A singular obsession with a narrow sort of fame …
So, my hair is really gray now. This is not necessarily a recent development, but it’s a development I spend a lot of time ignoring, only to come to the sudden realization that it’s happening.
I think a lot about aging — in fact, it’s something that’s always obsessed me. When I was 22, I worried that everything I loved at the time — comics, indie rock, ‘zines, cinema — would end. That some day I’d be old and sitting around lamenting about the loss of everything I’d once held dear. The thing I didn’t understand at the time is that you get new obsessions — if you’re a living, vital person, you always find new things to like. Now that I actually am old, with two children to show for it, I see life as continuous, rather than stopping once you reach a certain age. But some times I do get overtaken by nostalgia.
Oddly enough, it’s often nostalgia for things I didn’t experience the first time — like Pavement, or Sebadoh albums, records I happily ignored in favor of cooler fare, but was still vaguely aware of. Or concepts and media — such as the “indie ethic,” analog home recording, cut-and-paste fanzines — that have faded into a forgotten history that only a small number of us remember, or bother to think about. I look at RestaurantFuel.com and I see a body of writing more massive than anything I ever wrote for the print Restaurant Fuel ‘zine. Yet that duct-tape bound wad of photocopies means so much more to me, seems so much more real, because so many hours were spent assembling it on the couch, and Tina and I actually sold it to real people by mail or face-to-face.
A few weeks ago, I experienced the strong craving to listen to Jenny Toomey’s entire back catalog — Geek, Tsunami, Liquorice, even her later solo records. I spent an hour ripping those records to my iBook, then transferring them over to my iPod. But upon listening to them, I find that they’re (how do I say this delicately?), pretty much shit. Most of her songs are about indie music politics, about the DIY ethic and the pitfalls of micro celebrity. All interesting topics to me back in 1994, but now only interesting in terms of feeling nostalgic for all that indie elitist silliness. Yes kids, we’re going to be mean to you because we like really whiney, self-involved, poorly-produced music. Trust us, though, it sounds much better live (wink wink).
What were we all thinking?
