Grace

Allow me to apologize to poor, dear, dead Jeff Buckley, who has had to listen all week to me brutally butchering every song from his album "Grace" on my commute to and from work. I'm sure that Jeff, sitting up in heaven with my mom, enjoyed very much the story she told about the time she was left in my new house to clean the kitchen while my sister and I went to get lunch, and how the only CD I owned that interested her was his. The two of them probably laugh at my wild gesticulations and air drumming (but at least one of them must be proud when I hit almost every cymbal crash in "Lover You Should Have Come Over"), and cry over the fact that my voice will never ever match his. No one's voice will ever match his. Neither of them knew the beautifully sad and ultimately unknowable tall redhead who bought me that CD, or how when he kissed me on the beach in Malibu that one time (maybe it was two), we were both humming "Last Goodbye." My old boss once told me how she liked to listen to "Hallelujah" at top volume in her car, and I thought at the time that was a weird thing to have in common with her, but really, it isn't. His voice, his voice, his voice.