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Forget every other time I’ve heard this song.
This. It’s this. His raw, gritty take on it. I don’t know how I’ll ever hear it again, and not hear his voice—this version. How I’ll not see this image of him on-stage, pouring his fucking heart out with every guttural word falling seamlessly from his lips, commanding the room like a god.
Like he was born for nothing else but this.
Hearing him, watching him…
It’s as if I’m observing in real time, as he sheds chains I never realized were there—one made up of ivory keys and frustrated fingers and a steel jaw and hard, bleary eyes as he tried to force sonata and overtures from a brain just aching for something more, something else…
Something that had been in him all along, one that had been….hidden somehow, buried under…under what?
The need to be like Izzy.
My heart grinds to a halt at the thought.
And I’m shaking my head, watching this boy on stage—this boy I watched grow into a broken man, white-knuckling the mic stand, neck tendons straining as he cajoles the song to its peak, vowing to always be there.
He swings the electric guitar around to his front, and as if practiced a million fucking times, seamlessly kicks the bridge off just as Waylon slams his sticks down on the drums.
Chills wash over my skin as he lowers his head, aiming his gaze right at me. He probably can’t see me—surely he can’t—not through the tight throng of people separating me from the stage, arms thrust up in the air, or through the glare of the spotlight beaming down on the stage…
But for a moment, I pretend he does, and I hold my breath.
I pretend he’s looking right at me—that it’s me he’s singing to, weaving words that sit like a pit in my chest.
And that thing inside me, the one that’s called to him since the second I first laid eyes on him…
It croons promises right back—wicked, wicked vows that are a betrayal to the ghost he’s really singing to.
No, no, I’ll never let you fall either.
I’ll be by your side always.
Forever, through it all, even if it kills me.
The room fades away. The drums, the guitar…
It’s just his voice—words that aren’t his, but feel like his.
And us…
Mason and me.
My Mase Face.
Caught in a vortex of past and present that flips through my head like snapshots of a comic book being pieced together, and the biting reality that creeps its way back inside me, reminding me…
This isn’t real.
The song trickles to an end, his voice fading out. Cheers and whistles rise up, drowning out everything but the heart thundering in my ears, and cooling the thoughts in my head.
And when Mason calls out into the mic, rushed and breathless, “We’ll be back in a bit!” as casual and effortless as always, with a smile caught in his voice…
My heart breaks a little bit.
At the confirmation, that like so many times before?—
It’s all in my head.
