1.20.2014

D d delay

I want to write something good but all my best writing so far has been done in basically one take. If I am ever to progress, I'll have to actually learn to leave something and recover the inspiration days or weeks later.

I do want to throw one thing out there, though.

I was in New York for about 28 hours and I went to the new Rough Trade shop and found in one space all that is wrong with "alternative culture".

Let's just say this for now: alternative culture is over. It'll be hard to jettison. I don't know if I could ever do it myself, and I'm sure it will be harder for those of you who have experienced the Velvet Underground or Joy Division or Sonic Youth or My Bloody Valentine as something more than a $30 180g repress prominently displayed in a heavily-curated section of a record store whose function seems to be a living museum of what was once deemed oppositional.

What we need to work towards, what I am failing at writing about, is a way to completely and coherently describe the actual ideology of "post-ideology", to enumerate the characteristics of the bland tastefulness that makes a store like this possible, where all of the competing and formerly vital beliefs as to what music is and should be are all housed together, with no contradictions apparent*, towards both delegitimizing this state of affairs and towards seeing this state of affairs as being intrinsically tied to the culture itself as opposed to being imposed upon it externally.

Does that make any sense?

Only new desires will save us, and they aren't to be found in the music that composes, or is made by people versed in, the archive of old desires.

(*ugh I'm just describing postmodernity aren't I)

2 comments:

mistah charley, ph.d. said...

nature boy

david bowie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTaLpPp7apU

the greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return

Anonymous said...

Yup, definitely sounds like the postmodernism that the likes of Fredric Jameson & Mark Fisher talk about in their books.