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“Tomorrow I turn 20, and it’s all I’ve been able to think about for days.” Lorde — the genius mind behind “Ribs,” arguably the most popular coming-of-age anthem of our generation — feels the weight of time passing in her 2016 Facebook post titled “A Note From the Desk of a Newborn Adult.”
Just like Lorde, I have longed for adolescence for as long as my memory endures. I always wanted to be 16 and sweet. It was the perfect age in my little head. Once I hit 16, I would have made it. I would have found exactly what life was meant to be. I would be in love with every aspect of my life, no longer forced to beg for rides or get told I was just a kid. I wanted to be frozen in time at 16, permanently locked in my beat-up Honda Accord, wearing my red Doc Martens and sporting a fresh bob, feeling the weight of a boy who never saw me and a unique contentment with what was to come. The future didn’t matter. I was 16.
One of my friends asked me why I’m obsessed with coming-of-age stories, whether that be music, movies or books. I’ve never really been able to verbalize why I romanticize adolescence so much. Maybe it is because my media intake is dominated by teenagers — the movies I love most focus on growing into life and love. Or maybe it is because I idolize my sister, who in my head is forever 17. I’ll never know why my desperation for the euphoric naiveté of one’s teenage years remains at the forefront of my life. Lorde describes it as a drunkenness on adolescence — that “teenagers sparkled.” And they do.
Even at 13, it felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders. No one could understand me and understanding was all I wanted. My emotions were far too big for my tiny bedroom to hold. I was miserable — no one had any sympathy for the problems that were huge for a 13-year-old girl and nonexistent to everyone else. But even in the misery and all-consuming pain, being a teenager was enough to make it feel like it was worth it. Because I knew that this period of my life was rare. It would be gone before I knew it.
Lorde says she spent her life building a sort of “giant teenage museum.” Just like her, the memorial of my teenage years will outlast my physical being. An empty water bottle from my very first Broadway show, overexposed disposable camera photos, love letters to loves lost and other pieces of trash that anyone else with a sane mind would not keep forever. These boxes live in the closet of my grandparents’ house, rarely revisited but constantly revered. I can never get rid of any of it. It is proof of my sparkle. Proof that I loved and lost and grew and cultivated a teenage life that was worth living and worth commemorating.
Here I am, knocking on the door that is 20 years on this earth. In three months, I will have to walk through the doorway, whether I like it or not. As much as I want to remain here forever — in this loud house party with my friends laughing so genuinely I swear it is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard — the disco ball has stopped spinning. It is only my reflection. The music can’t drown out the church bells telling me the time is here. In three months it will be over. The museum will close.
Lorde reckons with this fact by turning inwards. She feels as if a part of her has already moved past her adolescence, and unfortunately, I feel this way too. I don’t want to lose my teenage self, but a part of me is already done. Lorde’s moving on brings more power to her — power in accepting who she is outside of her teenage years.
She writes about how Pure Heroine was her way of putting her teenage years “up in lights.” Melodrama, her next album, was “what comes next.”
Melodrama is one of the most influential albums of my life. Songs like “Supercut” and “Writer in the Dark” are so profound to my experience as someone growing into her 20s, and knowing that Lorde wrote the album as a response to the end of her teenage years gives me so much optimism about what is to come.
As a farewell, she writes, “The party is about to start. I am about to show you the new world.” In three months, my teenage party will end. My 20-something party will begin. Mirror balls and all.
“I love you
forever.
L”
Daily Arts Writer Sarah Patterson can be reached at sarahpat@umich.edu.
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