Edge of Desire by John Mayer

Let's talk about the time I tweeted John Mayer, and some beautifully painful lyrics from one of my favorite love songs.

Transcript

I tweeted @JohnMayer in the summer of 2010. My tweet served to request that he play “Edge of Desire” at a Chicago-area show I was attending that evening. He obliged.

I like to believe he played it for me. If we’re talking singles, Edge of Desire would’ve been a B-side track. B-sides don’t get much concert run. Casual fans come to hear the hits. Die-hards want unreleased tracks their deep devotion allowed them to discover. Edge of Desire is neither. It’s on the Battle Studies album, likely beloved by many as most of Mayer’s songs are, but not among his more mainstream tunes.  

No way the song was part of his original set list is what I tell myself. He played it near the end of the show, as an encore of sorts after bidding the crowd adieu but not leaving the stage. It’s a popular tactic among musicians, you leave the people begging for more and then satisfy their longing. 

All the artists I’ve seen live do it, make a faux exit with every intention of performing one or two additional tracks. What song the artist pulls out for this sacred exchange varies. It might be an old underground track, possibly from a mixtape, or the single they recorded for a movie. I’ve seen artists return to the stage and cover someone else’s hit song. It could be anything in the repertoire. So, I smiled and swayed at Mayer from the grassy field with thousands of other concert goers, convinced he pulled out this particular tune at my request.

Sweat-drenched with wet hair plastered against his head, Mayer played Edge of Desire’s opening chords and I lost everything I came with—my couth, my inhibitions, my voice. No matter how many times he’s played or will play the song, this moment will always be remembered as mine.

Edge of Desire is a personal Mayer favorite partly because of the absurd instrumental break filled with drums and a guitar riff accented by whispering vocals, and partly because of the second stanza’s opening line. 

Love is really nothing / but a dream that keeps waking me. 

The song contains many memorable moments, but this one stands out most for me. I identify with the implication. I agree even, without knowing specifics. Love keeps waking Mayer, from what? My supposition? The same routine, often lonely, sometimes wretched life from which it wakes us all.

Most of our moments are ordinary. We spend our days auto-piloting through monotony. Unless you’re one of the lucky ones whose career is unconventional and days are less predictable—you probably follow some schedule of rising from bed, showering, eating, working, returning home, eating, going to bed, and waking to do the same thing all over again. You may squeeze in a deviation like going to the gym or stopping by the grocery store, but that’s the general, universal formula. Nothing much of note occurs.

With the unconventional career and less predictable days, there’s still some sort of pattern. Like Mayer, as a musician, especially on tour, you’re running from city to city playing the same songs and getting back onto the same bus or plane you’ve been in for months. Or you’re sitting in an airport five nights a week. 

Even if each experience feels unique and sometimes you play a song you don’t normally play, you’re repeating a cycle. For you, this is ordinary, everyday life. You might enjoy what you do, but you’re doing it a lot, over and over again, with only slight variation.

Then, something exciting happens to disrupt the mundaneness. You get some magic. You meet up with a friend after work and have more fun than you’ve had in a long time. You get to experience one of your favorite singers live in concert, and they over deliver. You take a vacation. 

You fall in love.

How beautiful it would be if love were the ordinary moment and not the aberration. Though if falling in love was this common thing, it could not be as magnificent. The elusiveness, the rarity is what makes it special.

We think we’ve found love only to have it leave us alone with ourselves, again. The butterflies sit still. Once uncontainable passion evaporates. Love fades and the relationship ends. Destroyed are our hopes and dreams and plans for where the path may lead. Like a dream that interrupts your sleep, it’s only a matter of time until you drift back off into ordinary existence.

But the fact that Mayer considers love a dream at all is poetic. He presents it as a nagging inconvenience when we all know it to be great fortune at best, a welcome distraction at worst. Because indeed this is the best part of life, to harness that feeling. To reach for someone who also reaches for you. To live in someone’s heart feels like not only enough most nights, but everything. The only regret is that we cannot always stay as long as we’d like.

Yet, I know not of one among us who will refuse the wake-up call should it come again.