Scattered Shots and Smoke from Distant Fires

Grow up with dirt under your nails and the smell of pigshit on your Keds, mail your hope to nobody from your lonely outpost in the middle of Texas nowhere, tell your mom to put down the knife, put it down, and then crawl under your bed with an AM radio. The storms come fast on the flatlands, clouds gather like cocked fists and you only get scared when it gets still. Soon enough it's the sound of a freight train rumbling through your living room -- F5 like a motherfucker -- and when the day breaks, your house is gone. After, your family stands among the rubble, trying to look stoic instead of like newly-homeless white trash and your baby brother holds his favorite toy truck and cries and somebody says something about Jesus's love and God's will and it's then, right then, you know if there is a hell, you are going straight to it. Because you hate Jesus and God and the stupid fucking Holy Ghost and God can take his will and shove it straight up his ass. You just want your baby brother to stop crying and his favorite toy truck back on its shelf and the shelf back on the wall and the wall back on the house and the house back on the lot and it's not much to ask for but God doesn't give a rat's ass about you, your house, or your crying baby brother. You feel God's malevolence like fire on your face and if you could, you'd kill that mean sonofabitch because he is clearly out to get you.

It's not long after God destroys your house, you hear your first punk rock song. You're 11 years old and living in a church basement while your family builds a new house and it's all you can do not to burn that fucking church down. You spend a lot of time outside and it's one of those bad, bad days when you see it -- a copy of the Repo Man soundtrack lying there on the sidewalk outside the church and it's just a cassette, no case, baking on the sidewalk on a late August afternoon. You study the faded lettering and the words on it seem to be written by the Devil himself -- Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Coup d' Etat, When the Shit Hits the Fan, Juicy Bananas, Iggy Pop. It's hot to the touch when you pick it up and it's still hot two minutes later when you sneak it into your walkman and turn the volume way up. From the first chord of the first song, you feel your whole life change like someone turned you inside out and scraped you clean and the blackness inside you suddenly has a voice and that voice is angry, raw, dangerous. You realize instantly everything you have been taught is total bullshit, that life is utterly meaningless, there is no Heaven but only Hell on Earth and as you sit there in the dark of a closet in the basement of a Southern Baptist Church, you know you will never, ever be this happy again.

You get into your first fist fight not long after and the taste of blood in your mouth makes you crazy and you try to beat that kid stupid but he's bigger, older, faster, stronger and he leaves you in a crumpled heap beside the swingset in the city park. The pain and humiliation give you the strength to get up and later, when that kid's at home, they give you the strength to throw a shit-smeared brick through his bedroom window while he sleeps. He'll beat you again for it but you won't care and you'll swear to do worse to him every time he puts his hands on you. Soon enough, that kid and all the other kids will give you a wide berth because you are a way they will never be and your very presence will frighten and intimidate them and you will take solace in their fear and the solitude it provides you. Your only friend will be the music you wrap yourself in like armor and as time goes by, the music will define you. Your parents will not understand you, your teachers will punish you, the institutions you are sent to will try to break you, but the music will always be there for you and the years will pass and, someday, you'll find yourself sitting at a downtown bar, remembering all you've left behind and you will take pride in the fact that you are still here. You will tally the days as you count the scars and the shots will chase beers while outside the winds will gather speed as three-chord guitar tattoos a rhythm on your soul and, furious, you will again curse God and beg him to teach you a lesson.

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There has to be some better way to get through this. The drinking and hiding, bobbing and weaving, trying to stay dry while it rains shit -- this is no way to live. I remember a time not so long ago when the worst thing I had to worry my pretty little head about was whether I'd be able to get into both the Sonic Youth and the Modest Mouse shows for free, and whether I'd have enough money for booze. I didn't think about war, famine, the prison-industrial complex, the Christian Right, abortion rights, starving Africans, the global AIDS epidemic, rogue nations, pre-emptive strikes, cluster bombs, body bags, or any of the other things that now clog my brain on a minute-by-minute basis. Ah, the Age of Ignorance. I was devout. I cooked BBQ, ate drugs, drank Miller High Life, listened to rock and roll all day every day, and at night, with the smell of smoke still thick in my hair, plunged headlong into the fray of wasted youth. I cared only about myself and I'd get fucked up and cry to my friends about how tortured I was, how nothing made sense, how crazy I felt, how the Pain of Life was really fucking getting me down, man. Those were the best days of my life and I proudly threw them away.

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