THE KIDS ARE AWRY

Everybody wants to say that The Kids are All Right.
But are they?
Are we?
It's hard to say, at this point.
More like The Kids Are Awry!
Speaking for this kid, I kinda feel all wrong.
I suppose I could start giving myself credit, see the big picture, be proud of the things that I have "accomplished". I use quotations because the challenges that I have survived, the setbacks that I've surpassed are not things you can chat about to a stranger on an airplane, casually pull out as party-fodder, or put on a resume. They may not even belong in a blog. Be that as it may:

It's Pete Townshend's birthday!!

So it is also my birth-day, being that he was one of my spiritual mentors at that ever-so-tender age of fourteen. Once again, the middle-age lamentations of a rock-poet and fool, such as Pete, actually, somehow, mirrored the emotional depths that I traversed as a teenage girl...Well, I guess overdosing on heroin and being declared clinically dead for six minutes, is quite like being a teenage girl in Napoleon, Michigan or (Stardom in Acton).

There is nothing trite about it. It's called chemicals, it's called hormones. As human beings we all experience these interactions throughout our life, some more than others, and all very differently than each other. Or not. I guess it depends on how we self medicate to heal from the trauma of our birth. I, through his music at the time at least, and he, well, I think the album Empty Glass (1980) appropriately illustrates his Rx.
Dr. Remy Martins orders?
Poetry, Sex, and Alcohol.
But it's not that banal. When I say Poetry, I mean channeling an Ancient Muse, When I say Sex, I mean a sacred rite of lust, an angel of DivineLove, and when I say alcohol it's as he sings in "I Am An Animal":
       "And I don't know how to lie anymore,
                                                                 I'M BOOZING TO PRAY."
Boozing to Pray?
Completely.
And even though I was only fourteen, and I didn't drink OR drug OR have sex-
"What do ya do?" (I just listened to copious amounts of Pink Floyd, YES and Led Zeppelin at top volume on headphones and that seemed to fulfill those needs, sort of...) I completely identified with this mans music. Mainly the "Slit Skirts" video on Mtv, which they, (surprisingly) gave heavy rotation to. Perhaps its the Minor piano chordage (Devils Music) throughout that song, but it got me.
             
"I was just thirty-four years old, and I was still wanderin' in a haze..."

In 1983, stuck in cow-town Michigan, I did feel alienated. I was  a geek in my way, (NO? REALLY?) and my so-called artistic and musical interests just didn't seem to fit with the Cheerleader that I tried to be, (even though Pete's performance style did influence my cheerleader moves, and I like to think of it all as performance art at the end of the day). Dabbling in both those worlds left me empty. Because I was never fully immersed or accepted in one or the other, I was always the outsider. Looking back I did this intentionally, because I didn't want to be like THEM, whoever THEY were. I wanted to be different. I was anyway, but I had to create an even different kind of otherness as a protective shell. Oh, the complexities of Teenage Wildlife.

So, when I recently viewed "The Kids are All Right", Who documentary on DVD-there is something about that footage of "Baba O'Riley", Pete's synthesized, cyclical mantra dedicated to his Avatar Meher Baba. There is this focused abandon in his performance. It's beyond electrified, it's as if he rebirths and ignites himself into a new element. Yes, what young girl, such as I, wouldn't feel the desperation in the cry
"Its On-LY TEEN-age WASTELAND!"
As soon as this footage came on in the documentary I was, once again, transfixed and transported
back to my parents house, gripping the carpet in excitement as I watched this documentary for the first time, clinging to-starving for-any media on my hero Pete! This was before the Internet, DVD's and YouTube. I mean, it was hard to see this footage back then, and all the tastier for the wait! I remember the day, it was a Sunday night around 1:30am, way too late to be awake on a school night, but I sacrificed what small chance I had of actually learning something in school the following Monday, for my PETE fix. I did it for for the love of his Light. I did it to SEE HIM, to FEEL HIM, to TOUCH HIM. His music did save me. His brutal honesty, and openness was inspirational, in that, his lyrics validated my emotions. I know I was a freak back then, lusting after footage of dudes twice my age from ten years prior and it did make it difficult to identify to the small world around me. (What's my excuse now?)

Looking back now, it doesn't seem too unfitting somehow-a curious and bored teenage girl, (whose only want was for an electric guitar to rock out with- in an effort to solve her unrequited love for life through blazing chords of currents), identifying with this scruffy-looking, drug-addict. He was still hotter than any of the guys in school, and I SO (and still do) respect how he exposed his soul, wore it-so punk, on his sleeve, then ripped it off, spit on it and disowned himself in exaltation, all in the course of one anthem.
THANK YOU PETE!...
.... For taking me on your Amazing Journey....
For being with me,
if only in vibration