Two rapscallions from Birmingham, UK, step out into the wilds of New York. Will they tame the lion of Authenticity? Will they shoot the rhino of wildly inappropriate metaphor? Find out here!
Olly- You don't particularly like anti-folk, what's less authentic than writing music in a style you don't love? But then again, I don't really know anything. About anything.
I like the song though, you sound like twee English boys singing 'Islands' songs!
Considering anti-folk is *defined* by irony, this is where it gets very fucking confusing. I wrote a much longer comment than this but I had to just delete it because I was completely failing to make a real point ... Now I'm just losing my post-modern marbles.
Irony’s a funny one. Incidentally, I really like this, from the footnotes of ‘a heartbreaking work of staggering genius’ by Dave Eggers.
‘Irony:
Sample 1: Benji was run over by a bus. Isn’t that ironic? No: That is not ironic. That is unfortunate, but it is not ironic.
Sample 2: It was a bright and sunny day when Benji was run over by a bus. Ironic, no? NO: that is not irony. It is an instance of dissonance between weather and tragedy.
Sample 3: It is ironic that Benji was on his way to the vet when he was run over by a bus. NO: That is not irony. That is a coincidence that might be called eerie.
Sample 4: It is ironic that Benji was run over on the same day he misused the word ironic. NO: This is again a coincidence. It is wonderfully appropriate that he was run over on this day, deserving as he was of punishment, but it is not ironic.
Sample 5: It is ironic that on the side of the bus that ran over Benji was an advertisement for 'the late show with David Letterman', a show which many often consider ironic. Oh, Oh: No, No.’ (page 33)
…
Sample 6: Olly makes anti-folk music even though he doesn’t really like anti-folk music. No: Not ironic, only silly.
Not ironic that Olly makes anti-folk music when he doesn't like anti-folk music, more the fact that anti-folk is centred around irony and this whole failing horribly but wanting to except not wanting to thing thus seems anti-folk in its own right, if you treat anti-folk as a cultural phenomena instead of just a scene, but as I got told by my friend Joe (the folky guy from Bournville), "IT'S NOT MEANT TO BE PICKED APART!" and picking things apart is something I can't keep myself from doing and maybe all I'm doing is destroying the authenticity of anti-folk by dissecting it ad nauseum...? But it doesn't matter, because it's not my crisis... (._.)
EDIT PS: I'm watching All About My Mother and coincidentally this line just appeared: "It costs a lot to be authentic ... and one can't be stingy with these things because you are more authentic the more you resemble what you've dreamed of being." And that's nice because to say that authenticity can be engineered is kind of an optimistic viewpoint. Yeah.
6 comments:
Will-I love your head dancing!
Olly- You don't particularly like anti-folk, what's less authentic than writing music in a style you don't love? But then again, I don't really know anything. About anything.
I like the song though, you sound like twee English boys singing 'Islands' songs!
Considering anti-folk is *defined* by irony, this is where it gets very fucking confusing. I wrote a much longer comment than this but I had to just delete it because I was completely failing to make a real point ... Now I'm just losing my post-modern marbles.
Irony’s a funny one. Incidentally, I really like this, from the footnotes of ‘a heartbreaking work of staggering genius’ by Dave Eggers.
‘Irony:
Sample 1: Benji was run over by a bus. Isn’t that ironic?
No: That is not ironic. That is unfortunate, but it is not ironic.
Sample 2: It was a bright and sunny day when Benji was run over by a bus. Ironic, no?
NO: that is not irony. It is an instance of dissonance between weather and tragedy.
Sample 3: It is ironic that Benji was on his way to the vet when he was run over by a bus.
NO: That is not irony. That is a coincidence that might be called eerie.
Sample 4: It is ironic that Benji was run over on the same day he misused the word ironic.
NO: This is again a coincidence. It is wonderfully appropriate that he was run over on this day, deserving as he was of punishment, but it is not ironic.
Sample 5: It is ironic that on the side of the bus that ran over Benji was an advertisement for 'the late show with David Letterman', a show which many often consider ironic.
Oh, Oh: No, No.’ (page 33)
…
Sample 6: Olly makes anti-folk music even though he doesn’t really like anti-folk music.
No: Not ironic, only silly.
I do have a lot of time on my hands...
xxx
Not ironic that Olly makes anti-folk music when he doesn't like anti-folk music, more the fact that anti-folk is centred around irony and this whole failing horribly but wanting to except not wanting to thing thus seems anti-folk in its own right, if you treat anti-folk as a cultural phenomena instead of just a scene, but as I got told by my friend Joe (the folky guy from Bournville), "IT'S NOT MEANT TO BE PICKED APART!" and picking things apart is something I can't keep myself from doing and maybe all I'm doing is destroying the authenticity of anti-folk by dissecting it ad nauseum...? But it doesn't matter, because it's not my crisis... (._.)
EDIT PS: I'm watching All About My Mother and coincidentally this line just appeared: "It costs a lot to be authentic ... and one can't be stingy with these things because you are more authentic the more you resemble what you've dreamed of being." And that's nice because to say that authenticity can be engineered is kind of an optimistic viewpoint. Yeah.
Anne-Marie: Thanks for the lesson, but thankfully this is a simple one.
"This is exactly what we wanted to happen, but we just really didn't want it to happen".
Irony.
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