depression session (3)
Posted 23 August, 2006 in music
I am sitting here doing work, listening to my iTunes, and Dire Straits’ “Brothers in Arms” is playing. I love this song. In fact, I love the whole album. It reminds me of when I was twelve and at boarding school in England. My best friend Claire and I spent many hours in the Music School (basically just a wing of the main school), listening to sad songs on the stereo in Room 2. “Brothers in Arms” was one of these songs. I am ashamed to say that we also listened to “A Man of Colors” by Icehouse, “One More Try” by George Michael, and “Easy” by the Commodores. We called these listening parties “depression sessions.” Back then, it was romantic to be depressed, because we were twelve, and it seemed like a grown-up thing to be. Sometimes our friends Suzie and Helena would join us, and we’d all mope silently as we listened to “Love Bites” by Def Leppard. I’m not sure what we were depressed about: probably boys who didn’t like us, and girls who were being bitchy to us. I do know, though, that whatever it was seemed monumentally important at the time.
As our hormones began to kick in, these listening parties turned into coed dances. Twenty kids would crowd into Room 2, and I’d put on the special tape I’d made, which contained only slow songs. Then we’d pair up, i.e. the girls would choose the guys they wanted, and the guys really didn’t have much choice in the matter. The key was to get the guy to kiss you at the end of the song. Most of them wouldn’t, because they were just too embarrassed by the whole situation. Despite the lack of sexual activity going on in Room 2, we started calling our dances “orgies.” I think that moniker scared the guys even more than we predatory girls did.
The music school was a perfect place to get up to no good. The rooms were left unlocked, I imagine because the faculty thought that children should be able to practice music whenever they wanted to. But no one ever checked to make sure it was actually music we were practicing. In fact, we were practicing making out, and the guys were practicing touching girls’ boobs without getting slapped. One of the rooms’ lights was on the blink, and we liked to pretend it was a strobe. “I’m getting woozy!” we’d announce proudly after a few minutes of dancing madly under the flickering light. I took the boy I liked in there, and tried to make him woozy too, so that he would kiss me. Of course, he was too embarrassed to, and there was no way I was kissing him first, because that would make me a slut.
When we turned 13, most of us moved up to the big school up the road. But the music school remained a haven for Claire and me: we’d come down after classes and sit in Room 2, put our slow-song tape in, and mope. Now our musical repertoire included the Eagles’ “Hotel California” and “Power of Love” by Frankie goes to Hollywood. We were still depressed, we still loved to wallow in it, and now we had a whole new crop of boys to moon over, some of whom had actually hit puberty.
That’s why, when I found Brothers in Arms online, I knew I had to download it immediately. Listening to it takes me right back to that time. I remember we all loved the intro, where the synth fades in very slowly, and then there’s that first guitar note. It made my stomach do flips back then, and it still does. I remember how incredibly meaningful and important everything seemed when I was twelve. And I realize how little I really had to worry about then.