George Jones (1931-2013)

There's a line in Sleepless in Seattle that has always resonated with me.  Rosie O'Donnell, gabbing with Meg Ryan while they enjoyed An Affair to Remember, states "you don't want to be in love, you want to be in love in a movie."  For years, that's what I thought love would be like-like it is in Sleepless in Seattle, all happy endings and cuteness and perfect bad timing.

What I find as I start to close out my twenties is that love is a bit more complicated, and if someone were to ask me how I wanted to be loved, I would say "I want to be loved like I'm in a George Jones song."  George Jones had a way to, with that voice that was so pure and heart-wrenching you felt as if he had sung the song you were listening to off-the-cuff, hit your soul.  He knew what love meant, what it meant to have your heart broken, what unrequited love meant.  In all of my romantic makeups and breakups, I've turned to the Dixie Chicks or Al Green or one of my other favorites, but only George Jones knew how to truly soothe my aches.  Like no other artist, he could find the pain in a wounded heart and sing it without ever forcing a resolution.  It may sound odd to have a gay, liberal Gen Y Democrat saying this about a Depression-born Republican country music icon, but no one has better captured the direction my heart pulls quite like George Jones.  And so, while he may be with the real honky tonk angels tonight, I will never stop loving him.