Is This It?

We no longer think The Iliad and The Odyssey were composed by a single poet. We have identified several different strains of authorship in The Bible. The attribution of a collection of 38 plays to a certain William Shakespeare is often disputed... Why should we then think that forth coming album Phrazes for the Young is the work of a single man, a single Julian Casablancas? It is not so much a question of whether Julian Casablancas exists, but rather what constitutes that existence... I have compared the songwriting of Is This It to Room on Fire to First Impressions of Earth and it does not seem that the same person wrote those songs. Granted these songs have all found epigensis in the same organic process known as The Strokes, but I know the DNA is not the same...If one is familiar with Borges, as I am, one must immediately think of the story Tlon, Uqbar, Orbius Tertius, in which a secret organization over the period of a few hundred years creates a series of encyclopedias detailing in minutia the workings of an apocryphal planet. Could some secret organization be behind the songs of The Strokes and now Phrazes for the Young? Could it be the same organization that has existed since The Greeks, that has taken the form of Homer, the J Writer, and Shakespeare? Is JC simply the manifestation of some greater world order propagating the literature of the ages, age by age... ever evolving, without a single form, without a face, without that long pale face we have so often seen but never felt. It is a possibility we must consider, a skepticism we must endure. 1

1. Let us not think for a moment that the songs of Albert Hammond Jr. deserve the same scrutiny. They are certainly the work of one man, one curlyhairedmongrel asshole.

The End Has No End

Does one suspect that our dream starts are no more than the waking states of some higher being, ever present in the fabric of creation? It is not that I fully doubt the wholeness of my own conscious, it is only that I suspect that there is some linkage between my thoughts and the beingness of the universe... Does this verge on solipsism? I hardly know... One must hold off these thoughts as long as one can... It is is difficult- can it be a coincidence that not long after one starts a blog about Julian Casablancas that Julian Casablancas releases a solo album, that Julian Casablancas begins to grant interviews, be seen... work on a forth The Strokes album... Should I in my most lonely of moments not suspect that I have created this or that this has created me. Can there be any doubt that somehow I am pulled into the dark orbit of Julian's conscious, or that he is pulled into mine? Does this blog follow him, or does he follow this blog... Yes there are countless bloggers writing about him, looking for him, dreaming about him...yet... I cannot believe that they feel as connected to him as I do... Are these other bloggers even real, or do they exist perhaps, only in the imagination of this blog, which is my mind, which may be the mind of Julian. Are we bloggers nothing more than his collective unconscious, his thoughts upon waking... his forgotten dreams?

Room on Fire

The spread of information is viral, and I suspect Mimetic. Should we not then expect that even the the most subtle twitter about JC would unfold across the internet like some giant squid wrapping it's liquid tentacles around the whole of the universe. Should it come as a surprise that after Stereogum claimed to have access to him that NME would soon follow... NME that bastion of British intellectual thought, that exemplar of journalistic restraint and good taste- I do not take myself for some scurvy ridden asthmatic dunderhead and I expect no less of you, my loyal readers.
Before you read the quotation I am about to share with you, I expect all of you to excercise the greatest skepticism in relation to it's verity, for I suspect that is nothing more than the fluffiest sillyness that has ever been presented to the internet as fact. It concerns JC's tour plans as if he was some ordinary musician trying to spread awareness of his creation, as if this awareness was not everpresent in all of us at once,

"I'm in the process of figuring out what kind of show it's going to be," he said. "It's like anything, it's starting out probably a little bit too ambitious so we've got to figure out what we can and can't do and that will dictate how much touring happens. Ideally, I'm going to try to put on some over-the-top, amazing, Disney shows. Not Disney, but you know how they have some amazing rides where you feel like you're in a weird world, like the Epcot Centre or something? I'm not thinking of the big Goofy costume but I was thinking of how those rides make you feel with lots of set changes and stuff. But that might not happen and we'll do straight shows, I haven't quite figured it out yet, it's the next thing to do."

You Talk Way Too Much

http://stereogum.com/archives/video/julian-casablancas-first-oncamera-interview-in-three-years_083491.html

Sartre said it is up to us to interpret the signs. There is a video, there is a man, but beyond that I know not what it means. Are we supposed to believe that Julian would condescend to speak with Stereogum just because he wanted to promote his album? One must ask why Julian would need to do so when there are so many bloggers who will spread the music amongst themselves. There is much in the shadows of this half moon world that I dare not believe I see, and this, which is so obvious, so clear, some simple, is it not the darkest of those shadows? Is not Stereogum just as desperate as we are? One should not imagine that they are beyond the propagation of lies and misinformation- What is good for the individual is not always in the best interest of these conglomerations that care only for the existential lifeblood of profit. Does not the cave of irreality flicker with the image of these bastardized forms, these false Julians who appear to be nothing more than shaggy haired wagtails hired off the street. If we bloggers are to assume any nobility, we must reject the lies that are fed to us by these systems, these Stereogums, these Pitchfork Medias, these Brooklyn Vegans who, in their faceless inhumanity care nothing for the truth that is the good. If JC, who in the darkest harness of my soul still flickers, exists-he exists not for the easy consummation of the indie rock community, he exists not for the casual fans or the people who are looking for something to fill up the time that lingers inbetween Albert Hammond Jr's abomitable solo albums... He exists for us, the bloggers, his followers, those who seek the truth in all things, those who stand outside of the cave and see the beingness that is his pure form.

12:51

I woke up tonight unsure if the news of JC's solo album was a dream. I immediately checked my blog roll and discovered it was not. One cannot be sure whereinfact reality lies. I must also apologize for my last blog post, it is, as one cannot help but notice, written by a very lonely person who had, for the first time in a long, while received a bit of good news.

Phrazes for the Young

Oh Julian my darling, my beloved, my naughty cousin in the bathroom at Christmas, thank you for this, the most brilliant and effervescent of your gifts, Phrazes for the Young. I have often thought, though I have dared not express it, that you, the most lovely, the most gifted, the most charming of the The Strokes would be better off alone, better off without that mongrel Albert Hammond Jr., that porpoise Nick Valensi, that glitter tooth Fabrizio Moretti, that charletan Nikolai Fraiture. Oh how you surprise me, tickle me, touch me with your release which you have so lovingly hidden from me, your loving follower, your blogger, who has followed you and loved you, and hoped to see you, to touch you, to know you, oh Julian I can hardly contain myself for the juice boxes within my soul are overflowing with the sap of your budding solo career. One in my position must in a situation like this give up all claims to professionalism and decorum and open ones heart. Do not forsake me, do not leave me again- I have composed a poem for thee

The ambrosial cup spills into the
fragmented moonbone of your glowing thighs,
the half heard cry of the four forgotten
men, oh pluck thyself from their flower and
sing with Apollos golden lyric charm,
up now into the pantheon of dreams.

Meet Me in the Bathroom

I returned to the bar from last week, or what I thought was last week, hoping to find Nikolai Fraiture's assistant. This time I was careful not to talk to the bloggers who sat in the back- I did not feel in danger of being discovered by them as they were utterly absorbed in their work. As a blogger, I know that when blogging one forgets the time of day, one hardly looks up, one hardly eats or drinks. I have heard, though it may have been from an apocryphal twitter, that a blogger once died from the sheer exhaustion of reading and responding to all his comments.
I was careful to set up my Macbook in the far corner of the bar, to the left of the door, and I was surprised to notice that there were far more Macbooks than last time I had been there, in fact the bar had been transformed into a hive of luminescent screens. My table, oddly enough, was made to the dimensions of my Macbook and allowed room for nothing else. I signaled for the waitress, who was thin, almost waifish, with sallow cheeks and stringy blond hair.
"I would like to order a drink," I said, "but there is no room on my table for my laptop and a glass."
"Well that has been a problem for us ever since you blogged about Nikolai Fraiture's assistant coming here, we've had to exchange all of our tables for these efficient squares in order to accomodate our new patrons. You really shouldn't have done that you know. We already had enough bloggers before you came here, but now we have to turn people away. You were lucky to have fought your way inside, most are left to wander around the building looking for alternative ways in."
"I imagine that would be good for business."
"Oh no," she exclaimed, "Nikolai Fraiture's assistant doesn't come here anymore, for obvious reasons- she can't have a drink without being twittered... Of course you bloggers will hardly admit that she's gone for good, even the slightest possibility is enough to bring you here. It's ruining our business- no one orders drinks and we have to pay for all the electricity being used by these Macbooks. I haven't managed to update my own blog for days because I haven't had my usual income from tips."
"I'm sorry if I have caused you so much trouble but one can hardly blame me for trouble caused by my readers."
"Readers!" The waitress laughed cruelly, "Why do you bloggers think you have readers! That is not the case at all. The blogosphere just has bloggers who blog about blogging and the whole thing generates these horribly destructive movements. You should have known that just name Nikolai Fraiture would cause an uproar. His guitar tech's intern's groupie would have been enough, but to mention that his assistant frequents this bar..."
"One can hardly blame me for blogging about the assistant, it is the bars job to protect their patron's privacy, it is the bloggers job to report what he finds. My blog, like any other blog is just trying to amass reader comments-"
"Reader comments are more of an absurdity than readers! You bloggers just create alternative screennames and write your own comments."
"Perhaps if I could meet Nikolai Fraiture's assistant that would not be as much of a necessity." I said and the waitress did not respond for a moment. I felt resigned and looked down at my screen. One must imagine my shame in having been so forward.
"Well, if you must know," the waitress leaned close to my ear, "We are in the same yoga class." She pulled away and smiled at me and I thought she had a look of certain desperation. I must confess I found myself, sometime soon after, with her on the floor of the men's bathroom, twittering and kissing, tearing away each other's clothing and sobbing with desire.

Hard to Explain

I have no memory before the year 2001. I don't consider myself unique, in fact I have not yet encountered someone who remembers life before that time. It is a shame that the events on 9/11 have obscured the more momentous 8/27, the date Is This It was released and my present state of consciousness began. It is possible, as some scholars, I'm sure, have debated, that we, and more ostensibly I, actually existed before 8/27, but it is my personal belief that on 8/27 we came into existence as part of a larger evolutionary leap of the human consciousness. Of course some ask, if we didn't exist before The Strokes, how did Julian write the album? This is a question for philosophers or philosophy grad students, I do not believe philosophy undergrads are yet capable of answering the question, and for a layman to attempt to answer it borders on absurd. We, not being philosophers or philosophy grad students, must simply let that paradox rest. Perhaps we can content ourselves with knowing that Is This It was released and that JC wrote it, that the exact nature of it's creation does not have to be known. Just as astrophysicists are only now beginning to understand what the universe looked like a millisecond after the big bang, we can only know that we began a millisecond after Is This It hit Napster. To try to comprehend the time before Is This It is like trying to understand what caused the big bang... Now of course all of this does not make me hopeless, rather I feel more at ease knowing that JC lives in New York City and that any of us can talk to him. Without that possibility, one must imagine that life would be utterly desolate, cruel, and meaningless, but given the inescapable fact that Julian is here, among us, in some Upper East Side apartment listening to Lou Reed's Transformer on vinyl, gives us meaning. Why else would we have blogs, blog readers, and Twitter if not for the possibility that somewhere JC is reading them?

Alone Together

I went to a bar in Manhattan which I had heard Julian frequented. My sources, I must admit, were rather dubious, but the general decor and patronage suggested the early 2000's - everyone wore Blazers, Doc Martens, and neck ties, and I heard more than a few of patrons discussing the merits of The Libertines in comparison to The Vines. Anyone in my position would have felt confident that JC had, at one time or another, bought a drink there. I sat down at the bar and signaled for the bartender, who wore a skinny neck tie under a black silk sweater vest. His hair was thinning and greasy and the skin around his face was drawn taught as if prematurely aged. I ordered a drink, I don't remember what exactly, one must understand that in my position a drink is not important. If anything, one must retain a keen sobriety if one is to ever meet Julian Casablancas.
I wasn't sure exactly how to pursue the subject of JC with the bartender or the patrons. The subject, if brought up to suddenly can be unsettling to some. The bartender, perhaps sensing how nervous I seemed, and I suppose I must have looked out of place at this bar, looked at me with a dead-eyed smirk and thrust his thumb towards the back of the bar, where I could make out several heads of elegantly disheveled mop-tops, and a glowing cluster of Macbooks. I suspected that they were bloggers. I approached them cautiously, had they any contact with an Under-Manager or Guitar Tech, even a roadie? They ignored me, either lost Twittering, or with willfull disdain.
I pulled a plug running from the wall. The Wi-Fi went dead and their heads jerked up as if hooked by some omnipresent fisherman.
"I was updating my page!"
"I had something on Twitter!"
"I was so close!"
I asked them again about JC and they moaned with despair. "Well what do you think we're all doing here?" One of them asked.
Another stood up, "Who are you that you think you can unplug the Wi-Fi?"
"My name is M., I'm a blogger... have you heard of Casa de Casablancas."
"No I haven't, " he said tersely. "Do you know how many different blogs claim to have access to JC? Of course ours do, but the problem is we've never seen him here. Of course, every once in a while Nikolai Fraiture's assistant comes in-
I gasped-
"Yes, " He replied. "Nikolai Fraiture's assistant has helped us a great deal. All of us here consider ourselves very lucky to have such a high ranking assistant drink at our bar. Before she came here we weren't bloggers but rather we were the janitors. Of course she refuses to even talk with us and sits alone, but on occasion on of us can look over her shoulder at her Blackberry, which is, as you can imagine, an opportunity that few even dream about. Blake couldn't pay for gradschool if it wasn't for her and thanks to her I have managed to pay my rent three months in advance."
I tried to sit down, but one of them snatched a chair away. "What do you think you are doing?"
"I'd like to sit down with you."
The one who had prevented me from sitting shook his head, "Why do you think you can sit down? Do you think we are so stupid as to let a rival blogger share in our incredible luck? No, rather we should throw you out of this bar all together for being so presumptious."
I protested that I just wanted to check my email but it was to no avail. The bloggers, who were by now joined by the bartender, took me by the arms, careful not to upset my hair, and dragged me across the floor and flung me out the door.

Last Nite

I slept and woke in fits, dreaming and thinking about JC. Around dawn, no longer able to endure my own thoughts, I left my apartment. It had occured to me that Albert Hammond Jr.'s solo career was indefinetly delaying the next The Strokes album, that maybe there wouldn't even be a next The Strokes album.
I found a diner and ordered a cup of coffee. I had heard somewhere that JC liked to frequent the diner and the rumor alone was enough to comfort me. Whenever the door swung open, I looked up, expecting to him to come in, resplendent in leather like some urban demi-gorgon.
"Have you ever seen Julian Casablancas come in here?" I asked the waitress.
"No," she replied, looking at me wearily, "But the under-secretary of his PR rep often stops by."
"Oh you must tell me the name of the under-secretary," I exclaimed. "Even the lowest under-secretary could help me."
The waitress shook her head, "Even if I were to give you the name of the under-secretary, it wouldn't do you any good. The PR firm alone employes a vast number of under-secretaries and they only handle a small portion of Julian's career. An under-secretary like the one who comes to this diner has never seen Julian and may not do much more than over see a few of the highest ranking unpaid interns. Perhaps if an assistant band manager came to this diner I could help you, but we aren't so lucky. "
"But you see I'm supposed to be following him around New York City-"
The waitress laughed, "Yes of course you are".

First Impressions of Julian

People often ask me- Why do you want to follow Julian Casablancas? Is he still alive? Was he ever real? I'm not sure how to respond to any of these questions, perhaps I'm not quite capable of facing the reality of my own existence, let alone Julian's... I can only assure all of you, loyal bloggers, that I am committed towards reporting on the life of Julian Casablancas as it appears to me, which may be not at all. Julian and I are both very lonely men, perhaps we were meant for each other, perhaps not... I hope to see him, to get to know him, one day to even touch him. Most people only aspire to meeting Albert Hammond Jr, but I have always felt that one could do better, that one could at least manage to hang out out with Nick Valensi...