Entries Tagged 'being a grownup' ↓

This isn’t my usual quirky petulant rambling for good reason. Syd Barrett, the creator of the band Pink Floyd died last week. I became a big Pink Floyd fan the summer before I went to college. Then I became a rabid fan while in college. I listened to them all the time, I had their album posters on my wall, I had quotes from their songs plastered all over my dorm room door, I used their music as background in various video projects I produced, I even named a major character in one of my shows after the now-deceased founder, Syd.

Reading their incredibly informative and intimate biography, “A Saucerful of Secrets” by Nicholas Schaffner only served to fuel the obsession. It was in this book that I read all about Syd, the guy who brought the band together but then fried his brain so much on drugs that he couldn’t continue with it. Unfortunately for Syd, yet very fortunately for every Pink Floyd fan out there, music history was much better served by his fall from rock stardom. Pink Floyd only became the super, mega, trippy, space age band it became because of Syd’s demise. Roger Waters took over as head of the band, bringing his weird visions and lyrical mastery into the mix. David Gilmour was brought in to replace Syd as lead guitar and vocalist, which gave Pink Floyd their now classic and signature sound. Beyond that, everything great that Pink Floyd has done, every album and song that people know and love them for, was inspired (directly or indirectly) by Syd Barrett’s collapse. Dark Side of the Moon chronicles, through poetry and incendiary guitar licks, Syd’s descent into madness. The Wall is the story of a rock star who allows the pressure of fame and the horrors of the world to drive him deeper and deeper into insanity. Several songs and scenes from the movie depict actual moments of Syd Barrett’s own life, including a night when he locked himself inside his hotel room then sat there catatonic until moments before a scheduled show, while managers, loved ones and the other band members hollered, “Time to go!” from outside.

The song “Wish You Were Here“, from the album of the same name, is an obvious dedication to Syd. I’ve never been to a Pink Floyd concert (I got into them the summer after they stopped touring), but from what I’ve heard, they are visceral orgasms full of lasers and lights and psychedelic images beamed onto a signature circular projection screen above the stage. Yet whenever they sang, “Wish You Were Here”, the lights dimmed, the lasers and the projector were turned off, and the band sang the simple song to their friend, with the audience singing along amidst a sea of lit cigarette lighters.

If only for this I felt a pang of mourning upon hearing of Syd’s passing last week. Honestly I held no special place in my heart for him as a musician. I’ve tried listening to albums Pink Floyd did with Syd at the helm and it is entirely unlike anything they did in their later, more productive, years. During their Syd years, the band had a more Brit-pop sound to them. Basically picture the way the early Beatles sounded… you know, if the Beatles had dropped acid and tried to write songs for children. One of Syd’s most famous lyrics comes from the song “Bike” on the Piper at the Gates of Dawn album and goes, “I’ve got a mouse and he doesn’t have a house. I don’t know why I call him Gerald.” So from a musical standpoint, I don’t like anything except post-Syd Floyd. Some pretentious music buffs will try and scoff and say the band was never the same after Syd left. I agree with that… it got better. Infinitely better. Anybody listening to Piper at the Gates of Dawn side-by-side with Dark Side of the Moon would swear that these were actually two completely different bands.

No, my regrets over Syd Barrett are felt more because I do know his story and it is tragic. Here was a guy who was ruling the musical world at the time and he wrecked it all with drugs. He spent the remainder of his life as a recluse, living in his mother’s house off his Pink Floyd royalties – which the rest of the band made certain he always received. Yet he was the inspiration for the music that defined so much of my late teens and early 20′s. And knowing that these songs originated out of the unravelling life of a real life person who I’d read all about only made the songs hit me at an even deeper level. These days I have to be in a very specific spaced out mood to turn on the Floyd, though their music remains, and will always remain a very fond relic of my college days. If only for that I raise my glass to the late Syd Barrett and say (along with every other cliched Pink Floyd fan), “Shine on you crazy diamond…”

I always think back on my college days with great nostalgia.  When else can you sleep until noon, drink your weight in Yeigermeister, discuss Brady Bunch episodes until 3AM, eat pizza at every meal and meet girls who might actually let you touch their boobs?  But the thing that made it truly great was that you were surrounded by hundreds of people exactly your age, at exactly the same station in life, who cared about exactly the same things you did: which basically consisted of drinking Yeigermeister and touching girls’ boobs.  I had the added privilege of going to school in Boston, widely recognized as the number one college town in America.  For four years it seemed as though the entire world was in college.  No matter where I walked, every store, every restaurant and every bulletin board catered to wall-to-wall 18-to-21-year-olds and the boobs they yearned to touch.

Life has certainly moved on and I’ve settled down with a wife and family in the Philadelphia suburbs.   I love it all and don’t mourn my early twenties for a minute, but lately I’ve started noticing something gone curiously awry.  It’s been almost seven years since I graduated college.  As near as I can tell it’s been the same amount of time for everybody else I graduated with.  A little elementary math indicates that if the whole world was twenty-one seven years ago, then there should be an abundance of twenty-eight-year-olds today.  Eighteen months of living in suburban Pennsylvania has proven that theory to be patently untrue.  By my estimates, everybody on earth is either under seventeen or over thirty-five.

No matter where we go, it’s the same two looks on everybody’s faces.  Either, “I’m jaded because I have another prostate exam tomorrow,” or “I’m jaded because my parents won’t let me listen to Eminem in the house anymore.” Lauren and I try, but it’s tough to identify with people talk incessantly about their cholesterol levels or about last night’s episode of Everwood.  Where are all the mature yet energetic mid-to-late-twenty-something’s of our generation?

I’m starting to think this part of Pennsylvania might actually be a vortex in the space-time continuum.  Or at the very least, it’s some kind of temporal black hole that prevents people in their twenties from entering.  Perhaps it wasn’t just perception back in Boston.  Maybe the whole world really was in college.  Perhaps my age group radically expanded in the late nineties as some kind of generational supernova that ultimately collapsed in on itself.  Perhaps Lauren and I are the proton nucleus of an age-gap nebula with negatively charged thirteen and forty-year-olds swirling all around us.

I know that sounds crazy, but the only other plausible explanation is that Lauren and I are actually the only two survivors of our entire generation.  Whatever the case, it can be a lonely way to live when there are no friends around to commiserate with over age-specific topics.  The irony is that most everybody on our upper terminus is at the same station in life as we are; married, with kids running around and others on the way.  Maybe that’s the reason we ended up here in the first place.  Maybe the act of bringing a child into the world opened a wormhole that sucked us into the vortex we’re in now.

That would explain how my single friends, who I hear from occasionally, continue to tell fun and interesting stories involving throngs of others our own age.  I’m not sure how Einstein’s Theory of Relativity works in practice, but perhaps the fast-paced singles lifestyle causes time to move slower in relation to the people around you, allowing all involved to remain the same relative age.  Having exchanged rings and genetic information, Lauren and I have somehow sliced open a hole in the fabric of time, shooting us into this strange eddy where time expands parabolically on either side of us.

We are making the best of it though.  Without other contemporaries around, we’ve turned to each other more and more.  We bond over games, late night talks and the child we’ve created – the one who opened this alternate reality to begin with.  And while we don’t know exactly what has happened to every other member of our generation, Lauren and I are genuinely enjoying our time together in this vortex of Pennsylvania.  If nothing else, I get to touch her boobs every day.

On the first day of our vacation in the Outerbanks, Lauren and I rented bicycles with the intention of riding them around a few times during the week. I know they say you never forget how to ride a bike, and I certainly didn’t forget, but man, I sure don’t remember it hurting so much. We weren’t a quarter mile away from the rental place before our legs started burning. I mean burning. It was a five-mile ride back to the house and by the end my heart was pounding and my legs were ready to give out. I couldn’t seem to stay on the seat very well and every time I slid down, it wedged the underwear up my butt a little bit further. I remembered that as a kid, whenever we’d ride our bikes and wanted to go faster, we’d stand up and peddle. I tried that for about two seconds, shouted, “Ah crap!” and sat back down. The burning in my quads multiplied thanks to that little stunt.

How did we do this as kids? I know that I was using muscles I don’t normally use and all, but geez, I don’t remember feeling that kind of pain the first time I rode a bike—I mean, you know, other than the pain of my skull slamming against the concrete when I wiped out. If it had hurt like that the first few times, I don’t think any of us would have learned how to ride our bikes. Kids aren’t like adults. We don’t find amusement from painful activities.

Not surprisingly, even though Lauren and I had paid for a full week rental, that ended being our only bike ride.

Lauren and I got new cell phones a couple of weeks ago which will finally allow us to take and send pictures and videos in addition to regular text messages.

“Oh, this will be good if one of us is ever involved in a car accident,” Lauren said to me the day we got them.

Well, it might have been that way if she and her sister hadn’t gotten the exact same phone with the exact same capabilities. Now the two of them, I swear, are like teenage girls, sending cutesy little messages back and forth all day long, shooting and sending pictures of everything they see, dressing up the pictures with pretty borders, attaching different ringtones to the pictures and typing the text messages to make it seem as though one of their kids wrote the sentiment.

One of the ladies (I won’t reveal who) actually took a picture of her own butt and sent it to the other. Maybe they aren’t like teenage girls at all. Maybe the new phones are bringing out the teenage BOYS in them. “Hey Marc, lookit ‘dis. ‘Dat’s my BUTT!

When they send something, it of course prompts the other person to call them back, and then they proceed to have an hour-long conversation. They sit up until midnight chitty-chatting on the phone about this and that. Except instead of whispering about the boys they snuck a kiss and a trip to second base with behind the dugout, they’re gabbing on about their latest Tupperware parties and PartyLite orders.

But it’s the videos that are the most out of control. Sure I’ll admit that it was fun for the first couple of days. I’d shoot a scene of Allison on the swings or throwing rocks at the neighbors’ kids and send it off to Lauren for a quick laugh. But these sisters think they’re Martin Scorcese armed with a cell phone. The thing about it is, it’s really all the same video. Fifteen seconds of one of the kids saying “Hi” to their aunt. “Hi Aunt Lisa” on the slide. Then “Hi Aunt Lisa” in the car. Then “Hi Aunt Lisa” at the grocery store. Then “Hi Aunt Lisa” in no place special except for the fact that she’s is just being really cooperative with the camera this time around.

I’d get mad, but it really is very cute, the two of them. They think it’s the pictures of their kids that are adorable, but really, it’s the two of them who are just so precious. Like little boy-crazy girls with technology. Can’t wait to see our next wireless bill.

I took the girl to the park the other day and while we were there another father showed up with his five-year-old son. The kid was your typically rambunctious boy – loud, excited, lots of energy. He’d brought with him to the park a toy gun. A very realistic looking toy gun. Like the kind that could get you accidentally killed by the police in the wrong situation. I was surprised they made those anymore. Don’t toy guns have to be painted bright green or something now?

I know all about playing guns when you’re a kid. My sister and I used to play a game we called “Spies” which was essentially just hide and seek with guns. And I really hate the way the pansy-girl ex-hippies have tried to ruin good harmless pretend violence. I hate how as soon as a kid uses his finger as a gun and pretends to shoot his friend in school, all of a sudden people freak out, call the principal, put the kid in counseling. I personally think we’re setting ourselves up for more disaster by NOT allowing kids to get out their aggressions in a playful manor.

But when this kid started pointing his play gun at me and the girl and making loud “POW POW” sounds, I’ll admit, something inside me said, “This is wrong.” And it didn’t stop there. The kid started shouting, “Better watch out or I’ll shoot you. Watch out or I’ll kill you.” Mind you, he was laughing the entire time. There was certainly no malicious intent behind his words. He was just playing. And I KNEW he was just playing. I was even playing back at him, pretending to be hit by a bullet when he shot me. But even so, something rubbed me very wrong about this whole situation. Especially when he ran up to other random kids and started shooting THEM.

Why did I feel that way? Have I allowed the wussy patty-cake movement of the 1990’s to infect me? Or was there something truly unique about this particular situation? Perhaps it’s simply a matter of the fact that I didn’t know this kid. He didn’t know me. He didn’t know the girl. He didn’t know any of the kids he was shooting at. I guess when I was a kid I never pretended to shoot anybody a) who I didn’t know and b) who didn’t know for certain that this was a game and they could shoot me back. We never said, “I just killed you,” to random strangers, even as we said it constantly to each other, to our friends and siblings. Maybe that’s the difference.

Man, I HOPE that’s the difference. Otherwise who knows what other core values I may have gradually turned over to the creampuff bourgeois over the last 15 years?