tell me something hopeful: a perry/julie fanmix
Beyond her face I see the looming white posts of the Stadium roof arches, and beyond that, the deep cerulean sky. I slowly alternate my focus between her and the sky, letting her face blur into a peach-and-gold cloud, then refocusing it.
‘What?’ she says.
‘Tell me something hopeful.’
‘What kind of hopeful?’
I sit up, crossing my arms over my knees. I look out at the surrounding city, the crumbling buildings, the empty streets and the lonely sky, clean and blue and deathly quiet without its white-sketching airplanes.
‘Tell me this isn’t the end of the world.’
ocean avenue - yellowcard
there's a place off ocean avenue, where I used to sit and talk with you
we were both 16 and it felt so right
I am Perry Kelvin, a sixteen-year-old boy, watching my girlfriend write in her journal. The black leather cover is tattered and worn, the inside a maze of scribbles, drawings, little notes and quotes. I am sitting on the couch with a salvaged first edition of On the Road, longing to live in any era but this one, and she is curled in my lap, penning furiously. I poke my head over her shoulder, trying to get a glimpse. She pulls the journal away and gives me a coy smile. ‘No,’ she says, and returns her attention to her work.
‘What are you writing about?’
‘Nooot tellinnng.’
‘Journal or poetry?’
‘Both, silly.’
‘Am I in it?’
She chuckles.
I lace my arms around her shoulders. She burrows into me a little deeper. I bury my face in her hair and kiss the back of her head.
we are broken - paramore
cause we are broken
what must we do to restore our innocence
and all the promise we adored
When I sit back down her eyes are dry but still red. She sniffs and gives me a weak smile. ‘I guess I talk a lot of shit about Perry, but it’s not like I’m such a shiny happy person either, you know? I’m a wreck too, I’m just . . . still alive. A wreck in progress.’ She laughs a quick, broken laugh.
Two years ago today my father was crushed under the wall he was building, and I became an orphan. I have missed him for seven hundred and thirty days, my mother for even longer, but tomorrow I will not miss anyone. I think about this as I descend the winding stairs of my foster home, this wretched house of discards, and emerge into the city. Dad, Mom, Grandma, my friends . . . tomorrow I won’t miss anyone.
save you - simple plan
i wish that i could tell you something to take it all away
sometimes i wish i could save you and there're so many things that i want you to know
The grin is not mine to share any more, and I know this, I have accepted the way things are and the way things are going to be, even if she hasn’t and won’t. But at least I can protect her. At least I can keep her safe.
I don’t know the pain she’s speaking from, but I know it’s deep. It makes her hard and yet so terribly soft. It’s her thorns and it’s her hand reaching out from the thicket.
'Take care of her, will you?’ Perry whispers up to me. ‘She’s been through some hard stuff. Keep her safe.’
the cave - mumford & sons
but i will hold on hope, and i won't let you choke on the noose around your neck
She looks out of the airplane window at the distant mountains. ‘I tried to talk him down. Tried really hard to keep him here, but over the last couple of years it got pretty clear to everyone. He was just . . . gone. I don’t know if anything short of Christ and King Arthur returning to redeem the world could have brought him back. I sure wasn’t enough.’
the rescue - american hi-fi
i wish we could go back to the beginning
'cause there's something missing from your eyes
Julie nods, still looking at her plate. When she speaks again her voice is soft and faint, the voice of memories longing to be forgotten. ‘Something . . . happened to him. A lot of things, actually. I guess there came a point where he just couldn’t absorb any more, so he flipped over into a different person. He was this brilliant, fiery kid, so weird and funny and full of dreams, and then . . . just quit all his plans, joined Security . . . it was scary how fast he changed. He said he was doing everything for me, that it was time for him to grow up and face reality, take responsibility and all that. But everything I loved about him - everything that made him who he was - just started rotting. He gave up, basically. Quit his life. Real death was just the next logical step.’
hush - automatic loveletter
we were once perfect, me and you
your love's not live it's dead
A girl lives here in this metal house. Do I love her? Hard to say any more. But she is all that’s left.
There was a time when I treasured listening to her, when I found the commotion in her soul bitter-sweet and lovely, but I can no longer bear it. I lean over to kiss her goodbye, but my lips stiffen and I cringe away from her. I can’t. I can’t. I’ll collapse. I pull back and leave without touching her.
(bonus track)
across the universe - the beatles
Nothing’s gonna change my world, Lennon chants, over and over. Nothing’s gonna change my world.
Julie sings a high harmony, and I murmur a low. There on the hot white roof of humanity’s last outpost, we look out over our rapidly, hopelessly, irretrievably changing world, and we sing:
Nothing’s gonna change my world. Nothing’s gonna change my world.
(Save You is an m4a, jsyk.)