ben, the two of us need look no more

mj , originally uploaded by dardana.

…spontaneously burst its way into my head early this afternoon.

well, not totally spontaneously. there was one of those ridiculous countdown-type shows on (in the BACKGROUND, ok?), about “sexual scandals” and of course, their montage of images would not be complete without a few unfortunate shots of poor, broken down mj. we have all seen this kind of thing a thousand times, but today i lingered on it for a few seconds.

i heard my head singing this line (y’know, the one in that title up there), and weirdly (and pretty irrelevantly) enough, it was the version that appears at the end of the pearl jam song “rats”, that my thoughts led to.
yes, brains are strange like that.

i thought about how unusual but nice it was that a rock band thought to reference a very different artist in such a blatant manner– this album (VS., on the song “rats”, if you care) came out around the time of “the scandal”; a live version i have includes eddie mumbling afterwards…”michael jackson was innocent…”
as an adolescent, i had always (unrelated to my blind worship of mr. vedder) felt that this was a very sweet gesture, considering how certain most everyone seemed about his guilt. i feel similarly for the mj-episode for south park (as it’s clear that the creators feel similarly as i and those like-minded).

all these thoughts in about five seconds, the way that thoughts do.

i am compelled to turn and ask edgar, in what seemed like an untimely fashion (at the time), “edgar, do you believe that michael jackson was guilty?” we have shared hundreds(?) of hours of mj-related existence (the recurring, week-long loops of “off the wall”s extended version for a week straight, including quincy jones interviews comes to mind), but i realize we’ve never really discussed it.

so we do, relatively seriously, for a few minutes, coming to the consensus (a rare feat) that neither of us have ever really believed it. i make mention of how i find it weird that people speak of his guilt as though it were certain fact (though of course no one can say for certain that it’s not), macauly culkin (ha), and we acknowledge how “messed-up” does not equal “child molestor”. our voices carry a certain weight of sympathy for this tragic figure who was about to become even more so in the next couple of hours.

what can one say about such things? everything is a cliche, everything sounds trite, but i really loved him, you know? the way that people love strangers and fellow human beings, and of course that much rarer love for people who create beautiful, joyful things. it blows my mind that there was ever a time where a single artist could change the entire world the way he did, and i feel sad for knowing it will probably never happen again. but this is not a new thing.

i think about seeing my family in albania for the first time on videotape, in what was a 3rd world country thousands of miles away, dancing to the same music as we did (it BLEW my mind, as they didn’t speak english- i was nine, ok?). i think about the days when my limited 2-year-old vocabulary included the name of an omnipresent popstar, and my baby legs tried to mimic his moves in a little circle of baby kicks.

i even see him as a missing link between this world and the one that i shared with certain people, traditions, and things that haven’t been alive for years. i think about how something similar probably happened to you. and i find this rather comforting.

how ridiculously self-indulgent people become in these scenarios. the man has young children, for fuck’s sake. but i’m sorry, i’m a sucker for good music and a sad story (see: my mournful visit to graceland). my heart has ached for this man for the past 15 years. his isolation was of such a profound magnitude that it terrifies me, having not another soul on earth who could relate to his situation. it really makes me feel nauseous.
but i will now put a stop to this pathetic platitude parade* (really, i’m ashamed of myself), as such talk will be invading your tvs all week.

oddly enough, the other notable conversation i shared with my roommate today (just before the other) was about my unwieldy sense of empathy. i was tearing up watching the (un-mj-related) news for at least the 2nd time this week, and we fell into a jokey kind of battle over my (jokingly) perceived sense of moral superiority in being so upset by events unrelated to my life.

he was the one who called me a few hours later to deliver the sad news. i could hear it in his voice, but he admitted that no other similar incident had really affected him before. within 20 minutes (ie. exiting the cafe where i had been sitting) i was inundated with signs, songs blaring from cars and endless overheard conversations on the subject. so strange, when this collective sadness settles. i can’t stop thinking about how much i hope this poor guy knew how many people still love him so fiercely.

18th birthday of an album that you don’t care about.

I feel an intense weight pulling on my left arm. I shift uncomfortably and glance at the strained, translucent plastic, wondering if HMV had bigger bags in the ’90s. Stronger bags. I know they did; they were also an opaque black, and bad for the environment, because you had to carry the heavy stuff back then. Like, heavier than MP3s, but not always as heavy as, say, a commemorative box of ~vinyl records, CDs, and re-created pieces of a band’s (and your own) history.
We were all carrying the “heavy” stuff in those days, you know.

Pearl Jam were certainly no exception, one may even be so bold as to label them the rule. So, of course we need to celebrate their first alum “Ten” entering into its first year of adulthood. I will not go much further then the tip of their iceberg which crashed into the Titanic of my adolesence (in a good way), but suffice it to say that I was unhealthily obsessed with the band and its members for some of my most formative years. Things weren’t quite the same once I was in my twenties, and the world was in its twenty-hundreds.

The milennium took the usual desperation to shake the fashion of the passing 10 years and multiplied it by 100, if my calculations are correct. Grunge music was consequently very much done (though some might argue it had already been like, 5 years earlier), with its suddenly unfashionable dirge-y wallowing having no place amongst the shiny foil jumpsuits of futuristic celebration. The impending rise of bands like Creed and Nickelback would make most people curse Eddie Vedder, his “golden baritone”, and the surfboard they rode in on, until those 2 bands (and their many bastardized spawn too hideous to mention) soon became the primary images conjured by these impossibly low notes rumbling from MTV into your chest. Unpleasant.

My love for this band is undying. It is, however, just barely tarnished with the objectivity of someone older and wiser. Obviously the last ten years has left me with a much bigger cultural picture than was once perceived through sheltered teenage eyes, but I take great solace in the fact that I still find this album incredibly affecting, probably in a way that today’s kids won’t feel (I certainly hope not) towards their Jonas Brothers mp3s in their late 20’s. This solace is partly due to its implicit proof that I was an uncharacteristically sensitive and mature child, one whom Eddie would have loved to hang out with.*

The need to make this purchase (including a process which permitted me to brandish my dedication to some HMV Yorkdale employees by 1. paying a mad crazy price 2. going to the trouble of coming in person to pre-order it weeks ahead) reminded me of a recent episode of 30 Rock. In said episode, hardened NBC executive Jack Donaghy sees a film of himself on his 10th birthday, where he receives a gift (not visible from the camera’s point-of-view) that excites him to the point of throwing up on the spot. Moved by the reminder of an enthusiasm he never knew he had, he sets out to find out what was in the box, and how to get it back into his life. When he finally figures out that the magic object in question was a toy spacecraft, he buys it, hoping in vain to duplicate that emotion. Of course, he cannot.

Any proper Eddie worshipper would probably be familiar with the existence of his mythic “journal” that got stolen once, and probably only seemed mythic if you were thirteen (as I was). The contents of this tome surely held the secrets to to life and death and were written in the calligraphy of angels, no? I imagined it to be something like the Dead Sea Scrolls, or at least the notebooks of Da Vinci. Well, for $220, I get to imagine what it would be like to happen upon this precious relic, as they have given me one of my very own to keep forever! The adult cynic in me is all WTF?!, but still  smiles fondly at the 90’s child sitting on the subway (also me). That one who, upon truly absorbing the contents of her newest toy, got that flutter in her belly that she has not felt for an HMV-related experience for many years indeed.
I did throw up- a week later- but the rarity of this horrific reaction leads me to find it no mere coincidence. I’d like to think it counts.

So, thank God I bought this thing. It allowed me to take my old vision of Eddie the god, as well as my new one of Eddie the human, and merge them into the far more healthy one of Eddie the rockstar. In this day and age, that’s an impressive enough feat, isn’t it? Now, if only I could go back in time for a day, and run into this guy (the same age I am now!) in a dark alleyway. Preferably after the Unplugged taping.
Oh, HAI. (a phrase that would not be understood at the time)

*I am sort of kidding here.

i wrote this on (the first day of) spring

…though it might not feel like it, what with the frigid temperature and my stolen-back toque hugging my skull. I assure you that it is the first day of the rest of our year(s?), and I promise that THIS! is FINALLY! the reason/excuse I was looking for to re-do this new thing I used to do (writing for the internets, to nobody in particular).

As I bid the beast farewell, I truly understand how much it ruins my life, infecting every facet of existence. From being able to read on the bus [TOO COLD TO HOLD (anything) IN HANDS], to resuming the visits of friends who live “off the grid” so to speak (rather, at the centre of a part of the grid that is the nexus of the Bermuda triangle of TTC buses), to buying/preparing my own food, it’s good to be sentient again, if only fleetingly so. I smile and toss my hair, which has regained its springtime lustre as I skip down College St., unfazed by the guy who caught me watching the breath I blew out my mouth turn to steam, to see if it would turn to steam (affirmative). I am wearing a pretty purple dress because all my pants are too tight, but nobody needs to know that.

A week ago, it snowed for – I think and hope- the last time this winter. Did you need to know that? Well, it was beautiful, if that helps, if you can believe it. Beauty can always be found when something (winter) dies, or when you’re dying instead (of over-winter), or your depression is dying (the end of winter excuses), because frankly, we miss that shit. I actually gasped a little when I saw it; big, Charlie Brown flakes that called to mind long, frolicking days on ponds and slopes that I have never experienced. Later that night, we met the singer of Bloc Party at the Gladstone and he kicked ass (1. awesome accent 2. awesome attitude 3. humoured us all very sweetly 4. was obsessed with Ardi’s name).

What follows: about 48 hours of feeling as though I love this band more than I actually do. I go out and buy the new album and it’s pretty alright (these things take time), and I listen to the old album and it’s just- INCREDIBLE, my responses all unbelievably heightened. My crazy, fangirl groupie blood boils out of my control, and celebrities are people no more, once they are seen through the filter of immaturity, which I keep in my back pocket for times like this. Talk of attending the concert goes from a shrug to a gut-wrenching necessity to nearly forgotten 2 days later. I youtube-stalk them out-of-control-like for a few days, and it’s enough to breathe life into the barren landscape of my aging, freezing musical and urban dwelling-places.

Rock and roll is alive and well- and not just in my house, but living, breathing and walking the streets. Drinking beer and such. I recall learning that “energy” never dies, but merely changes shape; like the sun, the rawwk, and my mutha-effing ‘blog. They’re all back, kids.