left and leaving.

I want to contribute to mainstream. I don’t want to be reactionary and apologetic, and I don’t want to be in an indie band that, like, pulls back because it’s afraid of mainstream. I wanna go straightforward, but I wanna be better. And I think that’s something that got missing, where the ’90s were great with Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana, and then rap-metal happened and everyone was so embarrassed that it was like either you were indie, or you were pop, or you were hip-hop. And the indie I grew up with was very, “I don’t even know how I got here, I’m just in a garage playing guitar, fuck it.” I hate that shit. It’s so annoying. It takes so much to be in a band that to not fucking get up there and just kill almost ruins the spirit. Like, what fucking right do I have to ask people to pay money to see my show? Not just pay money, but get on the fucking subway, get in the fucking car, like, ruin a whole night of their lives just to see my show. Ask them to pay money to buy my album, T-shirts with my stupid face on it. What right do I have to do all of that, and then not say it’s good enough? More than good enough — to not say it’s special?

One time when you were very small, you decided that you were going to fly. And so you built a little, what you called, a hot air balloon, but was actually a bed sheet. You built it out of your little dinosaur bed sheet on your mattress and you jumped and you had both hands on either side and you thought, “I’m going to fly!” everytime, “I’m going to fly and fly and fly!” And everytime, you hit the fucking ground because that’s what fucking life is, right? No. No, that’s not what fucking life is. Life is when you fly and sometimes you fall and sometimes you get bruised and sometimes you wanna fucking die, but you don’t. You stand up and you don’t give up hope and you decide that what ever is on this planet earth, that’s happening right now, what ever experience there is, be it bruising or existential crisis or fucking love beyond all measure, you decide that this is where I wanna be. I would rather fucking be here than be anywhere else, than be in a fucking coma, than be fucking dead, than be a fucking zombie. And so you don’t give up hope. You stand up and you fucking take the punches and that’s what life is.