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On Tuesday, May 7, Ian MacKaye stepped up to a podium in a lecture room at DC’s gargantuan Library of Congress. Most know MacKaye as the subversive frontman of now-disbanded punk bands Fugazi and Minor Threat, and for spreading the ethos of DC hardcore to the |
rest of the world. But the Library of Congress’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program also sees value in the way MacKaye has meticulously documented and archived his first-hand experiences in punk over the past 30 years. Never one to wait for the . . . |
I had a religious experience when I was nineteen. I cried until my body shook and I’d wept my weight in salt-water tears. I cried for four hours and when I got home, I cried for four more. I fell into the shower, rocked myself back and forth, and hugged my knees so tight they bruised my chest. The bathroom became so thick with steam that I couldn’t breathe. I had seen god. I had seen Patti Smith.
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Before that day I guess you could say that I had a few bones to pick with religion. Growing up god was a dude, looked mostly like Santa, and seemed for all intents and purposes to be kind of a dick. I was born into a faith, but all I learned from Jewish Day School was how to roll my eyes.
In a totally not-yet-realized fit of feminism, I remember asking my Hebrew school teacher where all the damn women were. I honestly have no idea what her answer was. I think I was too busy reading . . .
On May Day, a/k/a International Workers’ Day, the second annual “Funeral March
for Capitalism” took over downtown Boston. At 7pm, a crowd assembled near Park
Street station on the Boston Common. This group of protestors was not your typical
chanting and sign-waving mob. There were no vinyl banners, coalition slogans or cryptic
abbreviations. Instead there were cardboard boxes of costumes and masks, and all the
parts of what would become giant puppets.
Using paper-mached masks, colorful costumes, old inner tubes, staples, bamboo poles,
and tape, the crew quickly began assembling each section of the parade, complete with
its own choreography and signage. Within the hour the crowd was transformed from
ordinary protestors, to a mélange of . . .
WEEKLIES
