Your problem is that you’re not happy being sad. But that’s what love is – happy sad … Sing Street, 2016
I see a lot of Conor ‘Cosmo’ Lalor in me. Well, I did not form a band to impress a girl, not really at least, although that would be an apt piece to complete the jigsaw of tragedy that my teenage life sometimes was. But I most certainly would’ve entertained the thought that being in a band would help me meet more girls. Nothing of the sort happened of course.
Music, or more specifically being in a band, empowered me with a purpose that was far more relevant than anything I saw around or more importantly, in me, at the time. I was an awkward unpopular boy navigating through the treacherous den of fundamentally insecure bullies and sub-temperature test scores. I was basically a teenage vagabond, a flag without a country.
Whenever the valleys of teenhood purposed to drown me in its intent, I found solace in the redeeming embrace of power chords and rickety practice studios that smell of stale saliva and day-old cigarette buds. It felt like I was an unnoticed trespasser in an adults-only club while the antagonists of my existence were caught up playing seesaw at the playground. They could no longer touch me. They could no longer hurt me.
But more than the band camaraderie, I see a lot of myself in his frantic and cumbersome search for identity that was filled with blots and embarrassing trips. I see a lot of myself in his foolish candor concerning love and life, how he always seems to be the one pining for someone to walk through the door, or for someone to tell him what to do. I see a lot of myself in his naivety and how he always seems to be the last one in a room who would stop believing in something. Those initial steps towards adulthood are often clunky, and very few of us have escaped those painfully mortifying falls along the way.
Most people my age can offer a warm smile at a movie like this. I did. It reminded me of a time when I was able to draw silly conclusions from things that would not make sense to me now. That sense of wonder about a life ahead of you and just how unafraid you are of the coming consequences.
We were, in a way, immortal …
adrianyapck 