IT’S ALSO OKAY NOT TO LIKE THINGS.

I remember clearly, back in the day, when all my friends flocked to see Top Gun. I am aware that it was an enormous hit. I am aware that the country, especially the impressionable in my neck of the woods, rallied around the damn thing.

I also remember watching the upside down cockpit scene and saying out loud, at my tender young age, “where the fuck are the tailfins?”

It bothered me not at all to mock it as semi-literate jingo porn to my classmates who were the enthralled little Reaganites we were being trained to be.

I also remember, many years later, being on tour with a show, on a leg of the tour that was by bus due to short distances, trapped with a children’s chorus who were promised an in-bus screening of the first Harry Potter movie. I remember the vodka, the Ambien, and the opening credits. I was not the target demographic then nor am I now. I know it’s the most popular book since the Bible, etc., whatever. Put me down as “lack of interest.”

It doesn’t matter.

No one really cares.

You don’t have to go see it or listen to it or like it or whatever just because everyone else does.

When you accept this conformity, you give away part of your power.

You give away part of yourself.

It’s not worth it.

Demand yourself.

You are all you have.