Don't wriggle, you'll only make it better!

[imomus]

Postmodernism has us all tied up in a big ole shibari knot. The more we struggle the tighter it gets. Better relax and let it pleasure you, then hope it'll untie you when it's done and has no more appetite.

Every time you see that some old style is 'back on the catwalks', every time some series comes back from TV heaven, every time you read that your favourite artist has opted to use vintage gear on his new album, know that Uncle Pomo has just thrown another rope around your naked body. Don't wriggle, unless you actually want to excite him more.

I've re-appropriated the old hippy zen / Oasis slogan 'Be here now!' to describe what I think of as the best attitude to postmodernism. Wake up, smell the coffee, set your watch, be here now! Not because I think postmodernism is great (although it's certainly given me a hell of a lot of fun over the years) but because that's the best way to get on to the next thing. There will certainly be a 'next thing' some day, and postmodernism will be 'the last thing'.

It's actually impossible for anyone culturally active now to be doing anything other than postmodernism. The Taliban were a postmodern version of Islam, not (as often depicted) a contemporary group who were, somehow, also living in the Middle Ages. The Stuckists are a group of postmodern figurative painters who hate mainstream postmodernist art, but whose reaction against it also falls within postmodernism. Oasis and Matmos are both postmodernist pop groups. One is not 'more' postmodernist than the other. Postmodernism is the name of the cultural period we're all in.



But I see people's attempts to 'transcend' or 'deny' this as a form of bad faith. And I think postmodernism will not be superceded by denials and reactions against its core values, but by a complete embracing of them. That's why I like pop records like Cher's 'Believe'. By embracing postmodern production, by showing that there's no contradiction between the human voice and an electronic harmoniser, between technology and emotion, between contrivance and sincerity, or confection and belief, or the engineer and the humanist, 'Believe' brings the end of postmodernism closer because it brings closer the day in which to be postmodern will be as natural as breathing. Postmodernism will disappear by becoming so accepted that it's invisible and omnipresent. Whereas all reactions against postmodernism (Stuckism, rockism, fundamentalism) only serve to make postmodernism more visible, more important, something distinct from us, ahead of us, rather than written all through us.

Personally, I think Japan will be the country which first embraces whatever comes after postmodernism, because Japan is the society currently most at ease with postmodernism. They also know a thing or two about the fun you can have with ropes.