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THE PEOPLE WE LOVE, THE PEOPLE WE LOSE: TAM SONG ON HIS SOPHOMORE ALBUM Fractures
By Maruca Chebota
If you’re anyone who even remotely knows anything about the indie music scene, it’d be impossible not to recognize the name of one Tam Song, the man who made waves when he dropped his first studio album, Mosaic, almost two years ago. The twenty-five-year-old singer’s gripping lyrics paired with his gritty voice instantly drew in hordes of fans, propelling him to fame practically overnight. Fractures, the follow-up to Mosaic, has been highly anticipated, and there is no doubt that fans will be overjoyed to finally listen to what Song describes as “an exploration of everything I was lying to myself about.”
According to Song, this album has been a long time coming, brewing for even longer than his debut: “Fractures has been piecing itself together for over seven years now. The first drafts of most of these songs were actually written well before Mosaic was—I’d intended to put them in the album at first, but it felt too exposing to release these songs at the time,” he explained. “Honestly, I still feel on edge even now, but if I didn’t let this album out into the world, it’d never see the light of day.”
When I asked what it was about Fractures that made it such a vulnerable piece of art, Song grew quiet for a moment before responding. “I haven’t always been the easiest person for someone to have in their life,” he admitted. “I’m still not, to be honest. I’ve been constantly moving around for the past decade, constantly meeting new people—and then, constantly, leaving them. And of all the people I meet, there are certain ones who stick with me, who I can’t seem to shake no matter how hard I try to. They’ve all affected me so deeply that they’re practically fragments of who I am, and this album is made up of everything I never got to say to them.”
———————
MARUCA CHEBOTA: Okay, so, the first song on the album: “Hatchling.” I have to say, this was quite a song to open with—from that first lyric, I think it immediately becomes very clear that you’re not pulling any punches on Fractures. Why put this song first?
TAM SONG: Well, you’ve stated part of the reason already—I don’t hold back on this song, and I certainly don’t hold back during the rest, either. I guess you could say “Hatchling” serves as a disclaimer. The other reason that this song is the opening track is because the person this song was written about was the catalyst for all that came after. I met her when I was a teenager, when I had reservations about anything and everything, but meeting her really forced me to come out of my shell. Without her, I wouldn’t have had half the courage to do everything I’ve done.
———————
“Can I help you?” Tam says, eyes narrowing as he stares down the girl who’s been coming into the bookstore every day this week and still has yet to buy anything. She’s spent hours here at a time, only browsing, and Tam quietly wonders if she’s been stealing without him noticing. And although he doesn’t get paid enough to care what this girl’s up to, really, this is getting ridiculous.
The girl jumps when she hears him, eyes widening as she spins around to face him. “Oh!—no, I’m okay,” she smiles wanly, though it doesn’t quite meet her eyes. “I’m just looking.”
“You’ve been looking for the past week,” Tam points out, clipped. “I’m sure you know these books better than me by now. Either you buy something, or you leave.”
She winces. “Funny story—I don’t actually have any money on me.”
Tam doesn’t bother showing her to the door. She knows where it is.
“Tam!” His manager greets him enthusiastically when he walks through the door four days later. “I think you’ll be pleased to learn that you’re alone no longer—we’ve got a new hire!” She gestures wildly towards the shelves, and Tam sees a flash of golden hair as his new coworker disappears between the books.
He doesn’t even have to bother asking who it is. Fuck my life, Tam thinks as he takes up his usual post behind the register.
He much prefers silver to gold, if he’s being honest.
Over the next few weeks, Tam learns many things about his new coworker, none of which he ever actually wanted to know. He learns that her name is Sophie, that she’s lived in San Diego her whole life, that both of them are the same age—sixteen, though she’ll be seventeen in November—but that they actually are not, in fact, entering the same grade. While Tam is once again being shipped off to boarding school three thousand miles away with Linh for the sixth year in a row, Sophie has already graduated high school and will be starting her second year at UC Berkeley in the fall. “I skipped a few grades,” she explains even though he didn’t ask, and Tam privately admits to himself that yes, this is very understandable, because—and this is a fact that he is even more reluctant to concede himself to—Sophie is much smarter than he’d originally given her credit for. She reorganizes the entire shop within a week (“It’s never been so uncluttered,” the manager marvels); she takes over bookkeeping (the manager gleefully passes the reigns to her, she’s never been a math person); she even forces Tam to stand outside in the 90 degree heat in a penguin costume as part of some half-baked marketing scheme (and to his dismay, it actually works).
Sophie Foster is a good thing, Tam thinks. And then: For the bookstore, he amends.
Just for the bookstore.
“Did you know argonaut octopi have detachable penises?” Sophie says as she flips through a book of fun facts about sea creatures. “When they want to mate, the penis will remove itself and go swimming through the ocean to find a female octopus.”
Tam looks up from his own book—Frankenstein—to tell her that yes actually, he did know that, because his sister is a marine biology freak and has taken it upon herself to inform him of anything and everything pertaining to the ocean. “Technically it’s just an arm that holds sperm, though,” he muses. “I don’t know if you could call it a penis.”
“If it has sperm then I think it counts,” Sophie says, and then she grins, because regardless of how natural an animal’s mating process might be, the concept of an octopus penis will always be funny to a sixteen-year-old.
Despite his better judgement, Tam finds himself grinning back.
“What are you doing before work tomorrow?” Sophie asks him one day at the end of their shift.
Tam stares at her like she’s grown three heads. “Before work? We open at 9 a.m. I’ll be in bed.”
“Lame,” she says. “Go on a hike with me.”
“A hike!” he exclaims incredulously. “You’re kidding.”
“Why would I be? San Diego’s very pretty at sunrise.”
“You’re insane if you think I’ll get up at the crack of dawn to go on a hike.”
“I’ll pick you up at 4:30,” Sophie replies cheerily, pointedly ignoring all of Tam’s protests about how he was absolutely not going to get out of bed to go scale a mountain with her.
At 5:05 a.m. the next morning, Tam Song finds himself scaling a mountain, trailing behind one Sophie Foster.
“Sophie,” he huffs after they climb halfway up, “why did you drag me along for this?”
“I like hiking,” she replies airily, “and I haven’t gone in a while. Come on, we’re halfway done, don’t bail on me now.”
Tam glares at the back of her head. “You forget that we have to go back down,” he mutters. “But you still didn’t answer my question. Why did you bring me? Why not one of your friends instead of your coworker?”
Sophie pauses at that, and Tam almost bumps into her with how suddenly she stops, and he nearly says something before he catches a glimpse of her face and thinks, oh, perhaps he shouldn’t. Perhaps he’s already said something very wrong.
“I don’t have any friends,” she says finally, starting to march ahead again. “No one in college wants to be friends with a teenager, and no teenager can relate to someone in college, and so I just… gave up on friendship.”
It’s on the tip of his tongue to say what he really wants to say, to tell her that, Hey, we’re in the same boat, I don’t have any friends either except for the girl I shared a literal womb with, but to admit that to Sophie would be to admit something deeper to himself, that perhaps he’s incapable of maintaining friendship or love or anything normal, and so Tam bites his tongue and instead says, “Hey, clearly you haven’t given up on friendship if you’re here with me.”
He can’t see her face, but he’s pretty sure she’s smiling when she says, “I guess I have at least half a friend, then.”
The hike, much to Tam’s dismay, does not end up being a one-off event. It practically becomes routine for Sophie to call him up at truly horrendous hours in the morning, asking, no, telling him to get out of bed and get dressed, because she’s found a new trail or hill or mountain or whatever and they have to go hike it, immediately. Tam can’t even believe that there’s this many places to climb in San Diego; surely, they must have seen the whole city by now. But Sophie enjoys it, and although Tam is most definitely not a morning person he does like having the whole day ahead of him, so whatever. On the list of Things He Has to Deal With, these morning hikes are nowhere close to being the worst.
And, as an added bonus: Sophie was correct when she said San Diego was beautiful at sunrise. There really is nothing quite like seeing it after a climb: the feeling of standing on top of the world, watching the way rays of sunlight fall over the city, dousing it golden.
Tam still likes silver better, but he supposes gold is pretty good, too.
“Hey, I can close up today,” Tam offers one Wednesday night. It’s been a slow day today—weekdays usually are—so there isn’t much cleaning up to do, and anyway, Sophie’s been closing practically every day since she was first hired. While he was happy to have that responsibility taken off of his hands at first, Tam thinks it would probably be the right thing to do to let her go home at least a little earlier than she usually does.
Sophie freezes when he offers her her freedom, though, holding a book in mid-air. “That’s okay,” she says quickly. “I really am in no rush to get home.” She smiles at Tam and turns her back to him as she continues stacking books on the display table.
Perhaps the Tam from over a month ago would have shrugged it off and left. Or perhaps if he was a different person entirely, one who didn’t have to grow up reading between the lines or one who didn’t spend his childhood hiding under his bed, he would’ve taken her words at face value. But Tam is neither of those things, and even if he doesn’t know the specifics he recognizes himself in Sophie, so he sighs and joins her at the display table.
“We can both close up,” he holds out a copy of Anne of Green Gables to Sophie, an olive branch of sorts. She hesitates a moment before smiling—a real one, this time—and taking it, adding the book to the top of the pile.
“I’d like that,” she says, and Tam internally cheers. Small victories and all that.
They keep doing things, Sophie and Tam. They hang out before work, after work, outside of work. They go rock climbing on Tuesday and visit old record shops on Friday and stuff their faces with funnel cake on Sunday. Tam starts to wonder if they perhaps spend too much time with each other, and that most people usually divide their time between multiple people, but then Sophie pulls up with two tickets to Comic Con on Thursday and he gets a picture with some guy in sick Wolverine cosplay, and he resolves not to think about it too hard. He’s enjoying himself. He made a friend, somehow. What a wonderful thing to have accomplished.
His newfound happiness does not go unnoticed, however, and all good things must come to an end, and in the world of Tam Song that usually happens sooner rather than later. As July fades into August, and summer starts winding down, dread settles itself into his gut as Tam tries to force himself to not think about what he already knows: this is the beginning of the end.
“You’ve been busy this summer,” Mai Song muses one morning, carefully watching as her son scarfs down cereal at the kitchen island. “Waking up as early as four in the morning. Most summers you never get up before noon.”
Tam pauses. He recognizes that tone: measured, calculated. Where his father is explosive and angry, his mother is one of two things: the first is tears and apologies and endless regret due to the fact that she was unable to mold her children into everything she wanted them to be, and the second is what sits in front of Tam now: a viper in sheep’s clothing. She is poised to strike right now, waiting for him to take a step out of line, to give her an excuse to pounce.
But Tam is no longer six but sixteen, and he knows how to navigate this game of cat and mouse, and all he says is, “I like being up early. It’s good practice for when school starts again.” He does not betray anything about Sophie, about their morning hikes or their movie marathons or junk food binges. He refuses to let these two parts of his life intersect, because one will inevitably stamp out the other, and Tam knows very well which one will come out on top.
Tam can see on his mother’s face that she doesn’t believe him for a second, but Mai only clicks her tongue and says, “If it really is school you’re ‘practicing’ for, make sure that when you go back, you actually stay focused this time.”
He’s not stupid. He can read between the lines. He knows that his mother is telling him to cut out whatever so-called distractions are in his life by the time summer ends—his father would never be quite so understanding.
“Hey, Tam.”
“Hm?” Tam looks up from rummaging through vinyls to see Sophie grinning at him like a madman, hands hiding something behind her back, hair slightly sticking up and a wild glint in her eyes. He takes a step back instinctively.
“Happy birthday! This is for you.” Without warning, Sophie deposits a guitar and a pick in his hand, and he nearly drops both things out of shock.
Tam stares at her, brows furrowing. “Yo, what the fuck. It’s not my birthday? I don’t play? Guitars are expensive? Take it back!” He tries to push it back into her hands, but she steps back, shaking her head.
“One, this is an early birthday present because you’ll be all the way across the country in March. Two, this is so you learn to play? Obviously? Three, I didn’t even pay that much for it! My neighbor had a garage sale and gave this to me for like, fifteen bucks. So, chill out, and take the damn guitar.”
And so Tam does indeed take the damn guitar (still not without checking to make sure it’s okay that he accepts it every ten minutes), and if he cries a little when he manages to play the chorus of “Piano Man” for the first time, well, that’s no one else’s business but his own.
On their last day at the bookstore, their manager tells them to take anything they’d like. “You both have been such a help to me this summer,” she gushes. “Really, I don’t know what I would’ve done without you two. Pick out any book you want—you’ve earned it.”
Sophie beams at the manager, thanking her profusely for both the job and the books, and then speeds off, immediately beelining for the fantasy section. The manager chuckles at her mad dash, then turns to Tam. “You’re a good kid, Tam Song,” she says after a moment, face inscrutable. “Never forget that.”
Tam promises that he won’t, but that promise is quickly exchanged in lieu of losing himself in a copy of Northanger Abbey.
“Hey, are you all packed?” Linh’s head pops up in Tam’s doorway. “I guess not,” she amends as she walks into his room, taking in the sight of Tam sitting on the floor surrounded by freshly washed laundry, hunched over his suitcase.
“I don’t want to go back to that fuckass school,” Tam says miserably. “I don’t want summer to end.”
“What’s worse? Boarding school on the East Coast or private school in the Bay?”
“Just put the gun to my head.”
Linh laughs, plopping down on the floor next to him. “Listen, I know you're gonna miss your little girlfriend when we leave—”
“It’s not like that.”
“Well, whatever it is, it’s not like this is the last time you’ll ever see her. We’ll be back next summer, and over winter break, and you can text and call all the time! It’ll be fine.”
“Yeah,” Tam agrees. “Yeah, yeah, it will.”
They talk almost all the time, those first few months.
Tam tells her about school; talks shit about the rich kids who fly off to Ireland for a weekend (“Didn’t your family go to Switzerland on a whim for two days?” “That’s different, I’m not an asshole.”); narrates in great detail how some girl accidentally set the chemistry lab on fire, leaving Sophie in stitches by the end of it. In response, she gossips about her floormates, complains about how stupid some of the people in her classes can be, and occasionally dogs on UCLA’s football team (“You don’t even watch football.” “It’s the principle!”). They make plans for winter break, spring break, summer break (“Do you think the aquarium’s got an argonaut octopus?” “Probably, yeah. Maybe we’ll see its penis fall off.”) Everything, Tam thinks, is good. Better than good, even.
But the months go on, and they both become wrapped up in their own lives, and calls turn to texts, and texts become less and less frequent, and suddenly Tam’s birthday rolls around in March and he sees the guitar collecting dust in the corner of his dorm room and he thinks, Oh.
Well, this fucking sucks.
So he does what any self-respecting not-quite musician would do in that situation. He writes a song about it.
And then Tam thinks, Hey. This is fun.
Thank you, Sophie Elizabeth Foster.