Battle Studies Review, Pt 2

The next chapter in this story involves my fifteen (and a half) year-old self, her current boyfriend, and the front seat of a parked car. While these sorts of memories are the type that seem most appropriate to suppress or ignore altogether, this particular one is of special import to you, dear readers, who are interested* to hear the ensuing details of the John-Mayer-discovery epic, which was begun in Part 1 of this series of installments.

You see, it was during these parked-car occasions that a budding love was developing that would forever change the horizon of my musical interests and endeavors. Fortunately for all parties involved (including you, readers, since this story would seriously digress into some sort of romantically comedic fiasco which I'm sure none of you have even the slightest interest in hearing), this love was not one arising between said boyfriend and myself. No, no, a more substantial, more lasting, and more meaningful involvement was growing through these many** meetings betwixt a certain suitor and I, who had been introduced only a short time before, but to which I became immediately attracted.

In order to further paint the scene surrounding the meeting of this lover and I, I must first familiarize you with this dear boy to which I was romantically "attached***" at that time. You see, as should have been a sign to my young self at the time, the boy was a musician. He played the guitar with such grace and confidence that at times I thought my heart would melt**** to hear the warm melodies he played. The tunes we loved he would play with such artistic interpretation as would rival the creators themselves, and while some of them he would sing (and I along with him), it was more often that he would simply play, while I, enchanted and completely mesmerized*****, listened intently. By this point you get the idea and to avoid further digression and possible nausea I will summarize by saying: He was good.

On one particular evening, he and I drove together to his (also musically inclined) friend's house with instruments in tow. Sitting around the living room, his friend began to play the intro to a song I had never heard. Boyfriend began to play along. Friend began to sing. "I am driving down 85 in the kind of morning that lasts all afternoon...."

I was hooked.

That is the moment in the room where it all began. I asked for and received "Room for Squares" for Christmas that year (within the month of this initial interaction), and "Heavier Things" became the soundtrack for the car-time adventures****** of Boyfriend and I. I knew that album backwards and forwards before I ever owned it, and the haunting themes from "Neon" and "My Stupid Mouth" from "Room for Squares" became more a part of me than I realized any music could be. I was listening to good music for the first time in my life, and had a insatiable hunger for any new, intriguing music I could get my hands on. John Mayer had single-handedly changed the way I thought about and experienced music.

It was love.




*mildly curious
**Somewhere between 1 and 1000
***in the words of my mother, we would have been described as "going steady"
****figuratively
*****I was fifteenish
******don't read too much into this


Editor's Note: Eventually, the author will get around to actually reviewing the album.