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Self Help: Navigating Between Two Kinds Of Oblivion [Grimes and Bethesda Softworks]

This morning after I got up and got the dogs ready (“got the dogs ready” = how I think about feeding them and taking them out), I washed the dishes and made coffee, which is my usual routine. And then I made an inspirational message on a piece of paper, which is not a part of my routine. The paper, pictured above, has five numbers on it that are supposed to remind me about different things, and the goal is to “be inspired”.

It’s a bright, hopeful morning, and the feeling felt right.

Related to all this, I think, is that at the end of last week, I totally got Grimes, and it made listening to her music really pleasant. That all started when I watched the video for “Oblivion”, which I just really despised at the time. It was on a Thursday I think. The oft-cited “someone on Twitter”, I think, said the video was like “hipsters discover sports are cool” or something, and that seems apt to me. Sort of.

The thing about the video that drives me batty is that all the things Grimes does — listen to her discman, wear stupid clothes, have dyed hair, dance around, cause a ruckus — are all things me and my friends did in very similar circumstances when we were young. And it wasn’t cool or anything at all, and Grimes seems like she’s really cool. So the whole enterprise smells to high heaven with the stench of cultural tourism, which I’m usually OK with as long as god damnit it’s not my culture because we don’t usually issue visas what with who would want to pretend to be poor and bored and socially inept? (This is where I mention my utter contempt for every piece ever on The Gathering of the Juggalos.)

So this Grimes thing that I tried to get into three weeks ago came to a head at the end of last week, but then I got it!

It sort of occurred to me that Grimes is not being a cultural tourist, and also that Grimes is not “being” anything at all. It’s really a facile thing, I think, to think someone is “being” any way at all unless you’re willing to spend a lot of time thinking about how they’re being. So I’m not denying the existence or explanatory capabilities of ontology, but I’m saying its results get question begged in a lot of cultural hit pieces (and, to be fair, encomia), and that’s a pretty lazy way to be! It sort of occurred to me that I should just listen to Grimes and not be a jerk about it, and try to draw my own conclusions.

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nervousacid: As far as writing goes, I did a lot of it in 2011. More of it than I might have ever thought possible. Enough of it to make me a little crazy at times. But not enough of it to make me feel like I never want to write again. The other week, in a conversation with Matthew and B. Michael, I got kind of flustered trying to explain my frustration with not using Tumblr the “traditional” way. I want to publish these short and pithy posts, I said, but every time I set up a draft for one, it just feels wrong. I delete it and tell myself that it’s better to wait until I’m inspired to say something. But I also feel bad about it. I told them how I’ve been anticipating a grand exodus of followers for some time now, but that their number is steady — if not increasing. Nervous Acid has kept me humble in that regard: It turns out that despite the conventional Internet wisdom of the 24-hour news cycle, people will wait for you to think things through. So while I may not post every hour — or every week, for that matter — your support in the past year has encouraged me to write and publish some really meaningful work on this site, and for that, I am grateful. To acknowledge it, I compiled a list of Nervous Acid’s Greatest Hits of 2011. These are, in chronological order, the ten short essays that I feel best represent (and map out) my year in thinking: • “Take That (Or, Why I Am Not an Indie Rocker)” (January 3) “The fact is that credibility has been institutionalized by scene ideologies and critical tropes. And because we don’t own it, we are unwillingly controlled by it. We consume, evaluate, and in many cases, simply dismiss media based on outdated historicism and meaningless signifiers of taste — and this is precisely why I am not an indie rocker. Much less an over-idealistic punk. Because, by my estimation, a group of 40-year-old men who, only twenty years ago, appeared in a music video naked while smearing jelly over themselves just made the album of the year.” Read More Reblogg’d not only because I’m mentioned, but also because this is some good writing!

nervousacid:

As far as writing goes, I did a lot of it in 2011. More of it than I might have ever thought possible. Enough of it to make me a little crazy at times. But not enough of it to make me feel like I never want to write again.

The other week, in a conversation with Matthew and B. Michael, I got kind of flustered trying to explain my frustration with not using Tumblr the “traditional” way. I want to publish these short and pithy posts, I said, but every time I set up a draft for one, it just feels wrong. I delete it and tell myself that it’s better to wait until I’m inspired to say something. But I also feel bad about it. I told them how I’ve been anticipating a grand exodus of followers for some time now, but that their number is steady — if not increasing. Nervous Acid has kept me humble in that regard: It turns out that despite the conventional Internet wisdom of the 24-hour news cycle, people will wait for you to think things through.

So while I may not post every hour — or every week, for that matter — your support in the past year has encouraged me to write and publish some really meaningful work on this site, and for that, I am grateful. To acknowledge it, I compiled a list of Nervous Acid’s Greatest Hits of 2011. These are, in chronological order, the ten short essays that I feel best represent (and map out) my year in thinking:

• “Take That (Or, Why I Am Not an Indie Rocker)” (January 3)

“The fact is that credibility has been institutionalized by scene ideologies and critical tropes. And because we don’t own it, we are unwillingly controlled by it. We consume, evaluate, and in many cases, simply dismiss media based on outdated historicism and meaningless signifiers of taste — and this is precisely why I am not an indie rocker. Much less an over-idealistic punk. Because, by my estimation, a group of 40-year-old men who, only twenty years ago, appeared in a music video naked while smearing jelly over themselves just made the album of the year.”

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Reblogg’d not only because I’m mentioned, but also because this is some good writing!

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Close Readings: Drake’s “Shot For Me” As A Template For Modern Masculinity

I dont even know what to say b. Like forreal…after hearin this shit…I wouldnt be surprised if this ni—a could pollinate a flower wit his fuckin breath son. Im pretty sure that son gets up in the morning n plays his harp for his cats n then slides down the muthafuckin banister in his satin man nightie n has a full glass of breast milk before he goes to the studio n hammers out some pooned out shit like this b. — Big Ghost

Please take it as read that Drake is the worst. Take Care shows a dark, sophisticated id that Tyler, The Masturbator could only fap fap fap searchingly for. Thing is, Drake’s alway’s going to have a little brother air about him, and that makes him seem less ‘threatening’ than Kanye. It doesn’t help that the ostentatious Drake plays second fiddle to a guy who’s just looking for a bitch that can fuck right, cook right. Or that he and that bitch have a weird, Made-In-Disney media manufacturedness to it.

The sum total of the largely external perception of Drake is that he’s ‘soft’, ‘effeminate’, ‘girly’, ‘gay’, or what-have-you. I think this is because it’s probably more fun for most people to read funny things (or look at memes) that make fun of Drake, rather than actually listen to Drake. Which is fine. I’ll listen to Drake.

A lot of what gets lost in music criticism (in certain circles, maybe) is too fine a focus on a record’s literal message, or on its sonics. This is not a surprise, since the entire reason I like(d) Drake centered on his songs all sounding to me like the platonic ideal of what an awesome song sounds like. You don’t need Nic Southall’s ears to know that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy actually sounds like shit. Drake’s two albums — and this, as well, contributes to his ‘soft’ image — Thank Me Later and Take Care sound like the wing-strokes of a beauteous angel tribe as they flap past the sixty-third moon of Jupiter on their way to the christening of fresh-born universe. I mean, Noah “40” Shebib needs to win some piece of every award for making music ever offered, because he’s at least half the reason why Drake is near the top of my list of favorite rappers.

You know, it might be me (it is), but I’m afraid of dying a violent death, and I don’t smoke weed. I don’t get most rap music. I don’t get most music — full stop — but I try really hard to get most rap music. It seems like it should be relatable, except it’s not, and I don’t think it’s supposed to be. At least, not any more than any other music. But the personal being the political, and rap being about personal struggle, gives it a documentary air that sucks the wind out of most critical arguments.

I celebrate rap as an aesthetic object.

This essay started out by me asking myself a sort of leading question: “Am I a bad person for liking Drake?” Because I really do think that Drake and Take Care better bears out all that “avant-garde need not be moral” bullshit that was being turned over earlier this year. Being a big fan of Drake means constantly asking yourself, “Am I crazy for liking music without even listening to the lyrics?” Or, more pointedly, “Am I crazy for liking music despite its terrible lyrics?” Or, most appropriately, “Am I just terrible at listening to music and/or being a person in culture because I actually kind of like Drake’s lyrics?” You ask yourself a lot of questions when you find yourself wholeheartedly liking Drake. The big thing for me about Drake is that he gets to the center of a lot of questions/issues surrounding masculinity, and these issues affect everyone. (I’ll be lining up over here for my PhD in Men’s Studies, now.)

And so, even though I sort of wrote about Take Care earlier, I think I sort of missed my intention. So, let’s just jump in.

Drake’s “Shot For Me” is a Raymond Carver story, told in the first person, by Ray Carver after he already knows how monumentally overblown is his literary reputation. It’s all that, but by Drake. So —

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