Red House Painters - 24
So, last night, as I was standing on a street in Flatiron with Willo, Jes and Morgan, watching them get their palms read by a very attractive black transvestite palm reader, some drunk kids walked by and were like “wooo! woo! It’s my birthday!”
I high-fived the kid and said “how old are you?” He seemed a bit nervous to answer but then answered proudly, “24!”
It was all I could do to not tell him it was going to be the worst year of his life.
24. It’s not everyone’s worst year, and indeed, in the fast-moving, ambitious, internet-enabled, entrepreneurial crowd I roll in these days, the 24 year olds have their shit together and see the world as full of potential.
But 24 is, I think, the year that more people find the worst year of their lives than every other year.
What is it about 24? You’re piled high in debt, you’re working at a shit job, if you’re lucky, or you’re unemployed.
And, if you’re even less lucky, you turned 24 in 1992, right around the time Mark Kozelek’s Red House Painters released their first album, Down Colorful Hill, featuring the gem “24.”
Down Colorful Hill wasn’t officially released until September, but if you were as up in the junk of 4AD as we were back in the day, you had the advance cassette promos and whatnot fairly early in the year.
So by the time my 24th birthday rolled around, underemployed, in debt and successfully sued by the State of Alaska for non-payment on my student loans, I got the distinct pleasure of hearing the song “24” just a few days after I turned 24, alone, at 4 in the morning, in a dark bedroom in my apartment on Comm Ave in Allston.
So it’s not
Loaded stadiums
Or ballparks
And we’re not
Kids on swingsets
On the blacktop
And I thought
At fifteen that I’d
Have it down by sixteen
And twenty-four keeps breathing at my face
Like a manhole
And twenty-four keeps pounding at my door
Like a friend you don’t want to see
Oldness comes with a smile
To every love given child
Oldness comes to life
The youth, they dream suicide
Oldness comes with a smile
To every love given child
Oldness comes to life
The youth, they dream suicide
Yeah. That didn’t feel good.
There’s something about 24. I think it’s the first time you feel old. I think it’s the first time many of us realize this is our life and we have to live it. Maybe it was just me. I was definitely slow to this whole work and responsibility thing.
I employ a ton of people now around the age of 24. They are bright and happy and ambitious and clever and hard working. It’s interesting how they are so much more motivated than I was, but at the same time, you can see the same 24 angst, the same restless, pent-up energy to… to… do SOMETHING. UNGH! The art of methodically breaking down all the pieces of life and weaving them together into some sort of spiritual, emotional, labor and recreational combination and plan that works for you is still nacent. But the sense of time passing has kicked in. And, if the pot didn’t get you, the knowledge that you gotta get it together soon is starting to creep into thing. Sometimes I look at these amazing kids working and wonder if I’ve saved them or robbed them of the joy of unemployment, aimlessness and oppression. I’m jealous of their early successes, but I’m nut sure I’d trade in my years of trying to start bands and record labels and design studios and wildly idealistic dreaming.
Maybe not. But these are the things this song brings to me. Absurdly young and beautiful people starting to feel old.
