Never meet your heroes.
My friend told me that he doesn’t have any heroes. He told me that he found it weird that I did. I said, ‘But what about Eminem? What about Robin Williams? Or Julius Caesar? You love those guys!’ He replied that he did really like them (FYI his Spotify Unwrapped this year was like 99% Eminem) but that he would never call them his ‘heroes’.
It just got me thinking about what constitutes a hero. By my standards, Eminem and Robin Williams, and even Julius Caesar, could all be considered my friends’ heroes. He watches/listens/reads up on them, he knows a lot about them, he admires all of their work. He knows almost every lyric to Eminem’s songs. He googles all the references Eminem makes and reads online interpretations of them in his spare time. I mean, I love Eminem, he’s one of my favourite rappers, but compared to him I am a lazy fan. I guess what he’s saying is that he doesn’t look up to them, they’re not his role models. He sees their flaws and he wouldn't want to be like any of them. Perhaps with the exception of Julius Caesar. He’s got a bit of an emperor complex.
It’s funny because I hate this word ‘role model’. Yet, by a lot of peoples’ standards, I have a fair few of them. I hate the word ‘role model’ because I don’t think anyone’s behaviour should be an example for others. I think that, as a society, the pressure we place on people to be role models for others is unrealistic and completely disregards the complexity of what it means to be human. ‘Role models’ are boring, bland. They teach you to stay in school, to not do drugs, to follow the rules. For me, the word ‘role model’ is so far removed from my conception of a ‘hero’. When I think about where I draw the line between ‘role models’ and ‘heroes’ what springs to mind is that heroes are, for myself at least, intensely personal. Whereas role models are generic, they’re unattainable, a standardised symbol of society’s nonpareil. They’re designed to make kids behave and to make adults feel bad. I use this word ‘designed’ deliberately because they are, in a sense, constructed out of the principles society holds dearest. I hate that. I hate the inauthenticity of it.
I kind of wish I wasn’t the type of person to have heroes. The word ‘hero’ always seems so lame. I always feel like such a loser when I talk about my heroes. But I can’t help it, I get consumed by certain people. Particularly as a teenager. In fact, almost all of my heroes are people that I found when I was thirteen and now I feel as though I grew up with them. I’m too far gone. It’s very difficult to let go of whatever you loved when you were thirteen because you can still remember how much of your heart and soul went into loving them. The exact memories may be a touch hazy, but what isn’t hazy is the ache in your heart when you think about how much they meant to you. When you’re a teenager, you feel ugly and alone and when you find someone to project all of that angst and misery onto, it’s one of the greatest feelings in the world.
My heroes are not people that I necessarily want to be anything like, but they are people who I learnt from. The reason they are my heroes and not my role models is because I see their flaws, they’re so glaringly obvious. It wasn’t so much about them, but about what I put into them. It’s not about their actuality, but about my reality at that time. They’re almost like my imaginary friends except they were all real. When I think about who I would consider my adolescent heroes, I can reel off a list in the blink of an eye — Syd Barrett, Marilyn Monroe, Patti Smith, Eric Clapton, Morrissey, Robert Smith, J.D Salinger, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Rimbaud, Allen Ginsberg. I was so engrossed in each of their lives, I spent hours upon hours scouring Youtube and Google for every tidbit about each of their lives. I read every book, listened to every album, watched every documentary. I became a walking-talking encyclopedia. I have always learnt things in this way. I get obsessed with something and I have to know everything about them.
I did leave one person off that list. That’s because he is the reason I’m writing this today. I hated being a teenager, I wouldn’t relive it for anything — the only thing that I would ever want to go back and experience is the first time I heard Bob Dylan. I remember it vividly — I had obviously heard of him before but I was too busy being obsessed by Pink Floyd at the time so I hadn’t had a chance to check him out. One day my curiosity overwhelmed me and I decided that I would listen to him. I went down to HMV on a shopping trip with my mum and sister, and I bought The Best of Bob Dylan and Highway 61 Revisited at the same time. It makes me laugh now to think that anyone could ever fit the best of Bob Dylan onto one CD, but at the time I was completely innocent of who he really was. On the way back from town, I made my mum put the CD on in the car. And that was it.
I know that that anecdote seems massively overdramatic but at thirteen, I was massively overdramatic. My thirteen-year-old self was absolutely blown away by what I heard. The thought of it still makes me cry. I had never heard a voice like it, never heard words like that. I really fell in love with him, I felt like he was my own private friend. Bob once said about Woody Guthrie that ‘you can listen to his songs and learn how to live’. Well, that was how I felt about Bob. I didn’t know what I wanted my life to be like when I was thirteen — ten years later, I only have a bit more of an idea — but it was then that I learnt what I wanted my life to sound like.
You might say, ‘hang on Rebecca, aren’t you basically described a role model here?’, and you shall be forgiven for your enquiry. However, I wouldn’t call Bob a role model of mine because I never modelled myself after him, I never wanted to be like him. It was more that I wanted him to be like me. I wanted our lives to be intertwined. It was intensely personal. I wanted to know everything about him — even the arrogance, the affairs, the quite frankly asshole behaviour. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Bob Dylan through rose-tinted glasses (although I can think of some people who would disagree). However, they mistake love for blind worship. The older I get, the more I can identify his faults. But he remains in my thoughts because of what he meant to me at that time.
I listened to everything he’s ever made. I watched every documentary. I read (almost) every book. He meant the world to me and he still does. His words are, obviously, astounding. But what I always loved more than that was the sound of the record, the sound of his voice. It was like a little time capsule, taking me back to the 60s. As a teenager, as you might have already guessed, I bloody loved the 60s.
Nowadays I spend too much time in the present to ever really indulge in the past. I no longer listen to Bob Dylan every day. I am busy learning new things, about new people. I am busy succeeding in some ways and fucking up in others. My obsession with many of my teenage loves has faded somewhat — my adult life has slightly hampered my ability to obsess in the way that I used to. I’m too jaded now. Don’t get me wrong, I still am reading new things that capture my heart and mind — the works of George Orwell immediately spring to mind. But I simply no longer have the time (or to be honest, the inclination) to watch their entire filmography or listen to their entire discography, or read all of their biographies, on a loop. It’s difficult to describe the frenzy that gripped me when I was a teenager. It was all-encompassing. It seized every part of me. Nowadays, I still watch Peep Show and The Thick of It on a loop, and I could still quote parts of those shows off by heart if I wanted to, but my obsession now lacks the intensity it once had.
I think what I am trying to say is that heroes are perhaps acutely teenage phenomena. The ability to really, truly to be moved by someone is an indulgence it is difficult to give oneself up to once you have passed twenty. I have always kind of wanted to be one of those people who is too cool to have heroes. There’s something very cool about those who are not moved by certain things in the same way I am. They always seem so much more self-assured. However, I also think there’s a beauty in loving someone to the degree that I did as an adolescent. I had such passion back then. I still have passion now, don’t get me wrong, but for whole genres of literature rather than for specific people at a specific point in time.
I used to be sad about losing that obsessive edge I once had but I have since realised that you can’t just get stuck in that angsty adolescent mindset. I have to keep on keeping on, to quote Bob himself. I know that Bob Dylan is still there anytime I want to listen to him. I still allow myself time to go back and relive him. Over the first lockdown, on the hour-long walks I took each day, I listened to every album again in order to release from 1962 to the present day, and I loved it just as much. If anything, I took more from what I heard, being so much older, having so much more life experience than I did back then. Who knows what I’ll take from his music in ten years, twenty years, perhaps even thirty years in the future. That’s exciting to think about. Seeing Bob live is still the best day of my life so far. My mum drove me from Southampton to Blackpool for the occasion and I am still grateful. It’s still the best present she’s ever given me. I was in the stalls, so close to him. I cried buckets. I guess I could have gone right up to the stage, but I didn’t. Despite my hero-worship, I still thought it would be best to keep my distance. And that’s the difference between a hero and a role model.