The Screamo Is Not Real Dada Manifesto (2015) by Zaen Edvird

[nothingisimportant]

Screamo isn't real.
Metal isn't true.
Hardcore isn't even hard.
Punk doesn't matter.

These are things I realized after I learned that

Dada means nothing.

This is a Dada Manifesto, that I have written largely in anecdote having to do with my youth being immersed in the hardcore/punk culture, my preference in music being for what I once called real screamo. I can't imagine it pertains to you precisely, perhaps many of you quite objectively not Dadaists at all, but at least you will identify with how I have come to the conclusion that

The story and mad graphomania I am going to expel may not apply to your experience with punk rock. The city I

live in is surrounded by conservative southwest rural lands, not very far from Mexico but

closer to Austin -- a far more working class place overall than Austin, too. It is a

blending of specific cultures and not as diverse as some places (mainly, three predominant

ones; black, Mexican, and largely Anglo-saxon Europeans). It's an urban place, sure, but

it's not NYC, DC, LA...

In the hey day of screamo, we didn't have a scene of emo bands here, though (not locally,

they of course came on tour at times, if they made it that far south), and when they

passed through, kids knew them as hardcore bands and punk bands, because we didn't really

have the type of hardcore guys in enough numbers who would be like, "That's some pussy ass

hardcore, crying like a little girl and not stepping up to be the solution." To us, if we

ever took it at all, was just a hardcore/punk band, post-the80s, forever to the true

purist of DC, a reason we must use terms like post-hardcore in the first place, as it

specifically says nothing in particular but that genres cannot exist without being changed

by other genres, and that after being formed, it became a variety of new things as years

passed, too, similarly to the way punk did post-the70s.

Keep in mind, that things do not stay the same is the reason, since the conception of punk

rock was conceived of, that we have spoken of the meaning of punk so righteously with out

perspectives on what is genuine, authentic, real, and intended -- what has value, and what

does not -- not merely to our own tastes, but universally, objectively, a truth that speaks

volumes about the character of people. "That guy thinks he knows hardcore, but he's a

poser." "That guy thinks he stands for women and defends the victim, but he just called

that woman a girl like she was his baby doll child princess, and obviously doesn't uphold

justice like us," or "That guy just took medicine for his allergies that are prepared with

gelatin; he thinks he is against cruelty to animals? He's just one of these social vegans,

not like us who do it because blah blah blah," and, "Yeah, I ride a bike and don't drive.

I do however plug in a generator and burn up more petroleum distillates every time I plug

in to bang on a guitar and sing about how the corporations have us set up and the social

order is upheld so that blah blah blah."

I'm not entirely disagreeing. But we are not above it. We have no right to be so

righteous, elitist, and full of ourselves because we know about some obscure thing.

I found out about screamo in depth in the city I live in, where it is was limited in the

90s, through the Internet and friends I had involves in other music scenes in other

places. I never collected records. I listened to so many of them because I downloaded them

all on the Internet. Most of them, I never had a chance to see live... I was exposed to a

different type of hxc/punk then.

When I got into screamo and emotive hardcore, I felt like I found "the real punk rock."

What punk rock was supposed to be, emo seemed to actually be.. DIY to the point that not

even people preaching DIY know what it is -- bands expire after two years and form other

bands. Without the Internet, they are memories to the people who saw it, and gone.

Partially, this has allowed many I have met to be filled with a sense of superiority that

I cannot really tolerate, especially as it comes with a sense of being right that is so

utterly profound that it stands for something I have come to reject: Objectivity.

Often times, though the totality of the supposedly unified punks and their descendants

often have put out amazing bands and done amazing things that I am grateful to have been a

part of and to know about it, the social structure, the movement of what it stands for,

and what the status quo is to be a part of it: it's the oppression of all art and thought

that is an amalgamation of all things which can never stay the same as they interact over

time. Punk has always wanted to hold on to its purist propaganda and become jaded when,

caught up in its own fervor, actually was ignorantly holding on to a notion that was far

more temporal and pneumatic and inconstant and (ultimately, without import) than they

thought it was.

So, am I hypocrite because I fell out of listening to it, as after a period of time, it

became to change, take on elements from other genres, incorporating math, and Midwest

stuff, and becoming militantly mobilized to call out anyone they can point a finger at for

the injustices they see, for the false sense of righting the justice when they hang them

like anarchists in the Spanish Civil War hung the bourgeois and even communists sat back

thinking, "In a couple days, after we've killed a lot of people and and cast blame and

solved nothing, the fascists are going to march on us and we will all be among the corpses,

that the righteous pile up so that they can say to themselves, I am correct -- that not

only do I see the problem, but I see the solution, and all the problems that solution will

generate. That's why I'm terribly offended that you would even suggest that black people

and white people could ever understand one another. YOU ARE NOT BLACK AND YOU ARE NOT

CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING THEIR POSITION, SO NEVER... NEVER, CALL YOUR HOMEBOY, YOUR NIGGA,

EVEN IF YOU ARE FROM THE EAST SIDE, AND NEVER... NEVER FORGET THAT YOU ARE WHITE STRAIGHT

AND MALE AND WE WILL ALWAYS BE DIVIDED THUS MAKING RACISM AN INSTITUTION OF SOCIAL DIVISION

THE FOUNDATION THAT WHITE STRAIGHT MALE CIS PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS STAND BEHINd AS WE REMIND NCAA

WORKERS THAT PRETEND TO BE BLACK THAT IF THEY ARE NOT RACISTS FOR TRYING TO BRIDGE SOCIAL

DIVISIONS AND BLEND, THEN WE ARE TOO OFFENDED BY IT FOR IT TO NO MATTER BECAUSE RACISM IS

A THING. SEXISM IS A THING. THINGS THAT SET US APART ARE A THING, AND NOT ONLY DO YOU NEED

TO ACKNOWLEDGE IT, BUT YOU MUST DO SO BY GOING AROUND LIKE A SOUTH AMERICAN COMMUNIST WITH

A BANNER THAT STANDS FOR TELLING EVERYONE ABOUT HOW FUCKING ENLIGHTENED YOU ARE TO BE SO

SURE THAT YOU KNOW WHAT IS GOING TO BRING FUCKING JUSTICE AND FUCKERY OF THE SORT.

Extreme, motivated by passion, encouraged by peers... You have no idea what the fuck you

think you do. You mean well, like a communist before we realized that socialism needs

private enterprise as much as private enterprise needs socialism.

Not only has the screamo and punk hardcore that I loved been touched by post-rock, math,

metal, even metalcore pretty boy pig squealing, and yes, deathcore, and hair in your face

like a scene kid with a vocalist that sounds like he's auditioning for American Idol

between screaming out an affected characteristic that... well, when I was a kid, kids

would have been ashamed of themselves to consider doing because it meant they were not

hxc, the ultimate reason for which they are all things, including vegan and anarchists or

afraid of GMOs, or whatever dumb shit they have decided to collectively hold so that they

can keep their station.

I'm not going to name any specific bands. It could be any bands. I'm not calling out any

specific type of DIY music. I'm talking about all elitism everywhere in DIY music. I'm not

talking about the generation of feminists who are less for equality than they are angry

that men can rape so easily and all they would do if they could is rape whomever they felt

was deserving of it arbitrarily, because all men are rapists in the minds of those who

think similarly to minds thinking, all women end up asking for it when it happens. Some women loathe the fact that they will never rape and seek the power.

When you stand up to something that you think is wrong and extreme, if you oppose it with

something that is extreme, it will create a list of problems naturally that others will

find to be wrong. Extremists are unable to comprehend that other problems that are not the

current circumstance are created by solutions that disregard the perspectives of others

and fervently believe in their own goodness.

They could fervently believe that Heroin was the epitome of emo and that anyone who

doesn't get that or who listens to bands like Empire! Empire! I Was A Lonely Estate just

doesn't get that. The world moves on, new things emerge, all of it connected somehow, and

the music kids listen to today is blah blah blah go the people who are old now, still sure

that they know anything, like hippies or ravers in the moderns day 2015 taking acid and

MDMA like it was 1960 or 1990 (you know, back when everything their still about happened),

completely unable to register the fact that at that time, they hadn't yet started

synthesizing thousands of wacky drugs per year. The politics of the Dadaist who was

neutral in WWI was not in the same situation, neutral in WWII. Punks and skins united will

eventually be divided, because it's not 1980 anymore, and punks and skins pretend not to

see each other when they pass shopping at Walmart.

Turning to what Jesus Christ apparently said about a fucking mustard seed and when its

appropriate to pull your cart out of a ditch with an ox if it's Saturday (or Sunday, I guess, after Catholics), and literally recite passages that say absolute nonsense because so far removed from then are we today that there is nothing to be learned except that, the more seriously we take this book, the more fucked we are.

But it's a sense of righteousness, encouraged by a social order and community, that allows them to be passionate about something that provides concrete answers to what is the meaning of my existence and can I hold on to anything and its meaning to the end, providing validity to the life I would otherwise live uncertain of why the fuck I am here.

It's a cognitive dissonance that rejects and refuses to adapt, when this is the only sound approach to the existence itself utterly changing and changing everything around it for better or worse -- and least of all, maybe I'm just sick of people looking down as if we're not all a little wrong, we all have restrictive taste, and our community stands for fitting in where we hang out and listen to bands on Saturday nights, and that's literally all it is... so why the condescension. Why do we stand around being hip as we possibly can be because we don't even have to try -- we're the real fucking deal, rolling our eyes at everyone around us who thinks they're so hip with their smelly ass riding around on a bike and making sure to bring their dinner to the show so that everyone can see the healthy fucking choices the they have made in light of the most recent trends in pesudofuckingscience... or worse, the decade year old trends in pseudoscience, like that aspartame causes cancer at human consumption levels, which has been disproved by science for ages, and faced with the smug look of one whose health is a delusion, when he tells me that I would be better off just having the amount of sugar in soda, because -- can you dig this -- at least it's fucking natural.

Like the one-with-nature Into the Wild guy whose inability to cope with the reality of civilization sent himself out into the wilderness to die ultimately because he could not cope with reality, so fashioned a sense of what was the right way, like it was intended, foraging and walking around trying not to get eaten by predators and standing at your desk. I knew a crust-hippie girl once who got naked and rolled around in the woods on LSD and had to be taken to the hospital after she contracted poison oak. I know people who will find the outrage in western medicine so awful with its enterprise that they will go out and buy the quack nonsense that some guy decided he could convince a bunch of weak minded, narrow thinking people would stop the cedar allergies -- but it's literally just oil of some random shit that sounds like native Americans would probably endorse it, like George Straight to rednecks in a truck commercial. That's why people are still driving around trucks and spending a million dollars in gasoline because it's the social order they are caught in and bound by.

That's how I feel about hardcore/punk as a community. It's not that I'm not interested in a world where every screamo band that I hear doesn't change my life and characterize my tastes the way it once did that I don't really listen to it all that much anymore, at least new stuff. It's not because there are a lot of bands these days that have gone in directions I don't really get excited about that I don't follow it. It's not that I feel like I have to sift through a lot of stuff I won't like and BACK IN MY DAY, KING ALFRED UNITED THE BRITISH ISLES FROM WESSEX AND SAVED EAST ANGLIA FROM THE VIKING RAIDING, EVER A THREAT TODAY AND STILL APPLICABLE LIKE ALL THINGS FROM MY TIME WHICH I AM STUBBORNLY ATTACHED TO. In fact, I think when a band blends two styles and incorporates styles he picked up influenced by "traditionally" not compatible, universally opposing one another notions, is actually providing something to the world that the stagnation of a hardcore purist or a screamo revival that has spoken of a term called skramz to speak of a thing that is genuinely real screamo, which today, is a catchall term to some people not knowledgeable on the issue, for a band that screams and is vaguely reminiscence of hardcore metal and punk, the fucking same genres that we have been tryng to maintain the purity of from day one as we ourselves are the ones who mutate it into something new or leave it behind.

I identify more closely today with Dadaism than I do hardcore/punk. I still love the music. I wish I made more time to find bands in the genre coming out that speak to me -- recently I found one, actually, i hate sex; they are great, but unfortunately, they are kids like I was once a kid, certain of their righteousness and making sure everyone submits to it, perched to act and stand in judgement of -- do interviews where they don't even mention their music, but instead how progressive they are to tell one another how their privileged is checked like bums asking for change from the same guy they just finished off the bottle of 11 dollar vodka with.

Hardcore and punk (and most notably, screamo) will always be a part of what made me who I am. I never would have realized the things I have learned about making more problems than solutions without actually considering the reason for the view points of others, that not only is everyone who thinks they are absolutely right absolutely and have the most sophisticated taste utterly wrong and with the most repressive, self serving egomania of all the rest of us who are just as wrong about everything, even when we are sometimes right about something -- we will be wrong one day, if we do not stop to ask ourselves, perhaps what was right is no longer. Perhaps those who were wrong, in spite of being wrong, had a point that should be kept in mind.

Maybe the Constitution is just an old piece of paper that reminds us, King Alfred united England and held off the Viking, and so we shall draw all of out applications in how to approach every situation as if the Viking Horde was coming faster than Obama to take away your guns, with a constitutional right to serve in the king's militia or pay 120 shillings and forfeit his land, a right extended even to those who do not hold lands, as well as commoners, who pay 60, and 30 shillings for neglecting military service, which was once, for God and country, what held back bloody Danes, Normans, and Vikings alike; and in the end, as English as tea is served hot, people turn to what they know. Americans know the founding fathers in America were the world's most beyond their time thinkers and accomplished much against all odds. Clearly, if anyone would know what is relevant today in the modern world, it could only be fucking Benjamin Franklin, who would have told us to hold on to our muskets, far more important than privacy from the state; so it was written in the constitution, on Earth as it is in Heaven, in some shit's name, we are convinced of utter bullshit being celestial... like Orchid is the real screamo, and the perpetual state of being dead and found bursting with life by people who enjoy the company of corpses like punk rock, and so there is life, a variety of which many have decided render their absolute certainty voided.

We're not fucking sophisticated for colonizing the savages anymore than for free healthcare; though, if you ask me, I'd say that the latter is probably something to be considered at present. But we're not on the cusp and we shouldn't be proud and egotistical like we fought off the English ourselves. We didn't. We would have given England twice the taxes if they built us a Walmart with a business center that could take care of the whole ordeal in one place, with a cell phone whose software and utilities all operated by Google so it's easy to login into everything, you don't need a password, and neither does the NSA because Google has created a backdoor for them: EASY! England would come riding like the red coats though our bank accounts, and withdraw the funds for the war tax stamp and do the entire thing electronically without even having to take flight from them on horseback. The king imprints his seal into the wax electronically.

We venerate contrivances that once let us feel comfortable and sure. Humanity is very affected by one another. Our social lives dictate what we find is real, beautiful, good, and fucking hardcore jamz that are real and true. But nothing is real and true. Things are made real and true for fancy and momentary, opportunistic willfulness that sticks, and people mobilize, agree, share the propaganda image on Facebook, say, "Fuck that band, they used to play good shit, but now they totally do something different, and I just can't respect that. They went against everything they used to stand for back when they were nineteen. They sold out, man."

Remember that anarchist who played in that folk punk band, Against Me!, who came out and totally blew everyone's' mind away by being a generic radio band about how capitalism was actually pretty cool in the end? Remember laughing at that dude? That's when someone from out of no where steps in suddenly, judge, jury, and executioner, loudly saying, "FOR YOUR INFORMATION, SHE IS LIVING AS WHO SHE REALLY IS NOW, AS THE WOMAN YOU MUST ACKNOWLEDGE THAT SHE IS AND NEVER - I MEAN, NEVER - EVEN CONSIDER MAKING MENTION OF THE TIME PERIOD WHEN SHE WAS TO EVERYONE'S KNOWLEDGE A HE (A THING I WOULD NOT EVEN SAY FOR FEAR OF HOW OFFENDED I WOULD ACTUALLY BE BY HAVING COMPLETE THOUGHTS LIKE THAT), BECAUSE SELL OUT OR NOT AND IN A SHITTY BAND, THEY ARE STANDING UP FOR WHAT IS TRULY PUNK NOW, AND THAT IS NOT ALLOWING THE CIS PATRIARCHY TO DECIDE THAT YOU CAN LAUGH AT THEM FOR BEING WHO THEY ARE" -- That's when everyone who was laughing before shuts the fuck up instantly and is like, oh shit, that gets him some cred back, I can't belittle and stand in judgement over his life choices anymore because if I do, the community will be cast me out, so let's find some other people to cast out besides him!

Like I said, I got into emo despite that emo was not very big here when I was a kid, and it was getting going in other places. I saw more screamo shows from 2006-2012 than ever back then. I knew about screamo because of the Internet. I was part of the revival that became a pretty much international phenomenon in hardcore, because of the Internet. And one of the driving forces of it all, was the sense that -- never mind the real love for the music -- a sense that we all were a part of something no one else knew about, not even other punk and hardcore kids. We were the real punks. We were what the 70s punkers wish they had been. We were what 80s punks were too mainstream to be. We were what 90s punks wished they could be, but they grew up and had kids and had to start doing Warped Tour. We did something that truly was punk, so punk that it's underground, underground. Like, it's not even on YouTube underground. I found that shit on Soulseek. They never pressed the record, yeah. It's that underground. They played two shows and recorded this in an hour. It's the most real thing that ever happened.

And, look, I totally get that feeling. But like emo bands get together, play, break up, and move on with their lives, so too does the rest of the world that constantly changes and has as many perspectives as set lists pinned by sad faced bands you will never experience. But in the end, our revival and love of the genre has brought it more light than it ever had before... And it's become something new now. And so... It's not that I have anything against it. I still hope to find a new band from time to time, even to attend a show, even if I have to tolerate the community there and its hypocrisy and elitism and belief in objectivty. But... for the most part, it's just that I've changed, too.

I'm a lot happier than I used to be. When I listen to the sad angry songs now, I feel happy and energetic, whereas when I was first touched by them, I felt deep empathy. I hope all of you are happy, and I hope that if any of you have taken issue with certain things about it all, that you can just let it go, do something different, sound completely different, be completely different, as many times as it takes to be happy again -- without drowning on what other people do for your sense of self, so fragile apparently. Maybe it's just me. I know I was one such.

In the 90s, I was so fucking punk, let me tell you. But I know of at least a million people who would tell you that I wasn't at all, and that I didn't even know the first thing about punk.

Like I said, where I lived, at that time, people here knew the emo of the Midwest that was all indie and math-like

and having the characteristics of sad Alibini music as being emo. The notion of emo being the

same thing as hardcore was too much to comprehend by naive and jaded punkers who

childishly make no sense and singlehandedly identify with a movement that gets together

to be exactly what (at least, I did) -- originally got into punk like Dead Kennedys and

Reagan Youth and (before I realized the connection to emo), even Minor Threat, and the

culture of people who listened to it, to get away from.

Righteous against those who are not, elitist and able to answer botcheck questions about

"real" screamo, scapegoating of those who fail to comprehend the true meaning of wearing

patches on your back and what your patches say about you, and a gross obsession with image

that trumps everything, as much the reason why you have studs on your belt as they have

GAP printed on their shirts -- to be placed in a social order, one that has led many a

punk rock vocalist to write songs about, how it changes, and leaves everyone jaded. And

it's not unlike the glory days of football and high school that the jock kids who made fun

of me had, which led me to decide, "I don't have to fit in with these people. They suck."

Basically, as soon as I discovered screamo like in 2001-2003 (when at first you discover

screamo, you do not first realize the misconceptions are not entirely the truth -- even

back then). It took the forefront of my interest in hardcore and punk. I was an upper

class man in high school, and only occasionally did bands from out of town actually come

to where I live; the local scene was more street punk, crust, metal. Most of those guys

thought it was puss hardcore that wasn't about how the stars and stripes on the flag are

not punk or how you're not supposed to watch MTV because it sucks. I remember originally,

I rarely brought it up. Even before the clown costumes of high school kids a decade ago, I

often among people I knew just said, "It's some post-hardcore, check it out." The word

emo/screamo was more effort than I cared to put in. To them it was just punk hardcore of

some type, because what in their minds they thought of as emo, was, "I MISS MY GIRLFRIEND

OH MY GOD CONTRIVED NOT PUNK MEDIOCRITY."

I didn't actually have to have the emo discussion with people I knew until the clown

costumes came out. And in part, I feel responsible for allowing the straight edge metal

influenced hardcore that existed by time, with machismo in excess, to say that my hardcore

wasn't hardcore enough (when in fact...). And even though the crusties that were around

here (they're all gone now, probably ODed or having DTs somewhere) were not at all about

the sxe life of "THIS IS OUR SCENE WE WILL STAND UP AND TAKE... A... STAND," it was always

easy to just buy what everyone had heard about emo, which they weren't often hearing till

the bands came through and left, congregating in better cities where the crustie and

street punks were not outnumbered by skinheads and Oi! dudes that were fucking scary as

fuck to have to be around, if I'm being honest about being 15 years old, the me who ran

away terrified once from a legitimate gang of boot boys that specifically targeted punks

who are too liberal, I have to say I simply wouldn't go to shows.

I used to pit. I have on occasion slam danced. I have at times done short bursts of what

athletically inclined production of hardcore fighting the air I could do before I ran out

of breath and gasped out. Honestly, I don't care for doing any of it. I think the argument

about which is correct is -- at the core -- what is wrong with hardcore/punk, what has

always been wrong with hardcore/punk, and why at coming on 30 years old, thought I like

the music, I have no interest in the punk rock of my youth and even less interest in that

of today, although I think at least here, it's significantly less violent, and that is an

improvement I can't deprive of the present.

I learned all of this about punk and its place in my life after I was profoundly affected by having read the Dada Manifesto by Tristan Tzara, and realizing that punk and hardcore could learn a lot from Dada notions and methods.

See, punk is a lot like Dada, or it could be. Punk isn't dead. Punk doesn't matter. And by extension, neither does how real is the screamo, that will one day be called something twenty times more offensive to our purely formed screamo tastes than the word skramz. That is the only truth, that there isn't, and that the best of you should calmly sit down and reflect on how with vainglory are you convinced that it makes any sense.

Forget the masterpieces, meaning something profound that only come out as ranting Dadaism if, you were ever not too unwilling to write and collect them.

[thisguyisalright]

dude what

[CharlieBronson]

R U FGT?

SKRAMZ IS EVERYTHING.
SKRAMZ IS LIFE.

[pygmyprieta]

.

[Flowersintheattic]

[danfitforbattle]

> erotic fiction

[Febcanl]

Hahaha, awesome comparison.

http://www.radicalmatters.com/metasound ... sium.I.pdf Page 53-65

[thebigmin]

TLDR?

[daveanderson]

i lold at the part bout the mustard seeds LOL

[brianutatx]

Can I get a 4 sentence or less summary please.