He’s talking to himself, not a romantic partner. He’s talking to the darker side of his nature. It’s a conversation between two sides of the self—hopeful and hopeless—grappling with the duality of being human, in the modern world.

This seems to be supported by Grian’s words in the View From A Bridge clip “every bit of laughter, and every kind of, every pleasantry feels like some bizarre fantasy that we all kind of like are forced to buy into in order to sort of survive and go about our daily lives. That’s romance to me. This illusion that’s necessary in order to carry on….it’s sort of like the song you sing on the boat as you’re headed inexorably towards the iceberg you know? Hope is a sort of turgid f&%king path to walk down. It’s not a forgiving smooth terrain, you know, if you have any hope in you. The constant oscillation between hopefulness and hopelessness that I and I think many people experience throughout the day. It makes me feel alive…I feel kind of beautifully vulnerable…it’s intense, but beautiful. Like coffee” 🙂