Bloody
Mother Fucking Asshole
It’s
not an original sentiment, or even an original phrase. It’s
the title of Martha Wainwright’s debut EP, and also
its first song, and that song’s chorus, which is addressed
to her father, singer Loudon Wainwright, who was given to
documenting his family in intimate detail in his songs,
while neglecting them in life. The song is her heartfelt
(and hugely singable-in-the-shower) revenge.
So
yeah, I’m with you on that one, Martha, as I’m
with Sylvia Plath in her famous poem, "Daddy,"
which ends "Daddy daddy, we’re through."
It’s also nice to see someone using "mother fucking"
in its literal rather than metaphorical sense. I admire
that kind of precision. In my own way, I am the queen of
precision — ask any one of my students about my anality.
I am, someone once told me, "a grammar Nazi."
Leaving aside the ridiculous comparison between genocide
and the vexed that/which question, it’s true. I am
a rule-breaker, but I think that you need to know the rules
in order to break them effectively. You have to know about
the hottest party in town in order for your non-appearance
to mean something.
Among
people who like me rather more than my students do, I am
known as a social organiser. Despite having five (count
‘em) part-time jobs, and a pesky thesis to boot, I
am knowledge central when it comes to what’s on in
Toronto. It’s partially coming from London, where event
knowledge osmosis develops to a high degree, part being
a cultural critic, which means that knowing this shit is
my job, and part being bored and having web surfing hard-wired
into my autonomic nervous system (as soon as I’m on
the phone, I’m idly half-reading NOW or the Star or
checking favourite artists’ websites). Between university
listservs, work at the Women’s Bookstore (which is,
like, Planet Flyer) and having friends in various artsy
worlds in the city, I usually feel confident that I know
whassup, and that I can induce at least one other person
to cruise along to any given event with me.
This
afternoon was a case in point. I went with a friend to the
Visible Cities conference at the Drake, and she was so glad
I’d told her about it, she bought me a chai. The room
was full of Important People: profs from the department
where I teach; Irshad Manji; Ydessa Hendelez. Le tout
Toronto. As ever. Such is the way of the Drake. Which
is why I’m so pissed off that the two shows I’ve
most wanted to see in recent months — Sri Lankan-born
British MC M.I.A. and the aforementioned Wainwright fille
— have both been completely fucking sold out before
I heard about them, because they were at the Drake.
OK,
I’m bitter. I admit this. I ran from work to Sunrise
Records on Friday (when I saw the listing) to get a ticket
for Martha, despite my hatred for Ticketmaster, and then
I called Soundscapes and they said they didn’t have
any more tickets, then that they did, then that they didn’t.
Emotional rollercoaster, much? Her album isn’t even
out yet. I just tripped over her EP because of its title
at Soundscapes, and I’ve been checking her website
regularly for a Toronto gig. So what the hell?
Looking
at it rationally in the cool halogen desk lamp glow of Sunday
evening, I have a theory: hipsters. Fucken hipsters, man.
It’s not like they care who’s playing, they just
want to be seen. Such is the Toronto way. My friend Nathan
and I estimated that about 85% of the people lining up for
Jem Cohen’s amazing, beautiful film Chain, which
opened the Images festival on Thursday night, were there
because it was an opening gala, not because they knew anything
about the film or film-maker. [I tried to find a website
for this film, but it’s not that kind of film. It’s
kind of anti-globalisation. And it’s amazing, you’ll
have to take my word for it, because it ain’t never
gonna get distribution].
I
wonder if the queuing hipsters in their American Apparel
T-shirts and matt+nat bags found that they had learnt anything
from the film when they went back to their condos after
schmoozing at the gala party at the Mod Club? I see their
conversations going something like this: "Thank god
we don’t live in those brand-name wastelands and have
to eat homogenised junk food. Anyone want to order in sushi?"
"Yeah, I’m just gonna charge up my cellphone,
I took so much video on it today of my friends cavorting
pretentiously that the battery’s flat." They would
have seen the film as a devastating discourse on the ugliness
of poverty and the 9 to 5 rat race, a critique of those
in thrall to the mall, rather than seeing that their place
on the food chain only allows them to avoid being rats (both
mall and race) because they control the rats. Immigrant
sweatshops (like the Neilson factory) become condo buildings,
their "authentic" history a selling point. But
that’s the Drake all over, right? The gentrification
of neighbourhoods begins with artists in search of low rents,
who are followed by hipsters in search of low-rent artists,
followed by $20 martinis in search of hipsters in low-cut
pants.
The
Drake even has "ironic" parody hipster gingerbread
men (and women). They know how up themselves they are, and
they think it’s funny. I think it’s funny, too,
because it’s the perfect opportunity to dismember a
hipster, from Italian shoes to stubbly chin. And it’s
not because I want to be one (for so too runs the argument
about overpowering fathers and disgruntled daughters, ever
since Freud), it’s because the bloody mother fucking
expensive vintage distressed hair tiny cellphone tinier
handbag artist slash trustafarian west queen west yoga whore
complicit in everything they claim to despise because they
can afford to be assholes take over everything I care about
and fuck it up. And I hate that I need to be like them because
I like what they want to have.
he