After the show Charlie stumbles into whatever hotel he is staying at that night and falls into a drunken slumber.
At 5:23 he wakes up in a panic. He has no idea where he is or how he got here. All his memories of the apocalypse and time travel are gone.
At 5:24 all his memories flood back at once, at it hurts like a migraine. Now Charlie is panicking for different reasons.
This isn’t the same as Billy or Max forgetting the future, this is clearly different. This feels like memories of two lifetimes fighting in his head. He has enough memories for a life and a half, and his mind is starting to reject the ones that still matter to him.
Despite the fact that his existence has become quite sad, he still clings to a tattered shred of hope. A hope that maybe something will good will come from all this craziness. That maybe this time travel could mean something if he could just find his purpose.
He also treasures his memories of that one night with Audrey. He hates himself for it, but can’t help it. He had never felt that way about anyone, and knows he never will again.
As the days crawl by he forgets for longer periods of time. 1 minute at the beginning of a new yesterday turns into 2, then 5, then half an hour over the course of a few months.
It kills him to know that soon he won’t remember Audrey or Max, or the fact that Billy saved Beth. It kills him to know that all this time travel really turned out to be a cruel cosmic joke designed to show him exactly the kind of meaningless person he was always destined to be.
After 5 years half is day is spent in a panic and confusion, with no memory of his backward life.
One day, when his memory floods back after half a day spent in terrifying confusion, he realizes he has to go home.
At this point in his past he was still living with his parents in the house he had lived in since he was born. He might have to spend half a day without his memories of time travel, but he doesn’t have to spend that half in panic, wondering where the hell he is.
He gives up that last shred of hope.
Lyrics:
Everyday I lose more time to fear and panic that rises so quick, so it's time for me to pack up and head for more familiar grasses to ensure this mindless joke that passes for an existence. In 60 months a quarter day still felt okay, then pounding like a nail right through my skull comes all my memory. In just 5 years half the day is spent in blissful ignorance, with half a day of darkness, hope, gloom, beauty, and memories.
And now I'm here with just fifteen minutes of sadness and fear, and a day spent in a haze of nauseating deja vu, and fractured nights spent trying to remember you. Five years spent in a fog of denial distilled in bottles, capsules, and smoke. Trying to hide from the monster, that ugly beast made of memory. But now I'd cry if I saw it rushing round the corner, shambling towards me. Not out of guilt or fear. No, it's more the fact that I am losing myself. I'll take my feelings off the the shelf. Embrace that shambling beast who holds my pain, who will inspire my last refrain. I've lived over a life and a half, no wonder my head is forgetting this sick monotonous life I'm somehow living. While unable to truly live, and still fucking incapable of dying.
When I don't remember I'm less alone, but when that memory revolver empties its chamber I will bite the goddamn barrel, but I'll remember for that one second back when I met you. With just one second to remember you, it makes me see the wreck I've turned into, and it's scary, depressing, boring, indescribable, crazy, and yeah, it murders those five years spent trying to forget you.
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