Music Nov 7, 2012 at 4:00 am

Four Stranger Writers Hold Forth on the Pope of Mope

DEREK ERDMAN

Comments

1
OMG! The four of you pinned Morrissey down. I was a young 16 year old gay in Utah. No where to turn, no one to talk to. The Smiths changed my whole life with "How Soon Is Now?" The lyric "I am human and I need to be loved, just like everybody else does" will stick with me forever. Thank you Morrissey and I thank the four of you for a beautiful column. I brought back all kinds of memories.
2
He rules! I accidentally turned him into the MGM

lion though, one time, in my mind. It's like his

song 'started something..couldn't finish'?

"hair brushed and parted" like some pics of the

MGM lion? And then he kind of growls like a lion

or something before he says "that's what

tradition means"? (an example of the weird

alchemy that happens in my mind):)

But yeah, i'm fond of his music and it's kind

of nostalgic. When I went to college and found

out about him. Nostalgia is a kind of alchemy.

Anyway, I'm not a witch, I've just been reading

about hermeticsm lately. I like your paper.

J

3
Also, in that train of thought, i think of morris the cat, and ceiling cat, and i have this buddy steven and his cat will only eat nine lives seafood of something like that.

Anyway I really like Morrisey. I ended up with
an old roomates tape of Meat is Murder. I used to
steal his food too. Uh, Paul Chickey is his name,
of Dr. Zhivegas Fame.

J
4
The Smith were okay but Morrissy is a twat.
5
The Smiths were great, but I had a very hard time warming up to Morrissey. As a straight kid in moderately redneck Colorado I had a number of friends who adored him, but I could never understand or warm up to him. This combined with my mid 80's teen redneck state homophobia made me a bit of a dick about the whole thing (did liking the Smiths means I was a fag? or way worse...that I would NEVER get laid?)
And he did have a propensity to act like such a pompous ass in public... but my Smiths friends were so much cooler than me. And sophisticated. And nice. And accepting. and those guitar lines...Johnny Marr was (and continues to be) amazing...and Meat Is Murder perfectly overlapped my discovered of marijuana. Wow. How soon was now? Maybe I was a faggot after all, and maybe that was okay, I didn't know... and there were girls. Mopey cute girls...and it was so much easier to relax with the black clothing semi-gothy Smiths/Cure people than the very stressful macho overdrive punk people or macho redneck metal people. Oh it was amazing to feel the energy of the punky and metal music....it was so cathartic, but everyone was so much tougher and butcher and altogether dude-er than I was, who could relax with those people? ...it was one fucked up misfired adventure after another with frightening and intimidating people and consequences constantly. The Smiths were melodic and wonderful and those guitars just went on and on and I never had to put up with being 'faced' or out macho-ed.

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