Melanie McGrath - Hard, Soft and Wet

‘Yes I do,’ says Daniel.

After lunch Daniel makes a bold attempt to play me a few more selections from his CD collection, but I cut him short. I want to know where he made the money to buy his kit, which leads to a safari through Daniel’s magazine collection, featuring articles by … Daniel. Aged twelve he pesters his way to a job writing computer games reviews for Zero magazine, then moves on to a more serious role compiling a tips column in GameZone. At fifteen he’s making a mint.

‘In fact,’ he rallies, ‘I designed some games myself. They’re crap, but I s’pose you’re gonna want to see them, hahaha …’

I emerge from Daniel’s bedroom about two hours later, battered but unbloodied.

Whatever aching tangle or peaceful blue lagoon exists beyond the bloom in Daniel’s eyes he keeps hidden beneath a whirl of talk and action. Nothing of the real Daniel, whatever that may be, is available for public view save for a few minute and unconscious inflexions of his voice and body. Nonetheless, I have a sense that Daniel is about to become an important part of my little project. I request another meeting. ‘What?’ He exudes an air of puppyish hurt. I shake my head by way of reply, faintly bemused. Some small shutter closes over the chink in Daniel’s armoury.

‘I’m DJing at the Big Chill in a couple of weeks. If you want to go on the guest list, you’d better speak to my manager and say you’re from one of the papers, and thank you very much,’ says Daniel, cold as January wind.

I ring the manager and mention I’ve been round to lunch.

‘What a cacophony,’ I remark, in what I hope is an indulgent tone. The manager takes it differently.

‘Well how d’ya think I felt?’ he replies, sounding plaintive. ‘Sitting down to roast lamb and mint sauce with my client’s mum and dad? I’m a rock’n’roll manager for chrissakes .’

Early morning, wind hammering on the windows and the cat curling through my legs to remind me I haven’t yet got round to feeding it.

Thinking about Daniel, or maybe the electronic scene, I e-mail Mac:

>Hey, Mac, do you think it’s possible to make generational statements, or are generations created by the statements made about them?

He mails back:

>What do you have in mind?

I scribble down on a piece of paper all the generational clichés I’ve ever come across. It’s a long list.

>Well, the presumption that 15-25-year-olds have a totally relativist set of morals whereas all us older people are more absolute about things.

You tap out an e-mail message and play it back in your head and Bingo! It becomes the most profound, the most meaningful, the freshest thought you ever had.

>Actually it seems to me that pretty much *everyone* has a relativist set of morals, it’s just that *society’s* morals have traditionally been absolute.

I suppose it’s a silly fantasy of oneness, e-mail. But then again perhaps it’s not a fantasy. Perhaps, maybe. I don’t know yet.

I sit and think blanks for a while, then finish tapping in my note to Mac.

>Maybe the 15-25-year-olds feel that society’s mores have broken down and they’re simply less hypocritical than the rest of us. Or maybe it’s just that they haven’t learnt how to be full-on hypocrites yet.

No, it’s not the perfect communication, but it’s damned near. An imperfect kind of telepathy.

I leave the screen for a moment and fetch myself a can of root beer. Cat follows at a hopeful trot. Mac’s answer is scrolling up on my return.

>I’d go along with that. Younger people are less hypocritical, definitely. Oh wow, it’s just started to rain.:-)

I glance towards the window, notice twists of rainwater spiralling down the panes and whitened in the light of the desk lamp. Cat yells.

>Here too.

How weird.

>What else?

>Well, issues. When I was a teenager…I think back and do my best to stifle the memory … it was nuclear war and trades unions. These days it’s animal rights, anti-racism, ecology and homelessness. We didn’t really think about that stuff. Oh I don’t know. Things change so *fast* is all.

Animal rights. Cat’s begging has become so insistent I’m driven to leaving the screen and pouring him some Go-Cat biscuits. On my return I tap ‘A’ to send the mail, remember all the points I’ve forgotten to mention and open another e-mail file.

>The decline in trust - another generational cliché. Can’t rely on your education to equip you for a job, there aren’t any jobs, can’t rely on your parents to stay together because half of them won’t, can’t rely on care when care means weirdos and sex abuse, can’t rely on god and the church ditto, can’t even turn to that old teenage staple, sex, on account of AIDS. Or how about this? A generation used to the idea that the only power they’ve really got is consumer power. Disenchanted with politics, enamoured of product.

I tap in ‘A’ again and take myself off for a pee. No word from Mac on my return.

>Mac, hello, I’m talking to you!

Electronic silence prevails. I wait a little while, humming over my screen like a wasp circling a honey trap but no word arrives. Mac has taken on such a sudden and unexpected importance in my life and yet I’ve never met him.

This is Mac’s eventual offering, paraphrased:

Even though the culture is ridden with premillennial tension the great thing about living at the end of the century is that there’s at least the theoretical possibility of being able to start out fresh. New beginnings, redemption, the Second Chance. So typically American.

A disconcerting lunchtime revelation. Mac is not American. I suppose I should have noticed that he doesn’t spell like an American, but I was too busy making assumptions.

>Why didn’t you tell me before?I typed.

>The Internet makes national borders irrelevant.He typed back.

Somehow all this matters terribly. The beautiful edifice of projections tumbles. Macadamia the California nut is actually Mac a British human being … which makes me what? Some lovesick clown dreaming of California on a computer.

Dawn arrives, but I don’t sleep. I drift about in the pale half-life between unconsciousness and dreams.

A ticket to Daniel’s DJ event arrives, along with his World Wide Web address. I spend ten minutes leafing through its two main sections, Boredom and Bedroom. Bedroom is the life story of his ambient techno album, Boredom is everything else that has ever happened to Daniel and is capable of being distilled down into two-sentence sound bytes and graffiti graphics. A lot, in other words.

Determined not to be entirely ignorant in the face of ‘the scene’ event tomorrow, I pass much of the day in Ambient Soho, Unity, Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus and with a pile of NMEs, Melody Makers , iDs and Mixmags catching up on being young. Nonetheless, I feel like someone trying to swing. My one comfort is that at least I now know what ambient techno is. It’s aural wallpaper, slews of electronic sounds devoid of narrative. Future noyz. Geek pop. Which makes Daniel a geek pop king.