Nothing like riding into a Beijing night with My Bloody Valentine. It's enough rickety shoegaze to make you want to fold up your bike, crush your heart, and wrought iron with your hands. And, while it might seem like you are going somewhere, meeting up with friends, and carousing with your most social, mesmerizing, presentable self, your heart is really somewhere else on another planet, kidnapped. "We're from the same universe."
He said, and it's a good thing too, because human minds are just as vast.
"You are way too blindly optimistic," S said, almost infuriatingly. He is one among my many cynical friends in Beijing who subscribes to the idea that life is suffering, but once you face the music, perhaps happiness will be earned and savored. "Whatever happens, record this, remember how you feel so one day you can trace back and figure out what happened."
When he shook me hard with both hands out of love, frustration, and anger, I wished with all my being that there was a way to take out the demon from him, but in this life, we all have different roles to play. One day he'll look back and it'll all make sense again. M says, "we need you around to balance us out." You think it's the constant conversations and debates that will change people, but no, sometimes, all you need is a happy little fool to strike a cord.
I told him: "we all need anchors, some extravagant hope to guide us to great things," and that is how I will live. I know I'm hopelessly optimistic to the point of sickening. I know it takes deep-seated narcissism to think you can change the world, one person at the time. I know it's ballsy to want to be "giver," because "what makes you think you have something to give?"
"Everyone has something to give, whether it's time, friendship, or otherwise."
We end the night with me fleeing on my bike. M said, "I'm happy for you, Q," and in my delirious mind I wished that everyone, everyone could feel for a second what I was feeling. Even if it's fleeting. Even if I'm stupid. Even if as I fly into the night shouting some words at him that I'm sure he'll write into a script and then a truck comes crushing into my gut, that will be fine, because for one second, I felt life burning through my world.