End of a Year
Ian MacKaye famously sang, "I don't like parties, they avoid the truth." But if we want to make it to the end of another year, we're going to need joy as a survival strategy.
I.
For my last “normal” job, I sold real estate in New York City. It was “hardcore” only in the sense that my boss was actually Keith Burkhardt—singer for the seminal New York hardcore band Cause For Alarm—but other than that, it was mostly just a way for me to live. I was good at my job, I took care of my clients, and it was the most lucrative job I’ve ever had; I can tell you that much without blinking. But it’s also possible to be good at something you don’t actually enjoy. When you’ve lived the majority of your life doing creative work, being uncreative for a living feels like living in a well-funded black-and-white movie. I wanted to live in color again, and I was willing to slash the operating budget.
One day in 2021, following a particularly distasteful exchange with a client, I very spontaneously quit after five years on the job. Keith saw it coming more than I did, and he told me as much when he said that he always expected that I would go back to music some day. “You were never going to be a real estate agent for life,” he laughed. I sort of resented that he knew that, but I also knew he was right. There was never going to be a perfect time to bow out. So I just had to have faith that taking this risk would make me available for opportunities that might have otherwise been closed to me. Remarkably, only one month later, I started playing with Thursday.
Your life can drastically change in a single year.
One year ago this week, I was winding down from a long year of touring. Thursday didn’t have any plans to tour in the first half of 2023, and while I had certainly earned a break, I also didn’t feel like it was wise to burn half a year’s budget without a supplemental income. So I decided to look for another “normal” job. Full-time? Sure! Part-time? OK! In the music business? Why not! At a tattoo shop? I’ll take it! I wasn’t particularly fussy about it. I was just a highly qualified person looking for work.
So I sent out résumé after résumé after résumé, day after day and month after month, until I was literally applying for jobs I didn’t even want. I had just missed the boat on a promising marketing job with a well-known label; that was disappointing, but totally understandable, so I moved on. There was a label management job for a distributor that I’d worked with in the past; I waited in limbo for almost two months before a friend in the company told me the job had already been promised to another candidate before the job listing was even posted. (That kind of sucked, to be real with you.) There was even a marketing role at a gay hookup app on the table, but they asked me to do a week’s worth of unpaid labor to even be considered for a part-time job. I have more self-respect than that. It was May before I knew it.
That month, I canceled my LinkedIn Premium account, and for the first time this year, I really sat down with myself. There is perhaps nothing more demoralizing than repeatedly putting your accomplishments up for judgment by a select group of strangers who don’t share your vision. I began to appreciate that, on paper at least, my life doesn’t make a lot of sense in the so-called real world: I dropped out of high school. I started touring and recording in bands in 1991 and never completely stopped. I published a fanzine out of my bedroom before writing for more “major” publications. I’ve been a nightclub DJ, a record label owner, an on-air personality for a gay TV network, an author, a documentary film writer, a university English lecturer, and a real estate agent. To most execs, that makes me a wild card at best and a liability at worst. And yet, I’d argue that all those seemingly disparate skills are actually proof of concept: They show that I’m adaptable. They show that I understand both art and commerce. They show that I can repeatedly make something out of nothing, over and over again. That has been the consistent narrative of my life.
Once I understood that, the next thought I had was more exciting: What if I could walk right past the gatekeepers who didn’t understand what I do and bring myself directly to the people who did? This is the question that ultimately reanimated Anti-Matter in June of this year. It led me to consider that, even 30 years later, Anti-Matter could still be a unique creative asset for this community. But in order to do it, I had to empower myself with the validation that I was looking for elsewhere. In that sense, recreating Anti-Matter this year is quite possibly the most hardcore thing I’ve ever done.
As we say goodbye to 2023, I am writing this to say that my life has, once again, drastically changed in a single year.
II.
For my final interview of 2023, I decided to try something a little different. Instead of focusing on a single artist, I invited Jeremy Bolm of Touché Amoré to go in with me on a year-end conversation, where we’ve each chosen our three favorite songs of the year to discuss among ourselves—while also allowing the conversation to flow into a range of unrelated topics, including why it’s easier to write about death than it is about love, why his band doesn’t write mosh parts, and what the name Touché Amoré really means (sort of). I chose Jeremy because, in addition to his work with Touché, he is a renowned record collector, the host of an excellent podcast, and one of the most articulate thinkers about music that I know. I wanted this to be a lighthearted and celebratory end to a banner year for Anti-Matter, and I believe we achieved that.
That said, early on in the conversation, we both acknowledged that 2023 has also been a difficult year in general. There is economic uncertainty, there is war, there is an upcoming election that feels dire to so many of us for so many reasons. With all of those things following us into 2024, it is tempting to downplay the wins—personal, creative, or otherwise—and this is something we struggled with when talking about our own lives.
“It’s similar to what was happening in 2020 and 2021,” Jeremy recalled. “Like, there’s a guilt that can sometimes come from feeling like you’re in a good place, and you almost don’t want to advertise that you’re in a good place because you feel that guilt—you know what I’m saying. And that sucks because sometimes it is nice to share that you’re in a good place. I think that was the main reason why so many people’s brains just stopped working over the pandemic. Because all they were inundated with was all of the horrible, negative things that were happening, and they made that their personality. We all know a lot of people that didn’t come out of that mentally well.”
Truthfully, the guilt is valid. And it makes it so that there is no small part of me that doesn’t feel like I should keep my personal victories to myself. But what I told Jeremy is also a long-held conviction of mine: I came from an abusive home, with housing and income insecurity. I was a 12-year-old kid who started reading about global economics because he wanted to understand why his father worked three jobs. Add onto that my experience as a queer kid in that environment and survival was a legitimate daily concern. As much as I wanted to understand my circumstances and work towards changing them, I eventually came to find joy—wherever I could get it—as a means to persist. It is about understanding that allowing ourselves to be wholly consumed by all of the awful things we are up against every single day is like setting yourself on fire and expecting the other person to burn. Anger is how we fight, but joy is how we survive.
III.
Sharing my recent failure in the job market with you is humiliating, and that’s why I am doing it. Because in the future, when I think about 2023, I want to remember all of the difficult things. At the same time, it wouldn’t be honest—or accurate—if I didn’t memorialize the fact that there was also joy to be found: In just six months, I’ve been able to find a community of people like you, thousands strong, who trust me to come into your email inbox with meaningful ideas and provocative conversations about hardcore punk every week. Several hundred of you have also become paying subscribers since then, and I simply cannot stress enough that the present and future of Anti-Matter is only possible due to your support. The more of you who can chip in each month for the cost of a coffee or a fanzine, the more time and effort I can justify putting into this project every day. As it is, you’d be amazed how much of my life I have dedicated to this right now, and I cannot end this year any more grateful than I already am.
Many of you have also asked about repressing the Anti-Matter book and/or the compilation record, and I promise you there is forward motion on both those things. In a perfect 2024, you’ll see them find their way back into the world.
In the meantime, Anti-Matter will be taking a sabbatical next week so that I can celebrate the holidays and the new year with my family and friends, but I’ll be back the week of January 2 with a new essay and a conversation with one of modern hardcore’s best-known and most celebrated artists. Until then, I hope you’ll enjoy (and argue over) our picks for the best songs of 2023, and that you all have a wonderful holiday season and a happy new year. Embrace the joy, wherever you find it.
Coming on Thursday to Anti-Matter: The Best Songs of 2023 with Jeremy Bolm of Touché Amoré.
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AM has been key in reigniting my joy in hardcore (and life!) and I thank you immensely for your thoughtful words. Here’s to even more hardcore and joy in 2024!
After years of dabbling in returning to playing music I found myself in 2 bands this year and reading AM has really helped me reconnect with a lot of important facets of modern punk and hardcore that I think I forgot about when I "dropped out" in the early aughts. I really appreciate all you do, Norman. Thank you so much.