Get in my head!

2002-05-08T17:26:00.000-07:00

Once a week...hah.

Anyway. Strange things have been happening, here in The Bastard City, Detroit. I work for a pretty decent Italian restaurant chain. I enjoy it. Which is weird, because I am a lazy bastard who has never, not ever, enjoyed a job. Every job I've ever had made me want to kill myself when I woke up and realized I had to go to work that day. At the Italian place, I actually pick up other people's shifts. Bizzare. Strange things everywhere; to many to name. So I won't. Ha.

Well, maybe one or two. Detroit is a strange place, after all, so it makes sense that strange things go on in it and strange people inhabit it. I was driving with my a friend from work downtown to pick up some narcotics extralegal in nature. I haven't done much driving in Detroit; in fact, the only time I can think of where I was behind the wheel of an automobile in downtown Detroit was when I was returning from Nashville and took a wrong turn. Getting out was quite a hassle, and the whole ordeal set me on the path of hatred for Detroit.

Anyway, so my friend and I were cruising downtown trying to find an apartment complex where our guy in the backseat would take the money and return with...well, drugs. Here's the thing about Detroit: the whole city is backwards, in a manner of speaking. In most U.S. cities, the center is a nice, at least decent, place. The outlying areas are where it starts getting dangerous. These are the seedy parts, the ghettoes, the projects, and all sorts of other urban shitholes. I know, I used to live in one.

Detroit, however, is the complete opposite. The inner city is the worst part, and it doesn't start getting better until you start leaving the city. All the clubs that matter (as judging by maximum number of occupants on any given weekend) are on the outside ring of the city. As much as I hate to draw race lines, I'm afraid it goes like this: black clubs, housing and everything else is inner city Detroit. White clubs, housing, and everything else is outside ring. The best, or at least most expensive, housing is on the outside ring, and is largely populated by white people. The closer you get to Detroit, it seems like the price and quality of housing goes down. And the general skin color of the inhabitants get darker. These aren't absolutes, of course, but here it's a well known fact (read: something everyone thinks everybody else thinks) that there isn't shit to do in downtown...if you're white.

"Johnny! I'm ashamed of you! You've basically admitted to prejudice! You hate downtown because you're white!" Bah. I don't just hate downtown, I hate the whole goddam city. Every part. Everything within a twelve mile radius of Detroit is a hellhole, in my opinion, be it a white neighborhood or black.

I will say this for Detroit, though: it can be interesting. Nowhere else have I been introduced as "my nigga Johnny". This may be because for the first time in my life, I have as many black friends as white friends. Detroit is very diverse, ethnically speaking. Which I find I am enjoying. And living in a backwards city has it's advantages. Driving into the city, I can't help but feel that no matter how much I hate the city, whatever's about to happen will be an adventure. And it usually is.

So Brian (the friend from work) is from Atlanta. Both he and I are from the south, and we both hate Detroit, so we managed to get along pretty well. I get along with him better than anyone else at work. And Brian is people who knows people, so he can hook me up when neccessary. You'd think we would get strange looks heading into and out of Detroit. Probably because a skinny white guy and slightly less skinny black guy wearing collared shirts and ties parked out front of a shitty aparment complex at two a.m. is bound to draw attention. Anywhere else, maybe. In Detroit, it's pretty standard.

I seem to have forgotten to tell you all about my Strange Adventures in the Bastard City. Ah well. Next time, then. Stay tuned...

2002-04-17T16:58:00.000-07:00

I like to play Blues music. It's what I learned to play guitar on. When I started, I had little idea of the force and ideas behind the Blues. I was a white kid from upper-middle class suburbia; fifteen and stupid. I liked the blues because it was "cool". It made me original! Unique! Huzzah!

Well, that wasn't the only reason. The music did something that the popular music of the day didn't: It said something. I couldn't understand what, though, as I didn't know the language very well back then. I had been studying music for seven or eight years up to that point, and I still could decode the language. And that's what music really is, yes? A language that I had been learning; all the grammar and vocabulary, the stuff that's in text books. I figured I could listen pretty well, maybe even speak it a bit. I was so wrong it's funny.

Still, I trudged along. I played in dirty little dives around Nashville for "Blues Jam Fridays" and "Open Mic nite Thursdays" and did my best to learn what the hell I was doing. People would ask me all the time "What are you doing playing the Blues? What are you so 'blue' about?" Most of the time it was a drunken joke, but I never knew how to answer them.

I would have continued in this state up to today had it not been for a Sunday drive listening to a local jazz station that sometimes played Blues. This particular Sunday, I was listening to an old recording of a Bluesman doing his best to explain the blues. He told a story that his father told him, a story that took place shortly after the civil war.

His father, a young black man, was carrying ice back from the market to his employer's house and decided to take a shortcut through a nearby field. In this field, he discovered the body of a man hanging from a tree. By the look of it, he (the body) had been lynched a few days ago, and was still hanging. His fingers, ears, and penis had been cut off.

"My father," the bluesman went on, "vomited once or twice and continued on his way. 'Cause it wasn't really that shocking to see that, not back then. When he tol' me that, I understood.

"The Blues is for when you look around and see the situation you're in, and that's it's not gonna get any better anytime soon. Maybe it never will. An' you can't cry about it, ' cause if you start crying now about this god-awful situation you got born into, you'd never stop. That's what the music is for. It feels better than crying and you can do it whenever the hell you feel like it."

And that's when I started hearing what the music was saying. So much pain and quiet desperation...

...so why did I still play the Blues? Where does a well-off white kid, born into a good family that loves him, in a safe suburb, find pain and desperation that can come anywhere near the level of Willie the old Bluesman? I tell you this, friends, it's there. Myself and everyone like me has it.

So what is White Upper-Middle Class Suburbia Blues all about? I'll tell you. It's when you look around and see things are okay, so you look inside and see things are pretty fucking far from okay. It's when you realize that you have everything everyone ever told you could ever possibly make you happy and all you can do is think "christ, is this it? This crap is supposed to make me happy forever?"

It's when you notice that you sure as hell don't feel happy; in fact, you don't feel much of anything. You look back and realize that all you ever were was comfortable. And when anything made you uncomfortable, you cut it out of you with a surgeon's precision. Too bad no one ever told you that getting rid of pain throws pleasure out the window, too. Summon apathy to make sure you never hurt enough times and eventually you throw the switch to make sure you never feel anyting ever again. It's the only way to be safe...

It's when people start asking questions, when they notice you're not alright. Such insipid, pointless never-coming-close-to-the-problem questions. "How's your relationship with Christ?" Sorry, who? Never met him. Everything I you told me Christ was turned out to be my Grandpap, and when he died so did the notion of someone never leaving me. "How's your relationship with your girlfriend?" That's not a girlfriend, that's just a pet. I don't love her; I've long since forgotten how (and when you realize this and break it off to assuage your conscience, you find it's too late. She's caught your cold and the numbness that follows, and off she goes to infect someone else). "How's your relationship with your parents?" Non-existant, thanks for asking. They could make me hurt, so I had to let them go.

Soon you realize that the only things that make you feel, that make you forget the black hole you've made of your life, are drugs and sex and fighting. All of which make you feel like shit afterwards, in their own ways.

Most of all, the White Upper-Middle Class Suburbia Blues are when you look at the adults in your life and realize that there's no way out. They became their fathers, and you will become yours. Even the socially acceptable and easily recognizable "rebels" conform sometime. Better that than end up like Johnny Rotten, yes?

So that's what the blues is for me. Don't ever mock the blues, because by god for someone it's the last thing that can make them feel okay for even a short time.

2002-04-17T16:22:00.000-07:00

Angry mobs can be scary, especially when it's made up of fifty or sixty fourth graders chasing down another fourth grader.

This really happened when I was in the fourth grade, attending the white lake elementary school not far outside of Detroit. I was just walking around the playground, minding my own buisness, when I saw a very frightened looking classmate crest a hill at top speed, throwing anxious looks behind him, shortly followed by the rest of the fourth grade chasing him. As you may have surmised, the kid being chased was very unpopular. No one liked him, and that included me. Apparently, it also included his little brother, who was leading the mob.

Disturbing, yes? It all seemed pretty normal at the time, as if a pack of bloodthirsty children about to deliver a horrendous beating on another child was as standard to a playground as a swingset. Funny the way things seem when you're young.

Watching the angry mob, I decided that I might as well get involved. So I caught up to the kid, tripped him, kicked him once for good measure and then took off as the pack swept in to beat the holy living shit out of him. Poor kid. No adults broke it up; the kids just got bored and wandered off. I imagine that it was a pretty mentally scarring incident for the victim, who really had done nothing worse than your standard teasing and taunting. Hell of a punishment. Maybe Detroit really does warp you in the head. I really don't think that the list for how to deal out corporal punishment in public schools has "chased and beaten down like a bad habit by fifty of your fellow classmates" anywhere on it.

2002-04-17T14:25:00.000-07:00

Hey kids! I'm Johnny O and welcome to my blog. My first blog, as a matter of fact. I plan to update this at least every week, but hell, you know how it goes sometimes. Onward!

I'm currently living in Detroit, but I plan to go back to Nashville TN to finish up my higher education. At the moment, I'm a philosophy major, but that will more than likely change as a philosophy degree is fairly useless. Then again, so is every other degree I've ever wanted. Ah well. So it goes. My current career goal (inspired by Hunter S. Thompson and Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan, which is kind of like Hunter S. Thompson on crack) is to become a journalist. My plan of attack is to simply harass the Detroit Free Press until I get a job.

"Johnny, back up a minute. What's in Nashville, TN, that's so important that you'd leave the wonderful city of Detroit?" A good question. First off, Detroit is anything but wonderful. I hate this city and just about everyone in it. It smells funny, it's dangerous, and it's ugly. While Nashville isn't much to look at either, it's certainly friendlier. Detroit is infecting me with bad mojo. My offensive driving skills have improved (despite the lack of a passenger side rearview mirror, which I expertly removed with a bush), which can't be a good thing. I find myself cutting people off, running red lights, and giving school buses the finger. You don't even want to know what I'm doing to people who do these things to me. Many are the times when I want to burn the city to the ground and eliminate everyone who has ever put a single foot inside Detroit, just to make sure that even the memory of Detroit will be erased from humanity.

Second, the university I wish to attend is in Tennessee. Also, my very good friends live and attend the same school (Tennessee Tech), and I've been away far too long. The last time I was gone this long, one of my best friends became a father, lost his child, and eventually ended up in a psyciatric ward in the time I was gone. Never let it be said that things can't happen quick in the South. For christ's sake, I was only gone four months...

Third, Nashville is just a pleasant city to be in. I used to spend entire weekends in the city, just wandering around, sleeping on benches and chatting up the occasional homeless derelict. Cities can be magickal places, if you know how to talk with them.

You may have noticed that I spelled "magic" with a "k" on the end. For many people, this would point me out as a "deluded fool who believes in things like ghosts and spells and all that other AD&D crap". Bah! It always amuses me that many religious people can believe in a God they can't see or feel, can accept a holy book as edited re-edited as the Bible, yet have a problem believing that one can affect the universe through the proper application of will. More on this at a later date.

I have just recently been told that it would be a good idea to tell a bit about myself. Feh. You will get to know me in time through my writing. You have my promise that I will not lie or otherwise attempt to decieve you in this weblog. In person, I make no promises.

So ends my first post. More to come, I promise; and quickly at that. I am enjoying this far more than I expected...