that scene shows us better than any other sequence in the movie how unaware he is of his surroundings and relationships with people/how skewed his perception has become. it’s the same scene where he watches troy’s overwhelmingly boring performance but appears to be the only person there who realizes how boring it is, who remains unmoved. he asks jim what he thinks of troy and jim calls troy a “wonderful performer” and llewyn says “really?” with genuine surprise and confusion. and then proceeds to ask if troy has “higher function”. troy is supposedly, judging by everyone else’s reaction to him (including the music producer/manager guy later on in chicago), this really likable guy that reaches out to and connects with people and llewyn is consistently the only person in the movie who’s like “seriously what the fuck is so great about troy nelson”. this can be interpreted either as llewyn being the only person honest enough to admit how lackluster troy is (‘cause like. c’mon. the dude’s performance was boring as shit) or as an unreliable narrator situation wherein maybe troy actually is really great but llewyn is just incapable of relating to it because troy’s style of interacting with the world is the polar opposite of llewyn’s.

it’s also the scene where troy is like “there’s someone special in the audience who i wanna play with” etc. and llewyn automatically assumes that troy is referring to him and gets all irritated and says “i don’t have my guitar” before troy invites jim and jean onstage instead. which llewyn, again, seems genuinely surprised by. and some people simply read that as llewyn being a ginormously self centered prick who overestimates his own popularity, but i’ve said before: llewyn’s an asshole, but i don’t think he’s that kind of asshole. i don’t think he walks around assuming people think he’s hot shit. i don’t read llewyn as “arrogant”. arrogance requires an inflated ego, and i don’t think llewyn likes himself enough for that to be the case.

i also don’t think llewyn is so delusional as to believe he’s dramatically more respected than he actually is. people know he’s good. troy mentioned having heard llewyn’s music and liking it. llewyn thinking troy was about to invite him on stage instead of jim and jean isn’t altogether irrational. just the way llewyn dealt with it was presumptuous and negative, and a petulant defense mechanism, as troy inviting him on stage would mean that troy wanted to harmonize with him and llewyn has a specific aversion to harmonizing with anyone since mike died.

so when everyone else in the club starts singing along to 500 miles and llewyn is surprised and isolated amid this crowd of people, it’s the perfect illustration of him being out of step with the very culture that he has largely dedicated his life to. it doesn’t even occur to him to sing along, that doing so might feel good. that this is a community. he has stopped participating.

which is also just. such an apt metaphor for depression, isn’t it? the inherent self centeredness of depression, how, by its very nature, depression cuts you off from the people around you, even (especially?) the people that logically you should feel the most attuned to. the isolation within a crowd. the sense of all connection stopping at your skin.

and finally: the fact that llewyn’s life is precisely the kind of life folk songs are written about. he is the weary traveler, the survivor, the starving artist, the disenfranchised, the rolling stone. all of those things are more poetic to write about than to experience. rich in fiction but spare in reality, difficult to actually live day to fucking day. his fucking life is a folk song but he’s too close to it, too inside of it, to see it. to see the irony and get the “cosmic joke”, as oscar isaac calls it.

Llewyn dreams of Ohio. Sees a little boy with dark hair and dark eyes, and the boy asks questions his mom won’t give straight answers to, and the boy has a mean streak, and the boy doesn’t know how to play guitar. And the boy is better off.

come on up to the house. music for llewyn davis, come spring.

fletcher screams at andrew that’s he’s not strumming his acoustic guitar gently enough

when in reality llewyn approaches his life too passively w/ a terrible kind of acceptance/detachment and andrew is a tough little fuck with a surprisingly shrewd mean streak who seems incapable of giving up unless someone, like. shoots him maybe

panicked running down stairwells

immediate family members being dismissive about ur career path

"oh my god. are you kidding me? that shit?"/"really? does he have...higher function?"

response to prolonged verbal abuse (andrew's crying vs. llewyn's dead, dead eyes)

"andrew. you're done."/"i don't see a lot of money here."

violent exhaustion 

"where are your sticks"/"where's your guitar"

terrible dinner conversation

"FUCK YOU JOHNNY UTAH TURN MY PAGES BITCH"/"would that cane fit all the way up your ass? or would a little bit stay sticking out?"