A Letter For “I’m Tim”

The Netflix Documentary on Avicii

Happy New Year! I’ve never been a huge believer in gearing up for a new year and using this calendar date to plan around, but I think that’s changed this year. I’ve never felt better moving into a new year and never been more thoughtful about what is coming in the future and how much of that I can control.

There is a bit of manifest destiny flowing through me at the moment - I’m going to create what I want to create and make it as good as I possibly can. I hope you all feel the same way.

This morning I woke up with my parents sitting in my living room and by 8:30am several neighbor kids had infiltrated the house as well. After 10+ days abroad in Europe their family got back late yesterday and this morning their kids came running to our door when they woke up to hang with my kids, they missed us, and that was beautiful to see and experience.

Once we all settled in and got some coffee and food in our bellies the TV found its way on and the new Avicii documentary, titled “It’s Time” popped up. My oldest son Otto loves EDM and DJs, and really took to Avicii and his music. When Tim Bergling, the human who created Avicii, died by suicide in 2018 it was the first time we had to explain a hard life concept to Otto.

It was one of those moments when we really had to think about and use our words carefully to try and gracefully educate and communicate something so sad and complex and hard to our young boy.

Before anyone could really say anything the “play” was pressed and the documentary started. Soon enough the whole house was gathered closely and glued to “It’s Tim”. The room was captivated, drawn into the story of this person who was obsessed with making music.

Tim was clearly a genius, a savant, someone who could create real art from sounds and words. He started mixing music at 8 years old. He produced polished and mature tracks by age 16. He was so prolific by age 21 on online music forums that he was globally famous. By 22 he had a top 10 global album with his first full major release titled “Levels”.

The documentary did a great job of telling this story, showcasing his obsession and passion for his craft, and outlining the success.

And then it did an equally good job exploring all the harsh realities that came with that success and intense focus.

We all sat stunned, silently absorbing the last 30 minutes that detailed his struggles and tried to find a way to explain his pain and suffering and ultimately his death.

It was deeply moving.

After it ended my parents and I moved upstairs and started talking about it. My mom, an especially clear thinker, threw out the first observation:

I think some people don’t realize that it takes balance and diversity of life and experiences to be happy

Gosh I love my mom.

She then followed the thought with her own experience in how she always sought to achieve balance in her life. She knew she always wanted to be a good wife and partner to my dad, be a good mother and support her kids, be healthy and fit and move her body, work and be productive, and be connected to other people and her community.

Every time she felt out of balance she would sit down and examine those 5 things in her current frame of life to see where she was imbalanced or where she wasn’t meeting those goals.

She said it always made it clear to her what she needed to do next to get back to a healthy place.

This seems so simple, as most great advice is, but it’s only achievable if those goals are clear and you’re convicted in them.

With Tim on my mind I responded with a thought I’d been grappling with.

“You cannot be focused and in balance, and conversely you cannot be balanced and focused”

I think some people, like Tim, can be singularly obsessed and see the success of being so far out of balance, that they lose sight of what balance is. That the pain they feel and deal with is because they can’t calibrate themselves back to a place of balance. They are grounded by the far-out-of-balance life and their brains molded by it, especially if they see and feel and experience success and adulation every time they go further out on the edge.

At some point it becomes nearly impossible to grapple with the reality that to feel good you have to be out on that edge, despite a rational mind knowing that being out there is risky and dangerous.

But I also get it, the more risk you are willing to play with the more reward, and if you get good at that game you start to feel confident that you can recreate it at will.

But that life is a singular one, it’s not one where you can bring someone else along with you, or one where you can build a family that’s well adjusted and functioning. It’s a competing life to that.

The conversation went on and explored this dynamic, with my wife joining and my Dad as well. It was a beautiful conversation that showcased how thoughtful and introspective we all were willing to be.

We couldn’t have had that conversation without Tim, without Avicii. He gave us incredible music and perspective. His story will be intertwined into mine, my sons, my families now. This New Year’s Day will be marked by that memory and conversation and that’s an amazing thing we get to have now.

Thanks Tim, we love you and are so grateful for your contributions to our lives and our own stories.

With love and deep appreciation,

-Andrew