LifeOr... On The Same Page

Read the inspired lyrics Daily Die and Forever Live

Among the many things I wonder, I wonder what it would feel like to have someone who was on the same page as me. There was this random Sunday night when my friend and I were sitting in our living room drinking wine and eating cheese, and we started talking about life. The conversation turned to a point where we realized how different our points of view about the future were from each other, and how she had people around her who shared the same view as her. She’s used to sleeping in late and going with the flow. I’m the type of guy who wakes up early and has his life all mapped out. Not figured out, but mapped out. I wonder if maybe I’m just part of the exception in the world, while my friend is the majority rule.

Either way, being like this is both a blessing and a curse. Maybe there’s something in my karma and a lesson that needs to be learned, but I never really found anyone who’s like this. All I found were people who wouldn’t care about the big things I plan. That used to put me in a position where I had to almost beg fpr them to do something. I had to almost beg for people to write songs with me, even with the most ridiculous talent that they had. To teach me how to ride a bike, even with their bikes hanging around unused in the backyard. But the thing with begging is that it’s not the right or healthy thing to do; the outcome of those requests is always bittersweet and never really counts for something, so I understood that it’s not worth asking. It always felt like there was still something missing, but if it wouldn’t be given to me by free will, then I wouldn't need it.

A silly, but good example to keep my hopes afloat (even if barely), would be Taylor Swift. I wonder how it would be to have a Jack Antonoff in my life. I imagine how awesome it would be to have someone say “hey, let’s do a song today” and then proceed to create said song — or seven albums (and counting) for that matter. I have so many songs written that I could fill much more than seven albums, so that would be fantastic. But I know I should step out of my sabotaging mind and start being serious about playing the guitar and the piano until I find my Jack Antonoff (or my Aaron Dessner), but sometimes one just wants to drown himself in the hope of finding creative minds that just want to keep creating art. More and more art.

Still on the tightrope of hope, let me turn it into a romantic fantasy, something I’m just too good at. I daydream about waking up one Sunday morning, having this guy by my side with a guitar, and we start humming some melodies and then create something out of the blue. The sun would shine on us, we would look like models even if we had just woken up, and all the trouble of the world would be solved in lines and rhymes. Suddenly, the beat-up guitar would transform my old days of perfect images reflected on the broken mirror of my eyes into distant memories and unquestionable perfect melodies, and all would be alright. That’s the thing about having your life all mapped out: you know exactly what you want, but that can distract you from what’s really meant for you (but I guess this is another type of conversation). Still, like I said: a blessing and a curse.

Maybe I’m just fooling myself and I’ll never get that because it’s just too conceptualized, and people are more and more learning to prioritize themselves over anyone else. And maybe the lesson to be learned here is that I don’t really need anyone else but me, but honestly I don’t think that’s the case. I’ve been in my skin for many years and, even though I love being a loner, I came to realize that that’s not the only way to live life. It’s what they say: "if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together". Who knows if I'll ever come to see if this saying is true. If it is, I'll let you know here. Please, just stick around with me and all my expectations.

LifeOr... Aesthetic Feelings and Abstract Concepts

Read the inspired lyric Long-Exposed Pictures

Dear advertisers, from someone who’s not on the branch anymore, I'm sorry but I hate how you think you can simply add the word “experience” to a piece and make everything magically irresistible. Spoiler: you can't. An experience can’t just be stated as one; it needs to be felt as such. It's an aesthetic feeling, an abstract concept. It's not a word that can be thrown out carelessly because it has to mean something, and make you feel a certain type of way. with your senses coming alive in the aftermath. Sorry, but that can’t be achieved just by adding a word; it requires action.

That doesn’t mean it needs to be something huge, great, or mind-blowing. For example, I find the most fulfilling experience just to walk on the street of my favorite buzzingly bright city, while listening and singing my favorite tune. Or to sit in a subway station (or, from a more usual perspective, a park) to read a book and watch people go on with their lives (secretly hoping to be noticed as well). They say it’s the simple things, and I couldn’t agree more.

An experience for me is something that makes me bittersweetly want both to treasure the moment in secrecy, keeping it forever to myself; and to share it with someone that would understand the beauty that lies beneath what normal eyes usually sees. Like walking on a cold street by myself in the middle of the night, feeling free but hopeless. Like wondering how it would be to have another shadow dancing with me under streetlights. Or driving with nowhere to go, just for the sake of driving. Or lying in a hotel room with lots of questions running wild in my head, only to end up asking “what are you thinking?” as if the whole course of the world could be defined by a simple, yet impossible, question.

Cherish these moments is all I can ever ask for life. It reminds me of when I was younger and I had sticker books that I would fill up with images from my favorite fantasy movie, that I would collect everyday to make the album complete. Just like that, I like to collect moments in life. And I crave the moment when my whole life will be an experience in itself. I imagine myself as the only cool living boy in New York, with a journal on my hand, just in case something beautiful appears to beg me to keep it forever remembered in my writings; and with a camera hanging around my neck just in case something beautiful appears to beg me to froze its essence for posterity.

While I’m not there, I’m taking my overpriced Starbucks coffee as I walk the busiest avenue I know, not waiting to live my Pinterest kind of life. Then I’ll go back home and open the notes app to write a song. It will make me always remember my feelings, in the event that I need to remind myself how blessed I am and how hurts and cuts are healed by a magic thing called time. That makes me wonder, maybe my life could be an interesting commercial. Advertisers, call me if you read this.

LifeOr... Devour The Feast, Scrape Off The Plates, and Lick Up The Platters

Read the inspired lyrics Devour

Nothing screams more "me!" than the word nostalgia and its excessively wistful and sentimental yearning to return to an irrecoverable condition. There's something inside of me that finds a disturbing comfort in missing what used to be. It's disturbing because, even though things are so much better now, they were never great. So, what should I be missing exactly? In this light I'm in, I'm convinced someone got my soul stuck in a moment of the past and left it there, while my body kept walking away, aging.

Even though I know I shouldn't be missing the times where I blissfully knew nothing about the world, there's one thing I know I'm right to miss: the old me who would have his heart broken but didn't know the reason behind it. The old me who wouldn't question fate and reasons because all it took was just moving on. Now everything cuts me so sharply that it draws no blood because, deep inside, I'm dry. In the past, I would be lying on the floor of my room, drunk and naked, and I would recover because hope kept my torches burning scintillating ambers. Now, they've been buried under the snow I so badly want to see in London.

However, I'm too stubborn to understand that. The storm of snowflakes invades my gardens, but I still pretend that there's a sun to warm everything up and make the white pavement a small river for my dreams to sail freely. I try to convince myself that I can be the guy who goes on meaningless dates; the guy who can stop caring, like a red light can make me stop at the streets I walk singing, while looking for the next eye to fall in love with, pretending that I can be the guy who won't chase but will attract. And so I live like this, an eternal loophole of indecisive signs, wanting to be something and being the total opposite. My lighthouse keeps the universe so confused that it's no wonder I am where and who I am right now.

Devour the feast, scrape off the plates, and lick up the platters. But in what way? What's being served? I would be fierce and eat love alive, with my bare hands covered in blood and dirt, no matter what. Now, I'm scared of this so called holy foundation, so I eat dishes made of false cold hopes because I know better now about how the story will end. And I can't help but wonder where have I lost it. What would it take to be my old self again? If there's one thing I hope to be alive to see, it's the day they will invent a map where one can find where all started to go wrong, that way I would know the perfect time stamp of when my mind started to control my every move.

It's paralyzing knowing that something is wrong but not knowing what that something is and, therefore, not knowing how to fix and make it right. It is just not worse, however, than watching everything you ever wanted passing through your eyes while you know that you'll never reach it because you're just not the chosen one. You’re the boldest and bravest you can ever be, but never the boldest and bravest that you should be to achieve your wildest dreams. After all, if everyone could be a hero, heroes wouldn't mean a thing.

Then all the hurt will mean nothing? It won't serve as a plot device in a future inspiring conversation of how life was hard but even so, he made it? Then me wanting to stop daydreaming because I wanted real things will be a fruitless effort? I guess I'm missing more closing my eyes at night without thinking of a single thing than what I used to miss when I used to lay down imagining me being picked up by a faceless guy in the middle of the night. At least, if I decide to come back to this habit, I can say I'm doing it because Stanislavski said fantasy is one of the most important tools of an actor in the book I'm currently reading. Maybe that's the first step to coming back to my old ways of shouting to the world that I would never stop trying to find real love just because my heart happened to be broken once.

In a way, I'm doing that now, as if there's still a small glowing spark inside of me that wants to keep the reminder of how innocent I once was, when ignorance was bliss. If now I can hold on to the belief that God, the Universe, or whatever knows what I want and what I deserve, as a mature thing I positively conquered throughout these years, the old glowing spark keeps telling me "all it takes is one", and nothing screams more "me!" than a blind hope that will follow me until I'm actually blind, without sensing or feeling the dirt that’s covering my body six feet down.

LifeOr... The Airplane Didn't Crash

Read the inspired lyric Catastrophic Minds

Going to London was a wild ride, from beginning to end. Intense were the months leading to the day I would enter the plane that would reset my whole life. Intense were the moments I stayed in packed airports and small seats. My throat was hurting, and my head was working non-stop. Once in my life I saw something as big as this going down the drain right in front of my eyes, and this episode still follows me to this day. I won't say it haunts me because I learned valuable lessons from it, but it's undeniable how I still second-guess some things. Like getting on a plane to London to start a new life.

Those long hours made me ponder about many things. The one that banged my head the most was how it's crazy how human beings are wired to think the worst-case scenario out of every single thing. If someone you love doesn't pick up the phone, for example, and you don't get a hold of them for more time than you're used to, then you probably think something terrible happened to them . When something comes easily to you, then it's probably not good for you because we've been told that nothing easy is worth the fight, so everything needs to have a struggle to be worth it.

Watching the sun rising on the window, over the bay of Biscay, I fought the demons that were falling from grace from the sky, trying to get into the white flying big piece of aluminum I was being miraculously carried on (flying farther on a river and a fast bullet flying from a gun, all at the same time). Impossible questions were trying to grow like poison ivy on the cavities of my body, making me want to play a game of chess against end possibilities, and all of them were more catastrophic than the others. "What ifs" and "What will I dos" kept balancing on a tightrope in the hope to make the other one fall and call it a win, as if they were both good things.

Why can't we think of what can go right instead of what can go wrong? Why can't our minds create positive thoughts without creating anxiety and expectations? Well, those are rhetorical questions because I know why. I must have read somewhere that thinking of all that could go wrong is a defense mechanism that we grew to develop hundreds of years as a way to prepare us for anything that might happen in this unpredictable life. Which is confusing, since anything means thousands of options and we don't plan thousands of outcomes in our heads. We get obsessive with just a couple of things and ruminate them over and over again like a piece of gum we don't even notice it lost its flavor. Always the same lines, always the same fears.

And when we don't think of the worst, we daydream of perfect scenarios. I don't know if you daydream of things you want to happen and don't get sad when they don't happen, but I do (if you don't, you've won the lotery). My daydreams cause expectations, and expectations are reality's worst enemy. Daydreaming is trying to be in control of things we can't control. It's thinking we know better than everything that's around us and better than the thing that makes the sun rise or the wind blow oxygen into our lungs.

I'm trying to change my "what ifs". Instead of "what if the plane crashes and I lose the chance to see what will happen in life?" to "what if the plane lands safely and I get the chance to have a clean slate?" Instead of "what if my throat turns out to be a problem and they think I have a horrible disease?" to "what if they know it's normal to get your voice messed up on a twenty-hour flight inside a capsule?"

At the end, the airplane didn't crash. My throat didn't kill me. All the answers were answered. Nothing appeared out of nowhere in my bag. And there I was, at a never-ending parking lot of the airport looking for a friend that would get me, and the friends who came to pick me up, home. Where I would sleep in a kid's bed in late-night clothes.

It's true; I won't lie. It's not easy. I still think that I won't get to be who I want to be. These intrusive thoughts come, but they have to go. I know nothing about tomorrow, so there's no use in wondering. If lots of bad things can happen, I'd rather think lots of incredible things will happen. No more catastrophic minds if I can help it.

LifeOr... Daisies and Little Yellow Flowers

If there's one thing I wouldn't want anyone to feel, it's that they've wasted years of their lives on something. Or someone. I'm currently making changes in my life and putting things into perspective, and in doing so, I've come to realize how I've wasted two years of my life (and, unfortunately, counting) in a terrible situationship. One I got into it after a breakup that left me yearning for one kind of adventure that many guys my age have once experienced. However, I've come to the conclusion that most of these guys didn't actively seek that adventure; it simply happened to them. As for me, on the contrary, I sought it actively. I craved the destination and validation, not the journey. Now I see that that makes all the difference in the world.

Now, I'm forced to encounter this person from time to time, and it feels like a rollercoaster ride. Some days, I'm less annoyed with sharing the same room as them; but most days, I feel like I could explode from all the anger I feel. I'm angry at how he made me lock myself away from people. Hate is a strong word, but it's the feeling that consumes me whenever I think of this whole mess I put myself into. I don't understand why I'm the only one who sees the danger lurking beneath his pleasant facade. I can only imagine how different my life would have been if I hadn't created scenarios in my head that I knew would never happen. And I fail to understand why I didn't know better when I saw his picture that September night. The funny thing is that I used to remember that fateful date so well, but now I don't anymore. Maybe that's a sign.

Nonetheless, I find solace in where I am in my life now because I've learned my lesson, and I'm so glad to feel that I really did. I won't say that I'm not still getting into peculiar situations, nor say that now it's easy for me to erase certain thoughts. It's a process. But entering my favorite park after a tough day at work, feeling all alone, made me realize that I don't want to be the same character in this new chapter I'm writing for myself. I know I won't be, because I'm making changes in my life, and I'm beginning to grasp that I've spent most of my life yearning for loneliness, thinking that sharing my life would be my downfall.

While sitting on the grass, now adorned with daisies and little yellow flowers that are falling all around me from big trees, I contemplated how it's time to learn not to be alone. Moving to different cities is not new to me, but sharing a home with friends will be. The idea of sharing walls and routines with others is somewhat daunting for me, considering I've always loved doing whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. However, this time I'm trying to embrace the feeling of belonging and having someone who genuinely cares about me. I hope I won't feel as down once I move oceans away, but if I do, I feel like I'll finally have someone to rely on.

For years, that someone was me. While talking with my therapist, I recalled moments when I went to the movies by myself. Years ago, I sat in those seats, hoping for someone to come sit next to me, feeling nervous as I accidentally brushed hands with them. More recently, I'd go to the movies and sit by myself, hoping no one would sit beside me because I can't stand watching a movie with someone eating popcorn right next to me. That's me: always too extreme. Perhaps there's a middle ground. It's heartwarming to see that now I'm so content with my own company that I just want to share these moments with myself, but maybe I can learn that sharing my self doesn't mean corrupting my soul.

After all, the feeling of being found still burns within me. It's consuming the walls I've built and the fantasies I've giving up for the life of me. The years wasted are the bottles that drugged me through lonely, naked, and sleepless nights I spent on the floor of my old house. Now, I can enjoy the journey while trusting whatever is to come, and recognizing the signs. How wonderful it is to feel young and yet posess a conscious and prepared mind? I'm trying not to think much about numbers like time and age, and I swear I'm living my days as they come, but I can't help but look forward to the person I'll become once I leave my current place and leave everything that pains me behind.

That includes you, the guy who made my last two years the worst they could have ever been. The narcissist guy I never want to see again, and whose name I’ll forget one day. Thank you for the growth. Yes, I'm old, and yes, I still hate you. I'm allowed to feel that since I can’t punch your perfect little face like I want so bad to. Well, that's life. I'd rather be covered in daisies and little yellow flowers than your blood, anyway.

LifeOr... Walking In The Rain

Read the inspired lyric Ampersand

Recently, I underwent surgery. It was nothing extraordinary, but it made me change a few habits in my daily life. One of them was to walk down the streets slowly without my headphones on. Normally, I'm the person you see walking on a fast pace made of the bpms of whatever energetic, or sad song, I felt like obsessing over. Vibing with my hands floating in the air, as if I'm the only person in the world. Or as if I'm on a stage, and anyone around me is watching my every move, paralyzed by each strike of confidence. It's an energetic feeling that I don't think I'll ever get enough of, even if it makes me look silly or crazy.

However, since the surgery, I had to cut down on these moments. My late-night walks to the grocery store became afternoon walks, and the sounds I now heard were sirens, tire scratches, and gossip on the phone. Each stair I had to climb or descend was now an important piece to pay attention to, and my surroundings felt more welcoming. Not that I never walked paying attention, far from that. I'm always seeing what's around me. But the focus now changed. In these new walks while the sun is deciding if it stays or goes, as if it's really a choice, I could see more, simply because I had more time. When you're not running, time isn't running along with you. So I had the chance to feel the wind twice on my skin, and I even glanced at more guys while doing it.

Yesterday, I had the chance to do it again. Lately, life is looking even more promising and less challenging, so I took the chance to leave the house for a bit. Hours earlier, the weather was scalding, but once I set foot outside my white door, the breeze was relaxing. It had even started to drizzle. The perks of working at home, I thought, were that I didn't have to carry an umbrella for that spontaneous straw. If anything, I would be coming back home where I could be warm if I ever got drenched. And so I went.

The best part was coming back because it started raining. There I was, feeling a bit sad that I hadn't brought my earphones so I could listen to something while facing the storm's gelid, freezing blows on my (feeling like naked) skin. But I shook that feeling off and thought that this was the kind of attention to life I was looking from now on. I passed people hiding from the rain, then people going in the opposite direction of me, and then by people hiding from the rain again. Without thinking, as I had decided to do in these types of situations in my life, I struck up a small conversation with a cute guy underneath a small shelter. He was carrying grocery packages, just like me, but he was waiting for the chance to leave, not the chance to go. So I said, "Let's go", casually, and went on.

A minute later, he caught up with me, and we walked together until the end of the street, chatting about small things until we parted ways. He turned right and down the street, and I turned left and up the hill. I didn't ask for his name, but I did think about the type of encounter I just had. Usually, I'm the person who asks for names and numbers and who sees every meeting as an opportunity, but I decided that it doesn't always have to be the case. Although it made me write something about it, it felt better knowing that I wouldn't have had this experience if I had been on my phone, for example. This made me realize that there are times when I don't need to be walking fast down a street listening to a song. You see, I can choose the moments I can do that, I can choose the where and the how. But I can't choose those exchange spontaneous moments because they just happen, and they happen only if you're not guarded.

So I went home drenched only on the front, after taking a new route that I was thinking about taking but never had the courage, and moved on with my life, feeling happy, glad, and satisfied. The rest of the day went on normally, but before I went to sleep, I became obsessed with a word: collarbone. I just think it would be a nice touch to let you know that. Ever since that, I feel every simple thing deep down my bones. Read a book at a coffee shop while eating a donut can sound so mundane (although for me it was always something I loved to do), but for me, since a few days ago, feels like there's no way life can get better than this.