“One day, you’ll be cool”
It happened, I felt it. I felt the coolness. I felt the music. I let the energy wash in and out of me. Let it take me for all I thought I had. It felt like it just had to keep on going. Like Almost Famous. Do you remember the first time you watched that movie? How it all just bit you? It had you, for like, a whole two hours. By the end of it, you could have sworn you’d met every single character. You were on the road with everyone, you were slamming beers and sneaking into venues and writing and learning and experiencing and Penny Lane-ing incessantly. And then the movie ended.
And of course it does. The movie always ends. That’s the worst thing about movies. The story is over, after only a couple hours. It’s over forever, unless you love sequels and nostalgia bait and spinoffs, which would make you a sucker or a loser. I fall for them often. It’s very eerie how we can’t accept the natural endings of stories. Not just the stories of others, maybe, even, the stories we make up for our own lives, in our own minds. (Too cliche??)
A nonchalant segway into talking about myself again… the stories we “write” for ourselves in our hopeful, hopeful young minds. The narrative we develop or hope to develop for ourselves. To live it all out like a movie. Like the movies that turned us into the ever so anxious dreamers we are. Like Almost Famous. But, as I said, the movie ends. At some point, when our imagined narrative doesn’t happen we give up on it. Or change it. Maybe to something more obtainable, maybe to something much, much less obtainable. It ebbs and flows.
Now the jig is up. You don’t see yourself as Almost Famous anymore. You don’t see yourself as Rushmore. You’re not Lady Bird or Edge of Seventeen or Palo Alto or Moonlight or Juno or Superbad. Not even Perks of Being A Wallflower anymore. Nobody warns you about the death of your relationship to coming of age movies. And I guess it’s natural, but it was a source of comfort for so long. And they are not there for me in the same way anymore. It’s such a shameful kind of grief.
And yea, change, whatever. I don’t know how many more idioms about change I can take. At some point, they can’t really be doing anyone any good. But what I’m trying to say is that this sort of loss, metaphorically akin to a death, requires moving through the stages of grief to pass through into the adult-fuck-up ”coming of age” movie junkie. Because we can get older, but we will never get better. K that’s a bit dark but it’s a joke. It’s a joke!!!! Anyways, I’m stuck in bargaining. Rewatching. Rewatching. Rewatching all my old favorites in hopes of finding something I hadn't before. A line to hit me in a way where I suddenly realize who I am. A song to needle drop at the exact right second, so that I may know that I am dreaming. A still frame, a single frame, so beautiful, it proves the existence of a god. Something. But, surprise, there was nothing I hadn’t already felt.
I feel at this moment reminded of a song. Car Seat Headrest’s “Something Soon”. “I want to burn this house down” is repeated eight times at the end. I need that. I need that song to play as I blow up a hospital like Joker in The Dark Knight, or dart up a hill on the back of my shimmering vampire boyfriend like in Twilight. I’m so tired waiting for me to catch up with the me I have created for myself through movies and music and things like this blog. Oh well, we’ll see. My teens are almost done. Nothing comes from nothing.
“See you back in the real world”
PS- This post was inspired by a cowardly man and a uniquely productive therapy session. Sorry there’s not a real ending, my thoughts are unfinished. Thank you for reading!!