Seventeen In '88 - A story of teen angst, long walks, dirty jokes, haunted rooms, haunted psyches, records as refuge, roads like mazes, young love, bonding and unbonding, deep foreboding, senseless death, and innocence peeled away slowly, layer by layer.
The Storm
Max had moved into another new
place, an apartment on the outskirts of the city. I think it was brand new. It
smelled of wood and clean carpet. That place became headquarters for the
remainder of summer.
Elliot and I often spent the
night there. In my memory we are there all the time, every day, as though we
lived there. The truth is, we may only have spent the night there three or four
times. The memory plays tricks like that.
This place inspired a great
deal of strangeness, in mood and behavior. One night we walked to the gas
station/convenience store up the road, where I bought a pack of cigarettes,
despite the fact that I didn’t smoke. I guess I thought I might try. I mean,
maybe I’m a smoker and I just don’t know it because I never really gave it a shot. On
that same trip Max stole a case of cokes from a stack that was sitting outside
the store. We walked back to the apartment that night feeling like rebels.
Elliot, acting as the voice of moral consciousness, or more likely the voice of
simple contrarianism, brought us down from our rebellious high by verbally
berating us all the way. "I can't believe you guys are smoking and stealing now, you must think you're so cool."
Elliot could talk. Luckily he
was usually funny, sometimes insightful. One night he kept Max and I awake for
hours brainstorming aloud about the ingredients of cheese. “Just what is it
about cheese that makes cheese cheese?” A question for the ages. Or at the very least a question for the remainder of the summer. For the next few weeks it became something like a mantra; The cheese that makes cheese cheese. What is it?
I always slept under the bed. I
have no recollection as to why I chose to do so. I remember being under there
and falling asleep to the sound of The Balancing Act’s “Three Cards”. The
Balancing Act was a folky college-rock band from L.A. that specialized in weird,
upbeat little tunes with titles like “A TV Guide In The Olduvai Gorge” and
“Kicking Clouds Across The Sky”. “Three Cards”, like most of their songs, is an
acoustically-based tune with elliptical lyrics and a slightly ominous mood.
Every song in 1988 seemed to have a slightly ominous mood. An undercurrent of
weirdness – something happening here, but I don’t know what it is.
Patti Smith’s Horses was not
really like that. All of its ominousness was worn on its sleeve, in plain view.
Along with its mystery, its drama, its ambition. That all of these things are
right there on the surface does not make the album any less effective.
The day I filched the album
from the dirty backroom at my Dad’s place was the day of the storm. There
may have been other thunderstorms in summer 1988, but this one sticks out
because I associate the buildup of black clouds, the rumbling thunder, the wind
and wetness and chaos, with the experience of hearing Horses for the first
time. What better setting to hear all of those songs about breaking through,
transformation, transcendence?
Elliot and I were over at Max’s
apartment. We put the album on and watched the storm brewing from the bedroom
window. It was all happening, man. That was the same window from which earlier in the summer, maybe earlier that day, we
had watched Cindy McCaslin swimming down at the pool. She must have lived or
known somebody who lived nearby. She was a classmate, older, sexy in a quietly
intimidating way. She tended to wear black. Even when swimming, apparently. Her
one-piece was completely black, making her pale skin almost porcelain in
contrast.
On the stereo Patti Smith was
singing “Gloria”. She’s at a party, bored (of course, parties are boring),
looking out the window at a sweet young thing leaning against a parking meter.
Wants to put a spell on her. That was happening and I was looking out the
bedroom window at the black sky and the lightning and I was remembering that
vision of Cindy McCaslin.
There’s something about
summertime storms. They have more color, more crazy atmosphere than any other
kind of meteorological event. The leaves on the trees are still green and alive
and the wind is making them shake in violent waves. The rain comes down in odd
spasms, maybe drifting, maybe pounding. The lightning making everything glow.
And then Patti gets into “Birdland”, where the sky lights up with such a naked
joy and the stars start to slip. Then on the other side it’s "Kimberly", a song
about birth, specifically that of Patti’s sister. “Little sister, the sky is
falling,” she warns, and outside the storm is at full throttle.
By the time she’s into “Land”
she’s on the other side for real, and she drags you along with her. The (neon)
boy is in the hallway drinkin’ his tea, laughing hysterically, surrounded by
horses. He disappears, and Cindy McCaslin rises from the pool all aglow with
water and electricity. She floats up to us at the window, smiling, wicked. We
all disappear together.
Blackout and a few beats, a few
quiet scratches on the guitar and then Patti Smith is ranting, moaning, riding
the sea of possibilities. It’s all about those possibilities, isn’t it? You’re
young and everything is ahead of you, and you might be able to do any or all of
it, or none of it, depending on your level of determination or stamina. We were
so schizophrenic, we thought we had plenty of both, but we were so full of fear
and indecisiveness that we were breathless with it all. I think we just hoped
we’d get lucky.
But none of that matters right
now, because that sea of possibilities is so intoxicating, you just want to
drown in it.
“Elegie”. Here come the ghosts.
And I feel for the people who moved into Max’s apartment after we were gone,
because that place was haunted before we got there, even though it was new -
maybe it was built on an old Indian burial ground or something - and then we
proceeded to leave behind even more ghosts. That place was filthy with ghosts.
“Elegie” is a song dedicated to
the spirit of Jimi Hendrix, whose Electric Ladyland studios the album was
recorded in. The song happens on some other plane, it's effectively both a haunting and a séance.
“It’s just…too bad…our friends…can’t be with us…today,” is a direct quote from
a Hendrix song, and Patti Smith sings it in a way that Hendrix likely would have appreciated - calling up spirits, dragging out the word “today”, stretching it
into something unimaginably distant, far away, never coming back.
Spirits do come back, though.
Spirits do come back, though.
We were all there, that night, I remember it. Listening to that music and watching the storm outside. We were there, and we still are, and we will be again. Ha ha, then disappear.
