That Power
Childish Gambino has become an artist that I truly admire. He is humorous and clever. I dig clever. I listen to his songs at work, and I am always hearing a new line that he raps that I didn’t hear the previous three times I listened to his songs. One particular song I enjoy by Childish Gambino is called “That Power”. I’ll admit, the rap itself isn’t one of the best raps he does, but the outro gets me every time. The story he tells, combined with the music behind it, really stays with me. I can listen to it over and over again, and I feel “that power”.
He talks about this girl he met at summer camp when he was young. A girl he has a crush on. He opens himself up and tells her how he feels. The outcome after he tells her these feelings, and what he learns from it, sparks a sense of familiarity…
[Outro]
This is on a bus back from camp. I’m thirteen and so are you. Before I left for camp I imagined it would be me and three or four other dudes I hadn’t met yet, running around all summer, getting into trouble. It turned out it would be me and just one girl. That’s you. And we’re still at camp as long as we’re on the bus and not at the pickup point where our parents would be waiting for us. We’re still wearing our orange camp t-shirts. We still smell like pineneedles. I like you and you like me and I more-than-like you, but I don’t know if you do or don’t more-than-like me. You’ve never said, so I haven’t been saying anything all summer, content to enjoy the small miracle of a girl choosing to talk to me and choosing to do so again the next day and so on. A girl who’s smart and funny and who, if I say something dumb for a laugh, is willing to say something two or three times as dumb to make me laugh, but who also gets weird and wise sometimes in a way I could never be. A girl who reads books that no one’s assigned to her, whose curly brown hair has a line running through it from where she put a tie to hold it up while it was still wet
Back in the real world we don’t go to the same school, and unless one of our families moves to a dramatically different neighborhood, we won’t go to the same high school. So, this is kind of it for us. Unless I say something. And it might especially be it for us if I actually do say something. The sun’s gone down and the bus is quiet. A lot of kids are asleep. We’re talking in whispers about a tree we saw at a rest stop that looks like a kid we know. And then I’m like, “Can I tell you something?” And all of a sudden I’m telling you. And I keep telling you and it all comes out of me and it keeps coming and your face is there and gone and there and gone as we pass underneath the orange lamps that line the sides of the highway. And there’s no expression on it. And I think just after a point I’m just talking to lengthen the time where we live in a world where you haven’t said “yes” or “no” yet. And regrettably I end up using the word “destiny.” I don’t remember in what context. Doesn’t really matter. Before long I’m out of stuff to say and you smile and say, “okay.” I don’t know exactly what you mean by it, but it seems vaguely positive and I would leave in order not to spoil the moment, but there’s nowhere to go because we’re are on a bus. So I pretend like I’m asleep and before long, I really am
I wake up, the bus isn’t moving anymore. The domed lights that line the center aisle are all on. I turn and you’re not there. Then again a lot of kids aren’t in their seats anymore. We’re parked at the pick-up point, which is in the parking lot of a Methodist church. The bus is half empty. You might be in your dad’s car by now, your bags and things piled high in the trunk. The girls in the back of the bus are shrieking and laughing and taking their sweet time disembarking as I swing my legs out into the aisle to get up off the bus, just as one of them reaches my row. It used to be our row, on our way off. It’s Michelle, a girl who got suspended from third grade for a week after throwing rocks at my head. Adolescence is doing her a ton of favors body-wise. She stops and looks down at me. And her head is blasted from behind by the dome light, so I can’t really see her face, but I can see her smile. And she says one word: “destiny.” Then her and the girls clogging the aisles behind her all laugh and then she turns and leads them off the bus. I didn’t know you were friends with them
I find my dad in the parking lot. He drives me back to our house and camp is over. So is summer, even though there’s two weeks until school starts. This isn’t a story about how girls are evil or how love is bad, this is a story about how I learned something and I’m not saying this thing is true or not, I’m just saying it’s what I learned. I told you something. It was just for you and you told everybody. So I learned cut out the middle man, make it all for everybody, always. Everybody can’t turn around and tell everybody, everybody already knows, I told them. But this means there isn’t a place in my life for you or someone like you. Is it sad? Sure. But it’s a sadness I chose. I wish I could say this was a story about how I got on the bus a boy and got off a man more cynical, hardened, and mature and shit. But that’s not true. The truth is I got on the bus a boy. And I never got off the bus. I still haven’t-Childish Gambino
I consider myself an open book. I don’t understand why it’s important to hide how you feel. Whether I am happy or sad, I guarantee that you could easily figure it out. If I’m into a person, I will show it, and, if I am over it, I won’t deny it.
I’ve been this way my entire life, which is funny because my entire family is the exact opposite of me. My mother will hide her anxiety until she is blue in the face because she is afraid my brother and I will worry about her. My dad… Well, my dad seems detached from everything. It use to really bother me, but I have learned to accept it. There are times when I see him open up, and, during those moments, I find that I am really happy. He expresses himself just like I do. Then, there is my brother. I believe at the age of thirty, my brother still hasn’t figured himself out yet. I can’t really tell if he expresses himself the way I wish he would, but I do know that, with the new love that he has found, he has learned to open himself to a life that he has never seen before. Good for him.
There are times when I think I should seem more mysterious. (Funny side note- I’ve been called a wallflower at work because I am quiet. Would that be considered irony?) Mystery leads to intrigue. Intrigue sparks interest. Interest leads to wanting more. Eventually, however, a mystery is solved, and then what is it? It’s a case that is put to bed. It’s nothing.
I’m fine with being an open book. What you see is what you get, and maybe, in some strange world that makes sense, I am more intriguing than any mysterious person you will come across.I’m not sure if that really matters to me. I am only sure of this: I love the person that I am, and I will continue to be that person for the rest of my life.
Take it or leave it.
