It’s time, I suppose. Today’s kind of a bad day and I have a lot of responsibilities at work, but I think I’m going to focus on this. I’m not really doing so well and my best friend is away. She usually makes me feel better about things and puts it all in perspective. I suppose this will have to do. I’ve been thinking of making this playlist as homage to a relationship that wasn’t really anything, but it felt as if it was everything.
After all, aren’t all shitfaced ‘modern relationships’ like this?
Ten songs in the four months of nothing we were, for all the gray areas and the promises of companionship and the disappointments, it’s a way of letting go of songs that haunt me. I think I can condense the essence of what we were in a single playlist, and that makes me glad that at least it was beautiful.
I don’t know if I’ll ever show this to the other person, but I don’t think that matters. What matters is that, someday I’ll look back at this playlist and I would still feel the pain it accompanies, but it wouldn’t matter after the playlist is over. This was a part of life, and as horrible it was, it made me realize that I could fall for someone again. It wasn’t magical shit, and it was stupid as hell, but hey, at least I got a story out of it.
“ It was stupid and beautiful and it broke me”
You were the first person I talked to on Tinder, did you know this? I didn’t even know I swiped right to you, but then this quirky guy sent me a message that seemed to go with my bio. So I decided to send you a song that I was obsessed with for a good month. To my surprise, you loved the song as much as I did, and that’s how I found my pickup line song! I’ve used this song other times also, but it doesn’t feel right anymore.
I can’t send this song to anyone who bears some semblance of romantic potential for me anymore. Probably because this song captures the kind of people we were are. Richard Feynman’s monologue in the song (Ode to a flower) connects it all really; how we found beauty in science, how we found beauty in music, and in each other for similar reasons.
[2] One Week – Barenaked Ladies
Do you remember the first playlist I made for you? You were going to be out of the country for a week, I think. You told me that you weren’t particularly fond of flying, and that turbulence bothered you. I thought about making a playlist for you, it would possibly help take your mind off of flying. I thought it was quite smart that I put this song in the playlist. I think this was the first song? I wonder if you remember the order of the playlist; I wish I wrote it down somewhere.
The week you were gone I was in this ridiculous high of finally meeting someone I liked in a romantic manner after a good seven years. The best part was that this was going to be a fling - something that I could handle. I was going through a battlefield of a breakup that was the reason for every bad decision I made that year, so it was good that you and I were what we were, and nothing else.
But then when you were gone you didn’t text me and I went on and on about a ridiculous rant about how you didn’t like me enough. In all honesty, it was a bit hard waiting for you, and in my head I had written you off. After all, this really was nothing, and I was overthinking everything. But then you did come back and you texted me the exact day you were back, and the bubble that contained echoes of our songs were back. Everything was wonderful and nothing hurt. When I asked you if the playlist helped, you told me how they did because it reminded me of you. You had me then and there with hat one line, person.
This was of course around the time when we were going to ‘be a nothing’; before you freaked out about your ridiculous condition.
This song came back the first time we met. You were getting into the lift and you were in general confused about the location and you kept on calling me with a shoddy cellular network, but I kept on texting you because I was listening to music and I was in my zone. The moment you told me that you’re in the lift beside the main entrance is when this song started playing on shuffle. It made me laugh, and I don’t know if you remember, but I kept on laughing when I met you because of this song.
This song reminds me of the potential we had, of the beauty it could have brought. Of everything good that was us.
[3] The Birds – Apparjatik
Oh this song. This song, person. This song. This song still haunts me when I listen to it. In hindsight I do admit that I ruined this song all by myself. It was the week you were gone, you told me that your luggage got lost in the airport but then you found it. You told me how you had a moment of peace, and somehow it coincided with mine. I remember sitting where I usually do, with the cotton candy clouds being swept off by the fall wind. A ginger cat lay on top of the tin roof between the asbestos covered house and the building I was in. I think that is what I would call living in the moment; in all it’s glory. And I was talking to a boy who was telling me what song he was listening to, and the things he wished for.
“10/19/16, 6:50 PM - Me: I'm sitting in Gloria beside the window with my laptop. The wind's lovely. The birds by Apparajatik is playing. The coconut tree's swaying with the wind. There's nobody else sitting around me. I kind of wish I could freeze this moment.
10/19/16, 7:10 PM - You: Aww
10/19/16, 7:10 PM - You: Its 2 pm, I'm at a Bubba Gump Shrimp place, sitting with my nieces. Only just a dream by Nelly(?) is playing. You: I wish I could live in London for a year”
I wished I could live elsewhere too, and in that moment I felt as if I understood you, and you, me. It was one of the nicest moments I had with you, even though you weren’t physically there with me.
I know, so far so good. Everything sounds perfect. It was, so I decided to make something that captured this moment and give this as a gift on your birthday. You’d think I’m embarrassed of this, but I’m really not. In my head it would have been a goodbye from me to you. But, well, as we both know - I never got my goodbye.
I told my friend I liked a boy who sent me this song. She got excited. This was probably in the first month of our correspondence. I made a cover art thing with a lyric of this song, and she tried ‘teasing’ me because you sent it to me. I didn’t even think about you when I did this, but because she attached you to it I can’t think about this song without thinking about you.
[5] Unconsolable – X Ambassadors
Even though we were living in our world of indie music, we always had our own personal preferences. I would always prefer the low toned depressing songs, you would prefer the high tone less depressing ones. And yet sometimes we would end up loving songs from the others’ preferences, and this song is definitely a very ‘you’ song that I still listen to. It reminds me of you but it doesn’t bother me much. It’s like the countless other songs we shared with each other, lost the the back of unkempt playlists that I never listen to anymore. Sometimes I do go back to these playlists, and one day I was listening to this in the gym and I got very mad at you. I let all the negative emotions catch up to me, wished you bad things, wished that you would understand that your condition was ridiculous, got angrier when I thought about how you would have picked me if you wanted to. Somehow it went towards my anger towards my ex. Things got a bit odd and convoluted.
This describes most of my bad days regarding you, it would start from you and end at him. Or start from him and end at you.
“I hope we stay
Thick as thieves
Butter and bread
Pillars on colonial homes
And I wish I could shout you out
False start
Come up to my house
Drink with my friends
You can lay on my couch
Aching to start all over again
Go on back to your room
Wait a minute, it's my room
Was it something I said,
Was it something I said?”
Yup, I can apply this for both. Sucko.
[6] Rock Bottom – Jack and the Weatherman
I sent it to you the day trump got elected. You thought I sent it because everything was falling apart; justifiable reaction as our mutual admiration for American politics, Bernie and memes knew no bounds.
But the reason I sent it to you because I felt like I was at the rock bottom myself. I needed to be okay with being platonic with you, and I was very close to never talking to you again. I kept on telling my friend (who was going through a similar situation) that we should nuke things, and everyday we almost did it, but then we didn’t.
But then something happened and I started talking to you about my ex and to my surprise, you started helping me in ways that a friend would. That’s when I knew how important you were to me. It didn’t matter that we couldn’t be together, it was actually quite fine. You became someone who I wanted to be around just for you being yourself. It was that moment of peace when I didn’t want anything from us. I started accepting that you would need to be with someone else, and that this was everything I had.
[7] It’s a Fluke – Tiago Lorc
I don’t remember how, soon after I accepted all that, in came the mixed signals. And so began what I call the ‘wing it’ part of our relationship. It was what it was. I stopped thinking about it. This song is one of the songs that remind me of how much I wanted you, but I knew I didn’t. I even made a pros and cons list of it all, and the cons outweighed the pros. This would never work out was the official output of all the input data, regardless of what we were.
This reminds me of the nights we used to talk, the nights I would think about falling asleep next to you. Of the gray area we kept on intermittently falling into. Of the luxury that was my need for you.
[8] Let me Down Easy – Max Frost
This song reminds me of the day I realized how it was probably for the best that we were never going to be a thing. I know it sounds like something I’m saying out of spite, but hear me out.
We were talking about traveling and you told me how you would rather not travel alone. You told me how you would rather not spend money towards soul searching, or whatever. It was hard not to take it personally because that was something I was going to do in a while. I had taken you for a person who was spontaneous, I suppose. I think you were at a point in your life. I wanted to be with that person. You told me how we hadn’t really known each other long for me to know what kind of person you were, but I really do think you were changing. The person you were faded away as you came back to the country. And that was perfectly fine because you were okay with it. Moreover, I was at peace with it because I didn’t want this version of you.
Also I like the fact that sending you this song helped you tick off one thing in your to do list.
[9] Casmir Pulaski Day – Sufjan Stevens
I had asked you why you hadn’t sent me any songs lately. You told me that you were simply out of new songs. But then you sent me this, and I fell in love with it and listened to it what it felt like a hundred times the first day. I remember telling you that I cried at parts of this song, and you listened to me. The second day I listened to it on the loop was the day I went out to a shady neighborhood to make your birthday gift. I was so proud of myself for doing it all on my own.
I also cried listening to this the day I knew I would never see you again. It was the day when all bad things happened on Christmas Eve, the day you contributed to my dark day. I remember being unable to breathe as the room felt like it was being sucked into a vacuum as I lay on the bed, broken. I can honestly say that I would have rather never met you if it meant that I wouldn’t have to go through that day again, but let’s face it. It wasn’t all you, it was my life in general and my bad decisions catching up with me.
[10] The Moon Song – Alden Patterson and Dashwood
This was tiring, writing it all down. This whole experience was exhausting, and it was a lot of work for a lot of nothing. I still don’t see the point of why you had to come to my life, although some people tell me that someday I’ll understand.
I love how we have a beginning song and an ending song. Before I was leaving the country I asked you if you’d miss me like I missed you when you were gone. You asked me if you had to tell me again when you did, and I told you once was okay. So you told me you would. And I believed you.
This is our ending song, and I can’t still listen to it without automatically going back to that exact moment where I knew it was over. That was the moment I knew I had fallen for you, and the moment I knew I had to let go of you. I was looking at one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever had the privileged to look at, and all I wanted was you beside me. It was a shitty feeling, and best friend tried logicing me into believing that it was in my best interests that I don’t contact you. I lied to her of course, and I sent you a text. You never replied.
“Dec 30, 201; Me: The moon song - Alden Patterson and Dashwood
I'm at this cafe that has a view of a temple that touches the sky and there's cold wind breeze though my face with gray clouds in the horizon, good coffee, good music, lonesome cafe.
This is where I miss you.”
That was it, the last song. This was the goodbye I never wanted, but it was what it was.
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