5pm_weds | eighty-two. [THEME: bildungsroman]

This Is Only for Now
Artist: Charlotte Sometimes
Album: Waves & the Both of Us
Year: 2008
♥: I have put this on so many mixes -- for myself and other people -- that I've lost count. And, generally, the first time someone hears this song, they screw up their faces, confused at the initial skipping (I like to put it as the first track, just to really make it questionable). The first time I heard it, though, in January 2009, I -- craving electronic music and weird beats -- was instantly hooked. No mistakes, though, this isn't breakcore -- it's one of those rare occurences of absolutely quality pop. I love this song. I love Jessica Charlotte Poland's voice, how it breaks and how you can't quite understand everything she says (the line "seems the bugs hit the windshield more than ever before", for example), how she has those moments of a capella, or almost a capella, before the richly layered music, beats, and skipping flow back in, whirling the song in circles.

And 'whirling in circles' -- I think that's about the best description of "growing up" I can produce at this point.

Ah, the bildungsroman...one of those weird German words that most people, somehow, seem to just know. I'd posit it's at least partially because 'coming of age' is about the most intense, fucked up, dichotomous experience anyone can have in a lifetime -- and everyone knows it. They don't tell you once they're past it, of course, except to whine that "youth is wasted on the young" and "someday you'll learn" or, if you're Leonard Cohen, you say it well: "And I lift my glass to the awful truth / Which you can't reveal to the ears of youth / Except to say it isn't worth a dime." Enjoy your ignorance, you young bitches: it'll be gone soon enough.

But the problem with the bildungsroman -- and with a lot of confined narratives more generally -- is that it assumes that you come of age once. That there's only one time you reach adulthood, and that if you miss that boat, well shit, my dear, you're not worth a dime. It assumes that there are benchmarks and common experiences that 'every human' has, in one way or another -- not necessarily "find-job get-married have-kids", but "find-purpose find-partners find-a-way-to-leave-a-mark". Unfortunately, a lot of people don't think about it all that much, or are genuinely happy taking the standard, normal path. Power to them, if they came of age at 16 and haven't looked back.

I have. I've wondered, I've questioned, I've taken some steps off the path, and I've looked back.

And that's why more than any other song, I think, it's important to remember "This Is Only for Now."
We keep changing. We keep evolving. We keep becoming someone else, every day. The thought of coming of age, narrated, is a construct. Obviously -- all fiction is. Most people know that. But the problem is when you absorb something from fiction, be it a pattern or an ideal or anything, really, and hold yourself to it so strongly that you end up losing yourself.

I like that you can be insecure, gullible, and confused, going too quickly with "bugs hit[ting] the windshield" and making you spin out of control -- and that it's temporary. That you will probably return to it, at some point, and that it doesn't mean you've lost ground or regressed ----- only that you've found new obstacles, new experiences, and as long as you are honest about it, the bildungsroman will never actually end.

"Here I am, a solid box for now."
Only for now.