nostalgia, hated device of human minds.
I am remembering one of my favorite bands from when I was young and dumb and didn't have any regard for the health of my ears and I probably like punctuation then too.

Hijinx.

I'm sure that the vision in my brain is only marginally related to the actuality, and even less so with the intervening years. I own nothing that verifies my recollections of the quality of the music. I really only remember the chorus to one of my favorite songs. Roger Barrett sang: I Love All My Friends.

This song was always accompanied by everyone at the show getting very close to the band, putting their arms around the closest person's shoulder. And then in unison singing the only words (that I remember, at the least) "I love all my friends" over and over and over. This song was cathartic, a release of the urge to have a room full of friends, if only for a moment, and being able to give them physical support. For a moment, sweating smiling singing or shouting. This was a free space, a time when you were allowed to be happy. I say 'you' when I mean 'I'. It was this moment in the show when I didn't need to be anything, or anyone, there was no equivocation, no over-thinking. There was nothing more than a positive moment. Even though there was an inevitable come-down from this brain chemical high, it felt worth it.

Sometimes I dream about returning to that moment, sometimes I do. But, my whole life feels both wider and narrower. That is to say, wider in the sense that I lead a much more vivid intellectual life, not to say that I didn't lead a rewarding intellectual life then, but it was tainted by lack of a mentor or teacher who could direct me to the books and ideas that I was then yearning for. Narrower in the sense that I have far fewer humans that I see regularly, fewer acquaintances, even though the number of people that I live near has increased dramatically.

And yet, so much more now than when I was 14 or 16 or 18, whenever the last time that Hijinx played in Fayetteville, I feel deeply for my friends. I am at a loss to describe how important certain people are to me, how dearly I care about them.

I'll stop before I get so gushy that I lose the last remaining shreds of my metal cred. As if I had any to begin with. A number of people have pointed out to me that I can be forbidding, at least at first, I fit a number of visual/physical stereotypes of metal-dude. I look 'metal' but I definitely don't act it all that often. That is to say, I do not fit the pre-conceived notions of how a metalhead should act, or speak like. Some of the time at least. Whatever, I am an ongoing project.

I Love/All My Friends.

(end of entry)