From the Try Something New Files

Today, I was a guest speaker at a high school. For real, dude.

Now, I have spoken in public before, but never to teenagers (excluding my own high school class presentations) and, if I can recall correctly to my own youth, the 18 and under set is a tough audience. Even though I was talking to them about the teenage-friendly topic of music journalism, I was still a little nervous that perhaps no one would know any of the bands I mentioned. Apparently, everyone knows Justice so citing that band as an example of something that is covered everywhere in virtually the exact same way worked well.

I spoke inside a very small classroom at very small private school (seriously, the school covers grades 7 through 12 and has the same amount of kids that were in my graduating class at an apparently not-that-small private school). The desks were all filled with students and a handful even sat on the floor. I was pleasantly surprised by the turnout.

The students were exceptionally hip. They knew about places like the Smell and Pehrspace and one asked, "So what do you think of Cinespace?" meaning, of course, the Tuesday night party that draws in celebrities who think that they are really cool. I was brutally honest. I went to Cinespace once on a Tuesday night only because Editors played and outside of the band's set, I hated it and vowed to never return. I have, in fact, made good on that promise.

They seemed impressed when I mentioned that I interviewed Grandmaster Flash (hell, I'm still impressed by the fact that I was able to get that interview considering how long it took me to set it up and that it almost didn't happen) and the stories about Ozzfest (one of those "Everything That Can Go Wrong Will" tales) and Coachella (aka, how I accidentally met Tony Wilson, aka how I almost got kicked out of Coachella, the story is in Razorcake, available here).

There is a rush to public speaking, like the knowledge that people are actually listening to you works like a drug. It's interesting because, as a writer, I never really know how many people actually pay attention to my work, so, I suppose this was an interesting way to understand the whole concept of an audience.

I must say though, that the standout moment of the day happened before my presentation. I was standing in the school library and this girl was sitting down reading. I saw her out of the corner of my eye and noticed that she was wearing silver glitter tights and green Dr. Marten boots. This was interesting because I often wore the exact same thing with my uniform twelve years ago. (And, as I pointed out to the deans back then, it technically wasn't a uniform violation.) I guess some things don't change.