Small Dreams Are Fine

I got the flu at the Phoebe Bridgers show–don’t ask me if it was worth it because you won’t like my answer.

And don’t take your mask off, not even for pictures. You’ll get the flu and all the work you’ve done to combat your depression will feel like a waste of time. No, it wasn’t worth coughing up my entire stomach to see Funeral live. But, it was still pretty great. 

I love Phoebe. She writes songs for girls with daddy issues who date men from Hollywood who feel like revenge is a slow burn to greatness.

I love Phoebe because she reminds me that there is still a dream left. 

I think a lot about dreams–the aspirational kind. I wonder if they have any value anymore, or if they ever did. I wonder if there is anything to dream about at all when the future seems bleak because, well, it is. 

I’ve decided, ever the unlikely optimist, that I’m pro-dreaming anyway. See, there’s still things that I want. There’s a person who I love and who I want to be enough for. There’s a life that I want in the city that I want and there’s a stretch of road that I want to walk home on. There’s stories that I want to write down.

What’s the use in dreaming all that up if it’s just going to be taken again and again by a future that seems bleak because it will be? Because no matter how bleak the future, those are the things that I want. No matter how difficult it becomes to find them, those are the things I’m looking for. 

That dream we all used to have–and I mean “we” in the macro–the house and the spouse and the kids and the lawn, whatever–that hasn’t been viable for a long time. And we all know why–the near impossibility of home ownership etc. But guys, if we’re picking a dream, any dream, why would we waste one on that? Who cares that we can’t own a house. I wanna be a weird artist.

And so I look at Phoebe, right? And I realize that she is living a version of this–a kind of new(ish) collective dream. And by this I don’t mean celebrity–there’s nothing noble in dreaming for celebrity. You may as well be dreaming of the lawn and the wife and the hot neighbor and the riding lawnmower because one, you aren’t gonna get it and two, if you do it’ll probably suck anyway. 

No, not celebrity. Phoebe is singing about her dad. About ex boyfriends. How they make her sick. She’s singing in front of 10,000 people on a stage made out of a canyon wall. To be able to tell stories to people who want to hear them and for that to be the art that makes 10,000 voices raw at the end of the night. Yeah, that’s really something. The dream is to be an artist, now. And I guess it always has been. The dream is to use the pain we’ve felt–that’s been inflicted on us by ourselves or by assholes–to make something. And for that to be enough to live off of. 

I don’t want a lawn. And I don’t ever want to feel like I have nothing left to say.

But, thing is, I don’t need 10,000 heavy-breathing spectators. I’m happy too, to be a spectator. Other people’s dreams are worth watching, ya know. They’re worth rooting for–they’re beautiful. That’s why we fall in love, dear reader. That’s why we have best friends. 

We can get so caught up in the pursuit of our own dreams that we forget there are people right beside us with stories too. Beautiful ones. Yeah, I wanna tell my own stories and I want them to matter somehow, but I want to hear yours, too. I want that new, collective dream to be all of us facing each other. Not all of us facing a stage. 

I had a dream last night (the unconscious, I-have-a-fever kind) that I was alone in a strange city without directions or a clue. In the dream, I started walking. I seemed to be going home, without knowing where exactly that meant. I kept stopping to pick up things I had dropped from my arms, and so getting anywhere was taking a damn long time. I realized after while, that all the things I was carrying (that I hadn’t taken note of till I dropped them) were somehow enough to make sense of where I was.

We don’t want the same things we used to–we can’t want the same things we used to. It seems to be a huge ask to hope we’re still around–to grow old in a world that isn’t trying to kill us.

Luckily, I’m still getting older. I’ve had a birthday since last we spoke. I’m not sad, I’m not worried or concerned. I don’t feel like I haven’t accomplished enough. I don’t feel jealous of other brunettes with bangs my age who’ve “accomplished” more than I have. Our dreams aren’t the same, you see–they’re relative to places we’ve been.

My dreams are small sometimes. And I think that’s fine.

I graduated college since last we spoke. I feel like it’s important for me to tell you that it isn’t college that’s important–it’s doing the thing you wanted to do, but were told that you couldn’t. It’s being in recovery from anorexia for nearly 4 years and not allowing the lowest lows you’ve ever felt to starve you again.

I know I am exceptional, even if only because I have dreams I won’t give up on. There are so many things that I want.

I wanted this essay to be “Phoebe Bridgers and the American Dream: How making millions of dollars from trashing your ex on stage in front of 10,000 people is about as cool as it gets.” Thing is, I couldn’t write that because it’s so insincere.

I want to write, and smoke cigarettes on porches. And I wanna grow old, ya know? I wanna grow old and be happy.

I love you.

Take care.