fic-mix, Lost: It's Fun To Lose And To Pretend (Nirvana!Jack), Pg13
Oh dear. I'm so nervous about this one.
Title: It's Fun To Lose And To Pretend
Fandom: Lost
Character: Nirvana!Jack (plus light Jack/Sawyer and Jack/Juliet implied)
Rating: er, does hard PG-13 exist? Look at the warnings.
Warnings: Heavy spoilers for the S3/S4 finales. Anndd.. there's drug use, alcohol, abundance of grunge music, ghosts, delusional fantasies and musings about dead grunge singers which aren't necessarily of the sane kind.
Summary: It starts just because he needs something loud enough.
Tracks/Words: 13 tracks, 4850 words.
Notes: for Queen alliecat8 at lostsquee, who asked for Jack love. Errrr. This is so not happy or fluffy or anything else but when you commented somewhere that you used to like Nirvana a lot and then you asked for Jack I had to dust this off. Because I had like three sections written since ages and I never brought myself to go forward, but I always wanted to actually write something regarding why the hell does Jack like grunge music so much and I swear it was done out of pure love. I ♥ Jack like, a lot. And I have a bit of Jack/Sawyer in there too, even if sorry again, nothing of the HAPPY! sort.
Notes #2: if I ever wrote something music-inspired where the music is an integral part of the whole thing, this is it. So I used box.net because it should give you the possibility to hear stuff without downloading if you open the link in another window, either from the direct one on the song or from the widget I put in the bottom. And I sincerely hope it didn't end up being cryptic or something. I'm so nervous about this really. Also, the Uncut copy really exists. I own it. And I know that Janis Joplin isn't grunge, it's just that IMHO her song fits. ;) Uh, and Scentless Apprentice and Gouge Away were the ones in the actual show. Okay. I'm shutting up.
1. Scentless Apprentice - Nirvana
I lie in the soil and fertilize mushrooms
Leaking out gas fumes are made into perfume
You can't fire me because I quit!
Throw me in the fire and I won't throw a fit
Go away, go away, go away,go away, go away, go away
It starts just because he needs something loud enough.
He might try with pills and alcohol, but they won't shut his father up anymore; after a couple of weeks, he realizes how much of a hopeless cause it is. He'll appear anyway; Jack will have to listen to him anyway.
He just needed something louder than that, enough to cover that voice in his head and outside it; music is just the first thing that comes to mind.
Thing is, Jack never was much of a music person; he isn't an expert whatsoever and he doesn't really know what he should go for. For once he wishes Charlie visited him instead of Hurley, he'd probably work against his own interests if it meant giving him music advice. What Jack knows is that he needs loud music and the only two kinds of loud music he knows the existence of are grunge and heavy metal. He never was much a heavy metal person and while he wants the music to be loud he also doesn't want his ears to bleed. He doesn't really know zilch about grunge and so grunge it is. But it's not like Jack is that great grunge expert either; the only group he knows is Nirvana and it's because everyone and the walls of their houses know that Nirvana made grunge music even if they barely heard one song all their life
So Jack goes to the first record shop, heading for the N in the pop-rock section (pop-rock actually sounds wrong, for some reason); if Jack had even a bare idea of Nirvana's music he'd have probably doing what every beginner who wants to try them would do and buy Nevermind, but Jack doesn't have one and picks the first one he finds. There's a drawing on the cover that reminds him of his anatomy textbooks; he figures it's as good as any other and pays it eight dollars and ninety-nine cents at the check out.
He doesn't know that this was Nirvana's last record and that it was released seven months before Kurt Cobain's death; not yet, at least.
Jack pushes it in on the car and there it happens. He hadn't even planned on listening to the lyrics and that first song was exactly what he needed, definitely some loud stuff, but then he listens to the lyrics at more or less half of the song and as soon as it says
As my bones grew they did hurt
They hurt really bad
I tried hard to have a father
But instead I had a dad
I just want you to know that I
Don't hate you anymore
There is nothing I could say
That I haven't thought before
Jack almost slams into a tree nearby because this isn't just loud music. He parks harshly and stays there for forty minutes, listening to the record straight, from Serve The Servants to All Apologies. When it's over, he puts Scentless Apprentice on again (go away, the speakers scream, and he figures it's the perfect message), on repeat, and drives home. When he's home, he brings the record up with him, puts it on again and puts the whole thing on repeat even while he tries to sleep helping himself with a couple of drinks.
It's a new world in front of his eyes; he never was one to pay attention to lyrics in songs or to songs altogether and yet, yet these lyrics go straight from the speaker to his head. He recognizes himself in a line or two scattered pretty much everywhere, he fucking relates and for one who doesn't really relate with real people that's quite the jump. He remembers vaguely some hype in 1994 about the singer committing suicide; when he walks in front of a nightstand and sees a copy of Uncut, special number, all about grunge, he buys it and starts to make himself a culture.
He never understood what being a music freak could feel like, but now he maybe does. And it gives him something to think about when he isn't thinking about what John said and about having to go back.
2. Broken Hands - Mudhoney
How come they've made you go?
How come they broke your hands?
How come I always have to know?
How come I never understand?
I never understand
oh, understand
As lame as it can get, during his second trip to the record store he brings his copy of Uncut with him. After all, it has the names; Jack doesn't know anyone apart from Nirvana really, and he barely knows Nirvana at all. First of all, he goes back to the N section and buys the first two records and the Unplugged; he leaves the rest there. Not because he wouldn't buy it, but he has read the article very carefully and suddenly the idea of some of his money going into Courtney Love's bank account unnecessarily sounds disturbing and so he only gets the necessary.
Then he moves to the hard rock/metal section and buys mostly everything that is mentioned on that article; Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Pixies, Smashing Pumpkins. He picks the records randomly except when there is some recommendation from his magazine, gets out of the store with his wallet lighter and the bag in his hands heavier; when he sits on his floor, opens himself the first beer of the day and just lies there surrounded by at least fifteen different records wondering which should he listen to first, he realizes he's feeling at least decent and it's the first time since... since he can't remember. In the end he just follows the magazine's advice. It says that Mudhoney were the first to open the way; Mudhoney it is.
And then, well, Mudhoney are actually fun. Compared to Nirvana, at least. The music is pretty decent and they’re actually even louder than Nirvana when the song is right, which for Jack is a blessing since he can always use it, but there’s a certain lightness behind it. He doesn’t perceive any inner turmoil going behind there, or at least not what goes behind a Nirvana song. Not that he doesn’t relate, he fucking does and more often than not; only, he’s more detached. Which maybe is not so bad.
3. Grind - Alice In Chains
Sure to play a part, so you love the game
And in truth your lies become one and same, yeah
I could set you free, rather hear the sound
Of your body breaking as I take you down, yeah
Let the sun never blind your eyes
Let me sleep so my teeth won't grind
Hear a sound from a voice inside
In the darkest hole, you'd be well advised
Not to plan my funeral before the body dies, yeah
How he gets into Alice In Chains, well, it’s rather morbid. Not that there’s something which isn’t morbid in his life, lately. Or something.
See, for the newbie grunge fan who gets into Nirvana first, is a matter of time finding out that someone else other than Kurt Cobain died on April 5th. There’s Layne Staley, too. Coincidences, Jack thinks as he comes home the day after with a couple of Alice In Chains’ records in the plastic bag resting on the passenger seat.
They’re definitely better-suited to his newly acquired taste, he learns after a couple of thorough listenings; like Nirvana, but somewhat more refined. More varied maybe. Less immediate. But they hit close to home almost as much. Too much.
A cocktail of alcohol and drugs isn’t a shotgun, Jack thinks. And for how much Jack likes Nirvana more, he isn’t so far gone not to notice that alcohol and drugs is far more his style than shotguns are or will ever be. He wonders how long would it take to find him, if he were to die that way. Morbid. Indeed. Sometimes he thinks he hears people laughing. He wants to imagine they’re the others and not his father. Then he swallows another pill.
Morbid, alright, but it doesn’t matter. Jack really loves Alice In Chains. Jack really loves Layne’s voice. It gets right through his head and goes straight to his heart and it hurts maybe too much.
4. Black Hole Sun - Soundgarden
In my eyes, indisposed
In disguise as no one knows
Hides the face, lies the snake
in The sun in my disgrace
Boiling heat, summer stench
'Neath the black the sky looks dead
Call my name through the cream
And I'll hear you scream again
Black hole sun
Won't you come
And wash away the rain
He thinks that the sun of my disgrace is what sold Soundgarden to him. That, and maybe a title which said fell on black days, but the first definitely had the bigger impact. He actually didn’t have it in program, but that song happened to be put on during one of his weekly raids of that record shop he had stumbled in just casually once and come on, who wouldn’t like an expression like black hole sun anyway? It’s a countersense, or maybe not, he knows that there’s a name for that sort of thing and Sawyer would probably know it, something that starts with an o, but he can’t recall it. Jack never was one for literary devices, after all.
It’s odd that when he hears the record on the car it almost sounds relaxing. The songs sort of blend and that smooth, deep voice which once in a while reaches impervious heights fills his ears without making them bleed or without threatening to make him crash the car with a couple of lines of lyric; because while it’s all things he recognizes, that he recognizes indeed (In my shoes, a walking sleep, and my youth I pray to keep, heaven send Hell away, no one sings like you anymore), it’s all general. It’s not directed at him. He feels as detached as one can and it’s good. It’s really good. And well, saying that he fell on black days can’t really hurt since he has already accepted the truth with open arms.
At home, he looks it up. Oxymoron, is it; fun, really fun, he thinks as he turns an Oxycodone pill between his thumb and his index and that deep, rich voice pleads for that black hole sun to wash away the rain. It won’t happen anytime soon, he thinks as he swallows the pill dry.
5. Gouge Away - Pixies
chained to the pillars
a 3-day party
I break the walls
and kill us all
with holy fingers
gouge away
you can gouge away
stay all day
if you want to
Pixies means going to the real roots; influence for everyone, or so it seems, and so Jack goes for a plain best of instead of picking random records.
He got good enough to recognize why would they be an influence, even if he rarely sees the point; or better, Pixies are alright but he just doesn’t relate. He puts them on when he doesn’t want to think. They’re good for driving around, the music is good and the lyrics just pass through his head in a fog. They tell him he can stay all day and gouge away if he wants to, but he barely sees the point. Fine, it’s more or less what he does for a living these days, but they’re in the mixtape he brings on his car just to give a break from the important things.
He thinks he finally gets the point of not getting the idols of your idols. He remembers some colleague of his years ago who was a complete rock music fanatic, insane levels really, who said he never liked Elvis Presley much but owned some records of his just because everyone else he listened to wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for Elvis. It must be the same thing, he figures, and so he turns up the volume as he drives, being thankful for the Pixies’ existence while tapping his fingers to Gouge Away on the wheel.
6. Dead And Bloated - Stone Temple Pilots
I am smellin' like the rose
that somebody gave me on
my birthday deathbed
I am smellin' like the rose
that somebody gave me
'cause I'm dead & bloated
You can't swallow what I'm thinkin'
You can't swallow what I'm thinkin'
I am trampled under sole of
another man's shoes
Guess I walked too softly
Stone Temple Pilots are kind of a new world. The point isn't only that Stone Temple Pilots lasted for a remarkable time, but they're different. They sum things up; at least with the first record, the one he gets, they are as loud as he needs, the lyrics are striking just like Nirvana's, their songs hit too close to home like Alice In Chains'; but then he also buys the others and he discovers that it's not just grunge.
There's that, sure; but there's also rock, some pop, fucking jazz and metal even and really, Jack had never thought there'd come a day in which he would have been able to tell the difference.
Stone Temple Pilots are good mostly when he longs for variety. It rarely happens though; Jack can't afford much variety, not when it just takes an instrumental colored in jazz to hear what he doesn't want to hear. But as long as the spell lasts, they work; there's something unique in the perfect blend of rough and gentle of those song's music. There's something special in a voice of someone who has fucked up as much as everyone else around here but who is still alive, at least as far as Jack knows and Uncut says. While Scott Weiland probably won't ever get to him as much as Kurt Cobain does, he fills the hole nicely. As long as it lasts.
And no, no one can swallow what he’s thinking, and yes, he’s not feeling much better than dead and bloated. That’s called hitting the target, even if he doesn’t have any roses on his imaginary deathbed.
7. Barbarella - Scott Weiland
And all the tangerines
They taste like jelly beans
This must be boring by now
Grab a scale and guess the weight of all
The pain I've given with my name
I'm a selfish piece of shit
Barbarella
Come and save me from my misery
Can't you see it's a disease
Shoot the bad guys
And I'll gladly sing a tune for you
Lost in space-we could be free
Jack buys his solo record just because; he's surprised. It isn't exactly noisy, but it's some kind of experimenting which Jack is sure must hurt his dad's ghostly ears since he never shows up when he plays it. As far as he’s concerned, it’s not bad. Not exactly his thing and probably too weird, but still, not bad.
And then he hears the lyrics to Barbarella and he wonders how fucking much soft has he gotten lately if he cries on that, too; because he does as soon as he realizes the gist and well, fuck what he thought. No one will ever reach Cobain, but this guy is a fucking good second. It's spontaneous and he feels ashamed as he gulps down a shot of Wild Irish Rose and pushes the repeat button.
He just can't not. He also has this certain idea that when he wrote this song Mr. Weiland had to be as far gone as Jack is now.
There's just a difference. See, Jack has a couple Barbarellas, too. But while Weiland's has to be the original one, a beautiful, sexy Jane Fonda, forms as perfect as a doll's (Jack remembers her vaguely from seeing that movie years ago), his own Barbarella has Juliet's and Sawyer’s face, depending on the says. They don’t wear a costume, but she's dressed like that first time she brought him that disgusting sandwhich and he’s dressed like that time when Jack found out about the glasses and they don’t talk to him because there's really no need and he isn't sure he wants to know what they would tell him anyway.
But each time they appear, they both smile somewhat sadly and kiss him slowly, a ghost of a kiss, Juliet for what never was and Sawyer for what ended when he saw him and Kate in that cage, and they don't save him from his misery as their fingers open his jeans and their hands push downward (never together though, it’s either him or her); Jack doesn't even want to acknowledge that he's doing all of this on his own. He doesn't need to acknowledge it.
He crashes back on earth though, to the sound of tangerines tasting like jelly beans and it must be boring by now; it's a disease, indeed. And then, I'm a selfish piece of shit, the speakers and Scott Weiland proclaim, and Jack wonders if he has ever heard a song which wasn't written by Kurt Cobain which is as sincere as this one is.
8. Bullet With Butterfly Wings - The Smashing Pumpkins
the world is a vampire, sent to drain
secret destroyers, hold you up to the flames
and what do I get, for my pain
betrayed desires, and a piece of the game
even though I know-I suppose I'll show
all my cool and cold-like old job
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
someone will say what is lost can never be saved
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage (..)
tell me I'm the only one
tell me there's no other one
jesus was an only son for you
and I still believe that I cannot be saved
Smashing Pumpkins aren't exactly his thing. They are his thing when they are loud and they say that loneliness is godliness and God is empty just like everyone, they aren’t his thing when they say that tonight, tonight is so bright. He doesn’t give a fuck about tonight being so bright, maybe because it never is, but he digs the other side of the coin.
They were more or less an accident, he got a couple of records because they were on discount along with some other ones, but he does appreciate a lot on said records, except for anything that gets remotely hopeful. But they’re a two-sides-of-the-coin group after all; and he just likes a specific one. He likes the one side where the lyrics are made of zeroes and worlds which are vampires set to drain, which has to be one of the truer things he has ever heard all his life. He likes when they say that despite the rage people are just rats in cages. That’s his favorite song actually. Because it says everything that needs to be said universally. See, Nirvana speak to him and no one else; this one song doesn’t speak to him, but he can relate anyway. And well, it just speaks the truth. Not only the world is a vampire set to drain, in his experience, but it’s also a fucking thirsty one; he also feels like a rat in a cage, has always been feeling like a rat in a cage except that the rage phase passed long ago. He isn’t even angry anymore, and he doesn’t know at whom he should be, if not himself maybe. He isn’t sure he wants to go there. He sure as hell feels like a joke and he sure as hell feels like he cannot be saved, most of all because he doesn’t even understand from what and by whom. He thinks that himself might be the only answer, but he’s not sure he wants to go there.
Still, whenever he ends up listening to it, he always puts it on repeat at least a couple of times. He likes listening to it because it gives him something to think about, even if it borders on morbid most times.
Maybe he feels like this because once he had thought that after all he has spent half of his life playing Jesus and Jesus was an only son for you, and Jack is a fucking only son too, what a chance, but it’s too much of a self-delusional thought even for him.
9. Black - Pearl Jam
And now my bitter hands cradle broken glass
Of what was everything?
All the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed everything
All the love gone bad turned my world to black
Tattooed all I see, all that I am, all I'll be
I know someday you'll have a beautiful life,
I know you'll be a sun in somebody else's sky, but why
Why, why can't it be, can't it be mine?
Pearl Jam are for the rare times when he feels optimist. In the sense that hey, they really did survive and in full swing; it makes him wonder if he'll survive, too. Pearl Jam aren't really as refined as Stone Temple Pilots and Smashing Pumpkins, not really, but every note leaks and screams honesty and it's something. Especially when, you know, he's living in this huge lie he has built himself.
Maybe this is how he really is. Maybe music is the only honest thing there is. He wonders what Charlie would say about this all. Maybe he should ask Hurley to ask him but he doubts they'd let in such a visitor.
Jack can picture his dad laughing his ass off as a tear falls off his closed lids as the record plays and that deep voice fills his ears and it says and now my bitter hands cradle broken glass of what was everything and I know someday you'll have a beautiful life, I know you'll be a star in somebody else's sky, but why can't it be mine? , but he sincerely doesn’t care. He wonders if it isn’t just it; fuck, Eddie Vedder knows how to speak to him, too. His own sky is dark now, not even a dim light; nobody is a star in there and sure as hell he isn’t a star in anyone’s. He kind of loves the expression. He wishes he had any kind of imagination to come up with something like it but well, he wasn’t born with it and he won’t develop it now.
He picks up again that number of Uncut, finds Eddie’s interview, reads it again and again and at some point it says, Are you gonna try and do something to make other peoples’ lives better, even if it means going through hell? Even if those people don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do. Even if you’re not sure yourself that what you’re doing is going to make any bit of difference.
The page is about to fall off, not that he needs to read it anymore. He really worn that copy out. He can’t help feeling ridiculous, also because this is obviously about songwriting and not about anything that ever happened to him, and nonetheless it just rings so true; he can’t fucking believe it took him forty years to get why would someone idolize some singer.
10. Hunger Strike - Temple Of The Dog
I don't mind stealing bread
From the mouths of decadence
But I can't feed on the powerless
When my cup's already overfilled
There’s something quite sublime about Temple Of The Dog, Jack thinks.
They were a recommendation from the owner of the store he usually goes to; after all, Jack has raided their hard rock section of every Soundgarden and Pearl Jam record they had, so why not trying what basically is the sum of it? Jack followed the advice and it was good advice.
Maybe sublime isn’t exactly the most proper word, but for all Jack cares, it is. There’s a certain charm in the mixture, he has to admit; Jack appreciates the music, which perfectly fits his needs with the added spice of a charming melodic line here and there. He also likes the lyrics, which while hitting close enough, do not hit really close.
(Except for Say Hello To Heaven, but he always skips that one.)
Maybe it’s the reason why he likes Hunger Strike best; beautiful music, lyrics which aren’t completely out of his grasp but which don’t make him want to cry his eyes out either. He spends one night listening to it only once, an empty bottle at his side and his head just trying to distinguish when Chris Cornell ends and Eddie Vedder begins, or the contrary. It’s good to think about such petty matters only.
Before falling asleep, he decides he still likes Eddie Vedder more.
He also fleetingly wonders if there’s something that sounds particularly interesting in an expression like stealing bread from the mouths of decadence.
Maybe yes, maybe not. That’s why he still likes Kurt Cobain better; if there are metaphors, it isn’t hard to get them. But sometimes is nice to be reminded that there’s something he can’t get. He tries not to wonder whether he would get it, if he was sober.
11. The Man Who Sold The World - Nirvana
I laughed and shook his hand, and made my way back home
I searched for a foreign land, for years and years I roamed
I gazed a gazeless stare, we walked a million hills
I must have died alone, a long long time ago
Who knows? Not me
I never lost control
You're face to face
With the Man who Sold the World
Nirvana are always the ones he comes back to, though; first love is first love, after all.
Jack’s favourite record, after a lot of pondering on his part, is the Unplugged; he’s no critic or expert, but he did his research alright and it just feels like a will, the sum of everything Nirvana were and weren’t, are and aren’t, will and won’t be, everything Kurt Cobain ever had to say or not to say. It’s fun, how much every single piece weights, how much a stripped performance will get straight to him and his head and his heart and will choke his throat until he washes down the lump in whiskey. He just feels close to this guy he never knew, whose death had barely been a headline in newspapers thirteen years before and who must have died alone, a long, long time ago.
Jack thinks he has never heard such a lie as I never lost control, but he gets it because wasn’t it a lie for the both of them (him and Kurt, just to stop before the list becomes too long)?
And is he going to die alone, too? He thinks he is. Nothing suggests otherwise, given the state of things. Who knows? Well, not him. He used to be the man who sold the world once, but now it really isn’t his place. Maybe it never was and he just was brought up to be that man and in the end he failed. He just knows he lost control alright and that relating to a dead musician (who, more often than he’d have thought, looks at him from a lot of t-shirts he notices people wearing, people who probably weren’t even born when he died; he hates those shirts, a disgusting blend of his face on the front and his suicide letter on the back) doesn’t sound ridiculous anymore.
12. Where Did You Sleep Last Night? - Leadbelly
My girl, my girl, don't lie to me
Tell me where did you sleep last night
In the pines in the pines
Where the sun don't ever shine
I would shiver the whole night through
My girl, my girl, where will you go?
I'm going where the cold wind blows
In the pines, the pines
Where the sun don't ever shine
I would shiver the whole night through
Thing is, Jack fucking digs that song. But he can’t listen to it on the Unplugged. It hurts.
And it’s ridiculous, but it hurts.
Last record, last song, last everything. He jut can’t listen to it. It’s true also that he fucking hates blues because the name says it all and there isn’t any noise to drown the lyrics in. But he really likes that song and blues is still better than the alternative, and so Leadbelly it is.
He digs that song because it’s haunting, because it’s open to interpretation, because it just creeps under your skin and doesn’t leave; and sometimes Claire appears in front of him and her hair is long and soft, she wears a torn dress and says she’s in the pines where the sun don’t ever shine.
He’s pretty sure she’s an hallucination. His dad isn’t, but she is. After all, if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t answer that she’ll go where the cold wind blows when he asks her, mostly because there’s no cold wind on a tropical island. Even if of course, it’d be her in the pines.
Doesn’t matter anyway. Where else she should be? Pines doesn’t mean jungle, but it’s close enough. He doesn’t need to ask her if she’s lying. She can’t. He’s the one lying; if she lies it’s his fault, since she’s in his head anyway. And what news. Not now, though. He’s too far gone to lie, but he has lied and it’s exactly the same thing in the end.
He wishes he could go and sleep where the sun don’t ever shine too, sometimes. Not a chance though, and he washes his throat in cheap bourbon. It’s the most honest thing he can do and it’d be fucking stupid if he started lying to himself now.
Shit, he hates blues, he thinks as he wipes his mouth and Leadbelly’s voice croaks from a shitty recording. He didn’t want to spend more than five bucks on a low quality best of.
13. Mercedes Benz - Janis Joplin
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?
He used to own Janis Joplin’s Greatest Hits once; it was a gift of Mark’s when he was thirteen or so. He had liked it then, but before he could exactly form an opinion on it, either his mother or father had decided it wasn’t appropriate music (he always suspected his mother, he thinks that for her dying overdosing was a reason enough not to be appropriate) and the record disappeared. Bad influence, his dad had said then, and how can you stand that voice anyway, she sounds like a hen.
He had pretty much forgot about it until he found it in the occasions one day for five bucks; he buys it along with the first two Alice In Chains, Riot Act by Pearl Jam, the only Mad Season record and the only Screaming Trees they had in stock. As he picks it from the bunch of discounted cds, he ignores his dad shaking his head from the corner of the store.
He puts it on the car as he gets home and he remembers driving a Mercedes Benz once, when he was dating Sarah in the beginning probably; call them coincidences.
Then he puts it on repeat at home because he’s anal like that when he likes one song and this one is raw and sincere and heartfelt and that voice sounds like warm honey to his ears, such a difference from his usual. Not that he doesn’t like his usual.
He takes a shot of the first drink at hand, wishing he could ask anyone, not necessarily God, for his metaphorical Mercedes Benz; too late, he figures, and no one to turn to.
He calls Kate and she doesn’t answer for the hundredth time. He realizes that maybe wishing for that Mercedes Benz is the story of his life and the only answer he got to this point is that there isn’t a thing in his life which ever smelled like fucking Teen Spirit (not that he likes it, but that’s not the point, the point is quoting things right and he’s becoming good at it), that having someone as a metaphorical star in your metaphorical sky is the hardest thing that you could ever try to obtain and that he’s just fucking helpless.
All he can think about, as he takes another slow drink, is the greatest thing Kurt Cobain ever taught him, probably, which translates in three words. Well, whatever, nevermind. The problem is that he knows it’s beyond him to put theory into practice and he won’t ever stop minding. He found out the hard way, and it’s hard to fucking find, indeed.
At least he has enough to buy himself a night on the town, he thinks as Janis asks for it and he closes his eyes, comforting darkness falling around him (after all, with the lights out it’s less dangerous) and the too familiar taste of whiskey burning down his throat.
End.
Whole folder, hoping that it works:
zip with all songs and cover
Title: It's Fun To Lose And To Pretend
Fandom: Lost
Character: Nirvana!Jack (plus light Jack/Sawyer and Jack/Juliet implied)
Rating: er, does hard PG-13 exist? Look at the warnings.
Warnings: Heavy spoilers for the S3/S4 finales. Anndd.. there's drug use, alcohol, abundance of grunge music, ghosts, delusional fantasies and musings about dead grunge singers which aren't necessarily of the sane kind.
Summary: It starts just because he needs something loud enough.
Tracks/Words: 13 tracks, 4850 words.
Notes: for Queen alliecat8 at lostsquee, who asked for Jack love. Errrr. This is so not happy or fluffy or anything else but when you commented somewhere that you used to like Nirvana a lot and then you asked for Jack I had to dust this off. Because I had like three sections written since ages and I never brought myself to go forward, but I always wanted to actually write something regarding why the hell does Jack like grunge music so much and I swear it was done out of pure love. I ♥ Jack like, a lot. And I have a bit of Jack/Sawyer in there too, even if sorry again, nothing of the HAPPY! sort.
Notes #2: if I ever wrote something music-inspired where the music is an integral part of the whole thing, this is it. So I used box.net because it should give you the possibility to hear stuff without downloading if you open the link in another window, either from the direct one on the song or from the widget I put in the bottom. And I sincerely hope it didn't end up being cryptic or something. I'm so nervous about this really. Also, the Uncut copy really exists. I own it. And I know that Janis Joplin isn't grunge, it's just that IMHO her song fits. ;) Uh, and Scentless Apprentice and Gouge Away were the ones in the actual show. Okay. I'm shutting up.
1. Scentless Apprentice - Nirvana
I lie in the soil and fertilize mushrooms
Leaking out gas fumes are made into perfume
You can't fire me because I quit!
Throw me in the fire and I won't throw a fit
Go away, go away, go away,go away, go away, go away
It starts just because he needs something loud enough.
He might try with pills and alcohol, but they won't shut his father up anymore; after a couple of weeks, he realizes how much of a hopeless cause it is. He'll appear anyway; Jack will have to listen to him anyway.
He just needed something louder than that, enough to cover that voice in his head and outside it; music is just the first thing that comes to mind.
Thing is, Jack never was much of a music person; he isn't an expert whatsoever and he doesn't really know what he should go for. For once he wishes Charlie visited him instead of Hurley, he'd probably work against his own interests if it meant giving him music advice. What Jack knows is that he needs loud music and the only two kinds of loud music he knows the existence of are grunge and heavy metal. He never was much a heavy metal person and while he wants the music to be loud he also doesn't want his ears to bleed. He doesn't really know zilch about grunge and so grunge it is. But it's not like Jack is that great grunge expert either; the only group he knows is Nirvana and it's because everyone and the walls of their houses know that Nirvana made grunge music even if they barely heard one song all their life
So Jack goes to the first record shop, heading for the N in the pop-rock section (pop-rock actually sounds wrong, for some reason); if Jack had even a bare idea of Nirvana's music he'd have probably doing what every beginner who wants to try them would do and buy Nevermind, but Jack doesn't have one and picks the first one he finds. There's a drawing on the cover that reminds him of his anatomy textbooks; he figures it's as good as any other and pays it eight dollars and ninety-nine cents at the check out.
He doesn't know that this was Nirvana's last record and that it was released seven months before Kurt Cobain's death; not yet, at least.
Jack pushes it in on the car and there it happens. He hadn't even planned on listening to the lyrics and that first song was exactly what he needed, definitely some loud stuff, but then he listens to the lyrics at more or less half of the song and as soon as it says
As my bones grew they did hurt
They hurt really bad
I tried hard to have a father
But instead I had a dad
I just want you to know that I
Don't hate you anymore
There is nothing I could say
That I haven't thought before
Jack almost slams into a tree nearby because this isn't just loud music. He parks harshly and stays there for forty minutes, listening to the record straight, from Serve The Servants to All Apologies. When it's over, he puts Scentless Apprentice on again (go away, the speakers scream, and he figures it's the perfect message), on repeat, and drives home. When he's home, he brings the record up with him, puts it on again and puts the whole thing on repeat even while he tries to sleep helping himself with a couple of drinks.
It's a new world in front of his eyes; he never was one to pay attention to lyrics in songs or to songs altogether and yet, yet these lyrics go straight from the speaker to his head. He recognizes himself in a line or two scattered pretty much everywhere, he fucking relates and for one who doesn't really relate with real people that's quite the jump. He remembers vaguely some hype in 1994 about the singer committing suicide; when he walks in front of a nightstand and sees a copy of Uncut, special number, all about grunge, he buys it and starts to make himself a culture.
He never understood what being a music freak could feel like, but now he maybe does. And it gives him something to think about when he isn't thinking about what John said and about having to go back.
2. Broken Hands - Mudhoney
How come they've made you go?
How come they broke your hands?
How come I always have to know?
How come I never understand?
I never understand
oh, understand
As lame as it can get, during his second trip to the record store he brings his copy of Uncut with him. After all, it has the names; Jack doesn't know anyone apart from Nirvana really, and he barely knows Nirvana at all. First of all, he goes back to the N section and buys the first two records and the Unplugged; he leaves the rest there. Not because he wouldn't buy it, but he has read the article very carefully and suddenly the idea of some of his money going into Courtney Love's bank account unnecessarily sounds disturbing and so he only gets the necessary.
Then he moves to the hard rock/metal section and buys mostly everything that is mentioned on that article; Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Pixies, Smashing Pumpkins. He picks the records randomly except when there is some recommendation from his magazine, gets out of the store with his wallet lighter and the bag in his hands heavier; when he sits on his floor, opens himself the first beer of the day and just lies there surrounded by at least fifteen different records wondering which should he listen to first, he realizes he's feeling at least decent and it's the first time since... since he can't remember. In the end he just follows the magazine's advice. It says that Mudhoney were the first to open the way; Mudhoney it is.
And then, well, Mudhoney are actually fun. Compared to Nirvana, at least. The music is pretty decent and they’re actually even louder than Nirvana when the song is right, which for Jack is a blessing since he can always use it, but there’s a certain lightness behind it. He doesn’t perceive any inner turmoil going behind there, or at least not what goes behind a Nirvana song. Not that he doesn’t relate, he fucking does and more often than not; only, he’s more detached. Which maybe is not so bad.
3. Grind - Alice In Chains
Sure to play a part, so you love the game
And in truth your lies become one and same, yeah
I could set you free, rather hear the sound
Of your body breaking as I take you down, yeah
Let the sun never blind your eyes
Let me sleep so my teeth won't grind
Hear a sound from a voice inside
In the darkest hole, you'd be well advised
Not to plan my funeral before the body dies, yeah
How he gets into Alice In Chains, well, it’s rather morbid. Not that there’s something which isn’t morbid in his life, lately. Or something.
See, for the newbie grunge fan who gets into Nirvana first, is a matter of time finding out that someone else other than Kurt Cobain died on April 5th. There’s Layne Staley, too. Coincidences, Jack thinks as he comes home the day after with a couple of Alice In Chains’ records in the plastic bag resting on the passenger seat.
They’re definitely better-suited to his newly acquired taste, he learns after a couple of thorough listenings; like Nirvana, but somewhat more refined. More varied maybe. Less immediate. But they hit close to home almost as much. Too much.
A cocktail of alcohol and drugs isn’t a shotgun, Jack thinks. And for how much Jack likes Nirvana more, he isn’t so far gone not to notice that alcohol and drugs is far more his style than shotguns are or will ever be. He wonders how long would it take to find him, if he were to die that way. Morbid. Indeed. Sometimes he thinks he hears people laughing. He wants to imagine they’re the others and not his father. Then he swallows another pill.
Morbid, alright, but it doesn’t matter. Jack really loves Alice In Chains. Jack really loves Layne’s voice. It gets right through his head and goes straight to his heart and it hurts maybe too much.
4. Black Hole Sun - Soundgarden
In my eyes, indisposed
In disguise as no one knows
Hides the face, lies the snake
in The sun in my disgrace
Boiling heat, summer stench
'Neath the black the sky looks dead
Call my name through the cream
And I'll hear you scream again
Black hole sun
Won't you come
And wash away the rain
He thinks that the sun of my disgrace is what sold Soundgarden to him. That, and maybe a title which said fell on black days, but the first definitely had the bigger impact. He actually didn’t have it in program, but that song happened to be put on during one of his weekly raids of that record shop he had stumbled in just casually once and come on, who wouldn’t like an expression like black hole sun anyway? It’s a countersense, or maybe not, he knows that there’s a name for that sort of thing and Sawyer would probably know it, something that starts with an o, but he can’t recall it. Jack never was one for literary devices, after all.
It’s odd that when he hears the record on the car it almost sounds relaxing. The songs sort of blend and that smooth, deep voice which once in a while reaches impervious heights fills his ears without making them bleed or without threatening to make him crash the car with a couple of lines of lyric; because while it’s all things he recognizes, that he recognizes indeed (In my shoes, a walking sleep, and my youth I pray to keep, heaven send Hell away, no one sings like you anymore), it’s all general. It’s not directed at him. He feels as detached as one can and it’s good. It’s really good. And well, saying that he fell on black days can’t really hurt since he has already accepted the truth with open arms.
At home, he looks it up. Oxymoron, is it; fun, really fun, he thinks as he turns an Oxycodone pill between his thumb and his index and that deep, rich voice pleads for that black hole sun to wash away the rain. It won’t happen anytime soon, he thinks as he swallows the pill dry.
5. Gouge Away - Pixies
chained to the pillars
a 3-day party
I break the walls
and kill us all
with holy fingers
gouge away
you can gouge away
stay all day
if you want to
Pixies means going to the real roots; influence for everyone, or so it seems, and so Jack goes for a plain best of instead of picking random records.
He got good enough to recognize why would they be an influence, even if he rarely sees the point; or better, Pixies are alright but he just doesn’t relate. He puts them on when he doesn’t want to think. They’re good for driving around, the music is good and the lyrics just pass through his head in a fog. They tell him he can stay all day and gouge away if he wants to, but he barely sees the point. Fine, it’s more or less what he does for a living these days, but they’re in the mixtape he brings on his car just to give a break from the important things.
He thinks he finally gets the point of not getting the idols of your idols. He remembers some colleague of his years ago who was a complete rock music fanatic, insane levels really, who said he never liked Elvis Presley much but owned some records of his just because everyone else he listened to wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for Elvis. It must be the same thing, he figures, and so he turns up the volume as he drives, being thankful for the Pixies’ existence while tapping his fingers to Gouge Away on the wheel.
6. Dead And Bloated - Stone Temple Pilots
I am smellin' like the rose
that somebody gave me on
my birthday deathbed
I am smellin' like the rose
that somebody gave me
'cause I'm dead & bloated
You can't swallow what I'm thinkin'
You can't swallow what I'm thinkin'
I am trampled under sole of
another man's shoes
Guess I walked too softly
Stone Temple Pilots are kind of a new world. The point isn't only that Stone Temple Pilots lasted for a remarkable time, but they're different. They sum things up; at least with the first record, the one he gets, they are as loud as he needs, the lyrics are striking just like Nirvana's, their songs hit too close to home like Alice In Chains'; but then he also buys the others and he discovers that it's not just grunge.
There's that, sure; but there's also rock, some pop, fucking jazz and metal even and really, Jack had never thought there'd come a day in which he would have been able to tell the difference.
Stone Temple Pilots are good mostly when he longs for variety. It rarely happens though; Jack can't afford much variety, not when it just takes an instrumental colored in jazz to hear what he doesn't want to hear. But as long as the spell lasts, they work; there's something unique in the perfect blend of rough and gentle of those song's music. There's something special in a voice of someone who has fucked up as much as everyone else around here but who is still alive, at least as far as Jack knows and Uncut says. While Scott Weiland probably won't ever get to him as much as Kurt Cobain does, he fills the hole nicely. As long as it lasts.
And no, no one can swallow what he’s thinking, and yes, he’s not feeling much better than dead and bloated. That’s called hitting the target, even if he doesn’t have any roses on his imaginary deathbed.
7. Barbarella - Scott Weiland
And all the tangerines
They taste like jelly beans
This must be boring by now
Grab a scale and guess the weight of all
The pain I've given with my name
I'm a selfish piece of shit
Barbarella
Come and save me from my misery
Can't you see it's a disease
Shoot the bad guys
And I'll gladly sing a tune for you
Lost in space-we could be free
Jack buys his solo record just because; he's surprised. It isn't exactly noisy, but it's some kind of experimenting which Jack is sure must hurt his dad's ghostly ears since he never shows up when he plays it. As far as he’s concerned, it’s not bad. Not exactly his thing and probably too weird, but still, not bad.
And then he hears the lyrics to Barbarella and he wonders how fucking much soft has he gotten lately if he cries on that, too; because he does as soon as he realizes the gist and well, fuck what he thought. No one will ever reach Cobain, but this guy is a fucking good second. It's spontaneous and he feels ashamed as he gulps down a shot of Wild Irish Rose and pushes the repeat button.
He just can't not. He also has this certain idea that when he wrote this song Mr. Weiland had to be as far gone as Jack is now.
There's just a difference. See, Jack has a couple Barbarellas, too. But while Weiland's has to be the original one, a beautiful, sexy Jane Fonda, forms as perfect as a doll's (Jack remembers her vaguely from seeing that movie years ago), his own Barbarella has Juliet's and Sawyer’s face, depending on the says. They don’t wear a costume, but she's dressed like that first time she brought him that disgusting sandwhich and he’s dressed like that time when Jack found out about the glasses and they don’t talk to him because there's really no need and he isn't sure he wants to know what they would tell him anyway.
But each time they appear, they both smile somewhat sadly and kiss him slowly, a ghost of a kiss, Juliet for what never was and Sawyer for what ended when he saw him and Kate in that cage, and they don't save him from his misery as their fingers open his jeans and their hands push downward (never together though, it’s either him or her); Jack doesn't even want to acknowledge that he's doing all of this on his own. He doesn't need to acknowledge it.
He crashes back on earth though, to the sound of tangerines tasting like jelly beans and it must be boring by now; it's a disease, indeed. And then, I'm a selfish piece of shit, the speakers and Scott Weiland proclaim, and Jack wonders if he has ever heard a song which wasn't written by Kurt Cobain which is as sincere as this one is.
8. Bullet With Butterfly Wings - The Smashing Pumpkins
the world is a vampire, sent to drain
secret destroyers, hold you up to the flames
and what do I get, for my pain
betrayed desires, and a piece of the game
even though I know-I suppose I'll show
all my cool and cold-like old job
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
someone will say what is lost can never be saved
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage (..)
tell me I'm the only one
tell me there's no other one
jesus was an only son for you
and I still believe that I cannot be saved
Smashing Pumpkins aren't exactly his thing. They are his thing when they are loud and they say that loneliness is godliness and God is empty just like everyone, they aren’t his thing when they say that tonight, tonight is so bright. He doesn’t give a fuck about tonight being so bright, maybe because it never is, but he digs the other side of the coin.
They were more or less an accident, he got a couple of records because they were on discount along with some other ones, but he does appreciate a lot on said records, except for anything that gets remotely hopeful. But they’re a two-sides-of-the-coin group after all; and he just likes a specific one. He likes the one side where the lyrics are made of zeroes and worlds which are vampires set to drain, which has to be one of the truer things he has ever heard all his life. He likes when they say that despite the rage people are just rats in cages. That’s his favorite song actually. Because it says everything that needs to be said universally. See, Nirvana speak to him and no one else; this one song doesn’t speak to him, but he can relate anyway. And well, it just speaks the truth. Not only the world is a vampire set to drain, in his experience, but it’s also a fucking thirsty one; he also feels like a rat in a cage, has always been feeling like a rat in a cage except that the rage phase passed long ago. He isn’t even angry anymore, and he doesn’t know at whom he should be, if not himself maybe. He isn’t sure he wants to go there. He sure as hell feels like a joke and he sure as hell feels like he cannot be saved, most of all because he doesn’t even understand from what and by whom. He thinks that himself might be the only answer, but he’s not sure he wants to go there.
Still, whenever he ends up listening to it, he always puts it on repeat at least a couple of times. He likes listening to it because it gives him something to think about, even if it borders on morbid most times.
Maybe he feels like this because once he had thought that after all he has spent half of his life playing Jesus and Jesus was an only son for you, and Jack is a fucking only son too, what a chance, but it’s too much of a self-delusional thought even for him.
9. Black - Pearl Jam
And now my bitter hands cradle broken glass
Of what was everything?
All the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed everything
All the love gone bad turned my world to black
Tattooed all I see, all that I am, all I'll be
I know someday you'll have a beautiful life,
I know you'll be a sun in somebody else's sky, but why
Why, why can't it be, can't it be mine?
Pearl Jam are for the rare times when he feels optimist. In the sense that hey, they really did survive and in full swing; it makes him wonder if he'll survive, too. Pearl Jam aren't really as refined as Stone Temple Pilots and Smashing Pumpkins, not really, but every note leaks and screams honesty and it's something. Especially when, you know, he's living in this huge lie he has built himself.
Maybe this is how he really is. Maybe music is the only honest thing there is. He wonders what Charlie would say about this all. Maybe he should ask Hurley to ask him but he doubts they'd let in such a visitor.
Jack can picture his dad laughing his ass off as a tear falls off his closed lids as the record plays and that deep voice fills his ears and it says and now my bitter hands cradle broken glass of what was everything and I know someday you'll have a beautiful life, I know you'll be a star in somebody else's sky, but why can't it be mine? , but he sincerely doesn’t care. He wonders if it isn’t just it; fuck, Eddie Vedder knows how to speak to him, too. His own sky is dark now, not even a dim light; nobody is a star in there and sure as hell he isn’t a star in anyone’s. He kind of loves the expression. He wishes he had any kind of imagination to come up with something like it but well, he wasn’t born with it and he won’t develop it now.
He picks up again that number of Uncut, finds Eddie’s interview, reads it again and again and at some point it says, Are you gonna try and do something to make other peoples’ lives better, even if it means going through hell? Even if those people don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do. Even if you’re not sure yourself that what you’re doing is going to make any bit of difference.
The page is about to fall off, not that he needs to read it anymore. He really worn that copy out. He can’t help feeling ridiculous, also because this is obviously about songwriting and not about anything that ever happened to him, and nonetheless it just rings so true; he can’t fucking believe it took him forty years to get why would someone idolize some singer.
10. Hunger Strike - Temple Of The Dog
I don't mind stealing bread
From the mouths of decadence
But I can't feed on the powerless
When my cup's already overfilled
There’s something quite sublime about Temple Of The Dog, Jack thinks.
They were a recommendation from the owner of the store he usually goes to; after all, Jack has raided their hard rock section of every Soundgarden and Pearl Jam record they had, so why not trying what basically is the sum of it? Jack followed the advice and it was good advice.
Maybe sublime isn’t exactly the most proper word, but for all Jack cares, it is. There’s a certain charm in the mixture, he has to admit; Jack appreciates the music, which perfectly fits his needs with the added spice of a charming melodic line here and there. He also likes the lyrics, which while hitting close enough, do not hit really close.
(Except for Say Hello To Heaven, but he always skips that one.)
Maybe it’s the reason why he likes Hunger Strike best; beautiful music, lyrics which aren’t completely out of his grasp but which don’t make him want to cry his eyes out either. He spends one night listening to it only once, an empty bottle at his side and his head just trying to distinguish when Chris Cornell ends and Eddie Vedder begins, or the contrary. It’s good to think about such petty matters only.
Before falling asleep, he decides he still likes Eddie Vedder more.
He also fleetingly wonders if there’s something that sounds particularly interesting in an expression like stealing bread from the mouths of decadence.
Maybe yes, maybe not. That’s why he still likes Kurt Cobain better; if there are metaphors, it isn’t hard to get them. But sometimes is nice to be reminded that there’s something he can’t get. He tries not to wonder whether he would get it, if he was sober.
11. The Man Who Sold The World - Nirvana
I laughed and shook his hand, and made my way back home
I searched for a foreign land, for years and years I roamed
I gazed a gazeless stare, we walked a million hills
I must have died alone, a long long time ago
Who knows? Not me
I never lost control
You're face to face
With the Man who Sold the World
Nirvana are always the ones he comes back to, though; first love is first love, after all.
Jack’s favourite record, after a lot of pondering on his part, is the Unplugged; he’s no critic or expert, but he did his research alright and it just feels like a will, the sum of everything Nirvana were and weren’t, are and aren’t, will and won’t be, everything Kurt Cobain ever had to say or not to say. It’s fun, how much every single piece weights, how much a stripped performance will get straight to him and his head and his heart and will choke his throat until he washes down the lump in whiskey. He just feels close to this guy he never knew, whose death had barely been a headline in newspapers thirteen years before and who must have died alone, a long, long time ago.
Jack thinks he has never heard such a lie as I never lost control, but he gets it because wasn’t it a lie for the both of them (him and Kurt, just to stop before the list becomes too long)?
And is he going to die alone, too? He thinks he is. Nothing suggests otherwise, given the state of things. Who knows? Well, not him. He used to be the man who sold the world once, but now it really isn’t his place. Maybe it never was and he just was brought up to be that man and in the end he failed. He just knows he lost control alright and that relating to a dead musician (who, more often than he’d have thought, looks at him from a lot of t-shirts he notices people wearing, people who probably weren’t even born when he died; he hates those shirts, a disgusting blend of his face on the front and his suicide letter on the back) doesn’t sound ridiculous anymore.
12. Where Did You Sleep Last Night? - Leadbelly
My girl, my girl, don't lie to me
Tell me where did you sleep last night
In the pines in the pines
Where the sun don't ever shine
I would shiver the whole night through
My girl, my girl, where will you go?
I'm going where the cold wind blows
In the pines, the pines
Where the sun don't ever shine
I would shiver the whole night through
Thing is, Jack fucking digs that song. But he can’t listen to it on the Unplugged. It hurts.
And it’s ridiculous, but it hurts.
Last record, last song, last everything. He jut can’t listen to it. It’s true also that he fucking hates blues because the name says it all and there isn’t any noise to drown the lyrics in. But he really likes that song and blues is still better than the alternative, and so Leadbelly it is.
He digs that song because it’s haunting, because it’s open to interpretation, because it just creeps under your skin and doesn’t leave; and sometimes Claire appears in front of him and her hair is long and soft, she wears a torn dress and says she’s in the pines where the sun don’t ever shine.
He’s pretty sure she’s an hallucination. His dad isn’t, but she is. After all, if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t answer that she’ll go where the cold wind blows when he asks her, mostly because there’s no cold wind on a tropical island. Even if of course, it’d be her in the pines.
Doesn’t matter anyway. Where else she should be? Pines doesn’t mean jungle, but it’s close enough. He doesn’t need to ask her if she’s lying. She can’t. He’s the one lying; if she lies it’s his fault, since she’s in his head anyway. And what news. Not now, though. He’s too far gone to lie, but he has lied and it’s exactly the same thing in the end.
He wishes he could go and sleep where the sun don’t ever shine too, sometimes. Not a chance though, and he washes his throat in cheap bourbon. It’s the most honest thing he can do and it’d be fucking stupid if he started lying to himself now.
Shit, he hates blues, he thinks as he wipes his mouth and Leadbelly’s voice croaks from a shitty recording. He didn’t want to spend more than five bucks on a low quality best of.
13. Mercedes Benz - Janis Joplin
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?
He used to own Janis Joplin’s Greatest Hits once; it was a gift of Mark’s when he was thirteen or so. He had liked it then, but before he could exactly form an opinion on it, either his mother or father had decided it wasn’t appropriate music (he always suspected his mother, he thinks that for her dying overdosing was a reason enough not to be appropriate) and the record disappeared. Bad influence, his dad had said then, and how can you stand that voice anyway, she sounds like a hen.
He had pretty much forgot about it until he found it in the occasions one day for five bucks; he buys it along with the first two Alice In Chains, Riot Act by Pearl Jam, the only Mad Season record and the only Screaming Trees they had in stock. As he picks it from the bunch of discounted cds, he ignores his dad shaking his head from the corner of the store.
He puts it on the car as he gets home and he remembers driving a Mercedes Benz once, when he was dating Sarah in the beginning probably; call them coincidences.
Then he puts it on repeat at home because he’s anal like that when he likes one song and this one is raw and sincere and heartfelt and that voice sounds like warm honey to his ears, such a difference from his usual. Not that he doesn’t like his usual.
He takes a shot of the first drink at hand, wishing he could ask anyone, not necessarily God, for his metaphorical Mercedes Benz; too late, he figures, and no one to turn to.
He calls Kate and she doesn’t answer for the hundredth time. He realizes that maybe wishing for that Mercedes Benz is the story of his life and the only answer he got to this point is that there isn’t a thing in his life which ever smelled like fucking Teen Spirit (not that he likes it, but that’s not the point, the point is quoting things right and he’s becoming good at it), that having someone as a metaphorical star in your metaphorical sky is the hardest thing that you could ever try to obtain and that he’s just fucking helpless.
All he can think about, as he takes another slow drink, is the greatest thing Kurt Cobain ever taught him, probably, which translates in three words. Well, whatever, nevermind. The problem is that he knows it’s beyond him to put theory into practice and he won’t ever stop minding. He found out the hard way, and it’s hard to fucking find, indeed.
At least he has enough to buy himself a night on the town, he thinks as Janis asks for it and he closes his eyes, comforting darkness falling around him (after all, with the lights out it’s less dangerous) and the too familiar taste of whiskey burning down his throat.
End.
Whole folder, hoping that it works:
zip with all songs and cover