the last verse in the demo was very jarring to me!! it’s obviously different & i really put a button on it by saying “well, the last part needs work”. melody & lyrics tend to develop themselves concurrently in my work so i’m always really surprised when i find evidence that i changed a melody after a first full draft, even when it’s pretty obviously a huge improvement. it does, however, make my “skype” mention into a particularly belty climactic moment (to the extent that i’ve always had to put this song relatively late in sets when i play it live to make sure my voice is warmed up enough to hit it). which, you know, it is, emotionally, but is also so fucking funny

dramatically namedropping skype is, absurdly, basically the emotional core of wonder, whose bandcamp page claims i finished writing it in 2017 (a few years after i started it, i’m guessing, based on the time the lyrics set themselves in). i knew that would be dated at some point, but i don’t think i knew it would be… so soon? & so, like, completely? like i mention facebook in a song i wrote in ~2010, & i think i thought that would fall off the earth WAY more quickly than skype (i even joke abt it on its bandcamp page), which felt too huge & unique to disappear, but technology & apps are funny like that

the reason it mentions skype is that skype would tell you if it was someone’s birthday & i think prompt you to message them? i don’t remember. but skype was the only digital connection i still had to this person after about a year of not talking, so i was hyper aware of it, & knew that on my birthday, it had mechanics to remind her of me, & i was obsessed with trying to understand the image of me that existed inside the opaque thing that was her internal self, so that piece of knowledge– that the program we’d started chatting on after msn messenger died but before fb messenger took over was, on purpose, putting the thought of me in her brain– loomed very large to me

it’s my birthday. are you thinking about me? i’m thinking about you thinking about me.

a year ago you brought me chocolate
two years ago, you brought me candy
for years and years, you brought me valentine’s
now it’s been some time

it’s valentine’s day. are you thinking about the valentine’s days we spent together? i’m thinking about the valentine’s days we spent together. i’m reading old conversations we had. do you ever read old conversations we had? i’m reading old conversations we had & thinking about you reading old conversations we had. i’m experiencing this memory by imagining you experiencing this memory. does any of this matter to you like it matters to me? can i be allowed to know you? can i be allowed to exist by seeing myself in you? even just my ghost?

just before we’d fell out of contact, she’d stopped drinking, & i was terrified of that because the number one thing we did together at that point was get blackout drunk. this was someone i’d known my entire life, & i had completely forgotten how to be around her sober. after two decades of friendship we’d settled into a routine of doing shots while watching movies all night then passing out on my couch together & it felt like booze was the only thing keeping us near each other & the only way i could give myself permission to be horrifically grossly completely unfairly in love with her when we were together. & it almost certainly was, right, but the answer to that was to let it go, not to dive as deeply into the unhealthy thing as possible to see if you can feed enough of yourself to the fire to keep it burning. which is something it’s deeply difficult to understand as a lovesick alcoholic twenty-something with utterly unmanaged c-ptsd & much easier to say as a thirty-something sober person who has done a decade of growth & healing since that situation peaked

so while this song is certainly about my relationship to a person, that relationship got so tangled with drinking that it makes grim sense that the addiction stuff is what really pops out to me

i wonder if you’re going to meetings
i wonder if you think of me
i look them up sporadically
i wonder if you worry

feels so indicative of my tumultuous relationship with alcoholism. knowing i had a problem but not knowing what that means for me. just obsessively thinking of old drinking buddies, wondering if they’re capital s sober, trying to dissect their relationships to alcohol from afar to better understand what i might do with mine, playing pretend that they’re going to drinking support group meetings to create an excuse to stare at the meeting times myself, sinking into the comforting soft martyring feeling of imagining that anyone who’s realised they have a problem then realised that i did & they hope that i’m ok just like i hope they’re ok

messages we wrote when we were fifteen
i know you didn’t mean to be mean

i’m fond of the attempt here to act with grace about the fact that my lengthy pining & unrequited feelings were certainly devastating for me but also incredibly unfair to her in their scope, which is something i’ve only been increasingly horrified by as i age & Put In The Work. trying at all times to remember that i didn’t mean to be mean either. often overwhelmed if i think for too long about the fact that me & my friends who hurt each other very badly were all just pretty fucked-up kids with not a lot of great examples to model our behaviour towards each other on

it wasn’t something i planned
i hope you understand

i didn’t mean to be mean either. are you thinking about me? i’m thinking about you thinking about me.

for years & years you would have come over
now we’re both older

it’s my birthday. are you thinking about me? i am thinking about myself from the safe distance of thinking about you thinking about me. time passes so strangely. i hope you’re ok. i hope you hope i’m ok. sorry & thanks