“I’m fucking crazy, but I’m free.”
So says Lana Del Ray. She also says so many more beautiful things and croons
them too, in her honey soaked smoky, dark, rich voice. Things that make me want
to do things to her. And I’m almost 95% sure I’m straight.
I think about her lyrics. There
was a phase few months ago when I used to listen to her songs every single day.
Now, I’m a little more old school: Nirvana, RHCP, Pearl Jam, GnR, Soundgarden,
Radiohead (Yeah, Yeah I'm a 90's girl. Call me mainstream! I won't get offended). But I guess a part of me missed her. My Lana, the songstress who
spoke of freedom, of living fast and dying young. I watched a nine minute video
of the song “Ride” today. It was perfect- melancholy, bittersweet, glamorizing a life of wanderlust; and thought about liberty, about true freedom.
Is it true that the one who has a
home, is never free? I have long yearned for the freedom of the open road.
Especially after leaving college and returning back to my hometown, where
nothing happens. Problems are small and their solutions are mundane. Shopping
and spending hard earned Dinars on fancy, “culinary” adventures are our
subsistence. No alcohol, certainly no Mary Jane and no unknown destinations. I
am sure that there are people out there right now saying, “Yes, bro! I get you.”
But just like a wanderer might never know the comfort of her own hearth, a
person with a home will never know the peace of leaving it all behind and
driving off into the sunset. The feel of the wind whipping through my hair, the
warm rays of the sun warming my back, sitting next to a man gunning down the huge
engine of a vintage Mustang as I play with his hair and kiss his neck, not
knowing where we are going, not knowing whether we would check into a seedy
motel or just spend the night in each other’s arms under the twinkling stars! I
crave for these things, however fantastical or even cliché they may be.
Lana tells me, “Maybe you should
just leave home”. Forget about Master’s, forget the job, just take out the
thousand or so dollars worth of savings you have and catch the next flight to
anywhere. Maybe I should be out there somewhere: Bali or Ibiza, hitchhiking to
the next country from there on. Maybe I should write a book about all the
partying and the travelling; the trials and tribulations; the survival on the
only thing saffordable- potato chips and coca colas; the bartending,
waitressing, nanny-ing; the many, many men of all colors and sizes; the Lucys
and the Jeffrys and the Marias and my times with them. Maybe I should complete
this manuscript and go; not like a damp squib, but in an explosion- a drug
overdose in a nightclub or a strangulation in the hands of a handsome, manic
lover.
Lana is still singing as I gaze
up from my laptop and look around my room. The old photo of a Hindu deity,
Balaji, hanging up, my messy clothes and messy desk which remain disorganized until
mom clears it up, an old TV that has been replaced by a newer model but is still
being preserved, a shelf chock a block full of albums- pictures shot when film was not "so vintage", thousands of pictures of my sister and I, laughing and
gleeful, the pages heavy with the weight of all the years gone by.
So, is this concept of freedom
just hype, created by the music and film industries to achieve some sort of hitherto
unknown but insidious purpose? Are people meant to run wild and free? Or does
society and its standards prevail in the end, forcing us all to eventually
settle down and start a family, buy a house and lay down our roots? Can we
survive on love, fresh vibes and good feelings alone? I finally realize that
question is not “Can we?” The question is “Will we?”
The time is 3.08 and I realize I’m
lightly dozing, listening to Lana, dreaming of her, and some charming raggedy
blonde man who looks like Kurt Cobain and he’s introducing me to Tony Montana.
Then I realize that I have to fucking to go work in less than five hours.
