Social Media Saturday

Usually I don't think these kind of memes work out as well or are as clever as their originators and propagators seem to think, but dangit if "Lorraine Slipped A Disc" doesn't sound like something I would suggest for a band name.

Watershed Days Revisited

I believe everybody, more or less, has two distinct conceptions of themselves: the self-as-child and the self-as-self. Holding those two separate personhoods in mind allows us to assign certain aspects of our life to 'the folly of youth', which is a useful if not downright necessary coping mechanism, though of course it's not limited to embarrassing indiscretions and attitudes. There can be positive things associated with ourselves-as-children, too, with fond nostalgia or bittersweet regret. It's all part of how we reckon with the passage of time.

And of course it's different for every person, because it's all subjective. The self-as-self doesn't axiomatically begin the day you turn 13, or 18, or 21, or 25, or 30. Some people may have memories of themselves at seven years old which they effectively recollect as 'me, but shorter'. Some people may go through some transformative event in their early 40's which becomes the only before/after line of demarcation in their personal timeline that matters. IDIC.

I'm also clearly oversimplifying things by setting up a binary in the first place, because we all exist along many different multi-faceted axes. When I think, for example, about my general attitude towards eating vegetables in terms of 'when I was a kid' (hated anything green and basically survived on meat and potatoes and Flintstones chewables) and 'as an adult' (eat just about anything, have hot takes on specific preparations of brussels sprouts and cauliflower) that's something that gradually shifted when I went away to college. On the other hand, when I think about my tendency to be a conflict-averse people-pleaser, that's always been true, but it was much more pronounced in my younger days, in this case meaning before I got divorced and picked up the pieces of my life in my mid-to-late 20's.

And then there's the fact that some things never end! I literally cannot remember not being aware of, drawn to, and fascinated by super-heroes. I'm still into them, while fully acknowledging that they are in numerous ways (fairly and unfairly) childish things.

So I'm all over the map. Aren't we all? Here's yet another personal example: pop music. I grew up in a pretty pro-music environment. The radio or the tape player was always in use on long family car trips, and my dad had his old stereo in the garage to crank up on weekends when he was doing yard work or fixit projects, and the newer and nicer stereo in the living room got a fair amount of use as well. We had cable tv and were allowed to watch MTV from day one. Rock and roll was all right, from Buddy Holly and the Beatles right up through the Clash, Van Halen, the Go-Gos, Michael Jackson, ZZ Top, you name it ... but my dad drew the line at heavy metal. He's deeply Catholic, it was the 80s, it was a whole thing. (A whole super weird thing, though, because there I was still going to Sunday school as an adolescent and being warned about the dangers of satanic messages in music, from such acts as Judas Priest and AC/DC and Queen and the Rolling Stones. AC/DC and Queen were 'satanic' for glorifying not just sex but unacceptable unholy perverted bisexuality and homosexuality right there in the names of the bands, which ... is a bit of a stretch particularly in making the case to a pre-sexual tween. The Rolling Stones trafficked in obvious Luciferian imagery from 'Goat Soup' to 'Sympathy for the Devil' to 'Their Satanic Majesties Request' which made much more straightforward sense, but I was also well aware that my dad was a HUGE Rolling Stones fan. But I digress.)

Some time around seventh or eighth grade I was first exposed to Metallica and was immediately hooked. And setting aside what exactly it was about the screaming primal energy of the thrash style or the baroque lyrical imagery that hit me right in the most receptive brainspots at that age and stage of my life, it really always stands out in my mind as a radical act of independence, a true line of demarcation. Before that, I would learn about new bands through my father. He was the gatekeeper who controlled the FM dial in the house or car, or who brought home new vinyl singles from his weekly record store trips. MTV evened the playing field a bit, although it was still most often the case that if I heard something first, when my father caught up on it he would approve. We both liked the same kind of music, which covered a lot of common ground. The suddenly there was this particular subgenre of music, embodied in one particular band, for which I was ALL IN, and my father was DECIDEDLY NOT. To his immense credit, he never really went beyond passive-aggressive shade-throwing. Metallica wasn't banned from our house, I never got grounded or even so much as yelled at for listening to it. My dad made it clear he didn't like it, and wished I didn't like it, but in hindsight I suppose he realized I was old enough to make my own decisions and that trying to control something like musical taste was pointless. So I was left with something which was mine, neither received through my parents nor positively approved of by them, and that was a big deal.

My parents' tolerance for it went so far as to allow me to go to my first concert at age 14 to see Metallica, at a giant arena with a group of maybe a half-dozen other kids from school. I remember that show being a very huge deal to me (and now that I have kids of my own I imagine it was a big deal to my folks, too), the culmination of my newly discovered fandom. After endlessly replaying the Kill 'Em All and Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets albums through the back half of middle school, the release of ... And Justice For All dropped and was a revelation, and catching the ensuing tour put an auditory exclamation point on it all. I certainly don't think of Metallica as my favorite band now, and I can't say for sure if there was ever a period, even a week, when I would have referred to them as my absolute all-time favorite band back then, but they have this looming liminal personal significance, is what I'm trying to convey. In the diagetic soundtrack of my life, there's all this radio-friendly rock and roll in my childhood, and then there's Kirk Hammett's guitar and Lars Ulrich's drums and James Hetfield's voice kicking in and, boom, I'm just not a kid anymore. Part of that just happens to be the timing, the natural progression from pre-pubescent to post-. But part of it is inherent to the music itself and the blazing bright line it created in my memory.

Significantly, nowadays when people talk about how long ago some pop culture phenomenon was, if it dates back to my childhood the intervening number of years usually doesn't phase me. Star Wars is over forty? Yeah, well, so am I, and Star Wars has always been a part of my life, so that tracks. The first GI Joe cartoon miniseries debuted thirty-five years ago? Again, I can't say that surprises me because I am a grown-ass adult and remember living for GI Joe as a little kid. Lotta water under the bridge since then. But I was driving the little guy to school today and listening to the local classic rock station, and the DJ mentioned the thirtieth anniversary of ... And Justice For All (the exact date of which apparently came and went last month, on August 25th) and I was momentarily stunned. That's not just something that happened a long time ago, but still within my lifetime, but only if you include the life of me-as-a-child to extend the lifetime reach of me-as-myself. That's an event me-as-myself can remember, as clearly as if it were yesterday, and yet was not one or two but three whole decades ago. Sweet satanic majesty I am OLD.