i don't like the internet anymore
but this is the only blog that should be exempt from the great, looming cull.
http://whatwouldjoando.tumblr.com/
call the nobel committee, fast-track the grant application, etc etc.
the one about everything other than myself
i swear on my mother's eyes i will never talk about my life on this blog
reasons not to kill yourself part whatthefuckever (a continuing series)
the machiavellian redhead on mad men. lord have mercy.RECORDS I'VE LOVED IN 2008
none of them.if nothing else
my extended shrug over tha carter iii on salon today is proof that you can spend 2,500 words and three drafts writing about something in hopefully a nuanced way and the commenters will fix on a contentious headline (and subhed) the editor gave yr piece at the last minute.more frighteningly
maybe it also means that i’ve let the nuances of politics (that i barely understand or study to begin with) get so out of hand in my head—that i’m for this but i’m not sure about that, etc. etc.—that i don’t HAVE any positions anymore, at least of the sort that go beyond “war is bad,” the inarguable stuff that you could never say to someone with a straight face.
also no one’s reading this so i’m not sure who the fuck i’m talking to.
how to write the ultimate protest song
since admitting that i No Longer Give A Shit About (Current?) Music, it’s been easier than ever to wallow in the kind of punk rock records that meant the world to me as an 18-year-old. not art-punk, post-punk, or garage punk. just plain ol’ punk. of the patches-on-jean-jackets sort. the here-is-a-list-of-worthy-causes-in-our-sleeve-notes sort. the crass-changed-our-lives sort. the DIY-or-die sort. the the we-wouldn’t-listen-to-pop-on-a-dare sort.
i never gave myself over entirely to the ideology that drives this music. at my most socially conscious, or at my most quasi-anarchic, i was still living firmly on the middle-class american grid. i enjoyed evil pop music and the corrupting influence of television and would rather have lived in a place with a working toilet than fuck over the landlords of the world by squatting. and even musically i often enjoyed this stuff at arm’s length. back then, when i was briefly earnest, the unashamed political and emotional bluntness of these songwriters was vaguely embarassing to me. rabble rousing was much more tolerable when expressed in clever turns of phrase or even with the occasional ironic joke. i got off on the visceral rush of the music while cherry picking the best lyrics and ignoring the ones whose directness made them uncomfortable or silly. now i wonder if writing a song about vegetarianism without couching it in some sort of “poetic language” takes more guts than i’ve given these bands credit for over the last 12 years.
it’s weird that when i think about this stuff, i think of it in terms of being “indefensible.” artistically indefensible, presumably. when what my subconscious really mean is “artless.” blurring the line between political rhetoric and self-expression, these bands prided themselves on keeping it morally real to the point of excluding the stuff i came to value most in music (funk, pretty textures for the sake of being pretty, pop-friendly hooks, soul-bearing emotionalism) as straight world indulgences that keep the people numb and the powerful in power. and so, when faced with bands who view the best things music has to offer as violation of their principles, it’s easy to call them reactionaries and dismiss their music (and worldviews) as simplistic. after all, a three-chord anarcho-punk tune calling conservative politicians a bunch of cunts is clearly not in the same league as dylan speaking truth to power via inscrutable poetry or public enemy’s own brand of rhetoric which is conflicted and contradictory and therefore closer to “real life,” closer to “art.” right? (to say nothing of the fact that, even at its bluntest, dylan and p.e.’s music is far more nuanced than most political punk.)
this “simplicity” is part of why a band like the subhumans will never get their retrospective entry into the music crit canon. (on the other hand, i could see crass being admitted to the pitchfork-approved party with the right push.) ignoring these bands because their music—good, rough, meat-and-potatoes punk-thrash—doesn’t hit your pleasure centers is one thing. ignoring these bands because their battering-ram lyrics don’t conform to bourgie ideas of “good political art” seems ridiculous if the music thrills. and there’s an immense thrill, even when you’re out of your teens and twenties, in a line like “no, i don’t believe in the system when nothing it does makes sense to me” when shouted over a fast, distorted riff. i find it hard to believe there are people who disdain this stuff as adults because it activates lizard-brain emotions, rather than engaging you on the level of a well-reasoned op-ed.
until i realize i’ve been one of those people for most of my adult life. why am i okay with the bluntest talk imaginable when it comes to love, sex, and interpersonal relationships, but lyrics that amount to “war is wrong” make me adopt an unearned position of intellectual superiority? am i, like most modern day liberals, simply afraid of shouting my beliefs from the rooftops in language anyone can understand? am i afflicted by the same middlebrow intellectualism (being honestly dumber than even the bluntest punk politico) that makes so many leftists feel the need to endlessly work out the nuances and resolve (or at least lay bare) the contradictions of their positions so as not to fall prey to demagoguery? (this is a noble goal, don’t get me wrong.) or having made so many major and minor pacts with the early 21st-century american devil—you know, like eating hamburgers and writing about mylie cyrus—am i just ashamed to be shouting along with the words of people who’ve done a much better job of rejecting the worst aspects of late-capitalist society?