My Dave Matthews Band Obsession

     I love Dave Matthews Band. There’s nothing else quite like their lyrics and rocky celestial soundings. From the days that I knew not of love, neither self-finding, nor abysmal sadness, words that addressed such issues played in my mind as often as my inner monologue. I feel Dave Matthews’ voice is as familiar to me as my own because of that. My thoughts reflect that connection in the sense that my conceptual rationalizations and drawn penmanship are performed in the poetic approach that Dave Matthews Band has honed.

     When I am in love, songs such as “Two Step” and “Crush” play through my head. When sad, “#41” is all I hear. When in need of spirits and high hopes, an unconditional loving approach, or a way to hear my thoughts in musical form, Dave Matthews Band is what I turn to.

     Even now, I can tune out of reality to the song “Grey Street”, and hear it as I did when I was a child. The words do not make sense, but his voice carried through that saxophone arrives right at my core, and I feel the raw emotion that is brokenhearted.

     When I was a boy, I longed for the day when I could make sense of his words, so as to understand what I was feeling from his music. My attention to their music weakened a bit during high school, unfortunately. Right when I needed that music. Through my early love life I turned to alternative bands, which unsuccessfully guided me, in terms of giving understanding through my teary-eyed relationships. I felt the heartache. I found myself confused, and eventually turned to writing. I found my passion, and crafted sentences that rationalized my experiences, which later I would use to define said experiences.

     By nature of these actions, I began to create a world around me that had meaning in places it once had lacked. Now… to create your own reality so as to remain in symbols and beauty may be crazy. One's perception is what creates the universe before his/her eyes, and so… to edit my perception is to edit the world around me. To survive, I did it. To be happy, I did it. To be sad, I did it. To this day, I do it.

     Returning to Dave Matthews Band was not so much a hello after a goodbye, but more so a glance back to the direction I had sat and gazed at for so long. It hadn't changed, and it helped me find that sense of self again.

(My tattoo of the Dave Matthews Band symbol.)

P.S. My parents did a fine job by bringing my brother and I to Dave Matthews Band concerts when we were younger. That stage glows and so does the crowd.

When Things Were Bigger and Lasted Forever

     When your home was a castle, so extensive that you forgot what certain corners looked like. You’d travel up stairs, transported to a new plane of existence, where you could escape the yelling from the world below... Behind your bedroom door, you’d sit and do the things that now you consider boring. When you had an older brother who was a big brother. When you felt you and him were soul mates, and the pain it was to see him leave; a soul mate die. You thought it would last forever, and that first hit that would begin a lifelong assault on a heart you put your hand to every day to salute a flag, mumbling words you forgot, standing among friends who you thought would last forever too.

     When going to Blockbuster was a vacation on Friday nights. You’d pick out your movie from the stacked shelves, a library you didn’t mind being in. When you saw the rounded sides of the bright colored plastic sleeves that held movies, something you didn’t have to read. When sitting in front of the TV on those nights with your family, a tradition you wanted to be an adult for so as to drink those drinks your parents drank. And you wished you could laugh like they did, or speak the words you didn’t know about yet. When things were sweet and so was the ice-cream you ate every night.

     When a visit to your grandparents was also a trip to the candy store. When you ate boxed chocolates like that guy from the movie your parents rented at Blockbuster all the time. And like Forest Gump, you could run like the wind on the playground — beat all those kids just to lose in the end in a foot race with your best friend. He was the fastest. And you loved that guy with all your heart, ‘cause he was not only the fastest but the best at everything you had no interest in. When you sat next to him and felt that friendship and smelled that hair gel in his hair, the kind all the kids used to prop up their front strands.

     When your grandma died and the treats at her house didn’t seem so sweet anymore. When at the funeral you realized that things aren’t like the redwoods or tortoises you saw on the nature channel. You thought that adult was big like the red wood, hardy like the tortoise. And you cried in the pews knowing full well that you’d be crying like your mom as she watched hers being carried away. In time, you’d watch the giants that created you be killed by Mother Nature or that thing you heard called diabetes that runs in your family. When the chocolates were no longer a treat, and you started eating your vegetables. When you fought a bit less with the giants and started being reasonable. When everything became smaller as you grew and old places revisited had shrunk to a size in which you realized…there is no magic.