Dear Eddie: A Tribute to Pearl Jam
By: RDV
She has no picture of him. The only piece of him she has is in her memory and there she’s quite sure it will always be fresh, like the morning she has come to greet each time she opens her eyes first time of the day. He has long hair that goes down just an inch below his shoulders, as far as she knows, auburn, frizzy and seemingly un-shampooed for several days. His face, of course, is the most beautiful thing to her eyes, like she has always envisaged. And his outfit, always the same; boyish but comfortable, minimalist but eye-catching nonetheless. She sees him whether she chooses to or not. It seems like her mind has been programmed to flash his image each waking moment.
But of course, his voice is what captivates her. It has been about that from the beginning. She heard him, and love made itself felt, had been set into motion, never to cease. She was bound for a lifelong obsession, as her ears trapped the melody of ‘Black’. Sheets of empty canvas, so says the first line. And so was she for the first time of hearing the song, disappearing to obscurity while she listened with a full, honest heart. When she saw a video his performance at a concert held in Seattle, his hometown where Grunge music thrived in its seminal years, the admiration took on a dramatic metamorphosis that threatened to go on forever. It didn’t start from a petty crush; it started, unprecedented in its enormity, big. It was love, irreducible and eternal. She knew that too as she watched fog come out of his singing lips as he sang Black in front of four million audiences. The awareness was prompt in coming; the love, deferential at first, was pitiless, and she, unchanged.
She didn’t buy their box set which contained their greatest hits. It was released in her 16th year. Apart from the fact that she couldn’t afford it, there was what one calls fear. She didn’t know if she was ready for the Pearl Jam’s greatest hits. If Alive and Evenflow were too hot for her to handle, what more the 30 others that were in that set? And if she did have the chance to listen to the singles, how would she be able to bear the brunt of such high-flung obsession? She knew it would be just too much.
It’s enough that she’s here, and he’s there in her mind. Burning, his face comes to her in both dreams and nightmares. Where in the former he is her savior, in the latter he is the ghost that haunts and torments her. She loves it, no matter. The fantasy remains; her fidelity to that love, undying evermore. But she loves more the music, the sustained but power-charged vocals, the ever-so controlled but sentimental tone in his voice, the roughness and the softness just the same. The way he was always relaxed in gigs, never making a movement above a single jump while either throned on a stool or standing stiff in front of a microphone, never trudging the bounds of the hard-core mainstream of rock such as head-banging and air-splitting; all of it, doubtless, are what made the group so deserving of her loftiest praises. Their songs—which are thus far familiar to her---are the only gospel to her.
She is his Daughter, his Last Kiss, his Jeremy.
As she rouses from her ritual acts of worship, she smiles, she laughs, she vows for whatever it takes to be loved.
She has no picture of him. The only piece of him she has is in her memory and there she’s quite sure it will always be fresh, like the morning she has come to greet each time she opens her eyes first time of the day. He has long hair that goes down just an inch below his shoulders, as far as she knows, auburn, frizzy and seemingly un-shampooed for several days. His face, of course, is the most beautiful thing to her eyes, like she has always envisaged. And his outfit, always the same; boyish but comfortable, minimalist but eye-catching nonetheless. She sees him whether she chooses to or not. It seems like her mind has been programmed to flash his image each waking moment.
But of course, his voice is what captivates her. It has been about that from the beginning. She heard him, and love made itself felt, had been set into motion, never to cease. She was bound for a lifelong obsession, as her ears trapped the melody of ‘Black’. Sheets of empty canvas, so says the first line. And so was she for the first time of hearing the song, disappearing to obscurity while she listened with a full, honest heart. When she saw a video his performance at a concert held in Seattle, his hometown where Grunge music thrived in its seminal years, the admiration took on a dramatic metamorphosis that threatened to go on forever. It didn’t start from a petty crush; it started, unprecedented in its enormity, big. It was love, irreducible and eternal. She knew that too as she watched fog come out of his singing lips as he sang Black in front of four million audiences. The awareness was prompt in coming; the love, deferential at first, was pitiless, and she, unchanged.
She didn’t buy their box set which contained their greatest hits. It was released in her 16th year. Apart from the fact that she couldn’t afford it, there was what one calls fear. She didn’t know if she was ready for the Pearl Jam’s greatest hits. If Alive and Evenflow were too hot for her to handle, what more the 30 others that were in that set? And if she did have the chance to listen to the singles, how would she be able to bear the brunt of such high-flung obsession? She knew it would be just too much.
It’s enough that she’s here, and he’s there in her mind. Burning, his face comes to her in both dreams and nightmares. Where in the former he is her savior, in the latter he is the ghost that haunts and torments her. She loves it, no matter. The fantasy remains; her fidelity to that love, undying evermore. But she loves more the music, the sustained but power-charged vocals, the ever-so controlled but sentimental tone in his voice, the roughness and the softness just the same. The way he was always relaxed in gigs, never making a movement above a single jump while either throned on a stool or standing stiff in front of a microphone, never trudging the bounds of the hard-core mainstream of rock such as head-banging and air-splitting; all of it, doubtless, are what made the group so deserving of her loftiest praises. Their songs—which are thus far familiar to her---are the only gospel to her.
She is his Daughter, his Last Kiss, his Jeremy.
As she rouses from her ritual acts of worship, she smiles, she laughs, she vows for whatever it takes to be loved.
posted by Ria D. at
9:46 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home