[Author’s Note: this Blog Post was heavily changed and repurposed to function as a chapter in the TMR Novel. This is the Revised & Refined version. Toggle under the title to read the Original & Unedited form.]

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, lie down, roll over, and paw. We did some threshold training by the door. He’s been barking at people in the grocery store, but we’re doing well on our own. He’s a good boy. 
I just got back from New York. This was my first trip back where I didn’t go visit any of our old haunts. And by our old haunts, I mean touristy places you used to love when you lived there, before LA, when you first moved to America. 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 JFK, you had the driver stop, but it wasn’t Joe’s Pizza, just some shitty $1.50 slice shop. Out of awkwardness, we went in and got the pizza anyway, and didn’t tell the driver 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 IG and were upset the owner (Joe?) didn’t add the screenshot to the photo wall. I went back this trip, and he hasn’t added any new screenshots 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. But I don’t think I’d be able to find it if I tried. 
I can’t believe how long it’s been since we’ve spoken! It’s weird how you can share a life with someone, and then something happens, and suddenly you have no idea what the other is doing. God, your life must be so different now! Mine sure is. Did you have a nice year in London? I know you’d been aching to go back for a while. I traveled a lot, too, but really I was just kind of… wandering. I thought I was doing okay, at first, because I wasn’t freaking out or anything. It’s like in The Year of Magical Thinking, after John Gregory 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. But then I started to wonder, “what happened to us?” I don’t think our hearts were made to answer that question, haha. It’ll drive you crazy. 
When we were living together, agh, I hate looking back on it, I was such a mess. I was in the valley of a long spiral. I thought it all began a few months before we met, but I’ve learned it goes back way further than that. I wish I could go back and stop before I ever started, because my spinning is what eventually unwound us. But if I had never gone down that spiral, I never would have met you. Meeting you was like seeing the stars after it rains in LA. The traffic always brings back the smog, though, and then the sky is dark and the city is lonely again. I know, I know, poor me, always brooding. You’d call it “the bad mean times,” do you remember? You’d just smile and scratch my head. 
Oh, those first few months were so happy! Before you had to go away for work, when you had all that time off, I thought our life would 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 boosters 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. Man, that was fun. 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 thought I was destined for greatness… turns out, I was just trying to finesse my way to superstardom. I was lazy. I didn’t do 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 on set, to vent about some EQ thing or vocal take. I’m so sorry about that, you had just a few minutes for lunch break and I used it all up. Thanks for listening, always. Eventually, I finished Junk Male. That was in my shitty first apartment, on Hollywood Boulevard, remember that place? You hated it, hahaha. I wonder what you’d think of my new place. It’s this beautiful 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, too, which again I know you hate, but I swear it’s in a better spot. There’s street parking (did I mention that!) and it’s away from the Boulevard. I’ve been really enjoying doing music here, which makes me really excited. 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. I wrote generic lyrics that beat around the bush, I made videos about modern relationships without exploring my own. I told myself I didn’t want to write about our breakup directly, out of respect for your privacy. That was, in hindsight, a lie. The truth? Writing music about our breakup felt boring. Too grown up. We had a happy life, and then it was over. Where’s the story in that? My whole life felt like a story that led to you. When we broke up, I realized the plot hadn’t progressed at all for two and a half years and I started thinking that my story actually ended with you. I tried so hard to pick it back up again, write a sequel, get the cast together for a reboot. It didn’t work. It was never going to work. My magical thinking had to fall apart at some point, and I’m sorry that our relationship was collateral for me to learn a lesson. True Modern Romance was never about our breakup. True Modern Romance is about me. 
I only knew how to make music about the drama of heartbreak. The regrets, the rejections, the betrayals. Our breakup had none of that. Just unanswered questions: “what happened to us? How did it happen? Why?” I looked for answers everywhere, and when I ran out of places to look, I started thinking— well, this is just what always happens. How could I have been so naïve? We were doomed from the start. Everything was, since the fall of man. It’s a cold, dark world we live in, designed with the sole purpose of tearing love apart. I thought about stupid stuff like this for a whole year, wandering around the world like a ghost. But this morning I thought about you. You, as a person, who eats and breathes and dreams and fears. I hadn’t been able to think about you like that in a long time. I thought of everything else. In every word, in every page; in every pattern analyzed and coincidence documented; in every theory incriminating every suspect.
There was no investigation. I was not collecting evidence. I was collecting smog to cloud over your starry outline in the sky. I thought about you this morning, and I realized I wasn’t in love with you anymore. Until I wasn’t, I couldn’t even see I still was.
Do you remember on our first date, you told me that people in London are depressed? I thought, How could anyone be depressed in the big city? You told me that people in London are depressed because of all the starchy and greasy foods they eat when it’s cold and cloudy, and because it’s always cold and cloudy, they’re always eating starchy and greasy foods, so they’re always depressed. It was so simple, so pragmatic, so mundane. I couldn’t accept it. I still believed in the romance of the big city. You thought it was better to have a normal life in the suburbs. 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. I’m gonna tell this story at our wedding. On the hammock in our backyard, I told you I had part of my wedding speech planned, and you were dying to know what it was. I always kept it secret. Well, now you know. 
At the Original Pancake House, back home in Kent, we got breakfast with my mom and dad. 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 the yellow house in Silver Lake with the red door, you would put on an outfit in the mirror and look at me and joke, “Look how hot your wife is.” Do you remember that? Do you remember which outfit it was?
The hardest thing I had to accept this year was the only thing I ever really had to accept: sometimes, things really do just happen. Relationships end. Friends leave, friends die. My career goes in directions I can’t control. There’s not a big grand cosmic reason for everything, but that doesn’t mean that everything is meaningless. It doesn’t mean the romance is gone. Romance is abundant and all-powerful, but it is fragile and fickle and does not debate with the skeptic. Romance means I have to fight, every day, to suspend my disbelief. You used to say, “If you’re cold, you just gotta put on a sweater.” Instead, I put on a leather jacket. You had the truth of it all along. 
I think you’d be proud of me. This year was really, really hard day to day. It felt like I was running in circles, going nowhere. But when I step back and look at the scrapbook pictures I took, I think, Wow, this may have been the funnest year of my life. That makes me happy, but it also makes me sad, because it was my first year after us. 
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 movie star life. Either way, I thought of you today, and thought I’d write to you. I really hope you’re doing well! 

Sincerely, 
Marcello

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 & 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