I think it's interesting how many musicians/writers I really like grew up in hippie communes: Grouper, Sam McPheeters(1), Isaac Brock - I would bet they all had similar childhoods (with the exception of Brock, who got out of them before they had much of an influence). McPheeters seems to describe his time in one as the most traumatic of the three. He's the only one that I know so far as to outright call it abusive, which is what is interesting to me.
Believe me, I have plenty of not very sympathetic feelings towards the whole flower-power-free-love-back-to-the-land hippie movement in San Fransisco, Berkeley, and elsewhere in the 60s. But I think I understand it though, even if my only leeway into it will be through books. So with that said, I think it's interesting how a movement that aimed at total freedom could quickly give rise to nightmare microcosms of total punitive authoritarianism. I think there are particular qualities of "hippie ideology" that lend to that as well, though I don't think hippies are inherently violent or something. That's why they kind of fucking lame.
Similarly, punk rock - which, contrary to hippies, is something I have loved - can grow authoritarians just as easily as flower power can, even with its explicit rejection of them across the board. Sam McPheeters as a scene lifer saw it first hand. He says that out of the boy-scout-militancy and puritanism of the Youth Crew bands - the everyone at a show agreeing with each other that James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem detested in hardcore - helped bring about the Proud Boys of today. Moreover, Gavin McInnis started out in the punk scene in Ottawa. In a kind of introductory video for his shitty ass show on The Rebel Media, he even mentions his punk roots as the reason he "became" a conservative.
Mussolini started his life as a socialist, Gavin McInnis began as an anarchist. Hippies make good entrepreneurs, punks make good fascists, either/or and vice versa.
Knowing the people I know on the Internet - the weirdo anti-vax new agers and the core kids alike - I wonder if any of them will fall into the trap of becoming the tyrants they claimed to rage against, or worse yet, even better tyrants than them. I think they got some of the right stuff. That means I do, too. We all do. As they say, when you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss also gazes also into you.
I think it's interesting because I am interested in disappointed idealism: failed revolutions and the close-minded fanatics that ruined them. I know that's directly tied to the outlook on life that I have nowadays, you know, being in my late teens and all. It has totally manifested out of my creeping pessimism. That where that dumbass "The Legality of The Apple Trade" thing came out of. The leader of that commune was a failed radical. I guess he's kind of a self-insert, but all writing is a self-insert.
I don't have much to say about it beyond that. One day I will though, I think.
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Nothing has changed for so long and I'm tired of it. I'm tired of wasting time and whining about it, so I'm going to stop. I don't mean that in the sense that I don't have the right to feel anything, I don't think that right now. I know it's not true. I don't want to be an asshole to myself anymore. I am just going to stop being idle. It's exhausting. This ends this week.
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A Muslim family got ran over and killed in London, Ontario today. I know it's repugnant, it absolutely fucking is, but it unnerves me a little that I'm not weighted by the feeling that it is. I don't like the feeling of desensitization. I don't like that the feeling of not liking it is just a pang in itself as well. It doesn't feel like you can scare yourself into desensitization on impulse. You need to discipline that scaring yourself back. You have to consciously remind yourself about it.
But what that said, if you couldn't keep together after hearing every fucked up thing that happens in the world, you wouldn't be able to function. Perhaps I'm too conscious.
Regardless of how I feel, a Muslim family of four is dead because of who they are. They're dead forever.
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Sometimes I don't think there's any point in giving a shit about art when the world is on its way out. Not out of defeatism, but just that there's clearly bigger fish to fry. You're not gonna do that by essentially just talking about it, right?
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I have been reading about phantom islands. They give me a really weird feeling. It's somewhere between nostalgia, and the adventure of the whole world. I want to do something with the idea.
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I wish you felt better, man. I don't want to tell you that directly because it's going to be overbearing. I think you already know I feel that way, but spelling out in conversation how I feel about the state you're in again now and EMT therapy and therapy in general and the whole nine yards is just gonna be adding another log to the fire. I guess saying it to you this is still pretty direct. We're not gonna not read these no matter how many times we tell each other we don't have to. I wish therapy worked. I wish you didn't have a truckload of shit nobody should have to deal with. I wish you didn't have something to dose with a don't-think-about-it-pill. I wish you had more friends and weren't alone. I wish you didn't have to have schizophrenia. I hope you will be okay. I'll be there for you however I can, even if I am hundreds of miles away.
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The whole place is dark
Every light on this side of the town
Suddenly it all went down
Now we'll all be brothers of the fossil fire of the sun
Now we will all be sisters of the fossil blood of the moon
Someone must have set us upNow they'll be working in the cold grey rock,
Now they'll be working in the hot mill steam,
Now they'll be working in the concrete
In the sirens and the silences now all the great set up hearts -
All at once start to beatAfter tonight if you don't want us to be a secret out of the past
I will resurrect it, I'll have a good go at it
I'll streak his blood across my beak and dust my feathers with his ashes
I can feel his ghost breathing down my backI will try and know whatever I try, I will be gone but not forever
I will try and know whatever I try, I will be gone but not foreverThe real truth about it is no one gets it right
The real truth about it is we're all supposed to try
There ain't no end to the sands I've been trying to cross
The real truth about it is my kind of life's no better off
If I've got the maps or if I'm lostWe will try and know whatever we try,
We will be gone but not forever
Come on let's try will try and know whatever we try,
We will be gone but not foreverThe real truth about it is there ain't no end to the desert I'll cross
I've really known that all alongMama here comes midnight with the dead moon in its jaws
Must be the big star about to fall
Mama here comes midnight with the dead moon in its jaws
Must be the big star about to fallLong dark blues
Will o the wisp
The big star is falling
Through the static and distance
A farewell transmission
Listen
