My Old Boyfriend Joe Strummer
Status quo. If you’re a rebel worth your leather jacket you have a problem with it. It’s been like this for me since I was 16 when I discovered my inner bad ass. If you’re ever lucky enough to see the inside of my bedroom (please submit a resume and list any special skills you think might be advantageous to your postion within the employment of said space) you’d see that there’s a theme. Salvador Dali, The Clash, Van Gogh, The Slits, Nirvana, Hole (from ’93!) not to mention my collection of literature from fellow bad asses like Gandhi, Howard Zinn, Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, and Vonnegut collide in my little apartment….Basically anyone who thought that the status quo wasn’t inclusive of unjustly marginalized people makes my wall of fame.
I like to keep a certain kind of company, if you will. “I keep to a certain lifestyle,” as one of my associates is fond of saying.
One Of My Favorite Sleater Kinney Albums
That’s why when I had run ins with the police not once, but twice yesterday in twelve hours in a neighboring wealthy shore town, it wasn’t really much of a surprise. And when I was mistaken for a domestic worker by one officer even though I am a mid-level professional who is college educated and speaks English as her first language, that wasn’t really terribly surprising either.
These guys aren’t bad guys, but I got the impression that a woman of color like me just didn’t compute in an affluent shore town neighborhood. Not because they were particularly belligerent dudes, but because that was the scope of their experience.
Le Tigre’s Makes Poli-Sci Dance Worthy on Feminist Sweepstakes
I don’t really know what to do here; I don’t really have an answer. I do know that there is some serious 90’s backlash that washes over our socio-economic-political-psychological experience these days against meaningful dialogue on issues that no longer hold the attention of the national media for any significant amount of time: poverty, the –ism’s we all wish would go away, homophobia, the loss of things held in common like clean drinking water and food (access to these varies according to class,) the rampant abuse of communities by corporations gone mad with power…
Kool Thing, Come Here, Sit Down Beside Me…
It gets so that you just want to open up a bottle (pills or booze, your choice), roll up a j, turn on, tune in, and drop out. It’s no wonder we’ve gone all ‘every man for himself.’ Panic, desperation, fear and unrest generally lead to that outlook. When Krist Novoselic opened up Nirvana’s “Territorial Pissings” by awkwardly warbling the Youngbloods “Come on people now/ Smile on your brother/ everybody get together try to love one another right now,” he was asking us “What happened to those ideals?”
John & Yoko Invite You To Think About The World From Bed
It’s a scary time out there for sure. I need my rock heroes to lean on. Music has always been a huge form of protection and shelter for me. And I’m not a politco-purist: I like The Knack (My Sharona) as much as The Plastic Ono Band (Give Peace A Chance). But here’s the thing: the artists that are my heroes forever authentically wore their ideas about truth, justice, freedom and all those other lofty ideals on their sleeves in earnest.
The Minutemen: To Quote D. Boon, “Punk Rock Changed Our Lives”
And as a kid who was absolutely sick from the fear-consumption cycle that keeps most of us in check, stumbling on Joe Strummer or John Lennon or Kurt, that woke me up. You don’t feel as crazy when you realize how screwed up a lot of what you’re subjected to is.
Back in the early 90’s when Nirvana played a show to raise money and awareness for Bosnian rape victims, it gave such huge legitimacy to progressively integrating music and politics, as well as the cause itself. All of a sudden these women who were victims of a brutal regime were getting international attention to their plight.
Contrast that with the current state of affairs: exorbitantly wealthy artists like Mariah Carey and Beyonce accepted huge amounts of money from dictator Libyan strongman Moammar Gaddafi for a private live performance at a party. I don’t like that, nor do I want to put a ring on it.
Getting profiled by the cops didn’t really alter my life in a fundamental way or anything, but it definitely reminded me that I don’t subscribe to the idea that my only objective in life is to vapidly party. Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill and later Le Tigre said, “Don’t freak out cuz the jigsaw is laying on the floor and it’s not all the way done and has been laying there for 4 whole hours now, resist the freak out. You will get to it..it’s all part of the process.”
“I’m about to have a nervous breakdown/ My head really hurts”
I know music can’t fix everything, but at least it can make me feel like someone out there gets it. As Corin Tucker sang on Sleater Kinney’s hugely important album One Beat, “When violence rules the world outside/ and the headlines make you want to cry/ it’s not the time to just keep quiet/ speak up one time/ to the BEAT!” … But readers, don’t you worry yourself into a paralysis! It’s gonna be okay! We’re all gonna be okay!
After all “The Future Is Unwritten.”
XOXO
Ang
