This quote from Radiohead’s frontman Thom Yorke about Street Spirit (Fade Out) confuses me. I’ve never listened to it before, now I can’t decide if I want to hear it, or to never listen:
I can’t believe we have fans that can deal emotionally
with that song. That’s why I’m convinced that they don’t
know what it’s about. It’s why we play it towards the end
of our sets. It drains me, and it shakes me, and hurts
like hell every time I play it, looking out at thousands
of people cheering and smiling, oblivious to the tragedy
of its meaning, like when you’re going to have your dog
put down and it’s wagging its tail on the way there.
That’s what they all look like, and it breaks my heart. I
wish that song hadn’t picked us as its catalysts, and so
I don’t claim it. It asks too much. I didn’t write that
song.
Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing
something you hate so that you can spend the small
remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may
never reach that end anyway.
Resist the temptation to
get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing.
Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it
for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon,
that will have value in itself.
He’s also the author of The Teenage Textbook, which I can’t find anywhere online, much less in English. Still, I’d like to read it.
Above all, the post-2004 hipster could be identified by
one stylistic marker that transcended fashion to be
something as fundamental as a cultural password: jeans
that were tight to the calves and ankles. As much as I’ve
investigated this, I can’t say I understand the origin of
the skinny jean. Why, of many candidates for fashion
statements, did it become ubiquitous?
And:
The most confounding element of the hipster is that,
because of the geography of the gentrified city and the
demography of youth, this “rebel consumer” hipster culture
shares space and frequently steals motifs from truly
anti-authoritarian youth countercultures. Thus,
baby-boomers and preteens tend to look at everyone between
them and say: Isn’t this hipsterism just youth culture? To
which folks age 19 to 29 protest, No, these people are
worse. But there is something in this confusion that
suggests a window into the hipster’s possible mortality.
The main thing I take from the author is this: hipsters have progressed from awful to not-as-awful, with potential to do something. A bit of a hollow core right now, though.
Mykala: “Is that guy doing Tai Chi?”
Alex: “No, he’s tying his shoe. He’s doing Shoe Chi.”
Mykala: “You mean Tai Shoe.”
Alex: “You always think up the funny ones; I was so close!”
