A Meander Through My Past (Boring)
2003-02-07 � 11:40 a.m.

When I started playing guitar, the first song I learned was the first song any adolescent fan of The Cure would learn � "Killing an Arab." The second song I learned was Stone Temple Pilots' "Plush" because it's a good, simple song and it was before they got all popular and stuff. Then I learned a bunch of Nirvana songs from my best friend Skot, and then "Suck" (Pigface/Nine Inch Nails), and then "Jane Says"...

I was playing a guitar that was on long-term loan to me from my friend Mark. Mark was an interesting kid, and the very first serious drug user I ever knew (though not the last � I was to be exposed to a lot more colorful people once I went to college, oh yes). He was a big fan of what he called "juicing" which was a new concept to me, and basically consisted of drinking a fuckload of cough syrup that has a particular chemical in it the name of which slips my mind at the moment.

Mark often came to school juiced up, and was highly amusing in that state. Skot and I had Chemistry with him, and he was our lab partner. We had a nice arrangement � we would do the lab, write it up and put his name on it, he'd cheer us on and try to stay out of the way. We're the only reason he passed that class.

One day in Chemistry we were going to do a lab that consisted of growing a crystal between two sixteen-penny nails submerged in a solution. I don't recall the details, but we were warned repeatedly not to let the nails touch each other. This would be Bad, probably because it would spoil the solution or something.

Mark was out of it. He had a sick grin on and his pupils were dilated funny. Skot and I took him back to our lab station in the corner and propped him up against the wall while we prepped the lab. Mark provided commentary.

"Oops, watch out," he said. "Don't let those nails touch each other."

Skot took the nails, which weren't even hooked up to the apparatus yet, and crossed them in front of Mark's face, saying something like, "Nyah!"

Mark freaked out. Like truly freaked. The only part of the entire pre-lab lecture that he absorbed at all was "don't let the nails touch."

He squatted down on the floor, and yelled out, "Everybody down! The nails are touching!" And then he put his arms over his head.

Skot and I lost it. We were laughing so hard I actually knocked some glassware into the sink. The entire class was looking at us like we were madmen, and we only laughed harder when Mark didn't move � he just squatted there with his arms over his head, completely still. We had to pull him upright while we were still giggling like fools.

To this day, if things are getting weird or out of control, the term for it amongst my friends is "the nails are touching."

Mark is the person that introduced me to Nick Cave, among other things (here's where I reveal that I took Mark's example to heart and, two years later, chugged a bottle of cough syrup � on my birthday; an odd birthday, to say the least). Mark was enamored of Nick Cave. He was torn as to which was the better band, The Birthday Party or The Bad Seeds, though he usually came down on the side of The Bad Seeds, since it had "Nick Cave and..." in front of it. Wings of Desire was the best movie ever, because Nick Cave was in it. Nick Cave was the best lyricist, and the deepest writer.

He leant me Cave's first book, King Ink, which I found to be disjointed and confusing, as it was really just a collection of song-lyrics and half-essays, but there was one essay that stuck out for me, and it was Cave talking about Einsturzende Neubauten.

I didn't know much about EN except that they existed and were in some way Holy Saints of industrial music. Cave's essay made it all clear. He talks about seeing EN on a Belgian television show, and this instrument they had made out of a piece of drainpipe. He describes going to their studio, and that it was more like a garage or construction site, and that they had mic-ed and were recording the sounds of a dog rooting around in a pile of entrails.

That is so cool, I thought to myself. These guys are hard core.

Which doesn't really have anything to do with anything else, but still happens to be true.

But as I was saying...

I started playing the guitar for all the wrong reasons. See, at the time, my friend Skot had just started playing the guitar, and he was into it. So into it that he didn't want to do or talk about anything else. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

It was really frustrating so, in desperation, I too attempted to pick up the guitar. This worked in some ways and failed in others. I was never very good at it, probably because I didn't have the right kinds of motivation. I actually took lessons, from this interesting and pretty cool guy named Roger. Roger was a janitor by day and taught guitar out of his house in the evenings. His taste in music ran pretty heavily to classic rock, but he urged me to bring in songs that I'd like to learn to play and he'd help me figure them out, etc.

I took this as an opportunity to expose Roger to some different kinds of music. He still has my Primus videos.

All of which is to say that Roger helped me learn what was the culmination of my guitar playing career, The Cure's "Prayers for Rain."

I can still play it, as I had a nice little guitar-only arrangement worked out that covered all the major hooks, whether they were guitar, bass or synth. I think I came close to getting at what Skot was getting at then, because I enjoyed the process of playing the song, even though it was a lot of work getting there (me not being musical and all).

Not long after that I just kind of lost motivation. Skot never really did, and got into using his computer as a recording tool a long time ago (thank god for Amiga computers). He's still at it, and if you haven't gone to check out his songs on BVDI, you should. His new one, the Car Commercial one, is a lot of fun.

Those hoping for a point to all this will now be radically disappointed, as there is none. As a reward for your patience, here is the song I wanted to give you yesterday:

Siamese Twins

Tah!

-t

Currently Aurally Inducing: The Cure, Six Different Ways
Selection of the Lyrical Vocabulary: "This is stranger than I thought...six different ways inside my heart."

[ last ] [ next ]

�	Int4rw3b Personals

�	Gene Wolfe

�

Image Fix

�	Again, I Return. (Gonna have to knock this off...)

�	A Return of Sorts