This song was written on April 29, 2021
1
When do childhood memories first begin to take root? Supposedly, it’s somewhere in that amnesiac window between age 2 and 7, where much of what we remember of that time is due to dreamlike, unconscious recollection. My own implicit memory bank is instantly illuminated, sending wordless signals through my mind and body any time I drive past the community pool where I spent every summer as a kid or when I look up at the suburban night sky on Christmas Eve, conjuring feelings of nervous anticipation awaiting old Saint Nick.
This emotional recall arrives like scenes of a film, a film that over the course of our lives we’ll revisit and re-edit countless times, upgraded with the inclusion of home movies, photos, and recounted stories of family members. It is all part of a unified narrative that we carry around, which informs so much of our character, possibly explaining an unwarranted cry at your desk or the comforting familiarity of a new friend.
There is much value in the more detailed, frame-by-frame memories that come to shape us later in life — a first broken bone or losing our virginity — but in gaining access to a view into our earliest memories, it seems to me that we begin to decode such concepts as the soul or our particular "purpose” in life. The reason I’m writing this is to engage with one of the most profound and meaningful memories of my own childhood: contemplating an empty, cardboard box.
On what I remember to have been an impeccable, spring day in South Plainfield, New Jersey, I spent the afternoon playing alone in my front yard, in the shade of a pink and newly blossomed crabapple tree. My house was pale yellow with blue shutters and nearly identical to all other houses on the street, save for the unkempt landscaping. That afternoon, in a fortuitous turn of events, I had acquired a large, empty cardboard box, likely to have housed a TV or another such large appliance, which had now become an indisputably rich source of entertainment for this young boy on some unconfirmed day in the mid-1990s.
When we choose to, most of us look back fondly on these formative bouts of exploration, within the confines of yesterday’s pillow forts and backyard igloos. An almost limitless sense of wonder exists within these spaces children build for themselves, and so it was for me on that afternoon, with my cardboard stronghold set upon the undefined border between driveway and sidewalk.
There is no real sequence or story to the memory; the scene is static and the memory is just a feeling, but it’s the same feeling I had this morning, just before improvising a song at the piano or before writing this piece. It’s the same feeling that leads me again and again back to the blank page, or more frequently, to confront empty, soundless space, finding the confidence to fill it with melody and vibration. What is poignant to me about that box is that it’s the earliest memory I have of a now so familiar feeling, of staring into the abyss of infinite possibility and being overcome by a seemingly innate urge to pilot it. If we could form memories as infants in the womb, might it not look like something similar?
To my adolescent mind, the task at hand was decidedly more cartoonish: a mad inventor deconstructing some simple object and changing the world with a technological innovation. The fact was, I didn’t have a clue what to do with the box, just an all-encompassing need to do something. At that crossroads in my young life, as has happened countless times in the years since, I folded under the pressure of endless choice and opted to just, play.
2
The engineering wunderkind was not to be. Instead, I spent my childhood mostly in front of the TV itself. I dabbled in drawing, drafting unfinished short stories, and imagining grand schemes while exerting no effort. I was an ordinary kid. Eventually, after witnessing a fifth-grader play “Surfing USA” during a school concert, I fell in love with the drums. A few more unambitious years came and went, and I took up skateboarding, following the more decisive paths of my friends.
The next time that feeling would turn up was around the age of thirteen when I began playing in my first band. The other members had originally ousted me due to lackluster drumming but I quickly scammed my way back in, on the premise that I was really actually a singer. Similar to my memory of that spring afternoon with the empty box, I remember a long phone call with my best friend and bandmate Joe, rambling on the rotary phone still mounted in my kitchen, constructing our newfound dream of rock stardom and the assured success that awaited us.
What I couldn’t have known then was that I was setting myself up for disappointment: years of studying concert films of Led Zeppelin, Queen and countless other icons performing to oceans of fans, dreaming of the golden days of an industry being slowly dismantled upon my arrival, and never grasping (to this day) all the many factors involved in reaching that level of fame. Not to mention: an aspiring musician in 2006 couldn’t possibly fathom how the very nature of a career in music would change with the rise of social media, reality TV, and the cult of celebrity.
What has resulted has been a 20-year artistic journey founded on equal parts passion for music and a deep need for validation. From the very beginning, there was no separating music from the want for recognition. While this poetic marriage of love and ambition is a tale as old as time — some would argue it’s even necessary, as opposed to creating art in a vacuum — the road to a more humble practice has been full of obstructions.
3
In time, our work begins to inform us of our unique sensibilities, principles, and tastes. With proper care, we start to replace ambiguous visions of “success” with more precise targets. Despite all the noise and many obstacles I’ve surrounded myself with, the work has ever so patiently taken me by the hand, showing me supreme truths and my place in the world, like a punk rock It’s A Wonderful Life, and by some miracle (and a bad Jimmy Stewart impression), I’ve found my voice. Musically speaking, in any case.
Much like the way people describe entering their 30s — the phase I’m now four years into — there is a certain inevitability to the arrival of one’s artistic voice. A life lived tends to present us with secrets and assurances only accessible to those who have crossed the threshold, touting medals and custom t-shirts for participation, and the same can be said for the years spent developing a craft.
Without going too far into such wonky territory as the 10,000 Hour Rule and the like, my (possibly redundant) point is that, for most of us, our voice is waiting to be uncovered in our accumulated body of work. I’ve started this Substack on the very basis of making sense of and organizing a constantly growing catalog of written music. My hope is that, not only through the process of writing the material, but now by sharing it here accompanied by essays, interviews, and other forms of reflection, I will learn even more about myself and my creative output.
Today’s entry, “Star,” is a song about a down-and-out artist who has recently fallen from grace and is bitterly confronting their new reality. It’s a story we all know well from pop culture’s history as well as its present: the lamentable fate of a washed-up rocker doomed by waning critical acclaim or cancellation.
As it relates to the topic of my writing above, in hindsight, this stand-alone song written 2 years ago almost to the day, triggered an idea of possibly developing a concept EP or performance piece to further tell the story, set to the backdrop of retro 80s synth-pop. What do you think?
You can always pay a visit to my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive or find my official music releases on your platform of choice. Find me across socials at @thisryanegan. On Friday, I’ll be sharing my first ever post behind the paywall (!) — something I’m really looking forward to. I can’t wait to hear what you think.
Thanks for listening,
Ryan