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What Else Do I Need?
VAST
Music for People
2000

♥: VAST was one of the first rock bands I fell in love with. In high school, I devoured the Everworld series (K. A. Applegate's post-Animorphs effort), and Scholastic released a promo soundtrack CD for it which featured "Touched." That's still one of my favourite songs, and now that I think about it, I think it's one of the big reasons I so love east-meets-west hard rock. This was when I stopped listening to Mix96 and 92.9 (my mom's influence, sigh), and started listening to something that spoke to me on a much more fundamental level -- something harder. I was growing up. So VAST is formative, and that's why I was so excited to find this song: it's so perfect to look at a band that answered a question I didn't even know I had...as a question (and, in fact, as the very question it answered -- what else did I need? Then -- it was music.).

I searched "what" in iTunes and this popped up. Admittedly: I had never really listened to it before this week. Music for People is one of those Beautiful Midnight-like albums where I get stuck on a few songs -- but I hit play and listened to the lyrics and this was the song I was posting, no question. Coincidentally or not -- the question I've been turning in my head for a year or more, something I think both of us have been asking ourselves for a long time, consciously or no: "What else do I need?"

The chorus seems to treat this as a rhetorical question: "I could stay right here / and never ever leave / what else do I need?" -- and I'd almost buy it except that Jon Crosby sounds so broken, and the rest of the lyrics are so angry. It's like he's trying to convince himself that the life he's living is sufficient, forced into a system he can't stand, but the moments he has away from it are worth it, enough -- but they aren't, not really. There's something missing, and you hear it in his fucking voice. It's such a desperate question: what else do I need?

And then, the worry: even if you have everything -- it won't be enough.

I waver back and forth on how I feel about this question, when I ask it to myself. Sometimes it is a black hole, horrifying, because I can't fathom exactly what I need (to do, to change, to become). But sometimes it is liberating, endless constellations. What else do I need? There is so much to life, so much to experience, so much I won't be aware of until the moment I experience it ---- so much more -- and that's when the chorus suddenly makes sense.

"What else do I need?" is still honest -- and you might be in the throes of something ideal. You could stay right there, never leave, but what else is there? I don't want "enough", I don't want "sufficient" or "adequate" or "static." That desire to strive, to never be complacent...that is the real beauty of this question. Not "what"...but "what else."

And, like when I listened to VAST for the first time: this song is about being separate, finding a new path, growing up. Of course -----
it'd be delusional to think you'd ever stop asking the question.