By William Louderback
Not all of it, really, just the old cafeteria and administration building. It wasn’t as loud as I thought it should be. It fell in clatters, shudders, and bangs, not thundering roars as the walls crumbled to ash. It should have been storming, instead the sky was blue with wispy clouds and hot. I shielded my eyes from the sun and realized I was saluting my childhood.
As important as it is to keep moving forward, I find myself fixed on looking back. I scroll through “previous dates” on Google maps to look at the cars of old neighbors; I photograph obsessively, heedless of my phone’s incessant “low storage!” warnings. Nostalgia has always been my favorite state of being. And so, one last time for old time’s sake, let’s go over the best albums of my life. (I hope you’ll indulge my inner child for a few paragraphs of perspective first).
Part One:
Baby Beluga – Raffi
A mix of classic covers and original songs, Raffi’s 1980 children’s album was one of the first CDs I can recall listening to—I think it came inside a sleeve in the back cover of a book of the same name. This album was often played on road trips, most of them before I hit grade school, and conditioned me to associate travel with music—it was either that CD playing or my dad’s favorite, Classical KDFC. Indulging in the CD on hospital visits post-surgery, I learned, from Baby Beluga, how to slow down in the most stressful, confusing streaks of my life and just listen to something soothing; a lesson I hope I haven’t unlearned. Thanks to an album written by a Canadian musician over two decades prior to my birth, I may have been more mature in some ways at age five, than now. It brings me great comfort to know Raffi is going strong at a wise 78 years old.
Most formative tracks: “Kumbaya,” “Day-O,” “Baby Beluga”
Talking is Hard – WALK THE MOON
Talking is Hard was the first CD I ever received by request. I asked my mom, begged, even, to please pick up the library disc alongside a Sheppard album that had a song all of us were listening to in music class—“Say Geronimo,” to anyone, dear audience, who wants to relive shrill elementary school recorder lessons. As it turned out, the Sheppard album, Bombs Away, truly has a large number of bombs, often of the ‘f’ variety. Well, my mom didn’t want my tender ears listening to all that cursing, so Bombs Away was returned to the West Valley Branch library and Talking is Hard was subsequently purchased. This album is the first CD I can ever remember dancing to; it was so upbeat, poppy, wrenching me out of my seat and carrying me along through the kitchen and down in the garage. In my elementary school years, I believe, I was truly my best at dancing.
Upbeat tracks: “Work this Body,” “Sidekick,” “Portugal”
Will’s Summer 2016 – Me
My family went to Disneyland in the summer between third and fourth grade. I remember it in pieces. The Cars coaster was one of the most exhilarating rides, Zootopia campaigning was positively everywhere, the motel we stayed in had a heated pool. Another thing I remember is the drive—probably the longest drive of my life at that point. And my first custom-burned CD. This pop mix included the vast array of whatever I could find in our iTunes library, from the aforementioned WALK THE MOON to artists like OK Go, Eurythmics, John Denver, even Smash Mouth. This, not my first ever album, marked what I consider to be the first moment I took my observations into my own hands, the first truly active role I accepted in the music I explored, making it, to some extent, a crucial step towards me being me.
All tracks I added: “Anna Sun,” “Jenny,” “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” “When Tomorrow Comes,” “After The Rain Has Fallen,” “Desert Rose,” “Barking at the Moon,” “Country Roads,” “Rocky Mountain High,” “All-Star,” “Dynamite (Kidz Bop version),” “Geronimo,” “MMMBop,” “Different Colors,” “Shut Up and Dance,” “Work this Body,” “Life is a Highway,” “You Really Got Me,” “I Can See Clearly Now.”
The second part: middle school and COVID, the interlude:
I was one of those kids, back in middle school. I talked in the back rows, I drew memes on my homework, and for anyone who would listen, I recited the entire plot of Five Nights at Freddy’s like a recorded message. Seriously, my parents had to convince me to shut up about it—it was a problem. Then, at some point halfway through seventh grade, I put my head down. I worked. I guess you could interpret that as me growing up, or, if you would prefer, falling in line. And it went as planned for a while. I studied, went to my friend’s house and studied some more, played Splatoon on the bed while her younger sister watched “3am CHALLENGE GONE WRONG!!!” videos that drifted in from the living room flatscreen, went home and drew, played Roblox, perhaps attended Scouts or Confirmation lessons. Those weren’t exciting years, but they were years in which I “got by,” despite it all, running across a too-big campus in too-little time, praying a vindictive Yard Duty wouldn’t shrill at me to “go back and walk,” learning CAP math for grade eight from prehistoric Youtube videos when my teacher wouldn’t teach, collaging, building, researching my new favorite mammal—(Canis Latrans, bane and god of suburbanites)—and then, the world changed.
March, 2020: I don’t need to tell you all. That year, that month, that day—the PAs came on in art class, as I added finishing touches to a rough alleyway sketch. We wouldn’t be coming to school the next week. Or the next. Two weeks, they promised, maybe a month. The months stretched on.
After a while, I had to write; otherwise I’d go crazier than I was, lost in Discord chats and darkness. I picked up my weathered 2016 Chromebook with its dirt-accentuated diamond-plate, and tried. It wasn’t the greatest first attempt. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, a horrid first attempt is more than infinitely better than no attempt at all. My days at Westmont High School began to punch by, and such recognition of my need to try set in.
The part I write at one in the morning (or, albums of high school):
Nurture – Porter Robinson
What comes from a mix of poppy synths, anime audio snippets, and nostalgic video game OSTs? Art. The debut album Worlds from this North Carolina weeaboo (affectionate) made its quarantine impact on my nostalgia-starved neurons begging for somewhere other than here. The follow-up, on the other hand, was more of a barely post-quarantine release than anything else, and its healing force resonated in a world-weary heart of someone who just wanted to teeter and tumble facedown into the flowers, never getting up. Living up to its tracks, it pushed me to “Look at the Sky” as I replaced clean dishes, watching pink whipped clouds drift over dark and dusky skies, and gave me “Something Comforting” to relax with in the evenings. Nurture is an album of pause, standing at sundown atop highway bridges and watching the colors shift and hearing the wind blow through dandelions mixed with trash. It allowed me to step out of my day-to-day routine and breathe the air, stop thinking and start listening, even if five minutes was as long as it could hold me. I learned, however, that it was not good for testing the audio quality of my poor old broken stereo—musical experiences the likes of “Dullscythe” aren’t meant to check one’s speakers. They are, instead, meant to remind dear listeners of its creative process, the eternal creative process of doing and redoing, always ugly and grating until the process latched onto and swung from, smooth, beautiful. Almost never is art “glory” in its beginning, but so little of it is awkward, unflattering birth matters when the end carries it home serenely and with grace. I can try to remember that. I think most of us can and should.
Most experimental tracks: “Dullscythe,” “Wind Tempos,” “Something Comforting”
The Bones of What You Believe – CHVRCHES
It’s hard to say why I included this album, but I think it was because I felt a need to. “The Mother We Share” didn’t land the first time, but something had to be there. The electronic voice modulating was something between comfortable and not, pleasant and harsh. The story of tough sibling love (or romantic, if you prefer a metaphorical “mother” for your angle), a story impossible to reach out and touch as an only child, and yet universally relatable in the emotions it evokes, the hollowed-out pain and anger and long-term hardship smoothed over by courtesy, gentleness—The Bones of What You Believe is the high school experience, the daily struggle to keep emotions under check, too often under lock and key, while trying our damndest to respect and acknowledge their existence below our surfaces. It’s quiet therapy, plain and simple, whether it means to be or not.
Sentimental Tracks: “Recover,” “The Mother We Share,” “Gun”
Future Hearts – All Time Low
My first article was not ready to do this album justice. If Bones was my “quiet therapy” for my junior and senior year, Hearts was the screaming, unapologetic catharsis. I’m not going to sit here and bemoan my mental health, Lord knows where that’s always landed me, but to pretend all this was easy and painless would be laughably wrong. Bones, to my trauma and my tendencies, was a warm hand placed under my chin, a gentle comfort. Future Hearts was a freight train crashing straight through me, full steam ahead, and I loved every tear-jerking second of it. The first time I listened to the album in full, in Chris DiGrazia’s class, I cried at the end over “Bottle and a Beat” for lyrics that hit too close to a post-suicidal home. The second go-through left me in tears before Track 1; “Satellite” stopped playing static and opened the rough guitars. I’d alienated myself, temporarily, from a distant friend with my too-common stressed and overbearing behavior, and her parents emailed mine. I hated myself deeply in that second listen in the back seat of a car that wasn’t ours, watching the foreign state of South Carolina smudge by in a special shade of black. When the final bonus track ended, I called my best friend since third grade on Discord, I told her how much I messed up and hurt myself and my friend, with much more stammering and many more quiet curses. I felt better, and in a dive motel as I wrote on my school laptop, my dad came in and told me the friend I’d made feel so uncomfortable had emailed back, forgiving me before I’d apologized. Maybe I deserved that, maybe it was an olive branch to someone not yet worthy. It certainly wasn’t the magic of All Time Low, but that night, I set my online status to a quotation of my new detached therapist, a rabbit’s foot known as “The Edge of Tonight.”
Cathartic tracks: “Kids in the Dark,” “Tidal waves,” “Bottle and a Beat”
So Much (for) Stardust – Fall Out Boy
There you guys go; there’s a Fall Out Boy album for you. I’m okay (trust me), I’m alive, I’m still me, my body unsnatched. Though, this album is known for snatching my heartbeat the millisecond it was announced. A few months before, I had darted off to check lead guitarist Joe Trohman’s memoir None of this Rocks out of the library, and biked home to pore over its contents as religiously as any devotee, but even then, rumors of new, fresh Fall Out Boy music were just that—words whispered in alleys between Believers, typed hesitantly on the blogs of Youngbloods, rumors. Until, on a fateful afternoon just before lunch in Gary Rose’s, I panic-plugged-in my headphones and listened to the glorious choir of news: Fall Out Boy was back, baby. Raised like a remixed phoenix from the ashes of a critically panned (and personally adored) M A N I A, my number one band was here and ready once more. It was an emotional moment, knowing from Joe’s book just how much of a struggle it had been to achieve another shot at life for the band, forming a new, beloved sound without treading old ground. Which is, inherently, how it goes. You don’t spend your life in one place, you step, shimmy, occasionally leap forward, and that is never going to please everyone. But if you stop worrying about the final result of the change itself and try something out, with full knowledge that you can always take another step, in whatever direction you please, then you can just go for it, make something beautiful. Even if you stumble, it’s only a short way down and even further back up.
Part Four (or, what you actually came for):
When I was asked to impart my high school experience and what it meant to me, one thing immediately stuck out—I am the wrong person for this. Still, I’ve been “here” for four years, and literally here for about three and one-fifth, minus zoom school. I can bang something out.
Raffi taught me to relax; WALK THE MOON, to dance; Porter Robinson, to take in everyday moments and risks; CHVRCHES, to struggle proudly; All Time Low, to heal, and Fall Out Boy reminded me that “stuck in the past” and “ever-forward” are never the only answers.
High school wasn’t easy and it never is. But oh my God, it was memorable. I can recall sitting cross-legged on the floor of Westgate, typing an AP practice essay desperately while a security guard tried to convince me to move to a bench. At home, my power was out and a branch was laying across our cars. That was the moment, amongst the food court chatter and the security guard’s foot-tapping, when I was truly smacked upside the head with the realization: this is high school. I laughed, it was beautiful, taken aback by myself.
It’s all in realizing the mess you have before you, and choosing how to approach it, adjusting your attitude and sometimes, your location to suit the circumstances. I’m not going to sit here, preaching and pretending that high school just requires “the right mindset.” Let’s be real, this “right mindset” doesn’t exist. But I will say that how these unexpected scenarios are taken will decide how things are tinted looking back. Have you ever watched a movie or listened to a song, and right after, something of great emotional significance happened to you? Likely, that permanently altered the otherwise unrelated piece of media in your mind, molded your opinion of it to the emotional intricacies of what came after. It’s why my grandmother’s funeral changed Last Young Renegade forever, why I can’t listen to “Bulletproof Heart” without cringing a little inside. Just as past experience permanently leaves a mark on the emotional weight that such surrounding events retain, the way you accept a present situation as it comes will forever shape the way you look back. Little can change the way you immediately perceive the world around you, your “gut-reaction,” but your best ally is the ability to recognize your default mindset and question its instincts. Consider and qualify the way you take in the world, ask “why” and “how,” and never be too hard on yourself for reacting naturally in outburst and having to calm yourself down. That’s okay, human. Take it as it is and move on.
Your grades are not you. This is an incredibly vital distinction to make. I’m often accused by classmates of falling short on this distinction. A fair share of overscheduling, coming to school ill as a Victorian child, and staying up past 2 a.m. writing papers lines my trail of destruction. Every missed assignment and red markup on my essays felt, for a time, like another failure to add to my infinite list, and I let my fear of failure consume me until it hollowed into apathy. But take it from me: it’s not worth it. Working hard in school is important, of course, and working hard means sacrifice, which is better to learn sooner, not later. But please, for the love of whatever and whoever you believe in, throwing your life aside to look better on an application is not the way to do things. There’s a time for putting your head down and studying and a time for living your life. It took me a while to learn this balance of gradebooks and self-care, but believe me, once you achieve it, pressure releases and the time to enjoy high school to its fullest arrives. I guess I could best summarize—think, in ten years, what are you going to reflect on? One missed ten-pointer homework assignment, or the wider achievements that truly define your excellence? And never be afraid to reach out to a teacher if you’re really worried. Through four years and nineteen teachers, I’ve yet to meet one who hasn’t been willing to lend an ear when I was struggling. There’s not as much pressure as it often seems there is, and you’re doing great, I promise.
High school hurt, and I loved it and loathed it in equal measure. It was a beautiful web of quiet pain and joy, exhaustion and fulfillment. It’s a wistful thing, to watch it go. A strange sort of tie to these buildings, these sidewalks and solar-panel parking lots that light up Stalenhag-green at night, it still tethers me somehow. I don’t mind, it was far from the worst place I could have spent four years. It certainly made its complex, contradictory impact. But from racing through storm-decimated streets after a tree fell on my best friend’s garage, to losing myself in a massive furry convention for two days, from getting locked outside in hurricane winds while attempting to babysit, to playing with Legos with David Nguyen when we made our intentions of studying clear, one thing is for sure—I’m not leaving this place without my stories.