jawn /jôn/ noun (chiefly in the greater Philadelphia metropolitan area) used to refer to a thing, place, person, or event that one need not or cannot give a specific name to. Jawn is a neutral, all-purpose noun used to reference any person, place, situation, or object. In casual conversation, it takes the place of the word ‘thing’. Example: “A jawn just fell off that dude’s car and hit our porch.”
“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?”
— Kurt Vonnegut
jawn one.
There are so many types of people in the world that lately I get to feeling that none of us has any idea what it’s actually like to be anyone we aren’t. Which, when you think about it, means that me and you will never ever be able to truly feel for one another from the inside out. And that’s probably why art remains the last bastion of humanistic togetherness or whatever you want to call it. Empathy is nice. Hell it may even be necessary if you hope to touch any kind of true decency. But it only goes so far. After all, the divides between us- organic or constructed- likely outnumber the things that unite us… oh, I don’t know… 10 to 1? 100 to 1? A billion to 1? Now look, I know this may seem like a negative or pessimistic viewpoint for a writer who writes about life and love to maintain, but what can I do? This isn’t really up to me to decide. Or you either. Frankly, human beings have never been all that overtly happy with each other. Right? Ask yourself that question… have they? And maybe that’s part of the problem here lately. It almost seems like way too many people (myself included) keep thinking that our political opposites are fueled by some sort of rough and rowdy disregard for thinking of others. While we chirp away over in the musty corners blowing our gaskets and pointing fingers in dramatic alarm, the world is just kind of being the world, isn’t it? I hate to say that, but it’s hard to argue. People are not inherently kind or caring. Most people on Earth are driven to survive, make good with commerce, score food, get fucked, drink water, and that’s about it. No one, one might argue, is ever biologically sparked to give a shit about their fellow man with the exception of their mates, their offspring and maybe their other family members. After that, this supposed concern for making the world a beautiful, peaceful place for everyone/ it falls away/ probably way more than any of us would ever be comfortable admitting. Hell, I hate just writing that, but I’m also looking for answers. Why do I feel lost now? Why do I feel stupid for ever thinking that steering the ship back towards justice and consideration for my fellow human was not only possible, but also the right thing to do? When has that kind of thinking ever been the way of this world for long? War, despair, grief and suffering: they are as old as the hills and they often come at the hands of our fellow man. So… yeah.
jawn two.
I’m about halfway through Hampton Sides’ 2010 book, Hellhound on His Trail. Ostensibly it’s a thoroughly researched affair about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the man who assassinated him in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968, but like any brilliant work of art there is much more here than just that. There is a rapid heartbeat built into this story, something that Sides himself injects throughout with cool, clear writing that burrows in your skin like space worms. Last night, King died on the balcony and although I obviously knew it was coming, I was blindsided all the same, by the writer’s capacity to shatter me with the things that went down. Recently I can feel it coming, each evening as I lay in bed after me and Arle watch some TV or talk a while. In time, she fades, lulled to sleep by her long work day and the kids and all of it, and as I fight the same challengers just so I can delve into a few pages before I crash with the book on my face, I manage to climb out of my little world and out into the magnificent ones that all readers understand. And there, I move alongside this man and then this other man, neither actually knowing the other: only one knowing of the other. What transpires in a somewhat known story from history boils down to the fact that few stories are ever told in full. People mostly haven’t the inclination nor the necessary means to ingest things more fully than they have before. It isn’t anyone’s fault/ it is merely the way most are wired. To spend alternating stretches of time with an assassin and his target is to step into a certain sort of darkness most of us would rather not experience. It is much different than a Netflix crime-doc binge. Books like this one are, despite the writer’s attempts, often tilted towards one moral side. But then again who can blame the writer? There is more at work here though. With a tale like this one in the hands of a writer of Sides’ magnitude, something haunted takes over. Squirrely southern motel rooms (the likes of which we will never see) settle in around us. Dirty house windows filter grey light from the sky. The pulse of a man throbs and challenges and in each moment passing we are led to believe that something ultimate will ultimately occur. Christ, the book, in its perpetual dusk, dumps two forsaken men into our beds right next to us. There is a manhunt to come now and I am expecting it to both thrill and mortify me. But I will remain on that balcony in more ways than one. Blood all over my shoes. Who were they? Who am I? Who the hell are we anyway. And then fear- like a fucking freight train- falling out of the brisk spring twilight.
jawn three.
The Replacements’ last album, All Shook Down, has re-entered my life in a big way. No one can explain why things come back to us many years after we first experienced them. Especially after we seemingly abandoned the thing too. In my case, I barely had any memories of this record except for spotty recollections of certain songs. Mostly I couldn’t recall a damn thing about it. This was odd too, because I was such a fan. But it might have been that very love for the band that caused me to feel I needed to avoid ASD when it came out. Or, if not avoid then swiftly abandon for whatever reason. See, I did in fact purchase the album on cassette at Sam Goody’s at the Plymouth Meeting Mall as soon as it was released in September 1990. I was a few months out of high school then. Most days in September of that year I sat in my car in the parking lot of Penn State’s satellite Ogontz campus in my native Montgomery County. There I would play cassettes on a big off brand boombox I toted around with me. I’d also smoke bowls of weed, run through half a pack of Marlboros, listen to Howard Stern, and avoid going to any of my classes at all costs. By the middle of the second semester, I’d failed out. I have no idea what happened to me then. I know I wanted to be something other than who I was. I know I wanted something bigger and better than what seemed in store for me. I was 18. The Gulf War had just begun and I was so afraid of being drafted and dying far from home in a pool of my own guts. I was a stoner with long hair. My friends were too. The Replacements had been in my life for years at that point and like any kid who loved them back then, you had a kind of feeling that they were always there for you more than anyone else. Outside of my crew of four other fairly young lost boys, I knew no one who had ever even heard of the band let alone worshipped them in the old ways. After high school I guess life began to show up for me in ways I’d been able to shirk up until then. Getting stoned at night after my mom went to bed, I ate bowls of microwave melted ice cream soup as I watched Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf use a pointer stick to show the exact spot on a bridge- in a black and white video shot from above- where a bomb was about to explode after being dropped from the sky by a US war plane. The destruction was ALWAYS precisely where he said it would be. I never once saw him miss the spot. He must have really practised before the news conferences. I remember thinking that was so fucked up, that he must have did that. I didn’t feel the Replacements slipping from my grip around then. Word on the narrow music news street of the time was that they were finished. Done. Dead. Westerberg solo album made to appear like a band record, that’s what the magazines were whispering. I don’t think I could wrap my head around any of it. How could that happen? How could I be out of high school and balanced on a tight rope above my own life and these fuckers were calling it a day? I don’t know. It felt like a tragedy to me, I guess. It caused me to move away from something I once had trusted in so deeply. It was a necessary tale for me to hear. It was a loss I had to be handed, sooner or later. Life is just like that, you know? You can’t hide from any of this shit, man. You can bend over in your car as the hired gun security guard creeps along through the parking lot looking for weird shit, but you will never escape all the ones coming behind him. All the creeping eyes coming round all the bends in all the roads you are going to have to run down. All Shook Down was lost on me then but now I can’t stop with it. It turned out to be this last gasp of cocky air from the lips of a band I kicked away right when I needed them most. It happens. And no regrets.
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Serge Bielanko lives in small-town Pennsylvania with an amazing wife who’s out of his league and a passel of exceptional kids who still love him even when he’s a lot. Every week, he shares his thoughts on life, relationships, parenting, baseball, music, mental health, the Civil War and whatever else is rattling around his noggin.
