Blazed Read Free Page A

smoking.
    I’m sitting at my computer. Three lines of Oxy remain on the cover of the book Our Band Could Be Your Life .
    I’ve read it twice since someone recommended it in this Sonic Youth chat room I was in a few months back.
    I lean down and go.
    There’s only two lines now.
    That Youth Lagoon song “Montana” is playing on my computer. This is the third straight time I’ve listened to it.
    Their first record changed me.
    â€œJuly” was the first song I heard from it.
    The music ripped a hole in me. It struck an emotional nerve so deep, I felt debilitated by the time the song was over. Never in my life has music pierced me so hard I felt like my life had been stolen from me once the music stopped.
    I cried when I listened to it the second time.
    And when I played the entire record in order, the spellof nostalgia that was cast over me was so potent and heavy, it was like I was still clinging to a beautiful dream when the final track had concluded.
    The music is mesmerizing.
    It’s not sad, but it makes you yearn for those afternoons or mornings or nights when you felt so damn alive and attached to the moment. Those times when you were really experiencing life instead of thinking about how you wished you were experiencing it.
    The feeling is gorgeous.
    Its beauty lies somewhere in the sentimentality of the past. It doesn’t matter if the memory was of a great moment or an awful moment. It was an important moment.
    And the nostalgia gives you all the comfort you need in the present.
    Everyone needs the comfort of nostalgia.
    This is the genius of the first Youth Lagoon record.
    When the song ends again, I grab my acoustic guitar and continue writing this new song of mine called “Black Vulture.” It’s pretty good right now, but it can be so much better.
    It’s sorta hard to concentrate, though, as my face keeps swelling from the vicious hits of my mother’s angry fist.
    She has to be passed out right now.
    Images of her losing her mind two hours ago and attacking me smash through my head.
    I set the guitar down and stand in front of the mirror on my door.
    My left eye is turning more blue.
    It’s so ugly.
    I put my finger against it and wince.
    I hope my mother is lost in some kind of gorgeous dream of her own right now. Somewhere far, far away from all her demons and monsters.
    I hope she’s standing in the middle of a thousand meadows filled with beautiful flowers.
    I hope she’s writing her name in the wet sand of a gorgeous beach.
    Barefoot.
    Humming.
    All her horror kept at bay.
    Back at my desk, I lean down and go again.
    One line remains.
    I scroll through my iTunes and play the Future Islands song “Balance.”
    After that, I upload the video of me reading my new poem to my Tumblr page and my YouTube channel and write an entry about it.
    Twelve hours ago, I couldn’t wait to get home from school and play my mother the new tracks Washed Out posted on their Bandcamp page.
    I was so fucking excited to hang out with her.
    It just goes to show how quickly things can turn against you.
    In a matter of seconds, your life can get turned upside down without your consent.
    My mother will never know what she did to me tonight.
    This is exactly how silence becomes deafening.

7.
    THAT LCD SOUNDSYSTEM DOCUMENTARY SHUT Up and Play the Hits is playing on the laptop in the kitchen. My mother is still sleeping, and I’m cooking us breakfast: bacon, omelets, fruit cups, and coffee.
    Even though I cook for the two of us all the time in the morning, it’s rare she ever sleeps in this late, no matter how smashed up she got the night before.
    But it is nice to have the kitchen all to myself.
    I’ve watched this documentary eight times, and I take something new from it every time. The idea of bringing your band to a halt at the height of its success in order to go out on your own terms is one of the most intriguing concepts I’ve ever heard. But