"Probably not."
"People are afraid to do that with you because you're always working. You're always watching." He shifted his shoes to his other hand. "Right now, just for an hour, what if you let down?"
I looked at him, barefoot in the sand, looking at me like I was a real person.
"I'm still not taking off my boots."
His smile was warm. "I can live with that."
As we walked, something inside me relaxed and unlocked. We sat where the sand turned compact and firm. Rune pulled his knees up, looking out at the water.
"What did you listen to?" I asked. "Before. When you could choose your music."
His eyes lit up. "Everything. Indie rock and R&B. Sometimes old Korean ballads. A lot of things that didn't fit together."
"Sounds like my father's record collection. Punk mostly. The Ramones, Dead Boys. He said proper music didn't care if you liked it. It just existed."
Rune picked up sand and let it sift through his fingers. "Someone still produced those records, though. Nothing that reaches people stays completely untouched."
He wasn't wrong.
"The point is, you can still put something true in the processing," he continued. "Something that's yours."
"Your lyrics."
"My lyrics. Management thinks they're safe to sell, but they're still mine. Every word."
"And that's enough?"
"It has to be. The alternative is becoming the product instead of making it."
I understood. Rune was trying to stay visible without being erased.
"Your father," Rune said. "Did he keep playing that music?"
"Until he died. Heart attack when I was twenty-three. It happened in his garage while he was working on a car transmission."
Rune looked at the sand. "I'm sorry you lost someone who played music just because it existed."
"He would've hated your music," I said.
Rune laughed. "Yeah?"
"Too polished. He'd have said it was corporate bullshit."
"He'd be right."
"But he'd be wrong, too. You're still in there."
Rune was silent for thirty seconds.
"I don't want to be pure," he said. "I don't want to be outside the system. I only want to be mine. That rock inside the shoe of the system."
His words rang with truth.
Rune moved closer to me until our shoulders touched.
"Do you think that's impossible?" he asked.
