December 03, 2003
Incoherence
The city has lapsed into incoherence, and a good chunk of the internet has too, it seems. Molly says it is all good, the function of seasons. "You don't want everything going on and on the same way, digging itself into ruts, do you?" I am not so sure. Change, yes. But this kind of stupid oblivion? Like agents buying the cover story and forgetting the real mission, everyone milling around purposelessly -- I think I can do without.
The research on collaboration continues, but that's a story for another day, when my brain is less foggy. For today I've pulled together a draft of something from notes in the back-file, or as Mol says, "nuts put away for the season." It's still a little incoherent itself, and more than a little sloppy, but I feel like sharing it Tell me if it makes no sense yet...
Posted by Sam at December 3, 2003 08:36 AM
urban nomads
exclusion frights
you got it new kid old kid
the hipster lives between the two
a phantom of their mutual gaze at each other
two faced and chimerical
as was the late 70s yup
and that ice face the hypoiser
of the middle 80s
woodstockers had a shock force phantom called the beautiful people
demons all
living in the virtual zones between us
strangers to these parts
Posted by: meat me at December 3, 2003 02:16 PM
is it cooler to be "conservative" nowadays? I'd say there is truth to that among a growing percentage of the population, who are also extremely cynical, apathetic, yet full of desire for purpose and belonging. It sure is "cool" to be liberal and part of the "protest culture" which now has its own fashion magazines. That these camps oppose eachother is necessary for their mutual existence. It is their mutual existence. A basketball player is a basketball player regardless of what team he is on, and is not a basketball player without an opponent.
Truth is, for alienated humans it is "cool" to be both because neither really matters. Only "cool" matters because it offers validation and belonging, something we all desire, something we're only given half of to keep us coming back to the store for more. The unity this "cool" offers is the shared language of separation which masks the true unity between us, that we don't control our own lives but simply react to things outside of us. We are united by the communication stripped from us and around our unilateral reception of images, "cool" images, and by the shared difficulty of expressing ourselves in any other way.
I don't know if I'd deny that these fragmented fragments of people you call hipsters exist. There definitely are people who take on this image and stores who sell the shit out of it. Do you have "urban outfitters" in New York? They sell the protest culture, trailer park, working class look mass produced style. I do agree that a true "hipster" doesn't exist, only the false image. The everyday appropriation of this image (and many commodified others) by people for capital is, however, very real.
Posted by: Fierce Machiavelli at December 4, 2003 06:38 AM
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