Day 5: Inspired by your favourite song.

So I missed yesterday's post. I had a work function until nine, so that's my excuse. I plan to do both day 5 and day 6 today to make up for it. First, Day 5:

The Graduate

Yesterday's prompt was: Inspired by your favorite song. I don't think I have a favorite song, so I'm going to go all Inception on this prompt and write, instead, about another time in my life when I was tasked with writing musically-inspired prose.

It was 2007. I was a senior, and my classmates and I were preparing for high school graduation. For some reason, we were supposed to pick a theme for the ceremony. This seems stupid and weird to me now. I mean, the theme of a graduation ceremony is graduating, right? We accepted it as doctrine at the time, and the theme we decided on was "The Lyrics of Our Lives," or something equally inane and saccharine.

The idea was that each speaker would base her or his speech on a song. The song each speaker chose (or, I guess, a sample of it) would be played before each speech was delivered during the ceremony. I was the valedictorian (Tangentially, I was also insufferable. You can read more about that here.), so I was expected to deliver one of the song-inspired speeches. Bright Eyes' Cassadaga had been released that spring, and because I was so cool and indie (No, I wasn't.), I decided that I would base my speech on the song "If the Brakeman Turns my Way," from that album.

Ostensibly, this song is about getting clean after a period of problematic drug use--a topic I could really relate to as a sheltered, brutally competitively nerd who was abstinent in every sense of the word.

No but seriously, I guess I thought it was relevant because of the idea of "our fates are beyond our own control" that seems, at least to me, to be conveyed by the lyrics.

I can't remember exactly what I wrote, or exactly how I incorporated that song into my speech. I'm pretty sure it was full of the typical graduation speech cliches: It's our last summer of childhood! Do community service! Shit like that. The more I think about it, the more I think that the only "brakeman" related aphorism in my speech was "I'll see you all again in 2017, brakeman allowing." My god, cringing forever.

But it turned out to be a good thing that I didn't more heavily incorporate the song into my speech because:
a.) the songs were not, in fact, played before the speeches and
b.) it was, in no way, made clear to observers that the theme of the ceremony was "The Lyrics of Our Lives" (or whatever).

My friend Jourdan was the salutatorian. He chose Saves the Day's "This is not an Exit" for his speech inspiration, which, I'm pretty sure, is about offing yourself. Anyway, I do remember that he read actual lyrics from the song during the speech.* Sort of like:

"Tonight will be the night that we begin to ease the plugs out of the dam." As I stand before      you today, class of 2007, blah blah blah..."And all the wasted nights and empty moments in our lives are flushed away as we sway with the rhythm of the waves bobbing us up." High school is over, and it's time for a fresh start. Blah blah...

I remember thinking that it was probably pretty confusing for all the Southern West Virginian observers. They were just there to shout "Git it Baby!" or "Go Bubby!" or something like that as their graduates received their diplomas, and then all the sudden they had all these strange lyrics coming at them with no context.

However, no one questioned any of it afterward. Nobody was like, "What was that shit about the brakeman and unplugging dams?" I guess, then, that the takeaway of the whole experience was that people don't actually pay any attention to high school commencement speeches. And that's good to know, considering how terrible mine was.

Anyway, thinking about all this now makes me wish that I could go back in time to graduation day, sneak into the Beckley, WV armory, punch my former self in the face, and deliver this brief and to-the-point valedictory speech instead:

Good afternoon, class of 2007. I just want to say that am sorry for all the hyper-competive, short-sighed, and generally mean things I did and said in an effort to get honors and titles that meant nothing. I am sorry that I was held up by authority figures as some kind of aspirational role model, when I was actually just a high-strung, spoiled, judgmental, jerk. Basically, I was wrong about pretty much everything. I should have relaxed and just hung out and been a teenager, just like a lot of you said. I'll soon come to understand all  that. Also, within four or five years, I will never see or talk to 99% of you ever again, which is probably best for everyone. So, I won't be seeing you all in 2017, or at any other reunion. Best of luck to all of us.


*Yes, I am embarrassed that I remember this.