On Taylor Swift and “Reputation”

I want complete transparency as I write this:  I am no music critic.  This entire piece is subjective and conjecture and any and all synonyms and words that are in the vein of “Hogwash” and “drivel” and as a writer I am all things under the umbrella of “hack” and “complete/utter horseshit”.  I play in a ska band unironically for goddsakes.  I’m not in any position to judge music in any facet.

That being said “tab” doesn’t indent like I want it to so everything is going to be formatted in this bullshit “Left aligned” nonsense that looks like a second grader with “notepad” wrote it.  All of that withstanding, that assessment isn’t exactly wrong.  I’ve also been drinking a little bit.  So there’s that.

So, here we go, a bullshit review of Taylor Swift all of her radio hits from her newest album, “Reputation”.

Just right out of the gate:  I hate it.

I do.  I really do.

You can ask a good deal of any of my friends and an equal amount of any of my ex-girlfriends they’ll all tell you:

I like Taylor Swift.  I do.  There.  I said it.

Unironically, I might add.  But here’s the deal with “Reputation” as I’ve heard it thus far:  She’s doing this “identity crisis” thing and with whatever phase she’s in, it’s just not working for her.  Let me explain why.

Miss Swift started out as a country star.  A legit country star.  And she was good.  She had the persona, the look, and most importantly:  The voice.  Her early hits all included all of the stereotypical country harmonies and vocalizations and that is, (again) in my opinion,  one of her strong suits:  She knows the genre and she knows how to play into it.  Given her writing style(one that is very similar to mine; “Oh, I have an ex-significant other LET’S TALK SOME SHIT WHY DON’T WE BECAUSE IT’S EASY) she has plenty of material and, if the rumors that I’ve heard where she writes her own music are true, has well, plenty more material).  Like, really, one of my favorite songs by her is “Mean” which is about a critic who said something mean about her.  Which, yea, whatever, write a diss-track about someone who said something not nice about you.  I’ve done it and I’m pretty sure anyone with anything out on the internet and a composition instrument has done because, you know, YouTube’s a thing, has done it.  But it was catchy, and it was cute, and it was optimistic, and you know what god dammit, it was fun and relatable.  Because fuck it, who hasn’t had someone talk shit about them?  It’s fucking GREAT.

So that was country Taylor.  Country Taylor has a lot of hits and for good reason.  They’re…well, they’re pretty good.  She has a lot of pop hits as well.  So let’s talk about those.  Or at least one in particular.

The song in question, at least for this example, is something I consider a lyrical masterpiece by Miss Swift if she actually wrote it.

To give you some context, I had an ex-girlfriend that, much like me, listened to pop music on the radio because, well, fuck it, you know?  So we would bullshit back and forth on whatever was on the radio because it was a fuckin’ thing to do.  At this time, only one other song came out from “1985” and that was “Shake it Off” which, at the time, I felt made a case for one of Taylor’s strongest songs because it was topical, personal, and for me, was a blatant step out of Taylor’s typical “Good girl, I play country music” persona that I knew at the time.  Her album “Red” was like a placeholder between her “phases” because it had content that were very much “meant for radio” like “I Knew You Were Trouble” a track that I have deemed “Swift-step” which was an obvious rip from the nation’s discovery of dubstep at the time, “We Are Never Getting Back Together” which was a fun track that had Swift blending her country roots with her newfound “popstar” persona with the major-key finger-picked guitar at the beginning of the track but right before that riff ends plays…almost backwards which is a very poppy-type trick that you can do in the studio because fuck it, why not?  So if anything, that track is the tipping point of Miss Swift embracing her newfound “This is who I am now” as being popqueen of 20-whatever(I wanted to say pop queen of 2017 for the rhyme but couldn’t in good faith couldn’t).

Flashforward to 2014 and “Shake it Off” comes out and I’m fucking in love with this song.  It’s fun, it’s personal, it’s topical(at the time she’d been under scrutiny for having too many boyfriends or whatever.  Who gives a shit) and it included a bari sax and goddammit I love me a good bari sax in whatever setting I can get it in.  But it was FUN and I loved it.

So we get to “Blank Space” and quite frankly, it’s wonderful.  It was one of Miss Swift’s forays into a kind of “hip hop” feel that didn’t exactly feel foreign or forced, it was groovy without trying too hard, and lyrically about as perfect and all-encompassing as you can get without pandering.  “Find out what you want, be that girl for a month, wait the worst is yet to come”, “So it’s gonna be forever, or it’s gonna go down in flames”, “Darling I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream”, “Oh my god look at that face, you look like my next mistake; love’s a game, wanna play” are some of my favorites and when you break them down, are just too relevant for anyone that’s dated in their 20’s.  It’s beautiful and just…masterful songwriting, in particular, to her demographic which is why it was probably such a hit.  Of all of the Taylor Swift song’s that has ever come out, lyrically, this one is leaps and bounds my favorite.  Stylistically, not my favorite, but as a whole, good lord this is one of them.

So, you’ve read this far.  What the fuck is my point?

My point is, because this whole thing does have a point is:  “Reputation” is a bunch of fuckin’ try-hard bullshit that reeks of falsehoods, poserisms, and record labels pushing a product that their product cannot be.

Taylor Swift, despite being 20-fuckin’-whatever, can be extremely vindictive and spiteful and coarse and mean and crude and many other adjectives that can be used to describe a “woman scorned”.  The thing about Swift that I admire, or at least I used to, is that all of her songs had this kind of “honest” quality about them.  That she wrote them(to some extent), she recorded them with actual studio musicians(up until a certain point), and that when she performed them live she…I don’t know she…meant it I guess.  Everything about her persona:  Yes, she was pretty and blonde and the width of my wrist around and had blue eyes and was a sweetheart, you know, all of the things that traditionally make a popstar, and she was all of these things, but there was a part of her that you knew, behind all of the glitz and glamour and hairspray, and cat eyeliner, and Target endorsements was a person.    And this person felt things and wrote those things down and sang them into a microphone and those things were things that you felt and maybe in doing so she relived all of those things all over again so every time she sang those words into a microphone maybe, just maybe, she felt those things all over again.  And maybe the fact that every time she sang these words into a microphone and had to relive all of these things over and over again made them all the more genuine; that every time she sang them a small part was left of her on every stage between the Save Mart Center and The Grand Ole Opry and…Brazil or…something.

The point of all of this, and here’s a little bit of context about me in general, I love feelings when it comes to artists no matter the medium.  To this day, and it’s still one of the things I strive for in my own personal “performance arts”(ska band shit) is the third top-rated comment on this video:  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYhffKUGGlQ)

Which is the Blackbird Sessions version of Modern Baseball’s “Fine, Great” which reads,

“I wish more musicians meant it as hard as these guys mean it”

And that’s all I ask of the music I listen to:  Fucking mean it.

And that’s where this all comes in:  She had this quality in her voice that I loved, this, “I have a story, and it stupid but I need to tell it” quality that you can hear in her early days; days when she was a shithead 15/16 year old in high school that got her heart broken for the first time by some boy that was a fuckin’ dickfuck in the first place because he’s 15/16 and in high school and trying to figure out what in god’s name hormones are and what they do but not knowing how they can affect other people.  The thing about early Taylor, and I think it’s the thing that everyone unknowingly loved about her, is that she was a person.  She wasn’t this idea, this metaphor, this…this bastardization of what perfection is like Brittney Spears was in the 90’s.  She was just a girl with a guitar and a pretty voice and she had some things to say about some dickfuck boy that was 15 and broke her heart.  And she sang.  And people listened.

And that’s what my problem is with “Reputation”

If I have to say I hate anything about anything in general it’s that I hate when people try to be things that they very much just are not.  To my credit I’m pretty good at reading people.  Even people I just met the day I met them.  And I’m pretty good at picking out what people are and are not.

Taylor Swift is not this deep, “rebellious” hard-ass popstar that she’s being made out to be, at least with the release of her last few videos.  She’s a girl that likes her cats, her…apartment or whatever, white walls(probably because of her apartment) and, making music.  At least from what I can tell.  She’s not the recent version of DC superheroes which are dark and dirty and gritty and have a whole fuck-ton of things to worry about like their parents are dead, the universe that they live in being in danger, being a half-robot in Detroit that has to worry about powering down and street youths stealing her hubcaps or whatever or not getting enough to eat or might fuckin’ die(Batman, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, and The Flash, respectively, probably).  So because of this, a lot of her music that’s been coming out has been artificial, over-produced, structurally the equivalent of a thousand Hindenburgs, and, in short, CODSWALLOP.

In lay terms, for the most part her music FUCKIN’ SUCKS HO-LY FUCK.

So here’s the deal:  Miss Popkween is Miss Popkween and has a deal with Target to do whatever the fuck she wants because she is, at this point, an unstoppable force to be met with the immovable object known as “American consumerism”.  So because Miss Popkween has a deal with one of the largest corporations to ever have to do business in North America and has exclusive rights to her newest album, Popkween is at Target’s beck and call because, of course, they’re paying her by the dumptruck so she does whatever Target, her record label, and their puppets-on-strings tell her to do.  They all think Taylor needs a make-over(again).  They tell her to write new music(okay).  And they say, “You need a new persona(Again?  AGAIN).  So Taylor Swift becomes this overtly-aggressive, thinly-veiled metaphor loaded, trap-backing-track equipped, “anti-hero” coming after Kanye West with “Look What You Made Me Do” which…fucking sucks dude.  As a track, it’s garbage.

“Look What You Made Me Do” has been praised as this track that knows how exactly to administer “Build-up and release”.  Which is something I don’t get.  Because if I’ve learned anything about either of those two things it’s that one is not one without the other.

The “build up” that they’re referring to is the build up right before the “drop” in the chorus which is FUCKING BULLSHIT BECAUSE EVERYTHING JUST FUCKING DROPS OUT WHEN THE CHORUS HITS.

Holy fuck dude, this is the musical equivalent of blue balls and I FUCKING HAAAATE IIIIIIT.

“Look what you made me do” is the most horseshit fuckin “thrown together” songs I’ve heard since she released “Bad Blood”.  And that song I kind of give a pass because there was no way that song was supposed to be released without SOMEONE doing SOMETHING over the top of it.  Props to Kendrick Lamar for making it listenable.

Remember when I was talking about things that aren’t “you” awhile back?  This is one of them.

“Look What you Made Me Do”(Heretofore referred to as “Look”) is the ultimate in “What the actual fuck are you doing”?  Nothing about this song is Taylor.  There are parts of it that I believe are Taylor, in particular the prechorus(at least”I’ve got a list of names, and yours in red, underlined” and the part of the bridge that goes “I’ll be the actress staring in your bad dreams”).  But everything else, especially when you look at the music video for “Look” seems just so…forced and out of character for even the extras, those extras I mean Taylor Swift playing as herself in other music videos THAT SHE’S BEEN IN.

And, let me include the creme de la cream, “Oh.  I’m sorry.  The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now.  Why?  Oh!  Because she’s dead”!

HOL UP.

THERE’S LIKE A BAZILLIONTY OF YOU IN THIS VIDEO RIGHT NOW AND YOU SAYIN’ THEY ALL DEAD

COOL.  Great.  WHATEVER.  That’s a blog for a different day.

The whole point of this is that “Look” isn’t a great song and here’s why:

Whoever directed the music video very much wanted to be the guy that directed “Thriller”.  It has this feeling that it wants to be this really heavy hip-hop track because, in regards to vocals it is very much Taylor and Taylor and drum(machine) and that’s it.  So it feels pretty empty sonically and in addition Swift says, “Is it cool?  No, I don’t like you” which is a little bit verbatim for Swift not to mention the verbage in “is it cool” is a blatant question and not a metaphor or LITERALLY ANYTHING NOT TRYING TO HIDE THE FACT THAT SHE’S ASKING FOR ANY KIND OF VALIDATION.

All of that being said, the rest of the song is fucking garbage.

Write drunk, edit sober.

I am Warning You Now:

What you are about to read is the academic equivalent of word vomit.  It will hold no scholastic, let alone anything resembling intellectually-stimulating value, nor is it important to anyway.  The following is an absolute catharsis of my mind:  My brain is Gordian’s Knot and I’m trying to Alexander the Great my way through it.  Should you read it from here on out, you’re on your own.

For the layperson:  I’m dealing with some shit and I’m trying to sort it out.  Whatever you’re about to read is going to be like reading a page out of your twelve year old sister’s diary about some boy that she likes.

Here we go:

Currently it is 11:28pm on September 21st of 2017.  I turned 26 today.  I hate my birthday.  Rather, the time of year that is August through very late September.  I have since I’ve turned 21 for the most part.  Some years were okay.  21 was cool.  22 was okay.  23 was arguably the worst year of my life.  24 was also garbage but got better.  25 was my first legitimate existential crisis.  26 has been…okay at best.  21 turfed out in October.  22 was also cool for the same reason that 21 turned out cool.  23 turned incredible in October.  24 was fucking miserable.  25 was marginally less miserable.  26…we’ll see.  Thing go my way in October.  Sometimes.

25 to 26 has been nothing different so far.  Which is why I’m writing this.  Allow me to explain:

In late August my band played with Smash Mouth.  Yes, that Smash Mouth.  Smash Mouth of “Shrek”, “All Star“, “Walking on the Sun“, whatever fame.  At this show I saw a girl there that was pretty and short and at the bar.

She’s my type.  If I had one, I guess

I have been drinking in bars since the day I turned 21.  It’s a thing I do.  Less so now, but still.  This isn’t my first rodeo.  And never in my now 5 years of drinking has the following line ever worked in my favor when said to someone I’ve never met before:

“Hey!  Can I buy you a drink?”

Until now.

“Yea, sure!” she replies, with a kind of cautious optimism.

At this point, I’m taken aback.  This is uncharted territory.  I’m the Starship Enterprise, she’s literally the entirety of space.

I ask her what’ll she have.  She says a gin and tonic.  I hate gin and tonic.  So I order two.  I ask her name and she asks mine.  She’s gorgeous.  I have utterly and completely abandoned my band at this point.  I may as well not know them.  She tells me she’s from Seattle and what she does for a living.  I ask her why in the name of anything holy why she would leave a beautiful place like Seattle to move to a god-forsaken place like Fresno.  She says she was in a really good spot in her life and wanted a change of scenery.  Smash Mouth is about to start their set so we move closer.  She tells me that she unironically loves Smash Mouth although she knows none of their catalog save for their hits but she unabashedly loves those hits.  I tell her about Smash Mouth’s inaugural album which is ska as fuck and that their “hit” album “Astro Lounge” was the first CD I ever owned.

Right before they play “All Star” I ask if I can call her some time.  She says “Yea, of course!” and hands me her phone.  She texted me and I texted her back.  Which in hindsight was stupid because she already had my number.  Whatever, I guess.

We text sparingly over the course of the next day or two until she asks if  I wanted to get coffee some time.  But because of our work schedules I tell her “I’m recording this day, do you wanna get dinner at this time?” and she agrees.  I’m ecstatic because I have a date with a girl that I met at a Smash Mouth show.  How many people can say that?  Honestly, though?

We didn’t talk for the days leading up to it.  I figured she forgot so I get out of recording and text her “So I’ll see you in an hour?” and she replies back in the affirmative.  So I haul ass to Fresno from Tulare and meet her for dinner.

There’s a bit of a wait for dinner.  Which was weird for a Thursday at 7:30 in Fresno.  So we shoot the shit.  I find out she listens to a lot of early pop punk in addition to jazz and swing and that’s she’s actually an instructor for the local swing community.  I hate dancing.  I’m bad at it.

“I’m an octopus of left feet” I tell her.  Make her laugh.
“Everyone says they can’t dance.  But no one’s ever really tried”.

Our server comes back four or five different times before we actually place an order because of us talking about whatever and my general indecisiveness.  The server makes a joke about making him go through all of that only to order the same thing she did.  I told him I’m sorry, but that Ziti looked good(it was).

We go to a local bar by her house and get a beer and I walk her home.  God I loved walking her home.  She kisses me good night.

After that I was hooked.

Fast forward a week or two.  I’m going to the swing dancing classes she’s teaching at and going to swing-type events.  We hang out afterwards a couple of times.  I go to her apartment and play video games.  I send her flowers at work that she says she didn’t know where they were from.  We don’t talk so much anymore.  Eventually to the point where she pulls me aside and tells me “I just don’t have time for you”.

I broke.  On the inside.  On the outside I kept my composure.  I get it.  I do.  But if you drop a TV still in the box the box will look fine but the TV on the inside is shattered and broken and good to no one, not even itself.  It’s just a paper weight.  An overgrown, overpriced, paperweight.

That was two weeks ago.

In that time I had done a little bit of thinking.  I’m a textbook overthinker.  It’s my thing.  “What did I do wrong is she seeing someone else and I’m not as cool as he is do I smell bad am I ugly am I not as funny as I think I am Why doesn’t she like me Is she seeing someone else does she even like me what did I do wrong why doesn’t she like me am I not good enough why doesn’t she like me whydoesn’tshelikemewhydoesntshelikeme”.

So I told myself to shut up for a minute.

I had a girlfriend that before we started seeing eachother that disclosed to me that her friend told her “Do you actually like him or are you just lonely”?  So I asked myself the same thing.  The truth is I’m a bit of a serial monogomist.  Admittedly.  And it’s gotten me into some things.  Mostly relationships I should’ve never been in the first place.  And so I asked myself, rather, I posed it like one of my best friend’s wife would ask me because she gives me the most shit when it comes to my romantic escapades:   So here’s how I think the conversation would ensue:

“So I like this girl”
“Oh, do you now?”
“Yea”
“Well what about her do you like?”
“Well she’s super smart and she’s funny and she has a full-time job and educated and we like the same kind of music and she’s really pretty and she likes video games and likes movies and books and stuff and she swing dances and teaches it and yea, I don’t know”
“So that’s it.”
“Yep”
“Those are just things.  Anyone can be just things”
“What the shit are you talking about?”
“Those are fucking THINGS dude.  What is it about HER that you like?  What is it about HER that you like YOU FUCKING FUCKTARD”.

So I thought about it.  I really thought about it.  Long and hard I thought about the things about this girl that I really liked.

She wasn’t just smart.  She was so good in her field of study that the State of California sought her out from Seattle, WASHINGTON and said “We want you to work to us”.

She wasn’t just funny.  Her delivery is really dry and matter-of-fact.  But I would listen to her call the ability to U-Turn in Fresno described as “absolute Anarchy” on loop for hours.

She doesn’t have just a full-time job.  She was headhunted.  And works in a field that she absolutely loves doing what she likes doing.  And the way she just…her eyes lit up whenever she talked about her job and how she would thinks she’s talking too long and apologize but in reality I just wanted to hear more.

She’s not just educated.  She has a degree in environmental science because she “Wanted to just do all the things and couldn’t settle on just one”.  So she did them all.  She did it because she loves Nature.  And that those “Neature” videos are her life in a nutshell and whenever she goes out she says “Thas pretty neat” and god FUCKING DAMMIT I want to be her Rodney.

We don’t just like the same kind of music.  She loves Green Day.  Her first concert was a Green Day show.  But she’s not super into Modern Baseball or Neck Deep or The Wonder Years but she loves Blink 182 and a lot of reggae and loves Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington and Joe Pass and all of the jazz cats that I like to listen to.

It wasn’t just that she likes video games.  It was that even though she doesn’t play them much she still kicks my ass at Mario Kart for the Gamecube and even though Star Fox was a piece of shit and has no redeeming qualities whatsoever it’s still one of her favorite games because she hasn’t beaten it yet and it’s her whole childhood.  Or that she loves Windwaker even though she’s never beaten it.  Or that there’s a whole slew of games on her jailbroken Wii that she hasn’t even touched but still plays Smash even though there’s something broken in it that makes it come out in black and white.

It wasn’t that she likes movies and books.  She loves Jurassic Park and the Andromeda Strain and Michael Crichton and that we both own the same Jurassic Park shirt or that she’s currently reading Silence of the Lambs.  Or that the second time I’ve ever seen her she was wearing a Star Wars shirt or the first time I got in her car she had a Star Wars sunshade in her backseat and a rebel alliance sticker on her back window.

It wasn’t that she swing dances and teaches a class.  It was that she’s been doing it since middle school and was head of the Swing club in High School and competed in college and then after two weeks of moving to California was asked to be an instructor.  It wasn’t that she loved to swing dance.  It was that you could know her for 12 beats of a song and just automatically know.  It wasn’t that she somehow got me to swing dance, but have people I’ve never met before tell me I’m a natural but the second I line up to dance with her I’m back to being an octupus of left feet and can’t think straight.  It wasn’t that she loved to swing dance but if she had to do a Ted talk it’d be on the history of swing dancing.  I love watching her dance.  She just exudes confidence and flair.  And that’s something I could never possibly get tired of.  Good god.

She wasn’t just pretty.  She was beautiful.  Her skin was a reddish olive from being out in the field so much.  She had tan lines on both of her feet from her sandals.  On our first date it was the only time I’ve seen her with her hair down.  Her hair is a gorgeous, healthy, wavy, brown that shone like silk in what was left in the sunlight.  Her eyes are a shade of blue that if you took a picture of her standing in front of the ocean you would swear that someone photoshopped out her corneas and just let the sea fill them in.  She never wore jewelry.  She had a smile that could reflect a laser.  Her nose was like mine but fit her face better.  She’s beautiful.  She’s the reason why faces were invented.  600,000 thousand or so years of Homo sapiens being a thing and we ended up with her and truth be told I think we’ve hit our zenith.

So now I’m here.  I like this girl.  And you can’t make someone like you.  You can only do your best and hope it works out in your favor.  So here I am, hoping.

So I’ll see you guys in October, I guess.

To Lose One’s Sense of Selfie

It’s no secret. Millenials are obsessed with selfies. It’s probably one of the more vain acts one could perform that would make Narcissus downright proud.
As what happens with most trends comes criticism that the trend in question is, indeed, a trend, and therefore stupid. Ninety-nine percent of these criticisms(and I’m willing to bet money on this) come from old white dudes who see the newest generation as a bunch of lazy fucks who need to get off their ass and find something better to do than take pictures of themselves*.

*probably

For some reason, selfies catch a lot of flak merely for…existing. Not even the act of the selfie itself(ie) but rather the person taking it. Which is something I don’t get.

We have the technology. Someone invented the front-facing camera. What else could it possibly be there for?

Remember like, two years back when that 13 year-old girl was catching shit because she was at Auschwitz or Dachau and took a couple of selfies and everyone called her “insensitive” or whatever because people died there? Which, fair enough, bad shit happened there that should never happen again. However, I see nothing insensitive about it. If she was smiling and acting like she was having a good time I would totally understand that. To my recollection her facial expressions seemed very stoic and matter of fact. As if she was trying to merely say “I’m here. This is a thing I did. I’m at a place and it’s kind of a bummer”. If anything I feel it should give a person a greater sense of empathy.
I should emphasize, I didn’t check my source on this. Maybe that kid was throwing up peace signs or whatever. This is a blog I’m writing at a quarter after midnight. I don’t write for the New York Times. If I’m wrong, please, do feel free to call me out.

This is a hairbrained theory and completely speculation:

A picture is worth a thousand words. Or so they say. Simply taking a picture of something is to say “Here’s a thing that I find remotely interesting. Look at the thing. Ain’t it neat”? Which, in the context of that girl at Auschwitz, would be a ruined building, all of those shoes that it’s kind of famous for, the gas chambers(if they have them there still. I forget), and of course, the infamous gates; “Arbeit Macht Frei”. Taking a selfie with these things adds a human element to them. Without you, they’re images on a phone and while, yes, you were there because someone had to have taken the picture, I feel like there’s kind of a disconnect. With a selfie, you’re adding yourself(obviously) into the frame of reference. Like, “Yep. That’s me standing next to a pile of shoes. It was as tall as my waist and about three of me wide and I remember it smelled of pine and old building”.I dunno. This whole example went over a lot better in my head.

Anyway, moving on.

If I haven’t lost you yet, this is where the whole point I’m trying to drive home is:

I read somewhere on the internet to pay attention to people what photograph because that’s what they fear losing the most.

That being said, I’m absolutely terrified of losing my dog, just about every meal I’ve ever eaten, a good deal of beer/other adult-type beverages, my guitars, and my good friends. And all that being said, yea, that’s all absolutely true. I still think about that slice of pizza from Downtown Disney…

Anyway, the point is is that our generation is known for taking selfies. That’s our thing. We’re all stereotyped by that. Because let’s be real here, if you’re between the ages of like, five and 30-something I’m willing to be my life savings(a value of ~$80) on the fact that you’ve taken at least A selfie in the span of you being born and right now.
And millenials get called shallow and vane and narcissistic. And yea, there’s some validity in that. We all have that one friend. Or multiple. More than likely multiple.

However, my counter argument is that we’re terrified of losing ourselves.

We’re terrified to lose our youth.

So we hold on to it and try and capture it whenever and wherever we can.
I feel like the majority of those who partake in selfie culture are in that 19-29 bracket. Basically, people born in 1990something or experienced the 90s firsthand. And I feel like in the last two decades they’ve had to grow up the most. Not necessarily grow up as in mature but “grow up” in the sense that the world was changing faster than at any other point in American history and we’ve all had to just deal with it; adapt or die as they say.

Think about it: Up until that point the internet was hardly a thing, books only came in tangible form, college was mostly affordable, and gas was still a buck-something. Then the 90s and 2000s happened an now…literally nothing of what I just said is even remotely true. Technology kind of boomed again and here we are trying to play catch up as best we can.

The kids of the 90s went from playing outside until the streetlights came on like every other generation before them to playing video games and stuff inside, contextually, almost overnight. There’s a whole generation of people that don’t understand that video games didn’t always come in disk form and that cell phones were as big as an actual brick or that Dial Up internet existed or that Facebook and Instagram haven’t been here since the dawn of time.  The way things are now have completely 180’d than how they were when we were growing up.

So here we are: Broke, tired, anxiety-ridden, innovators on the cusp of invention and making the world a better place. At least we’re trying to. You will never be as young as you are now. Every picture of you is you frozen in a place and time that cannot be touched by man or nature or even time.  Not anymore.

Pictures are our form of time travel.  We figured out a way to pause time, at least for an instant, to capture a particular moment that we want to look back on fondly and show other people and when the times they are a’changin’ again we can say things like, “What was I wearing?  Look at how ridiculous my hair is!  Oh, to go back and tell my younger self ‘What are you even doing?'”.

So go. Take your selfies. Preserve your youth. Because sometimes that’s all you have.

Just stop using the fucking dog filter.

Day One

Good evening, reader!  Welcome to the first post of what is sure to be a slew of incomprehensible ramblings, tangents of tangents of tangents, rants, raves, and phallic imagery.  If you’re reading this, you probably know me and, if you know me well, you probably knew that that’s how this intro was going to go verbatim and that I have a tendency to use comma splices because, well, it’s a habit I haven’t shaken since my freshman year of high school.  But to that I say what any other millenial would say to just about 95% of situations:

Fuck it.

For those of you that don’t know, my name is Asa Waggoner.  I’m 24, live in the actual armpit of the great Golden State of California, I have a dog that’s cuter than yours, and I work at a local music store.  I also play in a ska-punk band(unironically) and I’m an amateur stand-up comic.  I’m garbage at just about everything(this included) but I have a good time so the typical millenial sentiment also finds a place here.

So you’re probably asking, “Why in the name of actual literature are you writing here today”?  The answer is simple:  I used to run a blog.  A couple of them actually, off of another “blog”(and I use the term loosely) website known as Tumblr to…a degree of success.  I would write things, post a link to my Facebook, and then people generally liked it.  I just did it for fun or if I had an afternoon to kill and had something on my mind.  “So why not go back?” you ask.  Because, reader, it’s a bit more complicated than that.

Around this time last year I was very involved with this girl who was also very into Tumblr and what I deemed as my “Rant” blog became a more personal blog.  We would share pictures, have conversations, tag eachother in things that we would know the other would want to see or show them later, that kind of thing.  There was about a solid year of this, nonstop.  Fast forward:  We break up, I stop writing, nor do I even have any desire to write.  I had spent the last 365 days building this internet monument, this testament, my own Mausoleum of Halicarnassus to someone that I had loved so dearly and at the end of the day it hurt too much to try to sift through the ruins to get it back to the place it once was.

I tried.

I couldn’t do it.

What I discovered, however, was this interesting feeling.  This longing.  The English language doesn’t have a word for it.  But in Portuguese there’s a word, “saudades”, which describes a desire or a want to go and relive a certain period or to just go back to another time.

Every picture of you is a picture of your past.  A moment in time that, maybe it meant something, maybe it didn’t.  Maybe life was good, maybe it wasn’t.  But regardless of what it makes you feel looking at a picture makes you realize how much time has passed and what you were going through and where you were.  And the weird thing was as I was watching my relationship unfurl in front of me in reverse I discovered that everything took on this Benjamin Button kind of quality. At first, everything was awful and then it slowly, slowly got better.  Until there’s a point where everything seems  whimsical and carefree and magical like you have the whole world in front of you because you’re five again and that’s just what being five meant:  That everything was beautiful and that nothing could ever hurt.

And then there’s a point where that doesn’t exist.

You get to the point where you never met that person and everything is just okay and ordinary.

And that’s where I am.

Day one.