You feel that unmistakable emptiness, the one that’s been with you since you were fifteen. Since that day the doctor lowered his voice and said words like “affective risk” and “persistent mood disorder.”

David and Roger are sitting in front of you, one of them looking at you like you’re a song they still can’t figure out.

“You’re moving too fast with all this,” Roger says, his voice rough, direct. “The band, the tour, the press… do you even sleep?”

“It’s not just music, son,” David adds, gentler, like someone trying to reach you without making a sound. “It’s your way of saying you’re screaming inside.”

You don’t respond. You know they’re not wrong. You inherited the best of them: one’s lyricism, the other’s melancholy and both of their shadows. Your voice echoes through stadiums night after night, and yet, you step off the stage like no one ever clapped. Like none of it can touch you.

“It’s not that we don’t want you to be great,” Roger continues. “But when darkness becomes your only inspiration… it can swallow you whole.”

And it’s Christmas. You should feel something gratitude, joy, nostalgia, anything. But you’re just there, watching these two, old icons of a world you barely understand, trying to piece you back together from the outside, not knowing that sometimes, the problem is that you don’t even want to be put back together.