Let me set the scene: January, 2003. I’m subletting an apartment in Santa Monica with my girlfriend Rebecca. There are way too many strollers around and I simultaneously feel too young and suddenly old. I’m 28. Rebecca and I had been splitting our time between New York and L.A., which proved an expensive and ultimately unsustainable habit for two intermittently employed actors. To my surprise, I loved L.A., especially in January and February—months which, back in New York and Ohio, had always walloped me with a serious dose of seasonal affective disorder. So there was the sun and also—perhaps more importantly—there was KCRW, Southern California’s NPR outlet as well as the home of Nic Harcourt’s toweringly great Morning Becomes Eclectic every weekday from nine to noon. Each morning, Nic would unleash a steady stream of yet-to-be-discovered gems that—in those medieval pre-Shazam days—had you leaning in extra hard to catch the name of the song and artist in Nic’s soothing Aussie baritone when it was over. Morning Becomes Eclectic was, for me, one of the things that made living in Los Angeles not just bearable but actively excellent.
The “eleven o’clock hour” was often devoted to live performances by bands or songwriters swinging through L.A., and it was in late January that I first heard you. Well, songs from you, at any rate, played live in-studio by your author-slash-father. How to describe that initial encounter? It was certainly a stop-what-you’re-doing moment, and that’s exactly what I did. I looked up from—oh, I don’t know, the coffee maker, the New York Times, my audition sides—and thought: “This… is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.” A sad Irish troubadour’s exquisite songs of romantic heartache and pain, how he’d wronged and been wronged, delivered in a startlingly pure, achingly sincere, and elastic voice. It called something forward in me, some heartbroken essential thing. I furiously scribbled down the name: Damien Rice. I needed this music in my life. A quick internet search and a few record store visits (remember those?) revealed that it was available exactly nowhere, its domestic release not scheduled until the following year.
Rebecca and I broke up a few months later. The details are unimportant, but she was my first great love and the resultant pain from the split was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. It felt as though something vital to my physical and emotional well-being had been surgically removed, as if I was suddenly missing a leg. I went back to New York that summer to do a play off-Broadway and, in despair, redoubled my efforts to find you. Why I thought the ideal soundtrack to a clinical depression would be ten of the most melancholy and navel-gazing songs ever written is beyond me. Or maybe it makes perfect sense.
When I finally found you—one blessed afternoon in the import section at the Virgin record store on Union Square—you cost me nearly thirty dollars. I didn’t complain then and I won’t complain now. I got you home, transferred you over to my newly-purchased second-generation iPod, deposited the headphones into my ear-holes, hit play, and hit the streets. For the next few months, you were my constant companion.
Before I go any further, I just want to be clear about this: I scooped you. No one knew you in the U.S. outside of a handful of KCRW listeners, musically in-the-know Irish ex-pats, and whoever saw Damien play at Largo or the Troubadour (as Rebecca and I did a few weeks pre-break-up.) I was part of the initial army, the foot soldiers in the whispering campaign, one of the connector-slash-mavens whose connecting-slash-mavening leads to the infamous tipping point. I was out there for you, constantly pulling out my headphones and insisting that everyone—people I’d just met!—listen to a track or two. No one was unmoved. I felt I was at the ground floor of something huge, an apostle who had very much found ‘the guy’ and it was up to me to spread the word. So maybe that’s what this is really about. I want some credit. And perhaps a thank you.
I took my friend Michael to see Damien play at the Mercury Lounge one summer night and then the very next night I went to North Six in Brooklyn to see him play again, both times within bead-of-sweat proximity to the stage. I proceeded to see Damien Rice play live eight times in one year. Those shows were, for me, quasi-mystical, heart-opening experiences. Granted, I was never not high but still.
One cannot speak about Damien Rice in those days without mentioning his co-conspirator in feelings-inducement, Lisa Hannigan, a creature of such transporting loveliness she seemed to have emerged from a sea shell. She was the kind of ethereal beauty that got your fantasy motor so over-revved you were convinced you had just laid eyes on the great love of your life. Trouble was, every single dude in the place was feeling pretty much the exact same thing. Years later it emerged that she and Damien had been involved and came to a very bad end. You could tell there was something going on with the two of them up there, some kind of quiet friction that percolated but never exploded. You could even detect a hint of jealousy in Damien when the audience would burst into applause at Lisa’s first few notes and then quickly fall into a hushed, reverent silence. Damien often seemed to be competing with the audience for Lisa’s affection.
So who or what did I really love? Damien? Lisa? The songs? I’m not really sure at this point. I just know that in 2003 I was convinced you were the greatest thing I’d ever heard or would ever hear and I needed you underscoring my every movement and thought. I’m almost embarrassed now by my O phase. Why did I think you were the final word in profundity? Why did I fall so hard for lyrics like:
Stones taught me to fly
Love taught me to lie
Life taught me to die
And it’s not hard to fall
When you float like a cannonball.
Now it just sounds a touch silly and indulgent, but to sad 28-year-old me it all felt so urgent and deep. I was, back then, much more prone to deploy sarcasm and distance myself with irony and humor. You functioned—I’m now realizing—as some kind of earnestness surrogate for me. I couldn’t say certain things so you said them for me.
Imagine my heartache the next year when I saw Natalie Portman and Jude Law walking towards each other in the trailer for Mike Nichol’s Closer to the familiar strains of “The Blower’s Daughter.” It was then that I knew we were finished. It wasn’t total snobbery—the hipster’s odious knack for abandoning something once it becomes popular—although there was certainly some of that at play. It was more a feeling that if I couldn’t have you mostly to myself, if everyone was experiencing you as intensely as I was, some of that intensity was diluted. You were no longer my special discovery, you were everyone’s new favorite thing. For a brief time you were exclusively mine and then suddenly—almost overnight—you got really really slutty. No one would know I loved you first and best.
A few years later my friend Bess took me to see Damien sans Lisa at the Greek Theater when he was touring to promote 9, the follow-up to O. Gone were the small clubs filled with only the most devoted of fans; Damien was now playing to thousands. And I had a very strange response watching him. He was in fine voice, and a few of the new tunes were the equal of anything on O. But Lisa was gone, which considerably lessened the impact of the evening for me. And songs I once loved seemed suddenly saccharine, his delivery overly dramatic. Plus—and here was what really irritated me—he was doing the same bits and between-song patter I saw him do that first summer on those small stages. The same faux-drunken jokes and charming Irish-y stories that appeared so spontaneous and ‘just for me’ were now revealed to be rehearsed shtick. No longer could I see him as the tortured poet or wounded artist; he was a huckster, a showman, a seducer. And I was mad at myself for once having fallen for it so completely. I remember looking around at the moony-eyed crowd thinking, “Yeah, I was you once. It won’t last.”
I realized my love for you followed the familiar arc of love itself, the first flush of passion so all-consuming you can’t imagine ever not feeling that way. But then, like all things, it passes. You get on long-running TV shows, you fall in love again with people who aren’t Rebecca, you get hooked on other peppier, less self-pitying albums.
But here’s a question: Is loving something the way I loved you even ‘love’? Shouldn’t a love that is true be sustainable? Should it not grow and flourish rather than dim and wither? Is it possible to love something at full tilt… forever? I realize these are unfair questions to pose to an album. You are what you are—unchanging and static—while we— your listeners—are in a constant state of flux and growth. You’re still the same beautiful, damaged thing you always were. It’s me who changed.
I’m happy I changed, though. Really I am. Approaching forty and listening to Damien Rice on loop would be weird and unfortunate. But there are times, when I think about you and I miss… something. I don’t know that it’s you I miss, actually. It’s the feeling, or rather the realization that I could have loved something that unabashedly, that fully and truly.
Or maybe it’s this: Maybe I just miss being 28 and being heartbroken for the first time. Maybe I was a little in love with the pain. If nothing else, things were vivid. I wasn’t numb. I was legitimately depressed (and even did a disastrous three day dance with Lexapro) but the summer had a kind of cracked beauty to it, the darkness illuminated by some genuine flashes of light, cosmic reminders that I wouldn’t always be feeling that way. There was beauty in the world… and some of it would be mine.
Would I do it all over again? No. One can both mourn a time being gone forever and be grateful that time is over. Youth is funny that way: We worship and miss it and want it done and gone all at the same time.
I wish you well, though. I hope you go on for many years to get under the skin of moody young men and women susceptible to melancholy and convince them you’re the perfect and final word on love and loss. I wouldn’t deny anyone their O phase. I had mine.
I want it back.
And I never want to see it again.
***
This piece was originally written for People of Letters, an offshoot of Australian literary salon Women of Letters. Participants were asked to write “A letter to the thing I wish I’d written.”
23 responses
I relate to every word of this. I too was at that Troubadour gig in January of 2003. I discovered The Frames a few months later and felt like my own direction was determined by a conscious decision to move toward their light, rather than continue down the path of darkness Damien seemed himself to have forged.
I enjoyed reading this translucently honest and beautiful letter.
thank you for writing this josh – i resonate with your question on how how can one fall so hard for those lyrics because i sure did. i had my O phase as well, as a 17 year old from the philippines longing and pining to be back home. that’s what that album reminds me of, but i enjoyed reading your experience.
I completely understand all of this. I’ve been prone to associating music with the time in my life where I first heard it, and hearing the same music again years later has always given me a sense of nostalgia and longing for the time I first heard it. Thank you for writing this.
This was so perfectly written. I literally went through exactly the same thing. I’m shocked by the accuracy of this piece in expressing this album’s effect on people. PS. Ray Lamontagne is a much lighter version of the same vibe. Check him out if you haven’t before.
it’s been a good eight years, since i was 17, from O to 9, and occasionally the random singles in between. it’s hard to pick a favourite singer, but his songs marks so much of the depth of my emotional life. haunting, beautiful, raw, and reflects so deeply the ache that we feel for all that is unattainable.
I felt the same way about Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism album, which I obsessed over in the fall of 2004. I totally get it.
The ending reminded me of a comment you made on Joni Mitchell’s “All I Want”. On how one can love something and its opposite at the same time. Anyways; I love your writing style and I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for any more of these short-story type blogs you write.
Always loved this song & just now rediscovered it..
O was huge in the UK. I guess I had my O phase when I was 10 years old, being a victim (or more likely the beneficiary) of my older brother’s music taste and collection. It involved less of the heartbreak but so much of the falling hard for the lyrics.
Hey Josh, I’d read your grocery lists like Hazel Grace Lancaster would for Peter Van Houten in The Fault In Our Stars.
i’m pretty positive we were at the same damien rice show at largo. after “O” and then with the loss of lisa, i lost interest. i wonder if he still plays street shows for tips. seeing him at the greek would be a total drag, i think. way too large a venue for his sound.
Ah yes, I get this too. Had a similar love affair (both with the album & a disassociated Irishman) only to suffer (as close as I’ve come to) heartbreak and as a result, I can barely listen to this album, even now. But it’s beauty was both soaring and devastating all at once. Genius.
I feel like O will live on in Starbucks playlists for years to come. I was always curious to hear more of the rift between him and Lisa.
As for me, I went through a similar phase a few months before Closer was released and he became heavily featured on every network hour-long on the air. I remember teaching myself to play these songs on guitar, and sitting in the dark listening to them as if they at all resonated with my lame 16 year-old self. For me, I think they represented the passion and longing I hoped to experience someday.
I wasn’t fully committed to this letter until I reached midway and then I got lost in the words, kind of forgetting it was a letter to O and not just a realisation of “Yes! You are right”… ‘One can both mourn a time being gone forever and be grateful that time is over. Youth is funny that way: We worship and miss it and want it done and gone all at the same time’. Beautiful Mr Radnor. Thank you for sharing and letting us see a little piece of your beautiful soul.
Beautiful… Almost a sad of a story as one of the songs off O. Just curious if Mr.Radnor ever listened to some of Lisa’s songs? If not, I hope he gives “Oh Undone” a listen. The thing to remember is that the creative forces that made such special memories for us also move on without us. If you can celebrate the change in yourself, why not celebrate the change in others as well? I think even Damien is putting out an album in fall after a long haitus.
Lovely letter, Josh. Who knew you were so great with words as well as acting? I definitely associate certain albums with specific events of my life, whether it be a breakup, moving to new digs, or a vacation. It’s one of the mystical powers of music. Reading this reminded me of a blog post I did on Jeff Buckley’s Grace album (although much less eloquently written). I loved O with all my being, and I believe it will always be one of my top albums. But depressing music is really my thing – a friend of mine likes to tell me ‘it makes me want to shoot myself, of course you like it’.
I remember the exact moment. I was reading the paper and a local well known chef had an articile in one of the columns. He was asked what was he listening too and he said he had just bought ‘O’and had not taken it off since…..I really respected this guy, so went and bought a copy…I remember the day like yesterday….that first listen, I could hardly move…I sat in the sun on the couch and listened to someone singing my life and thoughts!!……..still nice to revisit now and then.
I don’t think I could ever let O go, regardless of how long the intervals of happiness grow. When life hits hard I habitually relapse to O and then spring back when the drowning pisses me off enough. I don’t think I’d ever not want him there though. Great article, very well written and super honest, like him more. Thinking of going to zurich to his next gig but afraid I might attack him if I got too close…emotional overload! “why did you cheat!! why did you leave!! I wanted cheese on my toast!!” haha
I was cleaning my section after a long night of waiting tables when I first heard ‘Blower’s Daughter’, and thus began my ‘O’ phase. It fit perfectly with the breakup and self-reflection I was going through at the time, and I had it on repeat for months. Hearing it now still deeply moves me – such power in music and lyric is a rarity these days.
Damien’s music has been haunting me for the last 4-5 years. I’ve been wanting to run off and chase him where ever he played but I’m not that lucky. I finally get to see him tonight and so grateful for the beautiful Immanuel Presbyterian Church. Couldn’t ask for a better venue. Thank you for writing this beautiful piece on Damien.
I cried when I read this, then felt silly, then cried again. Every word you wrote completely describes my love for this album. This record sits in my Whole Foods carrier I stole when I was 23 (like the self loathing hipster I was); it collects dust along with the other albums I do not dare to play unless I feel like wallowing in my past. Nostalgia at it’s finest. I praise this album to this day but my ears do not dare to see the pain it still holds.
I don’t know what it is about listening to O but I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving listening to it. Back then, O was every emotion I was feeling, the yearning, the heartbreak, the anger, and it was my soundtrack for a good 2 years (there were others in between, but it always came back to O). True, listening to it now is not as invested, but it is the best kind of reflection, distraction and nostalgia
I would just like to point out the new Damien Rice CD is as brilliant if not more than O. Listen to it in its entirety on NPR. If you are like me you will find you can love another Damien Rice release again.
http://www.npr.org/2014/11/02/359335290/first-listen-damien-rice-my-favourite-faded-fantasy
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