Sometimes things aren’t always what they seem. Life’s a funny thing, man. Wet, slippery sidewalks walking to class on a caffeinated buzz. Was it supposed to be like this? Interviews that are hit or miss.

At relatively the same place you’re at as a senior in high school, but not really. Lost, like a rolling stone. You’ve gone so far and yet you’re so alone. It’s a big scary world out there and you’re caught between branching your wings and looking for comfort in what you’ve known so long, the lawn-mowing, eating-white fence, America apple pie culture.

Let me say something before I go any further. This isn’t the typical newspaper story. It is not of the “she said this” format or quote format or inverted pyramid. It is more along the lines or tangents of Allen Ginsberg-style.

Because my writing has been influenced by so many poets, authors, newspaperman, etc., I think it’s important to embrace your different styles.

Obviously, the Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan-lyrical may not find their material on the New York Times news pages, nor should they. But while there is nothing wrong with news writing, there are those times you just feel much more connected with that lyrical prose. That being said .

I went to this Battle of the Bands this week, set up my video camera as the official geek, but was I really? I was the only one standing, unless you count the band, the sound guy and anyone that got up to go to the bathroom.

We don’t have much room for fun in this world, 40-hour work weeks, overtime, double, triple shifts coupled with double and triple bypasses. As a lover of work myself, this is kind of hypocritical, but I have a write (sic) to be critical of the horse tranquilizer-induced crowd that was the 7th Street Underground Wednesday night.

Even in light of the fact that they may not have enjoyed the musical spectrum offered throughout the night, wake up and put on a little make up (as the song goes). For those that had fun, my condolences, but it’s hard for me to sense emotion on the faces of the concrete ocean that was the underground.

The “sun’s not yellow; it’s chicken.” They’re lyrics out of Bob Dylan’s “Tombstone Blues” off his Highway 61 album. What does that have to do with anything? It has everything to do with this column and with anything really. It’s the answer against conformity.

It’s how you look at things. Things aren’t always what they seem. You say the sun is yellow. I say it’s the eye in the sky. Dylan says it’s chicken. Eat up the sunrise. So if you take nothing else away from this tangent-ridden column, remember that nothing is what it has to be.

Kevin Kenealy is a senior journalism major. He can be reached at 581-7942 or at [email protected].