So - disclaimer. Like an idiot I didn’t write down the initial list of my Top Artists over the last three months on last.fm so as I keep listening to music my list keeps changing. I can’t remember the order of things when I started at all, so I’m going to just keep moving down the list as if each of the artists were there the whole time.
Last Three Months Theme - Entry Four: If I'm Sinking and Laughing at Something Sunken In, I Am
7. Why?
Why? Is one of the notorious bands from the anticon scene, and frontman Yoni Wolf participates in a handful of other anticon bands, markedly cLOUDDEAD and Hymie’s Basement. Why?’s second, and in my opinion, best album, included contributions from additional anticon favorites Doseone and Odd Nosdam. My love for the anticon collective is similar to that for Elephant 6 – there are very rarely any releases that don’t impress me, and I love the idea of a large amount of my favorite artists all sharing space, being friends and collaborating and creating music that has meant so much to me.
Alopecia, Why?’s second release, is another that has already received a fair amount of attention on the boards, so rather than talk about it as a whole I’m just going to word vomit all over you.
Am I an example of a calculated birth?
To a star chart for clowns?
My parents split up when I was young, and my dad won custody after a long, arduous, gruesome battle backed by his parent’s money and the support of the local LDS church branch (I am not joking). I grew up with my father and stepmother (a woman he was cheating on my mom with and then married three months later) and was systematically turned against my mom. I was told she left because she didn’t love me anymore, she would send birthday cards I would never see. I wasn’t allowed to talk her from the time I was 10 until I was 18. I moved out of my father’s house when I was 16, no longer able to look him in the face and no longer willing to give him the satisfaction of having me depend on him, not only as a parent but as a human being. I graduated high school in May of 2008 and after reconnecting with my mother via myspace a few months earlier I invited her to the ceremony. She accepted. She came to Wyoming after being gone for nearly a decade and we had an Oprah worthy reunion. At the commencement exercise my father made a scene in front of everyone in attendance, upset about the fact that I had invited her. He told me he hadn’t considered me his daughter for the past six years. I told him I wanted him out of my life. My mother invited me to come visit her where she lived in California and I did, and once I got here I realized I had nothing in Wyoming to go back to, so I stayed. I left everything behind and I didn’t tell anyone I was leaving.
But I was born for this flight/ United 955 on the fifth of July/ Back to SFO I join the dark side in a thin disguise caught on consumer grade video at night.
Alopecia came to me at one of my lowest points. I learned of Why? Through MB immediately after I had made this move away from my hometown unexpectedly.
I had ended up in California where I knew no one, knew nothing, wanted nothing, and wanted to do nothing. I had jumped a plane to San Francisco National Airport from Salt Lake City. I joined the dark side in that I joined the family that I had been so warned against for such crucial years of my upbringing – suddenly everything I thought I knew about my mother was turned upside down and I realized for how long my father had been lying to me, and I saw the lengths he went to keep me from my mom. My thin disguise was created in my attempt to hold myself together while I decided which parts of me I wanted to keep, which people I wanted to let in my life, who was safe and who was a threat.
A hollow bullet yet spent
Subject to dismissal
I sunk into a deep depression. After moving in with my mom I reverted back to a childhood state of dependence that had become unfamiliar to me by then – I allowed her to take care of me in the ways I had been craving since she left. I stayed home all day, doing nothing but eating and watching movies. I read all the books in her house, I questioned everything I believed. I went nowhere, I talked to no one. I began to develop a new philosophy on life, sparked by a constant series of existential crises. I abandoned the plans I had made with my best friend from back home in regards to moving away to Oregon to go to college together – I decided I wasn’t ready. I learned guitar and wrote poetry and immersed myself in MB, collecting and discussing music, making friends and discovering substantial things about myself in the process.
While I'm alive I'll feel alive
and what's next I guess I'll know when I've gotten there
I began to feel better about myself, having picked apart every aspect of how I knew what I knew, why I needed to know it, and what else I needed to know. The depression had not left, but its weight had decreased. I felt confident in the things I spoke of, I felt sure of myself in a way I hadn’t before. I got a job, moved out of my mom’s house and put together a life I could be proud of. I haven’t spoken to my father since.
The first complete song I wrote was about this experience and was in part inspired by the SFO line in the
Vowels Pt. 2. I’ll share that now.
Lyrics:
I packed my bags two days after my high school graduation
Said goodbye to my hometown without much hesitation
Jumped a plane to SFO in my determination
And made my way through the North Bay with sense of liberation
My sister said I left due to lack of appreciation
Dad cried out abandonment toned with intimidation
But they can’t steal the thrill I feel negation expectations
And guilt trips call for too much fuel and duel cooperation
Lies won’t hide invisible scars
You looked right in my face and said you don’t deserve resentment
That night when you disowned me, yeah, you said you never meant it
I promised my forgiveness and you filled up with contentment
But I had my fingers crossed inside the pockets of my jacket
You always said that anger’s justified when provocation’s present
I grew up knowing you were wrong, accepting the unpleasant
But now today three states away I’m calling you pathetic
And if the whole world shit on you it’s only ‘cause you let it.
Lies won’t hide invisible scars.