Like You
I dreamt last night that I was hanging out with Maggie Rogers, one of my favorite musicians. We were at the community theater I grew up in, visiting in the lobby on the black vinyl benches, the fabric splitting from age, held together by silver frames. It obviously wasn’t our first time meeting but you could also tell it was a newer friendship. Eventually she had to leave to do “celebrity stuff.” With no tact I asked her if I could come to her celebrity stuff. Her response was tender, “No, you can’t. I like to keep my friendships separate from that side of my life when I can.”
I walked her out the glass double doors to the concrete steps, already having said our goodbyes she continued down the stairs. As she hit the final step, I called out: “Maggie.” She turned around. I looked her in the eyes and said, “You know I am friends with you because I like you, not because you're famous?” She smiled, “Thanks for saying that,” and then headed towards her celebrity shenanigans.
I woke up sad that I hadn’t actually hung out with Maggie last night. This is the second time we have hung out in my dreams. The first time, we had a killer dinner with one of her old classmates from NYU. Sitting in a fancy dark green leather booth, the kind where the back cushion is made up of half circle humps. Under the dim lights of a five star restaurant, the conversation and food were perfect. Maggie and I talked all the way back to our cars and she promised we would hang out again. I appreciate that she followed through on that commitment.
Like I said in last night’s dream, it would be so fun if these dreams came true not because of Maggie’s status but because from everything I can learn about her (and that is, of course, limited), I really like her as a human.
In my twenties, I found the idea of “being a fan” intriguing and, not infrequently, found myself jealous of friends who felt so much emotion towards seeing someone in concert or about watching a favorite TV show for the hundredth time or seeing a film the night it was released. My lack of fandom was another thing that felt wrong with me, another place I didn’t fit in. One more place I couldn’t connect with people.
Recently, my spiritual director asked me to start outlining the values that I want to be guardrails for my life, at least in this season. She explained life as a hollow shape. We can choose a shape with as many sides as we want. A side for each value, and once those lines are in place we can fill our life, our shape, with anything we want as long as it fits within the values that we’ve deemed as the borders of our life.
As I was journaling through this exercise for the very first time, I was surprised that one of the first things that came to my mind was “the act of creating.” I wrote it down and then circled it three times. Every other word was predictable. Hospitality, generosity, deep relationships. Things I have talked about with passion for years. But even as someone who identifies as a “creative,” someone who has valued and participated in the arts before I knew what the arts were, I was caught off guard by creativity as a core value.
There is a falling in place that starts when we begin the work of finding and honoring ourselves, a slow trickle at first; big, crashing waves in the thick of the healing; and then, what I have found, is a continuing tap left barely on.
Journaling at the breakfast table one morning, another drop falls in place.
What do I value?
drip
drop
I now understand that, to become a true fan, one must first have begun that work of knowing and accepting themselves. Of course there was teen fandom where everyone loved the same thing. But I am talking about adult loves. The things we'll pay too much money to experience. The places we find comfort. The rabbit holes we fall down. The people we dream of knowing.
I had almost no ability to stand on my own two feet until I entered my thirties. And to be a fan is nothing if not to stand on one’s own. It’s the concert you’ll attend solo. The art exhibit you don’t invite a friend to because the experience feels too intimate.
To stand alone I had to begin that journey of returning to my true self and to at least take a crack at liking that person I was discovering. I had to find ways to trust myself before I could ever see and honor what my heart found compelling. I had to chase down the demons of feeling different, wrong, to be able to ask the questions needed to become a fan.
What sounds do I want in my home? What makes me laugh? What makes me feel alive? What words do I enjoy reading? Who and what do I like?
Over the past few years, way before I sat down to think about my values, I have become more and more fascinated with the process of creating. The art itself, yes, but even more so the people behind the thing, the way their minds work, the stories that have formed them, the quiet years where the art is birthed.
There’s a song I can’t stop listening to. I don’t remember how I was first introduced to it, but quickly I found a video of the song being recorded. I’ve dropped the video below so you can experience the song in my favorite form. If you’re in a place to watch it before you continue reading, you should do that.
This is not a music video. This is not content. This is not performance. This is three people creating music and giving us the profound honor of watching them do it. This is storytelling between friends and we are just lucky enough to listen in.
It’s absurd if you think about it. Creating is a deeply intimate act. Something that at some level only the creator themselves can fully understand. And the whole idea of intimacy is something that one keeps close. It takes some kind of different DNA, a different way of looking at the world, an absurdity, to take your most intimate moments and share them.
So this mashup of Phoebe and Noah’s songs with the added three-part harmony of Abby is an absurd intimacy, and something I can’t seem to shake.
I feel particularly drawn to Phoebe. The way she pulls away from the mic in between lines. It’s almost like the emotion is too much to stay in it for more than a second at a time. When her eyes look up at the ceiling to start the song, you immediately know she is with herself. We could never see or hear this and it would mean no less. These words are from her and for her. The way she digs her hands into her pockets you can almost imagine her, a teenager singing some of her very first songs. There is an effortless urgency in the way her body moves as she sings. Every slight nod, crinkled brow, rise on her toes, something that needs saying.
It’s now wild to me that someone could watch this video and not be moved by what happens in those eight minutes. That watching these three people make music could not create a deep almost obsessive desire in you to learn more about these people and their art.
But I know I feel these things because, in these particular people and in their particular art, I experience more of myself while watching them create. Their words, their voices, their bodies resonate with me. And I know that, because I know me. I want to know more of them because I also want to know more of me. And I want to know more of me so I can know more of them. Creating is not only intimate in the process of creation, but in the invitation art provides for intimacy with ourselves and, at some strange dream-like level, intimacy with artists we will most likely never have dinner with.
Maybe tonight I’ll meet up with Phoebe. We’ll drink coffee, and I’ll ask her about her mom; hear more about her depression. We’ll refill our mugs and buy a pastry to split, while I tell her how much I love writing and how fucking hard it is to eat somedays. And then, at the end, I’ll remind her I like her as a person and that I like myself a little more knowing her.