What Makes You You

The song is two versions of the same daydream. First verse: quit music, move to the Midwest, duplex, dog, patchy lawn, online tech job, six-month boot camp in the cart. Second verse: same impulse, different details: sell the guitars, giant TV, fantasy football, Roth IRA funded by deleting Pro Tools.

Both verses land on the same question, broken across lines so Do sits on its own: do you stay yourself when you lose what you do? The title pun is the whole point: what makes you you might be the doing, not some stable self underneath it.

It’s funny and a little sincere. The suburban fantasy isn’t mocked; it’s imagined in specific detail (plastic picket fence, patchy lawn) because that’s how escape fantasies actually work. You don’t picture “happiness,” you picture a duplex and a dog. The boot camp and the Roth IRA are the sensible-life version of the same urge that made you buy gear and learn Pro Tools in the first place.

Written while recovering from Guillain-Barré, when guitar wasn’t an option and the question had time to sit. The personal version of that season is The Bent Stick (essai #1). Same recovery arc as 無門関, different angle on not knowing who you are when the doing stops.

I also like Yu Yu Hakusho a lot.

Thought about quitting music
Moving to the midwest
Buy a duplex
Rent the other side
Live a sensible life
In a quiet suburb
Maybe I could get a dog
I'd probably have a backyard
Plastic picket fence
And a patchy lawn
Maybe I could find an online
Tech job
Add to cart
A six-month boot camp
Do you stay yourself
When you lose what you
Do
That which makes you you
Thought about quitting music
Selling all my guitars
Buy a tv
That could fill a wall
Dedicate my time
To fantasy football
Maybe I could fund
A Roth IRA
With all the cash I save
Deleting Pro Tools
Do you stay yourself
When you lose what you
Do
That which makes you you
You