If everything could ever feel this real forever
It's so hard to think about where you've been sometimes, based on where you are. It's weird putting yourself back in the mindset of a place that seems so far away that it might be almost difficult to figure out. But the point of a journal sometimes seems to be either to type about shit that's happening now, or what happened then, that you still think about from time to time. And you're talking to a guy who has to play a handful of the same songs every night for the rest of my life, so why not delve into that shit and see if I can remember where it all comes from, or if some of my memories have rosed over, or completely disappeared? Let's give it a shot.
It was almost twenty years ago exactly that I was still fucking around with ideas for the new album. We'd been playing three or four of the new songs live that year, and some of them were really catching on with the crowd, especially 'Enough Space', which could fucking whip the crowd into a frenzy, and it was easy to write. Took five minutes. We even started playing 'My Hero', and I actually started to believe at that point that we had some good stuff for a second record. Sure, other stuff would come and go, but some of this shit really started to stick. I really started to believe in it. But the problem was, that there was so much other stuff going on in my life it both fed into and detracted from all of the shit I was trying to do. And when you've had a difficult, ridiculously heartbreaking thing happening in your life at the time, it tends to do that. Writing music starts to become a warped sense of therapy, telling stories and writing shit from your own point of view. It may not actually BE what the truth is, but it's your truth. It's my truth. It's the way you feel, and you can depend on it, or you can let it hurt you. At the time, it was doing both to me. Going into the studio, we had a pile of shit ready to record, and on the first round of scratch tracks and actual recordings, I remember feeling that there was a weight missing. Something was left out. Something didn't sound right. After a tense night of writing and fighting and crying and writing more, I realized where it was coming from, and fixed it, which well, didn't sit well with some people. I almost started to feel like the album was becoming a daily therapy session, and was leaving very important people out of it. Talking to the wrong people about the wrong shit. Taking the high horse while at the studio, and falling apart at home. It was tense. It was hard. And it was like that for a few months. Consistently.
We lost a band member because of my selfishness. My overbearing desire to have these songs the way I wanted them without asking or taking a fucking vote. Pat nearly left the band (and eventually did) for reasons that we really had to fucking smooth out later on in life that relate to this time period. I did that thing every twenty-something does when they are trying to rid themselves of memories and forge forward through them even though the memories were consistently tripping you up no matter where you turned. I cut my hair and grew a goatee. It seems lame now to think about, but I was one of those guys back then who really thought that I could change my image and perception based on how I looked. It's wacky to think about now because I haven't shaved my beard in like ten fucking years, but I guess it makes sense then. Shed everything you knew before. Start over. The wall has already been broken through, so why not kick out a few more fucking bricks while you're at it?
Amidst all of this I fell into a relationship I hadn't planned, and just fucking fell hard. Like, have you ever been crushed from one thing and while you're picking yourself up, something else comes along? Because Phil Collins has. Fuck. He wrote an album that was basically about divorce, but came out the other end of it with a song or two about new love all mashed up in the despair and the anger and the depression. So does that make this album my Face Value? Maybe. I mean hell, he was the drummer of a giant band who had a decent career afterwards, so. Maybe it Is. Shit. That's a really weird thing to think about. Now I want to go back to his album and listen to the similarities and see if I can figure out if we're really just the same person. I AM BLOWING YOUR MIND.
Anyway, where was I? Right. So here I am plodding along playing new things, cutting my hair, feeling like I could be someone else, and if I believed myself it would happen, and BLAM. In comes someone who I just fell for completely. Spiritually, emotionally, everything. She just got me. So I started to spend more time with her, and sometimes when you spend time with someone, it ends up going in a few different directions. The two of us just made sense. It was like we were tearing into each other's open wounds and finding a way to fix them. We hung around a lot. We had a lot of mind blowing late nights and sweet early moments. We recorded some music for a soundtrack together. But when you fall for someone so completely after a really messy situation, things start to leak a lot faster than you'd like them to. Cracks start to show, because you're dealing with your previous relationship on a daily basis. So it's really hard to plant something new when you've got a pile of old dirt that just isn't meshing well with the new dirt. It gets all fucking jumbled in your head, and it starts to just crumble. You realize that you're never going to make something of this because it's going to just start in a bad place and even though you want it to last a little longer, it's probably best for everyone involved to just take a step back and figure out what the fuck is going on. Figure out your shit before you get in more shit, you know? Are you starting to sense where some of the lines from the song are coming from, now? Is it starting to make sense? Wishing that you could have something this real for a longer time, but knowing that you can't, because it's going to be unhealthy. It's going to have this past that is always associated with it. You're always going to wonder, "is this for real, or is it A DEFLECTION?" And the hardest part about all of it is figuring out which one it is. Taking the time to realize that something might not just be right about this. It isn't long term. Some parts of you line up, but not the right parts. And once you start getting there, everything else doesn't matter. You could feel like you've got the right person in so many ways, but the other ways that are so much more important, they're just not there. They're not what you need. Add them to the mix of your current past, and you've got yourself a whirlwind of potential problems.
And then you realize you've got to find a way to let go of two people at once. Maybe that deserves a Part Two.
It was almost twenty years ago exactly that I was still fucking around with ideas for the new album. We'd been playing three or four of the new songs live that year, and some of them were really catching on with the crowd, especially 'Enough Space', which could fucking whip the crowd into a frenzy, and it was easy to write. Took five minutes. We even started playing 'My Hero', and I actually started to believe at that point that we had some good stuff for a second record. Sure, other stuff would come and go, but some of this shit really started to stick. I really started to believe in it. But the problem was, that there was so much other stuff going on in my life it both fed into and detracted from all of the shit I was trying to do. And when you've had a difficult, ridiculously heartbreaking thing happening in your life at the time, it tends to do that. Writing music starts to become a warped sense of therapy, telling stories and writing shit from your own point of view. It may not actually BE what the truth is, but it's your truth. It's my truth. It's the way you feel, and you can depend on it, or you can let it hurt you. At the time, it was doing both to me. Going into the studio, we had a pile of shit ready to record, and on the first round of scratch tracks and actual recordings, I remember feeling that there was a weight missing. Something was left out. Something didn't sound right. After a tense night of writing and fighting and crying and writing more, I realized where it was coming from, and fixed it, which well, didn't sit well with some people. I almost started to feel like the album was becoming a daily therapy session, and was leaving very important people out of it. Talking to the wrong people about the wrong shit. Taking the high horse while at the studio, and falling apart at home. It was tense. It was hard. And it was like that for a few months. Consistently.
We lost a band member because of my selfishness. My overbearing desire to have these songs the way I wanted them without asking or taking a fucking vote. Pat nearly left the band (and eventually did) for reasons that we really had to fucking smooth out later on in life that relate to this time period. I did that thing every twenty-something does when they are trying to rid themselves of memories and forge forward through them even though the memories were consistently tripping you up no matter where you turned. I cut my hair and grew a goatee. It seems lame now to think about, but I was one of those guys back then who really thought that I could change my image and perception based on how I looked. It's wacky to think about now because I haven't shaved my beard in like ten fucking years, but I guess it makes sense then. Shed everything you knew before. Start over. The wall has already been broken through, so why not kick out a few more fucking bricks while you're at it?
Amidst all of this I fell into a relationship I hadn't planned, and just fucking fell hard. Like, have you ever been crushed from one thing and while you're picking yourself up, something else comes along? Because Phil Collins has. Fuck. He wrote an album that was basically about divorce, but came out the other end of it with a song or two about new love all mashed up in the despair and the anger and the depression. So does that make this album my Face Value? Maybe. I mean hell, he was the drummer of a giant band who had a decent career afterwards, so. Maybe it Is. Shit. That's a really weird thing to think about. Now I want to go back to his album and listen to the similarities and see if I can figure out if we're really just the same person. I AM BLOWING YOUR MIND.
Anyway, where was I? Right. So here I am plodding along playing new things, cutting my hair, feeling like I could be someone else, and if I believed myself it would happen, and BLAM. In comes someone who I just fell for completely. Spiritually, emotionally, everything. She just got me. So I started to spend more time with her, and sometimes when you spend time with someone, it ends up going in a few different directions. The two of us just made sense. It was like we were tearing into each other's open wounds and finding a way to fix them. We hung around a lot. We had a lot of mind blowing late nights and sweet early moments. We recorded some music for a soundtrack together. But when you fall for someone so completely after a really messy situation, things start to leak a lot faster than you'd like them to. Cracks start to show, because you're dealing with your previous relationship on a daily basis. So it's really hard to plant something new when you've got a pile of old dirt that just isn't meshing well with the new dirt. It gets all fucking jumbled in your head, and it starts to just crumble. You realize that you're never going to make something of this because it's going to just start in a bad place and even though you want it to last a little longer, it's probably best for everyone involved to just take a step back and figure out what the fuck is going on. Figure out your shit before you get in more shit, you know? Are you starting to sense where some of the lines from the song are coming from, now? Is it starting to make sense? Wishing that you could have something this real for a longer time, but knowing that you can't, because it's going to be unhealthy. It's going to have this past that is always associated with it. You're always going to wonder, "is this for real, or is it A DEFLECTION?" And the hardest part about all of it is figuring out which one it is. Taking the time to realize that something might not just be right about this. It isn't long term. Some parts of you line up, but not the right parts. And once you start getting there, everything else doesn't matter. You could feel like you've got the right person in so many ways, but the other ways that are so much more important, they're just not there. They're not what you need. Add them to the mix of your current past, and you've got yourself a whirlwind of potential problems.
And then you realize you've got to find a way to let go of two people at once. Maybe that deserves a Part Two.
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