Okay, I'm definitely on a depressing kick with the last three choices here. Dave Matthews is yet another one of those albums I listen to for the sole purpose of torturing myself.
Allow me to explain: You see, in high school I discovered Dave Matthews Band and decided I liked their style. So, naturally, I went out and got Under the Table and Dreaming. As was the case with Tori's Boys for Pele, the album, as a whole, didn't do much for me--only particular songs.
At the time I had a friend named Jess Elby that I considered to be one of my closer friends. (Coincidentally, four years prior to that, her sister Christina was considered one of my sister's closest friends--but those days have passed for all involved.)
Anyway, what happened was: Jess had Crash Into Me, which I wasn't really all too familiar with, at the time, and she liked it, but only minutely so. She insisted Under the Table. . . was much better and she wanted to borrow my copy to make a copy while I held her copy of Crash for ransom. (Did that make sense--or should I copy it over?)
As fate would have it, I graduated still holding her copy for ransom, and she still held my other album. In the sappy spirit of saying goodbye, we let each other keep whatever album was currently in our possessions as tokens and reminders of our friendship.
So I move into college, and I kind of got into a few arguments with Jess after that, but I would still listen to Dave Matthews all the time, to remind me of the better half of our friendship.
Now at the same time, Justin started going through a rough time with his girlfriend, so he asked to borrow that very copy of Crash into Me for awhile. I had already tortured the hell out of the cd, so I said, "Sure."
Well as fate would have it, this is around the time Justin and I became very good friends and were hanging out just about all the time. And every night, he would mutilate himself emotionally by incessantly playing the title track off that album.
Now keep in mind he lived in the room next door, so that pretty much meant that I listened to that album every night as well. It was my replacement fall-asleep-ritual without Sabrina around.
Now as time progressed, Justin and his girl did temporarily get back together, and in all this time he still kept that very album my forgotten friend had given to me. I was okay with this. Justin was a very good friend and I still think of him as a brother to this day, even though we had a bit of a falling out a couple years ago and haven't spoken since.
But anyway--how easily I digress--Justin and his girl split yet again, and he got into a fight with her ex, who happened to also live in our suite. He decided then and there that he was moving off-campus.
I was devestated by the news because he was my best friend. Every night we had our talking and smoking and Dave Matthews Band rituals that I could not see myself living without out of nowhere like that. The thing with Justin is I think he was my twin soul. We were always on the same exact wavelength. I could literally hear him think, and he knew I could. I always knew what he was going through and feeling because I would feel it all at the same time, even though I sometimes didn't know why I'd suddenly be having a negative feeling. He was, without a doubt, the human version of Sabrina. He was the brother I always fantasized I was supposed to have that I finally found, and now he was leaving me to deal with all the campus melodrama bullshit alone.
The thing with me and everyone else on campus is that they all thought I was cool, but I'm a creepy kind of guy. It's hard not to like me, but it's impossible to want to be around me ALL the time because I march to the beat of my own drum. Most people can't understand me, and it leaves me feeling alienated whether I'm the center of attention or just an observer. With Justin, I wasn't ever alone anymore. We observed together. His drum was beating out the same confusing song mine had been delivering over the whole of my life.
In other words, as afore-mentioned, I was devestated by the news of his departure. In an uncharacteristic display of emotion, I told him to keep the album as a rememberence of me. The problem was, no sooner had I said it, when I realized it was the only real tie I still had to Jess. It wasn't the album, it was the disc itself that kept me linked to her. I'm a sentimental fuck and a packrat; stuff like that really matters to me. So as we're sitting there, listening to Dave, me with tears at the corner of my eyes, and I told him, "Okay, I lied. You can't have this specific album because it means a lot to me and it came frm a very good friend I don't talk to anymore."
Well we saw each other a couple more times over that last week of the semester, but he never made any attempt to give back the cd. I let it go.
Then, for God knows what reason, he decided to randomly not talk to me the whole break after the semester, even though we weren't fighting and he was the one who had insisted we needed, needed! to stay in touch over the break.
So as the break wore on and there was no word from this boy I cared about as though he were my blood, I did get a little irked over the situation with the cd. It was no longer just my tie to Jess, but also a strong connection between him and myself.
We actually wound up not speaking for about six months and we even got into a mini-fight along the way over the cd. Basically he refused to give it back due to sentimental value--even though he worked at a cd store and could have replaced it easily--and I argued that that specific disk in his possession also meant a great deal to me.
But I allowed myself to be the bigger person and I let him keep the album. I told him no material thing was worth fighting with your good friends over, so if it meant that much to him, he could keep the album and I would buy another--which I did.
Well six months go by, and then, out of the blue, Justin and I run into each other and are suddenly hanging out all the time again--I mean like every day and night for months straight. In that time, he used to like to bust out his guitar from time to time--a thing he did on campus as well--and this time around he would always play Dave Matthews for me.
Now a sidenote on Justin and his strumming capabilities: The boy was a genius. He could listen to just about anything and eventually figure out how to play it. What made this even more amazing was the fact that he was self-taught. He never took lessons, he just picked up the instrument and played. I was always swept away by the look in his eye and the accuracy with which he could beat out the notes from that guitar.
His favorite Dave tune to play was Lie in our Graves, and I have to be honest, to this day the song still brings me back and leaves me deeply saddened that we left on such terms that we will probably never speak again.
Justin was that one friend I searched for my whole life. I love all my friends, but he was the one that was my mirror image, the one people would call my twin. He was the one who fully knew what it was like to be me because he was living a parallel existence. I feel blessed to have known him, but cursed to have lost him.
To complicate the history of this cd even more, I wound up losing the other copy I had bought shortly after I replaced it, and had to buy another one. After justin and I stopped speaking permanently, my new one got so badly scratched from over-playing it that I had to replace it yet again!
So this is what Dave Matthews Band means to me. I think of all these things, and of Jess, and of Justin, every time I put the cd in my player. I like the band's other work, and I did eventually replace Under the Table and Dreaming. I even bought Before These Crowded Streets. Although they both offer things I like, neither hits the same chord within my heart as that one album can.
And that's all I got to say about that. There's a link below to another Dave site, enjoy, then come back for some Blondie. Peace!
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