Seriously. Sing It, Darryl.

It's been well documented that I have terrible taste in music. Lately I've been regressing to a phase I thought I was through with. This is a story with many beginnings and only one end, so I'll start three or four times and end up later.

Mark--my ex, one of the two great loves of my life--(and who, incidentally, had the best parents out of anyone I've ever dated; his mom was a yoga teacher, among other things, and his stepdad taught science at an alternative school) --Mark's stepfather was once a musician. A musician who played with a folk singer/singer/songwriter named Darryl Purpose. This is beginning number one.

Mark ended up at a school that was completely wrong for him with a girl who was completely wrong for him and still managed to make us all believe that everything was perfect. Mark made the girl (me) listen to all sorts of music, because Mark wanted to be a musician too. From Mark, I have in my library Philip Glass, Loreena McKennitt, (who I still don't listen to because it makes my stomach feel funny) Placebo, and the best making love playlist ever. Somewhere in there, some Darryl Purpose crept in. (#2)

Now, Darryl was not really my thing. There's a bright morning freshness about his music that struck me as phony, to borrow a Holdenism, for a man of his years, and seriously, weren't hippies out of style anyway? Mark used to want to be a hippie, too. So when he went away to camp, I put the Darryl on and listened to it every day, because it was his music. Doing something I didn't like felt like it brought me closer to him. And gradually, it wormed its way into my head. I found myself, and Mark, and everything I wanted us to be in the music.

Well, the relationship ended, badly, as I've stated more than a few times. But love doesn't end so easily, and before I knew it he was back in Cleveland, still with the other woman, but back--in my life, in my room, playing my piano while my heart expanded with the greatest love I'd known. And that's where this story really begins.

Mark and Phil came over one night, guitar in tow, to play for a while. We all used to mess around down in the practice rooms, piano and violin and guitar and flute and voice. It was fun, but I really suck at improvising. I used to sing sonnets, e.e., or Milton, when I got too fed up with the flute. One night I'd finally put the flute away in frustration (which is another story for another day) and was just sitting listening when he started playing this song. It was a little silly. It had Shakespeare and Biblical allusions. I was hooked. Phil sang harmony and the practice room rang like there was room for no more sound and I was in love, in love.

That song was Red, by Dave Carter, and I bugged Mark for about a year until he gave me the recording of Darryl singing while (I think) his stepfather plays in the background. I've listened to it about once every fifteen minutes lately.

I still listen to Darryl, every once in a while. It's nice to be reminded that the shortest path between two points is still a crooked line.