Artsy stuff, especially music stuff. A post written in a certain manner, for the high-school kid that I’ll never stop being.
You know how they say about musicians that are struck by genius: “they are (were) so ahead of their time!” Well, I say this entire thing with “he was way ahead of his time” is screwed up. I mean, what the hell, what time are we talking about? Wagner, Beethoven, Mozart, they have been said to be ahead of their time. Same goes for writers: e.g., Poe, Whitman (not one of my favourites, but a badass motherfucker, nonetheless) – both of them rather frivolously labeled with the ahead-of-time tag, because, you know, they’d probably been glimpsing into the future, trying to skip steps and make their way into the history of awesomeness. And some fucked-up part of history agrees with this: any totalitarian regime at your choice sometimes glanced at some weird dudes that were playing music, carving, painting or whatever they were doing and said: “hey, you’re cutting lines, you’re getting ahead of your time, don’t cheat! Get back and start falling in line, you pricks, or you’ll feel the wrath of the real time deal. Which is us!”
But now we’re pretty much through with totalitarian dudes. We’re a free country in a free world (rrright) and we’re surrounded by all sorts of freedoms. And the freedom of art is one of the most important ones and also one of the largest expressed ones. The problem is that we’re still having tons of trouble accepting the quality over the quantity. Yes, we’re periodically hit by tsunamis of lousy art trends and their proselytes (music, movies, you name it), but I refuse the lack of comparison with the quality stuff, no matter how absurd it may be.
Because, no matter how absurd it may be, every once in a while, I remind myself what crap is. It helps me better understand the entire situation. I expose myself to bad art for a very short period of time: crap music (be it live or recorded), crap art galleries, even crap architecture. I know, what you’re going to say: I live among these things every single day, I am exposed to them no matter what. Not true. In time, I’ve created a halo, a “bubble”, a firewall, call it whatever you want, around myself. And I rarely let stuff in. Most crap, I don’t even feel, it’s dissolved by the firewall. And it works just fine – keeps me a little less insane. So, by “exposing myself” I mean disabling the firewall and let crap in for a very limited period of time. During which I compare: Andra and Nina Simone. Florin Chilian and Iron Maiden. Marius Moga and Mike Oldfield. La Bloc and M*A*S*H. Cărtărescu and Mark Twain. And I laugh. At this step, the exposing is complete and I’m more of a misanthropist and elitist than ever. Which is a good place to be.
(You might have noticed I gave the “bad” examples only from Romania; also, used different styles in my comparisons. Aside from the fact that every comparison is an absurd comparison (by the way, “absurd” is a fancier word for “subjective”); this is because, even when it comes to bad music or bad writing or whatever, Romania sucks way more than the rest of the world. At least, the people abroad are struggling to make the most of their crap, quality-wise. Lady Gaga FTW.
***
I’ve annoyed myself.
So, yes. People who are ahead of their time, the misfits of their cultural era. The ones who didn’t really understand what their time was all about. What a pile of monkey muffins. All these guys, they fucking make the time. They are the cornerstones, they are the landmarks that set the time. The rest of the morons - fuck off, they are (were) way behind of their time.
Besides, there is no time for people like these.
“A wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.” – Gandalf the Grey
