Ben Folds Five - Alice Childress (on Naked Baby Photos)

In Freshman year, came for our school's Spring Fling concert and I waited nearly alone in the freezing cold for him for three hours because everyone I knew had gone home after Third Eye Blind finished. An hour to midnight he finally got onstage, and I swear the piano melodies were so captivating that each note took with it a piece of my loneliness as it echoed into nothingness in the night sky. Part by part, the pain evaporated, and despite all the crap of that first year I felt just happy singing my heart out to "Army" and looking like a lunatic doing so. But I didn't care. Happy makes you stop caring about a lot of inconsequential shit like that.

He did a concert at the school neighboring ours in Sophomore year, and I was ecstatic when my friend from there told me she'd get me a ticket. The afternoon of the concert, however, I decided that I desperately needed to study for my math final and had no choice but to skip -- so I expressed my regret to her over the phone, then turned my attention back to the textbook. Three hours later, she called me. "Hey. Just wanted to tell you that we just saw Ben Folds sitting on the grass with his kid, and we went over and chilled with him," she said nonchalantly over the phone. Still one of the biggest disappointments of my short, boring life. I failed the exam anyway.

Now it's Junior year and I have a chance to see him play live again: he's going to Boston for MIT's Spring Fling the same weekend we're going up there for the Open Ballroom Competition. It's like DESTINY. Bahahah. But I have a hugeass paper to write by Monday, which I'm obviously (and stupidly) neglecting at the moment. What do I do? Do I choose homework/GPA/future job prospects, or music?

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. -- Maya Angelou