Friday, August 29, 2008

Why not some Joy Division to cheer me up.

When I return to work after a vacation of less than 2 months, and the conditions seem unbearable the first day back, and I want to walk our and I almost do walk out, knowing I have no other economic recompense, I get tired and wish for the past. I used to live on a little over $300. per month. I don't think I ate much. And I never bought new clothes. And I didn't have a car. And life weren't so tedious sometimes.

Nevertheless I have felt like there is a wealth of experience beyond the "job" that, as long as it isn't over 7 and 1/2 hours per day, it's maybe do-able. Maybe.

In any case, the experience of watching the 2007 documentary on the band Joy Division, really helped me overcome the braindeadness of suprastress. The footage of the band and how they sounded in the beginning and their having come from an industrial place in England were the threads that wove themselves through the film. The film itself with the band members and other players in their success be interviewed in 2007 looking back, all of them set against a typical black confessional background, was kind of corny and pretentious. I had never seen the band although I had both of their records and played them all the time when I was about the same age as they were. I was going through a break up with my husband.

Ian Curtis got married at 17. He later had a French-speaking Belgian girlfriend. He read incessantly and had untreated bipolar disorder. When I listened to the band, I had no idea how Ian writhed all over the stage or what he looked like. I guess I didn't care. I was a punkette but had to work to pay for some expensive studio I had gotten in the upper Haight.

But the experience I had of Joy Division was not all about me. It was about other lives of my own of those of others and somehow transporting myself out of this lifetime to another my own --or someone else's.

1 comment:

Cory said...

joy division is the best