When Doves Cry

Rick Springfield is such a sex god. He successfully rhymed "cute" with "moot." He could wine and dine me anytime.

Ok, so I started this blog to rant about music, but then I ran out of steam about three sentences in.

Suffice it to say, I believe that people who think that my love and appreciation for artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Nirvana is a demonstration of my degenerate nature and hints at hidden desires to die of an overdose or drown in my own vomit are horrendously off base.

I believe in knowing the history of the music I claim to be a fan of, I think it’s important to know what statements artists were making in the cultural context of their times, and I’m not naïve enough to think that their lifestyle had no effect on their creations. However, just because I know all these details of their personal life, I don’t consider that a reason to either a) stop listening to their music or b) follow their example and shoot up. I would think that all of these tragic early deaths in the music industry would serve as deterrent enough.

What it comes down to is that I don’t consider rock artists to be different from masters of any other art form—they are people, messed up more often than not, who have an ability to create something that transcends their own small context as an individual: what they create speaks to people that the artist has never met, have little in common with, and who in the end will be alive much longer than they will.

Despite my scholarly desire to meet any of the great artists of the past, when you get right down to how I spend my life and my priorities other than art, I doubt I would have much to do with Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, Mozart, Poe, Dali, Beethoven, David, Dickinson, or Rossetti.

Except Edna St. Vincent Millay. I bet we’d be buddies until she started hitting on me.

But that’s besides the point.

All of these past masters have histories of mental instability, difficulty in and with society, immoral behavior, and other eccentricities—if eccentricities isn’t too mild a word. And they certainly aren’t the only people in the world to have such messed up lives. But, each one of them possessed a gift of creation. Instead of condemning those creations to obscurity as a statement that I disapproved of their personal choices, why wouldn’t I treasure them as a sign that even in a dark and troubled mind there is still a spark, a glimmer of genius, a way for someone to rise above what would be a life of insignificance and despair and still say something. This presence of creation in such a hostile environment should be celebrated, not looked upon disapprovingly.

So when I’m wearing my tattered Jimi Hendrix Purple Haze t-shirt, I don’t think it is beyond the potential of my peers (and more significantly my parents) to believe that I am not peddling a lifestyle of crack and promiscuity. I’m honoring the fact that Jimi combined rock n roll guitar with blues to create a sound that is both stirring and profound, soulful and adrenaline-pumping. I’m wearing it to say I'm glad that he lived until 27 so that his works could influence the works of other serious musicians for generations. Also, it’s a colorful and aesthetically pleasing graphic, why wouldn’t I wear it?

Hey, look, I didn’t run out of steam after all! How fortuitous for all of you, you didn’t miss out on being lectured and sneered at. By the way, Poison is just one of the best things that ever happened to the 80’s. Anyone who can sing the lyric “look what the cat dragged in” and follow it with a feline yowl is just golden in my book.

Also, my first real exposure to the season this year was from the proprietor of Osakas who last week handed me my take-out order and in her warbly old voice and broken English startled me right out of my bad mood with a sincere, simple, and painfully enunciated "Merry Christmas." It was beautiful.