Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Private Message | EchoZone Internal Chat
To: DeadStrings
Subject: People can be infuriating
You’ll understand this. I know you will. You feel music—not just hear it, not just play it. You breathe it the way other people inhale oxygen, and that’s why I’m messaging you right now instead of punching someone’s face—I’m a pacifist.
I just had a long, exhausting conversation with this guy who’s apparently convinced he’s the sole interpreter of every song ever written.
You know the type—condescending voice, smug smile, full of unsolicited trivia.
He swore up and down that “The Logical Song” is just about a guy asking for help, some upbeat little cry for guidance wrapped in catchy chords and a cool sax solo. I nearly choked on my saliva.
He’s wrong. To me, that song is a fucking requiem. A goodbye letter to childhood wrapped in synths and sarcasm. It’s the unraveling that happens when you wake up one day and realize you’ve outgrown the version of yourself that believed the world was good just because you were told it was.
It’s that moment when wonder curdles into weariness, and nothing feels safe anymore. Not even yourself.
It’s not about asking for help.
It’s about mourning who you were before the world got its hands on you.
There’s the line where he’s asking what we’ve learned, and every time I hear it, something cracks wide open inside me. Because it’s not a real question. It’s a scream. It’s someone clawing through years of bullshit, trying to find the truth in the rubble of everything they were told to be.
It’s about realizing you’ve been so busy becoming who they said you should be—sensible, logical, responsible—that you forgot who you actually are. Or were.
And, yeah, maybe that sounds dramatic. But, fuck, so is losing the dreamer inside you. So is watching the magic slip away, one practical decision at a time, until you can’t even remember the last time you did something just for the joy of it. Just for the rebellion of wonder.
That song isn’t a cry for help. It’s a funeral. It’s the soundtrack to every moment you start censoring yourself because adults don’t think like that. Because you’re supposed to move on. To be mature. Efficient. Sensible. Useful.
Manage your expectations.
Tamp it down.
Don’t feel too much.
Don’t dream too big.
Don’t fucking need.
But God—don’t we need to keep that part alive? That messy, loud, vibrant inner kid who believes in impossible things? Isn’t that the only part that actually feels real anymore?
And here’s the part I didn’t say while discussing this in the middle of a record shop: I miss her.
I miss that version of me. The one who thought music could save the world.
Who thought love was magic, and art was everything.
Who wrote lyrics in the margins of math homework and believed every ache could become a melody.
That girl wasn’t practical. She wasn’t sensible.
But she was alive. She was fucking on fire.
And I let her go.
Now I’m just trying to find her again.
And maybe that’s why the song hits so hard. Because it reminds me she existed. And maybe—just maybe—I can still get her back. If only I could stop pretending logic is all that matters.
Anyway, sorry for the rant.
I just knew you’d get it.
Private Message | EchoZone Internal Chat
From: DeadStrings
To: StringTheory27
Date: May 3rd, 1997, 5:02 PM
Subject: Re: People can be infuriating
That’s part of the reason I lost her.
Expectations—all of them. The noise, the pressure, the labels people glued to my skin before I was old enough to understand I could say no. I kept trying to be the person everyone else wanted me to be—the person they needed me to be.
I pretended for a while until I forgot to stop pretending. I got so good at performing I couldn’t stop and . . . well, I fucked it all up.
When I hear “The Logical Song,” I don’t hear someone asking for help. I hear someone realizing the price of becoming what the world demanded. The grief in that song? It cuts deep without ever raising its voice. It is a slow surrender. I know that sound by heart.
You said something about losing the dreamer. And, yeah—I get that. Fuck, I feel that. Mine didn’t just drift off slowly. She watched me sell out and back out of the room like I was already too far gone. And she . . . she loved the dreamer.
She saw the real version of me, and I buried that version six feet under a shitty personality.
She didn’t want the billboard. She wanted the boy who played guitar barefoot in her bedroom, who believed writing a song about her would keep her close.
I traded him in for an expectation—a different dream that wasn’t even mine.
You’re right, though. We kill off the best parts of ourselves just trying to survive. And maybe we don’t notice until it’s too late, and all we’re left with are memories and sorrow.
You ever listen to “Everybody Hurts”? The first time I listened to it—like listened, not just heard it in the background—I had to stop everything I was doing. There’s something in the way Michael Stipe sings that line: when you feel like you’re alone, you’re not. It guts me every single time.
Because that’s what it feels like, right? That ache we don’t talk about. The slow drift. The part of you that remembers who you used to be and wonders if anyone else misses that version of you too.
It’s fucking survival.
And I get what you’re saying about her—the girl you were, the one who burned brighter than everyone around her and probably scared the shit out of people because of it.
You’re not wrong to miss her. I’m willing to bet she created music like no one else could.
I’m also willing to bet that music’s still alive.
And I won’t lie, I wish I could listen to one.
Just one. Just to know how her voice sounds when no one’s editing it.
You’re not alone in this, you know.
I see you.
And if it means anything—I think she’s still in there.
Waiting.
Like mine is.
Like maybe they’re both just pacing in the same room, waiting for us to stop pretending long enough to open the fucking door.