AUDIO by Natalie David
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Matthew Good 
"Bright End of Nowhere" 
from the Album Avalanche 
Universal Music 
(Released 2003)

Some songs are addictions. They consume you completely. They command your soul and invade your thoughts. In an instant they can encompass all that that you see and feel and sense and taste.

They intoxicate your soul.

However, it’s amazing how quickly we can forget their power. "Bright End of Nowhere," a track from Matthew Good’s 2003 album Avalanche, is one of those songs.

I sit in a small campus café, headphones on, volume up, sipping my cup of Chai. The harshness of the day called for a less abrasive drink than the usual cup of Java. Avalanche, notoriously one of my favorite records, is at the other end of my headphone cord. 

Suddenly the first notes of "Bright End of Nowhere" catch me off guard. They shouldn’t, but they do. Immediately I gasp. My heart skips a beat. Time pauses. I drop what I’m doing and close my eyes. 

The plunk of the piano keys and lift of the soaring strings envelop me. The song is devastating, but still I pull it ever closer, seeing myself in its sound. I never remember how powerful this composition is until I’m in the midst of it. I feel as though I’m hearing it again for the first time. 

"The lights are out baby, and I’m a mouse." I feel comfort in the despair and revel in its wicked honesty that we are most often less than what we seem.

I reflect on my past. Good’s voice cries out without melodrama; Honesty holds him in check. He roughly croons, "Looking back it seems so simple/but having done it, it’s not the same," and I understand completely. Memories simplify the past, but the feelings they stir recall their adamant complexity.

The burst of sound slowly fades away. The song is over. I put my sorrow and shortcomings on the backburner until the right time again unfolds. Eventually, I will again let this song drift to the back of my mind, as I awaken back to the world of useless words inked on paper.

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AUDIO by Sarah Peters