Stash! Ephemera

​I went to the first punk / hardcore / whatever people want to argue about on forums and call it or whatever show tonight that I had been to in at least a decade. Going made me realize some things about not only the show and the groups of people there, but also about myself. I will start out by saying that I have been listening to punk music, like many others, since I was a teenager. One day in my algebra class in my freshman year of high school, I borrowed a friend’s iPod nano and she had Black Flag’s Nervous Breakdown EP uploaded. I had been into Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, and had read about how much he liked that band so I listened to the whole thing (it’s only four short songs long), and I was instantly changed. Or at least I thought I was. I was already reading Salinger and Kerouac by this point, rebelling against the tame and seemingly suffocating world that I lived in, made up of endless suburbs, standardized testing, and a Southern Baptist community that I had been in since birth...

 These were some of the first items I picked up that got me interested in the idea of ephemera. There was a big stack of them, all one-sided, one color of ink each. I found them at an antique mall and couldn't help but wonder 1) where they originated from 2) what they were given to people for and 3) where they sat for years before they somehow ended up in a booth in an antique store in Nashville. I wonder if they were given out at funerals? Not too sure. But still on the lookout for more.