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hello, hello, famolly, and welcome to the fifth installment of behind the music. today I’ll be sharing more about the song All My Friends, which is track number five on the Crystal Eyes album. before I get too deep into this entry, I wanted to let you all know that if you ever want a clearer idea of what my songs are saying (literally) you can find the lyrics to all of my officially released songs on my website. I’ll even include a handy little link right here so you don’t have to go digging around for it.
so, All My Friends. when I first heard this song in my head, it always gave me a sort of faraway, dream-like feeling. almost like a sort of nostalgia, but more of a somber reflection rather than a sentimental one, if that makes sense.
the beginnings of this song were birthed during a period in my mid-twenties when I went back to live at my parent’s house for about six months. life as I had grown to know it was changing swiftly and drastically, and I needed a steady place to land while I figured out what direction I wanted to go. thankfully, my parents offered to let me temporarily crash at their place (my childhood home). I was going through a lot of self-discovery and healing during that time, forcing myself to face difficult things that I had been pushing away for awhile. it often became overwhelming and I struggled at times to find healthy ways of compartmentalizing and coping with what became a constant stream of dread and worry. I found myself reconnecting with a lot of old friends during this time, too. while I very much needed this strengthening of my social circle, I began to realize that I was slipping into a sort of party lifestyle that had never seemed appealing to me before. grab a few drinks at one spot, go to the next and do the same, then a few more after that. squeezing through crowds of people to get to the bar, music so loud we could feel it rumbling in our chests. then finally get home in the early hours of the morning and find ways to drown out the eerie silence of everything until you (hopefully) fall asleep.
when All My Friends was nothing more than a couple of lines in my head, I was too overwhelmed to think about these nights much in the context of celebrating my friendships or any piece of positivity I might have been able to find in my life. It wasn’t uncommon for those evenings to begin with conversations about work and life in general but then quickly escalate to thinking-out-loud varieties of existential panicking. you know, simple questions like what we were doing with our lives, how and why our pasts had impacted who we were becoming, and what even the purpose of anything is. eventually we would become so light that we’d drift away from these heavy topics and forget about them for a weekend. but they’d inevitably resurface as we had to come back to reality and prepare for the week ahead.
All My Friends in its entirety came together as I started reflecting more upon those dark pockets of existential dread that tinged most of my weekend outings around that time. it is an organization of one rather specific tangled knot that was in my head: why was this lifestyle suddenly part of my routine? and why didn’t I feel good about it?
I don’t want to be misunderstood here. I have many cherished memories from nights like those, and I still very much enjoy an evening out on the town. but I’ve found that using party time as a distraction from life has a very different undertone than using party time as a celebration of life. sometimes, in order to go from the former to the latter, you need to sit in a state of sober focus on yourself, your mind, and all of the things that have been hiding in there. it can be truly terrifying, especially when you’re trying to resolve questions that may be too big for anyone to answer. but, you can pick them apart into smaller pieces and rebuild them into something that makes sense to you. something that is uniquely yours. something that is worthy of a little party time celebration.