Our existence is predicated upon ceaseless transience—a constant of transformation that Charli xcx’s most recent album, Music, Fashion, Film, addresses in the final track, “No One Lasts Forever” featuring acclaimed body horror director David Cronenberg.

 

I try to steer clear of contemplating my mortality, as I assume most young adults do, because reducing the reality of my impermanence to a far-off future is easier than confronting it head-on. Though after listening to “No One Lasts Forever,” I am unable to skirt around the squirm-inducing idea of mortality. And once I stopped fearing the fact of endings, I gained a new form of freedom.

 

It is still difficult to let go of moments, memories, and relationships, but it is easier when I remember that they never existed to be enjoyed forever, even if that was always my hope. I can only control how I decide to remember every ending in my life, and my willing forfeiture of control is more empowering than feigning influence over the inexorable. 

 

The final verse of “No One Lasts Forever” articulates this feeling through Charli’s outlook on her public perception post-Brat stardom:

 

That’s why I’m not scared of anyone

‘Cause nothing’s gonna last forever

But you need to discover that feeling

Of the crushing highs and lows of ego

Where one minute you know you’re the worst

And the next minute you know you’re better

Than everyone in the room

But know that nothing’s gonna last forever. 

 

By claiming that she no longer gives weight to other people—their expectations of her, their opinions of her, or their possible superiority over her—Charli is done being inhibited by things she cannot control. She does not bend to the whims of people around her because her art’s importance is to reflect how she feels and to make her feel. This parallels my forfeiture of control over permanence and is bolstered by David Cronenberg’s interlude about experientiality, where we both conclude that experience supersedes deathlessness.

 

In the interlude, Cronenberg discusses his near-death experience with Charli: what he contemplated in what appeared to be his last moments, and how, notably, he did not think of art. He found that “as [he] was lying there on the sidewalk, [he] did not think about art at all. [He] thought about people…[he] wasn’t thinking about art as endurance.” Continuing, he shares his belief that there is a futility in attempting to create art that lasts forever because even immortal artists die experientially.

 

Art can be appreciated after someone has passed and can immortalize them in our culture, but we must acknowledge the unignorable fact that, as Cronenberg repeats until the song ends, “they are dead, they are gone, no one lasts forever.”

 

While Charli and Cronenberg examine the ephemerality of art in the context of artistic careers, I posit that art here serves as a metaphor for life itself. I think that as young people, we have this idea that an endeavor is not worthwhile unless there is a sense of permanence attached to it. If we are not laying the foundation for something larger, it is meaningless. At least, I did.

 

I thought relationships were pointless unless they resulted in marriage; friendships were fickle if they did not follow us into every stage of our lives; and careers were unsuccessful if they lacked stability and continuous upward mobility. 

 

Yet in repackaging legacy as something aspirational in every avenue of our lives, we lie to ourselves that immortality can be achieved through experience. If our interpersonal relationships seem ceaseless, then life itself is. By pretending we do not die a little bit every day, in every ending that occurs for the entirety of our lives, we let ourselves believe these falsehoods about forever because we would be directionless without them.

 

These falsehoods felt so real to me in my final month of high school, and I let them become my compass amidst all of the change so I could chase away the truth of my friend group’s impending separation. I hung out with my friends nonstop, neglecting school for the first time to prioritize my last moments with them in my hometown. I longed to cement myself in their lives in a way that was unalterable, important, and unending because if I did, our friendships would carry meaning. 

 

Now, as we pack for our schools scattered across the country, each in our separate homes, about to embark upon our separate journeys, I see the fruitlessness in what I had attempted to accomplish. I was trying to freeze every frame of our friendship instead of simply savoring the sensation. I thought that I would be satisfied with savoring each morsel of each moment with them, but those moments could not last forever. Our friendship, in its current state, may not last forever, but that does not mean it is not valuable. When I am dying, I doubt I will applaud my friendship’s ability to sustain itself through desperate facsimiles of memories; I doubt I will view friendship as “endurance.” Instead, I hope to treasure how I felt and the beauty of that experience. 

 

I am definitely not the first person to declare that life is meaningful only because it ends, nor is Charli xcx. Though, we affirm that this concept must be actively remembered when we are experiencing the “crushing highs and lows of ego” in a career path as volatile as art, or just entering a new stage of young adulthood.

 

It is convenient to believe that nothing is going to last forever when you are enduring hardship. You yearn for life to fly by in its fleeting fashion to escape the undesirability of the present, but sometimes, your friends moving miles away will fly by, too. Sometimes life’s characteristic transience will disappoint, but there is freedom in that truth. We can embrace oblivion, truly experience every little death, and relish in the reality that we do not last forever, as David Cronenberg encourages in his interlude that “oblivion is freedom.”

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Desiree Okonkwo finds existential inspiration in a Charli xcx song — and who among us at the Nassau Weekly hasn’t? Listen to “I Got It” (ft. Brooke Candy, CupcakKe, and Pabllo Vittar) and try to tell me that you don’t come out feeling like you got it.