nasquasha

Photo 14 Jan 45 notes

fancyismymiddlename:

Beginning in the twilight of my elementary school years, and lasting until I earned my first paycheck as a cashier at a pharmacy, I earned a weekly pittance from my parents for above-board performances in things like dishwasher unloading, laundry folding, and tolerance of my younger sister. By the time I awkwardly stumbled into middle school, I had stopped spending my allowance on slap bracelets, stickers, terrible novelty candy, and scrunchies, and had started spending it on music instead. Cassette tapes that rattled around in the console of my mother’s car, and cds so precious and expensive I displayed them in my bedroom like crown jewels. And so it was that sometime in the early part of 1994, with one ear to the radio and the other to the murmurings of my maturing heart, I spent my allowance on a copy of Deluxe, the copy I still have 18 years later.
As was customary, I ran directly upstairs and sat on my bed, feeling the thrill of a small curse cross my lips as I tried to get that goddamned plastic sticker off of the case, and then remained seated as I studied the liner notes and tried earnestly to commit every lyric to memory. “Good” had been on heavy rotation on my favorite radio station, and I anticipated hearing more of the same. What I found was more, much more, but none of it the same. From the unabashed sexiness of “In The Blood,” to the striking desperation of “Porcelain,” to the rousing nostalgia of “This Time of Year,” I was smitten. Two years later I declared that Friction, Baby was the only album I would listen to when it was raining (admittedly, it punctuated the majority of sunny days as well), and How Does Your Garden Grow? was the soundtrack to every art class in which I had control of the stereo, and every late night I spent drawing at the dining room table, crafting the portfolio that would get me into RISD.
On June 17th, 2000, my mother passed away. It was the morning of my high school graduation.
After barely making it out of my freshman year of college intact, I elected to spend the summer living with my cousin in Dallas. (To say that I needed a change of scenery would be an obscene understatement.) On August 2nd, 2001, just a touch past midnight, my ever adventurous chaperone and I drove to the closest record shop in the city in the hopes of being the first customers in the area to purchase Closer. We were. The next day, sitting on my temporary bed in my temporary home, I unfolded the liner and started listening track by track, just like I had done with every other album I had ever owned. Fifteen minutes in, my heart nearly stopped. Allie woke up 8am graduation day/got into a car/crashed along the way…
My mother had died right around 8 am on my graduation day, and on the way home from the ceremony (that I attended), we got into a minor car accident because everyone was so shot that no one should have been driving. A few weeks later, we scattered my mother’s ashes over Narragansett Bay, just as she wished. …drove to the beach/’cause I knew you’d want it that way. The connection between my reality and this alternate reality were tenuous and coincidental, but I needed it to mean more, and so it did. A year in grief is paltry; 365 days seemingly reduced to a few agonizing minutes. Everything had changed, but the ache was still exactly the same, and I needed to feel like there was someone somewhere who understood. Mourning is terribly lonely.
A week or so later, my unrelentingly understanding and generous cousin took me to see Better Than Ezra at an outdoor festival sponsored by one of the local radio stations. (If you’ve ever been to Texas in the summer, you know just how generous this was. Between the months of May and September, everyone is a dog fixin’ to die in a hot car.) At Stefani’s insistence, we hung around after the show, hoping to get an autograph or a high-five from someone in the band, the idea of which made me anxious and uncomfortable. At 18 I was awkward, introverted, wearing a horrendous nylon skirt with a drawstring, and at that moment, incredibly sweaty and petrified of coming within 15 feet of anyone even a little bit famous, let alone any member of one of my very favorite bands. My cousin was my exact opposite and terrible at taking no for an answer. So, we waited, chit-chatting with the ladies next to us, while I nearly crawled out of my skin with apprehension. Then suddenly he appeared directly in front of me, and every time I think of it, the whole thing plays out in slow motion. There I am, fidgeting and sweaty, standing in a throng of vastly more collected people, and Kevin Griffin, singer songwriter of my sad little dreams, appeared DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF ME and was TALKING TO ME. Before I had the chance to utter anything unintelligible, he saw the visor in my hand and started talking to me about RISD, about Providence, about the pretentiousness of Brown students (sorry guys), about the shows they had coming up in town. He asked me about myself and actually listened to the answers. I was agog. Before he turned to quickly sign all of the other objects in all of the other outstretched hands, he told me to come see them in the fall.
So I did.
They played an outdoor festival sometime that fall, somewhere in Rhode Island. Armed with a shiny new copy of Closer I meant to have autographed for a friend’s birthday, my cohort Dave and I made our way to the telltale circle of tour buses and waited. As it happens with details, I’ve forgotten how I got Kevin’s attention, but it stands to reason that I did since I came away with the signed album and the memory of another kind exchange. Emboldened by something or another, I launched into a monologue about synchronicity, and tragedy, and a host of other things I can’t be entirely sure of, and he stood there and listened for longer than any decent person should be expected to, let alone a decent person being marauded by a slightly unhinged 19 year old girl.
The next time the band came around, I brought Dave with me to Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, early enough to stake out a prime spot in front of the stage. I danced and sang until I was hoarse. I stomped and yelled for the encore like a girl possessed. All around me were other die hard fans, many of them more well versed in the minutia of b-Sides, rarities, and Tom Drummond’s favorite color, vying for picks, and drumsticks, and the set-list, but Dave and I stood there just trying to catch our breaths. As the band finally turned to walk off the stage, Kevin turned around just before he reached the back stairs, and walked back toward the dwindling crowd. He made a slow motion beeline right to me, and crouched at the edge of the stage, his hand outreached. I raised my arm and grabbed his hand and all he said was, “Thank you,” and walked off. There were dozens of eyes staring at me angrily as his shape disappeared behind the heavy curtains, and all I could do was stand there and rub my hand.
I still don’t know what he was thanking me for.
I don’t dare to think about it.
I’ve fallen in love with other bands since then, other singers, but my distant admiration, no matter how fervent, will always feel cold by comparison. The astounding thing about music is it’s ability to resonate with you on what feels like a cellular level, and the things that touch you aren’t necessarily hip, or earth shattering, but they’re not supposed to be. They’re just supposed to feel like yours. A decade later I am still grateful for the kindness and empathy of a charming singer, the words he was moved to write, and whatever spark he saw in me that moved him to offer his thanks.
These things matter.

Brianna is an amazing writer, and this is a beautiful story.

Beginning in the twilight of my elementary school years, and lasting until I earned my first paycheck as a cashier at a pharmacy, I earned a weekly pittance from my parents for above-board performances in things like dishwasher unloading, laundry folding, and tolerance of my younger sister. By the time I awkwardly stumbled into middle school, I had stopped spending my allowance on slap bracelets, stickers, terrible novelty candy, and scrunchies, and had started spending it on music instead. Cassette tapes that rattled around in the console of my mother’s car, and cds so precious and expensive I displayed them in my bedroom like crown jewels. And so it was that sometime in the early part of 1994, with one ear to the radio and the other to the murmurings of my maturing heart, I spent my allowance on a copy of Deluxe, the copy I still have 18 years later.

As was customary, I ran directly upstairs and sat on my bed, feeling the thrill of a small curse cross my lips as I tried to get that goddamned plastic sticker off of the case, and then remained seated as I studied the liner notes and tried earnestly to commit every lyric to memory. “Good” had been on heavy rotation on my favorite radio station, and I anticipated hearing more of the same. What I found was more, much more, but none of it the same. From the unabashed sexiness of “In The Blood,” to the striking desperation of “Porcelain,” to the rousing nostalgia of “This Time of Year,” I was smitten. Two years later I declared that Friction, Baby was the only album I would listen to when it was raining (admittedly, it punctuated the majority of sunny days as well), and How Does Your Garden Grow? was the soundtrack to every art class in which I had control of the stereo, and every late night I spent drawing at the dining room table, crafting the portfolio that would get me into RISD.

On June 17th, 2000, my mother passed away. It was the morning of my high school graduation.

After barely making it out of my freshman year of college intact, I elected to spend the summer living with my cousin in Dallas. (To say that I needed a change of scenery would be an obscene understatement.) On August 2nd, 2001, just a touch past midnight, my ever adventurous chaperone and I drove to the closest record shop in the city in the hopes of being the first customers in the area to purchase Closer. We were. The next day, sitting on my temporary bed in my temporary home, I unfolded the liner and started listening track by track, just like I had done with every other album I had ever owned. Fifteen minutes in, my heart nearly stopped. Allie woke up 8am graduation day/got into a car/crashed along the way…

My mother had died right around 8 am on my graduation day, and on the way home from the ceremony (that I attended), we got into a minor car accident because everyone was so shot that no one should have been driving. A few weeks later, we scattered my mother’s ashes over Narragansett Bay, just as she wished. …drove to the beach/’cause I knew you’d want it that way. The connection between my reality and this alternate reality were tenuous and coincidental, but I needed it to mean more, and so it did. A year in grief is paltry; 365 days seemingly reduced to a few agonizing minutes. Everything had changed, but the ache was still exactly the same, and I needed to feel like there was someone somewhere who understood. Mourning is terribly lonely.

A week or so later, my unrelentingly understanding and generous cousin took me to see Better Than Ezra at an outdoor festival sponsored by one of the local radio stations. (If you’ve ever been to Texas in the summer, you know just how generous this was. Between the months of May and September, everyone is a dog fixin’ to die in a hot car.) At Stefani’s insistence, we hung around after the show, hoping to get an autograph or a high-five from someone in the band, the idea of which made me anxious and uncomfortable. At 18 I was awkward, introverted, wearing a horrendous nylon skirt with a drawstring, and at that moment, incredibly sweaty and petrified of coming within 15 feet of anyone even a little bit famous, let alone any member of one of my very favorite bands. My cousin was my exact opposite and terrible at taking no for an answer. So, we waited, chit-chatting with the ladies next to us, while I nearly crawled out of my skin with apprehension. Then suddenly he appeared directly in front of me, and every time I think of it, the whole thing plays out in slow motion. There I am, fidgeting and sweaty, standing in a throng of vastly more collected people, and Kevin Griffin, singer songwriter of my sad little dreams, appeared DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF ME and was TALKING TO ME. Before I had the chance to utter anything unintelligible, he saw the visor in my hand and started talking to me about RISD, about Providence, about the pretentiousness of Brown students (sorry guys), about the shows they had coming up in town. He asked me about myself and actually listened to the answers. I was agog. Before he turned to quickly sign all of the other objects in all of the other outstretched hands, he told me to come see them in the fall.

So I did.

They played an outdoor festival sometime that fall, somewhere in Rhode Island. Armed with a shiny new copy of Closer I meant to have autographed for a friend’s birthday, my cohort Dave and I made our way to the telltale circle of tour buses and waited. As it happens with details, I’ve forgotten how I got Kevin’s attention, but it stands to reason that I did since I came away with the signed album and the memory of another kind exchange. Emboldened by something or another, I launched into a monologue about synchronicity, and tragedy, and a host of other things I can’t be entirely sure of, and he stood there and listened for longer than any decent person should be expected to, let alone a decent person being marauded by a slightly unhinged 19 year old girl.

The next time the band came around, I brought Dave with me to Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, early enough to stake out a prime spot in front of the stage. I danced and sang until I was hoarse. I stomped and yelled for the encore like a girl possessed. All around me were other die hard fans, many of them more well versed in the minutia of b-Sides, rarities, and Tom Drummond’s favorite color, vying for picks, and drumsticks, and the set-list, but Dave and I stood there just trying to catch our breaths. As the band finally turned to walk off the stage, Kevin turned around just before he reached the back stairs, and walked back toward the dwindling crowd. He made a slow motion beeline right to me, and crouched at the edge of the stage, his hand outreached. I raised my arm and grabbed his hand and all he said was, “Thank you,” and walked off. There were dozens of eyes staring at me angrily as his shape disappeared behind the heavy curtains, and all I could do was stand there and rub my hand.

I still don’t know what he was thanking me for.

I don’t dare to think about it.

I’ve fallen in love with other bands since then, other singers, but my distant admiration, no matter how fervent, will always feel cold by comparison. The astounding thing about music is it’s ability to resonate with you on what feels like a cellular level, and the things that touch you aren’t necessarily hip, or earth shattering, but they’re not supposed to be. They’re just supposed to feel like yours. A decade later I am still grateful for the kindness and empathy of a charming singer, the words he was moved to write, and whatever spark he saw in me that moved him to offer his thanks.

These things matter.