don't go hiding, hiding in the shade...
I remember listening to this song for the first time, five or six years ago, as part of a mixtape Jim Webb made for me. We met in Drama class; I was a ragtag girl in thriftstore and army-surplus, alternately loud and fast on speed and quietly comatose on other things. He hid behind long matted hair, mumbling, sketching dark cartoons on my notebooks... we talked about music a lot. Nirvana. Geeky alt-rock. White Zombie. He lived near me, and we rode the same bus when he rode, and when he didn't ride we'd walk the long hot pavement to my house and sit picking at weeds in the cracks, sometimes talking a little. When he decided to really talk or perfom in class - which was rare - it would be brilliant, disturbing but fascinating and with a real and tangible talent. I started to drift away. He started to stalk me. Pages full of Oscar Wilde quotations appeared in my mailbox, death-threat-loveletters made of magazine cut-out-letters, and this mixtape. Nirvana's Love Buzz, Hairspray Queen, Rob Zombie, Tool, Self's Cannon, Spot, Radiohead, Pantera, lots of speed metal, Detroit punk. Fucked-up. Weirdo. I lost the tape, then found it again four years later in a move from one college apartment to another. Considered taping over it, relented, boxed it up to be lost for another year... I just found it again. I've been playing it all day. Jim is married now, with a baby girl and I think another on the way. Working as a car mechanic, maybe, or an assembly-line bluecollar, something mindless; coming home to a beer and the TV. Even I failed him in that. I never expected anything of him, either. I wish I had some reason to look him up, now that we're 30 minutes across the bay and a universe apart. What could I possibly say? What would he have to say to me? Would we even be listening? Maybe we'd talk about music some, about cats and kids, about high school. Maybe we'd just sit and pick at the weeds in the pavement cracks and remember the smells of asphalt and cigarettes and markers on boots, the smell of being 15.
I remember listening to this song for the first time, five or six years ago, as part of a mixtape Jim Webb made for me. We met in Drama class; I was a ragtag girl in thriftstore and army-surplus, alternately loud and fast on speed and quietly comatose on other things. He hid behind long matted hair, mumbling, sketching dark cartoons on my notebooks... we talked about music a lot. Nirvana. Geeky alt-rock. White Zombie. He lived near me, and we rode the same bus when he rode, and when he didn't ride we'd walk the long hot pavement to my house and sit picking at weeds in the cracks, sometimes talking a little. When he decided to really talk or perfom in class - which was rare - it would be brilliant, disturbing but fascinating and with a real and tangible talent. I started to drift away. He started to stalk me. Pages full of Oscar Wilde quotations appeared in my mailbox, death-threat-loveletters made of magazine cut-out-letters, and this mixtape. Nirvana's Love Buzz, Hairspray Queen, Rob Zombie, Tool, Self's Cannon, Spot, Radiohead, Pantera, lots of speed metal, Detroit punk. Fucked-up. Weirdo. I lost the tape, then found it again four years later in a move from one college apartment to another. Considered taping over it, relented, boxed it up to be lost for another year... I just found it again. I've been playing it all day. Jim is married now, with a baby girl and I think another on the way. Working as a car mechanic, maybe, or an assembly-line bluecollar, something mindless; coming home to a beer and the TV. Even I failed him in that. I never expected anything of him, either. I wish I had some reason to look him up, now that we're 30 minutes across the bay and a universe apart. What could I possibly say? What would he have to say to me? Would we even be listening? Maybe we'd talk about music some, about cats and kids, about high school. Maybe we'd just sit and pick at the weeds in the pavement cracks and remember the smells of asphalt and cigarettes and markers on boots, the smell of being 15.
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