ypsilanti's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- if through subdivisions if through sub- divisions of the past and all the sinews streched as make- shift paths to send signals or censor sent- iments or send like one has sent late bills belated wishes rent, a careful edition of all prescripted possiblities and elimination of un- expect- ed goingson strange states long pauses where even every honest word sounds like a lie and you can hear trains outside go by with a rotation that clicks out a code and calls for you to follow. *** it's four a.m. exactly, and i'm listening to the mamas and the papas. when lovesick was on tour this summer, we played a show in long island, and there was a womyn there who worked at the radio station and asked us to do an interview the next day. when we went to do the interview, she spent a lot of time explaining her idea of our show the night before, and talked a lot about how strange it was that i talked so much about what songs were about, and how she was reminded so much of christian slater in his role in "Pump Up The Volume". of course.. along with "Over The Edge", there was no film that made more sense and related more to my high school experiences without being at all congruent to what was happening in my boring, frusturating school days. just the vibe, the general weariness and a feeling of everything building up infinately. the only breif sense of outlet or release in the films were just the best efforts on behalf of the kids not to explode and self-destruct. in "Over The Edge", the kids all live in suburbs and there's nothing to do, and the cops fuck with them and shut down the youth center, and their parents couldn't care less, and they run as fast as they can through the dead nights of their still towns, trying to immitate as best as they could the sounds that they thought rain or wind or fire might make. this involved getting high, getting in fights, partying, playing with guns making out, doing all of the above in abandoned buildings or any hidden secret place to call their own, even momentarily. but no, these places are taken away, too and the kids are kept apart from each other, and in the end, the sounds they were just trying to understand on their own, these elusive and wonderful noises that seem to be second nature, just out of reach in reality... even the possibility of the kids speculating as to their sounds are taken away, and so they do the forbidden and burn down their town, learning for themselves at last what fire sounds like, and the sound that the wind that comes with that fire makes, and far too early the kids are put into a situation where they learn that it's sometimes better to think about what something might be like than it is to find out in a definite, irreversable way. sometimes when you have just a glance or a secondhand story of a vague memory, you can build something so much more beautiful than the immovable and completely explicable reality. and sometimes they won't even let you try to make the right mistakes. In "Pump Up The Volume" the kids are in an equally fucked-with town under similar suburban skies. where can they run to, except to each other? they try so hard, also, just to connect with something that they can understand, and maybe will make sense to them, perhaps that they can hold on to for a second or just see as a reason not to destroy everything around them that's gone so wrong before they even came into the picture. their hopes and attempts are embodied in the musings and somewhat ridiculous diatribes of a teenager with a pirate radio show. somehow through ranting about the evils of their school, making fake masturbation sounds and playing early '90's alternative music (which at that point was still so aptly and amazingly called "College Rock"), the anonymous dj shakes up his faceless, voiceless community and gives a name to the frusturations and falsehoods they've been glumly swimming under for their whole lives, perhaps unaware that there was anything more to hope for, or maybe just convinced that things would get better later or never. maybe never even considering any other possible way of life. and of course, even this small attempt to connect or understand or take control of their ideas of what's valuable is taken away from them, and they burn the town down, doing as much as they can to rise up. it's like that led zeppelin song "Stairway To Heaven". have you ever heard that song? the whole time i was growing up i misunderstood the lyrics at the end of the song. they actually read "When all is one and one is all", right? but from the very first time i heard it, probably when i was two or three, right on to a few years into high school, i always understood it as "We only wanted what is ours". seems simple enough. and of course, my misunderstood memories and concept of what the song was saying made so much more sense and fueled me so much furthur than whatever hippy universal nonesense the lyrics actually are. the sound that i thought fire might make before i ever saw fire, playing at full volume in my right headphone, and the sound that fire always makes for real, dully crackling and chirpping in the left. so that was the vibe of my growing up. some violent uprising just waiting to happen, waiting and waiting and waiting, buzzing and glimmering under the surface of the streets we lived on with all the fierce venom and anger i thought it should have, but never happening, never breaking out. the town never burned down, the kids never tried to understand or even connect. they just waited through whatever abuse they went through, personally or collectively, and with a few exceptions that rose and faded like any other shooting stars, they all just kept quiet and learned that was just the way things went. i realized so much later than i thought i should have, but of course right on time, that that breaking point i was convinced we were all headed towards was not actually an event or happening at all. it was me, and it was all my friends, and the things we knew and held on to. the town was burned down in our eyes, and injustices were battled in no outward way, and not in a collective ambush of fire and blood, but only in the silent, untouchable, collective beating of our hearts. just by realizing that we were not made for what we were being forced into, there was a glimmering uprising that never started or stopped happening, it was just a constant state of being. that attempt to understand, or the wish to take what was ours, was, as much as it possibly could be, the act of doing so. the attempt was the uprising. there was so much more to know, that the terms and concepts were disarmingly simple, basic. undeniably one dimensional, but building forever upwards, at a rate that would have been disturbing if anyone had taken their eyes off the ground. so, if you can think back and remember the womyn doing the radio interview.. she was suggesting none of the above. maybe more that there was a sense of purpose and ridiculous tangent, a confused and scatterbrained hope that accompanied my addressing of the audience at our show the night before. maybe just a vibe that reminded her of a movie she saw when she was a freshman in high school. there are so many ways to go. i am always in the middle of thinking about drastic decisions and changes that i may have never even considered before. always a churning process, always wondering what is next, or what has become of me from what has taken place. never for a second realizing that both of these things are happening right now in the act of the wondering. it's like, hold on and stay. run far and fast away. sell everything you own. buy everything you see. eat all the food in the house. starve yourself. break your favorite things. don't let anyone even see or know what your favorite things are. all of these things happen at the same time in each other. all the polar opposites contain their foils, and it's all worthwhile. the possibility of a choice existing is in and of itself your descision. it's happening inside you. it's happening now. saturday after this next one we leave for new york. everything that comes together or falls apart in the meantime or at any point thereafter will do so perfectly. and right on time. thank you to all my friends. i love you. thank you for listening and reading and for your continued input. *** (listen to: prince, beat happening, mission of burma, joy division, the pop group, ida, his name is alive, teach me tiger, wolf eyes, skip spence, neil young, walker brothers, cake (the '60's girl group), mammas and papas, the zombies, veronica lake, palace brothers, remainder, sonic youth, the intima, new order, carter family, buddy miles, turtles, teenage jesus and the jerks, the first two silver jews albums, some rush records, whatever's on the radio, whatever your friends play you, whatever sounds you think qualify as music. ) 07:47:44 - 2000-10-25 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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