#i was listening to the first version on repeat and i couldn't resist rip

[runningrabbits]

[ fairweather friend, rabbits on the run ; 2011 ]

just to make things clear, i like both the first and second version. the first actually has prettier lyrics, to me, but i don’t think Carlton’s final choice of lyrics was a bad idea. this is the song i listened to on loop ( along with Dear California ) for three days straight.

Fairweather Friend, as stated by Carlton, is about betrayal. i link this, for some reason, to the book Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.

( to digress a little, it’s a very beautiful book. i read it thrice. i am forever indebted to the acquaintance / friend who recommended it to me; i never did get the chance to thank her. it’s dystopian fiction, by the way. )

it particularly reminds me of the relationship between Arthur and Victoria ( i’m referring to the characters without context, so you can skip this part ). i cried when i read the chapter which was supposed to contain a few excerpts from Dear V. i don’t really know why; i haven’t been through anything like that ( that would be virtually impossible ), but i guess i am enough of a loner to know what it feels like. for the record, i just like talking to different people, but unfortunately that’s not how it works.

i cried when i read that chapter, i really did. i just sat there and cried. it’s one of those inexplicable things that you do. i have never cried as much over a book, i swear. it’s one of the main why i love Station Eleven so much — Mandel has given each and every one of her characters a story, a history. Arthur and Victoria’s story is especially painful; childhood friends eventually drifted apart. it happens, this drifting. we try to stop it, try to talk, but it never works. 

magical thinking gets us by. Carlton talks a little about believing — is it true that if you refuse to believe something, it won’t be true in ‘your’ reality? if we pretend that everything is magically okay, does that make everything okay? it’s one of the lines i love most from this album. it raises so many questions about the way we see things; do we all see them in a positive light, do we all keep on hoping, just for the sake of not breaking down? we gotta get by, somehow.

the character in Fairweather Friend is in denial, i think. he / she / they tries / try to look at things from a different angle — what if the ‘you’ in the song didn’t actually mean it? what if he / she / they himself / herself / themself didn’t mean it? both of them probably feel equally as bad about whatever happened, but one of them has chosen to ignore what’s happened while the other… the other refuses to let go. 

the piano and violin ( is it a violin? i never did learn how to recognise instruments well ) is a perfect mix. i’m happy listening to the instrumental by itself. it gives off the bittersweet feel Fairweather Friend has.

my favourite from Rabbits would be a very difficult tie between this and Dear California. both are beautiful in some unexplainable way, Fairweather Friend devastatingly so. we gotta have something to get us by. sometimes it’s the very act of waking up every day and hoping for whatever you hope for to happen that keeps you going, days blurring into weeks, weeks stretching into months, months dragging into years. there are certain qualities of light that blur the years.

( twenty points to your House if you know / can guess where that last line is from. )

i actually desperately want to write some sort of backstory for Fairweather Friend, but i’m stuck. i’m so stuck, and i don’t know why. 

this entire song makes me think about a lot of i don’t knows.

but i love it anyway.