I went to CDepot today to try and cheer myself up. I am going to do this music thing even if it means I end up in a hospital bed with complete nerve failure. Fuck it, I don\’t care. Anyway, CDepot is on the larger side of a middle sized independent music store in College Park, Maryland. I walked in the door and started down the aisle on the right hand side, when I noticed something. Unsettled, I started to count. There were eighteen people in that store. Seventeen of them were males, and one of them was female — me. Gang rape wasn\’t my fear — simply being a girl in a boy\’s culture was pressing down on me. The music selection there is predominantly male created (as in most stores), with only a smattering of the more mainstream female artists.
I purchased some classic (hit and misses — Cabaret Votaire\’s singles collection from 2002, The Living Legends on Mute Records; the 1981/2001\’s imported Public Image Ltd Flowers of Romance on a label from the Netherlands, Disky; Psychic TV\’s 2002 compilation, \”Origin of the Species\” Volume III: The Final Supply of Two Tablets of Acid (the remixes!) on Invisible Records, This Mortal Coil\’s 1986 effort, Filigree & Shadow on 4AD; Suicide\’s 1989 album A Way of Life on Saturn Strip Ltd; and even more embarrassingly, the 1998 The History of Ska three CD comp on Dressed To Kill; all for only $42, so top that) releases and was met with a \”Uh huh, nice selection,\” at the counter, which I suppose is better than \”You like this kind of music?\” or even the backhanded \”That\’s quite a selection… know much about this music?\” that I have received at other places such as DJ Hut (and if you do a search on \”DJ Hut DC\” at Google, my DC guide to scenester hell, which is about to be relocated, is the 19th site listed), so I gritted my teeth and didn\’t say anything. Next I walked next door to Atomic Music, which I had never been in before. I was looking to price cartridges, if they had any. There were six people in Atomic Music (not bad for four in the afternoon), and again, I was the only female.
These are what we call intimidating situations. It\’s easier to be a female in music these days, but it\’s still damn hard. How are we supposed to like music if we feel it\’s almost exclusively a male field? Who is there to introduce us to new music, to expand our musical knowledge? Mostly the very men who intimidate us by their sheer numbers, their comments and attitudes. Once they expose us to new music, it is predominantly male created, produced, and released on a label run by men. Often are the times I have heard from my male peers that women have not made any \”viable, important\” contributions to music, influencing only music created by other women. Often are the times I have been passed over and my opinions discarded in favor of a \”real\” music fiend — always a male. How many times have I tried to read about female artists, only to find that on the rare occasions I can find anything other than Rockrgirl, the majority of the articles all have pictures of the women with their tits pushed up, tight clothing, lips parted and their waists cinched? Outside of the \”female oriented\” magazines, when was the last time you saw a picture in a music magazine of a non-black woman who was over weight or not matching society\’s beauty standards?
I am so pissed at the state of the music industry, including the \”indie\” industry, that I want to wear my cunt on my head to every store, show, workshop, club, magazine and label offices, just to be defiantly, overtly female. What did riot grrrl change in the music industry? It paved the way for Lilith Fair and the plethora of Ladyfests, but the primary attendees at these festivals were women. We need to stop worrying about creating and pandering to a female market, and concentrate instead on a universal approach. What is good for my cunt is good for your dick, boys. Lick it up.
A good friend of mine\’s mentor and dear friend died Sunday night. He is distraught, and understandably so, but I am worried as to what other effects this is going to have on him. In speaking with a mutual friend of ours last night, in his words, it seems like a lot of people are \”popping off\” these days. Four other people he knows have died this season, including one friend who jumped off a building. I have another friend who told me on Christmas Eve that he wants to die, that he knows he could do it, and that the only thing stopping him is his mother and her dependency upon him. If something happened to her, he says, he would kill himself, that it would be easy. I know him too well to know that he is completely serious. I think I am the only one he has told.
My mother\’s eldest sister has had eight epileptic seizures in the past five days, and the doctors will not release her from the hospital. She is also running a subnormal temperature and has been in an almost constant state of disassociation. They cannot figure out what is wrong, and until they do, she is there to stay. My grandparents are afraid she will never be released, or if she is, that she will have to have constant assisted care, something they cannot provide themselves. The stress and worry are wearing them even thinner than usual. After my aunt\’s first seizure on Thursday night, my grandfather turned to me and said, \”This house is full of invalids.\” He had tears in his eyes when he said it. His wife has been \”dying\” according to the doctors since last March. She was only supposed to last a maximum of another six months, and here she is almost a year later, still kicking it on her oxygen tank, bitching at as all. My grandfather is emotionally dependent upon her to the point where if she dies, he will immediately give up as well. He has already dealt with cancer, among other things, and his health is unbelievably frail. If their eldest living child needs assisted living, they will have to sell their house and the three of them will move into a managed care facility, as their other two daughters are unable to manage three completely ill and dependent people while one of them works a full time job and the other has a full time family. I know my family too well to know that they will not bother to continue to live in such a facility, and that they will let go within weeks of entering.
A lot of people are \”expiring\” (I hate that fucking term; it\’s so cold and displaced) in the past few months due to old age alone, and others because this is the coldest winter we have had in years and their bodies cannot handle it. Others are cracking under mental and emotional pressure. Suicide rates climb and relationship \”failures\” happen more frequently in times of economic crisis and times of war. The stressors surrounding us in the media trickle down to a constant tension in the air, creating more problems among the populous as a whole. Most people cannot withstand the atmosphere and everything starts to show cracks. That which already had cracks starts to rupture. Some people feel the personal and public environments are unbearable, and then they themselves crack and forgo rupturing to ultimately break off from life itself. They could seek help, but many feel they are beyond help, or even that they do not want help, that they would rather simply die. There is nothing, however, simple about it.
I feel helpless to stop or slow the increasingly dangerous situations everyone around me seems to be in. It feels like there is nothing I can do, and that even worse, if there was something, most people would not want me to do it. It feels like everything around me is barrelling towards the same inevitable conclusion — a breaking point.
Or maybe I have been listening to too much \”roots of goth rock\” music and this is why men don\’t take women\’s relationships to music seriously — because we tend to have emotional reactions to everything, and often times, overemotional reactions. Oooh, stereotyping!
