This video still gives me chills.
When I wrote about GenX, which now that I think about it, is the only reasons we think about ‘generations’ in the first place, I recalled that we invented the mosh pit. Reading a friend’s retelling of the revolt of the privileged, I am called this morning to say something that’s nagging me. The day after Father’s Day, I am now a full-fledged grumpy old cuss.
The New Punks?
The first thing that’s nagging me has disappeared as soon as I thought about it just now. Like when you decide to flip a coin and while it’s in the middle of the air, you know which way you want it to land, your decision comes to you in a flash. Settling one’s mind in this way is proof the great Kahneman knew what he was talking about. It’s the great thing about being a wise elder. We are, unlike Charlie Brown, not wishy-washy. The decision was what to call the punks of our era. We had them in spades, from Adam Ant to Sid Vicious to Exene Cervenka. From Boy George to Billy Idol to Cyndi Lauper we had truly creative rebellion. My favorites were Angelo Moore, Bryan Setzer and that mastermind Malcolm McLaren. So I was trying, for that split second, to come up with a GenX label for our punks that might transcend time and become recognizable. What a stupid idea. Punks do that just by being the alienated creative geniuses they inevitably must be. That’s why I’m talking about Fishbone right now.
Last week at the Chicago conference of Heterodox Academy, a young man who watched my presentation thanked me and invited me to speak at Columbia, his alma mater. That may or may not happen - I mean who could make a bigger platform for themselves by inviting me to campus and loudly denouncing my ideas while ‘celebrating free speech’ as Columbia’s President did once upon a time for the Holocaust denial of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who was invited for ‘debate’. On the other hand, it’s a pretty low bar. Yet such youth are always encouraging when they strive for clarity and honesty in such a herd mentality as we suffer in today’s colleges and universities. Out among the gendered and racialized bodies, there is rarely a new or creative intellectual challenge - only the rhymed couplets of commodity protest. The people, united, will never change despite it. It being reality. We are often saved by our punks, who exist to puncture bubbles.
The fact that young folks don’t necessarily punk out to see clearly beyond the ordinary manufactured melodrama of partisan populist politics is not only comforting, but also inspiring. It is that kind of inspired leadership we need. My job is to give them confidence they are on the right track. Even those who initially lacked courage and confidence sometimes find it on their own. Reality intervenes. Reality like children to be raised or illness to be suffered through. Such realities require courage and direction. Reactionary slogans don’t cut it. I raise my glass to the strivers, to the peasants who recognize god within themselves and others, to those who do not squeal and flee under the harsh light of truth. I raise a glass, not a fist.
But Fishbone
Fishbone were heroic when everyone else just wanted one nation under a groove. How many in my generation remained on a quest for the freak of the week and never managed to taste the maggots in the mind of the universe? Fishbone was just crazy enough to never go pop, not even NWA pop. You can sell mythology but Truth and Soul cannot be sold. And though I’ve always wished them American Success, at this moment, I’m rather glad they never got it. Yet those who know, know. You pay a price in isolation you tortured geniuses.
Yesterday I took some pain to get moving onto W.H. Auden’s syllabus. I’ve been promising that to myself for years. Now finally there are pretty much zero entertainments being streamed I can manage to stomach. It’s going to be like that, I guess. So this week it is Rilke. What must it be like, to be the ghost of Rilke in the minds of peers of mine I will never meet? In the waning clarity of my own father’s mind who collected it into his library when I was a pup?
The poetry of Fishbone says:
Fight the Youth
The Youth with poisoned minds
Ignite the truth
Restore sight to these blind
Fight the youth
The youth with poisoned minds
And if they suffer it’s no fault but their own
Today I find myself on the other side of the middle aged curtain, not content to be comfortable, ever challenging myself to see the world as it is, not with some fantasy about what it needs to be so that I can discomfort those I feel are responsible. So I wrote in a couple other contexts:
If I cannot consider you trustworthy enough to police your own trashy mouth, why would I ever trust you with any money or responsibility? I’m not just talking about you. I’m talking about the movies you watch and the music you listen to. See? Your entire world is polluted and you don’t have the slightest clue on how to escape. It’s even a joke to call what you obey as ‘social norms’. What actual society do you belong to? The society of mall shoppers?
It’s a free society and we don’t jail people simply because they are ugly, stupid, vulgar or just plain wrong. We just don’t let them into our houses, our businesses, our country clubs, our churches, our trust.
We discriminate. We choose. We judge. We evaluate. We scrutinize. We watch. And we can afford to be patient. We don’t need to ‘abolish’ your inferiority. We simply don’t ‘celebrate’ it. Your inability to free yourself from ignorance, cruelty and injustice is your own doing and your own punishment.
Of course we are not equal. Now you know why. What are you going to do about it, plan a revolution and destroy what you had no hand in creating? Well, there’s your cruelty and injustice right there. Abolish your own inferiority, you pitiful slob.
It’s not nearly as poetic as it could be. I’m no punk genius. But the questions are getting more stupidly presumptuous. I do get out there where people ask them. They always have that going for them. Still. LLMs are going to be answering questions from beyond the universe of Substack. I don’t know when I’m going to run out of patience. Haven’t we tasted enough poison?
There's a lot of angry parents reaching out and saddling up to fight those who poisoned the minds of youth, and they're taking some scalps. Like various awards given out by the unappealing to the undeserving, an endorsement by the teacher's union is now the Mark of Cain instead of the sign of quality.