Barren Stares

As I’m growing older,
I’m bored.
I remember when misery
thrilled me much more.
I was about fourteen when I first heard Ben Fold Five’s self-titled. It came out on Caroline Records, home of my pre-adolescent favorites, The Smashing Pumpkins, but Folds, Sledge, and Jessee were different. They were local boys, straight out of Chapel Hill. They recorded at Wave Castle studios, and they practiced off of Airport Boulevard, “down by Rosemary and Cameron.”
It wasn’t until later that I actually purchased own of their records, the sophomore release Whatever and Ever, Amen. I was sixteen, the proud owner of a new North Carolina driver’s license, and I drove around Durham listening to songs that could have been anthems for my misspent youth. “Song for the Dumped” detailed the angry, irrational thoughts of a guy getting the boot from a relationship, something I was all too familiar with. In “The Battle of Who Could Care Less,” I identified so easily with the song’s subject, and later realized that it was the song’s narrator I shared most with: a fellow singing a bitter, sarcastic diatribe about how “the more you care about something… the less they care about you,” as Ben Folds himself said.
When I went to college in the fall of 2000, for some reason I stumbled across my sister’s old copy of the band’s first album. I recognized some of the songs from radioplay (“Underground” was the perennial favorite throughout the group’s formative years) and others only seemed familiar. The majority, I had never heard, but the lyrics and the music seemed to echo a chorus that sang through my entire young adulthood.
Even in that horrible first semester of university in the god-forsaken barrens of Boone, North Carolina, I don’t think I understood what Mister Folds was writing and singing about. Not entirely. But I think that’s what makes music lasting, what makes art worthwhile. I could sing in my car, at the top of my lungs, the chorus of the song, “Video,” while driving the 180 miles back to home in Durham, but I never got it. I thought I did. I put my energy and my best squinty-eyed rock star emotion into the lyrics. And now that I’m older (as the line goes), I recognize that I was treading those same paths that Ben Folds probably wandered. I understood it then, on one level. And I understand it now, on an altogether different one.
When I listen to the song now, I can still remember what it was like to sing the words with such conviction. I have a mental slideshow of the imagery I associated with the song, of how mercurial and mystifying I was in listening to it, as compared to the lunkheads who never gave a second thought to the words of the songs. This was during the rise of Nelly and Christina Aguilera. I knew what it was like to be aware of things, to be an artist and to see all.
Well, I’ve seen
some old friends sort of die,
or just turn into whatever
must’ve been inside them,
and whatever all of us had then in common
grew up and left home.
I left school before Christmas, and I was back in Durham. Things weren’t the same. I tried moving out of my parents’ house, to live on my own with a friend from high school. That didn’t work. Things were different. As much as I wanted to hold on to that comfortable little world that had existed before, it was impossible. It had grown up, moved on. I was faced, for the first time in my life, with the complete and utter responsibility of choosing where I wanted to go.
We’re counting the days down
’til the day when we’ll live in a video.
I’ll be stone-faced and pale;
You’ll pout in stereo,
24 hours, every day of the year.
Oh, what fun!
I can’t wait ’til the future gets here!
When you’re on your own, you figure out how damn hard things can get. It’s not the difficulty of flunking a test, or of being able to ask the girl out. It’s lying in bed, unable to sleep because you may not make rent, or be able to afford groceries this month. It’s wondering about your purpose in life, and trying to kick a bad habit that’s been with you for eons. It’s job interviews, and college applications, and the burden of the future. In a way, these are simply the old problems dressed up in new clothes, with a smattering of makeup thrown on, but there’s one big difference: you’re the one who’s got to face them.
Depression and the sadness of existence seemed so new when I was sixteen. It had sneaked into my life, crawling through the doors left ajar by the death of my grandfather and a suicide attempt by a close friend. As I aged, it was always there and it lost its luster. It was no longer glamorous, and unlike the movies and books, it didn’t always result in some epiphany of ingenuity, or a whirlwind of pleasant happily-ever-after imagery. It was persistent, it was irritating, and most of all, it was tiring. It bored me.
I think that when you realize how mundane the troubles of life are–I mean, really, we all have them, in one form or another–it’s a little easier to recognize how wonderfully lucky we are to have breaks in between. The weekends of life are truly splendid. I’ve found the love of my life, and the path I was meant to tread, all in between the stumbling blocks. When I’m not tripping over the obstacles (or my own two feet), I’m awestruck at how damn nice it is to not be on my ass.
So I think I really understand what Mister Folds wrote in that song. I hear it now and I laugh, because I know that life doesn’t turn out like a music video. It has its moments of dread and despair, and they are not fashionable or glamorous. But they serve their purpose. Without darkness, the light cannot shine.
Closing in on the pain and the torture,
he’s slamming the door like it’s something to strive for.
The girl tearing curtains down
looks funny as hell.
And a sense of humor,
can there be any doubt?
Yeah, well, natural selection
had weeded it out
just to keep me from laughing out loud.
“‘Video’ was written when I was in high school. I had been getting fed up with hearing about the fucking sixties on VH-1 and everywhere else, kissing the baby boomers’ asses. In fact, what later became the whole ‘Generation X’ thing was brewing in all our heads at that time, probably, and it seemed that every generation before had had a lot of pride in themselves for what they were. Even the fucking Micky Mouse Club seemed more valid than anything we had, and everything new seemed to be a throwback or revival. Anyway, it dawned on me that what we did have was ‘the video.’ And that was even more depressing. And most videos were bleak and listless and projected this boring faceless future. These were the things to aspire to: frowning, in fact not just frowning but deadpanning, breaking things in slow motion over and over again, watching yourself on TV. So I thought, so that’s what it’s like when you grow up… I can’t wait until the future gets here. Then I added another side of what it was feeling like to grow up and assume responsibilty. Then again, I was just 17 (and you know what I mean).” –BF