What does the aspect of this line imply about the speaker's imminent actions?
"You have been the one,
You have been the one for me."
Since I first heard this song (by James Blunt), I've been writing its story in my mind, and I'm really puzzled by the tense. Any ideas?
L
Originally Bruce, Leslie and Zak's e-journal, this blog mostly houses Leslie's thoughts and musings as she struggles upstream in the spawning stream of life. Or at least that's the way I see it -B
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2 comments:
Placing flowers on a grave?
Preparing to make the person spoken to one of the living dead?
Sliding a Dear John letter under the door?
Hi Earl,
Well, the song is called "Goodbye My Lover", so it is in itself a Dear Jane letter. But "have been" is truly puzzling -- I don't understand why the writer chose the perfect aspect. "You were the one" makes a break complete, "you are the one" implies continuing affection and the possibility of reconciliation, but "you have been the one" implies an imminent change that will overturn what has previously been true. So what can that BE? It's maddening, MADDENING, really, to a grammatical mind...
Sigh.
L
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