Many years from now, let's say ten, I will look back on myself - or rather, my self of today which I imagine will be considerably different from my self one decade hence - and I will laugh. I will forget about all my crazy future clothes, wacky future gadgets, and sexy future wives just for a moment to reflect as a 32 year-old person on my na??ve 22 year-old self of years past, and I will laugh. Or at the very least chuckle.
That laughter will not arise out of scorn or pity or because some super future robot is tickling my feet. I will laugh a knowing laugh, at the memory of a dude who thought he knew exactly what was up in the world, who had that college degree just about set and tucked under his brown and blue belt, when, in reality, there was still so much more to learn.
But of course, I should stop mid-column, right now, and ask myself, the very same question you probably have floating around your brain: what the heck am I talking about? You are right. That wasn't an especially appropriate way to start a column for the Arts and Entertainment page of the Tufts Daily, even one couched in popcorn philosophy and fortune cookie aphorisms. So let me start again, and maybe if I have time, I'll go back to the future...
Isn't it funny that the Kingsmen's song "Louie Louie" is so recognizable by so many people and yet so very few actually know any of its lyrics? I know I am not alone when I give the tune my amateur's rendition: "Eh Louie Louie, Oh No, You got the doobie do! Oh baby where we go! Never ahh baby, wake up girl our arms' nothin' and now yeah yeah yeah, oh baby Louie Louie where we go!"
There must be something more. Something embedded deep deep below the surface of words and instrumentation that speaks to listeners' subconscious and makes them want to sing loudly and obnoxiously along with the tune in such a mumbling bumbling muttered kind of abandoned way. What triggers that?
You might say it's the innate pull of our collective unconscious drawing us powerfully to repeat the undecipherable syllables, just as the generation before us surely did. You might say it is the inherent human desire to return to the nonsensical baby-talk vocabulary of our first years, a sort return to the linguistic womb. You might even give it an existential twist and suggest that the song's abrupt meaninglessness rings as an anthem to the untamable current of emptiness that flows ceaselessly through our lives. Of course, that would be awfully depressing, and nobody likes a party pooper, so let's just say the phenomenon exists beyond the realm of reason. In fact, let's just say it exists.
That should be enough, no? To note that something exists is quite an achievement in itself. Franklin did it with electricity, Newton did it with gravity, and Jerry Lewis did it with the French population's sense of humor. That is: they didn't explain something, or invent something, they just acknowledged the presence of certain natural occurrences that happened all the time but, until that very moment - Eureka! - simply weren't noticed.
As four years of something (your undergraduate experience, for example) come to an end, it seems reasonable to twist one's neck, glance around, look back, and attempt to notice the stuff that one's been missing all along. That could be the vivid pink and white trees flowering right outside your window. That could be the surprising deliciousness of Dewick's Jamaican Jerk Chicken. Or it could be the odd mole on your best friend's cheek that suddenly resembles in shape the state of Idaho. Whatever. The point? Notice, notice, notice.
If you try this conscious noticing of details and apply it to a period of time that has past, you might just experience a sort of revelation in which time feels, well, simply different. It's a Madeleine L'Engle novel or Robert Zemeckis trilogy. It's watching Nick at Night during the day. Essentially, that time which seems to have flown by with the speed of a ravenous cheetah will slow down and settle upon your shoulders like a soft quilt cozy with the dampness of autumn. You will notice the details that comprised your self four years ago and then you will place them next to those details of four weeks ago. And suddenly what felt like just a day, and what was actually 4 years, will now take on the import of eons. Could that have been me?!?!
Basically, it seems as if whole universes have formed and entire species have evolved and then become extinct in the time it took me to experience 8 semesters of higher learning.
And that's when it hit. I was looking back as a 22 year-old laughing knowingly at my young goofy-looking 18 year-old self. Then, as if I was in some cave, where echoes rang infinitely and deafeningly against rough time-worn walls, I heard many other laughs: those of my 18 year-old self reflecting on my 13 year-old self, those of my 32 year-old self reflecting on my present 22 year-old self, and - I hope! - those of my 75 year-old self reflecting on my 5 year-old self. It was a nice cave for it was filled with laughter, a delicate human sound tinged with an awareness, an understanding that we change and grow forever, twisted and random as it may be. Consciousness, simply taking note, a momentary yet fantastic acknowledgement of that inevitable and unending change is all you can possess. Explain that change? Plot it, predict it? Yeah right, you'd have better luck deciphering what exactly it was those crazy Kingsmen were shouting at good old Louie.
