Late winter/early spring 1994 was a period of constant activity and naive, youthful fun. D'luv was halfway through his final semester of community college, and was in the midst of being the managing editor of the student newspaper, The Cube.There was a clear-cut changing of the guard at the paper's office for the first time. The older students who were in charge moved on by early '94, and myself and the editor in chief, Tony, were kind of the rogue upstarts who, quite frankly, were pretty wet behind the ears. But we still had a strong vision for what the publication should be.
The two of us had attended a college journalism convention in Dallas the fall beforehand, where we picked up some ideas. When the next semester began and Tony and I took over, we implemented some changes; one of them being that, for the first time in the newspaper's history, writers, photographers and illustrators would actually be paid for the their work.
Bang! All you had to do was say "paid," and suddenly the Cube office went from the same six people doing everything to being a constant hub of freelancers hanging out on breaks between classes, doing actual work while philosophizing about vastly important matters in the way only 19- or 20-year-olds can."Reality Bites, the defining movie of our generation? More like the defining movie of horseshit!"
"What do you mean Ace Of Base have no soul?!?"
Anyway, one song on heavy rotation in those months, both on the radio and in the eternal jukebox of my mind when I think back to then, is Enigma's oddly stirring hit, "Return To Innocence."
"Return To Innocence" was always on somewhere in the background at that point—on the local Pittsburgh Top 40 station, on MTV or the newspaper office stereo.
I guess I didn't know it then, but it was a poignant song for the fleeting, simple pleasures life held at that age. Here are few exceprts from my journal from between March 12 and March 19, 1994 (which, incidentally, was spring break at my school):
"Went to Eat N' Park with Nick and talked for an hour + 1/2. I came home + my Dad and I put transmission fluid in my car. Then some other friends picked me up and we went back to Eat N' Park till 1 a.m."- "Today Tim and I went to Taco Bell, Pharmor and the pet store."
- "I went to Carrie's house. All we did was watch TV. Then I went to Tim's house. We started watching For Love Or Money, but it was boring so we turned it off. Then we tried to decide where he could go to college next year. It didn't work."
- "My dad and I drove to visit the IUP campus this morning [incidentally, where I'd end up transferring to that fall and graduating from three years later]. Then Nick and Carrie picked me up and we drove to Pittsburgh. We ate at some pizza dive then went to see Short Cuts."
- "It snowed a lot today. I got Carrie, cashed my check, then we came home to eat at my house. We drove to the Beehive in Pittsburgh, drove back to get Jen, then went to Eat N' Park. After we ate, we all went to the Regal to see What's Eating Gilbert Grape."
And if you want, then start to laugh
If you must, then start to cry
Be yourself, don't hide
Just believe in destiny
Don't care what people say
Just follow your own way
Don't give up and lose the chance
Your return to innocence
I played "Return To Innocence" several times last night while thinking back to those days which, in this post 9/11 world of grim economic collapse, now almost seem unreal.
And if I didn't know any better—or perhaps if I didn't have my fraying old journal or a time-worn album of photographs to bring a bittersweet smile to my face—it was an era that I could almost swear to you must have been fiction.
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THIS PIECE IS A CONTINUATION OF:
* Coffee, Drugs, Death And Ace Of Base
* Pet Shop Boys' 'Very' At 15: How Can I Even Try To Explain?
* These Are Days You'll Remember