Zinester Pride
I checked out some mainstream media items during the last week.
What a desert! No wonder ‘culture’ is so cut off from the people
nowadays. What a bunch of pompous pandering! No real person
would touch the stuff. Code up the wazoo. No wonder their market
share is plummeting. But they probably have ever more viciously
loyal fans among the intellectuals, climbers, strainers, or whoever
they are who read this stuff.
*I read a bookstore PR blurb for upcoming readings by Jim Harrison
and ? Lynch at famous area store. –The pagelong blurb was an overt,
smug, self-absorbed dismissal of the EFFECTIVE role of literature in
culture. It really said to the effect that writing doesn’t make a difference
anymore but we still appreciate those writers who amuse us. Total
educated po-mo blurbage to the pride of being a consumer who can
contain all art within himself. Blinders on! Giving up on being affected.
Going gung ho for preciousness with our peers. These readings will
be packed with folks who want to mix with the right people.
*I read a few essays from David Sidaris ‘Naked’. Trite. Pointing
straight down. You can’t get any more cynical. But oh so glib.
Such decoration. With ‘famous’ books like this, no wonder
literature is GHETTOIZED. (Blurb it every day on NPR why don’tcha!)
*I checked out ‘Outside’ magazine. Dang, gotta have a PhD to read
the thing! Hey, probably most of their strainer readers do already.
Anthropology no doubt. More glibness up the wazoo. Total code writing.
Every article reads the same. Man, their stylebook would be fun to
get ahold of. (Hey, I recently saw blurbs from Wired’s stylebook…
interesting to see the culture be led about by its nose by morons.)
Lovely how their writers find these exotic daredevil freak people then
knowingly write about them and absorb them into their consumerist
world. —Another freak to amuse us.
Anyway, those 3 doses were all so knowing and trite.
Helps me understand Munch’s ‘Scream’ painting so much better.
Makes me be thankful for the gift of mail art. With competition
like that, it would be so easy to win the world over to a new
revival of accessible truly democratic folk culture. Basically,
the mainstream has dropped the ball. It’s anyone’s game.
(I’m conveniently forgetting for the moment the fact that they
have the game rigged and that the ghetto is all we zinesters
will get…but there’s way to play that game, too. —Newsletters.
Zines. They get the job done. And have a lot more room to grow.
With a new shot in the arm, the movement could be 100 times
what it has been.)
