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October 21, 2006
This is a Public Service Announcement - With Guitars!
I don't even know where to begin. I wrote a rough sketch of my adventure on the flight home this afternoon, and yet I still don't know.
Thursday afternoon, I decided I really didn't want to go, even though I'd been looking forward to seeing Kristina, Wilco and opening day of The Clash: Revolution Rock at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Completely stupid, I know because shit: Kristina, Wilco, The Clash, my place of worship, all on my birthday weekend? What the hell is unsavory about that scenario? Not a goddamn thing, proving that I went temporarily stupid on Thursday when, two hours before my flight was due to leave, I was sitting at my desk, bawling, and reading the airline's policies on ticket cancellation.
Yes, you read that right. I almost cancelled. I think I got it in my head that I simply couldn't handle the iternary of the trip, which went something like this:
7:10 PM - Leave St. Louis on a plane.
9:30 PM - Arrive in Cleveland.
11:00 PM - Arrive in Akron and possibly sleep.
11:00 AM - Eat huge piles of awesome Middle Eastern food chased with great, tub-like quantities of ice cream.
2:00 PM - Hit road with Kristina's brother for three-hour trek to Latrobe, Pennsylvania
7:00 PM - Wilco
11:00ish PM - Hit road for the three-hour trek back to Kristina's moms house in Clevelandish area.
2:00 AM - Pass out.
9:00 AM - Valiantly fight against that dark night and wake up, already.
10:00 AM - Hit the road to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
1:30 PM - Drag me, kicking and screaming from my personal Mecca and get my ass to the airport.
3:30 PM -Fly home.
After having a busy, cranky week, on the verge of this trip, it all seemed too daunting. Suddenly, staying home in my yoga pants and iPod sounded like pure heaven.
But I went, and boy howdy, am I glad, although before arriving in Cleveland, I had the sickening feeling that my previous hysteria wasn't just my garden-variety hysteria, but might have been intuition. About halfway through the flight, I was snuggled in with my iPod, engrossed in Wilco's Ashes of American Flags, and just as Jeff issues his final, "All my lies are only wishes/I know I would die if I could come back new", the plane plummeted, dropping hard and fast enough to cause most of us passengers to scream. The plane continued to drop and twist in the turbulence as the song dissentigrated into vaccumous noise. I was mostly convinced that I was listening to the beginning of my own death. Ironic, because I credit "Ashes of American Flags" for saving my life at one point in my life that I'm not going to discuss tonight.
On the bright side, as the plane rocked and the album progressed, I realized that if I was going to die, I'd certainly be content to have Heavy Metal Drummer be the last song I ever heard. You could do a hell of a lot worse. How's that for technology: thanks to iPods and other MP3 devices, we can now choose what songs we hear as we plummet to our deaths from the skies!
Okay, maybe I really should have stayed home.
But it all worked out, obviously. Cleveland. Kristina. Akron. Her sweet little tripod dog, Nesta. Sleep. Friday progressed as planned, too, for the most part.
Until we were on the way to pick up Kristina's brother, that is. We took a scenic little sidetrip. I was telling her about The Cuz's recent rear-ending, caused when a driver didn't notice the red light and the line of cars waiting for it. Not ten minutes later, Kristina and I were sitting at a four-way stop with several cars in front of us. Our turn came, and as Kristina shifted into gear, the car jolted. At first I thought the transmission died, but quickly realized we'd been hit.
Our situation was much, much better than The Cuz's. No damage and no injuries. But the woman who hit us ... "Well, you stopped so suddenly!" she said. No Bitch, we didn't stop suddenly. We were moving. Did she apologize for hitting us or ask if we were okay? No.
For those of you keeping track at home, this is the second vehicular mishap that has occured within 48 hours of my date of birth.
But you didn't come here to read about fender-not-so-benders, plane panic or my whiny-ass anxities. You're probably here to read about the rocking, aren't you?
Ladies and Gentlemen, Wilco is here to play your prom!
This was, without question, the weirdest venue I've ever rocked. The show was in the "student center" of St. Vincent College. And by "student center", what I really mean is "slightly oversized gymnasium. Even weirder were the restrictions placed on the crowd: no purses were allowed. Shane, Kristina's brother, was a dear, and obviously very comfortable with his masculinity, as he offered to return our purses to the car. "What happens if a woman needs a little monthly protection?" Kristina wondered. "Are we supposed to just tuck a tampom behind an ear?"
In the lobby, there was a set-up of cups and beverage coolers. I got really excited, thinking it was punch and cookies, just like at prom, but it was just free water.
The crowd was exceptionally irritating. I've learned that in my advanced age, I no longer have much patience for college kids. I could go on, but it's just whining. Funny whining, but unimportant. I'll just say that the guy in the chocolate brown blazer and fuscia boulce' knit scarf, who stood directly in front of me and alternated between sticking his tongue down his rather boyish girlfriend's throat and taking close-up photos of her profile while she watched the show? I give her three weeks before she realizes he's psycho, and three years before he realizes he's gay. This boy had something to prove.
About eight songs into the set, I got tired of being crushed and not being able to see the band, so I retreated to the bleachers. I climbed to the top, towards the back of the gym. Only a few other people were nearby, so I stretched out and took in Wilco from a totally different vantage - I was high enough that I could see the entire stage with nary a head in my way, but close enough that I could still see facial expressions. I leaned back, alone, and drank in the rest of the show.
Three moments stood out:
Around twelve hours later, it ended. The next day, I turned 19. The day after that, we buried her.
Them's got ears, let them hear
Them's got eyes, let them see
Turn your eyes to the lord of the skies
Take this airline plane
It'll take you home again
To your home behind the skies
The band wasn't, though. The first encore opened with Sunken Treasure.
For all the leaves will burn In autumn fires and then return
For all the fires we burn
All will return
Music is my savior
I was maimed by rock and roll
I was maimed by rock and roll
I was tamed by rock and roll
I got my name from rock and roll
I have nothing to say, as that, right there, was the perfect birthday gift from the band. I couldn't have asked for anything better.
Okay, it might have been slightly more perfect if my Kleenex weren't in my purse and I hadn't been relegated to wiping tears and snot on my sleeve.
(The full set list is here.)
I dropped into bed at 3:30 AM, got up six hours later, and we were off to church. You know what place I'm talking about.
I had my moment, of course, walking up to the building, the moment after I snapped that photo, where I announced, "I'm at the Rock & Roll Hall of fame on my birthday to see The Clash." I stopped short of stating the obvious: my life is fucking awesome!
The whole time we were there, I couldn't stop smiling. I think I could have lost a foot in an escalator accident, I would have kept right on grinning.
The first time I heard The Clash: late winter, 1983. I was ten years old, and the song was Rock the Casbah, which was pretty much the extent of punk rock in my hometown. I didn't get the song, but I knew that there was something about it I loved. In the years that followed, I occasionally saw their videos on "120 Minutes". I knew I needed these songs, but I had no idea why. I don't think I fully understood why until today.
You might not know why something grabs your soul, but it can come to you decades later. A ten-year-old kid, riding her bike on an unseasonably warm February evening, singing "Rock the Casbah" to herself might hold the pieces to a puzzle that she'll finally put together the day before she turns 34, teary-eyed and grinning like a loon, Joe Strummer's hand-scrawled lyrics to London Calling beneath the glass under her fingers.
What does the puzzle say?
We're made up of little chips of different things. My chips are songs and the moments when I hear them. "Music is my savior. I was maimed by rock and roll. I was tamed by rock and roll. I was named from rock and roll," while sitting by myself in the bleachers.
The moment in Chicago I heard Bono sing, "I’ve seen you walk unafraid/I’ve seen you in the clothes you made/Can you see the beauty inside of me?/What happened to the beauty I had inside of me?" and I knew I had to find that beauty I once had within me that seemed so long gone. I knew I wanted to live.
Wallowing in the misery of one panic attack after another after another, convinced my life would never be anything but fear, and hearing Jeff Tweedy sing, " I'm down on my hands and knees/Every time the doorbell rings/I shake like a toothache/When I hear myself sing," and I knew my misery had been articulated, and I wasn't alone.
A few days later when I heard him sing, "You have to lose/You have to learn how to die/If you want to want to be alive/Okay?", and I knew. I knew.
Bruce Springsteen in my headphones when I was 13 years old, "For the ones who had a notion/A notion deep inside/That it ain't no sin/to be glad you're alive." Hearing those lyrics again 15 years later, finally at my first Springsteen concert with 30,000 other people screaming those words with me and knowing they are the truest words ever uttered.
"I want to run/I want to hide/I want to tear down these walls that hold me inside" as I felt my baby rolicking inside me, rolling and kicking, punching as the music built, her heartbeat an accelerating line on a piece of paper.
"God, what a mess/on the ladder of success/when you take one step and miss the whole first rung/Dreams unfulfilled/graduate unskilled/it beats picking cotton and waiting to be forgotten" when I was floundering my way through college, trying to figure out where I went so wrong. But I wasn't alone in it.
Some of these moments were loud. Others were building in volume over 24 years. When I was 22 and living the lyrics of that last song, the volume on The Clash got bumped from two to five.
Around the time I turned 30 in the shadow of 9/11 and the looming spector of Iraq on the horizon, they blasted to eight or nine.
On the verge of 34, in this world with this child, looking at Joe's handwritten, stained lyrics to Clampdown, reading his words from his hand while hearing his voice, the volume's so loud that I can't hear anything else. And I'm glad for this.
Sad and furious, too, that what The Clash articulated 25-30 years ago is still so fucking relavent.
Wouldn't it be grand if we could nostalgically talk about all the young punks back in the day, in their combat boots and Mohawks? Wouldn't it be great if the lyrics on damn near every song on
What the hell have we spent the past 28 years doing?
I'm so bored with the U.S.A.
I miss the innocence I've known. Playing KISS covers, beautiful and stoned.
Punk is supposed to be the epitome of youth music, so why is it, the older I get, the more sense punk makes to me?
Emersing myself in The Clash for a few hours before turning 34, on the anniversary of two negative, life-changing events (my grandmother's death, and a car accident 19 years ago today), has changed me. I don't know how yet. That might be a puzzle that takes me a few more decades to solve. All I know is, I'm different than I was a 9 AM this morning.
One of Joe Strummer's last works before his untimely passing in 2002 changed me three years ago. I was eight months pregnant, listening to one of Kristina's mix CDs while driving home from a doctor's appointment, the first time I heard "Long Shadow". The tears hit hard, like they can only do when my soul gets completely rattled.
Well I’ll tell you one thing that I know
You don’t face your demons down
You got to grapple them, Jack
Bend them to the ground
The devil may care – And maybe God he won’t
You better make sure you check on the do’s and the don’ts
Crawl up the mountain reach where the eagles fly
Sure you can glimpse from the mountain top
Where the soul of the muse might rise
And if you put it all together
You won’t have to look around
You know you cast a long shadow on the ground
Then one day I could tell my tracks
About the holes of the soles of my shoes
And that’s the day I said
I gonna make the news
And falling back in the garden
Of days so long ago
Somewhere in the memory
The sun shines on you, boy
Playing in the Arroyos
Where the american rivers flow
From the Appalachians
Down to the delta roads
A man can think so long
His brains could well explode
There’s trains runnin’ thru junctions
King Kongs down the road
And if you put it all together
You won’t have to look around
You know you cast a long shadow on the ground
Listen to the country – the night jar and the bell
Listen to the night streamliner
Sounding like the wolves of Hell
Head for the water – The water of the cleansing spell
It was always our destination
On the express of the never do wells
And we rock thru Madison City
Man, we didn’t even know she was there
And when we hit the buffees in Memphis
Beale Street didn’t have no prayers
And I hear punks talk of anarchy
I hear hobos on the railroad
I hear mutterings on the chain-gangs
It was those men who built the roads
And if you put it all together
You didn't even once relent
You cast a long shadow
And that is your testament
Somewhere in my soul
There's always Rock and Roll
Yeah
Amen.
Even though it's my birthday in, oh, 48 minutes or so, you're the ones getting the present: An MP3 of "Long Shadow". Do me a favor and listen to it today. Really listen to it.
I started writing this entry while B. was giving Clara Jane her bath. I was listening to "Clampdown" and writing when she came tearing out of the bathroom, naked, stopping to hear the song for the very first time. Her arms went up, her feet stomped, and she yelled, "I love this! Dance with me, Mommy!" Before it was all said and done, B., Clara Jane and I danced in the kitchen to "Clampdown", "London Calling" and I'm so Bored with the U.S.A.. And that just about makes up for all those birthdays where cars have crashed, friends and family have fought, and people have died.
Posted by Robin at October 21, 2006 07:49 PM
Comments
SO glad you had a great trip.
Happy Birthday to you!
Posted by: Angie at October 22, 2006 08:30 AM
What a great piece... Glad you had a good time!
HAPPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! :)
Posted by: Debbie at October 22, 2006 09:53 AM
Fantastic. This essay and your birthday weekend both.
Happy birthday, sweets. I hope your new life year will be soul enriching and completely satisfying.
Posted by: Dixie at October 22, 2006 02:06 PM
Happy Birthday. A great post
Posted by: Zoe at October 22, 2006 02:24 PM
Dang it! This is the second time I've cried reading a post about Wilco. The part about the Clash made me cry even more; lately I've been listening to London Calling more and more and you are right -- it is still relevant. I'm glad you had a good time and the Rock and Roll Museum just sound great and thanks so much for the present -- you know I downloaded it. :)
Posted by: Katya at October 22, 2006 05:32 PM
Longer Letter Later, but for now, I simply HAD to tell you that I downloaded "Long Shadow" a few days ago on your recommendation. At first, it kind of freaked me out -- I'm not much for straight-on folk, even though my Okie ancestors hail from the tiny town that's the birthplace of Woody Guthrie -- but it quickly grew on me. LOVE. Did you know that it was supposedly written in homage to Johnny Cash? Happy happy happy birthday, and I will be back with more later, pinky swear.
Posted by: michelle/weaker vessel at October 22, 2006 05:53 PM
Our time was rushed, but it was soooo worth it. Even though I am still jealous for not joining you on the bleachers and I occassionally fantasize about going up to that old bat and yelling, "Bitch, you need to apologize!" You were right. She probably just hated my Rupublican bashing bumper stickers.
Beautiful post and that is one hell of a great photo of the Rock Hall. Peace, love, Joe. Happy Birthday.
Posted by: Kristina at October 22, 2006 07:46 PM
I'm glad you had a wonderful Birthday.
Posted by: Kim at October 22, 2006 11:31 PM
Glad you had a cathartic weekend-your post made me cry, but I think they're happy tears.
College kids blow. Chocolate blazer man/boy might be the same kid at the wedding I went to Saturday night. Skinny jeans, ironic t-shirt, too much forbidden wine, and dancing like I've only ever seen on floats in the Gay Pride Parade.
Posted by: allison at October 23, 2006 07:34 AM
Happiest Birthday Poppy!
Posted by: Tiffany at October 23, 2006 05:06 PM
Happy belated birthday!
Posted by: Cass at October 23, 2006 07:49 PM
Thanks for all the birthday wishes!
Katya, hope you liked the song. I have a feeling it's right up your alley.
Michelle, I'd heard that the song was written about Johnny Cash, too. It was around the same time they recorded their duet of "Redemption Song". I'm not much of a folky, either, but there was something about Joe's voice ... that edge he had made it impossible for anything to be 100% folk.
Kristina, thank you thank you thank you for everything! I forgot to even mention your cute, sweet, ADHD boyfriend. He rocks!
Allison, thought of you, what with this being my first visit to your home state. We totally need to get Blazer Man/Boy and Ironic T-Shirt Guy together.
Posted by: Robin at October 23, 2006 09:38 PM
i've had to start and stop reading this for hours now, due to tears. i could hear you talking as i read, like always, but more so this time.
i'm so pleased that you had a wonderful birthday adventure! joyeux anniversaire, lovely!!!!
i want to hear that song, but i don't want to go to mp3 jail. iwon't go to mp3 jail, right? :)
i just love dancing in the kitchen. we've just got to get these kiddos together and have ourselves a dance party.
you know i couldn't help but think of all of those sundays that we spent listening to kasey kasem, writing down every song in the order it was played until we'd get to the number one song - guessing what it might be. while my top 40 days of liking most music are long gone, i know that it was our ritual that set music so firmly in me. thank you for reminding me. and thank you for being wonderful, perfectly perfect you.
xoxoxoxoxox
Posted by: kara joy at October 23, 2006 11:11 PM
Long Shadow was written for Johnny to sing. Joe went first and it never happened...
Posted by: Exena at October 24, 2006 07:23 AM
man man man this is so much. I've been thinking about this post for days, unsure of where I could get a foothold in it and make any kind of fitting response. I really don't think there's anything for me to say except yes, yes, yes, and yes. Yes, amen, I feel you. I'm so glad I'm not the only 30-something mother in the US who reckons her life's milestones by music.
On a more practical note, I probably wouldn't have gotten so freaked out at the Wilco show if 1) the seating wasn't so awesome, and I wasn't so got-damn close in (I don't know if anyone in those front rows could have escaped multiple epiphanies that night) and 2) it wasn't my first time seeing them ever. Sorry that your venue sucked, and NOTE TO ALL COLLEGE KIDS: STOP BEING SO OVERTLY FUCKING ANNOYING.
Happy birthday, mama, and you know? I think you definitively proved your answer to my rhetorical question a few weeks ago -- concerts, MUSIC, definitely can make you a better person.
Posted by: michelle/weaker vessel at October 24, 2006 01:27 PM
