Saturday

It’s Saturday night and the dread is setting on… I am no pundit, no statistician, no economist, no diplomat, I am no political analyst… Just a music listener in a world getting louder.

In our guts, in our hearts and in our deluded brains we all have come to some kind of conclusion of who we want as our president…So very many of us made our minds up months and months ago and have, ever since, suffered through the punishing plod of polls, hyperbolic howling over gaffes and devious digs and schoolyard zingers ping-ponging back and forth; these disingenuous grins radiating across our screens as various outlets from the gutter blogs all the way up to the Times or the Post continue to do their best to keep us oh-so-informed…

The two candidates have been arm wrestling for months, both fists barely budging away from this narrower, narrower, narrower middle, however much each bicep bulged… And we’re all ostensibly breathless… Staying tuned in…

Nightmare holiday, ceremonial yet tinged with what’s been stirred up into apocalyptic repercussions. Oh so stirred up. Or so we feel…

The final countdown….

Sunday

And now it’s Sunday and the feverous faces on the TV. screens are playing with teleprompter-esque devices – fantasy football schemers, dungeons and dragons rolling 12-sided dice’ what if this state goes this way, what if this senator beats that senator… what will the country look like (feel like, sound like, smell like) on Wednesday morning?

Unknowingly, I’ve been regarding these last few mornings with that no-tomorrow-kinda-dread, like who could even think of the weekend or any kind of future recreation, who could parse through whatever kinds of awesome locals shows are scheduled for Saturday, November 10^th …

…when by that time I’ll likely be either still be recuperating, my pulpy brain reconnecting synapses since snapped by outrage-inducers and my heart settling back into healthier rhythms free of panic…or, worse…I’ll still be in bed, under the covers, catatonic, self-deluding myself into believing that this is all a dream and that the social structure of the nation will keep together if I just keep the shades drawn and avoid news radio broadcasts…gimme gimme shock treatment.

But you know… next Saturday will come…

There will be new music to be heard…

(Like Detroit pop-wunderkinds The Kickstand Band putting out their new LP via SubSprawl/Quack Media)

(Oh, and hey… David Bazan’s in town, at the Blind Pig on Saturday, too, playing old Pedro the Lion jams!)

But anyway…

The country will hold together and the rug won’t fling out from under us…And it’ll do us good to get out and see each other; maybe even share a dialogue on what it all means, what it’s really actually going to mean and what we can do about it –

Whether we’re appeased by “our-side-winning” or distraught by “our-side-losing,” whether we’re inspired or now-scared-shitless, we can all get together, as we always ever can, realize that there really (no, there really) shouldn’t be “sides,” and meet at the local loud house, the stage by the bar, hear some friends play awesome music, and talk—together, about all this heavy shit…

But we’ll see what happens… Onwards to Monday

Monday

And Monday brings… …initially, discussions of how Hurricane Sandy has effected the

race. Which, on the surface, smacks of insensitivity. Airhead analysts are playing head-exploding games of “What-If’s” with their iPads, epitomizing inanity while a couple million people shiver without power, commuting compromised, thousands currently homeless…

“…power outages in Lower Manhattan, flooding of the subway tunnels, and evacuation of hospitals…” I kept up some communiqué, via email, with former Ann-Arbor-ite (and Mittenfest mastermind) Brandon Zwagerman, who currently resides in “the high ground” of Ridgewood Queens.

“Our cities are vulnerable and small in the face of the elements,” he wrote, just one week before the election. “And yet, we are likely altering climate patterns in way detrimental to our own survival. Whether or not we a species decide to make an effort to confront that reality, each of us needs to take care of our own family, block, and community and find some strength and comfort among one another at the local scale.”

Take care of our own family… All the news networks are showing you opaque graphs of “the nation” –with red/blue maps. But our families here, not just in our house or at your mom’s house 15 minutes away, but it’s going to be here, in an unconventional sense, albeit, via the strange community-of-sound we’ve fostered as a, yes, music community. That’s what I’m trying to remind myself of…as I get nervouser and nervouser…

The long and short of it – as I head into Monday…an eve of a kind of Apocalypse-tinged horror-holiday… is that I’ll be curious to see what history makes of …well, not so much these candidates, underwhelming as they are… but of this electorate.

“…the rules of the road have been lodged / it’s only people’s games that you got to dodge…” –Bob Dylan – It’s Alright, Ma, (I’m Only Bleeding)

Faith in reason… a friend says to me as we part ways, that day. He has faith in the reasonability of the electorate overall. We’ll find out… tomorrow night…

Tuesday…

I’ve listened to ambient techno in the morning, then progressive hip-hop in the afternoon…wound up closing out the day with Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” (with the original lyrics) and then with Europe’s “The Final Countdown…”

Felt nervous all day… …unsure, sort of hollow even… but ready to faint.

And it turns out…

Wednesday…

…it was all for nothing.

But then… the peril of this piece was to invite potential for my, a music writer, revealing personal political leanings.

Was that ever a secret though? Middle class hipster eking along just enough to pay his rent and deterge-his-laundry and feed his cat and give his snooty 12-speed bike a monthly tune-up, who likes weird subversive art and strange music that scares his mom, growing up a mile north of Detroit and coming into political consciousness in the wake of 9/11…is it any secret then, clinging as he is, fleetingly, to his idealistic wide-eyed days of his not-so-long-ago-college-age-self, where this writer would lean?

It was never about that… this column, anyhow. I wrote this as a repudiation against the devious drudgers tap dancing across the TV screens, the pundits who had me so convinced that my life depended on this election. Flaring us up to fever pitches thus that we could barely see straight: conjurers of angst and anxiety with your polls towered above the substantive issues (environment, education, infrastructure, immigration reform, and countless others…)

Temporary Insanity. Or is it like Inception? They got into our brains and bustled us around a haunted fun-house and when we came out the other end… it wasn’t as close as they said it would be …

So now, can we stop all the bullshit?

Let’s talk about what can be done next… And since I see most of you, readers, out there “at shows…” …let’s not shy away from striking up a political chat once and a while. Because the discussion on our screens and twitter-feeds is … well… questionable.

Ugh… We’re done. It’s a new year. Let’s actually start something… and see if/how it can be done…through music…

OKAY…

All my heavy/heady ranting is done…

Let’s go see a show –and shimmy to some sugary-reverb-ridden punk-pop jams!

Tonight, the Yellow Barn hosts:
Swimsuit + Chit-Chat + Grass Widow

416 W. Huron, Ann Arbor, brought to you by WCBN + EQMC and sponsored by Arts at Michigan