Audio post reblogged from contra natura. - Played 276 times
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]Richard Hell - ‘Blank Generation’
“…what motivated the “blank generation” more than anything else was the desire to make something new, and the most significant difference between punk in America and punk in England was the starting point. The British impulse, epitomized by the Sex Pistols, was to destroy, and indeed punk became notorious in America largely because of the Sex Pistols’ antics. The American impulse, on the contrary, was to assume simply that the slate was clean: a tabula rasa. There was less fury - at least until hardcore - in part because America had already destroyed itself. Nixon had resigned, the war in Vietnam was over, major cities had pockets of ruin and were on the verge of bankruptcy. There was nothing to destroy because there was nothing to destroy.”
(Nicholas Rombes, A Cultural Dictionary of Punk)
yessssssssssssssssssssss
This set the wheels spinning. This post, if you get right down to it, is the reason I started this blog. Abstract and tangential though it may be, this post got me thinking about America and it’s economy in a way I simply hadn’t before.
We’ve broken everything we can break.
There is a very limited extent to which American society can change these days. Barring absolute cataclysm, we’re stuck with most of our basic institutions. Capitalism isn;t going anywhere, nor is our consumerism. This, right now, is the closest thing to a post-consumer society we’re likely to see. This is the most radical change we can hope for. Thus, I started thinking…Where do we go from here?
I don’t have an answer yet, not even a sketch of one, but this blog will be a chronicle of my thinking, a process of thought.
What comes next?
Source: hardcorefornerds
