And the old man just looked at me and didn’t say anything.

And I thought about what my fans would think if they could see right then what I was seeing. What would it mean for them if they knew that this was the end game? How would it affect the way they look at me now? Would they still like it when I posted a picture online? Would they still show up at my concerts and scream their heads off when I did my dance moves? They must all know somewhere in the back of their minds that this is where we’re heading, but what would it be like for them to actually SEE it? To actually hold it in their hands?

I noticed that the old man was singing something. He was just like, mouthing it really quietly, and so I listened—I pricked up my ears and really concentrated on what was coming out of his mouth—and even though he sounded like me, like, even though his voice was still undeniably MY voice, I guess just because I was so much older or like, because my voice had gotten really worn down over the years, it just sounded kind of … normal. Like, it wasn’t bad—I still sounded like someone who could carry a tune, maybe even like a professional—but the actual quality of the voice, the actual timbre and resonance, were nothing to write home about.

And I listened to the song he was singing, and I realized that it was “The Star-Spangled Banner.” LOL. It didn’t even really register at first, because the way he was singing it, it was just like he was taking the song at face value, you know? There were no trills, no extra measures, no pyrotechnics—he was just like, doing the song. I realized that without all the extras, without all the embellishments and the showmanship, the song actually kind of … sucks. There’s nothing to hold on to in terms of a hook or a melody.

And I tried to think back to the moment when my twelve-year-old self became a superstar. I tried to travel back in time to when my dad and I recorded that video at my desk in St. James. I was there, pulling out every trick in the book, putting all this energy and emotion and ambition into this thing that was probably never meant to be sung like that in the first place, that wasn’t even a song, really. I tried to connect with the little boy who was putting everything he had into this poem about rockets and bombs and ramparts so that he could prove to the world that he deserved to be where I am now, that the world had no choice but to put him there. And right at the moment when we finished recording, right when my dad pressed the button on the computer and said: That’s it, I paused everything and asked myself: Is this the life you imagined? Is this who you thought you would become?