I let my tape rock ’til my tape popped

this morning, on the bus to work, a couple of things:

first, the sky was a battleground between an ominous mass of clouds and those few blips of early-morning sun that shine so fierce it strikes me as the closest we’ll see to the eye of Mordor. rain drops were already starting to announce their way down, leaving me to lament that in our household’s self-imposed restriction to ONLY doing things that we want to do, when we want to do them, things had backfired. Although we followed through on our initial desire to get a bunch of firewood for a warm and cozy winter, we then  failed to acquire a tarp to cover the half cord of wood sitting in the driveway, even with knowledge of impending rain. These tendencies of ours bewilder me. We are so resistant to the demands being made of us –by life, society, friends, family, and common sense– that we end up screwing ourselves over, in the basement watching Purple Rain. Right now, I guess it is what it is.

Secondly. I was listening to Girl Talk as we cruised down Killingsworth, almost unable to remain seated in my sheer joy of “Smash Your Head”  (“Tiny Dancer” + “Juicy” by Notorious BIG: “It was all a dream, I used to read Word UP magazine– Salt ‘n Pepa and Heavy D up in the limousine…”) It is the most perfect blend of the soft-rock strains that get us all, everytime and inspire such predilection for karaoke as motivates us currently; then, the rap track that resounds with the hip-hop trajectory we’ve grown up next to, underground  energy and inspiration made loud & clear coming down from the top (watch for “BIG”: The Biopic, coming soon). The way Girl Talk (and others) figured out how to mix these two and thus appeal enormously  to kids like me brings me to reflect on the phenomenon of life at this time in general, the generation that we are, what we grew up on and are seeking still and I’m  where it will lead.

This weekend at Gaycation, as with most nights at Holocene, I bemusedly noticed that the crowd goes most wild when we hear the most ridiculous, completely time-and-place jams. There’s things like “No Diggity” that we’ve been grinding to since 7th grade, but then there’s songs that bring it to another level. I’ll never forget the feeling of bliss that came from a whole room full of twenty-somethings completely shaking it to “You Can Call Me Al” at the very end of the night. Delighted but confused, I wondered why THIS song was the hit that brought the house down, amidst all the Kanye and JT and Britney Spears, but then it made perfect sense: this is what most of these people’s parents listened to, in the cars and living rooms of our youth. If it wasn’t, it was because we discovered it later, in high school or college maybe, in defiance of the music of that time. We love these songs because they belong to a time that feels more real to us that our own. However weird or displaced that may be, there are rooms full of us doing the same thing, and feeling it.