True Modern Romance

Posted on December 18, 2025 by max

Dear Codename: Didi,

I thought about you this morning. What are you doing? What are you up to? Where are you living now?
I trained with Milo today — played, really — we practiced sit, lay down, roll over, and paw. We did some threshold training by the door. He’s been naughty and reactive, but I’m not worried about him. He’s a good boy.
I just got back from New York. This was my first trip back where I didn’t go see any of our old haunts. And by our old haunts, I mean places you used to visit when you lived there, before LA. You would take me to them every trip. McCarren park. The Christmas market at Union Square. Smorgasburg. The first time we went to New York, you had to get me a slice of Joe’s Pizza. Do you remember?
In the Uber from the airport, you had the driver stop, but it wasn’t Joe’s Pizza, just some shitty $1.50 slice shop. But out of awkwardness, we went in and got the pizza anyway, and didn’t tell him it was the wrong place. Then you took me to the actual Joe’s you’d go to, on Bedford, and I took a picture of you eating your white slice. You posted it on Instagram, and were upset the owner (Joe?) didn’t add it to the photo wall.
I went back this trip and he hasn’t added any new pictures to the wall at all, so I don’t think it was personal. By the way, I don’t really count the Bedford Joe’s as one of our haunts. The shitty $1.50 slice shop would count though, lol.
I can’t believe I haven’t spoken to you since May! So much has happened. I hate to say it, and I hope you don’t take offense to this, but I don’t feel like my real life started until we went No Contact. I mean this as no shade, or disrespect, or insult towards you, and I hope you don’t take it the wrong way. After we broke up, I was just kind of… around. Waiting. I had no idea how to process any of it.
I thought I was doing okay, because I wasn’t freaking out or anything. It’s like in The Year of Magical Thinking, after John Dunne died, and Joan Didion knew there was shit she had to get done, and the guy at the hospital told her she was acting like a “cool customer.” I was a pretty cool customer after our breakup.
I didn’t want to write any songs about you. That felt disrespectful somehow. Like, we had this real thing, and I didn’t want to turn it into just another art piece. I also knew that if I released any of them, it would feel like an incursion on your privacy, putting it all out into the world there in the way I do (sorry about the blog).
God, your life must be so different now! Where are you spending Christmas? Did you get to travel anywhere fun? Did you have a nice summer in London? I know you’ve been wanting to go back for a while. I remember, back in the old days, we had this sort of hazy plan that I was going to come live in London with you at some point. I didn’t necessarily want to, but I would have followed you anywhere. Plus, I knew how homesick you were. Hell, I felt it when I lived in Hackney with you for that month.
As for me, this has been such a rich, vivid year. I feel like I have so much to tell you! When we were living together, agh, I hate looking back on it, I was such a mess. I was at the valley of a long depressive spiral that started a few months before we met. I’m just coming out of it now. You met me right as I was slipping into it.
Oh, those first few months were so happy, though! Before you had to go away for work, when you had all that time off, I thought our life was going to be like that forever. We’d spend all day just doing random stuff together, it felt so good to be around someone you could spend all day with. We got Covid shots together, do you remember? I got so sick, haha, you made me Magic Soup. We’d do Home Depot projects. We used to go out and dance at El Cid a ton, or do movie nights with Jess and Clev. We would laugh and laugh and talk and talk.
But eventually, you had to go off to work, and I had to get back to work, too. I didn’t want to! Haha. I was so lazy. Back then, I really thought being an artist meant I was entitled to just lay around and do nothing all day, waiting for inspiration to strike. It obviously didn’t work… I didn’t make much music that year, that first year we were together.
But I did make “Junk Male.” When you were off filming, remember? I remember calling you, frustrated, while you were at work, to vent about how I was losing my mind over some EQ thing or vocal take or something. I’m sorry about that, you had just a few minutes of lunch break and I used it all up. Thanks for listening, always.
Eventually, I finished “Junk Male,” though. That was in my first apartment, in Hollywood, remember that place? You hated it, hahaha. I wonder what you’d think of my new place. It’s beautiful, I have this upstairs loft with a spiral staircase, and this giant sweeping window that lets in a ton of light. It kinda reminds me of your Hackney flat, actually. It’s in Hollywood, which again I know you hate, but I swear it’s in a good spot, it’s a house (did I mention that!) and there’s street parking and it’s away from the boulevard.
I’ve been really enjoying making music here, which makes me really happy. Elephant in the room— have you listened to True Modern Romance? I made it for you! Just kidding, I made it for myself, I know that now.
I thought I was making a breakup album, but it wasn’t that, not really. There were elements of our life in there, some scattered lines. But it didn’t feel like our breakup did. I made it too soon after we ended, I didn’t have enough clarity to write about it yet. And worse, I was WAY too internally stifled to actually let any real emotion out or find any catharsis.
I made a whole EP since then, Codename: EP3, and that one was a HUGE unblockage! It’s mostly songs I wrote before meeting you, some during when we were together, and one from after. It’s like a snapshot of the last five years of my life, in all its weird uncanny glory and fury.
But now that that’s out of the way, I’m writing a ton of new music again. Who would have thought? You gotta actually FINISH the stuff you start before you’re rewarded with new inspiration! A lot of the new music has been about you again, weirdly, an EP later. I wonder what you’d think of the songs. They’re a lot more unfiltered and unhinged; they feel really vulnerable in a way that True Modern Romance didn’t.
True Modern Romance as a project, I think, was defined by its inability to be vulnerable. Looking back on it, that’s the thing I was actually exploring. Not how a breakup feels. But how a breakup changes you. How everything becomes so unclear, the status quo so irreversibly shook, your mind so broken, that to delve further into it is just begging for a mental breakdown. I welcomed it. I went down the rabbit hole.
I made a whole bunch of stuff for you (well, for True Modern Romance). I wanted to explore our breakup in a way that respected your privacy, that put all the onus on me, focused on my own part in it. I think I did a good job.
I made this character, Max Noir, you would’ve hated that guy, haha. But he was my reflection of who I became towards the end of our relationship, and especially after. This guy who’d rather get lost in the rabbit hole than accept that he’s in pain. Refusing to be vulnerable. “Investigating” the state of love, and how it “died” in the modern world, desperate to find some grand unified theory just to rationalize why his love ended.
Max Noir was the perfect vessel for how easy and tempting it is to push people away by overanalyzing life and calling it “self awareness.” I explored this character through the music videos, through the short film, through the webseries, and through the blog, sorta. The blog is more of a mixed voice between Max Noir, Max Bennett Kelly and me. That’s the only one of these mediums I’ve been really consistent with. I know you used to read it, but probably haven’t since No Contact. I think I’m going to turn it into a book now! I remember you were writing a book, a few actually, and so many scripts, I wonder if you’re still doing that. I want you to write the Uhaul script, that would be awesome!
Anyways, True Modern Romance is over now. I had that moment of clarity in the shower at Caleb and Curraun’s in the Upper East Side. What a relief! It was like, “my investigation into modern love has reached its end. And… I’ve found no conclusions.” Haha! How ironic.
Suddenly, in that shower, love made total sense to me again. It made NO sense to me after we broke up. Our relationship started the way I thought love was supposed to go, all fate and coincidence and flowers and road trips. But the way we ended made me question everything I’ve ever known about romance.
I’ve tried putting this thought into so many fancy terms over the last year and a half, but ultimately it boils down to this: I couldn’t comprehend that sometimes, love just doesn’t work out.
I was always under the impression that it was the world that got in the middle of love. Love is this unbreakable, primordial force, and the only thing that could ever destroy it was circumstance.
I loved people before you— Codename: Monstro, in high school. But when I had to go away to college, the love had to end. That was sad, but it made sense to me. After that, I loved Codename: Apples, but then she had to go to grad school and I had to go to LA and that was sad, too, but it also made sense.
You and I though, we tried, we really tried. Ours was the only relationship I’ve ever had that crossed over into multiple different phases of life. So logically, I thought our love was stronger than circumstance. But… it just wasn’t working, despite our best efforts, for so many reasons. I know them and I know you know them.
That doesn’t mean the love didn’t exist, though. If anything, that fight was just proof of how much we DID love each other. Because we tried to make it work despite everything. Endless long distance. Work schedules. Financial differences. Conflicting future plans. Families in two countries. We were just not set up for success, and yet we made it work for two and a half years! Gotta give credit where credit is due.
I don’t blame us, anymore, for having to throw in the towel. But I did, for a long time. After that, I wanted to blame circumstance, the way I did with the others. But there was no going away to school for us.
So then I spent the year blaming whatever I could. I blamed the world, I blamed modernity, I blamed technology, I blamed movies, I blamed the industrial revolution, I blamed the first caveman who ever brought a shiny rock to his cave lady, I blamed entropy, I blamed God, I blamed all these things and called them the “machine.”
This idea scared me, but I couldn’t shake it. I desperately wanted to disprove that the machine existed, so… I went on a ton of dates to prove that love was still out there in the world. The investigation begins! Lol. I remember you having some uneasiness about our relationship, because you thought I had never done any real “dating.” How was I supposed to know how any of this worked? I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but now I totally do.
Every time I had ever gone on a date before this year, it had always turned into a full-blown relationship, or at least a months-long fling. I was sheltered, in that regard. But now, I know how hard it really is out there. It’s brutal! Jesus, you’re out there in the cold with the wolves. Stupid small talk, shallow connections, $20 cocktails, see ya!
None of these dates went anywhere. And thus, I proved that the “machine” was real, that love was doomed, there’s nothing out there for me anymore. I really did already have the great love of my life, and anything else beyond you was just empty and purposeless.
I can’t lie, though– I did have a ton of fun. I thought that was some solace, at least. So I just kept going, seeing a ton of people, never progressing anywhere with them or committing fully, just enjoying the giggles and sex and thrills. But all the time, I was thinking about the machine. And worse, thinking about how I was another one of its great mechanical arms. I was the problem.
There was this girl I was talking to for a few months this year, Codename: Annie, who lives in New York. I found the long distance to be romantic with her. Not hard like it was for us. It was so low stakes, more flirty pen pals than anything. The physical distance kept us at a safe emotional distance. But we did have a real connection and I did really like her.
I saw her when I was in New York this last time, though, and this time it was just so obvious to me that her and I were going nowhere. We had our differences, and I couldn’t bring myself to reconcile them. It wasn’t going to work, even though it was fun. It’s gotta be more than just fun. There’s gonna be hard parts, too. And if I’m not willing to work through the hard parts together, then it’s just going to go nowhere, and I’m gonna keep running in circles like the wolves.
This all hit me like a truck in the shower, like I said. “Oh, yeah, DUH.” Like… I’ve been approaching this whole thing wrong. I thought the hard parts were why you and I ended, and maybe there was some perfect immaculate love out there that would be immune to anything tearing it apart. A child’s thought. I’m not going to find love on these dates when the only reason I’m even going on them is to try to prove that love exists. Love is abundant, and all powerful, but it’s also fragile and fickle. And it’s not going to debate with the skeptic.
So yeah, that all makes sense to me again, now. Thanks True Modern Romance! You reminded me of what I already knew. Lol.
I learned so, so much about love and dating this year. And about the world. I traveled a ton this year. That was something I never really did at all, before we met. My family always hung out back in Kent. I found it depressing there, which is why I went somewhere sunny for college.
I thought it was only the weather, but I eventually started thinking the reason people are depressed there is because it sucks to live in the suburbs. Do you remember on our first date, you told me that people in London are depressed, too? I thought, how could anyone be depressed in a city?
You told me that the reason people in London are depressed is because of all the starchy and greasy foods they eat when they’re cold, and because it’s always cold, they’re always eating starchy and greasy foods, so they’re always depressed. You were so ferocious about this. I knew I loved you, then. I remember looking at you and thinking, I’m gonna marry this girl, and I’m gonna tell this story at our wedding. Some time later, I remember telling you I had part of my wedding speech planned, and you were dying to know what it was, and I always kept it secret. Well, now you know.
At the Original Pancake House, in Kent, we got breakfast with my parents. Do you remember? We were all laughing about something, and my mom saw the way I looked at you. When you went to the bathroom, she said, “Chell. You have to marry that girl.” I’ll be honest, Codename: Didi, I thought I was going to. You thought so too, from the beginning. Since day one. You hated when I, or anyone else, would call you my “girlfriend,” because you were “my wife.”
I remember one time, maybe many times, at our house in Silver Lake, you would put on an outfit in the mirror and look at me and say, “look how hot your wife is.”
Do you remember that?
Do you remember which outfit it was?
I think the biggest thing I learned this year, or maybe I’ve ever learned in my life, is that sometimes, things just don’t go as planned. Your career goes in directions you can’t control. Friendships have unexpected ends. You can’t just make things work with anyone. Life just happens.
In retrospect, I think it’s so amazing that we made it work as long as we did. Especially with all the forces in the world pitted against us. That’s something special. But that’s why it felt so dramatic, so tragic, so cosmically significant when we broke up. It was so intense I thought that it must have been some uniquely devastating experience. But now… I don’t think so. I think a breakup of that magnitude would affect anyone the way it did to me. I mean, two and a half years would make anyone go crazy. I guess I’m just more willing to go crazy than anyone else.
I’m much stronger, now, because of it. I think you’d be proud of me. I really turned my life around. This year was really, really hard, day-to-day, but when I look back on the scrapbook pictures I took, I think, “wow, this may have been the funnest year of my life.” It was the first year I ever really lived. It makes me sad when I say that, though, because it was my first year without you in a really long time.
I don’t know when it will be, but I know we’ll catch up at some point, and we’ll have this insane journey to share with each other. I cannot WAIT to hear what a crazy adventure you’ve had this last year. Or, I can’t wait to hear that you’ve found peace and stillness amidst your crazy rockstar life. Either way, I thought of you today, and thought I’d write to you. I really hope you’re doing well!

Love,
Marcello

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The Marcello Rule™

Posted on December 1, 2025 by max

PROLOGUE:

It’s cold on the Upper East Side, but I could wear a T-shirt if I wanted to (I don’t). The leaves are yellow and the breeze over the East River tells me it hasn’t been summer for a long time. It took 9 straight days of drinking to bludgeon out the burnout that built up in my soul like lactic acid. A few of these nights ago, Caleb and I held a socratic seminar on 1st Ave and 89th, brainrot beatniks drinking Beatboxes.

“We’ve been drinking a lot,” we present the First Argument. “But I wouldn’t say anyone is worried about our drinking. How much do you actually have to drink to put yourself in 12-step?” We don’t have time to answer. We have a train to catch, and a Jessica or Katie or Christine to meet.

Later that night, I fly like the wind between Josie’s Bar and Houston, dodging the raindrops. Time slows as I pass Katz’ Deli — it’s remarkable how little interest I have in going inside. There was a gallery event with no art, where I met Rachel on the bathroom line. Instagram acquired. Must go— “I have a date,” and I say no more. The group of us, we scatter like refugees into the night.

When we reconvene, it’s been 2.5 hours but there’s 25 stories to tell. We look older; worse for wear, but smiling. Soldiers, battle-worn, raccoon-eyed, missing hair and lips and limbs. We’ve done our part in the eternal war against entropy, and we’re on the winning side. Must go— “hungry,” and I say no more. Roma’s Pizza is barely open to scrape me together a final chicken-bacon-ranch. Biddy’s welcomes us with open arms; they love me there while the rest of the Upper East Side rejects me. The neighborhood looks at me like they wish they could teleport me to Bushwick with their stares. I’d be fine with that, even past Myrtle-Wyckoff. I’ve reached the weekly maximum on the MTA. I long for a kake udon.

***A childish wine***
I don’t want to go back home to LA.

I’ve figured for a while now that, at some point, I’d have to Grow Up™. I reasoned I didn’t have a choice as to whether or not it happened, but I could at least have some say as to when it did. Therefore, it was in my best interest to delay that as much as possible.

When I was 17, I took AP Calculus BC with Mr. Harp. In his syllabus he instituted a rule where if your grade for the final exam was higher than your current cumulative grade, then your grade for the final would usurp your grade for the class. I saw an Opportunity— what if I did Zero Homework, studied for Zero Tests, and got an A on the final? Work Smarter Not Harder, right? I placed my wager, and lived my year stress-free, blissfully refraining from turning in my weekly homework and making pretty shapes on the Scantron tests. When the time for the final came, the reality of the situation hit me. If I didn’t receive at least a 93% on the final, I wouldn’t get the AP credit, and I’d have to retake the class1. But I knew I could make magic happen— because Things Work Out For Me™. And lo and behold, I receive a 97% and my grade shoots from an F to an A. Mr. Harp honored his word, but from that day forward there was an addendum to the syllabus called the Marcello Rule™: Your final exam score can’t raise your cumulative grade more than a single letter grade. Or, in other words:

***The Marcello Rule™***
There needs to be an upper limit to how much Something you can make out of Nothing.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been mulling over this story about Mr. Harp’s class. It’s the perfect metaphor for how I’ve been operating since… well, since as long as I can remember. I’m always looking for an angle, always trying to squeeze as much Utility as possible out of any exchange with as little effort put into the squeeze itself. The irony is, that at least in the Calculus BC case, by attempting to save myself the stress of daily homework I ultimately created myself more total stress in cramming for the final. I Could Have Just Done The Homework. But where’s the fun in that?

Over 10 years later, here I am in New York, once again cramming for the final. I flew out here to present EP3 to AWAL in the hopes of wooing them and securing my next advance. And I really need the A. Because I haven’t been doing the homework. Let’s spell out the analogy. I should have just gotten a job rather than relying on the advance.

***Hi, I’m Marcello, and I’m an addict***
I’ve been gambling on myself for a decade and the addiction threatens to destroy everything I know and love.

Step 4; made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. In 2021 I was late to an appointment to see Dr. David, my old therapist. In a rush, I parked in the yellow 15-minute zone. When I got up, I told him Sorry I’m Running Late, and he said Why? It’s Your Time You’re Paying For.

I told him, In That Case I Shouldn’t Have Parked In The Yellow Because I Could Have Been An Extra 2 Minutes Later And Wouldn’t Have To Worry About Getting A Ticket.

Dr. David said, Maybe You Should Have, and I realized I never would have done that, because I like parking in the yellow.

I told him, I Just Like The Feeling Of Going Out There And Seeing No Ticket.

Dr. David said, Why Play These Games?

I answer, If I Win I Get To Feel Like I Stuck It To The Man I Guess. But If I Lose I Pay $77. No One Is Watching Me Win And I Only Hurt Myself When I Lose.

***Dr. David said,***
That’ll Be $75.

I’m writing this from JFK Airport Terminal 5 Gate 507. It’s 10:53PM and I’m going to be here until 4:17AM because I missed by 9:20PM flight by 3 minutes. That’s a funny amount of time, because it’s coincidentally the exact same amount of time that I spent outside smoking a cigarette while thinking, “that TSA line doesn’t look too long.”

When you live your entire life parked in the yellow, you live with the constant anxiety that the other shoe could drop at any moment. Well, today I missed my flight, and lately, it’s been feeling like the shoe has, in fact, Dropped. It’s about time, I suppose. I’ve been told my entire life that I’m lucky, that things have a way of working out for me, but it’s always said with a bit of disdain. That’s because while people love winners, they hate cheaters. I’m not “winning” anything. I’m cheating the system.

***And worst of all?***
I’m being cheap.

My Dad is always obsessed with finding what he calls Deals™. This could be a $500 Dodge Neon on Facebook Marketplace or winning a bid on a set of Olympic Ribbons on Goodwill Online. I don’t know if he actually wants to buy these things until he sees them listed for a price that he determines to be a Deal™. In truth, the Neon was a steal. Let’s do Economics and say it created $2000 of Utility while my Dad spent only $500. That’s a $1500 surplus, right? Yeah, that’s the way I always thought about it, too. But I’ve come to realize it’s an illusion. Since my Dad didn’t need a car in the first place, the reality is: He’s Just Out $500.

But to my Dad, and by extension me who we’ll return to, that $500 is a small price to pay to feel like you got a Deal™. A Deal™ is worth everything. It doesn’t matter that when my Dad tried this method again on the Mazda Tribute, he got a lemon. He could still taste the Deal™ of the Neon. When I left Dr. David’s office to find that I hadn’t gotten a parking ticket, every other time I had gotten one paled in comparison to the feeling of that sweet, sweet win. When Mr. Harp implemented the Marcello Rule™, I rode that high long enough to forget all about the week of sleepless nights I had already paid for.

***And now, for my final trick***
I will take out a personal loan for the exact amount of my advance and then pay myself back when I get it.

Yeah, that was stupid. Monumentally stupid. I mean, as far as I can see, the meeting went great and I will re-sign. Amazing. Cool! But that’s not the point. The point is, this time, finally, the stress will outweigh the win. I’m finally disgusted by my actions. I can’t live like this anymore. I’ve gone past the point of no return, the shoe has dropped, I want to learn my lesson. Step 6; were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. I Want To Grow Up.

I don’t want to be a “finesser” anymore. It’s bad Economics. But that makes sense, I also finessed my degree. Ugh. Dr. David was right. The stress of parking in the yellow outweighs the Value of getting away with it because there is no Value in getting away with it. Why didn’t I see it until now? Step 5; admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. The stress of cramming for the Calculus final outweighs the Value in not doing homework every day because the risk of failing the class outweighs the Value in being lazy. Even here, in the airport, did I really want that 3 minutes of a cigarette? Or did I only want to see if I could get away with it just for the sake of getting away with something?

***The shoe drops***
I miss my flight.

When I say I was afraid to Grow Up™, I guess what I really meant was that I was afraid of the other shoe, the way it looms, the way it’s always threatened to drop and squash everything around me. As long as I’ve considered myself lucky, I’ve also known that one day the luck would run out. You can’t beat the house forever. And that would be the moment I would Grow Up™ and face the consequences of my actions. Yeah I know; the whole thing is a landmine of deep-woven narratives and internal biases, because what do I mean “consequences?” I guess, like I was saying before, I feel like I’ve been cheating my entire life. Cheating and gambling. And fucking2. Step 10; continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Ever since I moved to LA I’ve been trying to keep the plates spinning for long enough that some sort of scaffolding magically forms around me that would prevent the plates from ever toppling. What else was I supposed to do? What else had life ever taught me? But one day, you wake up and you’re looking 29 in the eye, and you realize you’re exhausted, and you wish you could put the plates down, but you can’t because you caught yourself in this infernal fucking trap of your own design and now you are cursed with never getting any rest and also never really winning.

Well, I want to win, for real. I want to earn something. I don’t want to finesse, anymore. Step 3; made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. I will let the shoe drop. As If I Ever Had Any Choice… that’s the real punchline in this magical thinking, isn’t it? The horrible, delusional hubris that comes with it? As If I Could Ever Make Anything Happen At All. It’s a comforting thought, thinking that there’s magic out there. That somehow I, with enough finessing, can create something out of nothing. That I, and only I, in my infinite power and wisdom can Beat thermodynamics at its own game. Step 2; came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. It’s easier to be delusional than to let the other shoe drop and accept that we live in a cold, mechanical, indifferent universe where Things Just Happen. The baby I was born as wails his eyes out at the injustice of being brought into that world. He grew into the child that cried himself to bed because Nick Harris had a birthday before him, and he cried because he would never be older than Nick and he cried that it was existentially unfair that even meaningless things cannot be changed. The child became a teenager and the despair turned into a fury and a fire and a rage that one day he would have to grow up and get a job and then he’d die and no, no, no, I won’t do it, I won’t do it, I can’t do it, it’s all machines, it’s all rigged, let me cheat, let me be a baby again, I am incapable, I am screaming, I am scratching, I am clawing, and Nothing Changes.

A wall of black stone stretches in front of you, infinitely to the left, to the right, to the sky. On the ground there is only sand, and behind you is a dense white fog. You are naked and alone. Millimeter by millimeter the black stone wall crawls away from you. You spend your entire life gnashing and clawing and gnawing at the surface of the black stone, squinting your eyes and convincing yourself that you’ve made a scratch. Because if you make a scratch, then maybe you can turn that into a foothold or dig deeper and hook your finger into it, and then you can get a grip on the wall, and pull it back towards you, and keep it from crawling away. You toil away for years, yet the surface remains smooth as glass. And you realize that even if you could hold on, the wall is infinitely wide and infinitely tall and infinitely deep, and you, the naked monkey man in the sand have convinced yourself that you possess even a portion of a fraction of an atom of a quark of the power in the universe to keep it from moving. In all of the trillions of the other pocket dimensions and galaxies of minds and souls that exist in every creature who lived is another naked monkey man who gnashes and bangs his fist at his own infinitely massive black stone wall and every one of these naked monkey men will continue to scream and cry and gnash and bang until each black stone wall reaches its final destination, at which point your wall will still be perfectly unmarred and without even your fingerprints as proof. Your black stone wall is one eyelash of eternity. This is time. This is fate. This is God’s will. And it is not a challenge, or a threat, it is just the alpha and the omega. Every day, as we live, this is what we’re up against, and this is what I fight against every time I park in the yellow and think that I am making any difference in anything at all. Step 1; we admitted we were powerless— that our lives had become unmanageable.

***The wall inches away and reveals 4:17AM***
I remain in the sand as I board my flight back to LA.

EPILOGUE:

The Mustang pulls up to Elie’s. “52 bumboclat pussywagon chicken nugget,” Bat says. Our party favors— the Josh (Merlot or Red Blend)— is paper bagged. I’m nervous here, South Pasadena has a stillness to it, I have to hear me think. I wasn’t going to drink, but I can’t speak. I let the Josh talk. When it’s time to say what we’re thankful for, I pray I’m passed over. Alas— I am intentionally uninvisible.

“I’m grateful for LA,” I stumble over my prefrontal cortex, “I hated this place for the last year, but I’m glad I stayed.” Why did I drive my car here? Why did I think I wasn’t going to drink? Are they going to remember that all I could be grateful for was the absence of hate? Are they going to remember me at all? “I’m grateful for all of you guys, too,” I add without thinking, and I mean it.

Later that night, I’ve drank enough to sober up, and catching up has turned into a pep talk. Devon says if she were in my shoes she wouldn’t still be in LA. Bat says I’ve been through lower lows than anyone here, but he worries about me the least. Grace tells me my future is a decision I made years ago, and it’s too late now to change my mind. Milo shits on the carpet. When I wake up on the couch I’m still here and everyone else has gone home.

I drive the Mustang to a coffeeshop and Matt is working, he gives me a lemon scone. I buy an alkaline Smartwater because Grace made an offhand comment about alkaline water last night and I realize I’d never tried it. I wonder if alkaline water does anything. “Does anything,” I start to get philosophical but I’m too hungover, thank God. I go home and I make the best fucking song I’ve made all year, and then I do the same thing the next day. Once again, making something out of nothing.

Thanks for reading
-mbk

FOOTNOTES:
1. I guess I could have been happy with any grade above a C, but I was shooting for perfection.
2. This is True Modern Romance, after all. But that’s a different topic entirely.

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To You, Five Months From Now

Posted on October 5, 2025 by max

Well, did it work?

***I would never ask you to say it, but in response—***
You’re welcome.

It’s the last day before It All Begins™. You remember. It’s Sunday, but you thought it was Saturday, because yesterday you thought it was Friday. You went to the Farmer’s Market with Bat and bought apples. The guy said it was $8.15, but with cash $8 even, but you only had $7 so he let it slide. It was a simple act of human kindness that let you know you were on the right track and that everything was Aligned again.

In the War of Art, or The Secret, or maybe The Artist’s Way, one of Those, you heard of a concept of Cracked Doorways. You read these books forever ago— back in 2021, when you were first figuring it all out— but this concept stuck with you.

***Alchemized and amalgamated and rationalized into your own words***
“You’ll find the path to Success by slipping through Cracked Doorways.”

You internalized this to mean that life is an endless hallway in a giant house. In this house, most of the time, the Doors are Closed and there’s no use trying to open them. These lead to paths that are not meant to be. 99.9% percent of the Doors in this hallway are like that. It’s nothing personal. “No” is the default state of the universe. You just keep walking down the hallway, towards the light of the Open Doors ahead. These are the “Yeses,” and they’re so rare that you only get a few in your entire life. And looking down this endless hallway, you see the light from a few Open Doors in the distance. Each leads to its own shiny Prize. The Prize behind one Open Door might be as small as a new hobby. Sometimes, an Open Door might actually be a Doorway that leads to a whole new hallway. This Doorway might lead to your family, or a new career. You know you can grab these Prizes or enter these Doorways eventually if you just don’t stop walking. At the end of the hallway is Happiness. This is Classical Optimism, I suppose. You could view life itself as the first Doorway your lucky swimmer shot through to get you into this hallway in the first place.

You could spend your entire life ignoring the Closed Doors and waiting for the Prizes and Doorways behind Open ones. This is, I think, the Intended Path. The “You Get What You Get And You Don’t Throw A Fit™” path. You have faith that these will lead you to a Safe life. A Good-if-not-Great life. Job, Security, Contentment. You, however, are a curious bastard. At some early age, you looked ahead at the light from the Doors already Open for you and thought— what if there were even bigger Prizes and brighter Doorways behind the Closed ones? Who says that these aren’t meant for me? You’ve knocked on every Closed Door just to see what happens. Most of the time— 99.9% of the time— no answer. But sometimes. Sometimes. The Door might Crack, just ever so slightly. This is a “Maybe.”

You’re not just a curious bastard, you’re a greedy bastard, so you’ve been collecting the Prizes behind Cracked Doors your entire life. You’ve left a foot in the Door, reaching just far enough in to grab the Prizes before going back to the Intended Path. They’re like side quests. But one time, at perhaps too young of an age, you Cracked opened the Artist Door.

***Needless to say***
You were blinded by the light behind it.

You got a ton of Prizes from this. The first immediate Prize was Fun. Then, your drawings and stories as a kid got you a ton of Attention. When you started making music, it got you Girls. You saw endless light at the end of the Artist Doorway, yet you always went back to the Intended Path: Family, Job, Contentment. These were your Doors. Art is just a side quest. But each time you doubled back to the Intended Path, those old Doors and Prizes seemed duller than the Doors and Prizes beyond the Artist Doorway. So you kept going down the Intended Path like you were Supposed To™.

You got far enough down to check out the Girlfriend Doorway. The College Doorway. But the Prizes weren’t as shiny, the light wasn’t as bright. So each time, you doubled back to the Artist Door. But the Prizes behind the Artist Door kept getting further and further away, so you had to go further and further in. But by venturing far enough, the Prizes started to become undeniably Great. You started getting better at Art and found Purpose. Even further in, you found Money and Prestige. Perhaps even a tiny bit of Fame. But you never forgot your way back to the Intended Path.

However, each time you returned, you were further back in the hallway than you should have been. Or perhaps the old Doors to Family, Job and Contentment were just further away than they were before. On your last trip back, you convinced yourself that some of them might actually be Closed now. Was the Intended Path perhaps the side quest all along? So as always, you backtracked to the Artist Doorway. This time, all that was left was a tiny of speckle of light in the dark, dark distance. You’ve collected all the Prizes that could be acquired a safe distance in. So you cut your losses. You took a leap of faith, let the Doorway back to the Intended Path fully shut, and you ventured into the darkness.

As you let your eyes adjust, you started noticing some Open Doors that led to further darkness. Naively, you went in anyways. These Doors did not hold Prizes. Behind them was Debt. Sacrifice. Pain. Loneliness. You got lost in these dark hallways and stumbled your way back to the Artist Doorway with the tiny bit of light at the end. As you ventured further towards it, you started— for the first time— wondering what the light really was. Was it a Prize? Another Doorway? You started thinking back to the Intended Path, and the dull light of Family, Job and Contentment suddenly seemed appealing in the pressing darkness. Did I, in my hubris, take them for granted? What about the subtler lights of Friendship and Laughter and Love? Were those now beyond my grasp? Alas— you were fully in the Artist Path now. You couldn’t find your way back to the Intended Path if you tried. And even if you did, who’s to say that any of those Doors would still be open? Would the lights still even be on?

Along your dark and tangled journey, your only solace was the idea that at the end of the Artist Path is the Doorway to Success, and whatever lies beyond it. So you placed a wager. Whatever lies beyond it is something even brighter than Family, Job and Contentment. Sometimes, you thought it was Greatness. Or Riches Beyond Belief. Perhaps it’s even the fabled Happiness. But after enough time in the dark, you wondered, for a time, if this was just delusion. It was so dark, that you started questioning if there was even light at all. You couldn’t even remember why you came down this path in the first place. But you kept walking. And what did I do?

***I kept knocking on the Closed Doors***
You’re welcome.

Lately, finally, after God Knows How Long, the Doors have started Cracking open again. The Door to EP3 was nearly Closed shut, but with a hard enough knock I Cracked it open. It was dark, as usual, but I sensed some Prizes at the end. This was a lonely Doorway. It was a quest I had to do almost entirely on my own. But at the end, I made Something Beautiful for the first time. I just wrapped on Friday, which I thought was Thursday, and I ventured back through the Artist Doorway after two months of Solitude. This time, the light at the end was closer than it was before, and brighter.

***And waiting for me was a Prize I had almost forgotten about***
Faith.

Oh, yeah. That’s what got me here. And now, it was back again, as a Prize. I don’t know who put it there. Maybe someone is out there looking out for me all along. Or maybe they’re looking out for you. I don’t know. Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe you are. Maybe this whole system of thinking is wrong, and life isn’t a series of Doors and hallways. Maybe “No” isn’t the default state of the universe. Maybe this is Pessimism-disguised-as-Classical Optimism. Perhaps “Yes” is the default state of the universe, and it’s not a hallway, it’s a river, and it flows endlessly through twists and turns that pull you further along with nothing you can do to stop it. And perhaps me, in my curiosity and greed and arrogance, convinced myself I had the Control by walking down a stupid dark hallway and checking out these Doors when really I was being swept along for the ride I was meant to be on all along. Maybe. You’ll have to tell me, five months from now, because right now I’m still in the hallway and the light is still beyond my grasp. I don’t think you’ll have found Success as a Prize, because I think now that Success is a Doorway with… Something Else at the end. Like I said, I don’t know what that Something is. I can’t see it. But I choose to think it’s Happiness. And I did all of this for you, five months from now, because if I didn’t, five months from now would be a Dark Doorway in which I run out of money completely and would have to file bankruptcy, SO. Yeah, like I said, I’d never ask for a thank you, because the big secret is even if this all goes to shit, I’ve had the time of my life on my Big Journey and if I have to end up in a Dark Doorway of Depression and Sadness and Misery and Failure because of it, then so be it. I still had the first Prize I ever got from this Doorway: Fun.

***I know, I know***
Trite, but true.

Anyways. Tomorrow, It All Begins™. I become Back Online™ and begin priming my social media for the release of EP3, which I can’t wait to show you guys. The sludge of doubt and disillusionment has been washed off of me by the proverbial river and I charge ahead like I always have even if the path seems as dark as ever. Because today, Sunday-that-I-thought-was-Saturday, a guy at the farmer’s market gave me $1 off of a basket of honeycrisps and I have enough Faith or Delusion (perhaps they’re the same) to think that everything is Aligned again and that new Doors are Opening up for me once more. And maybe it’s just my eyes adjusting, but maybe the future looks brighter than ever.

Maybe.

See you in five months
-mbk

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Cut To Black

Posted on August 10, 2025 by max

What is possible? What was possible, what stopped being possible, what might yet be? This blog has came a long way in the year since I’ve started writing it, but I fear it’s come to the End Times. I’m not sure what that means, anymore, though. I used to think The End™ meant something like it did in movies. Roll credits! However…

***The story in a movie doesn’t end when the credits do***
Think about it for a sec.

Just watched Barbarian so I’ll use that as an example. Right after [REDACTED} [REDACTED}s The [REDACTED}, we cut to Zach Cregger1. The movie is over. But… the characters live on (well, some of them). Duh! I mean, what, does the world just end, then and there, too? Just because the movie did? Do the characters not go home that night, do they not age, do they not tell the Story We Just Watched™ to their children someday? Do they do it as the credits roll? Are they aware? Why does the movie only show the part that’s the story? What happens after the story? Does the world really just end?

I always used to find movie plots so contrived. “Oh, of course the bank robbery, alien invasion and zombie virus outbreak happens right in front of the person the camera is following,” I’d say. “How obvious.” In my mind, it was all so predictable. Why didn’t we show the characters on more boring days? Wouldn’t that be more realistic? Why do we only show the most interesting days of their life as part of the story?

It took a while to realize the kind of Chicken-and-Egg situation I had created. Well, maybe the camera is only on these people precisely because this day was the most interesting day of their life. I think I avoided this realization because I found this idea existentially terrifying. Obviously not every character gets the camera on them. And if they are lucky enough to have them on them at all, they only get it on them for ~1-2 hours2. But this raises the question— is the Main Character of a story even lucky at all? How many horrors and tragedies befall our protagonists? The Featured Extras and Background get their seconds of screen time and exit usually unharmed. Because if they were to be harmed in any substantial way, they would become a Main Character. Congrats! But one has to ask— is having your name Above the Line a fair trade for the turmoil that the Main Characters face?

***Alright, alright, I’ll say it loud and clear***
I’m definitely a prime candidate for Main Character Syndrome™ of the year over here.

As a precocious kid, before I knew anything else, I knew I was a Main Character of… well, something. My own story, to be sure. I was destined to be a big, famous Artist. But I was also convinced I was a key player in some Grand, Giant Story. I wasn’t The Main Character™— even I wasn’t that arrogant— but I knew I had some destiny that was directly intertwined with the fate of mankind. I didn’t necessarily do anything about it. I just strutted my stuff, walking around the little town I grew up in with disdain. I was meant for bigger and better things.

***But all along, a little voice said***
“This is All True but… just in case, let’s play it safe.”

Yes, I wanted to be an Artist. This was my Divine Gift, the thing that justified making me a Main Character. But I wanted to do well in school too, in case that didn’t pan out. But, oh no, I couldn’t just be good at school— that’d make me a nerd. No, I had to try being popular, too, throwing parties and having friends. Maybe that’d make me cool. Maybe. Just in case, I had to date the fucking prom queen.

This Rube Goldberg machine of distractions— and I knew they were distractions then— took me further and further from my Divine Gift. All the while I was chasing these other things, I knew I had my Art waiting for me, whenever I decided to give it attention. I was never wrong. I’d live a little, laugh a little, love a little. And each time, I’d return to my guitar, better than I was the last time! I got cocky. This is easy. I smooth-sailed my way through squandering my Gift all the way through college. But then I looked a career in finance right in the eye and said… Fuck You. So after college, and years of procrastinating my destiny, I decided enough was enough. Time to go all in on music, finally. Finally. And although I had delayed it, I was not going to compromise. Oh no, I was going to do it exactly My Way, word to Sinatra. This meant moving to LA with my best childhood friends. And by fucking Jove, against all odds, we made it happen. We were going to do the thing. Go to LA, make music, play shows, go to wild parties, meet celebrities, become famous, whatever. And so we signed our lease.

***Start date:***
March 2020.

Covid killed any chance of my dream panning out. By November, every member of The Band had went back home, save for Clev3. We never even got to play a show. We didn’t even get to meet anyone new. We were in LA, but it wasn’t the LA I dreamed of. A Monkey’s Paw. An asymptotic world line. I, in my raised-Catholic guilt and myopic egotism, immediately understood this to be some esoteric mixture of divine judgment and karmic irony. Yes— there was no way around it— I was being punished for forsaking the Gift. If only I had went to LA instead of going to college… I just had to do the safe thing. I was a hypocrite. I thought I was divinely fated, but I doubted God himself. If I really knew God Got Me™, what was I so afraid of? My only interpretation, in my hubris, was that Covid was my own personal punishment for doubting the Destiny God had given me. It was a punishment, sure, but the timing was so kismet that I rationalized it like— well, at least I’m still part of the Big Story. So I vowed— never again. No more distractions. I would move forward towards my goal, at all costs. I would never even get a job again. I would never, ever, let anything get in the way.

***And yet…***
If you’d read the blog before, you’d know this is where I start going Job-wing-Sisyphus.

I’ll give you the SparkNotes version. Next, I start actually getting good at making music. I get a huge lucky break— “Happy, Healthy” goes viral. Same day, my best friend dies. I was distraught and scrambled, lost my way in the grief. I couldn’t help but see the parallels to moving to LA the same day Covid starts. But I was getting wiser, humbler, and knew even then how ugly and fallacious it was to make Jevandre’s death about me and my dreams. But I couldn’t help it. Was this more Cruel Kismet? I was bone-tired. The summer of “Happy, Healthy” was hanging over my head, like a cloud I couldn’t escape. When winter finally came, I ran into the arms of Codename: Didi— who, if you know anything of the story, was another 1-in-a-million chance encounter. And what do you know, we fell in love. But this started to get at odds with my career. I couldn’t be both a Family Man™ and Chasing My Dreams™ with the ferocity I needed to. It was yet another giant, lucky break with a huge cost. But this one I knew was special… so I stuck around for 3 years. I think, in my head, I knew it would never last. Music was on the backburner, but just like before, I knew it’d be waiting for me. So when that relationship ended, I ran full force back into my career. Made the breakup album, True Modern Romance. I put my heart and soul into it, put everything on the line. I am almost $70,000 in personal debt. I have 3 months left of rent before I run out of money. I needed the breakup album to blow up, so I could re-sign my deal and start to pay everything off. And… nothing.

Like fucking Clockwork, the second I need it most, my social media stops responding. Nothing is going viral. So I pick up content production. I start making better content. I fall in love with making content, even. I fall back in love with making music, making fans. And still, nothing. Numbers dwindling… I made a giant bet on myself that I could make this work. And I feel as if a dark, cruel God is laughing at me, mocking me, telling me— “Yes, You Are Right— You Are The Best In The World At What You Do. But You Are Out Of Chances. I Gave You This Gift As A Child, But You Forsook It. I Gave You A Lucky Break With “Happy, Healthy” As A Chance To Redeem Yourself, Along With A Test— You Must Not Waver, Even In The Face Of Personal Tragedy. But You Failed. I Gave You One More Chance. I Gave You Love— And I Said, Leave The Love Behind, And I Will Give You The Success. But You Didn’t. You Waited For Her To Leave. And Now, You Are Left With Nothing.” All this, He says to me, in my dreams, before I sleep, when I wake up and in my dreams again.

***Fucking Max 3:16, right? Jeez***
It’s getting pretty difficult not to listen.

Yeah, fuck that and Fuck You. I refuse to believe we live in a world reigned by this^ malignant, spiteful God. No: god. I’mma lowercase that guy. No, if there is a God, and I don’t doubt that there is, He is abundant and conspiring with the universe to make dope shit happen all the time, if you’re Open to it. And I have not been Open to it. I’ve been Closed like a motherfucker, and completely missed that for the last five years, I have actually embarked on my own epic quest— and, thanks to my sheltered suburban upbringing— actually experienced hardships for the first time in my life. And like the Main Character asshole I am, I interpreted all of these events to be catalysts in my own story. But I release all that.

Friday was 8/8, the Lion’s Gate Portal Opened, and I’m not sure what that even means necessarily but I had hyped the day up for so long without even knowing its astrological significance. I knew it was going to be the day I posted the first 1st TMR Promo Short. I told myself, for weeks now, that Friday 8/8 was going to be the day that my life changed. I was fucking terrified. I self destructed a bit before. Stayed awake until 8AM. Smoked countless cigarettes. Ignored texts. Didn’t call my parents. And then when the day came, and I posted the Short…

***What happened?***
Aren’t you listening? Nothing.

No immediate blowup. No changing my life with the velocity that “Happy, Healthy” did. I spiraled. Led me to that fucking ramble you read up there^. I went fucking crazy. It was the Lion’s Gate. The day of release, manifestation, alignment. A powerful day. I turned my phone off, and my logical brain, and acted purely on Spiritual Intuition™. I cleaned out my entire loft. I got rid of 25% of my possessions in a manic, sweaty frenzy. I did my own variation of a David Goggins-esque accountability routine where I sit in the shower and shave every square inch of my body4. I grabbed an Irreplaceable Object™ of each of these pressure points in my life. 1 Object representing The Band. 1 Object representing Jevandre’s death. 1 Object representing “Happy, Healthy.” And 1 Object representing Codename: Didi. I turned all the lights off and got Real Witchy. On each object, I wrote what it was about each of these objects that I wanted to release. And 1 by 1… in a large stainless steel pot in front of a dark mirror, I looked myself in the eyes and burned them.

***Bloody Mary be damned***
Yeah, I’m a fucking crazy person.

The second I notice myself getting into a pity party like you read up there^, I gotta do something drastic. And you know what I noticed? 5 fucking years of pity party. 5 years of lucky breaks and epic stories and— yes— tragedies and heartbreaks and failures, some of which have accumulated too much baggage. I had to go nuclear. I don’t know if any of my little magic spell did anything, but I choose to believe it did. And I also said my Our Fathers and Hail Marys like a good lapsed Catholic because not only do I like to mix my metaphors, I like to mix my spiritualities. And I said— Hey, God, you up there? I’m going to brute force a win. Because I know— and I’ve always known— that You Got Me™.

For a few years, I started thinking— this type of magic only works in the periphery. I’ve never really let myself have true Faith, and yet— things kept Happening for me. My logical conclusion was— “What does God have to prove to his loyalists? Does he only want to prove his doubters wrong?” But I hate this. I refuse to believe it. That died in my little bonfire on Friday. I decided, I’ve came far enough, I’ve taken on enough risk, the safety net is gone, and I’ve proven myself to myself. I am in alignment with my Divine Gift, finally, and now— forever, always. Those 4 Worldly Attachments I burned? The last things to ever get in my way. And I realized those 4 Horsemen represented a chapter in my life that I didn’t even realize was only one chapter until, on Friday, it was over. The End.™ And now, for the first time in how long, I breathe clear and fresh, Open to the universe and God and whatever else there is out there, and maybe I am not the Main Character or maybe I am but there is a big story out there and if the camera isn’t on me now then Fuck You. I’m going to make it look.

True Modern Romance next Friday
-mbk

FOOTNOTES:
1. Of course, it also shows her limping along for a bit, so this is a pretty bad example. But let’s pretend it ends here.
2. Unless they’re in a sequel or IP movie.
3. He technically wasn’t even a member of the band.
4. And cut the fuck out of my leg by doing so.

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Rage On, Eternal Optimist

Posted on July 14, 2025 by max

This is a journal entry from 4 years ago, almost to the day.

7/13/21 12:18 AM
Today Marcello died.

I just wanted to see how that would feel to type out. Cause I’m Max now, officially. Irreversibly.

I saw my old friends today. [REDACTED], [REDACTED]. [REDACTED], [REDACTED], [REDACTED]. [REDACTED]. [REDACTED]. And I don’t think they saw me. [REDACTED] and [REDACTED], yes to some extent. [REDACTED], maybe. But the other people didn’t feel like they got me at all. I asked them about their lives, their jobs. They didn’t ask me back. [REDACTED] said it’s because they assume I’m just doing good. I can’t tell. Do they not care? Do they feel intimidated? Do they think it’s cringe?

It doesn’t matter.

At [REDACTED]‘s, everyone thought I was the crazy one for asking if [REDACTED] had friends. No one has friends, they said. I’m the one living in fantasy land.

They just go into their jobs, day in and day out. Jobs that they hate. They don’t care about money so they work their entire life away for it. They don’t have friends. They don’t have hobbies.

They, they, they. Who cares? These are not my people anymore. Move on.

How much bigger would my life become if I lost touch with [REDACTED]? With [REDACTED], even? People who are here to support me on my journey but are not pushing me. Not at all. They’re just people to kill time with. I love them, they get me. But I am on the brink of bigger and bigger things. And I waste my time worrying if these people like me. I get sad when I don’t fit in with them. I care when they don’t ask about what I’m doing.

But they know. They know what I’m doing, and what I’m capable of. It’s going to be me. I’m going to do it. For Jevandre, for them. To spite them. To say fuck you, you cowards. You spineless, pathetic, sorry wastes of life. You sell your one shot at this game for $16.25 an hour and get told it’s good money.

What are you thinking about, every minute, if not in pursuit of something more? Jevandre once told me that I have a sense of optimism about the future that he didn’t have. And look at him, he’s dead. And I see my friends dying before me. They just don’t know it. Or maybe they do. Daily, they sap their own life away until they die. I think Jevandre saw this and decided that he’d die a dark quiet death on his own terms rather than waste away and die accidentally.

When Nonna died, I thought to myself, this is just what happens. Old people die. When Jevandre died, I thought to myself, this isn’t what happens. This is wrong.

But no. This is what happened. People fucking died. Nonna died. Jevandre died. And it will keep happening. My friends will keep on dying. And they already are, before my very eyes. My childhood died. My idea that everyone’s life has an ultimate purpose. Dead with Jevandre. The idea that every action leads to something else. Dead.

All my friends are dead. Kent killed them. The world killed them. And I fucking knew it. I knew it since I was a teenager. A kid. A toddler. This life will kill you if you let it. But I also fucking knew that there was something else out there. A great beyond, where childhood stretches eternally and your life is neatly divided into chapters and arcs. And I’m there, right now.

So yes, when I ask if [REDACTED] has friends, and they look at me like I’m crazy, I’m going to reconsider who these people are. And I’m going to reconsider how grateful I tend not to be for my fantasy life in LA. I’ve already fucking made it. Anything else is the cherry on top.

I spend my days worrying about if I’m as popular as my friends. My dead friends back home don’t have any friends at all. It is the pursuit of this life, this dream, that keeps me away from this bottomless fucking pit of suburbia and middle America and waking death and standstill contentment. From ticking clocks and wasted youth and endless timecards.

Maybe Jevandre was right. Maybe he had a point in what he did. “Why do something every day if I’m fucking miserable doing it?” I thought he was talking about his job. Now I think he was talking about living. He’s a man who sought truth, and the truth beneath the truth. And I think what he found is that the truth is plain and simple and staring in our faces all along. This is all it is. This is life. The mundane, dull, in and out, repetition, endless, haze. He had his degree. His prospects. His intelligence. And a fucked up brain. What was there for him? Could a man as intelligent as him stomach the rotten taste of growing older and raising children in this fucked up world, where you get caught in the machine and turn gears for the chance at a few hours a week of redemption?

I don’t blame him for what he did. I forgive him for it. I understand it. He saw the truth dead in the face. Maybe when he [REDACTED]. Maybe when he [REDACTED]. Maybe when he didn’t eat for 5 days. He saw something. He knew something, more than I did, always. But he died and I think I see it now. His final revelation. This is fucking it. This. Is. Fucking. it.

The eternal pessimist sees the almost ludicrously small scope of life and decides what’s the point of continuing? The eternal optimist sees it and decides to squeeze out every last drop.

Jevandre, you fucked up. Dude, C’mon. You gave up that easily? I know your face you’d be making right now. It was right around the corner for you, I think. You could have figured it out. I know you would’ve. You might’ve taken a few more years even. Or thought of it one more way. I’m sure you see it now. But you were tired. I understand. And I hope you’re not haunting me so that you can get some rest. Your Mind’s Guy likes to be asleep in his cave.

Your friends told me how much you loved me. He said you talked about me all the time and that he’s sad this is the first time we’re meeting. She said that you showed her my music. She said that you told her about our pact. Your dad said he knew we were brothers. And we fucking were. We had a bond, man, a bond that transcended that tiny little bubble of existence in third grade, where we were absolutely certain about the infinite possibilities of life and the destinies that awaited us. That’s who you are to me, man, and will always be. I don’t know what you became, but that’s not you. Not to me. I’ll spend the entire rest of my life tossing you around in my head trying to make sense of you. I’ll find the words to best describe the way you laughed.

You told me that in third grade you think you liked me. I like to think you weren’t in your right mind when you said that. Or maybe you were fucking with me, as one last thing to get over on me before you went. You loved fucking with people. You didn’t fuck with me that much. Remember when you called me and said you were sorry for calling me Choji? It’s okay, man. It hurt me real good back then, I think you could tell. You were always kind of mean. But that’s fine. I’m sure you were hurting, too, all the way up to the end.

But now, I take your flame, and carry it on. I will do it. I told you. I will fucking do it.

I am going to be the first famous, ridiculously rich person from Kent, WA. I don’t care if it’s delusional anymore. It’s going to happen. And I’m going to pursue it. I’m going to have 2 places, a mansion in LA and an apartment in Manhattan. I [sic] my mansion will be in the hills with a view of the skyline. It’ll have a pool and a hot tub. It’ll have speakers throughout the house. It’ll have a grand piano. It’ll have white marble floors and a kitchen island. It’ll have a library. It’ll have giant bay windows. It’ll have a backyard and a trampoline. It’ll have a tatami room for guests. My apartment in Manhattan will be minimalist and sparse. It will have art and sculptures and fine furniture. It’ll have down comforters and a TV in the wall.

And with my first check I will pay off my student loans. Then my parents’ house. Then I’ll buy my mom a Red Jeep. And I’ll produce my dad’s movie. And I’ll buy my sister a trip to anywhere in the world she’d want to go. And I’ll buy a house for myself but not live in it, just rent it out.

And I’ll buy a car. I’ll buy a Black 911. I’ll upgrade my studio. I’ll have synthesizers and furry red carpet and big windows and vintage microphones and golden guitars.

My friends will be the most famous and interesting people in the world and would have great parties. I would even throw some at my house. I will travel the world and see all there is to see.

Because I am from Kent and my friends are dead and my best friend killed himself and I promised him I would do it. And I fucking will. And I will do it because it is me and it is my destiny. I am the only one living this life. I will make it possible. And by the next time anyone sees me I will be famous and my song will have a million streams. And I will be the person I have always known I was but no one has seen yet of me. And I won’t need to talk about myself on [REDACTED]‘s porch because my eminence will be tangible. And I will know who the fuck I am.

I am shook up by your death, Jevandre, and perhaps you did me a favor. When the silt settles I will not be Marcello. Marcello is dead. I am now Max Bennett Kelly. Perhaps I always was. But today, my sister’s 22nd birthday, I have confirmed it. Who am I for myself? A mentor. A friend. A collaborator. I am Max Bennett Kelly.

And I will be so far from Kent, WA that I forget I was ever from here in the first place. And so far from Tucson that I forget I was there. My life starts now. Marcello died. Max Bennett Kelly is born.

I wrote this right after Jevandre’s funeral, and after seeing some of my old friends back home. It’s interesting to see how much I raged against the world… I saw my own forward movement as existential defiance against… what? What happened to the righteous anger? Right now, I’m on my Generational Run™, and I’m feeling a bit tired.

***Max Bennett Kelly’s Great Generational Run™ of 2025***
1. Get extremely Hot & Good Looking (track my progress here)
2. 90-Day Social Media Challenge (track my progress here)

Been feeling a bit tired… working at a breakneck pace… I looked through my journal and what do I find… this ought to do the trick.

There’s so much bite to this journal. I like it, I miss the fire. I want to seethe again. At least a little. It’s fun. Reading the Manifestation Manifesto™ part at the end is funny. I just vaguely described some nice places. I don’t know why I said Manhattan, at that point in my life I had never even been there. But four years later… A version of this has came true. I have my beautiful loft with the spiral staircase. I don’t have a sound system but I do have a few Alexas daisy chained together. No TV in the wall, but I have a hidden projector in my gallery wall. I don’t have my New York penthouse, but I’ve been able to travel there every other month and be bi-coastal. I didn’t pay off my student loans yet, but I did pay off my credit card. Got my first check. And second, third, fourth, fifth… funnily enough, I had not made a cent of music money at the time of writing that. I didn’t know how weird it would feel when money hit my bank account because of something I made with my mind. It’s hard to grasp.

I’m becoming the person I set out to be. Less fire, sure, but instead I’ve honed this fury into discipline, a slow, methodical burn. I’m on a Generational Run™, yes, but let’s make it a marathon, huh? Anyways. I’m proud of myself. I’ll leave this one at that.

Thanks for reading
-mbk

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