In Hairstyles of the Damned by Joe Meno, who-woulda-thunk-it but I found the same themes as in On Chesil Beach, which I wrote about yesterday. Again we have a young couple, each with a unique and private history, each trying to understand sexual appetite and misunderstanding each other. Their repeated failures to act, to talk, and to connect, mire them more deeply into misery and self-loathing and fear of what comes next in their lives.
Author Joe Meno places his teenagers in the very White, working class, and Catholic southside neighborhoods of Chicago. Meno knows this area well; he must, because he invokes it perfectly and genuinely for us, the rows of small brick houses, the squares of lawn, the parochial schools, and the malls and parking lots where teenage socializing goes on, and the basement parties where teenage sexuality is explored. His teens are set loose with only the slimmest threads of adult supervision or affection, to figure out for themselves how to act, think, participate in society, and stand up for their own place in the world.
Music plays a large role in this book (music was also a character in On Chesil Beach) because it delivers the message to the teenage characters that someone, somewhere, understands them. Music is the one medium through which the teens feel normal about the hormones raging through their systems; through the music they find a degree of self-acceptance and hang onto the slightest of self-affirmations as they negotiate their self-image, their role in the lives around them, and their place in a community of abusive teens (self-abusing and of abusing of others, verbally and physically) and largely absent adults. The lyrics of punk groups, no waves, Bowie, hard rock, and even Chet Baker play a role in this book. Lyrics are used by the characters to substitute for their own words, a better representation of what they are feeling that is also less risky than just trying to say it themselves. Mix-tapes (collections of songs recorded for a specific person) are the valentines and love letters, and also the SOS in the bottle.
But it is not only the lyrics that these kids hang onto as if for dear life: the thumping and thrashing of the music is the catharsis for their moods and their desires, providing both an outlet and a mirror for what is up with them. I remember needing music at that age; I still need it, to rock out, calm down, stir myself up. Whether it is Beethoven’s 5th or the Halleluiah Chorus or Because the Night performed by Patti Smith, music can express so many feelings all at once, an explosion of expression that leaves me afterwards feeling pretty damn good. For the kids in the book too, it is just about the only way they can feel pretty damn good. Exploring sex is a double-edged knife of desire and rejection, and there is no safe place for any of these teens, no stable and nurturing relationship, free of abuse and anger or complete lethargy, other than in the music, and even that can’t last longer than all the times it can be rewound and played again.
Brian goes on a mission at one point to steal all the bad music from the parked cars at the mall and deliver their owners from the evils of Crystal Gayle, Kenny Loggins, New Kids on the Block, and the soundtrack for Dirty Dancing: “[w]e seriously thought what we were doing would somehow save the world because it was so easy to understand that bad music actually made people bad.“ Sounds like a twist on “great good comes from reading great books.” I do believe that like a good book, good music helps us breach differences and takes us to a place of understanding and compassion. Who has not been swayed by music? Okay, not always with good results but music is the most effective medium for expressing common hopes and desires. And especially for teens, struggling to understand and express themselves, music is the translator, the spokesperson, and the guru. The kids in the book choose their genre (punk, rock, pop) and their identity takes off from there.
In the end, reaching a level of maturity we weren’t sure he could get to, Brian realizes that his chosen music is only a part of his self-expression; music is more who he is than his haircuts and his choice of clothes, but it is less that his own words and actions. He needs to stand up for himself now, express himself, and rely on the music for back up.
