Yearlong Song Challenge, Day 177: Zach

Prompt: "A cold or empty or bitter song that represents something that you lost or some feeling that you've been searching for and could never seem to find"

Selected by Zach

"Time"

Hans Zimmer

Inception: Music from the Motion Picture, 2010

Sometimes you know you're searching for something, but you can't put it into words. Sometimes it feels like the peak of my life would be accepting an Emmy award, for some screenplay I wrote. Then I think about how I'm 38. 38, just a sidestep away from 50. 38 really snuck up on me. 38 is OK, but 50 is where I should be CEO. I should have won that Emmy by then. It's hard to come out with good art after 50, no? Most of the bands I like came out with their stuff before the age of 40. And then I know 40 will be here before I know it. 

I am more creative these days. But sometimes I feel like I've accepted a life that feels mediocre. Showing up every day to the same job. Commuting is a topic that's been written about a lot here on this blog, and the phrase "commuting loser" that Sara recently used in a post has stuck with me. I really feel like a loser when I get on the bus, again and again and again. I so desperately want to quit. I can quit. And then I just picture the safety net under me of a stable salary. More than that, almost, I picture the safety net that's an easy answer to the question "so what do you do?" I can tell people I work on the light rail, and people immediately think it's cool. It's so nice to have an answer to that question. But is it worth my unhappiness?

It is important to build transit projects. But I'm in the depths of how the sausage is made, and it's just not how my brain works. It's like I'm living two separate lives—one at work, one not, and I'm generally doing well in the other life, but the work life has such an outsized influence on my time, and the other life is just not as good as it could be. No one is keeping me at my job. They just fired the #2 of the project, and no one knows why. They sent a message to the company WhatsApp group. "Following a decision taken mutually" was the phrase used to describe the circumstances of his departure. But everyone knows it wasn't mutual, and the CEO prides himself on speaking great English, and then he writes messages like "following a decision taken mutually" and I laugh. I don't expect him to speak perfect English—I certainly don't speak perfect Hebrew—but he thinks he speaks perfect English, so he gets less leeway, especially when he's writing a message that's straight-up a lie and expects us to believe it. Morale is low these days. Also, office gossip is the only thing that keeps you going sometimes. I wonder if they'll fire me. I kind of hope they do, in a way, because if you get fired here, you get three months unemployment from the government at your current salary, and you get a free course in a trade. I can learn to be a pastry chef if I want to.

I want to be a hero. I want to be better than this. I want to be Christopher Nolan in a lot of ways. To decide to make a movie about dreams, and think up the idea for Inception, and do endless amounts of research about dreaming and lucid dreaming and world building. And then to have the power to convince Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy and Elliot Page and Michael Caine and Cillian Murphy and Marion Cotillard to all be in your film. And then to deliver, and make one of the greatest movies ever made. I'm writing the background of a novel now and I know I have a lot of research to do. But it's hard for me to even put in ten minutes away. I feel such anxiety when I start writing. I don't feel anxiety writing these blog posts, perhaps because I feel no pressure to make them good? But I know I want my novel to be incredible, and the enormity of pulling that off is enough to make me want to take my bat and ball and go home. But Christopher Nolan has ostensibly pushed through that feeling, multiple times. He was 39 when Inception came out, close to my age. He had multiple box office hits to show for it. What do I have to show for my life?

More than I realize, I'm sure. I don't need to be Christopher Nolan. But I do want to be bigger than I am right now. 

"Time" isn't exactly cold or bitter. It's more cathartic than anything, and represents the end of a process. But there's an undercurrent of darkness, of yearning, of wanting something more. It's not a happy song. Its power is in making me feel like I'm still searching for that thing, that nugget that will make my life feel really good. That will make my life feel like something to be proud of. 

Sometimes I wish I was better at settling for mediocrity. Sitting outside an office park and smoking cigarette after cigarette. These people look dead already. "It's Wednesday," they say. "Halfway to Friday!" I can't stand this. Why are you wishing your life away for a shitty weekend that's coming? But sometimes I wish I could be like that, put on a tie and jacket every day and take a briefcase and put in hours to profit the company dime. Because that's what people do. I want more. I can't help it. I just want more.