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Love your concept of "scene" and how you write about it. I know exactly what you're getting at. I, like you, have moved around quite a bit over the years. It's amazing how a certain combination of time and place, and those people with whom we share that, can produce the most unforgettable moments and experiences. Even things that would otherwise be mundane take on a sort of otherworldly sense of amazement that is impossible to bottle up or recapture yet never escapes you for the rest of your life. It's haunting, really.

In my experience, the pinnacle of scene was 2012-2014 Hanoi. Those years offered the most magical and dynamic life, times, and sense of place that anyone could hope for. I still struggle with accepting the fact that it will never be recreated or experienced again, but that's life. We have to enjoy the great stuff while we have it and hopefully have the presence of mind to truly appreciate it before it's gone.

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Jun 22, 2021Liked by David Reaboi

I found this a very interesting piece and I look forward to the next installments. I suspect there's a profound link between the experience of the artistic avant-garde that defines what became conventional in the modernism of the 20th century, what you are here calling a "scene," and what constitutes the experience of authentic political action today. Am I right to say politics [as authentic experience] can only be conceived on the model of artistic rebellion?

It strikes me that there's a jouissance intrinsic to the avant-garde experience that may be passing over into more right-wing spaces due to the success of the dissemination of politics-as-artistic resistance. The corpse of the bohemian is becoming the puritan. But about this jouissance, I mean, in the avant-garde, you are freed from the law of the future that will bind those who come after as your imitators, because you yourselves are the very necessity that is bringing that law about. You don't have to regard it, you just have to be it.

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Jun 22, 2021Liked by David Reaboi

Did that late-90s SF scene include the Firehouse down in the Mission? I saw Glenn Spearman play there some time in the 90s. Also the Luggage Store in the Tenderloin? Lots of great players in the Bay Area at that time. Now they can't even afford Oakland.

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Jun 21, 2021Liked by David Reaboi

My few visits to San Francisco were never so good. It's a beautiful area and I happen to love the weather, but the puking drunks and drug abusers passed out on the streets ruined my experience.

I can't judge a city based on one short vacation and a few business trips. It sounds like you were in the right place at the right time. That's a good thing,

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deletedJun 23, 2021Liked by David Reaboi
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