ACT II: The Beacon, 26 Jan 2011.

Wintery Mix. This phrase was meaningless to me before I moved to New York because I grew up in the deserts of Southern California. For anyone reading this who, like me, was raised beneath The Sun’s unrelenting eye, let me illuminate:

Wintery Mix is a set of conditions including cloudy sky, low temperatures and cold/wet/frozen precipitation. It is almost as if the sky can’t decide on rain, hail, snow or sleet, so it just dumps it all.

The best description I’ve heard came from a lab mate of mine who grew up in New Jersey:

Wintery Mix is Shit Weather.

& It was through a wintery mix that I navigated the streets and subways of Manhattan to get to The Beacon Theater on 12/26/11.

I had been in the city for about a week and was apartment hunting during a bedbug epidemic. It was an exciting time to be alive and learning the rhythms of New York City. Swirling underneath it all was the shadow of my previous advisor's words: “Grad school isn’t for everybody." If you lack context, you can catch it in last month’s article.

My journey through graduate school was as much about my own ego as it was for love of chemistry. Did I love chemistry? With all of my heart, I did (and still do!) but love is not what I was chasing on that cold, wet January night.

I was in grad school to make waves. I wanted to dazzle my colleagues, peers and betters with jaw-dropping work. I had a project with promising leads and, in my mind, I was about to slam this dunk. Festering beneath the noise of all my ambition, lurking deeper than my neon-lit dreams of academic accolades, lurked the vote of no confidence from my idol & one time hero.

Anticipation for the show and anxiety for my future charged the atmosphere as I took my exit on 72nd and Broadway off an Uptown A. That night, the lineup at The Beacon Theater featured a band named Wye Oak opening for The Decemberists. I had been listening to The Decemberists since 2005’s The Crane Wife, but I had never seen them live. I didn’t know Wye Oak when I bought my ticket, but after listening to their stuff ahead of the show, I was looking forward to seeing their set.

The evening was perfect. The Beacon is a special place. I was perched near the front of the lower balcony, dead center with the stage.

The Decemberists did not disappoint.

They took the stage with a pageantry fitting their reputation. They were gracious, charming, funny and they held the audience’s attention to the last. Their setlist featured two guest appearances by Shara Nova of My Brightest Diamond. She joined them on stage, reprising her role as The Wicked Queen from their 2008 concept album, The Hazards of Love. It was everything you’d want and more.    

The true surprise for me came from Wye Oak. The band consisted of two people - drums & guitarist/vocalist. They looked small in the spotlight. Yellow/golden rays encircled their position. The deep blue/black of the stage stretched out like a dark ocean menacing to swallow up the two-peice, and yet something etched their set in my memory.

It is worth noting that this was 2011.

Rock’n’roll two pieces were running wild in the wake of The White Stripes and The Black Keys.

Wye Oak felt different. They were not playing blues-soaked garage rock. Their heavy (dare I say, sludgy?) guitars contrasted against and fused with Jenn Wasner’s mournful vocals. It was pure alchemy: haunting, passionate & spell-binding. The Beacon was not full when Wye Oak walked out on stage, the show’s sold-out energy would not take hold until later, but that night, for half an auditorium they played the set of a lifetime. I was transfixed.

There was something in the room that night. A giver of insight granted me a boon. As I looked out on the stage, I saw how being a grad student and being an opening band were the same. They were the same in this sense: both are positions of access, but the access is limited.

As an opener, you actually get to be on stage. It’s the same stage the headliner gets, except it’s not. The audience is not there for you. They are not going to eat out of your hand & half of them won’t even show up for your set. An opening band can imagine what it would be like to headline a venue like The Beacon Theater. They can imagine watching the audience transform as they are caught up in the joy and wonder of the set. They can imagine it all because an opening act has been brought close, but not brought in.

Grad students have an analogous access. We get to meet visiting professors from other departments. We rub elbows with the elites at conventions and symposiums. We even get opportunities to present our work to the world’s leading minds and, ya know what? After 5 years of grad school I can imagine what it would feel like to be a Professor of Chemistry. I saw myself, in those lecture halls, seminars and labs doing all kinds of professorly shit. Do you know what it felt like to me? 

A Dream.

It felt like a Dream.

Wye Oak’s opening set at The Beacon Theater was so good, it made me anxious. It made me anxious for them. They were good, REAL GOOD, but what if they never made it? What if opening at The Beacon was as high as they got. What if a Divine Providence marked that they could fly this high and no higher?

Of course this was me projecting. I was projecting hard. These were my own fears read into the narrative of a band that continued to find success in the years that followed. They’re still around. Look ‘em up! Both together as Wye Oak, and in numerous side projects Jen Wasner and Andy Stack built fruitful musical careers. They made it, but I didn’t. At least, not in the way I wanted to make it.

I got close enough to taste the dream, but did not make it far enough to live the dream.

Sometimes you are just a masters student. Sometimes you are just an adjunct. Sometimes you are just an opener. This is not me feeling sorry for myself. This is me make peace with what I am. For years I lived in denial. Years. I did not begin to truly heal until I looked in the mirror and named what was there.

When your knowledge of self is less than accurate, as mine used to be, you will find yourself treading in the path of Sisyphus.

You risk spending the rest of your life carrying a weight you were never meant to bear - one that slips from your grasp just as you gain traction!

To avoid this fate, we must remember.

Remember what it felt like to rise like Icarus.

Remember the JOY as we took the sky on wings of wax.

& then, Remember, if we can, where in the sky our last flight unraveled.

By respecting this boundary, set in the heavens by our own frame, we can spread our wings and move through the air.

If we ignore who we are, if we venture out to take the sky, in our hubris we will fall again and again.

There is no point in re-testing the melting point of wax. Make your peace with what you are.  We live in a world where dreams come true for some, but not for others. Bury your dreams that die. It hurts, but it’s better to mourn the death of a dream than to retraumatize yourself in fruitless attempts to revive it.

Lay it to rest, because as Steven King said in Pet Sematary: “Sometimes dead is better.”

I’ll catch ya next month on the 3rd,

-JT⚡

P.S. Was that a dower of an article? Probably, but ya gotta remember, this is part two of three in a mini series. Like any second act, it’s gotta end a dark to set up the third.

Call it my Empire Strikes Back, if that helps you contextualize.

This chapter of my life was sad, but it no longer makes me sad.

You’ll have to read next month’s article to learn why…

…in the meantime, if it made YOU sad and you want to tell me, hit up my contact page and send me a message! My inbox is always open.