I am a fraud.

Years ago, this song came on in the middle of the party, a glowing basement of tipsy young laughers floating in the immaculate EQing of a gifted music engineer's speaker system. This was one of the best party thrower's places, where dancing and conversations effervesced in the midst of each other, all smiles and music and movement and voices. There was any conversation I wanted to have, and I remember being busied by the thoughts stirring from person to person, everyone so willing to convey so much. I had no reason and no motivation to stop joking and sharing and learning and playing. Then "Could You Be Loved" played, bursting like spring sunlight from a music that had been in the mood of a current, cutting-edge, obscure wildness. And suddenly I was out of my conversation, had found Jill, and we were in the dance together with a spontaneous group, and I danced and danced as I had apparently imagined I would if this moment ever arrived. You ever have songs that are only in your quiet life, but you know what you'd do if they ever played in a tumult? I had listened and listened and listened to this song; I finally got to live it out then.

I was happy like I'd known this song my whole life. But if this song played just a few years before then, I'd have gone on with my conversations and gone hoarse before I'd have jumped into action. I would've reached my conclusions and fallen off into a silence that I didn't realize was an absence...

My wife introduced me to this song.

When I met Jill, I didn't listen to Bob freaking Marley. I tended to like my music to slug me in the face.

"Could You Be Loved" is absolutely a Jill song, not mine. I can picture her dancing to it right now. I hear music, and I think of the ideas and the musicians making their sounds. She's the one with the moves. Still today, I think of how lucky I am to be with a woman who really has moves.

Our first dates and weeks and months emanated with excitement that I continually think back to and try to live up to. As I fell in love with her, I was also learning from her, her fun, her soul. There is so much Bob Marley playing in the shimmering shadows of those first memories, blessing us.

She still teaches me.

Robert Nesta Marley still blesses us.

One by one, I hope he reaches all of us.