(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.
