Alice Practice

Toy Story came out when I was four. they released, of couse, toys to mimic the ones found in the movie about toys and insead of making woody as he is in the film, cheep cloth, big plasic head, pull string, five phrases, cutting edge technology cira nineteen sixty three and charging three or five bucks a peice they put out these even cheeper made rags of toys and the same for buzz lightyear and I thought, well, these are a frail reproduction of a frail reproduction of a cowboy. an imprint of an imprint. and it was the same all around me. instead of real restarants we had things mimicing some perverded fantasy of the fifties. instead of real adventure we had jeans pre faded and pre ripped. instead of musical instuments we gave our kids fake press-button guitars. instead of real fights we had fake apologies forced upon us. maybe it was just the nineties, it was the age of artifice. maybe it was the boomers not wanting anything to fade, wanting to fake it forever instead of letting anything go. maybe not. and imprint of an imprint of an imprint.

and thats the problem really everything is trying to be something else that it isn't. borrowed. instead of posters trying to look the best they try to look like something trying to look the best fifteen years ago. Instead of groups trying to get the best sound they can they try to get the sound of groups from '94 trying to get the best sound they can and not doing that well. Los Campesinos said, in that thing they do where they say something not deep at all and completely ovious that for some reason no one has the courage to say out right because of how imature it sounds, they said "they've apropriated everything we've ever loved, dressed it up in quotations and fluff".

And so it ocurs to me that nerds these days are no longer doing what they do because they're smart and rejected by the mainstreem, they're doing it because thats what they preceve nerds as doing, and they think of themselves as a nerd. Which is to say, most nerds these days aren't smart at all they just think those things are cool. most artists don't get art at all they just think its cool too. most people who listen to weird music don't get anything at all.

in high fidelity (fuck me for thinking to refreance this. fuck this.) theres a line about him feeling like the guy who shaves his head into a mohawk one day and swears that he's always been a punk. and I think - thats every punk. What do you think they were born that way? They just up and shaved their head out of the blue before you met them. Everyones a poser, those you think are the real things are just better at posing consistantly, keeping they're story straight, ridding themselves of any human incosistancy in they're chosen characer.

you see I used to use that little bit whenever someone acused another of being a poser or a fake - to defend the attacted by saying we are all posers equily so you can't be a dick to this guy in particular. but now I see it another way - we are all posers. we are all a decreped pile of phonys - too self councious and self ironic to even use the word phony based on its connotations. the world is made up of echoes of echoes. jocks pretending they're losers pretending they're the oppresed poor pretending they're glamorous millionares pretending they're rebelioius angry punks pretending they're well read anarchists. imprints of imprints of imprints.

I'm bitter tonight. some drunk adults are making noise outside my window. sometimes I need to say things extreemly childish, sometimes I need to be honest to myself and say it anyway.

scares will heal soon