Category Archives: personal

Walk in Silence 21

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Love And Rockets

(Photo by Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images)

The summer of 1989 was spent mostly in cemeteries.

No, I hadn’t decided to go full-on goth…I was in the Cemetery, Park and Tree Division of the DPW, lugging lawn mowers in the back of the town trucks around to most of the local cemeteries.  We on the summer help team would cut the grass around the headstones and the odd niches, and one of the regular full-timers would come riding around on a John Deere and cut the rest.  We’d usually be one or two sections ahead of the riders, so occasionally we’d sneak into one of the wooded areas and enjoy the shade.  The cycle of cutting was such that by the time we made our rounds at all our usual stops, it was time to cut the grass on the first location again.  My favorite cemetery to mow was Silver Lake; it’s the largest in town (a few of my relatives are buried there), so it would take a few days to finish, and we’d have so much more time to goof off.

Me?  I got along just fine with everyone at the job.  They thought I was a bit weird, wearing my Cure and Smiths tee-shirts and all and listening to that weird shit, but I gave as good as I got, and got the job done as needed.  I brought my Walkman (I finally had an official Sony by that time!) and listened to all kinds of stuff during my job, both old and new:  Hüsker Dü’s Zen Arcade, Bauhaus’ Swing the Heartache: The BBC Sessions, most of my 1988-89 compilations to date, The The’s Mind Bomb, Concrete Blonde’s self-titled, The Cure’s Disintegration and The Head on the Door, most of Cocteau Twins’ Treasure, The Moon and the Melodies and most of their EPs from that era, and so much more.  I’m pretty sure I went through fifty or sixty dollars’ worth of AA batteries that summer.

I also started focusing a bit more seriously on the writing.  The IWN had pretty much gone into stasis, the Belief in Fate project was complete, so I focused mostly on my lyrics and poetry writing.  I also worked on my guitar chops, both on my bass and on my sister’s acoustic.  I’d gotten better, though my chord-shifting still needed a hell of a lot of work.  Given that I was outside for most of the day and hiding inside in the evening during the hot summer, I didn’t have much else to do except listen to a lot of music and let my influences get the best of me.

This was a bit of a double-edged sword, as I found myself returning to my ‘morose bastard’ ways again, even though I was in a strong relationship and was heading out into the Big Bad World in a few months.  Perhaps it was a bit of melancholy I felt in realizing that I’d finally be letting go of both the good and the bad of my youth.  Maybe it was a bit of sadness that I’d be heading off to Boston and leaving Tracey back home for another three years.  Maybe it’s that I’d be even further away from my friends and would have to start over from scratch.  Maybe it was that I really had no idea what I truly wanted to do, but I was afraid to admit it, especially after I’d already committed to my choice of college.  Maybe it was a bit of all of this.

The end of the summer came quickly.  I worked pretty much all the way up to the last few weeks of August, taking maybe a week off before I was to head out the first week of September to my new destination.  Which meant any last minute music dubbing and compilation making would need to be done post haste!

fiasco

It also meant that, for a very brief time, I’d get to see all my Misfit friends again.  Chris borrowed his grandfather’s cabin out on Packard Pond north of town, and invited most of the Misfit crew in for a three day get-together (which he’d amusingly named a ‘fiasco’).  It was a purposely low-key party, just like most of ours, in which we listened to music, played various games, watched silly movies and cartoons, and went swimming.  There was even a tag sale up the street that we went to, where I bought a few things for my impending college years.  It was the vacation we all needed then, a few days of doing nothing but sleeping in, goofing off, chatting and just having fun.

If anything, I’d say this was the point where our friendship had truly become more than just being high school friends.  Many of us have drifted various ways over the years, but that summer was the moment when I truly knew that many of these people would be in my life for years to come.  I wouldn’t know when I’d be seeing them again after this, or if we’d be in constant touch with each other (remember, this was 1989, well before anyone of us used the internet)…but I knew that, despite that, we’d still find a way to make it happen.

I’d borrowed my mom’s car for that weekend, so I was one of the last people to head out when the party was over.  I packed my belongings in the back seat, helped Chris clean up, and saw him off.  He’d be heading back to his parents’ house for a bit and then head back to UMass in a few days, I’d be leaving the first week of September for Boston.

The Last Home Year had finally come to a close.

This is how my mind works.

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jonzbox

The Jonzbox, acquired Christmas 1983, last used…2004?

So I’m listening to KSCU online this morning, and one of the deejays is playing stuff that’s catching my interest.  I have a few titles written down for further research and possible downloading.

And I’m thinking…back in the day, I used to have a blank tape at the ready inside that mini boombox you see above there, Record and Play already down, the Pause button ready to be hit as soon as a cool song comes on.  I have a good handful of tapes full of stuff I’ve taped off of college radio shows from the 1988-1989 semesters.  One or two of those tapes are almost complete shows.

So after that show finishes, I’m thinking…it’s all fine and dandy that I can write down the songs that I like and download them, but what if I want more than that?  What if I want to retain that bit of college radio atmosphere, some deejay patter, and so on?  How would I go about doing that?  I mean, aside from downloading questionable software that may or many not even work?

So it occurs to me: I could set up a tape deck, just like the old days…plug some wires into the Audio In jack in the back, plug the other end into the speaker jack or the headphone jack of the PC. I think I still have a few blank tapes kicking around, and I know I can still find new blanks if take the time to look for them.  And then I can use my audio software to convert the tapes to mp3 later on.

An extremely Rube Goldbergian setup to be sure, but I would actually go that far if I really wanted to.  Because I’m that much of a music nerd to go THAT old school to tape stuff off the radio.

 

[As an aside, there’s one show on KSCU, The 80s Underground, where the deejay records his entire show, patter and all, and puts it up as a podcast later in the day.  He’s got excellent taste, knows his obscurities, and it’s well worth checking out.]

Walk In Silence 1

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I’d say the music that I connected to most at the time was classic rock.  I’d grown up listening to it, and started my music collection with the Beatles.  Not to say I didn’t enjoy other genres or station programming…I had a passing interest in the poppier Top 40 sounds, especially from about 1983 onwards, when it updated its sound and included multiple genres.  But thanks mainly to WAQY 102.1 FM out of East Longmeadow and WAAF 107.3, originally out of Worcester, I found myself listening to a lot of classic and AOR rock.

Looking back, I think part of it may be due to the quality of the production and the creativity of the music.  It didn’t necessarily need to be a genius creation, it just had to have something that caught my attention somehow.

That would mean John Bonham’s thunderous drums and John Paul Jones’ synth strings on the epic “Kashmir” — the first rock song to completely blow my mind — or the Beatlesque* sounds of Electric Light Orchestra’s “Can’t Get It Out of My Head”.  Or it could be the countrified twang of Eagles.  Even the bubblegum fun of Sweet’s “Ballroom Blitz” and “Fox On the Run” counted, thanks to their catchy guitar riffs and high-pitched harmonies.

 

I often say The Beatles’ 1967-1970 compilation is ‘officially’ the first album I ever owned, but that’s not entirely true.  I will admit that claim actually belongs to Shaun Cassidy’s Born Late, which I’d gotten for Christmas in 1977.  I kind of consider that a trial run, though…in December of 1977 my music collection was pretty much a reflection of what I thought album collecting was about at the time: pop music and buying whatever was popular at the time.  Why did I have my mom buy that Shaun Cassidy album?  Who knows.  I think it was because he was one of the Hardy Boys on TV at the time, and he was all over the covers of teen magazines at the time.  David’s little brother, also a musician and an actor and a heartthrob!  Buy it now!  Hell, I was six years old at the time, I didn’t know any better.  I didn’t even know I was breaking a perceived gender role at the time by liking a young pop star’s music.  My parents may have side-eyed me (more on the quality of the music than the gender role, that is), but I didn’t care.  Even then it was about the music.

All that changed in 1978, when two things happened.

First, the much maligned movie Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, featuring the insanely popular Bee Gees (another favorite band, thanks again to an older sister) and Peter Frampton (a huge pull, thanks to the fantastic Frampton Comes Alive album and his mindblowing use of the talkbox guitar effects on “Do You Feel Like We Do”).  I originally went because I liked the singers, but my mom had hinted that I’d enjoy the songs they’d be singing here.  It’s painful to watch now, but at the time it was silly and a lot of fun.

Second, I was made aware of an annual tradition on WLVI, channel 56 (6 on our dial), one of Metro Boston’s independent television stations (decades before it became an affiliate of The CW).  On a summery Sunday afternoon they’d play Yellow Submarine, the 1968 animated Beatles movie.

I knew the Beatles in passing, of course.  In the 70s, who didn’t?  They’d only broken up a few short years before and were enjoying healthy solo careers at that point (especially Paul McCartney).  Their music was still getting heavy rotation on the radio at the time.

[I should probably interrupt here and state that there was a third event that took place in 1978 that changed everything, even though I wasn’t quite aware of it at the time.  That event is the overwhelming change in radio listening habits in the United States.  It was this year when people began listening to music on the FM dial rather than on AM.  There are many and varied reasons for it — the acceptance of rock radio as a valid genre rather than an underground interest, and even the fact that home stereos were becoming more affordable.  By the time 1978 rolled around, we’d had a stereo in my parents’ bedroom that as soon moved to my sisters’ bedroom, where it got much higher use.  I ended up with a cheap hand-me-down kids’ record player where even to this day, I can still remember the loud nasally wrhirrrrrrrr of the motor.  I’d get the old stereo when my sisters upgraded, and finally getting my own sometime around 1983.]

So yes, it was in 1978 when I finally, officially, owned my first record, and also picked up on my first musical obsession.  Over the next four or five years, I searched and found all the Beatles-related records I could find.  Some of the albums I purchased were new (usually bought at Mars Bargainland, the department store outside of town), but many were found used at garage sales, town fairs and elsewhere.  First came the albums, then came the singles.  I believe I got Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road early on, because I was already familiar with most of those songs from the Sgt Pepper movie.  Revolver was another early one, thanks to familiarity with some of its tracks as well.  Imagine an eight-year-old  hearing “Tomorrow Never Knows” for the first time — I had no idea what I was listening to, but it certainly was amazing!

 *

I’m explaining all this, even though it has nothing to do with college radio, because this early obsession is a major reason why I latched onto it as closely as I did.

Even as the pop music of the seventies and eighties slowly morphed from one genre or style to another, I found myself irrevocably obsessed over it all.  I knew bands and their discographies almost as well as other kids my age might know who played on what NFL team and for how long.  Their stats were performance ratings and signature moves; my stats were release dates and what labels released them.

 

* – Beatlesque: usually means evoking psychedelic melodies of 1967, dreamlike whimsy, three-part harmony, and often attempting to sound like something from either Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or Abbey Road.

Walk in Silence 0

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PROLOGUE:

I’ve been listening to college radio and alternative rock for thirty years as of this week.

Currently, I’m kind of cheating and switching between the XMU station on SiriusXM, RadioBDC, and a host of college stations via their streaming feed, but the point remains — the singer here (Paul Westerberg at his alcoholic best/worst on Let It Be) is barely making it through the song without stumbling.  You can hear the liquor in his voice.  It’s a classic song of generational discontent, as Wikipedia points out.  I heard the same thing back then, in my bedroom, late at night, and I felt the same thing: who the hell let him close to the mike?

But truly, that was exactly what endeared me to the alternative rock genre, and still does to this day.  The fact that studio time was given to a musician of middling proficiency and questionable talent amused me then, and impresses me now.  Well — at this point, anyone with a laptop, a few microphones and some cheap recording and mixing software can lay down their own music.  And thanks to the internet, they no longer need to jockey for position at the local radio station or bar; they can upload their latest song on Bandcamp hours after making the final mix, and let their small tribe of listeners know it’s out there.

There’s a lot of excellent indie rock out there if one chooses to actively look for it.  Some listeners like myself spend far too much time and money on it, but we love it just the same.  Again with the internet: many college stations stream their shows on their website, so someone like myself, now living in San Francisco, just over a mile from the Pacific Ocean and a view of the Golden Gate Bridge just outside my window, can listen to the broadcast of Boston College’s WZBC.

The only thing missing, in my mind, is having a blank cassette at the ready, in case one of my favorite songs comes on.

That’s one of the original facets of alternative/indie rock, really…the ability to look in the face of popular culture and loudly and proudly profess that you’re not going to play that game, at least not by those rules anyway.  One of the whole points of the genre, harking back to the original UK punk wave of the late 70s (and much further back, depending on which rock genre you’re thinking about), was to make sounds under one’s own rules.

It was about a certain style of anarchy –a personal anarchy, wherein one fully embraces who they are and what they want to be, where one stops trying to fit in where they obviously don’t belong, where they find their own path without outside influence.  Be what you want to be, and fuck ’em if they can’t deal with it.

*

Every music fan has that story:  where did you first hear that new song, that favorite band, discover that new genre?  Every fan has a story where they heard a song or found a new radio station or a new genre for the first time where it just clicks: YES!  This is the thing that has pierced my soul, has connected with me in such a deeply personal way that I will never hear it the same way again!

Okay, maybe not in so many words: often it starts out with a distraction.  Yeah, I kind of dig this track.  It makes you stop and notice it.  You may not know exactly why just yet, but you’re not going to dwell on that right now.  But its primary job has been fulfilled: it’s gotten your attention.  You may be intrigued for the moment but forget it a half hour later, or it may stay with you for much longer, so much that you’ll end up looking for it the next time you’re at the local music shop.

Or, if you were like me in the middle of the 80s, you’d have a small ever-circulating pile of half-used blank tapes near your tape deck, and if you liked the song that much, you’d slam down the play and record buttons and let ‘er rip.

This is the story of how I got from there to here.

*

 Let me start with this: I was part of the inaugural MTV generation.  I was ten going on eleven.  I remember when I first saw the channel when it was offered on our newly-minted Time Warner Cable system, the first cable service in my hometown.  I remember the beige-colored box with the light brown label on top, listening all the channels we’d be getting.  I remember seeing MTV for the first time.  [For the record: my first MTV video was .38 Special’s “Hold On Loosely”.]  And most of all, I remember it was channel 24.  Even before we got cable, I’d already made plans to park my butt in front of the television and soak in the musical goodness.  Any music I heard from about 1982 onwards was considered Something Awesome in my book, especially if it had a video.  But even if it didn’t, that one network opened up something within me that turned music from a passing interest into an obsession.

Around the same time, I had pilfered the radio that had been gathering dust in the kitchen (an old model I believe must have been purchased at one of the local department stores a few decades earlier), and it was now at my desk.  I’d made little marks on the dial where my favorite stations were.  I’d fallen in love with rock radio.

Was it different from the sort-of-occasional listenings of records from our family collection, or the albums we’d take out from the library, or whatever was playing on the car stereo during family roadtrips?  In a way, yes.  Even then I’d gotten into the habit of listening to certain radio stations, but not to such an obsessive extent.  I’d gone from ‘now and again’ to ‘every single morning’ to ‘pretty much all day long’.  Other boys my ages were probably watching sports or playing outside or whatever it was we supposed to do, but I was perfectly happy sitting right next to the radio and enjoying each new song that came on.

The obsession with countdowns started around this time.  That was the fault of one of my older sisters who’d taped various songs off the radio at the turn of the decade, and had recorded part of the year-end countdown on the rock station we all enjoyed, WAQY 102.1 out of East Longmeadow.  A year or so later the torch was passed to me (well, more like I snagged it as she headed off to college).  WAQY had a contest in which, if you sent in the correct countdown list, they’d pick a random winner and give away every album that was on it.  Who was I to turn that down?  With an insane amount of focus and intent for a preteen, I wrote each artist, song on lined paper and duly mailed it in.  Never won, of coure, but that didn’t stop me from listening with rapt attention.

Thinking back, that’s probably what fueled my music obsession the most — between the countdowns and MTV, as well as radio in particular, I was glued to my desk or the living room couch, wondering what song or video would come next.

That went on for most of that decade, really.  From about 1981 or so onwards, I would always have a radio on, or I’d watch a good hour or so of MTV, just soaking everything in.  I really wasn’t too choosy about what songs came up, as long as they caught my interest.  That was partly due to listening to whatever my sisters were listening to in the 70s.  I could take Chicago’s easy-listening comeback albums the grandiose prog rock of Rush, and the guitar jangle of early REM.  A lot of the rock stations back then were more adventurous in their playlist, mixing past and present genres without a second thought.  Within the span of an hour I could hear the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Dire Straits, Van Halen, and maybe even an Ozzy or an AC/DC track.  In the early days of FM radio, there was always some element of free-form.

I was given a massive playlist to choose from, and I devoured pretty much all of it.

Walk in Silence: The Blog Series starts tomorrow!

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Yes, after all these years of talking about it, doing all kinds of reading and note-taking and excavating my memory banks, I’m finally going to make this a thing!  Over the weekend I started making the posts, and will schedule them to drop on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.  Woo!

I’ve even made it a point to be a few posts ahead and want to keep it that way, so I’ll have a backlog.  This is a project I’ve had in my head for a good few years now, so I want to do it justice.

Hope you enjoy it!

All Things Must Pass

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This phrase has been stuck in my head quite a bit lately.  Not so much in tandem with the recent passings of numerous famous (and infamous) people we’ve known in our lives, but more with how nothing is ever permanent.  It’s a theme that runs rampant in the Mendaihu Universe.  Things end, things begin.  Things evolve.  It’s never the end of the world; it’s just an unfortunate moment that we must process in some way.  Yes, there are horrible things in history, horrible things that cost lives, and I’m not ignoring or belittling that.  But in the evolution of humankind, it’s never remained that way forever.  We learn from our mistakes as well as from our insights.  We make things better for ourselves and for others.  There are always naysayers, but there are others who believe.  There are destroyers, but there are also makers.

And to be honest, that’s the most fascinating part of being alive for me.

War Is Over! (If You Want It)

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wio-iywi

For all John’s faults as a person in his life, he was also the first person to own up to them.  He was a man with little to no filter — we all know people like that — and sometimes things would spill out that were tasteless or hurtful.  Sometimes he’d need to have it pointed out to him that he was in the wrong, and more often than not, he’d admit fault.  Sure, his relationship with Cynthia was rocky and fraught with issues, and they weren’t exactly resolved as much as they could have been.  Sure, he was hard to get to know, and he had a hair-trigger temper, but he’d apologize afterwards.  Sure, there was that ‘Lost Weekend’ in the early 70s when Yoko sent him out to LA and he proceeded to be a drunken idiot, but come 1975 he’d gotten that out of his system, admitted how badly he’d acted, and spent five solid years being a close husband and father.  Sure, he and Yoko had their own media circus in the late 60s and early 70s with their Bed-Ins and their Bagism and their other political movements; they knew they were famous and the press (especially the UK press) printed news of every time they sneezed in public, so hey, why not use that to their advantage?

My point:  we’re all infallible.  We’ve all done dumbass things, hurt people, made fun of others.  Had prejudiced and/or bigoted opinions.  Done things that in retrospect we’re mortified or embarrassed to admit happened.  But THAT’S OKAY.  As long as we own up to it, learn from it, change ourselves because of it, then we’ve done some good in this world, both personally and universally.

I learned that from John over the years, and that’s why, despite his faults, I still see him as a decent man as well as an intriguing musician.  That’s why I don’t make much noise about the peccadilloes of those around me and those in the media, unless it’s warranted.  You can have different opinions than me, and I’m totally fine with that.  As long as you own up to them and learn from them, and see how they affect the rest of the world and not just yourself, and become a better person in the process.

We’re all water from different rivers
That’s why it’s so easy to meet
We’re all water in this vast, vast ocean
Someday we’ll evaporate together
What’s the difference?
There’s no difference.
–“We’re All Water”

Why can’t you see, you’re fighting a million and me

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God’s Favorite, “(Hurry Hurry) Sunday”
(not to be confused with God’s Favorite Band…different group entirely!)

Well, this is certainly a surprise!  This has been hiding on YouTube for almost a year and I never noticed until just this moment when I was doing a bit of Walk in Silence research.  This little gem of a track was the first song I ever taped off a college radio station (WMUA 91.1 at UMass Amherst) — the same taping session on 11 November 1986 that introduced me to The Go Betweens, Felt, and This Mortal Coil.

I listened to that tape so many times I pretty much wore it out, and it wasn’t until about a year ago that I had Jeff Shelton play it on his KSCU show The 80s Underground and finally heard it again after what seemed like decades.  I downloaded that particular podcast just so I could finally have the track in my collection again.  I was never able to find the vinyl anywhere when it was out, and as I currently do not have a turntable (yes, I am a heretic!), I can’t go on Amazon and buy it.

I remember hearing this track and thinking the vocals were a little too earnest (in that 80s indie way we’ve all come to love in retrospect), but there was that gently sweeping melody that kind of reminded me of early REM, who I was getting into at the time.  It also hinted at that pastoral walking-through-the-woods-in-autumn mood that I would get from a lot of the college rock I loved then.

Flying Bohemians Trivia:  This song is one of three that inspired me to write “Lift Your Heart Up (In Your Hands)” in 1991 (the others being Love and Rockets’ “Welcome Tomorrow” and Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians’ “Swirling”).

Christmas Time Is Here Again

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So.  Here we are on Black Friday.  A. has the day off today and is in the other room listening to podcasts while I’m stuck here in Spare Oom until 4pm.  Neither of us are going to be heading out for any shopping any time soon (unless that includes heading to the local corner store for a few groceries).  She’s done most of her shopping online, and I’ll be doing that later today myself.

With the many post-college jobs I’ve held over the years, I’m used to working on holidays and busy shopping times.  I dealt with the Q4 sales season at HMV for a few years which actually started mid-September but really kicked into high gear on Black Friday; that’s when we’d put out all the Christmas cds and prepare the huge amount of backstock of the big sellers.  During the Yankee Candle years my schedule got truly wonky; ten-hour days, six days a week, and quadruple the volume going out.  Between those two jobs, it’s a wonder I still found the time to write!  [Noted, I did get sick a lot more often at that time, due to exhaustion and unhealthy eating and smoking habits.]

Even when I moved away from the retail and warehouse jobs, I still had to deal with the public: the last snowy commute when I lived in New Jersey, the last-minute calls of businesses holding their banking until the absolute last minute, and so on.  I don’t think I’ve ever taken any Christmas-season weeks off in my life, at least not without chalking them up as sick days.

So yeah, I’m well-versed in holiday stress.

That said…I do my best not to let it get to me.  Sure, I completely understand the irritation of long lines, clueless shoppers, squealing kids, long work hours, and so on.  But I decided early on that these petty grievances are part and parcel of the experience, and chose not to dwell on them.  Too often, negativity spawns more negativity.  My complaining about the idiot in front of me to the guy behind me is going to make that guy think ‘you know, you’re right’, and he’ll end up in a bad mood.  Life’s too short to be irritated by everything under the sun.*

This is the time of year where I choose to embrace everything good that’s happened, on a personal level and otherwise.  Time to listen to all the great albums that came out this year.  Time to bask in the fact that I self-published a book, with three others coming out in the not-too-distant future.  Time to think about how lucky I am to have great friends and family.  Time to think about how awesome A. is.  And just enjoy the positivity that comes around.

 

* – Granted…this isn’t about me willfully ignoring truly bad things in the world.  I’m just as frustrated and saddened as most people by the events in Paris, the Syrian refugee situation, and at this very moment, the shooting in Colorado Springs, for example.  The point to this post is about dealing with petty irritations that really don’t amount to much in the grander scheme of things.

You Say You Want a Revolution

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I try not to go into politics all that much online, at least not anymore.  I used to debate and growl and soapbox like the rest of them out there, but in the words of John Lennon, I’m “no longer riding on the merry go round / I just had to let it go.”  I found that I was taking a lot of things a little too personally and emotionally, and realized that not only was that unhealthy for me, it was also pretty irritating to everyone else.  I had to back away and focus on more important things in my life, like family and writing.

I still think about it some, just not as much as I used to.  This past week has been kind of a tough one, considering all the white noise I’ve been hearing.  [I use the term ‘white noise’ here to describe the heavy volume of Tweets and FB posts on certain political subjects, most of which is usually in the form of shouting matches, name-calling and trolling.  Most of it is well-meant but often drowned out by the thousands of others saying the same exact thing and the thousands of others saying the exact opposite.  Thus, white noise.]

It’s not that I’m ignoring the injustice and the idiocy out there.  I’m still well aware of it.  I’m just not offering my opinion on a public platform nearly as much as I used to.

Sure, I may still be a rebel at heart in some respects.  If I want my voice to be heard, believe me, I can make it heard.  But I realized some years ago that the voice I was using was getting lost in the din of that white noise.  Or as I’d said on my LJ, I no longer wanted to contribute to a lot of the hot air that was already out there.  I chose to internalize my thoughts about things…think about them, figure them out.  Think about why they were bothering me, what I can do about it (if anything), and go from there.

One avenue that hasn’t escaped me when it comes to this sort of thing is music.  I’m fascinated by protest songs, especially if they’re in an unexpected format.  That is, protest songs that aren’t outright protest songs like the ones we expect from Pete Seeger, or early Dylan, or Billy Bragg.  Or even obvious outcries, such as the punk aesthetic of the Sex Pistols or Dead Kennedys.  Some of them are oblique, only describing a hectic mise en scene of a stressful time.  Others are more poetic, describing the mood or the mindset of those involved.

Still others decide to offer no filter; calling it like it is, for good or ill.  Pouring out black bile and anger and never holding back once.

In the past week or so, I’ve been trying to focus on many things in my life, both internal and external.  Trying to keep focus on my writing deadlines and near-future writing plans. Trying to avoid overindulgence of social media and social justice.  Trying to avoid reading the comments.  Trying to keep an even mind and an even heart.  It’s tough, especially when it sometimes feels like it’s expected of me to react to whatever injustice is going on. It’s tough, but I have found ways to calm myself.

Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, as Congreve says.