Blooming Under Moonlight - Nolita Jackens

I remember the feeling well. I used to dream and ache for the life of a rock star, a free-floating artist, a mysterious writer. Something about that seemed within reach as a teenager but not so much as an adult. My generation seems to have given up our creativity with a soft kaput as we traverse our twenties, me included. It can’t be helped that the situation last year coincided with my college graduation and left me high and dry without a palatable job selection. Yet there are always bills to be paid. Like so many others I bit the bullet and signed up for something I do not want, which I spend my summer “vacation” dreading the start of. I didn’t expect those dreams to come wafting toward me again, at least not until a wild new song found me thanks to the internet.

As an American I barely understand what Eurovision is. The name recalls vague memories of my time on tumblr when my mutuals overseas would be screaming about weird songs and even weirder costumes. Is it a music festival for the entire European Union? I still don’t know. What I DO know, however, is that this year’s winners are something special. Zitti E Buoni by Italian band Måneskin crossed my Twitter timeline soon after they took first place and it wasn’t much longer before I was entirely captivated by them. One song wasn’t enough, I needed to hear the whole album. Then the album before that. Then the remaining singles. Music aside they also flaunt a myriad of iconic fashion and imagery, it’s almost too much for my dead heart to handle that they're only a couple years younger than me. And yet, rather than bemoan their success compared to mine I found myself immensely inspired. Inspired in a way music hasn’t been able to accomplish in me for years.

While grappling with these unnerving waves of passion, I kept coming back to the question of why they made me feel this way when nothing else did. I would look back on various pursuits I now felt numb to and realized they had all been compromises to my current reality. A path in education? Puts food on the table. A path in publishing? More straightforward than being a writer. A path in business ownership? Quells fear of being controlled. They were all just distractions from facing the responsibility required to actually do what I wanted to do: be a free-floating, mysterious, rock star writer. Måneskin’s road to glory was clearly wrought by pure love for their career and it’s evident in every aspect of them, from the relentless bangers they put out to their flawless fucking eyeliner. They trusted themselves and each other well enough to put everything into their art and that’s what really got me. It’s been so long since I resonated with anyone, let alone anyone my age, in their creative vision and drive to achieve. It feels like waking up to myself again. The world will always need people who put their love first and societal expectations last. It may be difficult to remember that in these trying, capitalist times but I’m forever grateful to artists like Måneskin for proving that it is true.

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Nolita Jackens (she/her) is an artist from Los Angeles living in Tokyo. Preferring words as her medium, she also experiments with the visual arts and has a deep affection for skeletons. She is currently studying at Emerson College online for her MFA. You can keep up with her posts on confettibastard.com or follow @confettibastard on both Twitter and Instagram.