The very first time I saw the music video for "Runaway Train" by Soul Asylum it was the summer of 1993. My sisters and I were having a sleepover with "Weekend Dad." My parents had divorced in 1992 and he started to slowly get rights to have us over without supervision. Many of our visits were genuinely fun as dad made a point to fill them with as much Blockbuster and Little Caesar's interventions to hide his true intentions. He used our sleepovers to interrogate us about our mom's new boyfriend in between bites of pizza or what should have been fun trips to the video store on a Saturday night. I remember it like a bad dream, finding myself snuggled with my sisters in between sleeping bags with the movie they picked our or some block of MTV videos. There was always a lingering sense of dread for me that being with dad meant that this could go from a fun weekend that my mother would get angry about on Sunday night bathing us (because he didn't) to a full on hostage situation. The toys, the entertainment, and the distractions were mostly forthcoming to my older siblings, but for me? I just hung onto the imagery of having spent a day, a night, or a weekend at my dad's poorly lit cigar filled bachelor apartment.
I still refer to the 90s as a decade that hated children. It HATED children. Every story from a friend or friend of a friend all resembled something close or worse than mine. Divorced parents, or the raging angry abusive alcoholic parent showing up uninvited to the parent who had sole custody (usually the mom) and beating her within an inch of her life. I realize now that everything I feared as a kid (kidnapping, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, suicide, murder) where both on my television but waiting on the pullout sofa couch outside our room. I just never felt safe as a kid. I learned as an adult that this music video that played a very America's Most Wanted attempt to save those who seemingly disappeared into nothingness were in fact the collateral damage of bad marriages or divorces. Many of the teens in the video turned up trying to hide at houses of friends or significant others only to be returned to horrible family environments. Worst? Some were found buried in backyards. In an effort to get leverage in a bad divorce. Then I think of Jeremy....
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I guess that was the great cautionary tale of the 90s...when trying to be the Catcher in the Rye, you have no idea who or what you're inadvertently destroying in the process of trying to address a real problem. The biggest danger of being a writer or a person who cares? What if what I say or commit to paper makes somethings so much worse? I address that in the book. A book that really stops getting nostalgic about something because the pop culture influence seemed so fucking awesome. I grew up on the fault line, as did my sisters. Teenage pregnancy, abuse, rape, alcohol and drug abuse came later. I am somewhere now with the anticipating of September 1st where I hope I didn't write a runaway train or jeremy and I hope there is something to get out of the literature that screams...marinate with this, let it resonate, and hopefully we can start having conversations about it without judgement.
No matter how good a book, a song, a poem, or a film is...ask yourself, where the hell did it come from and is it contributing to a dialogue? I really hope I learned from the past and successfully did that.
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