September 28, 2003

• Sitting here listening to Thomas Dolby. ‘One Of Our Submarines.’ Is missing. Tonight… Bye bye empire, empire, bye bye!
  
  Back in the early days of high school, I thought that for sure I would be cool if I had a cool stereo. I honestly can’t remember if I saved for it, or if my parents just gave it to me. I guess that was a lesson well learned… But the point here is that I ended up with it.
  
  It wasn’t exceedingly cool. It was kinda OK, and I listened to all the cool rock stations so I’d be all cool and stuff. Sitting there alone in my room trying to be cool. Such is the way of autism.
  
  I had a tape deck so I could tape the radio. One of my first tapes had ‘One Of Our Submarines’ on it, along with ‘Welcome To The Machine’ and other joyful anthems of alienation and despair. The early 80s were like that. So when I hear ‘Submarines’ I’m transported back to a certain feeling I had at that time.
  
  I remember walking through suburbia late at night. I’ve blogged about it before. I’d wander through the quiet streets, the strip centers, the parking garages at the local mall. All in the middle of the night, all alone.
  
  When I hear ‘Submarines,’ I also think about the Toms, Tom C. and Tom C. Both their last names started with C, so that was the joke. The Toms and me and Robert H. I think about playing video games on the Atari 800 and basically having nothing to talk about. Thomas Dolby in the background.
  
  By the time Dolby’s second album, ‘The Flat Earth,’ came out, I had it a little more together. I went down to Sound Warehouse and picked it up. I had heard that it came out on Reverend Huey’s show on KPFT. Reverend Huey was another very strange late night phenomenon, and I really regret that I never met the guy. Maybe my chance will come someday.
  
  He played all the strange music I was into. His radio show was, I think, his equivalent to walking around the suburban streets in the middle of the night. It came on at like 11pm and ended at 4am. I’d sit in my room with the headphones on, halfway asleep, while he poured Tangerine Dream into my ears.
  
  I always took my odd music for granted. Somehow I always assumed that everyone would hear, for instance, King Crimson’s ‘Frame By Frame’ and be blown away. Yeah, somewhere between Huey Lewis and the News and that guy who did the ‘Somebody’s Watching Me’ song, ‘Frame By Frame’ went over really big. Even the Pink Floyd fans would rush to the tape deck to find out if it was eating the tape. Never did I think I was hanging out with the wrong people; the fault was obviously with me.
  
  I know the first time I was ever The Guy With The Cool Music. 2001. I was listening to ‘Flugufrelsarinn,’ by Sigur Ros in the basement of the house in Ballard. M and her friend Mitchell came down to the basement to pick a random movie to watch, and found me there with the CD going, and those lovely speakers that E left when she moved out. Truly, the cool stereo I had always hoped for. Plus 20 or so years and some other people aroud to hear.
  
  ‘Flugufrelsarinn’ is hard to describe (and pronounce). But suffice it to say it held them in a sort of rapture for a while. When it was over, we got into a discussion about music, and they ended up not watching a movie.
  
  Finally. I had been cool. Now I could stop trying.

  • 5:29 am
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