N.K. Murray

Dear Dave,

I hope it’s alright that I call you that – you see, you’ve been a huge part of my life well, for the better part of half of it now, and I feel like I know you. Perhaps that’s presumptuous of me, as I have only met you through your music, but that music. . . Dave, that music has been the soundtrack of my life. I have been wanting to write you for a while, but fear kept me from doing so. Recently, that fear has gone away – pushed aside due to the myriad of other feelings that have taken root inside of me, and I realized that I literally have nothing to lose by writing this.

You see, I’ve been listening to your music since I was 15 years old. The first song I ever heard was Satellite – off of Remember Two Things, and it was the first time that I felt like someone understood what it felt like to look in the sky and wonder. Wonder what else was out there. Wonder who else might be seeing the same things I was seeing at that exact moment. It was transformative, and beautiful, and made me realize that there were other people who might think like I do.

As I made my way through high school, an awkward, forceful, solitary girl, I listened to Crash, and wondered what it might be like to walk by the water, and feel the wonder of just being me, and not worrying about everything else that impacted who I was on a daily basis. The music washed over me, and in those moments, I didn’t worry about what other people thought about me – if I was weird, if I was loud, if I was quiet, if I was me.

Oh, life it seems a struggle between
What we see what we do
I’m not going to change my ways
Just to please you or appease you

Seek Up – Dave Matthews Band

Life progresses beyond childhood, and in my case, almost painfully so. I could go through each album, and pick out the many songs which spoke to me, but I really want to get to the point of why I’m writing you.

In ’98 you came out with Before These Crowded Streets right after my dad had been diagnosed with the cancer that would kill him. I lost my dad in April of 2001, and in 2002, you released Busted Stuff. Between The Dreaming Tree and Grey Street, it felt like you knew me. You knew what I was screaming in my head every. single. fucking. day. of my life after my dad died. And. . . now, 22 years later, it’s even more true. I dream myself a thousand times around the world, but I can’t get out of this place.

She thinks when she was small
There on her father’s knee
How he had promised her:
“You’ll always be my baby”
Daddy, come quick
The dreaming tree has died
I can’t find my way home
There is no place to hide

The Dreaming Tree – Dave Matthews Band

But. . . I digress. Dave, you were the soundtrack to my wedding, and the first song I danced to as a married woman. God, I love that song. It didn’t just speak to me – it wound its way into my heart and made me BELIEVE in what you were you were saying.

In the darkest times you shine on me 
Set me free forgive me 
Steady as we go 
So if you heart runs dry my love 
I will fill your cup 
And if your load gets heavy girl 
I will lift you up 
But troubles they may come and go 
But good times be the gold 
So if the road gets rocky girl 
Just steady as we go 

Steady As We Go – Dave Matthews Band

And in 2009, I was driving down a road I frequented, and Baby Blue came on. I was transported. Have you ever had a moment where you saw your destiny in your head? My first thought, was what if that broken heart meant a literal broken heart? I saw the story in my head, as clear as I saw the road in front of me. A good friend had pestered me for years to write a book, and your song brought that book out of my head and onto the paper. I scribbled 80 handwritten pages furiously, an ending to a book I had no idea how to start. But, as the days passed, the ending to my story sat there, staring at me as ideas tend to do when they are neglected. For over two years, I was at a standstill.

And then my mom died, rather suddenly. From cancer. Like my dad.

My heart couldn’t break – it was already in pieces from losing my dad in ’01. I was a mess. An utter, inexplicable, disaster of a mess that I tried to hide the best I could. A blackhole of depression that nothing, literally nothing could get me out of. Big Whiskey and the Groo Grux King was the soundtrack of my loss, and I felt like the Time Bomb you crooned about. The loss decimated the pieces of me that were left after losing my dad. It felt catastrophic. It felt like I was going to lose the parts of me that made me, me, and it was okay, because I hated myself. I hated the person that I had become.

When everything starts to fall
So fast that it terrifies you
When will you hit the wall?
Are you gonna learn to fly?

Time Bomb – Dave Matthews Band

I started writing again. I wrote feverishly. I couldn’t get the words out of my head fast enough. I spent many a sleepless night crafting the narrative in my head, and needing it to get out of there so my demons could dance more freely. The story came together, almost comically easy, as though Grief (my most active demon) had spurred me on. My main character, Merry (as in Christmas, not as in Virgin) sang Angel to her husband as she slipped from this world to the next, and I wrote her story with tears streaming down my face. I finished my first draft, and let out a sigh – not of relief, but of loss. The loss of the story on the page was as heavy on my heart and soul as almost anything in my life to that point. Your words made their way through that story, not just for the broken heart that plagued my main character, but the people that she left behind. It was her relationship with her sisters that ultimately triggered me to name my book, and it was your song that soothed my soul as I grieved the loss of my main character, and my parents all over again.

I would never make it through
Hope you always know its true
You could make the heaven’s fall
Just by walking away
Sister, I hear you laugh
My heart fills full up
Keep me please

Sister – Dave Matthews

It was that song that let me finish my story. It was that song that let me close a chapter in my life that I didn’t wish to ever revisit again. Your music made me an author. For that alone, I could never repay you. For that, I will be eternally grateful.

As of late, my life feels like it’s taken a swift left turn into a concrete wall that I can’t stop myself from hitting. I listen to your music when I’m in the shower and no one can hear me sobbing into the falling water. The words of Grey Street rush over me as though you were singing directly to me.

She feels like kicking out all the windows
And setting fire to this life
She could change everything about her
Using colors bold and bright
But all the colors mix together
To grey
And it breaks her heart

Grey Street – Dave Matthews Band

It’s not all bad – I know it sounds like the soundtrack of my life has encompassed many of your more melancholy missives. Someone recently told me that I seem to be pigeon-holing myself in the sadness, but Dave, it’s not just that sadness that has kept me going. Your music has soothed me in a way that little else can or ever will. I know I can put on one of your songs and be comforted by the words you’ve written. I listen to you more often than I don’t, and there always seems to be something that I can choose that not just speaks to me, but guides me forward when I just don’t know how to go on any further. I don’t know how much I believe in God anymore after all of the losses in my life, but when I listen to you sing, I want to. I really want to.

My body is bent and broken
By long and dangerous sleep
I can work the fields of Abraham
And turn my head away
I’m not a stranger
In the eyes of the maker.

The Maker – Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds

I know writing this does little for anyone other than me. But, I find as this life of mine rushes forward like a raging river where I am merely hanging on for dear life, that I have to take the moments that come to me and give credit where credit is due. I know the chances of you reading this are slim – infinitesimal perhaps. But I need you to know how much your words mean to me, and always have.

Dave, your words have fueled me. Soothed me. Broken me. And saved me. They saved me, and they still do every single day. Every day that I wonder why I keep fighting, why I keep slogging through the mud of this life, your words remind me that there is more within me that I may never be able to fully get out of my head, but man, it sure is worth trying to do so. I need you to know how your words have inspired my words at times when I thought there were no words to describe the darkness I felt. I need you to know that your words have saved me from myself. I want you to read my words, selfishly, of course. But I want you to know that your words altered the very fiber of who I was as a writer, and as a person, so you know that as an artist, your value is more than just notes and words and harmonies and sounds. Your words have given me purpose.

On bended knees, I pray, Bartender please
When I was young enough, I didn’t think about it
I just want to run and hide
On bended knees, Father please

Bartender – Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds

For that, I will never be able to fully thank you. For that, I will forever be grateful that you have shared your gifts with the world so that some chick from North Tonawanda, New York could listen to them and simply feel. Simply be.

Then comes the day
Staring at myself I turn to question me
I wonder: do I want the simple, simple life that I once lived in well?
Oh, things were quiet then
In a way they were the better days
But now I am the proudest monkey you’ve ever seen

Proudest Monkey – Dave Matthews Band