i wanna be instamatic, i wanna be a frozen pea

I know it's just a matter of time before every band I like is dead because I latched on to the sound of previous generations, but Poly Styrene, a half-Somali teenager with braces and a lot of snark who scared Johnny Rotten (though in fairness that doesn't seem hard to do), died of cancer this morning and had I known earlier I would have played a whole lot of X-Ray Spex and totally alienated all three of my listeners.

The X-Ray Spex were one of the first punk bands I got into, thanks to college radio and my friend Megan whose mom was one of my mom's roommates. At their every-so-often-reunion-gatherings, all of us kids would be turned loose while the parents reminisced, but since we were all pretty geeky, the younger ones would play video games and we would read each other's fantasy novels and watch The Simpsons when we weren't hopelessly losing in basketball to her older brother.

Despite her fear of crazy born again fundies, we got along well, graduating in culturation from an endless repeat of Billy Joel's Greatest Hits while making friendship bracelets when we were ten to listening to Elastica, the X-Ray Spex and other assorted Brit-rock, trading high school stories while trying to figure out what college would be like. I don't think either of us had any idea about what would be coming.

art barbies, certain ethnics, and the enduring chill

It's Dyngus Day or something, which I didn't know about being a half-caste Polack, but I wonder how many people in the almost-hood are going to bust out their accordions in the rain tonight, though I'm sure lots of revelry might commence, though I'm going to skip all that to do art since it's been about two weeks since I've enameled anything.



Being that I was a weird child, I never really got into horses and Barbies. Nancy Drew novels and dress-up yes, but I wanted to be Boadicea because I read about her in a Highlights magazine and also a lot of Rosemary Sutcliffe novels that kind of glossed over the whole torturing prisoners/getting killed by the Romans bit.



My friend up the street was also a weird kid and we spent our summers taming the mass of flowering bushes, trellises and lilacs into our own play area/domain between having her dad take us to cemeteries and museums and Little Italy for gelato. When her other friend would come over, sometimes we'd play with her dolls but I never liked blonde and usually claimed her Princess Jasmine one instead, when we weren't having super-soaker fights with the boys around the corner.

I'm all for getting kids into art because art is awesome, and since these aren't as bimbotastic as other Barbies, I can't hate on it too badly except that it's just kind of corny and doesn't look that good.



Then again, it's also not as terrible as this. I've got my love of kitsch as much as anyone, but history's finest mementos that aren't Church In A Box don't really do anything for me.

introversion/reconversion

Attempts at finding sanctuary thwarted by sundry fish fries and baptisms, I couldn't bring myself to mumble along with the faithful and made an exit halfway through the mass at some church I'd never seen the inside of before, ended up at the usual coffeeshop haunt with a journal and the laptop and tea now alone here.

My eyes tired and soul restless, scrawling letters to God in ink... adoration and questions and longing that barely makes sense when it hits the page, but to be known better than to know myself is a reassuring thing.

I could be out and among, but sometimes the solitude feels like the best place to exist, that place of safety. There's a part of me that fears closeness, because of all the bridges that seem to get burned in ways I can't explain, knowing that the last few times I was less wrong than I've been before, but knowing that there's still ash where connecting once was, that this is just part of life, and at least there is no bitterness on my end, learning to accept that as much as I long to make things right, to begin again, that there are endings, and I wonder how many more times things like this will happen.

I don't even want to begin sometimes because the ending seems so inevitable and when he calls up out of the blue saying we should hang out again, I hope that we don't because even though nothing's started, I just don't want it to go anywhere. It was hard enough watching things fall apart with people I lived with, I sure as hell don't want to get my heart torn up over nothing. I'm a bundle of raw nerves with a hemorrhaging heart and a soul that's equal parts wide-eyed wonder and cynicism. It's easier to watch from afar.

Is the lack of feeling a thicker skin or an emotional amputation? I wish I knew.

edgy

I missed my train and got to stand on the platform waiting to go home with no book to read and more DHS/TSA/transit cops than there were commuters. I've been seeing a lot more of this and I don't know why it makes me nervy, why I feel encroached upon. What the heck is up with the guns strapped to your legs dudes? Seriously. It creeps me out. I wonder how the woman getting on behind me wearing a hijab feels and avoid eye contact with everyone.

I'm relieved to get back to the car and the tunes, the routine of art-making, melting copper with copper, scraping off the firescale with stone, making mistakes and being overly ambitious with a form I've only begun to experiment with, trying to figure out what color to add next week since I'm going for something vaguely bronze-age looking.

Equilibrium restored, coming home to put together a playlist for tomorrow morning, heat up some dinner, try to figure out how to get the hair cut because it's getting split-endy and don't want to freeload on my sister-in-law. I have a benign neglect relationship with my keratin, hence the really long tresses in my teens that were more of an 'it just kind of grew' thing than any kind of subcultural statement.

I feel like I missed all those female memos that everyone else got, since I was reading Alternative Press and Guitar World instead of Seventeen and have no clue how to do makeup or do anything seasonal wardrobe-ish because that kind of thing is kind of boring and more than a little intimidating. I only started buying shoes other than black low-top converse when I got a Real Job four years ago and kind of couldn't get away with that anymore.

And as if I wasn't already hopelessly stuck in 1994, I'm kind of going for the Shirley Manson look sans crimson since The Powers That Be would probably frown upon such capriciousness. Garbage is more or less pop music for people who wouldn't have been caught dead in 1995 listening to Top 40, but darn it, I like my slick production and big hooks with the overdriven guitar every once in awhile.

grrl

It's imaginary boyfriend time again here in Cleveland.



What's creepy about this picture is how this almost resembles me in real life.

What's also creepy is how people kind of assume you're their best friend or that you might be a potential romantic interest even though they'd already graduated from high school by the time you were born. Yeesh.

something for the girls

I went to a wedding this past weekend, and my sister is getting married this August and occasionally in social situations people ask "well what about you?" and I always give them some halfhearted answer usually relating to haven't-met-the-right-person or I'm-enjoying-the-single-life and hope that someone changes the subject.

I find it ironic that whenever girls I know talk about how feminist or independent or radical they are, they are always the ones who end up getting married and having kids. I guess it's like being a college kid anarchist who eventually ends up working at a bank or something.

I thought that was just among my circle of acquaintances and friends who usually majored in something like English or Sociology and minored in Women's Studies, but evidently there are some high profile examples of this phenomenon:

Ani Difranco


Corin Tucker


Kathleen Hanna


I find it incredibly funny that Ms. Revolution Girl Style Now is married to one of the men behind this song:



Just sayin'.

On that note, here's some shoegaze/britpop bittersweetness for you all.