Waiting For the Show
The Method Actors - Do The Method (1980 / Post-Punk)
Hello internet pals of music. Today is a song by a post-punk band that played it’s first show on Halloween, 1979.
Man, people just love telling other people what to do. Or what not to do. The internet is a ubiquitous miasma of performance-opinion. We perform for strangers (and “friends”) to make ourselves look better, to feel better about ourselves and to maybe grab some little bit of control on this spinning space rock we’re all genetically pre-programmed to die upon.
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Art had that pressure foisted upon it. Actually, I’m not awake enough to go further with that, just reflecting on the inane internet art/intellectual world both fellating and punishing itself over a silly performance of activism involving a can of tomato soup and an overly familiar painting (“they Warhol’d a Van Gogh”- as if anyone but art people cares).
The ‘fun’ thing about the art world is that it somehow takes itself seriously, as if the institutions that prop it up haven’t manipulated the environment in the attempt to legitimize perpetuating the exact structures many artists in the latter 20th century were trying to step away from. So what we are left struggling with is more gatekeepers, and more endless discourse on power structures with no real solutions, except that somehow staging a spectacle such as throwing a can of soup at a famous (and expensive!) painting becomes a clichéd first year art school performance that flattens the meaning of the action, in a typically internet-era way: by going viral.
Fuck art, let’s dance.
Because there’s no real need to be actors. We’re all born, we all go through a series of shit, and then at some point, we all cease to breathe. And even this email shouldn’t matter, nor should what I have to say regarding life, music, politics, or ART matter…because like everything else, our little attempts at immortality are all just little plays we perform to stave off the inevitable truth, and the only thing that matters is how true we were to ourselves and the people / creatures we love.
“Take your shoes and socks off just before you go to bed / Think back and remember all the animals being fed” - Red Dirt - Memories (See Sermons! archive).
Ok cool, I’ve gotta go feed the cat.
Also, because it’s not only payday, but also Friday, here’s your musical paycheck:
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