Our Noisy Hearts
Sep. 8th, 2019 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hennessysTitle: Our Noisy Hearts
Summary: A fanmix for Jack Hennessy.
Warnings: unsafe drug and alcohol use, self-destructive behavior, brief portrayal of mania and depression, mention of very underage (but consensual) sexual activity.
Notes: Oddly, I was listening to Miranda's mix while formatting this.
Download here.
1. Everybody Loves Me, OneRepublic
Oh my!
Feels just like I don't try
Looks so good I might die
All I know is everybody loves me
From the outside, it looked like Jack had the perfect life.
And he did, sort of. Loving parents, wonderful sisters, great friends, a vast extended family that spoiled him rotten. Good looks, good brains, a good voice and talented hands. He'd been born lucky, healthy and wealthy; he was lucky all his life, rich if not always well. Where others struggled, he didn't even need to try.
There were problems. Everybody had problems. He sailed through them as best he could, hurdled them and never looked back. That was life. You just kept going.
What else could he possibly do?
2. A Better Son/Daughter, Rilo Kiley
And sometimes when you're on, you're really fucking on
And your friends they sing along and they love you
But the lows are so extreme that the good seems fucking cheap
And it teases you for weeks in its absence
He was fourteen when he was diagnosed. Bipolar I. Could be worse. At least he wouldn't be one thing all the time-- he'd never liked being boring.
And there were upsides, now that he had the diagnosis. Medication, for one. Jack was always going to be grateful to Seroquel. Therapy, although he didn't like it much when he was a kid; therapists poking through his life, looking for the bad spots like people examining apples at the supermarket. Understanding, more than anything else.
He wasn't kidding anyone, least of all himself. Being bipolar sucked ridiculously.
He couldn't always be lucky.
3. Born This Way, Lady Gaga
Don't hide yourself in regret
Just love yourself and you're set
I'm on the right track, baby
I was born this way
Being bisexual was way better than being bipolar.
Well, Jack supposed that if you asked his family in Mexico, you'd get a very different answer, but he hadn't bothered to tell them and wasn't really planning on doing so. As far as he was concerned, he couldn't really think of a better thing to be. So many attractive people, so very little time.
If you pinned him to the wall, he supposed he preferred men a little more. Women were wonderful but men were compelling, a mirror to his own body. But he was never going to turn anyone down.
4. Can't Stand Still, Footloose
I never walk when I can run
I don't believe I ever could
People try to slow me down
Saying boy you really should
Kick back and chill but,
I can't stand still
Looking back, it was pretty obvious that he'd spent most of high school at least slightly manic. He'd always had a problem sitting still, but in high school he discovered sex and extracurriculars and never looked back.
He played the clarinet and blew pretty boys at parties, starred in Grease and kissed Sandy behind the backdrop, scored on their rival's goalie and walked off the field with a teammate on one arm and a cheerleader on the other. His grades slipped a little, but something had to give.
They weren't the best years of his life, but they were close.
5. Hurt, Johnny Cash
Beneath the stains of time
The feelings disappear
You are someone else
I am still right here
It got bad in college.
Well, if he was honest with himself, it was getting bad before that, his senior year of high school and the summer before he left home. He'd put the grade slippage down to senior slump and the low-grade fog to uncertainty about the future, but halfway through freshman year it became obvious that it wasn't just that.
A meds adjustment helped a little, but he thought it came back to a fundamental insecurity. Where the hell that came from... but it didn't matter, it was there, and he had no idea how to fix it.
6. Keep Breathing, Ingrid Michaelson
But all that I know is I'm breathing
All I can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing now
He spent a few years after college in a boy band.
Of all the ridiculous things to do, Miranda huffed when he called. But he'd learned the guitar in college, and he sang well, and he was pretty, and that was really all you needed.
Jack didn't remember a lot of it. Not because he was drunk or drugged-- that was later-- but it all blended together, a blur of shows and teenage girls and hotel beds that were just a little too hard for sleep.
It was a good experience, he supposed. It just didn't change anything at all.
7. Glittering Cloud (Plague of Locusts), Imogen Heap
Go, go, faster wider
More, more get it down
Dance, dance
Take me over glittering clouds
And then after.
He did some things; released a solo album, did some work for the family business, kicked around the country doing interviews and retrospectives. It didn't feel right. Nothing felt right.
He'd been drinking since well before he turned eighteen, but now it got bad. He managed to avoid the serious drugs, but he smoked pot a lot more than he used to. He stayed out all night and barely slept, danced himself to exhaustion and drank himself to bed.
If it hadn't been for Felix and his sisters, Jack really didn't know where it would have ended.
8. Learn to Fly, Foo Fighters
Now I'm looking to the sky to save me
Looking for a sign of life
Looking for something to help me burn out bright
Felix was the first one to call him on it, then Miranda, then even Charlotte. No one told their parents, for which he was pathetically grateful. Even then, he wasn't sure he would have listened to them, except he looked up one night at the lights blurring over the dance floor, and realized he didn't know what day it was.
He went home. He didn't trust AA, and he sure as fuck didn't trust rehab, but he did trust home. His parents didn't know and that kept him honest, and slowly but surely things began to be more... well, okay.
9. It's a Disaster, ok go
It's a disaster
It's an incredible mess
But it's all we've got now
Yeah it's all we got
His life was hilariously fucked up at the moment, but Jack was sort of okay with that.
He was starting to think his life was never not fucked up. If it wasn't his brain screwing around with him, it was his love life, and if it wasn't his love life, it was work going haywire. And if it wasn't any of that it was Miranda getting stabbed or Charlotte being left. Something to do, something to fix, and it was probably pretty fucked up to think so, but he sort of liked it that way.
He was definitely never bored.
10. To the Beat of Our Noisy Hearts, Matt Nathanson
On and on, we keep going
Crowded like subway cars
On and on, to the beat of our noisy hearts
Our hearts
It wasn't perfect. Nothing was perfect. He kept on going.
Not like before. Before he kept going because he couldn't think what else to do. Now he did it because he enjoyed it. He got into acting, did a few movies, started to show up on people's radars. He moved in with Felix, near his parents, near Miranda. He still went out some nights, but he didn't have more than one drink. He still danced, but now with the people he loved.
He was born lucky. He'd lost that somewhere, but he thought maybe now he was getting it back.
11. Proud of Your Boy, Aladdin
Someday and soon
I'll make you proud of your boy
Though I can't make myself taller
Or smarter or handsome or wise
Intellectually, Jack knew his parents were proud of him. He might be a fuckup, but he had a degree and a career and a widespread group of friends and acquaintences, and if he wasn't okay he was good at pretending he was.
But. There was always a but and it was this: he couldn't really believe it. He kept screwing up, kept throwing jobs away, kept letting his brain and his broken heart get the better of him. He lived at home through his twenties, for God's sake, the original deadbeat kid.
He tried to do better. It never worked.
12. Like Dylan in the Movies, Belle and Sebastian
If they follow you
It's not your money that they're after boy it's you
Yeah you're worth the trouble and you're worth the pain
And you're worth the worry, I would do the same
Jack loved Miranda, but she could be frustrating as hell.
They clashed. Of course they did. Jack was reckless and restless, and she was so rigid, so controlled that it got on his nerves. So he poked at her and she snapped back, and they butted heads well into adulthood.
He could see her denying herself. He could see her throwing away the best things that ever happened to her just because she thought she should. He wanted to save her so badly it hurt.
He loved her without limit. She wouldn't have made him so crazy if he didn't.
13. Bach Lullaby, Trans-Siberian Orchestra
[instrumental]
He would have cheerfully murdered someone for Charlotte.
Not Miranda, she could do her own murdering, but Charlotte was so delicate. Much less so than she seemed, yes, but he couldn't help it.
Besides, Charlotte was the only person he knew who understood what music was to him. She had kept up her piano just as he played guitar now, and sometimes when they were in the same area they'd sit together and play, trading melodies and harmonies and never once speaking, lost in the sound.
Charlotte was a lullaby, soothing just by her presence.
He'd do anything for her.
14. Transatlantique, Beirut
No I couldn't tell you how the house burned down
Last night while we were running around...
Sing for last call
Sing for last fall
Such was it all
Seb loved him in a vaguely fraternal way, which was to say that he was bemused and worried by the things Jack got up to while at the same time rolling with the flow. And for a long time Jack was in love with him.
Hopelessly. He knew that right from the start. Jack was neither blind nor stupid and he knew Seb had been in love with Charlotte since he was thirteen. And Jack was okay with that, because they'd never make it anyway.
Thank goodness he'd grown out of that phase. They could just be friends.
Much better.
15. Ungodly Hour, The Fray
Her back is now much heavier
I wish that I could carry her
But this is our ungodly hour
He couldn't save Samantha, and it still clawed at his heart when he thought about it.
Miranda told him he was stupid for even imagining that he could help her. Felix said the same, though much more kindly. None of it really helped.
He knew what she was going through, after all. Not directly, he didn't think she was actually bipolar, but he understood that fear, that no one would ever love you. And he did love her. Not enough, in the end, but he did.
He wished he could have saved her, but he couldn't. That was the end.
16. In Your Eyes, Sara Bareilles
In your eyes - the light, the heat
I am complete in your eyes
See the doorways of a thousand churches in your eyes
The resolution of all the fruitless searching
In your eyes
Jack met Felix in college, and he really should have figured it out sooner.
Everything was there from the start. The way he felt around Felix, calm and bubbly at the same time. The way he smiled, automatically, whenever Felix smiled. How he always wanted to be near Felix. It was obvious, and yet he didn't figure it out until senior year, when the thought of graduation and going their separate ways terrified him.
He was smart enough not to say anything. Felix was much too good for him. But they could be friends, and that was more than enough.
17. Dark Roman Wine, Snow Patrol
You laugh as you pass me the night
As if it's too fragile to hold
And I hold it so close to my chest
With your hands in my hands
He had one perfect memory.
It was him and Felix, sitting on the beach. There was a party going on in the house on the cliff above them, but they had wandered off down the long stone stairway to sit ankle deep in the night-cool sand, watching the tide roll in, whitecaps shimmering in the moonlight. They were sitting shoulder to shoulder, passing a beer back and forth, and his heart felt so full he thought maybe. Almost.
He could still taste the salt on the back of his tongue, and feel the warmth of Felix's body at his side.
18. The Enchanted Garden, Secret Garden
[instrumental]
Jack had always been good with words, and yet when it came to Felix, they failed him completely.
Most things did. Felix seemed to defy any and all explanation. How could someone that calm, that centered and comfortable in himself, even look twice at a hot mess like Jack? How could he possibly be lucky enough to have that man in his life? But it had happened, everything had happened and Felix seemed firmly planted, more real than anything in Jack's life, more secure than anything he'd ever felt before.
He loved Felix wholeheartedly.
There was nothing more to say.
19. All We Are, Matt Nathanson
I kept falling over
I kept looking backward
I went broke believing
That the simple should be hard
Ridiculous as the idea was, Jack was occasionally required to contribute to the upbringing of small children. Not that Glory and Benji and Emma were at all troublesome; he just had no clue how to go about taking care of them. They were all more or less self-sufficient, fortunately. He was mostly there for emergencies.
And advice, it seemed. Advice on girls, for Benji (and, much later, Emma), advice on boys (Emma again). Advice on survivial. Advice on living.
He didn't know if what he said meant anything, but he hoped it did. Maybe someone could learn from his mistakes.
20. Crazy Beautiful Life, Ke$ha
Every single night we fight
To get a little high on life
To get a little something right
Something real, at least we try
...
Try trading all the wasted times
For something real in this crazy life
He'd always been looking for something real. It just took him a long time to realize that.
He'd found real things along the way. His sisters, though they'd come pre-equipped; their children eventually, their husbands even later. His family in Mexico. His friends; Spence, Egg, Mariposa, whose name rolled off his tongue like a wave. Felix, in a category of his own.
Jack had less than no idea of where he was going or what he was doing. He never knew what he'd be doing tomorrow night, or ever.
Still. He knew what he was doing now.
It was enough.
Summary: A fanmix for Jack Hennessy.
Warnings: unsafe drug and alcohol use, self-destructive behavior, brief portrayal of mania and depression, mention of very underage (but consensual) sexual activity.
Notes: Oddly, I was listening to Miranda's mix while formatting this.
Download here.
Oh my!
Feels just like I don't try
Looks so good I might die
All I know is everybody loves me
From the outside, it looked like Jack had the perfect life.
And he did, sort of. Loving parents, wonderful sisters, great friends, a vast extended family that spoiled him rotten. Good looks, good brains, a good voice and talented hands. He'd been born lucky, healthy and wealthy; he was lucky all his life, rich if not always well. Where others struggled, he didn't even need to try.
There were problems. Everybody had problems. He sailed through them as best he could, hurdled them and never looked back. That was life. You just kept going.
What else could he possibly do?
And sometimes when you're on, you're really fucking on
And your friends they sing along and they love you
But the lows are so extreme that the good seems fucking cheap
And it teases you for weeks in its absence
He was fourteen when he was diagnosed. Bipolar I. Could be worse. At least he wouldn't be one thing all the time-- he'd never liked being boring.
And there were upsides, now that he had the diagnosis. Medication, for one. Jack was always going to be grateful to Seroquel. Therapy, although he didn't like it much when he was a kid; therapists poking through his life, looking for the bad spots like people examining apples at the supermarket. Understanding, more than anything else.
He wasn't kidding anyone, least of all himself. Being bipolar sucked ridiculously.
He couldn't always be lucky.
Don't hide yourself in regret
Just love yourself and you're set
I'm on the right track, baby
I was born this way
Being bisexual was way better than being bipolar.
Well, Jack supposed that if you asked his family in Mexico, you'd get a very different answer, but he hadn't bothered to tell them and wasn't really planning on doing so. As far as he was concerned, he couldn't really think of a better thing to be. So many attractive people, so very little time.
If you pinned him to the wall, he supposed he preferred men a little more. Women were wonderful but men were compelling, a mirror to his own body. But he was never going to turn anyone down.
I never walk when I can run
I don't believe I ever could
People try to slow me down
Saying boy you really should
Kick back and chill but,
I can't stand still
Looking back, it was pretty obvious that he'd spent most of high school at least slightly manic. He'd always had a problem sitting still, but in high school he discovered sex and extracurriculars and never looked back.
He played the clarinet and blew pretty boys at parties, starred in Grease and kissed Sandy behind the backdrop, scored on their rival's goalie and walked off the field with a teammate on one arm and a cheerleader on the other. His grades slipped a little, but something had to give.
They weren't the best years of his life, but they were close.
Beneath the stains of time
The feelings disappear
You are someone else
I am still right here
It got bad in college.
Well, if he was honest with himself, it was getting bad before that, his senior year of high school and the summer before he left home. He'd put the grade slippage down to senior slump and the low-grade fog to uncertainty about the future, but halfway through freshman year it became obvious that it wasn't just that.
A meds adjustment helped a little, but he thought it came back to a fundamental insecurity. Where the hell that came from... but it didn't matter, it was there, and he had no idea how to fix it.
But all that I know is I'm breathing
All I can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing now
He spent a few years after college in a boy band.
Of all the ridiculous things to do, Miranda huffed when he called. But he'd learned the guitar in college, and he sang well, and he was pretty, and that was really all you needed.
Jack didn't remember a lot of it. Not because he was drunk or drugged-- that was later-- but it all blended together, a blur of shows and teenage girls and hotel beds that were just a little too hard for sleep.
It was a good experience, he supposed. It just didn't change anything at all.
Go, go, faster wider
More, more get it down
Dance, dance
Take me over glittering clouds
And then after.
He did some things; released a solo album, did some work for the family business, kicked around the country doing interviews and retrospectives. It didn't feel right. Nothing felt right.
He'd been drinking since well before he turned eighteen, but now it got bad. He managed to avoid the serious drugs, but he smoked pot a lot more than he used to. He stayed out all night and barely slept, danced himself to exhaustion and drank himself to bed.
If it hadn't been for Felix and his sisters, Jack really didn't know where it would have ended.
Now I'm looking to the sky to save me
Looking for a sign of life
Looking for something to help me burn out bright
Felix was the first one to call him on it, then Miranda, then even Charlotte. No one told their parents, for which he was pathetically grateful. Even then, he wasn't sure he would have listened to them, except he looked up one night at the lights blurring over the dance floor, and realized he didn't know what day it was.
He went home. He didn't trust AA, and he sure as fuck didn't trust rehab, but he did trust home. His parents didn't know and that kept him honest, and slowly but surely things began to be more... well, okay.
It's a disaster
It's an incredible mess
But it's all we've got now
Yeah it's all we got
His life was hilariously fucked up at the moment, but Jack was sort of okay with that.
He was starting to think his life was never not fucked up. If it wasn't his brain screwing around with him, it was his love life, and if it wasn't his love life, it was work going haywire. And if it wasn't any of that it was Miranda getting stabbed or Charlotte being left. Something to do, something to fix, and it was probably pretty fucked up to think so, but he sort of liked it that way.
He was definitely never bored.
On and on, we keep going
Crowded like subway cars
On and on, to the beat of our noisy hearts
Our hearts
It wasn't perfect. Nothing was perfect. He kept on going.
Not like before. Before he kept going because he couldn't think what else to do. Now he did it because he enjoyed it. He got into acting, did a few movies, started to show up on people's radars. He moved in with Felix, near his parents, near Miranda. He still went out some nights, but he didn't have more than one drink. He still danced, but now with the people he loved.
He was born lucky. He'd lost that somewhere, but he thought maybe now he was getting it back.
Someday and soon
I'll make you proud of your boy
Though I can't make myself taller
Or smarter or handsome or wise
Intellectually, Jack knew his parents were proud of him. He might be a fuckup, but he had a degree and a career and a widespread group of friends and acquaintences, and if he wasn't okay he was good at pretending he was.
But. There was always a but and it was this: he couldn't really believe it. He kept screwing up, kept throwing jobs away, kept letting his brain and his broken heart get the better of him. He lived at home through his twenties, for God's sake, the original deadbeat kid.
He tried to do better. It never worked.
If they follow you
It's not your money that they're after boy it's you
Yeah you're worth the trouble and you're worth the pain
And you're worth the worry, I would do the same
Jack loved Miranda, but she could be frustrating as hell.
They clashed. Of course they did. Jack was reckless and restless, and she was so rigid, so controlled that it got on his nerves. So he poked at her and she snapped back, and they butted heads well into adulthood.
He could see her denying herself. He could see her throwing away the best things that ever happened to her just because she thought she should. He wanted to save her so badly it hurt.
He loved her without limit. She wouldn't have made him so crazy if he didn't.
[instrumental]
He would have cheerfully murdered someone for Charlotte.
Not Miranda, she could do her own murdering, but Charlotte was so delicate. Much less so than she seemed, yes, but he couldn't help it.
Besides, Charlotte was the only person he knew who understood what music was to him. She had kept up her piano just as he played guitar now, and sometimes when they were in the same area they'd sit together and play, trading melodies and harmonies and never once speaking, lost in the sound.
Charlotte was a lullaby, soothing just by her presence.
He'd do anything for her.
No I couldn't tell you how the house burned down
Last night while we were running around...
Sing for last call
Sing for last fall
Such was it all
Seb loved him in a vaguely fraternal way, which was to say that he was bemused and worried by the things Jack got up to while at the same time rolling with the flow. And for a long time Jack was in love with him.
Hopelessly. He knew that right from the start. Jack was neither blind nor stupid and he knew Seb had been in love with Charlotte since he was thirteen. And Jack was okay with that, because they'd never make it anyway.
Thank goodness he'd grown out of that phase. They could just be friends.
Much better.
Her back is now much heavier
I wish that I could carry her
But this is our ungodly hour
He couldn't save Samantha, and it still clawed at his heart when he thought about it.
Miranda told him he was stupid for even imagining that he could help her. Felix said the same, though much more kindly. None of it really helped.
He knew what she was going through, after all. Not directly, he didn't think she was actually bipolar, but he understood that fear, that no one would ever love you. And he did love her. Not enough, in the end, but he did.
He wished he could have saved her, but he couldn't. That was the end.
In your eyes - the light, the heat
I am complete in your eyes
See the doorways of a thousand churches in your eyes
The resolution of all the fruitless searching
In your eyes
Jack met Felix in college, and he really should have figured it out sooner.
Everything was there from the start. The way he felt around Felix, calm and bubbly at the same time. The way he smiled, automatically, whenever Felix smiled. How he always wanted to be near Felix. It was obvious, and yet he didn't figure it out until senior year, when the thought of graduation and going their separate ways terrified him.
He was smart enough not to say anything. Felix was much too good for him. But they could be friends, and that was more than enough.
You laugh as you pass me the night
As if it's too fragile to hold
And I hold it so close to my chest
With your hands in my hands
He had one perfect memory.
It was him and Felix, sitting on the beach. There was a party going on in the house on the cliff above them, but they had wandered off down the long stone stairway to sit ankle deep in the night-cool sand, watching the tide roll in, whitecaps shimmering in the moonlight. They were sitting shoulder to shoulder, passing a beer back and forth, and his heart felt so full he thought maybe. Almost.
He could still taste the salt on the back of his tongue, and feel the warmth of Felix's body at his side.
[instrumental]
Jack had always been good with words, and yet when it came to Felix, they failed him completely.
Most things did. Felix seemed to defy any and all explanation. How could someone that calm, that centered and comfortable in himself, even look twice at a hot mess like Jack? How could he possibly be lucky enough to have that man in his life? But it had happened, everything had happened and Felix seemed firmly planted, more real than anything in Jack's life, more secure than anything he'd ever felt before.
He loved Felix wholeheartedly.
There was nothing more to say.
I kept falling over
I kept looking backward
I went broke believing
That the simple should be hard
Ridiculous as the idea was, Jack was occasionally required to contribute to the upbringing of small children. Not that Glory and Benji and Emma were at all troublesome; he just had no clue how to go about taking care of them. They were all more or less self-sufficient, fortunately. He was mostly there for emergencies.
And advice, it seemed. Advice on girls, for Benji (and, much later, Emma), advice on boys (Emma again). Advice on survivial. Advice on living.
He didn't know if what he said meant anything, but he hoped it did. Maybe someone could learn from his mistakes.
Every single night we fight
To get a little high on life
To get a little something right
Something real, at least we try
...
Try trading all the wasted times
For something real in this crazy life
He'd always been looking for something real. It just took him a long time to realize that.
He'd found real things along the way. His sisters, though they'd come pre-equipped; their children eventually, their husbands even later. His family in Mexico. His friends; Spence, Egg, Mariposa, whose name rolled off his tongue like a wave. Felix, in a category of his own.
Jack had less than no idea of where he was going or what he was doing. He never knew what he'd be doing tomorrow night, or ever.
Still. He knew what he was doing now.
It was enough.
