Foundational Texts: There Are Four Lights

Foundational Texts is a semi-regular essay series that looks at some of the culture that shaped me and how it still resonates today. Read all the installments: Jenny Holzer | The Goonies | The Channel 5 News Team | The Cave of Time | The Westing Game | Star Trek: The Next Generation I was only 17 when I moved out of my folks' house. I was ready to leave—desperate to leave—and landed in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood in the early '90s. This was back when apartments there were still big and cheap and the whole neighborhood had recently transformed into a haven for artists and musicians and weirdos. It was, in that moment, a perfect place. Sure there were pretty regular gunshots at Duks Red Hots down the street and the park itself was something you walked past quickly at night, but it felt like a place that was ours. (Of course, it was someone else's first, and the displacement that we brought to the neighborhood would be echoed by wealth displacing us years later, but that's a…