NO (some) FENCES

The internet brought to my attention that there's a thing called trainspotting. I mean I remember that 90's British movie about heroin addicts and Scottish poverty,  but it never occurred to me that this was an actual thing. As a driver of traffic I've been privy to lots of trainspotting as well as trainscussing and I realize that people stand in  nature places with binoculars waiting on birds to come so I'm not terribly surprised that people look for particular trains and that it gives them pleasure. People have long wasted hours of their lives doing things I don't understand (I'm looking at me triathletes) but for some reason this one really gets me. Yes, people actually spend time watching for and cataloguing trains. 

Maybe it's because trains in America are a nuisance mostly. Graffiti laden hobo transport. Remember when a segment of the homeless population were referred to as hobos. All of their belongings tied at the end of a a stick in a dirty bandanna.  Kinder, gentler, simpler times (for the world, not the hobos). 

The hobos were all equipped with charming names too. I mean, who wouldn't give a ten spot to Frog Eatin' Lou or a nice warm dinner to Ironbelly Norton?  Stungun Jones gets a little ornery, but you know if Kneepants Erasmus stole your last can of beans, you'd get ornery too. 

Hobos. Sometimes I wonder how I get here. 

Trainspotting reminds me yet again that there is something that provides joy (perhaps to the point of neuroses) for everyone in this vast world. 

It also reminds me how we as humans, spend enormous amounts of energy shitting upon the things we don't understand. 

I mean why should you care if you're friend is obsessed with Right Said Fred's 1992 smash hit, "I'm Too Sexy"? It won't "turn you gay" (not that there's anything wrong with that) or anything, that's not how that works, it's just a 30 year old feel good song that spent a couple weeks at number one. Let it go. 

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I come to this place because I am trying to be more "let it go" in my life. I'd say this is hard, but it's been a lot easier than I would have thought. I used to get violently opinionated on many things and people who didn't agree were likely morons or worse. Most of this was with regards to music. 

As time goes by I am reminded how very very small the world of the 1990's that I inhabited actually was. The sub cultural slice, minuscule in both scope and breadth, a nearly forgotten world, kept on life support by an even smaller subset of today's youth.  Ask anyone under 40 who REM is and you deserve the dull stare that returns. 

I remember being in my 1991 world and 7/8ths of the fraternity I was in being obsessed with Garth Brooks's, "No Fences".  I recall an instance walking into a party at an apartment where it was blaring and me stopping in my tracks like someone had inserted a heaping spoonful of mayo into my mouth. This was followed by me promptly turning around and leaving. No Fences sold 30 million copies. My favorite album of 1991 was likely Toad the Wet Sprocket, Fear. It sold 1 million, but was, in my opinion, serious music or something. 

Also of 1991 note. I didn't realize Louisiana was mostly rural. 

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There was, of course, a further out there side of music that even "serious, smart, opinionated Pat Fellows," didn't get and he likely shit upon it with equal fervor as the Garth Brooks folks. As I sit here now, I wonder if the Garth Brooks folks thought of us the same way?  I'd say likely, but in my young smallish mind, I couldn't fathom that they had an opinion. This is how self centered we all likely are. 

There's of course an anecdote(s) here but really the thing I keep landing on is "why did(do) you even care?"  Why not just spend your time and energy enjoying what you like and let the Garth Brooks people enjoy their wrong opinions?   (I'm trying here but it's hard to let go). This is the thing I've tried to get better at. Letting things that don't really matter, go. 

It's of course easier said than done. It seems as though we are wired to not only take a side, but also not be satisfied until those with alternative beliefs and opinions are wiped from the face of the earth. It's a caveman, primal thing and therefore, likely instinctual. Or maybe I just got more of it than the rest of you. Or more likely, it's me saying that these things matter to me. They are what I have decided to cling to to define me and as such are me screaming out. "This matters. Ergo. I matter."  

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I saw on the internet of things a meme, a creation that '91 me wouldn't have a  clue about, that said something like the following. 

"If you're the type of person who shits on something that brings another person joy, then you are the problem."

I felt like someone had aimed both barrels if their truth shotgun at the chest of 1990's me, a me that's still likely in there somewhere, just maybe a little less vocal. 

This year I won't be joining 100,000 people in LSU's Tiger Stadium for the return of Garth Brooks, but it it brings you joy, go with your friends in Low Places and live the things that give you joy. I'll continue to hate his music, but I'll be damned if I hold that against you as some character flaw. I'll also try and let that roll down to other things, may I recommend you do too. 

See. New year. New me. 

#hugsandhi5s