Post-Requisite: an intro
Well, now I've gone and done it. Nearly five years after thinking "I should set up a Substack" and undergoing the absolute minimum of effort needed to secure some sort of nascent presence on the site, I've finally taken another step towards the crucial phase of actually starting to write and post things on it. A lot of distracting developments have happened in the long interim between getting this thing planned and putting it into some vague semblance of an actual newsletter: I wrote two books about the recontextualization of popular music (one on sampling in hip-hop; one on "needle drop" music syncs in film), I picked up a gig freelancing for emerging music-crit/recommendation site The Shfl, I ditched Twitter because social media wasn't fun anymore, I got a Bluesky account and am trying to figure out how to make social media fun again, and I've seen upwards of 200 movies without reviewing a single one of them on Letterboxd. Also I and everyone else I know who writes for a living and/or as a side thing have spent these nearly five years having a pretty absurd and aggravating time trying to keep things going during a time period marked not only by COVID and its aftereffects but also a mass crisis of internet culture writing. So what now?
I ask because it feels like there's a generalized anxiety over the role of the cultural critic in the contemporary instant-take anti-gatekeeper moment we're at. I had a few visions for what I wanted to do with this newsletter, but a lot of them were based in expressing a sort of growing frustration over the state of things in mainstream pop culture, and I couldn't entirely commit myself to fully indulging that mode. I mean, figure I can throw down with the best of them if I was ever pressed into the service of complaining about all the extremely popular zeitgeisty trends I can't bring myself to care about, much less hype up. But I pictured the impact of that mostly just leading to the kinds of overheated online arguments I don't have that much patience for anymore. So this led me to the other, simpler option of focusing primarily on the stuff that mattered the most to me whether or not (and it’s usually not) it attracted any kind of timely trend-beholden discourse. I know that seems pretty cut-and-dry, but maybe something about being online for 25-plus years has fundamentally distorted my idea of where I stand as far as potential matters of good taste and relatabilty and popularity. And at this point I might as well bypass all that and go advocate for stuff I like, whether or not it'll make me appear to be Cool On The Internet. (I mean, I’m 46; that’s some other, more online generation’s battle now anyways.)
At least the name stuck. "Post Requisite" is the title of a Flying Lotus instrumental, first released as a single in 2017 (it made it to Flamagra two years later) and accompanied by a music video that is sort of like if Mike Jittlov's "Animato / Fashionation" was directed by David Cronenberg. This is not an all-encompassing shorthand for the general wheelhouse of my interests, but it's as good a pivot point as any. And I like what that title implies: you've got your obligations out of the way, so just go for whatever. I've got a lot of pieces planned so far, hopefully enough to sate a one-a-week pace for at least a few months (and eventually lead to a paid-subscriber exclusive bonus content tier). And while I can't say for certain what the overarching motive of this whole enterprise will be, I can at least offer the possibility that it'll be dedicated, either directly or incidentally, towards the purpose of figuring out what it means to have the kind of relationship to popular culture that drives someone to think and write passionately and feverishly and frequently about it. Or it could just be me pointing at a piece of music or film or TV and going "check this shit out, it's pretty wild, huh." I've got a few different modes and a handful of voices to work with here; who knows how they'll cohere when I'm not beholden to literally anyone else? I have no idea. Hopefully that's a promising sign.