moroseFor me, 90s music is going to be about 1996 and the far-reaching implications of that year until all the horror has been smoothed away by the passage of time and the re-visiting of those memories so many times that it fails to shock, and then fails to sadden, and then merely just is.
My then-best-friend, my high school best friend That Idiot Shawn, the guy I was in love with at the time, was getting the annoying end of the custody shuffle. He was also in possession of too much imagination, too much sensational TV, and self-medicated ADHD, using under-the-counter substances. Top that off with him being an irredeemable drama queen, and you may have an idea of how much chaos he was capable of causing, unaided. Enter me, the sheltered, naive girl who grew up without television and under the impression that everything a close friend or family member told you was the truth to the best of their knowledge. I believed in weird coincidences and the supernatural, because of weird stuff that went on in my own life. He believed that weird coincidence and the supernatural made for really good drama. He told me his rich fantasy life, complete with all the things he'd ever wanted to be and the way things would have played out if he'd been in a movie. He didn't bother to tell me where reality began and his dreams ended, partly because he thought I'd just know, and partly because -- well, he enjoyed the power he held over me.
This was on the radio then. I remember it being a year of bitter and symbolic songs with that thread of despairing hope and deep-rooted anger, because listening to the radio was like looking in a mirror. His world was crumbling around him, and he was taking mine with it.
