Noise With Dirt On It

After six hours of punk rock and metal, I'm so far outside my comfort zone that I doubt ground seeking radar and a trail of breadcrumbs could bring me home.  I'm still not sure of the point of the music, aside from the volume which is deafening and the lyrics which are raunchy, but what strikes me the hardest is the age and demeanor of the young musicians and their fans.  They slouch around between sets, chain smoking unfiltered cigarettes, guzzling Red Bull and raving about the music - every other word is a familiar obscenity and it soon becomes faded and harmless - just another overworked old adjective, as if there were no others in the English language.  On the dance floor, they scream and wail and chant and body slam into each other like freight trains.  At some point, it strikes me that these are just children - acned, extravagantly tattooed and pierced, ragged and rebellious - but still just children.  Oh, my God, I think with sudden and despair laden shock, I'm turning into my mother!  The realization hits me like a slap in the face and clutching my camera like a shield, I scramble outside to the parking lot to breathe and come to my senses.  Think of the passion and energy you're seeing, I remind myself harshly, You were eighteen once too!

It almost works until I recall being eighteen - Nehru jackets, love beads, a hint of weed, a forgotten war - and protest songs by the likes of Phil Ochs and Arlo Guthrie and Tom Paxton.  We were wating for the revolution and we not only sang the songs, some of us tried to live them.  I can't reconcile the protest music I knew and loved (still do) with the angry, illogical, hysterically loud cacophony shattering my eardrums.  That was satire and activism - this is the definition I read recently of a boy - noise with dirt on it.

But, I tell myself, the world is an offering and I'm here because I don't want to be stuck in a musical box and I surely don't want to see my mother's face when I look in the mirror.

Banging and body slamming is not my kind of music and while I'd prefer to simply shut it out, there's nothing worse than a locked up mind.  These are children - smoking, cussing, inked and pierced children - looking for their places, for self expression, for a sound that speaks to them.  When I was their age, I'm pretty sure I was doing the very same thing.

Tolerance is not really a lived virtue; it's more of a cerebral ascent ~ Krista Tippett

Oh, my wounded ears.  I hope so.