hope that they’re better at it than I was
When I think about my childhood I remember drives along winding roads shadowed all around by trees, dark, owl-haunted nights, bright torches set to the Guy every November as if we still believed the fire could redeem us.
Going back I still know my way around the streets, still remember the shops and the buildings even if the pub on the corner’s closed and the ceiling of the church seems lower and everything’s closer together, pressed in. I remember these stones being laid, I remember these trees as saplings. I remember the morning we found the hedgehog in the park and the way on still days you could hear the station announcements from the other side of town.
Drinking from the water fountain has made me feel ill; I stop in the street outside our old house where they’ve let the front garden grow wild, where there are pale curtains across my sister’s bedroom window. I daren’t knock. I remember the clear light through the pans hanging up in the kitchen and there’s too much dirt under my fingernails. Nothing unclean shall pass.
Back in the square the market stalls are packing up for the day; there’s a girl in my old school uniform eating a Mars bar and following at her mother’s heels. I breathe out, hold my car keys in my clenched hand. The sun is beginning to set.
I’m less interested in perfect things than most people. A lot of my favorite bands & writers are pretty flawed, and the flaws become part of the charm when you get really into ‘em.
Source: reddit.com
any surface where the paint will stick
Heat, god fucking damn it, so hot I feel like I’m going to die, boring down from the sun overhead and hissing back up from the pavement. I’ve got a splinter in my hand from the placard. Susie’s sat on the kerb with her arms around her knees, mascara starting to smear into the sweat, and over on the other side of the little square I can see some old hippy trying to pick a fight with the riot police like he actually wants his fucking head smacked in.
We’ve only been here half an hour. Stay calm, keep your head down. Fuck knows what happened to the people behind us, maybe they got back down Piccadilly and found their way back to the main march. I really want to put the placard down but I don’t want to look like a twat. Jinx is up on her feet and sweet-talking the police- the Filth, got to get the lingo right- like she’s got any chance of getting us out of here. Polly put the kettle on, and we’re ready to come up to the boil.
I just want a fucking drink of water.
I squint through my sunglasses and try to breathe slowly, hoping they don’t start closing in any further. I don’t understand the point of this unless the cranks are right and they really are trying to kick off a fight just so they can crack some skulls. Starting to wonder if I even care enough about the war for this, or maybe if I believe enough that stomping ‘round London with a sign in my hands will make any fucking difference at all. We all traipsed past the US embassy and glowered like good little lefties, as if a hard enough stare could bore through stone. I can’t read the words on my placard at this angle.
“Ben, I’m gonna call your sister and let her know what’s happened,” Susie says to me, pulling her phone out of her bag, and out of the corner of my eye I can see the nearest blank-faced officer shift a little on his feet like he’s worried she’s about to go on some kind of Apple tech rampage. I waggle the placard at her.
“Give her my love.”
Apparently all the cool kids are posting pics of their copies of All Survivors Pack, so here’s mine. The cover is coloured purple and red and inside the sleeve are the words “on the road again” in blue pencil scribbled over in purple. It is a delight. Now I just need a cassette player.
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
Source: oneweekoneband
SPIN: Your 2005 album, The Sunset Tree, is about your experiences with domestic violence at the hands of your stepfather. If you could have told your 12-year-old self, “This will pass,” would you have believed you?
John Darnielle: Nope. People told me that all the time, and it’s not something you need to hear. Because it doesn’t matter. “Someday you won’t be hungry,” is not something you tell a hungry person. You have to break it down so that you’re telling yourself, “It gets better by the end of the day. It gets better in half an hour.” I didn’t believe I was going to live to see 21.
Source: fuckyeahthemountaingoats
“Everybody knows I don’t generally do the acoustic guitar guy rocking political jams deal but as a former member of SEIU 660 & the California Association of Psychiatric Technicians & a kid who benefitted from great teachers I wanted to spend tonight saying WE ARE ON YOUR SIDE xo jd”
Source: vimeo.com
I look down at my hands like they were mirrors
Waiting at the bus stop with dawn still creeping over the horizon, tips of my fingers cold outside my gloves and the wind cutting under my coat. The percussion rolls over the rumble of traffic. There’s frost over the grass in the churchyard and I keep my eyes down and think about all the people I see every day whose names I don’t know.
I took my pill at 5:45am and I can feel it trembling in my arteries still, the weight of it around my eyelids. The white line runs like a fracture up the middle of the road. My mouth is still bitter with the taste of coffee and the petrol fumes smudged across the freezing air and I’m waiting, waiting, fists clenched and ready for the day to catch up with me. A siren howls two streets away, the slow school traffic drifting past in a dull haze.
Every winter I forget what the summer feels like. I study the colour of my hair in the mirror and watch the sun fade out of it, kick leaves down the pavement until they’re covered with snow. I leave the house before sunrise and under the cover of the drawn-out night there are hundreds of eyes, whispers and secrets snagging on the bare branches of the trees.
I look at my watch and up at the road again. The sky is the clearest, palest blue I’ve seen all week, razor-sharp. Clenched against my palms I can feel my heartbeat rattling like the drums.
