#93 (of 365) "Wait... What?" The World is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die

In June 2020, my first novel was published by Walrus Publishing, a division of Amphorae Publishing Group, and--despite coming out during COVID, and having zero marketing budget (it's a small press), I manage to sell 1300 copies, which was a pretty impressive haul, and I am proud and delighted at the positive response to the story I was trying to tell. I WILL BE OKAY was about two boys falling in love despite objections (or perceived objections) from their families, and the framing device is attendance at a concert in Asbury Park, watching the late-era emo band The World is a Beautiful Place play. There was an earlier version of the novel that I wrote back when I got my MA in Writing in 2008-09 that revolved around attendance at an Arcade Fire concert at the Bowery Ballroom in 2003, but by the time I started re-writing "I WILL BE OKAY" in an attempt to publish, circa 2016 or so, setting it in 2003 would have made it no longer contemporary, and I didn't really care for Arcade Fire anymore, so I didn't want to write about them. The World Is seemed a perfect substitute, as I was really into them at the time, and also, a high school indie rock kid in 2016 would be really into them as well (as evidenced by the age of the crowds I would watch them with when I saw them live). Now, in 2026 I feel about The World Is the same way I felt about Arcade Fire in 2016 (that is to say, the band's music has changed and I don't care for this version at all) but back then, their songs really appealed to me, and those songs, from the first album (only) and the EPs and singles that were released before/around the same time were amazing (and still hold up really, really well). 

The original Arcade Fire version was titled Us Kids Know, which was a line from "No Cars Go" off their first EP. Obviously that wouldn't work for this new version. So, while switching the band at the center (and the backstory of the characters, their families, pretty much everything except the attraction that forms the tension of the novel), I needed a line from one of their songs to capture the feeling of the novel as the new title. I went with "I Will Be OK...Everything". Which is the ending chorus of this very song, off a 4-song EP that also includes a song titled "I Will Be OK...Everything" (which does not include that line in the song). I made that phrase the "mantra" repeated by my narrator throughout (some might say too much), as a way to talk himself down from the stresses of his teen traumas, and when my agent attempted to get it published that was the title. Amphorae asked me to change it to the final version I WILL BE OKAY and I thought that worked better. But that's where the name came from. This very song. One of my top 100 favorite songs ever, and one of two by this band in the top 100.

"Wait... What?" - The World is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die // Are Here to Help You (2011)