Month: June 2005

I want what I want. We all do, I guess, and I just happen to surround myself with people who are willing to admit that. On one Defiance, Ohio tour, bored in the van, we broke out the guitar and went around exchanging verses, teasing each other about the things that we secretly (or not so secretly) desired. The other night in Brooklyn, Ryan voicing his frustration about the reality of setting up, playing, and getting everyone at the show cleared out in 20 minutes was transformed by the rumor mill as “We’re Defiance, Ohio and we get what we want!” We may want what we want, and each of us is frustrated in our own ways when that doesn’t happen, but we definitely don’t always get what we want.

On this tour, its been hard for any of the 30 or so of us to get what we want. Some people want to feel more safe on the bus, others want to go swimming, others want more sleep, or better sleep, while others want to eat when they’re hungry instead of when there’s time. Even when you get pretty much what you want, its hard to see your friends not getting what they want. Because, isn’t that what we all want more than anything? An easy, perfect world where resources are not finite and where one persons desires don’t mitigate another’s?

What I want, on this tour at least, is to be more of a part of the things that I see that excite me or inspire me instead of being this passing observer. Ryan would tell me that this is stupid and that I am a part of these things but just in a different, less easily identifiable and less easy to pat myself on the back way. Maybe he’s right. What I want is to be able to take some of the inspiration and ideas that I get from seeing so many people and places and having so many conversations, both with people I meet and with my tourmates and do something right away with them instead of being stuck with this bus and this routine. I want to do things while the ideas still seem fresh and possible because I know that the responsibilities that I’ve put off from back home will catch up to me and quell my momentum like an anchor as will the tug of daily life and fun for fun’s sake. Ryan would say that this is stupid and that the festering and the waiting is what makes ideas into things that are better in the end and that having to balance them, or preserve them with other things pulling at your life makes the things that you make better. Again, maybe he’s right.

Still, it feels like that’s the rub of tour. Lots of inspiration, little that can be done with it. I’ve gotten to do some just for fun stuff, though that makes me forget about frustrations, at least for a little. These are things like skate sessions in Binghamton and Philly or hiking and a nighttime trip to the water in Maine. These things seem so necessary as the days leading up to them always seem so stressful. I’ve gotten to see old friends and I think that maybe being around so many people all the time has made me feel a little less awkward and a little better at conversation so I can appreciate these friends a little more than on my other travels.

So, I can’t complain about not getting what I want. Most of the time I don’t really know what I want, necessarily, so I guess I don’t really know whether or not I’m getting what I want. Ultimately, I get to do some things that are pretty fun and hang out with some people who are pretty nice and that’s always a good thing.

Before tour, I was sleeping in the tree house behind my house, my old room now inhabited by a recent Bloomington immigrant while I was across the Atlantic. It was nice to sleep up in the tree, but noisy. I would fall asleep to the sound of crickets and frogs and I would wake up to the sound of birds or people talking on the street. Last night I slept in West Philadelphia and woke up to city sounds – cars, trolleys, and dump trucks. With the sound of the dump truck and all it’s clattering of steel and hissing of hydraulics, I couldn’t help but think of that morning in Binghamton, and I realized that I would now always hear the sound of a dump truck differently, not with a sense of foreboding or sadness, just differently.

We drove through the night from Detroit to Binghamton, NY. Following those great lakes on the US side, we dared not to try to get our sketchy asses through the Canadian border. I must have slept, but it was hard to believe because I could never seem to get comfortable. On this tour, I’ve realized that sleeping in a moving vehicle works okay for passing time, but does little for alleviating fatigue.

Looking around the bus, everyone was twisted and contorted with heads dangling off of seats, feet pressed high against the windows, or heads tucked into little balls resting gently on the back of the seat ahead. For the silence, the scene seemed so unnatural. One could imagine a disconcerting scenario where any one of us could have woken up and, for a second, thought that the bus was lying in a ditch after a horrible accident the way that our bodies were all twisted and strewn across the floor. One could have gasped in horror before realizing that the bus was not, after all, crumpled and twisted, but instead quietly pressing on through the night past the rusty cities and towns that line the great lakes.

A day later, after the show in Binghamton, we had been crammed, the thirty or so of us, in the extra rooms of a house inhabited by some people kind enough to put up with all of us. We nestled in where we could. I found some space in an attic room with Matte, Will, and Benji, amidst the broken window glass and the other relics of the house’s previous inhabitants. They had been frat boys, apparently and they had left such strange relics as some expensive work boots spray-painted gold as part of some strange ritual and the remnants of a porn collection with DVD titles like “interracial love” (or something similar but more crassly worded). Those of us sleeping in the attic were just waking up when we heard a grinding sound and then a crash and then shouts of “call 911!” We rushed downstairs, through our numbers, and out the door to find that a garbage truck had lost control and flipped over in the middle of the street, maybe 10 yards from where the school bus was parked, and exactly where the school bus would have been parked had we not backed it up to avoid blocking a driveway. I sat on the porch and watched as neighbors trickled from their houses to examine the carnage. The driver, who had managed to climb free of the dump truck, was staggering around deliriously. EMTs and cops arrived at the scene, followed shortly thereafter by a TV news crew.

It is strange to be a spectator to tragedy. Mere feet from the accident, and the realization that the multi-ton vehicle that crashed could have easily been the one that I was riding in, I don’t have any new found sense of my own mortality and don’t feel much at all other than a bit of concern for the victims. Fresh air doesn’t make that much of a difference, I guess, in terms of distinguishing real life from Rescue 911 or COPS. But it is minutes, perhaps, or yards, that allow this indifference. I heard that Erin had to run from the path of the careening vehicle. Chris was sleeping on the school bus, saved only by friction. Sherri ran to the side of the dump truck where the sanitation workers who had been hanging on to the back of the truck had been thrown and lay in pools of blood. On the porch, we remarked at how slow-moving and confused the emergency workers and police seemed, but Sherri told of how she, seeing the blood, was paralyzed, not knowing what to do to help the people laying in the street as people on the sidewalk screamed “DON’T TOUCH HIM!” at her.

I think all the time about those who lose their lives because of war or poverty or desperation or sadness, but I guess I hardly ever think of being wiped out by dumb circumstance.

Later in the day of the dump truck crash, we found that the tires on the bus were looking a little worn and some couldn’t help but think that we might end up like the dump truck. The tires ended up being fine, but shit, tons of metal is still tons of metal.

I haven’t had an honest conversation in weeks and irony rolls off my tongue much more easily and I don’t think its mean but it represents a chilling disconnect from reality. And nation building nation states are captured in the acetate or filtered to our heads through the flicker of the windows on our street as we’re walking home. Is there any place that’s sane? Is there any place that makes sense?

And I said things are bad, didn’t I? Didn’t I? And we tripped and stumbled for half the walk home.

What the fuck? Is this what passes for life? I’m pretty sure -that this is the worst that I’ve ever fealt. So fucked up – that even I’m talking crazy sometimes. What’s worse, silence or words without choice? Is this violence in the sound of my voice? What’s worse, silence or words without choice? Is this violence or the sound of my voice?

And I said things are bad, didn’t I? Didn’t I? And we tripped and stumbled for half the walk home.

The Greyhound doesn’t come to Carlisle anymore, and I just read in the Ryder that it will soon no longer come to Bloomington. I always assumed that the fake bus pass scam would get oversaturated and become a bust, but it seems like its demise may actually be with the mode of bus travel as a whole. I don’t know enough to talk about the economic or environmental meaning of changing transportation, but seeing the complex and strange web of connectedness of small towns by trains, busses, and hitchhiking down random country highways being replaced by car ownership, interstates, and airlines, seems a bit boring and sad.

is it the cool stuff your friends are doing? or maybe this summer’s plan-it-x fest tour? no, it’s a coke ad.

Here’s some commentary that might get worked into some kind of performance …

This audio could be talking about the DIY culture that we consider ourselves part of, or even this fest in particular, but its not … Its an advertisement for Coca-Cola.

We bring up the Coca-Cola ad not because we’re angry that a giant corporation can steal ideas like making things independently or being active or use images of tall bikes, DIY screenprinting, or dance parties to sell it’s products. We bring up the ad because it shows that if these ideas or activities can be appropriated by a giant corporation, they don’t have a whole lot of importance or meaning on their own.

That seems strange, because ideas like making media ourselves or activities like riding bikes mean a lot to us. However, its because, perhaps, they were involved in a situation where we learned to treat others better, or were ourselves treated better, where we learned to question our lifestyle or politics as much as we questioned the politics of others. And as much as we can value cheaply produced records or CDs and shows in basements and community centers, or enjoy riding bikes or dancing with our friends, when we value those things before our relationships with others or the questions we pose about the ethics of our lives, they mean very little.

We live in a world where it is difficult to consider our relationship with others and the choices we make. There are many institutions and forces that shape the world in cruel, senseless ways, and it often seems like our best efforts to change them directly are never enough. That doesn’t mean we should stop trying, but its also important to remember that one thing we can all definitely change is the way that we treat our friends, our collaborators, our families, our lovers, and our neighbors and we can change the way that we do things and the choices that we make in our own lives, and always question whether we’re making the right choices. This is no easy task and its very possible that those involved in Defiance, Ohio or Plan-It-X or all of us at this fest today are treating each other very poorly or making very poor choices or ignoring really important questions. That’s why we’ve made a suggestion box so those who choose to can offer a reminder to Defiance, Ohio or Plan-It-X or their friends or even themselves that there are better ways of doing treating people, better ways of doing things, and better questions to ask, than what our lives now represent.