Master of Time

Music filled my childhood home.

Not in an overly elaborate, graduation goggles type of way. It truly was filled with music. The daughter of a collegiate level drum major and a choir singer, I knew who John Williams was way before that was socially acceptable.

I distinctly remember listening to The Last of the Mohicans soundtrack on our family stereo and feeling really stoked to participate in the French and Indian War. Or at least run around in our backyard. Same thing, right?

Music has always had the ability to illicit emotion for me. I can listen to a piece and be moved to tears. I can listen to a piece and want to run until my lungs explode. I can listen to a piece and be transported to another time in life.

One that I can recall with such clarity that it’s intense is “Split Screen Sadness” by John Mayer. Heavier Things, his second studio album, it came at a very well timed portion in my life.

As any 16 year old young woman is wont to do, I totally dug John Mayer. When I first heard of him, I instantly swooned. It was a time and an age where guys with acoustic guitars really did something for me. I’ve since moved on, and brains, old timey manners and sense of humor rule. Which is spoken like the true adult I am. But I digress.

His soulful pop tunes and boyish looks, who wouldn’t swoon?! Plus his music was good. There wasn’t any denying it.

When Heavier Things came out, it was a couple of months after the end of a very intense relationship.

Sidebar: I know what you’re thinking. Because I would be thinking it too. “Intense?! Weren’t you like 16?” Yeah, okay. Maybe intense isn’t the right word. But it was the first boyfriend I had said “I love you” to, the first boyfriend that you get butterflies with all the time. That giddy feeling that is a hallmark of young love.

But with that intensity came feelings of jealousy, and pain that felt endless. It burned so hot that it burned. Not to say if the gentleman in question had asked me back – whoa, Nelly. I wouldn’t have hesitated. Because I would’ve wanted it back.

Ultimately, I ended the relationship because it had reached what felt like a natural ending. Nobody was really to blame, it just. Ended. It was that slow, sneaker upper of an ending. It was like Monty Python & the Holy Grail. It was all of sudden, but not really once you went looking for the obituary.

Being 15/16, and feeling those first breaths of love. It’s just overwhelming. The idea that someone did actually love you – the real you. Whoa. It’s intense. . . Maybe I did pick the right word.

I remember going to Wal-Mart down the street from my parents’ house. The Disney movie Sleeping Beauty had just been released for the first time ever on DVD (that dates me a bit). I always loved Sleeping Beauty because she sleeps through MORE THAN HALF THE MOVIE AND STILL GETS THE GUY. Someone get me her life.

I perused the CD aisle (remember when that was a robust area of the electronics department? Also dates me a bit) and realized John Mayer had just released a new album. Naturally, with my affinity for John, I bought it.

When this song played, it’s opening softness got my attention. It caused me to take pause and flip through the liner notes to read the lyrics. I immediately cried.

Because that song put into words what I was feeling. Wondering if I had done the right thing, when it had felt so. . . big. Was something wrong with me for chucking a relationship that had brought so much joy? There had been so much love, and we still couldn’t make it. That no one was to blame, it just wouldn’t or couldn’t work. It had been so much work for so long, that I don’t think either of our hearts were even in it anymore. We cared deeply, but when it is full of work for so long. . . It just ends.

Still, listening it to it now – I can remember that moment. I can still feel those feelings. That sweet, wounded, in love young woman. The uncertainty of being young feeling so sharp, but filled with so much passion for what was next.

That’s what great music does, no matter the age or stage of life. It captures those grainy edges of time as it slips like sand between your hands.

While listening to it now does bring all these memories back, it still makes me smile.

Smile at life. Smile at the intensity of those 16 year old feelings. Smile at knowing a piece of you, that feels long forgotten, still exists somewhere between the notes.