"Love Who You Love"

"Love Who You Love" is a ballad that comes from Flaherty & Aherns' A Man of No Importance. The show ran across four months, September through December 2009 at the Newhouse Theater in Lincoln Center. The plot centers around the main character, Alfie, reflecting back on his life as the director of an amateur theater troupe housed in a church in Dublin, Ireland. It is a complicated story, riddled with opposition of the Church from Alfie's choices of producing Salome and Alfie's final realization that he is gay.

"Love Who You Love" takes place in the first act after Alfie has spent time with the new girl in town, Adele. She breaks down crying and tells Alfie she has a boyfriend in another town. As a way of advising her as well as sympathizing with her over, he sings this beautiful song. At this point in the plot we are unaware that Alfie is not in search of a wife.

Not knowing the back story of the musical, and not ever hearing it in context or in an Irish accent, I took this song a different way. I looked at it through the lens of family, or the lens of difficult friends who put you through hell but you love them anyway. Because, in the end, whether they are friends, family, or something more, love can be a complicated emotion you shouldn't be ashamed of and words, their words, can matter greatly.

"People can be hard sometimes and their words can cut so deep.
Choose the ones you choose love and don't lose a moments sleep.
Who can tell you who you want?
Who can tell you what you were destined to be?
Take it from me...
There's no fault in loving, no call for shame.
Everyone's heart does exactly the same.
And once you believe that, you'll learn how to say
I love who I love who I love.
Then just go and love who you love".