Nobody runs away anymore. Kids are simple, but there's something particularly adult about children these days. I was walking with a friend to a hobby shop, and on the way, we saw three kids playing Cops & Robbers. A nice scene. Fingers as guns, it's a wonder we use them for anything else. Very nostalgic, very Americana. Then they turned their guns on us. This was high noon, shootout, Old West! What could we do? Give up, give out, give in?
I shot back. Nobody says ‘bang’ anymore; it has to be deeper, more "sh" sounds. More real. If it's not deeper, it's sharper, but you can't say ‘pop.’ That's the old-time version of today's Grand Theft Auto pistol. It's a fine line, so I went with a deep ‘dzuzsh,’ which seemed to carry across the traffic rather well. Real action-movie-like. I hit one of the boys, and it was looking promising for me, but then I realized my friend wasn't shooting. He was just walking alongside. We were under fire and he was taking it in stride! This wasn't the hero, focused and determined, storming in with explosions on either side; this was total disengagement.
He thought he was impervious. He thought if he didn't shoot back, he'd be safe. I was going down -- first my leg to slow me, then my shoulder just in case adrenaline hit and I crawled away. They were relentless as they went in for the kill. I was given my due and hit in the chest, rolling into the bushes, but my friend went right on down the street.
He kept going, until they really hit him. They called him ‘boring.’ Imagine that? Boring at 21? How do you recover? There was no other way to say it. The old-time version would've worked just as well, deep "sh" sounds and pop sounds alike. This was timeless. The whole time, I felt like Grizzly Bear (for the animal, see Grizzly bear) was hovering. Not that their music is boring, no way, but it felt present more for its tone, its atmosphere that feels, to me anyway, timeless. There's an ease, a playful seriousness, a blanket of comfort that kids seem like they should have, but don't.
Kids have a great way of blurting out the truth, they see an injustice -- in this case, a young person not playing -- and they call it like they see it. My friend, shocked, horrified, made a feeble attempt at fighting back, but it was too late. He was boring. There was no other way around it. So what did he do? He ran. He ran away. Twenty-one and running away. Kids don't run away anymore. Boring or not, there was something inherently childish about that. I thought maybe he was more childlike than the three boys. And there was Grizzly Bear. It seemed fitting, this adult childhood. And that's encouraging, isn't it? At least for those of us who aren't kids? For them, for those boys that were shooting at us, for those pre-adults, who knows. Maybe they can listen to Grizzly Bear.
They're touring, with Feist. No literal handguns needed. Bang, bang:
^with Feist
