It’s Friday evening and it just might be the tenth time you’re listening to Mariah Carey’s Without You from twenty six (you’ve just done the math) years ago. You’re thinking there’s still work you might do. Staring in front of the computer, but not at the computer. Thinking wtf. The song is coming to an end on YouTube, so in order to not let another song begin and ruin your trip, you rewind it. On again. It’s not on your laptop, it’s on tv, so you can stare at the tv, it’s bigger and louder. You, still, have your laptop to wait for a sign. Is this it?
As the chords strike you deeper and finer, you catch Mariah’s eyes and you connect with the feeling. A feeling of some kind of pain. Ideally, it’s a love story. This time, with yourself. It’s a pain of longing, belonging. I miss being in love. Man, I do really miss love!
I have just written the title and am smiling, grinning as we speak. It feels good to put it out there into the air, regardless of who, when, why and another w word reads this. Please observe the transition from the second person to the first. The heart had burst. Spontaneously. Sometimes, we try to flower power stuff, but other times, something just comes through. The truth.
And you, totally, feel Mariah Carey’s interpretation of the song. It must be the thirteenth time on repeat. They should invent a repeat button for geeks like us. Or super melancholic, anyway, people who, on a cold Friday night, should be partying or something, yet can’t or don’t want to escape this somewhat precious loop they’re in and start to, actually, enjoy it rather than escape it. A best friend once advised me, while I must’ve been dealing with some sort of heart ache because of some friendship, to just go deeper into it and fucking live it. Rather than escape it. I don’t know about that. It can be better, it might be not, you know best. Your best.
He was the one to send me a thing on millennials from The New York Times, this very week:
Technology has certainly played a role in popularizing the hermit trend. Writing for the New York Times in 2016, Molly Young suggests that services like Tinder, Netflix, Seamless, and Postmates have enabled today’s young people to abandon themselves to the comforts of convenience. “It’s like pouring your money into a savings account,” she writes of the choice to stay in over going out. “You’ll grow marginally; you’ll stay safe; your expectations will be met and never exceeded.” Heading out to a party or an art opening, Young writes, is more of a gamble. Maybe you’ll have an amazing night you’ll always remember, but more likely you’ll just stand around awkwardly and blow $60 on cocktails. Young’s theory suggests that Netflix and its ilk are facilitating our desire to stay in, rather than compelling us to do so.
Which is rather sad for someone like me who likes to pick up on the energy in the room, club, when everyone’s dancing and has a great time to the best music in the most fun atmosphere ever. I love that s*it! But here comes the tricky part. I love it just as much as I love the super cozy mood you can only have within the family. It’s about the energy.
THE LOVE!
I’m the happiest when I’m in the fam and I’ve, always, dreamt of mine. So, when Mariah sings at the top of her lungs, I can not stop but enjoy loosing myself in that feeling. Because I know what it feels like, I know exactly what I’ve always dreamt of. That feeling of putting your hands up in the air. Your feet banging hard against the floor. You almost can not sing, this is how much it hurt (past tense) something inside, yet you know you’re not giving up. On that. You are not trading it for any kind of substitutions you have, at times, been pulled into. Knowingly, not knowingly. But no more, I can’t give anymore!
An open heart is pretty… Uhm… Open. I am not afraid of the one reading right now and feeling like it’s too much, because for the one it wouldn’t be too much anyway. He knows exactly what I mean. Anyone who would be scared, would not be the one, so it’s fine. And you just know when you know. I mean, I do now. I might need to rephrase this at some point, but I’m on a train of thought here.
There have been trials and tribulations. And happiness. Loads and God knows just how grateful I am for it. It’s not perfection I’m talking here about. I’ve learned the hard way that’s not the way and it’s super ok. Or is iiit? I want something real. Our kind of real. Not from the movies, not from music. Ours. I stopped for a second. Stared some more. I get it why people I admire put things like these out there. Here. When you’re in it, you feel it and it just pours through you.
With Mariah in the background, still. It feels good. My spirit gets high, metaphorically speaking. I feel it coming, as the wonderful song by The Weeknd and Daft Punk says. It, thankfully, turns from sorrow to so delicately sweet. Just like Without You in a loop and loop and loop again is.
It might also strike a chord with me, as a kid, standing in front of the tv, each time this live recording of the song was playing on VH1, I think. Or MTV… And I was, discreetly, banging my feet against the floor. Singing. Staring. I remember my brother being in the room with me. He must have smiled, he was a teenager at the time. It was one of our moments. These kind of moments. Life is beautiful. And I’m so happy. Sometimes sad. But so happy.
On this note, I hug you real tight and wish you a very good night. A friend comes over, we’re not going out to meet people, just as The New York Times says, so I guess it’s family time. We’re having wine. And maybe some pizza. This millennial stuff, man. I hope it goes familial. That would be cool. Bye!
So fuck it, I might, just as well, enjoy it until it does. Now bye! Or hiii. Bye, bye.
