Turns out the best time to start a new album is at 4:45 in the morning when everything is quiet and your light is dim. Sitting in the spare bed because you couldn’t sleep and you didn’t want to wake up your husband and animals.
you snuck downstairs quietly to get the headphones that would feel the best to listen to. (autism going to autism). took a breath in as the first piano notes of the album started and suddenly you could smell the summer air of oklahoma and you swear you could hear cicadas.
and god, hits you right behind your sternum in the part that aches from time to time. and it’s hard to breathe as you start to feel the expanse of emotions without the words to describe them.
it washes over you, the way that the cold early morning hours when your insomnia hits do. you spent so long thinking about how you wanted to listen to the new album and the time you actually do wasn’t even on your list. it’s not meant to be planned though. you were meant to experience it in the hours that have become second nature.
so you listen to American Cars three times. you’ve always been so tough.
Cackled as something about the window seat makes you a poet that made you think about all the tumblr posts you’ve written out during so many parts of your life.
this song makes you feel like you’re bleeding out but smiling slowly as you think of the tricky parts of life that love and ache. god the tricky parts.
oh how I wish you could know me. And I wish I could know you much more sometimes. it’s the moments unsaid as you stare up at someone who was supposed to be one of your pillars who seems like a stranger. you didn’t expect the first song to make you sob be the one about your own flesh and blood. you love him so much but there is this divide you can’t seem to bridge and the ache settles into your bones and seeps out your eyes.
you start to understand that maybe the last album was about his parents, but this one is about his siblings.
and as porch light starts you look at the sky that’s turned an indigo color with the streetlight fading in the distance.
you realized you thought this song was about a lover, but it’s not. it’s all about them. and you’re angry you can relate.
and then you thank noah for giving you the reprieve of headed north. felt good to laugh after you felt like a bowling ball had settled on your chest.
The strums of the guitar of we go way back starts feel like the most specific blue, almost like peacock? and the feeling of hiking in Oregon during the fall and the moss is covering everything you can see. the feeling of a slight rain that makes you feel like you’ll never feel like this again. a moment in time that feels like the world. (the strain is called cement shoes, perfect for this album if you want to experience the expanse of human emotions)
it feels like the forest, this album. you know you’ll be listening to it and experiencing it over and over again in the upcoming days. finding new words that burrow into your thoughts. god, this is what it’s like to feel alive, you know? all the little connections that feel familiar and buzzing with understanding and witnessing. what it is to feel like someone is saying the words that hurt too much to say out loud!
you realize you have to experience this live. and you buy tickets that are probably a little to expensive. and you think of the last time you bought tickets to experience him live. you were living in a hotel and you didn’t want to be alive. you were sobbing when you bought those tickets and promised yourself you’d at least make it to that concert. the emotion gets stuck in your throat.
the crescendo. im always on my own. the yell. I wonder what books he reads.
Everybody’s asleep, let’s talk… and the light outside turns a robin egg blue…waiting for the sun to rise.
Don’t the sky look pretty up here?
the album begins again and you don’t stop it. how does he perfectly encapsulate the way that it feels to drive down a back road. HOW. this song feels like the windows down as you drive through the backroads where your 94 carolla engine mounts shook and your radio brought the music all around you. and you kept driving and you kept processing. god, that car was my favorite place to think and process. the 4runner felt that way too. sacred.
and then you gear up for crying in american cars again.
theartofmadeline
vaporwave
yousharknotpass
2087
tangentwithtanner
prguitarman
