Pop Culture Cannibalism

One of the fondest memories of my childhood is a simple one. It’s not a surprise trip to Disneyland, or my first kiss, or the unboxing of a brand new video game console at Christmas. No, in fact, it’s more banal than almost anything you could ever imagine. In reality, one of the most saccharine and amber-coated memories of my pre-teens involved sitting in my family’s living room with my best friend on a lazy summer day watching VH1’s I Love The… Series. We sat there lethargically sprawled out on my family’s couch, pacified by the television as we killed an entire bag of those cheap grocery store fudge pops and gleefully watched early 2000’s actors, comedians, and musicians warmly reflect on the pop culture events of yesteryear.

It feels like such a small thing. It wasn’t a “big” event, there was no defining moment, and if you asked me, I probably couldn’t even remember which season of the show we were watching at the time. If you asked my friend, he probably wouldn’t even remember this happening in the first place. It’s lost to time, one of the dozens of other nameless summer days that we all happily wasted enjoying our reprieve from of middle school.

I remember this day because I remember the feeling. I remember appreciating it in the moment, and it’s something I think of often, especially during the summer. I spent the rest of that summer playing video games, running around with friends, and watching as much as of the “I Love The” series possibly could. Luckily my family had just set up our first DVR, so I was able to methodically record every episode of each season and watch them all sequentially.

It felt good. Actually, it felt incredible. It was like a self-imposed history lesson. I felt like I was doing homework that I actually enjoyed. In my mind, I this show was a comprehensive look at every year of pop culture before I was born. It was the first time I was ever “pop culture woke,” and I realized that a lot of important stuff happened before I was born. I made it my duty to study it. This was my first step toward becoming a pop culture historian.

A couple years later in 2008, I listened to my first podcast. That’s a topic deserving of its own post somewhere down the line (it’s something I’ve been working up to for years). But in 2011 that podcast spun-off into its own show and subsequent network: Laser Time. Laser Time is a topic-based podcast that covers the hyper-specific happenings of our pop-cultural landscape. The show has covered everything from bad Beatles covers, and dirty Christmas songs to surprisingly pervasive concepts like 80’s rap commercials and celebrity vanity projects. The network is also home to a comic book show, a video game podcast, a chronological exploration of The Simpsons, and much more.

Amongst the days and days worth of programming on the Laser Time Network, there is a slightly higher-concept show titled Thirty Twenty Ten. Thirty Twenty Ten is a “pop culture time machine” podcast that looks back at the music, movies, TV, and video games of this exact week 30, 20, and 10 years ago. It’s a blast to listen to, and it just recently clicked that I love this podcast for the same reason that I watched I Love The… series as a kid: it’s a fast-paced, unrelenting, and (relatively) comprehensive look back at our own pop culture history. It’s a carnivorous approach to media, one that doesn’t discriminate, and talks about these bits of the past with an absurd amount of reverence… well, as much reverence as you can have with a fart joke every episode.

I mean what other show would take the time to describe the beauty of the 1986 Transformers movie with an earnest and loving 30-minute discussion? And speaking of earnest, what podcast would care to break down the surprisingly-complicated history of Ernest P. Worrell? Hell, what other piece of media would jump from Predator, OK Computer, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and the finale of The Sopranos all within in the same episode?

Thirty Twenty Ten is a blitz of pop culture past. Like a train whizzing by at 50 miles an hour where each compartment is a great forgotten album or hilariously-shitty TV movie. The conflux of the host’s knowledge and anecdotes from the audience (like yours truly) combines into a beautiful listening experience that’s unlike anything else out on the digital airwaves right now.

When I sat down to start writing this it was a warm sunny summer afternoon that brought to mind that one day I spent with my friend watching low-budget VH1 programming. Now as the sun sets over the trees I’m grateful that I have a new weekly fix that emulates the same experience, improves upon it, and gives me a 90-minute trip down memory lane every week.

It’s a pop culture geek’s dream.

We’re blessed to live in a world where we can find anything we want in an instant. From childhood recipes to old commercials, to half-remembered lyrics of some distant song. The thing is, most of us don’t take advantage of that resource because these memories aren’t on the forefront of our consciousness. Both I Love The… and Thirty Twenty Ten are great because they capitalize on this information in a way that nobody else is. They’re diving into the rich mine of our shared cultural touch points, and emerging with something from the listener’s own memory. Something that reflects who we are.

Over a decade ago VH1 programmed me to be an absolute dork of a pop culture sponge. Someone who collects, categorizes, and memorizes obsessively. Someone who values the history of art both high and low. It changed my life and made me into the person I am today.

And now Thirty Twenty Ten is reinforcing that. Giving me weekly satiation for my pop cultural hunger. And as my life becomes busier and busier, I can’t be that kid anymore. I can no longer be that middle schooler who spends an entire summer day sitting on his couch downing half a bag of fudgsicles. And as I’ve felt my post-college life whirring into place over the past year I’m grateful to have something like Thirty Twenty Ten there for me when I’m too busy or too tired to do it myself. It’s an absolute joy to have this program and its hosts in my life, and I hope that they continue the show until its logical conclusion. Podcasts have changed my life, and Thirty Twenty Ten is proof that this is all worth it.

Weekly Obsessions | 7/10/17

I listen to a lot of music. Sometimes looking back at my Last.fm or Cymbal and wonder what the fuck kind of music fan I really am. But that’s mainly because I jump from genre to genre so often that I never stay in one place for too long. I’ve been obsessed with a handful of disparate tracks over the past week, and I wanted to take some time to discuss them here. Hopefully, there’s a little something for everybody.

Snail Mail - “Thinning” | Emo

I saw Snail Mail perform live with Girlpool back in May. I’d never heard of them, but they were middling the show, so they were probably quality, right? To say I was blown away by Snail Mail would be an understatement. I was beyond floored watching this band. The lead singer Lindsey Jordan is a transfixing frontwoman, and I’m amazed at the small collection of excellent songs she’s already created by age of seventeen. “Thinning” is a rumbling emo track that flawlessly captures the lethargy of a warm, lazy summer day in suburbia. It’s a track about the simple pleasure (and displeasure) that comes with wasting time.

Half Waif - “Night Heat (Audiotree Live Version)” | Synthpop

Half Waif is the synthy spinoff helmed by Pinegrove’s Nandi Rose Plunkett. The outspoken frontwoman tackles issues of relationships, changing moods, and love in this haunting 3-minute track. It’s a song about losing your sense of self in the face of a relationship. Plunkett’s delicate, layered vocals intertwine over careful drum taps, cymbal crashes, and keyboard swells. It’s an enchanting track from someone that has more to say than words will ever allow.

Phillipa Soo - “Helpless” | Show Tunes

While it’s best experienced in a single sitting as a two and a half hour journey, I’ve recently started listening to individual cuts off Hamilton just to experience flashes of the show’s brilliance in quick, digestible chunks. “Helpless” is a goosebump-inducing track sung from the perspective of Alexander Hamilton’s love interest and soon-to-be-wife Eliza Schuyler. Backed by a chorus of female background singers, this is a love song that recounts the early stages of the historical relationship. It culminates in Alexander asking Philip Schuyler for permission to take his daughter’s hand in marriage. The song explodes in Eliza’s “I do, I do, I do, I do” as the background singers and Hamilton sing different refrains.

21 Savage - “Thug Life” | Hip-hop

While 21 Savage is usually known for overly-dark street music (or “murder music” as he calls it) “Thug Life” off of his recently-released Issa Album is perhaps the brightest and most summery song in his entire discography music. This shimmering ode to 2Pac explodes over a chopped soul sample that peaks with the song’s chorus “I’m thinking to myself you ain’t gang, nigga, fuck you / Feel like 2Pac, Thug Life, nigga, fuck you.” These lyrics provide quite a contrast between the song’s uplifting beat, but somehow it all comes together beautifully in a song that only 21 could have made.

Japanese Breakfast - “Road Head” | Indie Rock

While I have a full review of Japanese Breakfast’s sophomore album Soft Sounds from Another Planet coming up soon, I just can’t stop playing the album’s third single “Road Head.” In the self-directed video, Michelle Zauner finds herself in a toxic relationship with an imposing dark figure. The song itself is a dark but lush depiction of sexuality that ends with a spliced samples of a loop-board-interpolated Michelle placed over an absolutely hypnotic groove.

Vulfpeck - “Cars Too” | Funk

In this Pixar-punned funk song, Vulfpeck finds themselves in their most tripped out and relaxed state yet. It’s an absurdly groovy song, and slower than almost anything else in their repertoire. It’s proof you don’t need to be fast to be funky. In fact, you can slow things down to a snail-like pace and still find room for a bifocal-displacing guitar solo. A choice cut off of a near-perfect debut.

Julien Baker - “Go Home” | Folk

While she’s been on my radar for a while, I’m embarrassed it’s taken me until 2017 to discover Julien Baker’s Sprained Ankle. It’s a heavy-hitting and heartfelt 30-minute listen in which “Go Home” serves as the album’s stark final track. It’s thought-provoking, deflating, and gorgeous all at the same time. A ballad of pure, raw beauty that escalates without warning as Baker sings about skipping her medication and contemplating suicide. I can’t believe it’s taken me two years to discover this record, but I can’t describe how glad I am now that I have something this beautiful in my life.

The Crossroads Between Objectivity and Nostalgia

Something I’ve spent the majority of my “adult” life grappling with is the intersection between art and nostalgia. It’s a concept that I’ve only recently come to recognize but has essentially acted as the thesis for this entire blog without me even knowing it. As a result, this post feels like what the past year’s worth of writing on here has been building towards.

Reflecting on my most recent metalcore-infested post I began to think “why do I love these albums so much?” Even within that blog where I’m gushing over these albums, I repeatedly felt the need to clarify that I don’t think they’re great feats of art. Is that because I’m embarrassed of liking them? Probably… But there’s more to it than that.

In that same post, I also talked about my positive (or not-so-positive) memories associated with each album, and I even gave a wine-like pairing of what I was doing while listening to each album. Earlier this week Of Mice & Men surprise released a new song called “Back To Me” with their new line-up sans-Carlile. It’s always a bummer to see someone leave a band (especially due to health-related issues) but it’s also a bummer to hear a band without the member that you held most dear. Listening to the new song led me down a Tidal-binge on the rest of the band’s greatest hits. Over their eight years as a band OM&M have undergone a significant shift in sound, transitioning from breakdown-heavy metalcore, then nu-metal, and more recently full-on buttrock. It’s not a transition I love, but God knows I respect their freedom to chase that artistic dragon. When I pressed play on the band’s 2011 standout O.G. Loko I realized something: when all’s said and done, this track (from an album I’ve barely listened to) didn’t sound all that different from the band’s 2010 album that I hold so dear. Someone coming to the band from an outside perspective would probably find the two indistinguishable.

A brief history of Of Mice & Men

I’ll be the first to admit metalcore is a genre that breeds repetition and cookie-cutter behavior. Fans know what they want, and most bands are happy to give it to them. That’s another one of the reasons I respect OM&M’s shift toward nu-metal and away from their origins: it’s a risk. At the end of the day, there’s not that much of a different between the band’s first album and the second. The difference for me was that I listened to the first ravenously during an awesome time in my life, and only listened to the second a few times at most. There’s probably someone a year my junior who feels the exact same way about the band’s second album compared to their third. And so on and so forth.

To get away from metalcore (and back to myself) I’ve spent the last several months ranking and re-ranking my favorite albums of all time. Some of the categories like classic rock were easy. Not only because it’s a genre I’ve been listening to my entire life, but those albums and songs have saturated our culture for decades. There’s some sort of rough consensus in the collective unconscious that The Beatles are great… and you know what? I agree. Because of this weird conflux of pop culture, history, and personal experiences, I can easily say that Abbey Road is not only my favorite Beatles album, it’s also an incredible piece of art that I feel no shame (or risk) in elevating on a high pedestal.

Then I look at hip-hop. The genre’s been around since long before I was born, but it was a genre I only started to personally engage with a few years ago. As a result, most of my favorite hip-hop albums are from that exact time frame. I know they’re not all “incredible” (at least not as incredible as Abbey Road) but part of that is recognizing my own inexperience with the genre. I know, I know, I know there’s older hip-hop I need to listen to that are essentially as “classic” as Abbey Road, but it takes time and effort to become fluent in a genre. I have barely listened to Jay-Z, UGK, Madvillain, Biggie, 2 Pac, and a whole host of other artists that I know are great. It’s like that guy who hasn’t watched Star Wars. He knows it’s a good movie, but you incredulously asking “Seriously? You haven’t watched STAR WARS?” just discourages him. 

I recently watched Casablanca for the first time a week ago (shout out to Mother’s Day). That’s a movie that’s frequently held up with Citizen Kane and Godfather as “literally the best movie of all time.” For years I’ve known that it’s great. It’s been on my “to watch” list… and you know what? It was pretty good. What can I add to the conversation about Casablanca that hasn’t been said before besides ‘yep, everyone was right, it is really good.’ There are other movies like Fight Club and From Dusk Till Dawn that I recognize aren’t peaks of cinematic triumph or artistic feats like Casablanca is, but you know what? I like them more. I like them more because I’ve seen them more, I’ve had more time to digest them, and I have more positive memories tied to them. That doesn’t mean they’re better than Casablanca, but I like them far more.

Back to music. 

In creating that list of my favorite albums I’ve fudged a lot of genres, added categories, and made incredibly arbitrary distinctions, all because I wanted to fit more albums on there. I don’t put all those genres or albums on the same level. My favorite metalcore album does not stack up to my favorite classic rock album, that’s comparing apples to oranges. Or apples to pool cues.

A separate conversation within this is exactly how long an album should take to be placed among your “favorites.” And even more: what about an album that’s new to you, but “classic” within its own field?

Up until this year… Hell, up until a couple months ago, I’d never listened to The Strokes debut album Is This It. Until 2017 the only three Strokes songs I’d heard were “Reptilia” (shoutout Rock Band 1), “New York City Cops” (shoutout iTunes DJ, you will be missed), and “When It Started” (shoutout Spider-Man 1 soundtrack). Ironic since “New York City Cops” and “When It Started” were swapped on the US version of Is This It due to 9/11… but I’m getting wildly off-topic here.

Pictured: A bastion of high art

---

The point is that it took me seventeen fucking years to listen to one of the greatest “indie” records of my lifetime… But is it fair for me to claim that? Sure I like Is This It a lot, but I’ve only listened to it about 10 times according to last.fm. So is consensus swaying my perception? Is two-decade-old critical acclaim forcing me to enjoy an album more than I really do? Is personal shame making me think higher of the record than I should be? Maybe, but I don’t think so. Is This It is great, no matter how you cut it. Removed of nostalgia, I enjoyed it and continue to play it every couple days.

Meanwhile, another album that didn’t quite make the cut into my favorites list was 2016’s Psychopomp by Japanese Breakfast. It’s an album that I adore, but (again) I’ve only had a handful of months to really sit with the album and let it marinate. As much as I wanted to say ‘this is one of my favorite indie albums’ I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. This is an album I’ve listened to more than the Strokes, yet it didn’t carry the acclaim of “definitive album of the 2000’s” and thus I didn’t feel comfortable ranking it up against the classics. Same with Car Seat Headrest’s Teens of Denial. I love the album, but I don’t feel comfortable enough with my personal feelings toward it, nor its place in history to confidently place it amongst my favorites of all time.

I’ll admit I’m overthinking all this. All these albums and movies are great, and at the end of the day, nobody really gives a shit about my “list” or ranking of these albums. Yet this is a concept I’ve been struggling with lately on an artistic level. How can you stack an album that you’ve been listening to for a decade up against anything else? How can a movie that been heralded as the greatest of all time (for 75 fucking years) really compare to anything that I’ve seen a dozen times? How do you even begin to compare the two? 

To bring this full-circle (and give a total cop-out answer) I think the answer is a case of “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.” Those two OM&M albums are great. I think they’re an acquired taste for sure, but an outsider to the genre would probably hear two songs next to each other and probably think ‘these are different songs?’ 

I think all these qualifiers are sliders. Personal history. Critical acclaim. History. Context. Time. are inextricable from art. I guess I’d argue the art can still be judged on its own in a vacuum, but that’s not how anyone judges it… ever. We hear, see, and experience things on our own terms.

I guess if anything I’m arguing that personal history (nostalgia) is one of the most powerful influencers when it comes to my interpretation and experience of art. I use music like a time-traveling drug. You know that feeling when the holidays hit and you hear “Silent Night” for the first time? I have a calendar year’s worth of songs like that. I have albums that bring me back to distinct times, years, and moments in my life. I love that art can do that. I love that this coming August I can put on Frank Ocean’s Blonde and it will transport me directly back to Summer 2016. That kind of personal connection to music is something that can (sadly) never be duplicated. The beautiful part is that we all have our own narratives like that. We all have a list of albums… or movies…. or food… or podcasts… or whatever that evoke something within us. I’m just far more obsessive about documenting my own. 

My own history. My own context. Some far-off part of my own mind is the reason that I don’t like one Of Mice & Men album as much as it’s nearly-identical predecessor. Unfortunately, that conflux is something that can never be fully translated or explained no matter how hard we try. That unique perspective is the one thing we share, even if nothing’s shared. And that’s what we bring to art. That little piece of us that adds onto to something that’s already an inherently human and beautiful and pure creation. It’s what makes art beautiful. It’s what makes the world beautiful.

Art and the Freedom to be Weird

I’m pretty lenient when it comes to art. I’ve always hated the debate over art “is” because I truly believe there’s beauty in everything, and trying to constitute what is and isn’t art just leads to shitty semantic debates. Even some low-effort installation created in irony to make you question “is this art?” still has a point to it. Art is made by people that need to get something out of themselves. Sometimes it’s music, sometimes it’s a 20-foot sculpture. It’s not always pretty, but it’s a way for us to speak a different language and express the inexpressible.

Aside from music, writing, and the occasional video game, my free time is mostly spent mindlessly scrolling through reddit. A few weeks ago I stumbled across a link to an AV Club article that brought back a flood of nostalgic emotions. The article in question breaks down this specific kernel of nostalgia far better than I ever could, and as much as I’d love to talk about this book, I wouldn’t be able to add much on to what’s already written here. This article stirred something in me that made me question my taste in regards to art. Not music, not movies, not the written word, but Art with a capital ‘A’

I don’t often talk about visual art on here because I feel like I don’t have the vocabulary for it. I know what I like, but I never really questioned why I like it. When I say that I’m “lenient” in regards to art I mean that I’m not picky, and that’s another reason why I don’t talk about art; I kinda like it all. I don’t have a very discerning taste because I feel like I can (almost) always find the beauty in art. What I’ve come to realize is that while I enjoy all art passively, what I actively enjoy is fucked up.

The reason this article struck a chord with me is because it connected some dots in my mind and brought back a flood of memories that helped me remember a string of bizarre things I was exposed to as a child. It brought me back to a formative time in my childhood and helped me remember a series of massively impactful experiences that changed my artistic taste and lingered with me for the rest of my life.

1 - Lane Smith

The inspiration for this post was also, fittingly, one of my first memorable exposures to a unique art style. Again, the write-up above does a more articulate job of analytically breaking down Smith’s style, but more importantly, it served as the catalyst which helped me realize that two of my favorite books in elementary school were illustrated by the same person: Lane Smith. As a child, I read The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, andThe True Story of the Three Little Pigs ad nauseum. Both of these books are categorized as “postmodern children’s books” which skew and satirize traditional children’s fairy tales. If you have any doubt about where my overbearing skepticism and incessant irreverence come from, make no mistake the seeds were first planted here. Smith’s dadaist take on these stories is absolutely incredible. Filled with abnormally long tounges, contorted caricatures, and general fuckedupedness, these books helped me look at the world differently.

Seeing something as simple as a cow drawn in such a foreign style made me realize how different other people’s perspectives and interpretations could be. To see so many concepts that I was already familiar with (both visually and storywise) made me realize that not only were these bizarre interpretations valid, but they still worked. I still recognized this duck as a duck even though it didn’t take a “traditional” form that I was familiar with. These unique illustrations combined with the meta post-modern writing style were a door-opening combination for an elementary school-aged Taylor. There was no turning back.

2 - Stephen Gammell

Jesus Christ. If there was any indication that I had a fucked up start, it was first evident here. While I certainly loved Stinky Cheese Man, and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, later on in elementary school I was forced to read more “substantive” books (i.e. smaller text) so I looked for something with a cool cover (how else are you supposed to pick reading material at seven?) As I sifted through the contents of my Elementary school’s shelves like a shitty, snot-nosed seven-year-old record collector I stumbled across something that stopped me in my tracks and made my hair stand on end: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Illustrated by  Stephen Gammell, these books were (and still are) absolutely chilling. The short stories ranged from rewritten classics to modern urban legends, and while the written contents of the book were amazing, the real draw for me at the time was the art. A simple google image search returns a myriad of illustrations that I can only describe as unsafe for children. I don’t know how or why this book was allowed in an elementary school library, but I have a feeling that’s something that wouldn’t be allowed in 2016.

This was my first time realizing that art could be weird. Not that I’d had massive exposure to high art as a seven-year-old, but it felt like the first time I was looking at something completely unique. It was like viewing the world through a whole new (disturbed) lense. It scared me, but in a good way. It looked cool. It looked otherworldly. I wanted more.

3 - Gerald Scarfe

In 1998 my family bought a beach house in Manzanita, Oregon. That log cabin was a magical place and it contains some of the happiest memories of my childhood. My family took a trip down to the beach nearly every weekend. It became an escape. One particular weekend I went alone, just me and my dad. My mother stayed home with my younger brother, so it was a father/son weekend… which probably would have meant more to me if I wasn’t still in elementary school. On this trip my dad let me watch Pink Floyd’s The Wall, a movie that I was apparently just on the verge of being able to handle. While I’m sure he meant well (he just wanted to share his music with me) The Wall fucking scarred me. It was R-rated, sure but I think (aside from wanting to show me my first R-rated movie) my dad forgot how dark the movie was. Everything from the masked schoolchildren, graphic violence, and obtuse depiction of sex scared the absolute shit out of me. Now that I think about it, this movie is probably the reason I’m so freaked out by gas masks. Just take a look at the IMDB Parents Guide to this thing… I was a kid who was too scared to watch this scene from Winnie the Pooh a few years earlier.

Aside from the minor emotional scarring, my biggest takeaway from The Wall were the film’s animated sequences. The movie covers a double album it switches between live action and animated for many of the songs. Probably because of my age, I paid more attention to the animated sequences thinking “hey it’s like a cartoon, cartoons can’t be scary!’ The animated segments of the movie drawn by Gerald Scarfe were in retrospect more surreal and depraved than the film’s live action counterparts. Most notably the film’s dark and horrifying depiction of war (in reaction to WWII) was seared into my mind. Similar to the above entries, Scarfe’s distinct style granted me a new perspective, in this case, it was a twisted perspective of morphing objects, violence, and sexual intimacy, but it was a new perspective nonetheless.

4 - Jonathan Gourley & Ralph Steadman

On a more positive note, as I grew and developed into an adult with an only slightly-fucked up artistic taste I tended to lean towards abstract and disturbing artwork (who woulda thought?) In high school I discovered both rock band Portugal. The Man and writer Hunter S. Thompson both artists who utilize surrealist imagery to enhance their respective creations. Portugal. The Man uses lead singer John Gourley’s watercolored artwork as the cover and liner artwork to most of their records. Meanwhile, Hunter S. Thompson famously used Ralph Steadman’s artwork as a visual component to his books Fear and Loathing in Las Vegasand Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72. These artists combined with things I’d find around the same time like Wednesday Wolf all represented a further development of the style I was drawn to as a child.

Personal history obviously plays a major role in my taste, but emotion aside, I can’t really explain the psychological reason why I’m drawn to such a distorted art style. Maybe seeing the “scary” view of something makes the real world that much brighter. Maybe it’s just seeing these everyday concepts twisted and distorted to such a degree that they’re almost unrecognizable. Maybe I just like art that resembles drug use. I have no idea. But in looking back at all this, one thing is clear:

I have a fucked up taste. I’m lucky.

I don’t want to end this on a note of me masturbating to how great my own taste is, but I genuinely feel fortunate that I had the freedom and access to take this path. Being able to have a fucked up taste, or an off-kilter personality is a luxury that can only be afforded by growing up unafraid. If I had grown up in a harsher environment, I wouldn’t have had the freedom to explore “weird” stuff because I’d be too preoccupied with fending for myself and trying to be cool. I never had to deal with bullying, racism, discrimination, poverty, or violence, so I was able to flourish and be whoever I wanted to be. I’m grateful in that sense, but I’m also hopeful. I’m hopeful that I can culture the same environment for my children one day, and I’m hopeful that this path will keep me open. I don’t want to be one of those people that shits on art, or is “scared” by art… and not scared in the same way that I was when watching The Wall, but scared in the way Christians were afraid of heavy metal in the 80’s. I don’t want to be scared of the next thing, I want to embrace it. Even if it’s weird or confusing, I want to at least have some grip on art and pop culture as I grow older… but I know that’s impossible. You can only be “cool” for so long, but I think this “open” mentality can be eternal.

Remaining open to new experiences and weird fucked up shit can only open your mind. Sometimes you’re not ready for it. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense, and that’s fine, but sometimes it can click with you in a way you couldn’t even conceive of before. The times when you see something, or read something, or hear something and say “fuck, why didn’t I think of that?” or “shit, this exact sound is exactly what I needed to hear right now.” The times when you’re tapped into something greater than yourself, when you’re experiencing something on a spiritual level, when you feel connected to another creator. That’s what art is about. That’s what life is about.