The Sterility of Modern Fiction, Steely Dan, Pro Wrestling, and how Messy Art Persists and Inspires

Considering the state of the western world at the moment, it isn’t uncommon to see breathless social media posts shouting to the heavens about how important art is during these times. Sometimes even stumbling across these can, depending on my mood, stir up different sentiments inside of me. Sometimes I cringe at how self-important it feels, or indulgent the idea of faffing around creating art while people are being detained for peaceful protests, how the media enables that, or how people are still starving and doing their best to avoid bombs dropping on their heads. Worse yet, none of this is new in human history. All of this only furthers my belief that messy, complex art that informs and inspires will always have lasting value.

Art is self-expression, it’s a stress reliever, it’s the way some of us communicate with and learn about the world at large. I have a lot of inspiring, brilliant friends who have built up tremendous knowledge bases by consuming endless non-fiction. Someone like me, though? Most of my knowledge comes from the art I consume. Outside of a school setting, a bulk of the non-fictional or informational texts I delve into are for research purposes for my own writing and storytelling purposes. Would I have read Operation Paperclip if I wasn’t working on a novel about the fallout of the nuclear history of New Mexico? Probably not. I’d have read about Operation Paperclip in general, but not the actual book.

Why? Because life is perilously short and, to me, art is what I value. In my case, writing prose.

So, yes, in an age of the mounting tidal wave of western fascism's rise to prominence where an American president is trying to rally the country to invade Canada (!?!!?!), find a song that’s new to me and inspires me to want to create is valuable. Because somewhere there are other kids who were like me growing up, where the world was cruel and unforgiving, and finding books, music, movies and videogames created by like-minded people who then infused their knowledge and understanding of the world into these empathetic creations helped to inform my own world view.

Think about how many people learned about Black Wall Street massacre because of the… problematic but at times pretty good Watchmen HBO series. For a lot of folks, white ones especially, that part of history wasn’t hard-coded into their minds yet. It may have been something heard about in passing, but never explicitly explored. It wasn’t a topic learned in school or covered extensively in popular culture until, all of a sudden, it was. Even if that particular show itself’s life span was short and perhaps mercifully so, the impact remains of bringing to public consciousness a very real historical event from recent history where a city government handed power over to white supremacists to go out and destroy an entire thriving black community, or at least attempt to.

Art can, at times, be a covert or even overt delivery system of information, even if it’s a piece of fiction.

This is why I continue to write and contort myself in the face of misery and awfulness. There’s so much we can learn from each other, and for someone like me, that’s best through narrative prose. I don’t know why. It just is.

I discovered this song the other day. It send me on a quest to figure out where this was from, who they were, and the results were… somewhat frustrating to know there were only a few live recordings ever of this band. Still, it’s a time capsule to something downright incredible. There’s probably a slim chance you have the same reaction to this song that I did. But what if you do?

It’s like hearing a direct precursor to a lot of the things I love from the last thirty years or so in such a raw, perfect form. Overflowing with emotion and everything. And, as best I can tell, this band never released a studio recording of this song, or any studio recordings ever. It’s just… this. Imperfect, the drums poorly mixed, the vocals up waaaay too high. Just this.

So, here’s a related aside. The other night I was watching the AEW PPV and that night when taking out the trash, was finally able to really sum up my feelings on why sometimes very good, clean pro wrestling doesn’t connect the way it theoretically should. It’s the same reason why running text through ChatGPT to fix the grammar rounds off the edges and dulls the language and style. Adhering to grammar is an important way to communicate with the outside world, and while I play fast-and-loose with it at times, I’m still a proponent for at least making a solid effort.

For older fans of modern wrestling, they view modern pro wrestling and there’s something missing. Athletes today are far more athletic, safe and precise than prior generations. It all looks far more aesthetically pleasing in execution than what was seen before. Ironically enough, from this recent AEW PPV, it was the old timers in Jon Moxley and Adam “Cope” Copeland that put on a sterile, lifeless slugfest attempting to “show the boys how it’s done.” Overwrought with interference spots, ref bumps and other gimmicks, it was an emulation of late 90s/early 00s WWF/E that aged like curdled milk, while the rest of the show featured performers often called “sterile” who engaged in emotional, bloody bouts.

Then, I thought about fiction. I’ve been regularly visiting more writing, publishing and fiction Sub-Reddits as the Internet becomes a molten lava toilet, and there are a lot of sentiments about how to “properly” write fiction, which seems to be quick, accessible prose, polished into proper grammar, or at least modern interpretations of such, and then packaged as a commercial product and released into the world. To me, much of that fiction lacks staying power. Just like a Netflix original movie has that look because of the studios and lighting they use (most of which are here, in my city!) that robs it of anything unique, or how the writing is safe, the direction and framing are fine but unremarkable. It’s all done up to industry standards, but lacks a spark. A lot of modern fiction feels that way to me.

Recently my wife started watching this documentary about “Yacht Rock,” which really, I didn’t want anything to do with. Granted, I love a lot of music of that era, but err more into the Steely Dan attitude of “what did you just call us?” than I do leaning into the gauche ironic aesthetics. But, talking about this made me think about how Steely Dan produced most of their albums, and how for musicians it’s been a running joke that if you were a studio musician for Steely Dan, they’d give you one take to be perfect or fire you. Myself, like most weird guys my age, were introduced to Steely Dan by our fathers, and by proxy, Steely Dan served as an introduction to modern jazz and jazz-lite structures that helped unlock further musical exploration, and yet, Steely Dan’s brutal in-studio production standards were so against some of the most popular jazz aesthetics, which were talented, skilled musicians improvising together.

Steely Dan made some amazing music, but something about it remains sterile to this day. That’s what wrestling fans see in modern wrestling. That’s what someone like me, a modern fiction writer, sees in modern fiction. An attempt to mash down the beauty of creation into something “perfect” instead of something inspiring, messy and interesting.

My attempted deep dive into the Acid Seven brought me to multiple dead ends. The only information I got was that Dr. Acid Seven was a Japanese counter-cultural guru involved in the Tokyo Shinjuku Futen scene in the late 60s, bleeding into San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury commune scene (lol, my browser tried to correct it to Haight-Ashbury, can you believe that?). It helped spawn a lot of different bands in the psychedelic space, which included this ‘Oz Days’ festival where this recording came from.

It’s everything I love about art. It’s messy. Chaotic. Poorly produced. Beautiful. Melodic. Powerful.

My original disappointment in there being no perfect studio recording of this song drifted away, and now I’m simply along for the ride and enjoying hearing something so influential to all of my favorite music.

You might hear this and think it’s noise. But, to me, I hear it, and there’s a world of possibility sprouting out from its chaotic sonic rumblings. The tendrils reached out and helped inspire further psychedelic and noise music, which inspired other musicians and artists from all over. Most importantly, it inspires me.

This random performance from a random show buried deep on a random playlist I found on Spotify while listening to the Japanese band Ghost one day helped me get to a better place of understanding of the things I love and the world I inhabit. Never forget that.

My next book, Iconoclast; or, the Death and Resurrection of Lazarus Keaton releases on May 6th. Here’s an image. No squiggly arrows. No tropes. No bullshit. Buy my book. I worked hard on it. Fuck Amazon. Buy it from me, Bookshop, or anywhere else, if you can.