In the past I spent too much time trying to form my own opinions. I attribute this to my 16 year-old self standing around and listening in on the drunken circles of people (my age + a quarter my age) while they sermonized over what is artsy. I reveled in it. My ears couldnot keep up with it, though I nodded in accordance with what was familiar and attempted to memorize any time somebody namedropped something newfangled. I believed that forming opinions was what separated the kids from the adults so much that I am now completely burnt out on opinions. I now lack opinions on politics (a topic almost but not quite as heated as arguing over whether Brian Eno did invent the ambient genre, or if noise started in New York City with DNA, or if the Stooges and Pere Ubu were punk enough to be considered punk at a time when no one used that word to describe music anyway, etc, etc), am often unfeeling toward otherwise spiritually-galvanizing beliefs and concepts and therefore cannot bring anything to that table, and while more microscopic by nature and comparison, find it difficult to write either point or counterpoint on any given subject and habitually give it a Lady Justice ‘meh’-styled observational treatment.
That is why I’m writing. Or rather, I am writing to try and form opinions again: that is why I’m writing. The rhetoric for this blog material will go something like this:
How does (subject line) make Buddy Bell feel, currently?
I must feel first before even trying to get to the core of anybody else in words.
It is too easy to form opinions about art. I look at it, or I read it, or I listen to it, and I critique it almost instantly.
But have you found as I have, the way that our opinions of art cease to impress others the older we get? And how those opinions steadily and imperceptibly backslide down the hierarchy of life’s priorities? If I were to walk into a group of hippies 5 years ago praising the originality of ah… Jean-Luc Godard or R. Stevie Moore, I would have chimed right in, been completely enthusiastic, and thought I made some life partners right then and there. Contrast that with today, and, well…
See, these words are all stemming from going to a show tonight. A
house show. I just went to a house show in the college sector of my hometown. That’s something I haven’t done for, well, prolly about 5 years. To register faster recognition than a regular address, the house was donned with a nickname. I first heard of the house venue when a friend told me R. Stevie Moore would be playing there. So I f.b.’ed the owner of the house and asked how to get there.
Round a week after that I run into a friend of mine from those days on my school campus. We catch up with what the other’s been doing and make tentative plans to go see a show in town. All right.
Fast forward to tonight, where I’ve parked my TV (Toyota Van, not the viewing kind) and am fast approaching a small circle of slouchy smokers, swiggers and stoners. Speaking with my friend Erin, I overhear the memory-rustling and familiar din of hipster talk: these folks are doing some heavy namedropping! Some drunk dude describing Stan Brakhage’s cinematography to another still silent dude. I ask one of Erin’s friends if I’ve missed the bands, and he assures me I haven’t. That there’s still one last band that–
“Wait, do you know Mr. Bungle? Their second, weirder album? That’s what these guys sound like. John Zorn. And like John Zorn.”
I’m stunned by such obscure references getting dropped as naturally as if they were on the front page of today’s paper!
They play in the house’s unfinished basement, which is accessed by wooden stairs leading from a rectangular hole in the floor. Standing below, I surmise maximum capacity is in the ballpark of 37, and that being nuts to butts. Insulation and piping hanging low from the ceiling threaten to send your respiratory system into defense mode or deal you some massive welts, respectively. But they guys in the band, which I am told goes by either MAC or MAC OS (The Most Amazing Century of Science), are dishing licks like they’re playing the best venue in town. So if all these guys are so visibly comfortable and in their element, and if I’ve spent strings of nights for years participating in parties and shows like this one, what’s changed in my past to cause me so much anxiety down here?
Answer later.
