"Jaded" by Aerosmith

This song came up in a mix recently and I realized I'd forgotten how much I loved this song. When I was a kid, of course. It was released in December 2000 and was basically my whole soundtrack for 2001. I remember dancing around my living room whenever the music video came on MTV - this was before I was considered "responsible enough" to have a TV in my room. And yes, I know the MTV reference is instantly dated. I'm a member of the last generation who remembers when MTV only played music videos. And, I'm gonna tell ya, the world was a simpler place then. Or so it seemed. Yet, I still identified very strongly with this song - even though my (well meaning, Hanson-loving) friends didn't get it - at the tender age of 13....perhaps because I already understood the feeling back then. Of course, I'm not sure if I was jaded or if I knew it was unsafe to show emotion...so I didn't. Coping mechanisms are fun!

Your thinking's so complicated

I've had it all up to here

But it's so overrated

Love and hated

Wouldn't trade it

Love me jaded

I looked up the definition for "jaded" because I'm starting to feel like I know so many words but have lost touch with the true meaning. Linguistics is a true passion of mine (one of several). Apparently, the word originally meant "worn-out horse," possibly from the Old Norse jalda meaning "mare." Luckily, I've recently taken up Icelandic (apparently the closest language to Old Norse) so I know exactly how to pronounce jalda, in addition to several other words. I particularly enjoy saying the word for "mushroom," which is sveppur. Moving on in our explanation (rant....it's a rant at this point) about words, "jaded" has three meanings in English, all fairly similar. 1. Bored or lacking enthusiasm, typically after having been over exposed to, or having consumed too much of something. 2. Worn-out, wearied, exhausted, or lacking enthusiasm, due to age or experience. 3. Made callous, or cynically insensitive, by experience. I think it's something akin to that "emptiness" I'm always going on about. Nothing surprises you. In fact, the pettiness and predictability of human beings (including yourself) begins to get tiresome. It happens. Every so often, I stop believing in fairy tales and magic for a little while. At this point, I don't worry because it usually comes back. All you need is a little spark.

Hey j-j-jaded

There ain't no baby please

When I'm shootin' the breeze with her

When everything you see is a blur

And ecstasy's what you prefer

This songs meaning is somewhat layered. There's the most obvious layer, which is that it's about a complicated relationship with a younger woman who is just so bored with life already. But then there's the layer of what Steven Tyler was thinking when he wrote the song. He was thinking of his youngest daughter while developing "Jaded," about how he didn't feel as if he was there enough due to his lifestyle (not just the musician life, but drug addictions too). All of his relationships with his children are complicated like this. Liv Tyler didn't meet him until she was 9, when her mother took her to an Aerosmith concert. Bebe Buell didn't tell her that Tyler was her father due to his involvement with drugs but - to hear Liv Tyler tell the story - when she met Steven Tyler, she just "knew" he was her father. And I believe her. I think children always know about those kind of complicated things. They know when something's wrong, even when adults refuse to talk about them or straight up lie to their face. Over time, we teach them (and ourselves) that they're overthinking or they're "too sensitive" (that's my favorite one, can't you tell? I heard it a lot growing up), and so life slowly stamps out that intuition because we've learned to ignore it. And that shit is hard to grow back. Assuming that ignoring your intuition doesn't kill you first.

As I said, I loved the music video. It has a style about it - it's not creepy, but it's clear that the world is a little off. The girl (a young Mila Kunis, who looks as beautiful as always and weirdly reminds me of my older sister) is surrounded by a lavish lifestyle. Beautiful clothes, meticulous servants, every manner of entertainment at her slightest whim. She literally has it all but something is missing for her. Everything blurs together. There's nothing fantastical in her fantasy world. Then, a mysterious force asks her, "What do you want?" And she answers simply, "To Feel" (Oh. My. God. That is such a Cancer thing to say!) The mysterious force tells her to "Find the Forest" and she runs madly searching for it. For all her trouble, she finds the forest - which is quite a magical place - and she is finally touched to the point where she cries. I told you...she just needed a spark. A happy ending indeed. On a somewhat related note, YouTube has been suggesting a lot of psychology videos for me lately and I've taken the bait. Of course, I'm starting to realize that I've never strayed too far from my roots.

"Jaded" Video