"Something happened where I was not…kind of on the same page as a lot of my peers. And watching the cruelty develop around 12, 13 was super-psychically like, traumatic for me. Of course now, it’s like, ‘Yeah, people are kind of crappy to each other sometimes. You can live with that, it’s OK.’ But at the time, I had no experience of this, so watching two friends that were best friends the year before turn into cliques…you know, the more popular of the two would be taunting the less popular — his ex-best friend — and just…all that stuff was just…it was like some sort of horrifying psychedelic nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from. And it really, really traumatized me in a way that I find kind of embarrassing. Of course, it’s all just predictable stuff that everybody goes through, but um, I think you’re supposed to be…I think the blessing at that age is that you’re pretty oblivious to a lot of it, and so wrapped up in it that you’re kind of missing the horror. And I didn’t have that luxury. And it was not nice to watch."
—
James Murphy, LCD Soundsystem, on Fresh Air
I think James Murphy and I had the same middle-school life. Or maybe everyone and I had the same middle-school life.
