#is good stuff

Omg happy birthdayyyy dear user veradune ^-^ have fun !!

The energy of Wu Xie extremely excitedly but also so nervously giving Zhang Qiling a sword carved with a reference ZQL won’t even remember anymore but that he loves anyway (???)...

Although the band was stalled, it did nothing to brake the speed at which John and Paul’s relationship was developing. The two boys spent part of every day together, talking about music. Often, after school or on the errant day off, John would invite Paul back to his house, in Woolton, where they would hole up in the tiny front bedroom, smoking and playing records. Out from under Mimi’s watchful eye, they would sit cross-legged on the bed, running down bits of lyrics they’d memorized in an attempt to piece together an entire song, working a new chord into their slight repertoire. “We spent hours just listening to the stars we admired,” John recalled. “We’d sit round and look all intent and intense and then, when the record had ended, we [sic] try and reproduce the same sort of sounds for ourselves.” Paul’s pet expression for it—“just bashing away”—seems appropriate; they found ways to play songs using what little they knew about chord structure or technique. Other days they’d meet outside the art college and take the no. 86 bus together all the way out to Forthlin Road. During the week, while Jim was away selling cotton, they had the run of the house. Alone in the sun-filled living room—John on the chintz-covered sofa, and Paul curled into an easy chair at its side—they poured out all their big dreams: the kind of band they envisioned putting together, the musical possibilities that lay in store, the great possibilities if they worked. John talked, in fact, about playing serious gigs, even making records. […]   John and Paul had remarkably similar tastes; they liked it fast, hard, and loose. […] A rhythm developed between John and Paul that got stronger and tighter. Mostly it was intuitive, unspoken. They understood each other. There were unknowns but no mysteries. “They were on the same indefinite path,” says Eric Griffiths, who sensed that their bonding signaled his undoing. “Once they got together, things became serious—and fast. The band was supposed to be a laugh; now they devoted all their attention to it and in a more committed way than any of us really intended.” Other Quarry Men also recognized their special rapport. In Colin Hanton’s estimation: “The band quickly became John and Paul. It was always John and Paul, Paul and John. Even when someone didn’t turn up to rehearse, John and Paul would be at it, harmonizing or arranging material, practicing, either at Auntie Mimi’s or at Paul’s house.” No doubt about it, they were tuned to the same groove. But aside from a musical passion and amiability, they filled enormous gaps in each other’s lives. Where John was impatient and careless, Paul was a perfectionist—or, at least, appeared to be—in his methodical approach to music and the way he dealt with the world. Where John was moody and aloof, Paul was blithe and outgoing, gregarious, and irrepressibly cheerful. Where John was straightforward if brutally frank, Paul practiced diplomacy to manipulate a situation. Where John had attitude, Paul’s artistic nature was a work in progress. Where John’s upbringing was comfortably middle-class (according to musician Howie Casey, “the only claim he had to being a working-class hero was on sheet music”), Paul was truly blue-collar. Where John was struggling to become a musician, Paul seemed born to it. And John gave Paul someone to look up to. Their age difference and the fact that John was in art college—a man of the world!—made John “a particularly attractive character” in Paul’s eyes. There was a feral force in his manner, a sense of “fuck it all” that emanated great strength. He had a style of arrogance that dazed people and started things in motion. And he scorned any sign of fear. John’s response to any tentativeness was a sneer, a sneer with humbling consequences. John occasionally felt the need to reinforce his dominance, but he never required that Paul cede his individuality. He gave the younger boy plenty of room in which to leave his imprint. The Quarry Men would try a new song, and John would immediately seek Paul’s opinion. He’d allow Paul to change keys to suit his register, propose certain variations, reconfigure arrangements.

My breakfast =)