On Lorde, the Magic of Ribs, and Losing Track of Time
I. It feels so scary getting old
I started the first draft of this article when I was 22 years old. Fresh-faced and still reeling from entering a new life at breakneck speed. It began as an ode to house parties. How energy precedes safety when you're young. Steady agreements to surrender yourself alongside everyone else. Post-college, those spaces felt transient at best. You'd watch the moments pour out as they happened, like an hourglass that split open and spilled.
I write so much about the past because I've always had trouble imagining a future. 5 years gone in a blink. Near 27-year-old me still misses finding himself deep into nights where, with enough vices and a sound system that could shake your soul, you could forget about the moments ahead. No matter how fast it came barreling at us, we could move our bodies slightly faster, sing our songs a little louder, and give ourselves even more to the moment.
II. This dream isn't feeling sweet
Ribs by Lorde is an anthemic love letter to the ephemeral nature of youth. It was then, and it is now. Read: it always will be. No matter how fast we run backward, the future cannonballs toward us — arriving at every moment's notice. At 22, I felt impossibly old. At 27, I feel impossibly young.
It's a feeling that's hard to pinpoint. Maybe it's turning the age that Amy Winehouse always will be and Mac Miller never got to be. That sort of shock and awe is readily available as an adult. Equal parts fear and excitement are omnipresent. In Boyhood, right before the main character ships off to college, the teacher refers to this idea as "voluptuous panic." It's as sexy and enticing as it is utterly fucking frightening.
Readjust those dreams if they aren't feeling sweet — they probably weren't what you thought. Let's be honest, sixteen-year-old-you didn't know shit, and that's understandable. Delightful, even. Growth is failing with grace, over and over. Relish in those unachieved, unrecognized dreams.
III. I want 'em back
Memory lane isn't a road; it's a roundabout. The longer you circle those same spaces, the more you lose your way forward. Or out. Or wherever you need to be going.
IV. You're the only friend I need
Molly, Nicole, and I are bounding around Molly's family cabin. Think untouchably fabulous shag carpet, classic Midwestern paneling, and couches straight out of a Sears (remember Sears?) catalog.
Aimless, energetic, and full of glee, we're losing our minds to Ribs. Across the lake, I'm sure they hear us — the bass rumbling and coming straight off the water.
Certain moments in life mirror chrysalis — a time indicative of a before and an after — and even then, I know this is one of them.
Suddenly, and not at all, I'm older than I've ever been and younger than I'll ever be. I'm unearthing and setting free any feeling of guilt or anxiety or anything else that is weighing me down. And two of the people I love so dearly are right there with me.
V. Laughing til our ribs get tired
In truth, there are no ways to slow down time. I'm sure we'd have properly, irreversibly fucked the world by now if we'd found it. Our collective nostalgia can't be trusted anyways.
There's comfort in knowing the past will always be where you left it. Frozen and suspended there, forever. You can go back, but nobody you love is still there waiting for you.
If you're lucky enough, those people are still around for you to let know how much you cherish them and those memories you made, how you look forward to that impossibly fast-approaching future.
That future that's on its way and already here. I hope you're ready to dance again.
