Deep Cuts

by Holly Brickley

How awful, to get old. As if it wasn’t bad enough being young. At least our knees responded to our commands.

“Of course I wonder about the road not taken, honey. That’s part of life. But I don’t regret it nearly as much as you think I do.” “How do you know what I think?” “Your disdain for my life choices has been palpable to me since you hit puberty.”

Woof

If my “one who got away” (you never ask about her, but she still exists) suddenly wanted to try again, I would not choose you. Why? Well, it’s not me, Percy, it’s you. (Cruel, but too good to delete.) You don’t love me. You don’t even love yourself.

Go off Raj!!!

You’re obsessive about inconsequential things, like song lyrics, and dismissive of things that matter, like food and sleep and other people’s feelings.

Yes!!!!!!!!

“It’s hard to lose someone, no matter the reason. And you’re losing two people at once. I am sorry this is happening. I just want you to see that you chose it, because I think that might mitigate the pain.”

Mom is my new favorite character

“My opinions have brought me nothing but problems!”

Kind of real lmao

Why would someone so smart be so fixated on pop music?” “I don’t know! We don’t get to choose what we love, any more than we can choose our talents.

Felt that

“Why Britpop?” “Well, it’s basically dance music, but it’s songs, you know? Great songs. With melodies and words and images that mean something. Why anyone would want to dance to oonce-oonce nnta-nnta is mystifying to me,

Scream! We hate oonce oonce in this house

“First question. Why no heads-up? ‘FYI, old pal, you’re about to be plagiarized’?”

Because you told me to leave you alone!” “Did I?” I said. “I believe I said I wanted to stop helping you with your music, a request you somehow found a way to violate entirely on your own. Well done.”

She got you there

“Were you worried people would think you’re not really writing your own songs, because you have a co-writer? Don’t you know that only happens to singer-songwriters who are women?”

I will always be jealous of you.” “Fine. I will always be inspired by you, even when you tell me not to be,” he said. “And I will always be critical of you too. I can’t stand it when you don’t live up to your talent.” “And I will always be destroyed by your criticism.”

When I told Zoe later, she said it sounded like we had exchanged a perverse version of vows.

Lmao

That is the best ‘fuck you’ in the history of ‘fuck yous.’ Like, okay, you don’t want to kiss me? I’m gonna make you sing about this mistake for the rest of your life, dude. You’re going to be singing about this at the fucking Troubadour in a fucking decade, dude.”

The way this whole interaction is just a garbled up version of the most basic Fleetwood Mac discourse

“It’s just a boy,” she said tenderly. “It’s just a pop song.

I slipped up the back stairs, spun my iPod wheel to Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk,

The movement of time through music players is maybe my favorite thing about this

But it’s a punk song, practically; it’s Lindsey Buckingham raging harder at Stevie Nicks than he ever had before, the kind of rage that comes only when you know you’re guilty too. It’s Mick Fleetwood fully unleashed. It’s a lyric that must be spit, that must be spat, a lyric aimed at shoving someone out of her own head, hard.

See

See, she used to get those same melty eyes when he sang. It wasn’t until he got good—until she looked around at his shows and saw other girls with that same dumb look—that she started going cold. Now, no matter how much she smiles or claps, her eyes harden when he sings. She wants to be the only one. She wants him as her deep cut, a B-side unearthed from a rarities bin, proof of her own specialness because she’s the one who discovered it,

I really think I hate her

I’d come alone because Zoe and Melissa had started going to bed early in their “old age,” and because the expectation of socializing at shows had always annoyed me anyway.

Me as both side of this

but I found myself longing for a swampy Miami cab ride or a bracing winter walk through Manhattan, anything to shock my system and mark the time.

I hate her and then she says something I relate to deep in my soul

“Someone Great” is about loss. Actually it’s about the death of James Murphy’s therapist, but we didn’t know that then, or at least I didn’t; Murphy was cagey in interviews. To me it was about how it feels when you’ve lost someone, and the one person you want to talk to about it—the one person who could help you grieve—is the person you’ve lost.

“You think you know everything.” He crossed the bed toward me on his knees. “You think the songs will come between us again.” “They will,” I said. And then I grinned, took his face in my hands. “But they’ll be so good.”

Good luck with that