all the retro-dits say
the experts who make claims about who was and was not influential seem to agree that ps was. in march of this year, her sixtieth (yes, Obama, she is a boomer), ps's getting into the rock and roll hall of fame, a sort of recognition that's incidental to what she insists she "want[s] to do with the rest of [her life]."
According to a Newsweek poll of celeb boomers ("Send Me To Space," 22 Jan. 2007, 50-54), ps wants to learn horsebackriding from some polo club in Buenos Aires, to ride across the South American pampas (bareback?), and to read The Bible, The Torah, and The Qur'an (by campfire, when she roughs it out on the plains, perhaps?).
But where's the punk in that dream?
seems a more anthropological group of desires than an artistic constellation of hopes, motivations, or yet-to-do accomplishments. Her spiritual quest appears a solitary one, these days, in contrast to her 70s' public enlightenments: move ov'r/angels callin' everyone/levitation to freedom/now pow/livin' loud/livin' pushy/livin' on the verge of change (well, the lyrics aren't these, exactly). what's important, though, wasn't whether "you" got the words right, but that "you" found "your" own and were able to do something with them.
i'm not able to fit the Buenos Aires polo club into any of the ps stories that i tell myself, that other readers/listeners tell themselves, or that i interpret ps to tell herself.
is the polo club a boomerang? clearly, her statement to Newsweek that "if we take care of ourselves and stay focused, we can accomplish all of our dreams" is the kind of statement that can only be made retrospectively and that only a "poet laureate" of one thing or another, in this case punk, can make, coming back from a past when she could not predict her future accomplishments.
i'm not able to fit this quote into the 70s ps i thought i knew anymore than i can fit the polo club into that bygone version of herself. it sounds too much like a commencement speech, hoisting twenty-somethings right smack dab into the myth of the American dream; all ga-ga with hope that they can do anything they want to do, when really only some of them can and the rest just have to do whatever, making enough to live and pay off their student loans or not, falling into default.
According to a Newsweek poll of celeb boomers ("Send Me To Space," 22 Jan. 2007, 50-54), ps wants to learn horsebackriding from some polo club in Buenos Aires, to ride across the South American pampas (bareback?), and to read The Bible, The Torah, and The Qur'an (by campfire, when she roughs it out on the plains, perhaps?).
But where's the punk in that dream?
seems a more anthropological group of desires than an artistic constellation of hopes, motivations, or yet-to-do accomplishments. Her spiritual quest appears a solitary one, these days, in contrast to her 70s' public enlightenments: move ov'r/angels callin' everyone/levitation to freedom/now pow/livin' loud/livin' pushy/livin' on the verge of change (well, the lyrics aren't these, exactly). what's important, though, wasn't whether "you" got the words right, but that "you" found "your" own and were able to do something with them.
i'm not able to fit the Buenos Aires polo club into any of the ps stories that i tell myself, that other readers/listeners tell themselves, or that i interpret ps to tell herself.
is the polo club a boomerang? clearly, her statement to Newsweek that "if we take care of ourselves and stay focused, we can accomplish all of our dreams" is the kind of statement that can only be made retrospectively and that only a "poet laureate" of one thing or another, in this case punk, can make, coming back from a past when she could not predict her future accomplishments.
i'm not able to fit this quote into the 70s ps i thought i knew anymore than i can fit the polo club into that bygone version of herself. it sounds too much like a commencement speech, hoisting twenty-somethings right smack dab into the myth of the American dream; all ga-ga with hope that they can do anything they want to do, when really only some of them can and the rest just have to do whatever, making enough to live and pay off their student loans or not, falling into default.
posted by clh at 6:28 AM
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