I think this is going to be the intro to the thesis, the wonderous Genealogy of Taste. I'm trying to write poems for inbetween the chapters but I actually have to write them. more posts later i guess.


Chapter 1 – Introducing the Band

The Rule:
1) I will lie to entertain. I’ll try not to lie to make myself look better.


What is the proper guitar playing position? Could it be feet spread and parallel like railroad tracks on a one way ticket to Rocknrollville? Is it sitting, guitar nestled on the lap, mesmerizing the audience not through ridiculous chops, but instead through snaking lyrics and meticulous attention to injustice? Maybe it’s standing, hunched over while slinging the guitar back and forth while staring at the floor. Well if you witnessed a ten year old me and my exhibition of killer air guitar skills you might have been convinced that the correct position was on your back, rolling around like a beetle doing its best to dodge lumbering steps, legs squiggling in the air. Keep in mind I had no artists to imitate for this move, no Kurt Cobain or Stevie Ray Vaughn (we didn’t have cable TV so no music videos) to show me how to squirm on the carpet; it was like I instinctively understood that guitar was best played on the back (I was most likely kicking and airguitaring to the solo in “Hotel California” basically the only half way rock song I can remember liking and listening to alone in my room. I would never EVER do this beetle act in front of another person). I was not a musical savant; I couldn’t play guitar any better than I could swim (if you ever needed to kill me, throw me in the middle of a lake; I swim like a burlap sack full of rocks). Yet I understood, on a very basic level, that the base of rock was rolling around playing a loud guitar. Guitar players didn’t need school to validate their existence; they just needed some floor.
But now, alas, I’ve grown up. Sorta. It is the start of the summer of my 22nd year and I’ve freshly gone and done graduated with the classic ambling English degree and I did the only reasonable thing I could think of when I graduated: I came back home to live with my parents, in the sunny and wonderfully tedious Lavington B.C. and reclaimed my old job at the grocery store, stocking shelves and running the cash register. I sit I nhte sunroom my parent’s added to the house two years ago, big windows facing the tiny quiet road on a computer pecking at the keys without any real focus. There’s really only one thing in my head, that large million dollar question: what exactly am I supposed to do with my life now?
(a small side question: what exactly is a English degree good for anyways? I mean, I can introduce myself at parties and say “Well I have a BA in English” and correct people’s grammar as they speak; I can go home and intimidate my family by using polysyllabic diction and referencing Milton in relation to every night’s dinner (“Better to eat on the porch than serve in the kitchen”). An English degree sounds like it might be something spectacular but really it’s only slightly above basket weaving. Not to criticize basket weavers).
So what do I do now?
To my credit I’m only working part time; I’ve decided to try and play the role of starving artist, more specifically the writer. In the fine tradition of the wandering, graduated soul I’m trying to find direction and weasel my way into some sort of answer to the large “what now?” hanging over my head. I guess it is only natural that I’ve run to the consistent immediate comfort I have: music.
Ever since I got home (exactly 2 days 5 hours and 14 minutes ago) I’ve been insanely depressed. I thought I had made a clean break from this place. No more bedroom packed with early 90’s basketball posters and left over pictures from my 15 year old obsession with Sarah Michelle Gellar. No more borrowing my parent’s car when I want to go into town (I sold my 90 Honda Civic to pay for my third year of schooling). No more living with my parents. I’m like a very poor man’s Odysseus, only I don’t like Ithaca, there’s no Penelope and the Circes and Cyclopes were relatively few and far between (almost to the point of non existence. There was however a few Calypsos but I won’t tip my hand too early). In order to escape, or at least block out, my return and the consequences (i.e. back where I started) I delved into my music collection and have remained there, headphones fastened to my head, with breaks only to pee and eat.