Memoir

I will begin this memoir by stating that I am writing this in an attempt to put together several things in my life that I had carried for a long time from my own point of view, and that I have consistently struggled to articulate to others. I do not think I can fully summarize my life in this way without distorting the events mentioned, especially when it involves interpreting one's own life trajectory from within systems, or even the way one is perceived by others, as that is a context I probably will not ever fully receive. I am not trying to present a definitive version of myself here, and I do not fully trust my own framing of these events, but I am trying to make my experiences legible in the way I had experienced them to the best of my ability.

I grew up as a child of Colombian immigrants in a small, working class, low income town with a majority Hispanic population. Looking back, the main educational pipeline was not very helpful for most people I spent my earlier years with. I had come to the conclusion that the region was starved of an exceptional education, as I noted the "low reputation" most local schools that my peers were placed onto had. On the other hand, I was singled out in several ways. I had tests performed on me continuously, provided a basis to the adults that I was, in some way, "intellectually superior" to my peers, which I don't believe even now, and for whatever reason, I vividly remember being asked if I wanted to skip the third grade in front of my parents, which my family verifies had happened. I had rejected it because I did not understand the question at the time. I still do not know how to fully interpret any of these evaluations, even now. Before this, I had been diagnosed with autism and ADHD. Despite my supposed "intellect," I was often ostracized as a "sissy nerd" by my peers, facing frequent beatings by the "macho soccer football" kids, I think, at a monthly rate, all the way up until I was sent out to attend Boston Latin for middle school, which made the feeling that I was being routed through pipelines that were uneasy and incomprehensible more intense. I did not feel at home in either environment, and they feel somewhat analogous to me now. I have not seen the majority of these people again in my life since then. Looking back, the thought of uneven life opportunities makes me feel deeply uncomfortable, possibly informed by the fact I lived in a working class town despite being labeled as "promising." I think everyone has uniquely failed in one way or another, and deserved more than what they got. If everything really did work, then I shouldn't have been such an anomaly. Others should have been "elevated" to the same degree that I was, if you can even call it that.

I developed an interest in music and joined Boston Latin's classical ensemble before leaving at the very end of the year, feeling completely disillusioned with the almost Whiplash-like, elitist culture surrounding the band and decided to start producing music independently. I remember our conductor outright accusing us of not taking his band seriously, or even trying to sabotage the band, sometimes even hurling profanity at us, which feels kind of hilarious in hindsight considering we were playing whimsical dinosaur suites. This was at the exact same time COVID had hit, and my grades quickly tanked, and I was unable to recover from getting mainly Ds until 11th grade, where I had started getting As and Bs again, but I was not in Boston Latin by the time I was in high school. I was often crowned as a brilliant, charismatic, and intellectual student who knew everything but just "refused" to apply their smarts and intelligence, simply because I was too lazy, although I kept explaining that I genuinely experienced a lot of mental strain trying to keep up with the tasks I was ordered with doing it, but a lot of it was always just reduced to me being a paradoxical talent, of course, involving the "brilliant but lazy" narrative, with one teacher telling me "you're just so brilliant that this work is too simple for you, to the point you see it as beneath you." I don't know if I felt patronized, pathologized, or like I was being preached to during that moment, but it was one of those. I just thought I was sick. I was once told by an adult, "it must be so lonely operating on a level above everyone else." That statement felt like a massive lie, one so dishonest, fundamentally isolating, separative of me from others, and even like being put on a false, uncomfortable pedestal I don't want. I was lonely, but because I felt like I lacked connections, not because of some vague "superiority."

After my experiences in Boston Latin, the idea of "elite education" became unsettling. It seemed to imply that certain students are more deserving of educational opportunities and resources than others, despite how much educational success seems shaped by circumstances outside of a student's control, such as class, race, family history, or even the way their earlier education was handled to begin with. It also became deeply unsettling watching the way students linked institutional recognition and prestige with their own self-worth and the way seemingly abstract numbers got tangled with identity. At the same time, watching students abandon educational opportunities altogether was just as uncomfortable, but I couldn't blame any student in either case as much as the circumstances surrounding them. Applying meritocratic standards to children felt deeply wrong to me.

Eventually, I got fed up with the elitist environment at the school again and switched to Boston Arts for high school as a production major, which ended up being the least supported major in the academy. My grade was the first grade to have the production major, as most of the people asking for it were seniors that had already left by the time I started attending and the production major was created, and for the first two years it was a music major with little to no direction, and once we had finally formed a solid identity, the admins randomly decided to switch us to theater, a decision which seemingly left very little people happy about it, or at least, the people I had the most immediate access to within the music and theater departments, regardless of whether they were staff members or students. Personally, I felt like an outsider within the theater environment, severely out of place with everyone else in the department, and disregarded by the administration. I knew absolutely nothing about theater and was not very happy about engaging in it, not just because I was unfamiliar, but because it felt at odds with what I wanted to do for myself as a musician, and because the behavior of my peers in theater felt weirdly alien to me compared to when I was in music.

In 11th grade, after being prescribed stimulants, my grades suddenly jumped and my behavior began resembling what felt like the idea of me that people projected onto me since elementary school again. Even before taking the medication, the people around me were consistently surprised I was apparently able to retain and recall large amounts of information quickly, and yet despite that, I was inconsistent in producing or executing tasks I was assigned, which people thought would've been a direct link to my ability to retain and recall large amounts of information quickly and easily, which was another thing that fed into the "brilliant but lazy" narrative that kept being put on me constantly beforehand. I began looking into the Frankfurt School as a way to explain how I felt I was being placed in the world. My interest with it comes almost entirely with my desire to build a society that is less built on the institution and more on the individual. Institutions should serve people rather than require people to reshape themselves into institutional legibility in exchange for access or recognition.

The sudden jump in grades after being prescribed stimulants felt like a confirmation of a fear that happened to be disregarded as teenage deviance by many of those surrounding me. If I am being measured in capability, or intelligence, or whatever is claimed, and if everything is as fair and functional as it is claimed to be, why did I have to go through several years of back and forths with multiple psychiatrists to start taking potentially dangerous medication to start performing at an "adequate level" and not have to risk being held back in life despite being told it was a "personal issue" prior to being medicated? The small glimpses I had seen of college culture left me petrified, appearing overly elitist, competitive, and the whole thing about expensive private academies being more "respectable," and seeing that felt somewhat dehumanizing combined with my prior knowledge of how class shapes educational experiences. I am not trying to state that I think the medication should've "made me smarter," I am not trying to say "I took meds and everything was fixed," I am trying to state a deeper concern about what is even measured to begin with, specifically with the "measure of intelligence" narrative. I do not want my future, morality and worth as a human being to be determined by conditions that are out of my control, and yet this is a constant threat present in my life.

Sometimes, when I'm at the school's black box, which I think is the main hangout for the theater department, I feel as though I am staring head-on to a future I lost. Admittedly, a selfish idea of a future, one where I could've been playing music 24/7. I don't know how to explain the feeling. I just feel a sense of deep frustration and sadness in there, whether it be another noisy assembly or staying until 6 PM, being asked to write the score for a play despite spending the entire time just sitting there silently doing nothing. I often try to force myself to zone out during the theater department's meetings because of how much the space makes me feel incompatible and sick. The fancy reunions in colorful, shiny stages preparing me for "my future" make me feel perpetually disappointed. They feel instrumental, they feel like a reminder of the fear I have about college metrics, of my worth being defined by something other than myself. It terrifies me how I see things described in such a positive manner, although I doubt this is exclusive to the theater department, the shift just happened to coincide with the timing in which I started feeling like I was repeatedly being put through more meritocratic humiliation rituals dressed up in language that sounds positive or affirming.

It is likely my own preconceived perception of theater as an artform that makes me feel such a loneliness in there, as I heavily disliked the artform long before I even started attending Boston Arts, but the music rehearsals that we run the tech for at the auditorium make me feel somewhat frightened, too. I don't know if it's the memory I have of the middle school band, but watching it feels like I'm watching a set controlled down to the most microscopic level. Slight mistakes getting cut out that I didn't even notice, or even thought sounded good, students having to move in specific ways, technically impressive pieces that don't sound good at all, although I do like Angine de Poitrine, so maybe I'm not one to judge. It seems the music students are perfectly fine with this, but it makes me wonder, who is this intended for, and do these people get to author themselves beyond the student-led ensembles? I have dismissed this as just me horribly missing the point of these ensembles. After all, I was told "there's a reason you're in production." Likewise, a friend of mine in the music department says the production team frightens her, as the work we do at her rehearsals looks exhausting and physically demanding, and while that is true, it's my favorite part of being in production. I feel alive running up and down the auditorium. I wonder if that's also how she feels about the ensembles.

I had soon formed a post-punk band out of anger named De Vega's Run. At times, it appears as though we are not thought of as serious musicians, but as provocative edgelords who wouldn't know the first thing about making good music by certain parts of the music department, but this may just be a foolish judgement informed by production's odd inferiority complex after the theater switch. It feels like bureaucratic barriers to our success constantly appear one after the other, and they don't feel very random, although that may just be my attempts to figure out a justification for my feelings of vague antagonism. Regardless, the band is one of my biggest sources of joy today, as it allows me to express myself with no filter, and lets me indulge in the styles of music I have always found the most enjoyment out of. The band partially owes its existence to Black Bouquet, a band, which, among other bands I will mention eventually, significantly helped me remake a narrative for myself instead of imposed from above, helped me explore my own queerness and trans identity, heavily informed the concept and sound of the band itself, and generally helped me find an identity and a way to express myself that felt more aligned with how I felt internally, as a person. Our first live performance was a cover of Ghost in the Hall by Black Bouquet.

Several of the band's members, myself included, are part of the production department, the students most consistently selected to take care of the musical equipment, but for a while, we existed somewhat outside of the "standard" music environment, again, impacted by the switch to theater. That frustration of being asked to take care of the musical equipment while not being allowed to use it as the "mainline music students" ended up breeding a small part of the frustrations that led to the band's inception. Prior to the pride assembly, I felt as though we were stuck in some sort of administrative limbo, constantly struggling to secure performances. The band, to me, represents a whole barrage of things important to me, specifically my ability to define myself, and the time I spend with those around me. It became one of the first things that felt authored by me and my friends, independently. We received criticism from some of the older music students for being too rowdy and unfocused, but I told them they were missing the point.

The pride assembly was our first performance, and it marked a shift in how I perceived the school environment. It was the last performance by the Funkaholics, the school's "token" band. The members had graduated, and it did not dawn on me until after talking to the organizer of the event after I had gotten done with it that it might've been the last time I would've seen them. Funkaholics had the first set in the assembly, and De Vega's Run had the very last. I did not expect the positive reception at all, all of the complaints of us being sloppy and immature stopped that very day. I had achieved my goal, to finally become part of the school's musical ecosystem while making the least "acceptable" music I could possibly think of. I wanted to show the people around me that they did not have to rely on what I saw as old musical traditions to be considered good musicians, that there was more beyond orderliness and formal music. It reminded me of when I first had come to the school, most of the music students looked up to the Funkaholics, most of the younger bands being clear derivatives of the Funkaholics. Now they're gone, and now we're the age they were during our first year, and the youth seem more open to campy vampire rock.

While De Vega's Run unofficial replacement of the Funkaholics made for a lot of funk-punk puns, I felt slightly unsettled when the organizer told me that we were no longer the only punk band in school, which was a title I wore proudly and boasted about. We were now straight up the only band in the school, the organizer said. Funkaholics appear to still be active outside of the school, which soothed my nerves. I wondered, what will the freshmen do with their new role models now that the Funkaholics have graduated? What comes after we're gone? I hope what happened to them happens to De Vega's Run. A younger band takes our place, making something more crude and boundary-pushing than what we did, while we continue to exist outside of the school. To me, the Funkaholics represented an idea of virtuosity, groove, precision. De Vega's Run was the complete rejection of all of those values. That shift made me realize that I do actually have some control over the environment, which both made me feel prideful and afraid. I feel both glee and hesitation towards the thought of setting standards. All I know is that I miss the Funkaholics already, even if they haven't been gone for that long. I saw them as mentors to us in a practical sense and rivals to us in an ideological sense. Their bassist taught me everything I knew about leading a band, and their guitarist tutored several of our members, but we got into a disagreement over their belief that "virtuosity is what pushes music forwards." I countered, "virtuosity is too reliant on established traditions to push music forward, what is needed is innovation," and I generally was very hostile to the idea of "acceptable music" that they represented throughout the musical environment. It was always my goal to expand the range of what music was visible and accepted within the school environment, and I hope whoever is next goes further than I did.

The junior-to-senior promotion ceremony was particularly frightening for me, and for reasons I feel could come across as pretentious or snobby. The way I saw it was more like seeing people getting bid on, getting reduced into qualifications, price tags, investments, products, even, and it also served as a reminder that I only have such little time left to be young, and that everything I had built was no longer guaranteed to last the moment I stepped out into the so-called "real world" that I felt unprepared for. While leaving Boston Latin felt like an escape, leaving here feels like a threat. I kept wondering if trying to keep learning for learning's sake was going to get me anywhere, or if it was learning for excellence that would, and I already don't trust what people tell me excellence is. I could not comprehend why everyone else around me was cheering and felt confused, because what I thought I was seeing horrified me.

The only times I have been able to accept the label of "genius" or "intellectual" in my life was when it came from close friends and not the adults in my life, as when it comes from my peers, it sounds more like celebration and recognition, but from the adults I feel like I am being isolated and singled out for things I struggle to recognize as positive. It felt as though I was not being praised for my personal achievements, for my quality as a person, for my strengths, for the things I valued in myself, but rather as institutional evidence rather than personal recognition. I would gladly accept the intellectual label if it didn't turn me into evidence most times it was applied to me, and I even play into it in casual environments because it's almost always received as bantering rather than "this is an underprivileged young intellectual with insanely high potential." The "potential" angle makes me feel like I am a tool being tested out. I want to be seen as a complex human being without having to depend on being legible as proof to be allowed to exist comfortably at all. I am uncomfortable being pedestalized, because it functions as a fancier-looking alienation.

I am dreading graduation as I do not want my only remotely successful music project to vanish in the blink of an eye, and then be thrown out into "the real world" immediately afterwards. I am extremely uncertain and fearful regarding my adulthood, as I do not know how I am going to continue my life as an adult, and I have been seeking out opportunities to receive higher education focused specifically on audio engineering despite having a horrible fear of high-level educational institutions, amplified by the uncertainty of what my life might look with and/or without it, as I do not want to live in constant economic failure due to avoiding colleges but I also do not want to put myself through a high, rigorous level of institutional demand, as well as the extreme financial toll it might take on my family, as even today we struggle to consistently put food on the plate. Regardless, I have decided that I will try to attend a college to ensure my future doesn't look too grim. Both of my parents are practically retired due to medical complications, leaving them unable to work. Despite the "feel-good empowerment story" that I feel my entire life has been shaped around, the reality feels more like the exact opposite, like my future will crumble upon making a slight wrong move that the world around me might just not like a bit, and I am living in constant existential uncertainty. I get the impression that people are confused by my intense fear of living within institutions, but can you blame me? What I was told and promised does not line up with my reality, and at times, I feel like the solutions I was promised only made the issue significantly worse for me. Regardless, I just go with it, as I do not want to risk future stability over angst. My main priorities are trying to pave a way for myself to live comfortably, and getting to be with the things and people I genuinely care about. I plan on attending BHCC, and I will try not to be afraid to fight my way out, but I can't really say I'm happy about it. It feels like an impending catastrophe more than anything else, but I don't think I have much of a choice.

I guess there is something of a silver lining to it, beyond all the measurement and the economic implications. I do deeply care about my education even if I am afraid of what is providing that education to me. It has always been a desire for me to learn as much as I possibly could, to absorb as much information as possible, and I hope that this could help me explore that past my adolescence and give me more time to invest into subjects that I wish to explore. I have been told, not just by people who seemed to be trying to advertise to me but by my own peers, that there is a very specific kind of person colleges tend to attract, people who I can engage in dialogue with, who care deeply about the arts, who value the pursuit of knowledge as much as I do, but all of that is more about the people than the environment the people exist within. I am more interested in meeting and collaborating with likeminded individuals than fulfilling a specific social role.

One thing I fear just as much as the possibility of economic failure is the possibility that I will come up on that stage someday, not with the people I built this band piece-by-piece with, but with a mask on my face, playing somebody that I am not in front of everyone else, with a narrative built on good looks, sanitizing away all the things about me that look ugly or unfavorable to whomever may be judging. That's not me. I am not a beautiful person, a role model, or a success story. I am a flawed, complex person, and I am happy about being that. I would rather be honest to myself rather than sell a lie to people who may be in the same position I am in right now, but I don't think I can negotiate that.