the bassist in Blake's (I think we all know what Blake I am referring to by now, no?) new band is Daniela Sea... you may know her from her roll as Max, the transgender computer-whiz on Showtime's The L Word. She now rocks NYC with two of the Bay Area's p-rock icons!
Speaking of (since I need to focus my limited typing skills on my so-called novel), here is B's (yes, it's getting more and more abbreviated) take on the elements of a good salad (and more):
The thing with a hippie salad is, you have to be careful not to go crazy. First time vegetable lovers often run into this mistake head-on. Because one assumes everything is good – being earth grown and full of vitality – they make the inductive error that therefore it’s all good together and will make you feel better in a rude mélange. If Alice Waters has taught us anything it’s that you have to respect your ingredients. That means giving them space to express themselves – a leaf of arugula is like a stick of dynamite until you smother it in garbanzo beans or red onion. (In fact, arugula is sometimes called “the rocket plant”! That said, you will have only a wan sputnik if you don’t clear the pallet for a clean lift-off.) First-time salad builders should accommodate themselves to the logic that three good ingredients will always outmatch ten good ingredients. What one wants is an austere salad; a salad with dignity and pure tone. Each peppercorn should pipe its voice into the quiet symphony as a confabulator, not as a private contractor brought in for vulgar agitation. (Remember the so-called “Brooks Brothers Riot” in Florida ’04? That kind of vile populism has clearly been given its walking papers.) A salad should radiate calm. The leaves have come a long way to meet you. They’re in no hurry. They shouldn’t grab hold of your tongue like a salesman; they should slyly confess some secret on the way down: “Here was earth!”; or, “A season under rain, a gleeful seedling!”
In the arts we tend to put a premium on authenticity. In the realm of music that has long translated into “Three chords and the truth,” or, as I like to say of punk, “Three chords and a grudge.” I think this hearkens to a more universal engagement with process, one that is only becoming more defined as things go seamless and digital. Humans still need edges, rips, and cuts to enter a work of art. If there is no point of entry the object reduces itself to a mere spectacle of power and technical virtuosity, but has a much further way to go in establishing an emotional confrontation with the viewer. So too with salad! So too with intercourse! There must always be something musty, repellent, forbidden, lurking under all the romantic projection. The salad should confess a certain lurid background to the tongue – it may have once rubbed up against some dung or a poisonous vine; it may be at the threshold of rot; it must, above all, have some dirt clinging to its core. Eating such a storied plant facilitates a transfer of power and an acknowledgment of terror – we take our fears into ourselves, through that most vulnerable opening, the window to the intestines, the door to the head.
Perhaps one of the defining moments in American cultural mitosis was the mass movement known as vegetarianism, especially as it was used as ethical clout within greater subcultures (60s counterculture / 90s hardcore). Almost immediately the idea of pleasure was tossed out in favor of some pseudo-military asceticism: we are the foot soldiers of the truth, we will not smile until every pig is free. Every scene suffers (and must re-galvanize itself after) a violent influx of reactionary Puritanism. Think of the rise of factionalism in the French National Assembly – gone were the sweet amities of the Tennis Court Oath as vicious new rhetorics flooded the stables! The warm handclasps of Republicanism gave way to the scintillating fall of the guillotine! Similarly, it seemed to me anyway, there came a time in music when it was no longer adequate to simply refuse the received wisdom of parents and career trajectories: one had to fight at the table as well. This was, of course, a very useful kind of theater, because it called upon people to really define what they believed in and how far they were willing to go. The larger test, I think, was whether this social movement could show itself to be flexible, capable of earnest inner dialogue, without purging itself entirely of its rapturously free spirit. Naturally people were branded, thrown out, vilified, reported on – and periodically a genuine monster would be expelled; unfortunately, it was more often the case that someone was tied to a stake outside Gilman Street and made to bleat like a helpless goat. (The “scapegoat,” you will recall, has a venerable early religious history as the object of collective punishment within a cult or tribe; it was believed that by saddling the poor beast with all the evils of the world they could somehow become exorcised with its death.) But of course what was ultimately exorcised was a minor truant in an already oppressed ranks. Power was not challenged, it was merely exercised.
It is difficult, but not unreasonable, to argue for moderation in a scene predicated upon a certain, limited joyous excess. Anarchy and freedom only become a chaos when their wielders make them so. I believe in necessary violence – or at least I’ve seen enough to leave that door open. And at the same time I would like to argue that it is indeed a Faustian bargain. Even the most righteous defense will scar its victor. We carry the dashed spirits of the vanquished with us for life. (Neil Young once sang of a place where “Even Richard Nixon has got soul.”) There is inevitably a point in purposeful revolution where the movement begins to target and select from within its own ranks – and this is precisely the point where its credibility becomes dubious.
brickwallboyout.
