"When I started, there weren't that many kids doing it in the city, but the in the wave after me there were a lot of them and they actually never spoke to each other"
About this Quote
Eric San is describing a scene that should have been a community and somehow turned into a set of parallel solo careers. The line starts with a familiar origin-story beat - scarcity, improvisation, the thrill of being early. Then it pivots into something stranger: abundance without connection. That contrast is the point. He is not bragging about being first; he is mourning what got lost when the city finally had "a lot" of kids doing it.
The specific intent feels half-documentary, half indictment. San sketches a micro-generation of musicians who shared geography and genre but never built the social glue that turns a wave into a movement. "They actually never spoke to each other" lands like a hard, disappointed punchline: not even rivalries, not even alliances - just silence. The subtext is about how scenes are manufactured as much by conversations as by tracks. If the first cohort relied on scarcity to force collaboration - sharing gear, swapping tips, playing the same grimy rooms - the later cohort may have had cheaper tools, more private workflows, more reasons to stay atomized.
Contextually, it's a quiet critique of urban creative life under late-capitalist conditions: everyone hustling, everyone branding, everyone too busy or too guarded to be peers. San hints that the city produced talent, but not solidarity. The tragedy isn't that there were many kids doing it; it's that they missed the chance to become "we."
The specific intent feels half-documentary, half indictment. San sketches a micro-generation of musicians who shared geography and genre but never built the social glue that turns a wave into a movement. "They actually never spoke to each other" lands like a hard, disappointed punchline: not even rivalries, not even alliances - just silence. The subtext is about how scenes are manufactured as much by conversations as by tracks. If the first cohort relied on scarcity to force collaboration - sharing gear, swapping tips, playing the same grimy rooms - the later cohort may have had cheaper tools, more private workflows, more reasons to stay atomized.
Contextually, it's a quiet critique of urban creative life under late-capitalist conditions: everyone hustling, everyone branding, everyone too busy or too guarded to be peers. San hints that the city produced talent, but not solidarity. The tragedy isn't that there were many kids doing it; it's that they missed the chance to become "we."
Quote Details
| Topic | Loneliness |
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