on your own

when i lived in toronto, i found a decent studio apartment for about $1000 a month. it was located about midtown, and had a balcony with a view of the parking lot and the apartment beside it. honestly, nothing special. but it was quiet, and it was an apartment to myself.

that balcony wasn't a place of regular solace – like, i wouldn't sit on that balcony at 2 in the afternoon on a saturday to enjoy the sun. rather, it was the sort of refuge where – when you're a socially avoidant 23 year old, you end up having these nights where the loneliness catches up to you. so either after the 8th straight day of not talking to any of your friends, or after getting home from some club, you felt completely out of place at. i would've gotten pretty loaded at the bar (knocking drinks back to drown the anxiety away) and decided to walk home instead of catch a cab with people i'd only met for the first time. a completely impractical, 50 minute walk. these became common practice for me, walking up along yonge street, from the noisy drunken crowds of downtown toronto on a friday night, to my quiet midtown studio. by the time i'd get home, i'd be more or less sober.

anyways, what i meant to say is you get back to your apartment on a night like that, and it's 2, maybe 3 am. and it doesn't feel right to go straight to bed. so i'd end up lingering on that balcony. that's what i meant – you'll end up with these spots. either a balcony, or maybe even some park bench, or even walking across a university campus at the dead of night, those artificial fluorescent lights giving the place an eerie glow

these are normally busy or lively places, where people meet friends, go for lunch, are headed to some important meeting or some shit.. where people are open and lively. but when you walk through the crowds, you usually are on your own. so it ends up either anxious, or just annoying bumping into people, or trying to get past obnoxious groups of people who seem to spread themselves out as much as possible and couldn't give a shit you have somewhere to be. i want to curb this back a bit and admit i'm not a social recluse, but those times i do have people to spend time with, i'm always so excited i start grandstanding and being overly boisterous. (it took me a long time to realize some people could pick up on this, and i was actively driving them away like this.)

so it'll happen the only time you feel comfortable in the places people are sociable are when there was barely ever anyone around. i always felt most at ease at a houseparty when i stuck around at the end and helped clean the place up, after the reverie had ended. once everyone was blackout KOed and i did the dishes, and then just let myself out.

so, the same thing with that balcony. balconies seem somewhere you normally invite your friend and have a beer. for me, it was where i'd just stare out into the dark, in a half-drunk state.

usually i'd have my headphones in. those long walks, it'd be me with my headphones in. music either on shuffle, or there'd eventually be a "right song" i'd just leave on loop. sometimes it was the loudest music i could find. the loudest, poppiest, and most aggressive k-pop i could find. it'd be at total odds with my mood, and i knew it was a lost cause to try and 'drown it out.' i think, rather than drown it out, i was actually amplifying the sense of dissonance between being an attractive, intelligent 23 year old in one of the liveliest cities in the country, and having no real friends



there was another apartment i lived in, just before that one. i had to move out because it was too expensive, inconvenient, and i wasnt getting along with my roommate. but, anyways, it was closer to the downtown core, and it also had a balcony. same thing. that balcony was where i'd stand at the odd hours of the night, same as i ended up doing with the other one, but it was right above those busy bars i'd go to, and all those loud throngs of people going out with friends, going on dates – getting laid, getting high, having fun.

honestly, it was beautiful and terrifying to look at from afar. i'm not a malicious guy. i complain about something rotten in the state of the modern world, but i don't necessarily begrudge folks going out and having a good time. i enjoyed living in toronto, for the most part. the city has a nervous energy to it – people are excited, and when you're surrounded by that, you end up energized by and sharing in that energy.

but it was terrifying because every person that walked by, every yet another night on that balcony, felt like another missed opportunity. i had the sense i was falling behind socially, and it felt like a pit that was getting bigger and bigger the more time went on that would be that much harder to get out of

i'd eventually feel 'catapulted' by this anxiety and try that much harder to be sociable. i'd phone friends up at inappropriately late times and tell them we're going out and hitting the bars. i'd annoy the shit out of some of them, and eventually became 'that guy' in terms of these antics. i'd get drunk off disgusting concoctions of red bull, booze, and caffeine, and be bouncing off the walls. i'd have a really great time. but a point in the night always came – almost a cold snap, where i'd suddenly sober up, and look around me and see people together, having a good time, and looking a lot more comfortable and natural. i'd almost always be on my own, having either annoyed or possibly even scared people away. i began to realize it was taking me legitimate effort to try and emulate having a good night out in a way others don't have to even think about, and it was to increasingly diminishing returns.



up on that balcony in my midtown apartment, i eventually stopped even trying to go out. i would get drunk off caffeine and booze just in my kitchen, grab my ATH-M50 headphones and blast f(x) and t-ara songs on loop as loud as i could play them at, and just sit on the balcony and stare out at nothing. a few times, i'd even sit there and have a cigarette.

i'm now putting in words something i was intuitively aware of at the time, so this is gonna come out awkward, but it felt perfectly apt. that wall of sound and that intoxicated state, up on a balcony, far removed from everyone, seemed to sum the whole thing up. i knew there was something beautiful out there, and when i saw beautiful things i could appreciate it, but for me to interact with it felt like those math problems with curves approaching but never touching them. for me, a wall of bootleg four loko and loud music was keeping me from ever touching these beautiful things

i don't know what night it was. i know why i probably would've downloaded it, on the basis of the cover art, but i don't have any immediate memory of when 'on your own.' first came up on shuffle on my iphone, one of those nights. but it did, and that was it. on your own came up on shuffle, and that loud bunch of noise and reverb separating me from a perfectly beautiful beach house song made me tear up because i could relate to it so much



i don't know how chris will react to this. i think there's always a potential for a sort of "oh, that's nice [but i can't relate to that at all]" can come up when a fan tells an artist what a song means to them personally. for me, it's reminiscent of my falling out of love with elite gymnastics. RUIN had a lot of meaning for me – it felt like it spoke to something i'd "lost", but the more interviews james brooks did the more he seemed to be a sensitive guy who was really concerned about things i didn't think were relevant. by the time he was dating grimes and put out an album with aesthetics apparently more concerned about feminist politics than emotions i could relate to, it felt 'over.' i recognize those elements were always there, but it really only does become so apparent to become distracting when an artist over-explains things. where the point of over-explanation is, i don't know. i just know when it's been crossed

anyways what the fuck's my point here. it's five years and i'm in another apartment, this time overlooking a lively street in sydney. there's no balcony, but there's a window, and sometimes it's so loud down there at those bars and brothels, even, that i don't need to have to be sat outside to hear it. i just finished a 50 hour week of classes and studying, and was on the subway train home, and sad brain (alt mix) came on.

i downloaded the release a couple weeks back and i was intending to save it for "one of those nights." i'd even realized earlier today that i might be exhausted, leaving the library at 10PM, catching a subway before midnight with crowds of people, and ending up walking home through the throngs of people on their way to meet friends and dates and get hammered, get laid, etc. but i was intending to save it for later. i've only been attending classes in sydney for like a couple weeks, it felt like i'd be breaking open a bottle of wine on a not-particularly apt occasion

i was sitting behind a group of friends being loud and obnoxious. i had shuffle on because i had nothing in particular i wanted to listen to. i had the music on full blast to drown those guys out. i didn't recognize what the vocal sample's from, but didn't hit skip. the beat hit and it was perfect. i figured i knew what it was. i turned on loop and i've been listening to it for the past hour, on loop, for the rest of the subway ride home, leaving the station, walking past a girl so drunk she fell over mid-step. it's been on loop since i set it on loop, including while typing this up

i don't know what's wrong – it's not that we're not beautiful, it's just that we're having a hard time getting where we're supposed to be. there's a wall of fucking noise i'm realizing i'm not the only person that has found themselves staring at and feeling hopeless about. that alone is reassurance enough, but songs like 'on your own' and 'sad brain,' to me, feel like finding some beautiful graffiti art on said wall

sometimes you just stare at graffiti. sometimes you just listen to songs over and over. sometimes it's heart wrenching and other times it's all you really need

as contrived as it is to end the essay like this, it's necessary to point out that in these moments, you're always on your own

- INTERNETFRIEND march 17, 2018