the dreams of youth: you want to do what?!
In my youth I was angry. I cannot say childhood simply because --and I am not alone in this finding-- there is indication that I did not, in fact, have a childhood insofar as standard, 20th century American rites of passage. Things I never did: climb trees; play with action figures or dolls; play catch with my dad (or anyone); learn how to ride a bike (I'm 26 and still don't know how!); didn't play with jax or any other "standard" toy; wake up early for Saturday morning cartoons (but I would wake up early Monday-Friday to watch old sitcoms); played games like spin the bottle or seven minutes in heaven; helped my dad fix anything; learned cooking skills from mom, grandma, or anyone who cooked; had an invisible friend; played house, or doctor, or cowboys and Indians; played with beebee guns (I've only fired one in my life, c.2003);
Clearly, this is not a summative list of late 20th century American rites of passage; however, it is clearly a fairly lengthy list of activities which I did not experience. Life is really a haze in many parts, but I recently had a half memory fleshed out by another participant in the event. Briefly, the memory involved jumping on a bed and vomiting Pizza Hut Hawaiian pizza. I swore off pineapple as a topping for well over a decade after that. The rest of the memory, I found out, was that I was bouncing with excitement over watching the Back to the Future movies, at least the first 2, which were out on VHS already. Rough estimations place this memory around 1990-2. This occurred in a house I have not lived in since 1993. I'll return to part of this story, the Pizza Hut part, later.
Growing up, my mind was never really on the future in terms of jobs and events I'd like to occur. I just wanted to be old and worldly, full of wisdom, and a lifetime (or two) of memories well behind me. My love of old people must have had something to do with it. Though I have cousins fairly close to my age range (and my sister is, after all, only 3 yrs and 9 months older than me_, the fact is that I was the youngest. So, being the stubborn, stubborn child I was I often fought violently and vehemently against enjoying life. I was angry to say the least. Consequently, people let me get what I want. It was easier for them than any struggle to get me to lead a life of normalcy.
Somewhere along the way, I did think of dreams jobs. One was president; I was obsessed with presidential trivia to the point where I made it a thing to use the dictionary in elementary school (I guess I had more sway in the 5th grade than I thought!). In those days, dictionaries had lists of the presidents, including pictures and years served. Gradually, my mind shifted toward the arts. I wanted to write --creatively. My goal was to be a novelist. The movie Harriet the Spy (ironically enough, I never read the book) was new and pressed the importance of writing regularly.
Around this time, writing novels turned into writing film scripts. This, very, very quickly, turned into wanting to direct movies. In the late 1990s, I fancied myself a fan of Hitchcock and Kubrick; somewhere in my room, I still have my first ever Entertainment Weekly, which was the one featuring an obit for Mr Kubrick. My life revolved around the movies, a truly creative medium. It is sad to say that I once considered myself, particularly then, to be very, very visually inclined. Nowadays, my mind is not that limber or creative; I hear, I speak, I see, I feel, in words. Words. There are no fancy colours or images. Cold, sterile words, much like those you may be reading, right now.
My love of movies went back to love of writing and language. This was ill-fated, however, as my love of presidential trivia reminded me that I just loved learning, period. Keeping a journal was difficult, and I didn't establish a permanent journal writing/record keeping until 2000. It has been part of my life since. Livejournal, for better or for worse, has a disproportionately large segment of my "writing." Junior high was a rough period, and fiction wouldn't do it. Since I was newly new to "smart" classes, I threw my weight behind the academics. Creativity was for the birds; I loved science, struggled with math, had no athletic prowess, and was no longer the creative force in language arts. History seemed like a logical fit.
The history bit can be discussed in greater depth at some other point. In junior high, History became my passion. The abbreviated form is that my sophomore year of high school, I took AP European History which shifted my historical interests away from America as it is, to America as it was, to really --what is America and where did those ideas come from? Europe! But I digress. That was years of struggle and torment later.
The simplified story, then, is that history was in my blood and life designs. The obsession with history remained long enough that it turned into a degree. Interest in languages --foreign ones, especially -- has waxed and waned. My biggest lament today is that my historical areas of interest would require further, extensive language training in multiple languages. I'm not that dedicated. I'm English-Spanish fluent; 2 years of Russian under my belt; smattering and varied experiences with Croatian, Latin, German, and Arabic. I need to improve the Russian, to say the least.
Again, a digression. My life, then, has been caught in this absurd prosaic reality. The goal, the dream of being an academic has lied central to my mind. Whenever I think of or regret the History degree, or lament and curse the poor performance in Language Studies (which should have been a Linguistics degree!), I find myself asking "why am I unhappy? What could have or should have been done differently?" "Why did I even go right off to college? Why didn't I take time off? Why didn't I switch majors?"
That game leads me back to --movies and writing. I haven't gotten the nerve or work ethic for either. These are creative mediums, and though creativity is a very prized commodity, I just don't have it. In that sense, I still believe my practical use, my "I'm a coward and I gave in" the "I can't believe I'm philosophically devoid of meaning" existence, I would be a perfect example of a bureaucrat. In that sense, the dream lingers on; despite my embarrassing internet present (exhibit A), I still long and wish to serve an establishment, "the" establishment. Being of maximum public service seems to me the ultimate goal to aspire to. These are certain naive thoughts without much weight or vetting, but they are mine. Yes, I am idealistic. I have learned, however, that while there is a large degree of lobbying and consensus building and concession making and even backroom deals at the last minute, that to completely abandon any goal is weakness. A lack of conviction.
My life doesn't have much conviction to it, really. I wanted to be old. Around the age of 8, I wanted to die. The obsession and desire to destroy and die didn't go away, truthfully, until April of 2011. So strange to think that my most formative years were spent in such a hell.
Now, if you'll bear with the rhetorical histrionics, there are some important questions to ask. As much as I love books, which ones kept me alive? As much as I love movies, which ones kept me alive? True, television shows like the Golden Girls play disproportionately large roles in my life. But did teevee give me meaning and purpose? What historical figures served as templates for my life? What amount of writing kept me sane?
There's a large hole here. A gaping, missing, gnawing hole. Hopefully it is clear that in all this jockeying about art --in the broad sense-- where did all the sounds go?
As much as I credit Noam Chomsky, or to go back to them, Hitchcock and Kubrick, where did I really take my cues from? My cultural tastes are certainly dubious. But, there are obvious, palpable areas to address.
Much of my journal is dedicated to discussing The Wall that I built and the decade (2001-11) that was dominated by Pink Floyd. If asked about life changing experiences, aside from sobriety, there are 2 that come to mind --6 June 2005 and 5 November 2011 --my first major concert (Sleater-Kinney) and the first time I saw Wild Flag. If you read through this journal at all, even as a casual observer you'll note these in the tags:
Pink Floyd
Sleater-Kinney
Wild Flag
The Smiths/Morrissey
lyrics
songs
dark side of the moon
the wall
music
Neil Young
There are usually various song titles thrown in there, too. When I even think of how my parents met, music comes to mind. My parents met at a disco.
I am that rare individual that unabashedly loves punk and disco --the divergent sounds of the late 1970s. Television theme songs are pretty entrenched in my brain. I sing commercial jingles; I speak in song lyrics. Karaoke has become a prominent feature of my life in the last 10 weeks.
One of my best friends that I lost due to my alcoholism earned her degree in music, and I believe went on to do a master's. I'm not sure. Another friend, a prominent drinking buddy, was also a music major. Jesika and I clashed over music. Jesika was about harmony, and especially in that time in my life, it was all about psychedelic, discordant, atonal stuff. Sun Ra was a big influence. Sidebar: I fell in love with the 1960s of the music, but stuck around because the protest songs which are now commodities used to sell the very bourgeois, military-industrial complex establishment many of the songs said shouldn't exist. I believed in the fury, the rage, the protest.
Gail, Gail and I share the love of Morrissey and the Smiths; didn't we used to talk in their lyrics? I still have a shirt from here in which there are simple stitchings --"The Smiths" on the front and "Suffer Little Children" on the back, which was (and is) my favourite Smiths song.
At one point, in that odd time of "trio" there was a half-hearted attempt to write a film script about a detective named Dick Poop, there were to be lots of montages. Speaking of montages, one of the trio had a thing for Rocky movies --and I always pushed for Rocky IV because of the Soviets and because, well, James Brown was "Livin' in America." Also, a firm, bonding aspect of the trio was our divergent musical tastes, highlighted on various mixed CDs we made even up to the point of irony in 2010.
I've babbled on, in an important way for once. My life has been reexamined to a degree.
I suppose, then, the point is that I love music.
Music and politics are essential parts of who I am. After all, Pink Floyd said "we don't need no education" but The Smiths said we at least needed a Wilde one. Sleater-Kinney began as riot grrrl before evolving into whatever you would like to label The Woods (2005). Again, the 1960s were more than peace and love and harmony; Marty Balin, Grace Slick, and Paul Kanter harmonized together at one point to say "we are forces of chaos and anarchy, everything we say we are we are, and we are very proud of ourselves." I was proud of them.
It's a somewhat odd note to mention, but I wanted to explore the hallucinogenic world. I never did, and now I'm almost a year and a half sober. The odd part is that Bill Wilson --co-founder of AA-- had extensive experiences with LSD in the 1950s; as he suffered from depression, amongst other ailments, he thought that LSD could be a potential solution to the alcoholism that had nearly cost him and so many others their lives. Since AA literature doesn't say you can't do acid or anything like that, and because he was Bill fuckin' Wilson, he is considered to have had lifelong sobriety after 1935 before he passed in 1971.
My tweets have been saying it all. I've been articulating it in private conversation.
For those that don't know or missed it:
I love music.
I'm writing punk rock lyrics, if you can call it that. Some of it is clear novelty. Yes, there's "mutilated Marxism" in there. I somehow unintentionally acquired a guitar that I've still yet to learn how to play, but I know I will. I played cornet for one year, trumpet for 1, and then baritone the third before I decided academics, not music, would be my goal and interest in high school. I wasn't gung ho about the marching band idea, and after seeing how much of a drain it was to my sister, it just didn't make sense.
The latent appeal to the 1960s and the term punk are loaded enough to get a quick mention, now. In 2003, I protested our Middle Eastern involvements; I allowed my own demons to prevent me from getting more involved in the antiwar movement. Though I went to a university known for its left-leaning politics, I shied away from that; I was too establishment to realise that the road ahead is filled with sacrifices. One of my songs is about that, too. They're all very rough.
Education, history, language, these are all still driving forces in who I am. Indeed, going to graduate school in history, teaching high school, teaching in general, these are all very, very important to me. They've been my interests for very long, and at times they arouse my deepest passions.
Then, there is music. Music. It's a passion worth exploring.
Clearly, this is not a summative list of late 20th century American rites of passage; however, it is clearly a fairly lengthy list of activities which I did not experience. Life is really a haze in many parts, but I recently had a half memory fleshed out by another participant in the event. Briefly, the memory involved jumping on a bed and vomiting Pizza Hut Hawaiian pizza. I swore off pineapple as a topping for well over a decade after that. The rest of the memory, I found out, was that I was bouncing with excitement over watching the Back to the Future movies, at least the first 2, which were out on VHS already. Rough estimations place this memory around 1990-2. This occurred in a house I have not lived in since 1993. I'll return to part of this story, the Pizza Hut part, later.
Growing up, my mind was never really on the future in terms of jobs and events I'd like to occur. I just wanted to be old and worldly, full of wisdom, and a lifetime (or two) of memories well behind me. My love of old people must have had something to do with it. Though I have cousins fairly close to my age range (and my sister is, after all, only 3 yrs and 9 months older than me_, the fact is that I was the youngest. So, being the stubborn, stubborn child I was I often fought violently and vehemently against enjoying life. I was angry to say the least. Consequently, people let me get what I want. It was easier for them than any struggle to get me to lead a life of normalcy.
Somewhere along the way, I did think of dreams jobs. One was president; I was obsessed with presidential trivia to the point where I made it a thing to use the dictionary in elementary school (I guess I had more sway in the 5th grade than I thought!). In those days, dictionaries had lists of the presidents, including pictures and years served. Gradually, my mind shifted toward the arts. I wanted to write --creatively. My goal was to be a novelist. The movie Harriet the Spy (ironically enough, I never read the book) was new and pressed the importance of writing regularly.
Around this time, writing novels turned into writing film scripts. This, very, very quickly, turned into wanting to direct movies. In the late 1990s, I fancied myself a fan of Hitchcock and Kubrick; somewhere in my room, I still have my first ever Entertainment Weekly, which was the one featuring an obit for Mr Kubrick. My life revolved around the movies, a truly creative medium. It is sad to say that I once considered myself, particularly then, to be very, very visually inclined. Nowadays, my mind is not that limber or creative; I hear, I speak, I see, I feel, in words. Words. There are no fancy colours or images. Cold, sterile words, much like those you may be reading, right now.
My love of movies went back to love of writing and language. This was ill-fated, however, as my love of presidential trivia reminded me that I just loved learning, period. Keeping a journal was difficult, and I didn't establish a permanent journal writing/record keeping until 2000. It has been part of my life since. Livejournal, for better or for worse, has a disproportionately large segment of my "writing." Junior high was a rough period, and fiction wouldn't do it. Since I was newly new to "smart" classes, I threw my weight behind the academics. Creativity was for the birds; I loved science, struggled with math, had no athletic prowess, and was no longer the creative force in language arts. History seemed like a logical fit.
The history bit can be discussed in greater depth at some other point. In junior high, History became my passion. The abbreviated form is that my sophomore year of high school, I took AP European History which shifted my historical interests away from America as it is, to America as it was, to really --what is America and where did those ideas come from? Europe! But I digress. That was years of struggle and torment later.
The simplified story, then, is that history was in my blood and life designs. The obsession with history remained long enough that it turned into a degree. Interest in languages --foreign ones, especially -- has waxed and waned. My biggest lament today is that my historical areas of interest would require further, extensive language training in multiple languages. I'm not that dedicated. I'm English-Spanish fluent; 2 years of Russian under my belt; smattering and varied experiences with Croatian, Latin, German, and Arabic. I need to improve the Russian, to say the least.
Again, a digression. My life, then, has been caught in this absurd prosaic reality. The goal, the dream of being an academic has lied central to my mind. Whenever I think of or regret the History degree, or lament and curse the poor performance in Language Studies (which should have been a Linguistics degree!), I find myself asking "why am I unhappy? What could have or should have been done differently?" "Why did I even go right off to college? Why didn't I take time off? Why didn't I switch majors?"
That game leads me back to --movies and writing. I haven't gotten the nerve or work ethic for either. These are creative mediums, and though creativity is a very prized commodity, I just don't have it. In that sense, I still believe my practical use, my "I'm a coward and I gave in" the "I can't believe I'm philosophically devoid of meaning" existence, I would be a perfect example of a bureaucrat. In that sense, the dream lingers on; despite my embarrassing internet present (exhibit A), I still long and wish to serve an establishment, "the" establishment. Being of maximum public service seems to me the ultimate goal to aspire to. These are certain naive thoughts without much weight or vetting, but they are mine. Yes, I am idealistic. I have learned, however, that while there is a large degree of lobbying and consensus building and concession making and even backroom deals at the last minute, that to completely abandon any goal is weakness. A lack of conviction.
My life doesn't have much conviction to it, really. I wanted to be old. Around the age of 8, I wanted to die. The obsession and desire to destroy and die didn't go away, truthfully, until April of 2011. So strange to think that my most formative years were spent in such a hell.
Now, if you'll bear with the rhetorical histrionics, there are some important questions to ask. As much as I love books, which ones kept me alive? As much as I love movies, which ones kept me alive? True, television shows like the Golden Girls play disproportionately large roles in my life. But did teevee give me meaning and purpose? What historical figures served as templates for my life? What amount of writing kept me sane?
There's a large hole here. A gaping, missing, gnawing hole. Hopefully it is clear that in all this jockeying about art --in the broad sense-- where did all the sounds go?
As much as I credit Noam Chomsky, or to go back to them, Hitchcock and Kubrick, where did I really take my cues from? My cultural tastes are certainly dubious. But, there are obvious, palpable areas to address.
Much of my journal is dedicated to discussing The Wall that I built and the decade (2001-11) that was dominated by Pink Floyd. If asked about life changing experiences, aside from sobriety, there are 2 that come to mind --6 June 2005 and 5 November 2011 --my first major concert (Sleater-Kinney) and the first time I saw Wild Flag. If you read through this journal at all, even as a casual observer you'll note these in the tags:
Pink Floyd
Sleater-Kinney
Wild Flag
The Smiths/Morrissey
lyrics
songs
dark side of the moon
the wall
music
Neil Young
There are usually various song titles thrown in there, too. When I even think of how my parents met, music comes to mind. My parents met at a disco.
I am that rare individual that unabashedly loves punk and disco --the divergent sounds of the late 1970s. Television theme songs are pretty entrenched in my brain. I sing commercial jingles; I speak in song lyrics. Karaoke has become a prominent feature of my life in the last 10 weeks.
One of my best friends that I lost due to my alcoholism earned her degree in music, and I believe went on to do a master's. I'm not sure. Another friend, a prominent drinking buddy, was also a music major. Jesika and I clashed over music. Jesika was about harmony, and especially in that time in my life, it was all about psychedelic, discordant, atonal stuff. Sun Ra was a big influence. Sidebar: I fell in love with the 1960s of the music, but stuck around because the protest songs which are now commodities used to sell the very bourgeois, military-industrial complex establishment many of the songs said shouldn't exist. I believed in the fury, the rage, the protest.
Gail, Gail and I share the love of Morrissey and the Smiths; didn't we used to talk in their lyrics? I still have a shirt from here in which there are simple stitchings --"The Smiths" on the front and "Suffer Little Children" on the back, which was (and is) my favourite Smiths song.
At one point, in that odd time of "trio" there was a half-hearted attempt to write a film script about a detective named Dick Poop, there were to be lots of montages. Speaking of montages, one of the trio had a thing for Rocky movies --and I always pushed for Rocky IV because of the Soviets and because, well, James Brown was "Livin' in America." Also, a firm, bonding aspect of the trio was our divergent musical tastes, highlighted on various mixed CDs we made even up to the point of irony in 2010.
I've babbled on, in an important way for once. My life has been reexamined to a degree.
I suppose, then, the point is that I love music.
Music and politics are essential parts of who I am. After all, Pink Floyd said "we don't need no education" but The Smiths said we at least needed a Wilde one. Sleater-Kinney began as riot grrrl before evolving into whatever you would like to label The Woods (2005). Again, the 1960s were more than peace and love and harmony; Marty Balin, Grace Slick, and Paul Kanter harmonized together at one point to say "we are forces of chaos and anarchy, everything we say we are we are, and we are very proud of ourselves." I was proud of them.
It's a somewhat odd note to mention, but I wanted to explore the hallucinogenic world. I never did, and now I'm almost a year and a half sober. The odd part is that Bill Wilson --co-founder of AA-- had extensive experiences with LSD in the 1950s; as he suffered from depression, amongst other ailments, he thought that LSD could be a potential solution to the alcoholism that had nearly cost him and so many others their lives. Since AA literature doesn't say you can't do acid or anything like that, and because he was Bill fuckin' Wilson, he is considered to have had lifelong sobriety after 1935 before he passed in 1971.
My tweets have been saying it all. I've been articulating it in private conversation.
For those that don't know or missed it:
I love music.
I'm writing punk rock lyrics, if you can call it that. Some of it is clear novelty. Yes, there's "mutilated Marxism" in there. I somehow unintentionally acquired a guitar that I've still yet to learn how to play, but I know I will. I played cornet for one year, trumpet for 1, and then baritone the third before I decided academics, not music, would be my goal and interest in high school. I wasn't gung ho about the marching band idea, and after seeing how much of a drain it was to my sister, it just didn't make sense.
The latent appeal to the 1960s and the term punk are loaded enough to get a quick mention, now. In 2003, I protested our Middle Eastern involvements; I allowed my own demons to prevent me from getting more involved in the antiwar movement. Though I went to a university known for its left-leaning politics, I shied away from that; I was too establishment to realise that the road ahead is filled with sacrifices. One of my songs is about that, too. They're all very rough.
Education, history, language, these are all still driving forces in who I am. Indeed, going to graduate school in history, teaching high school, teaching in general, these are all very, very important to me. They've been my interests for very long, and at times they arouse my deepest passions.
Then, there is music. Music. It's a passion worth exploring.