Philly pals: Watch the new @Elephant6Movie on a big screen before it hits theaters/streaming services.
(In perhaps the last opportunity you'll ever have to ask me a question, I'll also be doing a Q&A and signing books after the screening.)
https://t.co/zO8D4j2LLF
I probably wouldn't have finished *writing* this book if I hadn't been able to live somewhere as cheap as Athens while I was working on it (and even Athens is much more expensive than it used to be).
I’ve been reading @awaytobuildit’s book about the Elephant 6 music collective (which is really good, btw) and thinking about how rare it is for an authentic artist scene to emerge and how much of it boils down to basic affordability.
Artists move there because it's cheap, then "developers" leech off that hipness until those artists can't afford to live there, and the yuppies who take their place are left with a bland prefab fiberglass cultureless void.
Within the broader "housing is becoming an unaffordable luxury" trend, this happens over and over at the neighborhood level in cities and a municipality-wide level in smaller places like Athens:
A thoughtful meditation on Jeff Mangum's post-Aeroplane prominence, which has always said much less about Jeff than it says about the people who talk about him (myself frequently included).
Can we listen to #NeutralMilkHotel free of fan fetishizations and myths of the noble martyred outsider artist, a quarter-century after In the Aeroplane Over the Sea? What does it sound like then? https://t.co/zYfguzRZiy
“There probably are dozens of other communities already much like the Elephant 6,” Clair says, “but you probably never hear about any of them because the ability for that stuff to reach people is not what it was.”
The @Elephant6Movie premieres Thursday at @DOCNYCfest, just months after the release of @awaytobuildit's book 'Endless Endless.'
A peek inside two long-gestating projects celebrating the music collective that yielded Neutral Milk Hotel and so much more: https://t.co/MmLKabbwwz
“[W]e should absolutely be supporting musicians and artists way more than we do, and we should be valuing this stuff more than we do as a society. But at the same time, for all of the reasons that any individual person has to not make art...you should still do it anyway.”
A book and movie tracing the history of Elephant 6 have both emerged this year.
I talked to the director of @Elephant6Movie, 'Endless Endless' author @awaytobuildit, and Elf Power's Andrew Rieger about these long-gestating projects and the legacy of E6: https://t.co/Sikvz9vn3p
Real Life published a few of the best things I've written and a whole awful lot of the best things I've read, many of which I can't imagine being published elsewhere. It's hard to be surprised anymore when a vital publication is shuttered, but it still sucks majorly.
Real Life no longer has funding, and is ceasing publication indefinitely. We thank all of our contributors and readers.
Good night 💚
https://t.co/Hz9ZSYrbMn
I'll miss Real Life (and editor @robhorning) immensely as a writer but even more so as a reader. It seems like the archives may stick around for a while, though, and I'd expect many of these essays to age well.
Join me for a conversation about my book and the Elephant 6 Recording Company on 7/26, moderated by the indefatigable @williamfleitch.
RSVP here: https://t.co/XpuUEwUifE