Reed College Reunion, 2011
I’d been here since Monday, but it was Friday night in some room in the Gray Center that Reed College started to crystallize for me again.
On the West Coast, I remembered, rock music had just made sense.
It had been a few months since I’d gone to a live show. And I’d almost forgotten that I spent a few years of nights off watching bands play, in weirdly lit rooms on campus, at moderate volumes. Forgot that I’d felt connected to them, that the exchange had often seemed almost spiritual. Forgot that I’d used to love rock and roll so much that just thinking about could make me feel like I was going to choke.
Walking around tonight on the Gray Center/S.U. porch, I remembered some things about Reed.
About how, outside of class, milling around in the rain while trying to look cool was the essence of what we did.
A life of damp porches and concrete redoubts.
How it was always slightly cold, how nobody ever dressed sexy. How it was a weird way to live, maybe, but it was our way.
How I’ve complained before about Reed’s one-track academic mind, its surprising lack of respect for creativity. And yet, at 1am in the student union, in the midst of a Talking Heads/Tom Tom Club/glo-stick dance party, it was impossible to deny that this place had regularly supplied one with moments of transcendence. And still did.
How I loved those days when they were happening. How I think that must be the most important thing.
Pix: Love Butt in the Gray Center, 6/10/11; S.U. dance party.
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