I Don't Like Mondays

The first time I heard that Boomtown Rats song (when it actually left an impression) was last summer during the preshow of Wonderland at the MN Fringe Festival. I remembered the lyrics and ran home and typed them into google and found it. I downloaded it. I listened to it over and over and over again for at least a month.

I was reminded today that I can hear a song a hundred times, thousands of times, and never understand what it actually means. Because maybe I only listen to certain phrases or the chorus or whatever. It's really hard for me to learn lyrics as it is and mostly I'm singing some distorted version of the song. Usually I just take bits and pieces of song and make it my own, connect with it how I need to for that phrase or line or word or instrumental climax. Of all the millions of times I've listened to most of (all of) Bruce Springsteen's repertoire, I really only know Born to Run like the back of my hand.

I had no idea I Don't Like Mondays was about a school shooting until today.

I listened to the song after work on my iTunes with that lump in my throat and the tears welling up in my eye. It was such a chipper, bouncy staccato song to me until I heard it for real today.

All the playing's stopped in the playground now
She wants to play with her toys a while.
And school's out early and soon we'll be learning
And the lesson today is how to die.
And then the bullhorn crackles,
And the captain crackles,
With the problems and the how's and why's.
And he can see no reasons
'Cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need to die?

When I was checking my email and MySpace as per usual at the Apple Store today, announcement of the tragedy was smeared across the Yahoo homepage. It didn't seem real. It seemed far away. It seemed like it was the anniversary of something that happened 40 years ago or 8 years ago. Then, a split second later, I realized it was real. And I opened up the link and read the article and saw The Boomtown Rats reference. And that, no matter how trite it seems, is when it was real to me.

My heart breaks for the students, teachers, staff members, family members & friends of Virginia Tech.

I don't know that pain. I pray that I will never know that pain. Loss is inevitable but not in this way, at this time, at this place.

When I saw that, my body began to slightly react like it did on September 11th when I called my mom in the Student Center of my own college and started weeping. On that day of my junior year at St Olaf, some boy, who I never knew and whose face I barely saw, rubbed my back as I sobbed with my mom on the other line. Today, when I felt that same distress began to creep up, I thought "Oh Shit", got out of the Apple Store and breathed. My reaction today did not even come close. The mall, the Apple Store boys, The Department Store were spared my seemingly melodramatic tears. I walked back to my friends at the counter. I didn't even know how to say what had happened because I didn't want it to seem like I was spreading some insane gossip. Saying it out loud would also make it that much more real.

Then, when I went back, the numbers had grown and now it has become the worst shooting incident in US history.

I hate that this happened. I hate that tragedy of this magnitude happens all the time on the other side of the world. I hate that the mother of my Vietnamese boss often wishes she never came here because, right now, "life is just better over there."

I don't hate this country. I just don't understand it.

Right after September 11th, Bruce was walking down the street when someone shouted from their car "We need you Bruce." When I went to my first Springsteen show in August of 2002, I saw a man in the audience holding up an American flag and I started to cry because it was the most honest, decent, genuine form of patriotism I had seen in a really long time.

Bruce isn't god. I know that. I'm not THAT crazy. But his music has helped me at my most difficult times.

I hope that those families and friends at the University find what they need whether that be religion, another person, nature, a song, a phrase...whatever it may be, I hope they find it. I hope it brings them a bit of solace.

There's a moment in a song, that one second, where the entire tune opens up. The music or the phrase climaxes and it could be quiet or loud. Give me a song and I will find it. It is one of my favorite challenges. When that moment jumps out at me, I will look down and memorize the exact second. I will rewind it to that second and make sure I have the exact second. In the past, it has been:

3:31 of King Without a Crown from Matisyahu's Live at Stubb's
3:02 of This Way from Dilated Peoples featuring Kanye West
3:16 of Mr. November from The National's Alligator
1:21 of Your 8th Birthday from Cloud Cult's The Meaning of 8

Last month, my friend Kevin and I sat in his car in downtown St. Paul as we waited for the doors of the theatre to open. Giddy and relaxed from the brownies, listening to Arcade Fire's Neon Bible, we pass the time.

"I'm waiting for that moment where it opens," he says.
"It's right here," I say a second later.

1:16 of Neon Bible from Arcade Fire's Neon Bible

7:56 of Jungleland from Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run

And that song means something extraordinary and painful at this moment...

Beneath the city two hearts beat
Soul engines running through a night so tender in a bedroom locked
In whispers of soft refusal and then surrender in the tunnels uptown
The Rat's own dream guns him down as shots echo down them hallways in the night
No one watches when the ambulance pulls away
Or as the girl shuts out the bedroom light

Outside the street's on fire in a real death waltz
Between flesh and what's fantasy and the poets down here
Don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be
And in the quick of the night they reach for their moment
And try to make an honest stand but they wind up wounded, not even dead
Tonight in Jungleland

There is freedom for me in that second of all those songs. Where is that freedom for others? Where is that peace?

There is so much love in my life, sometimes I feel like I'm going to explode. I need to always remember that.

I am reminded about how much I need to embrace those who give me so much love in return. I need to not be so afraid to say I love you and to deal with the painful and wonderful repercussions of meaning it.

I took this picture on Thursday night. Ice Rod and ZibraZibra were opening for Leslie & the LY's at The Entry. It was a hilarious night with a great friend from my college. Though in a couple moments, Ice Rod aka Michael Gaughan would perform a kickass rap about the glories of the booty, this picture makes me sentimental. Cause right now, it means what I need it to mean.



Maybe we'll someday learn to turn the Mondays around.