I’m showing my age, but...

Here’s one of my favorite singers singing one of my favorite songs....

If you’re the type who never clicks on links, it’s Bette Midler, and the song is “The Rose.” A woman named Amanda McBroom wrote the music and the lyrics in 1977, and it wound up in a film based on the life of Janis Joplin.

If you are one of the five people on the planet who don’t know this song, or if you couldn’t make out what Bette was singing in the video, here are the lyrics:

Some say love, it is a river
That drowns the tender reed;
Some say love, it is a razor
That leaves your soul to bleed;
Some say love, it is a hunger,
An endless, aching need;
I say love, it is a flower
And you, its only seed.

It’s the heart afraid of breaking
That never learns to dance;
It’s the dream afraid of waking
That never takes the chance;
It’s the one who won’t be taken
Who cannot seem to give;
And the soul afraid of dying
That never learns to live.

When the night has been too lonely
And the road has been too long
And you think that love is only
for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter
Far beneath the bitter snow
Lies the seed that, with the sun’s love,
In the spring becomes the rose.


We now return you to the cacophony that is 2011.