Whoa, I read this article and got a little nervous and worked up. I always think about how my kids will perceive me. When I was walking through a conference hall yesterday, I was trying to determine which carpet will look really old in 10 years and which styles will endure. Does hyper-ironically enjoying teen pop music prevent us from "becoming the dog," as the author calls it?
Are the ever-compounding layers of irony someday going to make it hilarious when people say absolutely normal stuff? Will my mom make hilarious jokes that she doesn't even get? Will 10 people in a room "get" a joke in 10 different ways, depending on how many personal irony layers they've compounded for themselves?
This is all very strange. Growing up is getting very, very strange. Last night I had a beer and screwed around on Ableton with an old friend of mine. I criticized something he said with, "Well, isn't that observation A just an extension of B?" and he responded, "WELL ISN'T EVERYTHING NOW JUST AN EXTENSION OF SOMETHING IN THE PAST?" I responded, "Man, I try not to trouble myself with thinking too hard about stuff in that manner anymore." He agreed, and said he thinks much more simply these days. I do, too.
I think I promised myself a thousand times over that I would never go down the path of mental comfort and general complacency I'm currently going down, but it feels so good to be comfortable and happy and it's so scary to back track to the dark, defeating, endless mind travels I've so recently escaped.
This isn't really an active transformation, though. It's part "I have enough to think about and enough responsibility to keep my otherwise curious+mischievous mind occupied" and part "I've got the right amount of brainfuck under my belt to be ready to move on."
It would obviously be nice to know how I'll look back on this reflection. Unbridled and hardly-edited streams of consciousness like this usually embarrass the hell out of me once the next mind-environment cycle turns. Like diaries or journals. That shit's hilarious. My 8th grade letter to my 12th grade self says, "Trust in God. Always rely on prayer. NEVER TOUCH DRUGS OR ALCOHOL."
57 minutes until the weekend...
[Edit: completely forgot to link the article. Here it is.]
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3 comments:
I'm calling bullshit on the article, for a few reasons.
1. Bitch please, the "twentysomethings" weren't throwing a party to highlight how amusingly ironic their parents lives are. Get over yourself. It was a wedding reception, where notoriously cheesy music is played in order to please a wiiiide range of age groups.
2. Bitch, let me explain something to you about 80s music (and music in general). Being ironic is not good enough of a reason to listen to a bad song. There has to be some earnestly good and enjoyable aspects of a song that render it timeless.
3. Bitch, this happens to every generation. Fashion and culture moves in a cyclical pattern. We just wait till some trend has been forgotten long enough to seem fresh again. Plus, old trends aren't as scary as truly new ones, because we know they enjoyed mass appeal in the past. They're incongruent, and yet still safe.
4. BITCH, the young people aren't just listening to your 80s music. We also listen to christmas carols. But really, a wedding isn't the place to make conclusive observations on the modern twentysomething culture. We listen to other shit, you're just not invited to those parties. Also, the 80s influences jump out at you the most because that. is. all. you. know.
but yeah, the layers of irony and earnestness is dead on
bitch
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