This page once contained a lyric called "Niche."
No longer.
Instead, I will tell the story of "Niche": how I came to write it, and how I came to erase it.
The title was inspired by a documentary that a friend of mine, Rachel Whang, was making a few years ago. It was called "Finding a Niche", and it was to be about a (very) loose circle of friends in Bloomington, Indiana.
The word "slacker" had gained some currency at this time as a catch-all term for the burgeoning bohemian set. Well, a few of us latched onto it, anyway. I think Rachel's goal was to answer the mysterious question, "what the hell is a slacker anyway?"
Rachel interviewed me. I was in a band at the time. I decided to write a song that would sum up the essence of what it meant to be young and alienated and all that. I was sure that, if it was good, Rachel would use the song in her documentary.
So I set to work writing "Niche" -- but I didn't really write it at all. I composed it all in my head, as I walked to work in the morning, or as I walked home in the afternoon. I memorized it line by line, as I composed it. I never wrote it down because it was all in my head.
In rhymed couplets, I tried to describe my lack of ability (and desire) to integrate into the so-called mainstream. I depicted my parents' worlds, the Corporation and the Church, as bleak, hopeless places that I did not love and where I could never prosper. The ironic refrain was in another voice. It was the voice of my parents, telling me that someday I would succeed, someday I would fit in, someday I would find my niche.
One day you're gonna find you're niche
One day you'll be comfortable and rich
One day you're gonna fit right in
One day you're gonna win
But the song ends in despair. Not having found my niche, I become a hopeless drug addict, a bum, miserable and in ill health, unemployed, eating garbage. It was a harsh song, I suppose, but it was supposed to be harsh, and painful, and tragic.
Well, Rachel's documentary never got finished. But the song, "Niche," became part of our regular set. It was long, slow, softer and sadder than most of our material. It seemed to touch a chord with people, too, as people would often tell me after the show how much they liked this one particular song.
Then the band broke up. Oh well.
I was working on my personal web pages, and I decided to include "Niche" among a handful of poems I'd written. So I typed it out for the first time, uploaded it to my server, and forgot about it.
Now at the time, I knew little about the Web, and I certainly never imagined that my parents would get wired someday. You can see where this is leading now, can't you?
My father and I are seeing a counsellor together, trying to mend our relationship, which is really not that great. I have hopes that it can be improved however. Today my father told me that he and my mother had found this webpage, read it, and cried.
It was never my intent to hurt my parents with this song. I wanted to share with others the pain that many young people feel when they don't "live up" to their parents' expectations. But I never wanted to hurt anybody.
I feel sick, and sick at heart, to know that I have made these gentle people cry. They may never forgive me. But I sincerely hope that they will.
