My Dream JunkYard

I was having a conversation the other day with my mother, of all people, and we were talking about the influence of gangster rap music on impressionable youth, of all topics, and my thought on the subject was that I didn’t have a problem with gangster rap itself (even though the music tends to be quite uninventive and the rhyme something a fourth grader could come up with…okay, maybe I do have a problem with rap itself) but had an issue with it’s credibility.  For instance, Snoop Dogg rapped (and made millions of dollars) about The Life, how he was jumped into gang life and he’d shoot dudes and bang a mess of girls and drank forties and smoked all the pot he wanted, yet Snoop wasn’t a gangster, was in fact married with kids and yes he smoked some dope but he was clear-headed enough, motivated enough, to navigate the complex, difficult music industry and get paid.  So, my issue with rap music (besides the music and the lyrics) is it’s a farce, analogous to professional wrestling being a sport.

This is not a new concept, I realize.  In the 80’s the “rock star” lifestyle was romanticized as well.  Rockers used the concept of excess to draw crowds to their shows, sell tapes, and paraphernalia.

My problem with this is similar to my issue with Facebook, I guess.  All of these things allow you to see a life that you do not have, that you’ll never have, that you may have dreamed about ever since you were a kid.  How can you be happy with where you are when the alternative is thrust in your face?

Maybe some people can disappear into these worlds and seamlessly transition back into their meager existence without much heartache.  Maybe others don’t look at their lives as meager in comparison, they are fine with where they are and what they’re doing.  But this thought process is foreign to me.  By nature, I’m a striver, and I see these glorified worlds and it’s hard for me not to get sucked into the possibility, or rather possibility-lost.  People say life is limitless, but I think we place limits on our lives everyday, and as the years go by more and more chains are added to our arms and legs until eventually we’re not able to move anymore.

Last Sunday I went to an interview at The Art Institute of Chicago with probably my favorite writer Jonathan Lethem, and as I sat in the crowd amongst a thousand admirers staring up at the man who’s written seven books that have received more than their share of critical and public attention, I knew, in my guts, that I wanted to be this man, that that is where I want to be, up on a stage with an interviewer asking my questions about my work and my visions for it, on NPR with Diane Rhehm, signing books at every local Barnes and Nobles.

Reading an article in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine yesterday afternoon about “Precious”, the new movie by Lee Daniels, led to a discussion by Daniels and the interviewer about Daniel’s life.  How he lives in New York, has two kids, and has a bibliography of movies (“Monsters Ball”, “Shadowboxer”, “The Woodsman”, “Precious”) under his belt that would make any filmmaker proud.  Reading this, allowed a light to penetrate me to a place in my body where dreams had gone to die, like one of those junk lots and all the dead cars are all in rows with their innards picked apart by scavengers.

My dream junkyard.

The ill feelings culminated this morning, when I clicked through the pictures of one of my Facebook friends living a bohemian life in one of the world’s greatest cities, I couldn’t stop myself from reflecting that energy back at myself and evaluating where I am and the life I’m living and comparing that to the life I used to lay in the grass under my folk’s elm tree in the backyard and dream about, and realizing how far away I am from any life I wanted.

But we are constantly inundated with other people’s success stories, other peoples dream lives, glorified and romanticized in our music and art, which makes it pretty difficult to be happy in our own lives when they seem so mundane in comparison.

Eh, I guess I can wallow with the best of ’em.

And keep towing expired dreams to my dream junkyard.