Kevin Emerson - Exile

“He said it’s better to burn out than fade away. Kurt Cobain quoted it in his suicide note. But they’re wrong. I want to do all those things and then still be around later, like, get old, get a lifetime achievement award fifty years from now, to still be . . .” He throws his arms up as if to indicate the world. “In it. Does that sounds silly?”

Silly or possibly painfully romantic. “No,” I say.

“But now I find out that my musical genes come from someone who did his best to be out of it, who couldn’t survive his own success.”

I find myself taking his hand, and buzzing at what he’s saying, so much like the thoughts I’d had this morning, sandwiched between oblivion and optimism. And I’m thrumming with the idea of this boy, this dark, busy mess of a boy, and how both of us have ended up exiled together . . .

Now what, then?

“Caleb.” I see his eyes snap down, just as affected by the use of his name. “I know what you’re talking about. Well, not totally. My dad sells concrete and is home every night at six. But the rest . . .”

An absolutely screaming baby is wheeling by us, the mom shushing it. I want to get us to a more private spot but I don’t want to lose this moment. And also Caleb is taking my other hand. Now we are two people holding each other’s hands facing each other, which makes people notice us and give us a wide berth, and I am determined to finish what I was going to say.

“If you don’t want to burn out, then you need to stop deleting Twitter accounts and alienating everyone in PopArts, and playing guitar alone.”

Caleb looks away and shrugs, a touch sulkily. “I guess.”

From a business point of view, what I can feel myself about to say may not be a good idea. The grizzled, veteran me knows better. Throwing in with the mercurial head-case singer type? Never good. But maybe Caleb is just a singer of the average head-case variety who happens to be going through a really rough patch. I heard that song behind the school. Nobody at the Kickoff Concert had anything like it. I feel as certain as I can that I’ve found my next project.

“I can help you,” I say. “You can put together a band, and I’ll manage. I know what to do. Your job is to get”—before I can consider stopping myself, I reach out and touch his chest with my index finger—“ this out into the world. Then everything you’re talking about can happen.”

Caleb shrugs, but then he takes my hand. “Maybe this is why I asked you out. How do you make everything sound so possible ?”

I want to ask Caleb if this is a line he’s used before. But no, I don’t really want to know. I don’t care to know. Maybe he’s another band boy but so what so what so what? Sometimes things happen and we feel things because we are who we are and we can’t control it.

“Because it is possible,” I hear myself saying, and I’m leaning forward, my body seeming to have already made up its mind about what happens next, and suddenly I’m terrified: am I really thinking about him as my next project or am I thinking about him as this cute, wounded beautiful soul, so honest on the surface, no games, no quoting his own lyrics at me, and getting hotter by the second? Slow down! It’s too soon! Remember last time — And I know, oh I know, this is so . . . Not. A good. Idea. Where’s one of those fortune-tellers made out of folded paper, a silly Seventeen magazine quiz, a flower to pluck petals, anything that would give me a sign that could make me feel certain about what to do next—

But I tip up on my toes and kiss him anyway.

I think it surprises him, but then he responds and, has it really been three months since I felt this feeling because, oh, kissing, hello! And this is exceptionally good and it makes me wonder if we’re made to think each new kiss is the best one we’ve ever had, or if it’s possible that there are just frequencies between people, wave vibrations that align in a perfect hum. Maybe it’s our relation to the magnetism of the planet, or the specific arrangement of our molecules, or maybe we both just so happen to have slightly elevated levels of some mineral, let’s say manganese, in our blood. Who knows? But there is something, something more than just the simple physics of lips and tongues at work here, and it’s vibrating me like a kite string and it’s almost like I don’t need to know any more. We’ve only talked for half an hour and yet I don’t need to know what cereal he likes or what his politics are or which Kurt Vonnegut novel he read first. None of it matters because of this frequency that is making me long to slide my cheek slowly down his neck to his shoulder and feel his arms at my waist pulling me close so that my lungs can’t fully expand.

Except I pull back. Take. A. Deep. Breath. “Okay,” I manage to say. “Wow.”

“Yeah,” Caleb breathes. “Um, thanks.”

“We should probably get back to school,” I say. “Either that, or . . . never mind.”

“What?” He takes me gently by the shoulders. “What were you going to say?”

“Nothing. It was silly—”

He kisses me back. “Tell me.”

Woozy. “I was just going to say that we either go back to school or instead we head to Long Beach and stow away on a cargo boat headed to Palau.”

“Two solid choices.” Caleb hugs me. “Probably school. For now.”

“We’ll need degrees in Palau. To start a music school.”

“And we should learn Palauean first.”

“Palau-ese?”

“Wait . . . we should get this right.”

I check my phone. “Palauan.”

“We’ll learn Palauan.”

“Yes.”

We walk, drifting along. He takes my hand. “That was definitely not in my plan,” says Caleb as we go. “I mean, I thought about it.”

“You thought about what?”

“Well, I mean I’m a guy . . .”

“Right.” I don’t bother telling him that girls have those thoughts, too. We’re just better at poker.

The end of our walk is as silent as the start, and yet, this silence is a whole other world, nearly bursting with possibility. I expect the school to be empty. But when I look at my watch I see that barely forty-five minutes have passed. Last period will be starting soon.

We stop in the same hall outside PopArts, the circle complete. The last moment before returning to the real timeline, and I’m almost sad. “So,” I say.

“So,” he replies.

This makes me want to kiss him again, but the halls feel like they have eyes. “So . . . that.”

“That.”

Before we can say any more, the bell rings, and the hall begins to fill.

Caleb takes a step back. He motions like he’s going to head to class. So I take a step back, too. We both smile. We both turn away. But he is the only thing on my mind for the rest of the afternoon.

VINYL CUFFLINKS

Where We Are Music Infinite

—posted by ghostofEliWhite on September 17

More from the anniversary of Into the Ever & After . Here’s something interesting: I was reading through the interview archives in On The Tip of Your Tongue , the anthology of interviews, letters, and journal entries from the band, and I noticed a quote, the significance of which I’d totally missed before. When asked by KNBC’s Hollywood beat reporter Sherrie Pine how the new record was coming along, Eli said:

“Slow slow slow, but the end is in sight. I think we’ve got seven tunes tracked. Kellen’s are all done, as usual. I’ve gotten a few of mine down, but it’s these last few that I’m most excited about. I think they’re my best work, and I can’t wait to lay them down.”

You do the math, friends. If they’d recorded seven, then doesn’t that mean that Eli is talking about the LOST SONGS? Is it possible that he had those songs sketched out, at least in his mind?