(no subject)
since it's the 25th anniversary of john lennon's death, i suppose it's as good a time as ever to
my first experience with online communities was an online board devoted to discussion of the beatles. it was mostly stupid, ephemeral stuff, nothing that sticks in my mind a decade later (one exception: someone once asked "is chapman still in jail?" and got a response that ran something like "ok, why is he in jail? i admit i've never liked him much, since he stole george's wife and all..."). i do remember that the board was dominated by a half-dozen or so self-appointed experts on the band, who generally posted in a manner that suggested they'd just remembered they'd left the water running. tart, succinct, condescending. those who openly disagreed with them were kept at a perceptible distance by the rest of the board, and if they disagreed too often they were tagged with that indelible label: "troll." yet for some reason the rest of us put up with these idiots - maybe the other AOL boards were worse.
looking back, i strain to see a hint of sadness hanging over the proceedings. the beatles, after all, unlike the rolling stones or any other number of "classic" bands we could have been discussing, were history. the camaraderie and spirit that seemed as much a part of their music as their image was forever undermined by the bitterness of their split (as a wedding picture of a happy couple might be tainted with melancholy if you knew that the now-divorced couple openly despised each other), and lennon's tragic, pointless death could hardly help but cast a slightly dour spirit over it all - wouldn't you think so? wasn't anyone upset that the beatles would never play again, that they belonged solely to the past? and didn't that make us want to go out and listen to someone else, to FORGET about the past?
i can still remember the moment when i realized something...something that i still find it very hard to put into words. it's that moment when you suddenly realize that while you and this other human being may share a common interest, the gulf between you is so extreme that your first reaction may be to back away in complete horror.
one dec 8, when all the starry-eyed 14-year-olds (me included) were posting about how sad we felt that john was dead, one of these experts he flatly pronounced: "i wasn't moved by john's death at all - i never met him, so how could i be? i was shocked, of course, but that was it."
i can, of course, understand the sentiment: there aren't that many celebrities whose deaths i've been affected by (the fuss over princess di - "margaret thatcher with a human face," greil marcus once called her - baffles me to this day). nor do i think lennon (perhaps best described by what an old school chum said about him: "he was a terrible guy, really, a real fucking bastard, but i liked him") was such a great humanitarian that we need to commemorate the anniversary of his death as if it were the anniversary of the WWI armistice or the day lincoln freed the slaves - to name two dates that get a lot less media attention than dec 8.
but imagine this sad fellow, a man so devoted to a band that he spent a good portion of his life posting inane trivia and snarky one-liners to a message board about them, a man so devoted to this old adolescent enthusiasm of his - an enthusiasm that was no longer even recognizable as enthusiasm - that his email address was inspired by a track on a fucking ringo starr solo album, and not only was he not at all, no, not even a little bit "moved" by john lennon's death, he was rather surprised and even AMUSED that you would think he could be.
after all, it had nothing to do with him. just like it had nothing to do with me. just like you and i have nothing to do with each other. your life is your own and it's nothing to do with me. period.
this is the kind of adulation that has little to do with why the beatles became popular (a lot of people saw themselves in a band, or in a song, and reacted on a scale that the world had never seen before). it has everything to do with the mentality that insists that there is something to be gained from putting the beatles on the cover of mojo, q or uncut every three months, from reinforcing the idea that they are the best band ever, one beside whom every other act in music history shrivels into insignificance. it's not about emotion and catharsis; it's about the pop equivalent of baseball card stats. it's not just anti-pop - it is, finally, anti-life.
i was 15 when the spice girls broke, and they were a regular object of derision on that board, the epitome of the empty, artificial pop band, a hapless parody of beatlemania - an opinion once, disgracefully, voiced by george harrison himself. a few years ago i was watching a SNL music special and lo and behold, there, amid the geezer-friendly likes of paul simon and elvis costello, were the spice girls, singing "wannabe," with the same relish the fab four once put into "a hard day's night" - only without the weight of history dragging it back into the realm of the experts.
"i just came from nowhere and i'm going straight back there," declared the buzzcocks, a long time ago. the spice girls went right back to nowhere, and "wannabe" retains its giddy out-of-nowhere kick; the beatles could never leave, and "a hard day's night" is trapped like seymour glass in jd salinger's "a perfect day for bananafish" - pay too much attention to life, give it too much exclusive scrutiny, leave it out too long in the sun - and it starts to resemble death.
it might as well have been a thousand years as a few decades that separated the two bands, but for one moment i could imagine them linking hands and breathlessly darting down a black-and-white railway station, ducking under benches and leaping over trash cans, running away from a crazed mob - not of fans, but of experts.
my first experience with online communities was an online board devoted to discussion of the beatles. it was mostly stupid, ephemeral stuff, nothing that sticks in my mind a decade later (one exception: someone once asked "is chapman still in jail?" and got a response that ran something like "ok, why is he in jail? i admit i've never liked him much, since he stole george's wife and all..."). i do remember that the board was dominated by a half-dozen or so self-appointed experts on the band, who generally posted in a manner that suggested they'd just remembered they'd left the water running. tart, succinct, condescending. those who openly disagreed with them were kept at a perceptible distance by the rest of the board, and if they disagreed too often they were tagged with that indelible label: "troll." yet for some reason the rest of us put up with these idiots - maybe the other AOL boards were worse.
looking back, i strain to see a hint of sadness hanging over the proceedings. the beatles, after all, unlike the rolling stones or any other number of "classic" bands we could have been discussing, were history. the camaraderie and spirit that seemed as much a part of their music as their image was forever undermined by the bitterness of their split (as a wedding picture of a happy couple might be tainted with melancholy if you knew that the now-divorced couple openly despised each other), and lennon's tragic, pointless death could hardly help but cast a slightly dour spirit over it all - wouldn't you think so? wasn't anyone upset that the beatles would never play again, that they belonged solely to the past? and didn't that make us want to go out and listen to someone else, to FORGET about the past?
i can still remember the moment when i realized something...something that i still find it very hard to put into words. it's that moment when you suddenly realize that while you and this other human being may share a common interest, the gulf between you is so extreme that your first reaction may be to back away in complete horror.
one dec 8, when all the starry-eyed 14-year-olds (me included) were posting about how sad we felt that john was dead, one of these experts he flatly pronounced: "i wasn't moved by john's death at all - i never met him, so how could i be? i was shocked, of course, but that was it."
i can, of course, understand the sentiment: there aren't that many celebrities whose deaths i've been affected by (the fuss over princess di - "margaret thatcher with a human face," greil marcus once called her - baffles me to this day). nor do i think lennon (perhaps best described by what an old school chum said about him: "he was a terrible guy, really, a real fucking bastard, but i liked him") was such a great humanitarian that we need to commemorate the anniversary of his death as if it were the anniversary of the WWI armistice or the day lincoln freed the slaves - to name two dates that get a lot less media attention than dec 8.
but imagine this sad fellow, a man so devoted to a band that he spent a good portion of his life posting inane trivia and snarky one-liners to a message board about them, a man so devoted to this old adolescent enthusiasm of his - an enthusiasm that was no longer even recognizable as enthusiasm - that his email address was inspired by a track on a fucking ringo starr solo album, and not only was he not at all, no, not even a little bit "moved" by john lennon's death, he was rather surprised and even AMUSED that you would think he could be.
after all, it had nothing to do with him. just like it had nothing to do with me. just like you and i have nothing to do with each other. your life is your own and it's nothing to do with me. period.
this is the kind of adulation that has little to do with why the beatles became popular (a lot of people saw themselves in a band, or in a song, and reacted on a scale that the world had never seen before). it has everything to do with the mentality that insists that there is something to be gained from putting the beatles on the cover of mojo, q or uncut every three months, from reinforcing the idea that they are the best band ever, one beside whom every other act in music history shrivels into insignificance. it's not about emotion and catharsis; it's about the pop equivalent of baseball card stats. it's not just anti-pop - it is, finally, anti-life.
i was 15 when the spice girls broke, and they were a regular object of derision on that board, the epitome of the empty, artificial pop band, a hapless parody of beatlemania - an opinion once, disgracefully, voiced by george harrison himself. a few years ago i was watching a SNL music special and lo and behold, there, amid the geezer-friendly likes of paul simon and elvis costello, were the spice girls, singing "wannabe," with the same relish the fab four once put into "a hard day's night" - only without the weight of history dragging it back into the realm of the experts.
"i just came from nowhere and i'm going straight back there," declared the buzzcocks, a long time ago. the spice girls went right back to nowhere, and "wannabe" retains its giddy out-of-nowhere kick; the beatles could never leave, and "a hard day's night" is trapped like seymour glass in jd salinger's "a perfect day for bananafish" - pay too much attention to life, give it too much exclusive scrutiny, leave it out too long in the sun - and it starts to resemble death.
it might as well have been a thousand years as a few decades that separated the two bands, but for one moment i could imagine them linking hands and breathlessly darting down a black-and-white railway station, ducking under benches and leaping over trash cans, running away from a crazed mob - not of fans, but of experts.