One-Hundred and Twelve Decibels

The air is thick with cigarettes, sweat, liquor, and the slightest hint of urine. It’s well past 9pm, but the world is hardly ready to be quiet. This is Dirty Sixth Street, the largest entertainment district in Texas, heart of Austin’s night-life. Gobs of tourists and bachelorette parties traipse about the streets with only two missions: they come to drink and they come to dance. I’ve come to entertain. I’m relaxing in the protective cocoon of a single-stall bathroom of a dive bar as I metamorphose from the androgynous roadie that unloaded my gear moments before into the fiery front-woman who will soon take the stage. It takes a bit of finesse to put my finishing touches of eye-liner on over a sink full of vomit— only one of many bizarre skills I’ve developed over the years of working as a performer. I use my fingertips to comb the knots in my split ends and tug at the edges of a slightly undersized hot-pink vinyl dress. Inhale, exhale— show time.

I live a compartmentalized life. My day-time persona is a delightfully awkward autistic woman who communicates primarily through rants about mathematics, particle physics and existential dread. She never wears makeup, and there’s an 80 percent chance you’ll find her hair in a bun. She doesn’t drink and often smells a bit funny because God only knows the last time she washed the oversized hoodie she wears every day. She loves to write— prose, poetry, computer programs. And she knows these performances are the bittersweet ending to a long story that she hardly feels to be a character in anymore. But it’s her story nonetheless. It’s her long and painful epoch of figuring out how to be a person in the world; her journey through the hatred, idolatry, and humble inspiration of the vocalist, artist, and entrepreneur that defined an entire generation’s tumult of adolescence: Hayley Williams of Paramore.

Hayley was the first artist to fully demonstrate to me the beauty and power of creativity, and of how the honest expression of one’s experience can help others to shape and redefine their own. It’s such a wonderful thrill to be an artist: to be gifted with the tremendous power to create, transform, and destroy. Unfortunately, at the age of 14, I hadn’t yet figured out how to do the former two. I was stricken with an unwieldy gob of emotional energy and only one mode to channel it through: destruction.

My teenage-self was an adorably gaudy caricature of youthful angst. I rarely left the house without sporting vans and skinny jeans ornamented with crude sharpie doodles. If something wasn’t black, it was neon— from my razor-sharp bangs to the collection of rubber bracelets which piled high above my wrists. I’d foolishly stash my aromatic bags of weed and accompanying penguin pipe in a small hole I’d torn in an Eeyore doll. In short, I was an emotional wreck that kept my parents up at night wondering where they went wrong.

I hated everything: my family, my peers, my city, my school, myself. And like any typical teenage rebel, I hated pop music. But most of all, I hated Paramore. And not in the simple way which a teenager is apt to hate things, like the way an uneducated American takes up hating the government as a flippant hobby. No, my hatred was passionate and intense: a verbose list of grievances against the band's art, the people that had created it, and those who enjoyed it. It’s funny, then, to look back and realize that this hatred served as a testament to the power of the band’s music.

One of the greatest powers of art is its ability to introduce you to pieces of yourself that you didn’t realize existed. The worst reaction an audience can have to art is one of dismissal. Art is communication: it is the catalyst for deeper understanding between both the creator and the audience and between the audience and their own internal world. If art gives rise to intense emotions within the viewer, you’ve done your job as a creator. Our reaction to art is nothing more than a reflection of ourselves and, whether that reaction be negative or positive, every person who is moved by art gets exactly what they need from it.

Paramore was an angsty emo icon in the early 2000s, and the story of their inception is remarkable. Atlantic records approached Hayley as a young teen wanting to sign her as a solo pop-star, but she staunchly maintained the position that she wanted to front a pop-punk band. What amazing courage it must have taken to be a young girl being courted by record labels and having the fortitude to say, “no— we’re going to do things my way.” She wasn’t interested in a solo-career: she wanted to be a part of something and she wanted her friends along for the ride with her. And because I felt powerless in the face of my own inadequacy, I was filled with hatred and jealousy rather than inspiration. It’s no wonder that I was drawn to near-obsession with her: she effortlessly shared her rich internal world in a way that others could relate to, so seemingly abundant with the human connection which I deeply longed for and struggled to maintain.

Growing up, I only learned one way to be, and that was separate: separate from my peers, separate from any sort of community, separate from pieces of myself deemed unacceptable and unlovable by those who raised me. My parents are both self-professed introverts. Therapy, a college-education and an adult perspective on the world would later reveal a much more accurate word for their temperament: misanthropes. I’d only ever been taught to experience the world through a lens of detachment and isolation. And I, being young, couldn’t understand that this was merely a perceptual lens; I just thought that’s the way the world was.

Emotional neglect is a terribly insidious thing. Its effects were rotting my life from the inside out, and I hated myself for them. I hated the scabs on my face, arms and scalp from skin I was constantly compelled to pick at. I hated the plump and pink scars which decorated my arms and thighs from cycles of self-harm. I hated feeling constantly overwhelmed and incompetent in the face of academic demands, demands which my depression rendered me incapable of meeting. I hated the endless and ridiculous stream of white lies I told because I felt ashamed of the person I actually was. But worst of all, I lacked context for the cause of my circumstances. The best story I could come up with for myself was that I was a broken person not built to function in the world.

The ironic paradox which was lost on me at the time was that the very band which I detested was producing exactly the musical catharsis I so deeply needed. I was so busy hating the world and everything inside of it that I missed out on so much: on getting to grow up inspired by a vocal and song-writing prodigy with a gift for turning her experience of the world into sonic art: on being a part of a community of misfit, black-sheep teenagers like myself struggling to make sense of themselves, the world and their place inside of it: on feeling less alone in the tumult of young-adulthood. Far more excruciating than experiencing emotional pain is feeling alone with that pain, and that’s the cathartic power of music and of art, and the incredible gift that artist bring to the world— the power to elucidate common experiences and bring insight into what it means to be human. Of course, I’m now able to laugh at the irony that I would someday come to shamelessly categorize almost half of my lifetime by Paramore’s album cycles.

2013 saw the release of Paramore’s self-titled record. Paramore fans had the pleasure of watching emo-grunge rockers blossom into a pop-rock sensation ready to take the world stage, headlining the Reading and Leeds Festival and taking home a Grammy for “Ain’t it Fun”. The self-titled record was the perfect anthem for those entering adulthood: a 17-track paragon of the joys and heartache of self-discovery and re-invention. My only criticism of the record is Paramore’s tepid descent into their dramatic genre-shift from Rock to Pop. Song-to-song, the record lacks fluidity as it attempts to cater to too broad an audience. It feels like it doesn’t know what it wants to be. But in so many ways, that only makes it a more perfect representation of the awkward and messy coming-of-age tale which it so brilliantly depicts. It’s such a delicious collection of songs for someone like myself who’s always felt like a bit too much of everything to really fit in anywhere. It’s often these unintentional imperfections of art that make it so extraordinary—so visceral, relatable and beautiful.

I have a great amount of respect for artists with the courage to reinvent themselves and their work. It’s a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” world for successful artists: you can write the same record over and over again to please fans and be criticized for becoming stale, or evolve your sound and be branded with the ever-pretentious label of “sell-out”. Branching out to try new things, especially against the judging eyes of public consumers, takes a great deal of courage and vulnerability. But the best art is born both inside of that tension and in spite of it. Life is kinetic, dynamic, and ever-changing. The art which represents it ought to be, too.

Of course, at the time of the record’s release, I was still clinging to my identity as an enemy of the band. I figured I ought to give the record a quick listen just to see what all of the fuss was about. (When you’re young, you often don’t even realize how poor and inexperienced you are at things, including at creating rationalizations for your ridiculous behavior.) Next thing I knew, the record was over, and I’d devoured every one of Hayley’s delectable vocals along the way. I was inexplicably drawn to the difficult emotions which Paramore’s music drudged up inside of me, like a siren-song which led my ship to crash against the rocky shores of my internal world.

There was never a dramatic moment in which I professed my Paramore fandom in a sweeping declaration. It was rather a slow and humble realization. Because the funny thing is, I was always a Paramore fan. (And to this day, they’re the only artist whose entire catalogue— spanning five albums and dozens of B-side singles— I have effectively memorized.) While my level of obsession remained unchanged, the story I was able to tell myself about it shifted dramatically.

That’s the funny paradox about personal growth. Whether or not you believe in the capacity for personal change, we’re forever doomed to be everything we always have been. Every year or so I get the sense that I’ve become an entirely new person, but really, I’ve just found greater permission to be myself. I’m not sure if I ever really change. I just get better at peeling away inaccurate labels left by peers, teachers and parents. We can’t erase the people we’ve been, the lies that we’ve told, or the habits we’ve held. But with wisdom and growth, we can find the power to reframe them.

My first few years out of high-school went about as spectacularly awful as one would imagine, filled with excruciating memories of drug-use and abusive relationships. I tumbled from one tumultuous situation to the next, so accustomed to drowning in a pool of misery that I was constantly searching for the next external crisis to give shape and meaning to my pain. As I attempted to scale the enormous pit of despair I’d dug for myself by listening to self-help tapes, Les Brown’s voice echoed in my head: “how much time have you spent today working towards your dream?” I don’t know, what was my dream? My life’s work? It’s a silly question to feel you must know the answer to at 19, but I couldn’t escape the crushing feeling that I was terribly behind in life, or that perhaps it was just too late for me. But the answer seemed simple and clear: I wanted to be a singer.

I’ve long debated whether this temperament is a blessing or a curse, but once I decide I want something, I don’t go for it half-assed. I didn’t just want a job; I wanted to build a career. It was an obsession which consumed me—and like any good American, I was drinking the kool-aid of workaholism and wore my stress and exhaustion like a badge of honor. Still, the whole pursuit was quite a step-up for me. In the modern era of #bossbitch, if you’re going to have an addiction, it might as well be your career and not drugs and men who treat you like garbage. (Although, candidly, I still tend to relapse on the latter.)

My journey into musicianship began as a quest for external validation. I spent years being deeply driven by garish visions of fame and life as a “successful” artist, enchanted by the charisma and esteem of these larger-than-life musical wizards that commanded the stage. Some part of me had learned long ago that they had something I didn’t, and whatever it was held the key to filling the empty void of loneliness that consumed me. Of course, everything I actually needed was much simpler than I’d made it out to be. What I wanted— and was too young to put words to— was to feel confident and comfortable being myself; I wanted to be vulnerable and feel seen, heard, and loved. The insatiable obsession which drove me was a calling deep inside of myself that longed for validation and acceptance.

I wasn’t ever consciously pursuing fame. I’d long thought of myself as above wanting such shallow ambitions. I’d shed the dichotomy that life as a professional musician meant you were either a starving artist or rich and famous. Most musicians I looked up to were just middle-class people making a modest living through their art. Still, I wasn’t really happy living the life I’d created for myself. It was all part of an elaborate scheme to get from “Point A” to “Point B”. And “Point B”, I realized later, didn’t exist. I couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that the rate at which I was working was unsustainable. Malaise and exhaustion began to nip at my heels at a pace which my manic work-ethic was gradually failing to outrun.

And then came Paramore’s magnum opus, their latest and fifth full-length album “After Laughter”. It’s a miracle that this record even exists. Paramore has yet to complete an album cycle without losing members, often in nasty departures fit for reality television. Hayley has stated in many interviews that she’s wanted to quit Paramore countless times, and who can blame her? She was barely thirty and had already invested more than half of her lifetime into her band. Life on the road is rewarding but difficult for touring musicians, especially when you’ve had to grieve the loss of a normal childhood to do it. Lost in the midst of profound burnout and afraid she would never make a record that she loved as much as the band’s self-titled work, she seriously contemplated moving on.

During an interview for Bryan Elliot’s “Behind the Brand” series, she recounted a conversation in which her father told her she ought to do what would make her happy, and that maybe it was time to hang it up. But there were many times that, despite the adversity she faced, she fought for the band to continue and was glad that she had. Shaping our lives is much akin to the process of making art: it’s a subjective expression of values and intentions. There’s no one right way to do it, and no precise direction we ought to take in the crossroads we reach. Sometimes the best thing we can do is let go and turn our attention to other things. But sometimes extraordinary things happen when we push through and find out what we’re made of. That’s exactly what she and the band did when they created “After Laughter”.

For the band and its fans, the album was a rubber-stamping event marking arrival into adulthood and fully encompassed the beauty and complexity of life that came with it. It explores the nuances of depression, isolation and imposter syndrome all juxtaposed against a danceable nod to 80’s New Wave. Hayley candidly reflects on feeling stuck while wanting to give up and outlines intense feelings of alienation springing from her fan’s idolatry.

Meanwhile, I was struck with the strange and sudden realization that I had failed. It wasn’t exactly a circumstance that I’d given much thought to, because clearly failure was a thing that only happened to quitters, which I most certainly was not. But there’s a different kind of failure, one that’s a bit more nebulous and much more bitter to swallow. It happens when you realize you’ve achieved everything you set out to do only to discover that it wasn’t actually what you wanted or needed in the first place. I couldn’t help but feel like Mario, brought to my knees in the apex of an empty palace. After busting ass for years, my bitch Princess Peach was sitting in a different castle.

I hit a wall of profound burnout. Not like, “I’m feeling a little bit unmotivated to work towards my goals” kind of burnout. Like, “nothing matters, it’s all over and I’m moving to Europe to build robots,” kind of burnout. I can recall sleeping in until 2pm on Sundays after sprints of 4 or 5 shows feeling like I’d just been on a week-long meth bender. My body was rejecting the life I’d built for myself like a misaligned nipple piercing. The woman who was living the life I’d created wasn’t the girl who dreamed it up all those years ago. I watched the values I’d used to shape my life collapse while the world tumbled past me like static on a TV screen.

It took me a long time to acknowledge how miserable I was— and even longer to realize life didn’t have to be that way. Adoration from strangers is a bit like added sugar for the soul. I love sweets every once in a while, but when it’s all I have to eat, I get sick. I hadn’t really learned how to connect with people in an authentic way. I just got better at hiding the pieces of myself that push them away. I was dazzling, but only in the purest sense of the word: something that shines so brightly that you can’t see it clearly.

“What’s something you’ve wanted to do but couldn’t because you were so busy with music?” asked a friend over dinner as I opened up about my depression. “I don’t know,” I replied hesitantly, “I just want to have fun.” So I did. I traveled. I wrote. I had great sex. I maintained friendships for the first time in my adult life. I fell in love with computer programming. I rediscovered pieces of myself I’d learned to hide away long ago, but more than anything, I discovered people who loved me for me. The geeky, awkward, brilliant and creative bookworm I’d hid away had a place in the world after all, once she stopped trying so hard to be like everyone else. The root of my burnout turned out to be rather simple: my quest for permission to be myself had finally come to an end. “We grow up and we go through school and all those years thinking that we need to be like everyone else,” says Hayley during an interview, “I look at all the friends I have and all the people around me that love me for who I am… They love all the different things about me that aren’t like anyone else.”

I had a deep desire to drop everything and forge a new career path with my newfound passion for computer programming and astronomy. Still, something inside of me begged for me to stick with it. I have a long-standing habit of what my armchair-psychologist exes have bombastically dubbed “avoidant attachment”. When things get uncomfortable, I’m quick to run off and create an entirely new life in a different corner of the world. But I thought of Hayley, and of the wonderful gifts she’d created by sticking it out when nothing made sense to her anymore. And, again, I discovered the beauty of reframing our experiences.

The pursuit of a career in music hadn’t been what I wanted or expected, but I’d gotten everything I needed out of it. Being in a band had healed something deep and profound inside of me. I’d finally learned how to be a part of something: when to lead, when to follow, and when to let go and trust your team. I grew up believing that connecting with others meant ignoring the endless distances which lie between us. I was scared to get close to people or commit to anything because I thought it meant losing my autonomy. But the beauty of being human, and the higher goal of art, is the act of discovering freedom and connection through the celebration of diversity. I still decided to pursue a career change, but was no longer overcome with the urge for everything to be done yesterday. Being stuck in the complexity of running a small business while going back to school allowed me to discover joy in the process rather than fixating on the end goal itself.

Hayley Williams always seemed larger than life to me. It took me a long time to realize that her most admirable qualities had nothing to do with her talent or fame. I used to spend hours drooling over her technique with my vocal coach.“That was absolutely fantastic,” he declared as I finished belting ‘Still Into You’ during a lesson, “it just goes to show that when you listen to singers with great technique you’ll start to sing with it, too.” But there was a lot of wisdom in those words that went beyond vocal pedagogy. I siphoned far more than a strong voice and a knack for head banging through my years of obsessing over Paramore.

People don’t adore Hayley Williams because she’s famous or talented— it’s because she knows herself and she’s confident and comfortable being just that. Many times I’ve received the offhand advice to, “just be yourself”, as if it were an easy thing to do. But it’s not— it takes years of practice, searching and refining. And that’s really what I was up to all those years, without realizing it. The skills and experiences pursuing music gave me were just gravy. Sure, being able to belt like nobody’s business is fun, but more importantly, Hayley had taught me how to move through the world with humility, kindness, confidence and courage.

Gone are the days of elaborate “Hayley Williams” Pinterest boards and dream-journals full of collages crafted from delicately trimmed images from Paramore’s live shows. My fandom has far outgrown obsession and idolatry, though I find it charming and a bit poignant that I’m able to appreciate her and her work all the more because of it. She’s not someone I want to become. She’s not someone I need to tear down in order to feel okay about myself. She’s not perfect: no savior or messiah. She’s just a person who has bloomed where she was planted in the most beautiful of ways.

This spring has borne the pleasant surprise of Hayley’s solo debut, and I savor each new release of a single or video like a yummy dessert after a long day. I still let my mind swim in delicious fantasy futures for myself, although these days they involve studying astrophysics at an Ivy League school and someday going on to be an astronaut. But until then, here I am, awkwardly transitioning between phases of life: computer science major by day, singer by night, ball of existential dread constantly.

I can’t help but chuckle at the angsty persona of my teen years who so bitterly and enviously thought, “man, why does anyone like Hayley Williams?” Because damn, what’s not to like? She creates art as an honest expression of the way she experiences the world, far removed from motivations of ego or vanity. She exudes a vulnerable humility rare in the realm of child-prodigies thrown into fame. She’s paved a unique path for herself in an industry dominated by men. She’s constantly reinventing herself as an artist and embraces change. She’s a performer, entrepreneur, and brilliant artist. She’s Hayley Williams: 5’2”. 117 lbs. 112 decibels.