this is me trying
- this is me trying / Labyrinth (Eras Tour, Gelsenkirchen)
- this is me trying / Daylight (Eras Tour, Miami Gardens)
Anxiety manifested as exhaustion, the speaker is doing their best under the sustained weight of depression and inner turbulence. The admission of effort itself is the emotional content: 'I was so ahead of the curve the curve became a sphere' captures the disorientation of a mind that cannot stop.
“shiniest wheels, now they're rusting”
“I'm here in your doorway”
“Pulled the car off the road to the lookout”
“Pouring out my heart to a stranger but I didn't pour the whiskey”
“And it's hard to be at a party when I feel like an open wound”
trying register
“I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere / and I've been meaning to tell you, I think your house is haunted”
“I've never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try” — mirrorball
Community reading places mirrorball's triple repetition alongside this is me trying as a two-song trying-register pair within folklore itself: both songs locate the effort in a speaker who is working visibly hard at something that reads as easy for others. Patreon commenter Alexis Luna frames the two songs as part of a three-part trying cluster with Mastermind. The proximity within the album (tracks 6 and 9) intensifies the pairing.
the threshold plea, retried in a wearier voice
“But I'm here in your doorway”
“Betty, I'm here on your doorstep” — betty
The threshold plea recurs across the album: James on Betty's doorstep with his apology, and this is me trying standing in the doorway with another, the same posture in a wearier voice. The community hearing places the two thresholds in series, the teenage apology retried by an older speaker less sure of being let in.
the gifted child stunted by early maturity
“I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere”
“Growing up precocious sometimes means not growing up at all” — But Daddy I Love Him
Community readers pair "growing up precocious sometimes means not growing up at all" with this is me trying's "I was so ahead of the curve", the two lines naming the same arrested development: the gifted child praised for early maturity and quietly stranded by it, the performance of being grown standing in for the stages it skipped.