My Freshman year of college I was walking down the hallway of my dorm, going about my evening, no doubt thinking about what i would eat for dinner or if I remembered my notes for my upcoming Spanish exam when I forcefully smashed through the heavy industrial door with all my 5’2 self like a bull in a rodeo coming out of its gate. As I blew into the cold cement stairwell I stopped dead in my tracks. The feeling that occured was like being in a deep sleep and the alarm goes off to wake you or like stepping out of a cozy house where you have been warmed by a fire 4 logs deep and into a cold Montana -10 degree night.  You are instantly aware. You are instantly informed you are alive because you feel.

What I felt was her voice in my ears. I stood quiet at the top of the landing not moving in fear I might disrupt the voice that was echoing off the walls.  It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. I felt like I had just walked into a secret canyon where there was so much beauty that I felt like I was drunk. As I listened I was stirred and moved.

Her words echoed a feeling in my heart that I hadnt been able to articulate… this is what I heard:

Up on the tower I thought she would jump ‘cause she square both her toes up to the edge. She turned and she saw and she said as she smiled, “It is not that I long to be dead. It is just that I long to dive and fly, dive and fly.” My mind turned in her head to stillness of sound, to a wind walking after its meal. And down in the valley the thunder’s resound made me feel as bad as you feel.

Up on the tower I thought she would jump ‘cause she square both her toes up to the edge. She turned and she saw and she said as she smiled, “It is not that I long to be dead. It is just that I long to dive and fly, dive and fly.” My mind turned in her head to stillness of sound, to a wind walking after its meal. And down in the valley the thunder’s resound made me feel as bad as you feel.

But that is just when I long to dive and fly, dive and fly… Why, then, do I take back my heart in the morning?

And has there been a girl quite as lonely as I am? Why, then, won’t our spirits touch when our bodies can? Why, then, is there so much of gravity in the mountains? There’s so much of gravity in the mountains. There’s so much of gravity in the mountain. Up on a bridge with a bracelet of stone hanging out over fingertips high. If I were to drop this would you writhe and moan, lose your faith in me till we died? Dive and fly, dive and fly…

I listened and somehow felt like a thief who had just been given a gift by the owners of the house he was burgularizing. Tears filled my eyes and my heart burst with the beauty of her voice that had touched it.  It was my own stolen concert in a dimly lit stairwell.

I don’t think I ever told Jennifer Daniels about this moment so I’m telling her now… I won’t ever forget that moment or those lyrics as I have carried them around with me all over the world.