Drown

As may be a pressing question for interested parties: does State College bear out its existence from the heart of Pennsyltucky? Even more important: is Jen a Pennsyltucky Princess? The answer is no and yes. State College, like Philadelphia itself, subsists surrounded on all sides by Pennsyltucky territories. But the influx, in the small college town, of students and faculty from Philadelphia, New York, and elsewhere renders the place cosmopolitan enough not to fall prey to Pennsyltucky syndromes. Where Jen was from, Liverpool, in the Harrisburg 'burbs, really is el primo Pennsyltucky real estate. Which means that, between being a city suburbs kid and being high as a kite on crack, I was destined for a big culture shock when I crashed there in '96. I felt strongly at the time: I could either channel Johnny Cash or Arthur Rimbaud. I chose Rimbaud. Back, also, to the Nineties. The cultural Nineties in America have a long and short version for me. In the compressed narrative form: the Nineties let popular culture get much more real than it usually does. This, I watched from State College. But The Pumpkins were a Zeitgeist band about the issue of real musical reality impinging on corporate third-world-ism and death-emphasis. With a soundtrack like The Pumpkins, it was easy to get transcendental. And ride the Nineties roller-coaster and appreciate it for all it was worth.