music: Blind Faith- Blind Faith
I’m pleasantly surprising myself as of late. It’s pushing 1am, I’m still awake with a full school day tomorrow, and moreover I’m just getting home from birthday celebrations at a karaoke bar. (Side note: it was my first time at a karaoke bar, and somewhere in between “Livin’ On A Prayer,” “Don’t Stop Believing,” and “Bohemian Rhapsody,” I was floored by the power of music to bring complete strangers together. I’m sure the alcohol helped too.) So all this in and of itself is quite surprising on several levels, but speaks volumes about the corner I’ve been turning in relation to my relationship with my job (more on this sometime very soon). It also indicates a shift in my priorities and a refocusing of my goals, namely that in the midst of a life of service to those who desperately need it, I am giving myself permission to loosen up on the reins, relax, have fun, treat myself nicely. It’s hard, but I’m getting the hang of it.
The real highlight of the night came just after, when I was suiting up to go home earlier than most. I am required to be on point at 8:00 AM tomorrow, after all, and just being out for a little bit on a Tuesday night is a significant accomplishment in my book. But as I was just about to peel out and head home, I get a call from my friends Adam and Rose, who had just liberated over 300 pints of ice cream and were planning on giving them all away to the good folks on the streets of San Francisco. It was more legit than it sounds; Adam works in a food store and they had to throw out their stock of ice cream because of power outages. Instead, Adam grabbed it all and thought it best to spread the sugary wealth. They needed some help pushing the wheelbarrow of ice cream around, and requested my presence. I live a life of service to others, after all, and felt obliged to help. I rolled west on Haight and ran into Adam, Rose, a fairly full wheelbarrow, and a small crowd of ice cream connoisseurs. The three of us spent about 45 minutes emptying the wheelbarrow and putting ice cream in the hands of anyone who would take it. We got some folks who were to streetsmart and wary for their own good, but most everyone we ran into was very excited to score a free pint of ice cream. The range of folks was astounding: bargoers, homeless guys, convenience store clerks, bus drivers, couples on their way back from dinner, even police officers. Everyone wondered why it was happening, what was in it for us, whether it was stolen, and the like. We found that people were much more likely to take the ice cream if we were eating it as well, which was just fine. I was smiling and laughing the whole time.
I was taken back to younger and simpler days, summers spent in the parking lot bazaars of music festivals and Phish concerts, back to an ethic cultivated at summer camp, back to a more innocent and idealistic mindset where talking to strangers is encouraged, giving is commonplace, and the moment is what matters most. I’ve gotten very wrapped up as of late in my supposed obligations and in being careful to take care of myself so I’m able to meet those obligations. This fall, Missa Toss would frown severely on carousing in the streets until the wee hours with school the next morning. I still have obligations and things that need my energy and attention, but I’ve recently placed myself on the top of that list. Tonight, thanks to a serendipitous phone call, what I needed most was to give out free ice cream to some of the people with whom I share my city.
When the wheelbarrow was emptied, Rose and Adam opened the back of their truck, revealing two more times the amount than we gave away. They rolled out from the Haight to the Mission and the Castro. I, still having to teach tomorrow, went home with some frozen party favors, but I think I gained far more than ice cream. I’m still smiling.
“and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” -John Lennon
music: Sigur Ros- Hauf/Heim
There is something about this time of year that tears at me, rubs me raw, makes me very unhappy on several levels. I’ve spent the past week or so in an irritable, discontent headspace that has colored this so-called vacation in unsavory ways. I’ve been discouraged, restless, exasperated. Full of energy, but without direction or purpose. Craving solitude, but quite lonely. That I have had the chance to catch up on sleep and have had the time to feed myself properly, and that I know that my affect inevitably dips during the final weeks of the calendar year have been my saving graces.
Why does this happen? What is it about the so-called “Holidays” that drive me to wish myself a million miles away from my own life? This year is not an isolated event, not by any stretch. There is something intrinsically…depressing about this stretch of time, and as I sit in the middle of it for the 29th time I can’t say it’s gotten any easier to wade through the murky waters that are the Holidays. This year I spent a good deal of time trying to dissect the subject with the hopes that I could arrive at a meaningful cause for such a downturn in my flow.
First and foremost, to my analysis, is my birthday on the 24th of the month. There are the mini-explosions of existential meltdown that accompany me turning one year older, and those steady reminders of my limited time on this planet do not really cheer me up. I should be thankful on my birthday: thankful for my health, that I have made it through another year, thankful that I have had opportunities most people do not have and have enjoyed relative good fortune, thankful for my mother who allowed herself to be sliced open such that I could breathe air for myself and bask in the light of the world, thankful thankful thankful. Instead I find myself quite the opposite: discouraged. Discouraged that youth is quickly becoming a thing to be spoken of in the past tense, and that whatever divine clock that keeps track of the rest of my days as David Taus is moving inexorably towards zero. Because of the date on which I was born, my birthday is overshadowed by someone else’s birthday — most people have heard of him; he was nailed to a cross about 2000 years ago — and because of this other guy and the special brand of spirituality he preached the country decides to whip itself into an economic frenzy, buying buying buying consuming consuming consuming consuming. This generally happens to coincide with travel to family far away or exotic vacation spots, so as a result most everybody I’d like to spend my birthday with is elsewhere, predisposed with the great American spirituality of capitalism. I’d like to have the option to drown myself in some degree of consumerism, to at least take myself out to a moderately nice dinner on my birthday, but in the greatest of ironies I find the rest of the world has closed for business on December 24th. I am really left to myself on my birthday, and try as I might to see that solitude as a gift, I struggle mightily.
Secondly, and hardly coincidently, is Christmas. If I were someone who celebrated the holiday, or even had the option to be part of the culture that celebrates it, I might see it slightly differently, but I’m not so sure. As it is, Christmas is the party that I am not invited to, but everyone else is And the whole universe reeks of Christmas: decorations in the store windows, muzak in the elevators, sweaters and velvet stocking caps on the populous. Christmas becomes part of the common greeting between strangers, becomes the reason to do this and that, becomes the excuse to do this and that. It’s inescapable, and from my vantage point on the outside, its existence and role in the country’s fabric is largely one of economics. Christmas is pitched as that other guy’s birthday (not me, the other guy from 2000 years ago), but the funny thing is that all scholarly analysis tells us that he was born in the spring, and in a different city from what the holiday purports. Furthermore, the jolly fat man in the red suit, his entourage of reindeer, and the presents he drops has a connection with the foundations of Christianity that is tenuous at best. And the kicker, even in the age of environmental awareness, is that celebrants of this spiritual occasion take it upon themselves to cut down upwards of 30 million trees (remnants of a pagan solstice rite appropriated by Christian missionaries) and put them out on the curb a week later. What is left of Christmas, then, is buying, giving, consuming, expecting. I wouldn’t want part of it even if I had the option, but just being surrounded so completely by Christmas is enough.
Beyond that, the natural rhythms of the planet are screaming “Hibernate!” to most large mammals this time of year. It is the coldest time of year, the time with the least amount of daylight, and in many places the time when the first snows hit. My instincts have most definitely been to crawl under my blankets and wait it out.
And this year certain specifics have made my December quite difficult. I have every hope that these circumstances will work themselves out in January (more on this late-breaking story as it develops), but the hurdle between now and January is to wait out the Holidays, which make for a period of stasis in all my efforts to rectify what has been dragging me down for the past couple months. So I keep to myself, weather the onslaught of consumerism, phototropism, existentialism. It’s been difficult, and especially so because I never really had the chance to solidify New Years plans that I am excited about. Those close to me who I would choose to share my last day of the year with, are far away, already committed to something I am not a part of. The drop-back plan, which is turning out to have incredible amounts of potential, is a pilgrimage to Yosemite. It is an attempt to contact that which inspired me to come out this way in the first place, an alternative to the inevitably mediocre party I might attend in the city with one-offs and acquaintances, and a means by which I can take stock of all that has happened in 2007 and clear some mental cobwebs for the start of 2008.
2008. I welcome it grandly. It will prove to be a most interesting year, full of incredible transitions and potentially some big decisions that will divert my life’s stream in significant ways. But not yet; I first have to get through The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year. With this much struggle, I expect some really significant progress.
music: Townhall -2/15/2004
This, of course, amounts to absolutely nothing in the larger picture but it’s worth saying now, especially because it’s not something that can be said a whole lot:
The Milwaukee Brewers have the best record in baseball right now! They have a 5 game lead on the second place Reds, and are 7.5 games up on the defending champion (and arch enemies) Cardinals.
And if that wasn’t enough: The Red Sox are close behind the Brew Crew in winning percentage, in first place in the AL East, while the Yankees are in last.
I haven’t been this psyched about baseball since the 80’s.
music: Talking Heads- The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads, d.2
This one came down the pipe a couple weeks back but I’m still thinking about it: what happens when a world-class musician plays the subway with a $3,500,000 instrument during morning rush hour? (It’s a long read, but well-worth it.)
That day, to the 1,100-odd rat racers, one of the most famous classical violinists in the world was relegated to background hum. This is a guy who commands the cultural upper crust to maintain absolute silence during performances, this is a guy who can take in more money per minute of performance than i probably make in a month. And coolest of all, this is a guy who, despite his fame and fortune, is willing to go along with a devilish social experiment. The results were quite clear: context matters. Do people rate a meal as better if it were more expensive? I bet they would. Are people more inclined to litter on the concrete sidewalk or the backcountry of a national park? Probably the sidewalk. So it goes with art. All artifacts of human creation exist in a medium of place and time which lend it certain properties, and often times great works of art are largely altered when removed from that context. Imagine Jackson Pollack in Renaissance Italy, the Beatles in pre-colonial Africa. Such drastic contrasts between time emphasize the point, but there are plenty of examples here and now: hip hop on the street corner and hip hop in the record executive’s board room, modernist paintings made by a 5 year old and modernist paintings hanging in the MOMA, and here, classical music performed in the subway versus the same music performed at Carnegie Hall.
Context matters. True enough. The other piece is prior knowledge on the subject matter. People who are “experts” in certain fields are able to discern more nuance than the layman, understand deeper layers of meaning, and most people aren’t “experts” in classical music. So in the same way that i can’t tell a 1997 ford from a 1999 ford, most people don’t know their Handel from their Haydin. My roommate pointed out something interesting: in the US, classical music buffs are generally more well off and tend to not ride the subway in DC, so there’s potentially a class thing at work here as well.
Most of the effect demonstrated can safely be explained by the current state of urban living, especially during morning rush hour. ipods, job stress, lack of wakefulness, bystander effect, and all that. But there’s also the anonymity factor in this particular situation. Part of why the social experiment here worked is that Joshua Bell wasn’t recognized by face. Classical musicians aren’t necessarily the rockstar types by way of looks and tabloid fodder and are very rarely recognized by face (they audition from behind a screen, for godsakes!). No doubt Paul Mccartney couldn’t pull the same thing off. And furthermore, I don’t think you can completely rule out people’s taste in music. I’d be very curious to test this out on other “virtuoso” musicians that do not play classical. what do we think would happen if one of the Marsalis boys dresses down and plays a subway station? Bela Fleck? BB King? i’d bet you’d get a different reaction.
And still.
This all confirms my worst suspicions: music does not speak for itself. Instead it’s packaged, tied up with image, personalities, lights and ambiance, cover charges, celebrity status, ticket fees, certain cultural traditions, promotional efforts, subcultures, distribution medium, method of consumption (LP vs. ipod), product lines, and the like. Music: buy the t-shirt, see the movie. it’s a pity.
music: Miles Davis- ‘Round About Midnight
I don’t own much stuff by American standards. Besides a couple boxes and drawers full of old relics in Milwaukee, my bicycle and car, and a few assorted odds and ends, I can fit all my worldly possessions into a 9’ × 12’ bedroom. I think that’s pretty cool, as I sit in my room surrounded by pretty much everything I own. I’m rolling on a backpacker’s mentality: only carry what you need (or really, really value) and be sure to use everything you carry. I may not have that much stuff, but the stuff I have is pretty important to me. I rely on it a great deal, count on it being in working order.
I’ve recently been making efforts to take more ownership of the things I own. If at all possible I’d rather fix or build stuff on my own than take it to specialists. Part of this is simple economics. Living where I do and having the job I have doesn’t leave a lot of spare change in my pockets. The other part of this is more ideological. I’m not a big believer in leaving things on the shelf and letting them collect dust if they are meant to be used. My camping gear is worn and patched and grimy at this point (except my whisperlite stove, which is a replacement for the old and grimy one sitting somewhere in a TSA warehouse in Honolulu. Thanks for keeping us safe, guys), but I know I can rely on it because I’ve used the stuff enough times in all sorts of dramatic conditions to know it inside out. I started in on my car under Ron’s tutelage last spring. I’ve been doing my bike for a while. My bed, while creaky, is homemade. Even many of my books are all marked up with notes in the margins. All this has been coming to a head as of late, when some very important material items have been on the outs as far as proper functioning is concerned.
Sometimes we don’t have the tools necessary to do a job properly. This goes for physical tools as well as mental know-how tools. One of the things I use the most and value even more, and the one thing I’ve been afraid to work on is my guitar rig. I’m only a novice when it comes to wiring and electrical work, and only a little beyond that when it comes to woodwork.
After about a year and 3100 miles on the road, though, my guitar needed a setup. This is a mysterious ordeal to many guitarists, even the ones who give a damn about their instruments, where a technician or luthier somehow realigns the guitar to optimal playing specifications. It’s like taking your car to the shop for its 30,000 mile checkup: you aren’t completely sure what has transpired between this skilled technician and your stuff, but you get it back and you can feel the difference. I couldn’t help but think, though, that something was amiss when someone says “oh, well, your neck is out of relief and i’m gonna have to go ahead and get in there and adjust your truss rod. No, no, it’s not dangerous to the instrument but it’s a bit expensive in terms of labor, might have to charge you fifty for it.” Sounds legit, but a quick internet search will reveal that a truss rod adjustment takes no more than two minutes and is as easy as giving an allen wrench a 1/4 turn in the right direction. That someone would charge $50 for this is completely stupid. So instead of dropping off my guitar with some stranger to undergo this magical process of getting set up, I found a excellent guy named Chris on Craigslist who not only does a setup on your instrument, but also teaches you how to do the setup while you sit there. And the whole thing costs $50. Amazing turnaround time, quality work, and more valuable still, a little lesson in self-empowerment. Way cool. I was feeling so empowered that I decided to install strap locks on my Gibson this past weekend, complete with taking an electric drill to its beautifully finished wooden body. There were tense moments, downright harrowing moments for that matter, but by day’s end two small holes were drilled in exactly the right spot, the strap locks were installed, and my guitar became less of a showroom item and more of another tool that I may use in order to make music. (I say that, of course, because I took a big divot out of the back trying to get a stripped screw out of the thing.)
Two weeks ago, my mp3 player finally gave up the ghost. I use that thing almost on a daily basis, and not just for consumption of music. I use it as a portable hard drive, a medium through which I can disseminate my own music, as well as a music player. The kicker is that it was the second one to go in as many months, as the display on my trusty nomad jukebox 3 finally blinked off. As I use my mp3 players for high quality digital recording (production, not just consumption!!) my options were pretty limited as far as what I could go for. Ebay came through: I ended up getting an identical iRiver h120 to the one I had previously. And between the old and new ones, I managed to cobble together a bigger, better iRiver than I had even before, plus I saved the time and headache of transferring all the music onto my new iRiver by just popping the hard drive out of the old one and putting it into the new one. All this, of course, requires that one be willing to open the thing up and tinker a bit. Thanks to “misticriver.net” I was able to stumble through the process with very little difficulty. Add rockbox to the equation and I have ways of customizing a lot on the software end. (And as an aside to any mp3 player user, including iPod users: rockbox is amazing. Look into putting it onto your music player if you can. You’ll be very, very glad for it.)
I employed the same ethic towards truing my rear bike wheel a couple months back. I managed to get it fairly straight, but realized that some spokes were wrenched very tight and others not at all. That all caught up with me this week when I popped two spokes on my back wheel and completely taco’ed the thing. That one, given the tools at hand, was beyond my capabilities and I had to bite the bullet and buy a new wheel. I’ll be giving my bike an overhaul some time soon when I have a minute, adjusting the breaks to be a little tighter on the new rim.
Lesson learned, though: if you’re going to do a job yourself, you need the proper tools. The actual physical tools you use are important, but more than that is the knowledge of what to do with them. Thanks to resources like Chris up in Petaluma, I’m able to take more ownership of the few important things I own. Too often we Americans outsource the care and feeding of all that is important to us, so much so that we lose the ability to deal with it all personally. It gets harder to personally deal with all your stuff in this manner as the amount of stuff you have increases, but it’s very much worth it. Or else, as the line goes, the things you own end up owning you. This sort of education began in earnest at Chowdahaus in Boston, and continues in full force to the present moment. The battle against entropy continues, but not without some of the necessary tools. As always, gettin’ there.
music: Phish- 9/12/2000, Mansfield, MA
This one came from duncan, by way of TiMO. It’s very much worth a look.
It is, of course, a shame that Brian’s home would be so forcefully torn down. I’d expect the Law to not give the man much wiggle room, especially after living on the fringes of society for so long, but to raze such a magnificient structure? At the very least they should preserve it, charge admission, and use the money to fund homeless shelters. As TiMO pointed out, there is very little that is different between Brian Joyce’s endeavours and that of Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau’s homestead at Walden Pond, some 15 miles to the West, is now a historical and recreational park. Brian Joyce’s homestead, perhaps more impressive in that he built it with supplies and materials scavenged and found for over 5 years, and did so literally under the noses of a couple million people, is now a patch of dirt.
What is striking to me here is that someone is able to live like this for five years, virtually unbothered and virtually undetected, in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country. When I was in Boston I had absolutely no idea that Brian Joyce existed, but his tenure in his house was almost exactly the same as my own in JP, Allston, Cambridge, and Somerville. Think of all the rent money I could have saved…
This is not a normal picture of homelessness. Many homeless people are homeless not by choice, but by one circumstance or another. Homelessness is a terrible byproduct of a social system where the distribution of incredible amounts of wealth is so uneven, as well as an indicator of certain types of institutionalized prejudices. But in the case of Brian Joyce, a very sharp and strong and willful and lucid figure, I can’t help but romantacize homelessness a little bit. Brian has found a way to work his way between the big teathers of society and subsist on what everyone else has cast aside. This is, no doubt, not an easy way to do things, and is probably uncomfortable at times, perhaps somewhat dangerous at other times, but I support Brian’s efforts. He is a walking practice of what so many have just read about the so-called “Great American Novels.” How many of us have cast down the river like Huck and Jim? How many of us have jumped trains like Jack and Dean? How many of us have dropped everything, built a one-room cabin by a pond, and lived in it for two years like Henry? Damn near none of us. But Brian Joyce has. His homelessness can be construed as unfortunate, but I think in this particular case Brian’s homelessness is the reason for his extraordinary life.
music: Funkadelic- One Nation Under A Groove
(Disclaimer: This one is for the true Star Wars Dorque.)
Making prequels can be a tricky business in terms of internal consistency. Will everything that we know and love about the original Star Wars Trilogy hold up as the background information comes to light? Will glaring inconsistencies be found? Will some things need a bit of reframing? George Lucas had to have known that he was up against the most nitpicky, meticulous, obsessed group of movie fans this side of Mos Eisely when he set out to make Episodes I, II, and III. Let’s face it, some Star Wars fans know more about worlds and events that (alledgedly) never existed than they do about our own world and history. So what follows, on some level, is to be expected.
I can’t argue with it, actually; the logic is watertight. But it really changes how you think of almost everything that happens in Episode IV. Star Wars Dorque extraordinaire Keith Martin makes the case that the #1 and #2 masters of espionage for the rebel alliance, the ones who really are calling the shots are…R2D2 and Chewbacca??? The Force is strong in this one. Read on, fellow dorque, and be amazed.
music: Curtis Mayfield - Superfly (25th Anniversary Deluxe Addition)
My friend Jordan Carlos has become, by all measures, a successful comedian and actor. I remember seeing him in shows in college with the on-campus improv troupe. (There is, alledgedly, a very funny script floating around somewhere about Jordan, our friend Patrick, and I trying to move into our apartments before senior year of college…but I’ve yet to see product.) I remember seeing him perform in New York City a bunch of years back, some amateur night with a $10 cover and a two drink minimum, and I remember been pretty impressed with him then. I remember walking by a TV in a bar at one point and flipping out because Jordan was on TV, starring in a prime-time-major-network commercial. I remember people talking about Jordan being on The Daily Show (or so I heard; not watching TV leaves me high and dry in matters of popular culture). By most measures, Jordan made it as a comedian and actor, and on a nationally recognized level.
He is a funny guy and a great performer, has been for as long as I’ve known him. Most of his scripted humor is based around race, specifically his being a black man living and working in a white man’s world, and being the “preppiest black guy in the free world.” This sort of comedy depends on deep-set unspoken stereotypes. Because he would be the first to admit to crowds that he does not act black, he gains a certain leverage to be able to point out incongruities in stereotypes of black/white relations in America. The fact that mostly white audiences are perfectly aware of these oft-unspoken stereotypes, and the fact that they are spoken out loud, into a microphone, out loud, by a person of color, somehow has made it all safe to laugh at. To an extent, Jordan depends on those deep-set, unspoken stereotypes to be there, because without them his jokes are not funny. Having gone to a prestigious college with Jordan, one largely symbolic of the power of the dominant culture in America, and then having worked for teenagers in the inner city, gives me some understanding of the two cultures Jordan pits against each other and embodies simultaneously.
There is at least a grain of truth behind every joke. Even in college Jordan, one of the few black faces on campus, was refining the characterization of a black person living in a white world. Even then he was the first to voice the incongruity of it all, and even then it was done with humor and good intention. But I think it has taken its toll. Some time last November, around the same time of Michael Richards’s racist explosion, Jordan’s writing online got a little more serious. A couple weeks ago, I understand, Jordan published a piece in the Washington Post, revealing a more somber perspective on his perfession and alledged success. Here, now, is something new: being black in a white world is not as funny as Jordan has made it out to be for all us white folks in the audience. And moreover, the black song-and-dance that entertains mostly white audiences might just be subtle form of cultural oppression and inequality masqurerading as comedy. This is most assuredly not funny.
Jordan keeps a blog. Up until recently he’s posted about upcoming shows, tried out pieces of material, vented frustrations about being a young (black) entertainer. The last couple posts have taken a different tone, however; Jordan has seemingly reached a reckoning. In the last couple of posts, Jordan has positioned himself in opposition to those with whom he previously sought to join. Before, being a preppy black guy was funny. Now, being a preppy black guy is becoming a vehicle for social polemic. I suppose that one can publicly shame oneself for so long before one wears onself down. Jordan might have hit that point. Now that he is breaking into the spotlight proper, and the stakes are a bit higher, things are taking on more significance.
There has been a lot of popular self-deprecating comedy used as satire as of late (Chapelle and Borat come to mind). But in these cases, the self-deprecation has a higher purpose than just laughs, it’s meant to hold a mirror up to those that practice ignorance, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and other sociological horrors. The problem is that much of the time the satire is too good, and the larger point is lost beneath the humor. Moreover, just because you know better doesn’t make it permissible. That Jordan has given himself a moment to pause and consider this, and then spoken about it on the national level, is commendable. Not just commendable, important. Not just important, vital. Vital. Someone has to say something, and if people are willing to listen to Jordan and laugh, I hope they are willing to listen to him tell them the tragedy of why it’s so funny.
Jordan’s January 10th post, the first following publication of his piece in the newspaper, takes the tone of social activist more than entertainer. As a teacher I have a job where people listen to me (well, most of the time anyway) and I feel an obligation to use that influence to further socially just causes. I think and hope that Jordan is positioning himself in similar ways now. It is, of course, is a big professional risk for a black man trying to be critical of and simultaneously break into a culture of power, one that I (and any other white person) can’t empathize with. But it is vital. Whites have no way of empathizing with this. Whites can not (read: are not allowed) to be critical of this, that is, if we want to actually see social justice being done. It’s inspiring to see a friend of mine grapple with quesitons of race, racial identity, and race relations, and assuring to see it being done with a degree of skill and poise that leaves people laughing instead of arguing. But at some point, if the message really is to stick, things have to stop being funny. That endeavour represents an enormous occupational hazard for Jordan, but one I support fully. There is at least a grain of truth behind every joke. My hope is that one day Jordan will get up and do his schtick and have nobody in the audience laugh. Not because he isn’t funny anymore, but because the underlying message in his jokes will have been, at last, successfully delivered.
music: Paul Oakenfold- Tranceport
I can remember conjuring images of the future as a kid. Fueled by Blade Runner, and Back to the Future II, then later by Akira,, Show Crash, Neuromancer, and especially by the RPG Cyberpunk 2020 the future as I dreamt it would be a dark, grimy urban place replete with healthy amounts of libertarianism, grit, corruption, shadows within shadows, minor technological miracles around every corner, a blurring of the line between biology and computer science, militarism, and governmental collapse. Luckily the extreme cases offered by these visions I sucked up as an adolescent have not fully come to pass. We are not living in a nuclear winter, the government is still more or less intact, there are not gratuitous bouts between street gangs, and technology has not yet gotten the upper hand on our mortal coils. Still, there are some very strong indicators that we are living in my childhood’s future.
Things change slowly, so slowly in fact that we barely notice the changes. Even the progress of certain cultural artifacts that evolve rather quickly, such as computer technology, is not really perceived as progressing minute-to-minute. Who among us fleshy simpletons would have thought even 10 years ago that you could jump on the internet and download DVD quality feature films in a matter of hours or even minutes? But technology does change. The contours of automobiles, the production of popular music, the integration of communication media into our daily lives (now people walk around with ear-implanted Bluetooth telephones!) indicates that things have been changing, and quick. If we aren’t living in my childhood’s vision of the future right now, we will soon enough.
There are brief moments where I find myself looking around and for the briefest of seconds actually seeing the future in the present. And as of late these moments have become more and more regular. Volker and I were discussing this as we gazed out on the skyline of San Francisco from Angel Island a couple weeks back; this is the sense I’ve been getting more and more as I roam the city’s streets after sunset. This is the feeling I get when I scan headlines and news abstracts online. This is the feeling I get when I peer underneath the hood of a car and find more electrical wiring than mechanical moving parts. This is the feeling I get when I reflect on how much of the social human interactions we enjoy are tied to TV, movies, cell phones, email, instant messenger, and myspace. This is the feeling I get as I pause for a painfully brief moment to realize I’m about to complete my 28th year of life on this planet, and that these are the darkest days of the whole year. The immediate future will see me on the road heading North for the next couple days, much like Hiro Protagonist on his bike. Now is the time of year to breathe in, take stock of my surroundings, and attempt to cling to those aspects of life that are the most vital, the most real, the most human. Here and now, it’s getting harder and harder.
music: Calexio & Iron and Wine- In the Reins
At least one full aisle of any Walgreens, Rite Aid, CVS, or other drugstore is dedicated to thick paper rectangles, usually decked out in brilliant four color funniness or deeply touching and adept aphorisms. One. Full. Aisle. And this is every day of the year; Mother’s Day and Christmas might even see an explosion of the greeting card aisle, with cardboard rectangles leaking into cosmetics or weekly specials. And the greeting card aisle is usually divided into sections: congratulations, I’m sorry, thinking of you, condolences, you graduated, you’re great friend, and of course happy birthday, further subdivided into his, hers, funny, from grandparents, from aunts and uncles, spiritual, romantic, even happy birthday from the dog. These pieces of cardboard run for at least $2, nice ones with fancy cutouts and embossed flowers and whatnot going for closer to $4. It’s the greeting card aisle; we all know it well.
I find the greeting card aisle to be a terrible place. Not because of the lack of selection, it’s quite apparent that there’s really a card for every occasion imaginable (“congratulations on finally beating your longtime tennis partner for the third time this beautiful holiday season after he got out of dialysis!”). What i’ve found so terrible about the greeting card aisle is that people countrywide are paying from $2 to $4 to borrow words that they want to share with their friends and loved ones during highly memorable and emotionally charged times. Cards mark milestones, serve as tokens of how we really feel about those to whom we choose to give a card. Greeting cards say, “you are important to me and I’m thinking about you.” And because our friends and loved ones are so important to us, we cough up a nominal amount of change to rent words that aren’t ours and use them as if they were ours. Is it so hard for the mass public to spend a minute or two coming up with a couple sentences of their own and scratching them down on glossy matte cardboard instead of using Emerson, or Margaret Mead, or Ghandi, or that crotchety old lady invented by the good people at Hallmark specifically for the purposes of making those who buy her cards more witty in their sarcastic tone? I’d like to give the general public a little more credit in terms of linguistic ability. I’ve definitely read my share of bad prose, having been a high school teacher, but even in those poorly spelled sentences there’s something more personal and vital than the canned and packaged lines found up and down the greeting card aisle.
We’re all guilty of this, finding others’ words and making them our own in some way. We all relate to certain songs personally, and make mix tapes (mix cds? playlists?). Back in middle school the way you showed someone that you cared about them was making them a mix tape with all your favorite songs. It’s not so different than greeting cards in this light, although I’d like to think that a 45 minute set of music has more elegant and artistic content than a 4” by 6” piece of paper. And to a lesser extent we’ve all cherished certain quotes or perhaps even kept a book of our favorite quotes. And I am not immune either — this very weblog’s subtitle isn’t mine originally; I can thank Frederick Douglass for the sentiment that has guided a good deal of my thoughts and actions.
I spent some time in the greeting card aisles this week, it being my mother’s birthday in a couple of days. I actually went to four places (four!) before I found what I was looking for: a card with nothing written on or in it. That means that by informal survey, 75% of the stores that carry greeting cards have no blank cards whatsoever. And the one that did had quite a selection: about 15 different blank card in the entire aisle, which easily held over 1,000 cards. Granted, if I would have bought a card with prepackaged emotion I would have mailed it already and it would arrive at mom’s doorstep in time for her birthday, but I’m still thinking of exactly what I want to say and the card is sitting blank on my desk. Even if it is a day or two late, it will be my own thoughts, my own emotions. In times worth marking and recognizing with these little cardboard tokens, I think that a little tardiness is worth some originality. Judging by the state of the greeting card aisle, it appears that most of the population is perfectly happy to pass off someone else’s words as their own, and is quite comfortable homogenizing their own emotions for the sake of timeliness and less work. I had no idea a trip to the drugstore could be so discouraging.
music: Sigur Ros- Agaetis Byjun
I’m doing laundry now, which is probably way overdue, and as I’m moving my clothes from the washer to the drier I notice that the clothes really aren’t all that wet. Rather, they aren’t as wet as I remember clothes being after a wash cycle. They are damp, there is evidence of water being involved at some point here, but they really should be more wet than they are. Then i realize that all of the clothes I’m moving from washer to dryer are made of plastic. Capeliene, polypro, nylon/lycra blend, duofold, bergelene…and the only clothes left out of the wash cycle are my gore-tex jacket and my windstopper fleece jacket. Granted these are my travel clothes, the small handful of garments I’ve been wearing ever since I rolled out of Boston on July 1, and when I consider all the clothes I own the picture changes. But still.
No-correction-my socks are a blend of wool and synthetic (40% wool i think), and my bandana is made from 100% cotton. So there’s that.
But still.
What happened to plants? Or animals even? Scientists working in high security research bunkers have managed to turn used milk cartons and tennis ball fuzz into such a wonderful facsimilie of plant fiber and animal hide that we’ve forsaken plants and animals altogether. Now our outdoorsiness manifests itself in brightly colored plastic clothes. We think of fleece in terms of the newest North Face or Patagonia garment, but often fail to remember that fleece originally referred to sheep hair. My ‘fleece’ jacket doesn’t have that barnyard smell to it (I take that for granted), and it is very light, packable, and due to some space-age laminate completely windproof. But here’s the kicker: I wear my jacket around town and people look at it and probably think “wow, that guy is really outdoorsy, really into being in nature.” Only when i cover myself in plastic, apparently.
I wonder what the environmental impact is of all the waste chemicals pouring out of the Gore labs…
Perhaps we’ve gotten too far ahead of ourselves as a culture when something so clearly synthetic, so clearly made by chemicals in a factory becomes the symbol for outdoorsiness or an affinity for nature. Maybe it’s just really good marketing by the gear companies. But it shouldn’t be so. Wool and leather, still quite acceptable materials from which to make clothes, should really be the marks of the nature-lover. Cotton is still a wonderous material, despite being a poor insulator once it gets wet, and there’s all sorts of alternatives like silk, hemp, or beech. These are all truly natural fibers, and would be better symbols of the nature-lover than the dryer full of plastic in the next room.
(Something similar could be said for food, but I’m not going to get into that right now.)
music: Sound Travels on 89.9 WERU, Maine (webcast)
Last year’s April Vacation took the Monkey Wrench Gang (me, TMO, 1ey, and Montana) to the South of Utah. This year, with incredibly open-ended travels on the horizon, I decided to stick it out in Boston and make some effort to investigate the universe locally. Original plans for the opening of break were to take off to the White Mountains to enjoy the first 70 degree days of the year, but due to events related to Jesus and bunnies that lay eggs this weekend I was left stranded. I went through the usual list of outdoorsy co-conspirators but nothing panned out.
I recalled late on Thursday night a shot in the dark that 1ey and I attempted a couple years back that turned out to be genius: a post on craigslist for some wayward souls to blindly join up in an expedition. Last time we found Matt, renegade writer and Harvard Senior, and the three of us headed up to Montreal and Quebec city for a long weekend. Criagslist has found me music gear, housing, and bandmates; why not some people who want to go camping this weekend? It was worth a shot, and worth 5 minutes before hitting the sack. The call went out:
weekend backpacking trip to NH
Reply to: davidtaus@anize.org
Date: 2006-04-13, 11:31PM EDTso i was planning on doing an overnight hiking trip to NH but my friends bailed on me. I’m still really pumped about getting some time in on trail this weekend but not pumped enough to go at it solo. been there and done that, but it’s much more fun (and safer) with other people. anybody out there up for a weekend of hiking?
(hiking here means > 25 lb backpack, elevation gains and losses, probably 5+ miles per day in the whites, sleeping in a tent, water purification, carry out your waste, all that stuff. not quite a stroll through the city park.)
me: 27/m, teacher for boston public who has friday off, would much rather spend a night out-of-doors this weekend than in his apartment. i have a car, tent, stove, maps, and knowhow. you hopefully have a a proper pack, sleeping bag, raingear, warm layers, a good attitude, and are not an axe murderer. because i don’t like camping with axe murderers.
drop an email if interested.
* this is in or around somerville
thanks-
david
* no — it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
There was a smattering of responses, mostly “I can’t go this weekend, but let’s go some time” or “I don’t have the gear for it but it sounds interesting!” Too little, too late, it seems. But among the apologies and rain checks, I find an email from John Muir in my inbox. Which is a big deal, because 1) it’s freakin’ John Muir! and 2) I though he was dead. Anyhow, here’s what ol’ Johnny had to say:
TO: davidtaus@anize.org
DATE: 4/14/2006, 11:57 AM
FROM: jmuir@trailhead.netDear David —
A few minutes ago I chanced up your message. At that moment every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring winds, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. I, too, hunger for a return to the wilds. I yearn to cast off the shackles of the city and take to the hills and glens. The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.
If you’ll allow, let us climb together into the mountains and get their good tidings. Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. I am sorry to learn that your friends “bailed” on you. I recall a hike in California where, to my dismay, my compatriots bailed the murky waters from the prior day’s coffee pot onto my snoring face. The grounds stayed interwoven in the fibers of my beard just as the song of the kestrel on a frosty morning is woven into my very being. I could still taste coffee when I began our descent into Yosemite. It was good and I smile now to think of it.
Shall we discuss provisioning? I have several pounds of salt pork and pemmican, stout rope, malt beer and a trusty axe—though I am not an axe murderer ;-) I hope it is not your intent to make this a hunting expedition! I consider that foul pursuit to be the very business of murder and will protest most vehemently and spit on you.
I am please to hear that you are “pumped about getting some…on trail this weekend”. I would be sad to see you go solo. I can promise that even though we may fag out after a long day toting our gear, I will still be “up for it” the next day. May I inquire as to your response to this parable? If you woke up in a tent and had mayonaise on your hindquarters would you tell anyone? I pray your answer is a resounding “NO!” and then we shall go camping.
May the road rise to meet you, fellow wanderer! And may we rise to this occassion as brothers in arms and hearts.
Sincerely,
J.
Genius. Craigslist comes through again.
John, if you’re out there, tell your boys down at the Sierra Club offices that the check’s in the mail. Also, if you could, put in a word with the good folks running the Mt. Whitney Trail Lottery for me come mid-July?
I opted for a hike around the Fells yesterday instead. It was really an attempt to break in my new hiking boots and test out a pair of trekking poles I picked up. I figured that on a 7 mile day hike over more or less flat terrain that I could get away without duct tape or moleskin. Stupid stupid. Today i’m nursing blisters the size of silver dollars. A pain in the heel for me, but probably a commonplace second thought for the likes of John Muir. Maybe I’ll ask him about blisters next time he writes.
music: Boogaloo Joe Jones- Right On Brother
I am taking jazz guitar classes every Thursday night (which is another story altogether) so I’m carrying my guitar on the T from Davis to Harvard and back. And every week I take my guitar I get the heads-up multiple times. Without fail.
We’ve all gotten the heads-up at some point for something or other. It comes in many forms: the quick noncommital lift of the chin, the salute, the wink-and-smile, the slightly more commital “‘sup,” the point, the wave, the point-and-wave, or the “right on.” However it comes, you know it’s some sort of acknowledgement from a stranger that you have something in common with them or they are digging something about your style. I haven’t really carried my guitars around a lot but maybe I should start to; the guitar cas has apparently a lot of heads-up street value. I’ve gotten at least two heads-up for the past three Thursdays because of it. The best was a drunk guy stumbling out of Johnny D’s who wanted to tell me the story of how he got his 1974 Martin 0018 Jumbo or something like that. Not bad for a city in which nobody talks to strangers.
It’s not limited to guitar cases; I’ve certainly given the heads-up and gotten the heads-up for other stuff. The most common candidates for the heads-up are certain articles of outdoor gear: the Mountainsmith buttpack and the Mountain Hardwear Windstopper jacket are the two most common. Osprey backpacks are a more obscure heads-up, and are much less frequently exchanged. (I’ll give the heads-up for any nice backpack really, but that’s because I check out backpacks the way most people check out certain parts of others’ anatomy.) I even remember when you would give the heads-up for the old-skool white polycarbonate nalgenes. There’s other stuff too: bikes, shoes, frisbees, stickers of certain bands…and different people give and get the heads-up for a wide range of things. Nick down the street gives the heads-up to volvo station wagons. In a way, what qualifies as heads-up worthy to you defines your subculture of choice. Or, at the very least, your materialistic tendencies.
The people who have given me the heads-up the most for my guitar case have been the subway buskers. It’s as if I’m all of a sudden in some sort of secret society when they see I have an instrument. They’ve never heard me play, they don’t think about whether i’m bringing the thing to its real owner or not, they don’t even know what’s in the case, but none of that seems to matter. They make their inferences, and in their mind I’m part of the musician’s club. A bit of a stretch, when considered more objectively, but it’s an ok stretch by me.
Carrying the things we value is a bit like wearing our hearts on our sleeves, and when people see that they share something with you they react. I suppose the heads-up is just a symptom of a larger human need for affiliation. Anything we can find to connect to other people is worth recognizing, and is worth a slight lifting of the chin at the very least.
music: Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk
Way to go, Someday Cafe. Your genius new year’s resolution was to install a widescreen plasma television?? That plays nothing but advertisements?? I can’t think of a worse way to kill a good coffee shop atmosphere. Yours is an establishment that should stand for the exact opposite of stuff like that. I guess there’s two things to do now.
1. Test out the TV-B-Gone on your newly installed obscenity
2. Go to Diesel
music: Studio One Rockers
Imagine a small country where there are no stoplights and no fast-food chains. You can take school buses all the way from one side of the country to the other for $3. Shoes are a rare occurrence (and shoes mostly mean flip-flops) and cell phones are even more rare. What’s more, this tiny country has an astounding array of natural beauty: tropical desert islands, atolls and a barrier reef, rainforests and jungles, mountains complete with waterfalls and rivers and swimming holes, and caves that need exploration. The people, while most likely considered poor by most Americans’ standards, live a life rich with the stuff that matters: long meals with family and friends, morning full of sunshine burning off a layer of fog, music that evokes island breezes, and the valuable understanding that very few people, in fact, are out to get you and what’s more are woth talking to.
Imagine not. Welcome to Belize.
December was miserable. December is usually terrible, but this year December was miserable for a bunch of reasons. But luckily Reuben found himself with a teacherly break in between Christmas and New Year’s, and he and I skipped town for a week in Belize, leaving his wife and our sorry excuses for lives behind. Both of us have been living, breathing, eating (barely) and sleeping (even less) for our students and were very much looking forward to a week of time in which we did stuff for ourselves- the last time we took an extended trip together was four days in Yosemite back in 2004, and before that was a road trip through Canada in 1998. So after some nice days hanging out with old friends in DC we hopped a very early morning plane for Belize City. We touched down in the tiny airport a little after noon, and scooted out to the cayes with a quickness. Thus began a week bookended by lazy days on”Caye Caulker.”:http://www.gocayecaulker.com/ In the middle of the trip we based ourselves out of San Ignacio, adventure town up in the hills. We took day trips to some amazing places: two caves in which some beautiful geology was occurring and in which Mayan rituals were performed, and a trip to Tikal, the capital of the Mayan Empire (and site of the rebel base on the fourth moon of the planet Yavin). It was a week packed full, but barely stressful. We did a lot, we saw a lot, but we didn’t feel drained from it in the least.
There are a lot of tales to tell, but I think it’s best to let the photos to do most of the talking. Suffice it to say that the trip and the time with my old friend gave me a very necessary respite from a life in Boston I’m now ready to admit is far from healthy or good. What struck me most, though, is that the perspective on people should live is so refreshingly different once you leave the US. And despite some amenities that Americans have grown soft over, in some ways the quality of life is better for those people I met in Belize. We here have things like efficient cars (and plenty of them), fast food delivery, a mighty military and well-protected borders, liability waivers, prestigous universitites, enormous leaders in industry, wireless internet, an overwhelming selection of food and drink, reliable plumbing and electricity even, but I can’t help but think that by my count, We The People are far less happy on a basic level than the folks I met in Belize. There is something to be said for simplicity and moderation and modesty. Belize and its people (a highly diverse bunch) manage to enjoy themselves, get along famously, and live fulfilled, happy lives despite not havng a lot of the stuff Americans find so valuable. I’m a week removed from my trip to Central America and am quickly losing that perspective at the hands of this Babylon System, but it’s something I’d like to hold onto as long as I can.
My life is once again governed by the obligations of Missa Toss. But like any period after significant travel, I am trying to find a balance point between the job I signed on for here and the ideals I discovered out on the road. Belize tourist traps are full of shirts and stickers that say stuff like “UnBelizeAble!” and “You Better Belize It! but the one I think summed it up was found on Caye Caulker, a gem of an island in which the main modes of transportation are bicycle, golf cart, and sailboat. As you exited the water taxi you walked over a mosaic with a simple message: Go Slow. Yes, I. Can’t think of a better way to usher in the new year than remembering that, the simplest but most potent lesson learned from a tiny beautiful country on the other side of the Carribean Sea. There is change on the wind, and 2006 will prove to be a year full of change. Here’s to an excellent start to the year, and here’s to making sure to make time for what really matters.
music: Beethoven- Synphony #6
We humans need stories. Religion itself probably started out as fantastic stories of explanation. Parables and tales not only passed the long hour, they also were the weapons passed down from old to young to be used against the great unknowns of the universe. And while we might not need our weapons, they are nice to have. Stories give us understandings of ourselves and our surroundings, understandings sometimes far greater than the most powerful telescope or microscope. What many do not realize is that the stories that have been told since the beginnings of spoken language are variations on a handful of common themses: creation, love, falling from grace, the battle of good versus evil. All stories flow from the same spring, but some tap the source so directly that their truths are blinding. This is the origin of mythology.
Myth is not dead. Not yet, anyway. My generation’s mythology takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
28 years after the original release, the final installment of the Star Wars saga was finally unveiled. With Episode III’s release, the original vision of its creator was realized in full and the mythology of our age was rendered complete for the first time. The final Star Wars movie is no small piece of trivia; this is an unarguably important moment for our culture as Star Wars is no mere movie. No simple movie could cause 70,000 Australians claim their religion to be Jedi on official government forms.
The figures that sprang from the imagination of George Lucas are nothing short of cultural icons: Yoda as the sagacious mentor, Han Solo as the honorable scoundrel, C-3PO as the trubador storyteller, Darth Vader as the incarnation of evil. We were given these figures in three installments almost 30 years ago, and have treasured them as we have treasured nothing else from the world of story and tale since. Star Wars and its characters are instantly recognizable symbols.
The more recent installments of the epic tale graced movie screens in 1999 and 2002, and filled in the timeline 30 years before the original trilogy. In terms of script, acting, and special effects the general concensus was that the movies fell flat, but there was a deeper disconnect. There was a piece missing on the mythological level. While the first and second episodes had some similar names and faces, they didn’t click into the narrative that we as a culture know so well.
Until now.
In the telling of the final piece of the tale, however, we see something quite different in Star Wars: the myth that was once so clearly about good versus evil has become something else. Star Wars in its complete rendering is really about a tragic fall from grace and subsequent redemption. The main character is not Luke Skywalker as we once thought, it is his father. And now that we have the whole story as it was originally intended, Darth Vader is not the incarnation of Evil that we once thought him to be. We see clearly that beneath that unmistakable mask is a young man hungry for power, conflicted between love and duty, and mortified by his own human limitations. This is not the stuff of Sci-Fi or action entertainment. This is derived from the stuff of the Arthurian Legends, Grimm’s Fairly Tales, Shakespeare’s plays, even the religious stories taught in communities all over the world. Star Wars is no different from these stories. Star Wars is the taproot of modern mythology.
I take Star Wars very seriously. I’ve studied it quite literally; I’ve written papers for academic credit that compared Luke Skywalker with Yvain of Arthurian legend and Mark Twain’s Huck Finn and Jim with Han Solo and Chewbacca. I delved into Joseph Campbell’s work my senior year of high school. I’ve sucked up the auxilliary novels and information guides of the Star Wars Universe; I’ve learned that fantastic pantheon’s history as if it were real. And perhaps most importantly, I’ve seen the original trilogy enough times to be able to recite it all myself. I was excited for Episode III, of course, but also apprehensive. There were worlds to bridge and things to explain. While the outcome of the movie was known, much of the telling was left in question. The last two episodes fell on their faces. Would Episode III meet the discriminating standards of the true Star Wars dorque, the one who could tell you the name of the animal that lives in the Death Star trash compactor (dianoga), the Ewok medicine man (Logray), the names of all the bounty hunters hired to find Han Solo (Bossk, 4-LOM, IG-88, Dengar, Zuckuss, Boba Fett), the chorus to the tune played by Max Rebo, Sy Snootles, and Droopy McCool for Jabba the Hutt (Lapti Nek), or the name, race, and planet of origin of the four-eyed fuzzy alien in the Mos Eisely Cantina (Muftak, Talz, Alzoc III)?
I could pick through every detail that caught my eye in the movie. I could list all the points where things clicked together for this Star Wars Dorque, and there were many. I could try to trace the movement of things from Episode II to the original trilogy. I could talk about acting, special effects, or movie script. I won’t bother. Plenty of people do a better job of that than me, and script or acting does not concern me. Episode III is released, and anyone who cares to get into that stuff is more than welcome. What is important is the telling of the tale, and the impact it had on me.
With wholly appropriate setting, music, and symbolism, Episode III slid seamlessly into what we know of the Star Wars universe from the original trilogy. It all made sense and clicked perfectly, even to the discriminating eye of this Uber-Dorque. I walked out of the movie theater entranced, fully believing the myth, loving Star Wars the same way I did when I was ten. And even though the movie ended on a grim and melancholy note, we had the luxury of knowing the eventual outcome. We Star Wars faithful were sad, but not worried. And we sensed as an infant Luke basked under Tattoine’s desert sunset (as he would 18 story years later), that evil would not win permanently, that love and faith would triumph over hate, that redemption for our true protagonist would eventually come, and that magic is possible.
It is sad to me in a way that the entire tale is told, that a new portion of the story would never again fall upon these ears and eyes. But there is something relieving about it as well. The narrative tension, drawn out longer than I have been alive, has been resolved. We have the complete vision of one of the most powerful myths of our time. We have a pantheon of names and faces more familiar than our neighbors, characters more real to us than some real people. We have now heard the story and because of it somehow understand our own human condition a little better. The Force will be with us. Always.
music: Keith Jarrett- The Moth and the Flame
I was lucky enough to be invited over to Jojo’s and (new anize’er) Nick’s for a dinner tonight. It was a welcome relief from the rest of the weekend, which was largely spent inside my own head recording music and grading papers. After plans fell through on both Friday and Saturday nights a couple hours with friends for Sunday dinner couldn’t have been better timed. They do it up right: full-out sit-down home-cooked meal. It’s a great practice in remembering the important things: one’s friends and food. Too often we are so busy with frivolous engagements and piles of paper to appreciate what really sustains us; I know I can count on Jojo and Nick to re-teach me the basics.
Dinner conversation (at a table full of do-gooders, go figure) turned to the state of the world these days. I, to be honest, wasn’t in the mood to really get into any of that on a Sunday night but didn’t have the mental fortitude to steer the conversational ship out of such choppy waters. We decided over glazed ham, asparagus, and vegetable soup that things look bleak for the hominids and that we are approaching crisis stages as a species on several fronts, if we are not already there. The specifics here aren’t as important. My first thought sitting at that table was that we well-educated, financially stable individuals have the luxury of treating the topic as an intellectual pursuit and are well insulated from the majority of its implications for the time being. The second thought I had was it is precisely people like us who are (often unwittingly) contributing to the problem.
The question of global sustainability on any front comes down to a more simple question for any individual: what are you willing to do without so there will be enough to go around? It’s a tough one to answer. I apparently haven’t gotten it yet. The way that I live my life, it seems, is not good enough. I recall the results of that ecological footprint survey I took a couple weeks ago: if everyone lived like you, we would need 2.8 planets. I own a car. I shop at a supermarket. I just noticed that there are lights on in rooms I’m not currently using. I own multiple plastic jackets that aid me in my pursuit of being closer to nature. And by our society’s standards, I weigh in on the treehugger side of things.
2.8 planets.
I said at some point that I feel a sense of shame at all this, that while I can raise my voice against that which with I do not agree, I am still in many ways as guilty as the next person in terms of greedily gobbling up our 1.0 planet’s resources. If we are to make it as a species (and never mind the argument that maybe, for the sake of the rest of the world, we shouldn’t make it as a species) those that have will need to make sacrifices. But there’s that seemingly unavoidable question again: what are you willing to give up? If you really want global sustainability to happen and are willing to walk the line for it, you stand to give up quite a lot. Nature’s checks and balances seem to be ineffectual given our species’ technological advancements. Peet so astutely said a couple weeks back that “we’ve basically Heisenberged our way out of Natural Selection.” No, in order for this whole thing to work we who enjoy privilege will have to move the discussion beyond discussion, we will have to very concsiously sacrifice certain aspects of our lives and not expect anything in return. It’s an overwhelming proposition if taken seriously, but some of the thiking has already been done. Brad has been hard at work on this one and has pointed us towards a decent starting point: David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge.
Today is Easter Sunday. Today is the day that the majority of this affluent country recognizes Jesus’ choice to sacrifice his very life for the sake of others, billions of others, apparently, with whom his spirit has a meaningful personal connection. Today, above all other days for the majority of this country, is the day to think about sacrifice. I wonder how much of the 2,000 year old message has actually been received. Ask not what your diety can do for you…
What am I willing to give up so that others may live a better life and the future of our species is encouraged? I am still in the process of answering that question, but I realize that I’m not yet in a place where my day-to-day existence is in concert with a satisfactory solution. Better than most, fine, but not good enough. 2.8 planets. While I do have the luxury of leaving this sort of self-sacrifice to the realm of dinner conversation, I need to understand that it is a privilege that the vast majority of humans do not share, and I need to do something about it. Leadership by example. There is so much that is not necessary, so much I could do without. But when push comes to shove, what will I sacrifice? What will you?
music: Paul Simon- Concert in Central Park 1995
Despite my philosophical meandering about surviving on air alone, my stomach was quite upset with me this morning. Physiology calls, and I answer. I had breakfast and made plans to go food shopping. While I wheeled a big cart through the ailes of the local grocery store filling it with consumables, brushing by enough food to sustain me for at least two lifetimes, I grew even more upset with the idea of food. The way it’s done for us supermarket style is dangerously convienent. I see this a lot more clearly with my students, who really and truly can not connect their kung pao beef in styrofoam with those enormous bovines that, they are told, graze in these mythical big open spaces called fields. Nutrition, to them, is trying to occasionally eat something that was not synthesized in a chemical plant. It’s a step in the right direction, and it’s honest. For those of us who are a little more mindful of the food we eat, I think we have a lot of misconceptions to get over regarding our own consumption.
I found myself spending the majority of my time and money today in the produce section: onions, mushrooms, bananas, orange juice, pears, an avocado, and the like. After that it was to the dairy aisle for butter, cheese, milk, and eggs. A little here-and-there with bagels, pasta, and pita bread and a few assorted house favorites thrown in like olives, teccino, and heady corn chips. I don’t think I bought any meat products today which is fairly standard for our house; even though none of us are vegetarians we have no burning need to eat meat on a regular basis. I looked at the contents of my cart during checkout and pegged myself as a fairly socially and environmentally responsible consumer.
But how true is that? I’m sure no self-respecting environmentalist would choose a hamburger over a banana, but the more I think about it the more i am unsure of the logic that goes into such analyses. Bananas are good food, fruit from the trees, unprocessed, full of good stuff you need. But there are no bananas growing where I’m from. This means that bananas have to be brought here from very far away, which involves harvesting, sorting, checking for quality, shipping, distrubiting, and stocking. I can’t easily imagine the life of a banana once it is picked off the tree; all I know is that bnanas appear in mind-boggling abundance in grocery stores and bodegas all over the Great White North, even in the winter months. There’s a lot of energy put into getting those bananas fresh on the produce aisle: people energy, a good amount of gasoline energy, perhaps some other energy keeping them fresh. When it is all added up, does the energy needed to bring one bunch of fresh bananas to my kitchen come out to less than the energy needed to bring a steak cut from a cow in, say, vermont onto my plate? Or a lobster from Maine? Even with biomass calculations I’d wager that it’s closer than most people think. The point here is that it could be that real social responsibility lies more in an effort to localize consumption as opposed to taking for granted that things like bananas, orange juice, avocados, and other food from other parts of the world just appear at the local Stop n’ Shop. Even though it’s not really talked about, there are some real problems with drinking orange juice in the dead of winter in Boston. But then again, who among us in New England are going to stick to cranberries, squash, alfalfa, lobster, and venison?
JZ forwarded a link around a week or so ago: it measures your ecological footprint. I scored an 11 acre footprint on the quiz (meaning I require about 11 acres of usable land in order to sustain my lifestyle, which is significantly below the national average of 24 acres per person. I can feel good about my social and environmental consciousness, I guess, but at the bottom of the quiz it said that “if everyone lived like you we would need 2.4 planets.” Uh oh. So much for my socially responsible ways. And, interestingly but not surprisingly, the category that required the most amount of space was the food category. Even with a car factoring in, even with big city living factored in, it really came down to food. The take home here is that one should be more than mindful about one’s own consumption; one should be mindful about the ways in which one’s society has set up and limited our means of consumption. I believe that it begins and ends with food, and today in the supermarket I had the unpleasant realization that the seemingly innocuous activity of stocking up on food for the 1-2 is built on premises that are inherently unsustainable. I say all this, of course, with a glass of fresh orange juice by my side.
music: The Slip- 2/11/05, Matt Murphy’s Pub
I’ve had this past week off from work and it’s passed in a slightly dissociative haze. Sleep has been adequate, but not of good quality and I found myself waking up much, much earlier than I wanted to. I have been doing a lot with music as well: went to two concerts, played an acoustic open mic, had a second jam session with the guys from last week, and wrote a new song. All the playing and listening has been wonderful, but it’s put me into a dream-like state, floating easily in and out of my own thoughts and the more objective reality surrounding me. I’ve also decreased my food intake this past week, partially because I haven’t needed to expend as much energy, but also because I’ve been dealing with a pesky cold and have stuck mostly to juice, soup, and tea. The predominantly liquid diet caused me to be fairly hungry all week as foodstuff passed through me more quickly. I’ve thought a great deal about the nature of food this week as a result and decided that while I really like food, I don’t really like the idea of food, as food is quite possibly the most important limiting factor in a human’s life.
Psychologists call food “the universal motivator.” Almost every religion on the planet manipulate the intake of food in some way in order to achieve some spiritual ends. Daniel Quinn points to food as the source of a need for economic and political systems. Biologists, in a slightly more compelling argument, consider food to be absolutely necessary for life. It is clearly a thing of great importance to us, I think because it is the unsolvable problem. We need to eat whether we like to or not; we are ruled on a very basic level by the very thing a lot of us socially conscious types don’t want to hear: “Consume Or Die.” I’ve hit this conclusion before. I’m pulling the topic off the mental shelf again because of something Chelsea dropped on me during our weekly dinner (yes, dinner; the irony is not lost) last week: Breatharianism.
The science teacher in me laughs at it enough to dismiss the idea all but completely. The ever-so-slight sliver of interest left over comes from my hope that there is part of us that is not bound to the human condition. It seems that if one were to solve the problem of hunger, if one were able to survive without needing to eat anything, then there would be something about us that transcends our own humanity. We would also have the key to solving the larger problem of consumption. Breatharians offer exactly that. And from their own reports, such things seem almost possible. There is the case of the Indian mystic who stayed under complete supervision for 10 days without consuming anything, after all. There are claims of similar feats from various sources. It can’t be coincidence that restriction of food is an integral part of the holiest events of the big three western world religions (Lent, Ramadan, Yom Kippur), or that adherents to Eastern religions commonly practice a form of fasting or purposeful restriction of food intake. Buddhism teaches that the source of our suffering is craving, and it seems that the most basic and common form of craving is hunger. Solving the problem of hunger, then, is a step on the path to enlightenment.
At this point, though, I’ll take a good breakfast over enlightenment. The world I live in is more commonly about making it through the next 24 hours than worrying about transcending the human condition. Time and energy are more precious commodities now. Modern living has got me firmly by the neck and I’m running in my little urban hamster wheel enough to afford myself a fairly comfortable mortal existence. It probably doesn’t help the breatharian cause that the most popular Breatharian guru comes across as a quack and that one of her followers died following her teachings. It also doesn’t help that our (very human) common sense tells us that this is all a pile of crap.
Still, if I were given the choice between living as I am now and somehow surviving without eating or drinking anything I think I would choose the latter. Food is a utilitarian function these days-I’m eating purely to keep fuel in the tank. I know full well that we can’t run on nothing, that our energy can’t just be created, that it needs to come from somewhere, and that there is a finite amount of energy in the universe. But that there is even a whisper of an outside shot that the tank could be kept full by something as simple as the air we breathe and that the problems of consumption could be solved in one fell swoop has enough philosophical appeal to keep me, um, hungry to know more.
music: Def Leppard- Hysteria
People to stupid things, but this one deserves special recognition. So utterly backwards, so shockingly against common sense and biological programming, so completely appalling, so rediculous that I can’t do anything but laugh at the poor bloke. I don’t know what more to say about it. Reason #8425 why alcohol is an awful drug, if nothing else. I guess the only redeeming thing about the whole situation is that this guy has effectively eliminated himself from the gene pool. Someone please submit to the Darwin Awards. And we Red Sox fans think we know a thing or two about team loyalty…
music: Club d’Elf- 2/28/03
I’ve been told that I should sell Nalgenes for a living. I’ve been quoted as saying that everyone should be issued a grey wide-mouth 1000 ml lexan water bottle at birth. I’ve sworn by these water bottles for so long I can’t remember what things were like before I carried a Nalgene everywhere I went. Recently, thought, I’ve begun to hear a strong dissent to the unparalleled positivity of the Nalgene Bottle. The first came from an old friend of mine: “Trendy Nalgene water bottles made of Lexan polycarbonate resin can leach the potent hormone disruptor bisphenol-A, shown to have adverse effects on prostate development and tumors, breast tissue development, and sperm counts.” The second came from one of my students: for his current events in science presentation he chose to present an similar article (no doubt spurred by the fact that I drink out of my Nalgene every day in class). There are numerous websites issuing warnings about Nalgene products. Despite all this hooplah, the Nalgene Company claims the bottles are safe. But the warning shot has been fired; no doubt the water-drinking masses are growing more cautious.
This is certainly something that warrants further invsetigation for me. I’ve been drinking anywhere from 2-6 liters of water out of my nalgenes every day for the past seven or eight years. It is quite possibly the material object I use most often in my life. I’d like to look into these claims and studies a little deeper beofre I hang up the lexan for good. One of the common threads in all these warning articles is that harsh cleaning agents were uesd on the nalgenes that the rats drank from. I would guess that this had something to do with the results; it was a variable not adequately accounted for in the study’s design. Furthermore, a lot of these studies were not conducted with the express purpose of determining if nalgenes were responsible for chromosomal abnormalities and whatever else. Instead, such conculsions were offered as an explanation for error found in other studies. Researchers noticed elevated levels of these abnormalities in the rats and then deduced that the cause was the material from which their cages and food containers were made. I don’t think there has been a controlled, rigorous study of lexan and its potential to leech biphenols into water.
If we are to blacklist nalgene bottles, I think we’d better blacklist all the other things that cause damage to humans. We’d better stop eating produce sprayed by pesticides and meat treated with hormones. We’d better stop using our plumbing in the older parts of town for fear toxins leech through the pipes. We’d better stop driving our cars. We’d better turn off and smash all our cell phones for fear of brain tumors. And while we’re at it, we’d better extinguish the sun for fear of skin cancer. I think there is a healthy amount of paranoia riding under the surface of the nalgene scare; drinking from these bottles is probably no worse than drinking from the more disposable plastic soda bottles. Of all the things to die from, this is one that we shouldn’t worry about as much. Or maybe I’m just trying to console myself, make myself ignorantly blissful of the lexan-induced health calamity ahead.
music: Lee Perry- Arkology d.1
It was determined earlier today that George W. Bush will be our president for another four years. I’m profoundly disturbed by this. I don’t really talk about formal politics too often because I find the whole enterprise pretty repulsive but this is worth a quick, sharp rant.
I voted for Kerry yesterday because I don’t like Kerry less than Bush. I think that generally speaking politicians at the CNN-coverage level are exactly the wrong people to have in leadership positions precisely because they all had the audacity to run for their respective offices. (sort of like everyone who has a degree from Harvard had the audacity to apply to Harvard…) I find Bush’s opinions and platforms especially deplorable in this light; in many ways he is the posterchild for a false sense of self-entitlement. Texas boy grows up filthy rich, blows off classes at Yale and Harvard and inherits the family business, then through deals with Big Business slowly ensures himself and his inner circle of more riches, security, and most of all social capital. What I am worried about most is that with someone like Bush at the helm people begin to believe in an elite aristocracy more deserving and entitled than everyone else, that Might actually does make Right, that the ends always justify the means. I am worried that the haves will further distance and exploit the have-nots, that taxes will actually get cut and we will actually get what we (don’t) pay for. I am worried that it will be acceptable to integrate religion into government. I am worried that people will be sent off with gun in hand to fight and die because the brave leaders of this country have us still convinced that we have to swing at shadows to feel avenged for a terrible hate crime that happened almost three years ago. This Bush fellow is emblematic of everything that will end up working against humanity in the long run. I suppose, though, that if it all bends but does not break in the next four years then Bush will step down self-assured and justified in all his decisions and leave the mess for someone else to clean up.
That’s not what worries me the most. The big problem is that after yesterday, the precautions set in place to balance power and protect all interests was grossly upset. The Senate and the House of Representatives now leans significantly towards Bush’s camp. The projections are that at least three Supreme Court slots will be filled during this term. Those whose political leanings favor self-gain have a lock on Washington for the short future. I only hope this country can endure the imminent attacks on the equitable distribution of resources and more accepting and tolerant ideologies. Those of us who still are believers in liberty and justice for all have a tremendous challenge ahead of us.
I was thinking today that all great nations have at some point folded. Greece, Rome, Persia, Egypt, China only lasted so long. We would like to believe that we are more enlightened beings now, that we have something on the Greeks, Romans, or Egyptians, but I think that the opposite is true. After all we’ve done in the past 150 years to this world, this great nation is living on borrowed time. Never mind the debt we are incurring to Mother Nature, never mind the millions and millions we are alienating with our military presence, never mind the unsustainable practices and lifestyles our government has perpetuated and embodied. We are setting ourselves up to be ripped open from the inside. It was not so subtle a point that the election maps looked suspiciously like maps from 140 years earlier: Blue v. Gray, 1864. The only difference now is that this time around, the Good Ol’ Boys of the Confederacy have poked into Ohio.
Four more years. We’ll continue to fight like only underdogs can.
music: London Symphony Orchestra- Star Wars Trilogy Soundtrack
I’m a big dork sometimes. I’m willing to admit that. Proud to admit it, depending on the company. I like reading books. I like NPR. I like learning about stuff. Fine, fine. That’s all pretty benign as far as the dork scale goes; I suppose a lot of people can claim to be dorks if that is the sort of stuff that makes people qualify. Allow me, then, to propose why I am no mere dork, but rather why I am a Dorque, sometimes dabbling on the fringes of the terminally awkward and socially inept.
I used to be really into RPGs. Heroes Unlimited,, Call of Cthulhu, and Cyberpunk were my mainstays.
I also played magic cards for a while. I went to GenCon two years running.
I have a blog. ‘nuff said.
Then there’s that whole Phish thing.
And like many middle-class American males my age, I’m a recovering Star Wars addict. I can quote the movies backwards and forwards. I stayed up all night for Episode I tickets. I own the NPR radio dramas. I still have an original Y-Wing kicking around somewhere. I have read over 15 of the Star Wars novels (considered by George Lucas to be canonical, mind you) and own A Guide to the Star Wars Universe. I own Star Wars Trivial Pursuit (and have only lost once). I could tell you the names and species of any and all of the aliens in Mos Eisely’s Cantina or Jabba’s Palace. I can say “going somewhere, Solo?” in Huttese. And as of today, I’ve truly reserved my place among the elite Star Wars Dorques. I spent the majority of this weekend sewing myself a Jedi tunic and robe for Halloween.
Having not touched a sewing machine for over 10 years, I think I did a pretty nice job getting everything together. Mom would be proud. I bought a pattern for the tunic and found a basic blueprint for the robe on the internet. Got the fabric from Chinatown. Borrowed a sewing machine from OGD. Got to business. As a Jedi must construct his own lightsaber (I found mine at a yard sale), he too must construct his own robe. It’s a little rough, especially the tunic’s front, but she’s got it where it counts. I think the costume’s biggest downfall is that it is too clean, almost cartoonishly clean. The Star Wars universe was believable because things were dirty, places were lived-in. I’ve yet to break in the uniform. But the Jedi must learn patience.
I made the costume for Halloween this year, true, but I also made it knowing that I’d need to pull it out every now and then for other occasions. And I think it’s cool to own Jedi garb. (If only I had this back when I was a camp counselor for Star Wars Day…) I’m planning on being a Dorque at least twice this week: at school on Friday and at a costume party on Saturday night. Maybe I’ll just walk around the city next Sunday in my Jedi robe for kicks. Maybe I’ll just lounge around the house in it. Maybe I’ll run around a swamp and practice handstands for a while with a little green gnome strapped to my back.
I was going to take pictures and post them, but then I realized that I’d be that guy who takes pictures of himself in a Jedi robe and posts them on his website. I’ve done enough damage to my street cred already. At least Peet’s around here to validate my Dorquedom.
But maybe I’m ahead of the curve with this. Jedi is almost a recognized religion in Australia. The Geeks shall inherit the Earth. May the Force be with us all.
music: Fruit Bats- Echolocation
Teaching is a quirky profession as far as how it fits into society. On a person-to-person level, it seems to command the utmost respect; when people ask what I do and I say I teach high school, i get the “oh, good for you.” It’s one of the only jobs I can think of that has that universal moral approval. People can’t really say anything bad about teachers without being morally reprehensible. Other public servants, especially those in politics, usually have the same social conscience as teachers but they receive all sorts of blame and criticism. Even police officers, whose job is to protect and serve us citizens, are constantly criticized for their work. Funny that the same person signs teachers’, police officers’, and city councilors’ paychecks.
And while teachers are looked upon favorably from any angle, they don’t see that appreciation in their paychecks. For a profession held in such high regard you’d think teachers would make a little more money. You’d also think, I suppose, that public schools would receive more funding than they do. I guess adults take their schooling for granted once they have finished with it…and it’s funny that the adults making these decisions are ones that have succeeded at school. We live in a country where the President makes under a quarter million a year, which is around the lowest of the low starting salaries for professional athletes.
Maybe there is a connection. Maybe people are so morally approving of teachers because it is clear they do their work for reasons other than money. Teachers are held in high regard consistently abov