If you would like to know the fastest, simplest, and most certain way to get as many customers as possible using Facebook Ads…then this will be the most exciting message you’ll ever read.
—KING KONG, “the most ruthlessly effective platform for rapidly scaling businesses on planet earth.”
Punk’s not dead, it just sucks now.
—Graffiti in the Men’s Room at the 9:30 Club
Go suck Abbott’s dick, you fascist loser.
—Editor Phil
How’s your epoch? If you’re reading me chances are you know enough about nuance to eschew extremism and leave the hyperbole to the pitch and big sell of platforms and influencers. The Information Age is dead, curation is now king and even Bill Gates can’t read this article without having to claw through a click jungle and be mined. The Coarse Grind is dead, too, and Into the Void, but what we stood for will never die. Writers are like the gang of hoboes at the end of Fahrenheit 454, down by the railroad tracks and walking on with a novel in their head and canned goods in their sack. What’s more, what’s happening virtually ain’t happening in the real world, at least it shouldn’t be, and we ought to take back this media and better—give ‘em something to report on. See you on the streets, motherfucker? Now more than ever. I am sick of being sick, with a 2-pack habit and a motel tan, entertaining myself with unfiltered opinion and worst of all suspended in the ever-present of the internet, where photos from 5 years ago are a click away from everything I’m reading and “experiencing” right now. There is no present without a past, having a digital record of every moment of our lives means that time as we know it isn’t really passing. Nothing dies so nothing can live. There’s a cost to living and there should be. Death is the motivation of any writer or performer worth his salt. Doing it for chicks and fame yields the kind of notoriety you can get from King Kong and a pair of tits on Instagram. I’m urging you to take to the territory, Reader, whether you want to or not. Neuroticism is all the rage and we’ve got to rattle our chains. Unless you’re happy being pasty, with a downsloping libido and Lexapro script bumping Spotify hits through a cigar box-sized Bluetooth speaker.
When I got off the road in ‘00, I was offered a residency at a tiny bar above an Ethiopian Restaurant in West Philly. I told the barmaid I’d have to be paid in whiskey and there could be no time-limit on how long I spoke. Those 8 months reading at Upstairs At Abyssinia were like what Brian Eno said about the Velvet Underground—“[they] didn’t sell many records, but everyone who bought one went out and started a band.” Readers and artists featured at that sweaty series went on to Portland and Japan. We worked in radio and publishing everywhere from Antigua to Hong Kong. But even the result of our efforts at the end of the American Century aren’t why. We did work then and it inspired us to keep working. Poetry got drunk those nights and sobered up for decades after. The RNC came to Philly that fall and a small and piggish man sunk us into forever wars after winning a cooked election. Did we make a difference, reading into a guitar amp and banging on the table in a 1-bedroom apartment converted into a bar, 5 blocks west and 7 blocks south from where protestors were raided and unlawfully detained in busses for nothing more than building W. puppets and blood red-spattered protest signs? Don’t know but we raged and came and told it and laughed about drinking Gin&Catatonics, having sex in the ladies room—and waited all week long for Sunday night church with Yours Truly, incanting and orating and passing the mic to You.
This isn’t about the past and there is no future. I wanna see you, Reader, feel you and hear your words, experience the body of you far and away from where the mind of some mogul or generating platform dictates culture and has the unmitigated balls to tell us who we are. Truth is I’d wanted for a bloody revolution for most of my adult life. I still do on most days but what happened on January 6 was not it. Whether you like it or not, Trump was the punkrock candidate and whether you see it or not punkrock as we know it has passed. Tattoos on cops should tell you everything you need to know about the underground and it ain’t just punk either. In the years since Nevermind, technology leapt and the culture fell. Devices and the medium are so interwoven and, more than the thread, have become the event. I don’t want to be indoors anymore, Reader. I want to see the seas burn and fall in line running Nazis right out of town. Mostly I wanna hear them tell it because the kind of shit they’re running with deserves a punch to the throat. Come. Meet me. It’s one of our last summers here together and I want to fight and fall in love. They can’t take the streets, at least not every one of them at the same time, and they’ll never take our voice. Let’s rant and run and yell awhile. The bad news is it’s over but you got to figure now we’ve got nothing to lose. Let’s pitch a tent on Ted Cruz’s lawn. Let’s get on the air! The summer’s here and the time is right for fighting in the street. There is no better time to come together and kick out the jams than the end of the world.
Vox populi vox dei,
Trainer
AUSTIN TX
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[…] He has blogged weekly at Going For the Throat for over a decade, penned a monthly column at Into The Void and contributes to Music, Movies&Hoops. As a proponent of personal journalism Trainer […]
[…] He has blogged weekly at Going For the Throat for over a decade, penned a monthly column at Into The Void and contributes to Music, Movies&Hoops. As a proponent of personal journalism Trainer […]