She likes artistic music. The kind of musicians art kids listen to. I don’t know what that means, don’t know if I can ever call myself an art kid because of it, but—she listens to music as if she were an art kid because she is an art kid. In the middle of the city, with wide brown eyes and caramel skin used to soaking up days of sunshine and heat. A lovely journal in hand and a somewhat static lilt in her walk, she has that artistic confidence one only gets from spending innumerous hours making things inside their own wondrous mind.
I’d only heard of Brockhampton once before, on the fleeting Instagram story of a face in the crowd I used to know back home. They were selling tickets to a concert of theirs in Long Island or someplace nearby. I thought nothing of it then. In fact, the boy band was so foreign to me that I assumed it was a sort of place or destination attraction for artists or whatnot.
I suppose I am not an art kid.
After I realized that Brockhamptonwas not, in fact, a place or thing, I plugged in my headphones determinedly and looked them up on Spotify. I recognized one of the names she’d dropped, Rex Orange County, so I suppose I had some type of feeble hope that I possessed some semblance of ‘art kid’ in me. I clicked play on the song with the most streams.
A stutter of a deep bass started it off.
I was met first with the stark realization that, no, I was definitely not an art kid and that I should lose all hope in ever being one. There were abrasive but smooth flowing instrumentals and musically mumbled words that I usually refrained from listening to because it didn’t hold an impact on me. Then, I closed my eyes and saw the image of her putting ear buds in with teenage nonchalance and pressing play with practiced casualty. I was dropped into the shallow end of the swimming pool that made up the girl who listened to this. Of course, the outside didn’t change. She still had a pretty face that I mildly envied every time I saw. She still had a startlingly gentle, kind nature that made everything easy. She still was the same. I imagined her in a colorfully lit up room, smiling and dancing along to Brockhamptonwith all the other art kids. She’s wearing vintage jeans, tucking her smooth hair behind her ears—which are sparkling from the golden cuffs and dangling earrings—and acting all lighthearted and genuine. She formed into a moving picture in my mind, suddenly morphing into a tangible that I was starting to get lost in. I was drifting into the deep end.
She deepened.
From a pretty picture frame into a shadow box of genuine human emotions, she deepened.
She said she hasn’t grown up yet, doesn’t think she’ll ever grow up in the near future. She talks about California and her family as if they are factors of life support. I think I understand that.
“What even is growing up?” she asked, out loud to no one in particular. I don’t know.I don’t think I am anywhere near doing it either.
Her favorite colors are yellow, lavender, and red. She doesn’t think they go together very well. I used to dream in those colors. I named them technicolor dreams. I felt inherently poetic.
She speaks Hindi, is the only one who speaks Hindi, and because of that it is her favorite language. I used to learn when I was very little, too little to recall all of the words now. But I still hear it. I still hear the way the letters form around the tongue like warm lyrics. I hear my dad speak it, I hear it in movies, I hear it in music. I’ve never heard her say a word.
She likes the ocean when the water is warm and she thinks everything is worth fighting for. Is everything worth fighting for?
I think everything is worth fighting for, to the person who fights.
She fights battles similar to ones I’ve dealt with for a lifetime. She isn’t confident or spontaneous, or at least not to the degree she wants. I am not confident, either.I began by thinking she was all of the things I am not.
She’s an art kid. Now I’ve explored the swimming pool, dived and swam and floated on my back all in fascination and contemplation. And she’s an art kid, not in the way she wears vintage jeans or listens to Brockhampton, but in everything else she is—in the parts of her I have only glimpsed at.