Aging, Rocking, Chicago, and the "Big New"s on a Saturday Morning

DIARY

Last night Jess and I saw fellow judge Lisa and old friend Ricardo, among others, as the band Animate rock out at the U.S. Beer Co. on North Clybourn.

It's been ages since I've been to a good, old-fashioned rocking out. In fact, I'm a little at odds with myself. As much as I try yto expand the range of my cultural and musical experience (this year I'm frantically trying to familiarize myself with the Blues before leaving Chicago forever); jazz, classical, country, techno, and hip hop, it's really the music I liked in high school that continues to grab me.

I still follow the careers of R.E.M. and Tori Amos, and the scattered members of the Smashing Pumpkins, and be counted upon to buy anything they release, no matter how questionable the quality (Strange Girls). I still listen to their cohorts: Jane's Addiction, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, and the Stone Temple Pilots. And most of the groups I've discovered since then; Radiohead, Björk, and Lush, have many similarities.

Thus I'd always assumed that if I had unimaginable talent and infinite time, and decided to start my own musical supergroup, it would be a rock band with roots solidly stuck in the electronic and indie scenes of the late eighties and early nineties.

In fact, a plan had been all worked out.

I'd join forces with Paul Lathrop and Brandi Caruthers in the revolutionary group Effervescence, and our trademarks were the rhythmic synthesis of electronic and acoustic rock, mind-numbingly ambitious tours, and nine-hour long concerts.

Our first album was to be Rest. Stop. followed by the Driving Tour. Our second album Fuchsia would barely go gold by the end of our Mauve Tour. Our third album, Honey Locust, only sold half as many, but we broke out with our fourth, Issue, as embodied in the wildly successful Teddy Bear Tour. Subsequent albums had titles such as X Aisle, Swing Set, and Moonbabies, but I forget the exact order.

Today, I'm inclined a little older. If I had just a little more talent and a lot more time, and decided to reinvest myself in making music, I think I'd have to go to the blues.
I realized this at the concert last night.
Animate really was rocking out. And yet, the audience drew me away from time to time. During the earlier set, when I sat back by the bar, watched their black silhouettes against the stage, static, as if carved out of cardboard. There was a little head-bopping during Animate's set, but I realized that with most rock, or at least most rock made these days, dancing is an optional activity.

This was true during the three Smashing Pumpkins concerts I attended, which were some of the most artistically intense experiences I've witnessed, but which nevertheless consisted in large part of people standing around, oriented toward the stage. And here I make an audacious generalization, but one that is true enough to justify my concern: most "white" music, from rock to classical, has asked us to forget our bodies. As someone who feels awkward in his own skin, and would like to be better acquainted, I see no use in indulging this predilection any further. Certainly I don't have the finesse for dancing or the physical convolutions we see unfolding in music videos these days. But toe tapping. The idea that a rhythm is manifest and has to be exhibited somehow. More, the sense of rhythm as having its origin in the mind and bones and blood and shaking itself out through the body is that sort of holistic rapture I think we seek out when we go out to a club in the first place.

So I would play the Blues.

I am sure of it.

I think I realized this in Flint two summers ago when I'd make a weekly expedition to the Vets Club, a south end bar featuring Remix, an old Chicago-style blues setup, and felt that I got it, and nothing more. Which is not to say that the blues, or any other type of music is a purely physical experience. The difference is on emphasis. All music I've been drawn to possesses a sort of powerful emotion. The difference is that the universals and vagueries of grunge ("rape me" are nevertheless incredibly broad lyrics when you get down to it), alternative, rock, and its ilk is abstract in a way that requires stillness, like sitting on a bed, to "get it," because you have to reassimilate and build on the words and sound to derive meaning. In my experience, the Blues have been an equally mental exercise, but the process begins with comprehending the specifics of the music and moving toward the abstract. You learn what the song is about, then recombine elements in a meaningful way. There is less interpretive freedom, but it trades in for greater directness, and probably, relevance.

This has been a big, fat tangent.

But if I was going to play, I'd like to play the Blues.

* * * * *

And speaking of the Blues.

Now that I know for certain that I am leaving Chicago soon, I want to devour the whole city... the eat it up, to experience every block, row, district, parade, and party. I'm, fortunately, able to make this a useful experience as well by connecting it with Euphemism.

The Blues are a pillar of this effort. The Blues are to Chicago what jazz is to New Orlenas, hip hop to New York, Motown and techno to Detroit. So I'll be trying to ingest a blue album and see a Blues set every two weeks. I'll post details on this blog. I hope you'll join me.

Similarly, when I go to grad school, I decided that I'd start right away at gaining some comprehensive knowledge of my new home, partly through music. My plan had been to master grunge in Seattle, jazz in N'awlins, and hip hop in New York. Well, Seattle's right out. It's going to be New York or New Orleans. The Big Easy or the Big Apple. And I hope you'll join me.

* * * * *

It's almost impossible to talk about aging with any range of people, because those who are younger do not understand, and those who are older scornfully dismiss questions and ruminations ("don't start... don't start").
I first felt old at the age of twelve. It was the end of my sixth grade year and the middle of the night, and I'd just finished watching what stuck me as an incredibly depressing movie, Avalon with my father. It was about an Italian immigrant who arrived in Baltimore (?) during a fourth of July spectacular moment that defined the rest of his life. Which isn't a bad moment for definition: he walked out of the night like a melancholy hobo with lilies and stargazers mounting and exploding behind him. But the movie ended with him desiccated and shriveled in a nursing home, watching (uncomprehending) a Fourth of July parade on TV. I didn't really get it. I still don't know that I do.

I do know that back in bed, with the window open and the orange lava lipe churning at my side, I felt a sort of static chill. I felt old because things had been chaging; I was growing into an intensity of thought and feeling that I'd never experienced before.

I've had a similar feeling, minus the static, over the last four years. At two times twelve, I began growing out of an intensity of feeling I'd experienced for twelve years. In a way, childhood, and adolescence in particular, is drunkenness. We're propelled by gut and hormones, and even as our brains grow more agile, their energy is still focused on that sort of visceral gratification. In my early twenties, trading in this sense of personal power and relevance for "sober" thought and focus seemed like an truly raw deal. Give me back that indulgence and vulnerability. I'd rather have that crutch. What use are the tools of stable relationships and actions if I don't prize and cling to every moment of every day?

Last night may have been a turning point for, albeit a small one. For the first time, adulthood didn't strictly imply "less fun." It did imply more discipline and responsibility, but for the first time, the benefits were not contemptible. After all, I have reconciled much that I thought to be at odds in my life, and have lost neither of them. I'm actively involved in my family, but maintain diverse and fruitful friendships. I've become dynamically active in my faith and political beliefs, but retain my practice of independent thought, debate, and scrutiny. I've adjusted my desire to write all my life with my passion to raise a family with Jessica. And I still enjoy it. And yes, there is still passion. I'd always assumed that passion of youth was more genuine and more powerful than the "passion" of age. But last night I felt a passion balanced by discretion and perspective, and it is not less genuine, and it is not less powerful. It is a little slower, perhaps, and given to caution. But there's the trade-off, the pro, the worthwhile: nor does it rely on elaboration, ostentation.

Last night I felt mature and powerful, as I drank my beer and clasped my head and nodded my head to Animate.

There are those in my life who've always been comfortable with their age. I might never be quite as easy with it as all that. But it's a struggle that reamins worthwhile when fueled by the hope that changes are worthwhile, and that new vistas are not to be ignored by obsessively checking over my shoulder.

At twelve I was frightened for leaving what I knew... but the next twelve years brought love and fury, social awareness, artistic growth, and discoveries at every turn. Lately I've been frightened for leaving what I now know. Hear me and help me keep my eyes on the horizon ahead.

And if I played, I would play the blues.