I've never really been one for connecting specific people with specific songs (not emotionally, at least), because to be honest I think it can ruin a perfectly good song if the relationship goes south. Having said that, there is one song that reminds me of a specific person, and though it may seem a little clichéed at first, bear with me, because my reasoning behind it may surprise you.
I suppose I should get a little background out of the way first. This song reminds me not so much of a person as of my reaction to the situation we found ourselves in. I must have been 17 or 18, hanging out in London in the summer, nothing much to do except ride the Tube up and down and sit on the South Bank smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and reading cheap paperbacks, probably thinking I was the coolest motherfucker on the planet, not really realising that coffee and paperbacks are the backbone of any city's economy.
But I digress. At this time in my life, I was relatively new to Nick Cave, and still in that giddy stage of exploring every song in a newfound artist's back catalogue. I first came across this song as a mid-album track on a greatest hits collection, and largely dismissed it as a run-of-the-mill heartbreak song of a kind I'd heard before. I was far more interested in Cave's angry murder ballads and screamy Biblical armageddons.
That was, of course, before I met the person who became my first boyfriend (that's too strong a term, really, but it'll suffice). We had a brief but tumultuous dalliance that summer, and tried to maintain over long-distance, but in the end it just fizzled out. It wasn't acrimonious, nor was it particularly friendly; it simply ceased to be.
It was then that I heard this song again, but this time I paid attention. I listened to the lyrics, I felt the music and the sadness in Cave's voice. I could hear the heartache almost palpably being squeezed from Cave's guts as he squirmed under a magnifying glass of his own making. I listened to him talk about stars exploding in the sky and the world going to war and all those other marvellously morbid images that only Cave can conjure out of love.
I listened to the song, I listened to Cave and I listened to my own heartache. And here's why I'll always remember this song: it did nothing. For all intents and purposes, this song should have had me crying until I puked. But it didn't. I didn't feel anything, and it surprised me. Now, it's got nothing to do with the song: the song is beautiful and elegiac and makes you catch your breath with every image in Cave's lyrical acrobatics. It's got to do with me. I discovered that I couldn't muster that depth of feeling inside myself for the loss of something that had meant so much to me, if only for a short time.
So I listened, and I listened, and I listened some more. I wore out the CD and if I could have worn out my iPod, I would have. I tried to figure out just what this song was telling me. It was having an effect on me, certainly, I just wasn't sure what.
Then, finally, it hit me. I'd been listening to too many sad songs, watching too many movies. Emotions aren't as big or as dramatic as they're often portrayed. Sometimes you can let something go and it's OK. Not everything has to be a big deal, not every relationship has to be the one you invest everything in, and not every emotion has to be felt to its fullest depth: we can get by with a twinge of sadness and a shade of nostalgia, and move on. We don't have to live every day like we're a Nick Cave song.
So I'd figured it out. I wasn't some heartless monster: I was a human being after all. A human being who had maybe been mistaken as to how important something (or indeed someone) was. I'd realised why the song didn't have the impact I thought it should have had on me. I was eighteen years old, getting my first taste of real human relationships. This was just the first act, the pilot episode. I had a whole story left to unfold before me, and I had no idea where it was going to go. I'd have to leave a lot of things behind me on the way, but I knew then that not all of them would be as important as others. I knew then that not everyone would be the one I've been waiting for.
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