Hubs: There’s the classic rat experiment on overpopulations;  I forget what it is.  You put too many rats in this city, eventually the male rats just start grooming and preening instead of mating.  And I think we’re in that grooming-and-preening stage.  And I think maybe Meinschaft is a commentary on that, perhaps  But it’s sort of distant from mass culture in a traditional sense.  It’s all about riding the ship of indifferent taste.  I think we have something on a liner note that says something like that.  Just watching and observing, not really having a hard opinion on anything.

Lips:  Right.  Like, I think the De Kooning quote where he says, ‘We have no position in the world, absolutely no position, other than we insist upon being around.’  And I mentioned earlier this idea of standing outside of conventional political rhetoric, or all political rhetoric, and sort of mocking it or clowning it.  I guess you could also say that applies to a cultural position as well.  Almost like a good comedian that’s doing a proper impression or a parody, to do it right implies some kind of reverence for the subject.  It’s not done with some great bitterness or resentment.

You’ll see the example of SNL doing a parody of Trump, which, of course, is this very low-hanging fruit.  But it doesn’t really land; it’s not that funny.  Because in a way he’s also a parody of himself.  Really what I’m getting at is, it’s done with so much malicious feeling and hatred, there isn’t any kind of reverence for the subject.  So I think when we’re drawing in, bringing certain musical traditions into the brew of Meinschaft, there is one level of winking parody.  But we also like these sources.

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