051: i learnt the truth at twenty-five

a quarter of a century is sexy

Yesterday, I turned twenty-five. In spite of, or maybe because of, not celebrating my birthday for the majority of my life (shoutout to growing up a Jehovah’s Witness), I love my birthday. The past few weeks, I’ve been trying to reflect on what turning twenty-five means for me. I’m not really a person who is big into making long-term goals (even though I’m a Capricorn) and so I’ve never really had a five-year or ten-year plan. I’m sure when I was fifteen I had a vague idea about where I wanted to be when I was twenty-five but no real plans to achieving it. Some of those things that I imagined, living in New York being the primary one, have happened or are in the process of happening. But, in my cynical way, I can’t see them as achievements that I’ve spent the past decade working towards—these things feel like lucky accidents. And in some way they are. In other ways, I very clearly made certain choices, reached out to certain people, thought about certain things in order to get here. I’m thinking now of the commencement address that Steve Jobs’ gave at Stanford that I used to listen to constantly when I was thirteen. If I go back in time in my Tumblr archive, I know that I shared quotes from it a few times. There’s a line in it about how once you get to place you wanted to be or the place that feels like success, that’s when you’re able to look back and connect the dots and see how there was a purposeful path towards the moment of success, even if it didn’t feel like it at the time. [The actual quote is: “Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”] I think that’s what birthdays are good for, reflecting on the moments that brought you here and how none of them were really mistakes, even if they were imperfect. A decade ago, at fifteen, I was really concerned about “making it” by a certain age. These days, I am more comfortable with taking my time. I still have a vision of success that I’m trying to live up to but I’m confident enough that I will eventually achieve it, so I’m not distracting myself with concerns of “falling behind.”

Apart from recalling Steve Job’s commencement address, here are some other cultural eggs that I’m thinking about as I begin my 25th year:

At the end of an interview from Rookie’s fourth yearbook¹, regarding her next album (which became A Seat at the Table, I think), Solange says that she is trying to channel her fifteen-year-old self: “[I’ve tried to] capture the true essence of the emotions in the lyrics, channeling my 15-year-old self, when I wrote those songs and didn’t think twice about what I said or how people reacted.” I’m always reminded of this quote anytime I feel like I’m experiencing a creative block or I am overthinking how something will be received by other people. I was definitely freer at 15 with my creative pursuits, more willing to do random shit for the sake of it, including making zines or painting bad watercolor portraits. My mindset wasn’t as much focused on getting better but on creating as much as I could, whenever I could. It’s harder for me to get that excitement about collaging and painting as I used to get but I am trying to embrace just doing things and sharing them, even if they’re ugly, even if they’re stupid and embarrassing. I might even start baking again.

I recently read an old essay Durga Chew Bose wrote for Metrograph which they recently re-shared in conjunction with their release of Millenium Mambo. I sent the piece to RAFTM Jess and it turns out we both were drawn to Chew Bose’s note on responding to the films (and books and music) we consume and experience. Chew Bose advocates for not having an immediate response, for letting things sit with you before having to make a claim about them. In the last paragraph she writes:

I am always relieved by having left the theater unconfident in my thoughts. There’s nothing as loyal—rich and electric—as doubt’s unsettling powers to make me feel like I’ve just experienced a new classic. Similarly, how risky it feels to live outside the starkness of liking and disliking. Quick takes are wasteful. They do little for the heart. So where does ambivalence go to live? Can the critic occupy that liminal grey space? Somewhere to cultivate an inkling and steer clear of conclusions. Isn’t intuition a quiet feeling, after all? Doesn’t time, a few sleeps or forgetting what a film was really about—don’t all of these things reanimate the art? I never know what to say when my companion asks, “So, what did you think of it?” I always suggest we find a booth, sit—share an order of fries. Later, well after the fact, that’s when the movie really begins.

On that note, I’m really trying to work on my consumption behaviors including embracing passive consumption—i.e. not having something to say about everything—and returning to things that I confused me or bored me. I obviously write this newsletter that is based on talking about the things I consume and I want to keep doing that. But I personally find it’s livelier when I talk/write about things that actually get my gears going rather than commenting on something for the sake of sending something out.

In the past, I used to save songs that correlated to ages I hadn’t turned so that I could listen to them on the corresponding birthday. When I was seventeen, that was Stevie Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen” and Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen,”² a song that got me through my angstiest teen angst years. At my twenty-second birthday celebration, I listened to Taylor Swift’s “22.” I haven’t done that so much recently and couldn'’t recall any songs about being twenty-five but then I was reminded of this line from Mitski’s “First Love/Late Spring” that I really love: “And I was so young when I behaved twenty-five / Yet now, I find I've grown into a tall child.” I used to revel in people thinking I was older than I was and didn’t always embrace my youthfulness (i.e. being silly and aimless) to the full extent. I don’t think all of a sudden I’m going to be wild, young, and free but I’m embracing the spirit of what it might mean to be “a tall child.”

Speaking of song lyrics that I’m embracing this year, I’m still obsessed with “Storms” and the line “Never have I been a blue calm sea / I have always been a storm.” I wrote about this in the newsletter last year and it’s still front of mind. The concept of “new year, new me,” whether it’s the beginning of the calendar year or a birthday, presents these beginnings as an opportunity to work on changing, on trying to achieve some ultimate goodness. This year, I’m really trying to live with embracing my embarrassing traits that I might have been tempted to change in a move towards growing up.³ “Storms” embodies that mindset for me.

Thanks for reading! I had a lovely birthday, got my ears pierced, listened to some poetry, ate some cake. Trying to keep those same vibes for the rest of the month. Til next!

1. Shoutout to my older sister, my fellow Akosua (long story), for finding my copy and scanning these pages for me

2. As I’m writing this, I feel like I should recognize two seventeen songs that I didn’t listen to at that age but certainly would have if I had known: “17” by Youth Lagoon and “Seventeen” by Sharon Van Etten

3. I love this advice from Marlowe Granados’s last advice column for The Baffler: “My advice is why not try being a little bit of a nightmare?” Its applicable for relationships with unavailable men but also life in general. https://thebaffler.com/latest/to-all-the-final-girls-granados