This is a song I always tell a very long story about at the beginning because I want to make sure that the one person who’s in the crowd who is actually experiencing the story at that exact moment knows that I have got your back. It’s hard for me to imagine that there’s anyone who hasn’t experienced that crushing loss of waking up one morning and having this brief moment where you’re thinking, ‘Oh, I’m waking up, it’s nice, I slept, I’m waking up, the light is coming through the window, it’s all right…oh fuck. I broke up with the person I love yesterday.’ And then suddenly, it’s really this amazing, cinematic thing where the darkness floods in from the corners of your eyes, and if you’re a big ol’ drama queen like me, you just start crying immediately….It sounds funny when you’re talking about it, but if you’re down in it, it’s like, seriously, you think nothing could be worse. If they’d cut off both my arms, I’d rather them do that than for me to feel this feeling that so-and-so is gone, and isn’t coming back, and it’s so horrible, and so whoever you are that’s suffering, I wrote this song for you. It’s called Woke Up New.
The reason I want everybody to sing along isn’t because I’m trying to massage my own ego, although it does also do that. It’s also because if every single person in the room, and I do mean every single person, in the balconies, at the bars, wherever the fuck you might be… If you all sing along then what we’re doing here tonight ceases to be about a group of guys with snazzy white shirts, a raised piece of flooring, backstage passes and a fucking ego problem shouting at you for an hour and a half. And instead becomes about a group of people in a room who are equals, together, who are making a sound together. We’re doing something interesting, something transcendent that takes us out of the mundane bullshit that we all put up with all day, every fucking day for the rest of our lives and thats what music is all a-fucking-bout. Are you with me?
“
| — |
Frank Turner, in the middle of Photosynthesis.
This. Right here.
|
That awkward moment where, just briefly, you want to make out with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
There are some people you like immediately, some whom you think you might learn to like in the fullness of time, and some that you simply want to push away from you with a sharp stick.
I thought that adulthood would basically consist of having a series of very interesting conversations about great books. It turns out adulthood primarily consists of standing in line and being on hold.
Make good stuff, then make it easy for people to buy it. There’s your anti-piracy plan.
There are British people who are cool, hard as it is to believe, and then there are people like me, who seem to be made of tweed.
I have very few concrete rules for the music in this bar, but I think ‘DON’T PLAY LAST CARESS’ is on there in bold.
From now on, anytime someone’s being a pussy about something, I shall call them ‘Benedict Cumbersnatch.’
“
| — |
Me, at my New Year’s Day waffle gathering.
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fishingboatproceeds:
robofillet:
My latest brochure from Kenyon College, one of the many schools to which I am applying. I didn’t even know John went there, so imagine my surprise when I saw this familiar quote. Out of context, as always.
You can’t escape it, John.
It’s really funny to me that the college from which I graduated would use this quotation, since A. I disagree with it, and B. even the character in the novel they are quoting eventually disagrees with it, and most importantly C. the place I learned that there is a point to life other than seeking remarkableness was Kenyon College.
Boosting the signal, in hopes that Kenyon College will see this.
