"
When I was young, I had a best friend. We would hang out all the time and every time we saw each other at school, we’d talk about music a lot. I was a post-punk kid and he was a grunge guy.
Time passed, our tastes developed with every year. We turned 19, and he left to join the army. He would write to me every now and then out of boredom to ask how things were going. Then it was the year that Interpol’s Turn on the Bright Lights came out. I told him about how fresh it sounded and that I wanted to start a band with him when he got back.
A month passed, he didn’t write back yet. I waited 3 more months until I got a letter. Then, my mother told me that my best friend’s mother was visited by people of the Army. I couldn’t believe it, and decided to phone her directly about what happened….
She told me he had died in combat. I looked at my extra copy of Turn on the Bright Lights, unopened, waiting for my friend. I said what I thought was appropriate; “I am sorry for your loss… He was my best friend, and I don’t think anyone can replace him….”
She simply sobbed at the other end, and I slowly hung up. I turned to the extra copy I bought, opened it up, stuck it in my CD player, and listened to it. And when I did, I put it above my TV, right next to the photo of me and him together 6 years ago.
I wept.
"