Air Bladder

Lately I've been fascinated by the idea of culture, pop or otherwise, and its relation to our ages and our perspective during that time. Today I was reading an old Peter Bagge comic from 1983 and thinking that when this came out I was a young teenager probably walking down the street in my neighborhood with my best friends carrying my boom box chanting along to George Clinton's "Atomic Dog" on the radio. And I was thinking, I was probably a little kid spending my first family vacation in Hilton Head Island when the Sex Pistols were touring the U.S. And I was probably singing "Kumbaya" in my Presbyterian kindergarten class while Salò and Sweet Movie were being shown in (obviously selected) theaters. I guess the 1970's has that same kind of mysterious allure that the 80's have for twentysomethings, who always seemed so bowled over that I was a teenager during those times, that I was aware of what was going on while they were still piddling their Pampers. It's deeply narcissistic I'm sure, but I think of my childish mindset standing in my first grade class chanting the day, month, and year along with the other students every day before lessons, while elsewhere adults were sitting in dark theaters watching Taxi Driver. Or my father jokingly confusing my three-year old mind by calling the moon an "apple" while somewhere Les Rallizes Denudes were blowing some avant-garde young hipster's mind. And how my perspective changes over time, seeing the things that everyone else saw at the same time, and taking it in with that dull analytical adult mind. How talk of a "boy in a bubble" in my first grade playground during recess conjured images in my mind that bore no resemblance at all to the sterile room that little David Vetter was forced to dwell when I researched him later in life. How much the photographs of the famed Zuiyo-maru monster in the worldwide newspapers back in 1977 made me believe in something extraordinarily magical when I was a little girl, only to discover thirty years later that it was nothing at all but a decomposed basking shark. And most of all, accepting that conclusion, because for me to believe it to be anything else would be... well, downright magical. And you don't believe in magic when you are an adult. You just don't, n'est-ce pas?

Maybe it was being blown away by all the young people at the Residents concert last week that got me to thinkin'. Or wondering? Or maybe just -- dreaming.