The Gembrokers

GEMS

3/4 OF THE GEMBROKERS AND STEPHEN SMITH

ST. Bernard Parish at Waffle House.

3/4 of the Gembrokers taking a nap

Theories of Aesthetic Refinement

It is the work of my generation.

A system has been built of pieces of aesthetic past. I have heard before that this fashion, here at the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, is a hodgepodge jungle puzzle of all eras prior. I believe that this sense of “timelessness” is truer and truer in the sense that our cameras can turn any moment into a scene from the past. Through aged filters, my world can look like a nine-teen-thirties saloon. A Russian revolution hideout. A 70’s field of daisy-chains. Our screens comply with a sense of complete surrender to a feeling of era, the only thing grounding us in this century being presence of such ominous technologies. 

All is perfected. From the autotuned country singing pop star to the crustpunk trainhop ballad. It is important to note that, here in the age of Aesthetic Refinement, we are not only dealing with a over-edited mainstream airbrush style of perfection, but of a down-low organic homemade style of perfection.

Diamond Brand straddles the medium between the essence of why we desire a certain aesthetic/lifestyle and the acquiring of materials necessary to complete the chosen lifestyle. 

The Gembrokers are staying on my floor here in the Dilapidated Victorian Fg. 3. Aside from being harmonized works of personalized West Coast styles, they are also people. Something of their personhood is left in their remnants, which is most of what I know of them, as I have not been home much. I have been a Wingbroker, over at yonder Double Tree Hilton. I know them by their shedding leather instrument cases, hand embroidered floral print patches, bottles of grapefruit choice juice, green tea facial scrub, accordion case with lipstick popping out of the pocket, dental floss sewing, jar of strange hand-canned purple seeming root vegetables, large tour van from the year 1990, dreads poking out from under crocheted quilt, to-go cups lingering by the sink, sarong hanging from the shower rod and four separate hands reaching out into my line of vision containing the weight of four separate baubles,

rapped in a brassy art of wire

attractive in an Indian sort of way. 

The girls are brazen, journeying, They use the acoustics of the apartment with an intensity I respect and don’t understand. I am watching a lifestyle movie. A three dimensional documentary of what it is to be a traveling black lace banjo grunge band from the acoustic mist streets of armpit hair Santa Cruz. I am trying to suck the honey out, and put into perspective the many layers of American sensuousness.




THE GEMBROKERS
THE GEMBROKERS
THE GEMBROKERS
THE GEMBROKERS
THE GEMBROKERS
THE GEMBROKERS