Instead, I propose that we should think of “X-wave” names as, essentially meaning “operating as if X is true or hegemonic.” So “synthwave” is “operating as if synthwave is hegemonic”, or — to put it in less theory nerd terms — music from an imagined alternate history where Grunge and Rap never displaced New Wave. Ergo “Satanwave” is “operating as if the satanic panic were true.”
Read MoreLet us look at nostalgia itself, because nostalgia is what we’re taking aim at here. The pain of homecoming. Let us take a more medical or therapeutic approach. If we view being a Nostalgiac as a bad thing, what is the treatment for it? What is the plan of action for rehabilitation?
Read MoreHumans generally look for patterns. It’s one of the things we’re good at, as a species: finding patterns in things, even when they’re not there. So it’s not particularly surprising that we look to the past to try to figure out what the fuck is going on: what is the pattern at work here?
Read MoreThe past thirty years has been quite a ride: in the 1990s, one of the biggest phenomena on television was the X-Files, which wrestled with the hidden weirdness of the 20th century (mostly in the form of aliens.) At the core of the UFO mythos was a nominally apolitical distrust of authority – the government was hiding something from us. They were hiding the truth. Of course, much of this distrust was coupled with (the publicly disavowed) white supremacist ideology. This gave us what could be called the Interbellum Consensus, sitting as it does between the Cold War and the War on Terror: the UFOlogical Weird and the Militiaman Hauntological.
Read MoreI’m going to love “The Helm of Ned Kelly” until the day I die, because I would never have thought to equate the legend of Taliesin with the history of an Australian bushranger, and I’m still not 100% certain on the nature of the correspondence, but I still feel in my bones that the correspondence is there and that it has a value to it.
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