(no subject)
So I was riding home on the bus today, listening to The Gits, and just about had a total nervous breakdown, thinking about Mia Zapata and her life and death and so on.
Mia Zapata, for those of you who don't know, was the singer for the Gits, and a pretty influential person as far as the music scene in Seattle during the early 1990s goes, especially in relation to riot grrrl.
What happened to her was this: one night, she was walking home from a friend's house and this man caught her and dragged her into his car and beat the everloving shit out of her and raped her and strangled her to death with the strings of her own hoodie. Later on, after the autopsy, it was determined that the strangling was pretty superfluous as her internal injuries were so severe she would have died anyway. He dumped the body, arranged it in this bizarre crucifix pattern. She was found some hours later by a streetwalker passing through. She was twenty seven years old.
Years pass. The hunt for the slayer continues. This event obviously galvanizes the nascent riot grrrl scene, proves the inception of Home Alive, the now-national self-defense programme, inspires Joan Jett to work with the remaining Gits on a tribute album, and (according to some theorists) proves to be the last straw for Zapata's good friend and perpetual Icon of Angst, Kurt Cobain.
Anyway, a few years ago they finally caught the killer, due to DNA testing that wasn't available at that time. He was convicted and so on and so forth, which was great.
But today on the bus I was listening to the Gits and thinking about Mia Zapata and how afraid she must have been, how based on her music and everything everyone says about her, she must have been an incredibly fierce and powerful and totally bad-ass woman, not to mention blessed with a preternaturally amazing voice. And I couldn't stop thinking about how scared and alone she was, how bad it must've hurt, how she was terrified and maybe tried to fight, how she maybe thought she was gonna make it out alive, how maybe she was still conscious when he pulled the strings around her neck. How her family must've felt, how her friends must have felt, when they got the phone call saying, "Listen, your friend/daughter/sister was raped and beaten to death and dumped in an alley last night, and we have no fucking clue who did it." I can't even imagine. It's the fear that does it: to die terrified, struggling to fight, praying for help, to die alone and hurting and paralyzingly afraid.
And so there I was, on the bus, listening to Mia Zapata deliver some of the finest lines of her short career, thinking about terror and vulnerability and grief and loss and so on and so forth, and I couldn't help it: I started to cry. And this happens every day, and it's something worth crying over.
Mia Zapata, for those of you who don't know, was the singer for the Gits, and a pretty influential person as far as the music scene in Seattle during the early 1990s goes, especially in relation to riot grrrl.
What happened to her was this: one night, she was walking home from a friend's house and this man caught her and dragged her into his car and beat the everloving shit out of her and raped her and strangled her to death with the strings of her own hoodie. Later on, after the autopsy, it was determined that the strangling was pretty superfluous as her internal injuries were so severe she would have died anyway. He dumped the body, arranged it in this bizarre crucifix pattern. She was found some hours later by a streetwalker passing through. She was twenty seven years old.
Years pass. The hunt for the slayer continues. This event obviously galvanizes the nascent riot grrrl scene, proves the inception of Home Alive, the now-national self-defense programme, inspires Joan Jett to work with the remaining Gits on a tribute album, and (according to some theorists) proves to be the last straw for Zapata's good friend and perpetual Icon of Angst, Kurt Cobain.
Anyway, a few years ago they finally caught the killer, due to DNA testing that wasn't available at that time. He was convicted and so on and so forth, which was great.
But today on the bus I was listening to the Gits and thinking about Mia Zapata and how afraid she must have been, how based on her music and everything everyone says about her, she must have been an incredibly fierce and powerful and totally bad-ass woman, not to mention blessed with a preternaturally amazing voice. And I couldn't stop thinking about how scared and alone she was, how bad it must've hurt, how she was terrified and maybe tried to fight, how she maybe thought she was gonna make it out alive, how maybe she was still conscious when he pulled the strings around her neck. How her family must've felt, how her friends must have felt, when they got the phone call saying, "Listen, your friend/daughter/sister was raped and beaten to death and dumped in an alley last night, and we have no fucking clue who did it." I can't even imagine. It's the fear that does it: to die terrified, struggling to fight, praying for help, to die alone and hurting and paralyzingly afraid.
And so there I was, on the bus, listening to Mia Zapata deliver some of the finest lines of her short career, thinking about terror and vulnerability and grief and loss and so on and so forth, and I couldn't help it: I started to cry. And this happens every day, and it's something worth crying over.