TRANSCRIPT

I'm Alynda Segarra of Hurray for the Riff Raff, and this is The Slowdown.

I came of age in the New York City punk scene. And I loved the idea of living on the road and just focusing on art like my heroes, Woody Guthrie, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, that being the purpose of your life.

When I was 17, I left home for the first time. I had this perfectly worn bandana. I wore it around my neck for eight straight months, and the ends were distressed and tattered. You could see sunlight through it because it was so worn thin, and it had a little bit of a sheen to it because of the sweat and the grime from riding trains. It was like a badge of honor. And when I came home for the first time, my aunt washed it for me as an act of love. When I woke up and saw this perfectly folded, crisp, clean bandana on the bed, it devastated me.

I'm fascinated by memory and by our different experiences of time. Memories are the way we integrate that which we've lost into our lives. They are our mental holey sweaters. We wear them around, they slowly disintegrate, but we are proud to wear them. Kind of like the bandana around your neck. You're holding on to this place or time or person that you don't have anymore.

Sometimes I feel like a lot of these memories are still happening, like it's not that far away. It's just right there if I could just find a way to touch it. So it feels very close and also impossible to get to. And that's the thing about holding on to these relics. The item is showing that change is happening, and you're holding on being like, "Everything's the same. Everything's the same. I still have this." And it's just showing you time is wearing through it all.

Coming home for the first time felt surreal because I was a completely different person. I felt like a ghost or almost like the whole life I had lived up until I left was a dream. I felt like I had gone feral, like I wasn't domesticated anymore. My old way of life felt like the illusion. The way I had been living, which was on the road, felt like the reality. But the reason life on the road got old to me is because I was so dependent on the people around me. Because of danger, I couldn't just go walk anywhere, and I had to be on other people's timelines. When they wanted to leave, when they wanted to go out west. So starting to write and focusing on music became this vehicle. Starting a band, I'm the one driving. I say when we go on tour.

There are times in my life when I felt really called to witness something, and the story takes over my body and my life. It's been important to me in my work that I document the people that I've lost or that my community has lost, and to document the fights that we lost as well. Because I think it's important that future generations know that we fought those battles. It's either death or you fight. You either will die before you die and have the spiritual death of giving in, or you really dedicate yourself to trying anyway. And saying we might not get to where we wanna go, but this is life, the trying of it all. My responsibility is to witness and to experience and to not numb out, and it means being brave in life's most difficult moments. In some ways, what is harder is getting into a dull, numbed-out state. In other ways, it can be exhausting if you don't know how to take the time to care for yourself.

As a songwriter, I see myself as a bridge. I always felt a strong connection to a generation before me. Many of the artists that I first felt very connected to had been long gone. And for me, holding a torch for another generation means to undo this programming about generational divides and battles, because I think that is all created to keep us separated. And the wonderful thing about folk music is you can continue conversation with artists and thinkers that are long gone, and then you can leave something that future generations can build upon and modernize. The way that me and my friends lived was ridiculous to most people, and yet I feel so proud of a bunch of kids that just wanted to consider a different way of life, who wanted to see if they could create a freedom and weren't trying to hurt anybody.

My focus in life was to make a way out of no way. It was through art that I saw many different examples of people who had created a life for themselves that they were told was impossible. So I continue to remember artists who ignored stop signs and just continued on.

My immigration into my dream world was when I fully committed to the path of an artist. It's a path that's allowed me freedom from gender or any other confines that were placed upon me. For a long time, my desires terrified me. They represented a bridge too far, a complete loss of a safety net. And in spaces of desire, that was where I started to dip my toe into this deep well of I might change. I might want this today, and I might want something else next week. I might want you to see me as this gender, maybe in two years it'll be a different one. I can try on different sides of myself, and I've learned that it is okay to change and to explore.

Today's poem is heroic, erotic, modern, mythological, absurd, sentimental, and gut-wrenchingly real. More than anything, this poem is about time – how the stories of our desires and heartbreaks are the way that we feel ourselves move through time. Both our individual lives and the churn of history.

Holes
by Eileen Myles

Once when I passed East Fourth Street off First Avenue,
I think it was in early fall and I had a small hole
in the shoulder of my white shirt, and another on
the back–I looked just beautiful. There was a
whole moment in the 70s when it was beautiful
to have holes in your shirts and sweaters.
By now it was 1981, but I carried that 70s style
around like a torch. There was a whole way of
feeling about yourself that was more European
than American, unless it was American around
1910 when it was beautiful to be a strong
starving immigrant who believed so much
in herself and she was part of a movement
as big as history and it explained the
hole in her shirt. It’s the beginning
of summer tonight, and every season has
cracks through which winter
or fall might leak out. The most perfect
flavor of it, oddly in June. Oh remember
when I was an immigrant. I took a black
beauty and got up from the pile of poems
around my knees and just had too much
energy for thought and walked over to
your house where there was continuous
beer. Finally we were just drinking
Rheingold, a hell of a beer. At the
door I mentioned I had a crush on both
of you, what you say to a couple. By
now the kids were in bed. I can’t
even say clearly now that I wanted
the woman, though it seemed to be
the driving principle then, wanting
one of everything. I was part of
a generation of people who went to
the bars on 7th street and drank the
cheap whiskey and the ale on tap and dreamed
about when I would get you alone. Those
big breasts. I carried slim notebooks which only
permitted two or three-word lines. I need you.
“Nearing the Horse.” There was blood in all my
titles, and milk. I had two bright blue pills
in my pocket. I loved you so much. It was
the last young thing I ever did, the end of
my renaissance, an immigration into my
dream world which even my grandparents
had not dared to live, being prisoners
of schizophrenia and alcohol, though
I was lovers with the two. The beauty
of the story is that it happened.
It was the last thing that happened
in New York. Everything else happened
while I was stopping it from happening.
Everything else had a life of
its own. I don’t think I owe
them an apology, though at least
one of their kids hates my guts.
She can eat my guts for all
I care. I had a small hole in
the front of my black sleeveless
sweater. It was just something
that happened. It got larger
and larger. I liked to put
my finger in it. In the month
of December I couldn’t get
out of bed. I kept waking
up at 6PM and it was Christmas
or New Year’s and I had
started drinking & eating. I remember
you handing me the most beautiful
red plate of pasta. It was like your cunt
on a plate. I met people in your house
even found people to go out and fuck,
regrettably, not knowing about
the forbidden fruit. I forget
what the only sin is. Somebody
told me recently. I have so
many holes in my memory. Between
me and the things I’m separated
from. I pick up a book and
another book and memory
and separation seem to
be all anyone writes
about. Or all they
seem to let me read.
But I remember those
beautiful holes on
my back like a
beautiful cloak
of feeling.

"Holes" by Eileen Myles, from NOT ME © 1991 Eileen Myles. Used by permission of Semiotext(e).