THE GOBLIN NEWSLETTER - 135 - TEENAGE RAMPAGE

I can remember when I first started getting into Punk & I didn’t know anybody yet, how alone I felt. I’d go take BART to San Francisco & wander around, go record shopping, get coffee, go to the leather shops to buy studs & then go home. So much of this was because there was no place to “be Punk” & when I first got into it. In the late 80s & early 90s the scene was in a depressive period, the second & third wave were dying, addicted to drugs & selling their record collections. Their words to the young were that “Punk was dead” & that I’d be better off doing something else. They may have been right, but I caught the bug hard & it wasn’t something I could switch off. In retrospect this teenage loneliness was part of my quest to find myself, in thinking that I would find myself in others I was wrong - but I’m sure that this questing done by teens, especially teen males is just part of our biology. A spreading of the tribe as it were. I never really found my tribe, I slowly found myself & made my own. The scene started to revitalize in the mid 90s. It was focussed on Pop Punk & Husker Du influenced Grungish semi-Hardcore while I loved UK82 Street Punk but the new blood definitely pumped in the Punk heart. There was a certain glory to that feeling of alone-ness, of feeling absolutely no connection to anything or anybody. I mean, I was obviously connected to my family & friends but in my head I was absolutely alone. It was a terrible mental state that I never want to feel again, but I can see that this helped to form who I am. So much of growing up weird & isolated made my art & everything that much more. I don’t think you can create interesting art & have a normally functioning brain - a balance is necessary of course. I have a lot of friends who were actually too crazy to even do their art. They had to numb their brains with drugs, some died. Part of the challenge is just trying to communicate to people in these other ways. For me it was with zines, drawing, writing, fashion & music. Everything mattered. Everything was a potential for communication. This communication hammered home - This is what I like, this is what I hate. That was it. In aging I have definitely mellowed out, I don’t have that feeling of desperation driving me.

x SEAN

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