Summer 2002/2005
By JMcQ

The summer of 2005 seems a lot like the summer of 2002 to me. 2002 was a very odd, pseudo-transitory year for me; I really was not an insider to either DePauw or Lancaster itself, and I felt even more so out of the loop in Lancaster’s band scene. 2002 was also the first year that I went up to the Allied Media Conference (formerly the Underground Publishing Conference), and the most major similarity has to do with the first AMC trip. Alyson, my then significant other, took me up to Bowling Green for the conference, to which we were only able to spend a day because the heat was so oppressive. Being stupid and headstrong, I did not pack any water or anything to really tide me over properly. This meant that we had to turn around and go home at the end of the day. At the hottest point up in Bowling Green, I was so enervated by the inferno that was Northern Ohio that I was barely on the verge of consciousness – I felt like shit, and I hadn’t really had the luck to feel that way until this summer began. The family house, like Alyson’s car does not have anything in the way of air conditioning – the costs are just too high, and there has been a string of days lately where the temperature in the house went up in the middle-to-high eighties and stayed hot throughout the night.

This heat makes it virtually impossible to do anything besides lie on the floor and watch TV. I had attempted to start this issue much earlier in the process, but this heat sapped any drive that I may have had. Aside from this heat, the simple fact that I have so many different responsibilities pulling me each way – 25-30 hour work-weeks over at Kmart, the zine, the still-as-of-yet unreleased second NeuFutur Records disc, and graduate school at Kent State all loom large. The heat will break soon, but I have no doubt that things will remain at this fever pitch for longer than the heat ever could. I think another reason for the extreme amount of ennui I’ve had for every one of my passions is that some of the most important friends in my life have either changed or been in trouble. One friend, who I continually talked to in the summertime (to the degree that we swapped mix tapes and all that fun jazz) has figuratively went flip-mode, becoming unreachable most the times and snarky at others. My other friend has been in jail for two months and will be imprisoned until further notice (I still am not sure exactly why eir is still in jail but I haven’t been able to get in contact because me and the family are not on good time). This other friend was really inspirational and (unless ey was drunk) much more positive about things than the vast majority of my allies here.

So, aside from Shayne and Barton (the Kirkwoods too), there really aren’t that many people left around to really provide support. There will always be those people that I talk to on AIM or Myspace, but many of those conversations really do not go anywhere beyond random emoticons or inane babble. I’m a little unsure whether to try to initiate any new friendships or relationships here, as the plan is now to go and get a more permanent house up at Kent State second semester of next year. Everything is so grey this summer – with buddies gone or locked up, there are very few things to wake up for every morning. Honestly, the only reason that life has any vitality for me right now is the hope that sometime down the road that I would be able to help my family and friends out. That motto was behind the creation of NeuFutur Records, and a whole host of individuals have not been able to detach themselves from a fundamental distrust of humanity that says that anyone doing anything that could possibly be described as “good” has to be doing it in order to gain something larger from it. I still remember the rumblings that went through Lancaster last year – that I was taking money from the concerts I held and essentially robbing the concert-goers of Lancaster blind. Obviously, the fact that I made CDs free (and distributed them to 1000 local people) did not put a kink in those discussions.

So, I’m sitting here at the computer desk, in the same room that I’ve done these zines since 1999. There have been changes in the people that I know and some of the activities that I do, but by and large everything is the same. Chances are that every night, there’s a batch of punk kids drinking, and even those people that say they are straight edge will fall headlong into the bottle sooner or later. Just because people are dolled up in a Fleas & Lice shirt instead of a Polo pullover really does not mean much unless individuals honestly live different and want to chance society. I’m in a transitory state right now because I just graduated, lost a bunch of friends there that were able to accept me for the lifestyle I’ve led there (Todd, Storm, Mayghin) and those few (incredibly fucking few) people in Lancaster that could do the same have changed, left or are in jail. Its going to be a long, fucking hot summer and hopefully things can change for the better before I leave here for good in August. I have no clue how Kent State is going to be – it is the second largest college in Ohio, and pretty much the only thing I know about it is that their main library is 13 stories tall (dayum). Sure, I have some other friends around (Jamez, Kelly, Steve, Jill, Jim Testa), but they are lightyears away from me, someone who doesn’t have any solid method of transportation anywhere.