In the predawn hours of this past Saturday (9/26/2020), I found myself on a sidewalk waiting for Attic Records to open for Record Store Day: Part Deux. I finally had a few hours away from the house to organize my thoughts and scribble them down in an effort to start writing again. If I ever force myself to overcome my own laziness and do the damned thing.
I was in line with a bunch of hipsters with nary a mask in sight and social distancing was barely being observed. No wonder this plague will never go away. Sometimes I feel like I'm the one that's crazy because I'm keeping up with self-quarantining and limiting my time around other people.
At least I remembered a chair and my headphones so I didn't have to listen to the chatter of a falling species. Having No by Boris on repeat was curing what ailed me. The lengths I'd go to for a Dinosaur Jr. live record bothers me sometimes.
I almost snapped at the douchebag a few spots in line ahead of me because he jokingly said that he was being a “rebel” by not wearing a mask. And he said it loud enough to make sure everyone heard him. No, motherfucker, you're not being rebellious. You're being stupid. Cover you're dirty fucking mouth. A little while later, he gave me a dirty look when I laughed and said, “It figures,” when he said he was in line for a Hootie And The Blowfish record. He was probably one of the assholes that rejoiced when that great staple of Amerikan culture known as Applebee's reopened.
It still doesn't feel right to me to prattle on the way that I do while the world is burning down around me. It's not like I have some sort of massive following (five to twelve views per post according to the Google) but I don't want to take up any amount of space that could be used by something of importance. I've been maintaining radio silence, keeping my mouth shut and my ears open because I don't think anything that I have to say will add to the current conversations that must be had.
I sure as hell don't want to cause a distraction. As Dave Chapelle said recently, the streets are talking and who am I to get in the way of that. The police are murdering and assaulting people with impunity and that seems a bit more important than my thoughts on The Stooges Funhouse box set that came out recently.
Being faced with this dilemma, I have decided to carry on writing. Using it as a creative outlet also acts as a kind of therapy that helps to keep me functioning as a human being. I'll also try to be aware of my surroundings and throw some attention in the direction of things that may need it.
Along with listening and watching what has been going on around me, I have fallen back into my stacks of books to help sharpen the mind. James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Frederick Douglas, Malcolm X, the Black Panthers and Mumia Abu-Jamal have been giving me a mental workout. I've been reading a selection or two from each and hopping around from book to book. And since our government called them out by name, I started into The 1619 Project and taking another pass at Howard Zinn's A People's History Of The United States. I will be the Bart Simpson/Randle McMurphy of the reeducation camps up until my forced lobotomy.
The past few months have been rather trying. I had to redouble my quarantine efforts with an overabundance of caution due to a family member cruising toward a stem cell transplant to reboot their immune system. I try to go out into the world only once a week to gather provisions and hunker down for the rest of the week because a larger than it should be portion of the population can be certified as grade A fucking stupid beyond belief.
If I end up driving around town when there are a lot of people out, I can't help but notice how few masks are being worn and how everyone is piled up on top of one another. I can't get over how easily people fell back into behaviors from “The Before Times” like COVID has gone away. I would give my left arm for food that I didn't have to cook but I'm not willing to risk the health and safety of myself or my loved ones in order to do so. Not to mention the employees that are putting themselves at risk. I never want to hear the term "unskilled labor" again.
As much as I wanted to attend more protests, I had to curb my direct action after the first few for fear of the plague and not wanting to kill anyone if I got the damned thing. To make up for my absence, I've taken to throwing money around to various organizations that could use the funds in these ass backward times that we live in. I feel guilty about not being out in the streets but at least I'm still on a payroll and can funnel my corporate dollars to where they might do some good. So I continue to sit in my house and watch the world pass me by while it's on fire.
For some version of a creative outlet, I've been spending a lot of time going through boxes of photos and recordings from the late '90s and early '00s. Since there won't be shows any time in the near future, I figured I may as well go back in time to see what survived after all these years. There's been a lot of photo scanning and audio transferring going on. I am so glad that I went with the MiniDisc instead of the DAT recorder. While everyone's DAT cassettes are crumbling from age, all I had to do was remember which box I stashed the discs in and I was in business. Digitizing and editing all of this dead media has certainly helped prevent me from climbing the walls while in quarantine.
While cropping and cleaning up old photos, I've been giving a lot of time to thinking about what to do with the photos I took at the protests that I did attend. Since the bastards are using the internet in attempts to suss out the identities of protestors, I am quite leery of posting the pictures anywhere. I'm also keeping in mind that the protests are not about me and my camera so out of respect for those who are doing the heavy lifting, I might just keep those to myself.
Going over the board mixes of old live recordings has been a mixed bag that made me wish that I worked for better bands. Listening to the isolated recordings outside the of the club environment really brought the warts to the surface. In one band there was always someone who was either too drunk/high to keep it together or somebody wasn't taking the set seriously. In another band the singer couldn't sing and we always hoped that that fact couldn't be picked up through the PA during the show.
As much as those recordings were not the greatest performances, I threw them up on Bandcamp anyway. I felt that the musicians in those bands that did show up to play deserved to be documented in some way. They did the damned thing so I think they should be acknowledged for that.
Bringing those memories and realizations forward did make me more appreciative of the small role that I have volunteering with Submachine and Killer Of Sheep. Those bands can actually let it rip and I'm glad I got to see them as much as I have. Other than the one off outdoor secret show that happens every so often, I don't know if there will be shows on a regular basis any time soon due to everyone's COVID denial but I will be looking forward to that time.
