Graffiti and street art are a big deal to us at YCDB. This social
and artistic movement is one of strongest and most significant of
the last thirty years and exemplifies many aspects that are
lacking in other areas of culture in our world. To the
uninitiated or those who have been burdened with others' negative
opinions, I can understand the lack of enthusiasm or understanding
for a beautiful tag on a busy street corner. Transforming the
mental conception of graff from the scribble-doodle of a vandal to
a technically talented piece of art functioning on multiple levels
will take a bit of elucidation, but that’s our pleasure, and job.
Hopefully with a little schoolin’ (and loads of eye candy) we can
bring a bit more pleasure to you’re daily commute and
walkingabouts.
One of the most annoying statements that any graff writer
or appreciator can hear (next to “you’re under arrest”) is one
that praises the piece or production (the large, complex,
multicolored, often legal paintings) as clearly artistically
meaningful and poignant while slandering throw-ups and tags (1-2
color quickly done 2- or 3-d letters and one line signatures,
respectively) as sheer vandalism. It is an ignorant assumption to
make that vandalism and art are not mutually exclusive. Being
much more beneficial to treat ignorance as a solvable dilemma than
a trait worthy of ridicule let me explain why this is a source of
chagrin.
The first being it is simply an example of lack of
critical understanding of the art form. If one could be somehow
withheld from ever seeing a painting and was shown nearly any of
the masters from the 20th century, from Matisse to Warhol, as
their first painting I wouldn’t imagine their would be a
overwhelming presence of appreciation. Appreciation is something
that must be cultivated and much of it is lost with out an
understanding of the historical, both artistic and otherwise,
context. These “simple” tags and throws, when successfully
executed, are the product of countless hours of commited
repetitive practice. The talented writer has mastered many
techniques with an arsenal of tools ranging from different types
of tips on a can, to various types of markers, to continuously
innovative tools such as homemade markers filled with scouring
agents or sharp etching devices. The ability to express a
distinct style in such a minimal amount of marks is a talent
enviable by artists in any field. The presence of subtle,
recognizable distinctions denoting regional and temporal origins
of the artist are another interesting, scrutinizable aspect that
graf shares with nearly every other art form.
An even more blatant aspect of under appreciation lies in
its very nature of being illegal. It is inherently an extremely
earnest form of expression. Earnestness, a quality that many
proclaim extinct from the face of the planet (at least from the
art planet), thrives in graf. It is illegal, anonymous, with
hardly no chance of financial compensation. Writers paint for
many different reasons, but regardless of which it is clear that
they care about what they are doing. This makes them incredibly
unique. While many postmodern artists have been painting a world
where man is lost without distinct values, the graf writer has
literally been painting the world with what he or she values. Pop
artists mocked the role of money and commercialism in art and the
relationship between the bourgeoisie and the avant-garde while
remaining in in that commercial relationship with the bourgeoisie.
At the same time the graf writer severed that relationship and
directly attacked it with its work.
This brings us to a place where we can explore the
qualities that graf and street art inherently have on higher
metaphorical levels. Regardless of intention every illegal of
graffiti or street art is a political statement. It is a
statement against any authority’s right to limit the individual’s
expression. It is also a statement against the concept of private
property. And perhaps the word statement is too narrow and light
in these cases, for this form of art is a wordless action against
that with what it disagrees. Writing the word “FART” on the side
of a Target can be more effectual than writing “Fuck All
Repression Tonight” as making a statement through metaphor is what
distinguishes art from pure propaganda or advertisement. Although
street art and advertisements share many similarities, in the end,
advertisements, no matter how “artistically” created or
successfully intrusive, are created to sell a product while graf
does not have an explicit motivation other than as a work of art.
It is a work of art that makes a statement, as opposed to
commercial advertisement where the more it attempts to be
artistic, the more exploitative it is in nature and the further it
delves into the realm of kitsch.
People’s harsh response to graf due to its anti-private
property nature is an interesting phenomenon in itself. It
highlights (word) our society’s close attachment of private
property to its identity. People who view street as destructive
by association often view it as violent, violence and distruciton
often being concepts connected with one and other. There is
something quite odd that one would associate painting on a wall
with violence. One cannot commit an act of violence against an
object not associated with identity. I’ve never heard anyone
commiting a violent act against a rock or a lake. I have only
heard of someone committing violence against a person, an animal
or plant (something to which people attribute identity), or an
object conceived of as a necessary function of our identity (such
as field of crops or a house). The idea of people conceiving
private property as a necessary function of life is an area worth
more examination, though not here. Graffiti’s ability to point
out the “you are what you own” aspect of our society only makes it
more valuable and able to be appreciated on its own as an art
form.
One more interesting avenue that street art and graf
explore is the complex relationship betwen the individual’s need
to make ones mark with the individual’s understanding of the
extremely temporary nature of this art form. While there is your
occasional 20,000 year-old cave painting, most graffiti is quickly
destroyed. It is usually not placed in any museum to be passed
down to posterity. This is part of the reason why YCDB would like
to help document as much of it as we can.
We feel that most street artist are doing good just by
getting up; however, that’s not to say that every work is equal or
that any work can’t do better. Do the fact that the pictures are
submitted by the photographer and not necessarily the artist, the
sheer volume of pictures we have, and the fact that a picture of
graffiti is in many ways like a picture of sculpture--it can still
be enjoyed but one doesn’t feel the entire effect--we will not be
criticizing these works on a singular basis. That doesn’t mean
that you can’t though. Feel free to post what you think. With
all that in mind (or not) enjoy the galleries.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Monday, September 5, 2011
What Do You Mean I Can Do Better?
There's a scene in No Direction Home where Ginsberg speaks of hearing Dylan for the first time. He talks about how relieved he is. He says that he felt as if “the torch had been passed” to the next generation. I finished watching the movie and couldn't help but think that somewhere along the way the torch got dropped. The next day I wrote the poem "(america)?" and instead of pining over the way things were in “the day”—when things were “real”— I started to think about how we could find the torch again and spark it back up. Although our “America” seems to be resembling a interrogative echo of Ginsberg's “America” more and more, I didn't feel as if it were a reason to embrace hopelessness; man has overcome plenty before. I was well aware that I was not the only person who was sick of alternating between bitterly complaining about and ignoring our present facticity, and when I looked up at my calender—which has writers' birthdays on it—I noticed it was Ginsberg's birthday. I took it as welcomed encouragement.
Comfortably tumultuous could be our generation's almer mater. Well at least for the considerable majority of us. And to be more precise it seems it should be comfortable/tumultuous; there's definitely a bold dividing line between the two. Our generations has a front row big screen seat to a world that is expanding in every direction yet is facing some terrifying brick-walled boundaries. Social and technological advancements have created a potential for great progress and creation; however, it is up against the intimidating negative changes in the global scene, ranging from catastrophic climate conditions to the cemented status of debilitating consumerism supported by over two decades of globally pro neo-liberal politics. Our generation has mastered the amalgamation of countless cultures, ranging across time periods and socio-ethno-political borders, yet instead of learning from each of their strengths and short comings a prevailing dialectical attitude of either scorn at their naiveté or total validation for nearly all values, supported by a misunderstanding of cultural relativism, has arisen, creating with it both a monument of cynicism and a self-perpetuating fan that keeps the bonfire of naiveté burning. The world doesn't need someone to scoff at attempts of creation or the spreading of the false blanket statement myth that the world and everything in it is doing just alright. What the world does need is some positive complaining; someone to say YOU CAN DO BETTER, but because they want to see you do better, not because they want to feel superior.
So where are we now? And who are we? The title, Age of Mediocrity, seems to be a fitting appellation that I have heard whispered at an increasingly louder tone as of late. What is the American youth doing? Politically, not much. There wasn't a single sizable protest at any of the colleges I went to before I graduated yet I shouldn't have to remind anyone that our government was fighting two wars at the time and the whole nation was reeling from an economic crisis that was caused by unabashed and still unaddressed corruption. Instead of peace marches there were celebrations at the ending of the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. Symbolically, as a recognition of gay rights was a wonderful achievement, but, practically, it was a decision that expands the military. Somewhere along the line we all got tricked into protesting for joining the military. And what about the recession, what wonderful anti-corporate movement did we get out of that? The TEA Party! One has to admit it's an excellent PR strategy; these Klan members are even harder to recognize in their new colonial costumes. Few of the social issues that progressive and subculture movements over the years have fought against have been solved yet any attempt to organize feminist, labor, disarmament, or racial-ethnic-gender equality actions are met by a collective “meh.” Apathy appears to be the only unifying characteristic of our time and that seems to go for our artistic endeavors as well.
Certainty if I thought that there was nothing going on artistically, putting together a culture and arts publication would bring my judgment into question. You will not hear any funeral bells tolling out the death of art here, but you will here a lot of clamoring. I want to know, where our Great American Painter and Poet is? Where are our big movements and innovating genres? I am not claiming there we are a talentless generation—we're far from that—I just want to know what happened to the continuous outburst of artistic production that came from post-War America. What group of painters today could make the claim of expanding the boundaries of their craft the way the Action/Abstraction painters did? When was the last time a musician reinvented their instrument they way Hendrix did? We haven't even given birth to a legitimate widespread non-commercial subculture since the 70's with hip-hop and punk.
The cynics might respond “there's nothing left to do.” As Miguel Cervantes wrote the chivalric book to end all chivalric books, the Beatles were the pop band to end all pop bands, Rauschenberg's white canvases were the logical conclusion of abstraction, hip-hop died with Biggie, and Dylan wrote every song that could ever be written, art has finally finished. That would be an incredibly egotistical view on art for man to take up: “I have created everything worth creating.” It also is not a sound argument. Science and technology haven't ceased. I've never heard a scientist say, “well, got to the moon...done.” A naïve person would make the opposite claim, that people are still creating great things, which with I would agree, the train of progress and experimentation has not ceased. But that ignores the fact that the rate and range of great creation has clearly petered.
The cause of our apathy, both socially and artistically, is a subtle, although not a difficult, concept to grasp. Prosperity and adversity, two conditions that have fostered the creation of many great works, have remained constant in our society; what has changed is how art and culture are now conveyed to the public. In the years of prosperity after World War II corporate media flourished just as much as the arts. Mass media can be as potent as steroids as both a cultural vehicle and motivator; the excitement of creation feeds the process of creating. Corporate media needed material to sell and they had more art than they new what to do with. So they rode the wagon of expression and, slowly, they pulled in the reins. Even Pop art, which Umberto Eco called “the avant-garde's revenge on kitsch,” was immediately regurgitated and mass produced. The mockery of mass culture was sold as mass culture, and that's why you can find a girl at any high school today carrying a purse with a silkscreen of Marlyn Monroe on it who couldn't tell you who Warhol is. Now, as an overwhelming portion of all media is controlled by a handful of conglomerates, the market for anything but formulaic, predictable, and profitable work is nearly as slim as it was before the advent of mass media.
Consumerism and materialism are not new social aspects; however, there's usually been a group of voices against them. Today we have one faux counter-culture/stereo-typical insult: Hipsters. The word is defined vaguely and variously from person to person but, it is a word that has begun to be thrown around quite maliciously. What contemporarily began as local trend in Brooklyn somehow merged with and influenced more widely spread current trends in our generation. We now have a Myth of Hipsterism and, regarding the wellbeing of our culture, it is as terrifying as any dragon or leviathan.
It's not our concern here to define or explain the precise dimensions of a hipster. Instead let's start off with some aspects of our generation that are often grouped in with the hipster faux-culture. The absorbing and recycling of numerous other cultures, infantilization, incompetency, concern for gay rights, valuing obscurity, disregarding many traditional social values, strong presence of both cynicism and naiveté, and a concern for the environment are all aspects attributed to our generation, and by many critics, to hipsters. None of these are new social aspects, nor are they all intrinsically related. In fact, to consider all these traits aspects of a hipster culture would be absurd, as they are not only too broad to be considered unified, but in many cases contradictory.
Art and culture have always borrowed from past and neighboring cultures. Technology has helped ease that process. The lifestyles of the avant-garde have often been viewed as childish, as have its members often been deemed incompetent by upholders of traditional value systems who were attempting to impose their value structures on them. The gay and artist-activist communities have been intertwined since at least the days of Oscar Wilde. The harsh critic and the all accepting lover of the world have often both been incorporated in the same cultural movement, and sometimes in the same personality (think Robinson Jeffers). Why are we hipsters now? Why weren't punks who borrowed from early sped up rock styles, or hip-hoppers who borrowed from soul and funk hipsters? Why wasn't the gay, nature-loving, carefree, and often jobless Walt Whitman a hipster? Why weren't lifetime non-monogamous lovers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir hipsters? Because the hipster culture is a myth and myth, as Roland Barthes explains, both “points out and it notifies, it makes us understand something and it imposes it on us...it appears both like a notificator and like a statement of fact.” Although any group of traits can be arbitrarily given a title, the term hipster has gained a heavy negative connotation.
Many see callow and hipster as synonymous adjectives. The hipster steals from other cultures and uses it simply ironically, scoffing at the naiveté of the people whom s/he stole from while creating nothing new with it him/herself. The hipster doesn't follow traditional societal norms but finds him/herself in the same existential fetters as those who are unquestioningly enslaved to their traditional values. In claiming that all value systems are relative and therefore invalid, s/he is attempting to not-value, which is an impossible choice. In essence the hipster is the 21st century nihilist, who has demolished all cultural structure and built nothing in its place, believing s/he has found freedom but in reality has simply wrapped a blindfold around his/her eyes; corporate interests aren't as naïve, they've prepared and fostered this new attitude. Hipsters believe they are free, but they're really just free-ranged commodities, better off than the factory farmed consumers but destined for the same fate. This term, hipster, with all its connotations, is applied to the artist and progressive minded of our generation. It is an insidious myth that distorts and hinders the growth of a generation with incredible potential.
The strong negative reaction to hipsters is easily understood. Large numbers of people who have lived their whole lives shopping at thrift stores due to either economic necessity or as an economic rebellion against consumerist values, now get called hipsters, because some yuppie thinks it's fun to go slumming to pair his/her $200 boutique jeans with a 50 cent plaid shirt. The same goes with bicyclers. Then, there's the people who have identified with specific customs that have now become ironically fashionable with hipsters. They're hipsters now too. Because of the negative connotation of the hipster myth, people become irked by things that make them who they are. To go along with all of that, there's the “you smelt it, you dealt it” aspect: complaining about hipsters, or complaining that your own individual style has become hipster fashion is what a hipster would do.
Unwarranted snobbery, pomp, and haughtiness have long been characteristics of bourgeois culture. The moment that yuppie's started being called hipsters was the day the cool died. Any positive traits associated with hipsters became burdened with a negative image. It overshadows people with legitimate concerns and passions. Somebody hears a dumbass walking out of a Taco Bell saying “you know, everyone should become a vegan, because, like, we got to think about the animals...I mean look at the polar bears and shit,” and then meets a vegetarian who is earnestly and thoughtfully attempting to make the world a better place has already associated the earnest vegetarian and the trendy, moronic vegan before the vegetarian explains his/her reasons for his/her life decisions. What's more is that the hipster myth is supported and propagated by corporate interests; our culture is avidly pro-consumerism, of course people who profit of our consumerist society are going to support a “counterculture” that is politically asleep and tacitly accepting of consumerism.
We shouldn't let a handful of loudmouthed, yuppie, nihilists be the face of our generation.
We're here to speak out. To say, YOU CAN DO BETTER, America, by providing a non-corporately backed forum for you to be yourself. We want to bring some of the beautiful things our generation has to offer out in the open. We don't want to aid the propagation of the hipster myth or simply react to it. You're not a snob if you like beer that tastes better than PBR; you're not a hipster if you like a cheap drunk. If you like something because it's obscure, then you're arrogant. If you like something obscure because you think it's awesome then don't let someone else's label affect you. The same goes with the corny and the non-hip; if you like something fight for it. Never be ashamed of who you are but always try to be better. I like the Doobie Brothers and Os Mutantes goddamnit, and I will correct you if you pronounce their name wrong, not because I'm a haughty prick, but because they are a Portuguese, not Spanish, band, and you sound ignorant when you didn't bother to look up the details. I'd want someone to do the same for me, not in any condescending way, but in a way that shares the enthusiasm they have for the things they love. We're here to reward what we think is good, poke fun at what we think is bad, and to attack what we think is evil. We're here to revive the cool. We're here to reintroduce America to poetry. We're here to replace our fetish of adventurers with a healthy love of adventure. We're hear to help pick up and respark the torch. But we can't do it by ourselves.
Comfortably tumultuous could be our generation's almer mater. Well at least for the considerable majority of us. And to be more precise it seems it should be comfortable/tumultuous; there's definitely a bold dividing line between the two. Our generations has a front row big screen seat to a world that is expanding in every direction yet is facing some terrifying brick-walled boundaries. Social and technological advancements have created a potential for great progress and creation; however, it is up against the intimidating negative changes in the global scene, ranging from catastrophic climate conditions to the cemented status of debilitating consumerism supported by over two decades of globally pro neo-liberal politics. Our generation has mastered the amalgamation of countless cultures, ranging across time periods and socio-ethno-political borders, yet instead of learning from each of their strengths and short comings a prevailing dialectical attitude of either scorn at their naiveté or total validation for nearly all values, supported by a misunderstanding of cultural relativism, has arisen, creating with it both a monument of cynicism and a self-perpetuating fan that keeps the bonfire of naiveté burning. The world doesn't need someone to scoff at attempts of creation or the spreading of the false blanket statement myth that the world and everything in it is doing just alright. What the world does need is some positive complaining; someone to say YOU CAN DO BETTER, but because they want to see you do better, not because they want to feel superior.
So where are we now? And who are we? The title, Age of Mediocrity, seems to be a fitting appellation that I have heard whispered at an increasingly louder tone as of late. What is the American youth doing? Politically, not much. There wasn't a single sizable protest at any of the colleges I went to before I graduated yet I shouldn't have to remind anyone that our government was fighting two wars at the time and the whole nation was reeling from an economic crisis that was caused by unabashed and still unaddressed corruption. Instead of peace marches there were celebrations at the ending of the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. Symbolically, as a recognition of gay rights was a wonderful achievement, but, practically, it was a decision that expands the military. Somewhere along the line we all got tricked into protesting for joining the military. And what about the recession, what wonderful anti-corporate movement did we get out of that? The TEA Party! One has to admit it's an excellent PR strategy; these Klan members are even harder to recognize in their new colonial costumes. Few of the social issues that progressive and subculture movements over the years have fought against have been solved yet any attempt to organize feminist, labor, disarmament, or racial-ethnic-gender equality actions are met by a collective “meh.” Apathy appears to be the only unifying characteristic of our time and that seems to go for our artistic endeavors as well.
Certainty if I thought that there was nothing going on artistically, putting together a culture and arts publication would bring my judgment into question. You will not hear any funeral bells tolling out the death of art here, but you will here a lot of clamoring. I want to know, where our Great American Painter and Poet is? Where are our big movements and innovating genres? I am not claiming there we are a talentless generation—we're far from that—I just want to know what happened to the continuous outburst of artistic production that came from post-War America. What group of painters today could make the claim of expanding the boundaries of their craft the way the Action/Abstraction painters did? When was the last time a musician reinvented their instrument they way Hendrix did? We haven't even given birth to a legitimate widespread non-commercial subculture since the 70's with hip-hop and punk.
The cynics might respond “there's nothing left to do.” As Miguel Cervantes wrote the chivalric book to end all chivalric books, the Beatles were the pop band to end all pop bands, Rauschenberg's white canvases were the logical conclusion of abstraction, hip-hop died with Biggie, and Dylan wrote every song that could ever be written, art has finally finished. That would be an incredibly egotistical view on art for man to take up: “I have created everything worth creating.” It also is not a sound argument. Science and technology haven't ceased. I've never heard a scientist say, “well, got to the moon...done.” A naïve person would make the opposite claim, that people are still creating great things, which with I would agree, the train of progress and experimentation has not ceased. But that ignores the fact that the rate and range of great creation has clearly petered.
The cause of our apathy, both socially and artistically, is a subtle, although not a difficult, concept to grasp. Prosperity and adversity, two conditions that have fostered the creation of many great works, have remained constant in our society; what has changed is how art and culture are now conveyed to the public. In the years of prosperity after World War II corporate media flourished just as much as the arts. Mass media can be as potent as steroids as both a cultural vehicle and motivator; the excitement of creation feeds the process of creating. Corporate media needed material to sell and they had more art than they new what to do with. So they rode the wagon of expression and, slowly, they pulled in the reins. Even Pop art, which Umberto Eco called “the avant-garde's revenge on kitsch,” was immediately regurgitated and mass produced. The mockery of mass culture was sold as mass culture, and that's why you can find a girl at any high school today carrying a purse with a silkscreen of Marlyn Monroe on it who couldn't tell you who Warhol is. Now, as an overwhelming portion of all media is controlled by a handful of conglomerates, the market for anything but formulaic, predictable, and profitable work is nearly as slim as it was before the advent of mass media.
Consumerism and materialism are not new social aspects; however, there's usually been a group of voices against them. Today we have one faux counter-culture/stereo-typical insult: Hipsters. The word is defined vaguely and variously from person to person but, it is a word that has begun to be thrown around quite maliciously. What contemporarily began as local trend in Brooklyn somehow merged with and influenced more widely spread current trends in our generation. We now have a Myth of Hipsterism and, regarding the wellbeing of our culture, it is as terrifying as any dragon or leviathan.
It's not our concern here to define or explain the precise dimensions of a hipster. Instead let's start off with some aspects of our generation that are often grouped in with the hipster faux-culture. The absorbing and recycling of numerous other cultures, infantilization, incompetency, concern for gay rights, valuing obscurity, disregarding many traditional social values, strong presence of both cynicism and naiveté, and a concern for the environment are all aspects attributed to our generation, and by many critics, to hipsters. None of these are new social aspects, nor are they all intrinsically related. In fact, to consider all these traits aspects of a hipster culture would be absurd, as they are not only too broad to be considered unified, but in many cases contradictory.
Art and culture have always borrowed from past and neighboring cultures. Technology has helped ease that process. The lifestyles of the avant-garde have often been viewed as childish, as have its members often been deemed incompetent by upholders of traditional value systems who were attempting to impose their value structures on them. The gay and artist-activist communities have been intertwined since at least the days of Oscar Wilde. The harsh critic and the all accepting lover of the world have often both been incorporated in the same cultural movement, and sometimes in the same personality (think Robinson Jeffers). Why are we hipsters now? Why weren't punks who borrowed from early sped up rock styles, or hip-hoppers who borrowed from soul and funk hipsters? Why wasn't the gay, nature-loving, carefree, and often jobless Walt Whitman a hipster? Why weren't lifetime non-monogamous lovers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir hipsters? Because the hipster culture is a myth and myth, as Roland Barthes explains, both “points out and it notifies, it makes us understand something and it imposes it on us...it appears both like a notificator and like a statement of fact.” Although any group of traits can be arbitrarily given a title, the term hipster has gained a heavy negative connotation.
Many see callow and hipster as synonymous adjectives. The hipster steals from other cultures and uses it simply ironically, scoffing at the naiveté of the people whom s/he stole from while creating nothing new with it him/herself. The hipster doesn't follow traditional societal norms but finds him/herself in the same existential fetters as those who are unquestioningly enslaved to their traditional values. In claiming that all value systems are relative and therefore invalid, s/he is attempting to not-value, which is an impossible choice. In essence the hipster is the 21st century nihilist, who has demolished all cultural structure and built nothing in its place, believing s/he has found freedom but in reality has simply wrapped a blindfold around his/her eyes; corporate interests aren't as naïve, they've prepared and fostered this new attitude. Hipsters believe they are free, but they're really just free-ranged commodities, better off than the factory farmed consumers but destined for the same fate. This term, hipster, with all its connotations, is applied to the artist and progressive minded of our generation. It is an insidious myth that distorts and hinders the growth of a generation with incredible potential.
The strong negative reaction to hipsters is easily understood. Large numbers of people who have lived their whole lives shopping at thrift stores due to either economic necessity or as an economic rebellion against consumerist values, now get called hipsters, because some yuppie thinks it's fun to go slumming to pair his/her $200 boutique jeans with a 50 cent plaid shirt. The same goes with bicyclers. Then, there's the people who have identified with specific customs that have now become ironically fashionable with hipsters. They're hipsters now too. Because of the negative connotation of the hipster myth, people become irked by things that make them who they are. To go along with all of that, there's the “you smelt it, you dealt it” aspect: complaining about hipsters, or complaining that your own individual style has become hipster fashion is what a hipster would do.
Unwarranted snobbery, pomp, and haughtiness have long been characteristics of bourgeois culture. The moment that yuppie's started being called hipsters was the day the cool died. Any positive traits associated with hipsters became burdened with a negative image. It overshadows people with legitimate concerns and passions. Somebody hears a dumbass walking out of a Taco Bell saying “you know, everyone should become a vegan, because, like, we got to think about the animals...I mean look at the polar bears and shit,” and then meets a vegetarian who is earnestly and thoughtfully attempting to make the world a better place has already associated the earnest vegetarian and the trendy, moronic vegan before the vegetarian explains his/her reasons for his/her life decisions. What's more is that the hipster myth is supported and propagated by corporate interests; our culture is avidly pro-consumerism, of course people who profit of our consumerist society are going to support a “counterculture” that is politically asleep and tacitly accepting of consumerism.
We shouldn't let a handful of loudmouthed, yuppie, nihilists be the face of our generation.
We're here to speak out. To say, YOU CAN DO BETTER, America, by providing a non-corporately backed forum for you to be yourself. We want to bring some of the beautiful things our generation has to offer out in the open. We don't want to aid the propagation of the hipster myth or simply react to it. You're not a snob if you like beer that tastes better than PBR; you're not a hipster if you like a cheap drunk. If you like something because it's obscure, then you're arrogant. If you like something obscure because you think it's awesome then don't let someone else's label affect you. The same goes with the corny and the non-hip; if you like something fight for it. Never be ashamed of who you are but always try to be better. I like the Doobie Brothers and Os Mutantes goddamnit, and I will correct you if you pronounce their name wrong, not because I'm a haughty prick, but because they are a Portuguese, not Spanish, band, and you sound ignorant when you didn't bother to look up the details. I'd want someone to do the same for me, not in any condescending way, but in a way that shares the enthusiasm they have for the things they love. We're here to reward what we think is good, poke fun at what we think is bad, and to attack what we think is evil. We're here to revive the cool. We're here to reintroduce America to poetry. We're here to replace our fetish of adventurers with a healthy love of adventure. We're hear to help pick up and respark the torch. But we can't do it by ourselves.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
A Poem Which Offers Insight into the Genesis of the Magazine
(america)?
America, half blind to speak
half deaf to hear—
your sights
unseen by lauders,
unheard by faithful.
America what a pernicious fulcrum you're resting on:
what listless actors,
what hollow audience.
America your rouge is smudged,
your mascara drippy.
'America woke me up
in a dream,
said I had been writing
in my sleep.
It made Her cry.
There was an academic
executioner turned exiler
and America left me
for my best friend.'
Something's been lost;
the world is trembling—
my skin is trembling
from hearing words
that can never be written again...
(and there was so much else that needed to be said then,
and now—nation of perpetual noise—
now—June 3rd, 2011—
now, words have learned to fly off
on wings of lacerated tongues.)
Look, this responsorial
need not be an empty page,
and even if it's true that nothing can ever really be said,
I'd sooner suffocate from manic exasperated attempts of expression
than become a drunken hermit
in my cave of things and cynicism.
You've stiffed yourself
America.
America,
America?
are you imaginary?
are you Santa Claus?
are you Hallmark?
are you Disney?
are you Pornography?
are you a Rock?
a Dimesack?
a Used Bottle of Hair Bleach?
America are you dieing?
America why aren't you answering?
America I saw you disregarded
in a thrift store bin.
America I hear an echo.
America no one cares about flying or burning
your flag anymore;
cops are no longer pigs,
except we are all still niggers and spics.
America can't you write a love song anymore?
Is it true that only bad guys carry guns?
America have you come up with a good enough slur for the muslims yet?
'Have you heard?
They stopped playing
America on the radio.'
America will you turn that shit off!?
America my car's broken down again.
America yesterday your stock was up 26 and ¾ points.
Hey
America! your children can buy adventure on the internet now.
America are you a sum of people—
of personal minimum wage celebrities?
America I don't want to pay taxes;
I want a 3D HD Flatscreen TV.
America what's a suspension bridge?
America what is a bundled derivative?
Wikipedia can't quite tell me...
America what do tulips look like?
Who you callin' faggot
America?
When did you start wearing a bra
again
America?
America when will dinner be ready?
America when did you get “GRIME”
tattooed on your placid thighs?
Did you stop working out?
You're arms are getting pretty flabby.
America I'm having problems
keeping my eyes open,
how much for a cup of coffee?
America,
America?
Why aren't you saying anything?
Though tainted and diseased
with corn manure poison,
your aquatic veins are still pulsing
and I swear I've heard them sing
before...
but the speakers are blown out
and the repairman's out of business.
Poetry is not commodity,
America—
MFA will not save you:
MFA—Mother-Fuck
America.
Love is not commodity,
America:
I lost
rose lip
idol eyes
in a sea of
rose lip
idol eyes
and it only cost me 11.99
and one day perusing boutiques,
treading through malls,
wondering why they don't hire life guards
to protect 14 year-old catalog girls
and their “are you going to rape me now?” mouths.
God is not commodity
America:
I see you, you naïve atheist,
you capitalist christian bastards.
Words are scary
but please, please listen to them again,
please speak them again.
You're gonna leave me looking foolish,
America,
begging for your lips and earlobes
...please
America, please.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
A General Introduction
Good Morning/Night/Meridian (whichever one you may occupy),
I am happy to proclaim that soon the world will have another exalted, ridiculous arts and literary magazine through which to judge other struggling human beings and the arts society.
Are you one of those who peruses various local and online outlets of creativity and says to yeeself, "Pshaw! I could do better than this!" Well, we are too. But now we've got to prove it, and so do you.
You Can Do Better Magazine is a new platform for constructive criticism, positive complaining, if you will.
No more coddling.
No more vagueness.
No more form-letter rejections:
"Thanks for your submission. We know you weren't pinning that peanut-sized amount of confidence and spirit you have left after raising the courage and the work ethic to put yourself out there on being accepted at this institution [or any other for the matter]. ...Oh. You were. Well, here's a form-letter instead. Let's keep this as sanitary as possible."
Sincerely,
The Editors
FIE!
The people want answers!
That's the point: You Can Do Better Magazine seeks to take submissions from a variety of art forms, involve a rotating team of judges both trained and untrained in those art forms, and provide critical feedback on works. It's a conversation which seeks to excite those who submit, rather than reward a couple and neglect so many (with little transparency as to why.)
So with that I end by saying: Submit! and dare to hear the truth.
-The Editors
P.S. Thanks for reading, or at minimum skipping to the end to catch this message. Our official website will be up soon at youcandobetterzine.com, so please check back for more updates as well as submission guidelines, deadlines, and all that good stuff.
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