Chapter 3 of the some-what-zine-y rant thing: this is our life

(continued from here...and from here)

Chapter 3: Life and Fantasy

This is our life. There doesn’t need to be extra drama. Not if you don’t want it – There’s no need for hyper-scrutiny and there’s no need for exasperating insecurities.

There’s no need to prattle on about this or that – just come see it, hear it, call it what it is, have a drink, get to know someone and keep on living.

But anyway – as I said to my friend Asim, who plays in an ever-evolving “rock” based quartet that has wavered between sensibilities involving “psychedelic” rock, “shoegaze” rock and is now dabbling in “trip/hop” – we get to talking about genres, the incestuous blending of influences and whether certain styles can actually die.

I tell him what I’ve already told you –that if an idea is good enough, it always lives on beyond it’s “death.” Christ died 2000 years ago and people still think Christianity is a good idea. Lennon died 30 years ago and people still think infusing Brit-pop’s dynamic hooks into their present-day songwriting styles is a good idea. (People still say, “Give peace a chance” and still think Lennon might have been onto something when he posited his group’s popularity surpassing that of Christ) – if ideas are persuasive enough – and punk rock is persuasive, just as Detroit’s potential (and Detroit’s tragedy) is persuasive, if not provocative – then they live on…

The actual “thing” may be dead. But the idea, and our love of it, lives…and we embrace it, and we try to live that idea.

Asim wonders aloud if, by playing on stages under lights to crowds while 99% of the world carries on and seems to never know (or for some, still not properly care) about music, about the beauty of art, about the rich histories, about the power of music…its phantasmal influence on our everyday lives.

Well. The fantasy goes right back to the writer – the blogger, the scenester in the back, the misanthropic and insecure ego-inflamed hipster, the bitter-ain’t-like-it-usta-been curmudgeon, the ones who only see the two extremes: It’s not as good or it’s better than ever. It’s bleak…and here’s a poetic and gut-wrenching metaphor. Or it’s hopeful…and here’s a lyrical and soothingly encouraging depiction. Life’s not too sides of a coin – that’s the real fantasy…a delusional fantasy.

Life’s back to that tire. The rolling wheel. The tilt-o-whirl. Cycles and circles. We’re just living. And we come back around. We fall out sometimes, or we get dizzy and throw up – but often we’re rolling too fast to notice or care.

And all of that, that I’ve just spewed out, may or may not apply to Detroit… or to music…in general. Sometimes yes, sometimes no, I’m trying not to be absolutist and get comfy in the middle.

Again, this blog is not about punk rock, or about beating dead horses, or about cows who quote Plato; it is not about Chuck Klosterman or trip/hop, it is not about the Beatles; this zine is sort of about Detroit and definitely concerned with music and also with the people who read it; but this zine is manipulated, unabashedly, by its creators, as a reminder.

But this blog is not exclusively preoccupied with this “comfy in the middle” nonsense. It will be all over the place.

This zine/blog is not better than you.

This blog/zine is glad you read it.

End for now.