Don't ask me why I obsessively look to rock 'n' roll bands for some kind of model for a better society. i guess it's just that i glimpsed something beautiful in a flashbulb moment once, and perhaps mistaking it for prophecy have been seeking its fulfilment ever since.
For Lester Bangs this was a moment, a moment that changed his life, a moment when music spoke to him the way nothing else ever had. over our lifetime, moments like these slowly build up and make us who we are. In The Vintage of Our Lives, a life changing rock 'n' roll moment is recounted for one boy, and another moment that leads him to true happiness.
Xander.
Xander Ashley Tucker.
That's his name.
A boy with pin straight, Hershey locks,
Over sized sunglasses,
You know the one's that make you look like a bug
And a knack for the oddities of life.
I mean, let's be serious,
He pretends to be blind, and I quote:
"To see the world a bit better."
He has:
Piano fingers,
A dog named Jupiter Terbium Tucker
A four year old Newfounland
He refers to as his brother
An acoustic guitar he got from a pawn shop,
"Beacuse money can't buy the story."
Along with everything else.
Xander himself, does not believe he is notable, yet the boy already has many a claim to fame. he has created a world that exists on the fringes of our own. he does not fit the mold of society, rather, he makes the mold fit his ideals. There is no compromise.
What made this flamboyant,
Butternut of a boy though?
Was it his parents, who themselves, were no more odd than the next set?
Or perhaps Jupiter, his dog, infected him with some canine salivary disease?
What could it have been?
Parents were designed to keep therapists in business (so he's no worse off than any other kid)
And Jupiter has had all of his shots.
Pondering this matter will only lead to endless rivulets of confusion. Oh! And to such a degree the Capulet herself would be green with envy. So, to save some time on this most tiresome of subjects, the answer is; No, not forty-two, but music. Xander was touched by a rhythm, a beat, a harmony, a lyric, somewhere along the way. He has been running ever since then without even the slightest care to look back. If you found home, would you look back?
Xander's flashbulb moment,
At the time seemed uneventful.
But prophecies are relative to the listener
And Xander heard this one loud and clear.
It was three years ago.
The night that changed an angst filled,
Thirteen year-old gay boy.
Friends and peers amassed in a crowded,
Sweaty
Smelly
Smokey
Room.
It was chaos.
It was pandemonium.
It was bliss.
At the time, Xander was still trying to find his place in the world
What kid at that age isn't?
His heart pounded in unison
With the plucked strings of a bass
The set had barely begun, and something was already changing.
Xander stood at the rim of that epochal moment's pit
As a lead singer shouted out his versus, prophecies, and curses.
A smothered boy stood
Mouth agape,
Fingers strumming notes he didn't know he knew
Like singing along to the radio,
Except only half the chorus is known
So the other half is improvised about cats eating chocolate pudding
Xander had always been a bit. . .off. But after that night, things would never be the same. His oddities were embraced full swing after a siren song proclaimed, "live free" . He had shuffled into the dimly lit, no name building, unassuming and excited. It was to be his first concert; the fact that the band had no real fanbase outside of the local population did little to dampen the spirit of one zippy Tucker child. Such trivial facts never did.
Xander only ever wanted the experiance.
And experience is what he got.
It came in the form of:
Cotton Candy Choruses
And the messages he heard loud and clear.
A lifetime of missed anarchy, debauchery and the realization of such missed opportunity all hit Xander in a sucker punch of two hours. The thread of eternity was unwinding from its little plastic spool. The music knitting a Milky Way cloak Xander wore with absolute, unabated, joy.
He was hooked,
A fish on a silver line
Life would never be the same
Xander had seen what the fulfillment of potential meant.
He had a mission,
He had purpose!
And he was loving it.
Even more than wrestling over a slobbery stuffed bone with his dog.
A flashbulb moment, caught forever
In the hands of that butternut
Never found a more wanting home.
Xander had blossomed into himself,
Owning every song he sang
And then one day,
The metaphor meant soemthing else.
Society had welcomed him,
but had he welcomed himself?
Sitting on a park bench that had become his regular spot a strange sort of pondering began to bubbly slowly in Xander's head. He had friends, to some he even had fame, he belonged.
But to whom?
These rebel anthems were about,
Finding yourself
Not conforming.
Yet. . .
Conforming is really what he had been doing.
No, he hadn't abandoned his odd ways,
The ones that lead him to faking blindness
Or speaking with a subtle rhyme to his sentences.
They were repressed however,
Born only in acceptable times.
When others found them most amsuing.
He realized now,
That he hadn't actually found freedom
He hadn't actually found himself
Yes, he had found a lyric, that made him feel
Like he was home.
But Xander had tricked himself into
Believing in this freedom,
Simply because he wanted to believe he was free.
A self imposed delsuion
But a delusion none-the-less.
He wasn't free here, he just was. . .
Part of him didn't understand what had happened,
But most of him did.
How sad,
It was to have lost such faith.
But Xander knew deep down,
He'd rather search a little longer for true meaning than exist in a lie. |
Submission Name: The Vintage of Our Lives
