Boredom, Tyler the Creator

Charlie Downey

Tyler the Creator’s music is something I touched on during an earlier blog post this semester. Through middle and high school then into college, I have followed the evolution of his music and can root moments of my life to what Tyler album had dropped most recently. When I was a pissed-off hormonal middle schooler with a popcorn ceiling of a forehead: Wolf; maximum angst with Domo 23 on repeat. The first real heartbreak of my life spawning from, in retrospect, a massively dysfunctional relationship: IGOR. The opening track EARFQUAKE brings that naive immaturity and I DON’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE into ARE WE STILL FRIENDS?… an emotionally destructive closing. But if I cite any moment as the most important to me, it would be seeing Tyler the Creator live following the release of 2017’s Flower Boy, namely the performance of the album’s 8th track Boredom.  The track and performance’s message is that boredom or loneliness can catalyze creative energy, and these low moments should be viewed as ‘found time’ that can be used. “Boredom got a new best friend.” The performance was a call to action where Tyler expressed empathy for viewers who may feel alone, lost, or bored, but in being creative those moments change into ‘found time.’ The performance much like the album ended with the track Enjoy Right Now, Today, which is fully instrumental leaving viewers with a feeling that the goals of the performance were no longer in Tyler’s hands.

“TICK-TOCK”

Hearing Boredom for the first time and then seeing it performed live were massively cathartic moments. I was a sophomore in high school in a transitional period. I had bailed on athletics because I was bored of sports. I had bailed on a friend group. I was bored of nothing conversations about sports. I was lost, I was alone, I was bored and it was self-imposed. I was hungry, but I did not know what to do about it. I liked music, reading, and comedy but lacked any sort of self-confidence to try any of it. The fear of failure or embarrassment outweighed the drive to create. Sometimes it still does.

“What is the problem? Is it me?
Cause I’m not solved, I’m, bored.”

What if it sucks? Following the performance I realized something: At the start, it probably will suck, but here’s the good news: only you need to know that it sucks. I do not need to get on a stage in front of thousands to create. I can be my one and only viewer/critic. Then, when I make something I want to share, I can. The album Flower Boy and Tyler’s live performance pressed me in the right direction. I played guitar when I was younger like 10-11; took lessons, got bored. I had no interest in learning scales instructors tried to drill into my head. (I still don’t know scales.) Every few months, I would pick up the out-of-tune hollow box that desperately needed new, not 6-year-old strings. I’d badly and slowly play the only 3 chords I knew, and put it back in the corner to sit for another few months. Now I was 15-16, bored and lonely, and had Tyler in my headphones then alive in front of me telling me to use it. I really didn’t have much of a choice. I started writing songs. They sucked. Most of them still suck. But every once in a while…they suck a little less, and I credit songs that suck the least to Tyler the Creator.

“Find some time to do something.”