I'd like to take a moment to discuss some thoughts on authenticity. Not long ago, I read a phenomenal article about Kurt Cobain and his death. I'm not sure when it was written, but it had less to do with Kurt and Courtney and more to do with Neil Young and what "art" is. The thesis, and one which I find compelling, was that Kurt's need to remain true and authentic in a world which wanted to distribute him, created the internal conflict which led to his suicide (I am not going to tread down the conspiracy path at this point).

There was a time, I'm sure most of you I know remember growing up with it, where to be authentic meant to disdain commercial success. It was an era where the only things we talked about were ironic, and where sarcasm was one of the highest forms of humor. I remember that it made us feel smarter, elevated above the sentimentality which was so relentlessly marketed at us. In order to maintain our sense of choice, our power over our actions, was to scoff at emotions which were not dark and brooding, and to dismiss anyone who did not project malaise. I was a teenager at the time, and therefore stupid by definition, so I suspect my recollections are filled-in by hyperbole and scenes from movies. But such recollections fit with this thesis, and I had this view confirmed when I was looking over the dust cover for my vinyl copy of The Black Keys' The Big Come Up,

"For the past twenty years we've been living in a world of irony that has made it hard to access the true soul and grit of trembling guitar lines, aching voices, and heart pounding beats."

Irony. Man, it's a bitch, and I for one believe that it's a governing law of the universe. From that 2002 album comes this plea for genuine emotion and connection. These were the hallmarks of many genres which have been mulched up into today's top 40, but none so aggressively as folk music. The need to be authentic seems to find its roots in the folk-rock explosion of the 60's, which does bring us full circle to Neil Young. And if you know the story on how Woodstock 1969 came to be, you'll quickly see the inherent hypocrisy embedded behind the popular narrative. The need to remain authentic eventually drove us away from the manipulations of our emotions, and away from the very expression which must lay at the heart of any act of art or communication. Ironic. All the way down.

But maybe we're living in an era now where things can be different. No longer dependent on the privileged channels of distribution, perhaps it is now more difficult to be so compromised. . . Or, and more likely, we're all already so compromised that "selling out" isn't a thing anymore. I'm not sure, so I'll just leave you with a little something from a genuine artist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mf-BIZumaA