When I was finishing high school and preparing to enter the world, I had my heart set on becoming a professional writer. Writing was something that I enjoyed doing as a teenager and, from the feedback that I received from friends and teachers, writing was something I had some skill at doing. So why not become a real writer out in the real world? That was the path that I chose for myself as I left home and moved to Toronto to begin my university career which, in turn, would serve as a launching pad for my real career as a movie and television screenwriter. Well, the thing about life is that you have to move from imagining what it is going to be like to actually living that life in the real world. For many of us, adulthood was not what we expected it to be. It was hard work. It involved having to do many things that you didn’t like or want to do but had to anyway. Self-reflection and navel gazing are part and parcel with the process of adapting to the situations we all find ourselves in as we enter the real world. Hopefully, you will either continue to trust the process by which you have formed your initial life vision and carry on along the path you have chosen or else, you will come to recognize the folly of your ways and chart a new course for yourself going forward. For me, I ended up pursuing a career as a school teacher. The only writing I did for most of my adult life came in the form of stories I wrote with and for my students, along with newsletters and report cards I wrote for their parents. It wasn’t until I retired in 2018 that I revisited that initial goal of becoming a writer. That was when I started the act of blogging on the very blog site upon which you are presently reading these words. In the six years that have passed, I have had my words read by many great people and I see my “stats” continuing to climb in a manner that makes my investment advisor envious. Am I ever sorry that I let so much of my life go by without giving writing a true chance? No. Not at all. Sometimes life knows what is truly best for you, even when you don’t quite realize that for yourself. Time has shown me that I followed the correct path for me. I am proud of what I managed to accomplish as a school teacher. I treasure the relationships I have with students and their families. As well, it was because I was a teacher that I met my wife, which is the best possible outcome I could have achieved in life. From that union, I became a father. There is no higher calling than that. My life has worked out well and continues to unfold in a pleasing manner. I am lucky and blessed to be living the life I do, even if it is different from the vision I had in my head as a young man about to graduate from high school all those many years ago.
As individuals, we are all subject to the consequences of our life decisions. Collectively, as a societal group, each generation tends to face the same milestones along the way as we age. Milestones such as getting a job and starting a career, getting married, becoming a parent, owning a home, dealing with health issues, finding passion through our hobbies and personal relationships, dealing with death of friends and loved ones, etc., are all things that tend to be rather universal in nature. What changes for each new generation is the external societal situations in which they encounter these personal milestones. The world in which Baby Boomers grew up was different than that of the next group, Gen. Z which, in turn, was a different experience than that faced by Millennials and onward down the timeline. Because the times in which each generation grows into adulthood are relatively unique to their specific time period, each generation tends to view their personal and collective experiences as being special. The music, the fashion, the mating rituals, the work environment, etc., all tend to possess elements that no other generation had to deal with. For that reason, we tend to keep seeing movies being made that are really the same movie, just set in a different generational milieu. Today’s movie in question is called Reality Bites. It is a movie in which a series of people from Gen. Z faces the prospect of entering adulthood and dealing with the consequences of what they find there. It is really the same movie as The Big Chill was for the Baby Boomer generation a decade or so earlier. *(You can read a post about The Big Chill here). Reality Bites starred Ethan Hawke, Wynona Ryder and Ben Stiller as young twenty-somethings attempting to reconcile the reality of their lives as they are unfolding as compared to how they had hoped life would be when they were younger. Like The Big Chill, Reality Bites makes good use of era-appropriate songs throughout the movie. This brings us to the song of the day “Stay (I Missed You) by Lisa Loeb.
Lisa Loeb had a huge hit with the song “Stay (I Missed You). It went all the way to the very top of the charts when it was released as the debut single from the soundtrack album for Reality Bites. But a funny thing about that happening was that reaching No. 1 on the charts made Lisa Loeb unique in all of music industry history. You see, Lisa Loeb’s life path had not prepared her even remotely for the possibility of this coming true for her. Up until the release of the movie Reality Bites, Lisa Loeb was not a professional singer. Loeb was raised in a medical family. She and her sister both enjoyed music and were indulged in this passion by her parents in the form of instruments and the requisite lessons being purchased on their behalf. As Loeb entered adulthood, she performed at parties, coffeehouses and open mic nights but had never been offered a recording contract. She created original music for the sake of being a creative person. The act of songwriting and performing filled her heart with satisfaction so she kept on singing and writing new material whenever she could. Among her family and friendship circle, Lisa Loeb was regarded as being talented. In time, as young artists often do, Lisa Loeb began to enter into co-operative ventures with other struggling artists. For example, she would create music for a new play that an actor friend may have written. It was in the course of doing this that she came to know Ethan Hawke. As you may know, Ethan Hawke got his break as an actor in the Robin Williams’ movie Dead Poets Society. But even with the success of that film, Hawke was not immediately inundated with scripts to read and movie offers to consider. In the down time that followed, Ethan Hawke came to know a young woman who lived across the street from him named Lisa Loeb. While they never dated, Loeb and Hawke became friends and found themselves at the same social events from time to time. It was during one of those chance social encounters that Hawke asked Loeb what music she was working on. In reply, Lisa Loeb gave Ethan Hawke a cassette with several songs on it. One of those songs was “Stay (I Missed You)”. Ethan Hawke listened to the cassette and liked the song, especially “Stay (I Missed You)”. Fast forward a few months, the producers of Reality Bites had cast the movie and offered Ethan Hawke the lead role. In the course of shooting the film, Ben Stiller took charge of organizing the music that would come to form the soundtrack to the film. In the process of compiling the song list that would form the soundtrack, Stiller asked his cast mates for input. It was at that time that Ethan Hawke played Lisa Loeb’s cassette for Stiller. The song “Stay (I Missed You)” was chosen for inclusion on the soundtrack by Stiller and ended up playing as the movie ends and the credits roll. As mentioned, the song was chosen to be the lead single from the soundtrack because it was an original song. When “Stay (I Missed You)” made it to the top of the charts, it became the first and only time a singer without a recording contract has ever had a No. 1 hit song in modern music history. It made Lisa Loeb a star and changed the course of her life.
Needless to say, a recording contract was offered in jig time to Loeb. The video for the song was directed by her friend, Ethan Hawke. It is famous for being shot entirely in one continuous take. However, while she has recorded and released many albums in the years that have followed, “Stay (I Missed You)” remains her one really big hit. For many people in her situation, the typical end to her story would be that she would tour on the nostalgia circuit, playing her one hit song for adoring audiences again and again and again. But that is not what Loeb ended up doing with her life. Being someone who enjoys the act of creativity is at the heart of who Lisa Loeb truly is. Thus, after a few years of trying to replicate her Pop music success from the Reality Bites soundtrack and having no real commercial success, Lisa Loeb switched creative gears and started releasing Children’s albums. In fact, she has won Grammy awards for her efforts to record and promote “camp songs”. Buoyed by her success in that genre, Loeb established a charitable foundation that helps to sponsor underprivileged children so that they might get to experience the pleasure of attending summer camp. In addition to music, Lisa Loeb is also known for the stylish glasses she has worn her whole life. Because of the attention her glasses always get, she now runs a company that produces glasses similar to the ones she likes to wear. So not only is Lisa Loeb a Pop singer and an award-winning children’s singer, she is also a successful business entrepreneur. The final chapter in her professional story comes from Loeb having a good, grounded sense of self. Being a one-hit wonder can be a good thing because it means that you had at least one hit song that you can be proud of but, on the other hand, it can be embarrassing to only have one hit song, too, if you let it get you down. Lisa Loeb decided to have fun with her image as a one-hit wonder and has appeared on several television shows as herself. If you were to ask my daughters about Lisa Loeb, their first reaction would be that she is that singer from one of their favourite shows, Fuller House. It was not by fluke that the plotline of the episodic arc that Lisa Loeb found herself in was one in which one of the main Fuller House characters, Stephanie, had started a career in music, had one minor hit and was wrestling with the decision to switch over to being a children’s performer. In the end, Stephanie followed her heart and became a children’s singer…just like Lisa Loeb did in real life. And, just like Lisa Loeb, the character of Stephanie found true happiness from the act of following her heart.
It all just goes to show you that the path you dream for yourself is often not the path that life rolls out for you to follow. I am thrilled with how my life has turned out, even though it was not as I had envisioned it to be when I was a teenager. I have watched movies such as The Big Chill and Reality Bites and have seen how young characters deal with how the real world works in settings that reflect the times in which each generation actually lived. And now, I know the story of Lisa Loeb and how she became the most unlikely of pop stars and ended up being a designer of custom glasses, a children’s music titan and a guest star of some cache on modern television shows that I watch with my own children. Life is a precious gift that we all open with varying degrees of satisfaction. It is not for me to say to you that life’s gift should be accepted and followed unequivocally. That is for each of you to decide. What I will say is that being open to where that gift leads you is the key element of it all. As I enter my 60s, I do so with a tiny bit of wisdom accrued from years of following where life has led me and basking in the happiness and simple pleasures that I have discovered along the way. I am sure that a teenage Lisa Loeb would never have believed that she would win a Grammy award for producing children’s songs nor that she would be a successful eyeglass designer but I’ll bet that, like me, she wouldn’t change any of it for the world. Happiness is not something you map out and then go out to find it waiting for you. It is something that happens to you along the way. To all of you, I wish you happiness and fulfillment on your own journey. Thanks for reading my words today. Your presence here makes me happy, too. Thanks.
The link to the video for the song “Stay (I Missed You)” by Lisa Loeb can be found here. ***The lyrics version is here.
The link to the official website for Lisa Loeb can be found here.
The link to the video for the official trailer for the film Reality Bites can be found here.
The link to the video for Lisa Loeb’s appearance on the television show Fuller House can be found here.
***As always, all original content contained in this post remains the sole property of the author. No portion of this post shall be reblogged, copied or shared in any manner without the express written consent of the author. ©2024 http://www.tommacinneswriter.com
And Happiness to you ❤️❤️
To you and yours as well.❤️❤️