Nostalgia

20 Essential Songs from the Late Lookout! Records by Dr. Frank from the Mr. T Experience

I'm a little bit surprised at how much nostalgia this article is invoking for me.  I mean, I knew I'd know some of the songs, which is why I clicked on it in the first place, but I didn't realize how vividly the sounds and the stories would evoke the world of my late teens and early twenties.  I felt so on the fringe of things at the time, so attenuated, that I failed to notice how much of the East-Bay-Punk-Rock-Gilman scene had seeped into my brain and my blood.

I have more to say about this, I think . . . maybe.  But it's difficult because Danny is gone now, and that is hard to look at, being so ridiculous and ugly and unnecessary.

And yet, I cannot separate him out.  He was my link to the whole thing, my entree into that world.  At least that's how it started, and that's certainly how it felt at the time.  And afterward... well, it was hard for my little 23 year old self to figure out what of it was him and what of it had become part of me.

Fairly quickly, it became clearer (thank god, or this would just be pathetic), and I bought my own record player and a few punk rock albums.  And then my musical world view really opened up, as I discovered more and more music on my own and through new and old friends and figured out what I liked and didn't like.

But he, and childhood, and growing up, are so twisted around with this music and this world that they're impossible to separate without doing some damage, like performing surgery on conjoined twins.  The flesh has knitted, and blood vessels are shared, and there is no dividing line, no space between.

And so it hurts and it's good, and I'm sad and I'm happy to revisit something past.  And I'm seeing me and not me reflected everywhere.  And, yeah.  Nostalgia.