Flavors of Entanglement has been a coming-of-age album for me. In 2008, teenage me had just started crafting his musical taste and, after The Cranberries in 2007, Alanis Morissette was the second singer I threw myself into head first—also thanks to my mom’s only cassette in the car being Jagged Little Pill while I was growing up.Incomplete - Alanis Morissette
Notwithstanding the musical merit of the album, it always held a close place in my heart, being the one just released when I approached Alanis. Underneath was playing on the radio and has been the most played song on my iTunes for years to come. I really (virtually) consumed that album, and have felt a close bond with many of the songs for a long time. As my musical taste (and age) matured, I found myself looking at FoE with more emotional distance and, although I still love most songs very much (even the ones that I was not much into at the time), Incomplete ended up being the least favorite of my adult self. It just sounded… Incomplete? Too light and airy? Just plain forgettable? Silly?
Things have changed in recent times. Facing a low-point in terms of mental health, hope, energy, and general life motivation, I have started to relate to the song much more. “I have been running, so sweaty my whole life, urgent for a finish line” sings Alanis. How not to relate to this? Study in school to open doors for your future. Work hard to set up your life as a young adult. Then, upon choosing an academic life, give your whole time, brain, energy to your work—which you love, but love is ephemeral as we know. Give your whole self to the person you chose as your partner—over and over, but then facing the inevitable disappointments.
One day I’ll be arrived, I’ll be secure, I’ll be less afraid, I’ll be measured outside my professional achievements (“poems and lyrics and art”) sings Alanis, unclear (to me) whether this is hope for her future self once she’s able to let go or rather the ghost of the past self-imposed demands to be perfect, to live a perfect life, to achieve one’s goals.
The message of the song, apparently, is that achieving our goals is actually not life’s goal. In the end, if we achieved all our goals, what would there be left to do? Embracing the uncertainty, precariousness, incompleteness of life is actually what life is about: “I’ve been missing the rapture this whole time of being forever incomplete”. Blessed be Alanis who can feel rapture at being incomplete. I still feel anguish, lack of energy, hopelessness… I just feel tired. Maybe incompleteness is not meant for perfectionists. Or for people who don’t even know what their actual goals are and who have been running around so sweaty their whole life not even knowing where they are going…
I guess that, overall, I still don’t feel like I fully buy into the song given my incapability to enjoy incompleteness, but at least I now more deeply understand its starting point and see the state of being it describes as a desirable state. Maybe that’s the first step to getting there, to feeling the rapture of being forever incomplete.
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