“The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The summer before I began college, my friends and I planned a semi-elaborate road trip to see Kid Cudi preform live in Ohio. Man on the Moon II was still popular and we thought the event would be a sort of last hurrah for our friendship. The plans fell through and our summer was incredibly mundane.
That non-adventure hasn’t entered my mind in years. In fact, I haven’t listen to Kid Cudi since that summer. As far as I was concerned, his music would forever be confined to that specific era in my life. Like a photograph, it would remain static. Whatever new material he produced would never live up to his old work, merely because it wouldn’t be the soundtrack that accompanied my treasured memories.
Also, I kind of outgrew the whole GOOD Music lineup and Cudi’s introspective pothead shtick.
Fast forward to this week. I was planning my Halloween activities, this year’s costume is “slutty rapist,” when I stumbled on an advertisement for a nearby Kid Cudi concert. I scoffed, “that would be a cool show… In 2010.” Then I started thinking. I remembered how excited my teenage self would have been, had he actually gotten the chance to see his favorite rapper. 18-year-old me would have killed for this moment. An opportunity that my 20-year-old self was about to pass up. I decided to buy tickets, if only to make good on a youthful desire long since passed.
Despite the obvious fact that I get to fulfill one of my childhood wishes, I’m actually not that excited. At 18, the event was a quest, an adventure, there was all kinds of planning and budgeting required to reach the goal. Now I can press two buttons, drive for half an hour, and get exactly what I want. There’s no element of danger, no thrill of the unknown, no uncertainty. And, truth be told, I kind of wish there was.