Have you ever felt that rush…

The few seconds when a loud concert hall darkens, comes to a hush, and the audience roars as the band arrives on stage?

Waking up in a new city in another country and not knowing where your day will take you?

Hiking up the last crescent of the mountain, knowing your eyes are about to be rewarded?

Walking into your favorite restaurant on an empty stomach? Walking into a brand new restaurant you’ve always wanted to try?

During a first kiss? Or maybe during what you think might be your last?

Origin Story

It was 2017 and my dear friend Linda was coming to visit me in SoCal. It was her third time flying down to San Diego’s coast from Toronto, so we decided a weekend in LA would be the best jaunt this time around. There was a show at the LA Philharmonic that included free drinks on the garden rooftop. Any excuse to dress up and high brow around town! Plus there was a yurt in someone’s backyard via Airbnb that was calling our names. I wonder if any neighbors happened to peek over their fence only to see two girls putting on cocktail dresses outside on a deck raised above Silver Lake, sharing a locker sized mirror. I wonder if between big gulps of cheap white and discussing the possibility of alien life, we knew we were about to invent a word.

Hyperion Avenue

Linda and I met a handful of years ago, while working for Collective Arts Brewing. Her love for travel, conspiracy theories, music, and art always made for wild ivy-like conversations that branched from Canadian/ US politics one second, to our forever battle we endure when it comes to dying our hair “blonde.”

We were in the cab on the way to the Phil when one of my favorite conversations happened. It wasn’t our deepest by any stretch, but it would have a lasting effect on how we’d communicate thereafter. Maybe it was the mind-bending Gehry-designed building, the epic classical concert, or the roof views of one of our favorite cities, that punctuated the conversation, but this was a moment we wouldn’t forget:

“Do you ever get little jolts of excitement before certain moments that kind of take your breath away?”

“Yes! Wait, like the excitement before a really good meal, or before an epic trip across the country?”

“Exactly! Like, it’s not really the action coming up that matters, but the elation of anticipation just knocks you off your feet.... I feel like there isn’t a word for that.”

“Right. Excited is too overused. Elated seems …. inflated.”

“Yeah, there is no appropriate word. I can’t think of any.”

We were silent while the taxi turned onto Hyperion Avenue. We looked up.

“Hyperion?”

But why?

Yes, this journal entry is about how we made up a word. Or rather, gave a very ancient word new meaning. Hyperion is already named in the dictionary. But imagine our meta-hyperion when we find out why it’s there in the first place. It’s both the tallest tree in the world and one of the 12 greek god children of Gaia.

Over the course of the next year, I would try to explain this new idea to a handful of friends and family. Sometimes just sliding in a little “Oooh, hyperion,” before taking the first sip of a delicious beer. Most laugh and more than a few lovingly joke that I’m ridiculous. After all, what’s the point of any of this? On more than one occasion I have heard friends use it (perhaps sarcastically) in conversation without my prompts. For a writer, that shit gets you going.

In a way, I’ve reverse-bucket-listed something I never thought I wanted to accomplish. Whether this goes anywhere or not, Linda and I know we came up with a word that we use often and we like to say among friends.

Send your imagination in hyper-drive > why can’t we invent words or give them new meaning?

Forget the why - Why not?

When we are children, our lives are filled with group projects. Invent a country! Spend a day in the life of any career of your choice! Make your own newspaper! These creative endeavors taught us organization and dedication, but most importantly these little projects teach us how to think outside the box. Put something on paper that hasn’t been put there before. We’re adults now and we don’t get to play in this world unless we assign ourselves these tasks.

So consider this our continuing-ed project. We invented a word and we damn well think we deserve an A on it. What’s your next group project going to be?

Hyperion

hī-ˈpir-ē-ən

Verb and/or Interjection

An emotional state of extreme excitement which usually precedes an event that the subject is “looking forward to.”

I am trying this new Michelin star restaurant tonight and I am so hyperion right now.

I don’t want to come off too hyperion on the first date.

“First day in London!” “#hyperionforyou”

Synonyms:

Excited

Elated

Wow

Stellar

Antonyms:

Indifferent

Whatever

Dull

Blah

Other definitions:

Hyperion

A titan, father of Helios (sun)

Of Hyperion we are told that he was the first to understand, by diligent attention and observation, the movement of both the sun and the moon and the other stars, and the seasons as well, in that they are caused by these bodies, and to make these facts known to others; and that for this reason he was called the father of these bodies, since he had begotten, so to speak, the speculation about them and their nature.

— Diodorus Siculus (5.67.1)

Hyperion is a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) in California that was measured at 115.85 m (380.1 ft), which ranks it as the world's tallest known living tree.[1]

Might as well end this with a moonset. Hear the loons? Hyperion, baby.

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Hyperion! Why we gave an ancient word new meaning…