In our teens, we formed a band. The lineup was based more on who was in our circle than on musical skill. Maybe there was someone you liked, and even if they didn’t play any instruments, surely they could shake the tambourine.

We listened to songs on a duct-taped Sony Walkman that once belonged to someone’s older sibling, rewinding or fast-forwarding by inserting the 2B pencils we had used on multiple-choice exams into the cassette spools so we wouldn’t have to spend money on new ABC batteries from the roadside stall across the parking lot.

We already spent more than we could afford to rent a rehearsal studio at the other end of town. Someone skipped lunch, someone lied about needing a math textbook, someone saved pocket money for two weeks, and someone else had rich parents and paid the rest. The room was damp, the carpet stained, and there was always that smell of cigarettes and wet shoes—even though we weren’t supposed to smoke and had to leave our shoes outside.

Then we started playing.

The drums,
the bass,
the keyboard,
the rhythm,
the lead guitar,
the vocals.

And unlike us—yawning through civics, reading Shoot comics and Sweet Valley Twins novels in biology, writing unsent letters to our crushes in economics, ignoring geography because we didn’t like the stuck-up teacher—this time we were focused, determined, completely immersed. We watched each other for cues, counted under our breath, nodded when we almost got it right, and laughed hysterically when we didn’t. We wished the staff would never knock on the glass and tell us our time was up.

We packed up in a hurry; it was late. Most of us had to be home before our parents did, but we carried the day’s homework in our heads: lyrics to memorize, drum fills to land, guitar solos to smooth out… and tempo—everyone, tempo.

Of course, later in life, we realized we hit the notes hard but not right, that we were often out of tune, off-key, off-tempo—full of far more enthusiasm than competence.

But did that matter on stage, in one corner of the tile-walled school hall—with its uneven platforms, terrible acoustics, flickering lights, and cheap speakers?

One boy gripped the mic too tightly, hoping the girl in the third row would understand this was actually a love letter; one girl, her fingers so used to years of classical piano, ecstatic to play the keyboard far louder than she was ever allowed to at home; one boy at the back, failing almost all of his classes, hit the drums so hard as if he were trying to prove something to himself more than anyone else; one girl, doing her best to shake the tambourine during the chorus because this was the closest she had ever felt to belonging.

We used to say we wanted to be rock stars, but I don’t think we meant the stage, the tours, the lights, the fame, or the applause. I think we meant the moment right before the song starts—when someone counts in, when everyone looks at each other in anticipation and nods, when the air is electrically charged and reverberating with a mix of anxiety and excitement, when, for a second, it feels like something clicks and things might actually come together instead of falling apart.

I think we meant striking a chord with people who resonate with us without translation—who nodded their heads, tapped their feet, clapped along, and heard rhythm where others heard noise; who didn’t shush us or ask us to be smaller, quieter, or better to be loved.

I think we meant those rare moments when time faded out—when your hands moved before you could think, when the sound of your voice was echoed louder than your doubts, when you weren’t watching yourself from the outside but were fully inside it; when you weren’t playing the song—the song was playing through you.

I think we meant the freedom and confidence to be unremarkable: messy, too loud, slightly off—and keep going; to have fun while making something, anything, with the people we vibed with, without having to wait until we were ready, or good, or qualified. To take up space without first adjusting ourselves to fit what’s missing.

Maybe we really meant remembering those moments ten, twenty, thirty, forty years later: us standing in a damp room, sharing one dirty pair of earphones, passing around a dented microphone, missing half the notes, forgetting the lyrics, and just having a blast: the best times of our lives.

And maybe that’s the part we didn’t understand back then: how to hold on to that unfiltered joy as we grew older.

So sometimes I wonder, did we ever really want to be rock stars, or did we just want to feel alive in a world that often asks us to settle down, to play it safe, to wait until we are polished, perfect, ready, and on track?

We used to say we wanted to be rock stars, but maybe we just meant we wanted to be alive without holding anything back.