But Why? — Black, Pearl Jam
I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life, I know you’ll be a star
In somebody else’s sky, but why, why
Why can’t it be, oh, can’t it be mine?
The other day, I wheeled out my bicycle from the garage next to my dorm to find out that the chain had magically come off. Unbelievable. I was already late to my 9:00 class session. It was raining, as it tends to in England. I couldn’t believe my luck: it was yet another in a series of unfortunate bike-related events including a trip to the hospital, attempts to fit the aforementioned bike into various Ubers after multiple cancellations, and faulty seatposts. Later, I jokingly mentioned to my friends that it was due to the fact that I’m a car guy with no car. After frantically searching for YouTube videos on “how to reattach bike chain” and being forced to sit through 30-second ads for videos that were at most two minutes long, a kind stranger set his coffee by the side of the path, fixed the chain, and helped me on my way. As I swiftly pedaled off to class, I kept wondering “why?” Why must I suffer? Why are there so many random, inexplicable inconveniences recently? Why didn’t I wake up for class earlier? But I couldn’t exactly spend much time interrogating my otherworldly misfortune: I had more important things to worry about, most prominently, how to invent and fund a theoretical motorsport-related service.
I spend a lot of time asking why, but not nearly enough time actually looking for the answers. I should clarify, this is largely referring to more existential questions (not sure if wondering why I’m late counts…), wholly unrelated to my engineering studies. I spend more than enough time following the scientific method and whatnot in class and through my personal projects. But academia and the other more tangible issues I face have always been a priority over broader questions about life. I’ve always admired those who are able to really dig into the nuances of what it means to be and to live, instead of just being and living. I believe that those closest to me are a positive reflection of that, but our differences can occasionally be quite glaring. I’ve been described as pragmatic, as a realist, as “black-and-white”, as “grounded,” all of which I attribute to my strict (yet extremely loving) upbringing and the fact that I’m the eldest sibling (if you’re not the eldest, I don’t wanna hear it). And I agree, to an extent: I too often make definitive statements (only a Sith deals in absolutes), which can be helpful when trying to make a decision, but significantly less so when asked for advice on heartbreak, on loss, on the unforeseen and unpredicted. I don’t like surprises. I want my conversations to be seamless, witty, and clever. I find myself uncomfortable with awkward silences, itching to abandon that empty feeling I get when I just don’t know what to say. I hate boredom, and I hate confusion.
I won’t pretend that these behavioral patterns haven’t helped me at times. I’ve become extremely adept at choosing who I associate with. I’ve become an extremely skilled conversationalist, even though I leave most conversations running instant replays in my head, trying to see if I could have said something funnier or more thoughtful. I have very clear and well-defined interests that grow over time while still maintaining the core of who I am. And to me, who I am has rarely been in question, at least in isolation. However, that same isolation that can produce such a distinct profile of a person has been borderline suffocating when it comes to love, both platonic and romantic.
Making friends was never particularly difficult for me, but forging genuinely close relationships is like pulling teeth (which I’m actually used to by now considering how much dental work I’ve needed, so maybe I need a different metaphor). I feel guilty of drowning others in shallow information about myself, forcing them into a deluge of fun facts and trivia that are easy to rattle off but don’t really mean much in the grand scheme of things. I think I do this because on some level, I really do fear being known, being disarmed. Not exactly a unique experience. Obviously, being fragile and vulnerable means I don’t have the capacity to be rock-solid and reliable for someone else, so why should I fill in the picture of myself when I can just draw the linework?
This is a very naive, patriarchal manner of thinking, one that I do my best to grow out of by confiding in those I love and by engaging with literature and music that forces me to take steps inwards. This is very apparent in my library of music: historically, I’ve put a decent amount of effort in avoiding sad or emotionally turbulent songs, for fear that I would, in turn, become sad or emotionally turbulent. Of course, I’d indulge in the occasional pop song about heartbreak, or power ballad about a dead friend, but for the most part I wanted my music to be exciting, upbeat, and high-octane. But that’s not how we’re wired. No one is constantly joyful, constantly alert, constantly “good.” We’re so privileged to have such a wide range of available emotions (groundbreaking, I know), and in turn an equally wide array of expression in music.
“Black” by Pearl Jam is probably my favorite sad song in recent times. In my experience, it’s often overshadowed by hit single “Even Flow” off the same album, but the two songs are polar opposites in terms of emotional evocation and to me, have equal impact. Where “Even Flow” is most often attached to skate culture and hype moments (which is extremely ironic since the song is, quite blatantly, a bleak narration of the life of a homeless person), “Black” mourns a shattered relationship, ultimately resulting in a dejected, pseudo-acceptance of the fact that the bygone lover will inevitably find happiness without the narrator. Vocalist Eddie Vedder has one of the most distinct voices not just in rock or grunge, but all of music (“It doesn’t get Eddie Vedder than this!”), often imitated, never duplicated. With this in mind, his declaration of pain on “Black” is one of the most gut-wrenching pieces of music I’ve ever heard. My relationship history is interesting to say the least: regardless, I’ve done my absolute best to keep moving forward and change for the better without ever fully erasing the person I was before.
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Eddie cut through all of that. I don’t cry very often these days, but I will admit I wept to this song. A handful of songs, shows, and movies have that effect on me, with none ever joining the ranks as quickly as “Black” did. It would have probably hurt less if someone had walked into my room and verbally accused me of lying to myself about how I really felt for the past decade of my life, giving me no chance to rebut. The song forced me to really reckon with the buildup of negative emotions I had so far successfully repressed for who knows how long: first kickstarted by White Pony, I finally took the time to sit with how I really felt about leaving my family, my friends, my home, my cat, all of the (relatively minuscule) obstacles I had to overcome since moving, my relationships that I thought I didn’t have questions about anymore, my personal doubts about my abilities (both technical and non-), and other variable-size grievances.
Unfortunately (or fortunately? Depends on who you ask…), love has rarely changed its magnitude when it comes to my life. I very often find myself overflowing with love in all forms, devoting myself wholly to a hobby, to a person, to an idea, while simultaneously trying to plug the leaks that would betray the full extent of that love and make me appear any less than stoic. Just look at the damage it could cause if you devote yourself wholly to anything:
Ooh-oh, and all I taught her was everything
Mmm, oh, I know she gave me all that she wore
…And now my bitter hands chafe beneath the clouds
Of what was everything
All the pictures have all been washed in black
Tattooed everything
Brutal.
I told myself and others before I left that love, friendship, or anything of the sort wouldn’t even be on my radar at school. I wholeheartedly believed that moving from one of the biggest cities in the world to one of the tiniest towns in the world, focusing on an incredibly niche and ridiculously competitive area of study, would be completely unfavorable when it comes to making close friends and forging more intimate relationships. To my credit, it’s certainly not the first thing on my mind, by virtue of being busy all of the time with some project or another and the fact that it’s pitch-black outside at 4:00 PM when I get out of class at 5:00, but when I’m lying in bed with my tasks completed for the day, it’s certainly not the last.
My classmates, bless them, haven’t been making it any easier for me. Organizing ice-skating outings, trips to Nando’s, Thanksgiving dinners (even though they don’t even celebrate it), and Wetherspoons baptizings have only served to make me feel even more loved and welcome. I spent almost all of my first month self-pitying, feigning at nonchalance when really, I was afraid of being exposed as a fraud. Imposter syndrome at its finest. But it happens to everybody — as time went on, people became more comfortable laughing at stupid jokes, cold-approaching each other, and dedicating time to making plans outside of the classroom. This may come as a shock, but I actually went on an early-morning run for the first time in…maybe ever.
We have fun here. Needless to say, I’ve expanded my horizons far beyond what I believed possible. BREAKING NEWS: Meeting people with shared interests and common goals makes you feel more included. Wow! Ring the papers. Thing is, it hasn’t made me any less nostalgic for home. In fact, sometimes it has the opposite effect: I wish the people I already know and love were here to see and experience these things with me. But would I even want to do them if I felt comfortable already? Honestly, I doubt it. Even in undergrad, I saw myself wanting to go out and explore New York City less and less as I grew closer with my friends, regularly preferring a night in to a night out. I’ve always been that way, sure, but haven’t I only gotten to this point by putting myself out there in the first place? It’s easy to forget where we came from: we live in a culture that highly values “living in the moment” or even looking to the future, but rarely do we put a premium on appreciating the past (“rose-tinted glasses” comes to mind). Problem is, people tend to get stuck in the past. Too often, we circle the drain of something that’s already passed us by, feverishly attaching every aspect of our identity to it instead of extracting the lessons it taught us and moving on. Of course, I acknowledge that many traumas are nigh-impossible to heal from, but what I’m talking about here won’t even scratch the surface of that, and I don’t think I have deft enough hands to handle that as delicately as I would like, so I’ll simply admit that shortcoming of my “analysis” and move on.
My parents have always reminded me to remember where I came from, and I attribute my extremely strong sense of self to a strong understanding of what circumstances produced the person I am. It has made me rigid, or unflinching, depending on your point of view. But songs like “Black” make me want to bend (not break), at least a bit. I want to be as empathetic as those I hold in the highest regard, seeing people beyond just seeing them in the same way that music makes me feel seen, which naturally requires me to lower most of the barriers I’ve had in place for basically all of my conscious life. I want to assure myself that my identity will not suddenly fall apart when faced with someone with the potential to really change me. Even if it does to some degree, everything falls apart eventually. The right people will help you put you back together, and the best people will make you even stronger than before. I think that’s pretty cool.
Happy listening,
Bolu
Unintentionally, it seems like there’s a theme in my writings recently: identity. Maybe it’s a phase, maybe not. If you have more thoughts or comments on what it means to be you, drop me a line! I’d love to discuss this.
