Change Is a Sound

So on the drive home from work yesterday I was listening to Strike Anywhere. It has been quite a while since the last time I kick started my mind with the social and political ideology that this band's lyrics recommend, so OF COURSE i find myself needing to blog about it now.

Strike Anywhere was the first band to change my life. I started listening to them in 2000 when I was a 13 year old 8th grader in a family being ripped apart by divorce. Lets just say I had a lot of unanswered questions and pent up emotions on my mind. I couldn't tell you the day or place that my sister introduced me to the Chorus Of One EP, but I can tell you that I was NOT instantly hooked. My first reaction was somewhere between A) Holy shit, this cd is fucking crazy. and B) well, if Virginia likes it then it's cool, so i do too.

It didn't take much longer after that initial shock for me to warm up to the speed and energy of the songs. I had a general idea of what the lyrics were about, though I didn't really understand them or many of the references they were making. I did know one thing though... none of the kids at my middle school were aware of this band, so they were mine, mine, and mine. Finally, an identity! Sure I had convenient "school-only friends" who were into weird ska and mainstream punk bands and wore some goofy shit, but my parents didnt let me go to school with t-shirts or jeans, so at that time I, too, was wearing "goofy shit".

I could write a short novel about the first time I saw them play or all the times I have seen them both in Richmond and out of state, but I think you have the general concept. Let's skip back into the present though and see where the past 9 years have led me.

Made obvious by my lifestyle today, I don't agree with 100% of the message that S.A.'s lyrics bring. I do agree with a bunch of them though, and I definitely enjoy the food for thought that the other parts give me. I was thinking back over the past 9 years and wondering how I got to where I was in life right now. I don't mean this in a bad way at all, I mean shit my life fucking rules these days. I'm proud of who I am and what I've accomplished (for the most part) and I'm happy over all so in my book that is success. I just wish I was a little bit more involved with some things. I could never wait to be older because then people would take me seriously and I could do things that changed the world, or other people's lives. I wanted to make a stamp on the environment around me that would push something or someone in a better direction. I'm not saying that I didn't do any of these things or that I've gone in the other direction or anything, but I definitely haven't lived up to my own expectations.

Over the next couple days, weeks, months, whatever... I'm going to try to evaluate what I'm about now, and what I wanted myself to be about when I was younger. Then I'm going to consider what I will have wanted myself to be about once I'm too old to do it again, and hopefully I'll find a middle ground somewhere to get myself back on the "righteous" path that I thought I had laid out for my life.

Maybe you'll notice this change, maybe you won't. I guess we'll see...