Tuesday 9 September 2008

a brief talk about revolution

let me preface briefly by saying i barely know what i'm talking about. So don't take this too seriously.
This! Is in response to what you were saying Tom about feeling part of that audience, that sense of revolution in music, about being part of something big.
I remember sitting at home, a year ago or two now i guess, and getting a call from a friend of mine studying photography. Him saying there was some massive protest on in town and I should grab a fucking camera and get over there. And blah blah blah but getting there and standing on top of that old war memorial looking at a street full to the fucking brim with people chanting, singing, shouting, with signs and costumes and all sorts felt amazing. The protest itself was an anti war protest. And anti Bush and Blair protest, but that didn't really feel important.
I felt like if the right person was to come along and say the right thing we would be able to do literally anything.
I remembered reading some Hunter S. Thompson stuff, there was a line like "you could spark revolution on any corner, any time" or something. The way I understand it there was a real optimism back in the 60s with all this revolution. And being in the middle of that street, those people, I could totally feel that. But there aren't that many massive revolutions and protests any more. That feeling, that optimism is definitely gone. I don't feel it anyway. Maybe i'm not in the right place, but regardless.
It seems like we have the "benefit" of hindsight. None of those protests, those revolutions, got anyone where they were trying to get. There was obviously a massive cultural impact that resonates to this day but it has been coloured by defeat and pessimism, cynicism.
I don't know fully how this ties into music. But when I'm "creating" anything, illustration, writing or music, my best stuff is only ever an awful sham rip off of someone else's.
When looking back and researching all this Russian Constructivism stuff you could get a sense of that desperate need for something new. It's there in the music you're talking about too I bet.
But maybe enough people just aren't looking back and digesting all that stuff?

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