***
Communities disintegrate often not from ideological disagreements, but from a slow seepage outward of participants. The leak starts with a tiny rip in the fabric and spreads into a gaping fissure, social atomization. In the early Pietistic woodland communes of 17th century America charismatic millenarian leaders would often predict dates for the end of the world. When the end didn’t come, it was only a matter of time before their communes became abandoned ghost towns. There comes a time when people ultimately weigh the advantages of ‘community’ up against its shortcomings and frustrations, and either divest themselves completely or renew their faith in the endeavor. Punk communities have such a poor retention rate for people aging into their late 20s and 30s because of a diminishing rate of returns—to be a part of it, one must continue to participate actively within the framework of a narrowly-defined lifestyle and continually show up to the persistent cultural and social activities, which begin to feel more and more obligatory. In the end, punk scenes disintegrate like any other social clique—people are let down by their peers, develop other interests, and begin to see the world through a wider-lens. They shift away from social milieus to more stable affairs like careers, marriages, or law school that make them feel alienated from the critical vanguard that make up what is considered ‘the scene.’ In a small incestuous subculture that defines itself by a moral interpretation of its predecessors, there is a constant back-and-forth tug of war between the mores of ‘the world’ and the mores of the community, which are often the inverse of the status quo. In this battle of lifestyle and ideas, ‘the world’, insidious as it is, often wins out—as they get older, many people prefer reading The New Yorker to some 18-year-old’s rants about eating food out of a garbage can in a photocopied zine. In this rhythmic, undulating digestion, the smaller thing is usually poached out and subsumed by the larger thing. Even the most well-hidden and reclusive cultures are eventually sought out by anthropologists and journalists, documented, publicized, and made consumable as image. To unravel a moral community all it takes is the transgression of one member of the sect—whether their sin is eating meat, signing a major label contract, or working within an established organization. This serves to legitimize and open that vista of possibility for the others. In his story “Worms”, Cometbus provided a parable for this: “For fifteen years the birds had hunted us down. They had done everything they could to kill our culture, including appropriate and water down every aspect of it that they could. Now they saw the exposure we had been getting and suddenly they came around and said they were very interested in us. What they meant was that they had stolen everything they could from us and now there was nothing left to steal from us but us.”
The author’s convictions bring to mind questions of revolutionary purity—after some perfect punk virtue is established, what next? It would seem that, like all revolutionary groups, the community could only turn inward on itself in a continual kind of self-cleansing and weeding out of ‘the normal’ within its ranks.
***
In one of the more recent novella-length issues of his zine, Cometbus #52: The Spirit of St. Louis, the longtime Cometbus reader notices that something has changed. For one thing, the narrative is noticeably fictional, whereas in the past it has been ambigous. There is no longer much of a literary character of the author, nor a hopeless romantic spin on the stories that make the world seem beautiful and filled with wonder. In The Spirit of St. Louis, Cometbus charts the decline of a fictional St. Louis punk scene—from the hope of its inception to the avalanche of bitterness that follows. Cometbus’s doomed lumpen punks are worn down by daily poverty, and the impinging forces of gentrification. Sheila is hit by a bike on her car, Spike wakes up with his apartment on fire. The only two good bars in St. Louis burn down and then are redeveloped. Pets die and one by one people get married and move away or disappear. This progression should be familiar to anyone who’s ever tried to stick it out in a second or third tier American city or a college town with an ephemeral and transient student population. The characters, one by one, shelve their idealistic hopes for community in favor of more realistic options. Gone are the excitable Greyhound trips, the love stories in a dumpster and bottomless cups of coffee in lonely nowhere diners, replaced by a multi-character narrative set in one geographic place. In The Spirit of St. Louis, there is the feeling of exhale, an unclenching of the synaptic stress muscles, as the author explores the kind of seeping bitterness of a life devoted to youth culture. In Cometbus #52, he steps back and assumes a more distant, shadowy author-reporter narrative voice. This has led to more journalistic/anthropological issues of Cometbus, such as Cometbus #51: The Loneliness of the Electric Menorah, where the history of Berkeley’s independent bookstore scene is dug from the archives, or Cometbus #46: The Dead End, a collection of interviews with the workers of a collectively run café in Minneapolis. These issues have a noticeable allure and interest, but are certainly less enthused than the younger, more caffeinated first-person approach—what originally captured the Cometbus readership was the image of Cometbus himself tromping around alone—his manic cross country trips, his long walks, his lonely Cape Cod squats. Blissfully lonely diaries like: “This is my new office, the bowling alley with twenty-five cent coffee only two blocks from my house. Before I moved here, my old office was the ice skating rink with seventy-five cent coffee. There was something really rad about spending a nice sunny day writing and swilling shitty coffee inside an ice skating rink.”
12 responses
(Warning: this is very long!)
I was raised to love, appreciate, and look for whatever was weird and eccentric. If no one had ever heard of something, or the only people who had heard of it were unhirable, angsty, and passionate, it was worth checking out.
I’m a part of the facebook generation, but I’ve made a conscious decision not to be a part of it. I still don’t have a facebook account, and the choice, for me, isn’t so much a political one as it is a social one. If I care about you or want to tell you something exciting that has happened in my life, I’ll write you a heartfelt letter, (or email) rather than a ‘status update.’ If I want to ‘network’ with you, which really, to me, means meet you and bounce ideas off your head, I’ll go to an event that you’re sponsoring, rather than leave a comment on your wall.
As a part of this facebook generation, I get to choose what form of media works for me and how I want to communicate with people.
I went to college in the middle of nowhere in Vermont. There was no TV or cellphone reception. In a town of 1000, the internet connection was laughable. You couldn’t download or upload shit. The best and fastest way to get information was through books, magazines, and journals- yes, PRINT. This was in 2004.
In 2005, on a trip back home to California, I picked up my first Cometbus zine. I’d been a part of the punk scene, or whatever you’d like to call the people who were living in a post-punk generation but still tried to live by Fugazi’s code of ethics. I was one of those straight-edge, vegetarian, thrift store wearing, activist types that liked the solidarity of feeling different from everyone else. But, living in a place as isolated as Vermont, the last thing I was looking for was isolation, and instead I looked for connection.
I found that in Cometbus, and I don’t think that is a unique experience, or something that is ‘out of date.’ (sorry for being so quote happy in this post) Think of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It is rooted in a strong sense of time and space, the characters are specific to that generation, and yet, we all know someone like Holly Golightly. We all know an overly ambitious girl who can charm the pants off men, and is very, very lost. That doesn’t make Breakfast at Tiffany’s outdated.
With Cometbus, I think that we’ve all been members of a community that we grew out of. If you think or have recently experienced a heart-palpitation, you’ve been disappointed by the government, haven’t felt that marketers or advertisers have known anything about you, and have felt disenfranchised from a mass culture that is more interested in the Kardashians than anything that you’ve ever read, heard, or watched that left a permanent impression on you. You’ve probably experienced unemployment, questioned the value of your education or degree, and do not appreciate the forward, technological trajectory that turns people into macs and pcs.
Long story long, I think that this article on Cometbus is absolutely fantastic, but I disagree that one day historians, anthropologists, and cultural excavators will look at Cometbus, laugh, and put his zines back on the shelf. Instead, they will ask, why were only 12,000 copies of his zines made, when his work so accurately conveys the frustrations of the Americans of this generation. And then, they will be onto something.
Aaron,
This is an outstanding, outstanding article. Love and clarity. Keep writing and I’ll keep reading. Hope to see you around.
Sincerely,
James
Also, the hands of Cometbus — what a detail. So menacing and lovely.
really loved this essay- beautifully written and insightful and bursting with key questions about what cometbus means/represents in 2010
it’s super interesting to consider the “self-consciousness” of the current punk/zine/underground culture you pointed out, manifested clearly in us buying photocopied zines instead of reading a blog for free or buying a record from a local store instead of downloading it, etc, since these used to be necessary actions to take if you wanted the text/music but now are sort of anachronistic and self-consciously hearkening back to the 80’s or 90’s before the internet.
ditto your points about fliering and the culture of show-promotion. it’s interesting that today, when it’s easier and more effective to promote a show on facebook/myspace/twitter, it seems like the music community still puts a huge value on flier design by local artists or designing DIY or hardcore-style photocopied fliers, even if the fliers themselves are viewed only as an image online 99% of the time, which is cool, and also another somewhat romanticization of the past when fliers were actually used as fliers
it’ll be cool to see if in a few decades we’ll be looking back on the days of touring schedules on myspace and “friend requests” from new bands as a sort of golden age of 2000’s-era underground rock/culture
thanks for the awesome essay and viva cometbus!
Aaron, I’m hardly surprised that you’ve written one of the finest pieces on one of my favorite writers of all time. Thanks for this!
YES!! such a blast from the past for me… i am so glad he’s still doing this, and in the same classic style, too.
Thanks for all the nice comments.
Michelle–Just a note, By 21st century print sales standards, 12,000 copies is actually a pretty impressive figure. More so given that there has been no publicity or PR team behind him, very few reviews (outside of the predictable punk publications) and almost no self-pimping internet presence.
Yes! A story on the interwebs about one of my very very (did I say very?) very favorite writers Aaron Cometbus, and written by one of my new favorite writers Aaron Lake Smith.
ALS – you make some extremely subtle points in your article about AC’s writing that nobody has ever brought out before in all the crap I have ever read about AC. Loved the lyrics by the Abe Froman band about an inferiority complex w.r.t. AC’s writing – something I have felt for a long time and know the “ingrained guilt” that comes with being a fan of his work.
You note “Cometbus is socially reclusive” which was the first time I had ever read that about him. I had an awesomely ego-crushing failed attempt to chat with him which makes it difficult for me to reconcile the breezy, well-traveled AC of his writing with the man I attempted to meet in person – whom I later saw at another event where I swear I saw him try to fold his 6 foot plus frame behind a NYC street sign pole to avoid being recognized.
Well said about “seepage” outward of a scene (punk or any other) – the internal struggle remains for many of us mid-lifers who are reading both the New Yorker and photocopied zines. Now let me print your piece out so I can read it properly and not on this computer screen. Long live ink and paper.
Thank you for writing this, and writing it so well.
Kind regards, Abbey
Great work. Ode to the analog. “This luddite, lo-fi aesthetic, borne of necessity, is now consciously being reproduced by Internet-era zine writers who romanticize the analog.” It’s refreshing to see Cometbus discussed in this context.
I saw something new in The Spirit of St. Louis, too.
“Long walks, lonely diners, and late nights working at the copy shop filled the pages. Tropes like punk love and too much coffee and long trips on the Greyhound bus reigned supreme.”
Sounds like Big Hands….
Seriously good article. Absolutely hit the nail on the head:
“So powerful is the effect of the long-running zine, that there is today an entire generation of people who read it in their malleable adolescence and now can’t help but view their own lives through Cometbus-colored glasses.”
Does Aaron know about this article though? What will he think?
hello, from pensacola
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