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I once heard that the Japanese approach to life is you work every day toward perfection, knowing you’ll never reach it, but always moving closer.
It sounded imperfect but we were imperfect together. Separately our two different melodies sounded incomplete, but when they weaved in and out of one another, they created something real. Something cool. It felt intentional.
group of godless miscreant skate rats. These were my people. I fell right in.
We were young and stupid and unstoppable.
We were fearless. Invincible. Ascendant. Immortal. Fuck you.
When Tom wants something, he is relentless in his pursuit. He sees where he wants to be and simply starts walking toward it, confident in the knowledge that nothing can stop him. He puts in the work. He’s a guy who makes things happen. He is his own biggest proponent and most ardent believer. He cannot be told no. It’s both inspiring and infuriating.
This established a dynamic early on that would remain for years to come: Tom dreamed big and I saw it through. He strove and I stabilized. He’s the guy reaching for more and I’m the guy making sure the band can withstand the structural pressure from the leap to hyperspace.
Maybe 182 is the number lovingly painted on my childhood sled, long before I became a morally bankrupt newspaper tycoon, dying alone among my riches. Maybe it’s a blank canvas and everyone paints their own interpretation of 182. Maybe the real 182 is the number of friends we made along the way.
TO TOUR IN A VAN, you’ve got to want it. Anyone with any semblance of home or normalcy or decorum or compassion for their fellow man has no place in a van tour. Van touring is as close as one can get to the days of pirates roaming the open seas, for better and for worse. It strips life down to the bare essentials. Food. Music. Show. Laundry occasionally. Sleep if you’re lucky.
Sure, it seemed like a one-in-a-million shot, but one-in-a-million happens to me all the time.
took our songs, which we thought were already pretty fast and explosive, and threw kerosene on them.
Yes, I’m laughing and having the time of my life, but I’ve also wondered how much blood my bathtub holds.
I didn’t overthink or second-guess anything. I just got the fuck out of the way. Sometimes I look back and I miss that freedom and innocence. I wish I could get out of my own way more
But even weirder than that is that everything Skye and I told the old guy at the bar ended up coming true. On Valentine’s Day in 2000 I proposed to her and by December we were married. We ended up having one kid, a boy. And we own a nice home where we’re very happy. And we’re still in love, just like we told him.
The way my anxiety works is: Once my brain analyzes a situation and considers what could go wrong, I default to believing that it absolutely will go wrong. The worst-case scenario will find me.
They say never meet your heroes, but I didn’t know what the rule about kissing them was.
I know how divorce feels, and the band breaking up felt like divorce. Bitter and acrimonious. Hostile and cold. We tore our family apart.
The best way I can describe it is this: blink is blink, and Angels & Airwaves is Angels & Airwaves, but Tom is always Tom.
TRAVIS STILL TALKED ABOUT TOM the way a kid talks about his dad who went out for smokes five years ago.
“Hmm, why am I so unhappy lately?” I’d ask myself as I stared into a beam of pure concentrated negativity for the tenth consecutive hour. It was morbidly addicting.
The universe is sending you a lesson and you need to be open to learning it.”
In a way, I think Matt knew this day would come. blink-182 will always be Mark, Tom, and Travis. Maybe I knew it, too, even when I didn’t.
