i was out tonight and someone said ‘well you don’t know what it’s like to be poor’.
and i took a bit of umbrage at that statement.
cos, well, i do know what it’s like to be poor.
in 1988 i moved into a quasi-abandoned factory in stamford, connecticut.
(and i’m sure that i’ve written about this before, but, well, i’ll write about it again. like a perennial plant.)
and i moved into a room that was maybe 225 square feet(not meters, feet) and i had no running water and no heat and a shared bathroom that was literally 1/4 of a mile away down a long hallway.
i loved this room. the electricity was free and it faced south and got a lot of light and i had a shelving unit and some carpetting that had been given to me and walls made out of plywood that my friend paul and i had found discarded at old building sites.
and i was poor. i was dj’ing once or twice a week in port chester, new york, and i was making around $100 or $125 a week.
but i was relatively happy. i had my days free to work on music, and i would save up my money to buy cassettes and then go into manhattan(hiding in the bathroom of metro-north to avoid paying the fare)to try to get a record deal, pounding the pavement in the rain talking to anyone who would express an interest in what i was doing.
soy milk was a luxury at this point. a bran muffin at the diner was almost off limits for being too pricey. but i was pretty happy.
i’m not quite sure what the moral of this story is, but it was definitely inspired by someone saying ‘you don’t know what it’s like to be poor’.
and have i mentioned when i was growing up and my mom and i were on government assistance and food stamps?
that’s a different kind of poor, cos that’s parent-poor.
when you’re mom is depressed and has to borrow money to feed you.
that’s a whole ‘nother storey…
but my late 80’s poverty(returning cans to the supermarket so i could buy groceries…convenient, actually: return cans, get nickels, buy groceries)wasn’t so bad, cos i had friends and i was able to spend my days making music.
i’m not advocating poverty, nor am i trying to romanticize it. but i do take umbrage at someone saying ‘you don’t know what it’s like to be poor'(as i’ve said).
let’s take a time machine back to 1988 when i’m at the grand union supermarket trying to figure out if i can afford grapefruit juice(no, i couldn’t)and ask me then, ‘moby, do you know what it’s like to be poor?’ and, oddly, i probably would’ve said, ‘well, yes, but it’s not so bad.
you just learn to make do with what you have. in fact, you can feed yourself on $10 a week(you really can: rice, beans(sometimes sprouted), onions, oats, raisins, etc. bulk food is cheap.)’
did i have a tv? no.
did i have new clothes? no.
did i live in a nice, safe neighborhood? no.
was i happy? well, yes.
ok, thanks for listening.
moby