The Perimeter
coalesce
They want the band back together for a record release tour. The label's contacting all of the guys since I didn't keep in touch and don't know for the life of me how to find any of them. They were the last thing in my mind when I wrote this album. All of my other songs were ours. We wrote the music together. But then you abandoned me, and I abandoned them, and I'm learning how to do this on my own.
I don't know if they band would even be up for playing the songs that they didn't write. They were always about unity, or something. And I blew that concept the second I sat down at the piano and tried to think of words that would explain why I was so confused or sad or mad or whatever I was when you left.
They're good guys. They were. They might still be. I don't know. They could've changed, people do occasionally. But I noticed it's almost never in a good way. Like how your dad went from helping your mom cook, your little sister with her homework, you with the radio, to laying on the chair watching football, drinking beer like it was water, not changing his clothes for days, to just not being there. And how all of my high school friends got jobs and wives and kids and big houses and nice cars. And they just became shitty people. Or OK people impersonating shitty people.
I know you changed. I know I changed. My older brother changed a lot. His change was good though. He went from not giving a shit about anything other than himself to building schools in Uganda. He sends me letters talking about things I can't even imagine. You used to hate him. You'd tell me how he thought everything was about him, how he thought the sun came up in the morning for him. I love that you never got to know the new him, the real him. I love that you don't get everything because you don't deserve it.
I remember he used to make me do everything for him. Get him food, do his laundry, take him places even though he was older. And my mom liked me to help her cook, and buy her groceries, and walk her dogs. And my dad wanted me to pick up his girlfriend from the airport, and download new music for him, and work out. He said I was scrawny and weak and useless. My friends used me for money, even though I hardly had any, you used me for sex and a false sense of security and hope and just about everything else. I wanted to say no. I couldn't.
I think you told me once, at your mom's house, in the basement, on old mattresses covered in a plaid wool blanket, that "you don't have to do what everyone wants you to, Maddy".
And then you left, and I stopped writing, the only thing I did for me, and I ignored everyone, and I hate everyone, and I don't know how to say this. I don't know what I'm trying to get across with this. Just that I'm not doing anything for you anymore. It's for them. The one's who fight like hell not to change, the ones who watched me grow up and grew up with me. The one's who bought my CDs and know every word by heart. I want to be like them one day. With a heart that can't be punctured without their word. I want to know that I believe in one thing so hard that nothing else matters. I want to be in the crowd, that old crowd.
The crowd that I'm scared might not even be there anymore because of me being selfish and scared and sitting in the studio, sleeping on the couch in the corner, eating in the streaks of sunlight, Chinese food and old soda and my skinny legs crossed over each other praying to God that I could make it through another day with my sanity, that my mind wouldn't cross and weave itself so that even I, it's main occupant, couldn't understand it anymore.
I don't know if they band would even be up for playing the songs that they didn't write. They were always about unity, or something. And I blew that concept the second I sat down at the piano and tried to think of words that would explain why I was so confused or sad or mad or whatever I was when you left.
They're good guys. They were. They might still be. I don't know. They could've changed, people do occasionally. But I noticed it's almost never in a good way. Like how your dad went from helping your mom cook, your little sister with her homework, you with the radio, to laying on the chair watching football, drinking beer like it was water, not changing his clothes for days, to just not being there. And how all of my high school friends got jobs and wives and kids and big houses and nice cars. And they just became shitty people. Or OK people impersonating shitty people.
I know you changed. I know I changed. My older brother changed a lot. His change was good though. He went from not giving a shit about anything other than himself to building schools in Uganda. He sends me letters talking about things I can't even imagine. You used to hate him. You'd tell me how he thought everything was about him, how he thought the sun came up in the morning for him. I love that you never got to know the new him, the real him. I love that you don't get everything because you don't deserve it.
I remember he used to make me do everything for him. Get him food, do his laundry, take him places even though he was older. And my mom liked me to help her cook, and buy her groceries, and walk her dogs. And my dad wanted me to pick up his girlfriend from the airport, and download new music for him, and work out. He said I was scrawny and weak and useless. My friends used me for money, even though I hardly had any, you used me for sex and a false sense of security and hope and just about everything else. I wanted to say no. I couldn't.
I think you told me once, at your mom's house, in the basement, on old mattresses covered in a plaid wool blanket, that "you don't have to do what everyone wants you to, Maddy".
And then you left, and I stopped writing, the only thing I did for me, and I ignored everyone, and I hate everyone, and I don't know how to say this. I don't know what I'm trying to get across with this. Just that I'm not doing anything for you anymore. It's for them. The one's who fight like hell not to change, the ones who watched me grow up and grew up with me. The one's who bought my CDs and know every word by heart. I want to be like them one day. With a heart that can't be punctured without their word. I want to know that I believe in one thing so hard that nothing else matters. I want to be in the crowd, that old crowd.
The crowd that I'm scared might not even be there anymore because of me being selfish and scared and sitting in the studio, sleeping on the couch in the corner, eating in the streaks of sunlight, Chinese food and old soda and my skinny legs crossed over each other praying to God that I could make it through another day with my sanity, that my mind wouldn't cross and weave itself so that even I, it's main occupant, couldn't understand it anymore.