Warning: sentimental jabbering ahead
I’m in a weird mood today, teetering on the edge of knowing what to do with myself.
I think I am in some sort of gathering phase, foraging through old writings and articles and trying to put a dent in my sheath of ignorance about Minnesota music history. The temptation is strong to pause and reflect and have one of those "what does it all mean?" days; sometimes I think I get more joy out of examining my life and what I love and hate about it than I get from actually living it, and it scares me a little. Even when there is a clear path through the trees and you've got a good map, there are times when it is ok to stop a moment and look back at how far you've come, right?
Ok, enough with the crappy woods metaphor.
In full "what does it all mean?" force, I am thinking today about my heroes and rock mentors. Just so you know who to blame when I can't and won't stop talking about music. Some people idolize rock stars, I idolize rock writers.
This first one is a picture from 1982 of Jim DeRogatis interviewing Lester Bangs. Jim was 17 and Lester was 2 weeks shy of the end of his life. This picture is powerful to me because of the innocence coupled with weariness, the young lighting a new torch off the burnt out old flame.
"Over the next few hours, I caught a glimpse of another Lester," DeRogatis wrote in 1999, "one that was very different from the gonzo legend. He seemed to be as interested in me as I was in him, continually asking me what I thought, what I was reading, and what I was listening to. We listened to records and bullshitted amiably for what seemed like forever, even after I'd asked all of the questions on my yellow legal pad and turned off the tape recorder."
This next picture isn't so much a rock hero as the perfect description of how I feel most of the time that I am working. I probably don't need to explain, but it's from Almost Famous and Patrick Fugit here is playing the role of baby Crowe, the budding journalist. Obviously I have never written or interviewed to the extent that he did, writing for Rolling Stone and touring with national rock bands and such, but there is a definite feeling of unabashed naivity that follows me around everywhere. I am not a hipster, I'm really not very cool at all, and yet I force myself to go out night after night, prowling the town, hiding on the sidelines of clubs, soaking up the idea of community. "See, friendship is the booze they feed you. They want you to get drunk on feeling like you belong."
Despite my husband's insistance of Cameron Crowe's hackitude, his movies make me go all soft inside and I have yet to make it to the end of Almost Famous without a tear in my eye. My favorite part: toward the end, when the rowdiest of the Band Aids, Sapphire is talking to one of the rock stars about the new set of groupies. "They don't even know what it is to be a fan. Y'know? To truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much that it hurts." Sing it, sister!
This last one is more locally based, but if I had to choose one reason, give one explanation for why I write anything, music/poetry/otherwise, it's because I grew up nursing a huge crush on the writings of Jim Walsh. In high school I would get up extra early every Friday because it was Music In The Newspaper day, and I would read all of Jim's columns as fast as I could and go out to Best Buy and grab up as many of the CDs that he wrote about that I could with my measley Pet Food Outlet, minimum wage income.
I wasn't very sure of my writing back then, and I had this strange habit of hiding everything I did under my mattress in messy piles of scribbles because I was too scared to show it to anyone. There is a longer story here, but since I never showed my writing to anyone I never really got any encouragement about it, and on my 18th birthday I got the best present that anyone could have ever given me: a line in the paper describing me as having a "gift for writing." That one little compliment kept me going for years, I still think about it sometimes.
I don't know how to come to terms with these heroes, exactly. They're people like I'm people, but I feel like there should be a way for me to show their impact, show that writing and music and all of it can have a real effect on other people, whether the results were intended or not. Or maybe I just feel like saying thanks.
Time to saddle up and hit the ol' dusty trail again!
I think I am in some sort of gathering phase, foraging through old writings and articles and trying to put a dent in my sheath of ignorance about Minnesota music history. The temptation is strong to pause and reflect and have one of those "what does it all mean?" days; sometimes I think I get more joy out of examining my life and what I love and hate about it than I get from actually living it, and it scares me a little. Even when there is a clear path through the trees and you've got a good map, there are times when it is ok to stop a moment and look back at how far you've come, right?
Ok, enough with the crappy woods metaphor.
In full "what does it all mean?" force, I am thinking today about my heroes and rock mentors. Just so you know who to blame when I can't and won't stop talking about music. Some people idolize rock stars, I idolize rock writers.
This first one is a picture from 1982 of Jim DeRogatis interviewing Lester Bangs. Jim was 17 and Lester was 2 weeks shy of the end of his life. This picture is powerful to me because of the innocence coupled with weariness, the young lighting a new torch off the burnt out old flame.
"Over the next few hours, I caught a glimpse of another Lester," DeRogatis wrote in 1999, "one that was very different from the gonzo legend. He seemed to be as interested in me as I was in him, continually asking me what I thought, what I was reading, and what I was listening to. We listened to records and bullshitted amiably for what seemed like forever, even after I'd asked all of the questions on my yellow legal pad and turned off the tape recorder."
This next picture isn't so much a rock hero as the perfect description of how I feel most of the time that I am working. I probably don't need to explain, but it's from Almost Famous and Patrick Fugit here is playing the role of baby Crowe, the budding journalist. Obviously I have never written or interviewed to the extent that he did, writing for Rolling Stone and touring with national rock bands and such, but there is a definite feeling of unabashed naivity that follows me around everywhere. I am not a hipster, I'm really not very cool at all, and yet I force myself to go out night after night, prowling the town, hiding on the sidelines of clubs, soaking up the idea of community. "See, friendship is the booze they feed you. They want you to get drunk on feeling like you belong."
Despite my husband's insistance of Cameron Crowe's hackitude, his movies make me go all soft inside and I have yet to make it to the end of Almost Famous without a tear in my eye. My favorite part: toward the end, when the rowdiest of the Band Aids, Sapphire is talking to one of the rock stars about the new set of groupies. "They don't even know what it is to be a fan. Y'know? To truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much that it hurts." Sing it, sister!
This last one is more locally based, but if I had to choose one reason, give one explanation for why I write anything, music/poetry/otherwise, it's because I grew up nursing a huge crush on the writings of Jim Walsh. In high school I would get up extra early every Friday because it was Music In The Newspaper day, and I would read all of Jim's columns as fast as I could and go out to Best Buy and grab up as many of the CDs that he wrote about that I could with my measley Pet Food Outlet, minimum wage income.
I wasn't very sure of my writing back then, and I had this strange habit of hiding everything I did under my mattress in messy piles of scribbles because I was too scared to show it to anyone. There is a longer story here, but since I never showed my writing to anyone I never really got any encouragement about it, and on my 18th birthday I got the best present that anyone could have ever given me: a line in the paper describing me as having a "gift for writing." That one little compliment kept me going for years, I still think about it sometimes.
I don't know how to come to terms with these heroes, exactly. They're people like I'm people, but I feel like there should be a way for me to show their impact, show that writing and music and all of it can have a real effect on other people, whether the results were intended or not. Or maybe I just feel like saying thanks.
Time to saddle up and hit the ol' dusty trail again!
Its not so much that I think Crowe is a hack as I think... wait, no, he's a hack. I liked Almost Famous, but for the most part his films contain boring dialogue and predictable plots. They seem more like soap operas (in style, not in content) than like films.
Posted by
Ozmodius |
3:53 PM, March 19, 2006