livion

The Bourgeoisie Alternative
(my first regular column appearing in print

This is my love letter to an alternative culture, written in a time when the unified feeling of a culture no longer exists.

Alternative subcultures. They were a crucial aspect of industrial civilization in the two previous centuries. They were where industrial civilization went to dream, exploring alternative social strategies but they became extinct.
Extinct?
We started picking them before they could ripen. A certain crucial growing period was lost, as marketing evolved and the mechanisms of recommodification became quicker, more rapacious. Authentic subcultures required backwaters, and time, and there are no more backwaters - William Gibson

Ill drink to that. And because of this, we take from the mainstream and go underground to construct our own version. We create a new culture that we would like to live in, as opposed to the one we were sold into. Is the culture not supposed to be ever evolving?

I love everything ranging from otherworldly beauties with UV painted faces at Trance parties to whalebone skirts, Absinth and silk. Yet I do not subscribe to just any one version of any one alternative subculture. Now you face the challenge of trying to attend any of these parties. My black is not ber black, my PVC is not shining enough, my Absinth is not real enough (none of it in this part of the world is, so hahaha!) to come together with the Goth group, and I'm not colorful enough nor bouncy enough, nor trippy enough to dawdle around the Trace hippies.. Both sides of the extremists would willingly brand anyone else showing an interest in the same subculture, without slavishly following it, with a shining scarlet P and throw them to the Punks. The clever cyber Goths have found a way to walk this line quite inconspicuously though. But I do pity the poor Punk/closet Emo.

I would have said that the first thing you all need to know is that most of the people in the world are not white, upper-middle class and extremists. All the kids that were picked on in school are now doing the picking. Why would we need your approval from anyway? You are the assholes who have made us hate ourselves for 12 years. No one in the greater alternative culture seems to agree with anyone else. In fact, we deeply hate a lot of the people who don't agree with us. We secretly look down on one another. Sometimes it's not such a secret. What happened to sense of unity that made us want to break away from the mainstream in the first place? Everybody still talks about the old Zeplins in Bosman Street. When the logo "The club for people with a mind of their own" still meant something. To be honest, we'll probably just keep hating each other. And those who tried doing something about it kept doing it wrong. Personally I just want to start handing out hugs, tissues and sandwiches and tell groups under the alternative umbrella to get over themselves. Alternative also means a choice between multiple options. Who ever said I only need to choose one? What I want now is a handful of great albums I can play for later generations. When they ask me "What were your young years like?" I'll put on those albums, turn up the volume, and say, "It was like this, and like this, and like this Then they'll know.

So when you attend the next party, and you see you a girl with flowers in her hair, rocking it out on the Industrial floor wearing whalebones is her hair with her pvc tights tugged into her Doc Martins, drinking Absinthe, do come and say hi.