“It was you, breathless and torn.
I could feel my eyes turning into dust.
Into strangers, turning into dust.”

History Lesson:  Featured on the album So Tonight I May See, Into Dust was never released as an official single. That said, the song did chart on two separate occasions on the UK Singles Chart. Fifteen years after the release of the album, the song charted at #71 in August 2009 following its appearance on a commercial for Virgin Media. Two years later, the song spent a further four weeks on the chart, reaching a new peak of #47, when it was used on the “Dust to Dust” trailer for Gears of War. In September 2011, Into Dust made its début appearance on the Irish Singles Chart, where it reached a peak of #40

The song has appeared in many television shows and films, most notably used in two pivotal scenes in the first season of The OC, in the 1996 film Foxfire, and most recently during an episode of the failed 666 Park Avenue.

Personal Reflection: As I stepped forth into the world of winding hallways, locker combinations and places to fit – and not fit, I tried to break from my existence so many times, to step forward, to change. I had all these images of what adolescence should feel like, all of them taped together from television shows, magazines, books. I wanted to leave behind my cloak and dagger silences, throw out my superhero ears and eyes, be something worth being. But, you cannot escape yourself so easily. Skin holds tightly onto your wavering body, your image, that cracked mirror that sits in the corner of your soul, breaking up the girl inside, smash.

No one really saw through my stapled shut mouth. I stumbled over words, clothing, style, always trying too hard, contrived, the jangled up strewns of who I really was showing through the cracks. Only the other shadows took me in, other missing pieces in the puzzle of high school.

So, I dove into my escapes. Music took front row center. I memorized lyrics obsessively, finding my reckoning in the repeating lines, and I wrote. I wrote mis-matched and candy-coated goo like romances, things I wanted to be living, breathing, sick little twists of my mind/mine.

I lost myself even deeper still in some fictional beyond, and although it would be years after high school when I would first hear this song it would immediately remind me of an adolescent version of me, of that lost part of me.

Into Dust (live) :: Mazzy Star

The 90’s