“Who are you now when all you have is thin air around you?” I heard this question in a musical once and it’s left me wondering how I would answer it myself. The song continues to say that it may be easy to disappear from the problems in your life, but the singer is reaching out to grab the real girl he sees. It’s in the later line “no more stories just show me the real you”, that is possibly the exact sentence I hear the most in my own life.
“Thin Air,” from the musical Amelie, describes the concept that the real core of a person is found when they are alone. I seem to be asking myself this question more as I come across introverts in my life who wonder why I fail to enjoy silence. The art of making a perfectly balanced conversation didn’t apply to me, in my mind every conversation rested on my shoulders. Without fail I become the dominatrix in every social interaction, holding the other person hostage to my overdrawn stories. Being the extrovert that I am, I live in the social interactions I share with others because it’s far easier to jump from conversation to conversation than it is to sit alone with my thoughts.
Personally I see a lot of myself in the quirky young woman, Amelie, that the audience follows in the musical. Maybe it was the fact that she had a questionable relationship with her parents, or maybe it was because she was known to be an oddball in the town, but what tied us together the most was the fact that she’s an optimistic dreamer. The song Times Are Hard for Dreamers depicts Amelie as someone who’s been fueled by the dreams that she is determined to reach, but “Thin Air” offers the question of if Amelie is merely running away from her problems. It’s interesting to see this contrasting perspective because, while Amelie is uncomfortable with thin air, she is left with it every time she tries to run away from reality.
A person doesn’t need the concept of thin air to define who they are but it’s definitely something to ponder over. Discovering connections between my life and the fictional character Amelie demonstrates that thin air is unavoidable. The concept of thin air represents our self awareness and how we define ourselves at the core when we are stripped away from the crutch of social interaction. As morbid as it may sound, I believe this lesson keeps me centered and allows me to consider the thoughts I have to equate the person I am fundamentally.