The following was written by
littleblueworld. It's really good.
If you were to tap the shell of a snail with the tip of a pencil, it would retreat back into its shell. In psychology, this is called an orienting response. If you were to continue tapping on its shell, the snail would eventually learn that the tapping poses no threat and move on with its life. This is called habituation. We grow accustomed to stimuli. As long as we perceive the stimuli as unthreatening, we can ignore it. I set two alarm clocks for this reason. I can sleep through both of them if I can convince myself there isn't a good reason to hear them, and wake up.
History is full of tappings on the shell, though in retrospect we might see our blindnesses we are, in the present, only numbing to the tap tap tap of a pencil without contemplating the monster that holds it in his grip.
I think this is often why the counter-culture is created by the young. They hear the tapping and want someone to explain what the fuck is going on. And when no one can, they refuse to contribute to the tapping, and then they make their own noise.
Although bellbottoms came back briefly only to reincarnate into wide-legged Levis and boot-legged Tommy Hilfiger's, it wasn't until George W. Bush began saddling-up and aiming his lasso toward a small Middle-Eastern country that I began hearing people murmuring that the 60s were really coming back. We even had a war to protest and swarm of misguided youth to guide back into the herd. Where, though, amidst the pot smoke and the rubble was the soundtrack?
Who are we? What does the new counter-culture want? And why isn't anyone singing about it?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind.
It's not a time when you can go to the park and play the ukelele and wonder how Art Garfunkel maintained that afro. In fact, you can't even go to a Rage Against the Machine show anymore for your fill of "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" which is the new "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" Since there is a lack of current politics in music (even the Beastie Boys can't Get it Together,) I suggest we learn from contemporary sensibility. The other day I heard Avril Lavigne on a "lite-rock" radio station, I wanted to write her and tell her the punk, finally, has gone mainstream. You can listen to Britney Spears' new album. She even wrote some of it herself, and think about what she did for the gay/lesbian movement by kissing Madonna on MTV. Or better yet, Fox has put the power back in the hands of the people. You can vote for your next idol Monday night at eight, and if you get an ATT phone, you can text message your vote so BUY BUY BUY! Eddie Vedder, the remaining forefather of grunge doesn't even know what to sing anymore. He did stomp on the likeness of our president, many fans walking out in their own protest. Anger and dissent died a long time ago, as if Kurt Cobain took all of our souls when he took his. We come in peace. Take us to our leader.
There is no free love, at least not without a Trojan and a fifth of something amber. Our version, a mimcry, of civil rights leaders are thug gang rappers who brag about gun shot wounds while misquoting Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. We don't wear flowers in our hair, we wear bling-bling. The closest thing we have to a drug guru is Elizabeth Wurtzel who dubbed up the Prozac Nation. Happiness used to be a warm gun, now it is a loaded pill which along with its friend Ritalin has scared every new parent into rushing for a prescription for their child who would rather play than sit at a desk in a classroom while life waits out the window.
We don't have Woodstock, but we had Perry Farrell's freak show, Lollapalooza. If you went, you know we weren't naked and covered in mud, but we saw Jim Rose's Circus. And mud isn't so impressive once you've seen a man suspended by his nipples. In fact, nothing impresses you after that. If anything proves we've moved beyond the lovey-dovey limp-dicked, psychedelic blur that was the sixties, a man hanging by his nipples does. If the mantra of the 60s was "tune in, turn on, and drop out," the motto of the 90s was "stop, drop, and roll."
Someone needs to explain to the majority that we've been moving in these absurd circles for generations. If I am going to live in a culture of civil disobedience, I at least want the acid to be as good as it was forty years ago. Hell, if we can't move forward, I at least want to do backward right.
At this point, I'd gladly exchange my capacity for human empathy to worry about things like how to wash that man right out of my hair or to be burdened by NBC's war coverage interrupting my Must-See TV. The truth is, we can't be the sixties, not even with a war in a far away land, not even with a band called Phish, the Simon & Garfunkel reunion tour, or the rape fest that was Woodstock part deux. Not only are we accustomed to the tapping, but our shells are harder. The Terminator is governing our softest state. Women aren't burning their brassieres, Victoria's Secret is offering an eleven million dollar one encrusted with the shinest rocks. Cher is without Sonny. Two of the Beatles are in heaven, if we can Imagine one. Elvis may or may not be dead. Nothing is real.
We learned this from the eighties. Hair wasn't real colors. Boys wore make-up. Leg warmers were a fashion statement. Madonna taught us it was a good idea to become clowns of ourselves, to hide the pain. And if after that, Nirvana's self-absorbed, flannel-rock had us ripping off our untruths, acting in self-indulgent apathy, all apologies. At least we were feeling again.
You see, for there really to be a revolution, people have to know they are getting screwed. We live in a time when no one feels the dick up his ass. We're numb. We're schizophrenic: we crowd around the man hanging by needles through his nipples and at the same time we shrug at it. Oh well. Whatever. Nevermind.
The sixties taught us, if nothing else that the counter-culture is always counter. It's belittled. It's fad. It's naive. Ultimately, nothing changes, it's just televised.
I think it is beautiful to stand up and scream "liars" toward an administration that tells us the string potatoes we eat with our happy meals are no longer French. It's freedom we dip in ketchup. I think it is entirely worthy to take to the streets when someone's freedom is being violated, for really one person's freedom is all of ours. And you might see me there, holding a sign. But part of me wants to jump in a painted Volkswagen, just for the ride to somewhere else. You see, I've done enough tuning in and turning on for a lifetime, and now I want to take my remaining brain cells and caravan with mis compadres somewhere safe. Somewhere time doesn't catch-up, where I can keep warm by a fire fueled by brassieres, where if I hear so much as a tap, I will recognize the sound of safe home, slowly coming undone.