Night Changes: reflections on innocence and experience
“Youth of delight, come hither,
And see the opening morn…”
- William Blake, Songs of Experience
During my freshman year of high school, I was interviewed by a member of the yearbook committee and was asked, “Who influenced your sense of style?” Unironically, I replied, “One Direction” (Look, H&M was new to my city and chinos and button downs were worn by many people at the time — One Direction included).
When the boy band came to perform in our city, my sister went with friends to see the show. She told me how enjoyable it was and how an artist named Olly Murs was the opener. She told me about this guy named Ed Sheeran who just so happened to write my favorite songs by the band. Around this time, I was developing a genuine affinity for music, and I was looking for voice parts in the music world that were similar to mine. As I came of age my voice dropped a good deal and every artist I wanted to imitate hit notes I seemed to be incapable of hitting. For those like me searching for a bass/baritone exemplar within our generation, Liam Payne seemed to rise to the occasion. As the member of the group with the lowest register, he held down the bass notes incredibly well and still maintained the ability to jump an octave from time to time with clean voice breaks (see One Direction’s song More Than This). I strove to learn how to do the same.
It was the summer of 2012 when I told my parents I wanted to join choir in High School despite them never hearing me sing. I chose to sing them the song “Gotta Be You” by One Direction with none other than Liam Payne opening the song on a strong note. Of course it was Harry Styles leading the charge on the chorus, but upon finishing the song attempting to perform all five parts, my parents felt they’d heard enough to let me pursue my newfound interest. As a relatively shy and angsty kid, joining my high school’s choir was one of the best decisions I ever made. It served as an outlet of a certain kind I failed to find anywhere else. And like a good portion of my choirmates, the idea of fame was idealized.
Never once did I consider what it really meant to be an adolescent with global renown — as a thirteen-year-old I didn’t have the capacity to. Today I think about how millions of eyes are on you at a time when you’re the most insecure and unsure. The most vulnerable, the most persuadable. Or as writer Philip Roth etched in his opus American Pastoral, “[prior to your] …stabilizing.”
Actor Adam Pearson who suffers from neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) said in an interview regarding his condition, “I was…taught from a really early age to live the life you’ve got rather than mourn the one you don’t.” I would venture to say that a person must also refrain from mourning a life already past. And yet I cannot help but think back to a younger version of myself, who despite my own insecurities and shortcomings, had the privilege of experiencing those quirks and working them out without having a platform. I think about the reckoning of the idea of celebrity on display in the entertainment industry today and what it means to elevate individuals prematurely. I think about what it means for these young victims of apparent public and private trauma to remain within an industry that has put them in a position to be the recipients of said trauma which can, in the most unfortunate of circumstances, make true the common maxim: Hurt people, hurt people. I think about what it means to achieve the most amount of success as a young person and the likely stark realization that you’ve got the rest of your life to live afterwards. I think about Liam’s family, loved ones, and former loved ones. I think about his 7-year-old son.
At the end of my freshman year of high school some of my closest friends and I auditioned for the talent show with an arrangement of One Direction’s most popular song at the time, “Little Things”. We made it through auditions and for two nights we performed the song in front of an audience of several hundred people which was by far the boldest thing I’d ever done at that point. The shy and angsty kid performed. Music did that for me. One Direction was the catalyst.
For those of us who were even mere casual listeners of the group, Liam’s passing serves as an awful reminder of how short and impermanent adolescence is, and how the things that appeared to be stable and consistent are just as fickle as the rest of us. How us, the viewing public, feel like stakeholders in the lives of people we’ll never know.
There once was a boy who wanted to be a tenor and couldn’t. Another who lived many miles away showed him how to live with the voice he had rather than mourn the one he didn’t.
RIP Liam Payne.
“Then down a green plain leaping, laughing they run
And wash in a river, and shine in the Sun…”
- William Blake, Songs of Innocence
