The Psychic Soviet

Written by Ian F. Svenonius

It seems like celebrities have their names on everything nowadays and are constantly asking you to buy something or to buy into something. But every so often, they’re just asking you to listen and, once in a while, they actually have something worthwhile to say. Whether or not this is the case with musician Ian Svenonius, you decide. For the past two decades, he’s been best known for doling out his brand of disillusionment via bands like the Nation of Ulysses, Weird War and Scene Creamers, and there’s no better way to reach the masses than through the cult of rock—what Svenonius believes to be capitalism’s equivalent to religion. But with his new collection of essays he’s opted to put down the microphone and pick up a pen. In “Seinfeld Syndrome,” Svenonius reasons that the show’s purpose was to market the then-impoverished and crime-stricken NY to an upper class, white population seeking a hedonistic and lascivious “anti-community.” Sound a little  farfetched? Maybe, but there are kernels of truth in this essay that might make you think twice the next time you take a nap under your desk a la George. In “Time as Money,” Svenonius’ claim is a little more dubious: Here he asserts that music is the last relevant art form because one must hear it in its “time-specific entirety,” as opposed to a painting, which a viewer can consume at his own discretion. Ultimately, Svenonius’ ideas may be a little narrow and simplistic but, at least he’s not arguing that all problems can be solved through exercise like a certain star named Tom. My, how standards have fallen.