I was sweeping the floor this morning, picking up the hair of three giant dogs and one fluffy cat reflecting of the state of misery in which we live or will live. Same old middle-aged talk in short. Between passages I caught myself thinking how fertile the soil of necessity really is, in short, scarcity of means at first sends you into crisis mode, but it is when you are starving that your metabolism speeds up and your body becomes much more effective in fundamental needs. Boxing grass does not grow in the garden of the wealthy, they say. Coming out of the dichotomy misery = ugly, abundance = beautiful the new perspective reveals that even absolute deprivation actually hides unthinkable opportunities. The ecosystem of even the most barren desert under a microscope reveals a multitude of organisms capable of coping with extreme temperatures and lifestyles. To the keen eye, billions of bacteria are hard at work. Reptiles, insects, fungi live and multiply in the environment.

Then, when you adapt to an emergency mentality, after a while even the idea of abundance begins to change and that sandwich full of sausages and onions makes you crave it in a completely different way. You no longer want to shove it in your stomach, you want to taste it slowly and get a good feel for the flavor of the mince and spices. Then you are surprised by a thought you never imagined. That maybe you don’t even need to eat it all anymore and maybe half of it you can even give to a friend, or others who are hungry.

Living “without” then leads you to stop looking at the “with” with the same eyes.

This applies to everything from personal relationships, to financial stability, to music and entertainment. It is the evolution of yesterday’s discourse, that gonzo way of shelling out by accumulating and showing off that has become typical of our genre can only be the result of a bulimia now out of control, a victim of the clusterfuck mashup that occurred with the advent of the Internet.

It is, as always, grognard talk, which I am, but I still think it’s time to go back underground and recreate little ecosystems within this big mass of shit a bit like it used to be done in the 80s/90s before certain genres born in the mid-90s made everyone believe that they too could have the experience of that “alternative” spark that united people from all over the world through a real passion. And let’s be clear, this applies to music, to writing, to illustration, to role-playing. Everything.

Which then, is also why even historic labels are making piss poor choices to try to pick up what they had abandoned years ago. I know them. I see. AND I JUDGE. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way, the lack of consistency creates situations that ring as false as a 3 euro coin, getting out of one’s identity may bear some fruits, but they are not the fruits of necessity, but the rotten fruits of opulence.

Selecting, believing, reflecting remain the cornerstones for the production of TRUE works both by the artist and by those who are in charge of promoting them in some way as we fanzine editors or small labels do.

Consistency only lives and bears fruit when you do things right, with attention rooted in the things that matter. A genre that is born out of a fascination with the morbid and anger, the discomfort of Man, can only live in that dimension. Use this music to show off and the result can only be crap.