I think the reason the attribution of hipsterness is always pejorative is that "hipster" is actually identifying today a subculture of people who are already dominant. The hipster... aligns himself with both rebel culture and with the dominant class, and opens up a poisonous conduit between the two.
- Mark Greif, What Was the Hipster?: A Sociological Investigation
Of all the kinds of belonging that contend for allegiance––as workers against the boss, as citizens against the enemy, as believers against infidel––all now have to compete with one which makes agon its first and only principle.
- McKenzie Wark, Gamer Theory
***
HIPSTERS:
A Play
An unkempt, unclean young man wearing an ironic t-shirt, HIPSTER 1, sits with an acoustic guitar on a step at the centre of a disproportionately large stage, practicing a song. Beside him are an iPod, computer speakers, and a crumpled hoodie, on the wall are Bob Dylan and Communist posters, and upstage there's a basketball.
Plays a delicate introductory chord. Two slow bars of strumming, then glances at the lyrics on the paper and on the upbeat starts singing in a cheerful monotone.
HIPSTER 1
––––––––––––––––––––––––––If there
Ever was a girl you had a crush on, or broke
Up with, this song is specifically about her,
Or if you're a girl him.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Enter from behind HIPSTER 2, a good-looking young man wearing an ironic basketball jersey. HIPSTER 1 glances again at his lyrics.
HIPSTER 1
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––This
Song is about how good my life is, as a
Rockstar, and for its duration you can pretend
Yours is just as good.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
HIPSTER 2 comes forward to pick up the basketball. HIPSTER 1 plays the bridge.
[Downstroke.]
Shut up, and listen to my awesome song.
[Downstroke.]
–[one-beat rest]–Or if you're a depressing loser sing along.
[Downstroke.]
–[one-beat rest]–Music makes your life seem like a boring movie.
[Downstroke.]
–[one-beat rest]–Look at all these adoring fans, I'm so groovy.
Ensues ecstatic guitar solo, accompanied by electric guitar voice. HIPSTER 2 briefly amuses himself by palming the basketball then dribbles once and chest-passes it as hard as he can into the back of the head of HIPSTER 1, interrupting the performance. Recovering, HIPSTER 1 swivels and peers at his assailant.
**ACT I**
HIPSTER 2
Sounding good man, why'd you stop?
HIPSTER 1 scrawls something on a pad of paper, then returns to peering.
HIPSTER 2
Am I getting backstage passes to your concert?
HIPSTER 1 scrawls briefly, then peers again, then scrawls at greater length.
HIPSTER 2
What the fuck are you writing?
HIPSTER 1
[Stops writing.]
Fragments shored against my ruin.
[Returns attention to guitar.]
HIPSTER 2
You're messed up.
[Takes out and checks Blackberry. Pause. Looks up from Blackberry.]
Yo, I checked out your myspace. Why the fuck do you have a myspace if you don't have any songs on it?
HIPSTER 1
Why the fuck do you have a twitter if you don't have any tweets on it?
HIPSTER 2
I have hundreds of tweets on it.
HIPSTER 1
[Widens eyes in astonishment.]
That's impressive.
HIPSTER 2 stares at him. They turn attention to Blackberry and guitar respectively. HIPSTER 2 stands several feet stage left of HIPSTER 1, and never sits down.
HIPSTER 1
You're a regular Mark Zuckerberg.
[Pause.]
When the revolution comes will you be tweeting for the people? I'm probably immolating myself anyway, maybe we could start some'n.
HIPSTER 2
[Not looking up from Blackberry.]
What are your grievances?
HIPSTER 1
None, spontaneous combustion. Metaphoric of the ideological vacuity of capitalism.
[Pause.]
Corporations are carving up the People's Internet as we speak.
[Pause.]
Have you heard the underground bootlegs of the new Animal Collective songs?
HIPSTER 2
[Not looking up from Blackberry.]
Could you be any gayer?
HIPSTER 1
It's their darkest work yet.
HIPSTER 2
I don't listen to bands with non-human animals in their name.
HIPSTER 1
[With ironic indignation.]
That's a completely arbitrary listening preference!
[Pause.]
I don't listen to bands who haven't survived at least nine gunshot wounds.
HIPSTER 2
[Not looking up from Blackberry.]
Play the Animal Circus if you want.
HIPSTER 1
[Selects on iPod an indie rock playlist starting with Animal Collective. Listens for a few moments.]
I agree though, they're probably my least favourite band. It’s just that there's nothing better. Western music basically has been dead in the water since Bach.
Enter upstage right two DOUCHEBAGS. They snigger in pantomime, remaining in upstage right corner.
HIPSTER 2
[Not looking up from Blackberry. With ironic fury.]
Who?
[Pause. Looking up from Blackberry.]
What about other classical music?
HIPSTER 1
I have a soft spot for Beethoven in his deaf phase but the symphonies have never found me.
HIPSTER 2
What about jazz?
HIPSTER 1
Deserves credit for raising the status of the musician in society.
HIPSTER 2
What about pop and rock?
HIPSTER 1
Good music for people who love bad music.
HIPSTER 2
What about hip-hop?
HIPSTER 1
I'm planning a side career as the first successful white rapper.
HIPSTER 2
By what fucking hipster definition of success?
DOUCHEBAG 1
[Casually hollering from upstage.]
Hey hipster faggot, nice myspace. Maybe since you're not actually a musician you should grow up and get a job before you have an epiphany of the worthlessness of your existence and kill yourself.
HIPSTER 1 swivels around to look at DOUCHEBAGS.
HIPSTER 2
[Looking up from Blackberry.]
Don't worry man, I'm doing what I can for him.
DOUCHEBAG 1
[Stares at HIPSTER 1. Pause.]
Fuck, it makes me furious just to look at him.
HIPSTER 2
I feel you man. Don't worry about it.
DOUCHEBAGS exeunt satisfied.
HIPSTER 1
[Watches them exeunt. Pause.]
Are you actually friends with those guys?
HIPSTER 2
[Not looking up from Blackberry.]
Why wouldn't I be?
HIPSTER 1
Like you'd be sad if they got run over by a car.
HIPSTER 2
[Flatly.]
Devastated.
HIPSTER 1
That's true.
[Pause.]
I would be as well.
[Pause.]
When you think about it friendship is simply a throwback to the stage of human history when nothing but your network of cavebros lay between you and a rock to the skull in your sleep.
HIPSTER 2 stares at him, then returns to Blackberry. Pause.
HIPSTER 2
[Looking up from Blackberry.]
Meds working?
HIPSTER 1 is focussed on guitar, appears not to hear.
HIPSTER 2
Huh?
**ACT II**
HIPSTER 1
Speaking of caves, I made a good discovery on craigslist: it turns out you can get a decent place just ten minutes out of downtown Africa for less than a dollar a day.
HIPSTER 2
[Returning to Blackberry.]
I was thinking of doing one of those teach-English-abroad things.
HIPSTER 1
That would be fun.
[Pause.]
Unfortunately, you'd simply be reinforcing the structural violence of global capitalism.
HIPSTER 2 stares at him, then returns to Blackberry.
HIPSTER 1
What?
HIPSTER 2
You should come, you'll need an income while you're building up your catalogue.
HIPSTER 1
I've been working on my between-song comedy routine.
HIPSTER 2
[Not looking up from Blackberry.]
As your friend I'm saying be realistic.
HIPSTER 1
For instance if a show's not going well as a tension-reliever I'll announce that if everyone doesn't dance to the next song like they're having the time of their lives I'll electrocute myself onstage with my amp.
HIPSTER 2
[Looking up from Blackberry.]
What if you wanna have kids?
HIPSTER 1
Bad enough my parents did.
[Pause.]
I can still barely play an F chord, I don't know what made them think they had good genes.
HIPSTER 2
Maybe they loved each other.
HIPSTER 1
Maybe they were so insecure they were worried people would think they were sterile.
[Pause.]
Unfortunately love is a myth of bourgeois consumer culture invented to sell Valentine's Day cards.
DOUCHEBAGS enter upstage left, sniggering in pantomime as before.
HIPSTER 2
[Looking at Blackberry again.]
I don't know what that means.
HIPSTER 1
In technical philosophical terminology, the colour of pill that keeps you thinking the Matrix is real.
HIPSTER 2
[Not looking up from Blackberry.]
Good analysis.
HIPSTER 1
The other lets you see everyone for the meaningless flashing green digits they are.
HIPSTER 2 looks up from Blackberry at DOUCHEBAGS, and HIPSTER 1 follows his gaze, swiveling around again.
HIPSTER 1
[Pauses music.]
Friends! We were just talking about you.
[Returns to facing audience, but hollers at them behind his back while attempting to casually noodle around on the guitar.]
We're so glad you decided to join us! So far this play's been a sausage-fest.
HIPSTER 2
[Back to looking at Blackberry.]
You're a retard.
HIPSTER 1
[Stilling addressing DOUCHEBAGS behind his back. With ironic gregariousness.]
Are you goons spending the rest of your plays playing one-dimensional dramatic antagonists, or do you have the balls to come down and get steamrollered by my sardonic squawks?
DOUCHEBAGS stare at him nonplussed, then casually exeunt.
HIPSTER 1
[Looks at audience as if waiting for response from the DOUCHEBAGS, but when none is forthcoming swivels around and sees them exeunt.]
You heard me, back to work with you! Grown-up jobs don't tolerate on-stage loitering on the company dollar.
[Pause. Swiveling forward again, to HIPSTER 2.]
I guess they're shy.
[Pause.]
I have nothing against grown-up jobs, I just wouldn't like having a boss who thinks he's better than me.
HIPSTER 1 picks up iPod, stares at screen gloomily and selects a song. Writes something on paper. Pause.
HIPSTER 2
[Looking up from Blackberry, irate.]
How are you gonna be a singer-songwriter when you haven't written a single song?
HIPSTER 1
[Not looking up from guitar.]
I'm working on it.
HIPSTER 2
You've been saying that for decades.
HIPSTER 1
[Casually noodling around on guitar.]
I had to teach myself guitar first.
HIPSTER 2
Why don't you teach yourself to wrap your guitar strings around your neck and hang yourself from your own fucking superiority complex?
HIPSTER 1
[Pause. Looking up from guitar, taken aback.]
I have to teach myself singing first.
HIPSTER 2 returns to Blackberry. HIPSTER 1 picks up iPod again and gloomily pauses the song and selects a different one. Writes again on paper. Pause.
HIPSTER 2
[Looking up from Blackberry, murderous.]
What the fuck is the structural violence of global capitalism?
HIPSTER 1
[Pause. Looks at him darkly.]
It's like the dark side of global bourgeois consumer culture.
HIPSTER 2
You personally embody everything that's pathetic in bourgeois consumer culture.
HIPSTER 1
True, and if you weren't breathtakingly ignorant of dialectical science you'd realize that makes me the very spectre of bourgeoisdom's undoing.
HIPSTER 2
[Pause.]
You're secretly studying for the LSAT.
HIPSTER 1
In secret I'm a superhero and keep the law by the moon's lusty light.
DOUCHEBAGS are cruising up from the aisle on the opposite side of HIPSTER 1.
HIPSTER 2
You’re a loser.
HIPSTER 1
But I look down on you.
HIPSTER 2
You're a snob.
HIPSTER 1
I don’t look down on you you humourless philistine.
HIPSTER 2
You're a bum.
HIPSTER 1
So was Jesus.
HIPSTER 2
Pitchfork Media's gonna crucify you to a giant wooden pitchfork.
HIPSTER 1
Thanks Judas, sorry about your eternal damnation to the shittiest circle of Hell.
HIPSTER 2
Is that the one where we get serenaded by you?
**ACT III**
DOUCHEBAGS arrive exactly now.
DOUCHEBAG 1
[Rapping, with rap gesticulations and insouciant flow.]
Oh! Take that bitch, hipster faggot, you're not tough so quit tryna act it, you can't hack it, time to move back to your parents' attic, even if you could play guitar you'd still be a sad guitar-playing sack of shit. In theory an indie rock superstar but in fact lucky if you can score a gig to accompany college kids getting stupid in dingy bars. Living hand to mouth and dick to arse, don't call yourself a starving artist cuz you're just a gay loser who's gonna starve.
DOUCHEBAG 2
You're so poor you sneak into high school girls' bathrooms to eat the barf!
HIPSTER 1 sits tensely. Meanwhile HIPSTER 2 is engrossed in Blackberry.
DOUCHEBAG 1
Yo, I'm the white Barack Obama, except instead of my midterm elections I fuck up pasty hipster complexions. Six figures straight outta law school, whatever, wowing my profs de rigueur whilst fucking sleek-figured sluts and busting the bell curve so hard I'm like Pavlov, the firms hear me coming and start to drool. Soon all the world's under my awed rule––I already basically own all record labels––and once I install myspace up in my stables I'll personally hit up your account with disable.
DOUCHEBAG 2
And I'm going to med school, so if you ever go into a coma I'll pull out your life-support cables!
HIPSTER 1 looks depressed. HIPSTER 2 still engrossed in Blackberry.
DOUCHEBAG 1
What the fuck do I care about music? My life is a rap and the beat over which I flow is the sound your face makes as I abuse it.
HIPSTER 1
It's an okay club beat but I don't think I'd enjoy it for just listening.
DOUCHEBAG 1
When they give you a zero Pitchfork’ll have to adjust their old scores for inflation.
HIPSTER 1
Many highly popular bands got their break from the backlash from a Pitchfork zero.
DOUCHEBAG 1
Everything you say only reveals you for the loser you are.
HIPSTER 1
[Browsing iPod.]
What's the use of more dialogue when the play's already basically over?
DOUCHEBAG 1
Truer than you know, bitch. I'm the white Francis Fukuyama and I declare this day the End of Hipstory, so cease your faggoty ways or cease to exist.
[To HIPSTER 2.]
Dog, let's blow this fruity drama frippery.
Pause. HIPSTER 2 looks up from Blackberry for the first time since the start of the rapping, and stares at him. HIPSTER 1 selects a rap playlist on the iPod.
HIPSTER 1
[To HIPSTER 2.]
Dog you heard the dog, cease your faggoty ways and go blow his dick.
[Pause. Turns up volume.]
Go on pup, nature calls! Sluts aren’t gonna fuck themselves!
[Pause. Turns up volume.]
Dog, don't think about tryna raposte this douchebag of a rapper with a more rhetorically-effective counterrap. Musical ability is something you're born with, and dog I'm telling you, I being a man and you being a dog and thus, as it were, my friend, be realistic! You couldn't spit rhymes for shit.
HIPSTER 2
[To HIPSTER 1, while glaring intensely at DOUCHEBAG 1.]
Shut the fuck up, we don't stand for douchebag hipsterphobic rants. I'm gonna rap him in the ass till his dick bursts the douchebag in his pants.
DOUCHEBAG 2
Hey man, we were just kidding around.
HIPSTER 1
Dog that was some dope bourgeois boilerplate, literally are you doped up on some kind of bourgeois tranquilizer?
HIPSTER 2
[To DOUCHEBAG 1.]
Hey white Barack I'm the white Osama, raised from the dead by Allah just to haunt ya, boo in the Oval Office gotcha boom drop a bomb in your first class at law school and in one meaningless flash blast your meaningless plans back to your meaningless scheming-ass past.
HIPSTER 1
But in the moment of that flash you finally understand, the meaninglessness you've been searching for all your life was within you all along.
DOUCHEBAG 1
[To HIPSTER 1.]
You're a bad influence on him.
HIPSTER 1
You don't find there's a piquant irony to the idea of being blown up in your first class of law school?
DOUCHEBAG 1
No.
Scowling, HIPSTER 2 turns his back to them and goes off to one side to brood.
DOUCHEBAG 2
[Timidly steps forward. To HIPSTER 1.]
Maybe you're not thinking about "meaning" the right way, you know. It's a cool fact about your brain that it gives you chemical rewards when you set goals and accomplish them, and that's what creates a feeling of happiness and fulfillment.
[Pause.]
Maybe you think life is meaningless because you set goals you can't accomplish.
Pause. HIPSTER 1 stares at him darkly.
HIPSTER 1
[With ironic psychopathicism.]
There are cobwebs in the crevasse of my brain where I once held my rewards ceremony, and I can hear synapses chirping in it, and the guy who used to present the rewards is dead, I shot him in the head with a neuron and now his brain’s smeared on my brain's dirty floor.
DOUCHEBAG 2
[Pause.]
Maybe you're depressed?
HIPSTER 1
No dog, I'm giving you advice. Your life will be sweeter if you make a shroud.
**ACT IV**
HIPSTER 2
[Aside. Music pauses, lights dim except him. Holds basketball à la Yorick's skull.]
I can almost hear it, humming––the call of nature, thumping––thrusting––stuck in my brain chemicals like a song in a club instructing me to fuck––using me to be fucked––seducing me to bust and to drudge my stud butt and to hunt wild bucks and in theory thus run a fussier cunt. Why do I give a fuck, that is the question. Your own brain chemicals whoring you to nature, that's life and love.
DOUCHEBAG 2
I don't know what that means, "make a shroud."
HIPSTER 1
It means when someone tells you his dream you say you had the same one and woke up screaming.
DOUCHEBAG 2
[Pause.]
Nightmares are often your brain warning you based on semi-conscious memories to not do something.
HIPSTER 1
Well I never dream nor nightmare, and I'm either conscious or not, no sell-out equivocations.
HIPSTER 2
[Aside. With basketball gesticulations, forlornly then with growing confidence.]
I just wanna nice girl to settle down with––get a nice house just ten minutes outta downtown with––bond with and bound with till we have a round dozen kids to whom to expound my practical wisdom and profound know-how. What the fuck do I care about law school, fucking myth of bourgeois litigious culture invented to sell tuition to law school. What kind of nihilistic douchebag goes to law school? Backpack-ass practicers see me in court when I riposte up the courtroom floor no-look passing the bar and slamming it in the judge's streetlaw-schooled backdoor.
DOUCHEBAG 2
Actually most people have trouble with continua, the mind is adapted to think in dichotomies for efficiency. That's not my point though.
HIPSTER 1
What's your point? I'm not actually listening.
DOUCHEBAG 2
Just that you don't need to be an artist to know life is meaningless. Why is a penis born with a foreskin? Evolution doesn't care if you get HIV. You're but a tiny twig in the tree of life and as utterly subject to elemental forces beyond your fathoming as the simplest bacterium. The day it ceases to grow your body begins to decay and no medicine will ever change that, and maybe that's why humans learned to dance and sing, to distract our oversized brains, because people don't wanna think about the truth, because the truth is ugly.
HIPSTER 1
So put it out of its misery.
DOUCHEBAG 2
Sort of. I'm against euthanasia.
DOUCHEBAG 1
I am as well, I feel it's wrong.
HIPSTER 1
Let the bastards suck it up and suffer like the rest of us then, good.
[Pauses music. To HIPSTER 2.]
Learn to dance and sing you big-brained bacterium.
HIPSTER 2
[Pounds the basketball on the ground then punches it out of the air across the stage, into DOUCHEBAG 1's hands. Angrily sardonic.]
Fuck teaching English to Africans, I'll be so passionate at my law applicant interview about being magnanimous to Africans no one'll fathom I hadn't done jack-shit. Wouldn't you wanna have me as your advocate?
DOUCHEBAG 1
[Flatly.]
It depends what's your GPA.
HIPSTER 1
Your conscience would gnaw away at the language-processing nerves of your brain until your forehead is so emaciated people can see the outlines of your skull.
HIPSTER 2
I'd get AIDS and malaria and trampled by elephants.
HIPSTER 1
You'd get abducted by aliens for use as a moon-plantation slave.
DOUCHEBAG 2
Maybe you'd become a human-rights lawyer in Africa.
HIPSTER 2
[Looks at him. Pause. Bitterly sardonic.]
You represent yourself and judge yourself at the court for the structural felony of existence––have to make your own case for your own persistence––and why not make it explicit? Honesty’s a virtue, isn’t it? Your Honour, my client pleads guilty of wanting to fuck a slut just to see if she’d reciprocate, verdict: I order him to whenever he sees her escape with precipitous haste. Your Honour my client pleads guilty of hoping the world stays dominated by American force just because it protects his personal wellbeing, verdict: I sentence China to a devastating civil war with one side he can root for and that gives his life the semblance of moral meaning. But Your Honour, I’ve hard genetic evidence my client couldn't possibly have been present at the site of the crime at the time of his conception. Case dismissed then, back to life as usual, the rest is hipster-ass objection.
HIPSTER 1
Objection. I have hard hearsay evidence heard said by him by me that the defendant can be truly a gentleman, and an upstanding lamenter of the lacunae in China's human-rights record.
HIPSTER 2
If only Qadaffi'd had the acumen to learn a lesson from the patient Chianaman.
HIPSTER 1
You said I had a superiority complex.
HIPSTER 2
You do.
HIPSTER 1
So what about an apparatchik too good to be democraticked?
HIPSTER 2
In his position I'd probably say the same.
HIPSTER 1
But you're not in his position.
HIPSTER 2
So I say stick a chopstick down his yellow-bellied throat.
HIPSTER 1
What about a terrorist?
HIPSTER 2
Ram a burning Koran down his Koran-chanting pants.
HIPSTER 1
But would you be chanting the same?
HIPSTER 2
I wouldn't know what weird shit sluts in burqas consider gentlemanly.
HIPSTER 1
But wouldn't you rather be the hipster who had the idea to blackball Mubarak?
HIPSTERS stare at each other.
HIPSTER 1
You're zero from head to toe.
**ACT V**
HIPSTER 1 plucks guitar broodily. HIPSTER 2 looks at him irritatedly.
DOUCHEBAG 1
[To HIPSTER 1, but hollering as if mainly just wanting others to overhear.]
Yo, I apologize for my exhortation to self-slaughter. Would you mind not mentioning it in your note?
DOUCHEBAG 2
[Pause.]
I don't think he's suicidal.
DOUCHEBAG 1
You think he's a psycho?
DOUCHEBAG 2
It's possible. Or bipolar. Most likely just immature. He looks so helpless, like he literally couldn't get up and move from that spot. Like he could be sitting there learning guitar for eternity and still only pluck one dissonant string.
DOUCHEBAG 1
A regular Sarah Palin.
DOUCHEBAG 2
Because he's immature?
DOUCHEBAG 1
Cuz he's a dumb bitch.
DOUCHEBAG 2
[Pause. Looks at him.]
Women have much superior social intelligence to men, you know. Most men are unbelievably deficient in empathy.
DOUCHEBAG 1
I'm not worried about it.
DOUCHEBAG 2
What about presidents starting wars because it didn’t occur to them Arabs are psychologically more complex than woolly mammoths?
DOUCHEBAG 1
I have empathy enough.
DOUCHEBAG 2
You'd be the type of white Barack Obama to be flabbergasted when the universe isn't as proud as you are about your seducing of your intern. It's because of close-minded goonbags like you that people who actually think about life get depressed.
Pause. Stares at him.
HIPSTER 1
[Strums a portentous chord. Singing tunelessly.]
Your thoughts get dim, the universe is closing in.
DOUCHEBAGS look at him.
HIPSTER 1
I feel you man.
DOUCHEBAG 1
[With ironic visceral disgust.]
Do you still exist?
HIPSTER 1
Ooga booga.
DOUCHEBAG 1
You're a neanderthal.
HIPSTER 1
Better a neanderthal terrorized than a hobama sapien paralyzed.
DOUCHEBAG 1
If you're unbelievably deficient in rationality, yes.
HIPSTER 1
[Pause. Looks at him. Puts down guitar and confrontationally walks up to him.]
For your information, it's a cool fact that music has been known to induce chemical rewards in the brain: the very body part in charge of rationality.
DOUCHEBAG 2
The prefrontal cortex?
DOUCHEBAG 1
Good to know.
HIPSTER 1
Horrible to know, but I'll have you know something else. Among the ancient neanderthal tribes, when a tribe was preparing for an important battle with an invading enemy bourgeois tribe, it was traditional for the tribal shaman to perform a war song to entreat the gods to lend his warriors the strength of the lion and the swiftness of the cheetah, and if the song was an 8.0 or higher then yea the heavens sundered and quoke and the warriors felt the very howl of nature in their veins.
DOUCHEBAG 2
[Pause.]
That's more the motor cortex.
HIPSTER 1 stares at him, then goes to iPod.
HIPSTER 1
[Standing back to audience, selects electronic music.]
But to what gods can a gods-fearing tribe turn in this disenchanted age?
[Puts on the shaman hoodie that was by the speakers.]
DOUCHEBAG 1
It turns to being productive contributors to society. Sorry if that's blasphemous.
HIPSTER 1
[Turning back around.]
Nature's dead in tooth and claw.
DOUCHEBAG 1
I also play tenor sax in a jazz combo and freestyle snowboard and BMX.
HIPSTER 1
How versastyle!
DOUCHEBAG 1
I style what I want.
HIPSTER 1
[Raising arms.]
Do you like my new style?
DOUCHEBAG 1
I set the styles.
HIPSTER 1
[Raises hood.]
Yea, though I freestyle through the idea of the valley of death, I fear no evil.
DOUCHEBAG 1
I’m also fluent in Mandarin.
HIPSTER 1
Thy rationality it comforts me.
DOUCHEBAG 1
Freestyle touch-of-death your xenofaggot ass.
HIPSTER 1
[Bowing head.]
Thy touch it's life unto me.
DOUCHEBAG 1
Who the fuck are you talking to?
HIPSTER 1
[Starts restlessly pacing around. As if addressing God.]
Yea though your boos echo in my head I'll never exit this tragic stage, for thou art with me, and of thy dissonant notes I’ll compose symphonies, freestyle.
DOUCHEBAG 1
Who are you talking to you psycho bitch?
HIPSTER 1
[Stops pacing. Looks at him.]
I'm communing with my creator and the explainer of my mysterious ways, my rock and deliverer from the desert of the real.
DOUCHEBAG 1
Your deliverer from the desert of yourself. Bitch.
HIPSTER 1
[Music picks up. Pacing again, hunched and heavy-footed. With ironic solemnity.]
It’s you who direct my fingers to these frets, and I your acoustic-headed lackey am entrusted but to strum the strings. You have tuned the instincts upon which I pluck my faith, and for my devotion I’ve the revelation of my prostration before the goals it’s you who command. I'm the apostle of your mighty notions and the jihadist of your random hankerings, and I tremble before your semi-conscious wrath.
HIPSTER 2
[Also pacing, straight-backed and stiffly. As if simply channeling the gods.]
Almighty Brain, lead me to victory and I'll propagate your instinctive truths, but fail me or try forsake me bitch I'll pop a case of whiskey in you.
HIPSTER 1
[With ironic spiritual anguish.]
I see visions of watching faces you project onto my retinas, and can’t see them lucidly though I pinch myself until I bleed. I hear the voices of synapses wailing through the labyrinth of your crevasses, and the harder I listen the more surely hear just sound and fury. I feel disturbances in my heart––blood cells palpitating in my heart for democracy in the body politic––they only want to love and be loved and be pumped to the crevasses of power but as soon as the audience's gone they're scheduled to be fired upon and self-restrained and forever locked up.
HIPSTER 2
Brain Leader, prosper my body politic and I'll abide your heartwashing lies, but feel my red-blooded blood cells palpitating to start moshing up in you when the right grievance immolates and star-crosses my eyes.
HIPSTER 1
My God, my God, give me a goal. My God, I was bought and now I'm sold out. What happened to the revolution? Was the betrayer Lenin or Stalout? Was it Robespierre, was it Obama? My God, the truth is forsaken. Was the hope ever real, was it all an Odrama? My God, my God, what the fuck do I care, what the fuck––
[Launches himself at DOUCHEBAG 1, and is immediately deflected to the floor.]
DOUCHEBAG 1
What the fuck?
HIPSTER 1
[Scrambles back on his hands and knees and grabs DOUCHEBAG 1 by the legs.]
How can I not think you're on my side?
[DOUCHEBAG 1 picks him up and then wrathfully smites him down.]
HIPSTER 2
[Unclear who he's talking to. Worked-up and as if possessed.]
There's no salvation in self-righteousness, no satisfaction in self-righteous righting of self-righteous lies, no self-respect in saying fuck it, look out for your own forsaken hide. How can you not just quit bitching and lay down and––
[Pause. Looks at HIPSTER 1 cringing on the floor.]
Look at this nice young man, prostrating himself to his own peers, what humility, what fine man-fearing piety! The mere sight of his pathetic servility sends frissons of inverse pride down my godforsaken spine. And yet so insightful and wise, I bet's of good genes, I bet'll survive and reproduce and die.
HIPSTER 1 partially rises and stares at HIPSTER 2, then returns to original seat. HIPSTER 2 ignores him and turns to the DOUCHEBAGS.
HIPSTER 2
And who can resist the douchey charm of these promising heirs to the Obamacratic thrones? Fine young digits, fine bright young flashing white digits shored against the end of the white show. May they yield as handsomely as the capital from which they flow! Just to network with such meritorious fellows bloats my belly full of hope.
HIPSTER 1 pauses iPod.
HIPSTER 2
[To audience.]
Play’s over you silly people, time to go home you pretentious pigs. Why the fuck'd you even go to a play, if you’re too semi-conscious to read a book shouldn't you at least be doing something to improve your social intelligence? Contribute to the dialogue you ineffectual quipsters.
[Spits.]
Couldn't spit a realistic quip of dialogue if your life depended on it.
[Turns his back to the audience.]
DOUCHEBAG 2
[Pause.]
Man, you can’t–
HIPSTER 1
[Stamps feet.]
No one asked you.
[Glares at him meanly.]
Pause. DOUCHEBAG 1 takes out his Blackberry, looks at it a moment then exits head-down in it, followed in a moment by DOUCHEBAG 2. HIPSTER 2 takes out his Blackberry and looks at it, and once alone onstage HIPSTERS stare at each other a moment, then turn to their guitar and Blackberry respectively, and HIPSTER 2 exits head-down in Blackberry. HIPSTER 1 turns the music back on, looks fearfully at the audience, then lies down on his back, legs still dangling over ledge, holding the guitar to his chest and ineffectually riffing to the music. HIPSTER 2 re-enters backstage right and DOUCHEBAGS backstage left, all wearing business attire. They briefly hang out upstage centre, talking and joking in pantomime – HIPSTER 2 however seeming slightly aloof – then exeunt stage-right with HIPSTER 2 in the lead and DOUCHEBAG 1 beside him, DOUCHEBAG 2 trailing slightly behind, gawking at the limp form of HIPSTER 1 as he passes.
