music: Steve Kimock Band- 3/28/03, Madison, WI
This whole blogging phenomenon has been criticized as being a teenaged phenomenon. And by-and-large, it is. but as DFC has pointed out, more reputable and established citizens than the angry teenager keep weblogs. And just so I can feel better about myself, let’s add one more to the list: Neil Gaiman. A writer of no ill-repute. Somehow that makes me feel better about all this typing I do. And piques my interest as to what Mr. Gaiman, the mind behind The King of Dreams, has to say about the world…
music: Eva Cassidy- Live from Blues Alley
My old roommate Liz made up a song about me. It was to the tune of that old bubblegum pop 1950’s song “It’s in his kiss” and the only line she worked out is “it’s in his bag/that’s where it is!” She, apparently was impressed with all the things I carry around with me. Someday I should do a complete buttpack inventory and post it, but for today it’s enough to know that I have two 6’ lengths of 4 mm p-cord stashed away in the bag.
I was at The Gut working out some plans for this week and whipping out a final round of cover letters when a fellow member of the TAC program comes up looking like they are about to ask a favor. Turns out some professor’s kid dropped their toy Superman in the pit that lines the building and couldn’t get it out. My friend couldn’t find the security guard to open the basement door to the outside in that pit. The problem with just jumping down there is that you can’t easily get out of it- the pitch is about 75-80 degrees off the horizontal and there’s nothing to hold onto as you climb. But my friend’s thought process went something like this: oh, Taus is like a mountain climber, he can get down there to get that kid’s toy. Sure, sure.
I whipped out my two lengths of p-cord and tied them together with a fisherman’s (note: different from the fisherman’s taught to tie up sails at Minikani) and did a double-eight to anchor one end of the rope on a railing. Then a quick descent, a gathering of the kid’s toy, and no problems coming back up because of the rope. In the bag.
(This is a great site on knots, by the way.)
No, I never was a boy scout. Better. I was a camp counselor. And if you are a camp counselor, you are nothing without your stocked buttpack. Over the years I’ve refined the practice to better suit urban travel and navigation, but the old reliable items still come through in the clutch. I guess I’m infamous among those that know me for my stocked buttpack. 1ey and tmo as well. They like to call it my man-purse, which is fine. But it’s really my superhero utility belt.
music: Olu Dara- In the World
Been two weeks since I last wrote here. Doesn’t feel like two weeks. Things have been hectic.
Spring has officially coated Boston in a warm bath of anticipation. Summer is within reach, and for me that means the end of grad school and student teaching, the bestowing of the title “Master of Education,” a new job (for which I’ll be paid!), moving, and the light at the end of the tunnel: six weeks or so of relatively unstructured travelling.
But not yet.
The past two weeks have, essentially, been a process of me cranking up a machine: tightening springs, oiling joints, preparing for that day in the not-so-distant future that I will set the machine called summer in motion and finally be free from all the pressure and obligation of this past year. It will be most welcome. So I’ve been busy. I’ve been working (in a very loose sense) on my final portfolio submissions for grad school, interviewing for jobs, adjusting unit and lesson plans and whipping up curriculum, putting paperwork through to assume a full-time substitute teaching job after my grad program ends, tying off the last little bits of Live Live as a radio show, negotiating living situations for next fall, and beginning to plan for my cross-country trip this summer. I’ve somehow managed two overnight campouts in the past two weeks, a brief trip to Brooklyn, a night at Murphy’s, and a concert downtown. Plus, I took it upon myself to do my own taxes. No large feat in the grand scheme of things, but quite time consuming. It will all be worth it in a couple weeks when I get my refund. Uncle Sam pays for David’s summer vacation.
I feel like I’ve been slacking this week. It’s been BPS’s spring break, and I’ve been sleeping late and not working much. I’ve caught a brief stomach bug and am tied to the bathroom today, which is why I have time, thought space, and proximity to a computer enough to finally blog. But I’ve worked myself out of the working habit. The summer machine is kicking in prematurely, and all that potential energy is leaking out. I think that’s why it’s called “spring break.”
Two weeks ago was a tough week. I was dealing with the closing of Live Live, the faults of rushed lesson planning, an insurmountable accumulated sleep debt, and some terrible gray rainy weather. This past week has been much better. The sun and warm weather have finally hit. I’ve managed to relax a bit. It has been nice to not be productive but now that I have to snap back into the gruelling schedule I realize that I have grown soft. Tanned and rested, but soft. I will be returning to the grad student’s lifestyle soon, and will be dragging my feet despite myself. I can feel the migraines returning already.
There is not that much time standing in between me and the summer. The spring in my cranked up mind is already starting to uncoil and release some of its energy. The trick now will be to sustain some sort of work ethic over the next eight weeks. and re-wind enough to make it through the end of June. I’m already looking into July, but there are still two months that will be quite full that need attention and effort. I only hope I can manage to keep myself together for that much longer.
music: Beatles- Revolver
This has been going on in geek circles for much longer, probably, but this is the first I’ve heard of it. We now have a computer program that can predict and produce pop songs. I’ve heard rumors of something along the same lines but for classical music (analyze a composer’s body of work and produce a symphony that he could have written) that has fooled the experts, but this program does more than creates music in the style of a certain composer. It claims to be able to take data along twenty dimensions and create original music that they say will be commercially successful.
I suppose things like aesthetic popularity can be modeled mathematically considering it works off principles related to normal distributions. This can sit somewhat comfortably with me; I’d be a little more concerned if there was a computer program that tried to model a more objective evaluation of the arts. Richard Powers tells of the unforunate end to such a project in his book Galatea 2.2.
The notion is intruiging that pop music could be reduced to a formula. Yes, it can be described as ‘formulaic,’ but does the comparison carry that completely? I think that there would need to be a fourth axis to these kinds of calculations, one that would incorporate time. Maybe they have already built something like that into the program. But fads change. The popular music of the early ‘90’s was grunge. Now it is electronica-laced teenaged vocalists. Thirty years ago it was disco. Forty years ago it was the Beatles. Sixty years ago it was big band swing. Who is to guess what it will be in the next couple of years? Were a computer program to extrapolate that, or even claim to do so, it might even dictate the next fad instead of predicting it. Sadly, this is exactly what the suits that produce and distribute pop music are looking for.
music: Ravi Shankar & Yehudi Menuhin- West Meets East
These days I find myself so busy that I feel a little guilty when I take time out of my day to eat something. I know that eating food is more or less up there on the lsit of important things to do every day, but right now it gets in the way of me doing other things more pressing. I know that food is the centerpiece to many a social gathering, that food is a powerful reinforcer for all living things, but right now it seems to be a nusiance, an unfortunate necessary in which I must engage in order to keep my biological machinery working properly. The problem is that I normally like food and eat too much of it. These days not so much. It’s a problem I’ve bumped up against before.
(Sleep falls under this same categorization as well, but I’m not going to go there this time around…)
Paul Auster talks about the problem of hunger, but from the opposite end of the rope. Still, the argument holds: we humans can never solve this problem of food consumption. We will always need to eat if we want to live, and no matter how hard we try, no matter how much we want to, we can not do without food. He was approaching this quandry from a starving artist point of view, where food was hard to come by. I find myself in a much luckier position. Still, in both cases, the wish to be able to do without food is the same. I think that if there were a magic pill I could take that would allow me to survive without eating but still be able to eat for pleasure I would. I think that anyone who has thought at all about consumption would do the same.
Which brings me to a larger point: food consumption is really the Ur-example of human consumption. Now our consumption has taken a myriad of forms, and the vast majority of our consumptive tendencies have little to do with our biological survival. One of the most globally contraversial right now is our oil consumption. It’s probably true that our taste for oil will be our undoing, as our culture has become physically and psychologically addicted to the stuff. We have used oil as a cornerstone in the building of our 21st century civilization; when the oil is gone so is our civilization and culture of consumption.
Consumption takes more insidious forms, and like food all these things are ultimately unfulfillable. Unsustainable if left to stand on their own. There is oil, on a personal level that would mean keeping gas in the car, but there is also the little stuff we deal with day-to-day: are the credit card bills paid? (watch what happens if you lose your source of income) Cell phone and iPod charged? (watch what happens if the power is shut off) Have the latest in this-or-that? (watch what happens if you stop paying attention to commercial culture) And, of course, the root of it all: did you eat yet today?
I’ve toyed around with some ideas surrounding asceticism. Hindu and Buddhist belief in ending the human cycle of suffering has a lot to do with moving beyond the human condition of hunger, both physically and metaphorically. Interesting to think about; much harder to actualize. I was considering a tea fast this spring, but given the present circumstances can not really afford the loss in energy. I have always considered vegetarianism, but I can’t manage to make that work either. Just not enough going in to fuel this organic machine. It seems, then, that I’m stuck needing to eat food. Just like the 6.2 billion other people on the planet. Lucky for me that food is easy to come by in this part of the world, and so many different kinds to choose from! Consumption and its subsequent demand may have some merit when I’m figuring out what I want to eat on a Saturday night.
I remember reacting strongly to the first day of the first (and last) economics class I ever took. The teacher proclaimed the tenets of the dismal science: “Humans have unlimited wants and unfulfillable desires.” No, I thought, there is a point of satiation. Not so, it seems. If there is a point of satiation, it is death. Until then, we humans will keep consuming food, oil, water, air, electricity, personal electronics, fabrics, plastics, or whatever else is dangled in front of us as long and as much as we can. A tough little morsel to swallow.
