Left: The Greenville County Recycling Center, Stone Avenue in Greenville, SC. Here at Dead Air Church, we're in a mostly Buddhist mood this 4th week of Lent. Even though wonderful Belledame has just reached the astounding and enviable goal of 250,000 hits on her blog, I have to say, I had one of my lowest hit-counts this weekend, so I am fairly certain no one is reading. One can choose to abandon the blog at this juncture, or progress into even more obscure cultural corners of the Daisy-psyche.
Thus, Dead Air Church brings you the best in 90s Cowpunk nostalgia today, with the Meat Puppets' wonderful BACKWATER. This song is from Too High to Die (1994).
At this time in your humble narrator's life, I was working two jobs (about 50 hours a week); one at a small, community college, and another at a locally-owned video store that was uncomfortably close to the reality of the film CLERKS. In addition, I was madly scurrying to and fro in manic, 90s-soccer-mom mode, dropping young Delusional Precious off at choir rehearsals, sleepovers and clarinet recitals, trying to recycle and leaflet for candidates like a good doobie, attempting to be a good Catholic and never miss Mass, and wondering why I never had any time to myself. It was around this time that my thyroid simply fizzled out, looking backwards half-unconscious from the pain. I felt as if I was in a never-ending foot-race, always bringing up the rear, with no clean socks in the house for ANYBODY.
During this time, in which my life is a total blur, the song hung over my head; constantly serenading me through this addled, sleep-deprived period:
Hey, I'm blind
Good, fine
Roll the time
On whose dime?
And so, arguing with Delusional Precious in the car (no, you can't wear that to school) and trying to remember to let stubborn stains soak, dealing with the unpleasant fact of a dead pet bird (don't ask), driving, driving, driving, to work, to school, to recycle, home, and .... often forgetting where I was going mid-route... ah, those were the days, weren't they? Where did the time go?
The anal-retentive obsession with Recycling took on spiritual significance; something BETTER will come of my wasted days and wasted nights, I thought to myself. The song became a sort of nihilistic personal hymn to the lost hours, microwaved burritos and lack of sleep.
In short, there was some spiritual-sanity there, that these guys were communicating to me. I welcomed their wisdom, then as now. I didn't have time to stop and smell the proverbial roses, but sitting at traffic lights all over the upstate, I heard their words:
In the backwater swirling
There is something that will never change.
Absolutely true. Enjoy!
~*~
Meat Puppets - Backwater
[via FoxyTunes / Meat Puppets]