"Twisted thoughts that spin 'round my head"

Sometimes I remove myself from the popular. It's some kind of odd rebellion against those things that are 'in' or 'hot' at the moment. I'm not sure why I do that. It's not because I think I'm too good or above it or anything like that. One example is the movie Pulp Fiction (1994). I just saw it for the first time earlier this year. I was probably the only person between the ages of 20-50 who had never seen it. Maybe when there's so much hype about things I think that it's just hype. If it seems too good to be true then it must be, right? Anyway, I did finally watch Pulp Fiction, and I'm glad I did. I really liked it a lot and have wanted to watch it again, which is for me the sign of a good movie. Maybe there's something about being exposed to something long after the fact. Maybe it gives you a different perspective. I'm not sure if I'd have liked it as much or more if I had seen it sooner. But asking that is like asking what the world would be like if I hadn't been born. It's pointless.

The entire decade of the 1990s was crap for me. I missed a lot of the pop culture stuff then because I was deep in the Darkness of Depression, and many difficult things happened over the years. Sometimes it seems like a bad dream to look back. The decade started off bad with one of my grandmothers getting killed by a drunk driver in Jan. 1990 and ended with a wounded marriage and unexpected pregnancy in Dec. 1999. In between those I lost my mother and all of my remaining grandparents. There was some good though. My kids were the best. But even bringing them into the world was unusually difficult and painful.

Much of the music of the 1990s is unfamiliar to me. Maybe I avoided music because it was too emotionally charged and I didn't need any more charging. Maybe I just couldn't relate to much of it. Maybe I immersed myself into Led Zeppelin and other 'classic' rock which was old, familiar, and comfortable. I don't really remember. This might sound absurd to many people in their 30s-40s, but I never listened to Pearl Jam's cd Ten until this week. Now that I've heard it I think that I might have gone completely insane if I'd listened to it when it came out. I just wasn't ready for it until now.

I like it very much. It sounds, to me, very Zeppelinesque (well, later Zeppelin), the track "Oceans" especially. Of course, I had heard some of the songs like "Jeremy", "Alive", and "Even Flow", but three songs do not a real impression make (pardon the Yoda syntax). But my favorite is "Black" because it is truly a masterpiece marrying the emotion and music and lyrics to make a complete sonic experience that takes you to a place you only get glimpses of otherwise. And if I'd heard it back in the 90s while all my pain was so raw and fresh I don't think I'd have been able to endure it.

Now that I've mostly left the Darkness behind I am playing catch up on some things. Does anyone else feel that way about certain things?