"Titanic" Made Me Neurotic

I came to this conclusion recently while I was trying to dig up the roots of my greatest fear, which is not leaving any kind of legacy, and being forgotten once I'm dead, and everyone I know is dead. This fervent desire to leave behind some kind of tangible evidence that I once existed  on this planet has been a major fuel source for my creative endeavors, which is good, but it's also filled me with fear and anxiety about running out of time, and not possessing the  talent or creativity to leave behind something meaningful enough to outlive me. 

For the record, I know that my life, as it is currently, is meaningful. I know I have a lot of strong, significant relationships with many people about whom I care very much, and who care very much about me. I know that I've done well in my jobs, and that through my work, I have helped others achieve their ambitions. I know that people have seen my plays and comedy, and been touched by it. I'm not discounting any of that.

But, friends, I'm a planner. I need to know that, in 100 years, if civilization hasn't succumbed to nuclear war/climate change/inter-species mating with Gritty, someone somewhere will know that Kristen Scatton existed. And I blame all that on Titanic.

Since Titanic came out 20 years ago, I'm going to go ahead and assume that you've seen it. If you haven't - seriously, stop being that person who hates pop culture, fucking watch it already, and come back in 3 1/2 hours. If you don't have 3 1/2 hours, go here and come back in 10 minutes. All caught up? Great.

I was 13 when Titanic came out, just a small-town girl living in an ass-backwards, culturally empty, suburban world, although I didn't really know that yet. I was still relatively happy in my rainbow sticker and glitter lip gloss bubble. I went to see Titanic with my girlfriends on a wintry Friday night, because we went to the movies every Friday night. Movies were one of the few non-drug-related forms of entertainment available to teenagers in my hometown, and at $3.50 a pop, tickets were actually something I could afford on my weekly allowance. There was a lot of buzz about Titanic, and we all knew Leonardo DiCaprio was a hottie because of Romeo + Juliet, so it was more exciting that going to see, say, ​Mousehunt (poor Nathan Lane. He really must have needed a paycheck.) Still, I had no idea that when the lights went down in the Church Hill Cinema that night, a seismic shift was about to take place in my young life.

"I figure life's a gift, and I don't intend on wasting it. You don't know what hand you're gonna get dealt next. You learn to take life as it comes at you...to make each day count." So says Jack Dawson (DiCaprio), completely owning a bunch of stuffy first-class d-bags who try to humiliate him for committing the horrible crime of being poor. It's an important character development moment for both Jack and Rose (Kate Winslet), who recognizes something of herself in Jack's desire to squeeze every drop of juice out of life.

A short time later, it becomes utterly devastating (at least to a 13-year-old girl who has never been confronted with the concept of mortality) when Jack's bobbing like a cork in the middle of the North Atlantic, frozen to death. When the film's present-day Rose (Gloria Stuart) concludes her tale of doomed romance by saying, "He exists now, only in my memory," I was shattered. I didn't know why; I don't even think I really knew that something new and big had broken open inside me. I was sobbing because it was just so sad, they were so in love, it isn't fair, are we SURE they both couldn't have fit on that slab of wood??? I was obsessed with the movie because it's such an amazing love story and Leonardo DiCaprio is so hot! and the special effects are incredible and saw it 8 times in the movie theater (remember, tickets were THREE FUCKING FIFTY, so this was entirely possible).  But it was more than that. I see that now. Titanic dug into my psyche, and evenly though my obsession  abated after a time, it never fully disappeared.

There it was, bobbing back to the surface like a popsicle-ified Jack Dawson, as I reflected on my deeply embedded fear of my existence being lost to the ravages of memory and time. Before I saw Titanic, death had not really touched my charmed world. Once or twice a distant relative whom I had met once would pass away, but these were people who I wouldn't have been able to pick out of a lineup. There deaths meant little more to me than a baby-sitter while my parents went to the wake. 

(Which, sidebar, wakes are one of the worst social functions human beings ever created. Like, I get before modern medicine, it was necessary to wait and make sure the person was really dead. We're beyond that now. We have stethoscopes and coroners. There is absolutely no reason for all of the dead person's relatives to stand in a line and stare at the corpse of their loved one for three hours, It's a downright macabre tradition, and I refuse to be a party to it, especially at my own funeral. You want to honor me? Crack open a good bottle of Scotch, crank up "I Want It That Way," and tell the funniest stories you can remember about me until the sun rises. Those are my instructions. This blog is basically as legally binding as a will, right?)

Aaaanyway...therefore, when I first saw Titanic as a teenager, it hit me with a triple-whammy truth bomb: 1.) I would die. 2.) It could happen at any time. 3.) Once I died, eventually, everyone would forget about me, and it would be like i never existed at all. That's a lot to take in when all you wanted to do was spend a night out with friends and stare at a beautiful, blue-eyed boy who makes you feel kind of tingly and weird in your bathing suit area.

Seeded by this revelatory information, my desire to "make each day count" was born fully-formed on the Church Hill Cinema's sticky, popcorned floor. Suddenly my school was too small, my town was too small, by life was too small. I had to do something big, something memorable, lest my time on this earth be cut short abruptly. Much of the drama of my teenage years was fueled by this burning desire to live, coupled with the unnameable anxiety that I was wasting so much of my precious, limited time.

These desires and anxieties morphed over the years, ebbed and flowed, but to this day, they are present. They are what forces  me to write, even just for 15 minutes, even if I'm exhausted. They are pushing me to pick up my life, move across the county, and try to make it in one of the most competitive industries in the world. They keep me sitting here, finishing this blog, even though it's 9:25 pm and I haven't eaten dinner yet. For 20 goddamn years, the mantra has been imprinted in my mind: Make it count. Make it count. Make it count.

Why is this so important to me? Why can't I simply be content to live a good life, make a positive impact on the people I know, and accept that one day I will just be a name on a tombstone, like so many others?

I don't know have an answer for that right now. A lyric from Hamilton, another pop-culture phenomenon about untimely death with which I became obsessed (although unlike Leo, I only want to fuck Lin-Manuel Miranda's brain) comes to mind. As Hamilton stares down the bullet that will end his life, he says, "Legacy. What is a legacy? It's planting seeds in a garden you never get to see."

Now, if you're half as bad a gardener as I am, you know that a lot of flowers never bloom. But you'll never have any hope for a garden at all if you don't at least plant the seeds. And so I plant, in hopes that something, somewhere along the way, will outlive me.