Coda

I’m leaving this blog as it is, a record and time capsule of my first semester of college. I’m still around, working on music, writing, and studying. Check in at The Steve McQueen Appreciation Group if you’re interested in what I’m doing now.

iChat Book

I think people naturally sort of want to let go of their secrets- the things about themselves, or the thoughts they keep from others. So they’ll share what they think is acceptable to one person, then share something else with someone else (who they have a different sort of relationship). It’s interesting to read a transcript of someone’s private conversation and make inferences about the person based on that.

A collection of these from one source could be really interesting. You talk to your mom differently than you talk to you girlfriend, and your pals, but I think if you examined everything somebody said over a month or something, you could start to get a more complete picture of them. My computer automatically saves iChat messages with everyone I talk to (and it’s my main form of communication)- if somebody read all my chats from the beginning of the school year to now they would know a lot about me- more than I ever let one person know.

It’s an interesting idea (they could probably even be arranged to form a story), but I don’t know if I could let go of my secrets that easily.

Casino Royale and the move towards Realism

This week a new James Bond film will be released. There’s a lot of hype around this movie, as a sort of “return to what Bond is about”. This new movie sets out to be more realistic and mature than the prior films in the series- films that at best took occasional artistic liberties with reality, and at worst had Bond chased on an iceberg by a beam of sunlight.

I’m excited about it, because I’ve always been a fan of the old Sean Connery films. Spy stories can be a lot of fun, but after Connery departed from the role Bond’s adventures grew more and more outlandish (fighting on the Golden Gate bridge, villains with razor sharp metal teeth, submarine cars…).

It’s interesting though, how entertainment more and more tries to mirror reality. Movies were more realistic than plays- and since the creation of the motion pictures the tendency has been to move further and further away from the absurd.

In the last five years reality tv has rose to power. The traditional sitcom has died off- NBC’s “Must See Thursday”, which had for twenty years dominated comedy with shows like Cheers, Seinfeld, and Friends, now has a program devoid of any laugh track. The popular comedy on tv, The Office is a single camera comedy based in a paper distributor’s Scranton office branch. If it was any more real it couldn’t be fiction.

James Bond isn’t the first franchise to get this treatment either. “Batman Begins” was released last year to wildly popular reviews. It too took a gritty, real world look at a character that had in the past been written as larger than life.

I think the change is good. The more like real life the stories become, the less people will care if their lives are like those in the movies. At the same time it’s getting easier and easier for people to create their own entertainment. Perhaps when these two movements intersect everyone will finally have their fifteen minutes.

Sociology of Cool, Written Final (unedited)

1.



high art is art created for art’s sake, to be appreciated like a painting hung in a museum

low art is art created for personal enjoyment, or for commercial purposes- not created with the intent of being seen as ‘art’

pop art is a blend of the two. Pop art questions the nature of art, and repackages low art for the museums



Jean Seberg- starred in many French art films. A lot of her work is meant to be seen as high art, but The Journals of Jean Seberg suggests that she herself didn’t see herself as an artist, or her work important (which goes against the idea of high art). In Jean’s eyes, she may have been making low art. A renowned artist rejecting the importance of his own work supports the theory behind pop art.



The Merchants of Cool- asks us to reexamine what we think of as high art (bands and movies that reject society’s rules and are seen as cool). It suggests that upon closer inspection we’ll see the hand of business and commercialism behind almost all popular entertainment- that most of it is in fact low art. This too supports the theory behind pop art.



Thomas Frank- writes about the commercialization of cool (and in turn, art). In doing so he asks what the difference between high and low art. This is the very same question that pop art sets out to answer. It asks whether low art that is widely known and popular becomes a form of high art just because it has been so well received.



Amiri Baraka- writes about how African Americans created the blues in an attempt to set themselves apart, and define themselves as a race. Art created with such large intentions must surely be classified as high art. The blues however was seen by the country (largely white) as low art.



David Amram- is a musician that achieved success as a classical composer (creating high art). He also played jazz and embraced many types of music seen as inferior (as low art) to European classical styles. His works that prevalently feature and embrace outside influences can be considered a type of pop art.



2.



Amiri Baraka in his book Blues People tells the story of African-Americans in this country. Baraka explains how blacks created art to distinguish themselves in a country where they weren’t seen as people. That’s how America’s cultural history begins- deep seated in racism. The first popular forms of entertainment in the United States had white actors with black face-paint singing and dancing like clowns. After the end of slavery, African Americans attempted to set themselves apart from this image of being inferior clowns with their art. Thomas Frank’s book is about how capitalism (and by extension, rich white people) takes the art that people (and specifically African-Americans) create, and made money on it. Baraka shows the effects of this- once the blues had been exploited and commercialized it stopped being ‘cool’, and blacks had to try something new to make their voice unique.



They found that new voice in jazz, which was originally very controversial among conservative whites. Soon though, the powers of capitalism described in Frank’s book found a market for nonconformity in teenagers, and sold them on the idea of jazz. The cycle continued- the blacks followed up with bebop, the whites eventually followed, so then came r&b, and rock and roll. Frank completes this story by bringing us to the present with hip hop and rap- the latest example of black art made popular by whites.



I found the Frank book surprised me more, because I think there’s a tendency for the struggle of the black musician to be better publicized. The advertising techniques described in the Frank book were therefore mostly new to me. That makes sense, because you aren’t supposed to see good marketing, and the creation of an image of a whole group of musicians that are constantly searching to define themselves is very good marketing. There’s an underlying message is that the really cool people listen to the music made by these black musicians. What they do is followed first by whites seeking cool, sometimes even before the African-American community lends it’s support (bebop was much more popular among the beats than it ever was among blacks).

What Would Lennon Do?

I’m kind of surprised at how easy it is to succeed in college. I mean, I don’t really work hard, or have to put much time into it, but I’ve got A’s in all my classes. I kind of wish that I did have to work for it a little actually- that way I’d feel like I was getting my money’s worth.

As it is though, I sort of just listen to what’s said in class, and do all the assignments that get graded. That seems to be enough. Teachers don’t really disguise what they want you to pick up on to well- they all go over those couple main points over and over. You’d have to be oblivious not to pick up on it.

Last Monday though, my sociology teacher handed back a writing assignment we had to do. She told us that they were the worst assignments she’d ever read (not to be mean, just as a matter of fact)- they were so bad that the next assignment has to be edited by peers several times, and everyone in the class had to meet with her in her privately in her office to talk about their assignment.

I didn’t have to. She wrote the nicest things on my paper. Comments like “Great point”, and “This is exactly right”, even though I threw the whole project together half an hour before class began. I didn’t have to do anything for it. I certainly didn’t learn anything from it. So why am I spending $7,000 a semester? It’s not just that teacher either. I’ve sort of started thinking of the morning Logic class as optional, because it’s so easy to just show up the day of the quiz and get an A.

Recently I decided to research SAT scores, and found out that mine is fairly high. The thing is, I never cared about scoring big on a test, or getting into a fancy school. I just showed up and took the test one day because I had to if I wanted to go to any college. I didn’t study for the SAT’s, I didn’t take any prep classes, or take the PSATs- I just walked into the room with my pencils and scored a 1400.

Now I’m not saying this to brag- it really doesn’t matter to me. I’m just saying it to try to make sense of why I don’t really need to exert myself succeeding in school. I guess my mom was right after all- maybe I am special.

Extrapolating this observation into the ‘normal’ world, I figure I could make a healthy living without having to put much effort into it. If I applied myself then I think I could either make a lot of money, or make a big difference. I think I’d like to influence change in the world. For instance, the Pentagon is going to say in a report in a few days that our options in Iraq are leave, step up the troop numbers quite a bit, or be prepared to stay there for years. I’d like to spend the next couple months getting everyone in favor of leaving, so that the new Congress would face overwhelming public opposition by staying in Iraq, but I don’t know how. They don’t teach you how to do that in in school though. As far as I can tell politicians can’t do it because they’d lose votes. Lobbyists don’t do it, because no companies would profit from war being over.

I look over to the wall next to my computer, and I see the sort of person that could pull together that kind of show of support. Up on my wall is a poster of John Lennon, with his arms crossed, wearing his New York City t-shirt. His eyes are behind round black sunglasses. He always knew how to get on the news. He got the attention of the press just by staying in bed. What would he be doing to end the war?

When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.

Freedom, China, and Wikipedia

You can listen to politicians hype the war against terrorism all day. That’s all a lot of them talk about. They try to spin our current battle into epic proportions-into a final showdown once and for all between good and evil, and the Arabs into the ultimate enemy. “They hate our freedom”. We’ve all heard stories about how they treat women, and the excessive power their leaders hold over them. I’ve got all that in perspective though. China just continued it’s ban on Wikipedia.

It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the numbers. Over a sixth of the world’s population is being blocked from unfiltered knowledge. I use Wikipedia every day multiple times, to quickly look something up that grabs my attention.

The Chinese civil rights violations of course do not begin or end with Wikipedia. All media goes through the government censors. People are not allowed to move freely around the country, and the people are not allowed to voice dissent against their government.

Do you know what is written in the White House schedule whenever the President meets with someone about the Iraq war? “President Bush Discusses Freedom in Iraq and Middle East”. Remarks that Donald Rumsfeld made in 2004- “The vast majority of the 25 million Iraqi people want freedom for their country,” “Those who oppose the Iraqi people’s transition to freedom and self-rule will not be permitted to derail it”. That’s what Iraq is all about, haven’t you heard? It’s all about freedom.

China just banned Wikipedia though. We aren’t fighting a war against them. We wouldn’t even need to use military force- if we imposed economic sanctions on China as a penalty for their rights violations they would be inviting UN inspectors inside the country to see their new reforms within a business week. The truth is we’re not only indifferent to violations in China- we’re looking into better ways to make money off of it. Slavery is illegal here in America, but in China you can still get a day’s labor for less than you spend on healthcare paperwork here.

John McCain and the War on Ideas

I don’t know what happened to John McCain. He used to be alright. Now that his last real chance at the Presidency is here though, he’s starting to go a little nuts. First he said that he wants Roe v. Wade to be a state matter (which is pretty much legally impossible at this point, and is only really brought up to divide people) “like gay marriage”, and now he’s drawing an imaginary line in the (imaginary) sand for his Democratic challengers. Support a troop buildup in Iraq, or support the terrorists.

“The consequences of failure are so severe that I will exhaust every possibility to try to fix this situation. Because it’s not the end when American troops leave. The battleground shifts, and we’ll be fighting them again,” McCain said. “You read Zarqawi, and you read bin Laden. … It’s not just Iraq that they’re interested in. It’s the region, and then us.”

“We left Vietnam. It was over. We just had to heal the wounds of war,” he said. “We leave this place, chaos in the region, and they’ll follow us home. So there’s a great deal more at stake here in this conflict, in my view, a lot more.”

How was Vietnam “over” when we left? I don’t think everyone gathered around and agreed that Vietnam was over. People had been saying we should leave Vietnam for years before we actually did. When we did, the “chaos in the region” (which was also called by the Vietnamese a reuinification under a populist government) did not follow us home. If you’d really like to compare this war to Vietnam, I think the lesson to be learned is “get out as fast as possible”.

Republicans need to stop fighting wars on ideas. John McCain is now just another politician guilty of grouping Iraq with terrorism without any evidence.

John Kerry Misspeaks, and My Life, the Tabloid

I’m not famous, and people don’t usually care too much about my life. Sometimes I wonder though- if I were famous, what would the tabloids write about me?

My love life wouldn’t interest a tabloid, because it’s fairly boring (of course if I was being covered by tabloids it might not be). I think I would be like a politician and only get mentioned when I said something seen as outrageous. The media’s reaction to what Senator Kerry said to a college audience about Iraq is a perfect example of what they’d do to me. It’s what happens to pretty much everyone that tries to say something different.

Of course Kerry was supposedly trying to make a joke when he misspoke. What he meant to say was that “If you don’t study …. you end up getting stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush”, instead of suggesting that only uneducated people wind up soldiers in the army…… as true as that is. I don’t just think that only the poor, and the uneducated join the army and are sent to fight our wars- it’s a matter of fact. The reason Kerry’s slip was so noteworthy was because it struck a little too close to home.

I’d probably make the tabloids for saying stuff like that. I wouldn’t mind it- I don’t say things that I’m not prepared to stand behind. I’m always careful about what I say (and sometimes maybe I don’t say enough). Not only wouldn’t I mind- I’d love my comments and opinions making the tabloid headlines. People have stopped speaking out against things that are popular, like racism in our military (the Kerry comment), or in our government (I found mentions of Kanye West’s outburst at a Katrina fundraiser still in the tabloids a year later), that’s why 95% of the news in tabloids is in the love and romance category. Fame isn’t being used to further peace and politics anymore. When George Clooney speaks up, it still makes the news. John Lennon’s activism always made the news. There’s a sense though that someone else’s problem isn’t worth ruining your career for. That’s the only thing I would want fame for- so I could ruin it for something worthwhile.

Cool

In my sociology of culture class we study the concept of cool. Cool is more than just a word today. It’s an adjective, it’s an idea- it’s a way of life. To be cool means to be relaxed in even the most stressful circumstances. It’s being above society’s rules.

While the word “cool” was born in Africa and found it’s current meaning here in America, it’s a concept that is universal. Many of the same ideas can be found in religion. Jesus wanted his followers to be cool and turn the other cheek. The Dharma tells us to chill out and be happy with our lives as they are.

The heroes of our stories have been cool for centuries. They leave the life they’re content with to make things better for their village, or to right some great wrong. Stories have a lot of value- they can entertain, teach, and provide us with role models. People make the mistake though of wanting the fame and wealth the hero gets as a byproduct of saving the day, instead of learning and living their lives by the moral of the story.

Andy Warhol wrote in his book “At the times in my life when I was feeling the most gregarious and looking for bosom friendships, I couldn’t find any takers, so that exactly when I was alone was when I felt the most like not being alone. The moment I decided I’d rather be alone… that’s when I got what you might call a “following”. As soon as you stop wanting something you get it. I’ve found that to be absolutely axiomatic.” I have found this to be true as well. Time spent in the pursuit of something goes quite slow relative to the rest of your life. The things people most often desire happen to be more attainable for people with genuine attitudes of nonchalance.

Being without want is a cornerstone of what cool is about. If being cool helps you live a content, happy life, and if we are subconsciously (or perhaps instinctively) drawn to what is cool, that raises the possibility that we often times know what is best for us “deep down”, in our repressed thoughts. I think our consciousness is aware of these thoughts, but a constant effort is made to deny them. This struggle is difficult, and it explains why people who seemingly lead normal, happy lives can be deeply depressed. I think it would be greatly beneficial to people if each day included an hour of psychological assistance, to aid in recognizing these repressed feelings and acting on them.

To be cool is to be calm and at peace, is to be spiritual, is to be psychologically sound, is to be.

The Perfect Routine

have come to the conclusion- after thinking about it for eighteen years- that if you don’t want to do something there’s no point in doing it. After you make one concession by doing something you don’t like it always leads another. The rationale is always that if you kept doing whatever it is that makes you unhappy a little while longer, eventually you’ll get to whatever it is you want. Making these compromises becomes a habit and you learn to conceal your unhappiness even to yourself. It’s just a facade though- your discontent is buried by your desires and fear of failure, and it will lie there nagging at you, keeping you from ever being really happy on a day to day basis until it erupts.

My plan is to try to live my life in such a way that I wouldn’t mind living it again (both because I think I’m bound to, and because it’s a good way to help you decide what will make you happy). I don’t mean to try living my life like a movie star, or an action hero (not that adventure will be avoided), but I think a good way to start is by imagining a perfect routine. Something realistic that I think I could do over and over for years without getting bored, tired, or unhappy with it. You can’t find an answer if you don’t know what the question is, and you can’t start living the life you want if you don’t know what the daily ins and outs consist of.

I would start my perfect routine by waking up around eleven o’clock and having a bowl of cereal. Nothing fancy- even if I ever get to be a billionaire I don’t think I’ll want anything more than a bowl of cereal in the morning. Then I would dress into my bicycle clothes, and go for a nice long ride. I’ll have the best bicycle I can afford (so I’ll be riding my twenty year old ten speed for awhile), I’ll get to explore, get some exercise, and have some time to think about whatever I’m thinking about that day.

Get back from the bike ride around four o’clock, and hang around for a half hour or so before eating dinner by myself. I figure I’ll be done with my exercise, my relaxation, my daily thinking, and most of my eating by five o’clock. If I give myself eight hours a night to sleep, then I’ll have ten hours to work. That seems like a good amount of time to get things accomplished, but at the same time not so much I go crazy.

On a regular day I see myself leaving after dinner to play my bass somewhere. It won’t be a normal job, so there will be some variation from day to day. A night that I play a show is easy because it’s clear how what I’m doing is helping pay for my rent, my cereal, and my bicycle. When the evening doesn’t have something with a similar, specific purpose, that’s when it’s most important I budget my time wisely. Of the ten hours I think two should be spent on a jobless night pursuing paying work. Even if I have something lined up that pays the next five evenings, I should call people I work with (or want to work with) and chat to build and maintain relationships, practice (to ensure when I do have a job I play well), and other things to help find or keep jobs.

The next eight hours are “free”. They aren’t to watch tv with, but time I can work on whatever projects I’ve got going. Animate a scene in a cartoon I’m making, record a demo for a song I’ve written, write a song, write a story I thought of while on my bike ride, etc. Creating will be my job. I wrote in my biographical sketch in August that I want to be an “idea man”- that’s what I’ll be doing. I’ll work on a project while planning out the next one in my head. The eight hours will go by fast- time always goes by fast when I’m working on something I’m excited about.

So I don’t know how much an idea man gets paid, but the only expenses I see having is rent and food. I’ve been perfectly comfortable living in half a 16’ x 10’ room for three months. I don’t need material things to be happy- I need to be creating.

So now that I have the vision for my happy life, why not go and start it? There wasn’t any part of that day that required a diploma. I’ve committed to finishing this semester of school because it’s already been paid for, and I’ve been getting good grades (which could be useful to transfer), but when it’s over in a month, what reason will there be then?

When me and my friend Darina skipped school secretly to go to a demonstration supporting free speech in Washington DC I was petrified. We made a film documenting the trip, and at the beginning we’re filling the car with gas a few miles from town and Darina asks me if I’m excited. “I’m excited- I’m so excited I kind of feel like throwing up a little bit”. I thought we were going to get caught, I thought my car was going to break down, I knew we were going to get lost. It was a bad idea, but I knew inside me it was right. I look back on it now as one of the best days of my life.

It was dangerous and exciting because it was the real world- we left the safety net of our families and our town. When we got back we kept it a secret, until one day I was too proud of myself. I told my parents and showed them the film.

The odd thing is, they were really proud of what I had done too. Every time we have company over at the house, they make me get my computer and show them the film. They told everyone about it. Whenever they bring it up, I ask them if they would have approved of me going if I had told them- and they absolutely would not.

What’s the worse that could happen if I set out on this ‘new’ life?