Saturday, August 02, 2003
Asthma…
Unable to breathe…
Can't hardly breathe...
*gasp*
You don’t have to rush back in to things in order to prove something to yourself; you don’t have to define yourself by who you’re with or what you want. Definitions (and lists therefore) mean permanency and the world is not permanent. People are not fixed values and set qualities. People are processes. The world is a process. That includes you. This is also why lists are rockist; even mutable, transformable, changeable lists; their very existence at any point in time demonstrates a move for permanency. (One day I may define ‘rockist’. Ha!)
Shoot down sacred cows? Are they unassailable now? After smashing the previous sacred cows themselves and claiming nothing is unassailable? That from now on everything has changed? No; they become a new order themselves. Maybe.
Eric Cantona did it best. Stopped. At his peak. Imagine if Bowie had done! Who is it now who’s a crotchety old man, always harping on about the perfect aesthetic of rock music, decrying everything that came afterwards? Meltzer? Is he the one who believes nothing can get any better than The Rolling Stones and Hendrix and The Who? Who doesn’t bother anymore? He’s wrong, of course. But also right. Because what place does he have now to continue striving? To try and carry on forever? Bangs’ taste died with Bangs as did his writing but not alas his name and legend and mythology. You die. You stop. Or you try and carry on forever. Very few who try the latter maintain quality. Not that quality matters. Metal Box and London Calling came out in the year I was born.
Don’t have heroes, and certainly don’t have these fuck-ups as heroes. Don’t make the reporter more important than the reported. Cult. Of. Celebrity. We all need…
I am broken – fix me.
No.
I am bored – entertain me.
I am absent – distract me.
One thing I forgot to mention in the part about Paul Morley below, is that as much as he may curse the death of the 7” vinyl disc there is a whole generation after him who loves CDs. The silver, the perfect images pressed onto the surface, the very fact that the disc itself can be painted with an image to represent the music, to accentuate it. The intangible rainbow of colours that rise and evaporate in sunlight, streaming across the real surface of the disc, the part where the music lies, ripples of colour, all colours, in infinitesimal patterns and shifts. The socialist uniformity (utopia?) of the jewel box, so utterly throwaway and shelvable. Indestructible? I don’t think so. You can destroy them; it’s a joy to, because it takes effort, to physically snap a CD, to scar it’s surface; you have to mean it. Black plastic? No thank you. That’s your first kiss. I can’t remember it. The real magic is in putting the psychedelic silver disc into a black box and having this perfect sound emerge, time after time… Maybe. It’s not your magic. But you’re not writing for me. I’m not writing for you.
8/02/2003 10:26:00 am
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