Winter 1988 Recalled As A Series of Random Glimpses, With Music
It’s a strange thing, how memories work. Some of them come back to you wholesale, in perfect sequence, with every detail, every last word in place. Some of them are a blotch, a nebulous mass of color and sound, with only the atmosphere easily accessed.
My memories of winter 1988 are a hybrid of both, and something else. They funnel through the mind in little bursts, some like still pictures, some like short movies that go in and out of focus, random frames left out. Always, though, with a clearly remembered soundtrack.
At a party on a Friday night. Elliot and Max and I outside in the car, laughing and insulting one another. The house on a hill, the lights in the windows illuminating fun, music, conversation, potential life-altering encounters, unspeakable awkwardness. And us. Not going in. Instead waiting, pontificating, finally deciding that Reckoning actually is just as good as Murmur.
Peter Buck’s guitar, that tangled, tumbling, cobweb sound, Stipe’s voice circling and weaving through and around it – “She-ee will returrrrnnn”. Will she?
The snow. Admiring the swirl of tracks left in our wake. Maggie’s brother is driving, spinning the car around on the ice, (it’s called “doing doughnuts” but I hate that term, it's too cute) huge looping figure eight tire tracks left behind. Anxious. Not wanting to go home. Though at least at home it will be warm and there will be music.
Fairport Convention’s “Sloth”. The funeral pace, the cold winter starkness, the bare-boned emptiness in the sound. Dave Swarbrick’s violin trying to comfort, then Richard Thompson spitting at the gesture, his guitar evoking the cold hard facts of history’s endless, inevitable brutality. Then it all comes ‘round again to the personal – “She’s run away, she’s run away / and she ran so bitterly.” Maybe she's got the right idea.
Study Hall. In the library, looking over a map of the nation with friends, laughing at Ralph Buckman when he points out the pond in his back yard. Or reading the pre-season baseball predictions, all of which projected the Dodgers to be a lackluster, middle-of-the pack team. Or being taunted by an oafish jock. And we break for that story here: Identifying me (fairly accurately) as a nerd, he attempted to verbally toy with me, asking with condescending fake earnestness if I had a girlfriend. To him the idea would have been preposterous. I should have lied to him, made up something ridiculous, or said something crude like “Ask your mom”, but I’ve never been particularly quick-witted that way, I’m the type that thinks of the perfect comeback hours later, usually while lying in bed trying to go to sleep. So I just told him that yes, I did. He assumed, of course, that I was lying, but he took it and ran with it, firing off a series of questions about her, making a big show of responding to each guilelessly honest answer with mock serious interest and astonishment, even dragging one of his buddies into it, “Hey man, JB here’s telling me all about his amazing girlfriend!” I knew that I should have felt humiliated, and I suppose a part of me did feel that way, but I was also an arrogant little shit, so another part of me just felt bemused. That reaction was doubtless some kind of mental defense mechanism. Still, I wonder now what kind of deep dark secrets that guy had hidden in his psyche.
Shane MacGowan again. If I Should Fall From Grace With God, and how excited Max and I are to hear it, only to end up mildly disappointed because it isn’t as good as Rum, Sodomy and the Lash. Listening over and over anyway, trying to sort through the cleanliness and the eclecticism and find the next “Pair of Brown Eyes”. It isn’t there, but as good in its own way is the Christmas song, “Fairytale Of New York”, a mini-movie with Kirsty Macoll as the hard-bitten dame, sparring with MacGowan’s useless drunk to a draw. Back then it was funny when she sang “You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot". We didn't think twice about the now-obvious ugliness of that homophobic slur, even those of us who were out (not many) used the word as cavalierly as your average indefinite article. If all shouldn't be forgiven or forgotten, at least it can be contextualized. In this particular context the feelings the song gets at are unavoidable - by the time she gets to "you took my dreams from me, when I first found you" it's so heartbreaking you can feel your own dreams slipping away.
English Class. Sitting in front of me is the voluptuous, wonderfully named Linda Lusk.* She is a cheerleader. She frequently turns around to make idle conversation. Passively looking over the scrawl on the front of my notebook she asks, “What’s The Velvet Underground?” I tell her but she doesn’t seem impressed. Later a boy from across the room is trying to get her attention. I tap her on the shoulder and say, “Hey Linda, Matt wants you. But then, so does every other guy in the school.” She smiles at me, sly, a light in her eyes. I feel the sharp thrill of a tiny victory.
*All the names in Seventeen in ’88 have been changed, just in case anyone gets pissed off about me writing about them. But Linda Lusk’s name in real life was comparably wonderful, so I feel okay in describing it that way.
Violent Femmes’ Hallowed Ground. The first Femmes album now passé, and the third an impenetrable mélange, all the cool kids have drifted to the second. Religious imagery, prophecy, blasphemy, murder. A Velvets pastiche and a down-home gospel hoedown. Though even heavy contextualizing can't really explain away the lyrics of "Black Girls" - what might now at best be thought of as childish provocation we charitably assumed was anti-racist and anti-homophobic at the time. Thinking was hard, and getting caught up in the frenetic pace of the music - all jittery rhythms and sly horn patterns - was easy. My favorite was “Never Tell”, seven minutes of pure menace, bravado, and spite. Everybody’s favorite was “Country Death Song” with its take your lovely daughter and throw her in the well. A little campy in its self-consciousness. Or vice versa. It would come to feel pretty prescient, give or take.
The Late Nights. I’ve taken to staying up way too late on school nights. The act becomes an adventure, a bold stand against the tyranny, the hideous normalcy of sleeping. Truthfully there isn't much adventure, mostly I just watch TV. Letterman, then maybe a movie. I saw Midnight Cowboy during one of these late nights. I related then to Joe Buck’s bewilderment, being a stranger in a strange land surrounded by con men and coldness. But when I see that movie now I just remember the joy of staying up late.
Sandy Denny. My friend Brandon, who is obsessed with Natalie Merchant, will in a few weeks decide to give up the sound of the 10,000 Maniacs singer’s voice for Lent. He suggests that I do the same with Sandy Denny’s voice. I tell him he is crazy. In my room, lights out, the sound of her voice both earthy and ethereal. And the depth of feeling, the far-away soul, old but also mirroring the innate restlessness of a seventeen year-old kid in a dark bedroom, longing for something like oblivion. “I wish I was somewhere / but not in this town / maybe the ocean / next time around”. Will she sleep, will she rise again? Will any of us?
The Library. On Sunday afternoon, with Maggie, songs buzzing in the brain and it’s supposed to snow tomorrow. Across the room we spot Emily Waller. She’s the local queen of academia. Tall, thin, long dark hair, walking with what I arrogantly perceive as endearingly transparent false confidence. I'd seen her around a million times, even knew her somewhat - she'd just joined the drama club, which was still the center of my social world - but for some reason on this day I'm a little struck by her presence. She's radiant, like a ghost come walking in from the future.
But we’re still here in the gray mid-winter. Maggie and I off in a corner, at a table by the window, books open, ostensibly there to study but of course we end up talking, laughing, flirting, planning. Slightly nervous, slightly melancholy. We’re young, drunk on possibility, so much of the world left to absorb. It’s cold outside.
