Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Hold onto your genre/ your genre’s got a hold on you
There’s something irritating me today, and before long I realize that it’s the radio. I have written this same sentence before, I know, and I’m writing it again. It’s not a matter of pretension that has me thinking such things either; the radio really is just plain and terrible. I twitch a little bit in relation to its horribleness and then switch to something else. And then I change the station again. Every station has up for offer today some horrible simulacra of simulacra. Every group is some weird parody of a group that sounds like a group that sounds like Nirvana. And then, through the static, something weird happens. I switch to 103.9 (“The Edge,” a station named for its own sense of daring) and they’re actually playing something that I have some vague cultural affiliation with: an indie rock song. Which then has me positing the question, how “independent” can that band be, now that it’s getting commercial radio play? Is this station really that “edgy?” And furthermore, what does any of this really matter?

Hanging out in a bar in Albany, New York the other night, for what seemed to be some kind of record release party for a “punk rock” band. The band, fashioned in the way of your latest hipster aesthetic, was a group of 18 year-olds doing some parody of that Sum 41 version of punk that has gone some distance towards totally killing music as of late. The kids were into it, though. There was a circle in front of the stage, where crazified young men with muscles did a dance involving no shirts and running around in circles. My companion and I looked at each other in vague amusement. It’s always at least somewhat amusing when a bunch of people get together and run in circles while doing a flapping arm motion, even while horrible music plays. Although, what better music is there to accompany dancing that is so bad?

I’m easily confused these days, out in public. I’m not quite at the age where I feel the complete and total disconnect that has me saying things like, “crazy kids,” but I can definitely see the chasm, the pulling away of the ship from the docks, and the distance between. I can more easily recognize the ornate cultural mishmash, the various shapes and forms, and their corresponding titles. A review I read today on Pitchfork.com reads, “If you’re lucky enough to see this band when you’re sixteen, it’s going to change your life.” And it kind of makes you wonder if all of those labels weren’t there all along, taking so long in your 16 year-old head to catch up to the amorphous forms of what you were experiencing then. I remember talking to my friend Suz Massen about this same thing over dinner a couple of months ago. “Being into indie rock in 1995 was a totally subversive thing,” she said, “and there’s not really anything like that anymore.” And I guess I side with the amorphous and undiluted interpretation of experience inherent in her description of that period in time. But everything’s changed around these days, in the post facto, everything goes type of landscape we seem to be inhabiting. It’s weird, turning on the television set and seeing how your (sub) culture has been incorporated into primetime television. The music you thought was somehow subversive was in fact just waiting for the proper moment, the appropriate test market, and the corresponding labels that would push the product form.

A fanzine that I’ve recently read has touched on this same issue 10 years ago. The revelation was that when your subculture becomes commodified, and the people who were beating you up in high school start hanging around at the venues you do, how do you react to that specific set of incidents? Do you abandon your stances and jump ship, or do you stick to your guns? (Do you, in other words, start wearing khaki pants and playing lacrosse?) The malleable mainstream marketplace will listen to and embrace any trend or fashion thrown down the cultural conveyor belt. They will stand there with open arms, and even if it’s something that had those same people deriding you years before, they will consume blithely and plainly. It doesn’t matter what it is. If you were to contact a polling company and set up a test market with a total hoax of product form, selling the repetitious beating of a jack hammer on pavement, it would be enthusiastically purchased by the masses in time. This has already been proven with any number of “artists” you see and hear daily.

I’m not sure where I was when my revelatory experience occurred to me. It could have taken place at any number of all-ages shows, in the absence of a mosh pit or much of a crowd at all. The music coming through the speakers occurred to me then, and it had me looking around and thinking, this is where I belong. These are my people. Because outside of these four walls, in the world, with its everyday degradations, this is where those people are not. But what kind of revelation are these kids having, I wonder? They’re probably really big fans of The OC. And revelatory experiences, I think, should fall outside the timeslot of primetime television. But mostly, what it broils down to, is I don’t want to be associated with those kinds of people. Even after all these years.

Watching the band at the bar the other night, I tell C., “This sucks, I need to get out of here,” which we do. On the way out, some tricked out rock guy makes eye contact with me from the distance, mistaking me for someone else. “Oh, sorry, man, I thought you were my friend,” he says to me. It’s cool, though. I can take it. I give this whole thing another five minutes in the limelight, until it’s all really outdated, when these haircuts are considered really passé, and things get back to normal—which is already such a horribly compromised word.

Monday, April 24, 2006

This is the worst vacation ever/ I’m going to cut open your forehead with a roof shingle
Romantic notions I attach to certain work situations. It’s hard not to look at the librarian, stoically putting away books, and think that must not be too bad. Or the postal worker delivering mail on a sunny afternoon, showing up at your place of employ long enough for you to be envious of that same person disappearing back out of doors and into the afternoon, little glints of sunshine coming down and through the trees. And it gives me hope. There must be something out there that’s worth doing.

It is with this mantra in mind that I tell myself I am going to apply for a job at the Book House today. Here is what is good about this work environment: there are two coffee shops in the immediate vicinity; there is no dress code; there is no small modicum of attractive women going into the hair salon right next door, and some of them must read books, too. Additionally, I imagine, there must be some faction of people within the actual bookstore who may even share in a similar interest set (whatever that means). Which begs the question, who would be an ideal co-worker? Someone like me? Maybe yes and maybe no. I’m the kind of person who is hardly tolerant of other human beings, as has been recently been pointed out to me by my sister. “People like you, you asshole, but you always think everybody sucks,” she admonishes. That’s not entirely true. It’s not that I dislike others as much as it is that I cannot fathom why these people haven’t attended the same cult-deprogramming center that I’ve attended, which has them preening interests that seem to me worthy of laughing out loud. Although it’s hard, in lieu of this same discussion, not to think of Sartre, and his axiom-crusher of a proclamation, “hell is other people.”
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I gave myself a sweet haircut today, in anticipation of a potential job interview. It’s a totally haphazard process, and whether the ensuing result has me looking more employable is up for discussion. It does seem to be shorter, however, and so that’s something. Also, I do not iron, and so I put a jacket on over my wrinkled shirt, so that I am, at least to me, thoroughly employable-seeming, which is a nice illusion. When I find myself satisfactory, the smooth veneer of a young go-getter complete, I depart for the bookstore. Somehow, despite the fact that I could be there in minutes, I decide on taking the roundabout way of getting to the bookstore. A recent myspace bulletin has astutely pointed out that there are various ways to Stuyvesant, and why I take the longest way possible from my house is a total mystery. For the effort, I tell myself, despite having a lifesavings of $11.50, that I will reward myself for filling out the application by buying an album that I want, which is sadly tantalizing, but which propels me forward nonetheless.

Arriving to the store, I am almost promptly run over by a passing car. My own passing is something which fills me with horror, more now than ever. I imagine my paltry and wasted life put on display in some obituary somewhere and the thought of that fills me with the kind of legwork that has me dodging the vehicle and hustling to the curb, where I contemplate this some more. A human life, once passed, is measured in the most base and intangible ways. So condensed, it is, once gone, the small type print hammered out onto paper is all that is left. My life "accomplishments” might be meted out in the way of various schools I’ve attended. And that is, incredibly, it. Not exclusive would it be of things that actually mattered: the sweet dance moves I’ve cultivated over the years, a homeless person’s aesthetic, a magnetic hum which attracts women over the age of 40.

Shaking off this train of though, I go inside the store. My romanticized notions of hip bookstore clerk are quickly grounded with the sight of various older-looking woman, who stare at me as I enter. Quickly, I make a b-line for the non-fiction aisle. There are various people looking around the store, who are probably on a lunch break, languidly scanning the science fiction. Occasionally, a worker breezes by to put something away. And I suddenly realize, all at once, that this is the most mundane bookstore of all time. Not even the tinkling of jazz graces the store today, just the occasional customer ignominiously asking for a book he can’t find. And I realize, I cannot work here! This is horrible, which elicits another thought: Initially thinking of filling out the application has quickly segued into some vast rumination about filling out an application, and then that becomes one more layer detached as I think about all of that. It’s like the third tier of unemployability, which seems like it should come with a pretty good insurance plan. But it doesn’t, and even though there’s a record store on the corner, I realize, since I suck so thoroughly and completely, that I won’t be making a purchase today. And probably not tomorrow, either.

Sunday, April 23, 2006

You're watching TV/ I stay up all night
Biblical buckets full of rain coming down, standing on a street corner, just because. And then, moments later, being snapped out of your reverie by people, who are your fellow humans, hustling on by to some obscure destination. Particles of moisture are collected in cloud formations and then released, to fall hundreds of feet down and get on your jacket as you jog to a lunch appointment, where you will be shifting in your seat because of that same water saturation. “Hey, what’s your problem today?” your companion will ask, and you will be at a loss for what to say— Not realizing, all the while, that it relates back to the soaked jacket you have on, your irritated skin, and moisture particles.

The balmy early spring weather of last week has been harshly juxtaposed with a duo of rainy days, encompassing your brain and making you wish for some small respite, a kiss on the mouth or otherwise. And I don’t know if it’s the weather, but everyone I know seems horrendously depressed. In fact, I can’t think of one person I know who hasn’t expressed a sentiment within the last few days that isn’t totally certifiable. And believe me, the bar is low. But even then we find ourselves with our legs just all caught up in it, falling to the surface and not too amazed by the results.

How can that be possible? Antidepressant commercials have broadened the diagnostic spectrum to include just about everybody in the viewing audience. No one, actually, is absolved from at least one of the symptoms they’re describing, as the cartoon iconography garishly dances around the screen, the lugubrious blue blob of a figure demonstrating a sad frown before being given the pill that has it smiling like a motherfucker. And it’s not hard to imagine that, before long, we’ll all be there, too.

One girl I know who used to take the aforementioned medication describes her experience in the following way: “It neutralized me to the point that you could have exploded a bomb next to my head and I wouldn’t have minded one bit.” And so I guess the consequence is yours (ours). The morning paper today reports that the USA comprises 5 percent of the global population and consumes a quarter of the world’s resources, making this country the most accommodated place on the face of the earth. In relation to that statistic, it’s kind of unnerving to realize that this same country spends in excess of 6 billion dollars a year on antidepressants. It’s pretty weird.

Meanwhile, as I stand there in the rain, a middle-aged man comes by. He looks familiar from somewhere, like a child star in older age. He has been through the wringer, maybe. The initial success of his sitcom did not entirely pan out. And now he is here and there I am. He looks twice as he’s about to pass by and then asks, “Buddy, are you OK?” Yes, I assure him, I am. But he is not assured. “Well, you were standing there the last time I walked by, and you’re all wet.” I was just about to go, I tell him, which I do, walking away, and realizing for the first time that I’ve never owned an umbrella.