Pride
From the Album The Minstrel
The streets are all empty now
As the comfort of darkness falls
The ghost of a thousand cars
Pass along curb stoned halls
There’s that place where we used to meet
By the shade of that tree
From a time so long ago
A time of you and me
The house is so empty now
A monument to broken dreams
The ghost of a thousand laughs
The threads of a thousand seams
I tried so hard to start again but never found a way
One stupid act of madness
And forever I must pay
Chorus
I have my pride
Your foolish pride
That’s all I have, I know
But I have this pain
And so do I
And I don’t think it will go
Do you think of me now and then
When you gaze upon empty streets
Standing beside yourself, hoping one day we’ll meet
I’m sorry that I hurt you, what more can I say
If only you’d have forgiven me, we could have found a way
How I wish you were with me now
As I start on this long walk home
Passing through memories
So hard when you’re on your own
I know that it meant nothing, I know that your love was real
This pain will never leave me
This wound will never heal
THE STORY BEHIND THE SONG
One of my favourite films is Dangerous Liaisons starring the great John Malkovich, and one of his lines really struck me, “Pride is stronger than love.”
It reminded me of a short story by Somerset Maughan called The Back of Beyond in which a man finds out his wife is having an affair, so he leaves her. His wife tells him she still loves him and that the affair meant nothing. She pleads with him to stay with her, but he refuses. He ends up living alone and miserable while the man she had the affair with, lives happily in his place. To quote the final line of the story, “What a fool I was to throw away what I wanted more than anything in the world because I couldn’t enjoy exclusive possession of it.”
His pride was stronger than his love.
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