Alan Hanson

I promise to keep this brief (or at least try):

So I’m moving to New York tomorrow morning. I’m anxious, I’m scared, I’m excited, and I’m ready (I think, I hope). I have one million feelings about Los Angeles and leaving it and joining its largest rival but those are feelings that are too specific to just me and who needs the umpteenth tl:dr navel-gazing “I’m leaving LA, I’m joining New York” blog post? My love letter to Los Angeles will be a perpetual draft I will write every single day I get to stay on this earth. It’s home in so many ways and the people here are so wonderful that it breaks my heart into three-dillion microscopic pieces just attempting to wrap my head around it all. Everyone knows I love this city like a family member and everyone who lives here that I love already knows how much I care.

But I did want to say something about taking chances and the soft braveries I’d like to believe still exist in a generally easy and calm generation. Someone wrote something several months ago about how the simple act of asking someone out in public is a truly brave moment because it’s honest and accepting of the numerous ways it could go wrong. And I think that’s true and great. Am I moving to New York because there are more job opportunities and I can live without a vehicle and to fux with the career rut I’ve been stuck in out here? Yes. Am I also moving across the country for love? Hell yes.

And, as many people have timidly expressed, could things potentially go south—financially, mental health-wise, relationship-wise? Yes. Everything can be fucked with. But I’d rather live my life trying and believing in optimism and love and all the other wonderful things that exist in this silly world to balance out all the obscene horrors. 

I’m not the most pragmatic person in the world. I’m down to gamble and wing it, for the most part. But there is a very, very small village in my mind’s landscape occupied by roaring Pragmatic Pagans—they’re wild creatures who occasionally pop into the foreground and try to squash my optimism for chance and randomness. Not often, but sometimes, their moon howling parties remind me to briefly tour their allotted zone in my pink-tissued fake world. Most of that world is occupied by a soft suburban romanticism. When I visit them it is only brief, flighty tourism, for I could never live there, there in that beautifully prepared and calculated land of pragmatism because truth be told, I’m just not cool enough. For twenty-six years I have been far too romantic to be ultimately cool. And I thank my my gushing, soft, emotional zones for their openness and their tenderness and I thank the fading beam of youth, of which I will hide behind, for its ability to make synonyms of stupidity and bravery. And I will hope with all my dusted bones that moving 3,000 miles from home—from family, from the desert-baked basin of myself with Mojave air forever filling my cells—for love (for love!) will fall under the category of bravery, simultaneously winking at the notion that it wouldn’t exist without at least a dash of the stupidity category. O, how I can sleep with that rationalization! A well-rested, possibly brave and definitely dicey, sleep with wild dreams of exploration and love and growth rather than the dreamless log-like slumber of a comfortable, sure-footed fool, calculated and cowardly. 

And here I begin, like a screaming come across the sky. Los Angeles, I fucking love you.

Thanks for all the greatness, you beautiful friends who continue your own LA stories.

Last night I went to the Bootleg Theater with some friends for a free Random Access Memories listening party. Objectively, it’s kind of a silly event—especially for someone who isn’t a die-hard Daft Punk fan. Regardless, I thought it could at least be a fun, energetic atmosphere to hang out with some friends in and drink some beers while listening to a moderately enjoyable and mysteriously monumental album outside of my bedroom.

The “party” was painfully lame. It was supposed to begin at 11 but they waited until 11 to let anyone in. As we passed the bouncer we were offered Daft Punk masks, declined, and headed straight to the bar. Most of the audience were dressed in a weird amalgamation of urban and midwestern rave-wear and were already peaking their MDMA trips and chewing their sweat slicked cheeks. For some reason, the venue decided to have so-called DJs play ass-grade techno bullshit for the first hour. Maybe they thought, “if we serve them White Castle now, the Olive Garden entree to come will totally blow their fucking minds.” Everyone seemed to be okay with this. We were not.

As we waited for RAM to come on I couldn’t help thinking how utterly ridiculous it was to come to this bar and buy drinks and listen to an album I’ve already heard that I wasn’t crazy about by a band I might not “get” with a bunch of people I wouldn’t want to hang out with in any capacity. I’m fine with being alone in that, meaning if Daft Punk were my favorite band then I could vibe on these people and this atmosphere—if there were an event for, say, a Crooked Rain anniversary listening party, I would go to that and be stoked to be with other Pavement fans (for the most part; a lot of Pavement fans are weird bros who wear New Balances to formal events).

ANYWAY, the point of this long intro is that we left before they even played the fucking album and my mind started doing somersaults for the rest of the evening about many silly but nagging ideas:

• The only reasons I could come up with for attending said event were: a) I’m a die-hard Daft Punk fan, b) I’m a fan of drugs and I happened to have drugs, or c) I’m trying to get laid. Since I fell into zero of those categories, I had no business attending in the first place.
• Daft Punk fans are kind of nerdy and mostly sweaty dudes.
• Why did I even download Random Access Memories last week? The answer is twofold and disgusting: 1. I wanted to be in the loop. If everyone is going to listen to and thus talk about a thing then I should probably hear that thing so I can talk about that thing when others do. Which is fucking stupid! That’s not why I want to listen to music or talk about music. And it seems that’s most of why we listen to a lot of things lately. I didn’t seek it out because I was a fan or interested in how it’d make me feel or anything like that—I listened to it just to say that I did. 2. The pop culture world has been hammering into me that Daft Punk is important and Daft Punk is brilliant. They have been shitting those ideas down my throat for years now and I caved and gave in and went along with it because, like, whatever man. That really depressed me. They have certain songs that are fucking nuts, just fucking excellent pieces of modern music that I would be ultimately bummed if they were not to exist. But overall they don’t have a large affect on me and most people I know seem to passively like them or lionize them because they were told to. I couldn’t help but think I was being sold something in a really corporately icky way. As if they were the robotic face of modern capitalization of culture and we were all duped. It felt very inauthentic thinking about who I thought I was as a music fan, going to this supposedly cool event for a nutso cool album release, while somewhere else some asshole 40 year old in Silicon Valley is connecting his Zune to his SUV and totally jamming out in his Native American patterned pullover from Urban Outfitters. Which brings me to the next point of
• who the fuck cares? But at the same time, you know, I do, kind of. There’s something to be said about holding on to the idea of not “selling out.” And I’m not saying Daft Punk are “sell outs” even though they have sold me GAP jeans before. I guess this sounds a bit like the guy who doesn’t want his favorite band to get famous because he was the first to like them; they were his special thing. But it’s irksome to see bastions of the culture you aligned yourself with turn into gargantuan profit fueled monsters. Coachella is bloated and your mom is going next year. SXSW is brought to you by every single brand you have ever heard of. There’s got to be a line somewhere, right? I’m very, very pleased about The Orwells success. And I want those guys to get huge and make money with their art because that’s the ideal. Then again, I want to vomit at an H&M commercial using their song to showcase a clothing line that is modeled after music festival apparel to sell you pre-torn flannel and mass-printed MC5 tank-tops. Like, here’s your culture, will that be cash or credit? LOLOLOLOL @ me rn. 
• And what is the point of discussing any of this? Isn’t it all completely subjective? Why do I even write about music, ever? Why does it matter what I think is cool and what is being co-opted as such? It changes from every city and scene, too. Do I think it’s cool that Bleached is in a contest to get their video on MTV? No. Is some kid in Ponca City, Oklahoma insanely cool because she is the only one in her high school who knows who Bleached is? Yes.
• Maybe I should stop writing about music forever. 
• Really.
• Being swarmed by these thoughts, standing in Cha Cha, I couldn’t help but think that Cha Cha felt really fucking uncool lately. All of Echo Park and Silver Lake feeling just so wrung out of anything original or worthwhile. I mean, it’s been a long time coming but can a neighborhood jump the shark officially? And did The Rolling Stones playing the Echoplex mark that moment?
• God, I sound like an old. I’ve never felt old in my life. Not once. Always too young—too young of a face, too young ideas, just a fucking baby bumping into things constantly, this guy. But now here I am shaking a stick at the popularity of bands and neighborhoods. 
• So what would pass my litmus test?
• I don’t even know! That makes it all so stupid and more perplexing to me! Who is even cool? Do Vampire Weekend get a pass because they stayed who they were or is that I just like them a lot or is it that they just put out an excellent fucking album? Would I have had these same thoughts if Random Access Memories spoke to me as did Modern Vampires?
• Where are the punnnnkkkkkkkkkssssssssssuuuughhhhhhhh
• Hi Kanye?
• Every music publication sucks dick and I couldn’t name you five music writers off the top of my head that I currently get geeked about which means the rest is all just opinion from faceless non-characters so why the fuck should I add to the dulling whir?
• I quit.
• I quit.
• I quit.
• This is the stupidest post I have ever written.