It’s mostly just this weird image I have of standing in line after the bell rang, waiting to go inside. I remember seeing the playground teacher leading her inside, and my sister crying, and being worried and confused. Was she in trouble? Had she done something wrong? I remember it felt weirdly alone. I knew something bad was happening but I had no idea what.

That’s all I really remember. I don’t remember how I found out about her broken arm. Some more weird images of the school’s office are floating around through my head but I don’t know if it’s real or imagined. But that moment really stuck with me. Maybe it’s because I always figured that if anything were to happen to one of us it would happen to me. That’s how it usually worked out. We were playing on some TV trays and I was the one who ended up with the two-inch gash by my eye. Later on, when we were teens, when she was teaching me to skateboard I was the one who fell off and fucked up his teeth and tore open his lip.

I still have the scars from both of those. She told me she felt bad about it once. I’m just happy for the stories.

My sister got a plaster cast and had lots of friends sign it. A few years later, when I was in fifth grade, some kid broke my arm and I didn’t go to the doctor for days, because I refused to believe that it wasn’t going to be okay. He put my arm in a sling and made bad jokes, and I felt like everyone was staring at me all the time.

I remember an occasion where someone asked if I wanted to go to the Snackbar. This is apparently what the cafeteria used to be called. Naturally I said yes, because I assumed they meant the bookstore, where we got our snacks, and I could be relied upon to want candy. And we went to this place which was foreign to me and serving food that wasn’t candy at all, and I was very upset. This wasn’t the Snackbar, this was some other place, some place serving food I wanted none of. It was shattering. I felt cheated. I felt like the world wasn’t working the way it’s supposed to.

I’m older now. I know the context of things, and I understand confusion, as much as any of us can. I still care a great deal about words and what they mean, though, and I still find it shattering when life doesn’t live up to my expectations. I have them so rarely, that when it doesn’t happen I don’t know what to do. I was expecting something. I had every reason to believe it would happen. When it doesn’t, I feel just like I did back then. Like there’s something that just fundamentally broke, and I’m left holding the pieces.

And I’d been thinking of that story lately, because sometimes an old story you’d forgotten for years is the best way to frame the world.

I’m sorry I want to give up and just focus on living my life the best that I possibly can, and hope that maybe you’re better off for it.

It’s not you, it’s me.

I still think of you a lot. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t, really. But it’s not all good. I hear about all of these things that you do and it makes me really uneasy. And it’s gotten to the point that I think I’m done hoping that I can fix you. And don’t get me wrong; there’s lots of really great things about you. Sometimes you turn up things I never dreamed of that are so much better than I imagined. But other times it’s like everything I hear about you is just depressing, and it just reminds me that there’s a lot of work to do.

I still like you and hope that we can be friends, but you’re a lot to deal with sometimes. I’m not as strong as I used to be. We have both come a long way since we first met and I have gone through many pairs of shoes, and I’m so tired and uncertain these days, and everything is bigger than I know what to do with and everything I was certain of has fallen through and I’m a long way from home. So if I stop caring so much about you, if I stop hoping you’ll get better one day, I want you to know, it’s not you, it’s me.

Maybe I’ll come back. I’ve probably left a hundred times before, in my own ways. I know I’ve come crawling back too many times to count. Maybe something really great will happen and I’ll be ready to take the world on again. But right now I have to focus on being me, and I’m not even sure how to do that. I hope you’re not upset, and I know you’ll be up for some awesome times in the future.

Yours,

Rob Mason

This was about 2005-2006, I guess. You may remember! I was always hanging out on the couches, along with some of my friends. I think there were two or three of you. I only remember one of your names, and that one of you was blonde. Apparently one time you complained about me to the guy who works in the cafeteria, who knew me. “Do you know Robert Mason?” you asked. And when he said he did, you just said how much you hated me.

I have no idea what I had done to earn your ire. I suppose it was probably just a case of being completely different people who happened to share proximity all the time. Apparently your hate for me was pretty intense. I’m sorry if I caused you to lose sleep or something. I mean, I’m sure you aren’t terrible people. Maybe you are very nice, and I just rubbed you the wrong way? So, I’m sorry. I hope that you don’t think back of how much you hated me from time to time, unless it’s just to laugh about the follies of youth. We should all laugh about the follies of youth.

Yours,

Rob Mason

I am so sorry. I didn’t know any better.

We were young and stupid and loud and obnoxious. We probably never tipped, or if we did it was in small change that we just left on the table in an annoying heap. It was probably worse than nothing. We stayed for hours, we were loud, we didn’t order very much, we were demanding and took up a lot of space. I think we must have thought of you as some weird combination between a vending machine and the lunch ladies at school–someone who existed to give us food in exchange for money and occasionally complain that we were breaking rules or being disruptive.

In our defense, we were in high school. We hadn’t really learned that the world around us existed. I mean, we knew, on some level, but it seemed like remote knowledge–like knowing that Mt. Everest exists. I’ve never seen it. I can’t conceptualize it. It’s out there and I know it and I believe it and on most levels I just don’t care.

I know better now. We all do. We’re nice to waitresses these days. In Seattle they actually liked seeing us because we were fun and tipped nicely and gave them someone to talk to. I appreciate that you have jobs that are demanding and often filled with annoying people and I try to be as pleasant as possible. I know that doesn’t make what we did any better, but I hope it helps to know that I’ve learned my lesson, and I wish I could make it up to you somehow.

Sadly sincerely,

Rob Mason

I’m sorry I thought you were ridiculous and a terrible idea for marketing. It’s not your fault your employers wanted to become synonymous with those cheap pens with company names on them that nobody pays attention to. I’m sorry that if I don’t lose your pen, your company name will probably end up getting scratched off to near illegibility. I’m sorry that those pens aren’t very good advertising, since most of the time the person who ends up with it has no idea where it came from, and even if they do they don’t care. I’m sorry I don’t like your pen as much as the one I stole from the Berkman center last year.

I’m also sorry that after I wrote “it’s not your fault” above I considered adding the clause “unless you came up with the idea, in which case I’m sorry that you are not very good at marketing, but I congratulate you on finding a way to get paid to hand out pens to college students.” I’m sorry that I’m not going to write out your company name here.

I’m sorry that it wasn’t a terribly good pen. It wouldn’t write for me earlier, when I needed a pen to write on a napkin. It’s one of those cheap Bic pens that has a cap and isn’t even clicky. I’m sorry that I’m probably going to lose that cap the next time I use the pen, and I’m sorry that I’ll probably either let a friend steal it or forget it at a restaurant somewhere. I would say that I am terrible at keeping pens, but that’s not true at all. I’m just terrible at keeping things I don’t care about.

Yours,

RM

Dear Canvassers Who Have Stopped Me At Various Times Around Northeastern,

I am sorry for wasting your time. I was never going to give you money, even if I had any to spare. But I feel bad and I really wish I could help in non-money-related ways.

The first time you stopped me, you were the guy who had just moved in to the place I’d just moved out of. It was cool or at least funny running into you. You needed to meet quota, and I appreciate that you were straightforward about that. I hope you managed despite wasting several minutes talking to me and only getting me to sign one of your little postcards in exchange. I am sorry I am broke and miserly.

The second time you stopped me, you were a cute girl who thought that the news article I read a few weeks ago that I was vaguely sure about was pretty neat. I signed yet another postcard, and I think I even checked the little box that said I would volunteer. You gave me a flier for working at Environment Mass, and we chatted about our majors and our lives and so on, and I am pretty sure you were hitting on me. If you were, I am sorry that we will never get coffee. You were gone when I went to get dinner later. I never got a call. I am sorry I am not helpful.

The third time you stopped me, you were very persistent, and I seriously considered saying “look, I have already signed like three postcards for you guys, I have no money, I am glad you exist but you don’t want to waste your time talking to me,” but I didn’t because you seemed so enthusiastic. You said a few things which were slightly dishonest, and I smirked and ignored them. You didn’t stop until I finally said I would not give you any money. I am sorry I found you amusing and entertained myself by making you come up with ways to counter my excuses.

The time you didn’t stop me, I was on my way to class. I’m sorry that I told you this instead of just continuing to walk. You hear that all the time, and it makes you wonder why they sent you to a college campus like they did, because everyone is either poor or on their way to class.

I am sorry that I embody the type of person you hate running into on college campuses, someone who is sympathetic and willing to listen and talk but has no interest in giving you money because that’s money I could spend on food or concerts or booze and at this stage in my life that’s a significant sum of money and I just can’t afford generosity. I am sorry that despite my attempts to be friendly and helpful you probably just sigh and shake your head and wonder why college students all suck.

Mostly sincerely,

Rob Mason

DIABLO: THE MOVIE

Teaser trailer.

A dark set–a dark sky, a faint horizon, wilderness. Moody music. A fire is lit, casting red lighting over:

Two figures, a MAN and a WOMAN, seated around a small campfire; around them the signs of battle, or at least skirmish, are barely visible.

MAN: I don’t understand it. It’s like they were–

WOMAN: Possessed?

Shot of mountainous country with a desolate and slightly ominous feel. The music swells in intensity. WOMAN speaks over this.

WOMAN: This is an evil neither of us can hope to comprehend. We need to find someone who knows. We need to find Cain.

Cut to many scenes of the MAN and WOMAN battling demons, zombies, et cetera. Music is appropriately fighty. The montage concludes with an image of a massive, terrifying demon. The MAN and WOMAN pause, glance at each other, and simultaneously raise their weapons to charge. Cut to black, silence. The lights slowly raise on DECKARD CAIN.

CAIN: Stay a while, and listen…

The title DIABLO flashes on the screen. Fin.

Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone?
This is their first album, and it is the one you may have heard. The single is called Flagpole Sitta. I have always thought the title is pretty appropriate for the tone of the album, at least partly because lyricist and vocalist Sean Nelson is the sort of person who would be concerned with that sort of thing. It is less polished than the other albums, but in a very appropriate way. This is an album about departures and reflection. I am not entirely convinced lo-fi is the term I want here, but it’s got a simple sound with pretty memories, beautiful vocals, and lyrics which are hopeful and nostalgic and sad. It is simple and straightforward and makes me happy. If you like your indie rock simple and nostalgic, you could do no better than this album.

King James Version
In contrast, the King James Version is a complex and sarcastic exploration of faith and skepticism and alienation. Polished, self-aware, and snarky, this album has a lot of energy and a lot of really great moments. Mostly it is a restless album, from Carjack Fever suggesting that we “empty all the minibars and leave this town in flames” to Sad Sweetheart of the Rodeo’s tale of its titular heroine and her life of corporate drudgery. There is a lot of dissatisfaction and restlessness expressed here in a lot of different ways, because Sean Nelson is excellent at capturing those subtle nuances of things. It closes with The Same As Being In Love, which is one of my favorite Harvey Danger songs and certainly my favorite closing track. If you like guitars and energetic well-constructed rock albums, you probably want this one first.

Little By Little…
This album came five years later and represents quite the departure stylistically, from the guitar rock of KJV to a more mellow, piano-driven sound. (It is also available for free as a download at their website, so you have no excuse for not listening. At all. This is free music, completely free, and it is a really good album. That is free.) The pianos give it a more mature sound, and lends itself nicely to an album which is darker and, if not exactly brooding, at least a little bleaker. (It also makes one of the happiest songs on the planet, Happiness Writes White, even prettier.) There are songs about record collections, stalkers, shattered relationships, and dying by what you live by. Despite this it ends on an optimistic note in Diminishing Returns, about finding something tangible in a world of -isms. It seems to say: This will all make sense one day, so just hang on. The perfect album for people who like introspective albums, and especially for people who like to fall in love with songs about someone who has fallen in love with their music collection.

It seems so cliche to say that the decade was characterized by change. And that’s not quite right. It was inconsistency. It was mercurial. It was frequently beautiful and frequently terrible, often at the same time. There are parts I don’t remember. I was a completely different person then. There are little fragments of memory, like fragments of a strange dream. Some days I wonder if they really happened.

I’ve lived in four places in the last five years. I’ve been in this city for a year now. More than a year, even, and I’m restless. I am far from home, but I have a home now. That’s new. I want to travel and explore. I want to find secret places and make them my own, and stumble home exhausted with a smile on my face because I have seen and experienced things that no one else knows.

I’m not sure what to think of this decade. I’m not sure what happened. It’s been that sort of quiet which is really restless underneath, where everything is moving into place, waiting for the other shoe to fall. It’s tense. It’s dissonant. It’s full of ghosts and regrets and memories. Everything that happened is screaming at me to write about it, but none of them are important anymore.

Here is one thing that happened in this decade. Maybe it will help make sense of things.

It was March of 2008, I believe, and Harvey Danger was performing their tenth anniversary public spectacle, a two-evening event in which they played essentially their entire discography. On the first night they played rarities and B-sides, along with their debut album, “Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone?”

Just before they played one of my favorite b-sides, a track called Incommunicado, Aaron Huffman and Jeff Lin switched instruments. Rachel Bowman came on the stage and I realized she was the same Rachel Bowman who sings some beautiful lo-fi songs. Sean Nelson said something about how much he liked it when Aaron Huffman and Jeff Lin switched instruments. To my knowledge this is the only song for which they do this.

Incommunicado is a song which used to be on the “Little By Little…” album, but it evidently didn’t fit with the rest of the album and was ultimately removed. It is beautiful and sweet. It opens with the line “I wish the words would fail me just for once.” Yet despite its charm it was ill-fated, and it is a secret now, a strange and unique and wonderful moment waiting to be found.

Happy New Year.