Decade's End III: This Time It's Alpha Centauri

[koganbot]

People keep adding interesting answers to my Decade's End question, if you want to go back and look. In the meantime I've gotten another response via email, which I'm putting into the comments. The question is:

What do you think the story of the decade in music is? Or what was the story of the decade in music for you? I said "Just list one" last time, but I've kind of added a second question here in adding that "for you" bit, haven't I? So if you answered one of them last time ("what the story is") and the other ("what the story is for me" ["me" being you]) is different, you're invited to answer the second one here in the comments. (And you can comment on the last comments in these comments if you want, lj's "use-by" date being so frustratingly quick.)

Comments

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Haha, as soon as I'd posted that I was like BUT THERE IS NO CENTRE but decided to leave it as is (because in the absence of an objective centre, wherever I subjectively locate the centre is wherever I'm uncomfortable being at any given time. XD;;).

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Yeah my phrase was "the center spreads" and another way of saying that might be "the center is a feeling," or at least "the center is contingent on our agreement of center." Which is why to me The-Dream can feel "center" without having a ton of critical or popular catchet -- he has some of both but is only truly central to a relatively small bubble.

[koganbot]

X is central to Y.

E.g., the sun is central to the solar system, but the solar system is not central to the universe, nor is anything else - although universes can have population centers, I suppose, just as continents can, though the former is probably contingent on relatively rapid intergalactic travel, which may be impossible.

My story of the decade, by the way, is Ashlee Simpson, but she (or that) is at least three stories for me: (1) I walked a thousand miles while everyone was asleep... I'll walk a million more to find out what this shit means, a.k.a. The Sixties Never Died a.k.a. the mainstreaming of romanticism a.k.a. Girls Rock The Boys a.k.a. the ongoing feminization of the romantic quest for self and for the overthrow of self in favor of new selves and of the glimpse of new worlds as alternatives to this one [right, that's probably more than one story]; (2) alienation as disaster as well as opportunity, so the attempt to simultaneously move beyond the world as given (her family as given) and reconcile with that world/family (reconcile with her own character); (3) making the complications and mundanities of her lovelife (lovelives) and the various quests therein quite beautiful in her telling and singing of them (her = Ashlee, Kara, John, and sometimes Shelly and some of the people on Bittersweet World too). If I were to make Ashlee the center of my piece - but I won't - I would actually concentrate on #3, but since I'm doing decade's story not just Frank story I'm going with #1 as my theme, with Ashlee just one of the players, probably more space given to the not-yet-as-romantic-as-Ashlee Taylor.

My Decade's Story Of The Decade rather than personal story of the decade might actually run counter. It's that there was always a multiplicity of stories with less of a center than there seemed, and the contribution of the Internet is to make the multiplicity of stories more visible, and to enter more of them into the historical record. The stories that are being made more visible are the responses by a broad number of people who might not previously have been considered creators (and for whose response there isn't much of a market, or didn't used to be)... their responses to songs, that is, to stars, and so forth. (Responses to Elvis, Beatles, Sex Pistols already part of the official story, but the stories of many of the responders to the first two, especially the girls', wasn't usually individually noticed or recorded in the way that you can e.g. notice fan vids on YouTube now.)(And of course fans of the esoteric and the nonstars can enter the record as well.)

If I were to

[koganbot]

That last "If I were to" is stray. Maybe "If I were to" is the story of the decade.