Part II...please comment, share, whatever. I need to know if I am self-absorbed, alone or somewhere near the truth...the truth...The Bridge.
We found a bar on 64th St., someplace called O’Neal’s. Kim dragged me onto a stool as I argued furiously with the DS-4000. She ordered drinks and took the recorder from me in the middle of some worthless rant,
“…Such overwhelming uniformity in a culture that presents itself as the standard bearer of diversity and creativity! I mean…Ikea, Whole foods, Bugaboo strollers; it’s our whole morning in Park Slope for fucks sake! The New York Times Magazine, Harpers, NPR, Atlantic Monthly. Pitchfork, American Apparel and Urban Outfitters. All that’s missing is a barker: ‘Buy your rebellion at these fine outlets; we offer a fine selection of Che Guevara iPod covers! Trade it in for a futon and New Yorker subscription on your 25th birthday!’”
“I think you’re being too hard on people, and simplifying a great deal,” Kim argued gently. “Surely not everyone that buys those things is a zombie and not all lefty zombies buy those things.”
“I suppose so, but these stereotypes are not unfounded. In fact, I think they’re pretty damn relevant! Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about. Besides, consumption patterns are only the beginning; there are far more perilous and unsettling forms of uniformity to consider. The widespread, idle philosophizing of social ills with no results, other than self-gratification, for example. Or the dark cultural hole of their Press! They’re no better than the class worshippers of the Paris salons.”
Short on money, we left the bar quickly, one at a time, faking towards the bathroom and bolting out the door, running for the subway. We took advantage of the train ride to collect our thoughts and finish the last of the drugs. We stared out the dirty windows at the city as the train passed over the East River. Kim scribbled on the seat next to her as I tried to work out this delicate and menacing analysis in a notebook.
When we got back to Peter’s house, I replayed the recordings I had made and was not surprised to find that, indeed, the others in line were reciting from articles in the New Yorker (“The Revolutionist,” 10.30.2006) and The New York Times (“Mapping Stoppard’s Circuitous ‘Coast’,” 11.24.2006). Jesus, I thought, how many people in that line were playing the same game? How many had read the same articles, developed the same bastardized understanding of the characters in this production. It’s like they gave up their Saturday just to keep up with one another.
“It’s just like Gramsci described.”
“You need to stop,” begged Kim. She grabbed the Scrabble board and went upstairs to get high with Peter and Sara leaving only me, the DS-4000 and Giant Steps on repeat to work out the details. I found a bit of grass on the table, took out some papers and tobacco and turned the recorder on.
“There can be little doubt that the American sub-culture which produces coffee shop squatters like that plagiarizing little shit at Lincoln Center has real power. The political shift that took place in November of 2006, the hordes of aging Barak Obama devotees and the sheer number of ‘Trim Bush,’ ‘Ivy University’ and ‘Bloc Party’ bumper stickers that sit side by side on Jettas all over the country are testament to that. The New Salon Culture is not to be trifled with.
New Salon elders wear the turmoil of the 1960s like a badge; they sip imported organic chai on the porch of a $1.5m eco-friendly house in the suburbs of Seattle, patting each other on the back for the ‘Impeach Bush’ stickers on their Audis. They have repackaged the self-gratifying rebellion of their youth as true struggle – and they act is if they won! As if they were even fighting for anything specific in the first place! They are the headwaters of this river of shit. From them flows a churning cascade of escapism, rationalization, and patchouli scented greed.
College campuses across the country crawl with a scourge of their wealthy, oblivious brats – the children of the elders, the youngest New Salonists. They blindly parrot watered down Chomsky and articles in Harpers Magazine.
But the middle-aged New Salonists are the meat. They are responsible for atrocities like MoveOn.org, the blogosphere, and the sickening disease that is destroying this country. They feel they are involved, politically savvy, and aware. They are sheep, held captive by their self-obsession, kept docile through consumption and mediocrity.
This is The New Salon Culture.
As a part of the struggle upwards, through any number of private colleges and universities and into the upper echelons of the liberal elite ruling class, to share in the power it wields, you must buy its propaganda. You must be able to speak its language, engage in its custom, and share its values. This includes gobbling up the excrement of an inert Press and wearing it around like a badge – The Grand Star of the Aware and Learned.
It is hardly a stretch to describe The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harpers, NPR, Slate.com or, ironically, Salon.com as constituents of The New Salon Press. Far from independent or objective, it is hardly uncommon to read the same story in the New York Times, Harpers and hear it on NPR (multiple times) within a week. They’re all staring at each other, jerking off for producing such investigative, creative and original work – content and idle! And the endless revolution of ideas through the same Press machinery hammers the ideas deep into the mind. The result is a huge swath of rich white people who all think exactly the same! They are blinded and fed the same stories, six different ways, over and over.
Indeed, in all likelihood, New Salonists encountered the same enamored discussions of Stoppards “The Coast of Utopia” in multiple places. At the center, the Sunday edition of The New York Times. The aforementioned ‘Circuitous ‘Coast’’ article appeared in the Sunday Times, which boasted a readership of 1,683,855 in 2006. Any number of, cultural magazines, ‘literary publications’ or similar periodicals featured articles on The Coast (eg. The New Yorker, New York Magazine, etc). Also, the suffocating airwaves. Multiple NPR programs – some syndicated through Public Radio International, American Public Media, etc. – featured pieces on this play.
What is ironic – supremely, gaping and insanely ironic – is that Bakunin, a central character in Stoppard’s opus, wrote and fumed about exactly this sort of cultural hegemony. He saw the danger of a learned elite that rules through a language only its members can understand. There should be little doubt that the political and cultural discussions of The New Salon Press are exclusive; only a small portion of the population can relate to it or even has the time to learn to relate to it. Working 60 hours a week in a box factory leaves little time to consider the larger contemporary cultural ramifications of Stoppard’s resuscitations of Russian radical culture, no matter how liberal you might be.
But the play is only one example. In fact, it is one of the least significant items traversing the vast network of repetition and self-indulgence that is the New Salon Press. There is a great sweating sea of feeble information that rots in the mouths of the New Salonists. It is spayed, neutralized, devoid of anything that might disrupt the subtle balance of criticism and idleness that simultaneously maintains the elite power structure and massages the ego of The New Salonists.
Antonio Gramsci wrote about the power of the Press. Imprisoned by Mussolini in 1926, he detailed the way a particular alignment of cultural and political institutions can serve to empower a particular class or segment of the population and convince others to buy into their own repression. In this case, The New Salon Culture is repressed by being made to feel empowered. The language of The New Salon social ladder, its customs and cultural resources, reinforce the hegemony of capital – the worship of wealth, acquisition, and class. At the same time, organics from Whole Foods, New York Times Magazine features on global poverty and just about anything on NPR serve to pacify…Just enough ‘radicalism’ to keep them feeling progressive but not enough to encourage deep criticism or obstruct consumption…”
The recording ends there.
I remember waking up in the middle of the night wedged between Kim and a huge wooden dresser. I quickly became disoriented and woke her up as I scrambled to find the recorder.
“It’s in your shoes, like usual. Please lay down, don’t tell me the Valium wore off already”
“What Valium?” I suddenly remembered the ginger ale she brought me around 3AM. I barely registered the gesture at the time; in retrospect, I should learn to be more suspect.
I lay back down and my mind collapsed around the weight of Kim’s hand resting on my chest. The amphetamine flutter had faded and I no longer wanted to think about the irony of keffiyahs for sale in Urban Outfitters. This shit doesn’t stop, and it comes in a myriad of flavors. The only way to ensure your taste buds remain sharp is to routinely bathe them in the baptismal saliva of honest love.
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