I am thankful
That someone actually receives the prize that was promised
By all those fairy tales that drugged us
--Bright Eyes is by far the most-played artist in my library, and I know it's really easy to make fun of me for that, and I know everyone likes to mock Bright Eyes, or criticize him for being an upper-middle-class suburban kid from a happy family who is always so damn sad. --I don't think it's about having a shitty life. I think it's about wanting more. Or expecting more. Or waiting for more. I think it's the realization that the life you thought you would live doesn't exist, and the way you percieve the world is wrong. And I hide behind these books I read
While scribbling my poetry
Like art could save a wretch like me
With some ideal ideology
That no one could hope to achieve
And I'm never real, it's just a sketch of me
And everything I've made is trite and cheap
And a waste
Of paint, of tape, of time --I have these moments every so often where the bottom drops out. Where the illusion disolves and I sort of realize that everything's so chaotic, and the world in my head isn't there. --I met a nice person in Berlin. At first, he was quiet and lanky and low-key. He liked to go to thrift stores and read John Steinbeck. He was backpacking across Europe, at the last leg of a 3-month tour. I thought he might be an artist. A poet, an intellectual. A character. In my head, I worked out how his mind worked, the sorts of things he loved and the kind of person he was, and I had an entire portrait of him. I'm not saying I had a crush on him, but I thought I had met someone... interesting. --I think he was smart, I do. He had done a year of college and decided to take a year off; the year became three years. He also shared that he had dropped out of high school, and all his friends knew that his year off would not be simply a year. The last time I saw him, he was hitting on another girl from the hostel, a nice Norwegian girl. Pretty, funny, had nothing in common with him, was leaving the next morning. --Everything unraveled. I drew up a new portrait. Smart kid, never did any work in school, hardly showed up started failing and dropped out. Gave education another try and left again--- just doesn't have the sort of motivation or dedication to stick with anything. Saved up money and aimlessly wandered Europe. Not a poet, just a person, a slacker. Escaping the grown-up life. He did what makes him feel good an dit frustrates his friends that he can't stick with or accomplish anything. Then, he picks up and leaves. --And every person I know, all my friends, have some kind of complex or deap-seated flaw that drives me mad. No one is the character study I wrote up for them, and it's all I can do but wonder what my flaw is. So I hold my tongue, forget the song
Tie my shoes, start walking off
And try to just keep moving on
With my broken heart and my absent God
And I have no faith but it's all I want
To be loved, and believe
In my soul, in my soul
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