Twin Forks

Let’s talk about Dashboard Confessional.

My story is not unique. Dashboard Confessional was not some underground band, they were the flagship of a fleet of musicians representing the “emo” teen culture that was defined in magazines and the subject of a clue on Jeopardy. And they meant a lot to me.

When I was a teenager, I was very sad. I didn’t stop being sad, but it got a little easier, for a few years. I was lonely, and I wanted to be loved. I still am, and I still do. I listened to Dashboard’s songs about heartbreak and fantasized that one day I would love someone enough to feel that distraught over them. Eventually I met this boy Matt who was so beautiful and had the brightest green eyes I’ve ever seen. He told me he loved me over the phone, and not long after that he broke my heart.

"This is incredible, starving, insatiable, yes this is love for the first time. Well you’d like to think that you were invincible, yeah well, weren’t we all, once? Before we felt loss for the first time?" The Brilliant Dance

I spent over a year brokenhearted over Matt. I missed him all the time, and I missed the fleeting taste I’d had of there being a boy who wanted to hold my hand and stay up late talking to me. My friend “A” had a boyfriend, an older guy who doted on her, who bought us tickets to see whatever shows we wanted to go to. We were at a Dashboard show after the hugely popular album A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar, and while their perfect love song Hands Down played, A and her boyfriend kissed each other. I stood there, alone, but singing along, eager to listen to that song someday with someone I loved.

Ten years went by. I loved a couple of men in that time who weren’t interested in listening to the music I liked listening to. Those relationships didn’t work out, but those men loved me. As I turned from an inexperienced, lonely teenager into a grown woman, one thing felt right. Being in love is the thing I do best. I am afraid of so many things, and I am not sure how to take care of myself, but when I have opened up to the exhilarating feeling of loving someone else, it comes easy. Relationships are complicated, but loving is easy.

Finally I met a man who did use music as a way to relate to me. One night he surprised me by playing Hands Down for me, learning it after listening to it on a mixtape I’d made for him. The tattoos on his skin and the acoustic guitar in his hands were a dream come true for a girl who’d learned how to feel about love from Chris Carrabba. On our last date, he took me to a concert where we sang along, swayed together, danced, and kissed. It was perfect. I told him I loved him that night, and he broke up with me a few days later.

Chris Carrabba has a new band now called Twin Forks. Their folksy, country sound (they are from Florida, after all) fits well into the type of music I tend to listen to these days. I bet they get plenty of grown-up Dashboard Confessional fans coming to their shows, and I will be going to check them out when they come to town next month. Ten years later, in a smallish club instead of an amphitheater, I’ll stand listening to the music: still sad, lonely, and wanting to be loved. My story is not unique.