Tart, Infectious Humanity

I knew the name “Penny Rimbaud.”  His artistry shaped the course of my life as certain as any art has ever touched me.  But I couldn’t tell you what he or any other member of Crass every looked like.  These super-heroes of my seventeen-year-old consciousness were never ones to promote their own visage.  Steve Ignorant as well as Eve Libertine and Joie De Vivre were the voice of Crass, it was Penny’s lyrics, if not his rough militaristic drum fills which demanded I engage.

A random Youtube search on a Sunday morning and there he was.  Watching him speak to a room full of people for an hour, I was lulled into the tape I didn’t really have the time to enjoy, with Penny’s tart, infectious humanity. 

Once upon a time, he and his bandmates had the answer to just about everything.  Crass took on everything, with a broad, anarcho-pacifist critique of the systematic world.  In a fashion ironically religious, the totality of one’s actions were up for reflection, and most interaction with contemporary society engendered complicity in the system.  This made puberty and going to high school and earning money to buy records all rather challenging. 

Watching him now as a sixty-year old with stringy hair, I felt as though I were reconnecting with an old friend.  His tales and his delivery traced all the key moments of the band’s progression and were understated, plausible.  Remembrances were respectful, humble.  Rimbaud manifest, was not a zealot but neither was he awash with compromise.  He seemed to have done the very difficult, which is to mature into someone who still embodies much of the nobler tenants of an extremely idealistic youth.

The talk stayed with me longer than I thought it would.  Crass are an unresolved engagement with purity for me.  I badly wanted to reconnect with that El Dorado search perfect ethical consistency.   That Penny was reasonable and open to the complexities of maturity and impurity, meant that we could engage in my mind now as equals. 

Sunday, 09/17/17