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However, it should also be noted that, on matters both big and small, sometimes accounts of the same event differ. The truth often lies, unclaimed, in the middle.
So this is a girl that desperately wants to connect. But there’s no one in her life who is truly interested in who she is, especially not her parents. And it really breaks her. But it is also how she grows up to become an icon. We love broken, beautiful people.
DAISY: I learned about sex and love the hard way. That men will take what they want and feel no debt, that some people only want one piece of you.
I was drawn to him mainly because he was drawn to me. I wanted someone to single me out as something special. I was just so desperate to hold someone’s interest.
There’s this peace that comes with knowing you have a person in the world who would do anything for you, that you would do anything for.
I said, “I love you as much as I’m willing to love anybody.” Which was true. I wasn’t really willing to be vulnerable with anybody at that point. I had felt too much vulnerability too young. I didn’t want to do it anymore.
That’s how it was back then. I was just supposed to be the inspiration for some man’s great idea. Well, fuck that. That’s why I started writing my own stuff.
I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else’s muse. I am not a muse. I am the somebody. End of fucking story.
Men often think they deserve a sticker for treating women like people.
Let me tell you the sweet spot for being in rock ’n’ roll. People think it’s when you’re at the top but no. That’s when you’ve got the pressure and the expectations. What’s good is when everybody thinks you’re headed somewhere fast, when you’re all potential. Potential is pure fuckin’ joy.
Camila called me, before we left on tour. Told me she’d broken up with Billy. I said, “I thought you loved him.” And she said, “He didn’t even try to fight me on it!” I said to her, “If you love him, you should tell him.” And she said, “He’s the one leaving! It’s on him to fix this.” CAMILA: Love and pride don’t mix.
Teddy Price was ugly as sin. A face only a mother could love. [Laughs] I’m just messing around. He was ugly, though. I liked that he didn’t seem to care. KAREN: That’s the glory of being a man. An ugly face isn’t the end of you.
And when you start to feel real success, when you start to live large and all that, you have to stop and ask yourself if you think you really deserve it. Anyone that isn’t a complete asshole will come up with the answer “No.” Because of course you don’t. When guys you grew up with are working three jobs. Or they’re lost overseas like we lost Chuck. Of course you don’t deserve it. You have to learn how to reconcile those two things. Having it and not deserving it. Or, you do what I did, and refuse to think about
Look, as a man without a dad, you don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re supposed to do and you don’t have anyone to ask. I got it later, when I had my own kids. It’s like being first in the line, cutting down the path with a machete. Just the word Dad. This word that we equated with deadbeat, asshole, alcoholic. Now it described Billy, too. He was supposed to find a way to make that word fit onto him. At least, when I went through it, I had Billy to look to. Back then, Billy didn’t have anybody.
That was the beginning of a bad time. Where I was not myself. Actually, no. I don’t like putting it that way—you’re never not yourself. You’re always you. It’s just, sometimes, who you are…who you are is a shitty person.
I wasn’t good at lying to her. I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing. People think lying is all bad but…I don’t know. Lying protects people sometimes.
You have these lines you won’t cross. But then you cross them. And suddenly you possess the very dangerous information that you can break the rule and the world won’t instantly come to an end. You’ve taken a big, black, bold line and you’ve made it a little bit gray. And now every time you cross it again, it just gets grayer and grayer until one day you look around and you think, There was a line here once, I think.
and I remember Camila looked at me and she said, “What are you trying to do?” She didn’t say it in an exasperated way. She was really asking me. What was I trying to do? I didn’t know how to answer her. I just shrugged and I remember how stupid I felt, shrugging at a time like that, with a woman like that. This woman carrying my child. And I was shrugging like a ten-year-old boy.
Sometimes I wonder if addicts aren’t all that different from anybody else, they are just better at lying to themselves. I was great at lying to myself.
No amount of advice or lectures or trying to chain somebody down ever stopped anyone who didn’t want to stop in the first place.
CAMILA: I think you have to have faith in people before they earn it. Otherwise it’s not faith, right?
It was a big lesson for me when I was young—being given things versus earning them. I was so used to being given things that I didn’t know how important it is for your soul to earn them.
When you’re in a situation like that, when you have a man looming over you, it’s as if every decision you made to lead to that moment—alone with a man you don’t trust—flashes before your eyes. Something tells me men don’t do that same thing. When they are standing there, threatening a woman, I doubt they count every wrong step they made to become the asshole they are. But they should.
Music can dig, you know? It can take a shovel to your chest and just start digging until it hits something.
When someone’s presence gives you energy, when it riles up something in you—the way Daisy did for me—you can turn that energy into lust or love or hate. I felt most comfortable hating her. It was my only choice.
None of them cared very much. In general, when you have drugs to spare and a nice cottage to do them in, you’re probably not attracting people that care about you.
I guess I’m saying…if you redeem yourself, then believe in your own redemption.
And I always noticed that he used to squeeze the lime into her drink before he handed it to her whenever we were all out somewhere. He’d take his own lime and squeeze it into her glass, too. He’d squeeze the two wedges in and then throw them in with the ice. It seemed like a beautiful thing to have, somebody giving you their lime wedge. I mean, I hate lime, actually. But you get the point.
It was fun. Actually, it wasn’t that fun, it was just that I was happy. Everything seems fun when you’re happy.
People say that life keeps moving, but they don’t mention that it does stop sometimes, just for you. Just for you and your girl. The world stops spinning and just lets you two lie there. Feels like it, anyway. Sometimes. If you’re lucky. Call me a romantic if you have to. Worse things to be.
The Chosen ones never know they are chosen. They think everyone gets a gold carpet rolled out for them.
When you have everything, someone else getting a little something feels like they’re stealing from you.
I don’t think Billy actually resented anything I asked for. All of it was reasonable. He was just pissed because I knew how much power I had and he would have preferred I either not know it or not use it. I am sorry but that is not my style. I mean, it shouldn’t be anybody’s, really.
I run hot and I always have. I am not going to sit around sweating my ass off just so men can feel more comfortable. It’s not my responsibility to not turn them on. It’s their responsibility to not be an asshole.
I used to care when men called me difficult. I really did. Then I stopped. This way is better.
“There’s just as much to hate about you as there is to like about you. And that’s annoying.”
said, “It’s like some of us are chasing after our nightmares the way other people chase dreams.” He said, “That’s a song, right there.”
It wasn’t behind me. My addiction. I kept hoping it would feel like it was. Like I didn’t need to keep looking over my shoulder all the time. But that doesn’t really exist. At least not for me. It’s a fight you keep fighting, some times are easier than others. Daisy made it harder. She just did. DAISY: I was paying the price for the parts of himself that he didn’t like.
It’s hard to explain, because I really do think it defies reason. But I knew him well enough to know that he could be trusted. And I knew that no matter what mistakes he made—no matter what mistakes I might make, too—that we would be fine. I don’t know if I would have believed in that type of security before I had it. Before I chose to give it to Billy. And by giving it to Billy, I gave it to myself, too. But saying to someone, “No matter what you do, we’re not over…” I don’t know. Something about that relaxed me.
Some people just don’t threaten each other. And other people threaten everything about each other. Just the way it is.
I really felt like I understood him. And I think he understood me. You know, things like that, that kind of connection with a person, it is sort of like playing with fire. Because it feels good, to be understood. You feel in sync with a person, you feel like you’re on a level that no one else is.
I think people that are too similar…they don’t mix well. I used to think soul mates were two of the same. I used to think I was supposed to look for somebody that was just like me. I don’t believe in soul mates anymore and I’m not looking for anything. But if I did believe in them, I’d believe your soul mate was somebody who had all the things you didn’t, that needed all the things you had. Not somebody who’s suffering from the same stuff you are.
It hurts to care about someone more than they care about themselves. I can tell that story from both sides.
She’s going to be the girl bleeding in a beautiful dress until it kills her. I felt…lost, sad, depressed, sick. I felt really hopeless but also like I didn’t have the luxury of giving up. Like I was going to have to fight for her—fight for her against her—until I lost. Because there was no winning. I didn’t see how I could win the war.
I couldn’t stay because when I looked at Daisy, wet and bleeding and out of it and half-near falling down, I did not think, Thank God I stopped using. I thought, She knows how to have fun.
The thing is, I’m a person who survives despite his instincts. My instincts said to run toward the chaos. And my better brain sent me home to my woman.
Why did I hurt myself like that? I can’t explain it. I wish I could. I hated it about myself. I hated it about myself and I kept doing it and then I hated myself more. There are no good answers about this.
I decided to write a song about a woman that felt like sand through your fingers, like you could never really catch her. As an allegory for the things I couldn’t have, couldn’t do.
But giving up wasn’t cool. Especially not after trying for, you know, a couple of hours, tops. That’s the problem with people who don’t have to work for things. They don’t know how to work for things.
She was always good. Confidence is being okay being bad, not being okay being good.
