Frontier has disappeared

I was trying to articulate what went wrong with pop music over the last 10-20 years. There’s a lot of blame to go around: music being distributed for almost free, more visual forms of art supplanting the auditory art form. But one of the things you cannot ignore is that a frontier has disappeared. A lot of 20th century music revolves around new possibilities created by the electrification of sound, whether the sound becomes amplified, or recorded, or more highly engineered, or that technology has enabled its transmission over greater geographical distances, or that stadium rock was made possible, or that microphones / vinyl / electric guitars / synthesizers were invented. Those possibilities were becoming exhausted, and now we’re at the bottom of the barrel.

But I also think that this idea of a frontier disappearing can also apply to a life. Things are no longer new. I have gone through phases: the “I am an artist” phase, the “I am a prodigy” phase, the “I am a bookworm” phase, the “I am a wanderer” phase, the “lonesome café days” phase, the “immigrant” phase, the “aspiring techie” phase, the “brooding tortured soulful guy who nevertheless still can’t get laid” phase. But something’s changed a few years ago – it may be midlife crisis or whatever, but I’ve stopped looking towards the future with a lot of optimism and hope. 

There are periods in my life when a page is turned, when the whole new world is reborn, where new possibilities are opened up, where there is this excitement that new experiences await. I’ve come to the realization that I’ve run out of these periods. They will be far and few between from here on. 

And yet – things don’t have to be that bleak. The frontier may have disappeared a long time ago, but life goes on. Long after the Gold Rush of 1849, the great story of the West is still being written – the rise of Hollywood, the rise of Silicon Valley, and its transformation into a multi-racial society and its integration into the Asia Pacific. 

There was the briefest glimpses of hope in my 30s – I found myself reaching a new level of maturity, and assumed that things were going to get better from here on. Unfortunately that didn’t happen. Two things happen – you assume more weight on your shoulders, and you increase your capacity to handle that. But it doesn’t make life better. Very often, it makes life worse, and you will find yourself with less room to breathe. And yet – how many times did I find myself thinking that things were bleak, and there wasn’t any hope, only to find that my problems ebb away slowly because I put in the work everyday to chip away at them? 

I thought about big changes that took place in my life every 7 years. But during those epochs that take place every 7 years, I also saw something else - something came into my life to save it, or else to make it better. I had been given gifts and those gifts made my life better, and I can also think of those gifts as - if they didn't come into my life, I would have been in trouble. A sibling comes to me and decides to change our relationship for the better. I discover music and it saves my life. I discover art and it saves my life. I start a fling with a crush and I become confident in front of women. (That I also discover how toxic the crush is is another story). I discover the world of cinema because the crush is a film buff. My mind becomes wide open because of the exposure to university. I cast toxic people out of my life. I get accepted by my peers at work. I find a job in another country which, while not perfect, has a pretty good working environment. I make 2-3 friends in that job who will be friends for a long time. And during the last cycle, I was made to give up my place in the foreign country and move back to Singapore, but I was calling in one big piece of luck that I was born with - the family that I had. I could have been in big trouble if not for them. I used to think that the pattern is that during those 7 years, I would change my life in a big way. I think it turns out that every 7 years, I will receive one big blessing, one big stroke of luck that will help me on my way through life. 

There was a saying, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All play and no work makes Jack nothing but a toy. And it used to puzzle me, why would you be nothing but a toy? But now, in midlife, I've got it figured out. It means that people aren't going to come to you for serious business. They might come to you for good company, for amusement, for being some activity partnership. But they won't treat you seriously for anything. You are nothing but a toy.