![The Underground Online pt 2/3 - Different Ways of BeingThis is part two of a three part series. Part one can be found here.When you make something that no one sees, there is an implicit existential crisis. If it is never seen, does it exist? Certainly does. Inside you. Like so many important things in our lives, no one can see it happen. We just feel it. That’s the ultimate underground.Then there is the next level. The shared level. Creative subcultures. Film lovers. Music lovers. Theater lovers. Geeks. Fetishists. Something outside of the mainstream moves them. The only experience more exciting than being immersed is sharing that feeling with someone else. That’s why the underground exists. It is more special than popular art; it is more intimate by definition and it’s shared by a community.Chicago represented that second level to me. Wax Trax! records was a large part of that. The music was unknown to most of my everyday acquaintances. The music promotes non-mainstream values. It is sexually obscure like the intersection of Belmont and Clark in Chicago. The institutions that surround the intersection tell the tale. It is equidistant to Wrigley Field and Boys Town. Berlin is less than a block away - a 4 or 5 AM nightclub where the straight, bisexual, transgendered and outright gay have all come together for 20 years. Straight-laced DePaul University sits just south with it’s college parties and suburban commuters. And they all intersect at Clark and Belmont at some point. I’ve only ever found myself comfortable where everyone is welcome. I never fully committed to any particular culture. I identify with so many different ways of being. I love to dance the waltz as much as I love to bachata. I love the peace and quiet of meditation but I also engage in the onslaught of physical violence at an Enstrüzende Neubauten concert. But it’s impossible to be in all these places at once. So I’m only vaguely involved in any one culture, split by the possibility of being in love and totally committed - never truly being. ~ü[Logo: Wax Trax! Records]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ldln4nPej11qzzio5o1_400.jpg)
The Underground Online pt 2/3 - Different Ways of Being
This is part two of a three part series. Part one can be found here.
When you make something that no one sees, there is an implicit existential crisis. If it is never seen, does it exist? Certainly does. Inside you. Like so many important things in our lives, no one can see it happen. We just feel it. That’s the ultimate underground.
Then there is the next level. The shared level. Creative subcultures. Film lovers. Music lovers. Theater lovers. Geeks. Fetishists. Something outside of the mainstream moves them. The only experience more exciting than being immersed is sharing that feeling with someone else. That’s why the underground exists. It is more special than popular art; it is more intimate by definition and it’s shared by a community.
Chicago represented that second level to me. Wax Trax! records was a large part of that. The music was unknown to most of my everyday acquaintances. The music promotes non-mainstream values. It is sexually obscure like the intersection of Belmont and Clark in Chicago. The institutions that surround the intersection tell the tale. It is equidistant to Wrigley Field and Boys Town. Berlin is less than a block away - a 4 or 5 AM nightclub where the straight, bisexual, transgendered and outright gay have all come together for 20 years. Straight-laced DePaul University sits just south with it’s college parties and suburban commuters. And they all intersect at Clark and Belmont at some point.
I’ve only ever found myself comfortable where everyone is welcome. I never fully committed to any particular culture. I identify with so many different ways of being. I love to dance the waltz as much as I love to bachata. I love the peace and quiet of meditation but I also engage in the onslaught of physical violence at an Enstrüzende Neubauten concert. But it’s impossible to be in all these places at once. So I’m only vaguely involved in any one culture, split by the possibility of being in love and totally committed - never truly being.
~ü
[Logo: Wax Trax! Records]
