Remembering Eric Lowen

My wife, Catherine, received a message first thing this morning that Eric Lowen had passed away. Eric was for years in partnership with our friend, Dan Navarro, as Lowen and Navarro, achieving a rare level of success for as a songwriting team and then as a performing duo. Their 2004 CD, All the Time in the World is one of my favorite CDs of all time and their single, If You Loved Me Like That is one of my favorite songs, ever. Eric and Dan wrote several hits, including We Belong, which as I will mention below, was a very big hit for Pat Benatar and solidified their status as journeymen songwriters. There’s a recording of their own performance of We Belong in their 1996 CD, Live Wire. In 2005 I wrote a Valentines Day column for the Long Beach Press Telegram and the San Bernardino Sun, inspired by their poetic lyricism. Though I haven’t posted for a while, I wanted to take this moment to think of Eric and to share a bit of what his and Dan’s words have meant to me.

We belong together

“We belong to the light, we belong to the thunder. We belong to the sound of the words we've both fallen under. Whatever we deny or embrace—for worse or for better—we belong, we belong, we belong together.”                     

These words (I added some punctuation) are probably familiar to readers who remember Pat Benatar’s perennial hit song, We Belong, which was written by Los Angeles-based musicians, Dan Navarro and Eric Lowen, known together as Lowen and Navarro. I’ve known Dan and Eric for the past five years and have grown to appreciate the intricacies of their music, a true harmony of musical and personal collaboration.

When two people find in each other that special something, a miraculous transformation takes place that changes each—the “I” of separateness and isolation becomes a “we” of shared meaning and relationship. As I was thinking about “we” as the basis for this Valentine’s Day message, Dan and Eric’s song immediately came to mind.

We belong to the light, we belong to the thunder

In day or during the night, under blue skies or when primitive fears would shake us—our togetherness makes us so much greater than our individuality and our distinctness. We are so good that we belong and are meant to be…together.

We belong to the sound of the words we've both fallen under

Reflecting on love and relationship, I notice how much the common sentiment of Valentine’s Day is focused on such statements as, “be mine,” or “I am yours.”  I wonder why we don’t say, “be ours,” “I am ours,” and so on. Perhaps, it is the in the nature of Valentine’s Day that we are as much celebrating the love that is desired, sometimes even from a distance, as we also celebrate the love that is already given and consummated. When the words, “I love you” are spoke by one they are truly powerful, but when these words are spoken together, with one voice, they become divine.

Whatever we deny or embrace, for worse or for better…

For the already committed, Valentine’s Day is an opportunity for renewal and the promise of even greater and deeper love and affection. “In case you think I may have forgotten how wonderful you made me feel when I first knew that I loved you, well I still feel that way and here’s a card and some chocolates to remind you, too!”  These and other acts of reaffirmation of one’s enduring love can become a significant part of our most meaningful relationships, putting aside once and for all any sense that one of us might take the other for granted and placing the relationship in a context of ones life and lifetime commitment.

We belong, we belong together

The essence of partnership is the realization that we are both part of one whole. Our investment in the relationship and each other often exceeds our investments in ourselves, although never, in health, fully eclipsing it. When we belong, we are attached, well suited, bound by forces greater than those that would separate or differentiate us from each other. Together, we are gathered from chaos and uncertainty to form one relationship and location of being, from which we co-create our shared reality.

I’m grateful to songwriters like Dan Navarro and Eric Lowen, whose adult sensibilities have found their way into a special kind of music that speaks of love as love and is informed by a richness of life experience that knows about joy and pleasure, but also about loss, illness, and a sense of personal and social responsibility. Their (2005) album is titled, “All the time in the world.”

For more: visit http://www.lownav.com/ and, now, http://www.dannavarro.com/dannavarro/home.html for information about Dan Navarro, one of America’s finest singer-songwriters.