[Author’s Note: this Blog Post was heavily changed and repurposed to function as a chapter in the TMR Novel. This is the Revised & Refined version. Toggle under the title to read the Original & Unedited form.]

You’re 18 and the entire world is a mysterious, wondrous, massive place bursting with Possibilities and Magic. A decade later you’re looking down the barrel of 28 and the Romance is gone. Out of nowhere you know the number of each freeway and the direction it runs. You don’t remember when you learned this information and can’t decide if it’s even important to know. Your 2000 Honda Prelude starts overheating on the way to Newport to see a girl from 10 years ago and suddenly you remember what it’s like not to understand how a car works. A plane passes overhead, off to somewhere, and you remember how it felt to not know that flights ran on a pre-determined schedule. A song comes up on shuffle and you remember when it was music and not a combination of notes and harmony and rhythm and blah blah blah.

— 10 years is —
A lot of time to learn a lot of useless information, and a lot of time to forget a lot of important stuff.

I knew, for as long as I can remember, that I wanted to be an artist. 10 years ago, I had a dream of going to LA with my friends and Doing Music. We had our little band, we thought we could conquer the world. But then Spud just had to go off to Utah and get Mormon Married and shatter my big idea. So I hard-pivoted to business school at the University of Arizona and left my dreams behind. I was 18. It was time to Grow Up™, and I had to write a commencement speech’s worth of reasons to do so.

— I also had her —
But we’ll get to that.

Let’s go back another 10 years. I was 8 years old, that sweet spot where you’re functional as a little human being but you haven’t yet been burdened by Self-Awareness™. I was chubby, with a bowl cut and glasses. I liked what I liked and lacked the wisdom not to show it off. Art, then, was just drawing. I liked to draw pictures to make my friends laugh. The tragedy comes a few years later when kids start thinking sports are Cool and I’ve invested all of my skill points into drawing anime eyes, and now I’m in the Gifted class and all the kids I used to be friends with think I’m a Nerd and ahh damn I have an inferiority complex for the rest of my life.
Lonely, I kept doing my art. I started writing stories and came up with a character called “Max Bennett Kelly,” but that’s a-whole-nother rabbit hole. Eventually, I discovered music. I was obsessed with lyrics, first and foremost. I’d read them, recite them, and eventually write my own. Even then, my lyrics were confessional and specific. I was tantalized by the power musicians had. The way I saw it, musicians could say anything they wanted, unjudged and even venerated, given they turn it into a song. I began to see art as freedom. I was trapped by my status as a Nerd, but one day being an artist would make me Cool. The Coolest people in the world are artists, on TV, in movies, making songs. Yet somehow it’s Nerdy to draw pictures in class. What would it take to close that divide?
Growing up in the 2010s was a particular solace. I lucked out— nice was in the zeitgeist, and once I hit high school it felt like bullies and jocks weren’t the kings of the school anymore. I went in expecting to be Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club and was delightfully surprised to be more like Jonah Hill in 21 Jump Street. I would make funny video projects for school, and the kids laughed again. I acted. I did poetry slams. I formed a band with Spud, Log, and Dan, my friends from in and around the neighborhood. The advent of YouTube empowered us to post our music online, and we developed a small following. It was my Dream Come True.

— And now the next 10 years —
Who says you can’t write a recursive non-chronological blog post?

The dominoes came toppling down when, like I said, Spud cut us off and said he was going to Utah. Without him, the band fell apart. We had all talked about going to LA together, where the dream could continue. I couldn’t go alone. The future without the guys was a bleak reminder of the past. Art was the only thing that made me Cool. The only thing anyone had ever liked about me. I was a Nerd again. Only now, no one was saying it but me.
I Just Wanted To Do Music. What do I do now?
A few weeks before the application deadline, I got a full-ride scholarship to Arizona. Well That Answers That I Guess.
However, there was one little snag… her.
Yes, her, the her that I’m on the way to see in Newport, right now. The her that I wronged more than anyone I have ever wronged. My great blunder, my great shame. My high school sweetheart. I’m not talking about Codename: Winterwood; this was after her. No, let’s call her Codename: Monstro.
When I went off to Arizona, Codename: Monstro remained back home in Kent. I had already given up Doing Music, I couldn’t let her go too. She was a time capsule from when life made sense, when I was everything I wanted it to be. But it was all over. The plane was taking off.
I Love You, I swore to Codename: Monstro, But I Have To Go. I had no choice. I doubled down.
Hey, If You Can’t Beat ‘Em Join ‘Em.
If I really had to go to college, I was going to really Go To College™. I Just Wanted To Do Music. Now, I Just Want To Be Cool. I went to Arizona and tried to Change. I cut my hair and got new clothes. I was just like everyone else. I fit right in.
But I didn’t stand out.
I Have To Go, I swore to Codename: Monstro, but I had my fingers crossed. I kept calling her. I couldn’t bury the time capsule. I’d speak with her and relive the feeling of the life I had when I was with her. I treated her like a methadone clinic while I withdrew from my Peaked In High School™ high. As I adjusted to college life, my cravings subsided. I started calling her less and less. I didn’t need her as much— I had just rushed a frat. The guys were douchebags, and I hated them, so we spent a lot of time together.
I’d ignore Codename: Monstro for days, weeks, and then open up the time capsule when I was lonely and drunk. I’d tell her I loved her and she’d say it back. I’d get my fix and ignore her again. I’m Just Busy, I’d tell myself as I called her from outside the frat party. It’s Not Like She’s My Girlfriend Anymore, letting myself off on a technicality as I showed up hungover to my Greek mythology midterm. I treated her like my girlfriend when I needed her, and over winter break I treated her like my girlfriend for a whole month, and when I went back for spring semester I never called her again. I didn’t need her anymore. I buried the time capsule.
I Just Wanted To Do Music. But I didn’t. I’ve been punished for that ever since.

— 10 years is —
A lot of time to get your liver eaten.

And now, we do some homework.

Marcello Mottola
10/2/19 (5 years and 96 days ago)
RELI 305

Prometheus brought fire to man and was punished by being chained to a rock and having his liver eaten every day by an eagle. We think of Prometheus as a martyr who sacrificed his freedom and bodily health to bring fire to man, and we interpret this fire as a metaphor for innovation, evolution, and change. (cont.)

Marcello Mottola
2/7/20 (4 years and 333 days ago)
HNRS 206

In Plato’s allegory of the cave, for many individuals, the world is nothing more than shadows on a cave wall, cast by an unknowable fire. The people in power, aware of the fire, create shadow puppets. The former group is no more aware of the shadow puppets than they are of the fire itself. For this group, the shadow puppet of a wolf is the wolf itself. They are unaware that what they see is a symbol of the actual world, created by those with access to the real thing. The irony is, neither group of people is aware of the sun outside the cave. The ultimate source of fire. The true light. Plato asserts that enlightenment begins when one begins to question the shadows, sees the fire, and starts to search for the exit of the cave to find the sun. (cont.)

Max Bennett Kelly
1/6/25 (2 hours ago)
TMR 8, 18, 28

In college, I gained a limited understanding of the Story™ of Prometheus and will combine it with Plato’s allegory of the cave to provide a misguided yet poetic framework for viewing my morally reprehensible behavioral patterns. Both Stories™ use fire as a prominent symbol, and I argue that the fire in both versions serves as a contemporary analogy for ambition. In both Stories™, fire is reserved for the fortunate Few and darkness is the reality for the unfortunate Many. Fire represents self-actualization, and those who seek it are on a Quest For Fire™. My personal Quest For Fire™ is Doing Music.
I had a dream of Doing Music based on the Stories™ shown to me on TV, in movies, in songs. I sought to leave my cave to make this art myself. Outside, I saw the fire, and learned that it was possible. But the sun is blinding— Doing Music is hard. So I retreated to the cave. Now, having seen the outside, the Stories™ told inside the cave no longer make sense. By trying to make sense of these Stories™ with the knowledge of fire, I bring fire back into the cave. In this way, I am Prometheus. I brought fire to where it shouldn’t exist. And so, I had my liver eaten. To escape this punishment, I exited the cave and tried Doing Music again. But the damage was done. I abandoned my Quest For Fire™, and my liver was eaten by the Eagle. Only I am mortal, and my liver doesn’t grow back. Each time I abandon my Quest™ and start again, I do so weaker, less able to contain the fire, and I burn up everything in my path.

　·　　　.　　　　★　　　✵　　*　　　.　　　　☆•　　　　　　★　　　°　　　•

College happened, college ended.
After freshman year doing the frat star thing, I was empty. I thought about playing my guitar, but I couldn’t touch it without feeling like a sellout. My liver was half-eaten. I had not just sold my soul, I had willingly put it up for auction. I couldn’t even recognize myself in the mirror. I hated my stupid haircut. I distanced myself from the guys in the house and started trying to remember who I was before all this.
Sophomore year, I met Clev, and we started making videos together. That was fun, but it wasn’t Doing Music. I fell in love with Codename: Bubbly, but for whatever reason, that didn’t work out¹. Then I started dating Codename: Apples. I got an internship. That was junior year. I could be happy without Doing Music, I thought. I saw the future ahead of me, crystal clear, where I had an economics degree and a master’s and a shiny career and a fancy car and a house with a pool, and it seemed nice. But I wondered if I’d still be thinking about my guitar. That’s when Spud called me.
He said, “I’m divorcing my wife and leaving the Mormon Church and quitting college. I want to buy a van and drive to Arizona and start the band again.”
I hung up, quit my internship, and shaved my head.
We spent the summer going into senior year making up for lost time. Log² flew down from Kent and Dan was already in Arizona³. I lent Spud the money for his van⁴ and we parked it outside the frat house⁵. All the guys had gone home for the summer⁶, so we squatted there and set up the studio and practice room. Tucson has a vibrant arts scene, so that 110-degree summer we were playing three shows a week, dripping in sweat and cutting our teeth. I got this part-time job at a call center and was immediately fired for Photoshopping a concert flyer on the clock. Log was washing dishes at Hotel Congress. He spent all his money on cigarettes. Spud got a job at Subway, and he’d smuggle us free sandwiches, and Subway became the unofficial sponsor of the band. I don’t know what Dan was doing for money, but he was the only one of us who had any. Spud and I were so broke that we started selling⁷ our plasma for beer money. Drinks For Everyone After The Show(s)! Friends, family, fans. Sky Bar, The Flycatcher, 191 Toole, Rialto. When school started again, I snuck the band stuff out of the frat house and set it up in the guest house I moved into. Senior year, I was just barely scraping by school — C’s Get Degrees — Doing Music and playing house shows at the venue we made in my backyard. We had no idea how to produce or record or release⁸, so you had to hear it in person. We were way too Punk™ for social media. It was all so DIY. By our last Tucson show, we were pulling in hundreds of people, and it felt so Real, so visceral. I was no longer an empty shell. I stood out again. Everything was going the way it was supposed to go, before Spud left for Utah, before I went to college, before Codename: Monstro. It was time to prove I had learned my lesson.
After graduation, I took the long way over the Cascades to see Codename: Apples off to vet school.
I Love You, I swore to her, But I Have To Go.
The Eagle was eyeing my liver, but I had atoned. I had found the Quest™ again. I was going to LA.
Money is the evergreen issue, which is how I ended up back at Mom & Dad’s place in Kent. The band and I⁹ moved back home to save money before moving to LA. Plus, 2 weeks before graduation, campus security finally figured out who had been parking the 2000 Honda Prelude without a permit for 4 years, so I owed the university ~$1,200 before they’d handed me my diploma. I needed some physical proof that I didn’t just waste those 4 years, after all. It was hard not to feel like I had. I was in the exact same position I was in before college. Back in Kent, wishing I were in LA. Same Old Band, same old car, same old dream. The Infinite Loop. I was back in the cave.
A love peck at my liver.
I still didn’t know what Dan was doing for money, but he had enough to move to LA first. So Clev, Spud, Log, and I got jobs at Finaghty’s, this Irish pub in Snoqualmie. It was 27 miles from Kent, majorly inconvenient, but it was the first place that would hire all of us, and we wanted to make our money quickly and get our asses out of Dodge. Hey, At Least We Could Carpool The 54-Mile Round Trip. We were working overtime, and we didn’t have Dan, so we weren’t Doing any Music. Only 1 more month. Don’t Forget. By September, we’d have enough money, and we’d finally be in LA.
I couldn’t wait. I hated having a job. I Just Wanted To Do Music. When the guys were at work, I took a singing class.
Bryan, the instructor, had a studio in Bellevue. When I walked in, I saw a Platinum Record. I didn’t recognize the song, but hey, a Platinum Record is a Platinum Record. So This Is The Music Industry™, I thought. Our little band seemed so small all of a sudden. The Platinum Records cast a shadow on the wall. I remembered being a kid, drawing in class, alone. Maybe singing for Bryan would finally close the divide. So I sang for Bryan.

— What did Bryan say? —
“We’re gonna make you a star, kid.”

When I got to Fin’s the next day, I told the guys Bryan and his colleague, Philip¹⁰, listened to our demos and wanted to produce an album for us. We just needed time. And money. We Have To Stay Here Another 6 Months, I told them.
“It’s gonna be expensive,” Bryan said, “but we’ll make you a hit.”
Luckily We Have All This Money Saved For LA, I told the guys.
“Beg, borrow, or steal. All big musicians were broke at some point,” Bryan said. “Do what you have to do.”
We Won’t Just Be This Little Band Anymore, I said, parroting Bryan. They Even Have A New Band Name For Us, I said.
Don’t You Wanna Be A Star?
The guys followed my lead.
I got Chris and Michael on board, who, like Clev, weren’t really in the band, but I asked them to join because it would make things cheaper. Then I got our friend Ryan in on it, too, who wasn’t interested in the band or LA but was looking for a place to live. And so— Clev, Spud, Log, Chris, Michael, Ryan, and I signed The 6 Month Lease. What was an extra 6 months away from LA if it meant we could move to LA as Stars?
We wired our savings to Bryan and showed up to the studio where he and Philip were going to present us with our new band name.

— Drumroll, please… —
“California Dreamin’.”

“Get it? ’Cause you guys are Dreamin’ about California!” Bryan and Philip high-fived.
Oh God What Have I Done.
We had one session in Bryan’s studio and he turned our Cool, unpolished DIY band into Big Time Rush.
A full bite, now. Ouch, my liver.
We were able to get a few thousand dollars back, but the rest was lost to Philip’s deposit. Turns out arranging a few strings on Norman Fucking Rockwell can make reserving your time ineligible for a refund. Bryan was more generous in reimbursing the unpaid studio time. Getting a Platinum Record for a Myspace ringtone doesn’t go quite as far.
What we weren’t able to get back was the time. We had just signed The 6 Month Lease on the promise of snake oil. Another 6 months in Kent; another 6 months from LA.
The band fell apart after this, but we tried not to admit it. Bryan and Philip’s rebrand idea stuck with us, so we spent The 6 Month Lease arguing over what we were going to call ourselves. We didn’t write a single song. Worse, most of the staff at Fin’s quit, so Clev, Spud, Log, and I had to cover almost every shift. We couldn’t even carpool together anymore. 4 separate cars making 4 separate 54-mile round trips from the same house, where we didn’t spend any time together. Eventually, I got fed up and started bartending at this upscale place downtown called Earls. Work was only a 20-mile round trip now, so at least I wouldn’t have to worry about the Prelude overheating anymore. I started seeing Codename: Tukwila, who was a server at Earls, but I made it clear things were casual so as to fend off the Eagle.
This Is Fun, I told her, But I’m Going To LA.
The guys and I plugged away at our bars; Chris worked as a physical therapist; Michael had his coding job at Facebook; Ryan did his own thing in the room downstairs. We had a giant whiteboard in the living room that we’d use to count down the days until The 6 Month Lease was up.
180 Days Left. 179 Days Left. 178 Days Left. 177 Days Left.
Each day was an eternity. I felt so stupid for falling for Bryan and Philip’s Oldest Trick In The Book. I shook off the thought. I Did What I Had To Do.
76 Days Left. 75 Days. 74 Days.
I would see this through. I couldn’t abandon the Quest™, not again. If I just got us all down to LA, like I was supposed to all those years ago, I could make up for every time I had strayed from the path.
43 Days, 42. We kicked Spud out of the house, and he left the band for the second time. We said it was because he wasn’t working hard on Doing Music, but none of us were. We just couldn’t stand being around his shitty attitude. He went to LA without us.
1 Month.
Our band still didn’t have a name. We went splitsies on a bunch of camera equipment. We tried vlogging, making content. Anything but Doing Music. Clev, Michael, Chris, and I flew down to LA and found a house on Melrose with a detached garage. We decided we’d split the rooms inside the house, and we’d furnish the garage as a studio. A light at the end of the tunnel.
March 2020. COVID-19 sweeps the nation.
I was bartending at Earls, gloves and mask on, when Michael showed up out of nowhere. “My bags are packed,” he said, “and I’m driving to LA tonight.” No one knew what was going on. Washington was pandemic ground zero in the US and everyone was panicking. It was the apocalypse. They told us the state was going to be quarantined. If we didn’t leave now, then we wouldn’t be let out. We would get stuck here. It was now or never.
I was finally going to LA.
Codename: Tukwila came over to help us pack the house. We said goodbye earlier than we had prepared for. She had waited out these last few months with me, even though she knew LA was coming. Now, it was a road trip away. She was the best part of the worst part of my life. I didn’t want to let her go.
Be My Girlfriend, I said, Just For Tonight. Just So We Can Say It Really Happened.
“I’d have loved to be your girlfriend,” she said, “but you’re going to LA.”

— A sneaky attempt to abandon the Quest™ —
Nothing gets past the Eagle.

And so our nameless band moved to LA in the middle of a global pandemic. We made up with Spud, and he moved in with us again. Third Time’s A Charm! Dan was already there, too, but we took too long to meet him. He had a job and a Grown Up™ life. We brought his drums down to the garage, but he never came over to play them.
Log went home after 4 months. He spent the last of his money on cigarettes, just like in Tucson. He left without a word.
“We thought you knew what you were doing,” Chris said to me as he left, a month later.
Inevitably, we ran into the same old problems with Spud, and when we kicked him out this time, I knew I’d never speak to him again. After that, it was just me, Clev, and Michael. Michael stayed in his room almost all the time, still working from home at Facebook. One day, we heard something shatter in his room. He had broken his mirror. When he moved out, he said we’d still hang out all the time. I didn’t hear from him for 2 years.
After that, it was just me and Clev in the Melrose house. And Clev wasn’t even really part of the band. Devon moved in, then Clev’s girlfriend Jess, then our friends Adam and Mills, and the house was full, but it wasn’t the same. I tried Doing Music on my own, without the guys, but Doing Music was laughing in the basement and screaming at house shows and spending your plasma money on green tea shots. Doing Music on my own was 12 hours a day alone in the Melrose garage. I had finally gotten to LA. Having a dream is better than a Dream Come True, because once a Dream Comes True, you no longer get to have a dream.
“Happy, Healthy, Well-Adjusted” was originally a demo I had presented to guys, back in Tucson. Spud rejected it, saying, “Dude, you can’t sing along to this.” Well, with everyone gone, I could finally stop pretending I wasn’t doing it my way all along, and I finished the demo. I posted a snippet of it on TikTok, and it immediately blew up. I had stayed the course.
I thought maybe the Eagle would let me rest. That same day, Jevandre called me, and that same night, Jevandre killed himself.
The Quest™ was over. When I met Codename: Didi, I ran into her open arms.
I Love You, I swore, And I Have Nowhere To Go.
And so I returned to the cave.
When Codename: Didi left, I tried to leave the cave again, but I couldn’t remember the way out anymore. I had been blinded by the light outside. Back in the dark, the world was just jet lag and traffic. Dreams were just excuses and escapes. Music was just words and sounds.

— And now we’re caught up to the current decade —
The recursion is reversed.

You’re 28 and on the way to see Codename: Monstro.
The immensity of 10 years of time hits you. How can you possibly catch up?
It’s rare, in today’s world, to have no idea what someone has been up to. You’re so used to keeping up with people on social media that you forgot we are biologically designed to let time pass. That our minds are designed to forget. You’re so used to keeping up, to knowing, that I’ve forgotten what it is to remember.
As I prepared to see Codename: Monstro for the first time in 10 years, I remembered the time capsule I had buried so long ago that I had forgotten I had ever buried it. I was astonished I was able to recall anything inside it. The way things were when we were together. Who I was, then. How she made me feel.
I asked her to coffee, and she got a matcha.
“I don’t like coffee,” she said, “don’t you remember?”
I guess that didn’t fit in the time capsule, back then.
The last time I spoke with Codename: Monstro, when I came home for winter break that first semester of college, I buried the time capsule. 10 years later, in Newport, I realized there had never been a time capsule. There was just a girl, who was now the woman sitting in front of me. I was a boy who had an all-consuming dream, who was now a man with nothing to show for it.
You’re 28 and you came all this way. What will you say?
I’m Sorry For How I Treated You. I Hated Myself And The Way My Life Was Going And I Took It Out On You. There’s No Excuse. But I’ve Wanted To Say Sorry For Years And When I Heard You Were Living In Newport I Knew I Had To Reach Out. I Don’t Expect You To Forgive Me But I Wanted To Say Sorry.
“You were a total jerk” she said. She hadn’t touched her matcha. “I never thought I’d see you again. The way you treated me will affect how I view men and relationships for the rest of my life. It took a long time to get back to feeling good about myself.”
My Quest For Fire™. I thought about the Eagle and wondered how many other livers it had eaten as I tried to protect my own.
“Have you changed?” she asked me.
Does anything ever? I thought.
I Hope So, I said.
“Me too,” she said, sipping her matcha for the first time. Then we tried to catch up on the last 10 years.

— 10 years is —
A lot of time to catch up on, so don’t bother.

Codename: Monstro had no idea of the odyssey I had been on for the last decade, and recounting the Story™ now would feel like making the same excuse I’d been making my whole life. Instead, we just talked about what we were doing These Days. We did a brief SparkNotes on everything, sure, but mostly we just… talked. Codename: Monstro knew me at 18, skipped 10 years, and is seeing me again at 28 with no details to influence her impression. I stand before her, as I am, here and now.

— And once again, I ask —
Who am I?

Nowhere left to run. No excuses. Just the words I spoke and the air I breathed and the space I occupied.
Had I Changed?
These last 10 years didn’t matter. The next 10 years won’t, either. Life happens whether you like it or not, and trying to make a Story™ out of it is futile because eventually you’ll get caught with your guard down and have to present yourself raw, authentically, naked and flawed and vulnerable, as you are, right now. And in those moments, you won’t know why the freeways work the way they do; you just know one of them drove you away from someone who once meant everything to you. A plane passing overhead could very well be the exact same one that swept you off to college. You don’t recognize the song playing on the speakers but it reminds you of one you listened to together in the same car you drove 10 years ago.
We had a wonderful time.

　·　　　.　　　　★　　　✵　　*　　　.　　　　☆•　　　　　　★　　　°　　　•

After coffee and matcha I mentioned, Yeah I’m Still Driving The Honda Prelude. She couldn’t believe it was still running and wanted to see it. So we stood outside the old car, just like we did back then. I’m so glad I forgot how that felt, because it was really nice to remember.

How ’bout that?
—mbk

FOOTNOTES:
1. Turns out she had a boyfriend the whole time. ↩
2. The greatest guitarist and unsung tastemaker of our generation. ↩
3. Our drummer. Also went to school at UofA. Also in business school. Also in a frat. ↩
4. It was $500 on Facebook Marketplace and the interior was caked in dirt. ↩
5. I didn’t completely quit the frat, just stopped hanging out, so I still had house access. ↩
6. Even Matt downstairs, who was dating Codename: Winterwood. She ended up going to UofA, too, did I mention that? ↩
7. Well, donating, but it paid you $80 a pop on a reloadable debit card. ↩
8. We tried a few times, but it sucked compared to how it sounded live. ↩
9. And Clev, but he wasn’t technically part of the band. ↩
10. Philip had worked with Lana Del Rey, and I almost fainted when I found this out. ↩

One day you’re 18 and the entire world is a mysterious, wondrous, massive place bursting with possibilities and magic. You wake up a decade later looking down the barrel of 28 and out of nowhere you know the number of every freeway and the direction it runs. You don’t remember when you learned this information and can’t decide if it’s even important to know. You’re on the way to see a girl from 10 years ago and suddenly you remember what it’s like to not understand how a city works, and a plane passes overhead and you remember how it felt to not know that flights ran on a pre-determined schedule. A song comes up on shuffle and you remember when it was music and not a combination of notes and harmony and rhythm and God Particle and LA-2A and blah blah blah.

***10 years is***
A lot of time to learn a lot of useless information, and a lot of time to forget a lot of important stuff.

I knew, for as long as I can remember, that I wanted to be an artist. I refused to be a “grown up.” When I was 18, I dreamed of going to LA with my friends and pursuing music. We had our little band, we thought we could conquer the world. But then Spud just had to go off to Utah and get Mormon married and shatter my idea of the band. So I hard-pivoted to going to college in Arizona and leaving my music dreams behind. I was 18, it was time to grow up, and I had a full-ride scholarship and a commencement speech worth of reasons to grow up.

***I also had her***
But we’ll get to that.

Let’s go back another 10 years. I was 8 years old and I was in that sweet spot where you’re functional as a little human being but you haven’t been burdened by self awareness. So you know what you like to do and you lack the wisdom to tell yourself not to do it. Art, then, was drawing, and I liked to draw pictures to make my friends laugh. I liked the validation I got from drawing for my teachers and parents. I was a “draw-er” before I knew I was an “artist.” The tragedy comes a few years later when kids start thinking sports are cool and I’ve invested all of my skill points into drawing anime eyes and now I’m in the gifted class and all the kids I used to be friends with think I’m a nerd and ahh damn I have an inferiority complex for the rest of my life. I felt isolated by the very thing that made me “me,” and I could already sense the childhood wonder begin to dry up around all of us. Playing pretend gave way to chasing girls and sleepovers turned into parties. Drawing comics for class went from cool to weird and nerdy. I felt like the only one who knew we were growing up, and I wasn’t ready to leave behind the magic.

Around the time I was 11, I started getting into music. I was obsessed with lyrics first and foremost and was fascinated and empowered by the idea that if you put something into a song you had the liberty to say anything you want. There was real life, which even within the highly structured environment of elementary school was chaotic and inscrutable. And then there was art, which was neatly packaged and able to be played back if you missed a part. Around this time I also began my journal but that’s a whole other story (and also where I came up with the name Max Bennett Kelly).

I began to see art as the path to true freedom, a way to liberate your inner world in a way that was acceptable to the public. I clung to this idea because I felt so unaccepted by my peers who once found my creativity and intelligence endearing and exciting. I couldn’t understand why art wasn’t cool ’til it was “cool,” why the most famous people in the world were artists and yet it was “lame” to write song lyrics in class. How did you close that divide? Like I said, I wanted to be an artist for as long as I can remember, but that dream was (and probably still is) intrinsically linked to my desire to be accepted, to be liked, to be “cool.” I struggled a lot with being seen as “nerdy” and written off for it. Kids can be cruel, which is a horrible reality at a time when everything feels like the most important thing ever.

If there was any solace, it was that I grew up in the particular ensuing decade. I lucked out – nice was in the zeitgeist and once I hit high school it felt like bullies were dead, jocks weren’t the kings of the school and you could be received positively for being yourself. I grew up expecting to be Anthony Michael Hall in Breakfast Club and was delightfully surprise to be more like Jonah Hill in 21 Jump Street. I started being rewarded, again, by leaning into my creativity. I started posting music with my friends online and developed a bit of a following. I would make video projects for school and perform at talent shows and assemblies and my teacher and peers loved it. It felt like the two halves of my brain were both being scratched, I was able to do my art, and it was what made me “cool.” The little kid in me who remembered what it was like to be accepted for being himself was vindicated after years of torment and isolation. However, the draw to “cool” was too strong. I was popular now and I started drinking and chasing girls and doing all the things I used to see as sellout activities done by the cool kid bourgeoisie. Art was for the nerdy proletariat. I wanted so badly to be “cool” inherently, without taking the roundabout way I always had. Why was it so easy for some people to be in the “in” crowd? Why did I have to make fucking videos and songs and pictures just to get them to like me? What was the place of art in my life? Was it a way to draw people in or a way to alienate myself from others? When it came time for college, I began to wish for a simpler future, where I could be accepted without having to be… me.

***And now we’re caught up to the next decade***
Who says you can’t write a recursive non-chronological blog post?

The dominoes come toppling down when, like I said, Spud cut us off and went to Utah. I think I was relieved, secretly, that the band died and I was able to grow up guilt-free. It was my fault I wasn’t pursuing my dreams, it was the band’s fault for dying!! I had outgrown my childish nonsense and was ready to go off to Arizona to do Important Adult Things™ like joining a frat and taking Greek mythology midterms. However, there was one little snag… her. Yes, her, the her that I drove down to see on Sunday. The “her” that I wronged more than anyone I have ever wronged. My great blunder, my great shame. Let’s call her Codename: Monstro. She was a time capsule that I didn’t know how to bury. She was the last person to see me before my tragic 10-year journey of self-destruction and self-discovery.

When I went off to college, determined to destroy every idea of myself I had ever held dear, Codename: Monstro remained back home as a symbol of everything I was leaving behind. I didn’t want to go off to college. I know that now. I was so scared. All I had ever known was in Kent, WA. I had never moved. I had the same friends my entire life. I was the biggest fish in the smallest pond imaginable. The clock was ticking forward against all my wishes and it broke my heart and I hated myself for not following through on my dreams. But hey, if you can’t beat em, join em. If I was going to college, I was going to Go To College™. I would encapsulate every single American university stereotype. I failed at my dream of being an artist, but I would succeed at being a college student.

But I failed at that, too.

I didn’t get into a frat. I applied to a bunch of clubs and was rejected by every one. Oh wait, didn’t I want to be an artist as long as I could remember?? Why am I here again??? I was tormented by the idea that I sold my soul to come here and was punished for it. I longed to go back in time, just a few months, to undo everything. I would have never let Spud go to Utah. I would have gotten the band together and went to LA. I understood now what I was giving up by growing up. I was so ashamed for having betrayed myself. My creativity, my art, my sense of self, that’s what made me “cool.” Without those things, I was one college kid out of 50,000 with no defining characteristics. I was a shadow with nothing to talk about, no identity outside of being popular in high school.

***10 years is***
A lot of time to get your liver eaten.

And now, a brief tangent. In RELI 305, we learned that Prometheus brought fire to man and was punished by being chained to a rock and having his liver eaten every day by an eagle. We think of Prometheus as a martyr who sacrificed his freedom and bodily health to bring fire to man, and we interpret this fire as a metaphor for innovation and evolution and change. In HNRS 206 we learned about Plato’s allegory of the cave, and how for many individuals their idea of the world is nothing more than shadows on a cave wall, cast by an unknowable fire behind them. The people in power, aware of the fire, create shadow puppets of their own design to cast on the cave wall. The former group of people are no more aware of the shadow puppets than they are of the fire itself. For this group, the shadow puppet of a wolf is the wolf itself. They are unaware that what they see is merely a symbol of the actual world, created by those with actual access to the real thing. The irony is, neither group of people is aware of the sun outside the cave. The ultimate source of fire. The true light. Plato asserts that enlightenment begins when one begins to questions the shadows, sees the fire, and begins to search for the exit of the cave to find the sun.

I suppose that if you view the quest for fire as man’s ultimate struggle for purpose, it makes sense why Prometheus was punished for just… giving it away. Man spends his whole life trying to bask in the sun that the gods dangle over us, mocking and beckoning. It’s a microcosm of a microcosm. The humans with access to fire dangle it over the heads of the humans without, acting like the gods they so desperately wish they were. Prometheus took pity and he got his liver eaten for it. But the damage was done, and now we have fire, and now man is punished for seeking out the sun. Only our livers don’t grow back.

Like many men before me, the shadows weren’t enough. With a younger man’s hubris, I sought the sun in the most literal way by going to Arizona. I left the cave and was blinded. Without the shadows to guide me, the vast, real world was unfathomable to me. I missed the comfort of not knowing how freeways worked, how flight paths operated, how music was made. But I made my choice, I was outside of the cave and I could never go back in, no matter how hard I tried. I spent the next decade finding a way to make it all make sense again (someone should make that into a song lyric). I asked every question I could possibly think of, desperately looking for an answer that would be as comprehensible as the shadows used to be. But there was no going back. Freeways would never just be freeways, planes would never just be planes, music would never just be music. Friends would never just be friends again. Home would never be home. Love would never just be love. When Jevandre was still alive, he loved this tenet of Bruce Lee’s philosophy: for a beginner martial artist, a punch is just a punch. For the intermediate, a punch is an impossibly complex series of muscle contractions and releases and an instantaneous calculation of force and velocity. But for the master, a punch becomes a punch yet again. I wanted, so badly, to believe that this was true. That with enough study and analysis and questioning everything would become simple again, the way it used to be.

College happened, college ended. I eventually figured it out, but have always regretted betraying myself at 18, and have spent the last 10 years getting my liver eaten in atonement, promising to never, ever let that part of myself down ever again. Art was once a way to connect me with others, then it became a way to isolate myself, and it once again is a way to connect. I regret having to let it go just to learn how to get it back, but it couldn’t have happened any other way. I set out from home and went on this wild odyssey just figure out that I knew who I was all along. The punch has become a punch once more.

***And now we’re caught up to the current decade***
And the recursion is reversed.

You’re 28 and on the way to see Codename: Monstro. The immensity of 10 years of time hits you. You haven’t seen her since you broke up. You owe her an apology. You’re sorry that in your quest for fire you couldn’t bring anything with you. You’re sorry for leaving her behind. You’re sorry for pretending like she meant nothing to you, when really she was everything. You’re sorry you didn’t know how to say goodbye properly. You’re sorry you had to throw rocks so she wouldn’t come back. You’re sorry you were a jackass.

It’s rare, in today’s world, to have no idea what someone has been up to for 10 years. I’m so used to keeping up with people on social media that I forget we are biologically designed to let time pass. That our minds are designed to forget. I’m so used to keeping up, to knowing, that I’ve forgotten what it is to remember. But when I saw Codename: Monstro for the first time in 10 years, I remembered. I opened the time capsule I had buried so long ago that I had forgotten that I had ever buried it. I had so deeply forgotten how she was, how we were together, that I was astonished I was able to remember at all. But seeing her reminded me of the time before I left the cave. Before I left home. When things were simple.

***10 years is***
A lot of time to catch up on, so don’t bother.

Instead we just talked about what we were doing now. We did a brief Sparknotes on everything, sure, but mostly we just.. talked. It was bizarre to speak with someone who had no idea about Max Bennett Kelly, who was absent for my entire college journey, who didn’t know about Codename: Apples, who didn’t know Spud came back and we restarted the band, who didn’t know that we all went to LA together, who didn’t know that the band broke up, who didn’t know that Jevandre died, who didn’t know about Codename: Emily, who didn’t know I had found some success, who didn’t know I bleached my hair, who didn’t know about Codename: Didi, who didn’t know I saw the world, who didn’t know I lived in my dream loft, who didn’t know that I was leaving LA, who didn’t know I was moving to New York. Codename: Monstro knew me at 18, skipped 10 years, and is seeing me again at 28 with no details to cloud her judgment. I stand before her, as I am, here and now.

***And once again, I ask***
Who am I?

Life is so, so, so funny. I’m cracking up as I write this. I was devastated when I went to college and no one knew anything of my past, because I had nothing to speak of in the present. I spent the next 10 years building up my life so that I would never be caught like that again. And then after the most defining era of life, I’m faced with someone from my past who had no idea of what I had built; faced, again, with the undeniable and inescapable and unfathomably horrific idea of being… me. No accolades. No identity to lean on. Just the words I spoke and the air I breathed and the space I occupied.

We had a wonderful time.

These last 10 years didn’t matter. The next 10 years won’t, either. Time happens whether you like it or not, and trying to define and consolidate each moment is futile because eventually you’ll get caught with your guard down and have to present yourself raw, authentically, naked and flawed and vulnerable and beautiful, as you are, right now. And in those moments, you won’t know why the freeways work the way they do, you just know one of them drove you away from someone who meant everything to you. A plane passing overhead could very well be the exact same one that took you off to college. You don’t recognize the song playing on the speakers but it reminds you of one you listened to together in the same car you drove 10 years ago.

After matcha I mentioned that yeah, I’m still driving the Prelude. She couldn’t believe it and wanted to see it. So we stood outside of the car, just like we did back then. I’m so glad I forgot how that felt, because it was really nice to remember.

’Til next time -mbk