You Can Do Better Magazine: September 2011

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.

You Can Do Better Magazine

Monday, September 5, 2011

What Do You Mean I Can Do Better?

Sunday, September 4, 2011

A Poem Which Offers Insight into the Genesis of the Magazine