MOG

I never thought that I would go for her. She was never the easy sale, the one that a man would necessarily be drawn to in a crowded room. But once I slowed down enough to drink her in, she was the one for me. She definitely wasn't sold on me either at first, and her rejection of everything I thought was me at the time cut me deep. But I swam in a kind of infatuation that drove me to do whatever it took to gain her favor. Everything she did sparkled magically, and her natural artistic sense amazed me. I fancied myself a writer, but her work shamed me. Whatever she read, whatever she listen to, spoke to me like gospel.

I did my best for a while to resist her allure, to assert my own tastes and beliefs, but she had a quiet assuredness that always won out. When she played Radiohead for me for the first time, I can remember being bored and rather unimpressed. The same with Elliott Smith; I thought I was better than lo-fi and acoustic guitars. But time and time again she would be right, and I had to repeart the same refrain: "OK...you were right." Eventually, I began to seek out new tunes to impress and stump her, but, try as I may, I never could find an angle on her that she didn't already see.

Looking back on it now, my musical tastes evolved and improved more during that period of courtship than almost any other time in my life. It's unfortunate that life and my ego got in the way, because I sit here with my music and my memories, a time crystallized in my mind to dust off and admire.