Last week I was filling out graduate school applications, and among all of the hoops that I had to jump through, one directive gave me pause. One university asked me to write my “life narrative”. I thought for a few minutes about what they were really asking me to do. Assuming that this school knows nothing about me, I supposed that my life narrative might have been anything within a reasonable approximation of how I’ve spent the last twenty-seven or so years. They said to be specific, but how specific? Surely they didn’t want to know that when I was seventeen I decided that I liked mustard after all and that when I was twenty-two I finally settled on a brand of underarm deodorant. They wanted specifically broad strokes. They wanted a creative work of self-aggrandizement. So I put fingers to laptop and what I came up with was all of the best parts of me. Anything good that had happened to me had become an accomplishment. Any rough patches in my life were suddenly obstacles bested. My childhood had become poetic. My twenties were a coming of age film by the most sought after indie director. What a life! Most of us are more-or-less nice people who have done a few things that some people might find interesting. Anything much more than that might be considered fiction. I’m pretty sure if that isn’t what they wanted, it is what they got from most people. Nothing I wrote was a lie, and if I can tell the truth better than it really happened, I would be a fool not to. I wrote this song about writing that essay.
lyrics
You could be the one
Couldn’t you?
Tell me of your life’s story
You could spin a tale
Something true
You could set the cameras rolling
You could split the night right in half
Heroic in a common fashion
Following a true and righteous path
More than just a notion passing
Speak of the death and resurrection
Of earthly rivals
I have seen the world
Haven’t you?
I have overcome my trials
I have gained a sense of certitude
I have gone adrift a while
I have understood what it means
To barricade my heart completely
I have reconciled within me
The part of me that lies so sweetly
What part of you must you atone for?
Is that the question?
I could split the night right in half
Heroic in a common fashion
Following a burnt and broken path
More than just a notion passing
More than just a story
Goodness knows
Remarkable in average settings
More than merely one life’s captured prose
A narrative worth not forgetting