#also someone said that song is the hymn of introverts

[lauraneedstochill]

Find my body covered in confetti

pairing: modern!Aegon Targaryen and F!Reader summary: Aegon is a regular at your bar but he doesn’t come only for the drinks. warnings: a bit of angst, a pinch of violence, brief mentions of blood but it does have a happy ending (he deserves one) words: ~5000 author’s note: my first time writing for Aegon! I’m not nervous at all song inspo: Charlotte Cardin — Confetti (Spotify / YouTube)

>>> He’s broken from the inside out but the pieces he’s assembled of are not sharp and don’t cut like glass. The blunt edges of them are hidden behind his shirts, covered with the ink of tattoos, splatters of scars you want to trace with your finger and know more of. He doesn’t stay long enough for you to ask questions.

The first time he comes in, it’s a summer evening, the air veiled with humidity, the dancefloor is filled with heated bodies and flooded with blinking lights. He goes right to the bar counter, asks for a glass of whiskey, and smiles at you but says nothing else. He dawns the alcohol in two sips and orders a second one and then a third almost immediately, and your curiosity peaks just as fast. It’s a routine you’ve gotten used to — the more people drink, the more they want to talk, even the most quiet and prideful ones, and it works with practically everyone. Yet, with him, it doesn’t. He’s wearing dark colors — a grey tank top, black shirt thrown over, and matching jeans, and you descry a dice inked into the inside of his forearm. The cube is as blank as his face: it betrays nothing of what he’s feeling, what he’s thinking of, and his fingers stay glued to the glass.

The music rumbles, and some girls — in short, glittery dresses, glamorously pretty — come by to say hi to him, to lean in closer, their lips grazing his cheek, leaving shimmering strokes of gloss. But he looks through them, and his smile doesn’t reach his eyes which are the depth of the sea and hide just as many secrets. He is carelessly polite, he makes dry jokes, he buys more whiskey. A few times your gazes meet, and he doesn’t look away.

You learn his name from the check he leaves. He asks for yours the second time he comes to the bar.

>>> Aegon starts coming every weekend, and two weeks turn into three, then into a month, and he quickly becomes a regular. He sits on the barstool in the farthest corner, where the scattering light of the disco ball can’t reach him, he doesn’t cause problems, he drinks way more than you think he can handle. Still, his gaze stays sharply sober, and the green of his eyes reminds you of storm waves raging with unexplainable, deep-rooted sadness.

He’s generous with tipping but never with his words, and it seems wrong to disturb his melancholy, so you don’t allow yourself to, only pouring him more whiskey and keeping your empathy from pouring out of you. But with Aegon, the silence never feels heavy, and you catch yourself thinking that walking up to him is like retreating to an oasis of calm in the midst of a roaring torrent of voices. You also sometimes think there are glimpses of his eagerness — to talk to you, to be in your presence, and when you give him his drinks, your fingers brush more often than not. And yet, something holds him back from making the first step. But maybe you’re only imagining that.

And then it turns out that you aren’t.

“I find it weirdly coincidental that the guy only comes here on your shifts”, the bouncer nods in Aegon’s direction while stopping by to grab a bottle of water. It’s one of the last days of August, its agonizing heat finally fading away. “Does he want to make a move on you or something? Does he ever move from that spot? Looks like a part of the interior, I swear.”

You laugh it off, but your face flushes, and you feel Aegon watching you even before you turn to him. He calls for you barely a minute after the bouncer goes away. Aegon’s wearing a dark green shirt, silky and carelessly unbuttoned, and there’s a hint of a smile in the corners of his lips.

“Am I in trouble?” he leans in on the counter ever so slightly and taps on his glass.

You pour more alcohol in, and even though he’s the one drinking, you suddenly feel tipsy. You wonder if it has something to do with how his gaze feels on you — like a touch of warm summer breeze, like he wants nothing more than to have you in his arms. And you’d love to know what it’s like.

“I think you’re the only one here who doesn’t bring trouble,” you tell him as his fingers hook around the glassy surface — and he’s looking straight at you. With the bravery that usually only comes after three shots of tequila, you add: “You’re quickly becoming a favorite customer of mine.”

When your eyes lock, you catch a spark of mischief in his. It’s the first evening when he leaves without finishing his drink.

>>> September brings in some fresh air, and while the trees start dropping out their leaves, Aegon slowly drops his guard: there are layers to it put over the years — brickwork over concrete, and you tear them down with patience and care. He opens up to you cautiously but with so much candor, you wonder if anyone ever bothered to look past his feigned restraint before.

There are a lot of good things about Aegon — you get to them first, and it feels like you’ve never laughed as much as you do with him. He’s charming but with no underlying motive behind it, he talks with his hands and fiddles with his rings, he is childishly enthusiastic about the things he enjoys. He can play guitar, and you talk him into showing it to you one night, when most of the customers have left, and the approaching dawn is hidden by a veil of the rain clouds. The blasting music is turned down, and he only had one Gin & tonic so far.

He touches the strings with tenderness, with focus, and the flow of the melody is so perfectly smooth, he plays the song like he owns it. You busy yourself with wiping cocktail glasses just so you can fight the urge to touch him. When Aegon starts singing, it comes out almost accidentally, as if the lyrics slip out of his mouth on its own. He stops the very next second.

“ ’m sorry, that was uncalled for,” he mumbles.

“I quite liked it,” you assure him — and you are not lying. His voice is soft but with veiled depth, and you want to listen to him singing until the rain stops; maybe even longer. He’s sitting across from you, your bodies only separated by the counter. Sometimes it feels like if you take a layer off too fast, he’ll grow another one, so you tread lightly. “Who taught you how to play?”

“I’m self-taught,” Aegon gives you a short smile. “But I never took it seriously.”

“It looks to me like you made some effort,” you tilt your head at him. “Do you play often?”

“Nah, only when I’m in the mood for it.”

“And what mood is that?”

His fingers absentmindedly follow the contours of a guitar he’s got tattoed on his wrist.

“A weird one,” he manages. “But music helps to take my mind off it, I guess.”

That thing he doesn’t want to think of — you fear that it never goes away, always lurking up there in his head, with its eyes glowing in the darkness of the worst of his thoughts that he’s yet to share with you. He eagerly welcomes any distraction — you are eager to provide him with one.

“What was the first song you learned how to play?”

The grin comes back on his face, and his sadness recedes, like the water at low tide, and the unnamed weight is temporally lifted off his shoulders.

“Oh, it’s silly,” he starts playing again, and the rhythm builds up, cheerful and catchy, and you instantly find it familiar. You’re trying to remember where you heard it before — and the realization brings a smile to your face.

“Is this from Duck Tales?”

“Yeah,” Aegon chuckles. “My youngest brother Daeron used to love it, could spend hours watching the telly,” he’s maybe a little abashed but he isn’t ashamed of talking about it. “It was an easy tune to learn. Kinda helped to negotiate the terms of his bedtime.”

“Well, I’ll take Duck Tales over... whatever it is that our DJ loves,” you share a laugh. “And what’s your favorite tune?”

Any other guy, you think, would’ve tried to impress you and rushed to strum some rock or botch some classics (you’ve had that unfortunate experience before) but Aegon doesn’t play pretense. At least, not with you.

“It’s usually just a mix of everything I can think of,” he shrugs. “Like, maybe some Oasis, Rolling Stones, The Black Keys,” he trails off, eyes not leaving your face.

He’s so obviously hesitant about sharing that as if his music choice is what can scare you away. Not him drinking, or regularly staying up late, or bottling up decades-worth of feelings — all that is seemingly a given. But somehow his playlist is the real secret, and it wrings your heart to know he trusts you that much.

“That’s an intriguing mix,” you smile wider in a sign of approval. “What will it take to convince you to play me a snippet?”

“That’s a suspicious amount of confidence that you have in my abilities,” Aegon narrows his eyes with a fake concern. He beams at you in barely a second.

“You can call me an optimist.”

“Well, you’re getting a front-row seat to my impromptu concert, then. No predictions on the genre, though.”

“I think I’ll like it either way,” you put the last glass aside to give him your full attention.

Aegon adjusts the guitar and swiftly gets it in tune, and the intricate melody comes to life in his hands, made of bits and notes both known and unfamiliar to you. He’s in his element, and for a few minutes it’s smooth sailing, and your heartfelt excitement is his tailwind.

But then you notice the slightly lost look in his eyes like he’s got reminded of something he wants to run from, and he knocks down the rhythm a little — and then he picks it up, and it quickens as if he’s racing against the past that will inevitably catch up to him. He’s got no guitar pick, it’s just his fingers against brass-plated strings, and his movements are violently concentrated, visibly too harsh. You’re unduly afraid the metal will cut into his skin in no time.

You lean over the polished benchtop to intercept his hand, and Aegon flinches at the touch, and the flow of the music is cut off. While his subconsciousness is swimming out to the surface of reality, you pull his palm away from the instrument and intertwine your fingers with his, his skin heated and pale, the guitar inked into his arm being the only bright spot. And then, without really wanting to, you realize that the tattooed horizontal strings were meant to cover something of a similar pattern. You run your thumb over the black stripes laid on top of the long-faded white ones, barely visible but still palpable.

“Did it hurt?” you ask him in a whisper, careful as if you’re tiptoeing around a sleeping beast. And you are not talking about the tattoo.

The silence only lasts for a heartbeat.

“It was bearable,” Aegon tells you, not entirely avoidant of the truth but maybe still tormented by it. “I’m all good now,” he adds in a soothing tone, even though he is the one whose heart needs to be soothed and patched up. Pressing him for details feels like asking to rip open a wound, and you don’t think his have healed properly.

He’s still holding your hand but you know he’ll flee away soon like he always does, and you have no right to hold him back. You wish he could stop holding on to the things that left him so anxious and scarred.

“It’s fair for the last drink to be on the house,” you grant him another smile and let go of his hand, and there’s a flash of regret on his face that you can’t help but share.

It also feels fair to not make him dive into that black void of his memories so you put a clean glass in front of him and reach for the ingredients. Aegon curiously watches you adding cubes of ice, mint leaves, lemon juice, slices of lime. Then you pull out a cooled glass bottle of San Pellegrino.

“An interesting choice,” Aegon notes joyfully.

You actually don’t think you’ve ever seen anyone being so thrilled about drinking water. While it fizzles and fills the glass, it dawns on you: he does want to break the cycle of his self-destruction. He’s just so used to it, he stopped looking for a way out.

“Anything can pass as a cocktail if you make it look fancy enough,” you drizzle the drink with orange-flavored syrup and push it toward him.

Aegon takes a big sip and grins. “Tastes like Fanta,” he gulps half a glass, then chews on ice, his lips glistening with melted liquid. “Haven’t had it since I was, like, fifteen or something.”

“Well, if you are ever in need of some sweetened water, you know at least one bartender you can ask,” you joke as he pulls out a phone to get an Uber.

His finger stops an inch away from the screen, and Aegon gives you a long, wistful stare, but you struggle to read the meaning behind it, as his eyes are a kaleidoscope of emotions. You wish you could discern just one so maybe you’ll have a reason to justify whatever it is that you are feeling for him.

“I don’t go to any other bars,” he says, looking through car options. “So you better stock up on that water. Because your bartending talents are quickly winning this cold heart of mine.”

Aegon makes it sound very casual, like a joke made in passing, and you try not to think too much into it. But right before leaving, he glances at you again, and his whole face lights up. And then comes the awareness, like the sun emerging from the clouds: he is winning your heart, too.

>>> October is muddy and grey, lacking sunlight but not rainfall, and you think it’s the brightness of neon lights that beckons people in, and the bar stays packed night after night. You can’t seem to catch a break, your hands moving on their own accord, repeating all the well-learned steps, memorized recipes — swirls of orange and cranberry juice in Sex on the Beach, Bloody Mary garnished with a celery stick, the balance of sweetness and the tang of lime in Margarita. Surprisingly, Aegon is deadset on drinking nothing but fancy-looking water. Not surprisingly at all, you still think about him every spare minute that you have.

Getting to the deeper layers of him feels like drilling through an iceberg, and the baggage of his past is so big, it will hardly fit in any plane’s luggage compartment. You try not to pry, cherry-picking the words, the topics, the questions. Aegon lets you without ever resisting. Each evening, he chooses a different flavor of syrup as he tells you more about himself: he was a menace in school, hated chemistry and never been good at sports, prefers to avoid vodka since that one time he tried it in college and it didn’t end well. He has pictures with his mom, with two brothers and a sister, but not with his dad, and he never talks about him. You think he does it instinctively — like avoiding a bump on a road he’s taken even since he was a kid.

There are a lot of blank spots in his retelling of the childhood years but he does mention he got his first tattoo at fifteen. It’s a razor blade, and he taps on the area of his shoulder where it’s at, covered by the material of his blue shirt. You don’t dare to voice the question but it’s ringing in your head: has it all started when he was fifteen? Or that’s when he got better? Did he actually get better?

Some days, by the looks of it, he is getting better. When he’s excitedly stirring his drink with a straw, when he’s asking about your day, when he comes up with playful descriptions of every customer in the nearest proximity to make you smile (it works wonders). In these moments, you dare to think that he seems bored with everybody else but you.

But there are other days too, when he is joined by the motley crowd of people consisting, as you guess, of his friends. It feels like they hardly have anything in common — they are loud, giggling, making toasts for no reason, throwing money away. None of them notice that his tastes have changed; none of them are aware of all the little things you notice. That his fingers drum to the rhythm of the music but he refuses to go dancing, glued to his chair, clinging to his glass. That he’s the life of the party but he looks out of place, and his loneliness is the only thing that stays by his side. Sometimes it seems like he doesn’t even want to be here — drinking, thinking, cursed with his desire for solitude — and you wonder why he keeps coming, then.

And it’s horrifying how much it hurts you to think that one day he might stop.

>>> November passes almost in a blink, and the weather cools down, but the crowds of customers don’t get smaller, and you think your smile looks too pained to even bother forcing it. With the cold season comes bitter Old Fashioned with a cherry on top, spicey Mulled Wine, blood-colored Sangria. There is the never-ending clinking of glasses, chattering, cozy jazz playing in the background, and you save your energy for Aegon only — for when he comes with his tireless jokes, his sincere laugh, his gaze enveloping you like the fuzziest blanket.

The month is nearing its end, and so does your patience which some drunk man has been testing for almost two hours. You keep watching the clock — Aegon usually comes around 10 p.m., and you all but count minutes, and then seconds... and then it’s half past 10 but he hasn’t shown up.

In thirty minutes your worry grows, spreads, takes the form of a tsunami. It dawns on you that you don’t even have his phone number. He can just disappear, like a homeless man swallowed by the ocean, and you won’t ever find him.

“Hey, are you retarded? Come fetch me another drink, I’ve been calling you for five minutes,” the drunkard whines from the other end of the bar.

You hold back a huff and give an insincere apology and whip him up another Whiskey on the rocks. Your gaze absentmindedly scans the crowd when you see Aegom coming — and it looks like he emerged from a blizzard. For a second it seriously confuses you — it’s too early for snow, and you don’t remember what was the weather forecast. But after Aegon plops on his usual spot, you come closer and realize: it’s confetti. He is covered almost head to toe in the tiniest pieces of paper, multicolored and shiny, stuck in his hair, sprinkled over his shoulders, sparkling on his snow-white shirt.

Aegon looks like he might as well be covered in ashes — he is unbearably beautiful but also visibly, tragically unhappy. You all but dart to him.

“Can I have, like, a glass of vodka or something,” he asks morosely. “Vodka on the rocks maybe? I don’t know if it’s a thing.”

Your eyes are watchful, searching for clues, but you can’t dissect his mournful gaze, can’t see through his despondent face expression.

“Is there a reason for —” you are thinking of a word but he cuts you off.

“No reason,” and his tone is cold like ice, and he isn’t looking at you.

Aegon blinks once, twice, shifts on his seat, sighs. “I’m sorry, that was rude of me,” his gaze finds yours, almost desperate as if he’s drowning and looking for a life ring. “It’s my birthday. And I hate it.”

You involuntarily reach for his hand — you almost touch him but then the annoyed voice comes again:

“Can anyone get me whiskey in this godforsaken bar?!”

Aegon turns his head and looks in the man’s direction, very obviously displeased. You go to the disgruntled idiot again, put some ice cubes in his glass (he loudly counts them), pour him whiskey (he demands you add more), fight the urge to throw it in his face (maybe that will sober him up). Out of the corner of your eye, you notice that one of the security guys stealthily moves closer.

You come back to Aegon, your chest overflowing with both relief and concern.

“Why don’t you like your birthday? I mean, I also don’t throw parties on mine so I get it. But if you don’t want to celebrate it, you can pretend it’s just another day.”

Another day of him not drinking, another day of him staying on track to some happier future, you mean. A future where you’ll manage to finally help him heal every scar of his. You see a small, weary, somber smile growing on his face, and Aegon opens his mouth and —

“Your whiskey is some horseshit!” the familiar voice cries out.

Before you can react, Aegon interjects. “What the hell is your problem?” he looks at the man again without a smidgen of fear. The drunkard bores his gaze into him in return, red-faced and sweating with anger.

“Aegon, it’s not worth it, really —”

“No, he’s being disrespectful toward you, and you don’t deserve it,” he punctuates, specks of darkness in his eyes.

“O-oh, am I offending your darling?” the man mocks. “Are you two fucking? Maybe I should also bend her over the counter so she’ll give me some decent booze.”

He is quite irritating, yes, but you see men like him as just a part of your job, and you are used to them being armed with pathetically exaggerated self-esteem. But Aegon doesn’t see it that way, and ire sweeps him over like a tidal wave.

“You need to apologize,” he insists, looking the man dead in the eyes.

“Or what, huh? I’m the one with the money here, and the customer is always right!”

“She isn’t paid to tolerate your fucked-up behavior,” Aegon bristles, and the man jumps down the barstool and clasps the glass, spilling what’s left in it on the counter. You don’t care about it. You can’t care about anything but the fact that Aegon also gets up. It’s a new layer of his — with stubbornness, bitter temper, a frown plastered on his face. But you are not afraid of him. You are afraid for him, and fear leaves you frozen on the spot.

“I bet she gets paid enough for her to move her feet instead of making customers wait,” the man snarls, raising his voice, attracting attention. “These bitches can only flash their tits and complain! Never get their fucking job done!”

You think he isn’t talking about you anymore — drunk people will take any chance to overshare, — and you want to reassure Aegon you are not insulted or upset, and you see the security guy wading through the crowd and toward you. But then the situation escalates with a speed of a shot arrow.

Three things happen, barely a few seconds apart: the drunk man swings the glass at you, Aegon moves to stand in his way, then comes the sound of the glass breaking. It shatters into pieces that go everywhere — on barstools, on the counter, and behind it, some even reach the wall you are standing next to. You only come to your senses when the troublemaker is pried away from the bar.

“It’s not even Halloween yet, and I’m already seeing nonhuman creatures,” the security guy scoffs, grabbing him by the collar, then shoots Aegon a cool glance.

You rush to intervene. “He only tried to help!”

The bouncer gives him a look over. “Man, you are bleeding,” he notes and then drags the boozer away.

The manager comes running up to you, suggesting you take a break, but your gaze is drawn to Aegon — he’s got a cut on his cheekbone, and blood is coming out, bright maroon running down his face. He raises his hand to touch the wound, then looks down at his stained fingers in disarray.

“I didn’t really feel it, I —”

“We’ve got a first-aid kit, come on,” you take him by the hand and lead the way, taking big steps, rounding the counter, pushing the back door wide open.

Aegon doesn’t make a sound, only following you obediently, his fingers tugging at yours. You reach the utility room, and you sit him down on some impromptu chair made of stacked-up boxes, then go to look for medical supplies. He keeps his eyes on you.

You bring a cold pack, antiseptic wipes, bandages, and turn on the flashlight on your phone to examine the cut.

“It’s not that deep so you won’t need stitches,” your voice comes off too stern, and you notice how he shrivels at the sound of it.

You feel determination, guilt, and anger — not at him but at yourself, and the fear still hasn’t left, and the words that are filled with it flow out first.

“That was very stupid of you,” you tell Aegon, applying the cold pack to the wounded side of his face, “You could’ve been injured, seriously injured,” with your other hand, you wipe the dried blood off his skin. “You got lucky the man was too wasted to aim well. He could’ve cut you way deeper, or poke your eye, or —”

It’s the lack of response that makes you stop, and your eyes glide over him. Now he does look ashamed, but his shame comes off as a meek, habitual reaction to yet another mistake he made. You think back to his deep-rooted sadness, scars covered with ink and shirts, pain hidden under layers of mirth.

You don’t want to add to his misery, you want the exact opposite.

You throw away the wipe streaked with blood, get another one. And then you place a finger beneath his chin to lift it.

“I mean, it was also brave,” this time, your movements are more gentle, and so is your gaze. “No one ever did anything like that for me. And I should totally thank you.”

He considers the change in you — and welcomes it, grinning boyishly again, his irises the color of the sea that merged with the sky.

“What can I say? I’m doing my best to maintain my very manly image,” Aegon cackles, taking the cold pack from you, wriggling his face a little at the numbness.

“This might sting a little,” you warn him and put the wipe soaked with the antiseptic right to his cut.

“Ouch-ouch-ouch,” he mutters, eyes squeezed shut, nose scrunched.

You let out a short laugh. “That’s a crack in your macho image,” you remark, lightly pressing on his wound for just a moment. “But I am willing to look past that.”

Aegon is suddenly in no hurry to open the eyes. His smile falls away, his glee disappears as if swept away by a gust of wind. He’s both the drifting ship and the force of nature that ruins it.

“I am not the best company, you see,” he says sullenly after a pause, averting his gaze. “I’m all cracks and hollow.”

His wound isn’t bleeding anymore, but his heart is, and you can only patch one thing at a time. You take a band-aid, unwrap it and carefully place over his cut, smoothing out the adhesive edges.

“Leonard Cohen would’ve disagreed,” you respond, your fingers delicately brushing his cheek. “He said that’s how the light gets in.”

Aegon is quiet at first, positively stunned as if you are a guiding star, and he’s only seen utter darkness before that. You almost get shy with nervousness but then he stands up. “Dance with me,” he says, in a voice low and pleading.

“But there is no music, how can —”

He lays a thumb on your lower lip, silencing you. “Shhh, just listen,” he murmurs.

For half a minute you hear nothing, wondering if the walls are soundproof, but then you catch it — the notes of music echoing from the bar, muffled but still audible. You don’t know what song is it, what the lyrics are, what’s it about. But Aegon takes your hand in his — and it’s just you two in the middle of the dimly lit room, the walls separating you from the outside world, your bodies only getting closer, slowly swaying to the faint rhythm.

Him cautiously laying a palm on your waist is what gives you the courage to speak up.

“Someone told me it’s a weird coincidence that you come only on my shifts,” you mention, watching his reaction.

Aegon doesn’t shy away from your gaze. “Not a coincidence,” he confesses. “Does it bother you?”

“Not at all,” you assure him quickly. “I find it flattering that you appreciate my cocktail-making abilities that much,” and then you draw in a deep breath as if you’re about to dunk underwater. “But maybe there’s more to it... Maybe there is another reason?”

You notice his cheeks flushing with a touch of pink, and you expect him to take time to unravel the tangle of excuses or to make some. Instead, he lists fervently, like it’s something he’s always wanted to tell you:

“You are caring. And funny, and gentle. You are easy to talk to, accepting and calm. And you listen, without judgment or disapproval. And you never... you never ask me to be someone else,” that last part is the hardest one — and yet, he adds, “With you, I feel like I’m enough.”

There are no layers left, you realize, — it’s just him: sad and broken and lost. But with his eyes still shining with warmth, his gaze searching and hopeful. He is still beautiful, no matter how scarred.

Your fear crumbles into pieces, small like confetti, and you close the distance between you two, your mouth finding his, hands gliding up his shoulders. For a second his lips don’t move, and his breathing hitches. He blindly tucks away your lock of hair, and his finger slowly traces the angle of your jaw, as if he wants to make sure he’s not dreaming.

And then Aegon tugs you closer, and his hand cradles your face — and he kisses you.

He is tender, his lips soft like the foam of a wave, their movement steady, like he’s writing down all the words left unsaid, leaving you infatuated, breathless, and enamored of him. There are no secrets, no doubts, no regrets. In place of his darkest memories, you are planting new ones, and his affection is blooming already.

When you open your eyes and meet his, his gaze is nothing but loving, and Aegon holds you in his arms, the way you’ve always dreamt of. You brush a few pieces of confetti out of his hair, and you hope that one day his pain will disappear just as fast.

He is broken from the inside out but you find it easy to love every single piece he’s assembled of.

✧ technically, I got inspired by the piano version of that song (it’s sad) and the live version (it’s even sadder), and that was the reason I decided to add a kissing scene. not that anyone asked but now you know lmao ✧ this photoshoot of Tom deserves way more attention ✧ as does his band! go give them a listen ✧ Duck Tales theme guitar cover as a bonus

✧ another one-shot inspired by some music (Aemond x reader) ✧ my HOTD multi-chapter fic because why not ✨my masterlist

English is not my first language, so feel free to message me if you spot any major mistakes. reblogs and comments are very much appreciated!

[libramonthlyhoroscope1]

80 angel number

Numerology refers to the mystical connection between numbers, physical entities, and objects. Although the first creators of the numerological system, as we know, were mathematicians, numerology is not a mathematical discipline, but something much more. Contemporary numerology still contains ancient Babylonian teachings, as well as parts of the philosophy of Christian mysticism and the Hebrew religion. Angel numerology also found it to be the most accurate and definitive type of numerology.

The angel number is our essence and represents the possibility of taking our maximum in this life, and it is often hidden from others, but sometimes also from ourselves (numbers help us find the right path).

80 angel number

Everything that is written about angel numbers, our strengths and weaknesses can be permanently altered or corrected, because the goal is, as we said before, to achieve the maximum possible in life.

In angel number 80 we find many interesting aspects.

Angel number 80 and numerology - what does it mean?

Angel number 80 can be described as a diligent, disciplined, and self-controlled person, someone who hides his feelings and tends to isolate himself from others. Most loners are angel number 80; they are unpredictable for themselves, much less for others because they are born rebellious.

They have trouble opening up to others and usually expect their environment to understand them without saying a word, which is difficult and unrealistic.

Such strange and closed behavior is not very popular, and then there is nervousness. In that state of mind, they become even more withdrawn and distant. It is interesting that they are neither self-centered nor selfish, but introverted.

It is clear that number 80 shows the fear of rejection and the tendency to dishonesty in close relationships that some people have. They want to be accepted by others, but by hiding their real emotions, they experience a lot of internal turmoil.

Some recommend angel number 80 to work with animals like a vet or zoo keeper because it is challenging for people who are angel number 80 to find a common language with other humans.

Also, it is highly recommended that angel number 80 try to discover and learn self-discipline and strict principles; Angel number 80 is also advised to focus more on your family members, so that realization will bring you inner happiness.

Secret meaning and symbolism

To understand number 80, we must look at number 80 through its constituent elements - 8 and 0. These numbers give number 80 its persistence, rigor, vitality and curiosity and spirit of leadership.

Part of the meaning of the number 80 comes from the fact that it can represent the start or duration of freedom from oppressors.

Moses was 80, and his older brother Aaron was 83, when they challenged Pharaoh to free the children of Israel from their bondage (Exodus 7:7). Moses, whom God blessed by not having his strength or eyesight diminish as he aged, lived to the age of 120 (Deuteronomy 34:7).

Ehud was a rare left-handed warrior in ancient Israel. He freed the people from eighteen years of Moabite oppression by killing their king and rallying the Israelites around his cause. After his victory, he was Israel's Judge for 80 years, the longest person to serve in the position (Judges 3:12 - 4:1).

Appearances of the number eighty

King Solomon, according to the Bible, used 80,000 (80 x 1000) aliens living in Israel to dig stones out of quarries that would be used to build God's temple in Jerusalem (1Kings 5:15, 2Chronicles 2:17 - 18).

Solomon states that a particular woman he loved was more precious than 60 queens, 80 concubines and an innumerable number of virgins (Song of Solomon 6:8).

A man named Ishmael, after he murdered Babylon's governor over Judah, killed eighty men who came to Jerusalem to mourn its destruction (Jeremiah 41:5).

Lifespans and the number 80

The only Psalm which credits Moses for writing it is Psalm 90 (see verse 1). In his prayerful hymn to God, he declares that humans live an average of 70 years. If, however, they are strong, they can live to be the ripe old age of 80.

Moses' statement that humans live seventy to eighty years, even though made more than 3,500 years ago, is surprisingly accurate today!

According to the CIA Factbook, the life expectancy in the world is almost 70 years (69.8). Men live an average of close to 68 years and women average living to 72. In the United States, a male can expect to live almost 78 years with females living to 82. The average for those in America is 80.

The two countries in the world with the highest average life expectancy are Japan and Singapore. Their citizens can expect to live 5.5 more years than the U.S. average of 80

King Uzziah of Judah, after winning several battles against his enemies, became a strong and respected leader who was well-known abroad (2Chronicles 26:1 - 15). He soon, however, became filled with vanity and pride. In an impulsive act, he attempted to offer incense at Jerusalem's temple, a ceremony only priests could perform

Azariah the High Priest, along with eighty other priests, confront Uzziah in the temple over his intentions. The king, as he grew angry with the priests, was struck with leprosy (2Chronicles 26).

One of Jesus' many parables was of an unjust steward who was told he would be fired (Luke 16). Before leaving his position, he reduced the debt of several who owed his boss. One person had their debt lessened from 100 to 80 measures of wheat (Luke 16:7). The parable was given to underscore a Christian's responsibility to use, as wisely as possible, the resources he has been given (verses 10 - 13).

[davidjjohnston3]

1. Others' innocence can make us feel more alive and cleanly but we have sooner or later to 'cleanse the inside of your own cup' (Jesus).

2. I miss 'sis.'  That's all. I'm not married at 36.5 but someone did say, 'as a sister.'

3. I listened to Sowon's cover of 'Happy' and wrote a letter to Taeyeon on Instagram that she said something nice to.

4. I have several wishes pace Pope Francis' 'Come Let Us Dream' in the Covid era.  One of these is to move to Korea of course again, another to move to LA, and another to publish under the imprint of (Mrs.) Catherine Cho's literary imprint as 'Inferno' was terrifying to me in a good way and I too encountered both racism, antagonism towards introverts and quiet people, warehousing by TV, and other forms of evil and crime in the mental healthcare system from people who just want money or, worse in a way, fun and PRIDE.  I also think now that the mental healthcare system in Milwaukee Conuty was designed to give nursing school graduates either an 'easy money' job or exposure to a new Nazi-like system pace abortion-culture under the Democratic Party (including at least one Asian sadly; Andrew Yang), in which the mentally abnormal are considered second-class citizens if not Hitlerian 'life unworthy of life.' My parents are Democrats incidentally and fully support this.

5. I am pro-life 100%; I was going to be aborted and my biological 'father in law' still wants to post-partum-abort me; I could describe the spiritual realization but it's anatomical as well as literally electric.  I hope and pray the pro-life movement will be able to present a living paradigm whereby the value of orphan life can be demonstrated and God glorifide in a literal 'spirit of adoption' or at least a very good orphanage.  This has been part of my dream or 'ghost' since at least 2010.

6. I was driving to see Bethlehem Baptist Church + Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis and felt a crucifying energy from the church; I also thought about Monica and the 'white garments' of righteousness and covered sin ('white as snow' - Isaiah).  

7. I don't want to 'nuke the Johnston clan' but as I was brutally attacked by both my parents in a campaign involving widespread exaggeration lying to both biomedical professionals / sci-tech establishment as well as civil authority (police) I have written some notes and passages of a 'purple and gold' project, 'Johnston Family Promises; or How Easter Became April Fools,' which could be characterized as a parody of self-destruction, specifically self-post-partum-abortion by reversing the fact that medical doctor brain trust thought I'd be born on April Fool's but was actually born on Easter Sunday in Los Angeles, CA.  

8. I just want a future at this point however as my biological 'family' turned violently against me and I am in the position of 'gathering in the summer' (Proverbs).

9. I thought, 'an authentic love'... I love Changrae Lee also but it took me a long time to understand the spiritual 'Requiem' sense of his best book, by far, 'The Surrendered.'  Koreans I sometimes think are the one race or rather _ _ now taking the past seriously without throwing away the future.  With Secretary Pompeo I feel America could fall in on itself or at least on people like me, including many vulnerable loved ones of all of yours, my Facebook friends.

10. On a lighter note I like (Ms. / Artist) Kim Taeyeon's 'Cover Up' - 'I can't cover up my heart.'  

11. I still like Baskin Robbins Pineapple Coconut thoguh for some reason it makes me think of being a billionaire world-saving commerce-warrior in financial triller Michael Kim's 'Offerings.''

12. I gave the wrong things to the wrong people and made them worse; I expect to be judged by Moses as well as my former teacher-trainers and mentors for being 's/Sensei' who failed his students in both senses of fail (gave them F's and failed to teach them things that made them 'better').  It was a traumatic experience that made me feel demoted from EdAdmin that I had just been offered to wanting to assist-teach K4 or Spec/ExcepEd.  That's what you get for 'adult education' / being honest with Boomers about your thoughts, feelings, and decades of study.  I think Confuciu would say you can't teach constructively who have no sense of shame (old American whites), and moreover participate in a rape-culture including both literal rape, sex-traficking, university campus-culture, porneia,

13. I haven't yet had an EKG but could have experienced acute idiopathic cardiac distress from the Pfizer vaccine since too many beautiful women ages 11-80 all love me.  I thought a while back at 36, 'How to use my last half of my life.'  Then suddenly with pericardial effusion on my mind I thought, 'What to do with 3 months to 2.8 years.'  I wanted to go to Korea; I saw a Servants of Christ video where she was in Korea walking by a river to 'I Need Thee Every Hour' a Christian hymn to Jesus about absolute dependency, 'most precious Lord.'  I remembered Psalm 23 and a time I just wanted to be buried in a certain cemetery in Incheon.  Some other things happened involving my marital future, 'Skinship,' but now I am hoping for at least 5-10 years as the acute issues have mostly settled down and I am a clever self-dietician.  Honestly though with the state of healthcare in Wisconsin I thought about purchasing a needle myself for a pericardocentesis to drain the H2O.  

14. I have one writing-project I might not complete but I feel a solid start that could / should be published about abortion-culture and based on 'Love in Color,' a popular song by a no-longer-pop-idol.  

15. I still think about expositing American literature but suddenly 'The Old New World' means more to me; the old Midwestern novel, 'Winterlight,' 'My Soul at Night.'  And, 'The Magnificent Ambersons,' destined love.  I had a student in Korea who would be the card-carrying image of Lucy Morgan if they adapted it in addition to Mark Helprin's 'In Sunlight and in Shadow.'  

16. I am (too?) afraid of the Cross of Gold.  America getting rich.  China's 'moderately prosperous nation' i.e. Get Middle Class or Die (and Take World w/ Us) Tryinng.'  I want to be poor and poor-in-spirit except that I love some people who could use the money.  That is part of why I think about Michael B. Kim.

17. I like green peas, peanut butter, and blueberries.

18. The best audiobook I read lately is almost holy to me, 'Inferno' by Catherine Cho but 'Forgotten God' by Francis Chan is also incredible.  I listen to it while sleeping on audio and it always seems to wake me up at the perfect moment.  

19. I finally figured out an 'audience' as well.  If I could finally write a couple novels with a 'professional' utterance in addition to 'Love in Color' my 'caritas et amor' homage to a beautiful song and also something on the Covid era and old and young.  Like Pastor John MacArthur, or with him / following him I just feel like the whole point of Covid was to give people a chance to do better by / with kids.  'We plant the trees; our children enjoy the shade' - a Chinese proverb that the orthodox preacher / shepherd John MacArthur cites nonetheless. The American Families Plan.  Also even more (AUTHENTIC, non-guru-guff, non-fetishistic, non-trends-based) professionalization and humane policing and children's rights within the South Korean public and private schooling sectors.

20. I had one grand project as well called 'The Distant Lights of Seoul' that is kind of my take on 'In Sunlight and in Shadow' but it evolved in to something more personal that that's all... a trip I thought of taking, in the days when I was unsure whether to be the new or old.

21. I remember the most anguished summer of my life till now was 2003.  'Deep Inside of You' by 3EB.  'I would change myself if I could / I would walk with my people if I could find them / and I'd say I'm sorry to you.'  Coincidentally I went on an 'icy-hot' date with a hyper-beautiful woman at the cafe-bar where Jenkins wrote 'Motorcycle Driveby.'

22. I made a 'partial audiobook' of the early Psalms - particularly 5, about God defending - and had a beautiful experience like reading to children.

23. I don't want to broaden myself out too much physically or experientially; I'm afraid of becoming mentally American.  'Leaving Babylon, Leaving America, Leaving Milwaukee, Leaving.'  My homage to Madison Kwon Eunbi as well, theme-music 'Eraser.'  But I have to be a better man to approach my new _.

24. My original 'Korea project' was called 'Transferring to Line Zero' and like many Millennial writers in 2010 I tried to sound like a Haruki Murakami narrator but my experience turned out to be more like Kazuo Ishiguro, Marcel Proust.  I aimed for whisky but got wine.  I wish I could write this as I know for whom.  IDK if anyone cares though as Millennials almost all had 'these.'  I just wish I could make something of it instead of seeming like 'Acute Fangirl's No. 1 Fanboy.'  There wasn't a 'zero.'  

25. I had a crush on Dreamcatcher JiU 'Lily Kim' I saw once in Chicago - 'prettier in real life' is a good way to zonk people out into falling in love with a picture - but I saw a picture of her in traditional Joseon garment and just thought, 'cordial neighbor.'  That's all.

26. I used to write 'nuke Harvard' self-hyper-fanfiction about me v. the more customary winners and my ideal project is 'The Chinaman (or Chinese Poet) at American-Korean Thanksgiving.'

27. remembering my 2003 self / poet persona

akaka soru no

I thought about snow falling on velvet.  I got in trouble in the neighborhood. I liked Red Velvet's 'Wish Tree.'  I liked Wendy Son and Kim Yerim. A noble name, Son Seungwan, I'll say it once.

Maoists.  I read 'Wild Swans.'   I wanted to join you in your sadness and your beauty but I wasn't being Kawabata Yasunari. I don't want to generalize about my love for you but I don't believe in things either; Time disappears; mathematics inspires my disbelief; I think it can change.

'I love other people.'

What is it when parents grow old Do they go in to a new world They go to Heaven before us They know about being young

Wine, Elizabeth Strout novel 'Protestant endurance' in the old Midwest 'We are different from everybody'

The only question a bomb-threat at the school after 9.11 'Sospiro' fioritura In those days they were innocent 'I would take you seriously' (if I were a teacher) Now they try to be like New Yorkers I am not home

The poem that belonged to everyone flower a flower Can the passive-aggressive therapist Chinese girlfriend tea in the morning 'If I had to live with you'

the children of tomorrow where understanding ends require a world

a walk by the river i was old then carrying something i knew how to cook i knew how to live you sang 'dream' i said something like someone once said to me my old love contacted me via e-mail she said she had become materialistic and Republican she looked really good / happy married with kid after Covid-19 anaesthesiologist

28. Dov Danilov had abjected himself; he was known; on one cared.  The only decisive or critical factor... There was that armored 'girlfriend of steel' or perhaps better-than-girlfriend, the trial by ordeal, the one-look judgmentality, but it was all the past.  There was 'When You Are Old' and there had always been the presence of the Other like in 'The New World' with Pocahontas and John Smith; 'Who are you that haunts my dreams?'  That was a gooood movie.  He watched 'The Last Samurai' back in the day and didn't take it seriously but believed it contained good 'advices.'  There was Manheim Wagner's 'Korea: How You Feel' that had a great photo that seemed to mean something about the author's feelings but the book was all about illegal narcotics and sex-trafficking.  There was 'Brother One Fell' but it was all about masturbation and poor diet and illegal narcotics and what the Native Amerrian Indian shepherd-scholar hda called 'Mental Europeanness.'   The shepherd-scholar called himself a 'sheep-rancher.'  It was RU, 2005 autumn. 'Being known and ont cared for,' like HAndong from Dreamcatcher.  Maybe, it was the beginning of the end of the nightmare. - I could eat again a little if I got another love-letter from a female student... or even another bouquet from a gay male student... Maybe I'll mrary a North Korean woman after reunification... Remember 'Honey and Clover?' - Good song. - It's an anime-drama.  Originally it was a dorama.  Pramodh liked it before BLM stole his soul and he death-threated me with Cannibal COrpse and hate.  'Moon River' on pianoforte.  

- 'The Remains of DJ.'  'LA Dream.'  'Red Mansion Dream.'  'Pandemic of Honesty.'  'At the End of the Winter-Light; the Last of the Good Old Wisconsin Blue.'  'John Updike R

and I am not ashamed while my love is near me and I know it will be so till it's time to go So count the storms of winter and then the birds in spring again

'doctrine of unconditional evil'

29. My father acted in a really scary obsessive fashion toward me lately and now suddenly he is just eating and drinking.  

30. Jesus Himself said in the Gospel not to curse your parents.

31. I thought something about 'Sentimental Education' lately.

32. A while ago I wanted to write or read 'stories about families.'

33. I want to return to my '2003' project that predicted bioweapons and stuff but not really.

If I were redoing it I might just make it about 'Honesty' and instead of magic assassins it would be the medical doctor charged with mitigating bioweapon magic damage and the FBI agent investigating the bad guys.  Psalm 5.

34. Wanting to be the spiritual-intellectual successor to Bruce Cumings (hyper-meta historiography of the Korean War and, by extension, Covid, the world, Christ / CHristology, and the problems with non-Asia-based E. Asian Studies academicians or anyone who lacks Confucian scholar-gentleman / 'sunbi' / Scholar in Kingdom of Heaven sincerity).  China buries corrrput intellectuals alive.

35. 'Final Offer' in Time (on Pres. Moon Jaein).  'Peace in Our Time?'  Blessed are the peacemakers; blessed are the pure in heart.  

36. IDK if it's worth saying but - dept. of Anti-Christology or study of Antichrist - the 'first world' as it used to be called by and large seemed to be trending towards Imperium.  I honestly feel as if Barack Obama could be pulling the strings from within the CIA building and David Cameron adn Angela Merkel are in charge of all of Europe, while POpe Francis holds suzerainty of influence if not command-authority over the Spanish-speaking world.  IDK if there is meaningful dissent outside of a few republic-nations such as Poland and South Korea, who paradoxically take on a posture of what Park Chunghee callde 'itnernational responsiblity' despite a history of atrocious suffering and monoethnic somewhat xenophobic traditional social makeup.

37. Flaubert's notes to his supreme masterpiece 'Sentimental Education'... I'll just say... How he taught Frederic Moureau to fall in love with Marie Arnoux; taught himself how to LOVE Marie both before the beginning and after the end of being 'in love' with this mother-paramour.  

That said, I still remember the days when I had 'optimism' and someone said, '[woman] is happy because of you.'

38. I can't write more but do have specific goals, chiefly, master Korean and learn all the basic facts.  Professionals and experts believe in facts; as my Russian Yale MBA friend used to say, 'I am a scientist.'

I wish I had a profession... 'literary criticism of life?'  I am interested in 'the condition of fiction' and 'the logic of pulverization' but I just track John MacArthur.  I need to reconstitute my body and mind then maybe...

Dreams of [doctoral degrees].

39. 2 Timothy, Acts 2, Thessalonians, Revelation, in the Covid era.

40. Dreaming of Bethlehem College and Seminary.

41. Dov Danilov had abjected himself; he was known; on one cared.  The only decisive or critical factor... There was that armored 'girlfriend of steel' or perhaps better-than-girlfriend, the trial by ordeal, the one-look judgmentality, but it was all the past.  There was 'When You Are Old' and there had always been the presence of the Other like in 'The New World' with Pocahontas and John Smith; 'Who are you that haunts my dreams?'  That was a gooood movie.  He watched 'The Last Samurai' back in the day and didn't take it seriously but believed it contained good 'advices.'  There was Manheim Wagner's 'Korea: How You Feel' that had a great photo that seemed to mean something about the author's feelings but the book was all about illegal narcotics and sex-trafficking.  There was 'Brother One Fell' but it was all about masturbation and poor diet and illegal narcotics and what the Native Amerrian Indian shepherd-scholar hda called 'Mental Europeanness.'   The shepherd-scholar called himself a 'sheep-rancher.'  It was RU, 2005 autumn. 'Being known and ont cared for,' like HAndong from Dreamcatcher.  Maybe, it was the beginning of the end of the nightmare. - I could eat again a little if I got another love-letter from a female student... or even another bouquet from a gay male student... Maybe I'll mrary a North Korean woman after reunification... Remember 'Honey and Clover?' - Good song. - It's an anime-drama.  Originally it was a dorama.  Pramodh liked it before BLM stole his soul and he death-threated me with Cannibal COrpse and hate.  'Moon River' on pianoforte.  

- 'The Remains of DJ.'  'LA Dream.'  'Red Mansion Dream.'  'Pandemic of Honesty.'  'At the End of the Winter-Light; the Last of the Good Old Wisconsin Blue.'  'John Updike R

and I am not ashamed while my love is near me and I know it will be so till it's time to go So count the storms of winter and then the birds in spring again

'doctrine of unconditional evil' - humans mistaking themselves for God the Father - abortion-culture - Pope Saint John Paul II 'Humana Vitae'

42. Ideas of Christianity versus praxis and parataxis of Christianity

43. I was fond of Becca on Xanga but not as much as 'Clover' People open so much they can't but close off like a French novel 'humanity-rule' though their psychology of women is 'unconvincing' Glenn Gould ate a lot of eggs he was a hypochrondriac I want to drink 'Delta Covid Winter Summer Wine' and think of Mary HK Choi 'Yolk,' Lear's Cordelia and the real one, caritas / a'ga'pe I hope I don't get kilt with a _ _ _

44. Side- / mini-project 'My Brother's Type' about anti-Asian racism.

45. Ideal YA novel / counter to all corrupt YAL books, 'Clover' from the Promise / Fromis song.  It's beautiful, beauteous, 'fragrance from life to life.'  'I kept wishing for luck until I realized that which I wanted was happiness, yes?'

46. They were bored psychopathic Boomers; retirement had made them cannibal sociopaths.  His mom was like Volumnia in Coriolanus.  He didn't want to think about it.  He remembered Shan by the Han River, 'Fair Love.'  It was ten years ago; he weighed 25 pounds less but his mentality was the same. People were different.  Children were different.  In Wisconsin they evinced a... He was tired of being a bridge between West and East.  No one was curious.

47. I approached something really intense and pure and holy - and absolutely specific - and can't back off or back down without harm to myself.  This might be my last FBI.

48. I was 'boring guy.'

49. Summer rain.

50. That holiness... but also... CVA ('Charity edifieth')...

51. I want to read Korean poetry again as well.  Better poetry than ever, I imagine, better people.  'Perfect Children.'

52. 'And When We Are Older' - A Poem for Someone about My Age

And when we are old it won't necessarily get easier or fall into place or smooth into bonhomie or grow delicate as papery exquisite autumn leaves like the face of Jennifer Aniston and sometimes at the gym my smaller shoulder-muscles push harder but they remind me in this cute, precious way of some kind knowing amid Cross and sword that ever valor is a risk and God has got his hour writ. I thought that by now I would know what it's like to be one flesh with a wife, to watch a daughter practicing pianoforte, play catch with a son in the yard of a house by New Jersey reedy ponds.  That dream began in 1994 and there it stays, between the 'cello-clabbered music-room and gildered auditorium and still, in these institutions, nowhere to confess my love, nowhere to begin, just papers to plan on or wise. I used to love book-reviews, the language of dictionaries that could seem to get life so right, "Validity in Interpretation," the days when newspapers seemed to love me more than my own teachers, Colossians 4:6, editing sprinkled with salt, giving reason for hope, appropriate, apt, jeongdokhada. They get old and old and much is made of the things we can experience; sometimes I think that my dear friend quit Samsung too soon to know how to build his own team and I quit at least three jobs too soon and didn't stay in hot pursuit and now feel almost as if only my thoughts are as brightly alive with a love-light as your face once was. I get so lost at shopping malls, drowning; I don't get what anyone is up to. There was a Monsignor who composed or redacted this immense ethnography of all Korea but it must have broken his heart too, man who never took a wife, knitting red, his memory, the kind of person who arrives as I, watching Pompeo et al, in the hope of a benevolent ruler both forever and for the time being too... My friend used to say I could lead but I couldn't even shut down the snark-machine and Reddit had a field day with me and honestly maybe I've never loved anyone adequately. Let's be young a while more and though I didn't like this as a kid we can talk to the TV like at my grandparents' house long ago and again born on the new day, maybe we'll spend some time married.

53. 'Happy Days'

54. I miss the good K-dramas from Dramafever days though I don't watch television anymore... I wish I did just to rest my eyes... I miss 'Please Come Back Ahjusshi'... He's on the flying aerospace train to Heaven with his tears of contrition but decidees to return to Earth to delete his porn-collection for his wife and daughter surviving him... I deleted my biological father's literary porn collection ('daddy'-stepdaughter coercive / rape; adulterous housewife)... but he tried to send me to death and Hell.

55. It was like autumn in Korea this morning with the lamps and air-moisture; it was like Korean summer this early evening with August rain.

56. I want to regain my purity of literary style but hopefully God willing write something profitable / fruitful.   I might just teach again for pay..

[ricardosousalemos]

Thelonious Monk: Monk's Music

The summer of 1957 would seem to mark the redemption of Thelonious Monk, the summer he made Monk’s Music in one night.

He was then a 39-year-old New York jazz pianist of great repute who hadn’t been able to work at most jazz clubs in New York for the past six years. His cabaret card, a relic of New York law enforcement since prohibition, had been revoked in 1951 after a spurious narcotics charge. And so he hadn’t been easy to see, which means he might have seemed elusive. He was introverted and sometimes guarded; such behavior has never been unusual in jazz. In fact he lived with bipolar disorder—undiagnosed at the time, though we know about it now, especially through the work of the scholar Robin D.G. Kelley, whose book Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original is the principal source of much biographical information here.

At the end of 1955, Monk’s mother, Barbara, had died. In early 1956, an electrical fire destroyed his New York apartment on West 63rd Street, totaling his piano and resulting in his family of five, basically destitute, having to stay for months with friends—15 people in a three-room apartment. At the beginning of 1957, Monk spent three weeks in Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, taken there by a policeman he'd been unresponsive to after a car accident. (What else was going on in his bloodline? Kelley’s book, at this period, contains a chilling sentence: “Thelonious did not know that his own father had been living in a mental asylum for the past fifteen years.”) In May, his wife Nellie developed an illness which resulted in a thyroidectomy, leaving her frail and depressed, which had a relay effect on Monk. Also during this time, Monk got himself a manager, began a close musical relationship with John Coltrane, made several albums for Riverside records including Monk’s Music, regained his cabaret card, and started a six-month job at the Five Spot Café—a gig which would re-establish his performing career, serve as Coltrane’s finishing school, and be described thereafter as a high point in New York jazz culture.

This is all a relatively easy story to tell. There is a reversal of fortune; Monk makes a great album; he wins. Like any cliche, it only applies badly to Monk.

As a pianist, Monk, who would have turned 100 this year, was not a dazzler-virtuoso like Art Tatum or Oscar Peterson. He phrased in a wide circumference around the beat, leaving a lot of silence in an improvisation, enough for you to notice. He made polytonal clonks on the keyboard by playing the desired note as well as the key adjacent to it. The assumption, often, was that either he didn’t have much technique, or was withholding it because he didn’t want to be understood or known too quickly, and why would someone do that?

A common initial reaction to Monk was skepticism. The pianist Randy Weston, then 18, first saw Monk playing in Coleman Hawkins’ band. “Who is this cat on piano?” Weston remembers thinking, in his memoir African Rhythms. “I can play more piano than this guy!” In other words: it’s unclear what this person knows. Another reaction was humility. The drummer Art Blakey described in a 1973 interview how Monk had been his sympathetic guide through what Blakey called the “cliques” in New York jazz when Blakey first arrived from Pittsburgh in the early ’40s. Blakey watched Monk defend his own music and insist on the right way to play it. “He was very outspoken,” he said. “He knew what he wanted to do, and he did it.” In other words: this person knows a lot.

Much of the talk around jazz, and around Monk, turns on ideas of knowing and not-knowing. (I keep the hyphen, as for related reasons did Donald Barthelme in his essay of that name as well as various Buddhists and psychotherapists, because by “not-knowing” I mean flexibility, working without a fixed outcome, trusting oneself to find a new vocabulary, as opposed to what I would mean without the hyphen: ignorance, lack of awareness, incuriosity.) By one understanding, jazz is a consensual language of rhythm, harmony, and form, and a consensual repertoire accumulated over the last hundred years. That’s about knowing. If you want to work in jazz, you have to get the basic songs under your fingers. Those songs—including, say, “All the Things You Are,” “Donna Lee,” “Footprints,” and about ten by Thelonious Monk—are a part of what holds the tradition together.  

The larger part is the fact that jazz is essentially African-American in musical vocabulary and disposition. Jazz is cultural memory. For many African-American musicians, to know is also to be aware of the values and dangers; to know is not to forget. Monk’s music suggested the cumulative past as a wider present: something older from within jazz—boogie-woogie or early Ellington—along with other vernacular traditions adjacent to it: rumba, gospel, or rhythm and blues.

Jazz is further defined by the discipline of improvising, which some say is an express-lane to thinking through time progressively and allowing possibility, the greater idea of not-knowing.  

* 

From the first seconds of “Well, You Needn’t,” the second track on Monk’s Music and the record’s greatest eleven minutes, much control is in evidence. You hear Monk, with only the bassist Wilbur Ware thrumming in the back, working upward from the C below middle C over an F pedal in half-steps: C, Db, D, Eb, E. Monk is playing in an implied three-beat rhythm, and punching out his notes a little roughly, as you might imagine yourself punching an elevator button. But he is doing it in between the beats, with style and purpose. He climbs his five notes twice, each time bringing you one step away from resolution in a perfect cadence; he is building tension and expectation in a classical and idiomatic way, alerting you that something is going to take place here, and it’s going to be an event. Then it arrives: the song’s hard opening, with John Coltrane, Coleman Hawkins and the rest of the septet piling in, Art Blakey’s drumming shoving it forward.

The band plays the theme together and Blakey crashes on its last beat. Now it’s Monk’s turn. He doesn’t start until the cymbal quiets down, and so for the first measure and a half there is silence. His solo begins as a restatement of the song’s melody, according to convention, but picks it up like a sentence started in the middle. He speeds up and slows down, experimenting, stamping his foot a little, testing the strength of the rhythm and his own relationship to it. Three times he brings his hand down on a strange five-note chord: a stack of fourths, all black notes. Each time he lets it ring for six beats. “Well, You Needn’t” was not a particularly famous song in 1957—Monk had recorded it ten years before for Blue Note, also with Blakey—but it sounds colossal here.

* 

Monk wasn’t an album artist per se. Monk’s Music—produced by Orrin Keepnews, recorded at Reeves Sound Studios on East 44th Street, released on Riverside Records—is contradictory: strident, reassuring, fractured, centered. It isn’t perfect, whatever perfect means. Here and there it sounds like a rehearsal or a jam session. Some solos wander, particularly on “Epistrophy,” and the trumpeter Ray Copeland and alto saxophonist Gigi Gryce are comparatively weak links. But Monk’s Music also sounds loose and deep and urgent. At its best it suggests a party in a specific room; you come to know the room. After Monk finishes his solo in “Well, You Needn’t,” he shouts “Coltrane! Coltrane!” to signal who’s up next. Ravi Coltrane, John’s son, told me that when he first heard Monk’s Music he was 21, listening in a university library with headphones on. At Monk’s shout, he startled, thinking someone was looking for him.

The band includes the saxophonist John Coltrane, Monk’s new student, who sounds dry, driven, searching; the saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, Monk’s old mentor, with a gallant and knowing affect that he puts to special use on Monk’s ballad “Ruby, My Dear”; and Blakey, a kind of younger brother, pro-active, explosive, rendering the dance impulse in super-titles. Monk himself does nothing strange by his own standards. He is brusque and vatic and intimate, moving through funny, orderly, supremely affective songs. The first track is the exception in several ways: it is only a melody, played in straight rhythm by the horns alone; it is a hymn called “Abide With Me,” also known as “Eventide,” composed in the middle of the 19th century by the English composer William Henry Monk. Destiny’s Child liked to put their gospel songs at the end of their records; Monk put his at the beginning.

Monk’s Music includes the first renderings of a harmonically rich song that would become one of Monk’s standards, “Crepuscule With Nellie,” written for his wife at a fragile time. Monk plays it unnervingly slowly, and bids the band to do the same with him. (One of his drummers at the time, Frankie Dunlop, in an interview from 1984 extraordinary for the secret knowledge about rhythm it reveals, as well as for Dunlop’s imitation of Monk’s speaking voice, called Monk’s approach to tempo “a different musical category altogether.”) Really, it’s a radical slow dance. During the Five Spot gig, while others soloed, Monk began the practice of dancing on stage: a soft lurch, turning in a circle, imitating the greater circle around the beat.

* 

A lot came together for Monk in 1957. Shortly thereafter, starting in the 1960s, he shifted up to touring theaters with a steady band. His records became elegantly repetitive and often staid. He appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1964; from then on, till his withdrawal from playing in the 1970s and his death in 1982, he was “known.”   

You can make fun of jazz writers from the distant past all day, but some of their early published ideas about Monk in the ’40s, especially in Down Beat and Metronome, were only as naïve as Weston’s. If they liked him, they were describing a European-style avant-garde hero, desiring to cut loose from the known. If they didn’t like him, they were describing music they found incomplete or antisocial. They described him as “too too,” “for the super hip alone,” “neurotic,” and—worst of all—“bad, though interesting.” All these reactions imply Monk’s fecklessness or lack of control. They are the reactions of people encountering a critical intelligence and not knowing what to do with it.

Monk’s story is a story of relationships. Born in Rocky Mount, NC, he grew up among Southern and Antillean families at 234 West 63rd Street in Manhattan, on a block now called Thelonious Monk Circle. A couple doors down, No. 224, was the Columbus Hill Neighborhood Center, his social hub and the site of his early gigs. His engagement in the jazz culture of Harlem through the ’40s, alongside Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, and Kenny Clarke, created several new languages in jazz, collectively and roughly described as bebop. All his interviews, all the anecdotes, illustrate that Monk, to a great degree, knew his own value and had no interest in being strange on purpose. (“I don’t like the word ‘weird,’ anyway,” he told Nat Hentoff.) He knew who he was, and that knowledge allowed him the freedom of not-knowing.

One of the best lines in Kelley’s book comes in a secondhand story told by the poet Ted Joans. Be skeptical, but here it is. At some point in the second half of 1957, during a set at the Five Spot, Monk wandered off stage as the band continued to play, out the doors of the club, and walked for a few blocks. One of the club owners chased him down and found him looking at the sky. He asked Monk if he was lost. “No, I ain’t lost. I’m here,” Monk is said to have responded. “The Five Spot’s lost.”