Song Of The Day 5/31/2012
Days like yesterday remind me that Seattle is still a new city. Compared to the rest of the U.S., and even other cities on the West Coast, we're young. As politely distant as some people -- sometimes we -- claim Seattlites can be, when our heart breaks, we feel it. When the heart of our city's most vital culture and export breaks, it incapacitates us. Or maybe that's just how I perceive it. Business is still getting done, I suppose. Maybe we are politely distant. I don't know. I have no idea what any of this means.
The last week of violence already felt like the beginning of a slow descent. I know I was already starting to panic. Wednesday, for a moment, felt like that panic, unlike so many of my other panics, was entirely justified, and the descent was speeding up. The sense that we were falling apart didn't seem paranoid.
I didn't know Drew Keriakedes or Joe Albanese, two members of local band God's Favorite Beefcake, who died along with three other people in an unprecedented, scarily mobile shooting rampage on Wednesday. I have friends that did know them. From the accounts I've read they did not live to make airs about themselves, didn't care if they were insiders, and were maybe a little wiser for wear. Come to think of it, that's the character I've seen in a lot of Seattle musicians, many of whom I've met, some of whom I know to some degree, some of whom I've just admired.
Maybe that's why I keep ruminating tonight on our city's youth. There are other cities where this kind of horror happens on a daily basis, and there simply isn't time to process the fear, sadness and desolation associated with such acts, so they're often passed over. Seattle isn't like that. We aren't looking past this event. We're dazed and enervated tonight. I don't know if that makes us innocent, naïve, uncertain how to act, or anxious for the spell to pass so we can feel optimistic again. But all those traits are related to youth.
To Seattle's eternal youth. Sad hope. Eventual persistence. Rarely expressed more finely than from our elders.
The last week of violence already felt like the beginning of a slow descent. I know I was already starting to panic. Wednesday, for a moment, felt like that panic, unlike so many of my other panics, was entirely justified, and the descent was speeding up. The sense that we were falling apart didn't seem paranoid.
I didn't know Drew Keriakedes or Joe Albanese, two members of local band God's Favorite Beefcake, who died along with three other people in an unprecedented, scarily mobile shooting rampage on Wednesday. I have friends that did know them. From the accounts I've read they did not live to make airs about themselves, didn't care if they were insiders, and were maybe a little wiser for wear. Come to think of it, that's the character I've seen in a lot of Seattle musicians, many of whom I've met, some of whom I know to some degree, some of whom I've just admired.
Maybe that's why I keep ruminating tonight on our city's youth. There are other cities where this kind of horror happens on a daily basis, and there simply isn't time to process the fear, sadness and desolation associated with such acts, so they're often passed over. Seattle isn't like that. We aren't looking past this event. We're dazed and enervated tonight. I don't know if that makes us innocent, naïve, uncertain how to act, or anxious for the spell to pass so we can feel optimistic again. But all those traits are related to youth.
To Seattle's eternal youth. Sad hope. Eventual persistence. Rarely expressed more finely than from our elders.
Comments
I think what happened yesterday actually shows how connected Seattle is and how much the city can still feel. Not because it is young, but because even as it has grwon to be a top 15 metro area it is still rather provincial. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It just is.
I was born and raised in Seattle and still have friends there. I live in LA now and I doubt I could ever move back. I'm not sure I could get used to Seattle's inward navel gazing and they way it worships certain qualities that I think are a little silly. (My friends in Seattle all subscribe to the NY Times and the New Yorker. But why? Do they really need to be up on what's going on at the Whitney or know what's playing on Broadway?) But that sense of community is one of the qualities that makes the city special in a way.
Seattle should be proud that they are unnerved by what happened today on Roosevelt Ave. I called friends who live up there just to check in. I'm not sure my Seattle friends would necessarily do that if there was a shooting in LA. Mostly because it is so big down here that most of them don't even understand where anything is. (Neither does the national press. Bloody clueless they are.)
Seattle isn't young, Paul. It just doesn't want to let go of its inner child. I'm not sure it should have to either.
In the matter of youth, I was referring to a cursory effort in research I made in comparison to other West Coast towns that were extremely close to water. SF, LA, etc.
But I prefer your interpretation, about the inner child.
Thanks for the note. And your extraordinarily kind words.