And I’m happy.
Lonely, but, you know.
I had the most amazing day today.
It involved acres of farmland turned into a music collective… wonderful people all in this paradise, working all hours… one enormous house that no one and everyone lived in, several cabins on the grounds, one for each producer employed there, two tiny Shetland ponies, three beautiful cats (one Bengal, the others, brothers), too much sunshine and ease. They all are called to meals and eat together at a hand hewn table in a kitchen inside the main house, older than it lets on… barely modernized, mildly updated, but archaic in the ways the walls met. The kitchen opened to the yard. You couldn’t see another house for miles. Just stretches of beautiful green and weeping willows.
Sometimes I forget how lucky I am. Days like today help me remember what is really important.
Time tears away what I worked towards and nervously knead my knuckles against my knees for. And the trouble with time is you can’t run your fingers through it. You don’t feel it passing, but it does.
Before I know any better or have time to clear my head, I’ve been home almost as long as I was gone.
But home feels like a different word now. Home feels like someplace I can stay for a minute or more, but I know it’s another station I can’t stay at for too long. Home feels like someplace I can remember fondly but only remember. Soon I’ll go to my city, maybe go to other people’s cities too, and have no trouble telling Home I’ve got to. And I won’t wonder how she is while I’m away. I’m starting to find that maybe I don’t like being anchored. Maybe it’s shameful.
And memories. Memories always weigh me down. I can only move forward from here on out.
So I’ll take my twisted sidestreets and cityscapes I’d seen through sleepy eyes, and my rain soaked blue coat, my make up stained pillowcase, promises I turned into silences and scenery I swore that would save me, and all the strangers I met (and turned some into friends, unforgettable ones even), the smell of so much cigarette smoke (makes me sick with loneliness, now), crushed velvet curtains, unfamiliar ceilings and cold floors in my mornings, staring into stage lights, sound crackling through into clarity, one falling star over Birmingham, and so many nights spent unspeakably happy and sleepless, I’ll take them all and I’ll keep them, though, I’d rather tuck them away somewhere I can’t reach them anymore.
Why it hurts, I can’t say. Probably because it’s the most beautiful and memorable thing I’ve done in my nineteen-nearly-twenty years of life.
So how do I start again?
And when?
Bauer told me I should cover this song one day back in the beginning of tour when I hardly knew him. The fact that he equated me to Emily Haines was one of the most flattering things anyone has ever said to me. I’d die to have that killer sweetness and softness in my voice. Someday I totally will learn it and do it as much justice as I can manage. So strange that, this song, that never made me emote in any sort of way, now, I can’t even listen to it without feeling my heart sink a little. I guess I’m missing my new friends.
Invisible Monsters - 100 Monkeys
Uncle, I’m so goddamn glad to have gotten to know you. You broke my heart every night when you’d sing this song. You were the finale. It felt like an ending. And now it is. And even though it’s over I will never forget the words you left me with. Thanks for making me a Princess. I’ve never felt like one before. But blue eyes like yours can’t lie. I hope I’m worthy of the title. Cause heavy is the head that wears the crown, but… you trust me enough to wear it. So I’ll try.
Image Fantome (Pavane Pour Une Infante Defunte) [Pavane for a Dead Princess] - Jane Birkin
I only knew the Maurice Ravel rendition, consisting only of the rolling piano… but I stumbled upon this instead… it’s more fitting… immersed in a language I know nothing of, just as I knew nothing of you.
And yet.
This version is fleeting… like everything, she slips through your fingers too quickly… you want her to linger but, she doesn’t… it wouldn’t be right if she did.
And yet…
Bizarre Love Triangle - New Order
An underlying hurt masked as happiness that will fade into oblivion, eventually.
(Ignore the intro… not a part of the song…)
We were in Copenhagen. We were passing through the stairwell in the venue and a noise traveled toward us. We couldn’t ignore it. So we scrambled together our coats and our things and followed the sound. It led us to the bar in the basement, another band was playing… we had just finished playing upstairs, and we were tired as hell, you a bit drunk, and I a bit flushed, but both too compelled to care. Mesmerized, we let the five strangers on stage steal our attention. We were incredulous at how well they fit together… all moving as a unit, but nothing militant about it. They just, were. Just, existed together. Their instincts, all natural, swelling and stretching and speeding and slowing in all the right places. “Sounds like The Shins and Fleet Foxes got together for a session,” I said. “I bet they’re from Portland,” you whispered back.
At the merch booth after, I bartered with the singer for a few minutes and secured two of their albums for American dollars, which he was grateful to see. Turns out their band was running our exact course in the opposite direction, we just happened to cross in Copenhagen. We wished them well and were on our way.
Later we did some research. They were from Portland. The singer was in The Shins. We swore so loudly and so many times in one sentence we even made Jackson raise his eyebrows. Which I’d come to find, is a difficult thing to do.
Does He Love You? - Rilo Kiley
Soon you will be asking yourself this question.
And I can’t say I know the answer, either, but…
Good luck to you, anyway.
Thought I’d share a video from tour… one night on the bus, Saul, Brady, Ben Graupner and I built tiny dinosaur airplanes and threw them at each other. It was a great time.
Good timesssss.
I hardly know you at all but you still have me running though London in the rain to catch you before your bus leaves.
Escalators, all narrowing as I near the top, and then there are the stairs, and the streets, and every step I take I’m heading further away from you, but I don’t know it, of course. I fold my soggy map and return it to my pocket, where it will become an unrecognizable mound of useless information. I’m parting people and families and pushing through the slow moving drear of sleepy eyed, shuffling twenty-somethings in transit. And you are one of them and you are here, right here, somewhere, in this building but I can’t find you. You were waiting for me in a coffee shop that you’d abandoned after two hours of waiting. Two. Two hours late makes me break into a run again. Information desk doesn’t inform me much, she says the bus terminal is out the door and to the left.
This alley is endless. This pursuit is useless. And I’m about to give up til I see the station that woman swore existed. I’m enveloped by the automatic doors and scouring the departure board. Paris. Gate 20. I’m running again and running out of time, you said you were leaving at 7:30, and I know it was 7:13 what feels like a while ago. More double doors and more turning corners. And I get there. It’s tucked away in the back. I scan the cue. But I don’t see the black of your coat or the black of your hair. I am the antithesis to every unrealistic end of certain films in which the heroine changes her mind and tears through terminals til she finds her reason for stopping a plane waiting in a line very much like this one, about to go through those sterile doors with a head heavy from fighting, and stays with her instead. Except, I’m not in love with you or anyone, but I will always try to keep my promises. I’m getting lost in the glare of the bus through a dirty pane of glass, dotted with rain and my disappointment staring back. The glow spins people into silhouettes, some goodbye-ing, some hello-ing, and I’m quietly cursing like I usually do when I feel like I’ve fucked up. So I’m turning away.
And.
“Cara?”
Master of None - Beach House
(Saul’s choice)
Talking about Beach House earlier at the bar must’ve made you remember. The sound of this band has the ability to transfigure a room. Dreamlike enough already, it’s almost sickeningly sweeter instantly. Are we really in this enormous place? Three sleek panes of glass make up most of our walls, we can see city lights for miles. Tiny people on the street, traveling dots of light moving slowly on the highway. Everything is black and gray, and new, and neat, and too much for the four of us, but who can complain? We don’t dare complain about the broken lightswitch. Doubt I’ll complain about much at all, tonight.
In The End - Luke Temple
(My choice)
The ferris wheel outside in the distance is only half lit and it feels oddly appropriate. It looks the way I am. I am wishing I were in the car on the very top, I am mouthing along to the words I know so well, almost as well as I used to know you.
(Bauer’s choice)
Temporary distortion and distraction, sometimes you can get a bit too mellow so it’s up to someone to bring a little disruption. Uneducated, I’m trying to absorb every word. You insist I would love The Pixies. They’re a band I’ve always heard of but never heard. I have too many of those in my life, lately. The chorus feels like a sort of release, and I’m grateful for it. I settle in the sound. I could get used to the fit.
Hazy glow lights, small, dim stage, I’m finishing and smiling and stumbling down the stairs toward the table where I will fumble with my words, offer you a “bonsoir” or “bonjour” or “merci”, because they’re all that I can manage. But numbers mean the same thing in just about every language, we signal at each other with our hands, you hand me something worth as much as Monopoly dollars in my country and I hand you whatever it is you might have gestured at me to purchase. We make the smallest small talk I can manage, there is a wall, but you’re so friendly, you all are, you grin and giggle while I chip away at the barrier, bumblingly. I blush. You shake your head. You tell me I’m doing fine. I tell you that you are. Next customer. Rinse, repeat. I never get much better at the language, that night.
I watch a woman dance with strangers again and again from my place behind the table. I laugh and she takes notice, offers me her hand, too. We are twirling and not caring, I and feeling and unfeeling all the things around me. She leads. She is a good leader, and I, a clumsy partner. But she puts up with it, we bow to each other, she thanks me for this dance. And I thank her in my head.
Soon I’m packing and unpacking, folding and folding and counting and cursing cause I’ve lost something but I’ll forget it by morning. We are ushered to a car, we’re leaving, they’re crowding and it’s confusing, I’ve never been in the middle of a mob like this. Taxi take me anywhere, taxi, take me home, or to the hotel that I’ll call mine for the next few days. My first night in Paris and I feel so alive. We’re getting ready to go out and it’s almost two hours past midnight. Let me tell you though. Yes. It is the city of lights. I’ve never seen so many and I wish I could keep them all.
I never wanted to leave you, but I did, and I’m sorry, and I wish I could stay but I just can’t. Still, thank you for those three nights.
