I can’t remember if I said that I was going to post my little tribute to Shawn Mendes that I read aloud in the podcast, but I’m doing it anyways! (Even if it makes me hella anxious and embarrassed but whatever) Enjoy!
During a reading spree in April 2019, I re-read Rock Prodigy by Jules130 on Wattpad. This story is about a piano prodigy who becomes a rockstar with fellow bandmate and absolute babe Mac. After reading it, I desperately wanted to play guitar and messaged my dad about an acoustic guitar so I could learn. He said I could have his and I was officially like "Okay I am learning guitar. There's Nothing Holding Me Back." So I started learning guitar and wanted to write songs again when this concept of a boy loving a girl who can't be fixed came into my head. I was thinking "Hold On. I’m a total nerd so let’s tie in a science aspect and call it The Alchemist." Around this time I was listening to The Vamps' first album which featured Oh Cecelia (Breaking My Heart) ft. Shawn Mendes. I had listened to some of his stuff like his popular stuff and Roses, but this made me realize that Shawn Mendes could be Something Big. I had been jamming to If I Can't Have You because it's a fucking banger and when the music video came out I was in Stitches. I started listening to all of his music on, watching a couple of interviews here and there, watched a couple of Q&A videos, and read a lot of fan fiction. If I'm being Honest, this was probably the most fun part of me liking him and his music. Anywho, I found this one Q&A video where he talks about the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and I was like, "Woah. This is A Little Too Much." I'm a big believer of signs and shit like that, so I was like "What the hell? This is Crazy, so why not read it?" So I did and this book is all about signs and good omens and finding your path in life, which, in combination with Shawn being super successful at a young age, set me into quarter life crisis about my career and whether I wanted to pursue music or science. This is when I knew I wanted to see him live as a graduation present for myself but I didn't know which tickets to get: 2 4th row tickets or 1 VIP ticket a little further back. I was losing my Patience and was like "Don't Be A Fool. Which ticket will Treat You Better?" So I went with the VIP ticket and was metaphorically standing in front of Shawn Mendes going "You are going to Ruin me. I don't Understand, but let's see where this goes." This was going down in about mid to early June, so now we jump to early July. Think July 4th or around the time Senorita was released. I was pretty deep in the Shawnblr (Shawn Mendes tumblr fandom) so once all the Camila Cabello shit came up I was like, "Oh no. Honey." There's a lot going on with this that I'll get into later, but I'd finished The Alchemist and was realizing that maybe I needed to stumble upon Shawn Mendes to have this quarter life crisis and realize that you don't know what it's like to be a celebrity and celebrities don't know what it's Like to Be You (ft. Julia Michaels). I realized just how much I had idealized being a celebrity and being famous and now the very idea of having no privacy and having so many Strings attached to my relationships makes me queasy. So. There's that. Now flash forward to the week of the concert. This concert was happening about two weeks before I was moving 700 miles away from my family for the first time. I hadn't really grappled with it, but one day when I was driving to therapy I was listening to the playlist and the live version of Never Be Alone came on and I started bawling like a baby on the highway. I knew that those weren't Three Empty Words and started believing that maybe Shawn entered my life for a bigger thing than just showing me how much I do not want to be famous. Okay so going to the actual day of the concert, I was super Nervous because I was going alone and have mild/severe social anxiety and was thinking that I wasn't going to make friends or that I was going to ask a bad question at the Q&A if I even got called on or I was going to do something stupid, you know basic anxious thoughts like that. Well, my anxiety can go get Lost in Japan because not only did I end up becoming friends with strangers at this concert, I also got to ask Shawn a question at the Q&A and 100% didn't fuck it up. I went to my therapist about this and she was so proud of me and said something along the lines of "Queen. Was it even better than it played out in your Imagination?" And I probably responded with something like "I was the Life of the Party. It normally isn't In My Blood to do something like this, but I was able to do it Because I Had You." And I guess I can only end this by saying that even though Shawn Mendes might have kind of a Bad Reputation in the music industry right now because of the Camila thing, I'm still just acting like a Kid in Love even though he might look at me and say "I Don't Even Know Your Name." Well, Shawn, I'm just a regular old Senorita but you have helped me more than you could ever know.
