My mortality tends to sneak up on me. If not my mortality, the realization of what I’ve spent my time on this earth doing shakes me to the core because it routinely feels like not enough. Then I start to question what enough would be, and in what area of my life am I looking for something to “be enough.” And then I bring it to therapy, and troubleshoot this same issue I’ve had stored in the rolodex of my trauma with a therapist who has equally as much knowledge as she does patience. Then I walk out feeling better because I verbally processed my concern, and then days like today come.
By days like today I mean when the feeling is so raw it could be mistaken as being felt for the first time. The sun is shining, the weather is changing, and my birthday approaches like the spearhead of all of my other birthdays. Because even though I’m turning 28, I’m still 27, and 26, and 25. And even though I’ve already worked through a lot of my trauma I’ve still been a kid and a teenager and in my early 20’s and felt all of these emotions before. I’ve thought a lot of these thoughts before. And when I find a thought compelling enough to expand on, I realize I’ve written about it before. Or exorcised the premise. Or talked about it so candidly I don’t think I could make something worth publishing out of it.
In my quest to write about my new year of life, I did what I presume every other suffering creative does and I went back to reflect on what I’ve written about before. Between Joan Didion, mental health, and expanding my never-ending quest to write about music in the way it makes me feel, I found a piece of unusual literature tucked under layers and years and photos that do not belong to me on my blog. Titled “The Power of My Imagination,” I was enticed enough by my lack of memory that I began reading.
“The silence in these moments often turns into the most thought - provoking vice. There is noise, but it all drowns itself out. The crickets chirping blends in with the breeze when it blows through and calm when it leaves. For a second, it feels like time hasn't changed. I'm looking to the star filled sky for answers, as if it has any to readily provide, and I'm imagining. Finding hope listening with different ears. Looking with different eyes. Thinking with different sense. I'm not sure what I'm searching for this time, unless it's just hope, promise, or something to believe in on it's own. Years ago, I listened with different intent. I heard dialogue. I heard stories. I heard imagination in the sound of two other voices, and it seemed okay, even if the inflection was not.”
I was reminded, in this moment, of a short story I wrote quite some time ago. This story that was only to satisfy myself was the “script” to a trailer-esque video I made for my YouTube channel. I heard “Monaco” by MKTO and my imagination ignited, and in a month I had written the short story, created a storyboard, filmed, edited, “scored” (though not really a score), and released this brain child of mine. All because of a song. Following this brief commemorative glimpse, several points in my life aligned to form a singular thought; an expansion on something I had been toying with but had not been able to put into words. In The White Album, Joan Didion describes these as “meaningful connections,” though all “equally senseless.” She says “In this light, all narrative was sentimental.” I’ve had plenty of these moments. This instance seems to have a common denominator, rather than just a feeling that these moments are all connected.
As I’m writing to you, I can share in complete joy that I got a new car last week. While driving around yesterday running errands, I opened the not-yet-used sunroof, cracked the windows, and played “American Dream” by MKTO. This song, outside of its anti-plutocrat essence, reminds me of a spring day in 2015. This storyline unfolds in my brain because I remember running errands, rolling the windows down on the first warm day of the year, and blasting this song through my car speakers. I felt like life was breathed into me. I felt moved by the ethereal moment I was having, screaming “JACK LEFT DIANE THIRTY YEARS AGO.” As I rolled up to a stop sign, I turned the music down and made eye contact with the person driving the car at the adjacent stop, as if I had not been just losing my wits to a pop song at 9:00 in the morning. When I catch this song any other time, I’m sent back to that moment.
I struggle routinely with the concept of the common patriarchal view of what the “American Dream” is, and I tend to believe I have since the time mentioned before. The idea of “climbing the ladder” has become so far from the true practice of what we know as the American work industry, it’s hard to shake that you’re supposed to do anything otherwise, without the radical sense of not belonging as your driving force to change. From a creative perspective, the ability to produce anything new, unique, or personal has been oversaturated by our ability to see, hear, and experience everyone else’s thoughts, opinions, emotions, and creations. From a working class perspective, the idea of working your life away to retire well past what is considered “your prime,” for MAYBE another 10 – 20 years until the average human life expectancy knocks at your door is daunting. With the economic climate we’re in now, the likelihood of reproduction, buying a house, and “settling down,” seems like a concept ripped from the marked up draft of a previous version of America. Just shy of 9 years since the release of “American Dream” by MKTO, singing “you know that nothing is the way it used to be,” felt harrowing, now, as an adult navigating what her version of the American dream is. Or contemplating if there is a piece even of it left to be dreamt.
In 2014, I saw MKTO live in concert. Having been a fan of Tony Oller since since I was a pre-teen, this moment felt full circle. This felt like something I couldn’t live without doing. Like I’d be doing my tiny self an injustice. It was this concert in Charlotte, North Carolina that the crowd sang most of Tony's lyrics. He sat behind a keyboard, sunglasses on in a dimly lit room, as we were told he was not well. At the time, I thought “how noble of him to come out on stage and still perform.” Now, I sit and contemplate if that is the epitome of the American Dream. You work hard, you reap the benefits. You put yourself to the side, and you’re praised for it. Ignore your needs because you have a job to do. I am only barely 28 and have spent the better part of 8 years living by those notions.
For the past few weeks I’ve experienced cyclical thoughts not too far from what was previously discussed. Like clockwork: I’m thinking “I’m doing good, I’m helping” or “I hope my boss appreciates this” and in the millisecond later thinking “what is this for?” or “why am I not working from home when I have the opportunity to?” or “I don’t want to wait until I’m in my 50’s to feel like I’ve ‘worked enough’ to take a day off.” This, my friends, is the American Dream, by definition. Now, as MKTO has resigned into the shadows as a once-known pop band storming the Top 40 charts and I, quintessentially, sit at my desk daydreaming of taking a vacation, or even being half as adventurous, creative, and imaginative as I was nine years ago, the breath of mortality feels even colder on the back of my neck.
These moments, these equally senseless but somehow connected glimpses of time, come to cross in a way unable to be ignored by my curiosity. What this leads me to is simply just another cycle. A gramophone of endless “what if’s” and “if, then” statements. Then the realization that this is simply not fulfilling in any way. Piecing together the exciting parts of my life and hoping they’ll complete the whole picture of the metaphorical puzzle is not my ideal way of finding my path to “enough,” or even to “living.” My curiosity lies in what my idea of a dream is, albeit not American by default, but what it means to me to have a goal or ambition. Even now, I’m not sure what that looks, feels, sounds, or tastes like. Overall I’m not sure the idea of such an elementary dream is to be affiliated with the human senses, but is rather to just be living and doing, no matter the cost. There seems to be a lack of substance. And if that’s the case, I’m not confident I’m interested in this grand idea of having something so historically decorated to work towards, in the event it only leads to self-effacing mediocrity.
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