The Girls
Nothing revolutionary.
I see much of it as a post-adolescent chronicle. Navigating the fickle waters of romance. Girls on the brain, mainly. New Wave had both a romantic and artistic appeal. I was shy, recovering from some bad times, and it was a way to get stuff out, very empowering.
I always stuck rigidly to rhyme schemes, and for the most part, standard pop/rock song form. I really wanted to be inclusive, and I wanted people to dance, have the time of their lives, though I often wrote about pain and confusion. I think I wrote for the night, and all the dreaming that surrounded it. At least at first.
My attempts at protest were not all that convincing, resulting in some of my worse poetry. We identified as liberals, even radicals in the sense that no-one in power was doing the right thing. Still do. Just weren’t fist-in-the-air types.
Towards the end of our run, as we scattered to our own domestic scenes, personal politics gradually unseated romance. Boy, we had girls. Our obligations multiplied and interfered, resentments grew and fed off each other. It became a nightmare, a drag. It was a marriage.
I found I could write about it sort of obliquely. But that’s when everything went south. The music became richer, but more somber, even plodding. It felt organic, but so does cancer. The vessel was disintegrating, breaking in the sea of chaos. It was time to stop. I finished the thoughts on my own.
