Review Summary: we dream in color, but we see in black and white.
There’s something different about walking through the city streets in the morning. It isn’t how I imagined it being; there’s lights everywhere, I expected that. But I expected some of the lights to come from the faces of the people. I know getting up to just have to walk for your daily commute to get to your shitty 9-5 isn’t the most exciting thing. We all know that. But what’s the point of living if you’re not living, you’re existing? Where’s the energy? Where are the people we used to be? When did we give up our interests and dreams for student loans and tax debts we’ll never be able to repay? Are we just supposed to wait around in some mindless circle-strolling? Where do the circles end? Where do they even begin? All questions that we pretend we know the answers to, but we all need to get over ourselves. We don’t get up to live our lives by working 17 hours a day, 4-6 days a week, just to save up for something we don’t even know yet. It’s time to stop seeing the world in black and white. We can’t all see in vivid color, but we don’t have to see bright. Really, we just need to stop viewing our environment as this, dark, black, cold, dead place. There’s just something different about getting off the couch that’s so thought-provoking. This ‘culture’ is crying out for innovation -- for resurfacing. Albums like
Brutalism serve as shocking revelations, and we need records like this, because they inspire us to get off our couches, to wake the fuck up and do something with our lives.
Those city streets in the morning and their cruel intentions are the things that motivated
Brutalism and albums like it. I know it for a fact. Such anger and angst is only justified in the way that it actually has something to say. There’s something channeled through these Bristolian punks that has the potential to start something. There’s a spark to be made here. I’m not talking about the fundamentals of simplified first-wave--punk-bullshit; not that big, not as historical. We just need a spark, even if it’s not through music. We need to spread fundamentals of freedom and individuality in a world of diminishing boundaries and encroaching walls. People like you and me, we’re not the same, but we’re not that different. Maybe the people around us are different though. I want you to tell your mate to stop dicking around on FIFA and go and play an actual game of Football. I want you to tell your dad to stop complaining about losing weight and actually start a damn diet before his health worsens. I want you to look yourself in the mirror like I did with myself. I stared myself in the eyes and figured if I’m not gonna give up the bottles, I might as well make the best of them. I told myself I need to get out and do something, so I’m gonna tell you the same. Get up, go out and do what makes you happy, cut off all the burdens you have, take a day off. I’m not saying go quit your day-job or go shit on a cop’s door or something, that’d be fucking stupid. But what I’m saying is; grab a canvas, pen and paper, guitar, whatever it may be. Create and stop consuming, fuck, even if it means just to stop reading this, go create, move this world a little bit further forward. We’re at a time where innovation is imperative, and in the deathly orbit of anxiety and mundanity that we all live in, we deprive ourselves of that ability and wrongfully convince ourselves that we’re too small for the big picture. We can
be the big picture if we really want it hard enough.
Maybe I’m just a babbling book of nonsense to you. Maybe this will have no effect on you, and you’re gonna click on the highlighted “No” at the bottom of the page. But I want you to at least think about what you’re reading. Listen to
Brutalism; it says what I’m trying to say a hell of a lot better than I ever could. There’s a spark to be had and I think we’re all tired of waiting for it at this point. Start a discussion. If I don’t think there’s a god, and that’s not the worst news of the day, there’s a discussion to be had; about anything, just to get some gears moving. We need a culture-shock. We need me, we need everyone here. We need our friends. We need you. So get off your couch, grab your pen and paper or your phone, go outside and get to know those city streets. Start writing. Listen to the sounds around you and think about what they mean to you, and what they mean to everybody else out there. We’re all human, and we need to do what we can to push the boundaries of whatever that means.
Brutalism showcases that ideology better than I ever could. So do something. Anything. Get everyone you know. Go out and live a little. Make a change, even if it’s a small one. It’s all we can do.
