I like hearing this shoegaze Japanese music. It makes me feel like I belonged to a long-gone era of opportunities and leisure I never got. I did have leisure, but not liberty. Not the liberty of a free, safe space to explore. I would have loved to wander around the city.
My dead girlfriend makes me feel like I am, for once, walking on top of abandoned metallic beams, rusted from decay and fresh weather. Sure, I would have loved to hang out with friends on days of summer or winter. I would have loved to live days wandering around clean, walkable streets. You know… like living in an actual place.
Maybe I just envy the fancied life of Zack & Cody. There is freedom in that. Same as there is freedom in going around on bikes across a Midwest town, where everybody knows each other. Summer being relaxing but always on point for something new and disrupting. Winter being cold in the isolate. Enjoying the outskirts of fresh water in an uncomfortable, comforting place.
Cities are too big and only for the grown-ups. But even they stay home most of the time. What is it to live in a place where you can wander? In a town where the asphalt is slow and a commodity?
I never had that.
And I never will.
All I knew were the concrete walls of my home and the steel walls of our car. The occasional view out the window. Sometimes people walking. But even then… mostly cars. For someone living in a big city, you surely spend most of your time in the same small places.
And in my country, the decisions of many suited people have ruined the chances of conflict being non-lethal.
I can’t wander those streets even as an adult.
It figures to me that this desire for memories and comforts of freedom and discovery is something we wish to experience more and more.
That is why those trends and settings are effective in media. We, in a way, would like to wander Derry on our bikes, or discover oddities in Hawkins.
In our boring, sad lives, we like to experience the memories and vibes of those in flesh, in our comforting fantasy. Maybe some others did experience that, and they enjoy it because it reminds them of it.
But for the forgotten like us…
We can only pretend to imagine.
Imagine to feast.
Feast to survive.
Survive to forget.
Forget that we die.
And we will die without living that fantasy.