I think most prog rock is pretentious and I can't stand the majority of the things that Maynard James Keenan has put out into the world, in fact I remember someone putting on a wine documentary where he had been the main focus point and i thought, fucking hell, I knew I never liked Tool (could that have to do with that one guy that was always at the house parties that had a fucking bedazzled Tool shirt? Yeah, yeah it does.) there are maybe three punk bands I can listen to, as much as important as a good chorus I cannot always navigate the field of the odd harmonizing that reminds me of surf rock when there is no surfing in said music (obviously there are more shades of the genre, but that's for another time). Charming in the way that there's something that's inexplicably lovable about pompous blowhards, I thought to myself, my god, he's just so beautiful, he's like a Reni painting, he looks like that one guy from my brother's guitar magazine but he's insufferable, like, a prepubescent boy who just learned the word cocksucker and learned how to break curfew. And after the two wolves in me argued for a good two hours, not only were you all those things, but you were scathing and funny and someone that I felt compelled to try to chip away at.
That was some of the best time in my life, I was present enough to enjoy the hazy kind of daydream that kind of waved off of you like water in the distance in a drought. You were mean, brusk and difficult, you were romantic and secretive and sweet. The duality of man, I suppose. There aren't many things that I can look at in my life and think, no, I'd do that differently because do-overs never taste right. But every so often I'll remember something from that time, when I was awake and we were all laughing and I would stay there longer, I think, more than anywhere else. I remember the cliche ways we would stay up in the warm yellow light in the dark, talking about concept albums and trading notes on what lyrics could mean, how I told you about the time I knew a girl who wrote a whole novella about the disappearance of Richey Edwards and you didn't think it was silly, or I was barely 20 and you thought it was kind of funny that I was trying to impress you with stuff I knew about the things I heard you talking about. It was one of them.
Eventually after so many months of prodding and second hand record stores (because remember when that was a thing? I miss that), you weren't a different person with me, but the facets and the warmth that was always there became that much more apparent. I will never know if it was because I was relentless, if I looked like a drowned cat and you pitied what you saw, if the larger alternative subculture trying to be nice to their own or you saw that I was serious or something else altogether, but you felt so safe for so long for me and I'd never managed to thank you. The world was terrifying for me, all I wanted to do was go home and there were so many nights where you told me that home changed and even if I couldn't see it then, I'd be good, this would be good.
Today you are still insufferable, you still look like someone who's too pretty to be in a dive bar but goes anyway because of how you know how you look in the back mirror to everyone else there. You're upsettingly witty, intelligent, disarming and still the same guy who has always been so deeply in love with falling in love but would prefer to hide the heart on his sleeve with miticulously pointed barbs. I love you so very much and I hope that you have a fantastic birthday in the warm summer sun, because you're a freak and you like to tan.
