The Fall of Summer
Strange summer in a strange year...the "ReMix Generation" meets it's climax...agony in the sunlight, misery in the moon...some things i learned about the human species (or why I'm told I need a cat)...your humble narrator reaches his creative peak and goes Gonzo again.
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What a long strange trip it's been, eh Bubba? When summer started a couple months back it wasn't warm enough and now it just won't cool down - and that's just the weather in Washington (or Crawford according to some people). We spent long nights debating politics as a means of undercutting one's personal reputation; it used to be vice-versa (even last summer). "Republican" became a curse word, while London was in a whole different world-line after their 9/11 on 7/7/05 by proclaiming "we are not afraid". I couldn't get myself out of bed before noon, because the news agenda was set by then so that I could get my daily dose of paranoia watching the Conservative News Network ("you're watching CNN" indeed Bubba). It all ended tonight in the same place it started - amoung a few good friends (different ones albient) sitting arround circle in a friend's backyard over a couple beers and WITH A BOOM. What a strange way to still be start the fictional "American millenium".
We talk very loudly and about very little on cell phones, but until recently it has not been appearant what cultural (especially musically) contribution this generation has for the future. Somewhere around finishing a podcast for an anarchist group out of Utah (oh the things the internet makes possible) it hit me hard, delivering it's punishing clarity in the same unison of its medium. WELCOME TO THE ReMix GENERATION. Some may go on to say that this is the MTV or internet generation since we seemed to grow up with both (Dr. Thomson predicted us to be a doomed generation, fucked by the cursed), but we seem to have simply taken in the other generations and synthesised them. Take Generation X and move the "x" and put it before the "generation"s,and you have put it all in a new context. Maybe the nick of "amagalation generation" has a better ring to it, but it all means the same thing over a "pale ale". We make mash-ups of the beatles and jessica simpson, or jessica simpson and michael jackson. Sometimes we put spoken word, chop it into the sound bite format we are accomstomed to, and put it over a beat on our latest podcast. The "Soundtrack of our life" became too constant an accompanyment in the age of the iPod, so we saved time and energy by combining it into a single track. We have critical mass, and we revolt on ourselves. It's getting to the point where a single record can't be sold before the remix of the lead single has been released. We are all together on the same track; solo.
My skin has not touched the sunlight much more than a full-day cumutively all summer as a result. I can't get anything done in this compound, and so the television becomes the light giving window on my world. I even got a skin based fungal infection, and I think my doctor is too young to say it's scurvey. Not that it will matter much when the sun is covered in smog and temperatures outdoors reach 120 degrees. Not that we will notice much as we work over computers all day in virtual offices during tele-commutes inside our cliamte controlled environments. Cultural climate control via the internet coerced through Air Conditioning. Not that we would pay a cent more in taxes for public transport (even as gas reaches $3 a gallon before the year is out), at least not while NewEgg.com is tax-free, free-delivery (void in California, Taxachusets, Dean Country, etc); we don't work for UPS and the USPS "is obsolete". Fair complexion and full-figures will become fashionable again, refered to as moontans in the interim.
It's all just a matter of evolution. Which can't be proven a fact if you ask the right people. Just a matter of faith, though creationism (by any name you call it) must, MUST be taught as the only known truth in schools across the nation. Never mind choosing God, or accepting religion, which we used to call "having faith" in something. It's hard to be believe in anything in a market so saturated these days, and yet be so alone while sharing in the experience (one that ultimately passes). We sleep alone with our pets and wonder why people can't accept our spoiled selves. I need a cat. I feel the phantom body next to me in bed the same way amputees say they can still feel like an arm is there. Yes, that's right. The soldiers returning from the crusade only come back to find dogs to sleep with. There is no parade for them, and only in this way is it like Vietnam. At least the Vietcong had whores. We need cats, not the Hounds of Hades. Faith in the end.
The end is near. In several hours I will be attending classes, further indoctrinated into my role amoung the educated decision makers who shape your perception of it all. See, I'm doing it already.
But before then, I have been exploring the last creative burst of things I've been procrastinating for weeks if not months.: Radio Sub Rosa remixes, more material than necessary for a record, music criticism, paper-mache coffee tables, oil-paints, and regular old writing. Not to mention a flare on this LiveJournal. LiveJournal is my home. I never really had a goal, but I don't think I'll ever finish writing here. This post has no delicate way to end. I'm crashing into exits again. And I have arrived. Take the ticket, take the ride - as they say. There is no way to contain me, but online login renewal probably begs to differ. Into the anals of creative represion, towards a new found sense of cynicism, forming a remix generation bent on post-modernist thought I must be headed. The Fall out of Summer.
-------------
What a long strange trip it's been, eh Bubba? When summer started a couple months back it wasn't warm enough and now it just won't cool down - and that's just the weather in Washington (or Crawford according to some people). We spent long nights debating politics as a means of undercutting one's personal reputation; it used to be vice-versa (even last summer). "Republican" became a curse word, while London was in a whole different world-line after their 9/11 on 7/7/05 by proclaiming "we are not afraid". I couldn't get myself out of bed before noon, because the news agenda was set by then so that I could get my daily dose of paranoia watching the Conservative News Network ("you're watching CNN" indeed Bubba). It all ended tonight in the same place it started - amoung a few good friends (different ones albient) sitting arround circle in a friend's backyard over a couple beers and WITH A BOOM. What a strange way to still be start the fictional "American millenium".
We talk very loudly and about very little on cell phones, but until recently it has not been appearant what cultural (especially musically) contribution this generation has for the future. Somewhere around finishing a podcast for an anarchist group out of Utah (oh the things the internet makes possible) it hit me hard, delivering it's punishing clarity in the same unison of its medium. WELCOME TO THE ReMix GENERATION. Some may go on to say that this is the MTV or internet generation since we seemed to grow up with both (Dr. Thomson predicted us to be a doomed generation, fucked by the cursed), but we seem to have simply taken in the other generations and synthesised them. Take Generation X and move the "x" and put it before the "generation"s,and you have put it all in a new context. Maybe the nick of "amagalation generation" has a better ring to it, but it all means the same thing over a "pale ale". We make mash-ups of the beatles and jessica simpson, or jessica simpson and michael jackson. Sometimes we put spoken word, chop it into the sound bite format we are accomstomed to, and put it over a beat on our latest podcast. The "Soundtrack of our life" became too constant an accompanyment in the age of the iPod, so we saved time and energy by combining it into a single track. We have critical mass, and we revolt on ourselves. It's getting to the point where a single record can't be sold before the remix of the lead single has been released. We are all together on the same track; solo.
My skin has not touched the sunlight much more than a full-day cumutively all summer as a result. I can't get anything done in this compound, and so the television becomes the light giving window on my world. I even got a skin based fungal infection, and I think my doctor is too young to say it's scurvey. Not that it will matter much when the sun is covered in smog and temperatures outdoors reach 120 degrees. Not that we will notice much as we work over computers all day in virtual offices during tele-commutes inside our cliamte controlled environments. Cultural climate control via the internet coerced through Air Conditioning. Not that we would pay a cent more in taxes for public transport (even as gas reaches $3 a gallon before the year is out), at least not while NewEgg.com is tax-free, free-delivery (void in California, Taxachusets, Dean Country, etc); we don't work for UPS and the USPS "is obsolete". Fair complexion and full-figures will become fashionable again, refered to as moontans in the interim.
It's all just a matter of evolution. Which can't be proven a fact if you ask the right people. Just a matter of faith, though creationism (by any name you call it) must, MUST be taught as the only known truth in schools across the nation. Never mind choosing God, or accepting religion, which we used to call "having faith" in something. It's hard to be believe in anything in a market so saturated these days, and yet be so alone while sharing in the experience (one that ultimately passes). We sleep alone with our pets and wonder why people can't accept our spoiled selves. I need a cat. I feel the phantom body next to me in bed the same way amputees say they can still feel like an arm is there. Yes, that's right. The soldiers returning from the crusade only come back to find dogs to sleep with. There is no parade for them, and only in this way is it like Vietnam. At least the Vietcong had whores. We need cats, not the Hounds of Hades. Faith in the end.
The end is near. In several hours I will be attending classes, further indoctrinated into my role amoung the educated decision makers who shape your perception of it all. See, I'm doing it already.
But before then, I have been exploring the last creative burst of things I've been procrastinating for weeks if not months.: Radio Sub Rosa remixes, more material than necessary for a record, music criticism, paper-mache coffee tables, oil-paints, and regular old writing. Not to mention a flare on this LiveJournal. LiveJournal is my home. I never really had a goal, but I don't think I'll ever finish writing here. This post has no delicate way to end. I'm crashing into exits again. And I have arrived. Take the ticket, take the ride - as they say. There is no way to contain me, but online login renewal probably begs to differ. Into the anals of creative represion, towards a new found sense of cynicism, forming a remix generation bent on post-modernist thought I must be headed. The Fall out of Summer.