I remember when I bought Damien Rice’s album O and how it quickly became my soundtrack. I remember that long drawn out New York City summer, that frantic heat-induced lackadaisical summer. I remember being amazed that a season could be both one thing and its opposite.

I remember eating lunch at this tiny park in Tribeca that only had two chess tables and meeting my friends at our Tuesday happy hour in the Village. I remember deciding not to go back to school for the fall semester and the disappointment in my parents’ faces when I told them.

I remember the night that I became the other guy, and I remember so vividly the pain that I felt when she stayed with him. Since that summer the album has grown and changed in meaning for me, which is something that’s telling of an album: a good album is timeless, but a great one grows with the listener.

“Delicate” is the first song on O, painting a picture using every color on Damien’s lyrical, emotional, and musical palette. The song starts softly, like a calm before the storm, and I remember the first time I played it I kept checking my cd player to make sure it was even on. Eventually, it prompted me to turn the volume up to the max and start again from the beginning. Even with the volume up, the first three seconds of “Delicate” are barely audible; all you can hear is a faint low note played on an acoustic guitar. Fading in from the background comes an intricate pattern that stumbles back and forth between two chords until it falls into a third - a release from the others. At the twenty-sixth second, a strong bass drops in accompanied by brushes on a snare. Together they provide a backbone for something that seems destined to lose its way before it gets anywhere. Then Damien pulls out a different brush, his voice.

The voice is a powerful thing, with its ability to communicate that which is inexpressible. Then there are those rare voices that do more than just that; they move you. They bury inside you, echo in your chest. Hers was the first such voice I heard (she was the first for many things). The first time I saw her – I was twelve, she was eleven – she was on a stage singing, and her voice was like nothing I’d heard before. The feeling was so intense that I had no idea what it was.

Since then I’ve heard thousands of voices, but there are only a few others who have moved me like hers. Damien Rice’s voice, like his contemporaries Jeff Buckley and Elliott Smith, ached of something greater than a song. Unlike Buckley and Smith, however, Damien Rice’s angst aches from somewhere else, a place where love, sex, humor, anger, and humility all intersect and are mistaken for one another.

The first verse of “Delicate” opens with the line: “We might kiss when we are alone, when nobody’s watching we might take it home.” The rest of the lyrics have the simplicity of a whispered conversation between lovers. They are the kinds of thoughts that remind me how the smallest things, the tiniest forgettable moments, are always the ones that end up haunting me. The verse ends, resigned, as Damien declares that it is just “delicate.” The guitar, unsure if that’s a valid reason or an excuse, responds with two notes - one high and one low – something resembling a sighed exhale.

The chorus comes around at 1:15, and it welcomes a cello as it bows in with its own ache, a deep grainy resonance caused by friction between horsehair and metal strings, all amplified by a hollow wooden body. Keeping with the theme of simplicity, it uses the same three chords as the verse, but in a slightly different progression. Here, Damien questions the intentions of his lover, asking “was it real?” in an attempt to paint the situation either black or white. He begs, as if he asked long enough she might answer, as if he tried hard enough he might believe her lies.

At first we were just kids, playing innocently with what we had found but could not recognize. As we grew older we practiced on each other in every way possible: emotionally, psychologically, and, eventually, sexually. We became so entangled in one another it became harder and harder to unwind – see 2:08, “We might live like never before, there’s nothing left to give how can we ask for more? We might make love in some sacred place, the look on your face is delicate” - and all at once we would hold each other closer than close yet push each other apart, testing our threshold for hurting and pain, seeing who would break first and at what moment.

Inevitably, it broke. It always breaks. At 3:45 Damien repeats himself, as if after saying the lines once he finally heard what he had been asking. His voice crashes and cracks, piercing the higher registers with anger and a hint of frustration, giving a new color to the lines: “Why’d you sing hallelujah if it meant nothing to you? Why’d you sing with me at all?” His screams are abrasive, but they quickly dissipate into a strained falsetto. Shortly thereafter the song trails off into silence.

Now I question almost everything about our time together, from the moment I met her until we said goodbye. Eleven years. I question which I loved more, her, or what I thought she could have been. I don’t have enough distance to see the whole picture. But I am absolutely sure of one thing: her voice. It travels through me and reverberates as if my body was constructed by Stradivarius. I know that voice comes from a place I only got a glimpse of. Her voice is so distinct to me, I swear that I could pick her out from the midst of an entire chorus. Her voice was strength and yet with all its power it embodied its opposite - weakness. It hurts and it aches with regret of what it was too strong to show. I could hear her, and I did.