building steam with a grain of salt

one fall evening about 13 years ago, i was trying to get this girlie back to my bedroom. damm, i was real smooth…you should have seen me. anyway, the television was tuned to eMpTyV, and shit was gettin’ real hot, when all of a sudden the dreck stopped. no, no…i mean the shit on the tube. whatever garbage they were playing was replaced by sounds sweet and familiar, like a thousand angels or getting drunk outside at night. but what was it? up until that point, i had rapidly been losing hope in rock music…it seemed that the only shit worth hearing was on vinyl by some band who’d broken up when you were like 7. yet before me, swirling from those cheap fuckin’ floor-model tv speakers, was something like gold. and i’ll be dammed if it didn’t smell like teen spirit.

it was a watershed moment…a time and place i can go back to instantly, describe what it was like outside, what i was wearing, where i was, what i was on…it changed my lens, so to speak. as time passed, it seemed that people were finally getting it, tuning in, turning on, coming around to a new way of thinking. the vibe seemed less self-conscious and more self-assured. conformity seemed to be falling by the wayside. it seemed sure that soon a wave would sweep across the country and that our differences would be of no more matter than the color of our eyes…that maybe – maybe – we could get right what the hippies lost somewhere along the way. rip it all the fuck down, you know…

what happened to us all? are we still out there? this generation without a war to name it, this generation of x’s…wished it was x’d like malcolm until it found its own identity. is it searching or has it sold out, cashed in, ceo’s, and cell phones, pre-fab housing plans and that good, good blow? i think a lot of us felt like we were on the outside looking in for so long, and then it was like we found each other and just had the fuckin’ party outside, you understand. i hope we weren’t only clamoring and killing time until we found a way to get in.

sit and judge, tell me i had blinders on…that i missed a war and a riot and a trial that revealed scars deeper than we can ever understand. tell me that the revolution was packaged for convenience and all that really happened was kids were being sold to other kids. tell me i’m full of shit now and full of hope then…cuz hope is where your eyes fall when the grave is on your back. tell me i was looking to believe in something – anything – even if it was a stupid song. tell me that we are more afraid of violence than sex. tell me that the pill i’m trying to swallow isn’t as bitter as i believe. tell me that yesterday was only about the next four years and not the long-term. tell me that the semi-literate moron will not unleash an unholiness on the world. tell me that i am paranoid, that our rights weren’t whittled away, that the world won’t be plunged into instability through an arbitrary and capricious war, that a corporation doesn’t have more pull than a man's life. tell me we won’t use the name of god to hold another down. tell me that we don’t need to fuck people over in order to survive. fucking tell me.

my dream sprang from a song and perhaps that’s the problem. i failed to recognize there must be real struggle. i’ve heard and heard that the only worthy fight is the one where you lose and lose and lose and lose and lose – and then lose again – before you win. i’m just having a hard time finding where that spark may come from…that something that could bring us people together again.

it’s high fucking time we start looking. indeed…we will march on a road of bones.