5.08.2005

Anna Begins

I was reading this blog posting last week and I realized that almost every woman I know of a certain age has a story about the Counting Crows song, "Anna Begins." It inevitably involves some sort of one-sided love affair in which at least one party heard the song and decided that it perfectly encapsulated the exact problems they were facing at that point in time. That Adam Durtiz was speaking just to them.

It think I sound a little jaded about all this, but for some impossible reason this song has never held a great deal of meaning for me. I guess it's because all my other friends beat me to it. Once, my friend Aimee made a collage featuring the lyrics for her friend Christian (whom she could never love) and left it at his front door. He got home late that night, found the collage and burst into tears. Such is the power of "Anna Begins."

So now when I hear the song, all I remember are my friends' failed love affairs.

Not that I'm without my favorite heart wrenching Counting Crows songs. During the end of "Anna Begins" I always start looking forward to the next song. Those great opening lines of "Time and Time Again" always gets me:

I wanted so badly
Somebody other than me
Staring back at me
But you were gone.

I wanted to see you walking backwards
And get the sensation of you coming home
I wanted to see you walking away from me
Without the sensation of you leaving me alone.

And then there's the angry road trip part:

I wish I was traveling on a freeway
Beneath this graveyard western sky.
I'm gonna set fire to this city
And out into the desert we're gonna ride.

It pretty much has everything I need in a song. And it always bring a flood of memories. A potpourri of people and places and mistakes and decisions. All from one little song. It's just that for me, that song isn't "Anna Begins."

Favorite Song of the Week:
"Does He Love You?" by Rilo Kiley - I think I'm a little late to the Rilo Kiley thing (but hey, I live in Cincinnati) and I'm still not sure I'll ever be a huge fan. But it's always nice to find nice music.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, yes. Anna Begins is the song. It describes so many of the emotions you feel when you are in a relationship. Any upstanding commitment-phobe can relate to the beautiful agony in the lyrics.

You love someone, but you are scared, so you tell yourself "this isn't love" and convince yourself of reasons why the person is not the one for you:

Snap her up in a butterfly net
Pin her down on a photograph album


and

Wrap her up in a package of lies
Send her off to a coconut island


On a more positive note, it also shows the beauty of being in love with someone.

She can't stop shaking I can't stop touching her

and

And everytime she sneezes I believe it's love

Who doesn't want to be in love that deeply?

Anonymous said...

hi.
i hopped to your blog thru your friend shawn's who had randomly hopped to mine i guess.
anyways...your anna begins post caught my eye.

i do love that song,and it holds lots of memories,and we listen to those words and we relate sometimes.and sometimes we hear stuff that we'd like to relate to in a song,no?

i guess anna begins for me has words that i'd wish happened to me.
but!
time and time again has always been my favourite song from that record.
:)
the part about walking backwards ...aahhh
always got to me...

always liked perfect blue buildings too.
ok, going to go look for that cd now!