Man Called Aerodynamics

Both Voodoo, as it showed up in Otoliths in 2017, and the revised Emily's Voodoo and where it sits now, are an attempt to come to terms with Central Pennsylvania in the Nineties: what it meant and what it was like. Central Pa has built into it a certain amount of randomness, and also of obscurity: it's not that much of a national spotlight kind of locale. Penn State means football to most of the public. Yet, to people who love the place, and went through paces there that marked the hell out of them, the center of Philadelphia's state, Pennsylvania, will always have a sense of enchantment about it. As will Emily, who could also be called Maria, for germane, if skewered, reasons. And Guided By Voices, in Nineties State College, were knowable to the kids working the indie circuit, and became household gods as such. You can deduce from this that, yes, there was an indie rock scene in State College in the Nineties. The translation from GBV and Robyn Hitchcock disciples into world, or at least national, acclaim never happened. Small town life chewed up the State College indie scene and spit it out. I never myself got worked up about Bob Pollard and GBV that much. Neither did Emily. But that State College was ever that bum-fuck— not what I saw. And, as is in the piece, townies could be licentious in an unrepressed way. Central Pennsylvania breeds libertines, along with the sense that, if you keep the noise down, you can get away with murder. Licentious murder. Amidst the earth magic of the green stuff that lives & breathes. 

Drivin'

Drivin', indeed. Drivin' in a taxi cab from Dirty Frank's at 13th and Pine, all the way into the heart of Upper Darby. Paying $35 dollars for the ride, still a lot in 2026. Yup, folks, that's who I was in 2004: always assiduous about trying to do the things I deemed worthy to do. Dawn Ananda Hulton not only lived in Upper Darby, she bothered to live in what had been Todd Rundgren's house. So that, now that I've finally kicked For Dawn into shape, we can all start talking about rock music in Philadelphia without laughing or reaching for aspirin. Dawn Ananda was a musician, with a band called The Nooses. She also had a fetish for The Kinks and Arthur. Drunken, skittish, with a rich mother. Jane Fonda look-a-like: "What's your bag, Klute?" And on that drive, I had no idea I'd be sleeping on her living room couch, hiding beneath a blanket so her mother couldn't see who I was. The footsteps stopped, briefly, near the couch, then wandered away. In 2004, such incidents and situations revealed the primary laws of my nature. The infinite complexity of pain and pleasure. The Bean Cafe on South Street, where I wrote For Dawn, was also The Ween Cafe. The proprietor was Dean and Gene Ween's sister. So, randomly, this one has a rock insignia all over it. And a Philadelphia one. So there. 

Miracles

The intense craziness of my relationship with Jennifer Strawser, as is documented in Silly Putty, took much of its velocity from our being young, but also sprung from culture-shock, hot-wired into opposites attracting, then shaken and re-stirred without either of us being aware it was happening. Jen was clearly out to impress everyone in State College, especially the Daily Collegian crew, that she was from a solid lower middle-class background. She was not. Yet the headlong lunge into hard-core mattress-thumping calisthenics took Jen and I into a slanted, enchanted la la land where I hadn't bothered to venture with Kelly or Mandee. In the middle of our antics, Jen and I might as well have looked like Yellow Submarine cartoon versions of ourselves. Jefferson Starship catches Jennifer Strawser and I red-handed with what it means to, y'know, be able to handle things. We got lost. If Jen felt she had no choice but to lie, it all got busted when I visited Liverpool that summer of '96. At that point, I was occupying more than one la la land, owing to a dose fit for a Piper. Intense craziness. But the intensity is something, in retrospect, that I like. There was nothing tepid, bland, or insipid about who we were then, or what we did. The Marty Balin character in Miracles is about as pixilated as we were. And as horny. Jen visited Upper Merion, then, too, where I was stationed on semester breaks. We did a real roundelay routine. If I had trouble tying my own shoes at that particular juncture, so be it. Jen could tie them for me. 

Linger

I was in State College for the summer of '94, living in South Halls. It turned out to be uneventful. My first real semester was the Fall 1994 semester. I found myself living in North Halls, which, as a dormitory set, in the Nineties, was about artists and misfits. What is detailed about Kelly McCabe in Elegy's Ends is detailed with a great deal of affection. Mary and Abby were creative girls who could also come across as standoffish and pompous at any minute; Jen was amiable, usually, but displayed the hauteur of the beauty queen much of the time, too. Lo and behold: Kelly McCabe was not only genuine, she was what they call a nice person. She was good-natured, in a way that Mary, Abby, and Jen were not, exactly, or always. Kelly was also a gifted photographer, which would've received scoffs from Mary and Abby, but there it is. It remains strange that Linger, here, is such a plaintive song, because my memories of it, and of the fall of 1994, are so sanguine. Kelly was a Cranberries-head; not in least because Dolores O. seems to have lived for a while on her block in Lansdale. That feeling always happens when I hear The Cranberries: of the world opening up, of a bright new horizon set out before me, or a new expansive vista making itself known. Why I didn't stay with Kelly is that she only did one full semester at PSU, before disappearing into the mist. Her impact was, proved to be, indelible, as someone who, for me, was mostly about joy. 

Subterranean Homesick Alien

I always say that for the time I spent in State College in the Nineties, Smashing Pumpkins were the Chairmans of the Board for me and most of the people I knew, rock-wise. Radiohead were second in command. Yet when I look back at my time in Central Pennsylvania, it occurs to me that, towards the end, which for me was 1998, Radiohead had taken a lead over Corgan & Co. When OK Computer was released in the summer of 1997, it pushed Radiohead onto a new, lofty plateau. I cared enough to buy OK Computer the day it came out. This is a tune that illuminates my final year in State College. The environs of and around State College are full of country lanes. I also did have a way, first in '96 and then again in '97, of being abducted by aliens in State College. An uptight, hallucinatory scenario, indeed. This is a tune, also, that brings me back to one night, in the summer of '98, I stayed up all night with a friend of mine, doing random, meaningless tasks, as one might do in a small town in summertime. We wound up on the roof of the Weaver Building. At dawn, we got free donuts from a bakery where another one of our friends worked. Then I went back to my South Atherton Street sublet and crashed. Were aliens watching, and taking notes? Small town life sometimes does feel like living on the moon, or on another planet. Yet that's where I earned my stripes towards being the writer I am today, for whatever that's worth or not worth. What are all of these words worth? To small towns, aliens, donuts, and the Nineties. Peace. 

Fake Plastic Trees

Thirty years have past; thirty summers, with the length of thirty long winters, and all that jazz. The spirit in which I revised this one, now called The Rustic Inscrutable, was about the eternity of living through that time— the autumn of 1996 in State College— and recollecting it in a way or manner only semi-tranquil. Too many questions remain, even thirty years later. One thing is not in question— Carrie had the ops over Jen about music. As we drifted into our version of Nowheresville, Carrie set up The Bends as a mood-enhancing soundtrack. This was the Radiohead platter that had made them famous in the States. I heard it briefly in the spring of '95, then forgot it for eighteen months. Now, it lit up all the incidents and situations of that time for me— Jen and I united, then severed. Then, Jen herself disappeared off-campus into a foggy mist, after which she was never seen again in State College. Even as, unfortunately, bylines continued to appear with her name on them in The Daily Collegian. Carrie and I smearing our blood on various walls, groping towards real contact we couldn't make with each other. A brief anti-marriage. The fragility, the sense of alienation in The Bends was in us, too. The sense was, of course, that Jen's departure was planned to coincide with Carrie's arrival. I was a dummy-doll to be passed between them. Creepy stuff. It's all covered in Fake Plastic Trees, down to the fact that Carrie's physiology was famously an exhausted one. State College, and the drama department, wore her out. I happened to be stalled on the way to Outlaw Playwrights at that time. I tried the quaalude exuberance of Third/Sister Lovers with her, but that was (come on!) too extreme. Winter was coming. And spring. 

I Will Dare

For those of us who knew him, let's face facts: Andrew Lundwall was a punk. He was snotty, bratty, and a take-the-piss kind of dude. He was also extremely obsessive about rock, especially the avant or indie side of rock. The 'Mats, here, aren't exactly a punk band. Semi-punks. But when we picked him up in Beloit on a hot June day in 2007, Andrew Lundwall strutted into Steve's car in as completely an I Will Dare attitudinal fashion as was possible. He was ready to rock and roll in Chicago. The display of spontaneous virtuosity Andrew lucked into in Palatine, writing Chicago, as is here on P.F.S. Post, in Steve's living room, as Steve and I attempted to walk upright on a groggy morning, out-punked both of us about what it meant to be in the moment: alive, electric. Even if it's not like I didn't notice, then and now, that he seems to be aiming several pot-shots in my direction. Punk! But American poetry in the Aughts needed him, because poetry needed punks and punk energy: still does. Chicago may prove to be the central dare of Andrew's life fulfilled. It is the Keats-meets-Gordon Gano climax of what Amer-Indie could do around, or with, or among books. God bless you, Andrew.