The Slyder chiming in on the Noel thing…
Hey folks. Well we’re back home a day early for obvious reasons. It’s nice to be here but part of me is longing to be hanging with our pals in Oasis. It’s hard to describe the amount of positive energy I’m sending Noel’s way and I surely hope he’s up and about asap.
I didn’t want to repeat what my fellow bandmates have already said about this deplorable incident (although I’m in full agreement) and our fondness for Noel, Liam, Gem, Andy, Chris and Jay, so I thought I’d mention something sorta related.
I think most folks don’t understand how exposed and vulnerable performers can feel up there on that stage. Sure, it’s a blast and all, but anyone who’s ever stood on the floor of some overcrowded rock club singing their hearts out and have a microphone stand slammed into by some drunk guy and catching the mic with your mouth, knows that it can get ugly FAST! And that’s when it’s an accident! Is it any wonder that performers can get skittish when facing a boisterous and/or hostile crowd? No excuses or anything but what Noel went through the other night sends a cold chill down the backs of anyone who’s ever stood on a stage.
Let’s toast to our mate Noel for a speedy recovery and a triumphant return to the bandstand! I’ve heard that the make-up show has been announced for December 15th (London Free Press and Star.com) and we are all looking forward to it more than you can possibly imagine! … JG
leviweaver:
i got on stage once and sang with Ben Kweller.
I was young and dumb, and it was all in good fun - i sang harmony to “Wasted and Ready”, everyone cheered, i got down peacefully. Even Ben gave me a sidehug and a smile. But those were different days, I think. Dimebag was kind of Year Zero for this sort of thing.
p.s. where was security?
octobermoon:
And now a fan of both bands chiming in…
There really is nothing worse than idiots like that at shows. It’s bad enough when they are like that with fellow participants, but when they take that giant leap into nutterdom and attack a band member, well…i just don’t get people with that kind of hostility in their hearts.
I hope Noel recovers from this swiftly. From what I’ve read about him, I’m sure this won’t get him down for long. A Cardinals/Oasis show sounds like an awesome event..I wish it were happening in the UK!!
Get well soon, Noel.
fluentjb:
Slyder - this was so beautifully put…and here’s to Noel for a speedy recovery..
wolstenholme:
This will be one of the most difficult things that I have ever written. It will not be near as difficult as writing a eulogy for Mom’s memorial service, but this may be more difficult to write than a thesis or a dissertation. I have survived physical and sexual violence. I also was brought back to live after I was attacked by a group of thugs wielding brass knuckles. Reading the reactions to the attack on Noel as well as coming into contact with seeing a video of a subway rider attacked with a hammer in Philadelphia yesterday (warning, the video may retraumatize) has compelled me to share about some of my survivals of violence, especially random violence. It will not look like it was very difficult for most eyes, actually most eyes will not read this. Enough stalling. Here goes.
“There’s bound to be a ghost at the back of your closet, no matter where you live. There’s always going to be a few things, maybe several things, that you’re going to find difficult to forgive,” John Darniele “Up The Wolves”
Starting with a quote may seem like another stall tactic and it may be but The Sunset Tree resonates to me, from one survivor to another. This post is not about The Sunset Tree, that is a post for John Darniele.
This is a post about random violence, about surviving random violence. This is a painful post to type and will probably progressively get worse and more painful.
Yes, I stall. I drink coffee (10:43 p.m.) instead of gin and tonic, because I will become quite intoxicated emotionally and need to keep my head as clear and focused at possible. I have a tattoo that spans between my shoulder blades: The Way Out Is Through. This post is part of the journey through. To invoke The Dead, it has been a long, strange, and often painful trip. I have never dropped acid. I stall. I admit that I stall, possibly to try to scare away any readers in hopes that these demons (for skeletons are dead) remain in my closets (although they often seem to be in rooms with me, although invisible to others).
A refill of coffee.
“Abandon hope all ye that enter here,” sign above Hell, as reported by Dante.
I want to be clear. My Mom always demonstrated unconditional love for me and she raised me on her own and she is and always will be my hero.
Some of my earliest memories are of violence. I have seen many photographs of me wearing a gigantic smile as a child. I photographed as very happy and full of life, probably due to Mom’s tremendous love and sacrifice. Yet, I have many very vivid memories of my father physically and verbally abusing my Mom and Mom often was abused because she tried to protect me. Yes, alcohol contributed to my father’s evils, but, as I tell many of the inmates who I see on suicide observation (I am the director of suicide prevention at the prison), we all have trillions of available actions to engage in when we are intoxicated and many people do not engage in violence towards others (or self) when intoxicated. Yes, alcohol certainly impairs judgment and lowers inhibitions, but the action comes somewhere from within the individual, it simply lies dormant and not acted upon when an individual is sober (or they may act on these impulses when sober as well… I have to process similar scenarios with sex offenders attempting to recover from their paraphiliac impulses. My parents divorced when I was three years old and most of my memories of the violence are from before the divorce.
My father died from cancer when I was in my middle to late teens. I should know how old I was, but I do not. When I first typed this paragraph I thought that I was in my early teens, but I could not have been. I realize this because, after my father became ill, he came to a sermon that I preached at Gardenside Christian Church (ironically, I think that the sermon that I preached was “Surprise, You’re Dead!”… yes, titled in honor of a Faith No More song… also ironic, although purposely). My father came forward at the end of the sermon and he decided to rededicate his life to God. Outwardly, I was very happy. Yet, there was certainly a battle that raged within me, which I attributed to ‘spiritual warfare’ at the time. I was not ready to forgive dad for the multitude of sins that he committed towards Mom and me. Much of me thought that dad was engaging in another glib antisocial gesture to provide false hope (as he often did when he would go to rehab: often court-ordered). I feel very guilty for not connecting with dad after he was ill, but the mind of a middle teen is much different than my current 32 year old mind. Father passed away after I reverted to my heathen ways. I was very religious from about 15 1/2 to 16 years old, and then I had a falling out with the church. I survived verbal, physical, and sexual violence from a church representative. I’m not ready to type about much of my survival of those events, but I can say that I feel quite hollow and filled with nausea as I type these letters (I can say that hearing Ryan Adams and The Cardinals perform “Bird Song” is helping continue to journey through this post…). A brief deep breathing exercise. Some coffee. Mixed emotions: anger and vulnerability and strength. I still have not patched up things with the church and certainly not with the actors involved in the abuses. I have made some attempts to make amends with the spirit of my dad, but I still hold considerable resentment towards him for the physical and mental pain that he inflicted on Mom (just as I hold considerable resentment towards myself for all the times that I yelled at Mom and said hateful things to her when I was a rebellious teenager… I apologized to her many, many times, especially when she was attacked by cancer herself, but that does not erase my actions). The best apology is to not repeat the harmful action, or to make consistent concerted efforts to avoid repeating harm (in any sense) to others. That is a major reason why I work with prison populations, hoping to help offenders minimize the harm and hurt that they inflict on others.
This has developed into a poorly structured ramble, as I thought that it might. The literature student in me does not need to sabotage these words, the emotions that flow forth. This is not for a grade or for publication. This is to seek to continue the journey out through the hurt, the anger, the vulnerability. I still have not really touched, explicitly, on random public violence, but I will.
I grew up in low-income areas. Violence was often present in the neighborhood and at school. Streetfights and enduring the attacks of bullies was commonplace. There were several incidents growing up where I was brutally attacked by older and much bigger bullies, but generally the injuries were not worse than bloody noses, black eyes, bruises, and mild broken bones. Gangs were part of the environment. I was in a gang from 13 to 14 (when I also sang in metal bands), but my gang was broken up by police and long prison sentences for our leaders and some of the gangmembers went on to join the Folk Nation. I never assaulted anybody when I was in the gang. I did participate in gang fights, but the fights always had similar numbers of rival gang members. I am not proud of my history of being in a gang, but it is part of my biography.
I can recall dozens of situations in my pre-teens and teens when I escaped random acts of gang violence by use of my fast feet.
I often helped work out my rage, as a youth, through sports, streetfights (generally standing up to bullies or standing up for those who were being bullied… I had a willingness to fight bullies because most bullies did not want to fight, they wanted to overpower and intimidate; if they knew that you would fight, even if they knew that they could beat me up, they would avoid me), heavy metal music, and moshpits.
The only times that I ever attacked people were when those individuals were sexual abusers. I shattered the knee caps of two sexual predators who prayed on the youth in our neighborhood (and outside of it, too). One of the predators was a prominent businessman (whose ‘family business’ is now thankfully going bankrupt) who they local police turned a blind eye to, time after time. Despite all his money I guess that his knees were never repaired because he still has quite the noticeable limping shuffle. When I see him free it makes me sick with anger, but I would never touch him as an adult, but I hate how the criminal justice system often protects those with money and influence. Additionally, it is very retraumatizing for survivors (of physical and/or sexual violence) to try to navigate the “justice” system. I know that it was especially difficult for many of the male survivors in my neighborhood, because in a macho environment trying to process such traumatic events certainly complicated identity and development for many of us. Many of us harbored considerable anger, which made us very attractive to The Marines (who diligently tried to snatch us up the second we turned 18 in hopes that we’d sign the dotted line before having an ‘adult record’). I’m not ready to type much about survival of sexual crimes, and I don’t know that I ever will be able to type much about, except for when elements of my survivals work their ways (in a safer manner) into my creative prose and poetry.
Jon Graboff wrote of the vulnerability of musicians on stages (probably why Glenn Danzig punches, or used to punch, fans who came up onto stage). I have certainly experienced such vulnerability, although in a non-celebrity manner.
When I was nineteen years old I sought to sought to pursue my dream of being a professional writer of poetry and prose. I was not in college at the time. I had been in college and found it to not be worth the price of tuition, so I decided to be a dishwasher, live on a budget of $2-$3 a day for food and write poems and prose during much of my spare time. I was a dishwasher at Phil Dunn’s Cookshop. I had to close everything down and was often the last person out the door other than the manager. I walked home after closing on a Sunday night, around maybe midnight. My clothes were saturated with water and the aromas of a night of hardlabor at the cookshop. I wore light jeans, a white “remember the salem witchtrials” t-shirt, and a pittsburgh penguins hat. I listened to Sepultura’s Beneath The Remains, actual song was “Inner Self” on my headphones. I saw a group of about a dozen african americans running towards me (I was near Jewel Hall, on Euclid Avenue). I took my headphones off and thought about running, but they were right on top of me and I remember thinking “don’t be racist, they probably just think they know you,” (note: I had not been in a gang for about five years and have no indication that this was any way related to me previously being in a gang). I have very foggy recall, shadowy recall of many of the thugs, they are primarily apparitions of pain and anger.
I have thought that I had a crystal clear image of the face of the first one who struck me. I see a very clear face, even now (somewhat harboring the features of a hybrid of Ja Rule, Method Man, The Game, and Nelly — although stockier than all of them). He was shorter than me, stocky, with a boxer’s build (I also boxed for a while in my early teens). He asked me if I knew the time and I started to say that I did not have a watch and he flashed a HUGE smile (so antisocial and cruel) that revealed grills (this was before grills were quite so commonplace), and he directed a haymaker towards my jaw, which I partially dodged, but he must have had quite the punch, or maybe I went into shock because I lost some of what happened, then there are several brief flashes of consciousness where I can still very, very vividly see exploding flashes of light, see slivers of portions of the identities of the many attackers, feel the gushing of warm blood, the swelling, feeling my heart feel like an earthquake or a racecar engine. I came to with about six of them punching down on me and kicking me and I instinctively jumped up and began to run away. I was gushing blood. There were many cars driving down the street. A truck on elevated tires with a rebel flag decal across the backwindow passed while some of the thugs chased me. I am not racist, at all, but it baffles me that these guys (the truck was full) in this rebel flag truck would drive on past as a bloody white guy is getting chased by many african americans. Nobody stopped, just as nobody helped the innocent victim in the subway beating in Philadelphia the other day. I was discombobulated from the concussions and blood loss and instead of running to a hospital (there were hospitals about two blocks from the attack and five blocks from the attack) I tried to run towards a house (about a mile away) where two of my half-brothers (who I am not close to) lived. I spun around in a McDonald’s parking lot and punched one of my attackers in the Adam’s apple, which sent him to the ground. He was the only one close enough to catch me at that time. I used to be very fast when I was younger. I ran several more blocks and I passed out from loss of blood in the middle of Maxwell Street, near Wildcat Liquor. Thankfully a police officer discovered me lying in a pool of blood in the street. I have some memories where I went in and out of consciousness in the ambulance and at the hospital. I remember somebody in the ambulance saying ‘must be over drugs.’ Note, this may seem baffling, but I had had no alcohol or drugs at that point in my life. I remember how painful it was when they tried to check for internal bleeding. I recall the police bringing several african american males to the hospital for me to possibly i.d., but I was so foggy at the time that I really could not i.d. them (and I still am not sure how reliable my recall of any of the assailants was… I was focused on staying alive, not providing detailed descriptions).
Anyway, it turns out that I died multiple times that night, but was brought back to life. I sustained several injuries, including head injuries, and both jaws were shattered. Mom was an absolute angel. I moved back in with her and she was so wonderful in trying to concoct tasteful things for me to drink (my jaws were wired shut and I have plates in my jaws) and I could only consume thin liquids. I can’t imagine how devastating it would have been for Mom if I would not have been brought back to life.
The violence seems to have been completely random. I do not believe in the ‘wrong place at the wrong time’ philosophy. I believe in taking back the night, the day, and the streets. I was walking home from work. I was in the right place, sober, at the right time. The assailants did not steal anything from me (they may have taken my Pittsburgh Penguins hat) because I still had my wallet and walkman at the hospital… although my walkman was broken and the headphones were gone). I may have been attacked because I was not african american, I don’t know, and that really does not matter.
The mental injuries from this assault were very substantial. It was literally years before I could watch violence on t.v. or in movies. Violence would make me physically sick (a la Alex in Clockwork Orange… which I could not watch now) and would often trigger flashbacks. Sleep was difficult, sporadic, and laced with nightmares. I often awakened reliving the attack. I certainly had P.T.S.D. (although I had had P.T.S.D. for some time before, I realize that my PTSD was at its worst in the years following this attack) I had to carry a knife with me everywhere I went in public (I went to the University of Kentucky about 5 months after the attack). I was very hypervigilent, especially at night. I never felt safe in public, I thought that I could be attacked at any time.
I lost considerable weight when my jaws were wired (I was already poverty unchic thin before) and when I started at U.K. I could not talk in class or to any classmates and I had poor control of my lower lip which meant that I often slobbered on myself. Needless to say, most students avoided me like I had leprosy. Some professors treated me like a burden.
I still rarely feel safe. Some call me paranoid. I say that I am cautious.
I will write another post about how I was brutalized, in front of thousands, by Louisville Police Officers when I was 20.
I work at a prison and I wonder if I’ve seen any of my attackers.
I’ve seen many guys from my days in a gang.
I’m very emotionally drained, and I know that this seems very incomplete and not concluded. I’ll add more, later. I need to stop, for now.
I must say that I interconnect with Noel at this time and that I will meditate for him and that I wish him peace and safety, and I wish the same for the twenty-year old gentleman who was attacked on the subway in Philadelphia.
I apologize, for anybody who actually made it this far. This has been very draining.
The following playlist helped me journey through this post:
Grateful Dead: Not Fade Away (live)
Oasis: A Bell Will Ring
The Mountain Goats: Up The Wolves
Ryan Adams and the Cardinals: Bird Song
Oasis: Part of the Queue
Madball: My Rage
Nine Inch Nails: Leaving Hope
Nine Inch Nails: Discipline
Moonspell: Luna
[Jo Wolstenholme: exhausted September 11, 2008]
