LAD LIFE MUSIC

I was tired of playing Lego’s! Let’s do something else. I told the girl and boy siblings whose house I had spent the entire past weekend at. I knew this house like my own. Our dads were best friends who moved together from Syria, and both started families in the states so obviously we were obligated to spend time together from the moment we were born. The younger of the two, the girl, named Nora was my automatic best friend and we basically lived at each other’s houses on the weekends. So much so her mom called me her second daughter. I was proud of that title.  

I was ten years old and up until this moment our weekends consisted of playing outside, playing hide and seek, and especially playing Minecraft. We loved Minecraft. Of course, I still see Nora and Keenan (the older brother’s name) occasionally, but we have our own lives now in college. I used to think about the three of us getting older and wondering if we would still be friends. I would always imagine a day when Nora would be thirteen, me fourteen, and Keenan fifteen and thinking that it is impossible for us to ever reach that age. Now it’s nineteen, twenty, and twenty-one, and the ten-year-old girl who I used to be would never even be able to fathom that. I was wrongly convinced I would stay young forever. 

Growing up, I always loved music, playing piano from a young age and singing all the time. Due to having the autonomy of a child, especially of an extremely doted one, my taste in music had at this point been mostly influenced by my older sister who was a teenager during the peak 2014 Tumblr era. The likes of One Direction, 5SOS, and Demi Lovato dominated me and my sister’s iTunes. This one particular day at Nora and Keenan’s house I was influenced and my world absolutely shifted. 

I remember the three of us being in the playroom on our iPads like always (I hate to admit that I was an iPad kid), and Keenan as the older brother showed us some music he had been listening to. He played songs by the band Panic! At the Disco, and I am not sure which one was first but based off what ended up being my favorite at the time I believe it was “Emperor’s New Clothes” thus awakening a part of myself I had not discovered before. One song played after another “This is Gospel,” “Death of a Bachelor,” “Victorious,” and I was completely overtaken by the singer’s voice. This was exemplified when I saw pictures of Brendon Urie, the main singer, and my preteen self was absolutely giddy. I was then introduced to Twenty One Pilots and became even more obsessed with this peculiar two-man band. After I went home that day, I watched music videos on my iPad and was thrust into a world I hadn’t known existed.  

In hindsight, I am not sure if I genuinely enjoyed these new songs I was just introduced to, or if I was just impressionable and a follower. Truthfully, I always looked up to Nora and Keenan and from an even very young age I noticed how intelligence ran through their family, and I always desperately wanted to live up to their standard. This was completely a pressure put on myself, but my desire to belong was unquestionably a factor contributing to my newfound obsession. It was something that bonded us. An amusement we all relished in, which was exclusive to the three of us.  

I carried on entering the uncharted world of my brand-new middle school, a tiny all-girls private school that had its own specific culture unlike anywhere else I have experienced but at the time thought nothing of it. We were all pre-teenage girls struck by the early stages of puberty that believed we were full adults that had minds of our own. To my surprise, I immediately met a vast group of girls who were also enchanted by the world of Twenty One Pilots.  

Simultaneously, I was uncovering more and more of the internet falling into a deep rabbit hole of not only the music, but also the fandom surrounding these two bands. Suddenly, I had an urgent need to know as much if not more about the people, fans, and cultures surrounding them. I became a fangirl. My whole personality began to revolve around being a fan of emo bands. There was a certain community of people on the internet who I resonated with, and we all came together for our love of two men in a band, bands that had broken up, and upcoming bands. 

Even though I do not actively listen to Twenty One Pilots or Panic! At the Disco anymore, their music still stays with me. Every time the song “Heathens” or “High Hopes” plays at a store, I am instantly transported to the mall with my mom in 2017 going into the Hot Topic begging her for a black t-shirt that has my current favorite band on it.  

These intense fixations have occurred since then all throughout my life, some short-lived, and some have become long lasting parts of my identity. I was the definition of “it’s not a phase mom!” and it completely was. But I don’t think that invalidates what a previous version of myself was interested in at the time. I’ve gone through many phases that range all over the place. K-pop, anime, actors, and singers have dominated my life. 

In my senior year of high school, I learned what a “parasocial relationship” was. Parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships, where one person extends emotional energy, interest, and time, and the other party, the persona, is completely unaware of the other’s existence. They are most common with media figures such as celebrities, organizations, or influencers. Once I learned what this idea was, my life of staying up late for a music video drop, saving thousands of photos of a singer to my camera roll, and starting fan accounts on twitter, started to make sense to me. At times I have felt that these parasocial relationships in which I knew absolutely everything about the thing I was consuming on the internet brought comfort and solace to me. In times where I struggled to make friends at a new school or struggled mentally, knowing I could turn on an episode of my favorite tv show or watch a TikTok edit on my phone gave me an escape.  

There were some instances, however, where my infatuation became so intense, where it honestly became mental torture to consume anymore. For instance, during high school I loved K-Pop. The visuals, music videos, and insanely talented individuals were built for the development of parasocial relationships. The members of K-Pop groups are even called “idols” to symbolize how fans somewhat worship them. Looking back, I feel that I engaged with K-Pop in a healthy way up until my senior year of high school when I was introduced by my friend to the group Seventeen. This was a boy group made up of thirteen members that I was introduced to by my friends and one week later I was absolutely obsessed. Now I had a favorite member, but I felt connected to all thirteen of those men individually. This was a fixation like no other one I had. I had a folder on TikTok for them with thousands of videos and edits and Pinterest boards organized by member. This group meant so much to me, and the summer before my freshman year of college something shifted. During graduation season going to parties with my friends, I started to isolate myself. I think I was overcome by the pressure of the changes that were occurring and part of it was the fact that I felt like I was going to have to let go of Seventeen. During that summer I eventually fell into a depression and would cry over this group of men every day just over how much they meant to me. It sounds strange putting it into words. But this is all true. It was that real to me. 

Eventually I went to college and was so distracted by this new world (and I think just less being on my phone) that I slowly started to feel more distant from Seventeen and K-Pop in general. I still look back fondly on my days with Seventeen, but I know my love for them was affecting me mentally and that being isolated from the rest of the world on my phone is not healthy. Throughout all these phases, the other people in my life who I bonded with over whichever media always grew out of them before I did. Nora and Keenan were onto other new and exciting music. I also always just more into whatever it was. More emotional. However, I do believe that my inclination to feel stronger to music and musicians makes me who I am. I feel music in ways that I cannot even explain. The way I replay my favorite song repeatedly and binge live shows of my favorite band is special. I like knowing that with all the horrible things going on in the world I have something to go to that rejuvenates me. I believe feeling things deeply is an essential part of the human experience, and that is not something that is not a phase.