This past Wednesday, I went to see Duran Duran in concert. They were the centre of my teenage universe, the place I escaped to while the ugliness of real life crashed around me.
John Taylor, the bassist, was my one true crush. Seeing him now, realizing he’s mortal, just like me, is making my heart ache in recognition of my mortality.
I know many people – especially women, for some unfathomable reason – dislike admitting their age. I never have and never will understand that. Anyway, I shared my experience of the concert with my team mates at work. I mentioned that this concert was a moment that was 35 years in the making for me. I am 46 and finally saw the band of my teenage dreams in concert. My team mates were, as most people are, stunned that I’m 46. Being Chinese helps. Being hopelessly immature doesn’t hurt.
I take a trip into the time machine (thanks, Google), and I see the John Taylor of my youth. He was achingly beautiful. I see him now, an older man and still beautiful, but not the same Adonis beauty of his youth, and it brings home my own sense of mortality.
Time moves on, untouched by human sensibilities. It drives home for me that I have no time to waste if I want to make meaning of this life I have. I’ve always had this strange sense that I can stop time, that I can have do-overs. I believe it so much that I create these do-overs in my dreams.
But there are no do-overs in reality.
If I find myself on a train with people wanting the train to go in a direction I don’t want to go, driving the train in a style that I’m not into, I think the thing for me to do is to jump off and find a different train.
Andrea Ong 