For me, there are only one 80's.

Normally I wouldn't bring this up, but there just seems to be such a desire to go back to this particular time period that is totally baffling to me. I know that when you revisit things you have the advantage of finding the gems and polishing them up, making the innovations part of a more realistic and acceptible form. But seriously, can I ask this? What the hell was going on with us in the 80's? I know. It's not really fair of me to ask this question. I was three when the sun set on the 1980's and therefore was not really around to have been caught up in the moment. I don't have the advantage of looking back and being embarrassed about it or apologetic. I wouldn't bother to ask this question, though, if I didn't think there was some kind of answer.
I don't want to be overly critical or bash. I won't go into detail about the big hair styles for both men and women, I won't talk about the relatively unimaginitive automobile designs (the DeLorean being a pretty big exception) or the neon color schemes. I just want to know what happened. Naturally, I have my own hypothesis. In order to fully appreciate the argument, you have to remember, or pretend there was a time before "irony". In the 1980's "the future" was still something people thought about. There were still possibilities because not everything had been done yet. This was especially true because the ridiculous marijuana clouds and smell of swinger parties permeated 90% of American cities. It is easy to see how that could cloud the collective consiousness and make innovation difficult. Where the 60's tried to lead us, the 70's just plain didn't live up to the promise. All of the work that activists and avant garde musicians strived to achieve was erased by cock rock and hideous moustaches.
The lethargy caused by weed gave way to the hyperactivity of cocaine, for which there was really only one possible outcome: androgeny. This led to such possibilities. Musicians no longer had to be stuck playing the same four power chords thanks to the keytar, nor did the songs have to have any concept of being based on an idea. Take for example "The Safety Dance". Go ahead and search that song. Give it a listen and see if you can come up with a thesis statement. This was also the decade where Micael Jackson became a superstar. Don't get me wrong, I love the music of Michael Jackson, but in the year I was born, 1987, MJ released a song in which he tried to convince the world he was physically intimidating and macho via pelvic thrusts and jumping off of other guys' backs.
But I get it, people of the 1980's. Where else were you supposed to go. You were pioneers, trying to figure it all out and there was nobody to guide you. Commodities traders were changing the game of finance at the same time more than a negative percentage of men were seriously considering eye liner. You had to push the envelope for the sake of pushing it, even if it was into orifices that were quiestionable at best. And the cocaine definitely didn't help. You don't have to keep reminding us. I guess what I'm saying is, damn you 1980's for taking away innovation. All that's left for us now is to look back, and look back at you for ideas that were already all thought of. We've reverted to going back two centuries thanks to your trailblazing. Couldn't you have just gone with one thing? You could have had the synth, or the big hair, or people all dressing the same way be it boy or girl. But did you have to do freaking all of it? Who could keep up with the pace you guys were on? Had it not been for the incredibly depressing depression that spilled over into the early 90's it may never have ended. Hell, all of those flying cars and alien encounters everybody was so keen on might have actually come true.
I don't say this often, but thankfully shady business practices were allowed to prevail in oder to just give us all a break. It's been more than twenty years now since you ended, 1980's, and we still can't catch our breath. Except that when you stopped running into uncharted cultural territory, you took with you your entrepenuerial spirit, leaving behind jaded, angry people who can only say "Never again" even though they steal all of your music now and act like it was cool. Bastards. 

 

 Somehow, 1980's Michael Jackson was unable to distinguish between violence and eroticism.

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The Rise and Fall of Talent

I got to enjoy a fairly liesurefull Friday after five o' clock roundabout with some coworkers where we discussed genetics, predetermined intelligence and wether or not our futures are cast before we break free of the womb. I was, and am, of the opinion that, by and large, our destinies (meaning the decisions we will make, our personalities and interests, and overall intelligence) are a result of our genetic makeup. I won't go into full detail here, but I will say that while I believe we have free will on the surface, that free will is exercised and guided by factors that we are not necessarily consciously aware of. I do not believe we are all capable of anything. We have natural limits and drives, not all of us gifted in the same ways or gifted at all. While our environment can foster or discourage types of behavior based on insentives (which human beings seem to be very easily motivated by), you pretty much are you who are.
This didn't come up explicitly, but it did get me thinking that there is an ultimate sadness to my own ideas about human nature and the nature of our interests and obsessions. Perhaps this is why I was met with a healthy amount of resistence in the breakroom conversation. We are very much not in control of our own destinies. With that, perhaps, being the case, I want to talk about an even more upsetting posibility that is more liklihood than possiblity. That liklihood is unmet potential. I like to think that, as someone who has studied and spent most of his life in and around writing, my prowess as a storyteller and user of words has not reached its peak. Scary would the circumstance where I would have to sit back, go over my notes and realize that my best sentences are behind me. Or in front of me, already written. I would like to continue to grow, to grasp at rearrangements, word creation and poetry. Being in this position, I think it's reasonable to suspect that there is still considerable room to grow and that my natural predisposition to the written word means that I can better myself. So where, then, is the line and how do we ever know if we truly reach it? I guess we never really do. That in itself, can be unsettling, but not nearly as unsettling as thinking that you never even came close.
I was reminded about a once close friend of mine. She has written some of the most beautiful things that the English language can offer, and yet she was largely untrained in this area of expression. There were, of course, classes that required writing of various types, but in terms of serious academic or even personal discovery, there wasn't much that was done, so far as I could tell. Yet, her innate talent was (and most likely still is) perhaps beyond anything I have read. There was a simplicity to the line, a freshness to old words. It was as if the roots of the language you knew were revealed and suddenly a history came to light and your language had to be reacquired. It was even more striking because there was so little of it. I don't want to use a tired addiction comparison because there were no downsides to reading her work. I didn't wake up in the middle of the night in a sweat, I did not become itchy or cold when it had been too long between reads, nor did the interior of my nasal cavities deteriorate to the point of needing surgical reconstruction. This was more serious than that. Maybe the most heartbreaking part about it all is that I had forgotten about all of this.
With so little to go on, a sample size so miniscule that half of my fascination with the work was pure speculation on how good it could get, I can't help but wonder now what it was that had initially sparked the outlet of writing in her, and what so cruelly suffocated it before it had the chance to get walking legs. I don't speak much with her now and I don't want to theorize on what has changed in her life. It would be easy to link a failure to reach one's potential with so many artists that had their talent cut short by life spans that fell far below the national average. Basquiat comes to mind as well as so many of the other members of the 27 club. But there is a significant and more depressing difference between a life ending, resulting in the end of a talent, and someone simply not exploring their talent further, continuing on in to other areas of their life as if that talent had never manifested. With the dead, their talent was maximized by default. They reached their peak, however short-lived. In effect, that talent was not wasted. That says nothing of those that continue to live. We are all worse off for those who deny us their gifts yet are in full control of them.
In the breakroom, a point I had to concede was that culture largely impacts what we become. I do not find that this contradicts my being convinced that we are our genes. I feel that there is a baseline of talent, intelligence and behavior that we are given by our genetic donators. Where those genes take us may be predictable, but not perfectly so. There are outside pressures that gear us in certain directions. Even if we would like to, we cannot expose newborns to anything and everything. There is simply too much stuff in our world for that to be possible. But when an obvious talent is recognized, should it not be fostered? I don't want to come across as saying persuits should be forced upon people that do not want them, especially since this kind of talk comes up most often when discussing child-rearing, but it doesn't seem as though encouragement is enough in some cases. I just hate the idea of something not being created just because someone didn't want to create it. My sensitivity to this is mostly because of my infatuation and on again off again relationship with writing, but if the work is inside you, don't you have to let it out? Hell, what I am writing this article now for if not because I have no other choice?
I do not believe in a higher power. I do not believe that the universe is infinite. From what I can tell, existence, as we know it, is purely accidental. Maybe that's sad. Maybe it's not the best way to continue on since there isn't seemingly anything to work toward. Maybe that's why my friend's talent was never fully realized. But some accidents are just too damn good to let go of. 

 

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The Moment You Unlearn all of the Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know


Now, the last thing I want is for this to be a place where I tell you about things that I thought were awesome during my more impressionable years. I could go through all of the records I bought, I could discuss at incredible length the books I've enjoyed and movies that I thought could have been better. I'm not going to do that. What I am going to do is talk about that moment you have, the moment, that if you're really lucky, you'll have again and again. I've had a few, each one different and more illuminating than the last. But when I get them now, I'm not completely taken by surprise the way I was when that first one came along and spanked me.
In high school I was still behind the times musically. I was back in my comfort zone of oldies and classic rock. It was an easy place to be in. It's hard to stray too far from the herd when you say you really love The Beatles or Queen. I had drifted briefly into the world of hip hop and gangsta rap, and while it was eye-opening musically, it didn't really hit me in a fundamental way. I conformed to what I thought would make me more popular. That isn't to say I didn't enjoy my headphone sessions of Eminem and Ice Cube, but I wasn't changed underneath my baggy jeans and K-Swiss. The move back to classic rock also wasn't because I was in love with Led Zeppelin. It was safe. Weed was around (not that I took part in that), so long hair and repitive guitar riffs while an unmasculine voice sang about women still seemed cool. I wasn't at all geared up for the motor show that was to come from the Motor City.
If it weren't for friends far more adventurous than I, I'm not sure how much farther along I would have developed. That's just how those things go. During a hot summer day before the start of the school year, I was out on a football field along with the other fifty or whatever members of the music department. I was busy looking at girls in athletic shorts and putting on a bravado having seen my stock slowly rise over the previous year of high school. I had a burned cd (right around when they became cheap enough that your friends no longer charged you for them) dropped in my lap. On it, written in red sharpie was the word "Elephant", underneath, "The White Stripes". When I drove home I popped that bad boy in my cd player and felt very un-classic rock, very ungangster in my '91 Thunderbird.
I am not going to argue the artistic merits of "Elephant", you can draw your own conclusions. I listened to the now iconic "Seven Nation Army" probably a million times and then proceeded to make my way through the rest of the record endlessly before the next day so that I could bring something to the table. Back then, when you shared a song or a record with somebody, it wasn't unlike meeting your favorite athlete. The giddiness that took over, the comprehension that there were people out there doing these things and we were still young enough to think that it could one day be us. That record and I spent many afternoons together. Maybe the most compelling thing for me, at the time, was that this band wasn't a band so much as a partnership. It was a heart and head without the contraints of vestigial organs or even a body that could die and thereby destroy the magic that was created.
That same year, only a short couple of months later, another record came out that would ensure that I would never go back to the safety of music the way I had before. While I could enjoy the songs I used to love, and continue to actually love them, it did make me critical. A lot of the music I had thought I liked, I realized I really didn't. I figured out how juvenile and ridiculous so much of it was. It finally made sense that gangstas had never been people to admire because that kind of lifestyle was idiotic and childish. It made way more sense to wear only three colors, play the guitar as loud as possible and beat the shit out of drums. After that supplanted my thinking, I forgot about "Elephant". I absorbed records at such pace that only the music that really sparked my own creativity were able to stick around.
Because of the neglect, it only seemed appropriate to dig that burned cd out and give it a play again. The funniest part about it all was that it sounds just as crazy as it did when released, although were it to be released to the world for the first time today, I'm not sure it would have had the same impact on me. I'm not sure I could have even made it through the whole record, nor am I convinced that the public, as a whole, would have found the same missing piece that was delivered. In many ways, eye-opening is tied to time. We are not all ready at the same time, we are not all brought out of our lulls by the same thing. Maybe that's why they happen so infrequently. All I can say about it, really, is that I am glad for that moment, that realization. It has led to a great many other discoveries. I just sometimes wish I could have that moment over again.

 

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It Hurts My Sensibilities So Good!


I am constantly amazed by what people consider good and what they consider bad. There is a tendency to immediately go to the extremes: "that, oh my God, this one song by [insert obscure band name here] is so fucking good it will blow your fucking mind!" and "Can you believe that [insert aging pop star's name here] put out a new record? It's like what Hitler would listen to if he were a thirteen year old girl!" You know what that tells me about your ability to reason? That you don't have one. We live in a world of love it or hate it, where every sandwich you eat must be an orgasmic experience that alters our perception of the universe with every bite. I want to tell you that that world only exists in theory. That back here on earth, there is such a thing as nuance and degrees of enjoyment, and that all of it is subjective.
Within the world of praise and badmouthing, there exists a strange limbo that seems to defy these laws of criticism. There are occaisions when the qualities that would normally prime a work of art for the severist of ridicule by first semester philosophy students strangely become widely accepted as being works of genius. There are very specific parameters to the success of the "It's so bad, it's good" label. I want to be clear that I am not talking about works of straight parody. In those situations, there are other rules to determine whether or not said work of parody is good. What I'm talking about it a song that, to any observer, appears to be sincere, yet that sincerity is misplaced on a laughably ridiculous piece. While this phenomenon can be found in any form of expression, it seems to be most highly focused on musical pieces. That could just be because music has a faster and farther reach than other forms of art. I don't want to go through a huge list of instances where the "so bad, it's good" element occur, but I would like to point out a single example that has recently come to my attention.

The song is called "Smell Yo Dick" and it is truly as bad as that title would suggest:


The reason I find this to be a model example is that, from what I can tell, there is no intended comedic element to this song. I don't recognize any tells that would tip me off to the fact that this is anything but a genuine attempt at writing a song about fear, dishonesty and jealousy. This is a rich and thoroughly explored topic with many possible consequences and solutions, yet the one chosen by the writer of this song, is to literally determine infidelity based on the smell of the accused member. There are a couple of things that this premise suggests: one, that it is possible to determine whether or not someone has had intercourse purely based on aroma of the penis, and two, that the accuser has enough experience with penile odor that she can assess whether or not the accused has had intercourse based on smelling his dick. I'm not sure that it is necessary to elaborate on why this is humorous. The ridiculousness of this song makes it a worthy candidate of being praised as awesome because of its badness, but only because the other elements of it hold up their part of the bargain. The word play, although based on private parts, is pretty good, as is the beat and melody of the chorus. To add to the fuel, it is a pretty simple formula that has been tested again and again by songwriters probably far less talented. In fact, I would say that in order to make a song about dick smell work on any level at all takes an amount of crafting that 80% of working musicians and songwriters don't have.
So why write this song? There is no way of knowing just by hearing it. Is this a song from personal experience like confessional poetry? Is it common knowledge among women that to test if your boyfriend has been cheating you smell his dick? If that is the case, why have I not heard of it before? So many inquiries into the human condition are expelled from this three and a half minute gold nugget. I can imagine this song being blasted in dive bars and being sung along to by hipsters at full voice-cracking volume. It truly is so bad, it is a beautiful American artifact. It rhymes "that" four times in a row. I rest my case.
What I'm saying is I don't understand how this is possible. Given what we know about subjectivity, loud douche-bags with ass holes for opinions, it is a gift that we are given at least a little breathing room for tiny lights into the minds of people who, for better or worse, are not operating even close to the same taste level as the majority.
I should also mention that we have also been given a big heads up on how to avoid conflict with suspicious significant others. Fellas.

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