Sing It To Me

There's something about a Damien Rice song that makes one, upon listening to it, feel all raw and achy inside. Achy like a mid-December flu or cold. This is the power of music--this is the power of feeling an emotion so tough and wrong that you (meaning Damien) can't do anything but lose control on the track. With gut-wrenching screams, yells and wails this odd little white fellow sings to me. He sings in a way that I become lost in his world of heartaches, snot-slinging sobs and fast or slow heart palpitations that ensures the end is near. For this kind of pain is only fitting for lovers. This kind of hurt is what makes the world of good music go 'round. The art of communicating this kind of sadness is amazing to me. I absolutely love Damien's music and have to admit I'm quite surprised he's still alive. What manner of man can live his days singing in pain to a lover that could care less? What kind of person could sustain such misery?

Damien's songs, his hurt, pain--this train of thought, is leading me to think of an episode of Super Nanny where this couple, who were separate, was having problems with the kiddies when the father decided to leave the home. Even though the Dad would come by the family's home every night to tuck the children in they continued to misbehave because they could see how their Mom was falling apart. (Sometimes adults fail to realize how smart children are. Just when we think they aren't listening or couldn't possible understand what it looks like when Daddy doesn't love Mommy anymore they surprise us every time). Anyway, the heartbreaking part of the story is this, Super Nanny Joe, comes right out and asks Dad (who had been keeping his wife on the fence for months without any answer to whether their marriage was over or not) if he wanted to work things out, and just like a maverick without a care in the world he said, "No, no I don't." Cue the Damien Rice song--"I Remember" perhaps. Needless to say, the wife was devastated. How do you cover up that kind of hurt? Here's a woman loving a man like living water, and here's the living water refusing to quench her thirst. On television with thirty million people tuned in--again, how do you cover up that kind of hurt? The look of the wife's face made me shiver. I wanted to quickly play her a song from the O album and let her cry it out. One good cry is what she needed, this I knew.

What is anyone to do when the one he or she is loving turns that love off like a faucet? No lingering drips to offer some since of hope of maybe they'll come back. Damien knows the answer to questions like these. He screams the remedy with pain on track after track, but who can hear when heartache thumps in their ears so loud like water?