ITSOFOMO

David Wajnarowicz & Ben Neill: ITSOFOMO (In The Shadow Of FOrward MOtion).

I regard ITSOFOMO as an incredibly successful text-based composition and collaboration between two creative artists. I was fortunate to see this work live in 1993 and it's been sitting in my consciousness ever since.

Revisiting this work earlier today I was completely unprepared for the intensity of it. I had remembered it being an angry piece (textually) but I'd underestimated the impact of it when the full sonic environment is streamed through the headphones. The anger and rage directed at a society unable and unwilling to cope with the AIDS epidemic is skillfully and honestly crafted while the musical textures augment the emotion. The resulting sound seems to swallow the listener up with sympathetic resonance toward the unsympathetic depiction of an "illusory one tribe nation." There's this deeply conflicted feeling of disconnect from "mainstream" society coupled with an intense desire to be connected to something meaningful. It's a work of incredible gravity that plunges into some dark territory with merciless honesty.