Prompt: "A song about platonic love"
Selected by Joe
"One Trick Ponies"
Bottle It In, 2018
I feel obligated to pull up the phone and text at least two of my friends every time I listen to "One Trick Ponies." Just to see what's up. Just to check in. You know how it goes. Sunny painted a really accurate picture in miniature of it a week or two ago. He may have a little sarcastic about the "short one-to-two-line texts," but I really do think that the ritual is important as we get older. It feels good to let someone know you care, and it feels good to know that someone cares to send you that text and say wassup. I can empathize with the minor hurt at not getting a response (I am fully invested in the search for B. and will do anything I can to help). I'm not petty about it, and I know that it happens to many relationships as you grow up. People grow apart. Sometimes people don't feel like staying in touch; conversely, sometimes people need more than that text, and find that the other person isn't meeting those needs because they don't have time anymore to go anywhere or do anything, and so the texts aren't enough, and it withers anyway. I've been on both sides of that equation.
I think the trick is to hold that love in your heart forever, no matter what, but to at least keep it on ice if you have to. You never know when life's circumstances will bring the friendship to the forefront again.
I've been thinking a lot recently about this idea of friendships and the platonic love that grows from them. If someone asked me if I had friends, of fucking course the answer would be yes. Even after so many friendships and acquaintenceships have withered away in the past couple decades, there are still a healthy 50 people or so in my life that I would feel very comfortable texting right now to say hi, say how are you, see what's new. But I think the interesting thing is that very few, if any, of these friends live close enough that I could see them in person without any effort.
"Effort" is the key word. There are regular rituals that bring friends together—annual parties, quarterly book clubs, children's birthday parties—but those require effort, and as you get older, it gets tougher and tougher to give that effort. Geographical distance is by far the biggest, and maybe even the only, factor that determines how much effort is required. And the fact of the matter is that basically none of my friends live close enough to me that no effort would be required. My college friends have always been scattered all over the city and beyond. My hometown crew—the original no-effort-required pals—have all abandoned Northeast Philadelphia. It's just me and one other guy left, and the infrequency that he answers texts makes the distance seem pretty large anyway.
"Effort" is the key word. There are regular rituals that bring friends together—annual parties, quarterly book clubs, children's birthday parties—but those require effort, and as you get older, it gets tougher and tougher to give that effort. Geographical distance is by far the biggest, and maybe even the only, factor that determines how much effort is required. And the fact of the matter is that basically none of my friends live close enough to me that no effort would be required. My college friends have always been scattered all over the city and beyond. My hometown crew—the original no-effort-required pals—have all abandoned Northeast Philadelphia. It's just me and one other guy left, and the infrequency that he answers texts makes the distance seem pretty large anyway.
Human beings needs friends, and I have friends, so this will not devolve into me complaining or anything. Jeez, I mean there are around a dozen friends every day sending me emails for this very blog, and that interaction, however small, means a lot to me. I need friends and I have friends. But I've been thinking lately that maybe it would be nice to have friends that live in walking distance too, ya know?
I don't know how to manufacture that. I don't even know if you can. When I was growing up, my parents became friends with my friends' parents. They made it seem easy. They still keep in touch with those parents even though I have basically no contact with my original friends. What I don't know—and what I wouldn't know how to ask them without sounding like an asshole that they fear I am or the weirdo that they know I am—is whether those friends of theirs were originally friends of circumstance or if it was true friendship from the beginning. I make small talk with some of the dads of my oldest daughter's school friends, but after a whole school year I don't feel like I'm at a place where I'd know how to "make plans" with them. I wouldn't call them friends. I don't know how to make that leap. I don't feel any interest from them in being my friend, and I don't know whether that's because they are in the same position as I am and don't feel confident enough to pull the trigger, or if they can tell I'm not the type of person they want to be friends with.
Alcohol would have obviously solved all this, but that's not really an option anymore. I don't need to state my feelings on that subject because that's happened ad nauseam already, but I will say that it makes me wonder how crucial alcohol is to any fledging relationship, and more specifically, how crucial it was to the friendships that I saw my parents form with their peers in real time. I also wonder sometimes whether I'm too strange of a guy to make new friends, specifically new friends in the Northeast.
The friends I have who grew up in this area are my friends because of the bonds we built through mutual experience—note that maybe only half of them have ever had even a single thing to do with this blog, and the other half would have no idea what the fuck I was talking about if I talked about "my blog." I'm not saying we don't have anything in common. Far from it. But I do think that you probably need to share similar values when you build new friendships, and some friendships are so old and well-established that they are grandfathered in even if values are dissimilar over time. I just think the likelihood of finding someone my age in this fucking neighborhood who shares my interests and values and maybe even hobbies is probably pretty low. It's a conservative-leaning, generally under-educated part of the city, and I'll acknowledge that my hobbies are a little niche and maybe not necessarily transferrable from internet to in-person.
The friends I have who grew up in this area are my friends because of the bonds we built through mutual experience—note that maybe only half of them have ever had even a single thing to do with this blog, and the other half would have no idea what the fuck I was talking about if I talked about "my blog." I'm not saying we don't have anything in common. Far from it. But I do think that you probably need to share similar values when you build new friendships, and some friendships are so old and well-established that they are grandfathered in even if values are dissimilar over time. I just think the likelihood of finding someone my age in this fucking neighborhood who shares my interests and values and maybe even hobbies is probably pretty low. It's a conservative-leaning, generally under-educated part of the city, and I'll acknowledge that my hobbies are a little niche and maybe not necessarily transferrable from internet to in-person.
I'm just curious as to whether I'll eventually find myself so desperate for in-person, geographically convenient friendships that I will be spending a non-zero amount of time in some Fox Chase dude's basement with a bunch of acquaintances I have very little in common with, or if the communication I share with my great friends over the internet and through text message will be enough to emotionally satisfy me as I enter my 40s and find myself a little lonely sometimes (outside of my family, which, it should go without saying, is not the type of love that I'm reflecting upon today).
"One Trick Ponies" has a way of grounding me when I get wrapped up in these types of thoughts. Especially the verses: "Loved them all through many a lifetime / Some are gone, but some still strong / Some are weird as hell, but we love 'em / Some are one trick ponies, but we embrace 'em." I don't know if this was Vile's intention, but when I hear this song, I think about the friends in my life, the ones right now, and how different they all are too, both in individual personalities and in various shapes and sizes of bonds that I share with each, and how my heart overflows with love for all of them even so.
There's just something nice about having that kind of love in your life. This isn't painful love. It's not soaring love or wild or untamed love or love that's hot to touch. It's instead deeply embedded, steady, reliable, and low-simmering. I appreciate being able to feel this love, whenever I want, whenever I stop what I'm doing and send a quick text.
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