DN Archive 001: The Fade

Desert Noir / Razors on the Dashboard

This city, it’s really something else.

On the surface it’s just a place. A place like any other, nothing special. Still made of asphalt, concrete and steel.

But it had something else, something different. The kids used to say, “it had bad vibes” or a feeling that something more was going on. Not in a sinister way, or some creep-in-the-shadows way. Something had changed. It was a feeling that something was lost, or maybe, we were lost.

I never liked that feeling. It never sat well with me. It felt like I was shrinking, or the room was getting larger. Isolating.

I had been here my whole life. I felt it. We all had. Felt the shift from one phase to another, like seasons. You could tell by the temperature. Not Fahrenheit, or degrees Celsius, but a shift in people. People get colder every year.

Maybe I was just like them too. I had my moments. I knew when I snapped, or overreacted. Came off too harshly or blew up on the people close to me. I told myself, “It’s the stress,” “It’s the shitty job”…all excuses…

I saw it with the city, I saw it with the people I knew and loved. I saw their color fade, and their temperament ice over. One broken window gets repaired with shatter-glass and steel bars, then the murals and posters get replaced with digi-screens and auto-generated ads. A hundred and thirty-one government-approved flavors, all available 24-7, and no more street food with a side of culture.

One thing that the city, the cold, or the stress could never take was the art, the music. I wouldn’t let them take that. Not that.

I protected those things because they were the only thing that could take me away. I feel stupid saying it, but it made me feel safe. Like, somewhere else, somewhere out there I didn’t need to worry about making it. I didn’t need to worry about surviving another day in the meat grinder. I could just play…just create.

No matter how bad things got, I always had those. But like all things, those started to age too.

The clubs stopped hosting gigs, and only played algorithm-approved music and remote-streamed performers. Too many people were going Hollow on synth-drugs at the venues, making it too risky to keep booking locals, so they shut down or sold. Theaters only played the remakes of classics with disposable CG effects and no soul. And the guy who made music in the streetlight disappeared because he didn’t have the right RFID chip hard-coded to his name.

So now, I fight in different ways. I can’t be in the trenches anymore, can’t be too loud. Where the Gangers and mercs would fight and die and eventually be forgotten, I needed to pass something down. Pass the gospel around so new people could hear it and make their own choice. So the ones growing up now know it wasn’t always like this.

So the art, the music, those old Demons at the Gates records that never got out, those books they burned in Elysian Park and the people that protested every moment of it, everything, it’s sacred. In a world that puts a price tag on creativity, in a world that hates the authentic self, and wants to sell us a dream, our voice is our only thing. It’s all we have.

So just like everyone, I’ll put everything on the line for this. I’ll put myself out there as a form of protest, because they can’t keep everyone down, and a Razor is untouchable to those corp-o’s. Because we’re still here, because we remember what it was like before all this.

Sometimes making something different and being remembered is protest enough. We remember the old ways, how people treated each other when they still gave a shit about people. We all do it our own way.

Same goal.

Never Fade Away…