My college years were not ideal. I was trapped, going to a school known for it's efforts at being Southern Ivy League. The vast majority of the students there were rich kids whose parents sent them to Vanderbilt for the prestige. Me, the daughter of a professor there, was doomed to be an outcast from the beginning... even if I hadn’t been me, but I was me and that made it all the worse.
Another typical winter afternoon between classes. I was in my usual going to class uniform of black skirt, black shirt, black leather jacket, walkman. I can’t recall if it was snowing, or if the sun was shining, or if it was misty out that day. It doesn’t really matter. It didn’t then. I just sat there on the marble wall that surrounded the statue facing the library lawn like I had done so many times before. It was shaded there, and very cold under the sleeping Magnolia tree. Joy Division played over and over while I sat and thought and fed the squirrels as I had done since I was a small child. I got a lot of dirty looks, never could hear the comments, but I didn’t want to. They didn’t matter because I had carved out my own space.
Usually I went to class after that, listening up until the lecture started. Sometimes I didn’t go. Sometimes I just sat because the thinking , reading, and observation of the passers by seemed a better education than I would get in any class.
Looking back at those times, and the songs that I seemed to return to She’s Lost Control, Wilderness, Interzone, In a Lonely Place I can see the wall I was building up around myself. It had always been there and still is a part of me. I don’t feel like everyone else because I’m not like everyone else. Luckily since then I have discovered other people who understand because they are where I am. Back in those days, I was young, and the music that mirrored my feelings was all I had. Many who feel isolated turn to music to try and understand why they feel the way they do. It almost seems human nature to do so.
Joy Division was a lot of how I felt then, and often it is how I feel now. I can remember it making me feel oddly safe , now it makes me really happy. Not so much nostalgic for those days, but proud and confident that I have grown beyond that person who had to shut the rest of the world out. Not what everyone would call happy music, but then again, not everyone has used it to build nice solid safe walls and to learn how to climb over them.
Dead Souls
Someone take these
dreams away
That point me to another day
A duel of personalities
That stretch all true reality
That keep calling me - they keep calling me
Keep on calling me - they keep calling me
When figures from
the past stand tall
And mocking voices ring the hall
Imperialistic house of prayer
Conquistadors who took their share
That keep calling me - they keep calling me
Keep on calling me - they keep calling me