Chicago, Rochester & Cleveland: Three Cities, Three Decades, Three Lives

Late summer of 2011 marks numerous anniversaries: thirty years since MTV first debuted its concept with “Video Killed the Radio Star,” twenty years since the initial Lollapalooza music fest in Chicago and ten years since the tragic terrorist attack on NYC’s World Trade Center. For many, specifically Gen Xers, these moments in time have branded themselves into our psyche, and not just emotionally but, also, visually.

As long as MTV played videos, we watched the channel like programmed zombies, anticipating its playlist with the eagerness of a child. Because we were children… growing up in the safe yet vibrant North Shore, home to most of John Hughes’ teen angst films: Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Weird Science. My Skokie parents didn’t order MTV right away and I’m not sure the exact year we had it, but between MV3 and NBC’s Friday Night Videos, the concept of three-minute story lines altered the brain’s capacity for attention retention. And, once we did receive the channel on our wood-paneled Zenith, there was little left to do but memorize every new Duran Duran song lyric. My friend Erin and I even fantasized of being the next Bangles or Go-Go’s. I was a girl drummer in the ’80s. What could be cooler?

There was something very visually delicious about this time: the colors, the haircuts, the clothes, the Swatches – like a candy-coated spectrum that diverted this odd heaviness burdening my spirit.

In the mid ’80s, as my Sis headed off to college at University of Illinois – Champaign Urbana, somehow she convinced our immigrant parents to allow me to join her on a big Greyhound-type bus to head down to Daytona with a bunch of college students. Yep, there I was, fourteen, on the beach, as our L-shaped hotel turned into a “Tastes Great, Less Filling,” nightly battlefield. That year was also the first time MTV took on and branded spring break. We got pretty close to seeing Martha Quinn and Alan Hunter in person. The Sukhoy Sisters are also somewhere inside the Mister Mister “Is It Love?” live video, because we were in the audience as it was being filmed.

A few years later, the ’80s ended, the ’90s began and, as my generation enrolled in college and saw the evolution from dance and pop to alternative and grunge, we watched, again. My hometown, Chicago, transformed itself into a modern day Woodstock. Perry Farrell’s brainchild hosted not only his band, Jane’s Addiction, but also a cornucopia of musical acts that defined the early ’90s: Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nine Inch Nails, Living Colour, Ice-T & Body Count, Butthole Surfers, Rollins Band, Violent Femmes, Fishbone and others. I’d just returned from my one year at Northern Illinois University, transferred to DePaul’s Communication program, moved back in with my parents (as they moved to the tragically suburban Des Plaines) and took on a full-time retail management job along with full-time school. I never made it to the youthful and free-spirited Lollapalooza, because while I was youthful, I certainly didn’t feel free. Instead, between classes, work and daily three hour commutes, via a reliable fake ID, I danced to “Closer” at the Dome Room, where XRT’s Marty Lennartz spun U.K. tracks hot off the Manchester scene: Charlatans U.K., 808 State, Happy Mondays and Stone Roses.

In the early to mid ’90s, Chicago launched a variety of musical acts, giving us Smashing Pumpkins, Liz Phair, Urge Overkill, Poi Dog Pondering and Evanston’s own Eddie Veder of Pearl Jam. It didn’t hurt that Urge Overkill’s cover of Neil Diamond’s “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon,” danced into our pop culture framework as the stunning brunette wig-wearing Uma Thurman danced into our jagged hearts in the groundbreaking Pulp Fiction, directed by the barely known Quentin Tarantino. His films filled me with adrenaline and I wanted to do something with that energy. But I wasn’t sure what, so I quietly wrote things down that I didn’t want to share with the judgmental and materialistic world.

A few years passed, life changed dramatically and it was time to see what the planet offered. On August 20, 2001, my Sis took me to see Madonna’s “Drowned World Tour.” While Madonna wasn’t on MTV back in 1981, it was just a matter of seconds before she became the channel’s staple. Would she even have a career if it wasn’t for her memorable wedding-dress wearing, floor-rolling performance of “Like a Virgin” at the 1984 MTV Awards? We’ll never know. But in 2001, a grown up Madonna, now mother to Lourdes and the recently born Rocco Ritchie, gave a killer concert accompanied by — what else? Music videos. My cousin Jen was there, too, and so was my friend Chris. That night, after the show and outside the stadium, Chris and I, both wearing cowboy hats, met Joan Cusack, who, with her brother, starred in quite a few John Hughes films. Joan was kind, tall and friendly, even as Chris asked to have his photo taken with her. That night, at the beginning of a fresh decade, the ’80s and ’90s melted and we couldn’t be happier.

The very next morning with a U-Haul attachment and two good men at my side, my Dad and Derek, my boyfriend at the time, the three of us left my Lakeview studio apartment midrise building and headed east.

We arrived in Rochester, New York, the following day and the unpacking process began. As we settled into the two-bedroom apartment that would be my home for the next two years, it suddenly became clear that things would never be the same, again. My Dad took off for a trip to NYC, the Simon School MBA pre-term began and each day required learning new names, new faces, new streets and new subjects. The mind, used to three-minute increments, had to focus, plan, endure and process. This was probably the most unexpected challenge of all.

Or so I thought.

Just two weeks into pre-term and before classes officially began, 9/11 occurred. I was in a stats refresher course, we weren’t allowed to leave the room and while all the other campus buildings shut down, we, the MBA students, had to keep going. The following day, our building was the only one that held classes. Because markets never rest.

My new MBA friends and I never really glued ourselves to the television to watch what was going on because we all just gave up good salaries and agreed to take on exorbitant student loans in order to finance a once secure fiscal future. And so, we… ok, I… truly neither absorbed nor processed the events of that day. It was just twenty years, almost to the date, since MTV launched and yet nothing ever felt safe, again.

That following spring, Sahar, an Israeli friend I made the year before, and I would sometimes sit for hours in front of my TV and watch VH1, MTV’s sister station, as it rehashed the music videos of the ’80s. And whether it was Two for Tuesday or Pop Up Video, it didn’t matter as long as it played music from the decade that made sense to us, a decade of carefree Madonna, brooding Depeche Mode, early U2, a smiling Michael Jackson and a sexy Prince.

That spring, two specific events hit the heart strings and, again, we watched: my Sis and our friend (and government architect) Camdon, who both drove in from Chicago, Derek and I all attended the Neil Diamond concert in Rochester. Neil opened with “Coming to America,” and, with the American flag in lights behind him, not a dry eye sat in the theater, located just several hours drive from where, six months prior, the tragedy took place. That season Derek and I also flew to NYC and visited Ground Zero. The area had just reopened and we were stunned at the massive land destruction coupled with the simultaneous strength of the human spirit. This juxtaposition of light and dark, chaos and order, despair and hope, reminded us of the resiliency of the American spirit. It also solidified our adulthood.

After two years in Rochester and a few months after graduating with my MBA, I moved, alone, to Cleveland for the corporate job that, over the course of five years, lead to other corporate jobs, world travel and the purchase of my first house. And, just a few months after dropping cash for the down payment, another shake-up forced yet more change. I lost my job and, not realizing it, lost my sense of identity. For nearly two decades all I knew was how to climb that ladder and, suddenly, the ladder shattered, along with the delusions of grandeur that came with it. No more international travel, no more savings account, no more monthly massages.

What was left? Why television, of course.

So, I watched, again. This time, not three-minute increments, but a full hour’s worth of short, reliable laugh tracks, compliments of Craig Ferguson. Every night, Craig kept me laughing. Whether I was cold from that dreadful winter, broke or single, it didn’t matter: Craig was there, entertaining, reliable and funny. And so, I kept watching.

With the friends and connections I had made in Cleveland, I also decided to stay put and see what happens. There’s a vibe to this town that’s gotten in and each time I’ve declared exodus, even as currently as this past March, the city pulls me back in like a seductive siren singing my song.

Nearly three years since that pivotal moment of life’s great schism, things are finally looking up, with my professional career shifting to teaching, coaching and writing. I miss the pay and benefits of corporate America, but very little else. These days, my life belongs to me.

Some things are still very much the same, like a musical coda to 1981, 1991 and 2001. My book partner and co-author Anita, whom I first met exactly 30 years ago in Skokie, introduced herself to Joan Cusack last year and Joan now knows who we both are. I still watch the occasional music videos, but usually on YouTube. The lead singer of Poi Dog, Frank Orrall, and I are connected via Facebook, exchanging links to songs we both dig. I still adore Madonna and, while I’ve been selling off the CDs, my iTunes collection houses most of her three-decade song library.

And, as timing would have it, my latest trip to Chicago coincided with Lollapalooza’s twenty-year anniversary weekend. My Sis, Camdon (who worked as the owner’s rep in the design phase on Cleveland’s Carl B. Stokes Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse) and I walked around the city for five hours that Friday and got as close as I’ve ever been to the energy, the excitement, the crowd and the music. We even heard a band we really liked but never heard of before and then marched towards the sign to at least get some photos and capture the moment.

Later, as we headed west, towards the Loop el stops, and walked past all the university buildings, new and old, including DePaul, I thought about what in the past thirty years has changed and what’s stayed completely the same? I still love spending time with my Sis, getting lost in a song and enjoying a great video, vintage or current, with friends. The difference is that these days I’m also on the other side of the content machine, pumping out books, essays, photographs and ideas, and encouraging my film students to do the same.

During the past eight years since first arriving here in Cleveland, I have met some incredible people who went on to change the course of things. One of those people is Dr. Evan Lieberman, film professor at CSU. Our meeting was no accident and it’s as though it took this city and his influence to give me the permission to truly find my voice, develop my craft and accept the responsibility that comes with being an artist.

No one can ever fully shake out the corporate persona that resides within and now I get to teach business classes at CSU while teaching film classes at Tri-C. It’s as though the universes have finally meshed and the soul feels free.

MTV raised me, Lollapalooza inspired me and 9/11 shaped me. Chicago fueled my inner child, Rochester forced me to grow up and, for whatever reason, Cleveland is where I feel most like me. One year and decade at a time.

Reprinted with permission and gratitude from CoolCleveland.com.