Songs for a Neophyte: 2015.25

One Man Can Change the World
Big Sean (featuring Kanye West and John Legend)

Why have I been struggling to fit
I have planed down my edges until I'm slippery smooth
What is this continuing bad trip
I thought the effort would be worthwhile at the end
Just where have I been trying to get
This opening in the universe wasn't designed for me
Is it over? Is this it?
I'm on this side of the membranous veil of heaven
I'm stuck.

Lyrics
What is this song? I have trouble keeping up with the perspective shifts. I've needed to read it twice, and I feel like I'm only just grasping the edges of the words. It's big and valuable and not my story.

I feel loose. Words are difficult. I've written and deleted more sentences than I've left. I'm restarting the song after I already re-read the lyrics. I feel guilty. This song doesn't entice me. My heart--is that true? I said it. It must be, but how is that possible? Big Sean has reached out to me with his heart in his hands, offered me a story about his grandmother, offered me his pain and his perspective, offered me a door into his life. But I just don't see through into his life. I don't want it to be my privilege. I don't want it to be his disorganized storytelling (I could criticize his lyricism where the words seem  slapdash in places). I don't want it to be the sleep I'm not getting. I want to be sharp as a knife, to cut through to the heart of the song and to peel apart the muscle fibers to see why they work.

I was fascinated by my psychology class in Freshman year. I read books like the Five Love Languages and took the author's confidence for an absolute truth. I thought I understood humanity. But every new person I meet tears down my idiotic, youthful idea that humans can be understood. Certainly, Piaget's phases of development describe the general human arc. Certainly, Freud's theory of mind advances an explanation for internal thought that fits human behavior. Certainly, the old theories of the countless psychologists I've never heard of are all serviceable in their way. But humans are always more complicated than the picture we hold in our mind of them. I have never met a person that couldn't surprise me even after years of acquaintance. My mother still surprises me. My brother is new every time we talk. So why do I have the slightest hubris, thinking I could understand Big Sean's reverie?
After I had learned a touch about how human minds work but before I realized I'm an idiot, I went through a breakup. I still don't understand everything that happened to me when Kayla left, but she dropped every cliche in the book on my head. Did you know it's not me, it's her? Not only that, but she was taking a break from men, and for bonus points, was going to focus on God. Perhaps we could be friends in the future, and so on. Honestly, she did her best in a strange situation. I was not going to handle it well no matter what she said or did. She needed to break up with me and I hadn't made it easy. I thought I knew the correct way to act, the formula that would build our relationship and secure it, the futureproof method. I followed a logical sequence of events that would guarantee the us that still existed, and three days later there was no more us. I struggled for a long time to understand what had happened, and to be quite honest, I'm not sure either of us knew. She couldn't have explained it better if she had wanted to. But looking back, I can tell (at least) what happened to me. I learned that no matter how many spontaneous fruit smoothies you buy for your sweet, no matter how many caring texts you send, no matter how many small moments you carve from your day for your someone special, it won't change anything if you're already 99% broken up, when the only thing standing between you and the lonely road is the word relationship and nothing else. I learned that I don't and can't understand other people, and maybe I shouldn't try.
It goes much deeper than that, but tonight I'm not willing to weep. Big Sean didn't grab my heart, and I'm not going to dig it out for him just because you're reading this.

Stephen
You're right; the story is about family. And even though you're right, and Big Sean is begging me to reevaluate my closest relationships, to place them in a sacred space and remember them every day, I'm not interested in spilling that out, ink-blood running on the digital page, not tonight, not tonight, not now. I have work in the morning and sleep called an hour ago. I have too little to say and too much to lose.
I wish I could have met my grandparents as an adult, but that's not the hand I was dealt. I'm glad I knew them when I did.
I wish I could have been peers with my parents, but there's no knowing if they would have me as a friend.
I wish I could live closer to my siblings, but the things they accomplish are too big to be compact like that.
I wish I could bring you, Stephen, into our family. But you're already here, so what's the use?

So. I'm fifteen from the end. Am I going slowly enough for you?