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 Breakdown
One Saturday night in September
Elliot came by the radio station while I was working. He was distraught after a fight with his
girlfriend. He called her from the station phone and the fight continued. It
culminated in Elliot putting his fist into a wooden door, leaving behind an
enormous hole.
I’d already been chewed out for
having too many visitors during my shifts, and when I met with the station’s
managers to answer for the damage, they more or less let me know that I didn’t
have a whole lot of leeway left.
It was just a typical teenage
fuck-up, the kind of thing that happens to most of us at some point or another,
some of us more than others. But for whatever reason - and my reasons included
not only getting yelled at by my bosses but also some accompanying pent-up
psychological guilt issues that I’m still working through twenty-four years
later - this event triggered in me an emotional and spiritual sea change. In
the short term, it was simply a teenage nervous breakdown. In the long term, it
was a complete rearrangement of my worldview.
In 1970, after the flurry of
events that included his marriage to Yoko Ono and the breakup of The Beatles,
John Lennon recorded his debut solo album, Plastic Ono Band. Lennon had been undergoing primal therapy in Los
Angeles with Dr. Arthur Janov, a process that required he strip himself bare
emotionally by revisiting pain repressed since childhood. The album is the
aural equivalent of the therapy - bare bones production, simplicity of delivery
(lots of one-word titles, “God”, “Mother”, “Isolation”), and complete emotional
honesty. With some really gut-wrenching screaming thrown in here and there. Rolling Stone ran an
interview with Lennon simultaneously with the album’s release, the now-famous
“Lennon Remembers” cover story, during which Lennon revealed just how much
anger, bitterness and contempt one man can unleash in semi-polite conversation.
Lurking underneath all the bile, though, was a feeling of spiritual exhaustion, a
sense that a great deal of questing was coming to an end. So as emotionally
searing as all of it was, it was also cleansing. Not only for Lennon, but for
any fan who might be following along and who might be able to relate in some
way. Even a teenage fan, seventeen years later.
Yeah, teenagers are really
susceptible to the “Society is bullshit and nobody understands me!” mindset.
And Lennon’s work is rife with clichés - “Working Class Hero” alone has about
fifty.
But clichés are born of truth,
as the cliché goes. And Dylan-derived and platitude-ridden as it is,
“Working Class Hero” is also a powerful piece of work.
They hurt you at home and they
hit you at school
they hate you if you’re clever and they despise a fool
‘til
you’re so fucking crazy you can’t follow their rules.
Sounds pretty damn incisive, if
you’re so inclined. Then elsewhere on the album there are the virulent dismissals of any and all
figures of authority, spiritual guidance, leadership. “God is a concept by
which we measure our pain,” Lennon sings, before giving philosophical walking
papers to, among others, Jesus, Buddha, Dylan, and Beatles. Hearing him sing
this, beautifully – listen to the way he stretches the word “now” in the phrase
“now I’m reborn” from one syllable to five, downward, like water through a
drain - felt like a confirmation, permission to go ahead and trust yourself.
Which is where the trouble
comes in. Even Lennon acknowledges it in “Look At Me”, questioning his own
motives, desires, identity.
"Nobody understands me!" Well,
yeah. Nobody, least of all you, yourself.
On the day that my bosses
scolded me I walked over to Emily’s right afterwards and basically broke down.
In my own small-scale, much more private version of Lennon’s 1970 Rolling
Stone interview I unloaded a storehouse of
built-up emotions – rage at perceived familial pressures and failures,
frustration with my own sense of inadequacy and ineptitude,
and hopelessness for the future, one that seemed to hold no promise of any
genuine fulfillment.
Emily, with her typical sense
of empathy and grace, took it all in, and offered boundless comfort just by the
simple act of being there and listening, and being compassionate. I was so grateful for her existence. Still am.
The next day I stayed home from
school. I’d had perfect attendance for three straight school years prior to that day. I resolved to
sharpen my outlook on life. To stop caring so much, or, that is, stop caring at
all, about the limitations imposed by groups of people whose values I didn’t
share.
But if you’re going to do that,
you at least need to define your own set of values, which I wasn’t so good at.
It’s a lot easier to rail against the things you don’t believe in than it is to stand
up for what you do believe in. All I believed in was music. But I didn’t know
how to apply that to anything.
Similarly, there’s a fine line
between simply wanting to break free of convention, of the strictures of
religion and society, and turning into a complete asshole. I think I intuitively knew that, but it didn't really curb my momentum. I'd had a revelation, dammit! As a result I’m afraid I skirted
into asshole territory way too often over the next few weeks and months,
verbally berating other people for their adherence to “the rules”, failing to
show up for school or club meetings or planned gatherings of friends, staying out all night and worrying my mother, this last a particularly insensitive move in light of the fact that there was still a killer on the loose in our little town.
Yeah, well, what can you do?
Seventeen. You don’t know who the hell you are or what you’re doing, you just
know you want to be yourself and do what you want. You’re prone to big
emotions. When the changes come, they come jumbo-sized.
I remember one night Max and I
were out driving around, discussing the ridiculousness of everything and everyone - teachers, religion, bosses, family, college. I remember saying “Man, it feels so
good to just not care.” We drove along and we listened to R.E.M., The Ramones, Violent Femmes, The Clash.
Whatever. I mean, it did feel good. Really.
