decade (of...)

, originally uploaded by pinkgerl.

the summer after my senior year of high school i went to the recording workshop in chilicothe, ohio, to learn studio engineering. it was a six week course and there were 75 people in the program - four of them were girls. the three other girls and i lived in a house at the bottom of the hill. next to our house was the big stoner house where folks would congregate to do things like watch the wizard of oz synched up to Dark Side... and one one particularly rainy evening, to strip down and run around on the empty streets howling.
up the hill were little huts that the rest of the crew lived in, and on most nights they would make a big bonfire and we'd all go up and talk shit around it. as you might imagine, there was a lot of guitar playing too, and it was there at the workshop that my friend steve introduced me to neil young. i had always thought neil young was some kind of soft rock (comes a time era) coot, but steve insisted he was a genius.

songs of his have entered my life over the years - Old Man, which reminded me of my relationship with my dad just at 24 too, Sugar Mountain, which was how I felt when I lived in Wildwood that horrible summer - but I think now after my trip to LA i'm starting to understand the whole thing a little better, to get the monumental, ugly undertones of what's going on in that guitar and the world-weary voice.