Helloooooo 2021.
I am happy to bring this newsletter with me into 2021. I missed not being able to read responses during the last couple of weeks because I was taking time off. Responses have definitely brightened up my day, and reminds me why I decided to start this in the first place!
Thank you for continuing to read, and we both will see how this takes shape in the forthcoming year. Keep sending me shit!
happy new year?
I thought about this week’s title while I was still in the middle of my new thc/cbd/melatonin/valerian root pen-induced (yes, that exists) dream, when I thought that this idea was absolutely hilarious. Honor thy dream self! It’s meant to be an ode to Anchorman’s I’m Ron Burgundy? I guess it’s not that funny, but why not say it out loud: happy new year?
i thought you might like this:
Over the summer, I took a workshop with Emily Hunt, and we started each class by describing “what today feels like” with three words. This is all accumulated from over sixty people and I liked looking at all of it (but I couldn’t remember mine):
I HIGHLY recommend purchasing custom made earrings by my dear friend, Cindy Lin. Support y’all!
Keep checking in on Ellington’s weekly curated playlists! Drops every Monday. You know the vibes!
My friend Davia featured me on her Celluloid Tracks podcast where we talked about Wings of Desire/Beau Travail. Nerd alert!
i thought you might want to read this:
I got quite a lot I’ve been saving up, so take a deep breath and jump in. Or read one and go for a walk…..idk ur life……
The breakdown of the color Periwinkle.
I’ve never thought about birds like this.
The Health Insurance Plot.
Jasmine Sanders on the Black Romantic.
Texas’ gentrification.
I loved this piece on missing dap.
A Regina King profile.
*COUP ARTICLES WARNING* Here. Here. & Here.
Mass internment camps in China.
Where year two will take us.
On the importance of significant others outside your significant other.
And finally, I was truly affected by the reporting done on Congressman Jamie Raskin and the recent passing of his son. Just read, read, read and here’s a virtual hug.
i thought you might laugh at this:
Honestly, there is a lingering pain even though I laugh at these photos/memes.
So, here is something that is just fun:
How HBO writes “Teenagers”. Sent to me by Sami.
I laughed so hard and am amazed by the TikTok feature that allows duet singing. Check this out.
i thought you might like this avram kahn special:
edited by shay hahn
“1969”
Another Year With Nothing To Do
S-N-I___IIIIII-FFF. I can smell it in the air. A city - no, scratch that - a COUNTRY in self-destructive peril. Like a dopefiend on the last of a bag in a bender that has plenty of gas in the tank to keep this party going just a bit longer. Make that enough gas for six more years of a party. The American Government persists in its pride - unable to take a step back to exit the war, admit that they are in way over their heads with this trip, or ease the building tensions with a growing youth movement hell-bent on holding an intervention for this party. This is the postwar generation we’re talking about, better yet, the creme de la crop of the baby boomers. Fly the burning flag, tuning in to drop out generation. The good for nothing thinks they’re something generation. The dope smoking generation.
I’ve been listening to the radio much more these days. Maybe there’s something to do with scrubbing through all the stations looking for something, but not quite getting anything, that really has got me hooked on this whole radio thing. I’ve never been much of a radio guy, but I’m now finding the power of what public radio can do (and has done) for the thousands of people that listen. Here, there is a DJ that has an immense amount of sway. We can call them a cultural middleman. The laborer committed to the never-ending task of giving us, the consumer, what we want (a sound that really gets our goat). The DJ, spinning day and night, shifting the cultural consciousness of ‘pop’, and of course, gifting us with the commercial rock market’s newest trophy. There’s a moment while I’m doing the radio scrub dance where I keep pushing ‘left’ on the channel finder. Static. Static. A faint song comes through the signal. Static. Static. Then my favorite moment: a song comes just in to signal AND there’s static softly playing on top! I imagine listening to the radio, driving through Hollywood on the Sunset strip in 1969. Doing the damn channel scrub. I then imagine how many car crashes must have happened due to that one self-righteous, full-of-themself, truth-preaching DJ who somehow came across a promotional copy of The Stooges, “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” distributed and released through Elektra Records. I can picture myself now - getting launched right through the front windshield of my vehicle (cause ya, that’s right, who wore seatbelts in 1969?) flying through the air towards inevitable injury - with a look of fear, distaste, and disbelief that, yes, I am indeed flying through the air, but more so in disbelief about what in the friggin hell was just blasting through my stereo system. Was there something going on with the signal? I kept leaning down to give that damn radio a hit or two to try to get that distortion out, to get the sound to come through clear - was that the guitar tone in the song? I think I kinda liked it. And what in god's name was that singer snarling on about?! He wants to be a what?!! A DOG! For whom? Everything I knew told me no, this is simply not the type of music for this time. We want our Mommas and the Papas, our Dylan, our Van Morrison, our Byrds. Our generation needs singers singing about the time and how they are achangin! There’s war out there maannnn, and I need somebody to tell me that this other man…. the government maannnn is a comin down with my my my generation talking about my my my generation man. I ain’t going to war man, me and my long haired friends are grooving our way through dodging this draft. I mean for christ sake, I would even say Jim Morrison and Doors get at my generation more than what band was that…The Stooges? But strangely enough, as I’m thinking about all of this - and let it be stated, I am still flying through the air after getting ejected from my 1969 oldsmobile - there is an evil sort of grin smeared across my face. Maybe it’s the hedonist in me, but I actually kinda liked that. It kinda made sense. It was kinda the truth, well, not the truth in the Baez sense of the truth, but a different kinda truth. Maybe this isn’t all smiles and sunshine, and maybe that’s the truth in those damn snarls. Like these are the snarls of this bender I’m actually in. I dodged the draft, I have no clue what is actually going on overseas. All I know is that I was on my way over to Hippie Johnny’s spot cause he just got some new ‘stuff’ (if you know what I mean ;)) that I want to try. In fact, now that I say this, how in the hell do any of these ‘my generation’ bands actually know what’s going on in Vietnam, or better yet - how do they even know what is happening with the people?! Maybe they’re a bunch of frauds man. What’d the DJ say that singer's name was? Ig Ig Ig Iggy Pop, yes, that was his... SPLAT.
I am practicing radical honesty in my life. In accordance with radical honesty it is best to tell the truth at all times. So in moments like these - where you, the reader, are trying to form a visual makeup of the writer of this pseudo-fictional, pseudo-theoretical piece of writing - it is of the utmost importance that I come clean, tell my truth. I am not a baby boomer. I am not a hippie. I am not a part of the blank generation. I am not a punk. I never dodged a draft. I did not feel the existential drag of the late 60’s-early 70’s. I came into this world in the later part of the 90’s. Born 1996, to be exact, in a small hospital in the central coast of California. Born into a middle class household, the son of two commercial artists, I grew up in a rural isolated stretch of California land between Big Sur and the Salinas Valley. An area called Cachagua, best known for its agricultural exports, specifically grapes to make wine and cattle ranches. I am a part of a generation that saw, not the creation, but the formation and development of what the internet looks like today. Generation Z. I think they describe us as a generation of the postmodern condition; a condition in which we are lacking a historical lineage to follow. A byproduct of all preceding cultural movements.There is no singular road that we’re on - we move through a mess of intersecting highways with all exits open to roads of their own, leading to roundabouts, one-lane streets, u-turns and Texas-sized potholes. While our existentialism is undoubtedly different from our post-war cohort’s form of existentialism, our alienation from our parents' generation is indeed similar to that they felt from their parents, and so on. With ever-changing socio-cultural contexts and a constant influx of invention, generational gaps have always existed. Maybe it’s just me playing into that classic Gen Z trope of egocentrism, but this particular generational gap seems more distinct, as the advent of technology has sent society into some sort of warp-speed. The internet. This newly-created, never-ending access to information has somehow both enhanced and destroyed all notions of time. I can immerse myself in any facet of any decade with the clacking of a few keys, feeling so close to it - all while having my New York Times update banners flickering at the top of my screen, as if I’ve never departed from my current day. Never before has there been such a clusterfuck clashing of time - we’re everywhere all at once. How does the ol saying go? For every rose has its thorn. We’re a generation plagued by cultural confusion, lack of generational identity, copy-cat syndrome. We are riddled with historical reliances, but we’ve developed a tendency to recontextualize, breaking many linear notions of time. We exist in a place where the concept of truths hang on a fine line, tip toeing and switching from fiction to nonfiction at will.
Throughout my youth, like most other “Z’ers”, I was caught on this tightrope. As my generation sought to redevelop itself time and time again modeling itself after subcultures we all got to see live (through our youtube histories). I digress in all of this. Honestly these last two paragraphs could be cut entirely. I have gotten so far off track in this it’s unbelievable. I don’t need to talk about myself, but I have, so I guess I’ll leave it in there. Like, why not, right? Cause as much as this essay is not about ‘me’, we’re living in a day where individualism seeps into everything - which of course led me to believe that you might care to read whatever this opinion piece about Iggy Pop and The Stooges is.. and inevitably, myself ;) I’ll throw another one of those winky emojis,it shows that I’m technically skilled at expressing myself through symbology.
After a few solid paragraphs of rambling (we’ll call that my Jerry Maguire in my underwear moment), I’ll try to bring it all back. I like to use the internet. I like to scroll through various archives of culture (and subculture), seeing how they change from decade to decade. It’s a good time. I wonder if we’ll continue to classify time by decade now that it moves so fast.
I like the idea that there’s a cultural industry standard to try to conform and ‘dress up’ their goods (in this case, the record industry’s musicians) to fit the current ‘pop’ consumer. This is a basic idea about advertising and marketing - we’re talkin trends, capitalism, yada yada. It’s the truest, most profitable version of the 70’s picture generation. The art of appropriation at its finest, minus the art. The average youth consumer is bamboozled approximately 10/10 times. Rock ’n Roll being the worst of the worst. Time and time again rock’n roll has been used to commercially exploit the youth for their hard-earned cash. Images of what is “rock” cover albums and fill the pages of magazines - each carefully curated by pale, sweaty men in suits, looking down from the top floor of Capitol Records - for the youth to consume eagerly in some form or another. I mean, we can get specific here. Throughout the 50’s, the youth grew an interest in rock ‘n roll. Rock n’ roll had been around black communities for years, but once the record industry got behind Elvis Presley, rock n’ roll broke into top charts across the U.S. Let it be known, Chuck Berry started rock n’ roll - but I digress. People were dancin and shakin through the night. Prior generations held up their noses, smiting the youth for being sex-crazed devil worshipers. Industry, que up Jerry Lee Lewis. Throughout the mid to late 1960’s the west coast gained cultural relevance. The west coast is in, hip. The hippies are in full swing. ‘The people are just lovin maannn, eatin some lucy and just havin a real grooovy time’. Psychedelic music forms out of this scene to match the.. god forbid, can I say, ‘vibes’ of this growing youth movement. Industry follows suit, turning every square into a hippie, but only for their essential ‘psychedelic’ single. Ok, now I’m not saying Mick Jagger is a square (and quite frankly I sort of like The Rolling Stones “Their Satanic Majesties Request”), but I would be so naive to think that Decca Records did not come in and say ‘hey boys we need you to start sounding like you do acid, cause that’s what the kids want’. This isn’t some wild discovery here. Sometimes it just takes a copy cat to see a copy cat - so I’m generationally inclined to make such observations and, of course, bring it to public discussion.
I’m a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm
Im a runaway son of the nuclear A Bomb.
I am the worlds forgotten boy
the one that searches and destroys.
Honey you gotta help me please.
Somebody gotta save my soul
-Iggy Pop “Search and Destroy”
But what happens when the industry gets it wrong in relation to that ‘pop’ thing they’re always striving for? In this case it’s more of a half-wrong, half-right in terms of nailing it. Cause it’d be unfair to say they didn't nail it with the whole psychedelic thing. The west coast ate up a whole lot of the ‘pop’ interest of the late 60’s, but then we got to 1969. Altamount - that’s where all this shit starts to emerge, Hells Angels beating up hippies. My guess is that all of the pain, hard drugs, runaway kids, death, and general hopelessness that America was failing its youth (and that the scene that these kids were falling back on) began to bubble to the surface of society - though it was there from the very beginning. That there was a scene full of disorder, complacency, distrust, disgust and all sorts of twisted attitudes. LMAO, I feel it.
I find it quite beautiful that it was someone from the Midwest - specifically Michigan, specifically Ann Arbor/ Detroit - who embodied the other ‘half’ of what ‘pop’ was in 1969. The half that the record industries couldn’t see, because it was made by and for the people that record labels didn’t care to cater to. Iggy and The Stooges didn’t start out fitting into any definition of ‘pop music’. It was music made by and for disenfranchised youth of the Midwest. In their scene, they were revered - in the national audience, hated. But they were indeed still ‘pop’. A sort of ‘pop’ not defined by the popular, rather by the populous - they represented cut for cut the exact make-up of what the youth of the 60s was, and would continue to be in the 70s. I’m not saying Iggy’s ‘pop’ was beautiful, because it wasn’t. It represented a region that was quickly seeing it’s employment opportunities dwindle with the beginnings of the collapsing Detroit automotive industry. It was these midwest youth who were forgotten about by their government - the same individuals who were doing harder drugs with bigger consequences. Michigan's youth weren’t east coast and they weren't west coast. They were the middle. And the middle takes up a whole lot of the make-up of the United States. But Iggy existed as one of ‘these youth’, proudly embodying all that society spat on.
Iggy Pop is an American trophy. He’s not perfect. In his youth he was taboo, disgusted, and had a tarnished track record (that would take a much longer essay to describe and criticize). But maybe all of those things, and the good things as well, are why he’s more of an icon for the 60’s then any other Woodstock poster artist ever was. A shining light describing a generation of disenfranchised youth with the meanest, but the realest, of snarls. He represented the fallout of a generation that was shadowed by it’s former using an atom bomb. In a way, he is the atom bomb for ‘pop.’ He stood for and represented what a generation tossed to the curb felt like, looked like and acted. Iggy destroyed any idealism of the 60's, escheling in the youth's perspectives going into the 70’s. In many ways, what Iggy and The Stooges were was too real. It was too real for the industry to get -to market, to capitalize. He outsmarted them with absurdity that had more to do with the avant-garde tradition of high art than it had to do with ‘pop’ music. Like the roman empire it always falls- they, and I say they as in the industry, did eventually figure out how to give us our ‘punk’ poster child it, just took them about a decade to figure it out. Good on you Iggy, you lovable mutt.
The Stooges were indeed on a death trip, but it could be said the whole state of America was, and quite frankly, still is. 1969 was a year marked with political uneasiness, violence, disenfranchised/oppressed peoples, and a neglected generation. Through a collective youth disowned by their government (and that government continuing to fail generations that followed) grew a record industry revolved around capitalizing on teenage rebellion. Iggy Pop stands as an anomaly. In true Generation Z fashion, he is a postmodern hero. He contorts our perspective of a seemingly ‘linear’ history of music, emphasizing nuances that often go unnoticed in condensed versions of ‘how things came to be’. Both for better and for worse, Iggy Pop is the truth. I hope all is well with Iggy, and he spends another year with nothing to do.
All for now! See you next week!
I will be 25 then. Very cool.
Love ya!
Kyra