The Normalcy of Deviancy: Confronting Your Dangerous Thoughts, PART II
In this article, the second part of my luxuriously titled series “The Normalcy of Deviancy: Confronting Your Dangerous Thoughts,” I want to talk about the urge to runaway and the mysterious disappearance of the counterculture. What defines a runaway? Indeed, it is an age-old question. Perhaps we can find the answer in the great Soul Asylum lyric, “Runaway Train”:
“Call you up in the middle of the night
Like a firefly without a light
You were there like a slow torch burning
I was a key that could use a little turning
So tired that I couldn’t even sleep
So many secrets I couldn’t keep
Promised myself I wouldn’t weep
One more promise I couldn’t keep
It seems no one can help me now
I’m in too deep
There’s no way out
This time I have really led myself astray
CHORUS
Runaway train never going back
Wrong way on a one-way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I’m neither here nor there
Can you help me remember how to smile
Make it somehow all seem worthwhile
How on earth did I get so jaded
Life’s mystery seems so faded
I can go where no one else can go
I know what no one else knows
Here I am just drownin’ in the rain
With a ticket for a runaway train
Everything is cut and dry
Day and night, earth and sky
Somehow I just don’t believe it
CHORUS
Bought a ticket for a runaway train
Like a madman laughin’ at the rain
Little out of touch, little insane
Just easier than dealing with the pain
Runaway train never comin’ back
Runaway train tearin’ up the track
Runaway train burnin’ in my veins
Runaway but it always seems the same”
Hmmm, yeah, I didn’t really get much out of that. It’s got a killer melody though. That song was totally the anthem during a family vacation one summer on Long Island. I remember when we got back to New Jersey and I finally saw the video, I was so pissed off at all those missing kids. For me, it ruined the song for some reason. Oh well, I digress.
Although the song was titled “Runaway Train,” I think Soul Asylum was talking about kids who were most likely dead. You know kidnapped ones, raped and murdered little one. Its not surprising Soul Asylum fell off the face of the earth after all. That shit was too depressing. Pure runaways don’t really exist anymore because the kids of today are too chickenshit to try anything like that; runaways only exist in Mark Twain novels and Bon Jovi tunes (at least one, “Runaway”), but more on that later. Sadly, I have to include myself in this chicken poop category. When I was younger I thought about running away, but my life was way too cushy. I’ve always been in love with the IDEA of running away though, and if I ever learn how to cipher gas without killing myself I still might.
The idea that kids still leave home with a bandanna full of crap tied to the end of a stick is a myth. Kids who steal their parents’ credit cards and bale don’t count either. At some point, and I think this happened in the 70’s, running away died. It’s also no coincidence that this happened around the same time that the counterculture disappeared into either the underground or thin air (it depends on who you’re talking to). Aging hippie douche bags and stupid punk/emo kids will tell you it went underneath, they might even tell you that it’s thriving, but normal, pessimistic folks will tell you the plain, honest truth: it died like a donkey on a death train (whatever that means).
So let’s look at that Bon Jovi song, “Runaway,” let’s see if we find any truth, any insight there:
“On the street where you live girls talk about their social lives
They’re made of lipstick, plastic and paint, a touch of sable in their eyes
All your life all you’ve asked when’s your daddy gonna talk to you
You were living in another world tryin to get your message through.
No one heard a single word you said.
They should have seen it in your eyes
What was going around your heart.
Chorus:
Ooh, she’s a little runaway.
Daddy’s girl learned fast
All those things he couldn’t say.
Ooh, she’s a little runaway.
A different line every night guaranteed to blow your mind
See you out on the streets, call me for a wild time
So you sit home alone cause there’s nothing left that you can do
Threes only pictures hung in the shadows left there to look at you
You know she likes the lights at nights on the neon Broadway signs
She don’t really mind, its only love she hoped to find
Repeat chorus
No one heard a single word she said
They should have seen it in your eyes
What was going around your heart
Ooh, she’s a little runaway
Daddy’s girl learned fast
All those things he couldn’t say
Ooh, she’s a little runaway
Daddy’s girl learned fast
Now she works the night away
Ooh, she’s a little runaway
Daddy’s girl learned fast
All those things he couldn’t say
Ooh, she’s a little runaway
Daddy’s girl learned fast
Now she works the night away”
Okay, now we’re talking. At least this song is literally about running away. This is the classic tale of the middle class girl turned cokehead prostitute. Not a runaway in the mold of the traditional pre-70’s model, but rather the drug-fueled runaway. The drug fuel runaway isn’t exactly a new phenomenon; they’ve been around for a while, but they don’t really count either. Let me tell you what I mean by that. When you’re running away because of addiction you’re chasing the drug experience, while the runaways that fueled the counterculture were, theoretically in search of a life experience. Half of Oregon are runaways by this drug addict definition.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter. Most upstanding Americans (read: conservative assholes) would tell you that this is a great thing. People usually don’t care if their dark alleys are full of druggie waifs so long as during the daytime the freaks aren’t making a racket (i.e., during the 1960’s). In reality, this is a good and a bad thing. A lot of the hippie vision was passive, nonsensical idealism but on the same token, it’s not like the punk movement that followed did anything to stop Reagan and the current state of neo-conservatism.
I feel that if the two factions could ever be melded together somehow, then we might be onto something. The reactionary elements of both sides, the sunshine happiness of hippie protests and punk rock’s dark hatred & contempt for the status quo could fuse into a nice cocktail of change if the right people concocted it. Who knows, maybe the kids would runaway for something like that.
