Bubblegum Pop and Metallic Gel Pens

28 June 2002

Sometimes I wonder who I am. You know, what there is to me. I'm stuck in this hell hole of suburbia, same as everyone else. Everyone wants to get out; everyone thinks there has to be something better. But almost no one ever leaves.

I listen to the same music as all my friends. They all listen to different kinds of stuff. Pop, metal, whatever they're calling that weird dark stuff they'll claim has been around forever, but don't forget, they say, this is new. They'll only admit to liking whatever it is they want to call it, though. It’s all the same escape.

I like to dream of laying outside with the rain washing over me, turning the ground into runny mud and pelting down on me. Maybe I'm dreaming it'll wash something off. Change something. The music is static; it all says the same nothing. Thunder of a great storm rolls in, but the storm never really hits, and I wonder if I imagined it.

I could sit here all day in my room in my bathrobe and it wouldn’t make any difference. I can sit at my perfect lap top computer like in the new movies and type out my life to the invisible people living inside their screens some thousand miles away. I don’t even have to be real. I can make up who I am, live a thousand lives. The internet is the perfect place for Attention Deficit America; you can be a new person every ten minutes. Hell, you can even be a new person at the same time as you’re someone else.

It's all the same escape. Everyone wants to get out; everyone dreams of somewhere better. But no one has the guts to ever leave. Oh, sometimes they run. But you can't actually escape. There's nothing else to go to; the old gods have been replaced with new shinys and the only people who say they remember them really made them up to escape from the same thing as everyone else.

Some people can get swept up in it. I always wonder if they'll see it the same as me one day, if they'll see everyone running and realize nothing is real, this life they've been living is just something to immerse themselves in until something else comes along.

I like to dream of a huge storm coming and washing over the world. Change something, maybe. Make something happen. But I know I’ll never really escape. I like to think sometimes I feel transcendent. You know, that feeling when you finish a good book and imagination is still hovering so close to reality that you can almost see through the veil finally. Everyone thinks that's fake, run from that feeling and try to keep living in the real world. They don’t see it’s all just another escape, another place to hide from the same thing as everyone else.

Everyone feels their music is moving; it does something to them. Maybe it does. Maybe it's transcendent. It brings the veil closer again. Makes it easy to get lost for a while. Everyone wants to get away. But there's no way out. Nothing's real here; it's all marketing for the new shiny to amuse the magpie masses. These days trends won't even stay around long enough to remember themselves. When everything's new, you might as well try everything at least once.

But you don't always have to admit it. Go on, bury your past, scratch over all the things you once indulged in. Be a new person. Everyone wants to be the next newest thing at the corner store (which is of course, a popular chain for the next two weeks)--new and improved, shiny attractive packaging. Everyone wants one. No actual content.

They all tell the same lies, and they all believe them. They press up against each other desperate for intimacy when all they really want is some way to get back closer to the fantasy world they lost when they stopped seeing fairies, or believing in God, or thinking the swing was like flying and you could touch the clouds if you swung high enough.

But I guess everyone needs something. Something to hold onto. Something to make them feel transcendent. So maybe they can believe they'll get out one day. They need something to fill up that hole, and its new and improved and shiny and claims to fill holes you haven’t even found yet....

I dream of rain, heavy and thick and running into my eyes so I can't see anymore. I can't tell if I'm laughing or crying any more, there's just rain. And maybe it'll wash me away....