“Do you know what your problem is? You can’t live with the idea that someone might leave. So instead of being happy for me, like any normal person, you’re pissed of because ooh, oh no, Hassan doesn’t like me anymore. You’re so goddamn scared of the idea that someone might dump you that your whole fucking life is built around not getting left behind. Well, it doesn’t work, kafir. It just — it’s not just dumb, it’s ineffective. Because then you’re not being a good friend or a good boyfriend or whatever, because you’re only thinking they-might-not-like-me-they-might-not-like-me, and guess what? When you act like that, no one likes you.” (>>)

“You know, I used to have this tendency to project onto girls my fantasies of what I thought they should be like, and it just, didn’t necessarily have anything to do with what they were actually like. It’d just take me forever to figure that out; usually 4 to 5 months.”
“But Sophia was different?”
“Yeah. Well, you know…
…
No, actually, that was pretty much the same deal.” (>>)

“You’re like a bull in an emotional china store. You’re charging right in, stumbling around, and not realizing how much damage you can do.” (>>)

“And all I see, it could never make me happy
and all my sandcastles spend their time collapsing” (>>) [MP3]

“This girl […] comes into his life and just kicks him into gear, wakes him up. He kinda falls in love with her, but he’s not sure, ’cause he’s in love with his girlfriend, but this girl kinda wakes him up in a way. And because he’s kind of a bloke he mistakes that affection or that attention for some kind of sexual advance, which it just isn’t. She is into him and she is interested in him, but it’s mates; it’s, ‘Get your life together.’ ‘Come on, go get your girlfriend. Sing this song to her, you’ll get her back.’ ” (>>)

So say you’re feeling kind of sad and anxious, missing some girl or whatever, but you’re not totally depressed. You could go either way. It’s two in the fucking morning and you have to wake up in four hours, but you can’t sleep. Obviously you’re going to put on a record–or open up a playlist, you damn whippersnappers… but what do you choose?

You could listen to a sad song, something old and smooth and emotionally self-destructive, something by Otis Redding or Patsy Cline. That would be true to your feelings and comforting in a familiar but unhealthy way, like that bad relationship you kept going back to until your soul resembled Leonardo DiCaprio in the subway bathroom scene from Basketball Diaries.

Or, you could put on something new and fast and irrelevant, something with clever production and loud guitars. Something to numb your heart and distract your mind, like when Americans see pictures of genocide on the news and flip over to Desperate Housewives or ESPN. Motion City Soundtrack or maybe some Hot Hot Heat.

Because these choices are important. “Which came first, the music or the misery,” you know? Wallowing in beautifully harmonized self-pity starts to get a little pathetic by the time you reach your mid-twenties. But is it healthy to manipulate your feelings in order to be, well… healthy?

Maybe there’s a reason all those shallow preppy kids are so happy driving around in the BMW convertibles their parents buy them, listening to Britney Spears or N*Sync or whatever the hell the music industry is shitting out these days. But do you really want to live like that? I mean, those people acquire our contempt for good reason.

So, what do you do? Hunch down in the closet with Otis and a bottle of red, waiting for the voices to tire themselves out, or play Solitaire on your laptop with Britney until she bores the hell out of you and you can go back to sleep?

Or maybe you just make up a mix of both, sort it randomly and write something slightly neurotic for your blog.

“I want to be loved by someone, even if it’s a false love. I want someone to make me feel good, to believe in me. And that night I wanted this woman. I wanted her physically and emotionally. I wanted her to help me deny who I really was. I wanted her to take away the sadness. I wanted her to be my savior…

“[But] I don’t know if I will get emotionally entangled with [her] only to be shoved down into the dirt, more bruised than I was before…

“So […] I invite companionship and seek community, need community–But all I really have is God. People are too much like… people; they’re too much like me. I need someone who loves in ways I never could. I need God.

“But, like Jesus, I wrestle with God. ‘Take this cup from me. There must be another way.’ And then I learn that there isn’t another way. I learn that God is unreasonable. In fact, he always has been. Forgiveness is unreasonable. Jesus dying on a cross is unreasonable…” (>>)

“We’ve gone too far, we’ve done too much. We have to quit it.”
“Just one more kiss, just one more touch. Please, ten more minutes.” (>>) [MP3]

“Your heart won’t heal right if you keep tearing out the sutures” (>>)

“Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?” (>>)

“I caught myself thinking
I caught myself thinking once again
I have to try to keep my mind out of this
Try not to pretend” (>>) [MP3]

“I’m fucking starved for love
I deeply need to feel connection with the infinite
I want the nourishment
I need to drink it just like water, and it will sustain me” (>>) [MP3]

“The whole song is a study of reality through the lens of opposites: inside vs. outside, fact vs. fiction, heart vs. brain. When looking at something, which view shows the soul or the truth of the matter, and which is just a shadow or filter of the truth.” (>>)

“It has been the same in all my relationships. There was always, within me, this demand for affection, this needy, clingy monkey on my back. I wouldn’t be satisfied unless the girl wanted to get married right away, unless she was panicky about it, and even then I would imagine a non-existent scenario in which she finds another man or breaks up with me because of the way I look. I would find myself getting depressed about conversations that never even took place.” (>>)