anarchism

Punk, Anarchism, Feminism, pt.2

One of the things feminism taught me was that the patriarchy was deeply embedded inside my mind and inside my body. from the hollywood fairytales I'd been force fed, the prince in shining armor, the soul mate, the person who would complete me. It taught me about the feeling of incompleteness. It taught me to look at it critically instead of looking to fill it with promises that couldn't come true.

One of the thing Anarchism taught me is that the feeling of incompleteness is part of the neurosis of living in a world that robs us of our humanity by turning us into consumers and vacationers. work time and weekend time. Our feeling of incompleteness was partially due to the attempt to fill our needs with empty products, fill our loneliness with empty fun.

thanks to punk planet for inviting me to be on here.

I have a sort of mythology about how I became a punk. It's not exactly the true story but it goes sort of like this - I didn't become a punk until after punk died -- when Green Day first signed to a major label, and I didn't even know who they were. In Berkeley, where I'd just moved to, there were people sitting on curbsides, taking up public space, making invisible places theirs. They said they weren't punks any more, that punk had betrayed them, that punk was not going to change the world. They were ex-punks I guess, but I don't know. They seemed like punks to me. What I loved about punk was the way we actually lived in the world, walking everywhere and exploring every abandoned building. I liked the hope behind the desperation, and I liked the desperation. I was tired of pretending. Although, honestly, that was something that was hard to unlearn.

In response to a letter:

Moved from DC, I'm liking Houston so far, having been here for almost two years now. I forgot all about Refuse to Fall. I knew those guys back when they were staying in Philly, briefly. I in fact helped fold the sleeves of that 7 inch in the original Equal Vision office there, when I first moved into the Philly temple. Anyway, I don't remember them as being all that great of a band. One main reason: before they recorded that 7 inch in the studio, I was there when Ray Cappo sat down with them and "helped" them to reshape all the lyrics for those songs so that they would be more in line with Krishna consciousness, Shelter, and the Equal Vision label. That they allowed themselves to be manipulated like that, is not worthy of very much respect. (They are obviously not on the same level with bands such as Bad Brains, and I'm too old now to settle for much less these days.) Nor did it say much for Ray himself (then) or the spirit of the movement to impose like that, as they almost always did, and do now.