“Vice Rag” by A.A. Bondy
A. A. Bondy
By Natalie Silver
I listen to Vice Rag on the come up—glossy eyes tantalized by the promise of heightened introspection as they dart from a neon friend to the glow of an open Uber app resting within the jittering palm of another.
Armed with pasteled cheeks, rosied lips and the company of a dozen others in formation to get. what. we. want. starting with attention and ending in abundance, I cement a place in my disoriented generation.
I listen to Vice Rag in motion, thinking of a brilliant geography professor from the semester before who told our class of 500 that the word “sublime” is colloquially misused as a synonym for glorious; in fact, for something to truly be sublime, it must be so terrifyingly powerful that its sheer presence induces awe and amazement. The example he used was Niagara Falls. The example I use is American folk music.
I listen to Vice Rag on sloppy, dopey nights that end in solitude behind deadbolted doors, legs sprawled on the arms of a crusty loveseat as I succumb to the final of tonight’s many failures: brushing my teeth, taking my pills and climbing up onto my lofted bed above the city which innocently birthed me.
I listen to Vice Rag on the come down, a symphonic explanation of the actions of my blubbering and godless generation, a twangy and folksy confessional, a laugh track to the idiocy of my younger self and a humble peace offering to tomorrow.
I listen to Vice Rag when I write, the most complicated vice of them all, the loneliest road to a place where euphoria and agony coexist in a sick and counterintuitive romance. This reminds me of the staggering simplicity of the All-American Millennial heartbreak—a disconnect between us and the outside world. It’s a toast to nights spent alone on your couch in delirium, temples throbbing, heart aching, mind obsessing over all things you could have done wrong while still hating yourself for doing nothing.
A.A. Bondy’s Vice Rag is a process, a cathartic transfer of anxiety from head to ear to pillow to morning, which is why this song will never stop sounding good. It’s an anthem of resignation to the perpetuity of Millennial pacification and its cancerous sublimity, a subtle and ongoing deterioration that can only yield our special brand of ignorance, self-loathing and immobility.
Natalie Silver is a native Californian who recently graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Media Studies. She believes that the critical millennial voice is the most prolific threat to contemporary systems of oppression, and she would rather die than work in tech. Alas, she fell into independent journalism.
