Sundays like this I wish I cared about the Bears or the Browns or any of them, really. Watching a football game or two would let the day slip by without sadness. I’d roll to the sink with nothing to brush out of my teeth but barley, hops, and Cheeto dust. But no–I am sad. It’s partly osmosis–Amy woke up today from a nightmare wherein people were disappeared by the government and tortured without due process. She woke up only to remember that we already live there, and that we’re about to elect an Attorney General who refuses to condemn waterboarding. We sent emails to our representatives, but what else?
I have my own reasons to be sad, of course. I am approaching the three-month mark of unemployment. Every day, I can’t decide whether it’s best to duck or welcome those sweeps of revolutionary thoughts, those oughta-shoulds that usually only strike after travel, or December, or a death. Actually, there HAS been a death recently–Stylus, a beloved and comparatively snark-free music forum has shut its doors after five years. It was my favorite website, period. Reading the final sputterings of the writers this week has been bittersweet–most of these guys, it turns out, were very much like me. By their own admission, they’re “not really writers,” either, just music lovers who wanted to be a bit more out-loud about it. I had no idea. It gives me hope to know quality work CAN be squeezed into the margins of whatever job I end up getting…but then again, Stylus is dead, so that hope feels a bit soggy today.
So I’m lead to this melody again, and I hope I can talk about it without getting too declamatory. It’s worth a shot, at least.
I was a few months shy of 21 when Bill Clinton was first elected. Even though I hadn’t been able to vote, I felt a vague generational pride at that. The Nirvana kids had switched the regime, 12 years of Republican rule reversed, all that. But looking back now, I feel stupid for having conflated the shakeup of radio waves with that of a government. Where did it get us, in the end? And isn’t it lazy to merely vote, and then say you did so? Is there a “we” to be found in there, and if so, what should “we” have done?
Well, there’s no squaring that circle, not on this Sunday. I won’t dribble on about how fitting it is that “our” rock hero didn’t accidentally die, but purposefully, willfully, hopelessly. Maybe that legacy stains us. Or me. Or not. All I know is that when I hear “Awful,” I think of those years between ’94 and ’99, when I couldn’t have cared less about Courtney Love, when Celebrity Skin was released and its singles were meh-at-best to me–shiny and “glam” and dumb and she can’t sing and who cares? Weird how it comes around, though. I never even heard “Awful” until a couple months ago, and it’s haunted me ever since, especially on sad days. I tried to re-assess the whole album, and I can still take it or leave it, but this thing…
“Let’s start a fire, let’s start a riot.” Who is she talking to? Try as she might, there’s no “we” here, I don’t think. Or if there is, it’s not in the way I’ve been conditioned to believe. There wasn’t a significant connection between me and anyone else who bought Nevermind in 1991, but having been raised in a boomer world, I expected there to be. That would’ve connected me to millions, and that would’ve been a pretty cool feeling. And if I expected that connection, then I think Courtney Love REALLY expected it. But listening now, she sounds as misguided as I was. “Awful” might be a call-to-arms for a regiment that was already retreating by ’96, let alone ’98: “If the world is so wrong, then you can break them all with one song.” At the same time, she’s not off-base at all, sounding at other points like she’s fully aware of the ridiculousness of the dream: “I was punk, now I’m just stupid.” I hear this song, and I’m invited to wistfully recall my twenties while at the same time hating them with every ounce of my post-grunge guts.
Stupidly, I still feel that twinge, though. That occasional expectation that my music should resonate politically, should thread “us” together in some way. But I know now that if the personal and the political ever flint inside the space of a chorus echoing anywhere, it’s an accidental spark, not a revolutionary fire. Politically, I’m a firm believer in the smaller “we” of my many communities and my roles therein–leagues away from presidential politics, and thank God for that. Weirdly, I’m reminded of a line from another splashy disaster, contemporaneous to Celebrity Skin–U2′s Pop album, specifically the line in “Discotheque” where Bono croons that “you can push, but you can’t direct it.”
Sorry to all the U2-haters for springboarding off that, but with writing this, with voting, with trying to be a good citizen, that’s all there is, really–the pushing. Instead of waiting for some perfectly-soundtracked giant wave of socio-something to wash “us” all onto brighter shores, I push with my friends, my family, whoever’s around. That’s my job, and it’s really simple, and I’m only truly hopeless if I fail at it. I can be depressed as I want to be about Hannah Montana’s success, or Ted Leo’s relative obscurity, but neither of them really speaks for me.
Come to think of it, I’m actually glad I don’t care about the Browns or the Bears or any of them today. Small a gesture as it may seem, I’d rather type in here. Seems a better use of energy. Might not cut as wide as song or sport, but it cuts well enough, to just address a dear reader and say that I am so very ashamed of the way our country has been treating its political prisoners. And how about you? I know. It’s awful. But at least I’ll still talk like this tomorrow. Between playing records and walking the dog and enjoying all I have even jobless, yes, still.
