fleeting nostalgia

On Wednesday night, Corey and I braved the crowds to go see John Mayer at the New Orleans Arena, finally cashing in on the tickets that my sweet fiancee gave me as a Christmas gift (I may or may not have dropped quite a few not-so-subtle hints). The thing I love most about music is that it's funny what it can dig and plow up within you, even the first few notes bringing to mind the scene in which you first heard a particular song, who you were with, and what your life was like at the time.

For his second song, John played "No Such Thing" from his first album "Room for Squares." It literally took him two strums on his guitar to transport me back to freshman year of high school, when my cousin Matt and I used to drive around in his white 4-Runner, blaring this CD. Matt was the one who first introduced me to John Mayer, and we started listening to his CD and EP before he had really caught on in the mainstream (I know...we were so cool, right?).

The funny thing about this song though, is that even when it became ubiquitous and you couldn't escape from it on the radio, I still loved it and would belt out every word like I actually knew the significance of the lyrics. Looking back now, as a 15-year-old, I really believed I understood this "real world" he was singing about, and that I would come back to my high school one day and show 'em all! However, hearing it for the first time in a long time and as a 24-year-old made me laugh at my teenage self who thought I had it all figured out, and also made me realize how relevant these lyrics are to THIS time in my life (he was about my age when he wrote this, after all).

So, without further ado, the song that took me 9 years to really, fully understand its true meaning: