Note to future self

Dear Future Self,

Well done on still being alive. I'm assuming you must have started sleeping or eating properly, or taking so much crack that it has somehow preserved your body in an eternal state of fucked. I really hope you don't take crack.

I hope you're happy in whatever you're doing. Because I know you will be doing something, and you will be doing it at 100 kilometres an hour, and giving it every ounce of yourself, because that is in your blood. I assume you're probably having sporadic breakdowns adjusting with constant changes and obstacles. You'll get over them. The shit times will pass and there is always friends/drinking/music/nature/crack. But again I hope you don't resort to taking crack. That shit is expensive and you're meant to be saving up to go somewhere sometime.

I hope you've learnt to see the good in everything, and to appreciate things a little more. I hope you're at least a tiny bit less narcissistic, and that you've stopped being so terrible with money. I really wonder about things. Do you still have an undercut? What colour is your hair? Are you seeing anyone? Have you left your hometown yet?

It's the strangest thing that I (that is me, who I am right this second) will never be able to know the answers to these questions. Even though I will be the one who decides their answers, I won't really be me any more when they have an answer. This is too deep and illogical for me to articulate in my haphazard writing style. So I'll do something completely unoriginal and use an example from a play I recently did some backstage for.

The play was called "Quartet" - and yes it had four characters and yes it was about music. The four characters were all great opera singers in their time, but now find themselves in an upmarket nursing home devoid of artistic stimulation, or stimulation of any description. Like any good work of art, the play is not simply about music, or about being old people in a nursing home; it's two most obvious themes. The play is about the very concept of art, the pains and joys of living and aging, and lastly the invisibility and inevitability of change.

Three of the musicians in the home decide that they should like to perform the "Rigoletto" at a concert held annually by the home in celebration of the birthday of Giuseppe Verdi. This is particularly interesting as the three musicians recorded the song together along with Jean Horton years ago in the prime of their operatic careers. However, when they suggest that Jean should need to join them and render them the complete quartet again, she refuses.

For the majority of the play's opening it appears that Jean's refusal is solely due to stubbornness, and as such the rest of the quartet are angered with her for what they perceive to be selfishness. However, later in the play she reveals the truth.

You'll have to forgive me because I don't have a copy of Quartet and can't find it anywhere online, so I have no actual quotes to use here. But the big reveal Jean makes is that thirty years ago, when she abruptly ended her operatic career and stopped singing, it wasn't a choice she made. It was assumed by the other members of the Quartet and any strange members of the public interested in the personal lives of Opera singers that she ended her career to focus solely on being a wife and mother, as it was after the birth of her daughter that it happenned. However, she reveals to the rest of her Quartet that after the birth of her daughter, she tried to sing for a much coveted role, but simply couldn't. She tried and tried, but alas no sound would come out. And so she had no choice but to end her career as an opera singer.

While the other members of the Quartet lament Jean's loss of her own ability to sing, Jean herself laments something much darker - the loss of herself. She claims that "the Jean Horton that was" was brilliant and "shone bright in the firmament", but that she is literally a different person now, who just happens to inhabit the same body as "the Jean Horton that was".

The concept initially appears to be nothing more than a hyperbolic statement used to heighten the significance of the loss of Jean's vocal ability. However, as it is explored and expanded upon within the confines of the play, the audience come to realise that the statement Jean is making is not an exaggeration, but a profound philosophical statement.

The concept is essentially that we change throughout our lives - moving from role to role, from place to place, changing things as small as hairstyles or as large as professions and goals. We lose friends and make new ones, end relationships and start new ones. As we journey through our lives, aspects of our personality change, and we ourselves change too. The underlying claim made by Jean Horton in Quartet is that we literally become different people throughout our lives as we change.

The concept is terrifying yet thought-provoking. If I look back on my own life, while I do feel as though aspects have remained the same in my life - such as the fact that I still live in my hometown - almost as many things have changed.

At five, I could not properly or completely articulate myself. The concept of sexuality or intellect were hardly present in my mind - I did not consider the notions of sex, or of intellect.

At twelve, I was articulate. Not yet fully developed, but articulate. At this point, I began to notice I was same-sex attracted - but denied acknowledgement of this due to my beliefs. My intellect was certainly developed, but again, not yet to it's full extent. I enjoyed study, and learning.

At eighteen, I am able to well articulate myself. I enjoy intellectual stimulation, and have now fully accepted my homosexual inclination.

It is clear that at these three ages, I was and am drastically different. Almost no remnants of my five year old self remain. In light of this, I am left to consider. Do we literally become different people throughout our life? Does my former self no longer exist in any form, or does he remain at least partially?

I am not apologetic for bombarding you, my future self, with all of this. Above all, I hope you always think. I hope you wonder, and search for answers, and question, and explore. Change is inevitable, and though so much changes, I hope this remains.

I do hope you don't do crack.

George.