Wednesday, December 07, 2005

pump up the volume

it's four in the morning, and i'm not tired.
i feel like i'm in that middle place, that nice and safe place, where nothing bad is happening. i am busy enough to not have time to reflect, but i have the feeling that what i would reflect on wouldn't be that bad. not at all. i tend to only write when i'm feeling down. i'm feeling up to flat to peaceful to ... i'm just steady. i'm just getting things done.

i shut the lid of my computer tonight at around 2. i never feel finished, but at a certain point i try to make a rational decision to get some sleep. but i wasn't tired. things are going well enough, i said to myself. i had spent the night boiling pot after pot of tea, sitting there at my kitchen table, formulating endless emails about the album artwork, the This and the That, the captions for the dozens of photos to the sheet music, proofing the lyrics, making plans with my family for christmas. the things that thread themselves together and never unravel and never end. Shit To Do.

i laugh at the idea of anybody thinking my life is all that interesting. i come back to boston from tour and spend time in my apartment, glued to my computer, making occasional trips to the store for nourishment. getting things done, like anybody else. we all know the pile. boring running around and feeding my mouth and resting my mortal coil on a space pillow.

but i didn't go straight to bed, as i thought i would. if you had asked me, my best guess would have been that i would floss, brush, wash my face and apply two kinds of moisturizer, and crawl into bed. i would read the next installment in the julie doucet comic book that lies there spread face-down next to my pillow, set my alarm, read for ten minutes, whack off and fall asleep like every other night.

instead, for reasons unkown, i took a walk down memory lane and treated myself to a movie in bed. movies in bed are great. laptops are awesome. this is rare, i don't usually allow myself to spend two hours that could be spent on sleep or making more beautiful album artwork on a movie. but i'm glad i watched this movie. i fucking missed this movie. i bought this movie on an impulse buy from amazon.com about two weeks ago, because it came into my head, and it was cheap. then it arrived and it sat there on my stove for a while, knowing it wouldn't be watched.

pump up the volume. it was like the breakfast club for the nineties. i was liminal.i didn't belong anywhere, i was right on the threshold. not really belonging to the eightie sor the nineties. my older brother and sisters were in the car when we came back from the breakfast club when i was about 9. i remember i was still timgling from seeing judd nelson's fist raise into the air as the credits rolled and the sun went down on the triumph of the teenage spirit. i remember resolving to be a cool teenager. i was so jealous of my older siblings, they got to live this. they were IN high school, that mysitcal world of detentions and smoking corners and heavy bookbags.

but once pump up the volume came out, i barley related as if i was watching my own generation on that screen - which technically, i was. it was 1990, i was 14, and i felt like the entire world understood something i didn't, that everybody was in on the joke but me. however, i had my fantasy, and i held onto my fantasy when i saw movies like this. somehwere, i kept telling myself, somewhere THERE IS A PLACE where teenagers riot in high school parking lots because a pirate radio DJ plays sonic youth and leonard cohen and muses about existence. just like i'd believed at 9 that there was some mythical high school where five kids from different socio-economic backgrounds and cliques could show up for a saturday detention and smoke pot and forgive each other. i spent most of high school fantasising that college would finally prove to be the PLACE since high school was definitely Not the PLACE where these incredible things happened. lo and behold, i was totally fucking stunned when college turned out to feel exactly the same. i felt like i was in high school except everybody slept over. it's taken me years to sort through this shit, and i'm not even close. pump up the volume. i had almost forgotten how fucking great it was. it propelled my straight back to high school and all of a sudden, there i was, in the bathroom applying black eyeliner, calculating exactly which route to take to english so i would pass by andrew thompson's locker. feeling inherently fucking confused, with absolutely no way out. feeling like i understood everything totally clearly while simultaneously feeling i had no idea why things anything was happening.

i pressed pause half-way through the movie, in a daze, and went to the bathroom stuck in high school. i couldn't believe i had my own apartment. it was like i was on acid. i was just looking around going "how on earth did i get here?" i felt like i had to be up at 7:30 so i could eat cereal, put on tights and skirts and combat boots and walk to school in the freezing cold, smoking ginseng cigarettes on the way with my walkman blasting strangeways here we come on one side and meat is murder on the other and flipping the tape over and over and over again, morrissey's providing the soundtrack for a life that i could find tolerable when the music was loud enough and every step i took and every tree i saw and every passing suburban car was just a planted perfect prop while the credits rolled by. walking to school with the music blasting was always opening credits. i never did closing credits. not that i remember. in-between classes, headphones on, volume dial jammed, my fellow students were perfectly-cast extras walking through the hall for those establishing scenes where the director is trying to set a mood for a Cool High School movie. What happened? What happened to John Hughes? Do the kids of this generation, the ones who are 16, do they really, really see Mean Girls and relate? Do they leave the theater wanting to run home and throw all their sports pendants and strings of pearls and soccer trophies in the mircowave?

Happy Harry Hard-On is my new personal hero. I don't need reality. That's my new answer. So Be It. I bought my rebellion at the blockbuster mall just like everybody else but at least it makes my stomach stir. i cry at weddings.

i stand at the kitchen sink, filling a glass with water, and i look to my left and see a bottle of dish soap. i'm still can't shake it. i can't believe i OWN this bottle of dish soap. i can't believe it's MINE. i can barely turn around becaue i know what's in the rest of my apartment and i know i'll be completely overwhelmed. a COUCH? where did these things COME FROM? who the hell am i to OWN a couch and a bottle of dishsoap? i mean, i OWN it, i'm not just using it because it's there. I OWN it the way I own my clock and my towels and my books and my dictionary. it's mine forever. if the house caught fire and i fled in my boxers and t-shirt and stood out on the street, the sympathetic passers-by would shake their heads. I'm So Sorry, they would say. I Know What It Feels Like To Lose Everything. No, I would say, clutching my small bottle of fluorescent orange Dawn, I still have this. It's mine forever and nobody can take it away from me, ever.

high school is never over. it just morphs into something more subtle. i had an experience last week in new york which proves this. i've been a curious fan of bright eyes for about a year, ever since i discovered the fever and mirrors record. naturally, since conor oberst (the singer and basically the band itself) represents adolescent pain better than anyone in the universe, i developed a class A adolescent crush on him. i don't get these anymore. i miss them. i prefer sleeping alone nowadays. i barely think about love. i have plenty. i haven't had a boyfriend in so long i've forgotten what it's like. honestly. i have these vague memories of romancing and cuddling and planning and fucking and calling and the whole nine yards and it seems like a blurry fiction, something that i just wouldn't do nowadays, because....well, why would i? i'm happy. i'm rarely lonely. i have close friends and people i can talk to, i don't feel isolated. i certainly don't miss the heartbreak and the drama. but old conor pulled it out of me. he literally screams that you Must Develop a High School Crush on him. so i hauled my ass down to new york because i wanted to pass his locker. now, any girl (or boy, i suppose) knows that this locker-passing technique is ridiculous. if the person doesn't have any interest in you, they are not going to give a fuck if you walk by their locker five to six times a day for an entire school year. if anything, they'll be irritated. andrew thompson probably was. so, in Rock Land, when you're in a band that's Making It you can have your manager call their promoter or/and manager friends to get tickets and passes for shows. Sometimes they can, sometimes they can't. my manager is a Good Manager. he almost always can. so i emailed him and got a ticket and a pass for the bright eyes show in jersey city, and there i was all of a sudden, sitting in a seat in a theater with my coat on my lap and my journal in my hands. to my left was the cooler-hair guiter player from the yeah yeah yeahs, and to my right were conor oberts parents. now, i don't know what kind of cruel and surreal trick god was playing on me by doing this. i can only imagine. while talking to mr and mrs oberst i find of course that (could it be any other way?) they were the sweetest, kindest smiling rock parents you could imagine. so proud of their son, just beaming. conor was drinking coca-colas on the stage and giving a decent performance, but he seemed bored. maybe he's always like that.

my few words exchanged with him backstage before the show were trite and forgettable. he remembered me as the drunk girl who streaked onto his stage glastonbury and we joked. he was nice but not interested in talking to me. his tour manager was not so nice, however, and sort of gave me that full-body scan and sneer and told me that they'd had a great tour and that he didn't want me fucking up the show. what? i said. no, no, no. i am not a crazy person, please believe me. i thought that glastonbury was like las vegas...what happens at glastonbury stays in glastonbury....? apparently not. my one attempt at crazy rock star behavior had been met with steely witch-burning rancor. i looked the guy straight in the eye. please, sir, don't worry. i am not going to ruin your rock show. i am a sane person. i don't do crazy things. in fact, i am a grave disappointment to all the fans out there who want me to be a lunatic. i'm really not. he was half-satisfied, but that feeling shot through me again....what was it? what was it? oh, i remember. it was That High School feeling. i've been so surrounded by people who like me lately that i've forgotten how it feels to walk down a hall of people who all stare at you as if you're a freak and a loser. which is exactly how i felt after the show, surrounded by pretty girls with quilted dresses, stylish shoes with the weird heels in the middle of the foot (i don't GET those at ALL) long hair and bangs. i bet i would like every one of these people, i said to myself, if i could be alone in a room with them, they play music, we have a lot of things in common SMACK why do you feel so out of place? are these people really looking at you so strangely? or are you just telescoping yourself back into tenth grade? i'm inclined to think that after the conor-rejection and the you-dirty-whore treatment from the tour manager that it was the latter. i had a nice talk with mr yeah yeah yeah and i had a nice talk with ms feist, the opener. it struck me that i had invited myself into somebody else's party and why on earth should i expect them to be kind to me? would i be kind to them if they showed up in my backstage after a dresden dolls show? of course. but were they being unkind? what was i expecting, the PLACE? the magical PLACE where bottles are clinking and everyone is everyone's friend in Rock Love and our cups runneth over and music and love bring us all together and it's All Good? this doesn't exist either. i learned this lesson over the summer at the rock fesitvals, where the magazines were pumping the public with stories of the Rock and Roll Life while backstage was usually a bunch of cold and tired musicians standing in line for catering, trying not to offend one another. maybe i just wasn't invited to the right trailers. maybe i don't really want to go anyway. maybe i think too much and they can smell it on me.

pump up the volume made me want to blog. it's the practical equivalent of having a pirate radio station, but quieter. but that's all i'm doing, vomiting out my head periodically like this.

people leave comments. these posts are re-sent over to our myspace page, where people leave comments. i read them all, in case you guys have been wondering. it's the most satisfying thing in the world to hold a one-sided conversation with an imaginary audience and then hear the reverberations, the echo delay on a random thought. it makes me feel less alone. in fact, i blame you, Yes You, for the fact that i don't want to go boyfriend-hunting (in case you're wondering how the conor story ended, we said goodnight and i left the show but i ran into him at a bar the night after. he saw the error of his ways and asked me back to his apartment, where we stayed up all night, drinking red wine and reading passages form oscar wilde fairy-tales aloud to each other while crying and holding onto each other for dear life and kissing for hours without ever taking our clothes off. just kidding. we said goodnight and i left the show but ran into him at a bar the next night where i decided that tenth grade was over and i didn't say hello, which probably relieved him). i blame you because i think this may be enough for me at the moment, to scream/sing at a crowd, to cry on a stage, to send my blather into the internet and hear the echo. i think it's all i need right now. i think it is. this does not mean that if Christian Slater at age 23 waltzed into my kitchen i would not try to Trap Him and Cage Him and keep him forever. i would set up a little pirate radio station in my bedroom that would broadcast into the kitchen and the bathroom only. every night at 10:00 pm sharp he would dj and rant and play the pixies and bad brains and i would dance wildy, naked, flailing and out of control in the next room, with an umbrella in one hand and a bottle of salad dressing in the other, stuffing string after string of pearl necklaces and sports pedants (which i would procure daily at ever-more-distant salvation army stores) into a mircowave i would purchase at best buy for that purpose. then we would fall into bed, exhausted, complaining about how difficult it is to be in high school and how nobody understands us and how we can't wait to grow up and get the fuck out of this town.

it's 5:30. i could've watched a whole nother movie.

28 comments:

Jos 'Hyakugei' Yule said...

I just wanted to add to the ripple effect. Feel those reverberations...

spi said...

HS was much the same for me. Had the obligatory crush or two. Lived on the outside, never was that popular though I found others more or less in the same situation so it worked out.

Real life and being able to own stuff does make a difference though not quite as much as one would hope. It works out.

md said...

grandiddly awesome blog.

The whole realizaaaation experience in general i can relate to. that out-of-body: woooah. one of my first one- after watching some seventh heaven (yeah...) episode when i was 12 I remember looking at my mom and being like, "wow, thats my mom. shes my 'mom' like, 'mother,' mutti,' your maker, healer, that gal... i was in mother shock for maybe ten minutes... until my dad walked in the room. then i just fainted.

Karl said...

So I'm happy/sorry that you're so happy/unhappy lately.

Hey, since you actually read these, I have something interesting to share.

The word "sabotage" comes from 19th century Europe. People called Luddites were upset by the Industrial Revolution and how their skills were no longer needed amidst machines. In fits of rage, they attacked the machines by throwing wooden clog shoes ("sabots") into the machines to jam them up.

No joke.

artist said...

Yes, I do remember those combat boots, I was there, lingering not as long as I should have on the smokers corner. Yes, Pump of the Volume, HUGE,
"Talk Hard."

June Miller said...

Really, Amanda?

Is that the appeal of Mr. Oberst? The fact that he's like the brooding boy in high school that girls would often turn to eachother and whisper 'Oh my god, he's sooooooo hot!'?

For the life of me, I cannot understand why so many people are attracted to him. Four out of the five girls who I've gained an interest in have pretty much fallen head-over-heels in love with this fellow. HE HAS THE TEETH OF A 10 YEAR OLD CORPSE! I DON'T GET IT. Then again, these girls kind of are the girls in high school who dream their lives would work out in a "Pretty In Pink" sort of fashion, I guess. Whatever. I'll always be Duckie (Duckette?).

Although, I was more of a "Ferris Bueller" kind of gal, myself.

Kate said...

40 comments? I guess that would make me 41! wow. that is well over any amount I could even imagine getting on one of my blog entries. It's interesting that you don't have a significant other, for a while there I was under the impression that you were with that guy in your band, Brian...I guess I was mistaken, eh? Something my step dad told me before he passed, was to

"be in love with love, and you will always be content."...

Anyway, I dig the rockn' tunes. Don't let the weight of the world hammer down and engulf you.

R. MacKay said...

My Powerbook and I salute you!

I think we (your commenters, not me and my laptop) like reading you because you echo what we feel and do not say, or cannot articulate.

(Isn't it interesting - and a little telling - how the not-quite-bright insist on misspelling words to be "cool". u know what i mean. I think they call it "edgy" in Los Angeles.)

Anyhow, thanks for writing. (I'm too tired to be clever.)

kali_licious said...

"high school is never over. it just morphs into something more subtle."

Amen sister. If there is anything I can be sure of, at the ancient age of 36, it's the above statement.

Lux said...

This year I suffered a massively overwhelming crush on Trent Reznor. It ended this summer when I saw NIN in Glasgow. I suppose it was very good while it lasted, but was so draining as it took over my thoughts for weeks.

On the plus side, I discovered the Dresden Dolls via the crush and now follow this diary - it's superb. I like the way your mind works.

The best school-film I've seen in ages was a Swedish film called Onsdkan (Evil). School drama at it's sinister best.

muruch said...

Ouch. Connor Oberst sounds like a whiny little bitch. Though I realize you can't control who you crush on, it's a shame that your infatuation allows a peon that resides far below your place in the universe (and music) to treat you so disrespectfully.

Daftie said...

You're right. College is highschool all over again. I thought people would at least treat each other with dignity and respect. But I was wrong about that too. You're blessed to have the talent you have, and the life you live...many people would like to have a not-so-ordinary life.

(This is probably inappropriate to ask on your blog, but when New Orleans is back to [almost] normal, would you think of coming around? We'd love to have you.)

Dave said...

thank you Amanda. This is a lovely entry. Your writing always inspires me to work to improve my own, be it in blogs or songs or whatever else.

And now I want to go buy Pump Up the Volume, damnit. It's been too long.

Sunshine said...

How bizarre. I'm only just catching this blog entry (always a week late and a dollar short, heh). I work part time in a CD/DVD store, and last week I set aside (for later purchase) a copy of the Pump Up The Volume DVD I'd found while putting away stock.

I was so obsessed with this movie when I saw it back in the 90s that I had to construct an extended soundtrack to include all the songs not on the official one. I didn't know all the artists who had been featured, so I found it on VHS and squinted at paused screens of the credits. :D Talk about your garden variety geek-a-zoid. To do this, I also had to buy full-length cassettes of the albums each song was on. Richard Hell & The Voidoids, Leonard Cohen (oh how I searched far and wide for "If It Be Your Will"), The Descendants, etc. and so on, ad nauseum.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is how bizarre the timing of this blog post and my setting aside of said movie happened to be so close.

Thank you for all that you do, Amanda. I can only speak for myself in saying that I really appreciate how you open yourself up to us in blog form (as a supplement to song form) and thusly cut through the smoke and mirrors that separate the adored from the adoring. It takes a pretty brave soul to do that, I think.

I'm still a bit wary of the blogging thing, but you make me think a little differently about it.


~Sunshine

aagje said...

hmmm.

hmmm.

(sinks into her own high school memories, smiles at the particular thought of a former high school crush and wonders how many children and kilos he has gained by now)

hmmm.

i love you, Amanda!

S

A Unique Alias said...

I love that funny inverse deja vus of feeling like my high school self is in my 26-year-old head and is suddenly looking out at my life today, feeling completely and utterly on the outs with everyone, misunderstood and frustrated.

It provides a cathartic release akin to crying in a movie theatre about fictional characters and their fictional problems.

Which is probably one reason I like your art so much :-)

Me, Im not said...

Amanda..

It is refreshing that there are those in our age group that still feel the way you do.

Looking fwd to the next album..and tour in CINCINNATI.

Russell said...

Hello.

Merry Christmas :)

vo0do0chile said...

glad to hear you're feeling more comfortable with your life lately. I hope Brian is doing well, also (i know he had some personal issues a while back).

Pump up the volume is an awsome movie. However, Teen movies were (And still are) unrealistic. There is no magic place where goths become beauty queens and boys with a shitty attitude get the pretty girl (thank christ).
I think that's part of why your music is so popular... It's very real and very raw for so many people out there. There's no hollywood factor, you just say what you feel. I think more people want to be able to relate to an artist than want to be swept away into a complete fantasy world where everyone is awsome and the world changes because of some award winning phrase someone utters.
It's nice to be able to go "damn, that's the same shit I went through" or "holy shit, that's exactly how I feel" when listening to music or dealing with other forms of art and entertainment. No one knows what it feels like to be the school's hero for having a pirate radio station or to instantly have a hot chick fall in love with you because you spend a day acting like an ass.
However, Alot of us know what it feels like when you grow up and the schoolhouse has moved and your friend doesn't live near you anymore. Alot of us feel like the pills came a couple days too late or hate part of our family or are proud of ourselves for taking out the trash when we've had a bad month.

There is no nonsense world like john hughes would have us believe, and i think you do an important thing by speaking to us out here in the real world and letting us know we're not alone.

SAMANTHA P said...

happy christmas amanda, thank you for changing my life.

mazeofmemories said...

I'm surprised you actually read these. Or possibly you only read the MySpace comments.

The feeling you described having at the Bright Eyes Show is similar to what I feel at your shows. Here I am, this indie rock snob, prancing into a concert hall full of happy people who seem to be so much more accepting than I am.

You are one of my favorite musicians, and the fact that you have a high school girl crush on someone I look at as my inspiration in life in general is amazing.

I like pretending you care what I think. It's like I have a chance to leave comments on the Bell Jar or something.

Ramsey said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
mdhatter said...

well said.

you do think too much, and they can smell it on you.

Domestibot said...

It does raise the question if we've ever really left high school to begin with. Isn't the Earth just one big, high school, complete with lunch ladies, teachers, and the ubiquitous classes that serve as our obligations? Earth HS. I like the sound of that. It would also suggest we would be rival schools with mars or some other planet where their principal is a bit more literate and thus suited for his/her job.

High school for me was...well, amusing. I wasn't popular, I wasn't particularly known... if anything, I was the kid in the shadows. The side dish, just watching the main course get eaten. I loved being the observer. I would never get any attention or go looking for it. There are a few exceptions like... hmmm...Oh, my hot sister. Every once in a while one of her suitors would talk to me, in what I would surely know to be foolhardy attempts to get into her pants. Save for those few encounters, and whenever I had a school project to complete, my interaction with everyone was incredibly minimal. My sister still has some residual hotness, but no suitors are willing to fly across the country from her current location for some desperately needed tips. tis a shame.

in a few short days, I'm moving into the next sect of high school: college-landia. I've stopped into that realm for a brief period in time last year before I was forced to leave, but from what I do remember, it was the same thing as high school only the teachers wouldn't care if we used profanity or drank Mondo Mango in class.

But then every so often, I would run into one of "the stares." they seemed to follow the same pattern as someone needing to sneeze everyday. All sneezes may sound different, but they all mean the same thing. A tender, ladylike "achoo" to the most indistinguishable muck of noise ever to be carried by Earth HS' oxygen. They all mean the same thing: there's crap in my nose, here it is. Stares also could have their degrees in differences. one of them could say "who the fuck are you?" while another could just be a simple "hmmm." In any event, a stare to me was always a sign of someone trying to figure me out. and they didn't stop after high school. in fact, didn't they start in high school?

Maybe a stare is something else that comes with puberty? You know, you get the body hair, you grow a few inches, and let's not forget you suddenly have the ability to staaaaare at people. They really should've written that chapter in sex ed.

Chapter 5: Staring.

Since you're older now, your opinion, however small it may be, now carries weight. thus, you can STARE at something to get your message across. Pretty nifty, huh billy?

Even though I don't mind these stares in the least, I find that they're like mount everest. just there. In college, oh yeah. unavoidable. Yet they never bother me, and if any one of these gawkers ever took the time to try and speak with me, they'd find that I'm a really nice guy who would be more than happy to kick back and get to know them. since they typically don't do that, I fair very well at just amusing myself.

Well, my bike and I have a date. See ya around. oh, wrong blog.

Ariadne's Corona said...

So, Conner looked bored eh? Wow. I suppose there's not much left for him if pouring out his angsty poetic soul to dozens of scene kids hanging on his every moan is no longer stimulating.

I came to your last Chicago show at the Metro because a friend of mine, Chris, was doing a mime as an opener. For the record, I'm thankful you didn't look bored.

Actually, I have to say that the show was, overall, really fantastic. It's so rare to have two great opening bands (Faun Fables, Devotchka) in addition to an incredible set main stage.

Ramsey said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
shannon said...

i never felt that i fit in high school - yet i tried, and therefore split-off inside of myself even more.

now, at 31, i can see it all for what it is.

we all just want someplace to belong.

Sin luz no se puede said...

Hey,

The movie is my favorite to, i to feel the wrap of words that sting so real and make me see that it is not that diferent. that living in a generation does not suck that much like seeing those generations pass and you stuck on time, on an idea or a feeling you just can't get enough. my time, is as thin as air, i do what i am supposed to do, feel a bit cool with it, but feel like a ghost to my surroundings. although i think im starting to live when i supposed to be half way, yet always asking myself is it really worth it or what is new. shattering dreams that i thought as a kid that at this time i would acomplished, but hey. better struggle than to let go, give a fight than to surrender to it, for what ever they think they don't care, it'll be the same if your in or out. thinking always how did this much things come to be mine, and what was i thinking, why can it feel easy to leave but never taking that first step. well i read this a bit late, agreeing with you that the movie is a favorite of mine which actually represents something i crave with the spirit of anarchic youth struggling to express who they really are.

thanks best regards...