Oct 3, 2023·edited Oct 3, 2023Liked by Justin Smith-Ruiu
Speaking for myself... early interest in rap (circa 1983) wasn't intermediated through the UK, but by living in a podunk racist town in northern Ohio (indeed, the rumors I'd heard that there had been a lynching back in the day were later confirmed with the google lynching map) and being just barely able to tune in a Cleveland R&B station... The impulse to break out was a purely domestic affair. Astonishingly, I actually picked up 12 inch extended mixes of Grand Master Flash "The Message" and Afrika Bambaataa "Planet Rock" at a nearby record store at the mall in Mansfield. The following year, I started college in Cincinnati. Most of my new friends in the dorm were Black, of light skin. Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" had many plays on the turntable amidst our haze of marijuana smoke, while I turned the guys on to New Order's "Blue Monday". Meanwhile, the much darker Blacks from Cleveland had hip-hop parties in their 10th floor dorm room, replete with dueling scratch turntables. It really was a mini-venue. I recall one girl there complimenting my black eye-liner, and suggesting I should powder my face like Kraftwerk.... But later, I heard that there were complaints about 'too many honkies!' All in all, however, I feel that race relations were better in the '80s than they are now.... There was that impulse on both sides to reach out and leave all of the historical shit behind us. What happened? Now it seems we must dredge up all of the historical shit and DWELL on it.
I just wanted to say that I absolutely loved your Harper’s piece. I can relate to all of it, both the elegy for a time of art that’s passed, but also the disgust at the limitations of those who were so navel-gazingly swept up in it.
I’m not a Gen Xer, myself, but I share many Xer tendencies. If we insist upon generational identities, I’ll be even more precious and situate myself in that transitional “Elder Millennial” sub-set. The cohort that discovered TheFacebook.com in college fresh off its launch, but is confused that people can live their lives so mediated by the digital. Millennials of my vintage, at least, were still desperate to define ourselves via musical genre in the 1990s and to rail against the hegemony of the pop and the SNL, little knowing that there would never be such a “tyranny” of traditional media again and that tribes of genre would disappear almost entirely and maybe even be seen as quaint or even “problematic,” in retrospect.
We don’t seem to get this new world, either, with its enthusiasm for “selling out” and odd lack of irony or affected cultural snobbishness. One can start to feel like a real asshole for “not letting people just enjoy things.” And it takes some un-learning not to immediately sneer at anything, just because it’s popular.
But isn’t the Culture of Capitalism the worst!? No, it turns out that we’re the worst--for somehow thinking that what we were up to was any more authentic and world-historically meaningful. Or thinking that “alternative” or “indie” wasn’t just a marketing segment.
I'm very touched to be in the 17%, though when I saw the results, I felt like a loser.
I sing early 20th century rare American music on the weekends with friends and was just thinking yesterday about how often the levee breaking comes into play. It's constant. And so, yesterday I, too, Gen Xer, who moved on to the Cure and was drowned in Led Zeppelin during carpool with the hot 16 year old who drove me to school, was thinking : wait. They didn't have a levee problem. They just stole this levee problem and no one noticed!
Anyway, glad to still be reading and supporting you after all these years, constantly confirming the wavelength that probably comes from having been of the same generation and having also moved to that other country where I am now and would like to attend October 20. How do we sign up? Also, should I sign up? Sounds kinda scary.
I believe you’ve made the right choice: you should follow your own freedom, track your own laughter. Readers are limited by their desires, by what they already know. They react badly to what they do not expect. A writer should be prepared to lose all his current readers…. The minute you start trying to please other people, is the minute you become an entertainer, and turn away from the full potential of the unfolding of yourself. You wrote movingly and incisively about the sixties being a moment that seemed to promise total liberation, so it’s only right that you’re chasing freedom in your own acts of creation.
As your reader, I enjoy the best of your surreal fiction, the best of your personal essays, the best of the political writing, etc. You’ve got bullseyes and somewhat-less-than-bullseyes across the board of genres. But the surreal fiction, even if a particular piece has not worked so well for me, is always what seems the most distinctively Ruiusian, the most ludic and most free, the most revelatory of your personality. It gives a sense of how you laugh behind closed doors, of what sort of enthusiasms grip you spontaneously. The political commentary is often a leaning away, a distancing—a critique. The metafiction shows more what you incline toward, what sort of utopia of ideas you like to live inside.
Here is some advice from someone in the restaurant business. NEVER let a customer suggestion be part of your business. They will take ownership and they become a partner. If you must, disguise whatever it is as you own idea. People want a leader, an innovator. If you listen to them you are debased in their eyes and they are gone after the next thing.
I’ll jump in with a comment related to Harper’s and “the crisis of attention” that you mention: there’s a fantastic article in the new Harper’s by Rachel Kushner that touches on this theme in relation to film, and I think it shares some ideas that your previous essay on Renoir mentions. Also, I’ll attempt to zoom in to the Paris talk (a nice birthday present for me!) but as it’s right in the middle of the day, please do let us know if there will be a recording available later.
Absent from the list of fictions is perhaps my favourite--which, frustratingly, I can't recall the name of--the one about the supposed discovery of the hatred particle, the passing of a vision of reality where names held power, and the world's admixture of love and hatred--a richly imagined and moving piece, by no means worth consigning to Fat Garfield-dom.
Also loved the Gen X article; being born in the middle of the 70s I guess I fit the theoretical definition, and if we're called the jaded generation that everyone forgot, then count me into the band of misfits.
The part about the ideal of human liberation hit hard. We were born and inculturated at a profoundly optimistic time. Human beings for a moment looked like we could look at each other as such and, if not get along, at least be gracious about it, and vibe to each other's music. (Possible misunderstandings of) Freud had freed the libido from its bottle, so exciting! Am I even allowed in these present judgmental times to feel nostalgia of past permissiveness? Then came the internet, and it was like all doors were opening - especially the weird ones. Secrets were a thing of the past, and the lumbering weary giants of steel held no authority on the minds of anyone who was paying attention.
Yes, it does seem like the we were the last ones to catch a glimpse of some reflection of human near-utopia - at least for the time being. But surely this dreary obsession with effectiveness on the left hand and rightness on the right shall pass too. It has to.
I signed up myself for the talk in Maastricht, which is the city I study in. I really look forward to attending the talk, and was delighted to hear the invitation at the end of this piece. I’m sure I will come down after the chat to make acquaintance and to thank you for making the journey out.
Speaking for myself... early interest in rap (circa 1983) wasn't intermediated through the UK, but by living in a podunk racist town in northern Ohio (indeed, the rumors I'd heard that there had been a lynching back in the day were later confirmed with the google lynching map) and being just barely able to tune in a Cleveland R&B station... The impulse to break out was a purely domestic affair. Astonishingly, I actually picked up 12 inch extended mixes of Grand Master Flash "The Message" and Afrika Bambaataa "Planet Rock" at a nearby record store at the mall in Mansfield. The following year, I started college in Cincinnati. Most of my new friends in the dorm were Black, of light skin. Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" had many plays on the turntable amidst our haze of marijuana smoke, while I turned the guys on to New Order's "Blue Monday". Meanwhile, the much darker Blacks from Cleveland had hip-hop parties in their 10th floor dorm room, replete with dueling scratch turntables. It really was a mini-venue. I recall one girl there complimenting my black eye-liner, and suggesting I should powder my face like Kraftwerk.... But later, I heard that there were complaints about 'too many honkies!' All in all, however, I feel that race relations were better in the '80s than they are now.... There was that impulse on both sides to reach out and leave all of the historical shit behind us. What happened? Now it seems we must dredge up all of the historical shit and DWELL on it.
I just wanted to say that I absolutely loved your Harper’s piece. I can relate to all of it, both the elegy for a time of art that’s passed, but also the disgust at the limitations of those who were so navel-gazingly swept up in it.
I’m not a Gen Xer, myself, but I share many Xer tendencies. If we insist upon generational identities, I’ll be even more precious and situate myself in that transitional “Elder Millennial” sub-set. The cohort that discovered TheFacebook.com in college fresh off its launch, but is confused that people can live their lives so mediated by the digital. Millennials of my vintage, at least, were still desperate to define ourselves via musical genre in the 1990s and to rail against the hegemony of the pop and the SNL, little knowing that there would never be such a “tyranny” of traditional media again and that tribes of genre would disappear almost entirely and maybe even be seen as quaint or even “problematic,” in retrospect.
We don’t seem to get this new world, either, with its enthusiasm for “selling out” and odd lack of irony or affected cultural snobbishness. One can start to feel like a real asshole for “not letting people just enjoy things.” And it takes some un-learning not to immediately sneer at anything, just because it’s popular.
But isn’t the Culture of Capitalism the worst!? No, it turns out that we’re the worst--for somehow thinking that what we were up to was any more authentic and world-historically meaningful. Or thinking that “alternative” or “indie” wasn’t just a marketing segment.
I'm very touched to be in the 17%, though when I saw the results, I felt like a loser.
I sing early 20th century rare American music on the weekends with friends and was just thinking yesterday about how often the levee breaking comes into play. It's constant. And so, yesterday I, too, Gen Xer, who moved on to the Cure and was drowned in Led Zeppelin during carpool with the hot 16 year old who drove me to school, was thinking : wait. They didn't have a levee problem. They just stole this levee problem and no one noticed!
Anyway, glad to still be reading and supporting you after all these years, constantly confirming the wavelength that probably comes from having been of the same generation and having also moved to that other country where I am now and would like to attend October 20. How do we sign up? Also, should I sign up? Sounds kinda scary.
I believe you’ve made the right choice: you should follow your own freedom, track your own laughter. Readers are limited by their desires, by what they already know. They react badly to what they do not expect. A writer should be prepared to lose all his current readers…. The minute you start trying to please other people, is the minute you become an entertainer, and turn away from the full potential of the unfolding of yourself. You wrote movingly and incisively about the sixties being a moment that seemed to promise total liberation, so it’s only right that you’re chasing freedom in your own acts of creation.
As your reader, I enjoy the best of your surreal fiction, the best of your personal essays, the best of the political writing, etc. You’ve got bullseyes and somewhat-less-than-bullseyes across the board of genres. But the surreal fiction, even if a particular piece has not worked so well for me, is always what seems the most distinctively Ruiusian, the most ludic and most free, the most revelatory of your personality. It gives a sense of how you laugh behind closed doors, of what sort of enthusiasms grip you spontaneously. The political commentary is often a leaning away, a distancing—a critique. The metafiction shows more what you incline toward, what sort of utopia of ideas you like to live inside.
Here is some advice from someone in the restaurant business. NEVER let a customer suggestion be part of your business. They will take ownership and they become a partner. If you must, disguise whatever it is as you own idea. People want a leader, an innovator. If you listen to them you are debased in their eyes and they are gone after the next thing.
As one of the 17%, a million thanks!!
I’ll jump in with a comment related to Harper’s and “the crisis of attention” that you mention: there’s a fantastic article in the new Harper’s by Rachel Kushner that touches on this theme in relation to film, and I think it shares some ideas that your previous essay on Renoir mentions. Also, I’ll attempt to zoom in to the Paris talk (a nice birthday present for me!) but as it’s right in the middle of the day, please do let us know if there will be a recording available later.
Absent from the list of fictions is perhaps my favourite--which, frustratingly, I can't recall the name of--the one about the supposed discovery of the hatred particle, the passing of a vision of reality where names held power, and the world's admixture of love and hatred--a richly imagined and moving piece, by no means worth consigning to Fat Garfield-dom.
Also loved the Gen X article; being born in the middle of the 70s I guess I fit the theoretical definition, and if we're called the jaded generation that everyone forgot, then count me into the band of misfits.
The part about the ideal of human liberation hit hard. We were born and inculturated at a profoundly optimistic time. Human beings for a moment looked like we could look at each other as such and, if not get along, at least be gracious about it, and vibe to each other's music. (Possible misunderstandings of) Freud had freed the libido from its bottle, so exciting! Am I even allowed in these present judgmental times to feel nostalgia of past permissiveness? Then came the internet, and it was like all doors were opening - especially the weird ones. Secrets were a thing of the past, and the lumbering weary giants of steel held no authority on the minds of anyone who was paying attention.
Yes, it does seem like the we were the last ones to catch a glimpse of some reflection of human near-utopia - at least for the time being. But surely this dreary obsession with effectiveness on the left hand and rightness on the right shall pass too. It has to.
I signed up myself for the talk in Maastricht, which is the city I study in. I really look forward to attending the talk, and was delighted to hear the invitation at the end of this piece. I’m sure I will come down after the chat to make acquaintance and to thank you for making the journey out.