rockstars

i spend a lot of time pretending to be a rockstar these days. maybe you would too, if you lived in a modest but slightly chipped up city bungalow with your parents and five brothers and sisters - all five younger than you - and they were all determined to grow into respectable and nondescript [but nice] sorts of people. if you were a tall, big-boned blonde tomboy with the soul of a girl who sometimes looks like meg white and sometimes looks like sweet little ghetto pixie, but who always looks a hundred times more mod than yourself.

but back to the rockstars.

i've been thinking that even people in bands must pretend to be People in Bands, and sometimes they must get so good with their act that we can't tell the difference. that happened to the beatles. the beatles dripped cool. they were so cool they were more human than the rest of us poor wretches and that's why we loved them. because they were rockstars. [because they were cool.] it's all about being cool these days, now that we've seen what those wonderful delinquents can do.

so usually my daydream phases in when i'm stuck at home babysitting and smack in the middle of some spiritual crisis. somehow People in Bands can get away with looking for baby jesus and somehow i can't. i didn't pray more than possibly three words today, but i pretended to be bono instead. i preserved a few shreds of integrity by pretending. boom! paradoxical magic.

i spent an hour watching post-punk gigs from 1981 on youtube today and started to cry. those fresh-faced boys on stage were so cool that they could act real. the kids in the mosh pits looked positively alive. even the grainy videos screamed energy and desperation and exhileration. god seems much more likely to want to listen to them. sometimes i think god lives at shows, where are the cool people are begging to find him.

but all of this pretending gets frustrating.