Shopping Spree - Homeowners

Stephen Peters writes:

Hi Mark,

Last month I went home to North Carolina for a week to see some friends and to spend a little time away from Brooklyn. I find Brooklyn to be simultaneously wonderful and terrible in its never-ending stream of culture; on any given night I can find some truly wonderful food to eat, or band to see, or gallery to go to, and so on. But, its easy feel over-saturated and unimpressed in this environment, and as a neurotic over-thinker, it can send me off into these horrible existential spirals where, for lack of a better word, I temporarily feel like a huge phony. 

Anyway, I realize this is one of the most unsympathetic complaints imaginable, and that many similar things have been said about the internet, but hear me out for a second. Most of my friends in NC have legitimate 9-5 jobs, live in houses with yards, are getting engaged and are generally “settling down” in the traditional sense. They don’t care about things like buzz bands because buzz bands aren’t particularly relevant to their livelihood.

So, during my trip a friend and I were going through my iTunes library because he was curious about current music, and in the typical fashion of every loathsome and cliche Brooklyn twenty-something I was just sort of spurting off bands in this horrible detached monotone, drooling things out like, “Ok so this is Tame Impala. They’re from Australia, really Beatles-esque. They made a really great album last year,” and my friend, generally unfamiliar with the current music climate, would freak out over nearly everything I showed him.

That I can’t remember the last time I reacted so positively to something, and that most of my life decisions over the past couple years were directed in some way towards such a culture struck a particularly negative chord with me. I went into one of the previously mentioned existential spirals, and wrote this song about buying a house and just watching TV all day and never really going outside. 

I’ve since recovered and realize how stupid all of those thoughts and feelings are. Of course I don’t freak out over every band I hear (for example), because as someone who spends a lot of time digging up bands, that would be crazy. Sort of like a veteran surgeon who still gets really grossed out by blood. But, that’s how this song was written, so there you go.

Thanks,

Stevhen Peters

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