a lonely but exciting road by Caleb M. '27

A few days ago, I was minding my business, cleaning my room, and listening to cellophane by FKA twigs. cellophane is a vastly depressing song, often theorized to be about twigs’ relationship and engagement with Robert Pattinson that became the subject of much hate, negativity, and racism by Pattinson’s fans. It’s pretty heartbreaking and definitely worth a listen.

Why was I listening to such a sad song? Because, of course, it’s great. I saw it on a reel earlier that day and I had been thinking about it earlier, so I put it on as I was going about my day. People ask me all the time why I listen to such sad music, and I honestly don’t really know—I think part of it is because of how much acoustic and folk music I listen to, so the two spheres just overlap pretty often. Or perhaps I am just a deeply sad person. Who knows?

Regardless, after cellophane played, my Spotify went to radio and continued to play more songs by FKA twigs. One of those songs, and the one that stuck out to me the most, was called Lonely but Exciting Road. It’s the last track on the reissue of her 2025 release EUSEXUA and it. Is. 

Gorgeous. 

The song is about twigs’s adventure into an unknown future and the hope she holds for what might lie ahead of her, and it really resonated with me as I looked at my life as an MIT student and, for that matter, just being a person. Here’s the first part of the song…

So they say

“You can make the impression you want on the world”

So you make it up

In the hope that you’ll be something more than before

Isn’t it hard, believing we are going to change the world? Quite the responsibility. But weirdly, I believe it. I wholeheartedly think that I can do some good in the world around me. I have to build on something, have to move forward, bring the world forward somehow. Maybe in a small way, maybe in a huge way. What do I know? And yeah, sometimes it feels like we’re making it up—I guess that’s the MIT condition. But we push forth anyway, in that blind and enamored hope that we really will be able to make the world a little better. 

Be more than my mother was, no—

Be more than her mother and her mother was

Being a child of immigrants means that everything you do, you do as a member of a line of work behind you. You exist as legacy, as upwards motion, as a generation setting out to do more. To be more than my mother was, than her mother and her mother was—it’s a central charge of my pursuit of success, whatever and wherever that might be. Not just to be more for the sake of being more, but to fulfill a dream given to me; to try and make good on that promise we all implicitly make. 

‘Cause they say

“We gotta give to our children what we never was”

Everything, really, that we do here is to craft the future. At the very least, one of my motivators as a scientist is to carve out a better world for whoever might come after me. And I don’t just mean that in terms of literal scientific craft—I also mean making space for people like me to occupy the spaces that I’ve found myself in. I want to make the world a better place for my kid to live in. I want to make science a safer place for them to pursue. We, too, must give our children what we never were.

So I know something is coming my way

I know, I know

And I know something is coming my way

I know, I know

Here, my reading of the song diverges from these past few parts to something a little more general and yet a little more personal. Twigs insists that something is coming her way, but leaves that “something” completely ambiguous—and that’s what life, especially life right now, feels like. I know something is coming my way, but what that is, I’m not yet sure. There is a haziness to my future, and through that haziness I see some light on the other side, but what that light could be is lost on me. But I am chock-full of the ravenous tenacity of a 20-year-old, obsessed with the world spilling out in front of me, as vast as the midnight sky. Aren’t my lungs full of fire? Doesn’t my heart pump light through my veins? I know that, in the end, I will find my way. I’m more confident in that than anything—I will make it somewhere. And so, I run to that mysterious warm glow across the fog—with fear, with wide eyes, with the utmost hope.

It might be heaven that’s coming my way 

It’s gonna be a lonely but exciting road

And I’ll be finding myself on the way 

It’s gonna be a lonely but exciting road

I will be the only one to find myself. I have to be, don’t I? Wherever that road leads, I alone can traverse it. But whatever is in store for me, whether it be heaven or not—yes, the road to who I am, who I will be, will be lonely, but damn will it be exciting. Anything could be in front of me, and I think that that’s exactly what makes it so beautiful. I am at the infinite crossroads of whatever is ahead. How lucky I am, to have the opportunity to find out what’s next! 

It’s hard to completely codify, to capture exactly why I’m so moved by this song and put it into writing. You just have to listen to it because I don’t know that I can state it better than the song does—that something is coming my way. The orchestral, expansive melody along with twigs’s repeated refrain feels precisely like the hope of being where I am in life: perhaps not ready for tomorrow, but stepping towards it nonetheless.

And thus, I step, one foot in front of the other, on that mysterious but beautiful, that ever-travelled but uncharted, that lonely but exciting road.