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Because Of My Age And What I Do For A Living And The Amount Of Time That I've Spent Away From My Family And Loved Ones, I'm Starting To Relate More To The Late-period Kerouac Stuff In The Way That I Once Related To The Fun And Excitement Of The Early Material. There's A Darkness Inside Of Me That I'm Only Now Starting To Come To Grips With And Accept. And It's Starting To Scare Me.

-Ben Gibbard

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Because Of My Age

Ben Gibbard

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Because Of My Age And What I Do For A Living And The Amount Of Time That I've Spent Away From My Family And Loved Ones, I'm Starting To Relate More To The Late-period Kerouac Stuff In The Way That I Once Related To The Fun And Excitement Of The Early Material. There's A Darkness Inside Of Me That I'm Only Now Starting To Come To Grips With And Accept. And It's Starting To Scare Me.

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Because Of My Age And What I Do For A Living And The Amount Of Time That I've Spent Away From My Family And Loved Ones, I'm Starting To Relate More To The Late-period Kerouac Stuff In The Way That I Once Related To The Fun And Excitement Of The Early Material. There's A Darkness Inside Of Me That I'm Only Now Starting To Come To Grips With And Accept. And It's Starting To Scare Me.

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Nada Surf And Harvey Danger Are Good Bands. I Think They've Just Stayed True To Why They Play Music In The First Place, It's Just Because They Love Doing It And They Love Each Other And That's The Impetus For Doing It, Not Trying To Keep Singles On The Radio And On Mtv.

I Don't Want To Be Overdramatic About It, But I'm Starting To See A Lot Of My Bad Habits Get The Best Of Me.

I Have Always Been Very Open And Earnest About Some Things In My Life, Some Things That Are Not Directly In My Life, But They're Twirling Around Me At The Time.

I Want So Badly To Believe That There Is Truth, That Love Is Real. And I Want Life In Every Word To The Extent That It's Absurd.

I Don't Spend My Time Perusing Message Boards To Find Out What People Think About Me Or If People Think My Songs Are Good Or If People Love That Lyric Or This Or That. I Just Want To Be Happy With It Myself - And If Other People Like It, That's Great.

Anything Was Better Than Going To Work. All Those Early Tours Before We Made Any Money Were More Like Vacations. I Don't Think It Was Until 2001 That We Pulled Our Heads Out Of The Sand And Were Like, "what Are We Doing?" I Don't Think Chris Realized He Was In A Band Until 2001. He All Of A Sudden Woke Up One Day And Realized He Was In A Band. He Thought He Was Just Recording My Solo Project. Three Albums Later, We're In Baltimore Trying To Figure Out What To Do With Ourselves.

A Lot Of The Material Is About The Inevitable Disappointment People Feel As They Move Through Life, And Things Don't Feel The Way They Expect. No Experience Will Ever Match Up To The Idealized Version In Your Mind.

If There Is One Thing I Think I Have Accomplished, It's That I Always Thought Of Myself As A Very Literal Songwriter, And As I Look At Some Of Those Older Records, I Don't Hear It Now The Way I Did When I Was 20. I Think It Is Undeniable That The Songs Have Become More Instantaneously Descriptive And Literal. I'd Like The Songs To Be More Storytelling, But Also Have The Turns Of Phrase Within Them That Would Hopefully Distance My Writing From The Pack. I Feel Like On Those Older Records There Are A Lot Of Attempts At Clever Turns Of Phrase.

I Can Remember How I Sang - A Little More Nasal-y Back Then. Listening To Those Old Recordings Is Like Seeing A Photograph Of Yourself From 10 Years Ago. You're Wearing What You Thought Looked Cool At The Time. You Had Your Hair Styled The Particular Way You Thought Looked Cool. It's An Accurate Depiction Of Who You Were And What You Looked And Sounded Like At That Point In Your Life. It Doesn't Necessarily Mean That It Aged In A Way That It Feels As Cool Or Sounds As Good To You, Or Says What You Thought It Said, 10 Years Later. That's Just The Nature Of Growing Older.

If You Tell Certain People That You Like Kerouac, They Assume That's All You Read, Like You Don't Know Anything Else About Literature. I Recognize All The Things That People Dislike About The Way He Writes - His Tone And The Sentimentality Of It All. But Those Books Were There For Me At A Very Important Point In My Life.

An Ex-girlfriend Once Got Upset When I Told Her That Music Is The Most Important Thing In My Life. It's More Important Than Anyone Else Could Ever Be. I Don't Want To Be Overly Dramatic And Say It's The Only Thing That Gets Me Up And Keeps Me Going. But People In Your Life Come And Go. As You Go Through Your Life, You Make Friendships, You Break Friendships, You Have Relationships. Music Is The One Thing I've Always Been Able To Rely On.

I Kind Of Dropped A Lot Of Bad Habits About Three Years Ago And Became Kind Of Accidentally Straight-edge. I Don't Have Xs On My Hands, But I Guess If I Wanted To Go Back To Calling Myself Straight-edge, I Could. Around That Same Time I Started Running. I Never Saw Myself As The Kind Of Person Who Would Become A Runner. It Seemed Unfathomable To Me That I Would Ever Run Three Miles, Let Alone 26.2.

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