From A Lover To A Friend

This month, Sam and I thought we’d divert a bit from our usual music snobbery to focus on something a bit more personal. My best friend Jenn is moving this weekend, back to her home in New Jersey, away from Boston, her welcoming adopted home for… well, for this whole millennium so far. I met her through these wicked keen newfangled “interwebs” back at the end of 1998, where our shared love of movies and music and just about everything else led to an instant and ongoing connection. We got together in 1999 and have been a lot more than “just friends” ever since. Not in any way easily understandable to anyone else, and hell with it, that’s their problem. We’ve been each other’s companion in life for almost ten years, perhaps not completely fulfilled in many ways, worse than some but better than most. It’s a long story, certainly, and one I simply cannot do justice in a post on a music blog. Suffice it to say that we undoubtably love each other, for better for worse, but we’ve recently found that we must do something to move ahead with our lives in many ways, and part of that for her is to move back to New Jersey to be with her family and help raise her wonderous baby niece Emily. I hope you will all join with me and Sam in wishing her all the happiness and success she deserves.

As part of a send-off for her, Sam and I have come up with some playlists designed to say with music what we might find hard to say in person. All the “goodbye”s and “safe journey”s and “good luck”s and “I’ll miss you”s sometimes pale in comparison to a simple line from a song or film. If you’ve never seen “Lawn Dogs”, go rent it (or “NetFlix it”, as the kids verb these days) - you might understand Jenn and me a bit better then. Anyway, I’m sure Sam’s playlist will consist of mainly journey and Jersey-themed songs, and I’m looking forward to seeing what they might be. I went for something a bit more personal with my songs, touching on some shared experiences, and just generally more of a bittersweet goodbye. Don’t worry, “Bittersweet Symphony” is nowhere to be found, and neither is the song with which this post shares a title. That song and sentiment has already been shared, along with “Corner Of Your Heart” and “I Love To Be Loved” and countless others. Here’s the new stuff I have to say, in song:

1. Jon Brion, “Strings That Tie To You” (from the “Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind” soundtrack)
This film means a lot to both of us. The themes of love and loss and the desire to forget or remember, all strike a deep chord with Jenn and me. We also just enjoyed the film as a film, and the wonderful soundtrack by Jon Brion, using minimalist loops and chords, doing with music what Michel Gondry was doing with visuals in the film. This song does not actually appear in the film, but utilizes much of the same music with added lyrics about the ways memory connects loved ones, even after they may be gone.

2. Regina Spektor, “Us”
I doubt that Jenn knows I think of her when I hear this song. I’m pretty sure I’ve given her a copy of all the Spektor stuff I have (yes I know I’m a friggin’ Regina cheerleader), but there’s no reason she would think of this as an “us” song. I guess it isn’t for any real lyrical reason, it’s just that I first got into this song shortly after she and I had explored this park down in Connecticut (we enjoy traveling / exploring), climbing our way up from the highway to this tower with a view all the way out to the water. It was a dazzlingly beautiful day, and a wonderfully unexpected gem of a trek in the middle of sprawling highway gridlock. So upon getting home and delving into this song, its lyrical imagery of “They made a statue of us and put it on a mountaintop, now tourists come and stare at us…” just brought back the feeling of being on that mountaintop with the tower and the tourists and the sunlight. Even though I know we’ll meet up for other excursions, I shall miss my constant travel companion.

3. Death Cab For Cutie, “Passenger Seat”
Speaking of travel companion, this one certainly sums up my usual place in the scheme of things. I’ve been lucky enough to have someone patient enough to drive me around on all theses trips, while I get to be the passenger looking out the windows, taking pictures or video, sometimes of things that she doesn’t ever see until we get home and see the pics or video. I have been spoiled, and that’s the truth. Also, I never would have known Death Cab For Cutie’s music (at least not now and to this extent) if it were not for Jenn, who had a monthly crush of her own on “Soul Meets Body” (this went on for many months, actually) and got us both into “Plans” and from there onto the rest of the catalog. So this one’s for you Jenn, for all the rides home listening to DCfC.

4. ABBA, “The Way Old Friends Do”
I know I know, ABBA? But hey, I’ve always been a fan. If they’d used better lyrics (or had a better grasp of this thing we call “English”), and had exploded in any other time other than at the height of disco, I think more people would regard these guys as geniuses. Great songs, production years ahead of its time, stunning harmonies, and yeah unfortunately really inane lyrics for the most part. But this song, which closes off “Super Trouper”, an album I unashamedly include in my list of favorites, is a bit more palatable, and definitely expresses the right sentiment - through good times and bad, making up and getting through it all the way old friends do. The way we always have.

5. Coldplay, “Swallowed In The Sea”
Another song that Jenn probably barely knows, let alone thinks of as a “her” song. Again, it’s not a bunch of specific lyrics but more the overall gist of the piece that gets to me. And when it first got to me was on one of my many walks over to meet her after her work up Beverly. I love walking and listening to music, and for some reason this song cycled up and it was a gorgeous day out and I was missing her but going to see her, and the lyrical imagery about being kept and taken care of, even shaken to my senses when I need to be cut down to size, and how I appreciate that so much… And how that makes her a very special person that deserves more than to be just lost in mediocrity, she deserves to shine. And that’s what I will always wish for her.

6. Vera Lynn, “We’ll Meet Again”
Well, this one just popped into my head automatically, and I was about to dismiss it as a bit too cheesily on-the-nose, but then I gave it a listen, and man the lyrics are just beautiful. And her vocal delivery, similar to Edith Piaf (only you can understand what she’s saying), adds great poignancy to the whole thing. I find it very moving. Which is fitting, since Sunday is moving day! It’s also Easter, which is all about rebirth, isn’t it? So maybe that will bode well for my friend’s new life.

7. David McCullough & Paul Roebling, “Ashokan Farewell / Sullivan Ballou Letter” (from “The Civil War” soundtrack)
Okay here we go. There are a few… I don’t know what to call them… not “Holy Grails”, because they are not things to be sought after, but things that will haunt me forever after only experiencing them once. Things that moved me so much that I’m always wary of revisiting them again, either because I’ll be shaken again, or because I certainly don’t want to dilute the raw emotions it evokes just through repetition until it loses all effect. Anyway call these my “Holy Pails”, as in “holy crap Matt, you’re crying enough to fill a pail!” Some that come to mind immediately: Bridge To Terabithia. The Iron Giant. The friggin’ DOG episode of Futurama. Gallipoli (so haunting that I can’t even begin to watch this movie again - I feel the end creeping up on me inevitably). Douglas Rain saying “I understand now, Dr. Chandra” in “2010″, don’t ask me why, it’s just one of those self-sacrifice redemption kind of things. There are others, but I think I’ve given the general internet population of the world enough ammo should they ever want to reduce me to tears. Then, on a whole other level, there’s this clip from Ken Burns’ “The Civil War” documentary. It’s set to the pervasive theme of the series, “Ashokan Farewell”, which is beautiful and haunting on its own, kind of a cross between “Amazing Grace” and some Satie dirge. Then David McCullough narrates the introduction of a soldier, Sullivan Ballou, writing home to his beloved on the eve of battle. And Paul Roebling then proceeds to read the letter, and my God I don’t know how he gets through it without breaking down. It is as near-perfect a captured moment of everlasting love as you are likely to ever find in this life - and it’s so real, it’s not from some poet or songwriter, it’s a real guy in a ditch somewhere, hungry and covered in dirt, somehow finding exactly the right words for a final farewell to his love. And since words have often failed me when it comes to expressing such things to Jenn, I shall deftly step aside and let Mr. Ballou say it for me.

I love you Jennifer. And I shall miss you.

Download: Jon Brion, “Strings That Tie To You” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Regina Spektor, “Us” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Death Cab For Cutie, “Passenger Seat” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: ABBA, “The Way Old Friends Do” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Coldplay, “Swallowed In The Sea” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Vera Lynn, “We’ll Meet Again” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: David McCullough & Paul Roebling, “Ashokan Farewell/Sullivan Ballou Letter” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)