Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now by Andre Perry

Author:Andre Perry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio

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“In college,” Miranda said, “I was a hipster. I was one of the cool kids.” She meant, I think, to impart on me that, despite my literary pursuits and vibrant interest in music, she hovered above me on a higher artistic plain. She had studied art and she had been a painter. I asked her, much to her annoyance and passive disdain, why she didn’t paint anymore, why she pursued a degree in library science. “Just ’cause,” she said repeatedly. “You have to live, right?”

Miranda took me to a show at a place called the Hall Mall in Iowa City. Her friends played in a band called Raccoo-oooon. The Hall Mall was just a dusty hallway on the second floor of a building that housed a few makeshift endeavors—a tattoo shop, a place that sold used DVDs and VHS tapes, and a couple of rooms rented out by bands for practice space. Young punks, post-punks, and aging punks crowded the slim hallway, their bodies slowly tilting back and forth in tandem with the currents of psychedelic static emanating from Raccoo-oo-oon, who played not on a stage but in the middle of the floor. There were perhaps one or two loose fixtures hanging from the ceiling— long batches of cords ending in naked, harsh light bulbs that swung above our heads. The musicians concocted a pleasurable racket. The vocals were tertiary—they settled in, via waves of delay, behind furious tom rolls and an absolute wall of guitar noise. This music was something to be felt not simply regarded from a distance. Perhaps it had been intended as a blunt reaction to the long tradition of folk-blues and Americana that had anchored itself in the black Iowa dirt. Or perhaps it was just a bunch of art school kids who wanted to emote, who wanted to shout rather than whisper, because they were angry and frustrated but not quite sure why.

After the show, Miranda talked to her friends in the band. The guitarist, Shawn, was the king of the pack—not just the band, but the entire energetic posse that swelled around them, all kids in their asymmetric glory with tight jeans (one leg torn off) and unorthodox haircuts (one side long, the other shaved short). When Shawn looked at me, he conveyed with his eyes, likely unintentionally, that I was something different from him, different from his people. When he spoke to me—“Hey, man, how’s everything?”—he kind of looked away from me as if there was someone else he would rather speak to but he still had enough manners to engage on a surface level. I think he was wearing a multi-colored tank top awash in sweat. Either through his intense disaffection with me or my bubbling insecurity it became clear that he was underground and I was normal. I was just a writer. We writers wore battered, worn-in oxfords and patched-up sweaters and drank La Crosse Light, PBR, and Jim Beam at the Fox Head on the north side of town.

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