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One of the more recent documentaries on rock star legend Jim Morrison entitled “When You’re Strange” offers an interesting new perspective on the celebrity. Jim Morrison is an infamous figure, known for haranguing his audiences in between performances, frequent altercations with the law, and open admission to illicit drug use.

Although his band’s music was a popular, Morrison’s personal image struggled. Even though Morrison would self-identify as a poet and creative genius, the public felt his antics were uncalled for, his belittling attitude towards his fans arrogant, and his unpredictable, reckless actions menacing. Morrison’s behavior is not unlike hip hop star Kanye West’s today (Kanye actually refers to himself as this generation’s Jim Morrison, interestingly enough).

However, as the documentary I mention above notes, Morrison’s awareness of his identity being an integral part of his music was quite clear. One excellent example is the song LA Woman, and the famous refrain “Mr. Mojo Risin’/Gotta keep on risin’/risin, risin…” – the emotional and musical climax of a radio hit, and a song frequently requested live. As band members note, Morrison invented this phrase on the spot, and later revealed that it was an anagram (he just rearranged the words of his own name – like Tom Marvolo Riddle in Harry Potter).

This particular moment of studio session songwriting brilliance is emblematic of a larger point – Jim Morrison’s wild “bad boy” persona fueled his band’s fiery sound. As band member Manzarek notes in interviews, “he would do things just to see if he could get away with them. To say he did them.” One might even risk the thought that if Morrison was aware of his persona and its relationship to his music, perhaps his wild behavior was in fact a form of performance art.

Jim’s antics on stage, according to his band members, could be highly energized, or highly dangerous – one could never tell. On bad days, Jim would consume so much alcohol and LSD that he would yell at the crowd, or pass out, forcing the band to continue without him.

Another time, Jim blacked out on stage from drinking heavily and dosing on LSD and proclaimed, “I AM THE LIZARD KING!!! I CAN DO ANYTHING”. The Doors’ label later released a band compilation entitled “Lizard King” – concretizing Jim’s physical performance into a musical object.

During this holiday season, as my family was heading back from Jirisan, a mountain in South Korea, I was listening to the audiobook of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (narrated by none other than Stephen Fry) in the car. Never before had I even considered listening to an audiobook, but it was a fairly long drive and I get carsick easily if I have my head bent over a book whilst in a moving vehicle.

Interestingly enough, I was at the part, where the massive computer named Deep Thought, revealed that the answer to life, the universe, and everything, is 42. I chuckled a little. Not saying British humour isn’t hilarious – because there were other parts of this novel that had me laughing considerably harder – but I suppose the joke hit me with a pang of bleakness. Nobody and nothing knows the secret of life dummy. You are chasing a fools errand.

But this emotional pitfall quickly resolved itself, for me anyways, because I swiftly recovered by remembering that life may very well be, incredibly, shitty if we knew the answer to such a question. And by that, I mean shitty all the time. It is a hunch. Nothing more really. I may very well be wrong. It may very well be the case that if we knew the answer to that non-question, we would live like gods.

Yet, isn’t it the fact that we have both the inability to resolve such dumbfounding queries whilst also having the ability to conceive of them in the first place, what makes us human?

And at that very moment, as I heard the passage in my earbuds, we were passing by exit number 42 on the highway.

What a coincidence I thought, and how appropriate that such a coincidence would happen whilst listening to a book that features an invention called the Infinite Improbability Drive.

It was then that I thought, it is when moments like these happen – moments of pure chance, amidst all the universal chaos, when the stars align to make something like this to happen – that I get this jovial feeling that everything will be ok. That not everything will go to shit. Well eventually, things do go to shit, but life offers you small victories from now till then. Just don’t panic.

Many artistic people are inspired by their dreams. It makes absolute sense. The dream world is full of impossibilities and infinities; it is the very essence of human creativity and art relies on that. There are even people who practice the belief that dreams are extensions of our personalities, our hopes, and our wishes. So, what does it mean when one doesn’t dream, or only dreams in banality? What does it mean when one wants to live creatively, but in the perfect place for it to happen, they only get blackness?

I have always wanted to pursue creative endeavors. Even being a Neuroscience student now, I only pursue that field because the brain is astoundingly beautiful. In addition to that, I still want to write a novel, a novel that would be full of metaphor and quiet emotion. Unfortunately, my dreams (or lack of) want to force me into bleakness. They say everybody dreams when they sleep, we just may not remember them. That may be true, but even the dreams that I do remember are sadly mundane. Most of the time, I wake up from blackness, but those special times when I do remember something, they might as well have not happened. My nightmares consist of me waking up too late for an exam review and my dreams find me finding an extra pencil when I thought I had forgotten one. How absolutely, terrifyingly boring.

What does this mean for me? As a child, I was full of creativity. I constantly doodled and spent hours in imaginary worlds. I loved reading fantasy novels and writing my own fantasy stories too. This reflected in my dreams as well. They were fun and exciting and scary, but it’s not the same anymore. Now, when I doodle, all I end up with is spirals and squiggles, I stick to reading classical fiction, and when I write, it only ever ends up as a personal fiction or a personal essay. I can’t get outside of myself in my dreams and I can’t escape myself in my real life. How do I move on from here when I spend every night in a void?

Maybe it is only because I’m in a transitional state in my life right now. This is the first true time I’ve ever really embraced my emotions and didn’t try to run from them, this is the first time where I’ve ever really been truly open to another person, and this is the first time where I’ve really tried to think about who I am as a person. Perhaps it’s good that I am spending more time for myself than hiding behind imaginary powers and landscapes, but I have the urge to create something that is not about myself. I want to leave my body and create something outside of it, but it has become impossible. Well, for right now, I’ll be working on myself some more. This is my farewell to dreams and the hope that they come to visit me again someday.

Today “artsy” is synonymous with Instagram photos and DIY crafts from Pinterest. Everyone is a photographer, an editor, a creator. For many people, our lives on Instagram and our lives in the real world don’t quite match up. Thanks to the world of filters and editing tools, it doesn’t take much work to enhance, so to speak, your life. This is amazing in so many ways, but it also teaches people to devalue the grit or even dullness of their own lives. Sitting on the couch watching a movie or spending quality time with your family suddenly becomes less valuable if it is not captured in photo form and social media worthy. Though your ratty sweatpants may be the most pleasing outfit, they’ll never make it onto your Instagram page. In this way, the virtual idealization of reality, once found only in television, movies, and video games, are now merging with your actual life. Instead of creating a Sims character, you are creating a self character, constantly trying to chisel a glamorized public self on the pretense of giving a glimpse into your private world. Beacause of this it’s a lot more difficult to find spaces where you can let your guard down, leave the makeup off when going over to your friend’s, for fear of the inevitable snapshots that will be taken. Posed artsy “candids” shower the pages of Instagram though the subject presumably asked someone to take them.

This changing idea of self representation is messy. In many ways, it reflects the history of art, especially photography, where the piece can appear to be a happenstance capturing of a moment in time, when really it is the product of much staging and editing (like the Jeff Wall photograph above). On the other hand, it interferes with our sense of ourselves by shaping it around public reception. Only 10 likes on Instagram seems to tell you that that particular event isn’t worthy of public sharing, and thus is it really worthy of anything? Similarly, travel seems to be bogged down by excessive photography, as if we are so fearful of losing the moment or that it will not be recognized as worthy unless it ends up on Facebook, that we end up experiencing the entire thing through the lens of the camera. Art is supposed to influence and shape the self, but the individual is not meant to shape his or herself into a work of art. Imperfection is beauty and many of the beauties of life are those outside of the frame.

For many young adults, New Year’s Eve is a fun night out with friends filled with booze, cold hands and an anticlimactic countdown to midnight where they may or may not kiss a stranger under conveniently placed mistletoe. This year I spent my New Year’s Eve at home hanging out with my parents toasting in the new year with some sparkling apple juice and watching Kathy Griffin and Anderson Copper awkwardly interact on CNN with a morbid fascination. As my dad flipped through the channels we stumbled upon Idina Menzel’s performance of Frozen’s Let it go (for those of you who have not seen it watch the link below, the money note is at 0:16).

As I heard her struggle, I cringed. I know what it is like to be on stage and have a note not go your way, yet I tried my best to trust in her technique and waited for the epic Eb believing that she could recover from one or two bad notes. Unfortunately, that note didn’t go much better. In fact, it went much worse.

After my dad changed the channel I couldn’t help but wonder if I was simply being too critical or if everyone else would notice what I considered an egregious error, and if they did, I worried about what horrible things the internet would shortly be saying about the immensely talented Idina Menzel.

Of course the internet exploded with vicious comments and so on her Twitter account Idina Menzel posted the following response:

In one way, I agree with what she says. Yet in another, much bigger way, I have a huge problem with her definition of success.

Most musicians would agree that in a performance there are more important things than the pitches and rhythms that appear on the page, it’s about making music and connecting with the audience through what is written on the page by making it real. Yet, correct pitches and rhythms must be there, otherwise the audience is pulled out of the story as they cringe and turn to their friend asking “Did you hear that? What was that?”.

I recognize that the performance was not under ideal conditions, but she accepted the job knowing that it would be exceedingly cold and the danger of a major vocal flub on such a demanding piece. Still, I do not hold it against her. What bothers me is the percentage she used.

In live theatre, there will never be a perfect performance. Notes will be botched and you have to move on. If you are lucky, the audience doesn’t notice. If they do, by the end of the performance they will probably forget about it because you will have sung so many good notes throughout the show you will erase the unpleasant memory. While one or two, and maybe even ten or fifteen botched notes can be forgiven in a performance, using Idina Menzel’s math of 3 million notes in musical and success being getting 75% of them right she would consider getting 750,000 notes wrong a successful performance. To me, that is horrifying number.

In school 75% is a C. In the engineering world 75% accuracy in your calculations means your product will not work and someone could end up hurt or worse. I believe that in music it is the same way. One or two notes can be forgiven, but not 25% of them.

The notes Idina Menzel sang on New Year’s Eve were just a few of the millions of notes she will sing in her lifetime so we can, and will, forgive them as the memories are replaced by new, better ones in performances yet to come. But it is not right to pretend that her New Year’s Eve performance was a successful one – because if that is considered success in music, I may start avoiding live productions.