from the LP Awoo, Arts & Crafts Records, 2006My head’s been in a funny place since the holiday vacation to Florida---it’s like some remnants of my juvenile delinquency there have followed me home, after hearing about people who were, at one time in my life, so integral to my survival, I just can’t get the gears to stop grinding. Yes, it’s so simple for us as adults to smile endearingly back at the naïveté and idealistic ignorance of our youths---but when I more closely examine some of my insights from back then, I’m faced with the possibility that we only tell ourselves that to continue validating our socialized, jaded, monotonous and predictable lives as “productive adult members of society”. There is a truth within the maelstrom of adolescence, a pursuit of the ‘now’ which supersedes any rational or logical balance of past & future juggling that we so avidly engage in throughout the rest of our lives. I’m not pining for the old days here---a lot of that time was hell on earth for all of us; but, some of it was also the freest I have ever been: free from responsibility, free from complete disillusionment, free from obligation, free from SHAME! That freedom opens subways into vast recesses of the mind which seem to be difficult in accessing later on, paradigms of thought that wind up getting heaped upon the mound of “then”. And yes, I realize it’s virtually impossible to live like that perpetually, but isn’t it too easy & simplistic to merely look back upon our youth with the critical view that it was all just blissfully uninformed crap?! I don’t know, just thinking out loud here… This song is by a large collective of Canadian musicians, The Hidden Cameras, and it serves as background to the trailer of an incredible film by queercore godmother & DIY purist GB Jones, called The Lollipop Generation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeMQlzX0CbM), which I can’t get out of my head either, albeit, not something for the faint of heart or closed of mind; the vibe of this track is obviously influenced by the Femmes, Feelies, most of all Plastic Bertrand’s “Ça Plane Pour Moi”, but the words are super cryptic, “…can't contain the nervousness that creeps into the loins of us, our fate concieved of block by block and word for word, we walk the talk…turning into sap, the, incredulous man, stumbles as he glances, away, the harrowing way…he's taken in hand, led by, his favorite band, mumbles as he dances, in a, crumbling gang…lollipop, lollipop…” No great certainty or assurance to take away here today, these are ruminations which remain very much in progress, but they will hopefully distract me less now that I’ve bored you with them.
