Abigail Oswald’s Mad Lib of Longing: An Exploration of Pearl Jam’s “Wishlist,” Featuring You!

Before reading, consider and complete the following:

1. A DATE (of an event you wish you could do over): _________________

2. An ADJECTIVE (to describe how it felt to let go of a dream): _________________

3. A NOUN (that was the best gift you ever gave): _________________

4. A VERB ENDING IN -ING (for what you were doing in a moment you felt connected to strangers): _________________

5. A NAME (of a person you longed for, but never belonged to): _________________

6. A NOUN (that you were looking at in a moment of uncomplicated happiness): _________________

7. An EXCLAMATION (offered in response to the best news you ever delivered): _________________

8. A VEHICLE (that once belonged to someone you loved): _________________

9. A PLACE (where you felt at home): _________________

10. A NOUN (that you lost, because it wasn’t where it should’ve been): _________________

11. An ADJECTIVE (to describe a person in your life who you can count on): _________________

12. A VERB (that never lets you down): ______trust______

13. The SONG (that you never skip): _________________

1. a date of an event you wish you could do over

What’s the point of wishing?
Sure seems impractical to long for something you don’t have. A melancholy acknowledgement of the gap between where you are and what you want. But is it a waste of time?
Pearl Jam’s “Wishlist” was born out of a simple improvisational exercise, an attempt to make the most of studio time. Originally eight minutes long, “Wishlist” carries you through the singer’s many desires—some general enough to be shared among most human beings, others specific to Eddie Vedder and his own memories. This little stream-of-consciousness experiment wound up being my favorite track off their 1998 album Yield. Perhaps even my favorite of all their songs.
A wish is a genre all its own—a form with infinite variations, a fill-in-the-blank left incomplete without desire. It’s a time capsule of a moment in the wisher’s life; the things we wish for today are not necessarily the things we’ll always want. In wishing we recognize the flimsiness of the present; we nod to the other timelines. Wish one thing different, and everything that comes after might change, too. Every wish is a canvas of hypotheticals and what-ifs—the idea that _________________ and all the days like it could have gone another way.
A wish might change nothing about the actual past, but I like the idea of practicing possibility through small acts of imagination. I’ve started to notice that the world is full of blank spaces—distances between what is and what could be. Maybe wishing is how we fill them.

2. an adjective to describe how it felt to let go of a dream

Impossibility is irrelevant in the world of the wish; no sentence off-limits, no want too outlandish. Some of the things Eddie yearns for in “Wishlist” are contradictions, but a measly paradox could never stop the wisher. The reality he lives in is bogged down with irritating practicalities, but the wish-world discards those boundaries and embraces a dimension of total possibility. Those _________________ feelings from the past simply vanish.
What if reuniting with a discarded dream was as simple as reclaiming something from the lost-and-found? Not a contradiction or an impossibility, but a regular old item on a to-do list, something you did after work on a Tuesday. An ending’s never permanent in the wish-world—unless you want it to be.

3. a noun that was the best gift you ever gave

A few of Eddie’s wishes find him leaving human form behind to become an object. An ornament, a souvenir. In the wish-world his new form serves a purpose, fills a need, offers a reminder. There’s a sweetness to the simplicity of these wishes, identifying that the best gifts often aren’t about the object at all, but rather what they represent. Gifts like _________________ are transformed by their connection to memory and feeling, to the people they are from and for.

4. a verb ending in -ing for what you were doing in a moment you felt connected to strangers

Maybe the wish-world is not as separate from our own as we might first believe. Sometimes we make wishes and they come true, after all. Every once in a while, a moment of magic spills somehow into our practical, functional reality. Curiously, I’ve found these often happen in the presence of strangers.
For you, it was _________________. For me, live music. It feels like an impossibility belonging to the wish-world, and yet I feel at home in the crowd at a show, surrounded by people I’ve never met. Music underlines the ubiquitous connection that exists between every human being. I feel like I’m connected to something bigger than myself when I’m one body in a crowd at a show, one of 50 million hands upraised, one little star hole-punched out of an endless sky. A wish fulfilled for the cost of a concert ticket.
When played live, “Wishlist” keeps evolving. The wish-world shifts; what Eddie wishes depends on where he is and how he’s feeling. Live performance briefly closes that gap between present and past, allowing the singer to reunite with another version of himself. In wishing, we recognize the flimsiness of the present. In art we do this, too.

5. a name of a person you longed for, but never belonged to

There are words that don’t have English translations. Feelings that can’t be set to language at all. I would like to suggest that sometimes names can fill those blanks, if only just for ourselves. A name can conjure those feelings we don’t have words for. _________________ is a shorthand for a memory, or a possibility, the specifics of which cannot be found in any dictionary, its details known only to you. And if you were to wish for them, the want contains not only a person, but likely a time and a place and a story—all summoned only by saying their name.

6. a noun that you were looking at in a moment of uncomplicated happiness

There’s an instant just a little before the halfway point of the song’s runtime in “Wishlist” when Eddie seems to consider his own good fortune. What if the wishing ceased, and the wisher accepted what they have? For there is so much to be grateful for, especially when things are good. Simple beauties like _________________ all around us. What if this were the last wish?
     Perhaps some could end here. But what if there are those of us for whom wishing is the default state of being? A reflex in difficult moments? Maybe there’s even a little bit of stubbornness at play here—a refusal to accept things as they are. And when things get tough, well—we need that. Wishing can show us the path forward.
This must be why the consideration comes in the middle of the song. Because, and yet, inevitably—
The wishing continues.

7. an exclamation offered in response to the best news you ever delivered

I wish I was a messenger and all the news was good is one of my all-time favorite wishes. I’ve been the bearer of bad news so many times and nothing beats having good news to share. Hearing “_________________”; the way a face can light a room.
     I like that Eddie doesn’t only wish for good news—he wants to be the one delivering it. To play a pivotal role in someone else’s joy—that’s one of my wishes, too.

8. a vehicle that once belonged to someone you loved

When you commemorate a person in your art, you’re creating a way for yourself to return to them. Eddie and his first wife aren’t together anymore, but he still sings the line he wrote for her at shows: I wish I was the full moon shining off your Camaro’s hood. Just as live improvisation allows for evolution of the self, singing the original lyrics can be a way of acknowledging what once was: I felt this, and it was true. A life might change and the relationship might end, but in the world of the wish you can still climb into the passenger seat of the _________________, buckle yourself in beside someone you love(d) and imagine that everything that came next might turn out okay, because you’d face it together.
     Maybe singing a line live is a way of turning where you stand and taking a moment to smile back at your past and the people in it. Beaming out gratitude to that world of wishes that once were.

9. a place where you felt at home

The first summer I lived on my own, Pearl Jam kept me company. I couldn’t stop listening to Yield in particular. It was an album that signified a change within the band’s dynamic—an increased sense of partnership within the group—and I feel like the shift is something you can hear, almost as if listening to it might make you feel less lonely. The consistency of music has meant everything to me, certain albums and songs akin to life rafts floating out toward me in a sea of uncertainty. “Wishlist” was one such song.
It’s hard to take stock of an era when you’re in the middle of it. But no matter what else was going on at the time, I can look back now and see that I had my records and my books and a key that turned in a lock to a place I called my own—a place I have the distance from now to feel nostalgic for. I can shut my eyes and wish myself back there—not so much even to the geographic boundaries of that city and its skyline, but to the era and the people, the disc in the car stereo and the song I played over and over again. Everyone needs a place like _________________. Somewhere they can wish themselves home.

10. a noun that you lost, because it wasn’t where it should’ve been

Do you ever wish to live in a perfect world? A universe where the things we’re looking for are always right where we expect them to be. A key you could always find, the earring you never lost. In this perfect world, _________________ would have been right where you left it. But then, I guess, in a perfect world, there’d be much less wishing. Much less to write songs about, in fact. This one might not even exist at all.

11. an adjective to describe a person in your life who you can count on

I often think about the reader when I write. I wonder how you are and who you are. I can’t help myself; I’m curious; I’m thinking about you.
What if an essay could be a collaboration between the writer and the reader? Two strangers who come together to create something new. You’re always bringing your own memories and feelings to what you read anyway; that’s just part of being human. And so I’ve left you all these spaces to fill with your own words, your own wishes. I suppose if you’ve chosen to engage with the essay as intended, I led you to dwell on certain things—some that made you happy, some less so.
Here is where I wonder if you’ve left certain spaces blank. Are you in a hurry? Did nothing come to mind? Were there spaces you skipped because you didn’t want to think about what the answer might be? What might change if you returned to those vacant lines?
We all deserve a _________________ person. If you fill any space, my wish for you is that it’s this one.

12. a verb that never lets you down

I have this theory—or maybe it’s a wish?—that the answers we seek can often be found in the art that matters to us, if we just go looking for them. I knew I wanted to write about “Wishlist,” but I wasn’t sure what shape the piece might take. And so I listened to the song, and there it was—a line about a verb, the seed for my mad lib of longing. Eddie filled this space for you and me: I wish I was the verb “to ______trust______” and never let you down.
What if the solution to every conundrum, every question, had been queued up long ago on a tape or a disc, a record or a playlist, just waiting for us to press play?

13. the song that you never skip

Do I love “Wishlist” because it began as a creative experiment? Always shifting, never static; Eddie changes it live and the listener changes it again. A song like this one creates a space in which we can consider our past and our future, our desires and our dreams; I’ve just made that structure more explicit. It’s likely that you love _________________ not just because of the way it sounds, but thanks to the memories it’s accumulated over time, the pictures it summons in your mind, the person you were with when you first heard the opening riff.
A song is never just a song; a wishlist is so much more than just a list.

Abigail Oswald is a detective investigating life. She writes Microfascination, a newsletter on pop culture rabbit holes, and edits the Lost/Found imprint at Split/Lip Press, which gives out-of-print books a new home. Her work has appeared in places like Best Microfiction, Memoir Mixtapes, The Rumpus, and a memory vending machine. Abigail earned her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and can be found at the movie theater in at least one parallel universe at any given time. More online at abigailwashere.com.