There's a way I feel right now, wish you'd help me, don't know how

Hi Toe,

I like this idea of talking about a song that, in spite of the fact that it reminds you of a bad time in your life, you still love. It makes me think of a sort of healthy mental space, one reached with time, where you can embrace your past failings and love your lifeThere are a few bad times in my life, and a fair number of them involve women I have dated. Looking back now, a lot of these times do not seem so serious to me, but at the time, feelings I had were huge. Here is one song associated with such a time by Dinosaur Jr, The Wagon:

I was new to living in DC, staying in a big, decrepit house with five other people. A housemate had sort of set me up with this eccentric, Pixie-like woman who was very talented and interesting. Our first date lasted something like 7 hours, where we wandered around on a snowy day, going to a restaurant in Adams Morgan and talking non-stop. I remember the morning after the first time we spent the night at my place, I wanted to listen to music as we lay in bed. I had a cassette someone made me, one side was Dinosaur Jr and the other was something else. I had suggested the other band (I think it might have been Soul Asylum), and she said she liked the sensibilities of Dinosaur Jr. This was one of the first songs on the album if I recall, and I always think of that time whenever I hear it. My room was huge, with plaster walls crumbling, and two giant windows and a non-functioning fireplace. We lay in bed under a heavy blanket (it was February, afterall, and that place was very underheated) and listened to the tape as it played in the little boombox I had on the floor. I had plastic over the windows for insulation, and had painted the plastic with acrylic paint, so it looked like stained glass.

We dated for about two months. She broke up with me on the front stoop of the big stone row-house I lived in, late on a warm May night, saying how she was going home because she didn't think that it was right to fool around in bed with a friend. It was then I realized I hadn't been conveying how I felt about her, that I had somehow mistook her lighthearted, pixieness for a need for a light relationship, which was a relationship that worked for me, but I think I had hidden how much I cared about her. I told her I thought of us as more than friends, but it was too late, I guess, and I don't think I expressed myself very well. I tried to see her again a week later, but she refused ("You won't see me" goes the song). She moved away sometime in the next few months and I never saw her again.

I love the chaos of this song, of this whole album actually. It reminds me of being hungover on cheap whiskey--something else I experienced a lot in those days--and of being generally confused about life, but somehow having a good time. I was kind of manically happy while we were going out, but I was also sad and insecure, and this song sounds that way to me, too.

Anyway, what a good idea to talk about these song memories. Give me another song from your past, and I'll do the same.
Love,
E-word