2024

 

 

There are phones now.  I haven't posted on this thing in just close to ten years, this blog which was the main/only way that FU communicated with the outside world (besides our singles) for almost ten years before that, and I'm trying to come up with what the main differences are from then (2006?) to now.  I think it must be phones?

I got my first personal phone when i was 30, in I guess 2010.  We were on 14th street in New York stopped in the van outside the Levi's store, Jonah or Sandy or something was in there looking for pants. We'd just played and were about to leave town for somewhere else as I remember it, and it was getting old that I had to keep up with my partner at the time through email, these long, wonderful, romantic, flowery emails we'd keep up with each other across space and time, paragraphs unfolding across my laptop, emails that would keep us both going until I was home (or in whatever place she lived). I ran over to the little Best-Buy vestibule across from the Whole Foods and grabbed the smallest thing I could find - a plastic flip phone the size of a larger pack of matches, which felt almost weightless in my hands, as if it was mostly made from data instead of molecules, or that it was hollow.  It didn't have games, i had to press buttons thousands of times to write anything, but it was sturdy and I remember it fondly.

It was just for texting and calling. I couldn't have added data if i wanted to, because there was no way to display a website on that thing. I didn't have a plan, it was pay as you go, like most things in my life in. 2010.  I think on the way back to Toronto from that tour is when I landed back into an apartment after living basically on the road for three years without a home, moving in with Katie and Mandy and Amy and Sari.

So I had this device that let in two things - voice and these messages. Now instead of these long emails I could communicate with everyone in short unrelenting bursts that never ended. What I was doing, where I was. This duel thing we're all used to now that comes with incessant brevity - total security and total security. This person on the other end was always there but I really had no idea what was going on in their life.  

I hung onto the blog for a few years past it's due date. Even now, writing, I'm not certain it will even publish, if this is even a real website.  But I don't like the short bursts, I mean we released a 90 minute song a few years ago. I do well with the longer form, the contemplation, the detail. But mostly the blog was fun because it was it's own thing, disconnected from the rest of the internet.  I wrote it on my laptop at home or on tour, and you read it on yours. It wasn't this vital link between us, but it allowed for a certain amount of connection without the clutter of everything else.

But now everything comes through the phone.  Not only that, EVERYONE is everywhere. I have to go on instagram, facebook, twitter, to talk, to promote the band, and everyone is there, like a party you ended up at where no one knows you. And you have to stand there with every person on earth in this little room, and try and make your case in the tumult. When I was writing here, it was just this.

I don't want to have to compete with all of that. I don't want to have to assess the politics of the assholes who own all these sites just to talk about my stupid band and try and convince people to come see our concerts. A career in music now is just trying to negotiate the rules and fees of all these different cages you have to deal with to exist, to try and decide which one is the least bad out of all the bad options. The guy who owns the thing you need to communicate is a fascist.  The guy who owns the other one turns a blind eye when his cages is manipulated to over turn governments, plus you can't even put an advertisement there because your band has a swear word in the name.  The venue you were booked at supports genocide, or snuck a merch cut into your contract, or the fest you got asked to play is a gentrifying agent in that city.  You go to make a tweet about your tour and the first thing you see is Grimes talking about how sick white supremacy is, or whatever. It's too much, there needs to be another thing, another place we can all go.

All of the work we do that isn't work, all of our leisure time, our output, our communication, talking to our friends - they stole it all. They own it. Now you text your girlfriend to say you love her, and its just data that apple sold to google about your location and what time of day you usually send messages. They own it.  You make a tweet that you think is funny, and elon musk owns what you said. It's his, and he can sell it as an aggregate to whoever he wants. We all write novels every year across all this shit, but we already sold it for nothing to the guys who already have everything.

Your music got stolen by a bald swedish egg fuck because your label made a deal with him, and now you don't get paid, and the only place anyone ever may hear you is that same room filled with everyone on earth I was talking about a minute ago, but like, Taylor Swift got invited as well so everyone is paying attention to her, and besides, the swedish guy just decided he doesn't want to pay most of the people in the room ANYTHING anymore, and thats just ok. You put out these albums, but the label owns the music forever and you just have to keep pushing further into a world that keeps getting bigger, running from a history that keeps getting smaller.

The means of production, we don't really own any of it. I love making music, I love being in a band, and touring. I love coming up with ideas, and folding them into a paper airplane and throwing them into the wind, hoping they fly for a bit. But none of it is ours. This was mine - this way of sitting, putting on music, writing my pithy little quandaries, the updates on the band, the jokes, there was nothing else that it had to compete with. We'd pore over the data of what countries this writing was making it into, we'd read the comments and laugh at everyone making fun of us. It was simple and nice and just before all that other shit started to really creep in, and I have fond memories of that time.

So anyways happy new year, I'm gonna try writing on this when I feel like it.