Going Back To the Well

I went out the other night for beers with the Italian kid at the Showdown. Christ, I hadn't been in that place in forever, but 30 years ago, when Stuart Bell and I were living on the ground floor of Harry Harris' mother's old house at the corner of Collinwood and Sanguinet (demolished years ago to make way for yuppie townhouses), we'd check every Saturday morning to see if any drunks from the Showdown had driven through the hedges on the Sanguinet side of the yard during the night.

We were talking (as George Harrison would say) about sanctuaries and the getting of knowledge. Back when he was unemployed and living in Pittsburgh, the Italian kid's favorite spot was the library. He dug the quiet of the big, imposing space, and being surrounded by people who were searching for knowledge, even if he didn't particularly want to interact with them at the time. (Probably the church fulfilled the same function for his grandmother.) I told him I used to go to the downtown library a lot when I worked in the neighborhood. You'd always see homeless people there in the winter, staying out of the cold, and folks who couldn't afford computers using the internet. (I like the democracy of the library.)

When I was freshly out of work a few years ago, I used to go to the old Black Dog on Throckmorton when it opened, once a week, with enough quarters to feed the meter for two hours (until happy hour started) and enough folding money to buy four beers. Bars that have been around for a few decades are great refuges -- time stands still there. Nothing ever changes. In the cool, dark, and quiet of the afternoon Dog, I was able to forget (for a little while at least) my anxieties over prospects that might or might not work out, bills I had to pay, and the specter of Failure that loomed large over my shoulder at all other times. Invariably, I'd start shooting the shit with the bartender and wind up getting about half of my drinks comped. When the happy hour crowd showed up, I'd leave.

When you're young, the place you go for shelter and solitude is your room. Back when I was a youngster, that's where I developed an affinity for language, sitting in my room with the door closed with stacks of comic books and later, rock mags. But at a certain point -- probably around the onset of puberty -- you start wanting a public space to be alone in.

It's always interesting for me when I practice with Stoogeaphilia, listening to the band boys (who are 10 to 20 years younger than me) talking about music. It makes me realize how circumscribed my own knowledge and taste in music are. Back when I was acquiring the culture, nascent fans got most of their information from radio (and magazines, if they were readers). For the generation that came of age in the '80s, the Italian kid said it was MTV. (The guys in Stoogeaphilia are exceptions to this, because they're all readers.)

For the kids that are in their 20s now, the internet made the entire history of recorded sound and every bit of information that's ever been generated about it fingertip-accessible without visiting the library or anywhere else in particular. As a result, when the Stoogeband started playing on Magnolia Street for younger crowds than we generally got at the Black Dog and the Wreck Room, I noticed I had to do less explaining. The kids around my kids' ages already knew the music, which the 30somethings on West 7th didn't always (beyond a couple of songs). In the past year, I've actually had three conversations with random people at Stoogeshows about Glenn Branca, which seems really weird in the context of playing in a proto-punk coverband from Fort Worth.

Technology doesn't just alter the way we acquire and process information, it changes our relationship with the world. Every day at the market, I see people walking around with their cellphones (with text messaging, email, internet access, etc.), totally oblivious to their immediate environment and the people in it. James Lassen's series of small paintings entitled The Cellphone Users captures this dynamic well. (Also note that the signature pose for photographic portraits in the 21st century is from 18 inches away, arm extended.)

All kinds of social norms change with the advent of new technology. When I was growing up, if you heard someone talking to him or herself in public, you assumed they were crazy. No longer. Once when I worked in the Stockyards, I was going to lunch with a coworker at the Stockyards Hotel when we passed a woman walking back and forth in front of the hotel with a suitcase on wheels. When I remarked that she seemed rather odd, my coworker said, "Nah, she's just talking on her phone." When I went to use the restroom after lunch, I found five hotel employees trying to coax the woman -- who'd apparently gone into the men's room and taken off all her clothes -- to get dressed and come out. But I digress.

Thirty years ago, I worked for a man who, although he was kind of an asshole, said something prescient: "People aren't going out anymore; they're going in." That's truer now than it ever was; as a society we've become quiet inward and isolated, interacting in virtual "communities" with like-minded folks in a way that precludes dialog with anyone else. Targeted marketing based on internet usage patterns has contributed to this. From a music geek's perspective, this means that the newest generation of listeners has, for the most part, lost interest in "the romance of the artifact." Who needs it when you can carry your entire music collection around with you in your iPod?

Nowadays, I think people carry their sanctuaries around with them -- all "their stuff," from their music to their "friends" to more information than any one library could hold -- encoded digitally and fingertip-accessible in their pocket. But where, then, are the sacred spaces of today?