Grace

Just before the days when Napster's glory lit up the fiber-optics, BMG and Columbia House CD clubs were in full swing. I watched and waited for all the special deals, squeezing as many CDs as I could out of my summer job taking care of grade schoolers at Emerald Park. When a nine year-old kid stabbed me in the eye with his index finger as he spun on the merry-go-round, I could say to myself that the money I was earning would go directly into feeding my ravenous music appetite.

What those music clubs afforded me was discovery and experimentation in a time when there were no other options. MTV wasn't playing The Smiths and New Order, there wasn't an iTunes, and there was no way to hear a sample of a song online. If I heard a tune I liked in Some Kind of Wonderful or Pretty in Pink, I'd turn to the BMG catalog and figure out how to get it into my discman!

I found out about Jeff Buckley in a rather benign way. I read about Grace in the CD World insert in the Eugene Weekly, was intrigued by the review and the story of his death, but hearing nothing else dismissed him. The summer of 2000, the year of my high school graduation, was the summer I got a job working at Fred Meyer Photo Electronics. Most of you know this is significant because it's where I met Ryan. Yes, Mr. Crush was working there. In fact, it was in a conversation with Ryan that I was reminded again of Jeff Buckley and finally decided to get his album.

I think that conversation went something like this:

*     *     *

Photo-electronics, fluorescent lighting, black counter-tops, one-hour machine humming, the smell of chemicals.

I'm standing next to Register 1. "So Ryan, you're into music. What kind of music do you like?"

Ryan walks a few steps down towards the one-hour machine, files a film envelope in the correct drawer. I see him beginning to get a smirk on his face, and I can now identify that look as "I'm gonna lay a really good one on ya".  He says, "Good music."

*     *     *

I'm smiling right now as I read that last paragraph. Silly Ryan. Needless to say...

...Disintegration, Head on the Door, and Grace came in a cardboard mailer soon after. I walked back from the mailbox with a skip in my step, and a neighbor I'd played with since we were kid shappened to walk over to check out the cds I'd gotten. It was hard to know what to make of a song called Mojo Pin, and he and I laughed as we stood by my dad's beat up F-150.

The summer before leaving home, the summer of having my first customer-service job and meeting Ryan, was a summer of both withdrawing from and trying to connect with my family in our small house. On one hand, I'd lock myself in my bedroom-- plastered from floor to ceiling with pictures of musicians I loved-- to read, watch late night comedians and movies, and stay up as long as I could. On the other hand, I'd throw a new cd on in the living/dining room (the place to hang out in the house) to try to share the experience with everyone.

I remember throwing Grace on while I was sitting at the dining table. The most intimate, seductive voice rose up out of the stereo-- I could brush that off as not being too awkward-- but that voice wrapped my attention around itself like I was a scarf it could throw around its neck. "Mojo Pin" familiars will realize I was in for some serious noise and crescendo in a few seconds. I popped the cd out of the player, pushed my wooden chair back in to the table, and walked down the hall to my room. I'd just save that cd for later.

Much playing of Grace ensued. I didn't really understand the album immediately, or even necessarily love it...but I felt like I should keep listening til I got it. Pretty soon I couldn't bear to go a day without listening.

Before I left for college at Lewis & Clark, I sent the remote-controlled stereo I'd gotten when I had mono ahead of me via the mail. I did a week of service projects in Portland (through Lewis & Clark) before starting school in early September, and arrived to campus with the friends I'd made while doing a wide range of things from feeding the homeless to clearing invasive species from underbrush in a park. We'd slept in an old church in North Portland, snuck around in the pitch-dark playing sardines, and showered at the YMCA down the street. I remember stepping inside the entrance to my dorm complex with the whole group, wandering through the maze of halls to find my room. They cheered me on as I unlocked the door and found awaiting me the shipping box holding my stereo...I was home.

Of course the Grace cd came with me to Portland...but the music was accompanying me in every aspect of my life. One of the first friends I made was because I had cranked up Grace to an only-a-college-kid-in-a-dorm pitch; he came running into my room, eyes wide, exclaiming, "Are you playing Jeff Buckley??!!" and gave me a giant hug.

I found myself singing the opening to "Mojo Pin" while doing laundry in the pleasant acoustics of the basement. My journeys into record store land are marked by Jeff Buckley singles, my foray into vinyl by the purchase of a new copy of Mystery White Boy. When we had to do a project for my Blues class incorporating music we loved, it was Jeff without hesitation. Everyone knew I was the freshman that was obsessed with music. I was always so, but Jeff pushed me to another level.

This album occupied my poetry, my thoughts. What was so alluring?

Amidst the exhilaration of wandering downtown Portland every weekend in search of music, staying up all hours talking with new and wonderful people, learning what I wanted to learn, taking a poetry class, the freedom to do what I wanted when I wanted...I was sad.

My first roommate was never around, my best friend and eventual second roommate (after the first one moved out) was clinically depressed and dependent, I missed my family and pets and worried about my dog passing away while I was gone, and I was stupidly, inescapably missing Ryan. I felt like I wasn't connecting to anyone satisfactorily enough. Strangely, I didn't even realize that I was depressed at the time. 

Jeff Buckley's open arms welcomed me, I had (and even now) every nuance and note of that album memorized. Perhaps I was hearing some of the things that I couldn't articulate, some of the things I didn't know were inside my own head. He could sing with ferocity, with absolute honesty, about tenderness, partings, desperation, and somehow transcend it with hopefulness. His optimism seems so obvious to me. Here was a man who loved living but had no illusions about his own imperfection, the inevitability of parting, death.

With his music I could admit to feeling things nobody around me seemed to understand:

"But tonight you're on my mind so
(You'll never know)

I'm broken down and hungry for your love
With no way to feed it
Where are you tonight?"

-Lover, You Should've Come Over

And any time when the jaunty swagger was required, when I felt free and ready to take on the world, there were lines like this to be had:

"All I want to do is love everyone... 

There's no time for hatred, only questions...

And I've get a message for you and your twisted hell
You better turn around
And blow your kiss goodbye to life eternal, angel..."

-Eternal Life

This album has been cited by innumerable artists as influencing them, and deservedly so. It's not a perfect album, but perhaps the growing pains of Grace are like the growing pains so many of us know? Striving, reaching out, filled with yearning for what is lost, afraid of having our hearts crushed, and yet offering our hearts again and again. I want to keep living like this, to keep offering my heart.

What we must do is sing the songs of our loss, sing our fear and imperfection, and keep on loving.
"...Be the kind of person who is naturally powerful, positive, ingenious, open, to the highest degree, but with no interest in coersion or pressure or power over other people..."- JB