On Loop

An unfamiliar song played on my brother's desktop in 2002. The track title: On Your Side. The Artist: Pete Yorn. I heard it one sleepless night in high school. Before I knew it, I played the song on loop until I fell asleep. It was certainly not the first Yorn song that my awkward-neurotic teenage self liked. But the moment I listened to it, I knew it would be my favorite track from the album, Musicforthemorningafter.

Today, it's been more than ten years since I first heard On Your Side. Throughout the years, I've often returned to this song when I found myself quiet, alone, and unable to articulate things larger than myself: existence, growing up and apart, love, and in the general sense, most matters that inevitably escape us. While this entry will mainly be about the song and how it has become part of my life, I have to say listening to the entire album in high school foreshadowed how most of my relationships, and I, have turned out. It's one of those useless things people find out about their lives that make them feel like funny characters in fucked-up fiction (only here there are no real gods in machines. Just machines that have real hearts trying to make sense of such absurd disjunction).

Video: http://youtu.be/jclHisjkJYI
Song Lyrics:

I’m outside your house
2 am it’s dark
So many mistakes
Come back home from bars

I am on your side
I just want to tell you off

So many lies
Are taking hold
It’s not your fault
There’s many scars

I am on your side
It’s taken me a long time
I am on your side
I’m on your side

And I listen
Yeah I listen
Can you listen?
Now I’m listening

I am on your side
It’s taken me a long time
I am on your side
I’m on your side

(And I listen) I am on your side
(Yeah I listen) It’s taken me a long time
(Can you listen?) I am on your side
(Now I’m listening) I’m heading out tonight
(And I listen) I'm heading out tonight


The message of the song is comforting, as the music harmoniously complements its warm words of acceptance, "I am on your side and I listen..."

Growing up, I've always thought the voice of the man in the song is someone telling me he'll always be on my side. It's possible I've yet to meet this person, or have in fact met such person. Nevertheless, there is that person. Someone who will be there when I'm hurt, hopeful, happy, wrong and spiteful, arrogant and weak. It's a song that simply speaks about love and acceptance; a person who concedes that all other conditions do not matter because he has accepted the other person, for everything they've done, for what he/she is. While I've often wondered if there is such a thing as complete acceptance, the thought that it or something close to it exists somewhere is comforting.

Truth be told, I'm not sure if it's entirely possible for anyone out there to accept another person through and through, to love both their light and dark sides, put up with various disappointments. Relationships entail a lot of compromise; humans get tired. While we may eventually agree in relationships, we have to be honest enough to let another person understand why certain qualities/actions are unacceptable to us (yes this is me rationalizing).

These days, I prefer to think of the song's voice as the sound of my old self telling me, "It's taken me a long time, I'm on your side, and I listen, now I'm listening..."

What I'm trying to say is, I'm old enough to realize that I do not need a reassuring voice to affirm me all the time. I think I shouldn't give that burden to anyone but myself. I do get lonely, I seek company and need friends, but when it comes to affirmation, I'm only as secure as I allow myself to be.

Accepting who I am, what I've done, and what I've become has taken me a long time. While I am most grateful for my family and friends who have stayed all this time, no amount of company or attention from other people can mend my relationship with me but myself.

"Il souffira."