I Need My Girl

I have purposefully not listened to the new (not so new, now) record from The National because they were a band that Summer and I discovered together.

Our gateway was late - the Dark Is The Night double-cd the Dessner brothers actually produced. We bought it along with several DCFC albums at Easy Street Records in Seattle on our first trip up there. I’d been out in SF with her but had to return to NYC for jury duty in July. Summer was in Carmel in rehearsals for David Hare’s “The Blue Room” at Pacific Rep. She emailed me “Slow Show”.

With its refrain: "You know I dreamed about you/For twenty-nine years before I saw you/You know I dreamed about you/I missed you for, for twenty-nine years”

Summer was 29 that summer. It was crazy appropriate.

Soon “Boxer” became our favorite record. Summer called me from Outside Lands - the annual music fest in SF - to say first off “why aren’t you here with me!” (I was in aforementioned NYC jury duty hell) and that she had gotten all the way to the front of the stage and said to Matt B “I hope Ada is treating you well” (a reference to a song we loved and she worried was about having his heart broken). He asked her to repeat what she said and then, understanding, chuckled lightly and said “yeah, it’s okay, I wrote that with her, she’s my wife…”.

We were so excited when “High Violet” came out. I got us tickets for both Radio City and Prospect Park. It was the record of our year, our last year. Summer always thought she would die young. She warned me of it constantly. I would dissolve in tears at the thought. She would simply say, “remember me, listen to our music and remember me”.

There were a thousand reasons why we could have lost each other but the one that took her from me was impossible. It has been equally impossible to listen to our music. It’s almost three years now and it is impossible. But I saw this tonight. With a title - I NEED MY GIRL - that could only destroy me. I had to listen.

Summer, my love, my little sweetheart, you are with me always, my gorgeous girl. Always find me. None of this - we - are not over. All my love forever…m

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMhMcXppqcc