Deep Cuts

by Holly Brickley

Instead of sleeping that night I revised my end of the conversation in my head over and over, a lifelong pastime I always rationalized as productive since the lessons could apply to future interactions, though that never seemed to happen.

I had this dreamlike feeling of nearing some place I’d been looking for—a vacancy just my shape, hidden inside an enormous puzzle.

It’s just that authenticity seems to me only one metric by which to judge music, and I don’t see why it should swallow all the other ones, including beauty and fun.

I personally like to pretend the phrase “deep cut” has a totally different meaning, one that has nothing to do with anyone else’s opinion. How deep does it cut? How close to the bone? How long do you feel it?

“I think songs gave me a window into a magical life,” I said. “Something bigger, or whatever, waiting out there. And I felt like the only way to get there was through the songs. Like the songs, if I listened hard enough, would show me how to get it right.”

They were soulful and comfortable and had all the amenities that actually make people happy, like porches and window seats, and none of the things we believed to make us happy, like open-floor plans and living rooms optimized for Super Bowl viewing. They were built for reading and close conversation. Berkeley felt like a glitch in the modern machine, back then, an alternate universe for the chosen few. Maybe this is how everyone feels about their college towns.

That’s why the song was so short, I decided—because connection, like memories, came in the briefest of flashes.

I wondered if that was what made us feel so close sometimes. If the weirder the divide, the sweeter it was to cross.

I found it deeply disappointing even as I related to an awful seed of truth inside it: that all my attempts to grow, to find creative independence and purpose, were at least partly in service of becoming more lovable.

Honestly, how many different ways is it even possible for the same two people to break each other’s hearts?”