my favorite THROAM lines:
It’s not that I’m anti-social. It’s just that I prefer silence to my own voice.
I sit down next to him, offering him my silence.
Yummy strawberry milkshake is yummy.
Now I realise that ‘secret’ is just a word given for uncomfortable truths we don’t want to share in fear of what they say about us.
The second you want something, you risk losing it.
Shane is a likeable guy. There’s nothing wrong with him except for the list of two hundred and thirty-five items that I keep a log of in my head.
Brendon takes in a deep breath and says, “I know I’ve parallel parked tour buses when I’ve been on acid, but I swear to god that I cannot park that thing outside and we’re holding up traffic and a turban-wearing taxi driver is threatening to beat Jon up.”
He can hide it well, whatever he’s feeling. He can flick emotions on and off like a switch. Doesn’t matter who he’s with: a stranger or me. I, well, I can’t do that. I didn’t realise I was expected to do that.
I mean, when did he decide that we were just mere humans? Because I swear that for a while there we were gods… We spoke without words, and it was all crystal clear, perfect harmony. Me and him. When he decided to lie, he should have done it like a god. Be smart enough for me to not find out. But he couldn’t do it. He’s just human. And if he’s just human, then so am I. It’s disappointing beyond words.
I don’t see time as days, but simply as time: an endless string of hours, no beginnings, no ends.
I’m on a quest to find some well-hidden piece of him from an infinite labyrinth full of dead ends.
Jac has blonde hair, Keltie has blonde hair, I’ve been to restaurants with both, it was a damn easy mistake to make.
Don’t go seeking perfection because it isn’t worth it in the end. Seek imperfection. And when you find it, let it stay that way. Don’t go changing it.
“Brendon and I need a minute.” We need a lifetime, but I’ll start small.
tomorrow I’ll still be the same man. I cannot be magically transformed. I can evolve, but whatever I become is built upon what I was.
It all counts for something but adds up to nothing.
Anything for you, kid. Anything. With me on the side.
The ocean keeps breathing, I hear it touching the shore. Smoke swirls from my glowing cigarette tip into the sky, against the dark blue of it where stars are twinkling brightly. Thousands and thousands of light years away… I remember when Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon. I was packing. I didn’t go to my high school graduation but stayed in my room, listening to the new album of another Neil and figuring out what to take with me now that Spencer and I were taking off. We hitch-hiked across America, and Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. That big, pale thing above my head. It’s far away. It’s damn far away. Neil Young kept singing in my head. We travelled the same length, Neil & Neil & I.
There is no putting an end to it anymore, you can’t put an end to something that’s infinite.
See, here’s the thing: life is not a cohesive narrative. It’s made of puzzle pieces. It’s layered.
I’m not smiling, but I could smile were I so inclined. (how you know Ryan’s in a decent mood)
Because one piece of evidence does not logically take you to the next one. You always have to stop and take in the bigger picture. Ask yourself what you missed. Who you missed. Because events just happen, unplanned and spiralling. People just happen. And you can squint and turn and twist history around without ever figuring out how you got to where you are now. Where that significant turn was. And did you turn on your own or did someone push you
Funny. They remember me, but I don’t remember them. For how many people is that true for? Hundreds of insignificant handshakes that have meant the world to them and nothing to me.
Sisky said something yesterday, that a childhood of neglect has made me despise the attention that I crave
Can music truly change the world? Because we sing songs of protest and we sing songs of defiance, but as far as I can see, the same shit keeps happening. So sometimes I do wonder if all this music is just a new form of painkillers. Doesn’t get rid of the source, but lets us think that it will get better.
My mind is just full of ghosts right now, ghosts of the people I used to be, and it’s draining.
Ryan, dude. You live in Maine. Of course you’re not fucking fine.
It’s not even empty, which would suggest the presence of something before or a potential to be filled. It was just… nothing.
Everyone says that we have to make life count, that it’s special. Well, what if it’s not? You know? What if it isn’t? Why are we pressured to achieve things? And I say that as someone who has achieved a lot. There are billions of people in the world. We can’t all be special. We can’t all be rockstars. Most of us have to and should aspire to be mediocre, right? And support the structures that enable the privileges of the special people. Right?
Friendship and love too, it’s all overrated. People say it gives life meaning – no, it doesn’t. It gives life baggage.
You’re not moving on. You’re just finding new places to hide.
I grab my bag and confront the situation by not confronting it. Instead I have a quick shower, use Brendon’s products, quirk an eyebrow at his Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific shampoo but gee, I guess my hair will smell terrific.
that past cannot necessarily be justified, but we have to accept it, anyway. As fact.
Because it happened. And we can either remain angry about it or just accept that we have to live with it.
And I’ve been so angry that he didn’t want my dreams of us coming true. But maybe they were never that realistic.
And there was beauty in the world. Even without my band and my best friend, even with everything I felt that I had lost – and back then I truly felt that I had lost it all – beauty in this world remained. I realised that I could… fuck up again and again, I could be ugly and hideous inside, but I would never take this world down with me.
I squint and see something white out on the lake. A swan, one of the swans from four years ago. Bearing witness: and then the letting go. Have I qualified for humanity at last?
And I don’t know when he became a focal point for me, at what stage I started building my life around him. I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t change it for anything, and even this, the role of an observer, will do. As long as he’ll be okay.
I grab a book that’s lying around. I’ve seen Leo reading it – The Sea, The Sea. Okay, I like seas. I begin to read and soon conclude that the protagonist is messed up and needs to get over himself. In his crisis he withdraws from the world and moves to a house by the sea – who does that? Really.
You have to start saying no. People are vultures, and they keep taking from you if you’re stupid enough to give it. Love what you do, love others, but love yourself more. And if you can’t love yourself, then care more about yourself than others. Nothing in this world is as selfish as utter selflessness.
And then I was… so focused on just making it through the day that I stopped thinking about what I’d do with my life. But it stayed with me, that knowledge that my parents expected great things from me. I began to expect it myself and – suddenly I’m twenty-one and scrubbing venue floors in San Francisco. And I’m alive and I’m feeding myself and I’m with people who accept me, but… I’m not changing the world. No one’s interested in what I have to say. My potential’s wasted.
I think of Sisky and me sitting on the beach afterwards, when he asked me if I still loved Brendon. I said yes. Brendon is keeping his gaze on me, wrapped up in a blanket, his drying hair a mess, his body a mess, in a dressing room that smells of unwashed men and sweat, and he just sits there and exists and leaves me breathless, so of course I said yes. I’ll always say yes.
I love him even when I love alone.
Sisky picks up a flower and carries it around, and I don’t know what he plans to do with a dying thing like that (thE METAPHOR in that moment omg)
You have a home. You know that, though, right? It’s not fixed to one place, it’s not a physical location. It’s people, and when you’re with them, you’re home.
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