Lost Boys

a personal note on transformation

I am a transformed man; not always for the better. I am a changed man, but sometimes with a weakened self.

There is an assumption, one we often thrust onto ourselves, that to transform is good. The caterpillar becomes the butterfly. The frog becomes the prince. But sometimes, often almost, to transform is simply to adapt, to mould to a new set of circumstances. Our anxiety to associate change with growth smites the core of human identity: our fallibility. Our vulnerability. The quirks and chinks in the armour are what define us, make us attractive, different.

There have been many times in my life where I have been transformed. Perhaps a result of my own tendency for glass-half-empty thinking, my strongest recollections of change come not from my own desire to be different, but the world around me pushing forward a conflicting philosophy.

Growing up, I knew my state of self hinged on creativity. On performing. It provided rare moments of unusual solitude and something nearing contentment. Being on stage, being in a drama class doing silly voices and creating sketches, made me feel whole. As if I was where I’d belong. I’d go to sleep excited about reading Shakespeare in class, about rehearsing for the school play. Singing, acting, messing about, it was my safe place. Amongst the academic pressure I put on myself, it was a release valve for the stress and teenage angst, the self-comparison and the awkwardness of “transforming” in a changing body. It was what I felt I was supposed to do. And when push came to shove, it was a world others determined was not for people like me. When drama school seemed appealing, they sought to undermine it, to push for a more linear future. With time, that love and confidence dissipated slightly. It remained, for sure, but it was brittle. Law School beckoned because it felt safer. Less of a struggle. Less rejection, and more space to grow.

Trusting those around me, I was transformed into someone different. I don’t begrudge or resent their thought process. It is understandable for working-class parents to be sceptical of a kid with no money wanting to be an actor. But others, those with a more rounded view of the world, could have pushed me on more. What is life if not a constant quest to realise dreams. Perhaps that’s where I go all wrong.

At Law School, I evolved into a shell of my former self. I enjoyed the academic rigour, the reading, the debates. Debating became my only outlet in many ways. In that first year I found my new independence difficult, still bound by the conventions of a regimented school that preferred discipline and order to the waviness of adult life. I shut myself away. Retreated into a shell. Friends were hard to come by, interactions increasingly awkward. At social events, if I went, I stood apart with a pint of coke, scared of drinking alcohol and loosening up. I used to have this crazy belief that if I stood in the corner but kept a strong smile, people would somehow think I was enigmatic, cool, different. I’m sure, looking back, they saw a kid scared of his own shadow. I became averse to fun. It became a year of wasted opportunity, one that even now is tinged with sadness. Not one I’m ungrateful for. In the end it made me a better, rounder, more complicated person, but it lingers.

In one seminar, I remember it vividly. A new lecturer had chosen aggression as his method of choice. He set aside the reading we’d prepared and went round the room instead, cold, one name at a time, the random questions landing like target practice. I watched him get closer. Then it was my turn, and I had nothing. Not because I hadn’t done the work, he was shooting from the hip, looking to assert his own intelligence over a bunch of freshers. I don’t remember what I said. I remember the silence after, and him moving on to the next name as if I hadn’t spoken at all. I left when the seminar ended and didn’t go back. Not the following week, not the week after that. For an entire term.

There is a temptation to view thoughts like these as a self-aggrandising quest for pity. Or, worse, as the inner workings of a sad man. No. We all carry sadness within us. Some just suppress it more easily. But tucking it away doesn’t remove it. It is not as binary as happy or sad, settled or unsettled. It’s embracing the nuance. The complexity of our being, and accepting the warts and marks we pick up along the way. There is no single version of ourselves.

When I eventually graduated, I felt an enormous pride in myself. I had spent the second half of that degree working hard to be better, and had been doing a great job. Then covid came along, my progress halted, and I was forced to pivot again. In those years I focused on my work, studied hard, and locked in. Transformed, again, by something other than my own hand.

I’m trying to write a script at the minute that I think could evolve into an interesting short film. It’s a monologue set in an old photo booth. In my mind it’s relatively original, though I concede it’s entirely possible it’s just another done idea. But I find the concept interesting. In a fotoautomat, an analogue photobooth where what’s caught is what’s printed, we transform across four separate photographs. We feel like we have to, so as not to waste the individual prints, knowing instinctively that we don’t get the chance to do it again, or to change what’s been captured.

Andy Warhol once said something like: a picture never changes, even if the people in it do. If we change even in the space between the photos themselves, then there is an innate nostalgia to a photograph, especially one that’s analogue, black and white. A moment captured permanently. A memento of a former self. Evidentiary transformation.

I could sit and wax lyrical on the individual moments where I’ve noticed I’ve changed. I’d do so knowing full well there are a million more where I wasn’t even aware of it happening. Some done by others, some by myself. My successes, my mistakes, my shortcomings and my strength of character. Simply forging on. Trudging through the mud with the promise that an unspoiled orchard lies ahead.

I change with the seasons, too. As the green of the trees turns to copper and yellow, I prepare myself for new horizons, knowing that whatever I lose along the way will only survive as a snapshot, its permanence printed on a changing brain.

To understand that change is necessary does not mean it has to be wholly happy. We must accept it as the wormhole of living, of being. That each change brings with it a new opportunity: our constant transformation. Life is not happy or sad. It is an amalgam of emotions, fear, and excitement, that even we don’t fully understand. We must embrace the ride, openly.

The sun went down as I crossed the hill, and the town lit up, the world got still. I’m learning to fly, but I ain’t got wings. We adapt and we evolve. We’re all lost boys.