Last Call for Twentysomething

Well, today I have exactly one more year to be in my twenties. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I've always been the youngest among my friends, but from the perspective of twenty-nine, thirty doesn't seem quite the big deal that young'ns make it out to be.

Of course, my attitude about what's to come probably has more to do with the fact that, whereas many people peak around their college years, I bottomed out at that time, instead. Everything since has been upswing. Ten years ago, I dislodged reasonable hope from my life by dropping out of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Oh sure, I had a dreamer's hope — even a plan to go with it. I would return to New Jersey, find a job, get an apartment, buy a car, save up some money, head west, and then... lightning. Stardom.

As things turned out, I had the good fortune to stall after buying a car. At the time, I didn't think it good fortune, of course; even the prospect that my 1970 Oldsmobile 98 (like this, only brown) probably wouldn't make it all the way across the country just added to the adventure. The truth of the matter is that I'm not sure that I'd be alive today if I hadn't found the initial steps of my scheme to be unexpectedly difficult. The road to the radio is paved with would-be rock stars, whose strange mix of ego and tenacity keeps them drudging on a road to nowhere rather than take what looks to be a compromise.

I've always particularly liked the lone song that I wrote in May 1994, "Not Your Clown Anymore." (I've put a streaming MP3 of a very rough demo I made of the song at the time online.) Whatever it indicates about the level of my talent, the piano part was a little more involved than my usual improvised simplicity. Moreover, the utter depression that was quickly becoming the pounding theme of many of my songs was tempered by a sort of defiant hope.

I don't recall my thinking when I inserted the embellishing "Lord" exclamation toward the end. It probably just seemed lyrically appropriate — an indication of pop/rock tradition, rather than of faith. If it had a more profound intent, I must confess, it was probably a cynical and ironic subtext. (Funny how the same artistic flourish resonates differently from the perches of faith and no faith.)

But here I am, ten years out, after nine years of climbing from the bottom to which my life settled in the spring and summer of 1994. Happily married, just about to be a father of two. A man of faith. And still making progress. I may not be strolling in the light, but I can see it ahead, and I know it isn't an illusion.

Thank you for the role that you've played, over the past two years, in helping me to put some space between the boy of then and the man of now.