“‘Don’t be a little bitch with your chit chat just show me where your dick’s at.’
Wait a minute… you don’t know where my dick’s at? I don’t mind anyone assuming that one. ‘I often find myself debating the meaning of “good” as if destined to protect some discernibly correct answer from bastard philosophies with my own secondhand ideas… as if I have some insight reliant on something other than the words we already share. Language is intrinsic to society, but the more words become our daily bread, the greater the monopoly they have on our expression. The more words contain our thoughts, the less society is intrinsic to them. Experiences are more significant than the words with which I think my thoughts, and yet I cannot apply them as succinctly without them. Words are supposed to be our tools, not the other way around. Our ideas are held captive by the trappings of the end user’s perspective concerning the assumed intent, word choice, and subjective individual context, so, in a way, you already know what I’m going to say, which I realize as I say it anyway…’ so fuck yeah… I appreciate a fucking dick check, but I need some fuckin’ chit chat, too.
‘I am whatever you say I am. If I wasn’t, then why would I say I am?’” Click
I live in St. Louis, and I’m driving home to Champaign-Urbana, radio blaring…. I like it loud—louder than my thoughts anyhow. I used to hate the radio when I believed in evil. I’ve been doin’ this thing where I listen to whatever top 40 hit, find a line of any discernible thoughtfulness, crass is good—funny at least… then record myself reading the line (in this case, penned by Ke$ha) followed by some Mark Richard Altman rants… manufacturing my memory as I perform, even for myself. I feel like Krang worrying his body vessel might be schizophrenic.
INT. GASTROPUB – NIGHT
“China Girl is a great fuckin’ song, but Iggy’s kicks the shit outta Bowie’s.”
“What?! How can you say that that’s fucked!”
“Bowie’s great, fuck off… but listen to Iggy grrroowll… makes Bowie sound like Tom Cruise!”
Hindsight’s 20/20… but it’s true. I realize a certain subtle arrested development in my relative world—I can see it now anyhow. It’s not that absurd, the contrarian reaction to social norms—flipside of the same coin. Watching people… unassuming acquaintances unfamiliar with either version of China Girl clamber to have an opinion (seconds away from ossified fact) sure to spark a domino effect of unadulterated subsets of future human interaction. It’s all inferred, but one side inevitably ingratiates more so than the other, rendering the debate symbolic of something larger than a mere preference. Maybe it’s the duck-fat pomme frites on one plate or the chips and salsa on the other… are you intrigued? Offended? Does something feel condescending? They’re just fuckin’ fries, man…. I once wore a battle axe earring with a fake ruby in the handle, chain-linked to an ear cuff. Okay, I didn’t, but I should’ve and I could’ve. Whatever it may be, amidst those indecisive moments of incrementally heightened social anxiety, environmental cues feed a subjective yet decisive “cool” that drives us in a momentary and anecdotal fashion day to day and to varying degrees, but ultimately building a broader arc of a lifetime—which begs the question to me, is “cool” actually arbitrary regardless of its conditional birth? It’s Sodom vs. Gomorrah, and… wait, did they fight?
“I don’t know what I’m doing… It’s okay, it’s endearing hopefully. Fffffllerby flerby… derby flurby fucky…. Ok. I don’t know what I’m doing. Pygmalion Music Festival 2012… what the fuck is interesting about another fucking wanna be music review? Dinosaur, Jr., Grizzly Bear, Willis Earl Beal… Cloud Nothings… Willis? Sure… Best Coast…. I dig the California-hugging bear … the map. I was once congratulated for correctly identifying the Western Hemisphere on a globe… in high school…. That’s fucked up. Ohh, St. Louis, St. Louis. Does anything French come to mind when I say St. Louis? How ‘bout Illinois? What if you buy a shirt from a second-hand shop, are you supposed to feel bad for cutting off the sleeves?” Click
——– $ * $ * $ * $ * $ * $ * $ ——–
My reasons for driving home:
1) visit my grandma in the hospital; she’s 97 and just broke her hip
2) attend the Pygmalion Music Festival and write critical piece
3) another day in pursuit of familial connection
Driving home on I-55, the Pink Elephant always gets me—hypnotically coaxing me westward, “Slow down,” its big pink form floating ominously above the horizon for 5 turgid seconds. “At least long enough to remember what hemisphere you’re in,” I think I said aloud. I daydream constantly of Route 66. Why not turn around? Torn from its reprieving tank of decisiveness, my conflicted lobster brain boils in conflicted anxiety, nerves dance, flash frying… I’ll drink to that! Sauvignon Blanc, please, sir… Huh-hughng! New Zealand lemongrass!… sheeps and shit! My mind racing towards Tulsa behind me, I exit east on I-72, shit-bound instead, my freewill barking like a damn dog cursing oil pumps.
Where is the line between selfishness and self-respect??
The mixing pot is starting to burn, and I want to shoot it…. 2 minutes and 50 seconds or 2 minutes and 42 seconds or 3 minutes or— good doesn’t mean shit when you can decide what to like… we don’t know any better. But you can’t comment on coexistence while uncompromisingly disregarding it. The trappings exist in dissent no less. Americana makes a lot more sense now that Wilco has thrown some kraut in the stew. These are savage lands according to the Yankees. Where neither British nor Spanish fully evicted the Cajun orphans, the US overshadows with a Lewis and Clark history no less significant. There’s a great pride in stillness here… a pride dripping with shamefulness impervious but agreeable to logic. It’s not showy, especially when it wants to be. With Mother Road romance in tow, I’ve got some braunschweiger to eat.
“Okay… The Pygmalion Festival is not named after George Bernard Shaw’s play but the third album of the British shoegazers, Slowdive. It’s a boutique festival in a town too self-effacing to call much of anything boutique and plenty enough aware to stage a slew of worldly rockers. It’s a 3-day festival staged throughout Champaign-Urbana in mid-sized venues, coffee shops, art galleries, and outside in the streets and parking lots of antiquated city blocks. It’s appropriately affordable, too, for a small-ish Big Ten college town with as much popped-collar dicking as idiosyncratic Midwesternism to frame a pseudo-slacker intellectual culture. Big shit actually happens here… more than you might expect.” Click
All of a beginning I can muster while driving, I’m wondering what to watch on History once I arrive home… something to inspire a proactive state in my weekend sanctuary… some niche subcultural something slapped together with provocative irreverence and food or whatever… a soundtrack by some band from somewhere like Tashkent called Nietzsche’s Dick that SPIN calls “…if Sepultura met Sigur Ros on the Silk Road for pastoral jams and yak” … food… I don’t know who Slowdive is or was, but I find it comforting. Rock and roll is the unknown pleasure of everything we’ve yet to understand or at the very least, the accompaniment to figuring it out… depending how deeply you find yourself enmeshed. I’ll be going to see one of my favorite bands tomorrow. HUM. In an instant, they once proved to me that the world might not be so big. They’re on instead of Sleigh Bells… dude broke his hand or somethin’.
1/4