I’m Writing For The Child I Was And The Old Woman I Will Become
It’s 2026. Time marker for the future reader.
As the years go by, I become more keenly aware of how much more valuable every minute is, while simultaneously feeling less pressure to ‘enjoy the moment.’
When I was in my early 20s, I met a semi-retired drummer from a very cool rock band in South Korea. He was still making music but was not in his ‘hey day,’ so to speak. He was teaching me rhythmic phrases, and after banging on a table with some drum sticks for a few minutes, I sighed and said, “I wish I could just start making music now.” He leaned back in that ever so cool way that comes only with great experience, and laughed.
“There’s no rush to making great music. Music has to take time.”
I remember feeling irritated by this statement. ‘That’s easy for you to say. You’ve already made it.’ As for me, I had nothing to show for any of my efforts or interests.
But here I am, much later, and I think back at that period of my life often with sadness and relief. I was always twisted in knots of anxiety, wondering WHEN AM I GOING TO FINALLY DO SOMETHING MEANINGFUL WITH MY LIFE, as I knocked back a midnight drink with friends I had met the night before. I had so much passion and no direction. It turned inwards and self-destructed in a nuclear cloud of confusion; if I’m just wasting my talents and time, then what’s the point?
As I write this, I can barely constrain my eyes from rolling right out of my head. I think that I had nothing to show for because I had quite literally done nothing. It’s a horrible irony of youth. I wanted to say things full of significance that would transform the world (!) but I didn’t even know what mattered in life.
I genuinely think that the most fascinating people are those who throw themselves into something with open curiosity, have the resolve to survive their naivety and the trouble that comes with it, and then if they’ve succeeded, have developed the humility to speak with frankness and humor about the mistakes they learned along the way. Personally, I’m afraid I don’t give two shits about someone who has been working on their life passion for one year in their early twenties. I’d want to learn from the seventy year old woman who has started DJ-ing because she wants to appreciate new music before she loses her hearing (If you meet such a lady, tell me immediately), or the man who bounced back from a troubled upbringing to become a respected father of kids he had way too early. Those are the ones who have lived.
This is not to say that I dismiss the young; I’m young, myself. In fact, I love being dismissed by old-timers; it outs them early, so I know who not to bother being bothered by. And I adore the passion of youth. Something about the bright eyed hopeful spirit and lack of self-awareness combination really makes you try crazy things; failure doesn’t seem a possibility. Everybody was a kid once; if only everybody could remember what that felt like before they let the aged walking dead tell them to grow up.
This is probably why I love music and live performance so much. Nothing speaks so directly and sincerely to your most vulnerable self than a bare stage and a single voice. A true performer is the conduit of all the unspoken feelings the audience carries inside; she can make the listener laugh, weep, grit their teeth in anguish, feel relief as the chord comes to a conclusion. The wonderful tension in this is that the singer must not cry as she sings. Absolutely never; that would ruin the notes. But her voice lets the listener feel that it’s okay to shed some tears. The song is just so sad. It demands your emotion to give it life.
(I write this while listening to “Laughter in the Rain” by Neil Sedaka.
“Ooh, how I love the rainy days
And the happy way I feel inside.”
How sappily written, how sincerely sang! I sing it with all my heart when I hear it.)
I started writing when I was eight years old. I have a journal hidden in some back closet at my parent’s house that says things like, “today I went to mom’s friend’s house. The other kids are playing games but I’m sitting on the stairs because I want to go home.” The handwriting is wobbly and overlarge, but I express my feelings with precision. And as I grew taller, so did the stack of journals. I’ve yet to go back and read them in chronological order, but I imagine that if I did, I would be amused and appreciative of my growth.
I’m glad to have all of those journals now. They are the guardians of my childhood memories. Without them, my kid self might have vanished in the tidal wave of ADULTHOOD. Instead, I have a treasure map of clues to my younger self, and I can follow them to where the she still exists somewhere deep inside. It is that Real Me whom I cherish and think about as I write my stories or music. Would she like this? Does she think this is funny? Who else would I be writing for if I don’t first think it’s any good?
Though I am neither a child nor an old woman, I am always aware that both of those versions of me exist somewhere on my timeline. When I create now, I do so for the child I once was. And I keep creating now so that the elderly woman I will become will be able to look back, just like I do now with my old journals, and think, ‘what a charming and flawed individual! She has so much more to learn. I’m excited for her.’
Yes, I have less time than I did when I was in my early 20s. Yes, the natural result of that is I have now experienced much more worth talking about. Yes, making great music does take time. Living a great life can only happen with time.