11. Looking For a Kiss

New York Dolls: New York Dolls (Mercury, 1973);
composed by David Johansen

This song’s spoken intro is a direct cop from the Shangri-Las’ “Great Big Kiss” – “When I say I’m in love, you best believe I’m in love – L – U – V” – but where that lesser follow-up to “Leader of the Pack” is about one more no-future boyfriend whose attraction affords no explanation, the Dolls offer something weirder: a capsule poetics of FUN. Not just indiscriminate pleasure, but pleasure as a knowledge system with a fearsome overhead cost – one that takes dedication: “You know I can't be wastin’ time / Cause I gotta get my fun.” But colleagues are self-destructing at every turn: “Everyone’s goin’ to your house to shoot up in your room / Most of them are beautiful, but so obsessed with gloom.” It does not mean anything that the only Doll alive today is the one who wrote this manifesto, who “didn’t come here, lookin for no FIX,” but it speaks to what David Johansen had to say in 1973: I want everything this lonely planet has to offer and I will share it with you, but if you die on me, you might fuck everything up. P.S. You will fuck everything up. “You know it’s bad, but you know it’s TRUE.”

Note: 25 secular essays about 25 songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day during Advent (approximately).