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Spindle 01
SPINDLE #1 ~ May 98
"Exploring (and sometimes poking fun at) the culture of the late 90s."
Contents
________
* Preface by Geoff Gresh
* "Manifesto of another Psychopath", a rant by Nam Woo Kim
* "Education Within the Cleansing House", fiction by Ji Young Yoon
* "Museum Space", a rant by Geoff Gresh
* David Holmes: "Let's Get Killed", reviewed by Sam Kendig
[preface ~ may98]___________________________________________________________
I've been known to do some thinking, on occasion. I once criticized my
uncle Wendel for thinking about life too much, and then I realized that I think
about life alot, too. I usually just keep it to myself, rationalizing life,
like figuring out an equation in your head and realizing math just works. I had
never really thought about opening up these thoughts until about a week ago,
when I was watching an interview with Scott Weiland on MTV. He was talking
about how he was mistakenly identified as an artist of the "grunge" movement.
He slammed the movement a little bit, criticizing the clothes, etc. It then
dawned on me that "grunge" was dead, and we had moved on into the "alternative"
era, which was basically mainstream, anyway. I started to get a little worried.
Where was pop culture going? I forgot about it for a while. Then, about a week
later, I started to think about pop culture again while I was walking my dog in
the park. (By the way, walking your dog is an excellent time to think. It's one
of the only times of day that you can afford not to concentrate.) So, I'm
walking through my neighberhood with my dog and just thinking about how my life
has changed in the past few years. And then a word pops into my head:
"spindle." Huh? What the hell does a spindle have to do with pop culture? Well,
apparently, a lot. If you think of a spindle as a graph of culture over time,
it starts to make sense. The fat parts are periods with lots of trends and
fads, while the thin parts are periods when culture is individualized, and pop
culture doesn't really exist. This thin part is the post-pop culture, and we're
living in it right now.
I say that the late 90s is a post-pop period because it is a time when we
are unable to truly define our own era. It's not really the "Age of the
Internet." Most of the world's population is not online. It's not even really
the "Information Age." Most people now find it comfortable to not be trapped by
technology. (Have you ever met somenone with a beeper that didn't want to throw
it out the car window in rush hour traffic?) It's this lack of an official name
for our age that first made me nervous that day. But then I realized that
perhaps a society without a universal trait is better than a homogenous world.
As we enter the new millenium with a post-pop culture, it seems important
to let others know what people are doing to change and diversify our culture.
This is Spindle's purpose. To provide a space where culture can be observed and
examined, appreciated, even criticized and laughed at, but hopefully not
emulated. For once everyone jumps on the "alternative" bandwagon, it is no
longer truly alternative. Diversified culture can exist in a media-driven
society. Spindle will prove this. So put your feet up, grap a coffee, and get
ready to dive into the world of post-pop culture.
-Geoff Gresh, Editor
[rant ~ Manifesto of Another Psychopath by Nam Woo Kim]_____________________
Hmm, culture, culture, culture. What is there to write about culture
anyway? I'd rather be talking about the Knicks v. Heats game. Well, anyway,
since I'm such a nice person, and because Geoff has chained me to his desk, I
guess I'll have to talk about it. I was wondering, isn't culture what defines
you and makes you and individual from other people? Beliefs, religion,
characteristics.
Is it really? Think....now, culture is nothing more than how you are
dressed. (Are you trying to argue that? If so, you're an idiot. Go ahead, throw
that can of soda at the screen.) Want an example? Look at any asian kid in high
school. You'll see widelegs where you can bury corpses in, EMS's(Those are the
book bags with lots o' straps) with straps strapped to straps that are strapped
to other straps, etc, etc.
The way I look at it, culture has become superficial. Perhaps not to our
parents and the few remaining kids who wear tapered pants, but you have to
admit that our culture, every culture, has become nothing more than empty
tradition.
Okay, I thought I was done, but Geoff just gave me the shock treatment. I
have to write more. Uh, uh....yes.
If you remember your medieval English history properly, there was a
hierarchy, an order to culture. The mandate of heaven, king, prince, warlord,
uh, (I really want to read my Spawn comics) Well, anyway, the asian people (or
the asian mafia or collective) has a hierarchy as well. The peasants, which
would be the asian people wearing tapered pants and without EMS backpacks. They
are the most smart and hardworking. Yet that is all they do. And then, there
are traders and merchants and artisans like me. I have no real place in the
asian mafia. I do not wear wide legs. I carry a normal sized two strapped
Manhattan Portage book bag. (Well maybe the portage gives me a place somewhere,
but I ripped the emblem off) I associate with white, black, hispanics, etc. Not
only them, but the asians as well. So I'm technically a twinkie with multi
colored filling inside. Anyway, after the merchant class, there is the warrior
class or the legion. Take a look at the typical asian guy. All of them, I mean
ALL the asian guys. Bangs covering their faces like some helmet, wide legs with
semi ripped bottoms, like some kind of army uniform or fatigues. And those
bookbags....they're like some kind of armor, like breast plates or something.
Then there are the middle class. Usually consisting of "not fly"(pardon me, but
that is the term they use) girls and guys who don't wear size 40 Jncos or EMS
backpacks. Then there is the upper class, consisting of "fly"(I use that term
loosely, only difference I see between these girls and the middle class girls
is that the upper class tends wear that fuzzy black jackets and Mud jeans) and
those guys that wear black(tapered) pants and jackets with a white shirt
underneath and a gold beeper chain around their necks. Oh yeah, they pretend to
smoke to look cool, but all they do is puff and cough and make wastes of good
cigarettes. Then, like an Aliens movie, there is the almighty queen. I don't
know who the hell this monstrosity is, and have never seen it. But you have to
admit, there has to be a queen. The one that eats royal jelly and lays eggs all
the time.
Of course, all hierarchies and empires have your rebels and hybrids. The
hybrids are those who are asian, but live in Manhattan, and never really "hang
out" or "chill" with the Asian Hive (for all you Starcraft players out there,
let's call the asians the Zergs). Then there are your rebels, those heroically
holding out against the Zergs. Resisting assimilation. You can picture them in
your head, like some guerilla unit; ragged clothing, dirty, worn out, civilian
clothing, etc, etc. They are sometimes called the rejected asian mafia, but
they are in fact the anti-thesis, the very bane, of the Zerg's existence. In a
way, they remind me of those gypsy people in the Hunchback of Notre Dame hiding
out in the catacombs. Well there you have it. The hierarchy of the Collective
in a nutshell, or a two page piece of crap taking up more internet space. It
all depends on how you look at it. Must kill Geoff. Must kill Geoff. Must kill
Geoff. Must kill Geoff. Must kill Geoff. Must kill Geoff. Must kill Geoff.....
{Disclaimer: Geoff is a nice editor, not a slavedriver. He just has a
strong work ethic and an ego the size of a medicine ball.}
[fiction ~ Education Within the Cleansing House by Ji Young Yoon]______________
"The problem with this system," Mind twists me around, "is education."
Like some startling memory, her eyes flash very green and very bright. "Hey--
Wake up," she snaps. "Take a look at this place!"
Her fingernails dig into my shoulder blade; I feel the pain surge down my
stomach and jolt through my eyes. Mind is very much like mother, isn't she?
Mother used to warn us about dangers in the new society with that very tone.
With the same green pair of brimming, lively eyes.
"What is it, Mind? No, never mind. Just get back to work."
"Look! Look at everyone!! We're just kids, Notion! They're doing
something to us.... We're not learning how to keep our people healthy, we're
learning how to get the most marks. We didn't come here to get good grades,
Notion. We came here to learn! But look what's happened to us! There's not
one of us here that wouldn't kill to scrub the slightest stain. There is no
skill being mastered.. in a couple of years we'll be too old for this work...
then what will happen to us!!"
"Quiet down and get back to work. You'll be taken to the Dean if the
teachers find out what you've said."
"Go ahead... TELL. I hope somebody would kill me."
"You'll really be dead if you don't start scrubbing. Hey, if you're not
going to take that toilet, I will."
A drop of sweat trickles down and slips into Mind's eye. She rests her
forehead against her sleeve. "We used to have adults, didn't we? By the
blessed Dean, where are they now...."
My neck muscles go cold. Her words have roused something in me I do not
like. Why must things be so confusing? The Dean is right; the one path to
understanding is cleanness.... "Truant!!! Mind is a truant!!!" There is
already a breathless lunge for her scrubbing space. She is forced up by two
nine year old teachers. And in all the foggy mist of the shower stalls, out
appears our majestic five year old Dean, as if to guide us from the confusion
and haziness.
The Dean scrawls a check plus across my shoulder, with one of his play
markers, and catches me with his childish grin. His eyes are transparent and
extraordinarily clean. At that startling sight, I feel an heavy ache in my
heart and tears begin to swell up in my eyes. Why am I crying? It can not be
that I am sorrowful... "Dat was really good work, Notion. I want evybody to
know Notion is good boy. He gets good mark for today. Yayyy!!"
There are all around envious glares from my fellow students, yet I am sure
(I must be!) pleased. For in that split second, I have found a direction. I
have found my wonderful skill. No one else can catch truants as well as I can.
I long to please the Dean; so wise and steady in his guidance.
Dean speaks. "Evybody knows bad people get killed, yea?" Some of us
whimper while others try to show off how clean their areas are. "Good. We
gonna throw lots of food at Mind or something. It will be fun. Big girls like
her make me really mad."
Mind jerks her developed body in frustration and contempt. Her eyes flare
at the Dean. "Why can't you JUMP him?!! He's just a little KID!! We can do
this, if we want to!" The shining green eyes grow dim then rotten as they
search hopefully, now pleadingly, for some spark of life in the eyes of myself
and the other students. At the lack of response, Mind collapses in failure and
starts weeping. She sees too much for such an old age. We have been
misguided, by our mother, so I must strive to clean up all excess thinking. It
would not do to end up like Mind.
Whatever we were taught to believe is incorrect. Little kids are powerful!
The younger they are, the stronger.... My eyes crawl up the Dean's pink toes,
his scrubbed belly... his pure eyes. With just one blink of that eye, the
entire world could crumble at his feet.
"So.... Cleanup time comes soon. I wish you could finish fastlier. Lots
of people come here tonight. And Mind... " Mind looks like a heap of
miserable impurity, against the clean white tiles. "Mind, I want to play
with!! And today for her, I think, is a good day for bath day." The Dean
slaps down a little foot and one of the workers immediately escorts him, on
piggy back, through the shower stalls.
The workers jerk wearily back to their cleaning areas. We must get our
work done as soon as possible. The shower stalls and the toilets will soon be
teeming with hairy, smelly, civilians from the outside world. Today Mind will
be cleansed among them.
In no time at all there will be screaming girls, stripped to the ugly
pointy spines and pale green shoulders. They will be shoved into glass shower
tubes and locked in tight, so that the impact of the hot, cold water will not
spill them out. It is harder with the reproduction workers, girls with babies;
they have to be folded in and the glass pressed tight over them. Their kicking
bellies squeeze to get out and only round white flesh is visible behind the
steaming glass case.
Boys will be sandpapered down; thick growing hair is the most disgusting
sight in this world. Chlorine solution will be pumped down their throats, and
a flexible stick shoved down to scratch out any dirtiness, any impurity.
Hollering, they will regurgitate the solution and beg in the name of the Mighty
Dean to please, please stop the hurt... I am so pure, they say. My teeth and
tongue and lungs and brain are clean! No dirty residue!
This scrubbing must get done as soon as possible. The sooner it is done,
the sooner we can wash our people. The sooner we can purify them. We will be
rid of all hair, all nastiness, all grease or grains of dirt. In due time, we
will be happy.
[rant ~ Museum Space by Geoffrey Gresh]_____________________________________
To most teenagers, museums are serious places. They're in the same league
as libraries. You're sometimes obliged to go to them and you have to be quiet
while you're there. Most art museums fit that description. They are mostly
stuffy places that showcase the art of dead white europeans. Wait! Don't start
sending those angry letters yet. There are a few good exceptions.
During winter vacation, I went to Paris. I like to travel, and I was
looking forward to seeing some good, money-grabbing tourist attractions. Hey, I
thought, millions of people come to New York and spend millions of dollars on
t-shirts and miniature Statues of Liberty. It was time to give something back.
So the first thing I went to see was the Louvre art museum. It was right across
the street from my hotel, so I knew I wouldn't get lost and have to pull out
the French phrase book ("Are your underpants fresh today? Hey, that's not what
I meant!"). At first, it was kind of pleasant. You enter through a nice big
glass pyramid, and go down into a large hall that connects to the different
parts of the museum. It was spacious. Living in a Manhattan apartment, I really
like space. So now my expectations were high. I start walking through the
museum, not really looking for anything, mostly just taking the whole thing in.
That's the way I like to experience art museums. I never really stop for more
than a few seconds at any individual artwork. While I'm walking around, it
quickly becomes apparent that I have absolutely no idea where I'm going. I'm
lost and I'm okay with that. I like to wander, anyway. But then I entered the
Egyptian wing, and withheld a gasp. Sure, there were a lot of nice artifacts
there, but it was the wrong environment. Every room was very ornate and frilly,
like something out of a Jane Austen novel. Imagine seeing the Sex Pistols at
Carnegie Hall, or the Spice Girls playing with New York Philharmonic. It was
just wrong. The building was not designed with the artwork in mind. Most of the
Louvre was like that. Crowded rooms with way too much artwork and no context. I
left the museum relatively disappointed. And then I crossed the street...
On the same side of the street as my hotel was the D'Orsay museum. It
showcases the art of the Impressionists. The museum is a converted train
station, which is obvious the second you walk in the door. It's a huge hall,
and stretches a few city blocks. Now, the D'Orsay adopts a whole new
perspective on museums. There is a lot of space in that building, and most of
it is not used. This is not a bad thing. I don't like to feel cramped in a
museum. Like I said, I like to wander. This museum was designed around the
artwork, and it shows. The progressions from one piece to the other is natural.
The design is perfect. Now, for my fellow teenagers that are reading this
little rant, I am not a complete cornball. Like I said, there are lot of
museums I don't like. Think of the D'Orsay as an art theme park. It is not
spaced in and you can actually breathe.
Museums should be that way. You shouldn't feel like you're in a library.
The information (art) should be presented in as interesting an environment as
possible. You should be able to walk around these environments and be
comfortable. Imagine an art museum as a place you would go to read a book or
just relax. In some ways, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim are
able to accomplish that. But they've just started. Interactive elements can
still be blended with architecture to form a complete artistic experience. The
space is as important as the artwork itself. More teenagers would go to museums
if they didn't feel like museums.
I plead with you, art museum curators! Pay attention to your architecture.
It shouldn't be utilitarian. It should be enjoyable and interactive. Or else
the entire teen population will eventually be forced to turn museums into
parking lots and Burger Kings. Anyway, I left Paris with a better feeling after
visiting the D'Orsay Museum. And I got a nifty little Eiffel tower key chain,
to boot.
[review ~ David Holmes:"Let's Get Killed" reviewed by Sam Kendig]___________
I've never really written a review before, so excuse me if this seems
a bit unlike others you've read. I realized after deciding to write
this review that I don't read reviews of music. I'm one of those
people who just listens to the radio, and gets what they like. But
anyway, back to the review.
I think I first heard David Holmes while listening to Solid State one
night. It's a techno-electronica program Saturday nights, and I find
its great to just relax to, to leave in the background. The problem
I've found, however, is that techno has become music for the musically
challenged. While truly an art when it first started, its become so
that anyone can take a synthesizer, a drum beat, and a little mixing
know-how, and call themselves a techno band. Generally, Solid State
focuses on some of the better techno as the show starts, but once it
gets beyond midnight, they'll start to play some of the newer,
not-so-popular stuff. This was where I first heard David Holmes.
So as I was saying, I heard David Holmes one Saturday night, some
time after midnight. I was half asleep, and only marginally listening,
I think I was probably surfing the web without really paying attention
to what was on the radio. This one song came on, it wasn't quite the
synthesized beat that they'd been playing for the past hour. I think
it was probably the first and only time I'd heard orchestral strings
in a techno piece. I was only listening with half a brain, yet the
strings caught my attention, and I waited attentively for the name of
the artist. Later that night, I heard other David Holmes pieces, which
were also pretty cool.
Probably the best way to describe the genre is ambient. The album
really captures a sense of NYC, and for most of the songs, associate a
neighborhood. The songs put into music a pocket of the city, something
done with amazing success. To anyone who doesn't live in the city, or
for those who do, but don't know it that well, the album may still be
cool, but it loses its full effect. The casual tourist can't
understand. There's a certain experience to really have walked the
streets of the city, just taking in the surrounding areas, and soaking
up the culture. There's a certain something that New York has that no
other city has, and David Holmes has captured that on his CD "Let's
Get Killed." I played one track for my friend from out of town, which
had a clip from a public astrologer in Washington Square Park. He
thought it sounded funny, which it did. But there's a different
experience if you've actually been to the places, heard the people.
Its the difference between looking at a postcard of an unvisited
monument, and seeing the picture you took when you went there.
For those of you who know the city, "Let's Get Killed" comes under
great recommendation. It collects sounds of the cities varied
cultures, from the high class club scenes to the small corner bars,
from a downtown Broadway intersection to the street musicians of the
lower east side. David Holmes has managed to find wonderful examples
of the sounds of the city, and merge them with an electronic beat to
produce an amazing amalgamation of the city. If we can't fit the city
in a bottle, here are the sounds on tape.
___________________________________________________________________________
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____________________________________________________________________________
Contents of this email are copyright 1998 option.clique entertaiment. All
rights reserved. Sure, go ahead. Forward this issue of Spindle to whoever you
want. See if we care. Just don't reprint it, or we'll sick the German Sheperds
and our crack team of expert lawyers on ya.
____________________________________________________________________________
