When Harry met Z

I can't keep on losing you over complications

-Have you heard that song before?

-Which one?

-Dang, by Mac Miller

The song was playing, I kind of liked the lyrics, it was about losing someone, but it was happy tune. Cool.

-Sorry buddy, I came back to LA from China like two years ago. Am completely outdated. Whatever happened in the world in those ten years I spent abroad, I missed.

When she said that, she really didn't look like she was sorry. Sometimes she seemed arrogant, as if she was in another category of people, the ones who cared about "important stuff".

-Mac Miller. You know, he overdosed recently. Am always shocked when musicians or artists die too young. Mac Miller was a great artist. I guess what I want to say, we have our demons, our angels, sometimes those are intertwined. We need to be sensitive if we want to do good art. It is inevitable that we are in touch with our emotions, some people maybe a bit too much, and then it's frustrating, when we are interviewed by the media, you guys just want the gossip. It's really annoying. At least to me, it's annoying. There are so many other things we could talk about, perhaps how was life under One Direction. How our life changed overnight. We kind of had a military type of schedule, it was tough. It was a bit like being in the army, all lads, long hours; we loved what we did, but we had little say on everything, on most things. We toured the world, most of the time without our parents. We spent huge amount of time in hotels, airplanes, studios, tour-buses - you name it - so you start developing a kind of ...brotherhood. I guess? I never experienced anything like that, might never again. It was special. 

-Can see that. So, is that what you want to talk about?

I continued, stream of consciousness is how this is called, to let out your thoughts flow without restrain, letting them carry their own logic. I had so much to say, but since Barbara had no clue about us (which is good, actually, no bias, no judgment), I tried to put her in context. I continued:

- When you spend so much time together, you see how people really are, you see them really close. The band lasted five or six years, basically my coming of age took place in the band. 

We made five albums, topped charts everywhere, won nearly 200 awards, embarked in four world tours, we became rich and famous, so rich, Forbes ranked us as the fourth highest-earning celebrities in the world. 

Can you imagine that?

How do one copes with all that?

I looked at her. She was quietly listening. Good listener, I thought. I wanted to keep going, something in her gave me that confidence. She was trying to understand, she wasn't taking notes, nor trying to see if she could "dig" something from me. I remember the piercing eyes of journalists when they wanted to get something. My flow of thoughts continued:

 - I was close to all of my bandmates, but with one of them things were different. We were similar in so many ways. The level of passion we put into our music, how much we loved having fun, how wit he was. I started clinging more and more to him, and him to me, I guess.  Don't get me wrong, it wasn't as if we were both suffering and in pain. Nah, nah. We had fun. So much fun together. He and I were really mischievous, we didn't like to take things seriously. 

Everything that happened during those years felt like a tsunami, a huge tsunami, and I had his hand to hold on to. 

And that's how it happened. We were growing as artists. We were babies, in a way, but also young dudes filled with testosterone. We were growing up at light speed. 

We tried to protect each other, from you guys, mainly, but not only, from the managers, from lots of things. From the up and downs of the touring, from the stress, everything. It was quite beautiful, but hard to handle, to tell you the truth. It was fun. 

I was quite carefree, but I was attracted by him, maybe because he was introverted, creative, but also, masculine. I thought he was shy. I thought he was, but he wasn't, he is really, really passionate. You might have heard that song? His song, "we are who we are when no one is watching". That's it. That's us. But he said afterwards "I know you'll never be mine". 

Bummer, right？

-So, Barbara, do you think this is worthy of a story?

(to be continued...please let me know your thoughts....much love)