Feeling like I lived.

How we measure a full life and the dangers that may pose.

This morning on my run I listened to Machine Gun Kelly’s album: Tickets to my Downfall. I was looking for a loud, fast paced album that would drown out my relentless panting. I also recall using upbeat albums as a tool to train for my last first marathon, so I thought I would employ the same technique as I slowly get running fit again. As I was stretching and fiddling with the app that tracks my pace, I began to play the album. Some lyrics in the first song, “title track”, caught my attention.

I need this time to decompress

From this ketamine, this cocaine

This medicine for my growing pain

This weed I've been smoking, I'm dying inside

The song is everything I wanted, fast and loud and exactly the surge of energy I needed to get my feet into the rhythm of exercise. When I listen to music while I run, I don’t always listen to the lyrics or concentrate on what the song’s about, I just sort of need a distraction from the chore of running. But for whatever reason, those lyrics hit me in a really weird way. The way he sings about them, MGK is clearly trying to escape the various vices that have become a part of his lifestyle, but, at the same time, the things he lists sounded appealing to me. Which doesn’t really make a lot of sense. I ended up wrestling with this idea for the rest of my run.

I think I came up with this: that song, “title track”, and a lot of the album, really, is about this desire to pursue things that may be self destructive, even with the recognition of the devastation they may bring. Here are some more lyrics from the third song on the album, “drunk face”:

I'm still young, wasting my youth

I'll grow up next summer

I'm back on those drugs I quit

I kept my dealer's number

I can feel his heart, torn between two places: the recognition of the pain that his decisions have caused him in the past, and ultimately choosing to fall back into the comfort of routine and the world he knows. There is this continual awareness of what he expects from himself and how he isn’t meeting those expectations. The album is great, and I ran my 5k a hell of a lot faster today, but I can feel the pain he poured into each song.

MGK’s pain and brokenness prompted my creation of this.

These lyrics are from the 6th song, “all I know”:

My life on the outside's fun to them

But the person on the inside is crumblin'

He was right, of course. In the middle of my run in my small, quiet, middle class neighbourhood, I was listening to MGK sing about the treachery of a rockstar’s (or possibly pop-star’s) life, and I began to idolise it for a second. I don’t want to take ketamine or cocaine, but something about his song attracted me to his lifestyle. Regardless of the obvious difficulty it brings him, the life full of clubs, drugs and girls seems like a lifestyle I am often told I should want. It seems, through his songs, to be a life full of stories and highlights, like the mark of a life lived to the fullest extent. The following lyrics are from the penultimate song on the album, “banyan tree,” and is perhaps the most vulnerable track on the album.

Because also, if the world was coming to an end

I don't want to close my eyes without feeling like I lived

And then something clicked in my head. I looked back, into my own life; I examined my memories. I recalled my college days (saying it like that makes me sound ancient, I graduated like a year ago), which memories stood out and which ones were clouded over. Just like every young person, I want to belong, to live a full life, to taste what the world has to offer. My personal experience of clubs and drugs is a shadow of Machine Gun Kelly’s, but I can connect with the story he tells. In searching my memories, there was this divide within me, one similar to what MGK expresses throughout Tickets to My Downfall. I thought the drinks or dances or everything that comes with them would offer me more than they did. I had this desire, a sort of hunger to experience the world. But sometimes, the next morning or on the drive home I would be met with emptiness.

One uni memory that is bright and lucid in my mind is of a night with three friends. We were working late or something - I can’t quite remember. Anyway, it was just after sunset in mid summer and we drove this long and winding road near where I lived. The road was quiet and as we drove toward the horizon it weaved through vineyards and hills. In a clearing we pulled off of the road and blasted music from the car with all the doors open and lights on. We jumped around on the road and sang very loudly (and probably off key), basking in our youth and the quickly darkening sky. One of us took a film photo, wonderfully predictable for a group of art students. Oh! We were on our way back to campus after going to a wine farm together. Funny how one memory leads to another…

It didn’t really matter if I was in a bar or in class, it occurred to me that the truly impactful moments throughout my university career were filled with love. Those three friends and I were so aware of each other, of our youth, of the moment we had. It was this impossible and almost insignificant thing we shared. The memory is so striking because of the love and enthusiasm and shared disbelief of the fleeting nature of time we all experienced that evening. I have equally strong, love filled memories of a dear friend’s 21st, where I drank, danced, and shared a cigar with the birthday boy.

I am not attempting to condemn partying (please be careful, though). I get it, it’s exciting, and can be really, really fun. But, as my run and the album came to an end, I thought about how I measured feeling like I lived. I often see the life that MGK seems to be running from sold as a full life, what youth and excitement ought to look like. I do remember parties with friends with overwhelming fondness: inside jokes, wild adventures and all. But I believe that I only value those moments because of the people I shared them with, I can’t really remember much about the nights when I didn’t feel welcome or loved, regardless of how wild the party was. To me, feeling like I lived is far more dependent on the love I have experienced and given away than all the clubs, drugs and girls MGK is so torn up about. I think Machine Gun Kelly comes to the same conclusion, that perhaps love is the measure of life’s fullness. I’ll leave you with lyrics from “lonely.”

Lonely, lonely, even when the room is full

I'd trade it, trade it, I would trade it all for you

Lonely, lonely, even when the room is full

I'm lonely, lonely, lonely without you