creator/performer of the new pop hit Sugar Crash is only 17. He had to ask his mother if it was okay to swear in the video. He appears to be angry. About something. The imagery is violent, there is blood, and when he is not walking the empty COVID-19 streets he’s talking about ripping part of his brain out, and self-hatred, and his bong. The song is to some degree about addiction — but because of the canny title, he could of course be speaking of his addiction to candy. But we know better. With the mounting death toll from opioids it is clear that meth is the unmentionable subtext — and if it isn’t, it should be, as that’s the way addicted teens will take it. The single has been labelled ‘hyperpop’ which means precisely nothing, it certainly looks/sounds like any pop hit released in the last 20 years, only perhaps catchier. Elyotto’s vid is a response to COVID-19 isolation. Wow, on the one hand I’m amazed that anyone is actually speaking about their frustration with COVID-19. This reminds me of condoms. Early on during AIDS some Public Health Dimwit came up with the brilliant idea that condoms were ‘fun’ and ‘sexy,’ and there were videos of pretty girls shoving bananas down their throats that then emerged, magically, ‘condom protected.’ This was appealing because most penises are not quite as big as bananas — even when erect — and then the lovely allusion to bendy penises, which no one talks about. (Penises that bend down, slide into your throat with remarkable ease — I’m sure you already know that.)But the sexy girls and their bananas were to no avail; condoms are not fun, never will be, and the kindergarten condescension that inevitably accompanies such infantile jabberwocky was insulting to anyone who had ever had sex with a penis — bendy or not. What is most torturous about COVID-19 is that we are expected to enjoy it, and complaining about lockdowns is a thought crime, we are not only trapped in the prison of our homes — many of us with abusive significant others, and children now crazy from lack of stimulation — but we have to pretend to like it, because after all, ‘we’re all in this together.’ The truth is very different; what COVID-19 has done is rip us apart — beyond the illness is the crippling isolation that has birthed QAnon, mass opioid deaths, and the insane polarisation that comes from a computer telling you that you are right all the time. But I don’t wish to leave the subject of the young. Could you get it into you silly heads that when I talk about the cultural effects of COVID-19 lockdowns the assumption is not that I am against lockdowns (although I certainly am) but that they are bad for us, period. Could we just admit that? I worry most about the very old and the very young. Life is a bowl of cherries when you are between the ages of 30-60 — you’ve got a job, and love affairs and/or marriage, and kids, and before you know it you’re old. But to those under 30, and over 60, every moment is precious. And contrary to what you may have heard you are only young once, that is, when you are actually young in years. You can act young when you are old, but it’s not the same; you don’t have the young body or energy or drive — never mind the sheer newness of everything — that initial thrilling discovery of who you are and what you want. I am particularly sensitive to this issue as I lost about 17 years of my life to homophobia; I was in the closet from age 12 to age 29. That screws you up forever. It was all fine and good for me to come out and start acting like a teenager at a late age — 30— (which is what a lot of gay men do) but it was not the same, and half the time I was just acting like an numskull at 30 because I skipped acting like a numskull at 18. (I still am quite ridiculous.) That’s because it’s not right to miss out on your youth. I never had a ‘first kiss’ at 14 (or I did, with a girl who I didn’t want to kiss) and that left a huge aporia — it’s a giant hole like the ones you find in a Mark Rothko painting (Rothko’s paintings look silly on your computer but when you are standing in front of one at a gallery you are afraid you will fall in). What has been taken from these teenagers during this year of COVID-19 is irreplaceable; it is cruel of us to pretend that it’s been good for them, or fun, or redeeming. But the discomfort I have with Elyotto’s video — though I am happy there is some sort of response from ‘the youth’ — is that it’s certainly not angry or violent enough. Elyotto is winsome, thin, and wears big sweaters, he looks vulnerable and is not quite handsome, and his eyebrows are painted way too heavily. He’s probably gay, but in this day you can say you are non-binary until you are blue in the face and people will believe you’re not gay, because they don’t want you to be gay, because being gay is still the worst thing in the world. I’m not saying Elyotto is gay, of course -- if he was it would be great -- only that the song is just a bit too twee and innocent for my liking. I worry that this COVID-19 response manifests itself as victimisation and helplessness; and a wallowing in drugs to boot. I myself am now completely obliterated on weekends, hastening my own death, and I have aged so much in this past year that at the moment I can barely walk. I’ve ‘barely-been-able-to-walk-from-arthritis' before, it will likely pass, but all I can think of is that the COVID-19 nightmare will be over and I won’t be able to get out of bed. But I will always have this writing — just as poor whining Elyotto has his music, though it frightens me that he had to ask his mother about swearing. What youth needs is real revolt, real anger, none of this candy crash pap. I remember sit-ins, and kids getting shot at Kent State, and having sex in public, and marching to overthrow the government. I remember real violence— that is the SDS, and bombs and guns. Depression, as any therapist will tell you, is just repressed anger, so for God's sake kids, don’t kill anybody or yourself —or obliterate yourself with drugs — just please cause some real trouble. Gee whiz somebody needs to, before we all die of boredom and ‘the pipe.’
