I’ve always thought the impact that divorce has on children has been greatly exaggerated.
It’s a prepackaged, prefabricated emotional transition to me, like that cynical loner who doesn’t really want to save the world until somebody close to him munches lead, or the wise old man who shows him the way, or the feisty and totally unstereotypical stereotypical female that has a feisty and independent side at first and clashes with our hero, but is finally motivated by The Power Of Twoo Wuv to throw away her own hopes and dreams to prop this fucker up and make him feel like more of a man.
Even as a very young child, I understood the concept of divorce without having it explained to me. I never thought it was Really All My Fault or proof that They Did Not Love Me Anymore or any of that bullshit that pops up in children’s books. Mommy and Daddy used to get along. Mommy and Daddy used to be friends. Now Mommy and Daddy aren’t friends anymore, don’t want to talk to each other, and would like to be as far away from each other as humanly possible. Most natural thing in the world, I thought. They were people, just like any other people. If I got mad at my friend and didn’t want to be friends with her anymore, I wouldn’t want to live with them either. A while later, I would remind my mom about an argument they had and ask “Was that your divorce?”
It was a singular event to me. Two people falling out. My mom would smile sadly and say “That was part of it”. I never even thought too hard about why I lived with Mommy and not with Daddy.
I was one person. Couldn’t very well live with them both at the same time. Too complicated. That would be crazy.
When I saw kids on TV during Very Special Episodes of my favorite kid’s shows having this stuff explained to them, it always puzzled me. I understood, even when I couldn’t verbalize it, that human beings had to do what was right for them, within reason – so why did these stupid kids need all the details spelled out for them in agonizing detail? I’d realize later that were plenty of kids who did not have that innate understanding, and television, like it did so many times in life, would have to fill in the gaps, teaching the things the parents of out generation were unwilling or unable to explain.
It’s more difficult, given my early maturity, to understand why I could never come to grips with my favorite bands breaking up. Although I didn’t recognize it then, I went through all the same thoughts and rationalizations those junior fucktards went through on those kiddie TV shows. It’s not fair, I would think to myself. Don’t they understand that they’ve got something special, something magical that they’ll never be able to have to reproduce in a million years with anyone else? So what if they don’t like each other? They liked each other before for some reason, and there had to be a reason behind it in the first place. They’re being selfish, that’s all. Selfish and stubborn and lazy. Don’t they know they’re killing off my future memories? Why can’t they just stay together, for the kids?
Yeah, we’ve all been there before. And the thoughts that come afterward aren’t any prettier. As soon as they’re apart, we hold our breaths waiting for that reunion that won’t ever come, when Mommy and Daddy will realize that they loved each other all along and nobody else and all will be right with the world. As as Mommy starts hanging out with other boys, we look upon them with thinly veiled contempt. We’ll find the flaws, dissecting them note for note and comparing them with Daddy. We might find one or two things we like, and we might reluctantly take the candy they offer us, but they’re always found lacking. You’ve probably seen someone do this before – shit, you might have done this before. The quality of the music isn’t really important because at the end of the day, the new couple isn’t Mommy and Daddy, you’re gonna kick and stomp your fucking feet until Mommy and Daddy are back together and that is fucking that. Once in a while, you’re unlucky and get your wish.
Other times, the kids will take one side or the other as an elaborate defense mechanism, in even rarer cases, the kids are pit against each other. You know, that old chestnut. I was really only interested in Mommy anyway. Daddy was mean. He gave out spankings and wrote a hundred songs that sounded exactly like Lopsided. If only he understood… and directing their anger at a guilty party keeps them from thinking about it too hard.
Here’s the thing. Diehard fans of any musical group, like children, are incredibly self-absorbed. As fruitylicious as it might sound, those tunes can be an intensely personal thing. We associate them with moments from our own lives, they stabilize us through rough experiences, and in a certain way, they’re just as ours as the people who write them in the first place and travel across the state, playing them until they get sick of it. And that self centered-ness creates a self centered response. We might not know the people in that band personally, so we obviously can’t internalize feelings of personal responsibility. But we can convince ourselves they need to stay together for the kids; grit it out and keep going for our own sakes. And even if we’re too cynical to spell it out in exactly those words, we can redirect that feeling and convince ourselves it’s for their own good. Anything Mommy and Daddy do from now on will be rubbish anyway. Mommy and Daddy are motherfucking useless without each other, and if they knew what was best for them…
Right. And it’s easy to feel that way when we aren’t living in the room. But if you’ve ever had a long term creative endeavor with someone (or been through, y’know, an actual divorce) you quickly realize that there’s a point where the things that are interesting quirks to those on the outside become brutally, painfully difficult to deal with on a day to basis, a point where you’d rather function at 75% of your output, or even half of it, than put up with the hair wrenching neuroses and deception of that significant other, a point where, honestly, the kids can get fucked.
You can’t understand the kind of selfishness a breakup requires until you’ve done it yourself. Tough with a friend, tougher with a band or business partner, and toughest when there’s sex or kids involved – the more baggage that keeps you from a clean break, the worse it is. You can understand what makes people try it, toughing it out, halfassing life until the children are old enough to understand to fully comprehend what a “motherfucking sham” is all about. You push yourself and sacrifice by inches, right past the next benchmark, not for the person you’re tied to, but sacrificing for the folks who truly need it, who’ll truly appreciate it someday. But eventually, you pass the point where you wouldn’t mind if everything burned down to the fucking ground around you, where it wouldn’t matter how much the kids bitched and moaned. One day at a time becomes impossible, morphs into how many days?, and when you find yourself staring down the barrel of that unfeeling, uncaring hopeless infinity, you decide that pure bastardly selfishness is better than the alternative, and you let the chips fall where they will.
Fair enough. If you live long enough, you become Mommy and Daddy, and you see things from the perspective that a five year old child or that diehard Beatles fan with his cheesy speculative VH1 fiction won’t ever get. But sometimes, I wonder if those guys ever feel guilty about breaking up. Mommies and Daddies sure do. They can take a kid out for ice cream, have a civil conversation, look into their eyes as they laugh, and give into little fits of speculation, and if only things were a little bit different -
Well. If things were a little bit different, then things would be a little bit different.
That creepy guilty feeling would be natural. It wouldn’t ever make it’s way to the public, of course. The breakup of a high-profile band has a bigger megaphone than divorce papers and phone calls with the girls. There’s no point in Daddy saying anything that’ll make Mommy feel smug, because while you might make her a little different in your fantasy world, right here on Planet Earth, she’s still a fucking Fevered Ego that needs a few punches to the head. But musicians are notoriously self-involved. Think Billy Corgan never put on a Pumpkins record and thought “Damn, I’m listening to myself peaking nine years ago”? The solo-projects and side-projects and project-projects that come out afterward always seem to have a feel of one-upsmanship inside of them a desire to prove to themselves that the magic was inside them all along. But deep down do they feel like they’re robbing themselves, compromising the project they worked so hard on, traumatizing the kids that loved them so much while Mommy and Daddy battle it out for scraps of affection in the floorboards of a broken home?
This was on my mind the other day (because I think about weird shit like that) as I stepped into my convenience store. No ID for Sparks, so I searched for the stylings of a more conventional liquid energy renewal device. And I stumbled across this little number.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Jimi Hendrix Liquid Experience. The man has a motherfucking Energy Drink now, I shit you not. Couldn’t make it up if I tried. I stared down this purple bottle that promised me “Peace. Love. Purpose” with every sip, reading the side of the bottle more in shock than anything else.
“Celebrating 40 years. Authentic. Timeless. One of a kind. With impossible riffs, mystical lyrics and outrageous, amp torturing innovations, Jimi shattered musical convention, while uniting the world in an electrified celebration of peace, lova and purpose.”
I… I guess? But usually these messages on the side of the snack read something like:
“Jimi Hendrix was once just a poor farm boy from Washington State, and one day, his Mama told him all the secrets of creating the best energy drink the world has ever seen. Word spread through the countryside as farmers told their friends about the groovy secret ingredients – and now Jimi’s family is proud to share their craft with yours! The Jimi Hendrix Liquid Experience is made from the finest ingredients under the strictest quality control. If for any reason you are not completely satisfied with your purchase…”
Just as I was wondering what it was all about (Alfie), I read the next line.
“This new energy drink is a tribute to Jimi’s legacy, The Jimi Hendrix Experience and their everlasting influence on music and those who play it.”
Uh, OK. The man has had worse deeds done in his honor, I suppose…
“So, pop it open, turn up your favorite Hendrix tune and toast the legend whose genius still inspires people all around the world.”
Let’s picture me staring at this can of vitamin soda for a minute, not looking anything so much as confused while I decide what to believe. It’d be one thing if say, Trent Reznor’s steely mug was asking me to buy some Capital Guarana or whatever (I mean come on, REZNOR ENERGY DRINK. I’d buy it. The man’s name already sounds like some crazy Red Bull ripoff), but this was A Dead Guy Selling Me Soda. And while younger people might be drawn to a name, age and cynicism preinclined me to the opposite reaction. There was no small amount of revulsion rising in my throat at the thought of something so sacred (to others, at least) getting farmed out by an estate for a little extra dough, and the stamp under it promising that a portion of all the proceeds would go to blah blah blah whatever wasn’t doing a terrific job in keeping the acid down. If you’ve still got a mental image of me, picture me spinning this thing around like I’ve got no idea what an aluminum can is.
This is, pardon my expression, a rather tough thing to swallow. The idea that someones life’s work can be downloaded onto a flash chip the size of a cracker has always felt deeply wrong to me somehow, even if I accept it as a fact of modern life. But this seems like a brand new indignity. Jimi Hendrix in a goddamned motherfucking can. They’ve strapped the guy’s name onto a lot of stuff, it turns out. You can buy Hendrix golf equipment, Hendrix lava lamps, Hendrix underwear – pretty much any deal that’s been offered to the estate in exchange for money, the result of countless estate battles over the famous name. It feels more than a little degrading.
For a moment, I push the steel and purple can to the side and look for something else. This drink’s made me a little queasy before I’ve even been able to take a sip. But as my fingers trace over the Red Bulls and the cheap 99 cent Red Rock energy drinks on the rack below, I pause. Here I am, reacting with a child’s perspective. Who the hell am I, to get so upset over a glorified soft drink? I enjoyed his records, but does that entitle me to be a Defender Of His Legacy now? There’s no use getting apoplectic about what this means for me, or for any Hendrix fan, really. We don’t own our memories of music any more than we own our parents, no matter how special they are to us. All of us have, through our quiet desperation, through our struggles with the things we leave unsaid, earned the right to be a little selfish. Hendrix died young, and he passed that right onto his kids. Whether they decide to spend that capital on licensed underwear, well, that’s on them, isn’t it? They own that part of him. And who’s to say somebody who’s heard of the guy from commercials and Lenny Kravitz covers but hasn’t bothered listening to him in depth isn’t pushed over the edge by seeing him on a soda and finally wondering what the hype is about?
We certainly own our own memories. Mommy and Daddy might not ever come back together and be a happy family together, partners might not ever reach the places together that they were apart, the band might not make that perfect LP again. But what was created together in either event is special – it can’t be duplicated or replicated. And slowly but surely, given enough time, we’ll create something that isn’t like Them Together, but a more perfect reflection of Us Ourselves. And eventually, if we’re old enough, we can appreciate it for what it is, without measuring it against our vision of what a happy family should be and knocking it down.
And with that in mind, I decided I’d at least see if I felt the “Voodoo Vibe”. I took the can out of the fridge (the man himself seemed happy enough, locked in mid-solo ecstasy as he was). I walked to the counter, paid for it, and washed it down. And you know what? It wasn’t half bad. Had sort’ve a cherry/cranberry taste to it, and you could taste the fruit instead of just those two overpowering ingredients they put in all the energy drinks. It was Damn Good, actually. If you’re in the mood for some caffeine to make it through your day, you could do much, much worse.
As for Mommy and Daddy, the glory that was? Let me put you on your knee and give you the PBS Kids version, with cartoon characters and short phrases: It’s a Jimi Hendrix Liquid Experience. It pours over you, you enjoy it for what it is, and then you move on.
And wouldn’t Mommy and Daddy be a great name for a band?
Tags: Billy Corgan, divorce, Jim Ward, Jimi Hendrix, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, snark, Sparks Energy, The Beatles, The Jimi Hendrix Liquid Experience, The Mars Volta, Trent Reznor
Bahaha! That was great. Many laughs.