“The morning of the day I got sick, I’d been thinking. It’s good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that. I know. But lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.”
“Many Americans, I think, feel that way.”
-The Sopranos, “Pilot”
Since I’ve been back, I’ve been trying to write about reverse culture shock. There are so many angles that I tried to explore and a lot of conflicting feelings that don’t have names. (A “melting pot” of feelings if you will…ha…ha…)
Do I paint a picture of the theme park-esque patriotic novelty of the suburbs? (Trump bumper stickers, marquees advertising standing for the anthem, blah blah blah.)
Or maybe, paint a picture of the abandoned swimming pool of politics? A sticky goo of political opinion desperately clinging to each side of the concrete, leaving any middle ground barren and inaccessible.
…or should I just make a list of the many flavors of Oreos and pizza toppings I can get now that I’m back?
Nothing could accurately capture the salad spinner rinsing hope, disgust, appreciation, confusion, joy, and anger as I think about my past, present, and future living in the States.
…until I cracked open my Beastie Boys Book and started watching The Sopranos. Then I figured it out.
Piece of My Heart
Just Kids, Beastie Boys Book, and Piece of My Heart: Janis Joplin are currently fighting for the top spot on my bookcase. The first few chapters of Beastie Boys Book (a 550-page behemoth, for your information,) paint a familiar, cool, and dingy portrait of New York City. Kids running from club to club, seeing Harry Rollins moshing in the crowd at shows, practicing in dilapidated, $50/week apartments in Brooklyn. Everything seemed cheap (in the good way) and everyone seemed to know where to go to watch legends workshop their now iconic hits.
There’s a certain awe that squeezes my heart when I read and watch these stories. Scar Tissue, A Band Called Death, Chronicles. Fame seemed accessible. Rent was cheap. Cultural revolution positively motivated everyone. But as inspiration and excitement bubbles up in my stomach, a green-eyed monster turns on his porch light. This green-eyed monster has to pay $900 for a studio apartment in Austin, and that’s nothing compared to LA or New York. This monster knows all too well that cheap downtown apartments are just a side effect of the “old days.”
“Back then.”
“Before …”
Sonic Highways And The American Dream
My favorite music documentary/story of all time is Sonic Highways.
Sonic Highways is an eight-part documentary mini series created by Dave Grohl. It follows the Foo Fighters as they recorded a studio album in eight cities across America. Each city features a lineup of modern-day music legends (Dolly Parton, Buddy Guy, Rick Rubin) who discuss the glory days of starting out as a musician back in this and that decade of the 20th century. Kind of the same deal as all the other stories that are strewn around my room.
When I was a senior in college, I was lucky enough to win a contest on Facebook and attend the premiere of Sonic Highways in New York. No skill, no hard work, just luck. In a rare case of spontaneity, I skipped class, met up with a friend in the city, and sat amongst Joan Jett and James Murphy and the Foo Fighters. Pretty sweet.
Sonic Highways is the type of story that makes you fall in love with the American dream: you move to a big city with no money, and then you work hard and hone your craft. One day, before you know it, you and your friends make it big and create a legacy. It’s emotional. It’s beautiful. It’s why so many people move to America in the first place.
You don’t have to be a musician to identify with these stories. They parallel the narrative that American children are promised from the time we’re wee tots singing patriotic tunes in elementary school. We’re told that anyone, rich or poor, immigrant or born in America, can scrape themselves up from the dirt and build a glamorous, rich lifestyle.
Anyone.
Well, at least that’s what the story was back in the good old days, right?
Things Ain’t Like They Used To Be
These stories of great American cities for music, unfortunately, always seem to nosedive as the clock strikes present day. CBGB reopened in the Newark Airport. South by Southwest is overrun with tech bros and thousand-dollar badge holders. Things aren’t like they used to be, everything is a parking garage. You know.
The ending of Luc Sante’s chapter in Beastie Boys Book follows the same formula. After pages of name dropping that I oh-so wish I could recognize, he writes “and so your club will become a bank, your rehearsal space a parking garage, your greasy spoon an eyeglass boutique, your dive a sports bar.”
The talking heads in the Austin episode of Sonic Highways would agree. (Anyone who lived in Austin before 2010 – maybe earlier – would agree.)
As Dr. Melfi said in The Sopranos, many Americans, she thinks, feel that way. Cheap apartments and the financial ability to create the life you want for yourself feel inaccessible. Even if you can afford to pay rent, you’ve still got to cough up money for student loans. Members of older generations could get a house; college graduates are paying a mortgage just because they were pressured into getting a degree.
But I don’t have to tell you this if you live in America. You know this. We all know this, and live this.
But Was It Ever That Great?
Okay, it’s very easy to get very dramatic when touching these subjects. (It’s very easy to get very dramatic when I am me in general.)
Millennials aren’t the only generation dealing with an apocalyptic worldview, financial burdens, and serious limitations on “making it big.”
The American Dream, while it’s recognized and dreamt by people all over the world, can be very easily written off as a privileged narrative that was never as accessible as it seemed in stories. And in the hangover from a manufactured nostalgia that doesn’t belong to me, I remember that hindsight is the buff and polish of a dollar-store nail file.
The Beastie Boys, the beat writers, the hippies, and Foo Fighters weren’t living in the perfect world that we choose to picture when we read their stories. The Vietnam War and the AIDS crisis took the lives of people who wouldn’t get to share their stories in a glamorized music documentary. The summer of love was all fun and games until Charles Manson sent Hollywood into a screeching halt. Grim political and cultural events serve as nothing but a glamorized montage to “set the scene,” when in reality, things didn’t feel that great at the time, either.
And the feeling that “we missed the good old days” isn’t exclusive to one generation. I mean, that quote at the top of this blog post is from the pilot episode of The Sopranos, a show that premiered in January 1999. Have Americans been feeling like we missed out on the American dream for 19 years? Or longer?
Of course, when Tony Soprano talks about the good old days, he probably wasn’t talking about how he would have loved to hang out with the Beastie Boys or at Studio 54 or watch Nirvana do a basement show. But the “things ain’t like they used to be” attitude seems to be everywhere in America. It’s the attitude that, after a few months of observation, is the reverse culture shock I was feeling when I came back from traveling around the world.
So…what now? What do we do with a feeling that we missed out on the ability to have a fair shot at success (or even just a cheap apartment in Brooklyn?) How do we grapple with the idea that even a generation who “had it” feel like they were missing out? Where do I get an affordable apartment, dammit?
The answers aren’t satisfying because the future is unclear. And if the hamster wheel of missing the good old days keeps on spinning, we’ll only continue to make ourselves and future readers miserable.
Maybe I’m Just Spending Too Much Time in New Jersey
Offhand, I remember bits and pieces of the first episode of Sonic Highways. Buddy Guy was interviewed and the Cubby Bear was featured as a iconic venue for young punks in Chicago. (The first time I passed by the Cubby Bear in 2016, I heard a Sublime cover band playing inside.) Dave Grohl had a punk cousin. Cheap Trick was involved.
But the moment that sticks out even further isn’t a moment when I was breathing the same air as Dave Grohl. It’s when my friend and I were watching a dark New Jersey highway slide under my tires on our trip back to Philly. We were JAZZED. We were so determined to write. Not just write; we wanted to created something important. I remember picturing us individually flying through sheets of notebook paper at our desks, furiously building something magical. I was confident that we could do it.
This moment, and many like it, help to shush the green-eyed monster and smack talk of the “good old days” in the back of its head. Until the days of the calendar run out, it’s not over yet. As inaccessible as some things may be, we have the ability to access networks and audiences that were unheard of to people “back in the day.” As grim as the future looks, we still have the ability to create and write and get inspired.
That magic book or novel or story that I want to write is still waiting with its number at the deli counter of my consciousness. I don’t know when, how, where I’m going to call it forward, but at least I know I haven’t missed out on my chance to create it yet.