last night i listened to a tape i entitled ----------xxkillyourselfxxx---- for the first time in a good month or two. i actually hadnt heard any of my own music in that long because after having gone through 3 everfucking walkmans since ive been here i just didnt have the heart to go buy another one. but my mom gave my sister adji one for xmas so i borrowed it last night to listen to tracy chapman croon (her tape) while we were standing in the street as she gave her exboyfriends jewelry back to him. when we got home i went to the mirror in our room and began to play with my new tresses-braided hair extensions, brown and light brown mesh, curls at the end-i havent had long hair since i was 16. its really damn fun, and it hides my imgrowingmyhairoutpoofnasty. the whole thing took about 5 hours and 15 dollars. after dinner i was sick of tv so i went into my room to draw and listen to one of my tapes; and continued to after my sis and i turned the lights out.
so i was listening to the --xkillyourselfx--- tape - filled, as one might suspect, with sorrowful songs designed to put you in a sorrowful mood or make you feel better if youre already in one, depending; well i didnt really want to be sad but theyre great songs and fuck was i tired of hearing nothing but mbalax, zouk, and rap (ie popular senegalese music). it was about at me-music as i could get.
what i also didnt realize is that its about as 2413 (the address of my apt for 2 years in mpls) as a tape could get; throw in gypsy chimp, maybe some gorillaz and joshietypetekno and that would be about it. i started thinking about josh and mary and the colon pipe crew; and about other josh and nic and all the josh crew and elizabeth and then about josh sommore and i realized how terribly i missed the...josh and mary havent written one single word since i moved out of that apt, almost six months ago. i started crying. two tears rolled down my face in the dark as i lay on top of my new tresses, and then my body started to shake as i tried to ease my breathing so my sister lying next to me wouldnt notice i was crying..or maybe she was already asleep?
i started to think about ani sampling utah phillips quoting ammund hamisey (that old fart) "you love the country...the people, you just cant stand the government; get it straight." that quote never made much sense to me. intellectually i sort of identified with it, but i never really felt it in my whole. i was too busy thinking of the exceptions, the people who ate cubs food buns and burgers while blasting the latest poprockwonder out of their ineffiecient dodge rams and SUVs, parked next to the pool; talking about niggers and faggots wanting something rediculous like being treated as something other than a category of Unwanted and didja catch the game last sunday? brruuuUUP, pass me an BPR willya?
the quote never really caught me, made sense in my whole because i was too busy looking at my hate.
now it does.
*
.i bought a walkman today.
