~the online journal of an artist & minister's spouse, with the intent of recovering creativity after a long period of block. Just one person's meditation on Life, Art and Spirit.
I took a look at Jorge Garcia's blog, and found a gem of an old punk rock song I hadn't thought about in YEARS. Then just like the little mouse who's given a cookie in one of the kid's beloved storybooks, I was off on a classic punk rock song hunt, one song reminding me to look for another! So here's something I just threw together while doing housework. I wanted to keep it from the classic era ( late 70's early 80's) and the stuff that was genre-blending and and some even getting airplay in the mainstream. I wanted to keep it a little diverse, a little ska, a little English, a little NY, a little LA, a little mod, well, you get the picture.
Have you ever had a few words or a conversation with someone that stuck with you, like forever? Those words that pass between us, particularly when we're young, are the words that shape us in various ways. They can be positive or negative words.
Since I began embarking on this artist's journey to recover my creativity a couple of years ago, I have thought much about that. In part because of an exercise in The Artist's Way. Today I am writing about positive conversations that blessed me and stayed with me. I am going to dwell on those good words in honor of a long lost acquaintance whom I only recently discovered had passed away.
V.Z. and I ran around with the same extended group of crazy punk friends sometime during our teens. I can't remember exactly how and where we met. I knew his little sister and hung out with her a bit. We had some other mutual friends. I remember him as a crazy (in a good way) fun-loving guy. Zany antics are what I recall about V.Z.
One night many of us were hanging out and having fun out by a bonfire in a semi-secluded, semi-wooded area. People were coming and going, laughing and running around. If my hazy middle-aged memory serves, it might have been a wooded area that was being cleared for yet another subdivision in Florida. Anyway, that's not important.
I can't remember exactly what we were talking about, just that there was a lot of crazy frolicking and carousing going on, and we were probably having a joking or lighthearted conversation. What's important is that for a few brief minutes V.Z. and I were alone by the fire, and he looked at me and said, "You're not a dumb-dumb girl, are you? You're smart." How do you answer something like that. I was a little stunned.
I had been labeled a 'dumb blonde' in my early teens, and though my hair was darkening over the years, the term stuck. I really struggled with a certain subject in school, and there were circumstances in my home life and past that also contributed to my less than stellar self-esteem. At that time I waffled between teenage rebellion and just doing and acting in ways that I thought people expected me to act because I thought it was easier than being myself. I was so shy and insecure, and I tried to hide that various ways but I was growing, really starting to think for myself and be true to myself. Still, that was somewhat hazy, because I was quite young. Somehow that very small conversation with V.Z. encouraged me. It was like a little light went on amid the b.s. and subterfuge of teen angst and insecurity. Those new muscles I was flexing didn't go noticed by V.Z., he noticed a sliver of the real me and reacted positively and I knew he wasn't trying to scam* me either.
Looking back now, I think that conversation was like a compass, and in a small way, helped me move into a better direction. V.Z. was a good kid when I knew him, may God rest his soul. Thanks for the kind words V, I hope you are resting in peace and rejoicing with God in heaven.
Album Cover of the band Minor Threat's Salad Days EP
One day, oh about five years back I signed on the computer and I had a dictionary/word of the day application. The word of the day on that day was the phrase 'salad days.' The term comes from Shakespeare, who along with the Bible is responsible for so many idioms, phrases and sayings we still use. "My salad days, when I was green in judgment," wrote the Bard (in Antony and Cleopatra). That brought back a mini-flood of memories of what salad days means to me.
*warning* There is some profanity at the end of the song
Wishing for the days when I first wore this suit. Baby has grown older, it's no longer cute. Too many voices. They've made me mute. Baby has grown older. It's no longer cute. But I stay on, I stay on. Where do I get off? On to greener pastures. The core has gotten soft. Look at us today. We've gotten soft and fat. Waiting for the moment, it's just not coming back. So serious about the stuff we lack. Dwell upon our memories but there are no facts.
Recently I discovered a reunion page on a social networking site for former kids who were "hardcore/punk" and hung out at the hang-outs near where we grew up in the metropolitan area of a mid-sized Southern City. It was a bit of a unique situation. Since many of us were very few in number in our own respective high schools back then, we gravitated toward each other through our common love of the music and the other aspects of the punk/hardcore movement. There were a few places that brought us together and so we forged friendships with people beyond our own high school. In many cases, our own high school was not such a fun place for kids who were so different and provocative in their style, tastes and appearance. We sure had a lot of fun together, though. That's even where I met and fell in love with Big Daddy. I took a little honeymoon perusing the reunion board and its members, many people I knew only marginally or very little, and a few I remember knowing fairly well. Those were very formative years for me and my friends. But like all good things when it comes to youth culture and social movements, there was a dark side. I took off my rose coloured glasses shortly.
When I first met Big Daddy he was a skinhead. Wait! Before you throw rotten tomatoes at me, may I inform you that there was a time when being a skinhead was not interchangeable with being a racist or fascist, see here? It's true. Initially skinheads were just one other facet of the punk movement. Somehow the movement morphed and got hijacked into a white supremacist group, and that's all most people associate it with nowadays. There was a time when it was not so.
It was just a bunch of tough working class and middle class kids looking to express themselves through music and things that were important to them. From where I stood and where Big Daddy was back then, it looked like this: The burgeoning little skinhead scene in our area was primarily concerned with music hand having fun (Hey! we were kids after all); their own poverty, employment and future; being disdainful of arty pretension (they called it being an Art-Fag); and not "screwing" people over to get by - being true and loyal to your friends; having some kind of integrity when dealing with others.
The scales of that all tilted when a small group of their friends returned from another bigger scene in another state and where they became affiliated with the racist kind of skinhead-ism. They became the majority and that was that. We always hated racism, and we could just never come on board with that. For us, simply hating people for the way they were born and the traits they were born with was just pure evil.
Big Daddy and I gradually stopped hanging out and running around with that whole scene, as most of us were growing up and moving on to the other things in life one naturally moves on to.
As I looked over the reunion page recently, I wondered, where people stood on those issues today now that they are all grown up. Did they carry that same old baggage? Or did they grow and change? I wondered, and the answers do not seem clear or readily apparent.
The song Salad Days, and really the entire Salad Days EP became somewhat of a theme song for that time of our lives. The record was the band Minor Threat's swan song, and it signaled the end of an era for them and for us. Like a million other teenagers growing up who came before us and a million others afterward, we were questioning our youthful idealism and wondering if it could make it in the real world of adulthood.
