Will the Real Slim Shady Please Grow Up?
About a year-and-a-half ago, I turned 30. It’s nothing, really; I still feel, for the most part, like I’m 16. I’m just more tired because I have to work all the time and do laundry and cook food and clean the kitchen and stuff. The major change actually came when I was 28: There I was, teaching a class full of traditional-age college freshmen how to use a semi-colon, and I suddenly realized that I had no idea what they listened to.
Not a clue.
The Tool and Metallica t-shirts some wore gave those few away, but by today’s standards, those bands are distinctly “Old Skool.” It’s not that I think new music is any worse than the pop crap of the 1980s, when I was an adolescent, it’s just that my tastes have changed. I’ve become interested in the entire careers of songwriters and composers. I’ve started to see that is takes years and years to really appreciate the an artist’s talent (if she has any). If music sounds good at the absolute nadir of its popularity, it probably is good.
So what I’m not saying is that Eminem’s music is good or bad. I can’t be the judge of that yet since his career is still too new.
But I can say that he, too, is past 30. And he’s still riding a wave of adolescent rage. I still remember enough about the 8th grade to recall that adolescent rage, especially among white males, wasn’t really even cute then, though I’m relatively sure I took part in it.
I don’t take part in it anymore. It’s just somehow unbecoming a man, or in Eminem’s case, a male (at least), of 30 or more.
That’s really the point, though: there comes a time in your life when you’ve got to get over your “moms” and your childish recollections of how she may or may not have treated you. There comes a time when you’ve got to stop blaming the women who done you wrong for all your problems–weren’t you at least partially to blame for the trainwreck the relationship turned out to be too–even if it involves that bitch Kim?
In other words, by the time you’re 30 you should probably start taking a certain amount of responsibility for your yourself; you should have a little control over who you are. Granted, Freud made a whole career out of blaming “moms,” but at least he had the decency to intellectualize it.
It may, in fact, be time to grow up, Mr. Mathers.
I know, that sounds harsh, and it may very well kill your career, but you’ve made enough money already, I’m sure, that even in today’s market, if you’ve invested halfway well, you can live luxuriously and never have to record again.
That might even give you time for those much-needed therapy sessions.
I’m not saying you can’t still be enraged–I get enraged on a daily basis myself–but that maybe you should find something more important to get enraged about. After all, as tough as I’m sure your childhood was, it was still ten times better than that of a good chunk of the world’s population.
It’s time, Em.
You’re 30. Get over it.