The funny thing about discussing post-irony is that it’s already been discussed, but I’ll talk about it anyway. New York does these things to me. It might be that lack of contact with the real planet, the one with the dirt and the sticks and rocks, that sends me reeling into these hyper-heady flights. It might be something in the water.
Or it might be that there’s so much to see here, at any given time, even on any given corner, that the mind is easily set to racing. A cool site for hotels is all one needs, really, to begin the adventure, and the rest you can make up when you get here. Life on the ground in NYC is always interesting, and always stimulating, and in truth, there is a park where people go to get their share of sticks and dirt, but the best ones are further north.
The call of the wild here, though, has less to do with nature and more to do with human ideas of nature, or ideas of ourselves as things waiting to be defined. One of the more interesting notions of self, then, came here in the last decade with Mama Mia! , when ABBA was rejuvenated with life as a musical, so that the group could be quoted in new contexts.
This is a particularly New York phenomenon, and one for playing around with inside one’s own head. The Swedish singers who seemed to be pretending at music revealed themselves as interesting musicians despite the pretense, and this set the stage for a new age.
You could call it post-irony , if that’s something that strikes you as relevant, or you could lose self-consciousness altogether and get lost in the music. One of the great advantages of a post-ironic age is that it is possible to get caught up in both the consciousness and the unconscious appeal simultaneously. The music keeps playing. And I keep bobbing my head to the catchy tunes, that sing sweetly to me in the park when I am dancing my own world beat.
Tags: post irony