New Orleans Swim Team - Whatever You Want to Be
текст песни

This has been one of the strangest attempts I've ever made at making peace. Like the greatest piece of advice I was every given was that you have to learn to accept the person you see in the mirror because that's who you have to wake up and face each and every morning. My dad told me that, and I think it came from his dad before him. His dad was a musician, and sometimes I wish someone in the family could talk to me about what it's like to be one. To be anything. To be anything that exists because you feel it pulling from inside yourself. And that's why I'm here, dripping wet onto this page to try and make some sense of every near-identical page before it. That's all I've been doing since I realized that I'm alone inside my mind. Is that selfish? Hardly, I think. Because I know I'm not alone.

Everything I have thought and felt has the potential to be analyzed and questioned by every person around and before me. We just don't always have the liberty of talking about it. Because what, it's not like anyone cares, right? It's not like anyone else worries about the masks their friends put on, or that fact that two people walking down a street at two AM is the loudest, most deafening silence they've ever heard. You're wrong. We were raised to ignore the things that inconsequentially matter. To niche ourselves into groups that are so well versed on a particular subject that there is a starting point from every inane and repetitive night we plunge into readily. But you're the only one that thinks that, aren't you? You're the only one who grew up with a song in your throat, or paint on your cuffs, or a plan to get you out of every contingency. You dreamt. You picked what you were, or could be, and what that meant to you and you alone. So you set out. But that melody that struck you on the walk home is in some weird time signature that you can't remember, or the mountain you meant to sketch ends up looking more and more like the hill in your backyard with every stroke. It falls apart.

No one wants to hear how your business is doing, or how you won that figure skating medal, because it just reminds them of the dreams they had and left behind for whatever excuse they spit out as more a question than an answer. You peak. You beat your head against your hands because you don't know how to do better. The mental picture you spent hours hiding from the world is getting farther and farther behind piles of paperwork and deadlines to make. Your third grade self wants to know what you've become. Everything your hands touch is supposed to be the big one. The one that you accept. That you proudly label as the potential your mind cultivated made flesh. But it's hard. It's damn hard. And you're doing it so utterly alone. Your mouth moves too slow for your head and everything comes out wrong. Painfully and completely wrong.

They're scared by the fire in your eyes as you lay out what you think matters. But they're the same. Bubbled together, wishing just to be understood in terms they can accept. Your something became an anything. It's not you defined on paper anymore. It's the experienced reactions of others that define what you do and have done. You're not alone. We're all throwing sentences and ideas and songs and half thought out monologues in hope of someone grasping the essence of what it is to be you. To see and feel the world as you understand it. But, I can't write for you. This is what I wrote, crudely pushing my understanding of the world through a medium that may or may not be understood. This is my reality. How I see love, potential, art, the mind, friends, thought, and the concept of writing as it applies to be you and I. It's simply refusing to believe that no one else can feel this.

Maybe you're scared, too. Or maybe you have it figured out for you. I can't know. All I know is that these are words I chose like a child's dodgeball team to make sense of the world and my place it it. The thoughts swirling painfully as I pretend to feel fulfilled. This was supposed to be a release. Was it? No. Because every day was just more thoughts thrusting in and out of remembrance, each Earth shattering and novel. But they're gone, and yours leave too. They were somethings. Pull them back, distorted and half misunderstood. They're anything now. Accessible to all, but totally undefinable. This is me labelling that. But only the questions. I have no answers. I can only live the way I know best. And if I can't justify that to anyone, what's the point of saying anything?

Everything has brought me to this couch, wanting to desperately convey that everyone will make sense of the world as it applies to them. Again, this is my world. Take it, ignore it, answer it, cry for it, do anything. Because it's a circle. Unbroken, unending. And it may overlap with yours, and your lover's, and your parent's, and those of composers and writers before us. But know that it's not just you. We're all terrified and learning to live with that. We're all bigger versions of children whose teachers couldn't tell us what we'd be. We all look up to people, and there are always people that look up to us. You're more than the clothes on your body and practised words you exchange in elevators. You're a collection of thoughts, no matter how pointless or contrived you may fear they sound.

You knew begrudgingly who you were, and that was something. The world never was your playground, though. Your hands and words were never good enough for you. That dream, that something, becomes an anything. It's not about making your mark anymore. It's about staying alive with no final fairytale destination in sight. You long to be anything. Your potential came close and crumbled, but you still fight. Why?

Because you are you, but you're also me. We understand the sun above us and the gravity that ties us down even if the words are different. Don't fear the understanding that you have. Don't hide the experiences or thoughts that made you the mind you are today. Never lose the something you set out to be.

Because anything is the smoke your hands tirelessly try to hold. You're the something you've dreamed about since you were eight years old.