Love, it makes the world go ’round..brings us to our highest highs and lowest lows. Former suspect, Sting, once said: “Love can mend your life or love can break your heart”. Let’s dip our quill into the inkpot for this week’s episode.

There is a piano piece that opens and closes this episode that I could not identify. I expect it is another new composition and hope it gets a release. I feel it’s very much in keeping with the two songs we hear Tobert sing.

Tobert maneuvers a date with Mabel where they watch Johnathan, Howard’s boyfriend, singing in a lounge. The first song he sings is Love’s Old Sweet Song (beginning at the chorus?). I recognized the song from my love for James Joyce’s Ulysses. This 1884 composition was a very popular parlor song.

“And in the dusk where fell the firelight gleam,
Softly it wove itself into our dream.”

The second song we see Johnathan sing is Meet Me Tonight In Dreamland. This very popular song from the 1920’s seems to thematically compliment the previous song mentioning twilight. This composition has a twisted history. Written by Beth Slater Whitson and Leo Friedman in 1909, they sold it to Chicago publisher, Will Rossiter. Vaudeville singer who was known as “The New American Beauty”, Reine Davies, introduced it to the world and helped the sheet music sell millions after her photo was featured on the cover. The writers received no royalties.

“Meet me in dreamland,sweet dreamy dreamland;
There let my dreams come true.”

Where will this mirage of our own desires, this fever dream, lead us?