ILL MUSICAL MADELEINES: New Order, "Subculture" (c. 1998-1999)

By RAYMOND CUMMINGS

My undergrad senior year was an emotional horror-show on more levels than I can accurately articulate now, a decade-plus after the fact. I went for long, brooding walks, at all hours, because I rarely slept. Really, where to begin with that year? The scabbies plague? The crushing, immobilizing lethargy? The relentless loneliness? The all-encompassing certainty that I was destined to flunk Logic (a math requirement, Philosophy-major must, and graduation get-out-of-college-free card, all wrapped in one)? The very-real fear that four years of liberal arts education, most of it wasted on campus publications no-one read, would not lead to gainful, satisfying employment? I wanted out of academia, in the worst possible way - didn't seriously pursue graduate programs, didn't even begin to cram for GREs - but was terrified of what awaited me beyond that tantalizing tassel-flip. I went for long, brooding walks, at all hours, because I rarely slept. I'd been entrusted, that year, with editorship of The Collegian, an almost-monthly features magazine; very few had any interest in writing for the thing, let alone reading it, and its six 1998-1999 issues were essentially glorified versions of the irreverent, sardonic zines I was still cranking out at the time that nobody read, either. (I still have nightmares in which I'm back in that particular editor's chair, somehow armed with everything about life and journalism that I've learned since, fully cognizant that I'm dreaming and yet bursting with ideas that will make my Collegian do-over totally fucking rad and unfadeable, award-winning, triumphant. Then I wake up, and I'm all, "that was too real.") My Philosophy thesis - some bullshit about Michel Foucault and how the power of cigarette makers is made manifest by the effects of smoking on the bodies of smokers - crashed and burned, so I settled for a minor in that discipline, sweated out long English essays, listened to The Slim Shady LP waaaay too much, took a lot of dangerous walks alone, procrastinated ruthlessly, climbed trees, skipped a record number of classes, wrote quixotic newspaper columns, re-read Ellis' Glamorama over and over, skipped Dining Hall meals because underclassmen's general la-de-da cheeriness drove me even deeper into the depression that, unchecked, threatened to consume me whole. I went for long, brooding walks, at all hours, because I rarely slept. I was in a non-zone. All of my close friends had graduated already; they could relate to what I was wrestling with, but consoling telephone conversations can only accomplish so much. Those friends who remained had more pressing concerns. I went for long, brooding walks, at all hours, because I rarely slept. I went for long, brooding walks, at all hours, because I rarely slept. I went for long, brooding walks, at all hours, because I rarely slept. Paul Cox put "Subculture" - the non-gospel choir version - on a mixtape that he sent to me as part of a mixtape exchange project, meaning that I was supposed to listen for a month prior to sending the tape to somebody else. But I didn't do that. I held onto the tape, which also included Talking Heads and Sugarsharp songs, for months, and quite literally let the tape rock until the tape popped. The details of that period, beyond what I've laid out above, are hazy. Thank God for that. And Paul? My bad.