what will define our generation?

i am not naturally a morning person, but like many other grumpy commuters, i have a particular routine that helps me get ready for the work day. i like to put on my headphones, listen to whatever it is i am fancying at the time, and read. i zone out the rest of the shoulders and backpacks and louis vuitton purses or whatever happens to be bumping into my person. i am in a world of my own creation, and it makes me content.

last night i got halfway through reading the final pages of joyce maynard's memoir, at home in the world. the last pages are filled with the article she wrote for the new york times magazine called "an eighteen year old looks back on life." she speaks as a voice of her generation. edit, the voice of her generation. she speaks of how her generation is defined not by what they have or have created, but what they have missed out on or failed to create. they were a generation lost in limbo, waiting for the next significant movement.

it made me think hard about what would eventually define my generation -- how we will see ourselves in retrospect as definitive marks in our history. i don't have an answer yet to this question.

this morning on the train, true to my routine, i took out the fresh copy of legs mcneil and gillian mccain's please kill me, a book about the history of punk rock. it begins with the velvet underground, and it is told with the voices of lou reed, nico, john cale, sterling morrison, al aronowitz, la monte young, paul morrissey, et al... i found myself engrossed in their words. their perception of their generation, their era.

one particular passage caught my attention, and i think it sums up a little bit about how their era was marked by romance and fantasy:

danny fields: everybody was in love with everybody. we were all kids, and it was like high school. i mean it was like when i was sixteen, this one likes this one this week, and this one doesn't like this one this week, but likes this one, and there are all these triangles, i mean it wasn't terribly serious. it just happened to be people who later on became very famous because they were so sexy and beautiful, but we didn't realize it at the time, we just all were falling in and out of love -- who could even fucking keep track?

everybody was in and out of love with andy (warhol), of course, and andy was in and out of love with everybody. but people that were most "in-loved with" were the people, i think who fucked the least -- like andy. i mean the people who you really know went to bed with andy, you could count on the fingers of one hand. the people who really went to bed with edie (sedgwick) or lou (reed) or nico were very, very few. there really wasn't that much sex, there were more crushes than sex. sex was so messy. it still is.

as i was walking out of the subway and on my way to work, i wondered what our generation would remember most about our times. then i realized, i spent my entire commute without my headphones on. i realized, this book was music. i can't wait to read more.

tomorrow, i head to austin for sxsw. i am both nervous and excited about what will happen. most of brooklyn will be in austin, like some kind of sick and twisted hipster spring break. i just cannot wrap my head around what to expect. it is all up in the air, up to us.

added to the jukebox above: velvet underground, diplo, the zombies, ella fitzgerald, collete carter and guided by voices. enjoy.