Vol. 138 - A Requiem for My Old Life

What was can never be. (And why that's a good thing.)

Emily and I have been watching The Studio lately. It’s Apple TV’s excellent Hollywood sendup that puts a delightfully doe-eyed Seth Rogen at the center of a movie studio, where he tries to balance the ideas of art and commerce. Or, in the parlance of the show (and every obnoxious film-school dropout ever), the ideas of “films” and “movies.”

The other night, we were watching one of the season’s final episodes, where Rogen’s character throws a old-school Hollywood party in which there is a literal buffet of drugs, where people get extremely fucked up, and where the main cast of characters lose their boss, who is as high as a kite, to the bowels of a Vegas casino. The clock is, of course, ticking, as the entire team, including their high-as-fuck head honcho, have to give a major presentation at a major conference early the next morning (huge plot hole: drug-buffet parties come after the presentation goes off).

As Rogen et al tried to find their boss, while also angling to keep an equally fucked up Zoe Kravitz (playing herself) confined to a hotel room, Emily started laughing so hard, she was crying.

“This is like a documentary of your label years,” she said, choking on her laughter.

She was right on.

For nearly a decade, I had the most fun I’ve ever had working at a New York City-based record label group. We did amazing work, filled the world with some truly paradigm shifting music and art, and made lifelong friendships.

We also got really fucked up. Like, all the time.

Because no matter where we went or what we did, there was an open bar tab, an all-access guest list, a show, a boozy dinner, or even, on those rare quiet and show-free nights, a few post-work drinks that turned into accidental all-nighters.

We were in our twenties and early thirties, doing work we believed in with every atom of our beings, with unfettered access to free or company subsidized booze and nigh-unlimited drugs, living in the world’s greatest city. It was easily the best time I’ve ever had and one I will forever remember with the utmost fondness.

And sometimes, I miss that work. I miss that life.

It’s usually when I’m between assignments, when I’m languishing around the house with little to do, waiting on edits on drafts or green lights on stories from any of the editors I work with, waiting to get back to work. Sometimes, during those lulls in my current work, I wonder why I ever left that job, whether it was a boneheaded idea. “Should I have stayed?” I ask Emily, wondering what could be today, ten years on from my departure from one of the greatest stretches I’ll ever have, professionally or otherwise.

She’ll often remind me that, as with all nostalgia, I’m looking at my past through rose-colored lenses. She reminds me of the ceaseless hangovers and the records I’ve forgotten to time, records I particularly didn’t like but had to work anyway because, hey, it’s part of the job. She reminds me of all the artists I didn’t enjoy working with. She reminds me that I drank too much, smoked too much, and slept too little. She reminds me that I spent a decade helping other people’s dreams come true and how, through the work I do these days, I’m realizing my own dreams.

Still, nostalgia’s a motherfucker.

But, after a few nostalgic moments and a jolt of reality from my wife, I’m reminded that I’m doing exactly what I’m meant to be doing. I love my work. I love my job. I love the fact that people and trust me to tell their stories in an accurate way. I love seeing my name in the New York Times, GQ, Wired, and National Geographic. I love the fact that I make decent money yet live in a place where I can knock off work every day at 3pm, to be there for and with my kids the minute they get home from school. I love the fact that I don’t have to answer to anyone except Emily, that I work for myself, and that everything I create, I own.

I wouldn’t trade my life right now for almost anything in the world. Still, it’s hard not to think fondly of what was easily the most fun decade of my life (even though now, at forty-two years old, I’d barely be able to hang for a night at that pace).

Even forgetting the partying, there’s no way I could do that work now because I hate being away from my kids, even if it’s just for the evening. And it’s in the evening, the night, and the early morning that so much of the record industry’s work is done. That work is not inherently compatible with parenthood. That’s not to say there aren’t great parents in the record industry. I know several of them. Really, truly great fathers and mothers, many of whom I deeply admire as parents. But it just adds yet another layer of sacrifices that need to be made to either do your job properly, be a father properly, or both.

And even though we once had a night eerily similar to the drug buffet scene, where we lost a dear coworker, fucked up out of our gourds on god-knows-what, and spent much of the night frantically searching for him (okay, maybe not frantically, but we did send him a few texts), I think of those times so fondly because, when I really think about it, I have absolutely no desire to ever return to them.

And so much of that has to do with the kind of father I want to be.

Anyway, I’ve heard that most of my old coworkers hardly even party anymore, truth being stranger than fiction and all.