Viva Viva in London Under Attack

I got a letter from a club in London. They are having troubles with rusty old neighbors and legal councils who can't seem to handle merry-making of any sort. I sent them this letter:

Dear Eve, Council, Friends & Foes Alike,
Can’t we all just get along without killing the arts and bludgeoning people’s joy-making down to listless monotone? It grieves me to see that the attack on music and art is happening in London too. Here in NYC we have had smoking bans, which resulted in closures of countless clubs, bans on actually dancing – if you can imagine – moving your god(dess) given body (that one is being lifted I hear), forced closures of numerous music clubs from CBGB, Brownies, Continental, Luna, C-Note, Bottom Line and others. Add to that the skyrocketing rents that force out the artists that made the formerly dismal neighborhoods inhabitable in the first place.

Do we really want a Prozac Nation? Even tempered tan leisure-suited men drolling on every corner? Doe-eyed social pacifists doing whatever they are told, pumping their Starbucks and petrol and spouting slogans? Soon the only “party” will be the Republican party! Pretty soon the useless yammerings-on about pleasing their bosses will dull down the English language to the grunts and clicks of fanny-tanned arse-wriggling agreements and nervous-tic head-nodding. Are the legislators and public officials charged with protecting the common wealth of society in hock to their corporate friends enough? Or must we rent out our grandmothers too?

This war on the Arts has got to stop. Art, music, literature – this is the Humanities which is under attack. It used to be different factions knew how to get along in civil society. They compromised. They managed their differences and arrived at agreeable working solutions. They acted like human beings.

Please, those of you with some say over pubs and clubs and places where people gather to enjoy music and edify themselves over art and leisure: you were once young too, and don’t necessarily have to relinquish whatever you have left to the stodgy deafness and over-calcified lichen-infested creakiness of old age. Don’t resent the young and young at heart their vibrancy and love of life. Bend a little, like a living thing. And work to coexist.

Dylan Nirvana & The Bad Flowers
New York City
http://DylanNirvana.com
http://myspace.com/dylannirvana