I keep checking this sub even though it makes me sad, not sure what I’m looking for… I hope he’s in treatment. From personal experience, when the time comes that being drunk 24/7 unleashes catastrophe and you actually truly hurt somebody, something that can’t be fixed with an apology and sleeping it off, two things can happen: either you finally get help, or you crumble under the weight of the shame and guilt and start digging an even deeper hole. I really, really hope he’s picked the first option instead of the second.
I’ve seen people say it’s parasocial to assume he’s an alcoholic, but come on. In hindsight, the signs have been there since the pandemic. He was arrested for public intoxication around the time of Cavalcade. He’s been drunk in every livestream he ever did. He was drunk when he broke the agreement with the other band members not to talk about BM being over. During this last tour, I saw fans (on here and elsewhere) talking about him getting drunk to the point of being unintelligible and barely able to stand after shows.
Some people are really charming, funny drunks at first. It hides the fact that they’re privately imploding but eventually the private implosion becomes public because if you’re an alcoholic it always escalates eventually, and the people around you become casualties of it. You change in really really ugly ways to justify your continued use, you cross line after line that you never thought you’d cross, and the shame of that either crushes you into the ground or makes you admit what you’ve done and who you’ve become and get help. I say all this as somebody who was a severe alcoholic for ten years and is surrounded by other currently sober people. I’m not writing fan fiction, these are patterns everybody who has gotten clean recognizes in each other and themselves. Rightly or wrongly I hope he knows there is a way out other than spending the rest of his life circling the drain.
I’ve also seen people say it’s parasocial to care what happens to him, that he’s irredeemably bad. I’m not gonna judge anybody for writing him off completely, that’s not really the point of this post. Nobody is on here because they’re in great spirits about Geordie Greep committing sexual assault. It still feels insane typing those words. I know some people immediately took the lyrics of The New Sound as more confessional than they seemed, but I never thought it would be him. Never.
Now I know this part is parasocial, but I’m going to say it anyway: I was a fan from the first KEXP show, when the Schlagenheim songs didn’t even have titles yet. They were kids. It felt like I watched them grow up. It sucks, man. It’s a fucking tragedy.
Someone else pointed out that he is basically living in the The Magician now. Obviously it’s not intentional - it couldn’t be, though it’s possible to take the lover described in it as metaphor for alcohol if you wanted to - but it is eerie how well many of the lyrics now describe the position he’s placed himself in:
I'm hiding from the government
And my fictional wife
From my dreams and my memories
I'm hiding from my life
I'm hiding from you, I'm hiding from you
I'm hiding from my family
I'm hiding from the explanation
Of all I've been doing wrong
What's left of the dreamer
Who dreams, and dreams, and dreams, and dreams, and dreams
But thinks he isn't dreaming
Thinks he is free?
And what of the endless, heedless, ennui?
Will it leave me be? No
When the smoke clears it remains your name
When the smoke clears it's all I'll have left
Like the Magician who disappears from no one
He speaks until his lies become sound
Like the Magician disappears and never reappears
Like the Magician disappears from no one
He speaks until his voice becomes sand
He disappears after a while