To be completely honest, I’m writing from personal conjecture. At this point, I’m pretty certain about two things in my life. That stories are just great, and life comes in arcs. Several years ago, I rejected that idea because I found trying to be the hero of your own story a bit too dangerous. I was watching too many superhero movies. But alas, I think it’s true, and I’m quite comfortable with the idea of finally resolving questions I have been working through. Well of course, nothing is ever really gone. However, is it too much to ask for some finality?

In college, like we all have, I questioned where my life was going, what I believed in, and what that also meant for the people that were around me. I never told my parents that I was questioning my belief when I was. It just seemed more fun to tell them that I left my faith, while we would be opening Christmas presents. Of course, that didn’t happen, but imagine if it did! That would have been hysterical, in a tragic holiday kind of way.

I hope that joke was worth the tangent. Modern Vampires of the City (MVTC) is what I was spinning at this time. The album was released in 2013, and I was rethinking everything in 2015, so a little late. It talks about religion, unbelieving (Unbelievers), Judaism and Islam’s relationship (Finger Back), asking God those tough questions (Ya Hey) struggling to get up and look for a job (Obvious Bicycles), and dying young (Diane Young) [there’s a lot of death imagery]. Even the album cover, which is in black and white, is a picture of 1966 NYC fog. It’s a quarter-life crisis masterpiece. The band is Vampire Weekend, although you may have googled them already. I meant to write in their name at the end of this paragraph!

There is nothing like piece of music meeting you where you are at. I’m in crisis, can Siri play something that can set the mood? I could go on, but I think you get my point. Their previous albums, Contra (deals with angst of young adult life and the travels that they may inhabit) and the self-titled Vampire Weekend (exhibits the collegiate experience with wit and surprising profoundness) . I pretty much listened to each one in order, and got to experience the answer of the questions that they all helped to answer. This trilogy tracked a fictional life, that’s when it really clicked for me. This is a play-by-play to a millennial life. A commentary to a life filled with a bevy of steaming options and a mountain of fans whining about the latest Game of Thrones episode. (I’m kidding, come back!)

So now we enter in the year of our Lord, 2019. Vampire Weekend has released a new album. It was a long wait, and I already graduated from college. I wish they made an album about being offered a radio job in Boise, Idaho (potatoes). Thankfully, their new album, Father of the Bride, is about much more than that. I starts off with a wedding in Hold You Now. The bride and the groom are negotiating if they should stay together. They assure each other by saying “I can’t carry you forever, but I can hold you now”. The awareness of what life and time is, is what I had come to accept just a few months prior. Things don’t last forever, but so what? Right now, I can make due with whats in my hands.

I believe that, that awareness comes with age and the stage of life we are in. A lot of the album rejects the wit and irony that their previous albums documented when trying to figure out who you are. Now, questions have been answered, and the old arc is done. Now, like in Father of the Bride, it is time to contend with contentment and a settled life. Maybe a long-term union, and throw a kid in there, just to see what happens. Am I exactly at that stage now? No, I am not pregnant, I’ve just put on a few pounds. But with that extra weight, those salad days are now over. Honestly, I don’t mind thinking about more of what that stage will bring. It seems that I am in the starting stages of this new arc. It’s time to answer those bigger questions that have more do it with how to connect with others. So much has been answered in fact, that now, all that is left is sincerity. And a little room to celebrate that.