Dave Matthews ~ Minstrel of love, patience, perseverance in The Space Between
I posted this song on our Facebook page where it received a few comments. One of them, “the lyrics do lend themselves to that “shiver down your spine” feeling…none of us want to be there.”
No, none of us do want to be in a relationship that’s broken, filled with hurt, pain, anguish. It’s the kind of relationship our well-meaning friends counsel us, get out, let it go and don’t look back. Yet love flourishes in the space between the spinning out, the wicked lies and crying pain. We hear again the consistent beat of its heart on the calm, gentle ride back to the top of the roller-coaster.
The Space Between
The tears we cry
Is the laughter keeps us coming back for more
I know this kind of love, not so bitter or twisted as the one Dave sings about, but what friends might call hurt, wounded love. Broken love. Don’t we all?
We each of us read so much into a lyric, more than its author ever intended, and often contradicting those intentions. So I wonder if Dave would agree that I see here not a love that is broken. Rather, there is a wound, a gash, in the being of one or both. The love is true, but the suffering of individuals all but sunders it.
All relationships have spaces between moments of pain, anger, betrayals large and small. It’s when those spaces become constricted, become fractional parts of a relationship, that we deem the relationship itself toxic, that we fall out of love, that our friends urge us to move on.
I wrote a dear heart recently, “You are due for a man without baggage. Overdue. You deserve a man who has learned just to love, and be loved in return.” We all do deserve that kind of love. But we also deserve the kind of love that perseveres, that waits for us in the space between when it’s our own baggage, our wounds and brokenness — or theirs — ours — that causes the pain, the anguish. We all deserve a love that can heal when it breaks, that can find a way out of the pain, that grows the spaces between until they fill our lives.
That’s the love that Dave sings so wistfully and hopefully about in the final stanzas…the stanzas that never fail to move me…the moment that elicits the shiver down my spine…
Take my hand
‘Cause we’re walking out of here
Oh, right out of here
Love is all we need hereThe Space Between
What’s wrong and right
Is where you’ll find me hiding, waiting for you
The Space Between
Your heart and mine
Is the space we’ll fill with time
The Space Between…
4 Responses to “Dave Matthews ~ Minstrel of love, patience, perseverance in The Space Between”
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Reminds me of the underlying theme in the Michel Gondry film, ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’. You can’t/don’t want to erase the good bits of a bad/broken relationship.
You know, I’ve never listened to a note of Dave Mathews until now. I’ll keep an ear out for him from now on.
Do you always remember who introduced you to a musician? I never forget.
I love that film… the DVD is stowed in some box under a 10′X10′X10′ stack of boxes and furniture…someday, I’ll unload all that stuff and watch it again!
Gary!!! After all the DMB I’ve been posting on our Muse FB Page and my own FB profile, and this is the first you’ve listened to?!?! LOL
Guess that means you’ll never forget me now. ;)
As for my own intros, I owe so much to my first college roommate…dozens of bands and musicians, and entire genres of music as well. I’ve written about my intro to Fleetwood Mac, and Neil Young’s album, Zuma, on this blog. I can’t always place the first time I heard a song or band, but often can.
I’m also a bit of an explorer. I pulled Genesis’ album Foxtrot out of a department store cutout bin for $1.99 in about 1976 or 77…solely on the fact that I liked the cover art. I’d never heard of the band.
I loved the music so much, I went back for Nursery Cryme. Thus began my lifelong fascination with progressive rock. I was living in a small, New England town. No radio stations were playing it. My friends at school didn’t know what to make of it.
Better late than never re DMB.
The beauty of loving music that is not commercial is you can always find them in the discount bins!
Some times the unlikeliest person can introduce you to music that you’ll end up loving. A cousin who I thought had zero interest in music introduced me to Kris Kristoffersen…He just sidled up to me one day and said, ‘have a listen to this and thrust out the LP’. S’ funny.
RE: DMB… true enough, though sooner is better than later ;)
LOL — well, I’ve found a lot of forgettable music in the cut-out bins (and some unfortunately not-so-forgettable ;) ).
However, Foxtrot and Nursery Cryme are another matter altogether, and easily make up for all the screeching racket I paid a couple bucks for on intuitive discount buys. I still own those original vinyl album, and though I haven’t spun them in a couple years now, I’ve got import remastered CDs that sounds much better. Foxtrot remains among my favourite albums. And I will write about it … soon.
My first LP was Abbey Road, given to me by a dear Aunt for Christmas. I was 14. She never gave me another record. I’m not sure she owned it herself. That’s a helluva start to a record collection, and no doubt the second side opened my mind and ear to a wider variety of music than the local top-40 radio station offered.