You know I ran into someone this weekend who I used to joke about a lot. One of those people who is everywhere at all times but nobody really knows what their job is. And yet everyone knows them. This guy works at a major record label. I used to see him everywhere. Behind every velvet rope, at every VIP bar, on the side of every major festival stage, in every single green room, everywhere. You’re talking to Dua Lipa after she comes offstage and he’s there, and she goes “Oh yeah, everyone knows [name of person].” That guy. One year I actually managed to get into an area of Coachella that he couldn’t get access to (catering), and I remember him asking me multiple times how I managed to pull it off and if I could get him in. (Getting in places I wasn’t supposed to be in was my special skill, and I wasn’t going to share it).
Anyway he saw me at a coffee shop this weekend, and pointed at me, using my full name as only people who work in egocentric environments do, and I briefly felt like I was in my body four years ago and nothing had changed. I don’t really know how to describe the sort of caricature-like mannerisms of people who have spent too long in the entertainment industry, but they behave like peacocks in the wild, just strutting around, pointing and winking at people they “know” (ie, have had small talk with repeatedly for several decades) before bear-hugging them like we’re all one big family. As familial as - say - the mafia. Nobody can be trusted as far as you can throw them.
So the scene plays out. The omg what are you doing here look that comes across his face, before the pointing-winking “Eve fucking Barlow” etc, and the come-here-give-me-a-big-hug. And I engage in a charade I thought I had long forgotten, and he feigned total surprise and ignorance about, you know, my lack of participation in our now former mutual industry, despite following me on all social media platforms, and never engaging. “What are you up to these days?! You good? You doing well?” Me: Well, you know, I’m fighting the war of words, and I got cancelled, and Jewish people are experiencing a second Holocaust so…. “Oh yeah, man, it’s rough. Shit. Yeah you know, it’s just a dark time and things are really dark and so I’m just trying to concentrate on spending it with my friends, but shit’s rough, dude, like whoa, I don’t know any more.”
And as pathetic as this exchange was, when he gave me the second bear hug, I actually felt pain in him. It felt sad. Really sad. Because it’s PATHETIC. And I think he knew it. And who wants to live in a playground of pretend at a profound time when the sands of history are truly shifting. I will say this; the last thing I would find purpose in at this current juncture is standing at the back of a venue watching another band with a nauesating name and a new EP and nothing to say about any of it, besides: “well we believe that nobody is truly free until everyone is free, so yeh.” Cue Pitchfork with a 7.8 review: “LA punk quartet The Staplers finally locate where liberation meets the post-post grunge era.”
I’m so glad I’m not doing that any more. Now it feels meaningless. There was a time and a place. It was called - my twenties. I loved it. And it loved me. Gigging, shooting, interviewing, pontificating, living. Living. I had offices all over London, and then all over LA. The Fonda, The Troubadour, The Palladium, The Wiltern, The Echo/Echoplex, The Satellite, The Forum, The El Rey, The Teragram, The Greek, The Bowl… I could go on. Every night I’d be at one of them. Every single night.
I have boxes of old ticket stubs and wristbands that I kept. I’ve never thrown a gig ticket out. I have some 3,000 tickets in boxes. I was everywhere and nowhere, living it all up and then writing it all down. I was part of the scene. I often made the scene. I could guarantee entry to the scene, and often exit from it, but I rarely flexed that muscle. It was as shallow as a bathroom sink, but it was so much fun, my god. And I loved the music. As long as the music was good, I was good. I was great. I was on a plane every week, going to another town, another festival, another tour bus, another film set, another whatever it was this time. Writing about culture. Writing about why people make art and mess and noise and rubbish.
It was great but it was artifice. It was nonsense. And it would have gone on and on, and life would have just evaporated in the process, if there had not been for me personally a day the music died. The day the music died was the day I decided to become a person with a serious voice. And you know what the saddest thing of all is? These two things shouldn’t be in conflict with one another. There is no reason that Hollywood – whether it’s film or music or TV or literature or visual art – shouldn’t be a serious place for serious people with serious ideas and serious voices. But it has chosen not to be. Hollywood has chosen to let itself go. The standards have fallen so low, the only stars remaining are the ones decorating the concrete boulevard that people piss and throw up on when they’re stumbling over homeless people on the Walk Of Fame at midnight.
When I run into these old colleagues, I have absolutely nothing to say. I have nothing to say to people in the entertainment industry who complain that this is a rough time. No, sorry. You get no compassion from me. You are presently in a position where you can influence untapped numbers of people. And you have said nothing, because you are not serious about your place in the world. You guys in Hollywood are the ones who can shape the minds of the future. They’re looking to you to do it. And you’re doing nothing. You’re monkeys clapping cymbals. You’re making repeats of old films that have been made five times already. You’re putting out music that seeks to avoid the moment, not define it. You don't get to complain about this being a shit time.
Hollywood has not risen to the occasion of October 7. Not even in the slightest. But it’s not even that part that irks me. It’s the self-destruction of it all. Who is going to tell the story of October 7 if nobody is prepared to speak on it now? There are Jews who run Hollywood, there are Jews who run record labels, there are Jews in all of the arts, and those Jews are saving their bacon to preserve their place in an industry that doesn’t value their lives any more than it values the stories about their lives. This Christmas, the only thing of value in Hollywood is another movie adaptation of Willy fucking Wonka. I couldn’t even tell you what song people are listening to.
And don’t start with me with the strike. The scene has been set years before the strike. This is not about the strike. This is about an industry with diminishing standards, whose star is dwindling, whose talent is weakening, whose integrity and courage is frankly non-existent.
Last week, I was listening to a speaker talking about Jewish people as great storytellers. We are, I think. I know that Jewish people have lived to tell the tale. We have lived to tell the story of people; our people, the people who sought to destroy us and everyone in between.
There’s one hell of a story to be told right now, and everyone should be desperate to tell it. But only the brave and the bold will take on the task, and perhaps we may save this godforsaken dumb town in the process from people whose jobs we can’t even name and who don’t even know how to get free catering at Coachella.
“There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” - George Orwell, 1984 - You're not mad, you're right about all of this. The Goliath is real. Stay bold and hang on.
The emperor has no clothes, and he's been walking around naked throughout human history. Forget religion, skin pigment, class, etc. There are 2 types of humans: those that have evolved to get along and help fellow humans survive, and those that look around to scapegoat their next victim or, like your former colleague, just pretend nothing is happening. I have yet to read or hear of any one of the jabbering "You need to understand the history" prince and princesses, a history they studied in the last 5 minutes, tell me how he or she is going to turn over the family property to the nearest Native American tribe and return to one of his or her ancestral homelands.