the summer voice

So this is it: the final throes of a summer that wrestled hard at every bell. It’s nowhere near submission, and I won’t pretend I’ve ever been in control, but the fight’s almost over. Soon, the bookies will go home and the neon will fade and I’ll be standing in my tastefully purchased Cambridge thrift store cape in the empty arena, wondering what to do with myself. All my friends are either graduated or gearing up for insane abroad adventures.

I bought a 7-day T pass today. It expires August 11. I’m out of here August 20th. Two weeks, two days, Conn College.

So what did I learn? What do I still have left to think about?

I’m willing to bet this is the first summer since I was maybe 10 years old that has revolved around more than paranoia that the people I consider friends will or won’t call me to hang out in some barely distinguishable region of post-agricultural developmentally ravaged middle Massachusetts. Everything I’ve wanted to do, I could make happen; anytime I was bored was my own fault.

And I’m still sitting here thinking about people who, two weeks from now, won’t be a feature of my life at all. But they couldn’t seem to matter more. Maybe it’s because I’ve always lived moment to moment, (becca) coping better with the present situation than I do with planning for hypotheticals. Still, I’m inclined to believe that not dwelling on a future that is so far beyond control (anyone seen 2012? or, for that matter, Independence Day?) that planning seems obsolete the second it occurs is tantamount to being realistic.

I mean, what else is there? Magical realism? First off, I don’t write nearly as well in Spanish. Second, I don’t have much faith in non-scientific occurrences to intervene metaphorically in my day-to-day life. And I just had a lengthy (anthropology-based) debate with my friend Zoe about science filling the role of religion in modern Western culture.

Ultimately, I’ve been fired from a fine-dining restaurant (along with a good number of my co-workers) and disappointed by the minor role interns play in locally-focused journalism. But I’ve also learned a lot about what it means to have opportunities everywhere, and that last point seems especially applicable to Conn.

In one regard, sure, there’s a buttload going on every day that never seems to cross most students’ minds, and I have a strong feeling or two about how to change that. [Full disclosure: I book shows. Come to them. I know you’re not doing anything.] In another, there’s the consideration that there’s a lot going on which even I don’t think about.

To make the most of the summer, which is both my first summer in Boston and the only summer I’ve ever spent under my own power with more than maybe five friends (not to mention public transportation and living outside my parents’ house), I’ve had to be on my toes, trying to tell the difference between PR posturing and genuine DIY enthusiasm. And it’s been rewarding insofar as I’ve mostly found cool things only curious people find out about.

But there were still those nights when all that presented itself was a bomber of Long Trail Doublebag, an acoustic guitar, and the rooftop of a friend’s rented frat-house room. And what I’m struggling with is the tendency to undervalue those in favor of nights spent watching Nauset Light illuminate the surf or listening to some soon-to-be Conn performer tear it up in a dirty basement. Although I’m inclined to say the drama of involvement and people is more eventful, more noteworthy, or more important, I’m finding the highlights of my summer to be an even split.

Kurt Vonnegut has this whole thing he mentions in a few places where his uncle once told him to express his feelings out loud when he notices that he enjoys something. The idea is that when you realize you like what you’re doing, you should say aloud, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”

I think it’s excellent advice. This summer has been mercurial and evanescent, to get all grandiloquent on you. Every ten minutes it has had a different atmosphere, and the rug seems to get pulled out from under me more often than I do laundry.

I’ve been having the first inklings of excitement toward returning to Conn for one last uninvolved orientation/pre-class session of aimless summer collegiate fun, all endless MOBROC barn access and free reign over looking like a champ in front of friendless, lonely, too-young-to-possibly-be-in-college freshmen. And a lot of my internship has led to good ideas about how to improve what I care about in the face of the ever-shifting internet landscape [Lilah: look at the Voice idea-wiki].

But what seems to matter, more than ever now that I’ll be a senior, is appreciating what won’t last. Which is why I won’t think more about Conn than I have to. Which is why I won’t short-shrift the rest of my internship. Which is why I’ll continue to write acoustic songs, knowing full well a drummer is a week away.

Kurt had a point. Living for tomorrow is the same thing as not living at all. So I will be in Boston until I’m not in Boston. I will write until my fingers fall off. A wiser man than me once said: “Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact.” It’s time I took that to heart. After all, he continues: “Maybe everything that dies some day comes back.” And while I doubt I’ll have another senior year, another summer in Boston devoid of worries about permanent occupation, another moment to draft MOBROC-wide email puns while cruising Cape Cod, I don’t see any point in dwelling on the fact that I won’t. I’ll see you all in the fall, and I’ll see you with both eyes. The future might be better than today, but I’m hellbent on noticing what’s great about the present.

Because if this isn’t nice, what is?

This weekend, following a concert featuring Kurt Vile & Real Estate, my friends and I stumbled onto what appeared to be an all-night rager in the parking lot and disused garage behind the converted warehouse in which former Voice multimedia editor Logan Zemetres currently resides. The party featured live, sweaty music, a man dressed as a wizard who walked around dancing and saying nothing, crazy light-structures everywhere, fire dancers, an 8 AM endtime, a bar by donation, a car that was more of a sculpture, a blonde bouncer in a red dress, and presumably some assortment of club drugs intended to validate the absurd lighting choices. Somehow, it was a fundraiser.

The party was dubiously connected to something which eventually formed my entire weekend, called Allston DIYFest. Despite my best efforts, I can’t really figure out who put the festival on, how, or why, and moreover I haven’t been able to associate anything that happened at any one event with anything or anyone at any other event, but it offered me and everyone else who is capable of reading fliers on streetlamps a wide variety of musical, visual, and venue options for entertainment and the appreciation of people doing what they do for little or no money.

Some of those people turned out to be people I know. I’d just interviewed a street artist named Iansanity for an as-yet unpublished article in the Allston-Brighton TAB, and he turned out to be a participant in the art gallery component of the actual festival on Saturday afternoon. A band called Magic Man, friends of a friend, played at the basement show / afterparty I went to on Saturday night. Logan’s roommates hosted an all-day concert on Sunday.

So I guess this sort of thing is always around. If there were enough local bands and basements to put on six afterparties on Saturday, all with the intention of supporting whatever Allston DIYFest’s organization is, then there must always be something to do that doesn’t involve paying Harper’s Ferry or Great Scott a cover charge for a touring act.

One of the things Iansanity stressed about street art, which is a pretty DIY phenomenon, was that it grows out of a desire to beautify and improve, rather than profit or get famous. At the end of the interview, he gave me what I interpreted as a mission statement. “I’m tired of blank walls. Go paint. Do it illegally. Just do it.”

“Nike,” he added. He was a little crazy, in an awesome way. But he’s also right. There’s a lot of blank space. There’s also a lot of advertisement. And I think because so much of what’s not blank is just trying to sell you something, most people just ignore everything they see on the street, focusing on avoiding bikers or finding the side street they’re looking for or trying to not make eye contact with pretty girls or whatever. So maybe that’s why I was shocked when I started reading fliers on streetlamps, investigating sketchy-looking garage parties, and poking into guerilla art galleries this weekend. It was always all there, but my stimulus shield blocked it out.

Because those fliers were, yes, for concerts of varying quality in dirty basements, for places where the unshowering might congregate, and for highly unsettling robe-clad wizard dancers’ favorite throwdowns, but they were also for a community of people trying as hard as they can to be able to keep doing what they believe in. Those basements were doing what the bars don’t and supporting the people who can’t go on tour because they can’t afford it because nobody knows who they are. The people in Ringer Park were there to be the eyes the art needed to be worth making, even if they didn’t shower beforehand. Lord knows what was up with wizard guy.

So I learned something which is probably a valuable lil’ journalist lesson: don’t write the things that surround off just because you’re busy or hungover or worried about why so-and-so won’t call you back. Paying attention to the things around you will let you into the big secrets of what goes on where you live. Sometimes, that means crazy weekends. Sometimes, and these two aren’t apparently mutually exclusive, it’ll show you the side of your city you’ve always wanted to see. I found both — it was an insanely fun few days, but the only reason it was that fun was because a huge group of people, and I’d estimate like a thousand separate people must have been involved in just the parts of Allston DIYFest I found out about, wanted to take what would otherwise just be basements, rusting cars, chainlink fences, and ex-industrial spaces and turn them into stages, sculptures, gallery walls, and the meeting grounds for a small movement.

Well, less of a movement than a network. What connected one event to another may not have been a central planning committee, and there was certainly no central leader or icon at the center of all the events. Instead, the people were all connected ideologically, by interest in local art, bands without record deals, and an impetus to reclaim public space. The network wasn’t hiding, but despite their best efforts it’s hard to see, especially if you don’t look.