I’m sure I don’t have to lay it out, but on the off chance that my great-grandchild someday reads this you should know about 2020.
People thought, in the not-actually-thinking-and-not-reality thinking of Twitter hashtags, that the next world war would begin in January because of a major strike on the Iranian establishment from the US. That seems like a joke now. Hah! Teetering on the edge of something even worse than the current reality is the name of the game this year!
All the things that are coming out are destined to come out. The issues that we’ve had in terms of the pandemic on a local, personal, global level are all the things that we’ve been hiding for years, keeping them out of sight and away from the eyes of even those closest to us. Even from our own eyes. Hands behind our backs, working silently on a complex or an ideology that even we didn’t want to know was there.
Borders are closed. Random spikes of the virus haunt us all, shutting things down at random in New Zealand, Vietnam, and Korea. The biggest protest movement since the 1960s is just starting to really roll in the cities of the US, but the president is pushing LAW AND ORDER on Twitter and violating ethics codes that he knows will never come back from the comfort of his fully-politicized White House. The legitimate rage of people too long kept down is bursting forth, but I know from experience that the loudest voices become the most exclusive and undermine the original aims of a mass protest movement more often than not.
A radicalized baby with an assault rifle shot three people in Kenosha, WI last night and his fat little face is plastered all over the internet. A child who was born after the 2003 Iraqi invasion. A child. A murderous, hate-filled, held-up as-a-sign-of-the-times, praised-by-Tucker Carlson fucking child.
But then, it’s not even shocking to see a child with an assault rifle in the US anymore, is it? I said to my husband this morning, without much irony, “At least it wasn’t at his school?”
Of course, that means nothing. We’ve decided as Americans that 700 violent gun deaths per week is perfectly acceptable for years. That’s the secret sauce of American culture at this juncture in the 21st century; even violent death has ceased to shock us. Hands behind our backs, silently working on things we didn’t want to look at. If we don’t look, we won’t have to acknowledge our own complicity in the systems that bring us radicalized children and puts deadly force into their hands.
But yeah, this is supposed to be a post about music.
Lately, I’ve been relistening to music from my own youth. The lyrics that I still know by heart. The visualizations that I came up with in the hallways of my freshman year of college, or lying on the floor of my parents’ house in the long, sunny afternoons of the second semester of my senior year of high school, an empty house my purview for a few spare moments.
When Facebook first started, it was really popular to post lyrics out of context to random songs. It looks super cringe now, but it was a late-teens’ best bet on seeming deep and yet in touch with things beyond ourselves. It’s both a shame and an exhilaration that the lyrics still fit the world so well.
You can tell that these music videos are old because they were made before HDTV was even a thing in most cases. Look at those square crops.
I’ve become so numb, I can’t feel you there
Become so tired, so much more aware
By becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like youAnd I know I may end up failing too
2003
But I know you were just like me with someone disappointed in you
Father, father, father, father
Father into your hands, I commend my spirit
Father into your hands
why have you forsaken me
In your eyes forsaken me
In your thoughts forsaken me
In your heart forsaken, me oh
2001
Why do they always send the poor?Barbarisms by barbaras
With pointed heels
Victorious victorious kneel
For brand new spankin’ dealsMarching forward hypocritic and
2005
Hypnotic computers
You depend on our protection
Yet you feed us lies from the tablecloth
Yeah it’s holding me
Morphing me
And forcing me to striveTo be endlessly
2003
Caving in
And dreaming I’m alive
Of course, some of these predate even my time, but I listened to them as a teen anyway. This one is from 1993 and about the 1970s.
Last day of the rest of my life
I wish I would’ve known
‘Cause I would’ve kissed my mama goodbyeI didn’t tell her that I loved her and how much I care
Or thank my pops for all the talks
And all the wisdom he sharedUnaware, I just did what I always do
Everyday, the same routine
Before I skate off to schoolBut who knew that this day wasn’t like the rest
Instead of taking a test
I took two to the chestCall me blind, but I didn’t see it coming
Everybody was running
But I couldn’t hear nothingExcept gun blasts, it happened so fast
I didn’t really know this kid
He wasn’t part of the classMaybe this kid was reaching out for love
Or maybe for a moment
He forgot who he was
Or maybe this kid just wanted to be hugged
Whatever it was
I know it’s becauseWe are, We are, the youth of the nation
2001
That last one is hard for me to listen to these days. Written in the aftermath of just the beginning of the wave of school shootings, Youth of the Nation came out two months after 9/11. I remember practically wearing that CD out in my Diskman until it couldn’t be played anymore, a talisman against what I was sure would be the most uncertain times in my life. I remember walking around outside my middle school with my headphones blaring, watching storm clouds gathering over the Louisville plains. I remember singing along with the choir, taking my own place among the youth of the nation.
Who’s to blame for the lives that tragedies claim
No matter what you say
It don’t take away the painThat I feel inside, I’m tired of all the lies
Don’t nobody know why
It’s the blind leading the blindI guess that’s the way the story goes
Will it ever make sense
Somebody’s got to knowThere’s got to be more to life than this
There’s got to be more to everything
I thought existsWe are, We are, the youth of the nation
The radicalized baby in Kenosha wasn’t even born when that song came out.
There’s this bizarre desire within me to return to the simpler, calmer uncertainties of the age of the War on Terror. Listening to these and other songs from that time make me feel a little bit like I did then, that the problems are temporary and that if we work hard enough we’ll be able to overcome them. That there is time enough to make the changes that we want to see. That we can stop school shootings, violence in the streets, political disenfranchisement, and the alienation of modern life and build a better system. I don’t think I ever thought about what the world would be like when I was 32 at that time.
But again, it’s such a shame that things have changed so much and so little that the words fit everything even better when I’m no longer the youth of the nation. Same. Same. Same. Same. Same.
I’m sure I don’t have to lay it out, but on the off chance that my great-grandchild someday reads this you should know about 2020.
People thought, in the not-actually-thinking-and-not-reality thinking of Twitter hashtags, that the next world war would begin in January because of a major strike on the Iranian establishment from the US. That seems like a joke now. Hah! Teetering on the edge of something even worse than the current reality is the name of the game this year!
All the things that are coming out are destined to come out. The issues that we’ve had in terms of the pandemic on a local, personal, global level are all the things that we’ve been hiding for years, keeping them out of sight and away from the eyes of even those closest to us. Even from our own eyes. Hands behind our backs, working silently on a complex or an ideology that even we didn’t want to know was there.
Borders are closed. Random spikes of the virus haunt us all, shutting things down at random in New Zealand, Vietnam, and Korea. The biggest protest movement since the 1960s is just starting to really roll in the cities of the US, but the president is pushing LAW AND ORDER on Twitter and violating ethics codes that he knows will never come back from the comfort of his fully-politicized White House. The legitimate rage of people too long kept down is bursting forth, but I know from experience that sometimes the loudest voices become the most exclusive and undermine the original aims of a mass protest movement more often than not.
A radicalized baby with an assault rifle shot three people in Kenosha, WI last night and his fat little face is plastered all over the internet. A child who was born after the 2003 Iraqi invasion. A child. A murderous, hate-filled, held-up as-a-sign-of-the-times, praised-by-Tucker Carlson fucking child.
But then, it’s not even shocking to see a child with an assault rifle in the US anymore, is it? I said to my husband this morning, without much irony, “At least it wasn’t at his school?”
Of course, that means nothing. We’ve decided as Americans that 700 violent gun deaths per week is perfectly acceptable for years. That’s the secret sauce of American culture at this juncture in the 21st century; even violent death has ceased to shock us. Hands behind our backs, silently working on things we didn’t want to look at. If we don’t look, we won’t have to acknowledge our own complicity in the systems that bring us radicalized children and puts deadly force into their hands.
But yeah, this is supposed to be a post about music.
Lately, I’ve been relistening to music from my own youth. The lyrics that I still know by heart. The visualizations that I came up with in the hallways of my freshman year of college, or lying on the floor of my parents’ house in the long, sunny afternoons of the second semester of my senior year of high school, an empty house my purview for a few spare moments.
When Facebook first started, it was really popular to post lyrics out of context to random songs. It looks super cringe now, but it was a late-teens’ best bet on seeming deep and yet in touch with things beyond ourselves. It’s both a shame and an exhilaration that the lyrics still fit the word so well.
You can tell that these music videos are old because they were made before HDTV was even a thing in most cases. Look at those square crops.
I’ve become so numb, I can’t feel you there
Become so tired, so much more aware
By becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like youAnd I know I may end up failing too
2003
But I know you were just like me with someone disappointed in you
Father, father, father, father
Father into your hands, I commend my spirit
Father into your hands
why have you forsaken me
In your eyes forsaken me
In your thoughts forsaken me
In your heart forsaken, me oh
2001
Why do they always send the poor?Barbarisms by barbaras
With pointed heels
Victorious victorious kneel
For brand new spankin’ dealsMarching forward hypocritic and
2005
Hypnotic computers
You depend on our protection
Yet you feed us lies from the tablecloth
Yeah it’s holding me
Morphing me
And forcing me to striveTo be endlessly
2003
Caving in
And dreaming I’m alive
Of course, some of these predate even my time, but I listened to them as a teen anyway. This one is from 1993 and about the 1970s.
Last day of the rest of my life
I wish I would’ve known
‘Cause I would’ve kissed my mama goodbyeI didn’t tell her that I loved her and how much I care
Or thank my pops for all the talks
And all the wisdom he sharedUnaware, I just did what I always do
Everyday, the same routine
Before I skate off to schoolBut who knew that this day wasn’t like the rest
Instead of taking a test
I took two to the chestCall me blind, but I didn’t see it coming
Everybody was running
But I couldn’t hear nothingExcept gun blasts, it happened so fast
I didn’t really know this kid
He wasn’t part of the classMaybe this kid was reaching out for love
Or maybe for a moment
He forgot who he was
Or maybe this kid just wanted to be hugged
Whatever it was
I know it’s becauseWe are, We are, the youth of the nation
2001
That last one is hard for me to listen to these days. Written in the aftermath of just the beginning of the wave of school shootings, Youth of the Nation came out two months after 9/11. I remember practically wearing that CD out in my Diskman until it couldn’t be played anymore, a talisman against what I was sure would be the most uncertain times in my life. I remember walking around outside my middle school with my headphones blaring, watching storm clouds gathering over the Louisville plains. I remember singing along with the choir, taking my own place among the youth of the nation.
Who’s to blame for the lives that tragedies claim
No matter what you say
It don’t take away the painThat I feel inside, I’m tired of all the lies
Don’t nobody know why
It’s the blind leading the blindI guess that’s the way the story goes
Will it ever make sense
Somebody’s got to knowThere’s got to be more to life than this
There’s got to be more to everything
I thought existsWe are, We are, the youth of the nation
The radicalized baby in Kenosha wasn’t even born when that song came out.
There’s this bizarre desire within me to return to the simpler, calmer uncertainties of the age of the War on Terror. Listening to these and other songs from that time make me feel a little bit like I did then, that the problems are temporary and that if we work hard enough we’ll be able to overcome them. That there is time enough to make the changes that we want to see. That we can stop school shootings, violence in the streets, political disenfranchisement, and the alienation of modern life and build a better system. I don’t think I ever thought about what the world would be like when I was 32 at that time.
But again, it’s such a shame that things have changed so much and so little that the words fit everything even better when I’m no longer the youth of the nation. Same. Same. Same. Same. Same.
I’m sure I don’t have to lay it out, but on the off chance that my great-grandchild someday reads this you should know about 2020.
People thought, in the not-actually-thinking-and-not-reality thinking of Twitter hashtags, that the next world war would begin in January because of a major strike on the Iranian establishment from the US. That seems like a joke now. Hah! Teetering on the edge of something even worse than the current reality is the name of the game this year!
All the things that are coming out are destined to come out. The issues that we’ve had in terms of the pandemic on a local, personal, global level are all the things that we’ve been hiding for years, keeping them out of sight and away from the eyes of even those closest to us. Even from our own eyes. Hands behind our backs, working silently on a complex or an ideology that even we didn’t want to know was there.
Borders are closed. Random spikes of the virus haunt us all, shutting things down at random in New Zealand, Vietnam, and Korea. The biggest protest movement since the 1960s is just starting to really roll in the cities of the US, but the president is pushing LAW AND ORDER on Twitter and violating ethics codes that he knows will never come back from the comfort of his fully-politicized White House. The legitimate rage of people too long kept down is bursting forth, but I know from experience that the loudest voices become the most exclusive and undermine the original aims of a mass protest movement more often than not.
A radicalized baby with an assault rifle shot three people in Kenosha, WI last night and his fat little face is plastered all over the internet. A child who was born after the 2003 Iraqi invasion. A child. A murderous, hate-filled, held-up as-a-sign-of-the-times, praised-by-Tucker Carlson fucking child.
But then, it’s not even shocking to see a child with an assault rifle in the US anymore, is it? I said to my husband this morning, without much irony, “At least it wasn’t at his school?”
Of course, that means nothing. We’ve decided as Americans that 700 violent gun deaths per week is perfectly acceptable for years. That’s the secret sauce of American culture at this juncture in the 21st century; even violent death has ceased to shock us. Hands behind our backs, silently working on things we didn’t want to look at. If we don’t look, we won’t have to acknowledge our own complicity in the systems that bring us radicalized children and puts deadly force into their hands.
But yeah, this is supposed to be a post about music.
Lately, I’ve been relistening to music from my own youth. The lyrics that I still know by heart. The visualizations that I came up with in the hallways of my freshman year of college, or lying on the floor of my parents’ house in the long, sunny afternoons of the second semester of my senior year of high school, an empty house my purview for a few spare moments.
When Facebook first started, it was really popular to post lyrics out of context to random songs. It looks super cringe now, but it was a late-teens’ best bet on seeming deep and yet in touch with things beyond ourselves. It’s both a shame and an exhilaration that the lyrics still fit the world so well.
You can tell that these music videos are old because they were made before HDTV was even a thing in most cases. Look at those square crops.
I’ve become so numb, I can’t feel you there
Become so tired, so much more aware
By becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like youAnd I know I may end up failing too
2003
But I know you were just like me with someone disappointed in you
Father, father, father, father
Father into your hands, I commend my spirit
Father into your hands
why have you forsaken me
In your eyes forsaken me
In your thoughts forsaken me
In your heart forsaken, me oh
2001
Why do they always send the poor?Barbarisms by barbaras
With pointed heels
Victorious victorious kneel
For brand new spankin’ dealsMarching forward hypocritic and
2005
Hypnotic computers
You depend on our protection
Yet you feed us lies from the tablecloth
Yeah it’s holding me
Morphing me
And forcing me to striveTo be endlessly
2003
Caving in
And dreaming I’m alive
Of course, some of these predate even my time, but I listened to them as a teen anyway. This one is from 1993 and about the 1970s.
Last day of the rest of my life
I wish I would’ve known
‘Cause I would’ve kissed my mama goodbyeI didn’t tell her that I loved her and how much I care
Or thank my pops for all the talks
And all the wisdom he sharedUnaware, I just did what I always do
Everyday, the same routine
Before I skate off to schoolBut who knew that this day wasn’t like the rest
Instead of taking a test
I took two to the chestCall me blind, but I didn’t see it coming
Everybody was running
But I couldn’t hear nothingExcept gun blasts, it happened so fast
I didn’t really know this kid
He wasn’t part of the classMaybe this kid was reaching out for love
Or maybe for a moment
He forgot who he was
Or maybe this kid just wanted to be hugged
Whatever it was
I know it’s becauseWe are, We are, the youth of the nation
2001
That last one is hard for me to listen to these days. Written in the aftermath of just the beginning of the wave of school shootings, Youth of the Nation came out two months after 9/11. I remember practically wearing that CD out in my Diskman until it couldn’t be played anymore, a talisman against what I was sure would be the most uncertain times in my life. I remember walking around outside my middle school with my headphones blaring, watching storm clouds gathering over the Louisville plains. I remember singing along with the choir, taking my own place among the youth of the nation.
Who’s to blame for the lives that tragedies claim
No matter what you say
It don’t take away the painThat I feel inside, I’m tired of all the lies
Don’t nobody know why
It’s the blind leading the blindI guess that’s the way the story goes
Will it ever make sense
Somebody’s got to knowThere’s got to be more to life than this
There’s got to be more to everything
I thought existsWe are, We are, the youth of the nation
The radicalized baby in Kenosha wasn’t even born when that song came out.
There’s this bizarre desire within me to return to the simpler, calmer uncertainties of the age of the War on Terror. Listening to these and other songs from that time make me feel a little bit like I did then, that the problems are temporary and that if we work hard enough we’ll be able to overcome them. That there is time enough to make the changes that we want to see. That we can stop school shootings, violence in the streets, political disenfranchisement, and the alienation of modern life and build a better system. I don’t think I ever thought about what the world would be like when I was 32 at that time.
But again, it’s such a shame that things have changed so much and so little that the words fit everything even better when I’m no longer the youth of the nation. Same. Same. Same. Same. Same.
I’m sure I don’t have to lay it out, but on the off chance that my great-grandchild someday reads this you should know about 2020.
People thought, in the not-actually-thinking-and-not-reality thinking of Twitter hashtags, that the next world war would begin in January because of a major strike on the Iranian establishment from the US. That seems like a joke now. Hah! Teetering on the edge of something even worse than the current reality is the name of the game this year!
All the things that are coming out are destined to come out. The issues that we’ve had in terms of the pandemic on a local, personal, global level are all the things that we’ve been hiding for years, keeping them out of sight and away from the eyes of even those closest to us. Even from our own eyes. Hands behind our backs, working silently on a complex or an ideology that even we didn’t want to know was there.
Borders are closed. Random spikes of the virus haunt us all, shutting things down at random in New Zealand, Vietnam, and Korea. The biggest protest movement since the 1960s is just starting to really roll in the cities of the US, but the president is pushing LAW AND ORDER on Twitter and violating ethics codes that he knows will never come back from the comfort of his fully-politicized White House. The legitimate rage of people too long kept down is bursting forth, but I know from experience that sometimes the loudest voices become the most exclusive and undermine the original aims of a mass protest movement more often than not.
A radicalized baby with an assault rifle shot three people in Kenosha, WI last night and his fat little face is plastered all over the internet. A child who was born after the 2003 Iraqi invasion. A child. A murderous, hate-filled, held-up as-a-sign-of-the-times, praised-by-Tucker Carlson fucking child.
But then, it’s not even shocking to see a child with an assault rifle in the US anymore, is it? I said to my husband this morning, without much irony, “At least it wasn’t at his school?”
Of course, that means nothing. We’ve decided as Americans that 700 violent gun deaths per week is perfectly acceptable for years. That’s the secret sauce of American culture at this juncture in the 21st century; even violent death has ceased to shock us. Hands behind our backs, silently working on things we didn’t want to look at. If we don’t look, we won’t have to acknowledge our own complicity in the systems that bring us radicalized children and puts deadly force into their hands.
But yeah, this is supposed to be a post about music.
Lately, I’ve been relistening to music from my own youth. The lyrics that I still know by heart. The visualizations that I came up with in the hallways of my freshman year of college, or lying on the floor of my parents’ house in the long, sunny afternoons of the second semester of my senior year of high school, an empty house my purview for a few spare moments.
When Facebook first started, it was really popular to post lyrics out of context to random songs. It looks super cringe now, but it was a late-teens’ best bet on seeming deep and yet in touch with things beyond ourselves. It’s both a shame and an exhilaration that the lyrics still fit the word so well.
You can tell that these music videos are old because they were made before HDTV was even a thing in most cases. Look at those square crops.
I’ve become so numb, I can’t feel you there
Become so tired, so much more aware
By becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like youAnd I know I may end up failing too
2003
But I know you were just like me with someone disappointed in you
Father, father, father, father
Father into your hands, I commend my spirit
Father into your hands
why have you forsaken me
In your eyes forsaken me
In your thoughts forsaken me
In your heart forsaken, me oh
2001
Why do they always send the poor?Barbarisms by barbaras
With pointed heels
Victorious victorious kneel
For brand new spankin’ dealsMarching forward hypocritic and
2005
Hypnotic computers
You depend on our protection
Yet you feed us lies from the tablecloth
Yeah it’s holding me
Morphing me
And forcing me to striveTo be endlessly
2003
Caving in
And dreaming I’m alive
Of course, some of these predate even my time, but I listened to them as a teen anyway. This one is from 1993 and about the 1970s.
Last day of the rest of my life
I wish I would’ve known
‘Cause I would’ve kissed my mama goodbyeI didn’t tell her that I loved her and how much I care
Or thank my pops for all the talks
And all the wisdom he sharedUnaware, I just did what I always do
Everyday, the same routine
Before I skate off to schoolBut who knew that this day wasn’t like the rest
Instead of taking a test
I took two to the chestCall me blind, but I didn’t see it coming
Everybody was running
But I couldn’t hear nothingExcept gun blasts, it happened so fast
I didn’t really know this kid
He wasn’t part of the classMaybe this kid was reaching out for love
Or maybe for a moment
He forgot who he was
Or maybe this kid just wanted to be hugged
Whatever it was
I know it’s becauseWe are, We are, the youth of the nation
2001
That last one is hard for me to listen to these days. Written in the aftermath of just the beginning of the wave of school shootings, Youth of the Nation came out two months after 9/11. I remember practically wearing that CD out in my Diskman until it couldn’t be played anymore, a talisman against what I was sure would be the most uncertain times in my life. I remember walking around outside my middle school with my headphones blaring, watching storm clouds gathering over the Louisville plains. I remember singing along with the choir, taking my own place among the youth of the nation.
Who’s to blame for the lives that tragedies claim
No matter what you say
It don’t take away the painThat I feel inside, I’m tired of all the lies
Don’t nobody know why
It’s the blind leading the blindI guess that’s the way the story goes
Will it ever make sense
Somebody’s got to knowThere’s got to be more to life than this
There’s got to be more to everything
I thought existsWe are, We are, the youth of the nation
The radicalized baby in Kenosha wasn’t even born when that song came out.
There’s this bizarre desire within me to return to the simpler, calmer uncertainties of the age of the War on Terror. Listening to these and other songs from that time make me feel a little bit like I did then, that the problems are temporary and that if we work hard enough we’ll be able to overcome them. That there is time enough to make the changes that we want to see. That we can stop school shootings, violence in the streets, political disenfranchisement, and the alienation of modern life and build a better system. I don’t think I ever thought about what the world would be like when I was 32 at that time.
But again, it’s such a shame that things have changed so much and so little that the words fit everything even better when I’m no longer the youth of the nation. Same. Same. Same. Same. Same.
Reverse Retrograde 