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Scintilla Project: A Room of One's Own
Mar. 19th, 2012 11:51 amThey said :
"You're just another person in the world
You're just another fool with radical views
You're just another who has maddening views
You want to turn it on its head
By staying in bed !"
I said : "I know I do"
--Morrissey, "He Knows I'd Love to See Him"
I had my own bedroom in the northwest corner of the house until I moved out to college. It was originally a faded pinkish color but in the early 80s my dad and I painted it the typical light blue of a boy's room. It was a relatively small squarish room with baseboard heating along the western side and an odd notch in the southeast corner where the chimney was, and I could only arrange the bed and other furniture in so many ways, so it's pretty much stayed the same way ever since. My older sister has since taken over the room, but you can still see a few telltale things of how I had it set up back then.
The bed was either up against the north wall and facing east, or up against the west wall and facing south. There was a closet in the northeast corner, and next to it was my bureau, and next to that (and up against the old chimney wall) was either a bookcase or a chair or a squat shelf that housed my cassette collection. Those three were pretty much constant. The south wall changed over the years, first from a few bookshelves and whatnot to a desk and a hand-me-down stereo, and lastly a bookshelf that held more cassettes and my radio on the top, and my turntable stereo next to it, on top of an old school desk. In front of the window on the north wall was my desk, once my grandmother's. There was usually nothing in front of the west window that looked out over our back yard, as there wasn't much space for anything there.
I of course think of my old bedroom as my cave, my fortress of solitude, my escape from the rest of the world or sometimes just from the town I grew up in. Once I became a teenager, the walls slowly started getting plastered with music and movie posters, album cover flats, pictures from magazines, and other random things. In 1987 or so my sister bought me an extremely large poster of the Cure which took up most of the west wall. It was obvious then how much of a music geek I was by the things I put up.
The first radio I had in there was an old crackly one that used to be in the kitchen, and was the one I used to discover all the music I would enjoy in the early 80s. In 1984 I got my first radio/cassette player (which I still have), which I then used to make all the mix tapes of things I heard (most of which I also still have). That radio got a lot of use in those years, first parked at my desk while I listened to Top 40 and classic rock, then on my bureau or on my bookcase when I listened to WMDK and the college radio stations. You can still see a strip of tape on the dial where I'd stuck a strip of paper that held notches of where my favorite stations were.
I spent quite a bit of time in that room hanging out by myself, thinking about what I wanted to do when I graduated, and working on my writing and my music. I'd park myself on the bed with notebook in hand and write all sorts of things while music played from one of the radios, or I'd be playing my dad's keyboard or my bass. As I got older I'd also stay up late, listening to music with my headphones, with just a dim lamp next to my bed rather than the bright overhead light. Back then I'd stay up until midnight or one in the morning, even on school nights. I loved the cavelike ambience of that room at that time, when everyone else was asleep. I felt like I was the only one in the world who was still awake. This ambience, along with the pains of being a teenager and the music I was listening to at the time, definitely influenced my writing at the time. I was your typical teenage rebel in his own mind, getting along with everyone but thinking I was a teenage nonconformist. I wrote Cure-like lyrics of anger and depression, weird and strange scenes in my novel, and introspective lines of poetry.
I think it was late 1988 when I pulled my bed apart. I'd had the same woodframe bed since I was a kid, and I'd started to outgrow it, not to mention that the support boards were starting to lose their hold. I took it apart one afternoon and put the mattress and boxspring down on the floor. The funny thing was that my parents didn't notice it until about a week or so later. My mom was concerned that I'd be cold, but considering my bed was right next to the heater, it would keep me warm enough. I even kept the bed made during the day, folding the comforter so it just touched the floor. It was another personal touch to the room that set it far apart from all the other rooms in the house.
Moving out of that room when I headed to college was kind of exciting and sad at the same time. I was looking forward to heading out into the world and making something of myself, but at the same time I was losing something deeply personal that I would never get back in the same way again. I would still create my own personal spaces in a succession of apartments and even when I moved back home, but it wouldn't be the same. I'd moved on and grown up.
Sometimes I kind of miss having that personal cave, even though I now have my writing nook in our spare bedroom (aka 'Spare Oom'). My old bedroom was a place for meditation and rest, and a place to hide from the rest of the world when things got too frustrating or overwhelming. We're all so plugged in to the internet and distracted with the rest of the world that I sometimes forget I can still do that.
"You're just another person in the world
You're just another fool with radical views
You're just another who has maddening views
You want to turn it on its head
By staying in bed !"
I said : "I know I do"
--Morrissey, "He Knows I'd Love to See Him"
I had my own bedroom in the northwest corner of the house until I moved out to college. It was originally a faded pinkish color but in the early 80s my dad and I painted it the typical light blue of a boy's room. It was a relatively small squarish room with baseboard heating along the western side and an odd notch in the southeast corner where the chimney was, and I could only arrange the bed and other furniture in so many ways, so it's pretty much stayed the same way ever since. My older sister has since taken over the room, but you can still see a few telltale things of how I had it set up back then.
The bed was either up against the north wall and facing east, or up against the west wall and facing south. There was a closet in the northeast corner, and next to it was my bureau, and next to that (and up against the old chimney wall) was either a bookcase or a chair or a squat shelf that housed my cassette collection. Those three were pretty much constant. The south wall changed over the years, first from a few bookshelves and whatnot to a desk and a hand-me-down stereo, and lastly a bookshelf that held more cassettes and my radio on the top, and my turntable stereo next to it, on top of an old school desk. In front of the window on the north wall was my desk, once my grandmother's. There was usually nothing in front of the west window that looked out over our back yard, as there wasn't much space for anything there.
I of course think of my old bedroom as my cave, my fortress of solitude, my escape from the rest of the world or sometimes just from the town I grew up in. Once I became a teenager, the walls slowly started getting plastered with music and movie posters, album cover flats, pictures from magazines, and other random things. In 1987 or so my sister bought me an extremely large poster of the Cure which took up most of the west wall. It was obvious then how much of a music geek I was by the things I put up.
The first radio I had in there was an old crackly one that used to be in the kitchen, and was the one I used to discover all the music I would enjoy in the early 80s. In 1984 I got my first radio/cassette player (which I still have), which I then used to make all the mix tapes of things I heard (most of which I also still have). That radio got a lot of use in those years, first parked at my desk while I listened to Top 40 and classic rock, then on my bureau or on my bookcase when I listened to WMDK and the college radio stations. You can still see a strip of tape on the dial where I'd stuck a strip of paper that held notches of where my favorite stations were.
I spent quite a bit of time in that room hanging out by myself, thinking about what I wanted to do when I graduated, and working on my writing and my music. I'd park myself on the bed with notebook in hand and write all sorts of things while music played from one of the radios, or I'd be playing my dad's keyboard or my bass. As I got older I'd also stay up late, listening to music with my headphones, with just a dim lamp next to my bed rather than the bright overhead light. Back then I'd stay up until midnight or one in the morning, even on school nights. I loved the cavelike ambience of that room at that time, when everyone else was asleep. I felt like I was the only one in the world who was still awake. This ambience, along with the pains of being a teenager and the music I was listening to at the time, definitely influenced my writing at the time. I was your typical teenage rebel in his own mind, getting along with everyone but thinking I was a teenage nonconformist. I wrote Cure-like lyrics of anger and depression, weird and strange scenes in my novel, and introspective lines of poetry.
I think it was late 1988 when I pulled my bed apart. I'd had the same woodframe bed since I was a kid, and I'd started to outgrow it, not to mention that the support boards were starting to lose their hold. I took it apart one afternoon and put the mattress and boxspring down on the floor. The funny thing was that my parents didn't notice it until about a week or so later. My mom was concerned that I'd be cold, but considering my bed was right next to the heater, it would keep me warm enough. I even kept the bed made during the day, folding the comforter so it just touched the floor. It was another personal touch to the room that set it far apart from all the other rooms in the house.
Moving out of that room when I headed to college was kind of exciting and sad at the same time. I was looking forward to heading out into the world and making something of myself, but at the same time I was losing something deeply personal that I would never get back in the same way again. I would still create my own personal spaces in a succession of apartments and even when I moved back home, but it wouldn't be the same. I'd moved on and grown up.
Sometimes I kind of miss having that personal cave, even though I now have my writing nook in our spare bedroom (aka 'Spare Oom'). My old bedroom was a place for meditation and rest, and a place to hide from the rest of the world when things got too frustrating or overwhelming. We're all so plugged in to the internet and distracted with the rest of the world that I sometimes forget I can still do that.
