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Death In June... Live In November
Nov. 19th, 2014 02:02 amWhy the hesitation, Jack... why the second guesses and flake of disposition about attending a show you secretly already bought the tickets to twenty five years ago?
Well, to give it to you true, to give it to you honest, it's because I knew the event would have me time-tripping like my name was Billy Pilgrim.
Let's arrive off the march from the MARTA machine down Memorial. Let's arrive with me stoned confident and silent. Let's arrive at the Pearl, East Terminus. Here were I normally see your Deadbolt's and Southern Culture on the Skid's get down but not exactly your Neo-Folk Thelemic Goth troubadours string melancholy. Let's walk past the creepy Nazis in bomber jackets, the Lolita Twenty Year Olds trying to Siren you out of your ticket, the 688 reunion and the lumberjack bearded hipsters down with some Douglas P inspired irony. You'll order your Jamie's by the double at the bar, with you hood up and black watch cap worn low in hopes you'll walk invisible. Your banishing rituals will have been cast, your Resh vibrated at the sunset secret and you will be sure you will remain unseen amongst the many.
Which is when the kief and the whiskey will work their magick around a sea of faces lit up beautiful in recognition of your own.
And you'll go back to 1989, your natty ass dread mohawk twisted in the South Florida sun, your comic book geek lingo and blitzkreig bop attitude, where a west coast skinhead on the run from the law will introduce you to three things you need to know:
1. Robert Anton Wilson.
2. The Poetry of Rilke.
3. Death in June.
Okay, so #1 opened up my mind when I finally gave him a chance on a Med Cruise Navy locked into the service for a four year tour. #2 I struggled with for many a year until I hit 30 when with patience I saw beneath the gleam the knife that waited so patiently for an older man's re-read.
#3 though... came the easiest, with a burnt cassette tape bootleg of Brown Book and I was hooked immediately.
Suddenly I had a new idea of 'Goth'. Goth to me at that point is the Cure and Siouxsie. Good to have on hand for a black eye-lined girlfriend with cuts on the wrist and cloves on the lips. But this... this was the lamentations of warriors, the poetry of Valhalla and an introspective post-battle anthem for a 24-7 angry young man.
Recollect playing Death in June for some of my punk buddies a few years later after a few rousing anthems off Walk Among Us and Punk's Not Dead. They'd look at me with suspicion at the creepy kids singing in German and the looping rants before telling me with sage insight: "Ah... you like music that people who don't have friends like."
I shrugged helplessly at them, monkey stoned... as if to say hey, wait 'til I get my hands on some of that Rilke and then I'm really going to kill this fucking conversation.
I shrug helpless at them, monk drunk... these faces popping out of a dark crowd twenty years later. They know me from 688, they know me from the Secret Room, they know me the Invisible College and after-parties amnesia erased. They don't just know me... they name me, they bind me to the moment past, they remind me of our promises - fulfilled and failed in ways we never saw coming.
Don't know what to say, never do outside the page really, except when they pull me away by their confidence and charm to speak in whispers to that which waits beneath our masks.
In the moment now, sound loops off old episodes of the Prisoner - "You must not grow up to be a lone wolf"... "People who hide are afraid"... "Anonymity is often the best disguise"... looping me back to the play I never got to write outside my head and my poor friends' ears. Looping back and there's my ex Violet and she looks so good with her new man (I'm never jealous anymore, I don't know why, seeing them with their happiness free at last from my own a relief so holy as to be a blessing). Talk to her briefly. There are others you talk to friendly faces, kindly psychopomps, lost crushes angel eyed and devil horned.
Between their spaces, their adventures, heartbreaks, and conquests, I close my eyes and dance.
Dancing with my eyes close makes my body feel the way my mind does when it writes.
Neither of which I'm very good at yet... but on night's like these I'm thankful to have been given this chance to try to be a little bit better than I am.
Because it's not that I can't see the pretty things they can see in me... it's that I can see things so much prettier than the sum of these reflections right there out of my reach.
And I don't know... isn't that what our favorite bands should do for us... reveal what we know but do not know how to say while simultaneously releasing our flesh from duty's gravity into free-fall dance?
So... these words fall true save and that's why I went to dwell alone amongst you in your crowds only to discover that my face will no longer serve as a mask.
Now for the hard part... getting up for work tomorrow.
Well, to give it to you true, to give it to you honest, it's because I knew the event would have me time-tripping like my name was Billy Pilgrim.
Let's arrive off the march from the MARTA machine down Memorial. Let's arrive with me stoned confident and silent. Let's arrive at the Pearl, East Terminus. Here were I normally see your Deadbolt's and Southern Culture on the Skid's get down but not exactly your Neo-Folk Thelemic Goth troubadours string melancholy. Let's walk past the creepy Nazis in bomber jackets, the Lolita Twenty Year Olds trying to Siren you out of your ticket, the 688 reunion and the lumberjack bearded hipsters down with some Douglas P inspired irony. You'll order your Jamie's by the double at the bar, with you hood up and black watch cap worn low in hopes you'll walk invisible. Your banishing rituals will have been cast, your Resh vibrated at the sunset secret and you will be sure you will remain unseen amongst the many.
Which is when the kief and the whiskey will work their magick around a sea of faces lit up beautiful in recognition of your own.
And you'll go back to 1989, your natty ass dread mohawk twisted in the South Florida sun, your comic book geek lingo and blitzkreig bop attitude, where a west coast skinhead on the run from the law will introduce you to three things you need to know:
1. Robert Anton Wilson.
2. The Poetry of Rilke.
3. Death in June.
Okay, so #1 opened up my mind when I finally gave him a chance on a Med Cruise Navy locked into the service for a four year tour. #2 I struggled with for many a year until I hit 30 when with patience I saw beneath the gleam the knife that waited so patiently for an older man's re-read.
#3 though... came the easiest, with a burnt cassette tape bootleg of Brown Book and I was hooked immediately.
Suddenly I had a new idea of 'Goth'. Goth to me at that point is the Cure and Siouxsie. Good to have on hand for a black eye-lined girlfriend with cuts on the wrist and cloves on the lips. But this... this was the lamentations of warriors, the poetry of Valhalla and an introspective post-battle anthem for a 24-7 angry young man.
Recollect playing Death in June for some of my punk buddies a few years later after a few rousing anthems off Walk Among Us and Punk's Not Dead. They'd look at me with suspicion at the creepy kids singing in German and the looping rants before telling me with sage insight: "Ah... you like music that people who don't have friends like."
I shrugged helplessly at them, monkey stoned... as if to say hey, wait 'til I get my hands on some of that Rilke and then I'm really going to kill this fucking conversation.
I shrug helpless at them, monk drunk... these faces popping out of a dark crowd twenty years later. They know me from 688, they know me from the Secret Room, they know me the Invisible College and after-parties amnesia erased. They don't just know me... they name me, they bind me to the moment past, they remind me of our promises - fulfilled and failed in ways we never saw coming.
Don't know what to say, never do outside the page really, except when they pull me away by their confidence and charm to speak in whispers to that which waits beneath our masks.
In the moment now, sound loops off old episodes of the Prisoner - "You must not grow up to be a lone wolf"... "People who hide are afraid"... "Anonymity is often the best disguise"... looping me back to the play I never got to write outside my head and my poor friends' ears. Looping back and there's my ex Violet and she looks so good with her new man (I'm never jealous anymore, I don't know why, seeing them with their happiness free at last from my own a relief so holy as to be a blessing). Talk to her briefly. There are others you talk to friendly faces, kindly psychopomps, lost crushes angel eyed and devil horned.
Between their spaces, their adventures, heartbreaks, and conquests, I close my eyes and dance.
Dancing with my eyes close makes my body feel the way my mind does when it writes.
Neither of which I'm very good at yet... but on night's like these I'm thankful to have been given this chance to try to be a little bit better than I am.
Because it's not that I can't see the pretty things they can see in me... it's that I can see things so much prettier than the sum of these reflections right there out of my reach.
And I don't know... isn't that what our favorite bands should do for us... reveal what we know but do not know how to say while simultaneously releasing our flesh from duty's gravity into free-fall dance?
So... these words fall true save and that's why I went to dwell alone amongst you in your crowds only to discover that my face will no longer serve as a mask.
Now for the hard part... getting up for work tomorrow.
