so when you're near me, darling can't you hear me ... s.o.s.

interesting thread on fark about "guilty pleasures" in your music collection. you'll never know, or understand, why people feel bad about listening to certain kinds of music -- never understand, especially, when a band you really enjoy is on the list. a lot.

i'm talking about abba. i've written before about the swedish supergroup and if i can find the old newspaper column, i might throw it on here, but until then, let me explain what first awakened my love of their music.

fall 1993 ... my senior year at college.

by that time i was a total mess. my best friend nancy had gone abroad for our entire junior year, and her pretty steady diet of letters and phone calls didn't do enough to make up for the absence. i'd come to lean on her heavily when we were sophomores, and in the year she was away i'd found the then-love of my life, had several other high-impact events sail right over my bow -- so by the time i saw nancy again, i was a complete wreck.

we'd met in the theatre department, in the basement of the venerable ace morgan memorial theatre building. i knew she had gone abroad to do theatre -- that was all she ever did, from what i could tell -- but i wasn't prepared for what that one year did changed in her.

when she got back, she didn't seem to care as much for it as she had before; she was in training to be an EMT, which i thought was halfway between insane and "oh, that's just nancy being nancy" ... but it was taking up a lot of her time, and i didn't understand it.

i'd just been dumped by the then-love-of-my-life-forever-and-ever-amen, and the thought popped in my head: why not nancy? we'd been thick as thieves since we met, and i'd thought about pursuing her, but another good friend, rob, had the same thought i did. he showed me the shel silverstein poetry book he was about to get her, i smiled and decided not to go down that road.

but now he was out of the picture. and my aforementioned-etc. was too. so why not nancy?

wish i could tell you. i think, though, that the bridge had been crossed. she and i were buds, never to be lovers. and that's fine with me.

so anyway. it's mid-october, we're gearing up for the first mainstage production of the year. we always did four -- two per semester, and the first one of the year was the most fun, because there was a high level of energy and excitement in the air (no finals bogging you down quite yet). i was in ace morgan, getting ready for the show's opening later that friday night. it was a bit chilly outside, with the sun barely perceptible in the autumn sky, and the shadows gave the lobby a cold, cubist feel.

i was there to "assign the house" -- to match reservations with actual tickets, taking into account professors whose classes i needed to pass, season ticket holders, etc. i liked to do this a few hours in advance, so that i wouldn't have to worry about the rush of energy on opening night.

i walked in the theatre, and i'd thought it was empty. but i was greeted by ... abba. someone was cranking music throughout the building before the shot -- something i'd never witnessed in my three years there. it was eerie only because it was so unusual. normally, silence, or the frantic sounds of work, were all you heard. the stage manager, moreso than the stars or the director, dictated things like this, and i remember thinking "nancy's the SM here ..." and on this evening it was abba. just loud, rocking, poppy abba.

i went wandering through the booth (it faced the stage from the back of the house) and saw nancy, out on stage, singing along. she didn't have a care in the world, it seemed, and i realized that she wasn't wearing camoflague pants -- she looked pretty, actually. in a dress and lipstick and everything. and she wasn't carrying a mikita or a toolbelt either.

something in her had changed that year abroad -- i'd be upset, in retrospect, if it hadn't -- and i never really got a handle on what it was. but hearing that awesome chorus ... "when you're gone/how can i/even try/to go on?" ... told me that, whatever it was, it was here to stay.

around the same time, i was deep into learning guitar, and those chord changes intrigued me. it would take a few years of self-directed therapy to get over the associations i had with abba and the aforementioned-love-of-my-etc, and once i did, i realized something: nancy was right on about abba. i wish i'd been able to enjoy it with her.