you can stand under my umbrella

I've been thinking a lot about cultural symbols of proximity. At one point when working with the Modern Love editor on my piece, I revised a sentence in which I'd originally, lazily, talked about feeling T. breathe. The editor changed it back to "I felt him breathe," so I had to explain my reasoning: in the lung disease universe, breath is the obvious metaphor. It's in every slogan. Using it felt cheap. "I can feel you breathe"--it gets the point of closeness across, but it lacks originality.

When two people aren't allowed to be within three feet of each other, the obvious impeded act is sex. But what about all the other things we can't do, things that are less obviously intimate and perhaps only acquire their intimacy after they've been taken from you? I want to ride in an elevator with T. I want to ride a rollercoaster together. I want to tell him "scooch" and then sit down next to him on a bench. I want to hand him lightbulbs or nails as he stands on a ladder.

So I've been thinking about the ways in which we represent shared space. A bicycle built for two. A girl wearing her boyfriend's varsity jacket.

My favorite, however, is the umbrella. Rihanna's song (written by Terius Nash, Christopher Stewart, Thaddis Harrell and Jay-Z) is genius. Not only does it use an object previously untouched by the music industry (unlike the motorcycle, the bed, the shoe), but it uses one that is not historically sexual (some might say that there's always been a phallic element to the umbrella, but I'd argue that Rihanna is singlehandedly responsible for making it sexy).

"Umbrella's" message may be similar to that of "I'll Stand By You" or a dozen other songs, but it gets out of the abstract. Incorporation of a concrete object, however, is not the guarantor of an exceptional song. Imagine the song "You can have my house key (house key, house key, eee, eee, eee..)"

Why is "Umbrella" more effective? Because it's about being within inches of another person. It's a situation that's not blatant foreplay, that's likely to end when you reach the stairs of the subway station.

So compare the Friends themesong ("I'll be there for you, when the rain starts to pour...") with "Umbrella," and you'll see why the latter is pure brilliance.