REALITY’S TIGHT
WHEN THE MUSIC IS RIGHT

Toro y Moi’s music makes me stand still. Even when I want to run. Rich and complex in its melancholic observations, it’s made the best of me poke its head out of the pillows all the years he’s been around. But,‘Boo Boo’ is an album of distorted escape from inside you; so come back every day and dash away the darkness as I review the LP track by track, spending 24 hours listening to only one song at a time. Album stream via Carpark Records below.

/ DAY 31 /
MIRAGE 00:00-05:05

So, I am a runner. You’d never know it about me. You know me as the guy who stared down cancer with mirth and laughed as it lost its bravado and went whistling on past me. I ground my shoes into the earth around me so I didn’t leave Earth. But, I am a runner. Truly. People make me run. And when I can’t run I pretend I can’t see them there. People become mirages even when they can smack you in the cheeks, because pain and love and shared memories become lies you tell you that you never had. A heart starts to really hurt when the only time you hold out your hand to be held is when you’re high as a kite. And I took hit upon hit going on 7 years until I could look at every human and say

OH, HELLO, I DIDN’T SEE YOU THERE

My pupils were racing back and around the edges of my sclera and my irises indicated I was being eaten alive by ennui. Even when I was nestling my nose in his, or yours or their chest hair and cuddling in arms in the hope of being held down. Because I was in the bedsheets with you, him and them; and I wanted to ground my shins into your, his and their 1000-thread count egyptian cotton, to stand my ground. But I know you and all the pronouns I wouldn’t pretend are people either, and soon you’d know that my shoes were walking the highways outside Cairo. I’d jumped on a plane when you weren’t looking. I am runner, except when I listen to Toro y Moi. When chillwave, when the remnants of it’s bones in the shape of his new album Boo Boo, remind me that my sprinting socks can be slowed and my heart can hold on just a moment.

/ DAY 32 /
NO SHOW 05:05-08:00

I like ego. And I usually come out punching when I meet someone even though I don’t have much. Much of me, ego, a solid skeleton to punch back at. But I want that heart I’d love to entertain, beating there in that hot-blooded man, to know I’m a real person. Because most days, I’m trying to convince me I am one. And sometimes I think rushing the man who I want to turn his gaze lascivious and romantic and amused but never concerned with all the moxxy in me will keep my shoes turned towards him. And my body language will break the pattern. I won’t run because going straight means smacking into his body. But I always go backwards. Out doors and with heavy shoes and hearts on gas pedals gunning it down I-5. Because I think no one likes or understands my ego, even when I’m trying to convince them I’m not a terrible person by being charming as hell. I don’t blame them. How do you make sense of me?

IT WON’T TAKE LONG UNTIL
I’M A NO-SHOW BESIDE YOU

Maybe even by 2am the night we met. When I sing my insecurities under my breath as I slip out your door. When the music, all my emotion in me gets compartmentalized into mp3s on my smartphone. When I hold in my hand a helluva lot of highway hymnals of escape. And think about you waking at 6:30 to see all the love songs I abandoned beside your pillow.

/ DAY 33 /
8:43-13:00

Indiscernible. I listen to Toro Y Moi to not feel so. I have a Mona Lisa Smile. I mean, I think it says one thing. You think it leads you on. I think I’m present, being 87,515.63 types of extra. You think I’m aloof as fuck. But two shaking voices often tell a lie. And you’re shaking in anger and I’m shaking because my feet are on the floor foa 737 going through turbulence over Bangkok. They aren’t disconnected things, both of us are right.

A SUDDEN DIVE INTO EXACTLY WHO I THINK I AM
OH, DAMN I FEEL LIKE I MADE THIS UP
ONE MAN MAKING CHOICES FOR HIMSELF

I don’t know how to be the kind of person that people like, that they can see, anymore; and you want me to stay and listen again for the 977, 865, 311th time that if I learned to trust–no, trust you–that I wouldn’t feel this way anymore. Sorry, I’ll just place my head down against this window and smile in ennui until someone else finds it charming.

/ DAY 34 /
13:15-19:20

Don’t give me ideas, I just waste them. I woke up only cos I thought I had to. And my stomach says something. I don’t know what. I’m not listening. I’ll shove some food on top of it so it’ll shut the fuck up. And the air con’s not on and it’s 37 in here. If I don’t wake up, I’ll sweat to death. Wouldn’t be so terrible, I say to myself. Amazing how I can run away from anyone’s heart but pulling myself a metre across my bed to the remote is peace-accord level struggle. And I tell myself I have to watch the new episode of Veep, so maybe I can laugh myself into a state of half-human. These are the days I don’t want to understand what I am. Wake up.

DON’T GIVE ME IDEAS, I’LL JUST WASTE THEM

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