Be Now, Be Now

A Life Born on MTV

I was born the same day MTV hit the airwaves and started frying brains in full color. Some babies are born into silence. I was born into The Buggles.

My mom tells the story like it’s a sacred family myth. She was nine months pregnant, shaped like a beanbag chair stuffed with bowling balls, and praying my birth would be quick, painless, and ideally commercial-free. My two older brothers were watching cartoons and generally ignoring her until a neighbor kid burst in like he’d discovered fire and shouted, “There’s a new channel that only plays music videos!”

So they flipped the TV to MTV and there it was. Grainy, weird, and already too loud. The Buggles were announcing the death of the radio star, and my mom felt the first contraction. By the time Pat Benatar showed up in her red leather wrath, my mom’s water broke on the green shag carpet.

I wasn’t so much born as I was summoned, like some tiny, bald music video demon. I came out squirming to Fleetwood Mac, which the nurse had on the radio. My mom says I was already pulsing in time with Mick Fleetwood’s drum fills and gave a little shoulder shimmy during Stevie’s verse. They didn’t swaddle me so much as try to keep me from spinning.

From then on, I was a full-blown MTV baby. My mom, overwhelmed and probably already regretting a third child (she’d go on to have three more after me), figured the best way to keep me entertained was to put me in front of the TV. She’d say, “He likes the colors,” but really I was hypnotized. I’d sit there slack-jawed, eyes wide, drooling, while Duran Duran danced through jungles and Madonna humped Venice.

Somewhere around six months old, I started babbling. My mom thought I was speaking in tongues. I kept repeating, “Be now, be now.” She’d figured I had invented some kind of infant philosophy until one day Men at Work came on, and it clicked. I was trying to sing “Who Can It Be Now?” My vocal cords hadn’t caught up, but my soul was ready.

That was the beginning of the soundtrack. My life didn’t have a timeline. It had a playlist. Fleetwood Mac when I was happy and sad. Madonna when I put on my first sequin glove. Cyndi Lauper when I cut the sleeves off my Bugle Boy jacket. By the time I hit kindergarten, I could distinguish between Stevie Nicks’ solo albums and her Fleetwood Mac work, and I was suspicious of anyone who couldn’t.

Other kids played sports. I made choreography. Other kids had treehouses. I had a cassette of Ace of Base and a blanket I used like a boa. Plus, I’m part Swedish, so. Roxette, anyone? In middle school, while boys were discovering Metallica and body odor, I was lip-syncing “The Sign” in the mirror, flicking my bangs. I didn’t walk. I swayed. I didn’t talk. I belted. My mom said I sang like a black lady in church.

Even in high school, when MTV had devolved into shows about people named Chad who ate worms for money and shows like the Real World, I stayed loyal. I kept watching, hoping the next video might save me. Sometimes it did. Sometimes it was just Paula Abdul dancing with an animated cat. But still, it was mine.

I never grew out of it. While friends traded in their Metallica CDs for Nirvana and Dave Matthews Band, I kept my 80s music like a religion. I still do. When I clean, I play Stevie. When I cry, I play Stevie. When I lie in bed wondering why I’m not more successful, I put on “Dreams” and imagine Stevie watching me with quiet disappointment.

The truth is, I wasn’t born into the world. I was born into a television. I was born dancing. MTV was my first babysitter, my first identity, my first crush. I never questioned who I was because Cyndi Lauper had already told me I was allowed to be weird. Madonna told me to express myself. Ace of Base showed me the sign.

Now, I’m a fully grown middle-aged man with lower back pain, two chins and gout, but the music is still in me. I still say “be now, be now” sometimes, like a prayer. And when I hear that opening sax riff from Men at Work, I remember that baby in a diaper, bobbing like a backup dancer, possessed by the TV gods.

People ask if I remember the first song I ever loved. Of course I do. It wasn’t just a song. It was the reason I showed up.

Be now. Always.