from Contemporary Shootings (Burn This PDF, Vol. III), available here
(Prelude) With a fair amount of ambivalence, knowing as well as anyone that Nikos typically spends the hours of 3PM through 7PM, Monday through Friday, verifying the European origin of his dietary tract, I approached Mr Kazantzakis at 6:59 PM, ambling toward the screened-in patio of his modest row house located spitting distance from Garden City, and began as such:
01 (.748) Well Mr Kazantzakis, if I’m being honest with you, completely honest with you, if I’m holding back next to no honesty whatsoever, I should note that, yes, it’s indubitably true that of late I’ve found myself gluttonously chewing four to seven slices of gum in simultaneity, for a variety of reasons - in fact, it was just yesterday afternoon, prior to leaving our apartment to go grab a coffee that I indiscriminately shoved an entire pack of gum into my mouth and exuberantly chewed this large ball of gum, wondered if chewing gum was actually good for your teeth, when the thought occurred to me: Is emo the highest form of classical music America is historically responsible for? When discussing American music, I thought while chewing an entire pack of gum, a litany of genres, from post-bop jazz, to experimental rock, to avant-metal to the so-called classically trained composers of American descent, are discussed as ‘the truly classical music of America.’ ‘But what if emo is the truly classical American music?’ I thought to myself, chewing an entire pack of gum, preparing myself to pay full-price for a coffee out somewhere, despite the fact I had an entire pot of coffee at my apartment, waiting to be imbibed for free. The primary conceit of emo music is that its creators are young and white and male, and that they originate from neighborhoods that are safe if not opulent and utterly hate their lives. Nothing, it should be noted, is ever proceeding well for the emo band, as the slightest deviation from the emo band’s best case scenario is always apocalyptic, despite the fact that, sociopolitically at least, they have everything going for them. The emo participant exists at the apex of the American totem pole, and despite this fact everything remains essentially objectionable to them. Nothing is going well! The emo song is, in practice, the antithesis of the virtue signal. And it occurred to me, as I left my apartment to pay four dollars for a coffee that would inevitably be co-opted by an art school professor, with no regard to socially acceptable decibel levels. pontificating about people as brands to a foreign exchange student, that this type of wide-eyed narcissism, that this unironic ignorance of sociopolitical totem poles, this obsession with direct, lived experience at the expense of everything conceptual - is perhaps the apex of what should comprise American classical music? And I nodded my head at this notion as we entered the Honda asking Tina if she’d be willing to play ‘One-Eighty by Summer’ on our way to the coffee shop.