I was reminiscing about my grunge days

So, I was listening to music today. See, I decided to make up a 90's Alternative playlist. The playlist, of course, contains: Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Gin Blossons, Pearl Jam, Blind Melon, Weezer, and many many more.

Around the 9th grade or so, back a million years ago, I decided I was in love with all those bands. MTV was a fixed channel that elicited full fledge fights with my older brother any time he dared change the channel. My mother was wise enough to get us a TV and leave us to fight with each other in our room. We shared a big room (yes! we were poor folks from the NYC, what do you expect?) The room was great, and my brother, (thank god!) was rarely around. He spent most of his time skateboarding or just flat out getting into trouble. But MTV was always around.

I loved coming home and just turning it as loud as possible then singing till I couldn't speak. I mean, how can you not scream as loud as you can to 4 NonBlonde's What's Up? Just the lyrics are amazing. To this day I feel like screaming to this song, and still some how connect with it. I guess it's the whole part:
I realized quickly when I knew I should
That the world was made up of this brotherhood of man
For whatever that means


Tell me that's not fucking true?!! Or even more, so many times I feel like this:
And so I wake in the morning and I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream from the top of my lungs
What's goin' on?


But something happened today while I was listening to these awesome songs. Well, I realized that the songs were never about me. What I mean is that I always felt like the songs reached into my soul and poured out my feelings. I suppose in a way they did, but my secret thoughts that the songs were written for me (because of my own narcissistic ideas. Yes, I'm still reading "A Culture of Narcissism) Then I listened to Live's "Lighting Crashes," and there's the part where he says "pale blue colored eyes," that kind of smacked me int he face and I realized fully that man, they totally never thought about writing songs to a poor Dominican girl in the New York City. I mean, I'm not saying Van Morrison was thinking of me when he wrote Brown Eyed Girl.

I just started thinking of all those videos I watched of all those bands that I love and not even one person in them resembled me at all. Like Smashing Pumpkin's 1979 video. My God! I remember watching this video and thinking my life was shit!! hahahah I mean, it was, to me, like teenage Utopia. There, no parents, a bunch of "cool kids" jumping into pools and having that ideal suburban life I had only imagined, or seen on TV. It all sounds really silly but it's so true. Of course, now I realize that those were just a bunch of models.

All this really leaves me nowhere. I mean, I love that music and always will. I do feel they spoke of the overall sentiments that all teenagers feel, particularly to us "Grunge Gen'" kids. Maybe that's one good thing about today's music, there's way more people that look like a poor Dominican girl from the New York City on tv, not many but more.