OUTSIDE OF SOCIETY

by crystal smith

If you ever wondered what a grumpy old bastard looks like, in case you don't know one, here's one. Cracking up in my favorite tshirt, because I look like an old biker or a Vietnam vet. I'm neither one, nor was meant to be. The only thread I know of that runs through bikers, vets and me is refusal to live a fake life denying true self in order to be obedient to the social hierarchical code. Patti Smith is singing in my head, Outside of society--that's where I wanna be! I believe this explains why I felt so at home, and by home I mean as comfortable as being at home, as I am right now, in the punk club with a hundred or more people of the same mind about the fake society we live in. They were not people shut out of society, but people who can't live in denial and want to separate themselves from the society of climbers, at least on the weekend. The people who have checked out, my people. I didn't know there were so many. I hear Johnny Moss, punk vocalist, telling me when we spoke briefly, "This is the future," referring to the loving spirit of community in the place Saturday night. My intuition felt agreement as he said it. I have felt this to be so. We are in perhaps the darkest time of human history, now. They say it's darkest before dawn, and I can't imagine a time any darker than the time we're in. Dark, I mean, in the human spirit. The 80s were a time of narcissism, though not among the working poor by any means. This time we're in seems best characterized by the word, venality: willingness to do dishonest things in return for money. The venal minded have always been about, but it looks like venality is the nature of our time, from the rich to the poor. It's why we the people cannot take our "representatives" in government seriously. The example they give as "leaders" is socially criminal. They're the kind of people that say punk rockers are a bad example for the young and Muslims worship a fake God. 

between bands

I hear Bob Dylan singing, Something is happening and you don't know what it is. Corrupt to the core, Capitalism has run its course and is fading out of its own excesses, as foreseen. Capitalism has created immense global poverty in the human population while destroying the earth along with our human spirit. Balance will happen. The changing weather patterns is the earth coming back to balance. I'm feeling a groundswell of humanity is rising to say to the Capitalists draining our life energy, You've dampened our spirit too long. We're taking it back. I've lived my life in refusal to submit to control by my desire for more money. Before I started college, I knew I would never use my degree for a job. I wanted education for my life, not as vocational training. The thing that is happening that I don't know what it is, I suspect is social changes with the new generations of the young. From grumpy old bastard's perspective, anybody under 45 is young. I see in the younger people a consciousness of each other as valid individuals, judging being something other people do, accepting and supporting one another. It's not a hundred percent, but I feel like it is characteristic of today's young. I embrace it. In my fifties, I heard self start two sentences, the kids these days. The second time I heard myself say it, I said, this isn't going to happen a third time. I am not going to become a weary old turd that far separated from reality. I talked with myself quite a long time over it, a few years. I decided to go to a rock concert of the day on my 0 birthdays, starting with the 60th. I went to Ziggy's in Winston-Salem and saw Papa Roach, a California punk band, to get in there, shoulder-to-shoulder, jamming to hard-driving punk, the whole crowd as one. In that crowd I found the kids these days were cool. They had a whole lot more on the ball that the kids my days. They were a happy energy to be in the midst of enjoying some dynamite rock and roll. 

dirty south revolutionaries

For seventieth birthday, I went to Charlotte to a small rock club to see Thrice, a hard-core California punk band. They rocked my world. I found a place I assessed the sound the best and stood there with the kids these days all around me loving the music as much as I was. They regarded me with no more nor less respect than they gave each other. It told me I must be a comfortable presence. That I could be everybody's grandpa didn't inhibit anyone. A time or two I felt the urge to say, I'm not a cop, but edited it out, because what it would mean is, I am a cop. One thing I love about white hair is nobody suspects juvenile delinquency of white hair. I get away with a lot. Several years ago a bunch of suburban women become exurban women got together in a club, the Sparta Revitalization committee. I wondered what the Re- was about. I don't know that Sparta had ever been vital, except maybe when they had hangings on the courthouse lawn. The revitalizers took big, ugly, plastic pots, terra-cotta colored, and stuffed a small evergreen in the dirt of each one, putting these in front of shops up and down Main St, known by signage as Highway 21. Half the evergreens died right away. They stayed in the pots dead for a few months. One day I went to the hardware store and got a can of spray paint day-glo orange. I took off my ball cap to show my white hair and walked down the sidewalk, an authority, stopped at the dead ones and sprayed them beautiful orange. It was two weeks before anyone of SRC noticed. Of course, I confessed. First question in great urgency: You didn't paint any of the green ones, did you? First answer: No. Next question: Why did you do it? Next answer: They were ugly and I made them beautiful.

turd/cutter

The dawn coming after this time of darkness will be beautiful. I feel like the experience at the Milestone in Charlotte Saturday night was a peephole into the future. As the old Capitalist model of hierarchical, exclusive social behavior that only values money fades away, this new inclusive attitude toward life is coming on among we the people. What I believe Johnny meant when he said, "This is the future," was the spirit of inclusion, of love, of community, of people looking to the well-being of one another. No more tv anchorwoman hairdos. No more studying war. No more manhood meaning the power to beat down the weak. We humans have been out of balance for so long with our true selves, I'm believing we'll be coming back to balance. I feel like the Occupy movement that recently gathered 300,000 in NYC a week or two ago is a movement toward shifting into balance. Like when I'm standing and lean over a little to far and just about lose balance, catch myself and come back to balance. I feel like love energy is coming on among us and the hate energy of the dark time waning. Much hate is coming to the surface now, stirred by the right-wing propaganda machine. The hate has been there a long time. It needs to come to the surface to burn off and go away, get out of our system like a flu virus. It gives me hope in a dark time to see the younger generation of people carry amongst themselves a sincere regard for one another, inclusive, supportive, coming together around the music they love in common. I regard a punk rock band as valid an art form as a chamber quartet. In a country that does not encourage art, the art spirit springs up anyway. I felt like the Spirit of Art was alive and well, even flourishing Saturday night at the Milestone. I was as much in the presence of art as in the audience of Robert Wilson's Einstein On The Beach. The future looks good to me now. Thank you, Johnny.   

daniel biggins talking between songs

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GRUMPY OLD BASTARD PUNK ROCKER

dirty south revolutionaries

My head is so full of fresh memories they've faded like in a fog. Details fade first, and I'm left with the feeling in memory, which was so big and complex that it, too, fades to the core of all the feelings together: joy. Six hours from 8 til 2 in a small rock club, the Milestone, Charlotte, NC. Five bands played, all of them regional hard-core punk bands. It was a ten year anniversary party by the band DSR, Dirty South Revolutionaries, with four other bands playing, Turd/Cutter, The Seduction, Cop Graves and Dollar Signs. Free admission. I found Johnny Moss, who does vocals with two bands, Turd/Cutter and DSR. We've been facebook friends for some time, met on facebook through our mutual friend, Daniel Biggins, vocals and guitar for the band, The Seduction. I wanted to shake Johnny's hand and talk with him briefly. His appearance is scruffy punk rocker, and when I met Johnny, I found he, himself, lives his heart. I noticed everyone he spoke with, that I saw, he told them he loved them in a way you know he means it; he's not playing peace-love-wow-groovy or blowing smoke. It's who he is. It's how he feels. It's what he means. I spoke with his wife at the tshirt bar when I bought Turd/Cutter's five dollar cd with eight songs, their song list for the show. She had the same vibe, wide open, who she is, awake with a loving heart. I heard the word love go around so frequently during my time in the crowd, it made me pay close attention to where I was. The vibration in the crowd and in the bands I felt was love and joy. Joy not separate from love, but an aspect of love. I consciously went into the event open to whatever, territory I had never been in before. A whole new world to me. We all loved punk rock. Johnny told me the people here were a community of friends. Saying, in effect, the world as he wants it to be. He put out loving vibes all night that flowed back to him.  

johnny moss and turd/cutter

I never saw anybody even show a trace of being mad at somebody else for whatever reason. In other places when I only know maybe half a dozen people there, of at least a hundred, I find it hard to talk with anyone I don't know. At the Milestone, I felt free to speak with anybody at any time. It was like everyone was open to everyone else. Their lights literally did shine. In their community I was so welcome I was thanked several times for coming to be with them. I don't know that I've ever been in the company of this many people who were so wide-open receiving one another. I noticed in the mosh pit area, guys running around in a circle, kinda, slamming into each other (slam-dancing), pushing, shoving, running in a tight circle. When somebody fell down, everyone nearby, four and five, would pick him up and set him on his feet. It was spontaneous. I thought: in my generation, you fall down, you're on your own. Everybody was dressed in their punk clothes. For me, it was beautiful. Every person was individuated in what they were wearing and at the same time moved freely among each other like bees in a hive. Bump into somebody, nobody gets mad. Turd/Cutter opened the show. I was standing somewhere around the middle of the crowd, looking for a good place to get pictures from, when everybody around me erupted into a slam dance. Suddenly, I'm knocked this way, then that way, shoulders and arms in motion all around. I stumbled a path outside that circle in a hurry. It was a wild surprise to be standing still, grooving to the sound of raw punk, and quick as a snap of the finger, everyone is slamming into each other, and me, pushing, running, shoving. Unaware of the mosh pit phenomenon, I don't know what I'd have thought. Everybody went spastic except me. If I'd been a cat, I'd have jumped straight up.  

daniel biggins and the seduction

At one point in the night I was in what amounted to the second circle around the mosh pit. The people in the front circle would push moshers back into the pit when shoved out of the circle. The guy in front of me was hit so hard by surprise he fell back into me. In my hyper-vigilant way, I saw it coming before it happened, just enough to ready myself to stop the momentum rather than get knocked on my ass. I was able to put hands up and catch his back as he started over backwards. You start reeling in one direction from a shove and get a shove from a surprise other direction every time. It amounts to floating around staying upright. Until. This was not a mean mosh pit of football players, but a fun one of friends, community. From my brief experience of the shoves from different directions by surprise, I saw that one could let go and let the motion, determined by bumps and shoves, keep one upright and float like a raft on the ocean. Hypothetically. But I wasn't willing to try it. My right knee became sensitive after standing for so long. Toward the end of the night I had to be careful on steps. It reminded me I could be the grandpa of nearly everyone there, and the pa of everyone else. Crystal printed a black tshirt for me to wear, grumpy old bastard, in white letters on the front. I felt like it freed the people around me from seeing an outsider with white hair. The humor was evident, the only thing it was about. Nobody who takes False News Network seriously is going to wear a tshirt calling himself a grumpy old bastard. I can wear it in fun, because I am not grumpy, anyway not all the time. I didn't look grumpy; my face was lit up in a smile of joy the whole time. I was in mild ecstasy from the sound of punk guitars and drums real loud. Words cannot reproduce the experience of the sound. 

door at the milestone

Several times through the night I caught myself thinking I feel at home here. I felt like the others around me felt their own versions of that feeling. It was a new experience to be a stranger in a community where I am embraced as one of them on sight without question. The whole trip from leaving the house to returning to the house felt like a Divine set-up, saying: Here, you need this. I drove the Parkway to Daniel's house, where he, Jess, his wife, and I, took the van with trailer trailing behind down the mountain to pick up the rest of the band and girlfriends at Elkin. Then the long drive to Charlotte on 77, getting acquainted with the band largely through listening. Brandon, rhythm guitar, is an x-ray technician at the hospital; Jacob, bass, a recent graduate at ASU in Boone; Jonathan, 19, could beat the fire out of the drums; Daniel, vocals and lead guitar, I've known since he was a little child. I said when we left the house and passed the swing set for the kids, "This is the age you were when we first met." He said, "Yeah, I remember." I've known Daniel to only want to play rock music since a kid. I've supported him with encouragement all the way along wanting him to experience what he wants with all his might. It's like he's soul driven to be playing and singing in a rock band, particularly a hard core punk band. Initially, my only interest in going to Charlotte with the band was to hear them live and see them in motion. Daniel has given me copies of the self-produced cds they've recorded, so I knew their sound. I wanted to hear and see what Daniel is doing now that he has what he's always wanted and is making it work. In my heart the whole time I was feeling joy for Daniel. I loved the band's music. Like Johnny Moss and the bass player from DSR, Jesse, said to me of Daniel's band, The Seduction: They rule.   

rocknroll van ready to go

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