enjoy the silence.

a moment of clarity.

words.

"When Mark Kozelek chose to start and carry on a completely one-sided and extremely public feud with a band who genuinely did nothing wrong, who chose not to retaliate and even stated their position as fans of his work, who seem hurt and confused by Kozelek's constant public attacks that persisted for weeks and how said attacks affected their year—that doesn't seem like entertainment. It's important to call it what it is: emotional abuse.

...His behavior is indicative of a larger evil bred in the dark corners of the music industry, that of the middle-aged, straight white guy slowly fading into obscurity. He may be a musician or a music critic—could be both—who is obviously talented, but he isn't receiving as much attention as he used to. Maybe he sees other people getting the work or praise that he once received—younger people, women, people who don't agree with his worldview or go along with his way of doing things. With less to do now that he's slowly greying into obscurity, he spends his free time taking out his frustrations on soft targets: people who aren't likely to fight back, people who are already marginalized and without the platform or agency to speak out against someone with that amount of privilege and reputation. These men go off in interviews or on social media and take shots at anyone who doesn't fall in line with their worldview, and it gets personal quick. They're staring down the barrel of obsolescence, aimed at them by a culture where the most exciting music and art, as well as critical writing about that music and art, is being created by people they have nothing in common with. It becomes "you can't fire me, I quit" very quickly—they're no longer considered important voices, so they strike out against the people who are gaining traction.

...These men are devotees of a dangerous patriarchal herd mentality, which they confuse for part of some imaginary intellectual elite. These men can't just be smart on their own; they have to be smart in a superior way that only exists in relation to the ways in which other people are dumb, generic, inauthentic. These are men who never learned that someone else's success doesn't mean their failure. It's sad in the same way that American Beauty is sad—to see these men holding on to their fragile egos and public identities for dear life. And their retaliation is, more often than not, aggressive and menacing.

...don't write this off as the ranting of a cantankerous character, and definitely don't take the advice of so many enablers and ignore it. Instead, think critically about what this sort of behavior represents on a larger scale: human behavior doesn't come from nowhere, these traits are learned and reinforced by larger oppressive systems that also systematically disenfranchise people in many other ways. If we desire a more just world—and a better music scene for sure—we would be doing ourselves a favor to take the space we would normally dedicate to men like this and give it over to artists who represent a broader diversity of voices. This goes for music as well as art, literature, politics, any area where middle-aged white men have the most agency to make sure their voices are heard. The more of us there are, the more things will be like the show that pissed Kozelek off in the first place; no matter how cruel their banter gets, at the end of the day, we'll still be louder."

THE PITCH: Sun Kil Moon Yells At Cloud: "War On Drugs: Suck My Cock" and the Language of Male Violence