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Originally Posted by choc e-Claire

I guess what I might have been going for with my earlier thoughts is that there's the whole narrative about early-career Sonic Youth being impoverished young adults living in a shithole in the bowels of old-school New York, but part of that was a voluntary choice to throw yourself into where the art scene was, consequences and enjoyment to be damned. It's for the best that Thurston et al were able to make the most of it and not have to return to the nest, but it feels almost dishonest to ignore that it was quite a convenient nest to start from.

that "whole narrative" is a strawman, and first time i hear about it. i mean, all young people and students are "impoverished" almost by definition. unless you're an aristocrat or a wastrel or a crime or disaster victim, you start adult life in relative poverty and after a lifetime of work acquiring skills and growing your income you have some kind of relative wealth vs your beginnings (eg a house in coral gables or baltimore or waco tx). and then the net worth starts to get dismantled by nurses and doctors and caretakers due to the mounting health problems of old age

i haven't read the entire book, but in the free excerpt you can read that thurston would return to ct often for a break from his rathole apartments. much like college students might go home for the weekend for a decent meal and some laundry, he'd go home and get some rest from his musician apprenticeship

when thoreau was living in walden pond, ostensibly practicing simplicity or whatever, he'd often walk 2 miles home for cookies at his moms house (well not "cookies" but basically every need). he never mentions this in his utopianist book of course, because it would negate his entire manifesto and embarrass him for all posterity. but thurston, refreshingly, has no problem going home to mom

Originally Posted by choc e-Claire

There's a lot of musicians out there who come from uber-privileged backgrounds (which Thurston's wasn't, I'll admit - his parents don't have Wikipedia pages lmao) and try to sell themselves as an up-from-the-gutters newcomer, and it's probably worth critiquing that cultural niche.

of course thurston is not julian casablancas, but does casablancas go around pretending to have grown up in a trailer park? i dont know these people you mention, but if they exist honestly who cares

Originally Posted by choc e-Claire

Of course, feel free to take this as a bitter middle-class suburbanite griping about what she hasn't had - that's probably what it is.

even as a middle class suburbanite, you are impoverished as a student in relation to the way you grew up. your student job and/or loans or subsidies or allowances could not afford you the same situation you grew up in. so your sense of deprivation is there. the utopian ideations and aspiration of middle class young people often come from that. and their temporary identification with the proletariat vanishes when they get their first real paycheck. at that moment they become their conservative parents, hahahaha

now consider being you and the same age but stuck in gaza or venezuela or sudan and you'll realize that in spite or whatever problems you may have, you're actually rich and privileged by virtue of your birth and location, and surrounded by opportunities you could seize *right now*.

the problem with being spoiled is that in puts the focus on what you lack or what others have and you envy, rather than on what you actually have and what you can make of it. that's the real impediment. ask an aspiring immigrant if they'd like to swap places with you... they'd gladly risk their lives for it.

the point of this is not to feel guilty about it, but rather to do something useful or beautiful with your chances, even if just for an audience of none