(I’ve been trying hard to make it across. Across the razor’s edge of my subconscious. The idea is there, the words on the tip of my tongue. Seems like DE rapper Marchitect and I have something in common, I just can’t spit; I can’t get the sweet spot past my teeth. Do it now.)

Is this culture? Am I surrounded by the trappings of a culture as thick as any other? God help us if there really is little more to it than vinyl and complaining. Am I simply mired in a world of ideas, out of touch with the physical realities of the world around me? This is the first part of a rather involved attempt to flesh out the nuances of the relationship between contemporary counterculture and the culture it is supposed to counter.

-----
Like a confused father: What is all this and what is it supposed to mean? Beat-as-fuck, ironically old and gaudy tee-shirts featuring ponies or some other asinine shit; are they statements? Are they one individual’s attempt to lay into that fabulous gale, the global consumer culture? Or are they, in fact, a reflection of that very same culture; just another manifestation of the pervasive belief that we can purchase our way into a sense of belonging. Consider: My parents replaced all of the art in their house with Crate & Barrel prints of the Italian countryside. At over $300 a piece, they come with a “textural, brushstroke acrylic finish for an authentic painterly effect” (Crate and Barrel.com). Naturally, these prints match all of the other catalogue accessories from the Mexican, Spanish or Italian collections. They want to live inside those catalogues. Yet, there is nothing unique about this; this is America, this is consumer capitalism. Ponder: are we faced with an attempted hijacking of contemporary counterculture through a similar mechanism? Hot Topic, Corporate Punk, and Diesel jeans jiggle my eight-ball towards a bluish ‘yes.’

But who cares, right? Why should it matter that a huge portion of young America talks out of both sides of their mouth – purchasing punk? Because as this terrible vogue feeds off the honest relic it mimics, it co-opts, weakens, and could eventually destroy that once true core. $30K Jetta’s with iPod add-ons and fair-trade, anti-Bush bumper stickers parked in GentrificationHill, recycled-tire driveways, attached to exclusively-organic-textile-and-Ikea clad, two-bedroom walkups aren’t helping anything, that’s obvious. But this is an innocuous example, incapable of destroying anything powerful, for good or evil. Mall-punk, however, is an evil ideal veiled, leeching off of a belief system that seeks to destroy it. Danger lurks in the possible loss of that honest core to ideological simplification through commodification. Hot Topic is an easy target; it gets thornier.

(Can I get it across, what the fuck do I mean? I need help, we need help!)

Help is on the way…