Punk Is Dead
Minneapolis, July 2001

At check-in they can’t give me a seat. ‘Try asking at the gate’, they smile helpfully. At the gate I completely forget to ask, hell-bent as I am to find suitable reading material for the plane. I end up finding Saul Bellow’s first book in 13 years, entitled Ravelstein, amongst the Danielle Steele and Tom Clancy paperbacks. Checking the author’s bio I realise that Bellow’s lived in Minneapolis and has taught extensively at the University of Minnesota. A good sign. Happy with myself I finally get around to the seat allocation business. By that time the plane is full and I’m upgraded to first class. Thank you Mr Bellow.

In the past three months I’ve had the chance to travel to Hong Kong, Sydney, Paris, Milan, Vienna and the South of France. And now I’m off on an expenses-paid week-end trip to Minneapolis, thanks to my darling sister’s unbelievable luck with a stupid contest. The purpose of the operation is to spend a day at the Vans Warped Tour 2001, with backstage passes to a full day of punk-rock-ska-metal-skate-core mayhem, featuring the likes of Blink 182, Rancid, The Living End, New Found Glory etc. I actually don’t plan on going to the actual concert - pre-packaged rebellion is just another form of ugly, tasteless consumerism. I don’t deserve all this global jetsetting, yet I won’t apologise for it. There are things in life I feel I deserve but don’t have (and no, they’re not really things). We’re just here to make the most of it, after all.

First class in a States-bound Delta Airlines 777 is like being held hostage for 8 hours in a suburban family restaurant circa 1987, albeit with TV priviledges. The attendants are slightly overweight sitcom moms pushing fifty, the steak is overcooked and the leg rests are fully automated and adjustable. We even get warm Mrs Field’s cookies for dessert. I kid you not.

I watch the sweet aussie flick The Dish. In traditional export-friendly comic style, the aussies send up their own quirky ways (which, if asked bluntly, they’ll never admit to possessing in the first place), and they do it with a flair for cruely which never ceases to amaze me. Makes me homesick, almost. Next I watch the end of Memento again. And yes, in the very last scene, ‘I’ve Done It’ is indeed tatooed across Guy Pierce’s heart. I can’t be the only one who saw that, come on. Finally I watch John Boorman’s The Tailor Of Panama, which is a lot smarter than it looks, if you’re into that old fashioned spy stuff.

This trip reminds me somehow of Sébastien Lifshitz’s simple but powerful doco, La traversée (The Crossing), in which Sébastien follows his friend with a hand-held camera as he flies from Paris to the US Midwest, searching for a father he never met. The documentary is full of slighly uncomfortable silences, punctuated by American landscapes shot through the windows of moving cars. It takes a good filmmaker to conjure powerful, telling moments from bits and pieces of mundane reality, unfiltered and barely edited.

So far I’ve avoided writing about the nine other kids I’m travelling with. It must be the aspect of this unexpected trip I’m least enthusiastic about. A couple of first impressions, then. Most of the eight other winners are probably a lot more deserving of this trip than I am: pimpled post-teenagers who’ve never been to the US (and think they know where they’re going, thanks to a pot-pourri of TW shows, bad anectdotes, childhood myths and bad Hollywood films). They wear the requisite baggy pants and punk jewelry, know their skate-core and wear their baseball caps the right way. Their glittering eyes betray their excitement, which they try to conceal by loitering in the departure lounge in relatively blasé poses. There is only one girl, nice smile, proud boyfriend in tow. The organiser, an arrogant, très trendy Parisian, is already getting on my nerves. He is sitting a few rows from me in first class. When boarding the plane he says as he walks past, ‘looks like I was upgraded as well’. Quelle surprise. He is the manager of the entire rock catalogue of Universal’s Barclay label. He looks about sixteen. I did manage twenty minutes of decent conversation with a long-haired computer-games salesman named T. When I asked him if he was also into punk rock and skate-core he replied seriously that his tastes were a little more extreme.

All in all I’m having a lovely time.

I travel a lot though, I guess. And right now, save for one friend and a couple of family members, hardly anyone knows where I am. Sometimes I wonder if my friends would really miss me if I dies in a plane crash. And then I think they’d first have to know I was missing. And then I thought who care, as long as it’s something as glamourous as a plane crash.

When we finally arrive in Minneapolis, a twelve-passenger black limousine is waiting for us. Instant stardom can only be achieved through complete ans utter espousal of Bad Taste. The driver looks like a young Philip Seymour Hoffman. He shows us how to change the colours on the neon starlight ceiling. The kids go nuts. Reassuringly ugly, the Marquette Hotel towers over downtown Minneapolis, a monument to stale luxury and midwestern esthetics.

It’s late Friday night but I convince the others to do a little bar-hopping before we head to bed. No one checks my ID for some weird reason, and when the youngest kids get stopped by the bouncers, we negotiate our way in with our best French accents. Everybody thinks everybody else is a joke. But the real joke is the bar: hockey players, dumb fat blondes, oversized pitchers of bud-light, loud country music and toilets overflowing with warm vomit. Not that bad a place, come to think of it, and how so very surreal...

The next morning begins my only full day in Minneapolis. I get up early and head straight out the door. It’s a clichéd 94°, according to the concierge. I decide to get my priorities sorted and jot down the adresses of all the movie theatres in the vincinity of the hotel, over iced coffee (lit. coffee w/ ice cubes) and yes, donuts. Downtown Minneapolis, incidently, is very much like the ‘Downtown Minneapolis’ level in Tony Hawk Skateboarding on the Playstation: Vast expanses of wide empty streets, fountains, accidental skate ramps and the occasional speeding taxi.

I set out on foot, northbound so as to cross the Mississipi, which I’ve never seen. It looks like a perfect day for bananafish. The bridges here are barren and imposing. They seem to call out to you as you cross them: ‘jump! Jump!...’.

I find a decent looking coffeeshop and stop for a lemon and poppyseed scone. Heaven in a bun. I ask the waitress for directions to the Weisman Art Museum. It takes about thirty minutes for her to admit she has no idea. My table is covered with little hand-scribbled maps leading nowhere. Story of my life. She tells me Minneapolis is pretty upbeat town. I tend to believe her, though I’m ever so thankful not to have grown up in the area.

When I ask other people they’re just as friendly, ans just as hopeless. ‘You’re only ten minutes away’, they say. As I walk the empty, immense blocks under a blistering sun it hits me: of course, ten minutes away by car...

But when I finally stumble upon the stainless steel-plated Frank Ghery-designed museum, hidden amongst the red brick classrooms of the deserted U of M campus, I forget my deeply-rooted hatred of car-cultures... This is where I wanna be.

Upon entering the giant tin can, you are greeted by two huge murals by Roy Lichtenstein and my favourite pop artist of all, James Rosenquist, both made for the 1964 World Fair in New York City. The World Fair’s New York State pavilion was designed by architect Philip Johnson. He commissioned seven pop artists to produce murals for its exterior walls. What a side that must have made! Imagine Rosenquist and Lichtenstein murals outdoors, bathed in sunlight!

The collection on display looks indirectly at the intrusion of advertising in everyday life. First through a series of photographs spanning the late 20’s and early 30’s (Walker Evans, Berenice Abbott, Norman Rockwell and even the Frenchman Eugène Atget), in which the artists attempt to transform this loud presence into visual poetry. Then of course there’s the pop artists who used advertising as social comment and inspiration and cash source and means to get at a wider audience, making it beautiful in the process. Today advertising in an even louder, all-intrusive presence. It makes me sick with unsollicited alienation, invades my privacy and dilutes my sensory perception. But will art ever turn advertising into visual poetry again?

Another highlight is the works of Yasumasa Morimura, the Japanese transexual artist who sets himself up in poses reminiscent of popular icons (ici, Norma Jean). Reminds me of that exquisite short film about (by?) Morimura at the Paris Gay & Lesbian Filmfest where I scouted in december 99.

As I leave the museum I can’t help but look over my shoulder, as if the curvy stainless-steel building were alive and following me. Ghery, you irritating architect.

It’s 12:15. I’ve spotted a 12:40 screening of A.I. (my multiplex radar is well honed). I’ll endure the popcorn smells for a couple hours in the dark, hidden from the sun’s seek-and-destroy laser beams. I race the 15 blocks back to St Anthony Main and make it to the church on time.

The film is suitably Kubrickian, icy in tone despite Spielberg’s dripping sentimentality. Pretty relevant in its critique of consumerism (how ironic!) and a very enjoyable film despite a clumsy ending.

I forget how strongly a film seen before nightfall can break the day’s emotional inertia abd radically alter your mood. My free-and-invincible state has given way to subdued emotions and vulnerability, helped by the film’s tender but nighmarish core and the alone-in-a-foreign-land situation. Two mindstates for the price of one!

I decide to return to the morning’s bohemian cafe for a late lunch. For a true American lunch I get the vegetarian wrap and strawberry smoothie (the way they were meant to be: real fruit; ice cream, malt and whipped cream). I like the joint. It’s completely out of touch with its surroundings (windy streets, Valumarts, deserted parking lots and factories), yet filled with strangely attired drama students and middle-aged gay men. Björk plays on the stereo. It’s the perfect place to write a few words.

Travelling alone can be frustrating. I’d be so thrilled to be able to share today with someone (special)? Writing this and putting it online is one (egocentrical) way of sharing the experience a posteriori.

Next I want to check out the hip Uptown area. A n°6 bus materializes out of nowhere to take me there. The old lady next to me warns me not to walk home after dark, not guessing that Uptown is probably where I’d live if I were from around here. A relatively pleasant array of coffeeshops, parks, arthouse cinemas, queer-friendly theatres ans semi-alternative shops. Sure it tries to be trendy, but this is the Midwest, so you’re never in any real danger. Ah but where is Prince when you need him.

Soon though, I’m at another contemporary art space, the famous Walker Arts Centre. This museum is one of the top spots for contempo art in the country, and certainly a nice surprise in this old-fashioned town where mooseheads are usually considered ample-enough ornementation. The Walker is responsible for putting on the famous Ghery show that went on to tour the country (finishing at the Whitney) and launch the architect’s career worldwide... all the way back in 1986.

Unfortunately the exhibit I wanted to check out (Superflat – a look at two dimensional anime and manga designs and how they parallel traditional 19th century illustration) doesn’t start till the next day. The museum shop makes my day though: I get my hands on the Eames’ House of Cards that I’d ben coveting for ages. 32 large-sized 8-ply cardboard cards, each sporting a colourful Eames-chosen design from 1952, with six slots for easy assembly. These are the things that matter, that help you on your way.

In front of the Walker is lies an enormous sculpture garden complete with ponds, glasshouses, squirrels, rabbits, and a 20-foot maraschino cherry overlooking the city’s skyline. All I need is the right companion for a timely lie-down in the sun-bleached grass, though really that would be pushing the week-end’s luxury factor a bit far...

The bumber 4 bus brings me back downtown and I cross on foot the first bridge ever built over the Mississipi back in 1855 (or a replica thereof). There is not a living soul in sight (unless you count the men and women tin-canned in their gas-burning C0²-spitting engines of death). In the water below a small speedboat lies trapped in a iniature dam, left abandoned by its playboy owners and now overrun by huge ducks (er, geese?). This bridge was built for suicidal maniacs. I mean, really.

I realize as the sun sets that I have plenty of time left and decide to grab some grub and check out a second film. The local multiplex is short on watchable material so I settle for The Score, a heist thriller starring Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, Marlon Brando and Angela Bassett. The plot’s inconsistencies are glaring (though how much like real life that makes it – I marvel). It’s a trite, mechanical yarn that's relatively well acted. Strike that. The over-weight Marlon Brando is a fucking joke: put the old dog to sleep already!

The temperature is now just right for the two-mile walk back to the hotel. A steemed bath in the Pee-Wee-Herman’s-eveil-nemesis-style bathroom caps a groovy day. This suite could house a family of 6 – in the bathroom alone. It makes last month’s supposedly 4-star hotel in Milano (again, accidentally paid by someone else) look like a Hobbit-hole.

I won’t say much about the next day. I’m scheduled to leave slightly earlier than the rest – whom I finally meet up with after a extra-large american breakfast in the hotel’s sumptuously ugly restaurant. They’ve had a great day, met their idols, the whole works.

A last walk around town, the last pages of Bellow’s great over-my-head novel, another limo ride to the airport. This time I’m travelling with C., a likeable, good-looking 21 year-old. C. Is visibly into skate-core in a big way (yet somewhat open-minded about the rest of it). He tells me interesting stories about his six years in Ghana and the Ivory Coast.

We are both extremely different but mature and culturally close (if only in that we are both French) so that we can converse without too much free-footing. I try to isolate the few aspects of my identity / personality relevant to the encounter. He does the same (but with the fumblings of an amateur conversationalist) and meets me halfway in the thinning realm of decent (hell, pleasant) airport lounge chatter.

Our desperate race through Cincinatti airport to catch a connecting flight to Paris brings us somewhat together, but thankfully we soon fall back to our solitary occupations once the plane takes off. I compose silent haikus staring out the plane’s portholes at increasingly surreal light patterns and cloud formations. Getting the bigger picture of what living on a planet looks like. What moving across a spinning, revolving rock feels like. What men and women dream of, collectively, and what men and women do when they are given the means to follow their thoughts with reality.

I am sitting in an exit-row seat. I am taught what to do in case of an emergency, how to operate the 52 lbs exit door. With this particular, last-minute placement comes great responsibility. Arguably that which governs the fates of a 767’s cargo of europhile passengers. This doesn’t stop me from sleeping soundly for the rest of my Paris-bound flight.