Why does the world now look more like a William Gibson novel than one by Arthur C. Clarke? Gibson’s friend and cyberpunk peer Bruce Sterling explains:
Because he was looking at things that Clarke wasn’t looking at. Clarke was spending all his time with Wernher von Braun, and Gibson was spending all his time listening to Velvet Underground albums and haunting junk stores in Vancouver. And, you know, it’s just a question of you are what you eat. And the guy had a different diet than science fiction writers that preceded him.
In Doug Pray’s 2001 DJ documentary Scratch, which features interviews with many prominent turntablists, one of the questions was, “What made you want to be a DJ?” A large majority of the interviewees named Herbie Hancock’s 1983 hit “Rockit” as the defining impetus for their becoming DJs. This struck me as odd since the main thing that people remember about that song is the video’s disturbing robotic mannequins.
“Rockit” is also a total anomaly in the Herbie Hancock catalog, but it brought scratching to the mainstream of the mid-1980s with its infectious hook, based on the frenetic but rhythmic scratches of GrandMixer DST alongside Hancock’s catchy keyboards and mechanized vocals. It also had a major role in setting off what would become the turntablism movement—the DJ as musician. The documentary—and other media artifacts like it—represent sleeper effects we're not likely to acknowledge in the moment. We don't necessarily choose the few things that most influence us.
I read a similar series of interviews with professional BMX riders a few years ago, and the same question was posed to the day’s top pros. Again, a large majority cited one cultural artifact as their starting point. This time, it was the 1986 Hal Needham movie Rad. Given my age, and the fact that I was already deep into BMX when Rad came out, I never thought that it would affect the sport the way it obviously did. I clearly remember going to see it the night it opened in my town in Alabama. It was an event among our local crew of BMX riders and skateboarders. I knew nearly everyone in the theater that night.
“The essence of culture is found in all its artifacts.”
— Pete Robinson in Donald Antrim’s Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World
Bruce Sterling's use of the cliché "you are what you eat" above really gets at this phenomenon. Aiming your appetite at the right food is the missing step.
For me, it keeps coming back to my experiences making zines as a teenager. That hidden circuit of media, a grassroots exchange of information and ideas that slips through the cracks of popular culture is powerful stuff. As Mark Lewman, ex-Editor of Freestylin’ Magazine, head of Club Homeboy, and maker of “Chariot of the Ninja” zine, points out, “The first zine I did once I moved to California was called 'Homeboy'. I did one issue and some stickers, and it ballooned into a mail-order lifestyle company with 15,000 members, and became one of the first youth culture magazines, a pastiche of art and sport and randomness. So, the power of zines is pretty unlimited as far as I can tell.”
In spite of the proliferation of the internet, zines are not entirely a thing of the past. Every time we do something on our own instead of just taking what’s given to us, we strike a blow to the massive media machine that constantly shoves products and personality down our throats. Making your own zine is not only immeasurably rewarding —just ask anyone who’s ever done one —but it gets your point of view out there and incites dialog between readers, artists, and other zine-makers that wouldn’t necessarily take place.
Independent journalists wield the power to expose local underground talent as well. There are always obscure riders in sporadic locales ripping like top pros. The way to get them noticed is not to complain about the media’s lack of attention, but to give people a reason to pay attention. As one-time Faction BMX magazine editor John Paul Rogers puts it, “Quit bitching and get off your ass and do something about it.”
Again, in spite of the internet, those regional ties are still strong. One of the arguments you hear about the power of social media is its location-based communities. Information available from the conflation of virtual and actual is essential to users, consumers, and practitioners of all sorts. Now it's how we find what we like and each other. Zines used to make these connections with perhaps deeper but less broad effect.
Photo by Dennis Sevilla.
These few examples demonstrate clearly to me that culture is about our relationships to cultural artifacts, and not necessarily their intended purposes. It’s about the effects of artifacts, and not the artifacts themselves. If it's a matter of what we eat, it might be the side dish that has the most impact.
I always cite James Gleick‘s 1987 chaos-theory exposé Chaos: Making a New Science as a turning point in my adult life. As I told Gino Sorcinellio a few years ago, "I hadn't been a heavy reader up to that point, but I haven’t stopped reading several books at a time since reading Chaos..." Reading that book turned me back into a reader and set me on my way to graduate school. There was no way to know that would be the case. You have to both be careful what you take in while following your curiosity wherever it leads.
Hope you're well,
-royc.
P.S. In celebration of its 35th anniversary, Rad is back in theaters tomorrow for a one-night only fit of nostalgia. Yeah, I'm going... Join me!