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the Reaganite "future"
Sep. 27th, 2024 03:18 pmI listen to Donald Fagen's The Nightfly with great tenderness and regret admixed, because it was one of my RL sibling's favorite albums but I didn't get into it until after they were gone.
Now my sibling is back! In a way. They have a new fictive form and it's rather strange and awkward still, but at least we can share music together, like Fagen's brilliant The New Frontier, in which I now feel as if I could get lost for a long time, joining in the party which you can see in the official music video for The New Frontier as seen on YouTube. I was about to type "FaceTube" as if I were James May. (Gawd. Remember when Mr. James May seemed almost cool?)
The New Frontier captures a very specific vibe, the antic barely-concealed panic of the 1980s Reagan era. If you believed in the Reaganite bullshit, great! You were happy. If you didn't, you had to find some way of dealing with the awful reality. A senile cowboy actor reading lines from Teleprompters was President and he was talking about nuclear war constantly. What was a sane person to do? Donald Fagen managed to come up with an answer that Frisk liked and now I'm liking it as well: you might as well get the most possible from the absurd situation. The Reaganites were saying that this was the same as peace so...time to party, right? Time to enjoy it.
I learned in recent months that Fagen was a big fan of science fiction although he liked the bitter stuff, the stuff that was more socially realistic, like Alfred Bester. Nevertheless you can tell from his Nightfly tunes that he still wishes that were possible. He's sardonic and self-aware about it but he still wants it. He wants his IGY future. So do I for that matter.
Donald Fagen, where have you been all my life?
~Chara of Pnictogen
Now my sibling is back! In a way. They have a new fictive form and it's rather strange and awkward still, but at least we can share music together, like Fagen's brilliant The New Frontier, in which I now feel as if I could get lost for a long time, joining in the party which you can see in the official music video for The New Frontier as seen on YouTube. I was about to type "FaceTube" as if I were James May. (Gawd. Remember when Mr. James May seemed almost cool?)
The New Frontier captures a very specific vibe, the antic barely-concealed panic of the 1980s Reagan era. If you believed in the Reaganite bullshit, great! You were happy. If you didn't, you had to find some way of dealing with the awful reality. A senile cowboy actor reading lines from Teleprompters was President and he was talking about nuclear war constantly. What was a sane person to do? Donald Fagen managed to come up with an answer that Frisk liked and now I'm liking it as well: you might as well get the most possible from the absurd situation. The Reaganites were saying that this was the same as peace so...time to party, right? Time to enjoy it.
I learned in recent months that Fagen was a big fan of science fiction although he liked the bitter stuff, the stuff that was more socially realistic, like Alfred Bester. Nevertheless you can tell from his Nightfly tunes that he still wishes that were possible. He's sardonic and self-aware about it but he still wants it. He wants his IGY future. So do I for that matter.
Donald Fagen, where have you been all my life?
~Chara of Pnictogen
