hey punk!
at first, i couldn't tell if this voice was directed at me as i walked to the end of the narrow grocery aisle.
yeah, i'm talking to you, it continued.
i looked up to see a friendly, familiar face--the guitarist/vocalist of my favorite local band when i was 14 years old. there we stood, almost two decades later catching up. he self-deprecatingly announced that he has stuck around all these years, "living the dream." i told him how i've been in philly for a while now and he asked if i was still playing music. to which i responded that every new year i hope to start a band again...but never do. maybe this will be the year?
he's been recording stuff in his basement and he unenthusiastically promised to send me a link to his bandcamp page. as i was driving back to my sister's house i thought about how great his band was back in the day. and later on i listened to their discography as i wrapped presents; fond memories of that diy community of my youth rushing back to me.
but i also wondered, why couldn't i tell him that? why did i mostly just feel sadness for his current situation, past glories collecting dust as he ages further into obscurity? perhaps if we shared these sentiments with each other more often it wouldn't be this way.
how come our culture pressures us to keep it so cool? why are we discouraged from honestly sharing how much we respect and appreciate the people that have touched our lives?
a couple weeks later, i found myself working at the radical bookstore in philly. the phone rang and the man on the end was looking to speak to someone who took care of ordering. i asked if he was looking to place an order and he responded, "i do a zine called cometbus and i was wondering if you all needed more copies of the back issues?"
and i kept it cool.
on the phone with aaron cometbus, one of the most legendary zine writers of the underground punk world, i remained calm and professional, despite becoming slightly friendlier as i counted the number of back issues on our shelf.
after i hung up the phone i wondered, why did i keep it so cool? even though i demonstrated that i was familiar with his zine, why did i not feel comfortable saying how much i appreciated his work over the decades? maybe it's because i just assumed he knows and didn't want to hear it. he probably gets that all the time, right?
but what about my friend from my home town? and what about people from the past that are no longer with us? those that we now recognize as creative geniuses, but who--in their time--either toiled in obscurity themselves or struggled with mental health issues that prevented them from realizing their own greatness.
as my friend ak thompson recently wrote about radical feminist icon shulamith firestone after she quietly passed away in 2012:
No mention is ever made of our collective failure, of the gulf between our willingness to concede Firestone's brilliance and our incapacity to realize a single one of her goals. Under venal conditions such as these, who in their right mind wouldn't retreat?
so, i think it's time for us to stop keeping it cool. let's remember to tell the people in our lives that we love and appreciate them. and let's stop being afraid to tell those whose creative and political work has inspired us that they should never give up and that what they do truly matters to us.
we all deserve much more.
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