Escape.

Based on comments from my last post, I've actually been thinking a lot during the last couple of days about what it means to stay true to one's ideals.

Piotr:

Fuck the greater good. I did this for the money. heh.

Zack:

Yeah. This is totally why I left the Air Force. And partly why I joined the Air Force in the first place. Perhaps I should have gone to the show, there are other priorities at this point, money being one of them. I don't really blame myself for not going, because if I haven't figured out whether I should have gone or not yet, then it's clearly a pretty complicated issue. So, no regrets per se.

I guess the main issue that I'm wrestling with at this point is best summed up by a lyric from an Ani DiFranco song "Not a Pretty Girl":

and generally my generation/
wouldn't be caught dead working for the man/
and generally I agree with them/
trouble is you gotta have yourself an alternate plan

It's past time for me to find an alternate plan.

Dresden Dolls (or how I seemingly betrayed a higher ideal).

The Dresden Dolls were fantastic, as I knew that they would be. (For a full analysis of the show, see my separate post tomorrow in the music section) Their performance was among the best I've seen all year, and yet I felt miserable after seeing the show. Why? Long story.

I originally bought the tickets for a small venue. The Dolls were the opening band, and the headliners (Panic! at the Disco), are a band that I really can't stand, a group of corporate rockers cashing in on the end of a popular trend. Panic! at the Disco is the crusty scum at the bottom of the retro barrel of which the White Stripes and Interpol were the creamy top, retro-pop without any comprehension of the history which it supposedly evokes, an eighteenth generation Xerox copy of an illustrious initial text.

I reasoned that I could suffer paying for the tickets for fourty-five minutes of Cabaret Punked out Dresden Dolls bliss. I justified this expense when the tickets went on sale four months ago because I knew that I would see the Dolls in their native setting: Small Venue. Capital S. Capital V.

Then the tickets sold out, and the venue changed: The Expo center. I could now look forward to a barn with terrible acoustics and a small army of girl-pants wearing fifteen year olds and the girlfriends who had dragged them there. No matter. I would suffer thus to see the Dresden Dolls, and so I did. The show was brilliant. I left immediately after the Dolls' set in order to get to work on time. As their set was ending, Amanda Palmer asked how many of the audience was there to see them, rather than Panic!. A few strangled yells rose from the noisy ocean of pre-pubescent acne in which I was swimming. Palmer then went on to say that anyone interested could leave the show and follow them to a second, small venue Dolls show downtown for a longer set for $10, a show even better than what I had hoped to see in the first place.

Did I follow?

No.

I went to work.

At another time, I would have ditched work and gone straight to the show, no questions asked. Last night, instead of supporting people doing underappreciated work which I respect completely, I decided to go back to work supporting a store in a chain in a corporation in a conglomerate which serves as an outlet for one of only three major food distribution companies in America. I would make the same decision again. I have priorities to which I must now apply my efforts. Make no mistake. This is not the specter of responsibility creeping in. This is not maturation, or age or what-have-you. It's not. Really. Heh.

Still alive.

Yes, I'm still here. Now leave me alone. ( heh. j/k. )

Anyway, I predict that my lull in posting will last for at least one more month, and possibly upwards of a month and a half. For those of you who haven't fallen asleep on me, here's a nice, juicy thought for you, courtesy of Katherine and the New York Times.