Today I painted something blue

When you're an outcast, you feel it. \nYou know the stares from the other kids at work. Smoker. Tomboy. You're into Xiu Xiu, can't recommend DMB or 50 Cent. Grandaddy, not Pete Yorn. Maybe you can't pay attention so well. Dripped paint on the blueprints. Drifted off with the last instructions, completed your menial task the wrong way. You're almost 21; thought this feeling and the breakouts would have faded away with high school. \nNot a Republican or Demohipocrat. Not a hippie, not gangster. More mod, only very slightly punk. Black leather jacket, worn, not trendy. And even with "High Fidelity," everyone knows that the skinny (or fat) guy with the headphones on isn't really cool. \nYou are the girl who isn't the type to take to bars. You are the guy who drinks alone. Slopass. Ambitious. Workaholic. Scenester. Vegetarian (though it's amazing, I think the novelty and tweeness of it is making it more widely accepted, and hey, people say it's healthy). You'd rather listen to albums; down with house parties. You have a corner in the office, almost. You are too loud or too quiet. They can't make up their minds. Your boyfriend is somewhat off to the rest of the crew, but that's preferable. Your girlfriend is beautiful, but in a strange dirty t-shirt sort of way. Or you're alone. You cut yourselves together. It's too much oxycotin and snorting darvocet. Or maybe you just photographed the whole debacle.\nBut the blind leading the bled only leads to self-separation. It's inevitable, if you start feeling the outkastia now, it'll train you to withdraw in the future. It's hard enough to learn to love when you'd rather stay at home -- worse, when it's reinforced. \nThink of the type you know, the kind that could be saved by some measly part in a rock band. Charlie Manson was that way, you know. Just check out the Beach Boys' cover of his tune. Neil Young said it could have sanified the guy, somewhat. So you try to play the drums, sit in the back, keeping time, missing a high hat, squeaking bass pedal, when all the while your critics remind you it only started in March and you can't be good enough.\nYou knew you were different from the age of 10. Don't try to hide it, people will only think you're a stoner. But it's not what they think. It's the red lamp you painted that's waiting to be taken home, because you finally have one. It's the banjo in the corner that's easy enough to figure out a tune on. It's tossing baseballs at a rooster during work with the other losers. It's being the turntable to your comrade's beat-boxing, and underground hip hop all at once. Fidelity to life, not hookerstyle business ambitions. I found myself questioning if I would fit in when I move to Olympia, with all the real players and weird kids and photographers. I needed to ask. That's depressing. \nHandsome boy, don't pay your $60, you'll make it on your own. Just find a 6/4 time signature to learn the rhythm to, and you've got it. Snap. It's on, between bleak history and the impending heartbreak. \nGrab you're guitar, avoid the helter-skelter that's waiting for you. Manson should have pulled a Marianne Faithful. \nIt's why Neil Young, the Replacements and the Velvet Underground are so spectacular. The cool kids all have pretty voices, they don't know what's up. Forget about precision melodies and sad bastard harmonies and all that sissy music. No more Frank Sinatra records, come on.\nDon't worry, you were born a musician.