It's a Sad Salvation

I was listening to Sufjan Stevens' "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." recently. I hadn't listened to it in a while, because it is disturbing, like Tori Amos' song about rape. But hearing it again, I thought back to the first time I heard it and I could remember it well. It is in a rental car in Seattle, on a quest to find Lake Washington and the greenhouse where Kurt Cobain took his life. I was so freaked out hearing that song on the radio, but also impressed. Growing up in a training wheels town, Seattle was the first place I saw where all the small town "artists", misfits, intellectuals, addicts with vision, can go. These big cities filled with soy drinks and literate cyclists. We all get to an age where we decide if we care more about safe schools or decriminalized drugs, or both I guess. A town where they show Almodovar and Waters for midnight shows.