Shadows breathing on themselves
Only remember the photographs
All of the years and all of the years and that’s all that’s left


Gary Panter, Boarding Pass, 2008

* From a March 2008 interview of David Berman by David Malitz:

"I'm really hard on myself. I welcome people challenging what I’ve done on a level of what I’ve done. But I do get embarrassed about adulation that I see when it comes my way, if it comes my way. It’s embarrassing because I recognize it as part of this complete affirmation of the idea of a cool rock band. Of which there can be nothing wrong with them. There can be no question. You can’t mention the second terrible album. No one wants to mention that it’s terrible. No one wants to talk about that. No one wants to talk about, well, maybe they only had one album in them. And the kind of patronization that goes on with Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Mick Jagger on one end, and then the other end as far as adulation for a buzz band — it’s sickening. I just see the baby boomer’s technique is being used by the bloggers.

And I wish the voices of harshness — the fanzines I read like Conflict and Forced Exposure … if you were to actually apply any of the artistic principles that people used to apply and judge standards of music by … there’s a lot of foolishness going on. There’s very little wisdom going on. There’s certainly very little wisdom being communicated. But nobody wants to rain on the parade. And nobody wants to find out they’re not invited to the party. In a way, I think, that we’re going through a period right now where it’s sort of like people have no faith in any institutions other than what’s popular."