Episode XI:

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Diary of a Fading Rockstar, Episode XI: If 6 Was 9, or Recycling The Map

For study: Current music of moral and aesthetic urgency

Examples: Bloc Party, The Gossip, Saul Williams, Joan As Police Woman, Tim Armstrong, Dr. Israel, Les Savy Fav, Quasi

Opening sequence: “Maps” by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs

We used rock and roll as teenagers as a soundtrack to our adventures, either inward or outward; to help us cope with unbearable life situations; as an escape from boredom, or a coping skill for depression; as a source of hope, as a channel for our lust and rage, as a diversion from the mundane. As the melodies excited movement inside our heads, the rhythms excited movement in our bodies. We felt like we could at last leave the untenable state we were in, which was childhood, and in growing up escape to freedom.

As adults, the illusion of growing up as a liberation became the disillusion that conventional adulthood was a prison. Adults use rock and roll mainly as a nostalgia trip for a time they imagine to have been easier, more interesting, more innocent, more honest, more real, more free, more risque. They listen to rock and roll to induce a mind-state that convinces them that though their bodies are aging, their inner selves are still young, pliable, malleable, enthusiastic, un-jaded. They remember the strength they once had for recklessness, for fearlessness, for a disregard of security. But rock and roll in and of itself does not grant courage or bravery, let alone wisdom to the listener; at best it is a validation for feelings of dissatisfaction. Youthful dissatisfaction tends to drive outward, which is a natural progression of the maturation process; adult dissatisfaction more often than not drives straight off a cliff.

As teenagers we avoided the call by adults around us to grow into responsibility; as adults we continue to avoid our responsibilities. But is rock and roll really the soundtrack to a refusal to grow up? And what is this “growing up” we are supposed to be doing? I believe that in actuality rock and roll is a tool that helps us to truly grow up into a larger humanity -- one that resists oppression with energy and celebrates all forms of life -- and its stagnation and commodification as an art form results in the stagnation and commodification of ourselves.

We are told that growing up entails showing up, fulfilling the promise of our youth (as if we ourselves were the ones who made the promise, rather than those who projected it onto us). We hear often that to grow up means to give up. We’re not living for ourselves now, we’re living for others. But when did we really live for ourselves? When we were young we were obligated to do as we were told because we were not emancipated, not enfranchised. Our rights were limited, our aspirations constantly curtailed by the voice of reason. When we were young we wanted to burn out like shooting stars, but were sternly advised to cool our jets and stay grounded.

We’re told the same thing as adults. We are, in fact, somehow expected to be highly successful in careers that we love providing leadership for others and bountifully supporting our families, when in reality any any small steps or expressive acts that might have supported such an autonomous creativity and strength of character were practically beaten out of us from childhood onward. It seems that in reality we are told from cradle to grave to behave. “Productive member of society” is an interesting cliche because of how surprisingly little it is ever closely examined by those who use it. It is based on the presumption that in order to be a member of society, one has to ‘produce’ something; and if we do not, then our membership is liable to be revoked. Meanwhile the great captains of industry, in the main, have produced nothing but numbers, and more numbers; numbers measuring their own supposed value, which we must bow and scrape for like tip chips to the casino employee. It is interesting, isn’t it, that we do not say “creative member of society” -- someone who spontaneously brings forth new questions, new answers, new methods for navigating our shared landscape?

None of us asked to born. Our essentially fragmented consciousness having coalesced into existence around a fragile humanity, we’ve been summoned to roll call in what amounts to an existential concentration camp. We have been ordered to submit to any and all humiliation by those in charge, that humiliation assumed to be its own reward. We are asked to accept what we are told as gospel truth, do what we are told is the divine will, to dig our own graves and to conveniently fall into them after punching the clock on our way out.

This is true, and it is also not true. We have all been here before. Everybody knows this is nowhere. Emancipate yourself from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds. We are stardust, we are golden, we are caught in the devil’s bargain, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden. I don’t wanna be the prisoner. Man, there ain’t no life nowhere. I got my own world to live through and I ain’t gonna copy you. I’m on a submarine mission for you baby; I can’t figure out your watery love...I’m gonna solve your mystery; I’m sending it out from heaven above. I’m on a highway to hell. I met a man who was wounded in love; I met another man who was wounded in hatred. Love, love is all around me, every day. I wish I was special, but I’m a creep.

We have to create some kind of meta-language for navigating and shaping our own realities, because the maps that we have been given are all lies -- advertisements for a non-functioning product, a rip-off. As a child of American culture born into the end of the millennium, I believe that the meta-language for controlling reality is available in the form of rock and roll music. In the context of rock and roll we are not merely isolated tenants to the abandoned apartment complex of a post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland; we are souls interconnected by the unseen forces of vibration. Pete Townshend scripted the failed rock opus “Life House”, which later became condensed to the album titled “Who’s Next”, with the intent that it represent a replacement for religion. Rock and roll would be the socio-spiritual meeting ground for people on a quest to unleash their psyches from the shackles of tradition. “Life House” was ostensibly a failure because its multimedia multi-disciplinary vision of technology serving to unite humanity in a shared ethic of humanism and liberty was too many decades ahead of its time. Instead of such a vision unfolding as the triumph of an individual will, it is more likely to arise spontaneously and organically as the necessity arising out of the death of empire and the collapse of civilization as we know it. Even through its colossal failure, “Life House” sets the bar for the aesthetic aspirations of future rockstars.

Times are once again dire enough to require a dire music, a music that dismantles the very idea of ‘revolution’ by ripping the wheel from its framework and smashing it to bits. We want off the wheel. We’re tired of the misunderstanding of sampling as repackaging -- what we are striving for is a true synthesis. We’re not interested in selling a back catalog, other than to rediscover those who truly went against the grain, and to fall in step behind them -- it is only cultural misappropriation when we fail to learn from the mistakes of those we are following.

We don’t want success -- we want to destroy everything that reeks of it. We don’t want to be successful, we want to be full of our essence. I don’t wanna cause no sensation; I’m just talkin’ ‘bout my generation.