Penny Arcade: Longing Lasts Longer (Soho Theatre, 23 September)

Can the boomers just fucking die?, I found myself thinking, or retire or something? For lo, did the performer inflinct calumny upon my generation--specifically, those born in 1980 or later, precisely when my overly-mediated self entered the world. The performer, a Warhold type with a longer history in performance art, efficiently filled in the Bingo card of 60s cliches: you can't get good drugs now, people had better sex back then, kids and their cell phones. If New York apartments had yards, she'd be telling us to get off them. This is the generation that made everyone want to move to New York claiming that New York is now unaffordable; someone who talks about being repeatedly assaulted complaining about the city becoming too safe. And, surprise, she shares a lot of concerns with Bill O'Reilly: trigger warnings, queer theory, the safening of the American mind. 

This played out in like a less cerebral TED talk about self-actualization, complete with references to bullshit neuroscience and jokes about iPhones. "I appreciated the performer's energy" is the sort of thing you say when you have nothing nice to say about something, but I really did: this is an old pro at Warholian post-everything performance, playing to a room that clearly appreciated her. And the message that one's life does not end at 25 needs to be heard more often. But goddamnit: this was too much reverence, disavowal and all, for the 60s and 70s for me. I wanted to buy, like, seven Skrillex albums while floating in virtual reality. The belief that the 60s were more--her word--"authentic," coming from one who worked for Saint Andy Himself, was too much for me to bear. I spent long parts of the show in that complicated sort of shame that only the semi-anonymity of live performance can provide, and fled grateful that it was over.