Since I’ll be 41 in about 11 hours, now’s the right time for this one.
If you don’t recognize the reference in the title tag, it’s a nod to 1921 by The Who, from the rock opera Tommy, wherein the titular character is something of a Pinball Wizard despite being deaf, blind, and mute. And listen, I didn’t plan on starting this piece by talking nearly this much about Tommy (Who’s Next is an infinitely better album, and easily a top ten to top 20 all time rock and roll album), and maybe you’re expecting me to say something like “But that’s only fitting, because I didn’t expect 40 to go the way it did either…”
Except here’s he thing.
I kind of did.
Or a least I kind of hoped it would have gone as well as it did, if not better.
But before we get to that, since we’re talking about Tommy (“Tommy can you hear me?” might be echoing in your head as a Pavlovian response, depending on how many times you’ve listened to the album, or seen the movie), so let’s talk about Tommy, and how if you listen to it with a candle burning you’ll see your entire future.
I never did that (again, because Tommy isn’t as good as Who’s Next) but I was exposed to the legend when I saw the movie Almost Famous for the first time.
Almost Famous is, among other things, a cinematic love letter to rock and roll, much as my book is, among other things, a novel length love letter to rock and roll.
Because, gang, I finished my book.
I finished my fucking book and put it out into the world this year.
Almost Famous is, among other things, a movie I watched with someone who was a very loose inspiration for one of the characters in my book (or maybe not that loose), in what is decidedly my second most memorable watching of a movie I’ve seen over two dozen times. And I bring this up because my book is, among other things, not so much a love letter to past relationships but a way to process the emotional chaos, and the heartbreaks that came from those relationships.
And this year, in addition to finally writing a book, I got some closure on a past relationship that I only ever thought I’d get by writing it into my book.
This year I finished telling a story that I started 16 years ago (12 in earnest), and I got to set aside some things I’d been carrying for 25 years.
40 has been a good year.
(And that’s not even factoring in he progress I’ve made on my relationship with my dad.)
I’ve been cool, I think, about just how enormous finishing my book and putting it out into the world has been, but seriously, holy shit, I finished my fucking book, and some of you have even read it.
I’ve been talking about this story, this one fucking story which, among other things, has remained essentially the same for the last 12 years, and it’s not just this thing I’ve been working on, it’s real now.
It’s real, it exists, and theoretically a stranger might buy it and read it. A friend did a review on their book review blog and TikTok. My older sister read it, and related to it (because among other things, it’s a story about emotional violence and we came from an emotionally violent home). The loose basis for the Lane character read it, and recognized the elements of our friendship that I wanted to capture in it, and liked to loved it.
And along the way, friends, family, and stranger threw money a the project to help me push it over the finish line.
There’s a moment at the end of another movie that’s a tribute to if not rock and roll than pop music in general, High Fidelity, which came out maybe 6 months before Almost Famous, where, after all the fights, and all the chaos, the two lovers get back together, and she tells him, after he helps some kids make some music:
“It’s just that you’re making something. You the critic, the professional appreciator are putting something new into the world. The second one of those things gets sold to someone, you’re officially a part of it.”
And that’s where I am.
More than the comic, which sold some copies, and that got me welcomed into the world of comics by a writer who was an inspiration and a favorite (Matt Fraction), this feels if not tangible, than heavier and more substantial.
And it feels that way because it’s a whole and complete story. It’s not a chapter, it’s not an introduction or a tease, it’s something real and whole. It has something to say, something I want to say about life, and love, and who we are. It’s a part of me, it’s my guts, and it was a story that was necessary for me to tell.
High Fidelity is, among other things, one half of my elevator pitch for my book, “It’s Spider-Man meets High Fidelity, but way more emotionally and physically violent.”
And now, instead of that being the elevator pitch for my theoretical work of fiction that one could, one day read, it’s how I can describe the book that exists in this world.
This would be a moment to talk about time, and age, and growth, and how it’s a story about two fucked up 20somethings that it took me till 40 to really finish. This would be a moment to draw a parallel between it and me not being what I or it started as.
And this would be the moment where I talk about the last 12 years, how this story being a novel, and my whole life over that same stretch of time, were never part of the plan, but I spent enough time in the book making parallel stories rhyme that I don’t think I need to do that here.
And I tried to muscle in a Tommy candle burning callback in, but since that wasn’t even supposed to be a part of the essay anyway, and since I didn’t want to re-frame the narrative to make it work, I said fuck it.
40’s a benchmark, and everyone who knows me knows I see myself as, in certain lights, a bit of a fuck up. It’s not negative self-talk, it’s just the practical, on paper facts, and very little is more tiring to me than having to explain that regardless of the circumstances that brought me here, my circumstances read as “a bit of a fuck up”, and thinking that keeps me honest.
It keeps me honest, and fair.
Fair, because fairness to yourself isn’t about being nice, nice is what assholes pretend to be. No, fairness is taking it all in, weighing it, and not being afraid to look at context, equivalence, and seeing how all of it affects and informs the whole of who you are.
I know that, on paper, I read as a bit of a fuck up, and I’m not afraid of that.
40’s a benchmark, mainly because we have ten fingers so everything ending in a 5 or a zero/ten is a benchmark, and it’s the year I got closure on, among other things the biggest and most meaningful creative endeavor of my life.
You see, part of the whole me being a fuck up thing comes from the fact I put telling this story first. I turned down promotions back when it was still a comic, and I made limiting choices about work and career options when it stopped being a comic and I still needed to tell this story.
But now that’s done, and I’m ready to move on from that narrative, and that story too.
💚 Happy birthday a day early, pal!