by Alex Banayan
I kept going and going until I fell back on the couch to catch my breath. I looked up at Matt.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You have twenty-four hours to write that up.”
* * *
It was past midnight. Matt was out at an event and I was alone in the hotel suite, my eyes glued to my laptop. The river of words that had flowed earlier had dried up. By morning I had to give Matt a one-page document of the talking points, plus a PowerPoint that he would present to Gaga.
When I’d been on the couch earlier watching Matt and his employee, I had visualized everything I would do if I got in the game. But now that I was in, it felt like no matter how hard I tried to jump, my feet were glued to the court.
Minutes stretched into hours. I went to bed, hoping I’d find inspiration in the morning. Though as I lay under the covers, I couldn’t sleep. My mind kept churning, and I don’t know why, but I began thinking about a video of Steve Jobs I’d watched on YouTube years earlier. He was introducing the “Think Different” marketing campaign and talking about the importance of defining your values. It was one of the most brilliant speeches I’d seen. I pulled the covers off and reached for my laptop. I rewatched the speech and again it blew me away. All I could think was: I need to show Gaga this video. This has the magic I’m missing.
But I wouldn’t be in the room with her the next day. And even if I would be, I couldn’t force Lady Gaga to watch a YouTube video. So I emailed Matt:
This is it…trust me on this and watch all seven minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keCwRdbwNQY
A short time later, Matt walked into the hotel suite.
“Did you watch the video?” I asked.
“Not yet. I’ll watch it now.”
Finally, it felt like things were back on track. Matt disappeared into his bedroom and I could hear him watching the video through the open door. Then Matt emerged with a toothbrush in his mouth and his phone in his hand, barely watching as the video played. When the speech ended, Matt didn’t notice. He returned to his room without a word.
I yanked the covers over me. Not only had my plan not worked, but it was the fourth quarter, and I was all out of ideas.
* * *
I woke up before dawn and headed to the lobby to continue writing. As much as I tried, the words just didn’t have the impact I knew they could. Then Matt called.
“Come to the room,” he said. “My meeting with Gaga moved up. We only have two hours now.”
I hurried to the suite, opened the door, and that’s when I saw Matt standing at the kitchenette counter, his laptop in front of him and headphones in—watching the Steve Jobs video in full screen. His eyes were fixed. When the video finished, Matt slowly turned his head.
“I have an idea,” he said.
I stayed silent.
“I’m going to sit Gaga down…and show her this video.”
“YESSSSS!” I shouted.
The exhilaration of the moment overtook me and I whipped out my laptop and rewrote the entire page of talking points within a minute, perfectly channeling everything I’d said the day earlier. Matt knew Gaga in a way I never could, so his edits lifted the words to new heights. Now all we needed was the PowerPoint.
Matt had to be at Gaga’s house within the hour, so I stayed behind to finish. There was something thrilling about being under this kind of stress, as if the game clock was counting down 10…9…8…As Matt called to say he was walking in—the buzzer sounded—and I hit send.
An hour later, my phone vibrated. It was a text from Matt.
Home run. Everyone crying over here.
* * *
The next two days were a whirl. Late that night, I went to a Snoop Dogg concert to join Matt and Lady Gaga. After grabbing a Red Bull from the bar, I spotted them on a sofa in the VIP section. Matt motioned for me to sit beside Gaga. I plopped down and she put her arm around me. With her other arm she reached for my Red Bull, took a gulp, and handed it back.
“Alex,” she said, “sometimes…sometimes something is so deep inside you, you can’t express it yourself. For the first time, you expressed it for me in words.
“And that Andy Warhol line,” she added, smiling and swirling her hand in the air. “Incredible.”
After Gaga and I finished talking, Kendrick Lamar came over and sat beside me on the couch. Snoop Dogg continued performing on stage, rapping my favorite songs. I got up and danced, feeling freer than ever.
The next evening, as Matt and I headed to Gaga’s concert, I checked Twitter and saw she’d changed her profile name to “CREATIVE REBELLION.” She tweeted:
ARTPOP is creative rebellion. I don’t play by the nuns’ rules. I make my own. #MonsterStyle #ARTPOP
In what felt like a second later, I heard the thunderous cheers of thousands of fans as Gaga danced on stage. While she sang, a woman beside her chugged bottles of a green liquid. Gaga stood still under a spotlight and the woman gagged herself, throwing up on the pop star. Gaga called it “vomit art.”
As I watched green liquid hurtling out of the woman’s mouth and splashing onto Gaga’s body, I cringed. Matt laughed. “Talk about the opposite of expectation, huh?”
Later that night, Gaga’s interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live aired. Kimmel opened with a jab at Gaga’s outfits, then he took another shot at ARTPOP. But Gaga didn’t miss a beat. She hit back with the “opposite of expectation” line and the audience roared with applause.
In another blink, I was sitting in the front row of the keynote speech the next morning, right between Matt and Gaga’s father. The houselights dimmed. Gaga stepped on stage in an enormous dress made out of plastic tarps. One of the first questions was about the “vomit art.”
She explained how the idea originated and then said: “You know, Andy Warhol thought he could make a soup can into art. Sometimes things that are really strange, and feel really wrong, can really change the world…It’s about freeing yourself from the expectations of the music industry and the expectations of the status quo. I never liked having my skirt measured for me in school or being told how to do things or the rules to live by.”
Before I knew it, applause enveloped the room. The keynote was over and the audience was on its feet. Gaga received a standing ovation.
Matt headed straight to the airport and I went back to the hotel to pack. As I gathered my things, Matt sent me a screenshot of a text he had just received from Gaga:
I don’t even know what to say. I’m so grateful for everything u guys have done. U really supported me and I had wings today because of u. Hope I made u and Alex proud.
As I finished reading Gaga’s text, another popped up on my phone. A friend from USC invited me to a party on campus. The friends I’d started college with were in the final semester of their senior year, celebrating graduation. I felt like, in my own way, I was too.
* * *
As I stared out of the airplane’s window, watching clouds floating below, I couldn’t stop thinking about how this Gaga experience came to be. In a way, it just seemed like a series of little decisions. Years ago, I chose to cold-email Elliott Bisnow. Then I chose to go to Europe with him. I chose to go to that concert in New York City where Elliott introduced me to Matt. Then I chose to spend time visiting Matt’s home and building a relationship with him.
As my thoughts continued to unfold, a quote came to mind, from a seemingly unexpected source. It was from one of the Harry Potter books. At a critical moment in the story, Dumbledore says, “It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
It’s our choices…far more than our abilities…
I thought back to my conversations with Qi Lu and Sugar Ray Leonard. The message of that quote was the underlying lesson I learned during those interviews. While Qi Lu and Sugar Ray were both born with remarkable abilities, what made them stand out in my eyes were their choices.
Qi Time was a choice. Chasing the school bus was a choice.
Different images began coming to mind, rolling in front of my eyes like a slide show. When Bill Gates sat in his dorm room, pushing through his fear and picking up that phone to make his first sale, that was a choice. When Steven Spielberg jumped off the Universal Studios tour bus, that was a choice. When Jane Goodall worked multiple jobs to save money to travel to Africa, that was a choice.
Everyone has the power to make little choices that can alter their lives forever. You can either choose to give in to inertia and continue waiting in line for the First Door, or you can choose to jump out of line, run down the alley, and take the Third Door. We all have that choice.
If there was one lesson I learned from my journey, it’s that making these choices was possible. It’s that mindset of possibility that transformed my life. Because when you change what you believe is possible, you change what becomes possible.
The plane’s wheels hit the ground in Los Angeles. I carried my duffel bag and made my way through the terminal, feeling a gentle calm I’d never known before.
I stepped outside of baggage claim. When my dad pulled his car to the curb, he got out and I gave him a long hug. I tossed my duffel bag in the trunk and climbed into the passenger seat.
“So, how did the interview go?” he asked.
“It never happened,” I said.
As I told him the story, my dad let out a big smile, and we headed home.
In loving memory of
David Banayan
1957–2017
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Four days before my dad passed away, he taught me one of the most important lessons of my life. I was at Elliott’s Santa Monica apartment when I got the call from my dad’s doctor. She’d just visited him at my parents’ home and his condition had taken a sharp turn.
“From what I saw,” she said, “he probably has a few days to live.”
Nothing could’ve prepared me for what it was like to hear those words. Everything around me seemed to blur. I couldn’t think. All I could do was feel. I felt an overwhelming isolation, gripped by fear and sadness, as if I was a small child who found himself suddenly separated from his parents amid a crowded train terminal, lost and alone, not knowing what to do.
In that moment, I did the only thing I felt I could. I called my older sister, Briana. After telling her the doctor’s prognosis, I climbed into my car, picked her up, and headed to our parents’ house. When we arrived, my mom and my dad’s caregiver were sitting silently on the couch. My dad was in his favorite armchair, but he didn’t look the same. Just two days earlier, I was with him for breakfast where he ate a full meal and moved around easily. Now he sat motionless with his eyes shut, but I could tell he wasn’t sleeping. His skin had yellowed. His breathing was labored. My dad had opted for a natural death at home, so I fought my urge to call an ambulance.
“Dad?” I said.
When he didn’t respond, I moved closer and put my hand on his, shaking it softly.
“Dad?”
I turned to my mom. She looked at me and subtly shook her head, as if no words could be said. I took a seat beside my sister on the couch. We sat in silence as the reality set in. We were watching our dad, the man who gave us life, slip into a coma.
A few minutes later, my dad’s caregiver said it was time for him to take his pain medication. The caregiver stood above him, trying to feed him the pill, but my dad wouldn’t open his mouth.
“David,” the caregiver pleaded, “please open your mouth.”
But there was no response.
I started to panic, not for us, but for my dad. I knew that if he didn’t take his pain medication, his final days would be excruciatingly painful.
“David, please,” the caregiver repeated.
She asked again and again, but my dad remained unresponsive.
Then my mom slowly stood up. She took the pill in her hand and then kicked off her shoes. She knelt down beside my dad, gently placing her hand on his.
The moment my mom spoke—the moment her voice landed on my dad’s ears asking him to open his mouth—his mouth opened seamlessly. My dad not only took the pill, but he swallowed it easily.
I began to sob, my chest plunging toward my knees. But I wasn’t crying out of sadness. Rather, I was crying about the beauty of it. As I watched my mom kneeling beside my dad, it was as if my dad wanted to teach me that, at the end of life—when you don’t have access to money or possessions, when you can’t even open your eyes—all you’ll have left is your heartbeat, your breath, and your soul’s connection to those you love.
So, Dad, my first thank-you goes to you. I could use a hundred pages to write everything I want to say to you, but that still wouldn’t feel like enough. So for now, I’ll just say: I love you, and I miss you…
The next thank-you goes to my mom, who I had always known was a superhero, but during the final year of my dad’s life showed me that I hadn’t seen the half of it. Somehow the excruciating pain she went through transformed her into an even more phenomenal woman. Instead of becoming consumed by fear, she became more fearless. Instead of hardening her heart, she opened her heart more. Mom, I am so proud to be your son. I am who I am because of who you are.
I want to thank my sisters, Talia and Briana, who are not only my most cherished friends, but also my greatest teachers. At the time of our dad’s death, as I felt like emotional bombs were dropping on us every day, the fact that the three of us were in the trenches together, and that I could look over my shoulder and see you two beside me, made me feel that, in the end, everything would be all right. I am so grateful we get to do life together.
Thank you to my grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, because before I was on my dorm room bed and staring at the ceiling, I was sitting on your couches and around your dinner tables, feeling completely loved. And thank you to Mike Eshaghian and AJ Silva, who have joined us for this ride with steady minds and open hearts.
A particular thank-you is in order for my grandma, who we affectionately call Momina, and who’s best known in this story for her phrase jooneh man. At the end of my journey, when I became more certain about my decision not to return to college, Cal Fussman sat me down and reminded me that I still hadn’t apologized to my grandma for breaking my promise.
I pushed back. I told Cal that my grandma knew I wasn’t planning on returning to college and my relationship with her was great. It didn’t need to be explicitly said.
“You swore on her life and broke the promise,” Cal said. “It needs to be said.”
I was reluctant, but I still went to my grandma’s house one night to have the talk. We were halfway through dinner when I finally mustered the courage.
“I don’t know if you remember,” I told her, “but years ago I swore to you I would finish college and get my master’s. I said jooneh man.”
My grandma put down her fork.
She looked at me silently, as if she’d been waiting years for me to say these words.
“I broke the promise, and”—tears welled in my eyes—“I’m sorry.”
The silence that followed made me feel even worse.
Then my grandma said, “It’s…okay.” She took a heavy breath. “I hope…I hope…I hope…that I was the one who was wrong to have asked you to make that promise in the first place.”
The final months of my dad's life were filled with more pain than I’d ever experienced. But it was also filled with a kind of love I didn’t know existed.
Elliott would call multiple times a day to check on my dad’s progress and how my family was holding up. As my dad’s condition worsened, Elliott flew to LA more often, visiting my dad and sitting with him under his orange tree in our backyard. Elliott and my dad bonded over that tree. Elliott made a website for the tree. His brother, Austin, wrote a song about the
tree. His best friend, IN-Q, created a poem about the tree. Elliott made two-dozen baseball caps with a logo of MR. BANAYAN’S ORANGE TREE on the front. No matter how much pain my dad was in, each time he was under the orange tree with Elliott, he’d light up.
When I had first cold-emailed Elliott, I dreamed of having a mentor. Not only was I lucky enough to get that, but I also got a best friend. But never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined he would become my brother.
Eventually, the time came for me to call Elliott and tell him my dad was slipping into a coma. Elliott was traveling for work and said he’d get to LA as soon as he could.
The next few days passed slowly. On the fourth afternoon, I was sitting under the orange tree with my sisters, searching for a pocket of calm amid the chaos of emotions. As the sun began to set, my aunt came out and asked us to come to my dad’s bedside. At the exact moment I stepped inside, Elliott walked through the front door. He saw the look in my eyes and followed silently to my dad’s bedside. We all stood in a circle around my dad—me, my sisters, mom, aunt, uncle, and Elliott—and held hands. A minute later, my dad took his final breath.
Many emotions flood me as I remember what it felt like to watch my dad die before my eyes. Many thoughts and theories swirl around my head too, and I’ll always wonder whether my dad had waited until Elliott was in our house, holding my hand, before he passed away.
My dad taught me one final lesson before he was laid to rest in the earth, and it happened to take place on the day of his funeral.