That Childhood Crush

I cannot tell you how sad I was the day that the Red Hot Chili Peppers announced they would stop touring after Stadium Arcadium. I wasn't as sad as if my dog died, but I was pretty down about it. It had been a bucket list item for me to see RHCP live since I first saw Anthony Kiedis on screen with the release of the music video for "Otherside" on MTV. Out of the darkness your eyes are met with a figure in a black trench coat, with his bleach blonde hair accentuating a disheveled appearance as his soft dark eyes divert from the lens of the camera recording him as he sings.

Yes, I am old enough to remember when MTV actually still played music videos all day. My older sister had left the downstairs TV on MTV that morning while she was getting ready and just before it was time to go out to the bus stop this song comes on. "Otherside" was like nothing I had heard before and I was mesmerized by the man singing the flat tones yet making it sound so melodic. There was an intricacy to his voice that made the song work seemingly only for him as a world of black and gray played out around him in the video and the lyrics trudged on about the predicament of feeling you are trapped somewhere between life and death. My nine year old self did not even know what a crush was supposed to feel like so, in essence this simply became my favorite song for years to come. From that point on I collected every RHCP album that came out and dreamed of when I would be able to finally meet this man in person. It wasn't even a physical sort of attraction. I never said things like "Oh, he's so hot!" or "I'd like to marry him." Other girls my age would say such things about rappers, boy bands, or country singers. For me it was "I want to be an artist talented enough to be worthy of that person." It's a crazy thought maybe when you're nine years old. Maybe, it was especially crazy because we are talking about an artist that had no inhabitations to walking out on stage wearing nothing but a sock.

Instead I was distantly in love with a man that performed in paper fantasy lands that depicted horror tales, flew dragonflies in video games while singing about California, and danced among mushrooms and butterflies made of light. Even if it may have been the drugs, there was a creativity there that seemed boundless, and my childhood self will always have a light on for that.

As an adult I can say I still deeply admire this person, now not only as an artist but also for the physically attractive person he is and was. As I got older I also realized that part of the attraction was the boldness of the person. Performances like what the RHCP put on were not exactly common place, they were the front runner of punk gone mainstream that made art like theirs acceptable and fun for a younger generation. As they aged they had a way of bringing that energy with them to new audiences through out the 90s and early 00s, even though that meant they were toning themselves down a bit.

For these and many reasons I will always have a school girl crush on Kiedis. The art, the laughter, the intelligence and boldness of which each act was executed even when it was outrageous; all of these things taught me what I love and admire in people. If I were to have a kid, I could only hope they could learn as much from their celebrity crush. Mainly I would hope they would learn to be inspired.