It’s possible to hate the filthy world and still love it with an abstract pitying love.
Being drawn to the darkside is only natural when you lead a relatively buttoned up life. Structure. Order. Nine to five. Emails. Calls. Grocery Shopping. Rinse and repeat. Real mid-life crisis type shit. Welcome to my diary.
The workaday hamster wheel often times feels inescapable. That’s life. Please don’t worry about me, not all my dreams have gone to die — they have simply evolved into more manageable small wins, less lifestyles of the rich and famous. Dig?
As an aside, I keep telling myself that in a world where everyone has access to everything our culture has ever produced - the hottest fashion, coolest music, best films — being boring is really the new punk rock.
Think about it this way. People used to be able to define their entire personality by their knowledge of obscure music. Those choices would inform that persons world view. They were the gatekeeper of that cool stuff. If you know you know. If you don’t, get lost. But now the guards are gone and the nerds have captured the castle. While the cats are away the mice will surely play.
Rather than escape into some sort of Star Wars, Marvel, DC, cartoon nonsense I am gripping onto any last shred of decency and cultural cache I can find by turning, once again, to the written word. Not just any lane of literature, but a lane where most folks fear to tread — the neon lit world of City of Night by John Rechy.
Basically 460 pages of Street Hassle by Lou Reed, City Of Night follows a nameless narrator through the the clandestine world of furtive love - the city at night and all it’s seedy characters. This is a novel about America, and maybe the best cruising novel of all time. Its characters are layered — dark, twisted, desperate, hilarious — the stuff of life. Drag queens, faithless husbands, and beautiful youngmen hustlers. The scenes are one of a kind, boldly descriptive and and a real trip — a walk on the wild side if you will.
Dipping into the seedy underbelly of the human existence is messy and may not be for everyone. As for the gate being kept. I’ve just opened it up wide for you. Come on in. Sha la la, man. Why don’t you just slip away?
Well hey man, that's just a lie
It's the lie she tells her friends
'Cause a real song
The real song she won't even admit to herself
The beating in her heart
It's a song lots of people know
It's a painful song
With a load of sad truth
But life's full of sad songs
Penny for a wish
But wishin' won't make you so, Joe
But a pretty kiss or a pretty face can't have its way
Joe, tramps like us, we were born to pay
In other news, the best podcast on the internet is back. Everything is Stories announced a partnership with Oscilloscope Laboratories on an all new 10-episode season, launching this December. In the meantime, the previous episodes have been remixed, remastered, and re-edited - and you can catch releasing bi-weekly as of today. If you listen closely enough, you may even catch me as the voice of the credits.
See you around.
Good stuff. I'll add this to the read list. I went down a Kerouac wormhole a year or two ago. I get it.
"being boring is really the new punk rock." 👏👏👏