The Honeyclub and Wondering What’s Outside the Pond

Artists do two things: show the rest of us what we look like from the outside (that’s one) and fail to explain themselves in any reasonable way (the second thing). And I think you’ll find the two things are actually the same thing.

This reputation artistic people have for being oddballs has more to do with us than them. We are all part of one, whole and complete thing. We usually call that thing The Universe, even if we don’t know what that means. As tiny crumbs on the inside of that complete thing, it’s awfully damned hard to think about what that looks like from the outside. Just ask a cosmologist. Part of their job is figuring out how to describe to all us motes of dust what The Universe (whatever that is) looks like from the outside, when there isn’t an outside to look from in the first place. Their job is hard enough, and they have actual stuff to point at to say, “that’s part of what I’m talking about—and you can see it right there.”

Imagine if, instead of pokable things like suns and molecules, the reality they had to describe was made of stuff that isn’t anywhere at all. Stuff like decency and ugliness and oddity. The ingredients, in other words, to humanity (whatever that is). Even if none of us can point at Humanity, we all know what it is. We have no idea WHERE it is, of course, which may lead us to the mistake of thinking it isn’t anyplace at all.

The reality of the situation is we can’t find humanity because we’re in it. Sort of obvious when it’s pointed out to you, but someone had to point it out to you. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe someone did many years back for you. Or maybe it’s never occurred to you at all.

If it’s a weird thought to think that humanity is a definite thing (and it is), then the next obvious thought is what could that do to your life?

The answer of which is literally everything. It is the motivation for every decision you make. Nothing’s anything except by being called it, and caring to call things anything is what it means to be human, and meaning is what it means to be human.

Which doesn’t MEAN anything, except on some profound level more satisfying than thought.

None of us can look at humanity from the outside. But some of us can fake it, through some fairly robust psychic gymnastics.

That’s what artists do. And they never sufficiently explain themselves because we’re all unwilling to trust the reflection of ourselves they provide.

That’s all artists, although how much they’re willing to meet you where you are varies from one to the next.

Just musing.

Growth through devolution

The Honeyclub plays rock and roll. Established in September 2019 by childhood friends performing under the names G. Lou, Bo J. Al, and Feety Joe, The Honeyclub grew up in a musical world where they could have done any number of, as my dad might have put it, terminally unique things. If you go out into the world and find out what “the kids these days” are doing musically, as often as anything you’ll get some wonderfully imaginative answers. It sometimes feels as if every new band also needs to invent a new genre-meld to talk about who they are and what they do. That, or you might hear, “we don’t know what we do.” Which is almost better, you know? Then, at least, I can decide for myself what I’m getting out of listening to them.

The Honeyclub goes in neither of these directions. The way G. Lou put it, “we are just rock and roll.” Which could have been a cop-out, but he went on to talk about what he meant by that. Modern rock, he thinks, lacks ambition. We talked for a while about the amorphous quality suffusing some (not in any way all, but some) of the modern music scene. A lot of new bands spend a lot of time and energy trying to achieve this or that specific sound—either falling into the grooves of an old genre or some specific band. While they do, some of them miss an opportunity available to everyone making music.

That being the fundamental, incalculable something that rock and roll accidentally captured, and that the world got so exci