this was european

Gomorra

2009-03-22T22:38:00.000-07:00

It is without a doubt that the film Gomorra- based on the novel by Roberto Saviano (who, due to the books controversy now travels with a permanent police escort) is a new kind of mafia film. Aesthetically, it is more like a reenactment for a documentary sans the narration than the highly-romanticized Godfather-mafia films or the more recent HBO series, The Sopranos. This fresh attempt at telling an often-told story makes Gomorra intriguing enough and nothing like what we have come to expect from a mafia film. The characters are completely unlikable and if they look more like poor products of cheap cocaine and bad Italian techno then its because they are. The film is also completely without a soundtrack and no one eats a large dinner cooked by "Mama."

Instead, the camera stumbles along (I think that director Matteo Garrone forgot his tripod for this film) while taking in all the unglamorous details of the hard and dangerous life of different characters who are loosely related and tied to the criminal activities which plagues greater Naples. This no-frills portrayal creates a hyper-reality that at moments effectively pays off but unfortunately not enough. The problem in Gomorrah is that the film comes with an agenda but is too committed to maintaining the realistic nature of the story to fully explore what it has come to convey. The end result is that Gomorra is actually quit boring. After all, people being shot in the head isn't enough to get an audience engaged anymore. And while were being honest, we've all seen those mafia films so we already know how they end: tragically.

However, it's not how it ends but how we get there, right? Yet, the problem still remains because Gomorra doesn't invest the time into its characters to make the viewers really care what happens to them-- or rather, how it happens. Sure, this actually might be the point of the film's treatment of its characters. In war, whether on the streets of Naples or in the deserts of the Middle East, people lose their identity and become disposable. The film, more or less, treats its characters the same way. Furthermore, we do become aware that in the view of those who run the criminal activities, money and power is more valuable than human life—a major theme fueling the tragic nature of the events that unfold. However, Gomorra wants to go further and show the full extent that this culture of crime has caused and its widespread effect on almost all aspects of the city while maintain its realistic, documentary-like quality. It is for the most part successful in this attempt but ultimately the film falters in the indifference of how, purposeful or unintentional, it handles its characters. Gomorra has a lot to offer but its potential is realized only in brief moments throughout. While still worth a watch, the film comes across as being too caught up in its methods and approach that it often forgets that it is actually telling a story and not just documenting events taking place.

Spill

2008-07-31T07:59:00.000-07:00

Okay everyone! Please take note! My new, more dedicated blog is "Spill."

You can find it at saxonbaird.blogspot.com

Whats it about?
Mostly it will be focused cultural criticisms/observations. I'm trying to stand at the intersection of art, politics and society. It's pretty broad but its what I am into. In addition, it should help me with my journalism and a place where people can go to and see what I am into. While I might get personal on it at times, it will always relate back to some running theme. Thus, if I am selling a couch or moving, you probably won't hear about on this blog.

Also, I am planning to post everyday. So put me in your reader if you like what I write. Finally, while not planned out entirely yet, I plan on having some structure to the post. For instance, I have decided that every friday I will write something that is music related. Help you, myself and others hit the weekend off right while maybe adding something interesting or mildly stimulating.
I might have a wednesday theme too. We'll see.

What will happen to This was European?
Good question. I dont know. I think I might make this my personal blog and make it private or password protected. That way it will sort of act like a journal. However, I would distribute that password to friends and family who live afar and are interested in what the heck is going on in my life. However, I might not do this either.

What will happen to the blog posts on here that are already in the vein of cultural criticisms?
I think I might for the first couple months put up a "archived" blog post on the weekends on Spill. This archived post will be from This Was European. There is some stuff on here that I would like to transfer over. I think this will be the best way.

Final Comments?
A couple actually. One, the photo in the title will probably change. I know all my friends will make fun of me for it but blogs are somewhat narcissistic anyways and I don't care what you say, the photo is cool. If you didn't know that it was me, you might actually like it.

Secondly, please please please link to my page. Once again, not trying to be narcissistic but if you do this then you actually help me garner traffic which is important in the industry I am attempting to dive into. So yeah, put me in your blog roll and if I write something that you find interesting then please feel free to post it on your own blog but make sure to put link to where you got it.

Thanks guys, I hope you read my stuff and that I provide your life with two minutes of something interesting everyday. If not, tell me. I welcome criticism.

Changes

2008-07-29T13:27:00.000-07:00

So, it looks like this might be the end of this blog. I am currently working on putting together a new blog that will act as a sort of running resume. It will be more focused on a specific niche, mostly likely that of cultural criticisms, and much less about my personal life. It still needs a name and a home but you can expect that to appear within the next two weeks. As far as this blog is concerned I am still undetermined what is to happen to it. I might make it private and just re-print some of my more "professional" posts on my new blog. We'll see. Until then you can read my posts on Pushback.org

Here is a list of my most recent:
Jeremy Mayer Art
John C. Reilly: What is wrong with Art, Hollywood and America
2008 Olympics: No Sex, Money or God
The 2008 Celebrity Assault List, Now Featuring Christian Bale

Bon Iver

2008-07-21T13:39:00.000-07:00

I think the Bon Iver excitement is a bit too much. Sure, it's pretty and quiet and melancholy-all these things that us, white twenty-somethings with an heart stooped in indie-rock, tend to like. However, there is very little that stands out and separates Bon Iver from the long-line of quiet, hush-hush, artists that exist today and have preceded them. Its good, but its not that good.

That being said, they just recorded a Daytrotter Session that is worth a listen. The recording is much more crisp that the album and really reveals his voice and awesome lyrics. Its amazing what can happen when you shed your DIY-cred and enter a halfway decent studio.

Check it out here: Bon Iver Daytrotter Session

I suggest listening to this at night during the week, early morning or the four o'clock hour if you work in a cubicle.

McLaren

2008-07-17T09:20:00.000-07:00

Apparently, Pushback blog readers are too stupid for this post. Here's my lastest rejected:

A recent article by artist and designer Malcolm McLaren in Art Forum’s 500 Words has an interesting observation on art and western culture while talking about his recent Times Square installation Shallow:

Today, we’re so used to being stuffed with eye candy, with fast food, fast art, fast culture, that to take something really simple and just slow it down is the opposite of how we live. I think our culture today can be summed up by two words: authenticity and karaoke. They can both fit together, but you’ve got to be a bloody magician to make that happen, you’ve got to be some extraordinary alchemist. And some of these contemporary artists are. Many contemporary artists spend their days trying very hard to authenticate a karaoke culture.

At first, the idea of marrying the terms of authenticity and karaoke seems paradoxical. However, by imitating something, as in karaoke, we also can create something that unique and somewhat authentic through our own subjective reinterpretation. Such description of our culture suggests an unabashed recognition of our past in an attempt to create something new. It’s a balance between replication and the effort to make something that distinctly apart of our modern, western culture.

McLaren, who is probably best known for being the managing force behind The Sex Pistols, seems to have acutely recognized a facet of our culture that the attempt to create something wholly new and original that completely separates us from our past, whether it be in art or politics, is obsolete. (Admittedly, many would argue this would be impossible to do now anyways.) Rather, he sees our culture as something that wants to create something new and distinctive by pulling from the past and utilizing it.

Nation's Capital pt. 4

2008-07-13T19:15:00.000-07:00

What could compare to the festivities of last week? After all it WAS Fourth of July weekend. Perhaps, it was time to take a breather. You know, turn the fans on hi, grab a Schlitz with some bug spray and kick of those ratty shoes (be sure to put them outside because I know you haven’t been wearing socks) and just have a relaxing weekend of public radio, humidity and no showers. While that isn’t quite the way things went down, this week was a bit slower. Maybe it was because beer outweighed aqua on the alcohol to H20 ratio. Damn dehydration. Your guide to the fantastic and sometimes horribly depressing world of D.C. as selected by yours truly continues:

Plus

+Big Bear Café. This coffee shop sits in a strange location. It’s mostly a residential area. Admittedly, it i also right on the border of some serious gentrification. However, the coffee was actually really good and I heard the food is grub. Plus, they were blasting M.I.A. the whole time.

+ Making friends that you don’t work with or already knew before moving to D.C. I heard this was a good thing so I actually tried it. Working out so far.

+ When your smart, creative and intelligent friends visit from the West Coast and you can go drinking on Monday with them and talk about all the strangeness that is the East Coast. (Diana, Nick…) Always a plus!

+ The second burrito I had in D.C. was a breakfast burrito from a small Latin restaurant next to Casa Blanca’s downtown. Really cheap, filling and delicious.

+ L’Enfant. This is a French restaurant on 18^th and U st. It only serves dinner and alcohol during the week but on the weekends it opens early and serves up a breakfast/lunch menu that is delicious and well-priced. In addition, the service was amazing. While the cuisine and décor is quasi-french, it still is well worth it. Finally, they serve fruit with their plates! I know this sounds strange but most places here don’t offer fruit as a free side with your breakfast meal here. I find this strange. I will definitely return.

+3 dollar, 32 oz. beers from the food mall. (good call A...) Yep. They give them to you in plastic cups with a cover and a straw. You can also walk right out of the mall with them without anyone stopping you.

Minus

- George Washington University undergrad. Its bad enough you go to the most expensive school in the country. Try a little harder to not be a spoiled snob. Sure, you getting a better education than me but you work at the front desk of the student housing…over the summer. You’re essentially a secretary for the school. How cool is that? Nope.

- The first burrito I had in Washington D.C. was for lunch during our national student journalism conference. I threw it up 10 minutes later. Rad. Don’t eat California Tortilla. It’s a glorified Taco Bell. You’re better off going to Chipotle…and no…McDonalds doesn’t own them. Read up kid.

- Local bands. Nothing against the kids but the scene isn’t really showing me anything impressive so far. I’ll keep looking…I know its out there.

- People who are drunk talking about politics. Really? Really? I mean we all live walking distance from the white house practically. Senators cut in line at the local deli. People hand us political propaganda when we walk out of the metro. Half the people you know work on the hill or go to the hill or call people on the hill on a regular basis. Do we really need to talk about politics when we are drunk. Can we not just drink beer and put on a good record. Oh you don’t own a record? Then put on your Ipod for god sake. Lets dance and spill grape juice all over the floor. Lets shake our ass and do our best air-guitar impression. (Bobby…) Lets blow up rubber balloons until we turn blue. Lets NOT talk about politics when we drink. Please? Please…no…I don’t want to talk about the latest poll…no I didn’t read that new article in the Post…shut up. nonononononononononononononononono…nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! no no no blah blah blah. I can’t hear you!

Equal.

You don’t get any equals. I was too opinionated to feel neutral this week.

(Image: Don't Block the Box signs are all over D.C. Even the street signs are trying not the playa-hate.)

Flickr.

2008-07-09T14:05:00.000-07:00

here.
updated on the regular.

Nations Capital part 3

2008-07-06T14:28:00.000-07:00

Ah, the Fourth of July: the day when all your nationalistic sensibilities can finally come out in the form of attire, cuisine and body art. While being in the Nation’s Capital, one would assume that the festivities here are like no other town. This may be true. However, I decided to spend my Nation’s Birthday in the form of cheap beer, dance parties in kiddy pools and bad Mexican food. Here’s your plus/minus/equals for week 3.

Plus:

+ Last Sunday, I saw King Khan and His Shrines at Rock N Roll Hotel. I haven’t been to such a fun show is so long. Super dancey and Ian Svenonius showed up!

+ Partying with new friends in the form of Spam, dance music and kiddie pools. Photos to come.

+ Schlitz

+ Ben’s Chili Bowl. So this may seem like a “duh” but it really is a great place. First and foremost though are the signs in the place. One reads:

“Our chili will make a hot dog bark. Black owned and operated since 1958”

A second sign reads:

“People who eat for free at Ben’s: Bill Cosby. No One Else.”

+ **BREAKFAST SPECIAL**

+ Florida Street Grill. This southern greasy spoon has great service and a total local, family owned feel. Watch how much you go here though. You could be asking for a heart attack.

+ Rosemary’s Thyme. This is a breakfast/lunch place that is decently priced and with a Mediterranean spin. Service was shitty though and the crowd was a bit yuppie-ish. Still worth it.

+ Seeing the documentary “My Winnipeg”. (This really has nothing to do with D.C. but I still suggest it.)

+ Café Mozart. This is a German café/convenience store next to the building I work in. The convenience store is okay. You can get German chocolate and bratwurst to go. However, in the back is a bar/restaurant that has some awesome beer. In addition, you can order a beer in a stein. That’s a liter of beer for you. Perfect after 9 hours of work. Oh and don't be surprised if some lady bust out the accordion and sings in German. (Caution: finding your way home after a couple steins may be difficult.)

Minus:

-Quotes heard this week that totally bummed me out:

“Let me tell you something about REAGAN mister!”

“Dude. I totally hooked up with my intern! (*enthusiastic high-five*)

“I can’t make out with bad hair.”

- Keg Bus (I nearly cried)

- NOT BEING ABLE TO BUY BEER OTHER THAN AT A BAR PAST 10pm (WTF??!!$)

- DC9 on gay night. This is unusual because gay nights seem to be usually bumping and good for dancing regardless of your sexual preference. However, this just included a lot of douchebags that do not normally frequent DC9 and sweat. Lots o’ sweat.

Equal:

= AFI Silver Spring Theater- this theater likes to tout how great it is in the previews. Heads up: Your Theater sucks like your town. However, the plus side is that they show really great films and Milos Foreman is coming to talk there in celebration of a retrospective they are doing with him.

= Phillips Gallery- the permanent collection is small, mediocre and rather arbitrary. In addition, it cost way too much to enter. That being said, the retrospective on Jacob Lawrence was enjoyable.

Nation's Capital pt. 2

2008-06-29T10:04:00.000-07:00

Plus

+ The AFL-CIO held a free cookout last week around lunchtime to celebrate the return of their “Bush Legacy Tour” bus. The inside of the bus basically has documented all the ways in which Bush has blown it via Iraq war, Katrina, environment, etc. The cookout was yummy, free and two blocks from the White House.

+ People read! On the metro or the bus, morning or night, people are reading. In addition, the books seem relatively edifying and not romance novels or US Weekly (not that there is anything wrong with US weekly). I’ve met and know people who use their 40 hour work week as an excuse for why they don’t read very much. I say “boo” to you. If reading isn’t your pastime then fine but don’t blame your work week on it. D.C. proves that one can work a 9-5 and still fit in some literature or non-fic.

+ Madeline is here!

+ Monday happy hour with David Halperin and some other kids from the staff. Good times.

+ Watching the Angels destroy the Nationals on Tuesday

+ Interviewing Maria Teresa Petersen and CNN correspondent Rick Sanchez

+ Going to the SilverDocs festival for work and seeing a great documentary called Forbidden Lies

+ The Raven. Um… am I in Portland? For my Portland friends this bar is like a mix of The Nest and Beulahland but smaller than both. Cheap beer, variety of different kids, a bit seedy, good jukebox of old punk, rock and indie…my kid of place.

Minus

- Fashion: ouch. This may be apart of the down side to their being very few hipsters in town. After a few drinks, I told one of my friends that, “People in D.C. were just way more okay with looking dumpy than in Los Angeles, or even San Francisco.”

Last weekend, I went to dance at three different clubs and people weren’t even trying. I’m not talking thrift store style because that can work sometimes. I’m talking sales rack at Ross.

Having said that I commend the guy wearing the white wedding dress at Black Cat’s 80’s prom night two weeks ago. At least you’re mixing it up, dude. In addition, yesterday on my way to the metro, there were thousands of people out on the street. Most of them were black and killing it style-wise. So I give it up to them as well.

- Dulles Airport. Can anyone tell me why this place still exists? It’s not near anything and once you are there, it is the most convoluted, difficult and unaccommodating airport I have ever been too. Imagine a trailer park in the form of an airport.

- Noise. Yeah yeah…it’s a big city and it gets noisy. However, I cannot walk the streets for longer than five minutes without an ambulance, cop or high-profile brigade of security surrounding black escalades blasting by me.

Neutral

= Weather. So the down side is that it is humid as all hell. However, the interesting/good side is that you get some pretty crazy lightning storms that randomly arrive and then disappear within hours. Plus, when it does finally rain, it is such a different rain that Portland. It is like the world is relieving its stress. It seems like a natural development that the earth and all of us suffering underneath it need. Can I say the strange developments of the weather are a seemingly fitting necessity for the earth and the people on it well? Sure. And to continue being corny and a bit of a hippy, the weather and my body seem to have a relationship that seems to coincide and understand each other. (<--I think my two days in Santa Cruz a couple weeks ago rubbed off on me)

= Softball game. Our organization plays in a pretty competitive softball league. On Thursday we played against The Heritage Foundation. Unfortunately, we lost in the last inning and I didn't get to play which were both down sides. However, the upside was that afterwards we played a "Intern vs. Staff" game in which I was able to prove that I got some skills and shouldn't be riding the pine. Next game is against the Defense Department on Monday.

(image: Lafayette Park)

Spam thrives in the face of our slowing economy…again.

2008-06-26T06:08:00.000-07:00

(Note: I wrote this for a Pushback.org blog but it doesn't look like its getting past the editor's desk. Nevertheless, I thought it was funny, gross and interesting.)

An article by ADAge.com has pointed out the recent double digit growth in Spam sales over the past few quarters. In a time when almost every aspect of the economy is doing poorly, the Spam sector seems impervious to all the tumult.

Matthew Creamer reports:

It's a trend explained by the concept of "inferior goods," an economics term that less describes the makeup of a product than its place in consumer-demand theory. They're basically goods or services for which demand increases as income decreases and vice versa. They're staples that are somewhat dispensable in good times but more desirable in bad ones.

[…]

In the current economic climate, the media have given a fair amount of attention to this concept, as part of a tsunami of coverage of how the American consumer is cutting back to deal with rising food and gas prices and the looming threat of an economic apocalypse. Following parent company Hormel's second-quarter-earnings release, which announced a 14% increase in profit, the Associated Press attributed Spam's success to downtrodden simple folk and even quoted a few wretches who seem to have turned to the pork product as a last ditch before gobbling up their own hair clippings.

This isn’t the first time Spam has done well in an economic slowdown. The strange and questionably meaty substance was created in 1937 and was distributed throughout the south pacific to U.S. military personal during World War 2.

My question is: why is Spam even still available? Do you know anyone who actually eats Spam? Somebody must like it and now its sales are increasing? Strange…and…well… gross.
I’ll stick to discount shopping and cutting out coupons before the money crunch causes me to crack a can of SPAM for lunchtime in the office.

Nation's Capital

2008-06-21T13:31:00.000-07:00

In case you haven’t heard I am spending my summer in Washington D.C. as an editorial intern writing for Campus Progress and sometimes Pushback.org. I arrived last Tuesday and so far really love my job/internship. Things are different though now. I live in a living room and sleep on a couch. I wear business casual clothing and work for 40 hours. In a way, I feel like I am living someone else’s life. I’ll get use to it though. Its just really different to go from slinging pizza pies and being a full time student to this new life.

So, I figured that at the end of every week I’ll give a +, -, and an = to various aspects of my life here in D.C. You can figure out what sign means what.

+ Internship and all the kids that work there
+ Hanging with Courtney and crew
+ open bar at Liberation Dance Party on Friday at DC9
+ diversity! D.C. is much more ethnically diverse than Portland. I say this with a certain sensitivity to the fact that there is a slight tension between the minority working class of this town and the well-off. However, there is a wide range of various types of people from all different classes and cultures. I understand that it is not all peachy and that gentrification is in full effect here but it’s a nice change from the bubble that Portland was stuck in at times.
+ Walking by Senator John Kerry’s office door and seeing him standing amongst his interns at the Russell Senate House.
+ 10 dollar Nationals game. They suck but hey…at least I can see the Angels annihilate them next week for cheap.
+ DJ at Black Cat mixing “House of Jealous Lovers” by The Rapture with “Our House” by Madness and Hot Chip’s “over and over”…shit was so impressive, sounded good and basically could make anyone shake their rump.

- No Wells Fargo
- Roaches. See these things everywhere. None at the apartment yet though.
- Waking up at 4 in the morning to gunshots….yeah that ain’t cool.
- 40 dollars for a ticket to a D.C. United game. Um what? Isn’t the MLS struggling for sales. Here’s a clue….lower the price of a ticket.
- Lack of diverse restaurants around my work. Three words: sandwich, soups, salads. That’s it.
- Trader Joe’s being so far away. I have to walk like 8 blocks and change 2 metro trains to get there.
- No internet at the house.

= No Hipsters. Or at least those serious, should be in a American Apparel ad, hipsters.
= Wearing business casual Monday through Friday. You look good but you gotta iron shit and take it to the cleaners and what not.
= Lack of Mexican food. Its probably about time I lay off the Mexican food and try other cuisines. There are many restaurants specializing in food from Latin countries but I still haven’t found a real Mexican Taqueria. I couldn't even find good salsa at the store.

Pushback

2008-06-20T12:17:00.000-07:00

A blog written and edited by a diverse group of progressive young people from across the country in a creative, insightful and amusing ways. Pushback is apart of Campus Progress Action. Check it out at Pushback.org

I'll be blogging here a bit this summer. However that is not the only reason why you should go.

hearts.

Where politics and recruitment collide

2008-06-20T07:32:00.000-07:00

Enough said.

African Film et l'Occident

2008-06-06T17:11:00.000-07:00

This last quarter I took a French film class. However, since my instructor had just spent a year in Burkina Faso, so she decided to focus the class on films that revolved around former French colonies of Africa. Most of the films dealt with the influence and affect France has had on the development of these countries post-independence and the experience of the African immigrant in France. I don't know how many of these films all you Netflix-addicts will be able to find. Burkina Faso is the home to the African version of Cannes and it seems that maybe some of these would be pretty difficult to obtain. Nevertheless, I know many film nerds and thought maybe it would be beneficial to pass on the titles and a short description of some of my favorites. (Plus, by doing this, I am helping myself with my final.)

* Black and White In Color (La victoire en chantant) by Jean-Jacques Annaud (1976)

Taking place in Africa during World War 1, this film exposes the absurdity of nationalism and the attempt to re-inact the war being fought on mainland Europe in Africa between the colonies. I guess this really went down. Except who were the soldiers? Not the colonizers that is for sure. This film makes an interesting social commentary through exposing the absurd and often highly comical actions and events of this strange period in history.

*Chocolat by Claire Denis (1988)

Not not that shitty film starring Johnny Depp that came out a few years ago. This film by Claire Denis examines the various power roles during the last days of African colonialization. In addition, to be an intriguing and subtle film, it is also shot exceptionally beautiful. Highly recommended.

*The Battle of Algiers (La bataille d'Alger) by Gillo Pontecorvo (1963)

This is probably the most famous film that we saw all quarter. This film is kind of a must for all lovers of film. Examines the events that took place in Algiers in the 50's which eventually led to the atrocious and bloody Algerian war for independence against France. The film follows an illiterate criminal who works his way up a terrorists organization in the city of Algeria who commits various crimes against the French occupiers until the French Army is called in to squash the rebellion. There are many great elements to this film. Good acting, great soundtrack by Morricone, etc. However, its impressive how much this film is still relevant today by humanizing all those involved until it becomes not so clear who is right or in the wrong. Interestingly, the Pentagon made this film mandatory for all top U.S. military leaders leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

* Twisting in Poponguine (Ça twiste à Poponguine) by Moussa Sena Absa (1994)

One of my favorites of the quarter, this film takes place in a small town in Senegal and follows two teenage gangs imitating their favorite Western rock n roll stars. One names themselves after all American rock stars while the other are named after French rockstars. This film examines the search and struggle for identity in the first years of post-colonial Africa. Once again, the film makes a poignant social commentary through absurd, entertaining and extremely funny moments. In addition, Absa uses almost no professional actors in this film. Find this.

*Sango Malo by Bassek Ba Kobhio (1991)

Kobhio first wrote a novel and then turned his own book into this film that examines the role and importance of education in helping Africa develop. Kobhio brings up an interesting power struggle between communist-style and Western, capitalist influenced style education. This film contains many different elements that seem important in the development of Africa. It exposes contemporary corruption and the problems that exist but then questions the alternatives. There are a few, overly dramatic moments of this film but overall I found it to be enjoyable while enlightening me on something I wasn't entirely aware of.

Dakan by Mohamed Camara (1997)

This is the first film about homosexuality in sub-sahara Africa where many countries still openly state that such does not exist in their country. I feel like films that are specifically about the subject of homosexuality tend to overemphasize their themes and thus making the film feel very cliche and trite. However, Dakan successfully avoids falling into these trappings in telling the story of two boys, from different economic backgrounds, who fall in love in a society that doesn't even recognize the existence of such occurrence even being able to happen. The first half of this film trots along with relative ease while the second half gets suddenly way more complex resulting in a much more powerful film that originally indicated. Some of this has to do with the introduction of a white girl who is African and has a black mother. This never really gets explained but adds an interesting element that reminds of colonialization and its continued presence in Africa. Recommended.

No Fear, No Die (S'en fout la mort) by Claire Denis (1990)

Another film by Claire Denis that now examines the experience of two African immigrants living in France working as cock-trainers in an underground cock-fighting circuit on the outskirts of Paris. The theme of power once again returns and while this film doesn't specifically focus on Africa or colonialization, it does bring up many interesting themes regarding not just race but gender and class as well. In addition, this stars Issach De Bankolé who is a bad ass French-speaking actor from the Ivory Coast who you might recognize from Diving Bell and the Butterfly or Coffee and Cigarettes.

Scarlett Johansson review

2008-06-04T22:06:00.000-07:00

My lastest review on Fanbolt of Scarlett Johansson's recent foray into music is up.

Check it out here.

hearts...

Conversations with my mom and the leftist ideals that are causing you communication problems part 1

2008-06-02T21:21:00.001-07:00

Over the past few weeks I have engaged in a serious of conversations with my mom that seem to overlap a lot of reoccurring themes in the news, my classrooms and conversations with other people. Many of these themes revolve around the presidential race and regard race and/or various accusations or issues with Barack Obama.

Many of these conversations have delved off from specifically talking about the topical subject in which started the discussion and into bigger themes that seem to overlap or include progressive/liberal/leftist(take you pick) ideology, ideas and attitudes.

The interesting aspect of these conversations is that they tend to be a conglomeration of taking very huge issues and interspersing them with immediate experiences involving these issues. This can be really annoying in some cases. However, this intersecting of extensive issues with personal experiences which are initiated from current events and topical subjects has been interesting and caused some self-reflection upon my generation, political standpoints and you. I would like to expound upon some things in maybe two or three different entries. Here’s number one:

A journalism conference in Los Angeles that I attended in January begin with two hours of panel discussions with various from the west coast news media. Somewhere along the lines, the topic of racism came up and many people were saying that the difficulty in dealing with racism in the news media and with the general public was the lack of discussion going on in academia, the media and general public about the subject of racism. Suddenly, Marc Cooper, contributing writer to The Nation spoke up and completely disagreed. He thought that people do talk about racism all the time. As a part-time professor, Cooper mentioned that in his classes it is constantly brought up. Cooper went on to assert that especially with the elements of race and gender in the presidential elections that people are talking about racism along with a series of other related issues quit frequently.

I have to say that I agree with Cooper’s assessment not just from my recent conversations with my mother but also my experience as a student over the last year as well. I cannot remember another time in my life where race has been so often apart of the headlines in mainstream media whether it’s the Huffington Post or Bill O’Reilly.

However, what this has also exposed is a certain ignorance, inability and general difficulty in talking about such issues as racism. I think this exposure is good though because it gives us a sort of litmus test of where we are as a country and the change that still needs to talk place. However, it also shows though the difficulty in actually talking about an issue like racism.

A recent pro-McCain propagandist video I watched took an Obama quote where he stated, “My grandma was a typical white person…” and asked the question of what would happen if McCain was to say, “typical black person.” Their assertion was that it would be the end of McCain’s presidential run. Maybe…but that’s not why I bring it up. In addition, I have written enough on this blog about such issues and I also trust that you know the intricacies and reasons why it is legitimately different if McCain to say such things. Although, generalizations normally aren’t a good idea whether your black, white or polka dot.

I bring this up though because it does reveal another difficulty of explaining these reasons especially to the generation of our parents or grandparents. It is even difficult to explain such reasons to some of our peers, even our college educated peers. I don’t say this to scoff or chastise these people but to reveal yet another real issue: How do we, as a left-leaning, progressive, young generation actively discuss these issues in a productive manner? It is a difficult task and if one thing seems for sure, it is that we aren’t doing a good job so far.

Imagine something that you passionately believe in or something that is so apart of the way you think that it almost comes natural. Now imagine engaging in a conversation with someone who is radically opposed to that? Difficult to talk to them? How do you engage in a conversation with this someone? We’ve probably all experienced this with a family member at the dinner table resulting in a loss of appetite or an uncomfortable silence.

I think it is imperative that we learn the tools and how to engage in a real conversation with these people. I also think that it is our biggest fault that we don’t or have difficulty in doing so. (When I say “our” I am meaning the American political “left”- which I know is a bit elusive but roll with me.) It seems that our reactions now usually consist of frustration, name calling or a general lack of participation on our part. Yet, we are all so willing to spout our opinions over a beer amongst our friends. What do we actually do though?

It’s difficult to set the feelings aside sometimes and have a real conversation with those who disagree. However, by not engaging in such discussions then how can change come about? Perhaps, we can not change their vote but I still find it advantageous to reach a point where they can at least understand our point of view. Conversely, I find it equally important that we learn their points of view as well. And if we reach that level field where we understand each others reasons and motivations that fuel our beliefs and vote then real development towards a possible change can occur.

Before concluding I think it is important to point out that there are numerous methods which tend to distract from the real issues and motivations. I am addressing mainly those chain emails you might get from that conservative relative. Perhaps, it’s a photo, video or declaring the lack of patriotism with subtle tones of racism and classism (i.e. Barack’s lapel pin, etc.). They are usually not very logical and tend to be aimed at getting under you skin-which they often do. However, these are probably not the reason why Grandpa is voting republican. Underneath the distracting BS, are the real reasons and it probably has to do with where they come from, their experiences, where they work or their current quality of life.

My mom mentioned these differences in talking about my grandmother (her mom). My grandma doesn’t have any children living at the house, she is retired and I assume apart of an upper-income bracket. Thus she is against Obama probably not because he doesn’t wear an American flag lapel pin but because she disagrees with socialized healthcare. There are other reasons which are not entirely illegitimate and I wouldn’t mind having a conversation with her about it. I think it’s important to know, understand and learn these opinions if any of us have any real desire to create change or swing the pendulum towards our direction in any small or big way.

I realize that the issues I brought up are things that have always occurred and will continue to. I don’t plan on anyone being able to evr permanently alter change this. However, I think, from what I have seen, there is a sincere lack of self-reflection on our part when it comes to these issues and it might do us all a bit of good in our own lives if we learn to step back, look how we are reacting to those opposed to us and maybe change our attitudes in hopes of changing theirs and making even a small difference.

Cult Film ressurection

2008-05-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

Is it strictly an American tradition where we celebrate low-budget B-movies, horribly shallow action films, or simplistic teen dramas? Perhaps. Almost all of us have some crappy film(s) that we secretly love and watch faithfully every year that can be categorized in one of the prementioned genres.

If i wrote out a list of my top 25 films, amongst the Czech new wave, Godard's and Antonioni's, you would also find Space Balls, Major Leagues and maybe even Weird Science. That being said, I excitedly await the next installment of...

Point Break 2? Yep. Written by the same dude who wrote the original. Oh man...i can't wait.

Heres the description (now over a year old) taken from SlashFilm:
The new movie will be set in Southeast Asia and uncover the fate of the surfers’ leader Bodhi (played in the original by Patrick Swayze) who was supposedly (spoiler alert) killed by a giant wave at the end of the first film. The sequel will not feature the return of FBI Special Agent John ‘Johnny’ Utah (who was played by Keanu Reeves in the original), but will instead follow a surfer-turned-SEAL who is on the trail of “a criminal gang.” They hope to cast “a young male action star at the same stage in his career as Keanu (Reeves) was.”

Sounds horrible. Horribly amazing.

Think they'll have Clinton and Bush Jr. masks now? God, I hope so.

Post-Script: Screw artistic integrity. Who wants to put their creativity to good use and assist me in writing the next cult film? We can be the laughing stock of Hollywood but still get all the perks(wink wink).

Terry's miss

2008-05-21T22:41:00.000-07:00

Sports- art with muscles.

I saw one of the most heartbreaking moments ever in sports today. It nearly brought me to tears. For those of you that scoff at sports there is certain elements of theater, drama, spectacle and even art that it contains which cannot be denied. They say sports players get paid too much. If that is true then so do actors and so do some artists,writers and even musicians. Film, television and sometimes to a lesser degree music and literature, are just often more easily related to than sports. Either that or there is a certain element of fantasy that taps into the realms of our imagination that fits our dreams and desires and expresses them onto a screen, a canvas, a book or into a song.

I wouldn't exactly equate such with sports. (Although some would...) In addition, I don't think it is or ever will be something for everybody. However, I will say that for those who understand your game of choice and all the nuances involved, the reactions can often be on the same emotional level than these other forms of entertainment and art. That being said, what I saw today definitely emitted a similar response in me that is usually reserved for other such mediums.

Sure, sports is just entertainment but if anything; what happens out on the field isn't scripted and it can never be replayed the exact same way twice. This only makes it all that more fascinating, affecting and unique.

John Terry-my heart goes out to you man.

Marriage Equality? How about marriage illegalization.

2008-05-15T16:27:00.000-07:00

Everyone is texting, blogging and freaking out today over the good news in California that a state Supreme Court ruling of 4-3 stating that "the state’s ban on same-sex marriage violates the “fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship.” Thus, for the time being, marriage equality exist in the fine State of California.

It seems pretty absurd and dated to be against same-sex marriage. Such an attitude is rooted in a archaic judeo-christian morality that if seperation of church and state really exists, shouldn't be so ingrained into our politics. Obviously, they are but its good to see the pendulum shifting.

However...let me ponder a bit and expand on an idealistic pipe-dream in a moment of frivolity....

Why is the institution of marriage so wrapped up in legality in the first place? The fact that marriage is a legal binding agreement between two parties seems absurd as well. Why are the courts even involved in the issues, desires of formed relationships between individuals?

I guess issues like who gets the kids, the dog and the brown sofa are often decided through legal means. But can't such issues that may need legal guidance, counseling or mediation be separate from the actual act of committing your life to someone. Can't the contract you create with someone be simply a binding between you and them on an intimate, personal or spiritual level?

I am stoked on the recent invents in California and I realize that this is the context we exists in but stepping back a minute; the whole issue that we even have to go through courts to establish marriage equality seems a bit absurd in the first place.

Regardless, if you enjoy stand-up comedy, please take 2 minutes and 43 seconds to watch this following clip of Doug Stanhope talk about marriage. Its not even comedy...its just frank, somewhat offensive, yet insightful honesty on marriage put perfectly:

Street Art goes to the Tate

2008-05-12T12:08:00.000-07:00

As the street artists community continues to expand, evolve and grow in popularity, the Tate Modern in London has decided to dedicate an exhibition this month to some of its more established and known figures. According The Observer, many of the artists are now beginning to be commissioned to create pieces for millions of dollars in the homes of famous figures. Apparently, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie just had a Bansky piece put up in their living room. Good to know that he no longer needs to throw up his pieces sans permission in the MOMA. Not to mention that his hometown in England has trained the local sanitation department to no longer paint over his pieces.

In addition, May 5th was concluded the last day first ever Cans Festival-a stencil art battle in London under the Waterloo Station Bridge.

More power to the these street artists but it does seem to take away a bit from the ideas which street art is founded off of. Not like it hasn't happen before though...e.g. Basquiat, etc.

Images courtesy of Wooster Collective.
A website dedicated to exposing street art around the globe.

Party Time. Not-so excellent.

2008-05-09T01:21:00.000-07:00

So, this was out-loud funny to me. A blog solely dedicated to other peoples parties from photos found on Flickr.

Check it at: Sorry I Missed Your Party

Thanks again to Diana for discovering this. I think this is the second time in less that two weeks I have co-opted a post from her Systems of Operation blog.

Weather Report

2008-05-05T21:38:00.000-07:00

Recently, I have been fascinated with the We Can Solve It commercial campaign promoting awareness and activism in regards to climate change and environmentalism.

In case you haven’t seen them yet, they involve supposed opposite politicians and public figures, sitting together on a couch, expressing that despite their differences, they both agree on the need for climate change. Here are the two that have been released so far.

Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich

Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton

Here is an excerpt from the About Us section of We Can Solve It

“The We Campaign is a project of The Alliance for Climate Protection -- a nonprofit, nonpartisan effort founded by Nobel laureate and former Vice President Al Gore. Our ultimate aim is to halt global warming. Specifically we are educating people in the US and around the world that the climate crisis is both urgent and solvable.”

Admittedly, there are certain elements of this organization and their ad campaign which could be objectionable. More radical environmentalists tend to reject solving the impending climate issues through big business, special interest groups and the government. I am not well-versed in environmental politics but it seems that tendency from the radical left to work on the peripheries of society while refusing to cooperate or work with the organizations, systems, and/or governments they impose resolves in more conflict than positive, productive outcomes. In addition, it also seems that to take such an attitude is selfish and unconstructive.

Personally, I tend to see this sort of attitude quit frequently in Portland-a city which tends to boast its liberalism, open-mindedness and green consciousness. (side note: In October Business Week voted Portland the third most toxic city in the United States.) Attitudes tend to chastise those who don’t ride a bike or pour Biofuel into their cars. More than once, I have been scoffed at and dismissed for renouncing my 3 years of veganism. This also occurs in regards to political and religious issues. If you are not openly left then you’re possible friend ratio might drop significantly in this town-no joke! Obviously, this can personally frustrating. However, it has gotten to a point where one is tempted to question the foundation of leftist ideals altogether. Are all these kids doing it to be cool or do they really want to instigate realistic change?

In regards, to these commercials, I have personally found them to be possibly quite effective. It seems that a pragmatic outlook on the issue of climate change is that most people are uninformed and see no immediate incentive in making a change to their daily lifestyles. So regardless of how much money Pelosi and Gingrich are getting paid, and regardless of how much they are realistically attempting to push legislation forward towards creating constructive policy in climate issues, I think these commercials could be a beginning to getting people who don’t ride bikes, are vegan, food-forging anarchists or enviro-terrorists actually aware and maybe even involved with what is going on. It seems that such a cause really needs to target those who don’t live in conscious urban areas where being environmentally friendly is so easy. The suburbs need to know, the lower class need to know the incentives, major cities suffering from urban sprawl need funding to implement such measures.

I don’t see a lot of push for that kind of action with radical leftists. They seem content with their small, close-knit group of like-minded people. How is that ever going to change anything on a broader scale? Or maybe that isn’t the point....and maybe I'm just turning into a sellout.

P.S. I know Portland is a hip city but it’s frustrating that so many people who have ambitions of making social, political or environmental change move here. Portland has got enough people for that. People with such motivation should go to cities that really need to implement such change…like Detroit…or Phoenix….or even Los Angeles...or to the steps of Congress in D.C. Now that’s a challenge.

As they say: Portland-the most over qualified city of hyper-intelligent, MA holding baristas and bookstore clerks.

Diving Bell review...

2008-05-01T15:31:00.000-07:00

My recent review of Diving Bell and the Butterfly is up on Fanbolt.

Check it here.

It may seem sort of familiar from a previous post of mine late last year.

Our Duty to Die

2008-04-23T14:26:00.000-07:00

First, apologies for the dark subject matter of this blog. Blame it on it still being under 40 degrees outside even though we are in the middle of April. Its dreary, rainy, and the wind is cold. One is suppose to write about such themes in such a dark and dreary environment, right? When in Rome...

So the last broadcast of This American Life was on the theme of "mistakes". Broken up into two acts, the first was a lengthy, bizarre story on the first years of cryogenics on the west coast. Without going into the details of the story (although it is a fascinating listen and I highly recommend it), the ideology behind cryogenics brought to my attention (obviously) the occurrence of death and how it is perceived in America(and possibly a large majority of the rest of the western, first world).

The main concept behind cryogenics for those who are unfamiliar is that "death" might possibly be just another form of illness that someday we may be able to cure. According to the show this idea gained popularity in the early sixties and thus led to the idea of cryogenics. So if you freeze someone in the first few moments of their death, it is assumed that someday, there will be a cure for death and these people can be "resurrected" or "reanimated".

Death is surely something that many of us have trouble coming to terms with. Perhaps this gets easier the older you get, maybe not. Furthermore, it seems to me, although I know this can be argued against, that in a first-world society we are removed/shielded from having to encounter death on a personal, intimate basis. Surely, our lives are not riddled with death due to the absence of war and disease within our immediate vicinity. Nevertheless, the fascination still remains, if not heightened by our disconnect from it, and thus I believe it could be argued that maybe this is the reason why violence is recreated and depicted so frequently in various outlets of media.

I am aware though that there is an argument that we have become desensitized to death. And with that desensitivity, cultural practices that help us to deal with death have deteriorated. (I think Heidegger has some things to say about this which I don't care to look up)

However, I would like to present that if we are so removed from death, as I believe, then it has developed a culture where our ability to understand, cope and accept death has also diminished. The outcome is perhaps ideas such as cryogenics. The outcome is also, perhaps, the development of an attitude which asserts that we exist atop some sort of constructed hierarchy which gives us more of a right to live longer(or forever) than certain"others". I feel that there are numerous events that have taken place just in the last 10 years which could be argued to be connected with the existence of such an attitude.

Finally though, my main reaction to the event of death in regards to this radio program was personal. Immediately, this idea that we could permanently "defeat" death seemed so absolutely selfish and characteristic of an attitude that the first world would produce to me. When I heard that people actually felt a right to be able to freeze someone, in order to at some time possibly reanimate them was something I immediately had a objection to. Upon further examination, I discovered that my objection was because death, to me, is something that we not only obviously all have to endure, but something that is our "duty" to endure. How dare we try and cheat death. And thus for the first time, in a long time, I feel like I came to some sort of small, epiphany on my own mortality. If given the option to live forever, or if cryogenics was much more closer to a possibility than it is today, I would clearly decline. What a strange world we live in where even the idea of never having to die has strongly been considered and undertaken...that is...if you have the money ;)

To not end on a completely dark note... take comfort in this small celebration of longevity:

Brought to my attention by my friends blog Systems of Operation, photographer Mark Story has traveled the world the last twenty-plus years in search of centenarians (people that are over 100) and super centenarians (110 years old) to get their stories and take their portraits. Its called "Living in Three Centuries: the Face of Age"

Check out the site...here is an example:
10 year 115 day-old*
man of German and Irish descent.
Several of his grandparents lived past 100.

He served in the Army in World Wars I and II
and then worked as a railroad brakeman.
During the Depression
he traveled much of the country
riding the rails with hobos.

At 102, he was walking ten miles a day.
Now he walks three miles a day and can still
read the bottom three lines on an eye chart.
He gave up drinking in his 60s,
but smoked into his 80s.

He continues to work a few hours a week
at a tanning salon/espresso cafe.

He said, "I still chase
good-looking women around.
I just can't catch up with them —
my legs don't work fast enough.

100x50

2008-04-22T15:00:00.000-07:00

So...as you may have already heard, Me and a Ms. Madeline Stevens have begun an experiment in short fiction called 100X50.

Basically, we each will post fiction (or something) original for 50 days straight that is 100 words or less.

If you get a chance, check it out for the next month and a half or so. There is a lengthier description of what its all about on the page.

Hearts...

Translation

2008-04-20T19:38:00.000-07:00

Taken from the often entertaining, interesting and totally worth a hit every now and then Litlab.

Can we even do this in our language? Probably, but it would sound silly. In addition, I find the Czech portion really aesthetically pleasing to look at. I want to hear audio of this being read.

enjoy:

ída Sobková: Prosté popisování pátečního poledne / A Simple Describing of a Friday Noon

A short story in Czech where every word starts with the same letter and then translated in English.

In Czech:

Prší. Pátek patnáctého prosince. Pošmourné počasí protíná polední pauzu. Pozdní podzim povzbuzuje pápěří pampelišky poletovat. Plnicí pero popsalo papír poletujíjcí pod podloubím. Proslulý proutník Pavel provází podél podloubí pihovatou Pavlínu. Proč právě Petra? Proradný prostopášník povalil Pavlínu pod platan, poodhalil Pavlínin pihovatý pupík. Pořád poprchává. Pavlína promrzla. Pojď popijeme pro pohodu. Pokračují paloukem, přicházejí k pohostinství „Pod Pařezem.“ Popíjejí Plzeňský Prazdroj, peprmintku, punč – prostě praví požitkáři. Pojď popít pomálu podomácku pálené pálenky. Potřebujeme přejít potok. Pak projdeme pokosené pšeničné pole. Promiň, provlhlo pověšené prádlo. Proč? Prší, pitomče. Pan porybný povídal podivné předpovědi. Pokud povídá pravdu, přijde pravá pohroma. Přehrada potřebuje poopravit proti prolomení. Pak prošel pohřební průvod. Paní Pazderková podlehla příušnicím. Protivný policista Parma pokukuje po plačících pozůstalých. Podívej, pomaličku přestává pršet. První pichlavé paprsky prozařují palouk. Přines pálenku. Pec plápolá posledním posmoleným polenem. Pavlína pomalu přestává plakat, promrznutí přestává. Ponenáhlu poleno praskne, plamen povyskočí, podnapilý Pavel polije Pavlínu pálenkou. Pavlína plamenně poskakuje. Podívej pitomče, pálenka podporuje plameny. Popadne placatku pálenky, praští Pavla po palici. Pavla pohltí plameny. Pospíchejme potopit postavy pod proud potoka. Plameny pohasly. Pavel povídá Pavlíně: Přestávám pít pálenku. Pravím, Plzeňský Prazdroj, Punč, peprmintku pouze. Pitomý pátek.

In English:

Raining. Friday, the fifteenth December. Murky weather passes over a noon-hour. Late fall encourage blow ball to fly. A fountain pen overwrote the paper flying under the arcade. Renowned voluptuary Paul promenades freckled Pauline along the arcade. Why Pauline? Perfidious libertine laid Pauline under the sycamore; he undressed Pauline’s freckled bellybutton. It’s still drizzling. Pauline is freezing. Come, we’ll partake for strain. They continue walking throughout the glade; they are arriving to the pub “Under the Tree Stump.” They drink Pilsner Urquell, Peppermint, and Negus – simply real sybarites. Come drink some of my family style eau-de-vie. We need to cross the creek. Then go through the mown wheat field. Sorry, the hanged clothes soaked. Why? It’s raining, you idiot. Water bailiff told me strange prognoses. F he told me the truth a real disaster is coming. Reservoir needs to be repaired against crashing. Then a funeral procession came. Mrs. Pazderková succumbed to parotis. Mean policeman Parma peeked around on crying mourners. Look, the rain is stopping. First sharp rays are shining on the glade. Bring the eau-de-vie. The fireside flame with the last pitched log. Pauline slowly stops to cry, she is not freezing anymore. All of a sudden the log crack, the flame jumps out, tipsy Paul spill eau-de-vie to Pauline. Pauline falmy jumps around. Look, you idiot, eau-de-vie supports the flames. She snatched the flask and punch Paul on nob. Paul is eaten by flames. Let’s go hurry to sink our bodies under the flow of the creek. Flames die down. Paul is telling to Pauline: No more eau-de-vie drinking. I say, Pilsner Urquell, Negus or Peppermint only. Damned Friday.

Questionable Art?

2008-04-18T13:49:00.000-07:00

Aliza Shvarts, a Yale art major has decided on something peculiar and controversial for her senior art project. As reported by the Yale Daily News Shvarts has decided to document her nine-month process of artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. She plans to display her relics of the piece by showing video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

Needless to say, the project got national attention and sparked much debate. While it was recently reported that Shvarts was supposedly faking the whole process or re-titled as "creative fiction" by Yale university, the piece brings up an interesting question of when, if ever, can art go too far? Are there boundaries to art when it comes to as one student from Yale stated as, "manipulating life for the benefit of her art"? Without any applicable normative aesthetic to determine what is or isn't art(please argue this..please?!), the question remains if all morality and/or ethnics are also absent from art today as well.

My immediate impulse would be yes. Academically, there seems to be an emphasis on the relativity of morality depending upon what eachh culture we are specifically examining. We are taught to recognize and respect these cultural differences. However, issues do arise. International human rights efforts often encounter problems and/or lack of support when it comes to bringing up issues such as female genital mutilation. While one may be hard pressed to find someone who would actually argue PRO for this, it isn't completely unthinkable to devise an argument which would be founded in a tolerance for such practices in order to not project one's culture,and all the norms and morals that go with it, onto this 'other' culture.

The point is if we look at art then it is easy to see such application of certain ethical standards to have deteriorated due to the arrival of a sort of "liberalism" (i guess...) which emphasizes (may be too much) a tolerance for all people, their way of life and practices. On paper it sounds great. However, when you get into issues like FGM, it becomes a problem. The same goes for art. Anything goes, right? Well, what about Ms. Shvarts?

Personally, I don't have a problem with Ms. Shvarts piece. Actually, I find it fascinating and all that much more disappointing that she actually DIDN'T go through with it. I think her piece speaks to the fascination and sort of "mysticism" if you will of the female body that still exists in today's society.

In addition, art already has a long history of artists who have utilized, manipulated and damaged their bodies for art. Marina Abramovic, Chris Burden, or Tehching Hsieh are a few performance artists who immediately come to mind. Their work was much more taxing on the body than Shvarts proposed piece. Even artists like Eva Hesse who worked with toxic material all her life have sacrifice health for their projects. There doesn't seem to be too much of an issue with these artists because they are not hurting(usually) anyone else in the process. However, what happens when we actually do cross that bridge and effect others? Unwillingly? Are we violating an 'ethics' of art? Or does, and if not should, such a thing still exists?

Costa Rican artist Guillermo Vargas ‘Habacuc’ sometime last year in a gallery in Managua tied a dog up in a gallery, put it on display, then let it starve to death. As reported, People entered and left, day in and day out. The dog remained without water or food and eventually gave up the ghost. The artist has said a number of different things about the piece. Most of what is said refers back to the situation of massive amounts of stray dogs that are throughout the major cities of Costa Rica. One statement the artist suggest that if he had not captured this dog and tied him up he would of died anyways and no one would of noticed. (Google his name for more. Its hard to get a good link to anything that isn't completely biased). Recently, his name has blown up all over the Internet again because he has been invited to reenact the piece in Honduras.

Now, I am an animal lover and yes I find this disturbing. However, apart of me feels that this is an overly-hyped issue that roots back to our westernized, first-world attitudes towards animals and pets. Frankly, animal rights would probably seem like a pretty absurd movement in most third world countries where huge portions of the population are going without food. However, I don't want to go so far as the fully back that assumption so rather I will stick with what I know which is that we, in this country, have the privilege to even have pets. Our attitudes towards domesticated cats and dogs is much different than some countries. And while this piece probably wouldn't fly in the U.S., it certainly seem to go over relatively acceptable in Costa Rica.

So in regards to art, which seems to be without any borders or if it does have borders damn are they fucking broad, do we accept this? And if we don't accept this then under what pretext do we make that judgment call? That it is unethical? That it is morally wrong? If so, then what are exactly are those ethics that we must abide by in art? And if we do make that judgment then I find it imperative to take into account cultural and moral relativity? And furthermore if you are a liberal, progressive, open-minded individual who supports the application of such relativism then by what means do you make that judgment without becoming hypocritical?

I don't like the piece. However, I find it difficult to extract an argument against it that isn't rooted in my own subjective and emotional objection to it. I would almost rather argue against this relativity, and for a moral standard ,than try and argue against the piece within the definitions of such.

Juno Review

2008-04-11T09:07:00.001-07:00

Here is my latest review on Fanbolt of the film Juno.

Actually click on the link for me even if you don't want to read it. If I get the my review get the most hits thi month then I win something. Thanks!!!!

Misogyny, Racism and Pop Culture part 2

2008-03-31T22:38:00.000-07:00

A recent hip-hop single blowing up all over the charts called “Independent” by southern rapper Webbie has caught my interest. As an avid listener to popular, mainstream hip-hop I am often confronted with tired and overused go-to terminology when describing drugs, women, guns or cars. The popular terminology to describe these themes that are regularly covered in most mainstream hip-hop singles seem to change by the month. However, many still remain.

One instance of terminology that has not evolved much in the last 20 years of hip hop is the terms used to describe women. Or rather not just all women, but a described lower-type of particular woman who is usually attributed to being untrustworthy, unfaithful and dishonest. We all know the terms and I don’t need to mention them. The terms are definitely derogatory, sexist and over-used. It is also these terms that mainstream hip-hop is most often criticized about. In the early 90’s it was violence, now it is the inherent sexism and objectification of woman that seems to be the focus of those critical of hip-hop.

Mind you, one will usually find me in defense of this terminology to a certain extent. I don’t support the misogyny but from a standpoint of art and self-expression I think it should be tolerated. In addition it is important to take into consideration the various iconography and terminology that hip-hop and black American urban youth culture is rooted in.

Finally, to single out hip-hop is ultimately unfair. Sexism and misogyny permeates throughout all aspects of pop culture. And if we are going to talk about such issues we need to take into consideration not just hip-hop culture but the greater context in which it exists in: pop culture. As I have previously quoted, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson points out that objectifying women is not solely rooted in just hip-hop:

"it ain’t hip-hop that’s teaching the broader culture how to dog a woman; it’s the broader culture’s ways and rules that are keyed in by hop-hop lyricists.”

Whether Dyson is correct is debatable. I think there is more of a fluidity to the relationship and that both sides perpetuate the problem at hand. Nevertheless, hip-hop cannot be completely singled out.

That being said, misogyny and sexism is still probably hip-hop’s biggest problem to a certain extent. The issue is complex and it is representing something about not only American black culture, but American society in itself as well. Unfortunately, these complexities are rarely examined or talked about in depth by either the artist performing the song or the overly, feminist close-minded liberal (or super conservative) who is criticizing the lyrics. (see my blog post Its Bigger Than Hip-Hop for more)

Enter Webbie’s “Independent”. In my last blog I mentioned that pop culture seemed to often act as an arena where taboos and issues such as race and sexism could move beyond the borders which are often towed in most social settings. Webbie’s “Independent” does just that. Here is song that is in support of a woman who is independent, motivated and who doesn’t rely on a man. She rejects traditional ideas of a woman’ role. And from the standpoint of Webbie that is the most attractive woman that a man can find. He encourages the listener to find a girl like that. However, the complexity doesn’t really stop there.

Where things get interesting is when Webbie and the other rappers allude to the fact that all she needs a man for is a “good drill”. Here we see the independent female taking on almost the role of the male “pimp” or “ player”. The attitude often permeating hip-hop that a “true” male only utilizes a female for sex and maybe a good back rub is now taken on by the female character described in Webbie’s song. It’s almost an attitude of “hey she is like us…and that is hot!!”

However, to counterpoint, none of the rappers in the song utilize the tired, old, go-to terms that are used to describe a woman in hip-hop songs. To his credit, this is impressive. Webbie has essentially created a single that appeals to the lowest-common denominator, made it popular, and never has to use any of the terms or lyrics that seemed to have become almost a necessity to make a song popular on mainstream hip-hop charts.

It certainly isn’t going to get ultra-feminist to go run out and buy his record. Nor even please them to any degree. Nevertheless, in a genre of music that regardless of the reasons and complexities is overrun with overt sexism; I find Webbie’s contribution to be highly fascinating and worth a listen.

Finally, to add to the complexity of the song, “Independent” is actually a bit of a lyrical re-working of one of his older songs called, “Bad Bitch”. So its almost as if by taking out the go-to term he was able to make a song that was much more popular than his previous single.

strange…

Here’s the video. P.S. I love this song and sing it on the regular:

Misogyny, Racism, Pop Culture and Bret Michaels' wig

2008-03-28T17:31:00.000-07:00

The democratic primary elections are spawning intense debate and discourse in both the media and your local bar on the issue of race and gender. While there have been some calls to move beyond these topics when examining which candidate one should elect, the conversation seems to always fall back into this touchy and passionate subject matter.

Really though, it’s a good thing. Never in my short 24 year life do I recall such continual and intense discourse in all aspects of our social spectrum on the issue of gender and race. Needless to say, a whole lot is being revealed about our society. While some of it may be ugly and difficult to deal with, the very fact that the conversation is taking place is a good thing. If we are going to ever begin to break down the institutionalized structures and generalizations that perpetuate this oppression then the first thing to do is acknowledge that they exist. If anything talking about it allows you to really understand what the other person, who is supposedly on the otherside of the conversation or poltical spectrum, is all about.

Nevertheless, emotions do fly and one approach to this conversation is examining the historical context of race and gender in our country in an attempt to reveal who has suffered more: blacks or women. Of course, there is a lot wrong with this approach. First and foremost should be the place of black women. Where do they fit in to this conversation? In addition, making comparisons about who has suffered more is the unfortunate outcome of a near-sighted perspective that fails to examine the possibilities for moving beyond the small framework of such an argument. For the sake of this blog let us just agree on one thing: both have suffered and continue to be marginalized.

A reworking of this question that has recently arisen in conversatons is rooted in a more contemporary context that may be more constructive than who had it worse. Rather, let us ask what is more prevalent in today’s society: misogyny or racism?

I don’t ask this question to determine who would be a better candidate. In fact, I think this question should bear no impact on one’s vote. Rather, I think it is an interesting point to bring up to reveal the differing characteristics and nuances that these forms of marginalization are presented in society today. If anything, an attempt at assessing this question can help is lead to a better understand of the two in a contemporary context.

Due to a few recent encounters with pop culture and a conversation with a friend, it seems that while racism does still exist, it seems to exist on a much more subversive, almost unconscious level. Out right blatant racism is hardly tolerated in American society and especially in mainstream culture and media. Certainly it is there but it’s all below the surface. Please inform me if one thinks I am incorrect here. Remember, I am not saying that it doesn’t exist, its just not so outright blatantly expressed.

However, the same cannot necessarily be said for misogyny which seems prevalent in society on a much more apparent level. Turn on your television; it doesn’t take a gender studies major to realize that there is serious sexism still going on in mainstream society. Recently, a few things brought this revelation to my attention:

Example one: Rock of Love.

For those of you unfamiliar, Poison lead singer Bret Michaels has a show solely dedicated to finding his next “rock-girl of love.” Sure, these girls put themselves in this position but there is something seriously wrong (but admittedly…amazingly entertaining) going on in this show. It’s the ultimate groupie fantasy played out on television. Bret spends a day with these girls doing various different activities with them. Then equipped with pen and a pad of paper (no doubt the same one that he writes down those genius lyrics on) he determines which girls get to say on the show and which need to leave.

“Well, Katrina is a bit of wacko but she has got a good rack so that’s a bonus.”

This show is completely absurd. Nevertheless, the sexism is obviously apparent and perpetuating stereotypes and even encouraging them with each passing second. Watching the show, I couldn’t help but think of a show on television that would be this apparent in perpetuating racist generalizations about minorities. I don’t think such a show exists nor could it.

Example 2: Miss Bimbo

Anyone hear about this video game site yet? It basically a RPG where girls as young as seven are encouraged girls to go on crash diets and get breast implants. Yikes!

As CNN reports:

“When a girl signs up, they are given a naked virtual character to look after and pitted against other girls to earn "bimbo" dollars so they can dress her in sexy outfits and take her clubbing.”

Once again, it’s hard to think of a similar video game site that would be so apparent in its racism. I suppose Grand Theft Auto series would be the closest to perpetuating such ideas…but even the sometimes racist undertones come off not so apparent and in your face.

It is at this point in the conversation that I don’t know where to necessarily go. Misogyny and sexism seem to reveal themselves in a lot more apparent ways in mainstream media and pop culture. However, we can’t all get too serious on ourselves and become stick in the mud super liberals with no sense of humor. After all, generalizations do seem to exist on partial truths. (Thus the beauty and hilariousness of the blog: Stuff White People Like) Furthermore, perhaps this just reveals that the subtle nature of racism in this country is a sign that it is all that more ingrained and harder to educate about, examine and pinpoint. Nevertheless, the observation has been made.

The line between what is entertaining and what is perpetuating the marginalization of a certain group of people can often be fuzzy. All I can conclude is that there doesn't seem to be a whole lot you can do to change it on the level of pop culture. In fact, it seems that such generalizations that walk that line is what drives pop culture. Thus, my only conclusion at this point is that the level of mainstream pop culture seems to be a arena where touchy issues such as sexism, racism and other forms of oppression are able to cross boundaries and partially exploit taboos that are otherwise discouraged from conversations in our interactions within most social settings. However, there is also an interesting tension because even the arena of pop culture is restricted in regards to language, imagery and some types of subject matter. Thus, the freedom to explore these sensitive issues beyond the context of how they are typically discussed in social forums(excluding some academic levels) is given, yet not without certain restrictions. The end result is often fascinating and highly creative. (Personally, it often makes low-brow, trash culture so much more interesting to me than any form of high-art or culture. )

Thus, when examing an issues like misogyny or racism within a contemporary context is seems that often one of the best places to start is by flipping on your television. What are you seeing and what are you NOT seeing? Obviously, there are many more levels to be explored. Does pop culture really represent our society? How much are we dictating mainstream culture? How much does pop culture dictate how we act, think or consume? Regardless of these debatable points, the arena of pop culture is a fascinating place to watch some of these issues play out and often times is a seemingly more accurate, true, representation of where and how these issues permeate into American society.

Final question: does anyone else think Bret Michaels is wearing a wig?

Kite Runner Review

2008-03-26T22:06:00.001-07:00

My most recent review for FanBolt of The Kite Runner is up.

Check it here.

Handheld Shows

2008-03-17T10:48:00.000-07:00

The blog world seems to be becoming increasingly more interesting and diverse. What was once overrun with mid-30's corporate slaves and old journalists looking for a forum to rant has begun to get a bit creative and expand into all realms of culture. With the creation of such programs as Stumble, Del.icio.us , Digg it and many others; the world of the Internet and blogs is attempting to become a bit more organized and customized to your preferences and interests.

It is also creating a community. Sure, it is a bit of an artificial community since interaction is done completely through electronic means, but nevertheless it is a form of people coming together around an idea, a news story, or just a funny video and promoting it in a certain way. Never have we had such an ability to control what we want to read, listen, or watch. While a lot of crap came come from that, I think in the end it is a good thing. Its a power that is controlled more by the average internet user and less by a board of directors. Good thing right?

On the occasion, I will let myself "stumble" through a series of blogs and sites in search of something interesting. When something catches my eye, I usually put it up on the links in the sidebar to the left. (Which if you haven't already, check out Awesome Tapes from Africa and or the Post-Secret blog)

My most recent discovery is Handheld Shows . I believe that it is based in Denmark...or at least one of those Scandinavian countries. Basically, they film bands playing tunes in random places. I like the spontaneity and the move from this controlled area where there is a divide between band and audience to a more unstructured, natural setting. Its kinda like having a show in your basement, which for those who have experienced such, know that the lines between audience and band often become blurred or totally erased. Plus, I feel like it takes the concept of the annoying dude on the corner strumming too hard on his guitar as he tries to remember the lyrics to a Beatles song and makes it brilliant and worth stopping for a minute or two and watching.

Here is a video from the blog by Wildbirds & Peacedrums called "Doubt/Hope". This was also recently featured on Pitchfork...enjoy.

New Badu

2008-03-10T12:42:00.000-07:00

My review of the new Erykah Badu album New Amerykah, Pt 1: 4th World War is up and can be found at Fanbolt.

Check it.

Wolfgang Laib

2008-03-08T23:21:00.000-08:00

New issue of Sculpture features German artist Wolfgang Laib who collects pollen which he then uses to create stunning installations.

“I was facinated with what pollen is in itself. Pollen has incredible colours,
which you never could paint, but it is not a pigment and its colour is only one
quality out of many, like a hand has a colour, or blood is red but it is not a
red liquid, and milk is white, but it is not a white liquid. It is the difference
between a blue pigment and the sky.”

“Milk or pollen are extremely beautiful - like the sun or the sky. And why be
afraid of beauty? Recently so many artists, especially German artist, seem to
think it has to be as ugly and as brutal as possible. Beauty is bourgeois?
What a strange idea. I tried to participate in beautiful things…and this is
my great fortune.”
-From Light Seed catalog 1991

There is something to be said about the collaboration of what is seemingly chaotic and interjecting elements of form and symmetry. Such combination done precisely seems to perfectly simulate life. Yet on the other hand, it is able to create something unique and unnatural as well. It is as if the art becomes a mediator- a "Third Way" in the Hegelian dialectical sense.

Is nature chaos? To a certain extent it would seem so. Yet, the pollen collected by Laib is produced for reasons that science can logically explicate upon. However, (as far as I am aware) there is no mathematical pattern or at least a repetitive regularity to the amount of pollen produced, collected by flying insects, let off in the air, etc. Its like the weather-which can be explained but not entirely predicted or calculated.

Enter Laib. Collecting the pollen and adding a certain amount of methodically planned out, very precise (and often primary) color scheme. Sometimes he creates very balanced and aligned piles, or a spreads the pollen out into a recognizable shape like a square albeit with soft edges. It is symmetry but not precise. It is disorder and logic collaborating. The end result is the creation of a pleasing and fragile equilibrium in both the theoretical and the purely aesthetic.

Keep it coming Germany...

FanBolt

2008-03-03T18:55:00.000-08:00

I am writing reviews for Fanbolt.com. It boasts about 80,000 members/readers right now. Not huge by internet standards but definitely on the up.

Check it out...support, etc.

Website: Fanbolt

Most recent review: The Darjeeling Limited

Next up: review of the new Erykah Badu. Check it out if you haven't. Its amazing. "That Hump" is a great single. Madlib and 9th Wonder produce....

Nostalgia and the Death of the Polaroid

2008-02-26T23:58:00.000-08:00

Careful what you reject, you might become your parents.

If you haven’t heard yet, Kodak is discontinuing their Polaroid products by the end of this business quarter. This may seem like somewhat of a shock considering the level at which instant photography exist within our culture. Utilized by Warhol to your friends on Myspace, the Polaroid photo is a major element of the iconography that characterize the mid to late twentieth century. We all have memories connected to an instant photo. Its influence has permeated our society at an incalculable level.

With the sudden disappearance of the much beloved Polaroid photo, the question arises: Is film dead? Or maybe more precisely asked: Is everything that we have grown up with disappearing? The answer is a resounding yes.

People have already been predicting the death of the compact music disc for years. With advent of Ipod and downloadable music, we would be fooling ourselves to think that the CD is here to stay. The same is occurring to books. Sony recently released the E-Book which is equipped with a high pixel density display panel using what it calls "electronic paper". All our favorite novels may soon be read on a device that can fit in our back pocket.

While some embrace the arrival of advanced technology, many indulge in things of the past, take pleasure in their aesthetic appeal and reject the new. We all yearn for something from the past but this act of nostalgia is a reoccurrence with each generation. If you’re one who prides yourself on not having a Myspace or refusing to buy an Ipod, here is a little hint of what you’re becoming: exactly like your parents.

Rejecting the coming digital age may seem an inoffensive action, however such wistfulness for the past is an attitude that can have future implications rooted in bigger issues that are social in nature. And if you are not careful, such an attitude will lead you to be exactly like those you abhor now. Comedian Doug Standhope poignantly explains;

“Baby boomers are going to start to die in droves and it’s a good thing. Their day is over and there is new shit that they won’t accept. Old people look back at the good ole days and it was good because they were young and they act like it was the day. But no it was good because youth is good. That’s gone…your fucked. And now because it’s not the day anymore they got to reject anything that is new like we do with hip-hop if you’re in your 30’s and white. ‘That aint music…we had music back when 38. Special was around.’ What? We should kill ourselves because of the hypocrisy.”

While the context of such a statement is characterized by sarcasm Standhope has a point. At once, even our grandparents were young and hip. Slowly, as they got older they begin to dislike new art, technology and ideas. This probably happened around the same time they started tucking in their shirts and voting republican. Chances are that if you constantly reject the new, then you’ll do the exact same.

The point is that one should take caution in immediately snubbing what is the latest trend, technological innovation or cultural movement. Keeping an open-mind and attempting to understand the new and seemingly foreign is important to not simply prevent a recreation of the paradigm we exist in now (stubborn old conservatives running our country) but to create the necessary environment to progress into something socially better.

In a recent Harpers excerpt taken from his yet-to be released book In Defense of Lost Causes, Slovenian sociologist and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek attacked the modern leftist view that change can only come from existing and working on the fringes of the establishment.

“The lesson here is that the truly subversive thing is not to insist on “infinite” demands we know those in power cannot fulfill. So wonderful that, with your critical demands, you remind us what kind of world we would all like to live in. Unfortunately, we live in the real world where we have to make do with what is possible. The thing to do is, on the contrary, bombard those in power with strategically well-selected, precise, finite demands, which can’t be met with the same excuse.”

It starts with a rejection of many aspects of latest cultural trends and over time develops into a blindness where one cannot see beyond the ideologues and time period of our youth. It’s been said almost way too many times but the “times are-a changin’”. While this mantra may be interpreted by some that a transformation fitting our ideals is on the horizon, it is also a statement of constant renewal and rebirth.

To be truly radical, subversive or create the greatest possibility for change, one must work within the current, established framework. Plus, you’ll have a better chance of being that hip grandparent rather than the one who your grandkids loathe visiting on Sunday afternoons.

By the time you graduate you are already on the out and a new generation full of varying, and possibly different ideas is arriving. How will you react to their demands? Whatever you do, never consider immediate rejection. They deserve to be heard and considered just as much as we do now.

Bye Bye Polaroids

2008-02-14T22:12:00.000-08:00

In case you haven't heard yet, Kodak is discontinuing their polaroid products.

As a major element to our culture over the last 40 years, this seems really unfortunate. Utilized by Warhol to Marc Jacobs ads to your mother to your friends on myspace, this is one instance of nostalgia that I will never feel bad about missing.

Use those last packets of film well kids!

Dahl

2008-02-10T01:48:00.000-08:00

please go here immediately and let Roald tell you an old story his way...

Huckabee

2008-02-09T11:16:00.000-08:00

Taken from the Washington Post today:

"President Bush yesterday urged attendees of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., to unite behind the presumed nominee. Although he did not mention McCain by name, the president said whoever ends up being the Republican nominee will represent conservative values.

Earlier today, Huckabee disputed the assertion that McCain had locked up the GOP nomination and said he won't quit the presidential race.

"I didn't major in math," Huckabee told a cheering crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference meeting, according to the AP. "I majored in miracles."

_____

Just a personal observation:

Say what you will about Huckabee, I can't help but think this guy is adorable. Yeah...yeah...everyone talks about how he is some religious, conservative nut. However in comparison to Bush and/or Romney, this guy is way more likable.

With numerous appearances and participation with Colbert and Conan's shenanigans and as a bass player in a band called, "Capitol Offense"; this guy is like the harmless Christian neighbor who bakes the neighborhood yummy banana bread on Christmas that you can't help but like even if your politics are different.OBVIOUSLY, I don't want him to run our country but it just seems everyone is too ready to take a dualistic approach to this presidential campaign. Huckabee isn't my candidate but you can't help but feel that there is alot less bullshit with this guy than other candidates...including Hillary-who as much as I want to like, is a really unconvincing speaker.

All I am saying is just because he is a conservative Christian doesn't mean he is an evil, horrible person. Maybe just a bit confused and you know...homely and un-hip no matter how hard he tries.

Its bigger than hip-hop

2008-02-06T19:49:00.000-08:00

from a recent point-counterpoint article published in The Rearguard:

“I’m just trying to innovate and stimulate minds.” -Common

There is nothing wrong with hip-hop that are solely products of its culture. All aspects considered “wrong” with hip-hop are products of a society that existed well before an M.C. started making up rhymes over the beats of an old record. So why is it so often singled out?

The media often isolates the sometimes misogynistic or violent imagery contained in hip-hop lyrics as a source of the problems that plague America. These stereotypical portrayals of hip-hop are often given by commentators who aren’t experts on the culture A recent example is sportscaster Jason Whitcock who linked hip-hop as a possible source for Michael Vick’s participation in dog-fighting, calling it a culture that is “destructive to young people.” Such critics are often misleading and full of generalizations who largely ignore positive aspects of hip-hop and fail to take into account the entirety of what hip-hop embodies or its positive aspects.

Essence magazine in 2005 started a project called “Take Back the Music,” aimed at cleaning up the negativity towards gender in rap lyrics. Media outlets often fail to take notice of the socio-political consciousness of acts such as Dead Prez, Talib Kweli, Common and many others. When superstar Kanye West declared that George Bush “hated black people” in the post-Katrina aftermath, his statement was largely disregarded.

The reality is that socially conscious, progressive mediums of art and entertainment don’t sell. The type of hip-hop that gets the most coverage is often that which also sells the most. Hip-hop artists are producing what we are buying and it would be economic suicide to stop creating a product that earns millions of dollars. We are a culture attracted to violent and sexist images. Accusing hip hop of being the single originator of these images is unfair and naively fails to take into consider the violence and sexism in American pop culture.

Music journalist Orlando Lima recently wrote that; “blaming hip-hop for our societal addiction to drugs and violence is like hypothesizing its Lindsey Lohan's fault every time an athlete gets pulled over for drunk driving.”

Or was it hip-hop that made Lohan drive drunk?

By contextualizing the situation within a framework of popular culture in this country to prove that the finger pointing is biased and unjust. Violence and sexism still does exist within its genre but it’s cause goes beyond the music. It’s bigger than hip-hop.

To better understand the problematic aspects of lyrics in hip-hop, they must also be examined within the framework of black American (youth) culture. And as the good Dr. Michael Eric Dyson points out in his book Know What I Mean?, the metaphysical roots of hip-hop culture lie within the ghetto.

“The ghettos functions as an intellectual organizing principle of expression and the logic of the ghetto – or at least the logic of legitimating the ghetto in rap discourse-depends on understanding the complex and contradictory interests of the people who live there.”

Rappers are storytellers that seek to express a true portrayal of urban life from the point of view of an oppressed and marginalized minority, complete with all the emotionality and controversial iconography that is connected to that experience. The stories of ghetto life in America contain guns, drugs, money and violence. It is disturbing and offensive, but it is all a part of the necessary elements to the “mythopoetics” of a realism that hip-hop lyrics find foundation within.

Hip-hop often recounts tales of success; a theme most Americans obsess over. In these stories, an individual’s hustle, desire, and talent often lead beyond the ghetto to a new life filled with “bling” and an endless supply of materialistic wants. This new life embodies the triumph of the individual who was able to succeed, to ascend up the economic ladder. It is the fulfillment of the American dream without any help from America.

Of course these “success story” and this mythology does not represent the entirety of hip-hop or American black culture. However, these aspects are vital and must be understood before undertaking a critical analysis of hip-hop culture and some of its more offensive lyrics.

here is nothing within these lyrics that is anything new to American culture or other genres of music. Hip-hop is only more explicit about it. As Dyson explains,

“…it ain’t hip-hop that’s teaching the broader culture how to dog a woman; it’s the broader culture’s ways and rules that are keyed in by hop-hop lyricists.”

In an attempt to eradicate sexism and violence from our society, hip-hop isn’t the place to start. Guns and violence are expressions of urban life where hip-hop finds its roots. Music videos of “Cristal” champagne and Porsches are images of success by an individual with all the odds against them. Some may take offense and others might be inspired, but before you start pointing the finger, start looking elsewhere first. The source of all it stems from something larger: What you are buying.

return of the 40?

2008-01-29T13:29:00.000-08:00

Pabst Brewing Company has started a new marketing campaign that is attempting to garner appeal of their 40 oz. malt liquor brand Colt .45 towards young, urban youth. The campaign includes graphic novel style advertising and decorative brown paper bags.
Read the full story on Adage.

There is no denying that with the rise of hip-hop in America that many aspects of cultural iconography have been appropriated by middle-class white youth. The 40 oz. has and continues an element of that in some ways. (Some of us may remember the St. Ides commercials aired in the early 90’s featuring prominent hip-hop artists of the time)

However, the 40 oz. has also been considered a product that contributes to perpetuation of keeping urban poor communities down. (lots of alcohol for a cheap price has never led to good results)

Pabst’s attempt at making the 40oz. hip is a bizarre response to the continued appropriation of urban, hip-hop culture. It’s also sort of amusing…I wonder if it still costs a $1.99?

Thoughts?

Awkward Defined

2008-01-23T01:15:00.001-08:00

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

2008-01-13T09:32:00.001-08:00

Somebody once told me that Michel Gondry had no balls. It was in relation to his last film "The Science of Sleep". I was having a discussion trying to determine the reasons why I left the theater pleased but with a feeling of emptiness-like something was missing from the film. Gondry's films are good but I came to realization that his characters only contain a certain amount of depth. Gondry chooses to utilize his kitschy surrealism and fantasy rather than ever explore the complexity of human emotion and memory. It is what Gondry does best, but it can leave the more skeptical viewer (as in my case) with a desire for a more involved exploration of the psyche that is only lightly touched upon in his films.
Gondry’s popular and nearly flawless film "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" was able to through the writing of Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Being John Malkovich) better explore these deeper aspects of ourselves and how we interact with others. However, it was not necessarily the characters of “Eternal Sunshine” that so moved us, but rather the marriage of Gondry's beautifully surreal, visual interpretation of a difficult heartbreak and the role of memory with Kaufman’s sporadic, fragmented emotional script.
It worked well and Jim Carrey pulled out the performance of his life. However, despite these successful combinations, the film still only touched on a level of depth before falling into to somewhat fantastical and imaginary world of Gondry.
I mention Gondry's work to discuss the film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly; a new film by Julian Schnabel (Before Night Falls, Basquiat). Besides being a mostly French film (the director is American), Diving Bell has a very similar feel of a Gondry film due to its utilization of dreamlike scenes as an integral part of the narrative and the characters. However, unlike Gondry, Diving Bell is able to marry its colorful surrealism with a deeply emotional complexity that Gondry’s films have never been able to reach.
Based off the book by former French "Elle' editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, the story tells the personal account of Bauby's experience suffering from “locked-in” syndrome after a stroke at 43. Bauby wrote his story through a series of blinks and a letter chart devised by his medical therapists. The film fluctuates between first-person camera perspective, scenes from his memory and imagination to visually reenact his experience being completely paralyzed except for his left eye. It’s a traumatic real-life tale that is a testament to the ability of an individual’s will to continue to exist in such drastic conditions.
However, the finest aspect of the film is its choice to never dwell on Bauby’s condition. It is the central aspect of the story but celebratory moments of happiness and success never come or become the focus. Rather, the film chooses to center on the incommodious nature of memory and the outcome of all our choices that we are constantly reminded of. The end result is a film that examines all the ephemeral moments of our life that can form the varying characteristics of whom we are.
The film breathes with the beeps of Bauby’s respirator and projects the frustration of a man’s inability to communicate to the exterior world. The linear narration begins to crumble as Bauby’s condition continues. Finally, at the film’s conclusion, a circle has been formed testifying that our lives do not exist on a linear plane but as a constant cycle-destined to be repeated but without exact sameness or total predictability. The nuances will always differ.

Ultimately, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is able to successfully depict the struggle of Bauby's existential dillema in his present state, and his constant reflection and return to a vanished past. The end result is a film that examines all the ephemeral nature of our existence and all moments that can form the varying characteristics of whom we are.
In the book, “The Geography of Bliss”, author Eric Weiner interviewed a man from Bhutan who stated that to really live a life of happiness, one must put aside a few minutes a day to think about death. The attempt at undertaking an understanding of our experiences must first begin with an understanding of our finite existence. This understanding helps to give us a perspective that all things are fleeting, constantly change and someday end.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly contains a similar understanding of life; everything must be weighed down and balanced by its opposite. In conclusion, the film leaves the viewer with a sense of affirmation that the entirety of our emotions and experiences make up exactly what is should: being.
Unlike the other major films of 2007 which examined the degeneration of humanity (No Country for Old Men, There will be Blood); “The Diving Bell” offers hope without ever falling into clichés or overly emotional, heavy-handed sentimentality. It’s refreshing and something needed in lieu of an on-going war, a slowing economy, and other things dragging this country down. It’s not art’s task to implement hope into the observer, but its refreshing when it does it well-even when it’s not intended.
Director of the film and artist Julian Schnabel once said that, “Art is a utilitarian thing, not a decorative thing.” His latest work is just that- a film resonating emotionality that goes beyond the entertainment of mere images flashed upon the screen of the theater and into the marrow and minds of its viewers.

Article

2008-01-10T18:39:00.000-08:00

In conclusion to my previous Stewart/Colbert blog...go to Campus Progress to see my recently published article.

Digg It, Stumble, Delicious IT...Whatever...help the article get some traction PLEASE.

Writers Strike

2008-01-04T20:33:00.000-08:00

As of Monday, The Daily Show and Colbert Report will join Leno and Conan with shows returning without writers. One can't help but feel sentiments of disappointment in Stewart and Colbert who have seemed over the last years to have become a credible news source while maintaining a level of satirical edge that is wholly unique from almost any news program in the U.S.

Before passing judgement we will have to see how they handle the topic of the strike. However, both host have seemingly established a reputation amongst the American public (especially that of college students) as representative voices for those who desire an alternative to the stuffy news anchors of CNN or borderline comedic right-wing slant of FOX. The establishment of such reputations have caused us to expect alot out of them.

Furthermore, with the unlikely emergence of David Letterman as the vanguard supporter of the strike with the recent deal struck between the his World Wide Pants Inc and the WGA; Colbert and Stewart’s actions are looking even all that more disappointing. This has been further emphasized by Letterman's stauch support of the WGA on his most recent episodes since the strike beginning on January 2nd.

In addition, lest we forget his recent addition of a beard (which will unfortunately go away on Monday) which feels like a possible subtle stab at the heads of CBS who no doubt prefer a clean-shaven appearance. (Note: Conan has also grown a beard under what he stated as "solidarity" with the writers on strike. We will see if it stays...)

Of course, Letterman is in a better position that other hosts since he owns the rights to his show. Nevertheless, one can't help but feel that we expect more out of our beloved Stewart and Colbert.

Should we hold them to such standards? Maybe not...but either way we should wait to see what happens Monday.

opportunity

2008-01-02T16:42:00.001-08:00

jan 2

more signs that it will be a good year. not that i believe in signs but in this case...why not?

-i never play solitaire. and when i have...its usually on the computer. since i was tired and a bit hungover i decided yesterday to listen to music, sit outside and play solitaire. first hand, i won. i decided to leave the cards out and not play again.

-got an email from campus progress today asking me to write them a op ed on the writers strike and the return of the daily show/late night shows despite the strike.

keep it up...

fashion and a few things

2007-12-27T23:06:00.000-08:00

So, I am going back to Southern California for New Years. New York didn't really work out. People flaked, its too cold, etc. This trip was suppose to be dedicated to friends and family. NYC wasn't really giving me that suddenly. Anyways, I got some airline credit. So I will probably try again in a couple months. OR finally hit up Chicago. Haven't been there yet...

So this blog for the last week has been pretty light. I am working on a blog detailing the cultural impacts and differences of Eminem and Justin Timberlake. Await with suspense...

Other than that, spending time with the family down in Houston, T.X. Fly out to Cali in a couple days...

One thing I do find interesting every time I spend time away from home, is that I get a fill of television. Being a little hip jerk from Portland I feel like I got the pulse on alot of what is popular in american culture. Television usually lets me know that I am totally out of the loop sometimes.
Anyways, I was flipping through my Mom's Vogue(yes, I love Vogue...fuck you) and discovered an ad that looked strangely familar. Upon closer inspection it was the work of none other than Terry Richardson.
Some might find the cross between high-art/psuedo-porn/pulp photographer Terry Richardson with the commercialism of a Belevedere Vodka advertisement a bit strange....but I thought it was perfect.
Jurgen Teller worked for Marc Jacobs. Why not Richardson for Belevedere Vodka?
Plus, anyone who has been paying attention will know that Richardson has been photographing for the Paris-based fashion/art magazine Purple for sometime now.

A couple days later I am watching television with my sister and voila...a commercial featuring Terry and Vincent Gallo.

it was only a matter of time...

\

Flakes

2007-12-21T16:10:00.000-08:00

hate 'em. Sure we've all done it. But damn when you go and lie about it...ugh.

holiday

2007-12-20T08:25:00.000-08:00

I have been completely lazy on this blog. However, as of yesterday I began my two week holiday. This will consist of a week with the family (who has recently re-located to a northern suburb of Houston, Texas) and a week running around the snowy streets of New York City.

Before arriving in Houston I have pretty much heard nothing but negative things from most people. However, getting the opinions of people who live in Portland on major cities is a bit biased and not necessarily how I judge a city. The opinion of Portlanders in regards to whether or not they like a city probably consists of any combination of these things:

-vegetarian/vegan restaurants
-bike-ability
-public trans
-if it recently appeared on the hipster radar(vice mag, pitchforkmedia, or some other faux-artsy mag that I don't know about and thus proving my rapid decline into the unhip.-HA.)

As I write this list I suddenly realize that either I am completely wrong on how most Portlanders tend to judge a city or I have just been talking to a lot of hypocrites. Los Angeles rocks at two of these aspects and yet someone can practically get a black eye for claiming love for L.A. in Portland.

That being said I come to Houston with neither high nor low expectations. Rather, I come with open arms ready to embrace all the strange, gross and amazingness of this southern Texas town. True, I will be spending most of my time in a northern suburb and probably won't really get a feel for the city but here is how I plan to get in on a bit of the pulse of the lone star state...

-Go to some thrift stores
-drink Lone Star
-eat at Sonic
-listen to the local hip-hop station constantly.
-oh and go to some museums (which surprisingly...Houston has tons of. For instance, Museum of Photography currently has an exhibit dedicated to the Sanchez Brothers. *see below*)

Having arrived on three hours sleep, things so far have been relatively uneventful. However, last night I was awoken by a thunder storm like I have never seen. Lighting about every 2 seconds, thunder about every 4 seconds, hard rain with a strong wind rattling the windows. The strange thing about it that when I went to sleep at 1 in the morning, it wasn't even raining. Then when I awoke this morning, the skies were clear and it is now about 75 degrees outside. Flash storm? Southern weather? Very cool...

"descent"-Carlos & Jason Sanchez

Best Singles? Here is a start...

2007-12-14T11:12:00.000-08:00

This Brooklyn based band is bringing back disco with no shame whatsoever. I am totally fine with this, especially since they are bringing to muppets along as well. Best single of the year? Top 10 for sure...not to mention the video is amazing as well.

Oh and if you didn't catch the Snoop video...here it is again(oh and yes, definitelyalso one of the best singles of the year. Holy shit. Snoop impersonating JT???amazing) :

Snoop Dogg - Sensual Seduction [EXCLU]
Uploaded by PeteRock

the 10-er...musically speaking

2007-12-09T19:26:00.000-08:00

So the Top 10 is pretty cliché and everyone has on and no one cares. And besides everyone is already listening to all these albums anyways right? Sure, there probably isn’t anything on here that you haven’t heard but looking back it will be great to see what the hell was so hot in 2007.

In addition, there are still some records out there I haven’t heard that might blow my lid. (new MIA, Celebration, We are Wolves, White Williams, etc) And really, it is rare for my favorite albums of a specific year are even the albums that get the most play on my stereo. For example this year, I definitely bumped the latest Clipse album and Young Jeezy’s Thug Motivation more than anything else. Nevertheless, this is what I got so far on top…

*Jens Lekman- songs over kortedala

If you are fan of any kind of pop whatsoever, then there is a 99 percent chance you will find this record irresistible. There are parts of this record that sound almost like a Swedish Neil Diamond or dare I say Barry Manilow and yet it is still amazing. It must be his sincerity and awkward lyrics that are clincher. Best live performance of the year.

*Twilight Sad-fourteen autumns and fifteen winters

What? You didn’t download this yet? Well, you better get to it. Four nerdy Scottish guys play earnest rock with a cascading wall of guitar and drums reminiscent of OK Computer at its loudest and loosest. Oh but wait…its just four dudes and one doesn’t even play an instrument. In a year seemingly marked with a slow return to sincerity, this got me the most. Lyrically moving with just the right musical accompaniment where you don’t feel like your being told how to feel but rather just helping you express it. All Music’s review of this album finished by stating, “The density of the Twilight Sad's sound evokes wide open spaces, yet the louder they are, the more intimate they sound -- these kinds of paradoxes make this album a powerful debut.” Well put. This band has the ability to outlast most bands I have encountered over the last couple years. Let’s hope they do it.

*Electrelane-No Shouts, No Calls

Is this last album from them? I hope not. Apparently they have gone on what they call “indefinite hiatus”. It would be a shame but if it were true they would be going out after releasing their most focused and best LP yet. Electrelane has always been a bit of a mish-mash of different styles that never are fully realized to their potential. Here, they are able to perfectly blend it all into a focused and beautiful album that was originally hinted at on their first LP “the lights out”. I think Electrelane is my favorite rock band…if that is what they can even be called.

*Love of Diagrams- mosaic

You got to love the bands that keep it simple sometimes. This Australian trio brings female vocals a la Siouxie Sioux-esque backed by an angular post-punk sound with a touch of surf rock for kicks. I know it sounds like nothing special and admittedly the lyrics feel very much like poetry written on bathroom walls of an art-school. However, these are also part of the reasons why I love it so much. Stripped down, no-nonsense relentless rock that perfectly comes together to create an almost flawless album. These kids aren't doing anything new, but damn if they don’t do what has already been done perfectly.

*The Original Silence-The First Original Silence

Holy shit. I don’t think I have ever wanted to repeatedly listen to a live, improvisational jam so much in my life. (Well…maybe not including some key jazz records.) This is a heavy, moody, eerie and beautiful LP by Thurston Moore, Jim O’Rourke, two members of NY free jazz group The Thing and Terrie Ex from the Ex live in Italy. Mayhem ensues…

*Silver Daggers-New High and Ord

This album is essentially one relentless, apocalyptic noisy no-wave jazz onslaught of a song played eleven different ways. A mean and convincing example that one can be successfully heavy and intense without the use of peddles or by being a metal band. These kids sound like they recorded this in an abandoned warehouse using found instruments and somehow they pulled off one of the most angular and intense albums of the year. Los Angeles has been making me proud lately.

*Talib Kweli- Ear Drum

Okay…there is a lot on this album that I feel like only Talib can get away with. (Holy Holy, I got to get some religion in me like a/like a /holy moley)ß--- Frankly, this is one instance of some corny lyrics that Kweli brings. However, it’s Talib. When he steps up to the mic he is going to be nothing but himself. And that is respectable and makes you like it. Not to mention that there is some great production on this record. I have a soft spot for drug/gangster rap but on EarDrum Kweli seems to often bring the angst and energy of a drug rapper with the mind of an MFA student. I am pretty sure that Kweli is well into his thirties and I think he might have just made the best record of his career. Shake your ass and get educated all in 70 mins or less with EarDrum.

* Prodigy (of Mobb Deep) - Return of the Mack

Did I mention gangsta rap? The solo record of Mobb Deep’s Prodigy is exactly that. However, Prodigy’s laid back delivery and the 70’s soul-drenched blaxplotation influenced production give this record an interesting mood that is both eerie and seductive at the same time. It helps you forget the sometimes not so creative lyrics of Prodigy and allows you to just roll with it for a good 40 mins. However, to give him some credit Prodigy brings back the grime and sweat and hustle of a gangsta that in today’s hip-hop is often overshadowed by gold chains, fast cars and poolside parties. Ain’t nothing glamorous about this record and that is seemingly refreshing.

*Panda Bear- Person Pitch

I have a series of friends that refuse to listen to anything new that is just “re-hashing” something that has already been done a couple of times. While I partially am like this, I do listen to a lot of stuff that would definitely be considered 2^nd or even 3^rd wave knockoffs of past-sound. However, much like this recent album, some bands take an old sound and add or alter it just a bit to create something that is both familiar and entirely new. Sure, he is totally influenced by The Beach Boys and 60’s pysch. That doesn’t mean this sounds anything like that. I can’t help but feel that this album is the direction that I wish Animal Collective had gone-strange, organic, loopy experimental pop pysch. I also must mention that Person Pitch contains probably the most accessible thirteen minute song I have ever heard.

* !!!-myth takes

Oh I bet no on saw this coming. The sad thing about this album is that by the time it came out, !!! had already lost half their fan base with the slow death of dance-punk and their politically disco misstep, “Louden Up Now”. Myth Takes is their fullest and most intelligent record yet. An intense and energetic attack that rarely lets up and at some moments creates the same atmosphere felt on “Remain in Light” or even “Little Creatures” by the Talking Heads. I have a bad feeling this record will quickly (if not already) be forgotten. It would be a shame because its probably the only record(so far) of this entire dance-punk revival that tried to NOT just make white-belt wearing hipsters dance but actually create a lasting, and musically legitimate album that can be appreciated outside the genre. And besides, Nic Offer even shuts the fuck up a bit on this album.

Seriously Seriously Honorable Mentions:

Caribou-Andorra (pop songs influenced by 60’s pysch drowned in reverb and repeated rhythms. Organic, melancholy, lush…great.)

Shocking Pinks- s/t (I am still not entirely sure what this kid is doing on DFA…moody, low-fi post-punk for fans of Josef K, factory records, c-86 stuff.)

Black Moth Super Rainbow-dandelion gum (if Air listened to the Flaming Lips instead of classical music growing up)

King Khan and His Shrines-What is!?(I think this band has more soul and is way more interesting than any other garage-revival band out their. Fun, soulful and even has an ode to Jacques Dutronc!)

Health –s/t (oh los angeles…you make me so happy. Lo-fi and loud, spacious and screamy, angular and intelligent? Shoegazey, post-punk with a love for industrial music and grind? I dunno how to describe this…beautiful at times but also could make you shit your pants. Impressive)

Ponytail- Kamehameha (probably most closely associated with Deerhoof, I can’t help but argue that such comparison doesn’t do this band at all justice. This is surf music for the 21^st century led by a female vocalist who sounds like she is either swallowing the mic or is doing a drunken Mickey Mouse impression. This record is by far the most fun I have heard in awhile.)

Boris with Michio Kurahara- Rainbow (Boris is really good at being heavy in a million different ways. Here they do the laid, back nighttime, after party heavy.)

Justice-cross (This might contain the single of the year...i dunno. Nevertheless, I do have a love for electronic music. I think the first cd I ever bought with my own money was Daft Punk's "homework". I have definitely had a love for it ever since. This is dancy, rocking and moody all in the same. Great stuff...)

Stars of the Lid -and their refinement of the decline (describing good ambient music can be hard. The best I feel is when it creates a solid mood but is never asks for too much attention. This record does that perfectly.)

The Angels of Light- We Are Him (Michael Gira maintains his creepiness filtered through Waits and Cave-esque moods to create his own brand of down and out curmudgeon music. Highlights include Gira yelling, “I am the God of this fucking land!! after a momentary pause in the rhythmic pounding of a piano and drums.)

Radiohead-in rainbows (probably most focused album since The Bends. Turns out pretty good. big surprise I know...

*****************************************************************************
Possible surprises of 2007 that I haven't heard yet that might make it onto this list.

Food for Animals-belly
Clipd Beaks-hoarse loads
These are Powers- terrific seasons
Saturday looks good to me-fill up the room
Daft Punk-alive 2007
gui borotto-chromophobia

we'll see....

a real quick write on writing

2007-11-30T20:32:00.000-08:00

can i say that i really love to write. no...not just fiction but...almost anything. well...mostly anything that causes me to use my brain and my knowledge.

I came home tonight, its a friday, and really needed to start on an essay. People are going out, the text messages are coming in but man...i feel so comfortable and content sitting here, struggling to write this essay as i drink my third cup of tea.

goethe once wrote, "Is one alive when other men are living?"

kundera believes that hidden within this question is the writer's condition. He explains that goethe is convinced that "a single glance of a single human being which fails to fall on lines written by goethe calls into question goethe's very existence."

i love sitting here and writing. but if i am not read, then do i fail to even exist? do i continue this in vain? perhaps...

"...everyone without exception bears a potential writer within him, so that the entire human species has good reason to go down into the streets and shout: "We are all writers!"
For everyone is pained by the thought of disappearing, unheard or unseen, into an indifferent universe and because of that everyone wants, while there is still time, to turn himself into a universe of words.
One morning(and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a writer, the age of universal deafness and incomprehension will have arrived." - milan kundera from the book of laughter and forgetting

back to spewing words out into the indifferent universe filled with a sea of ears lost of hearing...
goethe wishes you were in weimar...

Some Events

2007-11-26T21:10:00.001-08:00

&

Ginger Blaze: http://www.pnca.edu/gingerblaze/

(if your in the neighborhood...you should check out these events.)

Godot

2007-11-21T16:04:00.001-08:00

Am i cheating by throwing up my articles on here? I don't think so. Here is the most recent addition to Curmudgeon Corner. I think this is probably the best one I have written so far. Able to actually get my thoughts down the way I would like in 900 words or less.

enjoy...

The art of waiting for our Godot’s

“Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time? It's abominable! When! When!”- Waiting for Godot

November 3, 2007 was opening night for the outdoor performance of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in the lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. Journalist Cain Burdeau of the Associated Press was in attendance and described the outside setting of the play as surrounded by “ruined houses still untouched since they were flooded by roof-deep water.”
The lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans is one of the poorest sections of New Orleans and was most affected by the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. Today, much of area is still destroyed and has yet to be rebuilt.

This rendition of Beckett’s play, which centers around two men attempting to escape boredom while they wait for the elusive Godot, draws intentional parallels between the characters awaiting his arrival (which never happens) and the residents of a destroyed city awaiting the help of the Red Cross, FEMA Vouchers and other government aid. Marked with elements of existential doubt and moments of insanity, the themes throughout “Godot” additionally connect to the daily condition of life in the Ninth Ward that its residence must experience.
Director of the play and artist Paul Chan expands on the similarity between the play’s theme and the state of the place it is being set in.

“The longing for the new is a reminder of what is worth renewing…“Godot” was my way of re-imagining the empty roads, the debris, and, above all, the bleak silence as more than the expression of mere collapse. There is a terrible symmetry between the reality of New Orleans post-Katrina and the essence of this play, which expresses in stark eloquence the cruel and funny things people do while they wait: for help, for food, for tomorrow.”

The theme of waiting is something that seems to permeate our society on various different levels. Most of these experiences are not that of what Katrina victims have had to endure. However, all of us live our lives in anticipation. We are characterized by a perpetually waiting for something or someone that can be emblematic of our own, personal “Godot”. Despite its different interpretations, Beckett’s play is wholly connected the human experience in society and on a universal level.

If you are religious, you are constantly waiting for a savior, the after-life, or that moment when the space between the divine and one’s earthly existence can be bridged. For others, it can be a life constantly in pursuit of an ambition or that which will make you sense a purpose. Some live their lives as it comes but are not free from societal constructs leaving us in a long grocery line, or stuck on the freeway as time flees by, making us late or simply cheating us from our freedom of how to spend those lost minutes.

As Katrina victims in the Ninth ward know, waiting is tedious and unbearable.
"We waited for Red Cross. We waited for George Bush. We waited for rescue. We waited for housing…" stated 53-year-old Tyrone Graves as reported by to the Associated Press on the night of Godot’s opening.
Yet this can also further emphasize a great outcome or a tragic end. All of mankind must at some moment experience both these polarities.

Waiting was the prisoners of Auschwitz on those last few days before liberation. It is what the third-world child experiences as they await sustenance, the soldier for his target, the elder on their death bed or nine month pregnant mother. It is our sense of anticipation as we wait for our hair turning the color of ash, the orgasm, the alarm clock to ring, the day to be over, dinner, the light to turn green.

And yet all these are more that just solely the act of waiting; they are events that change and define our passing time. Thus the essence of waiting lies in the experience of the moments which we “wait”.

The characters of “Godot”, despite all their longing, are able to discuss and comprehend the nuances of their waiting. What is discovered is a necessary of the “now”. One is only “waiting” if one lets it be that. There is still time to operate until then.

Kierkegaard wrote that “unhappy individuals who hope never have the same pain as those that remember. Hoping individuals always have a more gratifying disappointment”. By constantly committing the recollection of what is to come but continues to not occur disallows us the ability to hope. Yet, to wait and constantly remain in a wishful anticipation and desire is a whole other kind of waiting. It allows us to forget and no longer see our waiting as idle, and ultimately allows us to better act and exist in that condition of waiting.

The residence of the ninth ward assuredly believe that to be able to continue and exist in their devastating condition, they must find a certain balance between all of that which is, and an attitude of continual hope for what may or may not come. It an unfortunate lot to be in. However, to a certain degree it is something that is universally experienced. “Waiting for Godot” and the situation of the ninth ward is a precisely appropriate coupling and a stirring testament towards our human condition. The result is an uncommon example of real life closely interacting with art.

“Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! Let us do something while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed…But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us!” –Waiting for Godot

You're still a honky.

2007-11-09T14:46:00.001-08:00

Here is an article that I wrote for the most recent issue of The Rearguard. It took a long long long time and is part of the reason for my inactivity over the last couple weeks. Also, some serious drama went down around this article. Basically, we are doing an "isms" issue and one of the writers thought it would be a smart idea to write about what she calls "anti-white-guy-ism". boo hoo whitey...read up! Enjoy...

Portland’s Multi-Cultural Mirage: Examining the current state of Racism

“There is always a purpose when someone is talking about history” – Alfred Doblin

About a month ago when The Rearguard started planning this issue on “isms”, there was no article assignment on the subject of racism. As an all-white staff, our initial actions represented a group of white individuals nervous and hesitant to take on such a subject. The reason for our uncertainty is debatable but it did exhibit a clear, inherent predicament that exists in communities in not only Portland but America at large-white Americans are still timid in talking about the issues of race.

International Studies student, Janine Cunningham is from an extremely racially diverse San Francisco area. Moving to Portland to attend PSU, it did not take Cunningham long to recognized the peculiar attitude and approach towards minorities through an experience with friend from the area.

“It as like a novelty to him. When he meets someone black it’s all he wants to talk about all the time. It’s so bizarre to me that it’s so cool.”

Cunningham experience with her friend serves as an interesting contemporary example of attitudes towards race. Such approaches are mostly harmless but it could also contain negative consequences.

Since the achievements of the civil rights movement in the 60’s, racism has taken on new contours and nuances. The “classic” or overt racism of our past is no longer as prevalent in today’s society. Attitudes of racial biases are now much more subversive and often times even unintentional

Recently, issues of race have permeated in Portland on the topic of the city’s decision to rename some local streets in dedication of minority civil rights activists such as the latest renaming of Portland Avenue after Rosa Parks. However, a city council meeting on the subject of renaming Interstate Avenue Cesar Chavez Memorial Way has caused much debate and opposition that caused Mayor Tom Potter to walk out of one of the meetings. Such contention questions all the pride of our progressive thinking and how strongly and firmly Portlanders stand in regards to issues of race? So far the issue has yet to be resolved.

The term “racism” can differ depending on who you are talking to and what or where you are examining. In its most loose definition it can be defined as prejudice or discrimination based on race associated with a belief that racial differences produces an inherent superiority of one, particular race. However, this definition has its errors when talking about the structure of American society. Such definitions ultimately fail to take into consideration certain important constituents such as what is the dominant and controlling group of our society.

Sociologically racism must also include in addition the racial prejudice the institutional and systematic power to dominate, exclude or discriminate against groups of people based on a designation of race according to the Education Research Advocacy Support to Eliminate Racism. Expounding on the definition, ERASE determines that while racial prejudice can result in mistreatment, racism results in a special type of mistreatment: oppression.

Oppression occurs when racism is a part of the dominant culture's national consciousness; it is reinforced through its social institutions; and there is an imbalance of social and economic power within the culture. In America specifically, whites are and continue to be the dominant culture and the key source for oppression against minorities.

However, many would disagree with specifying the experience of racism to only be exclusively felt by minorities-but that regardless of the fact that white people are the dominate and controlling culture, they too can experience racism. This is often considered “reverse racism”.

Community Studies Professor at UC-Santa Cruz David Wellman is one who argues in his book Portraits of White Racism that this is idea is invalid.

"… racism is culturally sanctioned beliefs, which, regardless of intentions involved, defend the advantages whites have because of the subordinated position of racial minorities.”

Wellman alludes that since white Americans have and continue to be the majority of those that run our government, cities and companies, that they have no right to pull the “race card”. Furthermore, 40 years of supposed (but illusionary) racial equality after 200 years in America of minorities experiencing oppression, bigotry and prejudice from whites, is not enough to balance race in this country. Wellman believes that white Americans still remains at an advantage in society.

Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum who the president of Spelman College in Atlanta Georgia, expounds on this idea in her book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

“Racism is a system of advantage based on race. And you have to ask yourself, who is advantaged by this system, and who is disadvantaged? In the U.S., it's the white people who are advantaged. I'm not saying that all white people are actively racist. The question is, are you actively anti-racist? There's no such thing as being passively anti-racist.”

These figures believes that despite direct involvement with any type of racism, a white American cannot remove themselves from their racial historical legacy in this country. In turn, this legacy has given us an unequal and unfair benefit. However, the question remains, should today’s white Americans have to carry the burden of our ancestor’s actions?

Professor at PSU’s Black Studies department Dr. Darrell Milner says yes. However, Milner isn’t so quick to dispel the existence of “reverse-racism”. Rather, he believes that it is an unfortunate but important responsibility that white Americans must accept.

“I think that such a thing as ‘reverse racism’ exists. I wish it wasn’t necessary. However, I believe it is in this day in age.”

Milner went onto explain the importance of recognizing the history of racism in this country and the consequences it has lead to that are still prevalent today. And while such a burden is unfair, he believes it must be recognized and actively engaged. Milner goes on to detail the difficulties that white Americans face is dealing and accepting such a legacy and the burden it contains.

“History has placed this burden on the current generation of individuals. Society should ask the current generation to experience the penalties of their ancestors. Yes, it’s unfair and its more difficult for whites because the never have paid a price before. This causes outrage and mystification. I understand this reaction but it also is representative of the unseen advantage that they still are benefiting from….the reality is though that every other racial groups has experienced the same unfairness. You’re operating on a playing field constructed by earlier racism. ”

In regards to Portland, Milner touches on an ironic and also disheartening aspect of Portland: that while we do pride ourselves on progressive thinking, it seems to come to a complete halt at the subject of active anti-racism. Milner believes that Portland’s progressive reputation is marred with the attitude that talking about something is the same as actually doing something. However, when asked to make a sacrifice, Milner sees a divergent response.

“When people are asked to make a sacrifice a big difference develops between our rhetoric and our behavior. People who pretend to not be racist or colorblind are disillusioned. There are essentially attempting to pretend there is no history of racism. Sure, we don’t have as much of the classic racism of the past and certainly things are better. But as long as you’re silent and innocently accept the benefits of earlier racism then you are being complacent, if not contributing to the problem.”

English Professor Primus St. John holds similar views to Dr. Milner. St. John has been teaching at Portland State since 1973 and moved to the Portland area in 1968 from New York City. From African-American decent, St. John has never really experienced overt racism in his 29 years here other than some housing issues in certain parts of town when he first moved here. However, much like Dr. Milner, Professor St. John doesn’t necessarily consider Portland the most tolerant of cities.

“Ironically, I don’t see Portland that liberal but rather living in an interesting bubble of innocence. The liberalism of New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago seems to be more complex and sophisticated in regards to race and minorities. There is a better understanding in these cities. There is nothing wrong with being a nice town like Portland, but people don’t understand and are kind of nervous about those issues and topics.”

St. John supposes that some of the difficulty with white Americans dealing with minorities and other people from variant cultures in the United States may stem from a foundational American ideology that immigrants must integrate into and become apart of America.

“We tend to insist that people disconnect themselves from their cultural beliefs and history. Either that or we refuse to become involved with what other people are. We want to erase one idea and give them another. Conflict seems to arise when people don’t want to disconnect themselves.”

Professor St. John views call for a certain importance in holding on to such aspects of one’s cultural such as language and emphasize the need and recognition for such tolerance by Americans. Differences in cultural background and identity are apart of what makes America unique and that should be tolerated. However, it also must be recognized that if you are an American, you are also associated with the cultural identity of America as well. For most non-whites, that has been a long history of oppression and discrimination. While for white Americans this has been an experience from an advantageous position.

Many white Americans of today do not want to acknowledge their white privilege. And they would be partially right in contributing their successes from one’s personal qualities and hard work. However while this is not the sole reason for their advantageous position, it must be admitted that they are the product of legacy that has provided them with a certain advantage regardless of a white American’s class standing. Yes, it is true that an individual can probably no longer succeed just because they are white. However, a minority can still fail just because of the color of their skin or cultural background.

In Oregon, race is ultimately an abstraction for many whites. With the percentage of whites at 90.8% in Oregon, whites are more than the majority. With so few minorities in this state it is easy to be against racism when you are not having to competing with the minority for that promotion. However, why are there so few minorities in Oregon? Why don’t you have to compete with them as much for job positions or acceptance into that local university? Once again, it all stems from the legacy that whites have inherited from earlier generations.

The importance of white Americans recognizing the historical legacy and its consequences that they are inextricably bounded to is fundamental in understanding the nuances of contemporary race issues in this country. It is the ultimate first step towards understanding white American’s roles and advantages in society.

However, the most important thing is that white Americans cannot be afraid to openly talk and address such issues. In fact, you probably should regardless of your feelings on current race issues because you are apart of it whether you like it or not. The worst thing you can do is to not openly talk, read or at least address this issue. What will be discovered and learned might change your mind and eventually, society at large.

Take a step beyond your comfortable life as a pseudo-conscious Portlander and engage the multi-cultural community that surrounds you. Why not attempt to better understand their history, their situation, and their experiences? If anything, you owe it to them.

The Racial Report Card of Oregon and PDX

*As of 2006 the state of Oregon is 90.8 percent white while the city of Portland is 77.9% with no specific minority group break the 10% level. In comparison to our west-coast counterparts, Portland remains the whitest with Seattle at second highest at a 70.1% white. Portland is the third whitest city in the United States according to the federal government data of metropolitan statistical areas..

* Oregon is one of only three states that was admitted to the Union whose constitution excluded slavery.

*Oregon took is the only state admitted that actually excluded blacks altogether in our state constitution.

*Oregon refused to ratify the fourteenth amendment which granted black citizenship under equal protection of the law while not ratifying the fifteenth amendment which endorsed black suffrage until 1959! Only 3 other states ratified this amendment after Oregon and those state aren’t in the south.

*Weeks after Pearl Harbor, the Portland City Council created Portland’s first public housing authority which lead to the creation the largest public housing project in the United States; Vanport. Designed as an “instant city” for war workers, the area of which existed on the Columbia River on the North side of town consisted of 5,000 blacks (segregated to a specific part of the community) and was one of only two housing communities in Portland that accepted them. By the end of the war and an increasing decline in war-related jobs, Vanport eventually developed into a haven for the black population and was considered a great concern amongst the Portland population. However, these concerns were quickly answered when the dike separating the Columbia River and Vanport broke and destroyed the entire community.

* With the creation of the memorial coliseum, the development of Interstate 5 and a planned (although still never completed) expansion of Emmanuel Hospital in the late 1960’s a large portion of the Portland black community has been completely relocated under the forces of “urban renewal” over three times in less than 50 years.

* The later part of the 20^th century has seen a rise in the minority population in Portland. However, these years also saw a rise in Aryan white-supremacist groups some of which were (and possible still are) members of the police department. This proved most apparent with the 1985 murder of black security guard and father of five; Lloyd Stevenson. Apparently, in an attempt to subdue the flustered Stevenson’s who was a by-stander during he robbery, a Portland police officer applied a cartoid artery choke-hold on Stevenson’s till he died.

Despite an immediate ban on the choke-hold implemented by the police commissioner, intensity between minorities and police escalated when it was discovered that two officers produced and sold t-shirts bearing the slogan, “Don’t Choke ‘Em, Smoke ‘Em” outside a Police Athletic Club in the precinct parking lot on the day of Stevenson’s funeral. The police officers were discharged but only weeks later exonerated.

* The height of this tension during the 1980’s can be best exemplified by the ruthless beating which later resulted in the death of Ethiopian immigrant, Mulugeta Seraw on Southeast 31^st and Pine by a group of white supremacists known as East Side White Priders.

The Struggle to be Wholly American

2007-10-22T14:05:00.000-07:00

Is it possible to be wholly American? This is a topic that seems to have come up time and again in late night conversations with friends at a bar or over a cup of tea. One of the most fascinating things about America is that no one wholly claims to be "American". We always refer our identity back to some ancestral home. Everything from how well we can drink, to the color of hair, to perhaps an argumentative nature is often attributed to the country/culture of our families supposed origin. Or rather, as far back as most of us can trace. It is rare, that any of us claim to be completely American.
The big joke of course at least in my circle of friends is, "well who would want to be?". I am of course partially guilty of this. I have aspirations of living for lengthy periods of time in my life abroad. I have a strong affinity to most things European. And while I would definitely not categorize myself as being what one would think of as a "typical American", it cannot be denied that no matter how much I would like to contribute myself to my European ancestors, the reality is...I'm just an American. not Scottish-German, not French-English...I am American.

Having unfortunately come to that conclusion, the question arises of what exactly that entails. Strangely, being an American is extremely hard to define or even generalize into a stupid-cliche because of the fact that so many of us still do identify with our cultural heritage that goes beyond the states.
There are obviously other reasons for this. (We are big country and Americans vary vastly depending what part of the states you are in, etc.) Nevertheless, it seems to mainly because of our big, ole "melting pot" mentality that causes it to be so difficult to completely identify or correctly describe what it exactly means to be American. (sounds like some essay question for junior high students to win some money and trip to D.C. or something right?)
Many may immediately interject at my utilization of describing America as having a "melting pot mentality". And they would be correct to say that there definitely has been numerous incidents of intolerance, skepticism and downright violent acts against other cultures in our nation's history. Recent events haven't proven otherwise in lieu of the building of a wall on our Mexican border and a general sentiment from conservatives that Mexicans are stealing our jobs and social welfare. However, an irony exists in all of that which is apparent to most of us and defends my usage of "melting pot mentality"; those people may not want them to be in our country but damned if we are gonna stop eating their food, watching their sports players, listening to their music, reading their translated books, etc etc.
The truth is that in America, we are constantly effected by other cultures. This is becoming a symptom of the entire world with the onslaught of a globalization. However, in America we have the privilege to experience many different cultures on various different levels. We are a nation built off of immigration, its in our backyard. How can we not be constantly affected by other cultures?

Unfortunately, our tendency to co-opt these other cultures and integrate them into our american society can sometimes have negative affects on that specific culture. We seem to have a skill at turning them often times into some sort of bastardized, westernized version of what it was originally. This causes misinterpretations and often lessens it into nothing more but consumerist trends. Essentially, this can often take away from that culture. Our co-opt of that culture can over time (usually from well-intentioned but overly liberal tendencies) can blend the differences between us and the culture. Overtime, this in turn seems develops a negative stigma when our differences are openly identified. ( i.e. describing a white kid who "dresses black" isn't me perpetuating a generalization about black people but accurately identifying that gee whiz...maybe there is a large contingency of black people in this country who have a very distinct fashion sense that is different from the way the average white suburbanite dresses. Who are you to take that away from them? Why is that negative again? How did everyone forget where rock n roll came from? No one seems to freak out when an asshole wearing a beret is described as looking 'french') Basically, there is nothing wrong with identifying differences. In fact, they are good to identify as long as they are respected. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be often realized or thought that white kids sporting dreads and listening to bob marley may be a subversive way of contributing to the transformation of jamaican rastafarian culture from something spiritual and sincere to a trendy american fad.

I hypothesize that much of this may have to do with the problem that exist within the original question of this blog, what does it mean to be American? It seems as though we are constantly in a state of identity crisis and thus are constantly searching for any connection we have to other cultures, countries, etc. While strange to say, it seems that the one defining characteristic of our country is to take other cultures, integrate it and have it become apart of us. Or maybe... like us until we can say they are 'us'? (Foucault and the body? Maybe...have to ask Grant about that one.)

This can also of course be applied to our current war in Iraq carried out under the guise of "bringing democracy and freedom to the Iraqi people". What makes us think that our western ideas of democracy and freedom are the perfect solution for everyone else. Is democracy and freedom the ONLY way to solidly identify ourselves as Americans?
I like to think not. In fact, I know from having the fortunate experience of growing up in a very culturally-mixed area of the country that there are a lot of good/interesting and unique things that are wholly and only american. Its just a bit more convoluted and confusing and not always entirely identifiable.

2- I read an interesting article about the life of Thomas Bernhard in a recent issue of The Believer. (yes, I am bring up Bernhard again). It basically described how Bernhard had a clear distaste for the customs of his country-Austria. However, on the other hand, he refused to ever learn another language because he wanted his novels to be wholly Austrian and unaffected by other cultures. Obviously, this is partially impossible. And yes, it sounds slightly nationalistic. However, anyone who has read Bernhard knows that this isn't the case. He merely wanted to be as in touch with where he came from as possible. This in turn, Bernhard hoped, would be revealed within his writings.
Reading this, once again lead me to the question of how could I write and be wholly, truely American in style. Thinking of American literature, who comes to mind? Hemingway? Funny how all his novels take place in Europe and that he spent most of his time NOT in America. Carl Sandberg poetry? -Staunch Socialist. Faulkner? Perhaps. Even then, Faulkner is such a perfect representation of American literature from a certain, specific area in America. One which I cannot identify with at all. It is almost like I am reading a foreign novel. Nevertheless, it brought up an interesting point of discussion which I feel like can be expanded and stretched in a variety of different ways.
In conclusion, being American to me still kind of is annoying and gross. The eagle and the red, white and blue, and cowboy hats and all that. It makes me want to barf. But then look at what it is to be American through who you are, and who your friends are, and it suddenly becomes a bit easier to swallow. I don't think I realized this until I traveled abroad. It didn't really make me 'home sick' but it made me realize that it isn't all that bad back home.
nevertheless, i still want to live in europe.
i'll catch my baseball games via internet...hahahaha...
(p.s. this post was inspired mostly by some recent posts from a couple of my friends...sorry if i stole)

Festen

2007-10-18T13:25:00.001-07:00

film review (Taken and adjusted from an essay I am writing for my European Comedy and Satire course):

The Celebration is a disturbing film that successfully draws on its dark aspects to create a story around the taboo subject of incest and the comedy within. Through utilizing the simplified filming techniques of Dogme 95 and by candidly embracing its themes, the film creates an unsettling intimate atmosphere to satirically examine and display the dysfunctions of an upper-class family. The outcome is a film that ultimately proves to be successful at becoming darkly comedic through a conscious and well-created balance between style and narrative.
What proves to be the most important element of The Celebration is the interaction of the characters. In a certain sense, the film is about oppressed individuals attempting to overcome their problems. However, it is through the interactions of all the characters involved that proves to be the key element in helping the story take shape and become entirely horrific and yet wholly absurd and comedic.
This effect is heightened by the film's technical aspects. The unsteady camera work makes the viewer feel directly involved within the film and the characters. However, Vinterberg never lets you feel at ease within the group. Rather, he places you intimately at a seat amongst the rest of the guest and makes you feel awkwardly apart of the scene. Through the shaky camera and close up shots at face-level, the viewer is forced to almost be apart of something that they should not be while simultaneously feeling the same discomfort as some of the characters.
This is also emphasized by the lack of soundtrack throughout its entirety. A musical accompaniment in a film is often utilizes as an indicator or to emphasis a specific emotion being played out upon the screen. The Celebration’s lack thereof proves to only naturally heighten such emotional sentiments. Vinterberg allows the low murmur of conversation and the awkward clinking of dinnerware to be the only indication of the looming emotional reactions of the dinner guest. The lack of musical score in such scenes adds additional elements of realism that Vinterberg is quick to utilize in obtaining an amplified sense of shock, anxiety and embarrassment. Such reactions leak out of the screen and seem to infect the viewer, which further heightens the strange comedy of the tragic situation.
At moments, Vinterberg also allows the viewer to be a voyeur rather than closely involved. It is at these scenes that the film sprinkles comedic elements to make the tragic and vulgar subject matter slightly endurable. These brief interludes often act as a comedic relief. When compared to the greater context of the film, they prove to only further reveal the genius of The Celebration’s ability to find humor within that which is entirely tragic. This causes the film to be all that more disquieting and yet entirely brilliant.
Suggested for fans of Lars von Trier and those wishing Todd Solondz films were a little bit more raw.

Get active(tense)

2007-10-09T13:08:00.000-07:00

Second installment of Curmudgeon Corner coming out in a week or two...getting sorta serious and political in this one. And dare I say...hopeful too...

Our Idle Crime

A popular sticker ambiguously stating the date 1/20/2009, implying Bush's last day in office, has been a common sight in Portland for the last several years. I eagerly wait that day along with many of us. However the sticker instigates more than just feelings of hopeful anticipation, but also reveals a much bigger predicament that much damage can still be down from now until that date.
The easiest thing to do in America right now in regards to issues of politics and the state of our civic environment is to point the finger at Bush. And while Bush and co. are the primary individuals for the mess that we and a new cabinet come 2009 will have to face, it is no longer enough to simply sit and discuss it. Does anyone actually believe that getting Bush out of office will suddenly change everything? Continuing to put our faith (and vote) into those opposing him and his policies is proving to do very little. More must be done.
Unfortunately the American people are looking passive and easily controllable. Comparative to our history, the drive of the American people to organize and instigate social and political change is at a low point. The lack of organized protest against the policies of our government is a clear indication of our disillusionment. Yet the absence our dedication is the greatest crime that any anti-war, anti-Bush or anti-conservative American can do right now. Stickers and conversations are not enough. Scrawling “fu*k Cheney” on a bathroom stall in thick, black pen is a mute point.
Is this passiveness the fate of our future? Or can we once again become a country that doesn’t so easily draw their opinion according to party lines but whether or not the social welfare and interest of the greater population is being addressed and met? United we are not, but divided does not need to imply idleness and inactivity.
The issues at hand are not one’s that many of us would disagree over. One would be hard-pressed to find a strong contingent of people in this country who openly supports the justification of torture, the deterioration of privacy or the growing dictatorial inflation executive powers.
The war in Iraq, the failing infrastructure of our nation, our growing national debt, the destruction of our education system, and the increasingly important issue of climate change are all enough to make you mad. But how much of is a priority to you? How much do you really do? What does it take to cause mass strikes and protests in America today?
The answer has yet to be determined. However the likelihood is seemingly bleak. Why? Well, consider your life:
Can you still go to the movies? Can you still play your Nintendo Wii? Can you still check Myspace? Can you still spend an evening in a bar with your opinions and friends? Yes, you can. And as long as a majority of us are still can participate in these activities then major social or political change seems doomed to fail.
In the most recent issue of Harpers, author Garret Keizer wrote an article determining that the greatest depredation Bush’s presidency has caused is the pillaging of hope in the American people. Keizer goes on to call for a general strike by all Americans that would entail a major curtail of consumption, work and activities involving communication such as watching TV or utilizing a cell phone. Despite its passion and logical points of contention against American idleness, the article reads like an unlikely pipe-dream. However, Keizer is quick to attack such disbelief:
“…how readily and with what well-practiced assurance would your find yourself producing the words “It won’t do any good”? Plausible and even courageous in the mouth of a patient who knows he’s going to die, the sentiment fits equally well in the heart of a citizenry that believes it is already dead.”
Over the last seven years America has proven to be almost unwilling to habitually participate in such movements. On Sunday we are protesting, but by Monday we are back at school and our jobs. It is as if we have forgotten how to properly and effectively demonstrate. And that should bother you.
Right now, closing the growing disparity between us and the bureaucrats that run this country is an essential action that must be taken. We must show not only our current administration but those that will come after it as well that the future of our fate will be determined by us.
Can we be assured that a new president will be enough to steer us back into the right direction? The state our current situation should be enough to not allow one to feel safely guaranteed.
Consider: How many soldiers and civilians will die while we wait for the next president, or congressional discussion to arrive? How many prisoners at Abu Ghraib will get tortured? Or as Keizer presented in his article through the eloquent words of the Chilean poet César Vallejo:

“A man shivers with cold, coughs spits
up blood.
Will it ever be fitting to allude to my inner soul?...
A cripple sleeps with one foot on his
shoulder.
Shall I later on talk about Picasso, of
all people?...
Someone is cleaning a rifle in his kitchen,
What’s the worth of talking about the Beyond?”

A bomb explodes in Iraq killing civilians and soldiers?
Shall I play videogames?

a humanist poem.

2007-10-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

The poem below I feel like almost reads my thoughts. It is also how i feel sometimes about academics, philosophy, etc...
However, the real reason for me putting this poem up will make more sense with my next blog; which will be an article I recently wrote.
for now enjoy...

A man walks by with a stick of bread on his shoulder.
Am I going to write, after that, about my double?

Another sits, scratches, extracts a louse from his armpit, kills it.
How dare one speak about psychoanalysis?

Another has entered my chest with a stick in hand.
To talk then about Socrates with the doctor?

A lame man passes by holding a child's hand.
After that am I going to read Andre Breton?

Another trembles from cold, coughs, spits blood.
Will it ever be possible to allude to the profound I?

Another searches in the mud for bones, rinds.
How write, after that, about the infiinte?

A bricklayer falls from a roof, dies and no longer eats lunch.
To innovate, then, the trope, the metaphor?

A merchant cheats a customer out of a gram.
To speak, after that, about the fourth dimension?

A banker falsifies his balance sheet.
With what face to cry in the theater?

An outcast sleeps with his foot on his back.
To speak, after that, to anyone about Picasso?

Someone going to a burial sobbing.
How then become a member of the Academy?

Somone cleans a rifle in his kitchen.
How dare one speak about the beyond?

Someone passes by counting with his fingers.
How speak of the not-i without screaming?

-Cesar Vallejo

Art of decay

2007-09-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

With the onslaught of school starting last week, my blogs may become less frequent and more visual.

Here is some work by Anya Gallacio who employs natural materials to create her installations. Her work usually changes over the course of time. One of her more famous pieces is "Red on Green" (pictured below) A blanket of a 10,000 roses installed at an exhibit are left to rot and decay over the length of the showing. "Because nothing has Changed" (also below) is similar and utilizes apples roped to an up-rooted tree installed in the gallery. Over time the apples rot and fall off..

i dont think a detailed explanation is needed in regards to what this makes me think of, how i feel about, etc...

enjoy:

In order:" Red and Green", "because nothing has changed"(x2), "beat"

Harpers?

2007-09-22T11:48:00.000-07:00

"tirana" jin meyerson

Not to take art cues from Harpers...but on page 21 of a few issues ago a work by Jin Meyerson was displayed and all I have to say is ~!?!@?!@

Really though, whatever you say about Harpers, they are the one of the only major "left"-wing politcal-based publications that is willing to throw art and poetry within the first 25 pages and not confine it to a back page 'A & C' section.

sorry for the grainy photo of the work.

Curmudgeon Corner

2007-09-13T19:48:00.000-07:00

So article writing has once again begun. Our first issue comes out the first day of school. Each staff writer gets a column. This year I have one called "The Curmudgeon Corner". Its basically going to be filled with strange, sometimes humorous, sometimes serious musings on culture and society. To please the editor I have been asked to tie it into the theme of each of our issues. The first issue is "The Manifesto Issue". In addition, I have been asked to keep it under 800 words. Anyways, here is my first "curmudgeon corner" piece. Its pretty out of control and I am not entirely sure if I should be ashamed or proud of it. (like most things in my life) In addition, I might be put on a government watch list and/or go to hell because of this.

O’holy and anointed Unabomber…Bring us Back the Car Chase

Faced with a deteriorating environment, catastrophic climate events, overpopulation and an escalating disparity between first and third world countries, it is difficult to determine one’s actions in these times. As earth’s problems mount, our lives simultaneously have become increasingly technological. While creating more convenience, such technology has also caused our privacy and liberties to begin disappearing. Nevertheless, we continue to become interconnected with the inventions of our new, electronic age with little standing up against such progress.
A wholly different world has begun to take shape and the outcome of all of these 'advances' is still unknown. The world is faced with some new and difficult issues that must be dealt with and the imperative question has arisen; how we will deal with these problems?
According to some the answer has already been stated. We have chosen the machine to save us.
Unless you’re Ted “Unabomber” Kaczynski.
Luddites! Anarcho-primitivists! Skeptics of progress, technology and our modern world! Meet your Christ.
Despite his radical actions, Kaczynski isn’t entirely an incoherent psychopath. What many may not know is that Kaczynski wrote a heated manifesto, with many logical and interesting points that any bike-riding, quasi environmentally-conscious Portlander would probably agree with.
Ted’s Industrial Society and Its Future spends its time rooted in addressing early post-Hegelian questions: What are we losing from nature in our evolution and what is progress?
“Among the abnormal conditions present in modern industrial society are excessive density of population, isolation of man from nature, excessive rapidity of social change and the break-down of natural small-scale communities such as the extended family, the village or the tribe.” states article 47.
According to Ted, advances in technology have caused humans to replace real, important activity and goals with what he refers to as “surrogate activity”.
“…a human being needs goals whose attainment requires effort, and he must have a reasonable rate of success in attaining his goals.” states Kaczynski.
Ted writes that increased technology and our modern world allow and cause us to create goals which require little effort. This “activity” allows us to have goals for the sake of having a goals which result in selfish behavior and perversion of society. Kaczynski directly blames conservatives for this and the supposed irresponsibility of many scientists.
“The conservatives are fools…they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. You can't make drastic changes in technology without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well…such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values...” states article 50.
Is Kaczynski a prophet? Maybe that’s too far. However, parts of his manifesto are more heated and moving that anything since Mao’s red book.
Thomas Pynchon in a 1984 New York Times article titled Is it OK to be a Luddite? wrote on similar subjects concerning advanced technology. Pynchon determines that the speed of technological advances will eventually overcome and force the modern Luddite to view such progress in a positive light.
Similar to Kaczynski, Pynchon deduces that supporters of advancing technology (conservatives to Kaczynski) have control and the only thing we can do is prepare ourselves for the problems of the unchangeable future.
" …the average poor bastards are completely outclassed. We are all supposed to keep tranquil and allow it to go on…it becomes every day less possible to fool any of the people any of the time…” writes Pynchon.
The words of Ted’s manifesto and Pynchon may spur fits of passion and rage but we must try to deduce from them what can reasonably be achieved. The world cannot return to pre-Industrial Revolution times. Yet, there is one thing that we as Americans can do; bring back a good car chase.
It may seem strange but driving fast successfully is the critical act of modern man asserting himself with control and style over the machine. Furthermore, it is the ultimate expression of the modern individual faced with an impending goal that he/she must use with both skill and intelligence to obtain.
In the recent onslaught of our technological revolution the essence of the car chase is disappearing. Our nation’s law enforcement now have the ultimate and most sophisticated tools of surveillance. Thus, the car chase now is something that is easily observe and quickly halted before it ever gets interesting.
With each new car chase, the first steps back towards a level of balance between technology, the freedom of the individual and nature begin to develop.
Ted and Mr. Pynchon may consider the car chase superfluous and a surrogate activity. However, within the context of what can realistically be achieved, the absurdity of the necessity for the car chase is lessened.
Just imagine what America would be without “On the Road” by Kerouac? Or without such films as “Bullitt” or “The Getaway” both starring Steve McQueen?
Like it or not, it’s an important facet of who we are as Americans.

Poetry (because someone asked...)

2007-09-03T19:02:00.000-07:00

I don't write poetry. Well, that is to say, I don't write poetry anymore. Rather, I choose to put all my poetic words into the form of a story now. I don't understand how to write good poetry. Maybe no one does. I feel as if I am missing fundamental tools and therefore have abandoned it all together. Interestingly enough, the other day I discovered the last 4 finished poems I ever wrote. They were written approximately a year and half ago. In continuing last weeks embarrassing entry on worst records I still own, here are the last three poems I ever wrote. They are all without title...get ready to cringe...

she sits awkwardly
on a stool speaking
into a phone with
a language i cant understand.
it jabs at my ears uncomfortably.
her swollen belly is now demanding
attention
but its not quite ready.

outside everything is wet and
people hurry by unaware.
there shopping for sweaters
and shoes.

-----

he tells me she paints and shows
me her work when she is standing
right there.
tells me her typewriter is really
nice, an old smith-corona, she is studying
philosophy and is learning hebrew, been to
europe and
knits him scarves.
"great" i says.
but i got a decent typewriter too
and she wont sleep with him.

--------

i found some old sheets
i used quit a bit
but not anymore.
they saw alot of sand, dirt, sex, semen, tears,
a little blood, hair, fingernails, cat hair,
alcohol, food, and many other things.
they kept me warm good and well.
unlike me however they can be washed clean.
oh heavy memory...oh god...make me a detergent
for the brain.

--------

did it spill out of
her mouth?
get washed down cobblestone
roads and bleed into the
ancient river?
spill spill spill

her thighs are cold.

--------

Alarm Clocks

2007-08-30T10:59:00.000-07:00

I need 1,440 alarm clocks for a performance art piece i would like to do...obviously this will take a while and you probably all want an explanation. All in good time my friends...until then...send me your fucking alarm clocks. And make sure they work! Also, if you have any idea on how I can maybe get funding for this...or maybe get free alarm clocks...that would be swell too.

hearts.

send to:

saxon baird

2936 NE Going

Portland Or 97211

Worst albums I own (on a lighter note...)

2007-08-27T17:19:00.001-07:00

Okay, enough seriousness and reflections on death and life. A conversation began the other day at work about the worst records we ever owned. Surely, I have blocked many out of my memory. However, I decided to come home and find the worst records I STILL own. Even better, I decided to pull out the worst records I still own that i still ENJOY! here is the embarrassing list....

First, most embarrassing records I still own and i have no idea why:

Aztec Camera-"high land, hard rain"

This is one of those records I bought because they existed during a time and place where other bands where good. Whoops. Fans of Bruce Hornsby should check this out...

Commodores- "Natural High"

I must of bought this because"three times a lady" is on it. But seriously, that isn't even a good song. This is their 6th studio album and feels like it. Boring, and lackluster, The Commodores obviously forgot to this record while doing coke but choose to after they had been up all night and had already run out of blow.

Cursive-"the ugly organ"

once again, one good song. Other than that, its just a bunch of whiny songs about how hard it is to be an artist. Fuck you Tim Kasher...stop crying on stage.

Devo- "Oh no! It's Devo"

Oh no is right. I love Devo but no one...and i mean NO ONE listens to them past the third album (maybe even the 2nd). This is like their fifth and its only redeemable quality is the cover. Check it out:

yep thats right...they are all potatoes, and for whatever reason Mark Mothersbaugh has decided to wear fake glasses with fake eyebrows on them.

Truely a misunderstood genius.

Note: check out their video discography...the video from this album is equally absurd, hilarious, amazing??!

John Denver- "poems, prayers and promises"

uh. uuuuuuuuuuh. uh...

Foreigner - "double vision"

this might be able to go under the "embarrassing records I own but still enjoy...". However, i dunno if I do enjoy it or if I just know the entire album by heart because its something I heard growing up. Another amazing album cover...nice jacket asshole...

Styx- "the grand illusion"

see above.

Hot Hot Heat- "knock knock knock" e.p.

something about this album makes me want to believe that in like 20 years it will be cool and kids that are my age now will want to dance to it.

But there is also something that makes me want to puke knowing that I even own it...

Slapstick-discography

some 3rd wave ska band from Chicago that alot of actually good bands came out of . However, it reality, there is no reason for me to own this. Its not enjoyable anymore, the songs are stupid and frankly no one should own any 3rd wave ska anymore no matter who the founding members are and went on to become. (that includes skankin pickle...give me a break and give it up)

Sublime- "40 oz. to freedom"

yeah this is pretty bad. i tried to defend this to myself but i cant even listen to it. i grew up with it and at some point was a 14 year old snotty surfer who thought this was cool. oh well...

the decemberists- "castaways and cutouts"

I actually know why I still own this and it is because of one, really good song that the singer was never able to re-create. Other than that, this album is pretty impossible to listen to all the way through. An easy listening version of Neutral Milk Hotel. In fact they don't even deserve that...how about Phil Collins fronting a bar band from a small harbor city. I know this may offend some of my friends but guys...guys...really...c'mon....no really....they all look like math teachers...and not in that good way.

Aston "Familyman" Barrett- "Cobra Style"

I dont own a lot of reggae or dub. I am more a fan of rocksteady(jamaica's version of soul music). Although, I think there is some good stuff out there. Unfortunately, this is not it. Made up of various tracks of awkward reggae songs recorded in the late 70's and early 80's, its sounds like some of these bands are doing an interpretive Brian Eno songs....so awkward!

Medeski Martin and Wood -"the combustication" and "the dropper"

these are albums that phish fans listen to when they want something "heady". these guys may be amazing musicians...but it just sounds like a jazzy version of yngwie malsteem. (i.e. lots and lots and lots of wanking...) why i own TWO of them...is still a mystery.

The Get-Up Kids- 3 records.

Get up kids? 3 of them!!??! At one point this shit was something I loved. Then I grew up a bit...went back to it...and realized how much they suck and were directly ripping off SO MANY BANDS that are way better. barf. i must still own these because the record stores wont buy them back.
____

Ok now to the really embarrassing stuff:

Most embarrassing records I own and absolutely love (or still somewhat enjoy.)

Eddie Money - "s/t"

Fuck all of you. Eddie Money's first record is so hot. Nothing gets me going like "two tickets to paradise". I have honestly never met someone in my generation that likes Eddie Money. I love him forever though. Nothing can take Eddie from me.

the Eagles-"one of these nights"

Jeff and I are the only people we know who dig The Eagles. Maybe its because we are from California and so are they. I dont care how much they may have ripped off southern rock....I still love them.
I'll take "lyin eyes", "one of these nights" any day.

Bob Seeger- "against the wind"

whatever...so the guy sold one of his songs to chevy. he was probably just thinking about paying his children's college tuition. I like stuff that has no B.S. too it. Just straight up, sweaty shirt, no pyrotechnics rock. That's what Seeger is and i appreciate it and even like it. Have you seen these guys teeth? They are horrible...total rocker...not rockstar.

Alkaline Trio-"s/t"

I can sing every song, word for word on this record. Honestly, it still baffles me that this guy wrote these lyrics when he was in his mid-20's. They sound like they were written by a 13 year old. Maybe thats why I love it still....

Basement Jaxx- "kish kash"

I dare you not to dance to this record!

The Blow "paper television" and Feist " let it die"

I put these together because I have been called a "fag" more than once for listening to these albums. So be it...

Saves the Day- "stay what you are"

yeah, i cant say much to defend myself on this one. Nostalgia definitely plays a factor but I seriously have tried to sell this back and decided not to at the last second more than once. I know all the words too...seriously embarrassing....oh well...

note: i visited a friend in D.C. that I hadn't seen in ten years.(so when we were like 12.) She had a mix in her car made up entirely of music she listen to in High School. The first song on this record was the first song on her mix. Needless to say, we shamelessly rocked out.

gogogo airheart- "exittheUXA"

Probably most people dont know these guys but those of you that do are definitely shaking your heads. I dunno if there is actually anyone in the world who still likes and even listens to this band...but I will always be a fan. I have no excuses...

Cornershop- "when I was born for the 7th time"

Is this embarrassing? Pretty much...but only because they are known as a one-hit wonder with a song that talks about wanting to have a bosom for a pillow. Nevetheless, I still rock this every now and then. Who doesnt want to listen to a cover of "Norwegian Wood" entirely in hindi?

Okay that is pretty much it. I am sure there is other stuff you could come over and see that I have and laugh your ass off about. But this is all you get...

concrete

2007-08-24T15:21:00.000-07:00

An extra blog to make up for my lost week....

I took a walk briefly, today with the intention of taking these photos. All of the sidewalks in Portland are marked and etched with the names and numbers of the streets. They are also marked with the year and the name of the company that laid and formed the sidewalks of our city. All of the sidewalks across Portland from downtown to the more residential areas are like this. The names vary but the years are usually sometime between 1900 to about 1924.

I recently wrote an entry about the strange, fervor and pride I have of being working class. Or at least, I look upon my working class with a sort of respect and am happy with how it has influenced me as a person.
However, a strange thought occurred to me the other day while walking to work. As always, I notice the names and dates of the sidewalks I pass and I realized how lasting the work of these men is. These concrete sidewalks influence how we move and travel throughout our neighborhood and the city. Furthermore, with the exception of the random repair, these sidewalks have held up for over a hundred years. Surely, the men who helped have all passed on. Many, if not all of them, are probably mostly forgotten, nameless individuals who existence is probably no longer even in the memories of the living. However, these men were able to produce something extremely important and lasting that has carried on well beyond their own lives. Blue collar, hard laborers but were still able to contribute to something lasting.

Of course, these concrete sidewalks will probably not always exist. As everything does they will corrode and eventually fall apart and disappear. Nevertheless, as I was walking to my job of making pizzas, I couldn’t help but compare these men to my work. What is lasting about making pizzas? If anything, it’s contributing to obesity, high blood pressure and an eventual heart attack to hundreds of people a day. What am I contributing or helping? To appease hungry individuals? In realty, there is nothing lasting nor all that redeemable about making pizzas.
However, it is not a necessity to live a life dedicated to the production or contribution to something lasting and important. There is something to be said about the individual who comes and passes this life like a shadow. What they did may not help guide cars and pedestrians, house families for generations, educate, etc. However, surely they had friends, maybe a family, brought momentary satisfaction, happiness, pleasure, advice or ease to others. Maybe they lived a completely isolated life but one day pitched a coin to a man in need on their way home. Maybe they were not even what we term as “good people”. Surely, we are complicated beings. Nevertheless, there is something fascinating and worthy of note about a life lived that left very little that will last beyond the next generation. A life like this is acceptable as well. However, after 9 hours of making pizzas, cleaning floors and chopping vegetables, it is sometimes hard to find anything of worth in the work I do.

I can’t help but go back to Mr.Ramsay reflecting upon his work in To the Lighthouse. Father of nine, famed thinker and professor, and still a intense desire to leave the world with so much that is lasting. He reflects…

“The liftmen in the Tube is an eternal necessity.”

It makes him feel ill but he comes to terms with this thought. It is okay, the men are a necessity.

I reflect…

Is the boy in the kitchen making pizza an eternal necessity?

No, he is not. The most tragic thing I can think of is of someone flipping burgers for 9 hours and then on their way home meeting a sudden death. Their last nine hours were spent over a stove. It is a rather pessimistic thought and doesn’t help me get out of bed in the morning. Nevertheless, while the boy is not an eternal necessity, while he is leaving nothing lasting in his work, there are reasons in his life that he must do this right now. To eat, to have coffee with a friend and sit in a park, to travel and see a bit of the world, to provide, etc. It must be done for himself.

All discussions of anarchy, communism and the world developing into a certain utopia where we work for free to provide for everyone are always fun. But I wash them down the drain every morning with the excess juice from the sausage I just cooked in a 600 degree oven.

For now I have to learn to be okay with this. And hell…it is a tired, old saying but doesn’t hurt to think of sometimes…There is always somebody who has it worst.

How can I not be true to myself? How can I not seek out that which I want and is best for my well-being? So much in my life prevents me from doing this. How can I not try and spend my few, daily hours away from work how I want? It would be a crime unto myself to not.

Two poems by carl sandburg that I once wrote across a bedroom wall that I now can’t help but reference as a conclusion:

Under the harvest moon,
when the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the shimmering roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And ask you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

---

Happiness

I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me
what is happiness.

And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thou-
sands of men.

They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I
was trying to fool with them.

And then one Sunday I wandered out along the
Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their
women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

Some of his poetry should be written across the walls of restaurant kitchens, garbage trucks, the handles of hammers and the sidewalks of every city.

where reason succumbs...

2007-08-18T23:26:00.000-07:00

are we breathing? are we breathing? are we wasting our breath? - emily haines

i spent a day going to the river last week. I have had strange incidents with the river that haven't yet convinced me of its splendor. Growing up in southern california near the beach, the river has never been much more to me than what lets out all the sewage into the ocean. therefore a trip to the river is always awkward and foreign to me. I know that it sounds strange to many for me to be almost 24 and not entirely know what to do with a river, but what can i say...i grew up a beach bum.Yet last week's trip to the river was different and lovely for the first time. However, the thoughts that accompanied me while I was there added a strange element to the whole experience as well.

Lately, i have been engaging in a sort of theologicial/life-defining debate with my dad over emails. my father has always found structure and pattern in nature and sees god in this. its the same with the art he enjoys. he often says that he is not interested nor particularly likes most art after the 1950's with the dawning of modernism and post-modernism. the same mostly goes for the literature he reads with a few exceptions of course.

To me, nature has always seemed almost the opposite of how my father views it. To me, nature seems chaotic. Most things in this world seem chaotic to me. Regardless if there happens to exist a god or eternal-life, i still dont find much reason or logic to our existence or this world. I know there are explanations for why these specific trees grow in this region and why this river winds the way it does. I understand that the rocks that grace its side and guide it to its outlet erode and leave particles of rock and sand on its banks... but as I sat there letting the small pepples fall through my fingers, i asked myself if there is a explanation or a reason for the size and shape at which each individual pepple and grain of sand erodes into? I dont believe so. True, it may be that our biological and ontological understanding is limited.(i ventured in using philosophical terminology timidly...please correct me if my usage is awkward or incorrect) And so perhaps there is reason and explanation for what we cannot (currently) explain. yet, this answer/excuse leaves much to be desired. if there are indeed answers and explanations to that which we dont understand that is existing in some other, unattainable, noumenal world; my life as i live and view it will always be disorderly and always, eventually fall into the unexplainable regardless since i will never obtain these unattainable truths.

I suppose this can be a dangerous point to exist on when trying to base one's morality, give reason to one's life, etc....blah blah blah. In an attempt to make this less philosophical and keep in somewhat personal and even prescriptive, i wont venture down that path but rather conclude with me sitting on a rock covering my eyes watching the flies and gnats swarm in the sunlight. I can live without ever fully understanding. However, i have this intense desire to continue and try to understand fully knowing that it is completely unattainable. life is the attempt and the failure.

a friend of mine recently wrote that his interior world was shifting and suddenly he must get to know himself all over again. I couldn't define my own life in better words than these. everything is in transistion and i have become different, altered. i feel as though i must re-examine who i am suddenly. there are decisions to be made and actions to be taken and as much logic and reason and i try to put into it, it simply comes from my emotions and what us working class folk call "the gut". how well do you know yourself? yeah...its always limited... but i know there is a certain extent at which can be understood and its something i need to re-discover.

i tend to reject letting any one philosophy, theology or outlook define and govern my life. rather, i seem to run off a couple between emotionality and reason that is no doubt partially conditioned by the society that i was raised in, etc. (hegel, freud...blah). nevertheless, when you find yourself with altered views and changing thoughts, frustrated and restricted, what do you work off of? how do you make your decisions? its seems reason always succumbs to my emotion and desire. its dangerous and you fail and you sometimes dont understand right away or sometimes ever at all. but its the attempt that i value...the attempt to have, know, become, hold that which its best for my well-being.

selfish? perhaps a little. however, i dont necessarily find this negative thing. and i like to assume that sometimes these actions benefit more than just me.

*

I heard on npr that a scientific discovery has been made. A scientist has been studying why some animals live longer than others. its all about the heartbeats. an animal consumes energy and through its activity, the heart either beats faster or slower. a squirrels heart beats something like 400 times a minute. while a whales heart beats every 3 seconds. in the end he discovered that ALL animals die (assuming that they exist to their fullest potential) after roughly a half a billion heartbeats. every animal from a cat to a elephant.

the only exception is of course humans. which he attributes to hygiene and modern medicine. So we have overcome and defied nature and thus live as long as an elephant opposed to the 20-30 that we should. what a privilege we have. how will you spend all those extra heart beats? how else but in trying to be as truthful with yourself as you can be? how else other than in an attempt that is, has, and always will be destined to fail?

a life spent denying, pushing away and avoiding grief and failure, is a sadder life than embracing and accepting it. So i'll make that leap...watch my beautiful descent. regardless where i land i'll find something there.

maybe you?

half a billion heart beats later it will hardly matter at all anyways. why is that not okay with so many of us?

my friend finds reason and logic in the face of so much that rejects him and denies him. While i dont necessarily believe in the same things as him, its beautiful. Furthermore, while he has never spoken of it to me, i assume that there are many who maybe think that he is cutting himself short by placing his belief in that which he does. yet, he continues on. failure looks him in the eye everyday, it surrounds him (i assume), the mass majority of the population would probably view him as a contradiction, an oxymoron...he doesnt care and continues on.
beautiful.
one cant keep lying to themself just because its easier. i am going mildly crazy over that which i dont understand and my dirty future full of blaring but scary truths.
shall i embrace it or tiptoe along the thin curb...scared to touch the grass on one side while never letting my toes hit the golden, gutter waters of concrete angles on my left?

sometimes sound judgement and good sense is worthless.

*
A crude metaphor through a real-life experience:

the other day the basement of my work flooded. there is one floor drain with a hole that is about an inch and a half wide. I was standing in about 2 inches of water. over half the basement was flooded. I spent over an hour with a push broom pushing all this water in a tiny hole to get rid of the water. i couldnt help but think that the water was like everything we must endure and attempt to understand in the world. while the hole is our brains. there is so much and it is so overwhelming but we cant just leave the water standing. we have to attempt to take it all in. but what is left when all the water is gone? nothing but a damp floor.

*
listen to more otis redding.

________________

image: Mathilde Ter Heijne "tragedy"

blame Ernest...

2007-08-05T18:51:00.000-07:00

Last week I heard an interview on NPR with Annie Dillard. For those of you not familiar, she is the author of “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” and is mainly known for her narrative fiction. I have read one and a half books by her. They are reasonably decent and mostly consist of musings on faith, religion, herself , life and nature interspersed with an activity she finds herself doing. (i.e. walking in a forest, throwing up sandbags during a storm, etc.) I don’t particularly find anything entirely redeemable about her books. They seem to contain similar thoughts that any person would have during their life or everyday actions. These musings don’t offer much in the way of intellect or revelatory thoughts on life other than to stress that one must take the time to really experience it. Maybe that’s the point and that is fine. I just find her to be a lot like what talking to your sort of strange, earthy aunt or grandma would be like. From what I have read, it plays out like a modern-day Walden; only not as insightful.

Ironically enough, this interview on NPR displayed her as just that. It was very enjoyable for the most part but there was something she said that really bothered me. She recently released a work of fiction (only her 2^nd) and apparently she had written around 1200 pages at first. After this, she somehow was able to pair it down to a little over 200. She explained that she did this by closely editing the 1200 pages so that what was left was that which was necessary. No extra descriptions or overly-long paragraphs. She even explained that she cut down sentences in an attempt to cut out that which was not necessary. In the conversation she mentioned Hemingway and how he was a journalist before writing The Torrents of Spring and The Sun Also Rises. She mentioned his tight, easy prose and then Annie Dillard stated that, “When it comes to writing, we have learned everything from Hemingway.”

Now, I don’t necessarily fully disagree with what she is saying. Yes, it is a bit of an outlandish statement that EVERYTHING we have learned from writing since his existence is because of him. Nevertheless, it made me think of modern American literature since Hemingway and the statement begins to make a bit of sense. Who is at the top of popular American fiction? What books are on that list?

A Tom Clancy novel?

How about The Da Vinci Code?

Elmore Leonard?

How about a little less popular. How about those who can be candidates for being in some sort of canon (oops… I said it) in let’s say…hmm…200 years.

Joyce Carol Oates?

Tim O’Brien?

Okay, Okay but how about a little less popular but trying to do something a little bit less main stream.

Chuck Palahniuk?

I could make an arguement for all of the above as being highly influenced by Hemingway.

Yeah but what about Pynchon! He isn't influenced by Hemingway.

Ahh…here we go…now there is somebody who is doing something that isn’t Hemingway like. And yes, although I hate to say it neither is David Foster Wallace. And although I could easily make the argument that he is in fact following a Hemingway-esque style…I guess Dave Eggers isn’t entirely either. Although, I have read nothing but his first novel which I thumb my nose at and isnt that really a work of non-fiction anyways? Note: If you are sitting here wondering why Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy or Toni Morrison and probably a few others (although not too many) have not been mentioned then shoot me, I haven’t read them yet. (getting to it…)

The POINT is that upon hearing Annie Dillard say this, I was at first in total disagreement but then I came to realize that to a certain degree she is actually somewhat right. And to further that realization, it dawned on me that perhaps that is the problem I have with so much American Literature. From what I can tell Hemingway is all about the story. By whichI mean to say, there is a focus on what happens; the events, how the plot plays out. This is opposed to a focus on the internal reactions, the memory or all the minutes and hours in-between these events. In fiction by Hemingway, it is the story that is most important. Sure, there are small, intricate details about those stories and the characters that make him great but 46 years after his death, do we still need to be writing like him? It may be also a symptom of our culture and contemporary society, but I don’t particularly see anything wrong with a story about very little or even a story about nothing. (But you know not in that Seinfeld sense because then we are just turning into a David Sedaris memoir, yuck.) It seems that a story about the insanity of what the mind must endure every waking hour in our highly-technological world or a story about how definitive reality is becoming less and less discernable (perhaps it never has been, I know but roll with me…) is lacking. Not entirely absent but seriously lacking. It is a strange thing to declare and desire but I find lots of American literature to be overflowing with that which is overly focused on the "story", the short tight, easy prose, or written very much in the vein of realism.(just like Papa Ernest.)

Frankly, it’s boring. It’s making life boring.

I was writing the other day and I suddenly became overwhelmed with the possibility that I had just written ten pages of nothing. I expressed my discontent and Amy said, “So what?”

How true. Who cares? I am tired of story-driven fiction and I am tired of most realism. There is no problem with telling about real-life events but when I write, I am attempting depict life in a way that is accurate but wholly interesting and far from realism. This sounds a bit like an oxymoron and yes, maybe that is exactly what it is. I am trying to accurately write about life but I am tried of realism. Surreal-realism? Sure, why not.

Furthermore, there is enough non-fiction, true-life stories out there. Why would we write fictitious ones? What would motivate someone to do this? If it is to write a great “story”, then honestly, I find that laughable. I could care less about writing a “story”; there are enough of great “stories” out there that have actually happened.

I am writing to fill the void, to fill what is missing when these stories are re-told. Thoughts, reflections, the mundane, the misery, the imagination, perception, “stinky” the trashcan (see last blog), all compiled into a huge mess that is my or someone else’s brain and spit back out at you. And do take note, it will come in long sentences, with lots of commas.

Its not that there isn’t anything redeeming about the authors mentioned above (although I would argue that there isn’t with some of them). Nor is it that I am declaring that realism isn’t legitimate or that is doesn’t contain anything compelling. Nor is there necessarily a problem with weeding out the unnecessary in your writing. (sure, Pynchon could probably use an editor) Rather, I am merely making the observation that there is too much of it and that there is very little out there that is today, accurately describing contemporary first world life without falling into either “story”-driven narratives or a focus on that which is absurd and ironic. I currently loathe contemporary examples of both.

In all sounds like a lot of youthful, heated manifesto-like speaking…I know. So what…I working towards something…all of this is helping getting me there.

I blame Hemingway for all of this.

------

in a side note, i am still trying to figure out what to do with this blog. I have noticed that it comes almost weekly. Therefore, I think I am going to to stick to that. I got other things to write and read and i refuse to write a detailed account of what I have been doing. however, i have also come to find that this blog has been working as almost a rough draft for more elaborate essays and articles that i end up writing. its almost like a notepad that i scribble all my ideas out upon and then later go back to, expand, and touch up. unfortunately, you don't get the final draft of it. sorry...i guess...should i be sorry for writing a blog? this is absurd..hopefully it will not always turn out this way.

my last days as a flâneur..

2007-07-30T18:03:00.000-07:00

Is it true? Hardly. However, the last few days I have been paralyzed. Suddenly, all my momentum towards all these things I want to read, do, write, see, came to a halt due to my sudden inability to do anything. I stare at my computer screen but nothing comes out. I am forgetful. I read and fall asleep. What is happening!?
Partially, I think I have suddenly become overwhelmed with everything I have put myself up to doing. I feel as though I am suffocating underneath a stack of books and to-do lists. On the other hand though I have suspected that it might have to do with my social life. While in school or after a lengthy amount of time of reading and studying I feel like one’s speech is often times improved. Big words and clear sentences emit from your mouth. Slang suddenly disappears. However, when one is going out the bar almost every night, screaming at someone about really nothing over loud music and thick smoke(yes still legal in Oregon)…your speech(and thoughts for that matter) become less coherent and clear. I think it makes me uninspired too.
I told my roommate the other day I don’t think I like a majority of my friends in this town. This isn’t true per se…however, I have come to realize that while I do enjoy and like a majority of the people I know here; there are only a few who I actually like keeping regular company with. Unfortunately, it is almost entirely impossible since hanging out with them almost always means hanging out with the entire lot.
Furthermore, I have found myself enjoying staying at home all day and being a curmudgeon. I had three days off in a row last week and the entire time, I read and drank tea with my cats. Being only 23, I highly doubt I could say that my days as a socialite are over. No, I still enjoy shaking my ass, talking loudly at bars or starting a dance floor at shitty house parties way too much. However, I do see myself winding down a bit. Perhaps those 4 vodka tonics can be reduced. Getting to bed early and staying in might be just what I need to get “re-motivated”. Truely, however, I am sure that Summer is the culprit.

And tomorrow August appears.

August is a computer screen half empty, a tired mind, an unfinished novel, an uninspired day of reading, sitting on the window sill, drinking water and being culpable for the malaise, the empty mind, the unproductivity of words, the empty bottles of whiskey and beer amassing and decomposing through salty condensation and advertisement labels peeling at the edges of clear brown glass next to the trashcan of his kitchen. It's waking up late and wet, two hour of rest on the couch in the mid-afternoon after doing absolutely nothing, lukewarm tea cups scattered across tables forming rings and collecting ash decorated by crumbs of crust off of warm, frail sandwiches, cracked skin, hard toes, shortness of breath and stubborn lungs. It's spiders on the wall, hissing of moths and bees hiding in trampled grass and groomed hedges, the acidic smell of rotten fruit and vinegar of trashcans bothering the nostrils.

Oh August! I am overwhelmed with the congested imminence to the fluids of life that it forced upon me once a year during this month. Everything is damp and slamming into the senses.

Across the room in shades of grey Anna Karina smoked a cigarette facing an old man in a Parisian café, “I’d like to live without talking”.

Doesn’t everyone in August?

Truely....I blame summer.

More later I promise…

le grand flâneur....Monsieur Baudelaire

"stinky", the trashcan. and Thomas Bernhard

2007-07-23T19:31:00.002-07:00

My first word was "trash". No joke. When I was young my father owned a janitorial business where he would clean office buildings and banks. I guess I would often accompany him, pretending to help. Supposedly this was the reason for my first word being "trash". As I got a bit older, I continued to wake up early in the morning or even stay up late at night and help my father clean banks. My job was always to get the trash. Eventually, for numerous reasons, my father gave up the career as professional custodian and did other things. Life went on.

Currently; as I go to school, write for a newspaper, write for pleasure, and try to start a zine, I work at a pizza cafe. I work the kitchen and yes...make pizzas all day. I don't really make much money but everyone in Portland works some sort of service-industry job. The big joke is that its a city full of highly educated and intelligent(and overqualified) waiters. Nevertheless, I could work elsewhere and make more money. I use to be a vegan cook at a hip little joint downtown. They offered me a good sum of cash to return. I declined. While no one really makes a lot of money in Portland, there are other jobs I could get and be making more. Lots of them don't include a uniform or a corporation either. However, wherever I could possibly work, I wouldn't be earning a very high sum compared to many other bigger cities in the country.

Upon visiting California, i discovered that a friend of mine works for a big corporation in Orange County that is almost solely responsible for making O.C. the way it is. This corporation is pretty much the devil. Nevertheless, my friend who is currently still attending college, is making almost 70k a year. He told me that if I ever move back he could easily get me a job there. I don't think I will ever do it but it would be a lie to not find it somewhat enticing. Nevertheless, I know I could never do it. His jaw drops open when I tell him how much I make an hour. He is shocked I would even "waste my time" making so little.

My point in all of this is that the collar on my shirt is blue as blue can be. When I was 15 I went to work for Arby's and worked over 35 hours a week. (this is illegal by the way but that's another story) My entire two years living in Santa Barbara and going to school, I worked at least two jobs (at one point I worked 4!). At age 23, I have had already over 25 different jobs. While I have in the last year or two started to gear my life so that more attention is focused on school and less work, I have never really stopped working since I was 15. And while working blows almost always, for me its a necessity. I have never been supported by my parents completely nor have I ever been able to crack the code that leads to free money from the government for students. (any suggestions?) See, while I have issues with capitalism, america, and the protestant work ethic which i know is so finely ingrained in me, i also sort of feel a sense of pride(?) in all this work. It's shaped who I am and how I deal with things. Its allowed me to meet junkies, immigrants and others who exist on the fringes of society. In a lot of ways its shaped my politics and my opinions. Regardless of how much I would like to not admit it, the amount of time I have spent doing crappy, shitty, dirty jobs is very much an important part of who I am.

So one day, I found myself sitting in a cafe on campus. I was in a class that quarter that was focusing on Greek Classicism and its influence on German Thought. I was reading a play by Goethe when I hear a voice say, "mind if we sit here?". I pull down my book and there are 4 guys, all disheveled philosophy or english majors, some are in this class with me. I shrug and they sit. A second later they strike up a conversation about Nietzsche. Then Hegel and that leads somehow to Foucault. And they are going on and on and on and on about good ole bald Michel. And then...they look at me and notice i haven't been saying much. And ask me about what i think about whatever the hell they have been talking about for the last 10 minutes under the impression that I had been listening. However, the truth is I had stopped listening at the beginning. And I had started thinking about how none of these guys had probably ever cleaned a theater before, mopped kitchens, cleaned shit off of walls, done inventory or had to deal with corporate bosses who try to get you pumped for work with fuckin cheers like the ones heard at high school football game just so the store could make "quota". In fact, there is a good chance that none of these guys, as nice and intelligent as they are, have ever worked a day in there life. As big of a generalization as it maybe, i see these guys all over school and its always some fucking philosopher. There lives do not exist outside of theories. They are not the only ones. There are the ultra-hipsters who seem to be able to hang out at either a cafe or a bar everyday, all day. Or the pseudo-hippies who dance around with paint on their face and funky bikes all day and night. These people, some I hate and some i am friends with, are fundamentally different and honestly; are kind of out of it. And as much as I can kick it , talk about Foucault or ride around on my single with them, there is always this gap that seemingly can never be fully bridged.

Sure, many have it worse than me. And this isnt a "woe is me" plee nor am I saying that I am better than them. However, it has always seemed to be that looking at life, from the position I am in, that alot of those theories either make a whole hell of lot more sense, or just seem utterly bourgeoisie and completely out of touch with the dirty, concrete, blue-collar world I live in.

I was having a conversation one time with some friends of mine and the significant other of one my buddies interrupted our conversation with the intent of ending it. We were talking about pornography, what are the boundaries which porn is defined, and the possibility of healthy elements of pornography. The conversation was actually quit amusing. Nevertheless, she piped up and said,

"i am not really concerned with such subjects. I am more interested and focus my time on more important issues like the existence of god."

(btw, she was a philosophy major...)

This comment is a perfect example of what i am trying to express; that there is a fundamental difference is the way you see the world and live your life coming from my side. And its so hard to deal, talk, discuss anything with people on the other end.

I must digress, that I am not trying to come off like if you have never mopped a floor then you're an asshole. I am merely saying that things are different, its frustrating and in my experience in talking about philosophical theories I always try to bring it back to my blue collar life. Man's struggle to find meaning and understanding to his finite existence can not be found or wholly understood in a classroom or sitting on a couch drinking bottle of wine while eating brie. Man's struggle is trying to find meaning and understanding to his existence as he mops up vomit in a bathroom.

That being said, there is trashcan outside of my work that we have christened "Stinky". He exist on one of the most major shopping streets in Southeast Portland. Needless to say, on the weekend, Stinky tends to overflow. It is our job to take him out. Since I usually open on Saturdays and Sundays, I am left with the task now and again to take out Stinky before I leave. This usually consists of picking up the numerous drink cups and wrinkled up tissues overflowing out of Stinky as old, cold coffee or some other substance spills all over your shoes or runs down your arm. Remember also that this all takes place on a busy Saturday, as mothers, fathers, cute girls and boys walk by consistently. So there I am, taking Stinky out with my bare hands, there is a dirty diaper on top and its sunny. Flies are swarming around and a hole has ripped in the trashbag. So i am easily putting it all into another bag. And for whatever reason, this job doesnt bother me nor make me sick. Rather, it's sort of humbling and at the same time fills me with this pride as stupid as it may be. People are making faces, avoiding me within a 5 foot radius. Cars are driving by, little kids are sticking there tongues out. But...i dont care...somebody has to do it. Somebody needs to allow enough space for you to properly dispose of your 32 oz frappucino cup. That person is me.

I am currently reading "To the lighthouse" and there is a point where Mr. Ramsey is contemplating something philosophical when he thinks of the average layman and there is a line where he realizes that, " the liftmen in the Tube is an eternal necessity". It kind of makes Mr. Ramsey sick at first because he is ambitious and want to make it someday to R but he is stuck at Q. Nevertheless, within the page he comes to terms with this idea. And is fine with what he is and has done. i like that. And while I dont want to be just the liftman in the Tube..I am alright being him for awhile. So remember the liftman while holed up reading books of philosophical theory. Its not that I am not interested in such theoretical subjects, ideas and philosophies...i've dabbled and continue to dabble in alot of it...i find it interesting and helpful on essays and in conversation and sometimes it is even inspiring. Sometimes though, its hard to know how to utilize and understand such theories while cleaning up an un-taped dirty diaper that falls out of Stinky one Saturday... experience that and then maybe then I will pay attention and talk about Foucault with you...

+such trifle things i talk of. I should be wrapped up in more important subjects like the existence of god....+

And now a perfect finish: excerpts from an interview with the late writer Thomas Bernhard(you will see the why this fits nicely):

Does the fate of your books interest you?

No, not really.What about translations for example?I'm hardly interested in my own fate, and certainly not in that of my books.

Your characters and you yourself often say they don't care about anything, which sounds like total entropy, universal indifference of everyone towards everything.

Not at all, you want to do something good, you take pleasure in what you do, like a pianist, he has to start somewhere too, he tries three notes, then he masters twenty, and eventually he knows them all, and then he spends the rest of his life perfecting them. And that's his great pleasure, that's what he lives for. And what some do with notes, I do with words. Simple as that. I'm not really interested in anything else. Because getting to know the world happens anyway, by living in it, as soon as you walk out the door you're confronted with the world directly. With the whole world. With up and down, back and front, ugliness and beauty, perfectly normal. There's no need to want this. It happens of its own accord. And if you never leave the house, the process is the same.

There is nothing but striving for perfection. You want to get better and better...

There is no need to strive for anything in the world, because you get pushed towards it in any case. Striving has always been nonsense. The German word "Streber" (striver – meaning swot or brown-noser) means something awful. And striving is just as awful. The world has a pull that drags you whether you like it or not, there's no need to strive. When you strive, you become a "Streber". You know what that means. It's hard to translate into another region.Well, I know what it is.You know what it means, but I don't think people in France know what a "Streber" is. I don't think they have them.

But this quest for perfection does play a role in your books.

That's the attraction of any art. That's all art is, getting better and better at playing your chosen instrument. That's the pleasure of it, and no one can take that pleasure away from you or talk you out of it. If someone is a great pianist then you can clear out the room where he's sitting with the piano, fill it with dust, and then start throwing buckets of water at him, but he'll stay put and keep on playing. Even if the house falls down around him, he'll carry on playing. And with writing it's the same thing.

So it has something to do with failure then?

What has to do with failure?The quest for perfection.Everything fails in the end, everything ends in the graveyard. There's nothing you can do about it. Death claims them all and that's the end of it. Most people give in to death at 17 or 18. The young people of today are running into the arms of death at age 12, and they're dead at 14. Then there are solitary fighters who struggle on until 80 or 90, then they die too, but at least they had a longer life. And because life is pleasant and fun, their fun lasts longer. Those who die early have less fun, and you can feel sorry for them. Because they haven't really got to know life, because life also means a long life, with all of its awfulness.

What kind of intellectual aims do you...

These are all questions that can't be answered because no one asks themselves that sort of thing. People don't have aims. Young people, up to 23, they still fall for that. A person who has lived five decades has no aims, because there's no goal.

You're always presented as a kind of loner in the mountains, the man from the farm...What can you do. You get a name, you're called "Thomas Bernhard", and it stays that way for the rest of your life. And if at some point you go for a walk in the woods, and someone takes a photo of you, then for the next eighty years you're always walking in the woods. There's nothing you can do about it....and suddenly here you are in an urban context like this Viennese coffeehouse.

Urbanity is a quality you have to possess from within. It has nothing to do with the exterior. No. Nothing but stupid notions. But humanity has only ever existed in stupid notions, there's no helping it. There's no cure for stupidity. That's a fact.

Many of your readers, including so-called highbrow critics, have repeatedly subjected your books to negative readings.

I really couldn't give a damn how people read my work...

When people ring you up and say they'd commit suicide with you?

People hardly ever ring up anymore, thank God.

But would you go the other way and call yourself a humorous writer?

What's all this supposed to mean? People are everything. Each individual is more or less everything. Sometimes he laughs and sometimes he doesn't. People say it's all tragic, which is stupid too, because I...

Alongside your writing, does your work also involve reflecting on writing itself, as in the case of Doderer or Thomas Mann?

No, that's not necessary. If you're a master of your trade then you have no need for reflection. When you go out onto the street, everything works for you, you don't need to do anything, you just have to keep your eyes and ears open and walk. You don't need to think anymore, not if you're independent or if you make yourself independent. If you're uptight and stupid or if you're striving for something, then nothing will ever come of it. If you live in life, then you've no need to make any special effort, it all comes to you of its own accord, and it will leave its mark on what you do. It's not something you can learn. You can learn to sing, if you have a good voice. That's the one condition. Someone who's naturally hoarse will hardly become an opera singer. It's the same everywhere. You can't play piano without a piano. Or if all you have is a violin and you want to play piano on it, that won't work either. And if you don't want to play violin, then you'll just have to play nothing at all.

But when you describe yourself as a destroyer of stories, then in a certain way that is a theoretical statement.

I said that once did I, well, people say a lot of things in fifty years of life. The amount of stupid things people say over the decades, myself included. If people were always held to the things they say. Of course, if a reporter is sitting in a restaurant somewhere and he hears you say the beef's no good, then he'll always claim you're someone who doesn't like beef, for the rest of your life. Meanwhile, maybe you ate nothing but beef from then on.

A publisher once...

What is that; a publisher? I can put the question to you: What is a publisher (Verleger)? A bedside rug (Bettvorleger), there's no doubt what that is. But a publisher, without the bed, that's harder to answer. Someone who misplaces (verlegen) things, a muddled person, who misplaces things and can't find them anymore. That's the definition of a publisher, someone who misplaces things. A publisher, he misplaces things and manuscripts which he accepts and then he can't find them anymore. Either because he no longer likes them or because he's muddled, either way they're gone. Misplaced. For all eternity. All the publishers I know are like that. None of them is so great as not to be the kind who misplaces things. Who publishes something and then it's either ruined or impossible to find.

Does breathing play a role in your texts, in the sense of breathing rhythm?

I happen to be a musical person, and writing prose always has to do with musicality.

like with a singer...

Well, breathing isn't easy. Some people breathe from the stomach, some from the lungs. Singers breathe only with their stomachs because otherwise they wouldn't be able to sing. You just have to transfer breathing from the stomach to the brain. It's the same process. You have many little lungs in there, probably a few million. For the time being. Until they collapse. Because bubbles burst, and lungs collapse. There are those who still have lungs at 90. And there are those who have none left by the time they're 12, who just stand around like idiots. Most people are like that, 98 percent, maybe even one percent more. Every time you speak to someone, you're talking to an idiot, but charming. And because you're not a spoilsport, you carry on talking to people, going out for meals with them, being kind and nice. And basically they're stupid, because they don't make an effort. What you don't use wastes away and dies off. Since people use just their mouths but not their brains, they get very well-developed palates and jaws, but there's nothing left in their brains. That's the way it usually is.

You started out writing poetry.

Oh please!

What does that mean to you today?

Nothing whatsoever, I don't think about it at all. You don't think back over every step you've ever taken, do you? You'd have to set billions, hundreds of billions of thoughts in motion. Like with walking and running. You can't be constantly retracing where you've been in your mind, or you'll never get anywhere interesting.

You deliberately keep your distance from other living writers.

No, not deliberately at all. It comes naturally. Where there's no interest, there can be no inclination.

Sometimes you hurl abuse at them too, like Canetti or Handke for example.

I don't hurl abuse at anyone at all. That's nonsense. Almost all writers are opportunists. Either they affiliate themselves with the right or with the left, joining ranks here or there, and so on, and that's how they make a living. And that's unpleasant, why shouldn't that be said. One works with his illness and his death and wins prizes, and the other runs round in the name of peace and is basically a nasty stupid fellow, so what's the big deal?

From a non-Austrian perspective, this comes as a surprise-in France, you are often named in the same breath as Handke...

Well, that breath will change. A new breath with come. But habits like that last for decades. They're impossible to eradicate. If you open a newspaper today, almost all you read about is Thomas Mann. He's been dead thirty years now, and again and again, endlessly, it's unbearable. Even though he was a petty-bourgeois writer, ghastly, uninspired, who only wrote for a petty-bourgeois readership. That could only interest the petty-bourgeois, the kind of milieu he describes, it's uninspired and stupid, some fiddle-playing professor who travels somewhere, or a family in Lübeck, how lovely, but it's nothing more than someone like Wilhelm Raabe. What rubbish Thomas Mann churned out about political matters, really. He was totally uptight and a typical German petty-bourgeois. With a greedy wife.

For me, that's the typical German writer combination. Always a woman in the background, be it Mann or Zuckmayer, always making sure these characters get to sit next to the head of state, at every idiotic opening of a sculpture exhibition or a bridge. Is that where writers belong? These are the people who always make deals with the state and those in power, who end up sitting at their elbows. The typical German-language writer. If long hair is in fashion, then he has long hair, if it's short hair, then his is short too. If the left is in government, he runs to the left, if it's the right, he runs that way, always the same. They've never had any character. Only those who died young, mostly. If they died at 18 or 24, well, at that age it's not so hard to maintain some character, that only gets hard later. You get weak. Under 25, when no one needs more than an old pair of trousers, when you go barefoot and content yourself with a gulp of wine and some water, it's not so difficult to have character. But afterwards. Then they all had none. At 40 they were all absorbed into political parties, totally paralysed. The coffee they drink in the morning is paid for by the state. And the bed they sleep in, and the holidays they go on, all paid for by the state. Nothing of their own any more.

Your style is so distinctive that it has prompted numerous pastiches and parodies...

If they can earn money that way and pay for a summer holiday, three days at a decent inn, unfortunately they mostly only go to places with Michelin stars, where they have to pay 2,000 Schillings for a meal, I wouldn't begrudge anyone that if they enjoy themselves.

But how does something new like this come into being in the old material of language? Are there traditions that one refers to, even if that means going against them?

There are always traditions, conscious and unconscious. From reading and being alive since childhood, all that comes of its own accord. And because you're constantly throwing out what you don't like or what's bad from the beginning, you're left with what you want. Whether it's stupid or not is another question. Whether or not it's the right path, no one knows, every individual has their own path, and for that person every path is the right one. And now there are four and a half billion people, I think, and four and a half billion right paths. The misfortune of human beings is that they don't want to take the path, their own, they always want to take a different one. Striving and struggling towards something other than what they themselves are. Everyone is a great personality, whether they paint or sweep streets or write or... people always want something different. That's the misfortune of the world.

You sometimes give the impression of biting the hand that feeds, for example when you describe Heidegger as a "weak-minded pre-Alpine thinker" and...

He didn't feed me. Why should he have fed me? But he's an impossible character, he has neither rhythm nor anything else. He lived off a few writers, he cannibalised them, to the last, what would he have been without them?

I was thinking of the word "Lichtung" (clearing).

That word existed before Heidegger, 300 and 500 years before. He was nothing, a philistine, gross, nothing new. He's a perfect example of someone who unscrupulously eats all the fruit other people have jarred and who gorges himself, thank God, which makes him sick and he bursts. Gets stomach ache.

When critics accuse you of proto-fascist tendencies...

Fascist, I don't like that, the word, but I've been called everything. The things I've been called. Communist or fascist, anarchist, everything.

What, in your view, is a conversation?

I don't usually have them. To me people who want to have a conversation are suspect, because that raises particular expectations they're unable to satisfy. Simple people are very good to talk with. When talking is supposed to become conversation, that's when things get gruesome! That fine expression "everything under the sun." It all gets thrown in together and then one person stirs this way, the other stirs that, and an unbearable stinking turd comes out the bottom. No matter who it is. There are collected conversations, hundreds of them, books full. Entire publishing houses live off them. Like something coming out of an anus, and then it gets squashed in between book covers. This wasn't a conversation either.

Yes, of course not.

It's always: "you've been listening to a conversation" and so on, and at that moment, everyone who heard it has already forgotten it. Because it was nothing. There's the famous "Nocturnes" series. They sit there for an hour and a half, there's a philosopher and a pseudo-philosopher, or mostly both pseudo-philosophers, one wearing a polo neck sweater and the other a tie, doesn't really matter because everything is contrived and stupid, and they just talk constantly and talk and talk. If you look in the Süddeutsche Zeitung at the amount of interviews they've published over the past three decades, no one gives a damn about a single word of all these conversations and books. It's all just for the workers at the paper factory, so they have something to do, which might make some sense. Because they have a terrible life anyway and lose all their limbs, at 50 most of them have lost a leg or five fingers. Paper machines are cruel. At least it has some meaning, the family can get something extra. I live next to two paper factories, so I know how it is. In ten years you'll see how stupid it all was. But it all helps you get ahead, gives you something to live from, and life involves doing a load of nonsense. Life consists of one long succession of nonsense, a little bit of sense, but mostly nonsense. No matter who. Be it great, supposedly great people, all the usual names, me included, Cioran, aphorists. All pathetic and leads to nothing but the end. You can sit at home, put your books on the shelf, and when you look at them, you think: "Sad". But you still keep churning it out, like you get into the habit of drinking a cup of coffee in the morning, or tea. Tea is smarter, because you work less. The same applies to writing. You become addicted. Writing is a drug, too.

Has illness been a driving force behind your writing?

Yes, perhaps, possibly. Since it's been there with me throughout my life. And as you can see, some people are always critically ill but they go on living for ever. For all these people it's always been beneficial. An illness is always a form of capital. Every illness you survive is a great story, because there's no way anyone can steal your thunder with something similar. Only you shouldn't count on it, because one time it'll go wrong. Although it doesn't matter, because you're no longer around to notice. It's money in the bank.

You say you like talking to simple people.

It's always a pleasure.

And do you find such simple people in Vienna?

I've got simple people at home at the moment. That's most agreeable, even if they do make a mess. Their minds haven't been ruined by education.

But you have to pay them to come to your house.

I don't need to pay my simple people. I have hundreds of them where I live in the country and wherever I travel. They're not always easy to stomach either. You need both. It's important to master as much as possible. You have to be here and be there. If you only frequent one section of society it's stupid. You end up stunted. You need to take in and cast off as much as possible all the time. Most people make the mistake of remaining within a single caste and class, only mixing with butchers because they're butchers, or only with bricklayers because they're bricklayers, or with labourers because they're labourers, or counts because they're counts, or kings...

Or writers because they're writers?

Well, I'm my own, so I've no need anyway. No one can teach me or tell me anything, so I've no need to go to anyone. Because people in general are false and twisted, I go elsewhere. I don't need any writer. Sitting down with someone where there's nothing but envy and resentment from the outset, I've no interest in that, so I don't deal with writers.

Thank you...

What? Everyone lives until they die. And a great deal happens in between. But for most people it's of no interest. Mostly only for the person living it. The truth is that each person, even if he is interested in others, is interested only in himself. It's all about indirect benefits. It's the same everywhere, whatever it is, children's villages, the Sahel, hunger in Nicaragua. Mister Ortega puts on just as much of a self-serving theatre act as Mister Reagan, whichever way you look at it. People only do things they think will help them get ahead and keep going. Even if you become a nun or a monk, that's all you have in mind, you have no choice. In fact, if you want to be a monk and serve, that will make you especially ghastly and misanthropic. That's the way it is, I believe. With faith. As it were.

(not that i agree with everything he is saying but still...so rad...and seemingly fitting)

desiderata

2007-07-17T21:28:00.001-07:00

6 days of work led to a new, spur of the moment haircut and alot of drinking. summer is settling in and all the restlessness that comes with the endless sun. the small publication i am planning on putting out in december has, i think, officially begun its transformation from an idea to actuality. the name will be "desiderata". there should be a benefit show to fund it in september. i already got some people who are going to send submissions and a few helpers besides just me and madeline. today is the first day that i have been able to begin writing out a mission statement and figuring out the different sections of it, etc. in case you are unaware, i have been wanting to produce a small publication magazine for some time now. it basically started from a dissatisfaction with most "zines" out there and the specificity of them. opposed to focusing on one subject or medium of writing, i want to include an all-encompassing grab-bag of various subjects. imagine a magazine where you can read an essay, a piece of fiction, an article about science and learn something about the environment AND look at art. and imagine if it didnt focus on the left or the right...but chose to try and display both. mind you, i am well aware this isnt the most original idea and there are other publications out there like this. however, a majority of them are major publications. going to the journalism conference in d.c. with the nation was really inspiring and i think the best thing said the entire conference was; "hey...if there is something that you feel is lacking out there...then fucking do it yourself." simple words...but to hear them come from a girl who is only 27 and the assistant cultural editor of the nation and then to later find out that she got this job from pretty much just doing really good-looking independent publications since college...made kind of a difference to me. (check out her small pub: ://www.thecriermag.com) so why not? the more i do and the more that happens... i will keep updated on here...other than that...lots of work...reading...trying to write at least 1000 words a day (does this blog count?)...i actually...for the first time...um...ever...have gotten an idea for a whole entire novel. maybe a novella...maybe a long short story...who knows. we will see...

heres something silly:

3 albums to maintain the gloom of winter through those boring hot summer days:

the cure "pornography":

so you probably like the cure. and yeah...i know....you got disintegration and you've wept all over the goddamn cd...but dude...pop in "pornography" (the 3rd lp by The Cure) and let the raw, young, and poetic mr. smith, who didnt care about making a dime because he was probably just going to end up a backup guitar player for siouxie sioux anyways at this point, remind you the reason why you like to suffer, why life should never be full of happiness, why you sometimes wish you had the idiotic passion of your life at 16...let it bother you that you dont write poetry anymore...let it make you ask yourself why you've forgotten your emotions in place of intellectualism...listen to it.

bauhaus "in the flat field":

much rawer and darker than "pornography" and even sort of dance-y. not to mention their t-rex cover of "telegram sam" is better than the original. forget peter murphy solo, love and rockets and all the rest of the crap they put out after this. "in the flat field" is a band that studied joy division and projected what they would of become with better equipment and more drugs. fucking scary shit...

magnetic fields "get lost" and "house of tomorrow" e.p.

these two releases get overshadowed by the massive "69 love songs" and even "i". however, they are essentially what "69 love songs" would of been if it had been paired down to a single lp. (those of you who are familiar i am sure could pick out 20 songs from the entire collection and would be fine with leaving out alot of the rest) anyways, stephen merritt brings his melancholy lyrics and monotone voice and places it over repetitive pop music. catchy, sometimes it makes you want to jump around your room with a frown... but its also sort of maniacal and dark as well. perfect music to listen to when all you want to do is smoke cigarettes and wear a sweater but its a hot summer day and everyone else is smiling, wearing shorts, and riding bikes.

haircut: sometimes summer makes you do crazy shit. yep...thats steps in the side. and yes...its a comb-over. sorry for the shitty photo. the funny thing is that in portland...this haircut is really popular amongst the lesbian population. so i basically look like a lesbian. heres to androgyny...

i am sure it will last all of two weeks..

Brief musings on Baudrillard, Carvaggio and other things.

2007-07-09T18:14:00.000-07:00

Lately, I have been slowly and randomly reading "Fragments" by Jean Baudrillard. (I can see eyes being rolled as I type this) Its basically a collection of random thoughts and observations by the late thinker on a variety of different subjects and issues. None of the thoughts are longer than a page so I sort of enjoy it because wherever I am I can break it out and read a few, think about them and go on my way. A good portion of what he writes is actually pretty funny. However, overall B. can be pretty irritating. He seemingly attempts to strike down the validity of every argument, thought or discourse on any subject within contemporary society. He tries to expose the absurdity of EVERYTHING which mostly lies in the semantics which issues and topics are discussed, presented, etc. While I am not well-read on post-modernism, it seems to be that he is very representative of this. If anything, I think B. is very much a product of the last 50 years or so. He seems not so much a thinker who provides insight to the modern world but rather observes and discovers the absurdities of it. (as if we didn't already know...thanks for the reminder Jean.)

However, to give him credit, I do enjoy reading these "fragments". They are often times funny even if I don't agree with him. In addition, his theories on the simulacra are interesting and I find a lot of what he says to actually be supportive or if anything, inspiring for my creative writing endeavors.

"Oxymorons: a glimmer of despair- an élan récessif-the non-praying mantis-virtual reality"

I like that last one. "virtual reality". I have become increasingly interested in the idea of of dual realities or alternate realities. This has been spawned by the increased technological advances of our society. Our generation is so "connected" to various forms of media. Internet, advertisement, cell phones take up so much of our lives and our time. It really hit me when upon reading about the reactions from Virginia Tech students after the massacre, so many of them explained their experience by referencing film or television.

"it was just like a movie....or t.v...."

When did this occur? When did our reference to reality become representations of our reality?(i.e. television, movies etc.) To further spark my fascination, the discovery of the website 2nd Life almost makes me dizzy. Here we have an entire world on the Internet, through telephone wires and receivers, it actually doesn't exist other than our computer screens, where people buy and sell land, have sex, make families, create businesses all with real currency. Yes, REAL currency. Baffling? It shouldn't be anymore. Its hard not to think what kind of field day Baudrillard would have with this one.

My tendency with all this was originally to reject it. To decry the death of a bike ride, a walk in the park, a real-life lap dance in replacement of a 2nd virtual world. However, there is no non-reality...no virtual reality. Rather, it is just as real as anything else. I will not disagree on the negative affects of social world, social interaction how such mediums of media(reality?) are causing. I predict in less than 20 years there will be a world filled with adults who are extremely socially inept because they grew up on this. However, I will not reject it but rather I want to observe it.

This brings me to literature.

The novelist Christa Wolf spent a part of her life under the DDR.(that's former east Germany not the video game...) Obviously, working as a writer under such oppressive circumstances was trying and many of her fellow artists fled to the west. However, there was a small group of artists who stuck around. Wolf explains(i believe in an essay accompanying her novel "Cassandra") that she and her fellow artist friends decided to stick around because they knew they were living through and amidst something terribly unique. And while in hopes of obtaining freedom of complete artistic expression they could of easily escaped to the west, they chose to stick around because they wanted to watch and be apart of this important period. To see what art and literature they produced under such circumstances. To watch it crumble. To be apart as not only an observer but as apart of it as well. I feel similar to the current state of not only the United States but of our ever speedy and technological world. As I get older of course it is my tendency to scoff and the new and to shake my head at the young. Of course, with an intense love for Europe,travel and a disgust with our corruptness I want to run away from this country. Nevertheless, I choose to stay, observe and try not to be so ready to reject or run away.

That being said, when I write I am not trying to create a simple reenactment of our lives, as if I am a scribe recording the daily movements and words of our somewhat mundane days for nothing more but what it is. Literature seems to be overrun with the need for a good story equipped with a moment of epiphany and a coming of age experience all in 300 pages or less. What about interesting, fascinating and bizarre content? I want to create a million different realities which run from the insane and unexplainable to the mundane and simplistic. That is our world and the people that exist in it.

Nevertheless, this is dangerous. There is a small desire in me to still constantly recognize the existence of an objective truth. Where does this exist in today's world? Have we obliterated it completely? Perhaps, my writing endeavors can best be summed up under an oxymoron: "surreal-realism". And there I am...left in a bloated pile of irony.

Finally, Caravaggio. I am also slowly and randomly reading a collection of essays by Robert Hughes called "Nothing, if not Critical". Hughes, who as far as I can tell is a pretty main stream critic of art. By which I mean to say, he doesn't really offer anything too new or edgy to say. Nevertheless, his opening essay about how money and the desire to own art has ruined the museum and the exhibit revealed some leftist leanings which i enjoyed. The book is broken up into time periods, in which Hughes gives a brief biographical run-down of important artists from those movements, why they are important and what he feels about him. The reason for me reading this book is an attempt to get a basic understanding of what I guess could be summed up as "the canon of western art". I recently read his essay on Caravaggio. I have never really been able to appreciate art too much before the 20th century. However, Caravaggio has always fascinated me. There is an intense realism in his art that is dark and scary and powerful. Hughes questions where Rembrandt would be if it were not for C. After reading about his crazy life and his importance, I only like him better. I feel that he is a good representation of a sort of realistic depictions that still are important today. He reveals his subjects in all their faults and mistakes and ugliness. I like this and always have. I can almost always appreciate a reminder of our finite existence and the scars that we receive along the way. Caravaggio is an example of art which acts as a good balance for me between looking forward and learning from the past.

(image: st. jerome by caravaggio)

the holy.

2007-07-08T20:46:00.001-07:00

(many thoughts have been circulating around many different things...til my next real blog...here is a "story" i got published in the school lit mag...)

The holy.

Two older gentlemen are sitting at a small table outside any other street café. One is wondering where his immunity system has gone.
“It slipped out the window last night, crossed the street, flopped into the sand, and got carried out to sea by way of the rising tide!”
“Oh my! That is not good.”
“No, not good indeed!”
They cough and something disappears from each other’s mouths. They don’t notice.
Meanwhile, a young writer who is sitting alone just tables away is distracted. An American girl; not blond, not blue-eyed, very tan, is jogging by. She looks to be the same age as the young writer he thinks; early twenty something. Her face is shielded by sunglasses and a lowered hat. Her hair is pulled back. Her stomach is exposed. Right above the waistline an outward curve has formed. It is slight and quietly moves to the rhythm of her steps as she jogs. It’s frightened. It’s trying to be destroyed. It quakes and shakes yet holds on. One more night like the two nights before and it can get its strength back it thinks.
The writer drops his pen frustratingly upon the paper he has been scribbling most recent tragedies upon. Emotionally he tries to write of emotion without using such exact and specific words like love, hate and feeling. He doesn’t believe in any of “it”. “It’s all an illusion created by the world” he says. “By literature” he says. “by poets and romantics” he says. He is going to “change things” he says. He is going to be the destroyer. “like Kali” he says. He pulls out a paper design and leaves it on the table.
He is gone, out past the group of people walking on the sidewalk and spilling out into the street. They seem angry and start as four or five, have become 10 or 12, and are gaining people by every block. They will be meeting up with hundreds more just like themselves. They’ve come to warm the city, to brighten it, keep the steel fingers rough to the touch. They are making the glow of the metro. They’re keeping the signal steady and visible from afar. All are holding bags of paper, plastic or of other material. Some carry two or three. All brows are tilted inward while all teeth remain clenched. The bags hold the words, the bindings, and the covers which feed the fire. Inside are words of worlds written once by MR., REV., PROF., DR., and others. They all spoke of rainbows, a golden path or a green city and other such places like Q. But Q has never been found, only talked about. Families broke like porcelain; lives have been taken by others hands like candy, in search of Q. The grass has been combed, the snow sifted, the sand replaced and the water filled. The word is finally seeping out. The word that causes the fire. Such texts are no longer printed. No one will carry them, no one will buy them. There is no market. Instead, the shelves of decaying bookstores, clothing stores and restaurants owned by mother and pop are being filled with the text of others who found dissatisfaction of the search early on. Their words are beginning to replace the sides of trains and subways, are being painted across billboards and brick walls, re-engraved upon statues and tombs. The crowds move silently closer and closer. The fire chants their words.
A young man trips on a crack in the sidewalk while watching the crowd move into the distance while on his way home. A neon glow flickers upon the clouds. A small dog pees on a trash can which a passed-out body lays nearby. Televisions are off. Shades are being pulled in curiosity. Human touch is becoming stagnant in its familiarity. A woman is crying in the back of an apartment complex, two stories high. She is alone. Her partner has left, bought in, believed the full-page ad on page 3 of the Times. He left her to the overly bright bulb formed upon her kitchen ceiling to constantly expose the rotten objects of reminders. It lies in the warm hum between the refrigerator and the wall, saccharin images of the past, smoke and glass. She stops her whimpering to the sound of voices outside her door. She rushes to it, places her wet cheek upon the four or five layers of mauve and is still. Her right hand firmly pressed against the door. Her eyes close. Footsteps.
“…my second step out of bed this morning I fell down….I slipped on the wet, bathroom floor…”
Sigh. Eyes are blurry then clear. Blurry, clear. Glasses. It’s a couple in the hall. One finds the key and stick in door number 122(123?) Their prize is another dark room like the rest. Their tongues are green from spirits. They sway with the floor and fall to the ground. Moments later their howls can be heard throughout. Moths fail to fly. Paint ages with the seconds. The smooth sidewalk and the cracked concrete resist a reaction. Everything is uninhibited. A slow, consistent oil spill begins to darken the sky. The clouds now look grey and the air is algid. Eyes and lips foretell of rain but it never comes. It remains that way stuck in transition with unsure footing…hesitant, or maybe just a tease.
“No…
Come on baby…”
“No, no…
Just once?”
No, no, no…
Please?”
“No”
A candle is lit, the electricity is cut. Windows are opened. A cigarette exhales.
An old lady is putting on makeup without the use of a mirror or unnatural light. The overwhelming blue and red hues of her eye shadow and lipstick are smearing across the deep ripples of her sagging skin. It’s beautiful. She is beautiful. She is more beautiful than any one else’s body, laugh or smile, ink or sound at that moment.
Startled she suddenly stops at the sound of teenagers yelling out profanities. The old lady looks out her window down and smiles. It falls out and splatters across the sidewalk seeping out into the street affecting anyone who nears the loose flesh smeared in makeup. The teens walk through it and it sticks to the soles of their shoes. They are leaving their names on road signs, bus stops and thin street shop glass in various mediums. Marker, paint or semen, their presence is undeniable and their strength is magnificent, even in its misdirection.
Bottles sit snug preparing to be emptied, while other related vices ready themselves for usage. Bugs that are uncomfortably still between thin, decaying walls will soon move with the sound of moans and screams exploding from mouths in moments of hate, anger, ecstasy, love and other things that don’t exist.
She calls him then hangs up. She quickly calls again. She wants to tell him that she misses him, but she is…. is…ready for this again? Does he feel? The same?
A loud folk song spits out her stereo. The sky shrinks and expands at the last sigh of daylight.
“Hello?”
“Hey”
A young man gets up from the seat by his window.

Content

2007-07-05T23:07:00.000-07:00

Content.
This blog needs more of it. Now that I am aware of at least 4 people who read this blog I guess I should start putting more stuff up here. Its not like I don't have stuff to post, it is more a lack of real satisfaction with what I have written. Alot of what I have written is of course in the form of an essay for school. Many of these essays I am proud of but would like to expand on and perfect. Something which I was not able to fully do in the face of a deadline.
Deadlines.
Something I am use to writing for the leftist school publication (which we just won a local award for. weird.) However, this summer I dont have deadlines. So I am striving to really perfect some things I have written. For when they are finished, they will possibly be, beyond just newspaper I write for, published.
Published.
I have a fear of posting my creative writing online. Therefore, I will only publish creative writing on my blog that has already, previously been published. If you would like to read more of my creative writing then email me and I will send it to you. This fear is from people stealing what I wrote. Not that it is amazing or something....but what if it is.
Is.
Writer, journalist, grad school for creative writing. All the above I have concluded in the last week are my...dare I say...passion. Still, unlike many of those who surround me, I will refuse to call myself a writer for the time being.
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Now here is an article/essay I have been working on. I really want to work on combining culture, arts, etc and contemporary politics and social situations of our world. I would like to expand this more with quotes and/or comparison to other war films. Maybe not though. Enjoy.
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Going Beyond War: The lessons of Kanal and Das Boot

There is no question that war is hell. This seems to be becoming even more apparent as the situation in Iraq continues to fall apart and the daily tally of people killed continues to rise. Recently, I re-watched two war films; Kanal and Das Boot, and it occurred to me the strikingly applicable nature of these two films to our current situation in Iraq. Both films present that war leaves little room for humanistic statements on the worth of the individual or any philosophizing over morality and ethics. Furthermore, each film displays the dehumanizing affect of war through its treatment of those involved as mere pawns in a greater game. Through its anti-heroic stories, the very realistic and devastating consequences of warfare are revealed and serve as a reminder of how atrocious war can be.
The films focus both focus on a small group of individuals and display their struggle to survive as they are forced through the most extreme situations ultimately to no avail. At the bitter, ironic conclusions of these films, we are left to question the purpose of what these characters have just endured. These films testify that amongst the heroic stories of combat, there are an equal number of stories of warfare ending in no heroes and no valiant victory. Ultimately, we are left with a group of young, dead soldiers whose simple desires and wishes have been cut off for a sometimes vague and seemingly purposeless aim.
Despite both these films being over 20 years old (Kanal over 30), they seem to make stronger statements about intricate aspects of war that many other war films seemingly lack. In comparison to other war films such as The Bridge Over the River Kwai or even the more contemporary The Thin Red Line; these films succeed in breaking down the dualistic paradigm of definitive protagonists and antagonists. Unlike most war narratives, Kanal and Das Boot through an attention to the grim nuisances of armed conflict, create stories based on the plight of the individual soldier and succeed in creating a different dialectic of war that argues for the preservation of the ultimate human gift; life.
In an interview accompanying the DVD of Kanal, the Polish director of the film Andrzej Wajda stated,
“I think that the strength of Kanal lies in the fact that it is limited to this certain group of characters and pointing out that they died.”
Wajda plainly reveals the simplicity that Kanal is about the horrors of war and does not allow for any heroic or victorious themes. Furthermore, the film quickly reveals that its aim is not politically or historically based. Rather, Kanal plainly reveals the reality of the final hours of the characters and displays the extremities they had to endure in a very personal and intimate way. Kanal recognizes the participants of the Polish uprising, but in no way glorifies the situation. This is where Kanal is most affective.
From the very beginning of Kanal we are told to watch these characters closely for this is the last hours of their lives. In the same scene we are revealed that this group of individuals is very common people with no lofty aspirations. They simply want to live; something their Nazi oppressors are trying to prevent. Thus they are cast into the roles of soldiers and forced to endure the most extreme of situations. As we watch them descend into the sewers as a last ditch effort for survival, the obvious physical analogy to “hell” is revealed. But what evil or action have these individuals taken to be cast into this abyss? Kanal leaves us with no such explanation but continues to focus on the slow demise of their last hours.
Evidently in war such reasoning does not exist. Thus, Kanal concludes with no victory or success achieved and no point or explanation given. Conclusively, it only reveals the realities of the devastation that war can cause and that bravery can ultimately lead to nowhere. Through its refusal to name a hero or reveal any hint of hopefulness for the future, Kanal ultimately becomes a film that manifests into a blaring anti-war statement that holds strong even today in the face of the Iraqi conflict.
While in Kanal the soldiers were fighting for liberation of their city and country, Das Boot displays a group of men fighting on the side of Nazi Germany. However, it is quick to display that hardly any of the men support nor are necessarily members of the Nazi party. This facet of Das Boot creates an interesting element to the narrative that further strengthens its themes and seems only further applicable in today’s situation.
While these men may fight under the jagged black curves of the Nazi swastika and thus technically fight in support of Hitler, we can still view this film and sympathize with these men without any moralistic or political dilemma. These men are soldiers who choose this position and were assigned to the submarine. Their position is first and foremost a job to them and comes before any socio-political agenda. We bear witness to the captain openly criticizing Hitler. Another scene depicts a home sick sailor writing letters to his French lover. These contrasts allow Das Boot to reveal the strange complexities of war and the individuals that participate in it with glaring relevance to the current Iraqi conflict.
One of the most essential elements of Das Boot, is its ability to display the sailors as ordinary human beings taking part in a global conflict. The American troops of today’s Iraqi conflict are no different than the World War 2 Nazi sailor depicted in Das Boot. Whether fighting under the pretense of fascism or democracy, these individuals are individuals fulfilling their duty to being a solider.
With each passing frame of Das Boot, it becomes increasingly more apparent that the higher military regime that gives their orders holds their lives with little value. The individual does not matter. War becomes Us vs. Them and the assigned mission must be achieved at any cost. The fact that these men are given orders by a political body they don’t necessarily support makes the struggle throughout the film seem even more absurd and further displays the situation as truly tragic.
The conclusion of the film only further highlights the absurdity of the situation. The shockingly realistic and anti-heroic scene that Das Boot closes with causes war to seem wholly inexplicable. Ultimately, the film is a grim depiction of warfare with a perceptivity that allows its themes to go beyond that of a specifically German experience, but of an experience that has and must be endured by those individuals on both sides of the conflict.
Das Boot speaks for the individual participators who serve as pawns to help carry out the work of war. Through focusing on humanistic elements of these individuals, the film reveals the blurred lines between the enemy and the ally.
Upon their conclusion, neither of these two films provide condolence or any elucidation on their tragic outcomes. The viewer is left questioning the purpose of such struggle and as the final credits finish one is left asking who is to blame. No answer is given. Rather, Kanal and Das Boot break down and rule out all our preconceptions and ideologies of war and leave it up to us to recognize the only deduction that can be made; when the fingers start to point and accountability must be allocated, liability for the death toll on both sides of the conflict must be first attributed by those highest in command and not entirely on the individual soldiers. However, these films do not leave the soldier free from consequence. Opposed to the true offenders, who direct these individuals from afar and never have to bear witness to such ugly tribulations, the films display that a soldier’s punishment lies in the psychological weight they must bear for having actually experienced, witnessed and partaken in such atrocities. It is here that lies essence of these films; their ability to depict war through the humanistic and tragic outcome of the participating soldier while leaving it up to us at the final scene to take that last step towards its ultimate thesis.
Ultimately, Kanal and Das Boot are a grimly refreshing alternative to that tired old dualistic conflict of the hero and the villain, the good and the bad by depicting war as an event that results in none other than the death of individuals. No matter the politics or what side you choose to align yourself, the grim and unfortunate reality is that war equals death. These films are ultimately a great aide memoire of such unfortunate truths.

day one...orange county

2007-06-20T14:42:00.000-07:00

Flying into O.C. was always strange. Looking out the window at the plane curves from its coastal course towards John Wayne Airport, the lights of the county are already fully illuminated. The sky continues its nightly attack out over the cloudless canvas and creates momentary battle lines. Strip mall signs and streetlights maintain the fight through the night. The stars are forgotten. Darkness is losing.
We haven’t even touched down into its loving asphalt arms and already the overwhelming immensity of this place begins to take hold. The concrete continues to curve and wind itself into an endless labyrinth neatly decorated by the occasional palm tree and community swimming pool to help distract and ease your search. Don’t worry; you got your escape baby. The freeway is your never-ending syringe rushing right into the smog filled vein of Southern California. Tap in and Baby’s got her mainline and taking 80 million people, every two-car garage, decaying apartment complex and neon sign with her. Come visit and check out of reality for good. There is nothing more numbing than the constant distraction of countless billboard advertisements, fuzzy orange lights, and the constant low murmur of moving cars and still empty parking lots at night.
Moments later at 80mph, I stare out the window. Familiarity sets in. A map begins to take shape in my mind. However, it is outdated and expired. The county has continued its dull redecoration of its façade. This process is never really stops. A new sign, a new paint job, this restaurant to replace another. It’s not long before my map fails me and we are someplace unfamiliar. Suddenly, streets and intersections that are entirely unknown to me surround me. However, in no way is it exciting or exotic. No, it looks exactly like the street before it. The only difference is that I recognized that intersection. Another entirely common, ordinary Orange County intersection filled with all you chain store accommodations to make you feel completely at ease and at home no matter where you find yourself in the LA-OC metropolitan area. Realistically, there is no real difference between the intersections I am familiar with to the one that I suddenly, moments later find myself confused and disoriented in. The moment passes and I am quickly back on another street that I recognize. However, the disconcerting sensation remains. I grew up here. These streets despite there changing shops and colors are firmly etched into the creases of my memory. Yet, amidst all of this, I can within moments find myself in a place that is entirely unfamiliar. Within yards of everything I know, I can suddenly be surrounded by nothing I know and be lost. And abruptly, my entire reality is altered. However, it is not necessarily changed by the new and unfamiliar. Rather, its distorted because I am encircled by symbols and logos, words and names, stores and advertisements that I fully recognize, but they are in a space which before never existed or was once wholly something else.
The obsessive-compulsive desire to constantly fill space and let no open area not be filled with something is bizarre and will not cease. Physical, inanimate representations of my past are completely disappearing. The construction and constant redevelopment is turning my memory into a lie. A remembrance of a place and time that has since passed is no longer physically represented by the same environment. Progress for the betterment of the community. Digression and the eventual total dissolve of space, place and environment of events that took place in my life.
In the next 5 years my high school will be completely torn down. An Apartment complex I once lived in is completely gone. The trees, parks and hundred plus apartments took the wrecking ball and have since been turned into a town-home community. A 1,600 acre marine base air station that existed on the outskirts of Tustin was officially closed in 1999. After much debate as to what to do with the space, it has been decided that it will be redeveloped into housing communities, a new high school, a small park and couple of strip mall areas. On the base there are two massive blimp hangars that are listed as some of the biggest wooden structures in the entire world. Originally, only one was to be torn down. Now it is presumed that both will be torn down. The development of the base is already underway and last night I drove on roads that while living here were restricted only to military use. I presume over the course of my life, Orange County will continue to “develop” in such ways that eventually everything will become almost completely unfamiliar. I don’t want to be apart of a resistance against change. However, if with change comes the total destruction of that which is unique and representative of a specific area in place of that which is entirely common, ordinary and can be frequently seen all over this county, this state, America at large; then what’s the point? What is this desire for this uniformity? This desire to make everything exactly like it is down the street from your house? My sentiments are not a resistance to change but rather a resistance against change in place of uniformity.
This place is electronic junkie. Our minds struggle for the strength to contemplate or reflect. In the morning the sky is completely empty; a continuous light blue canvas occasionally disturbed by a commuting airplane or an overreaching palm tree. Coupled with the expansive flat and endless ocean, and to continuing push towards providing you with the ease and familiarity of a uniform space of chain store and signs; Southern California is a beautiful death. No matter how long I stay away, apart of me will always be attached to numbing electric drug that allows you to live without ever really having to think. Sweep away the consequences with the back pages of the daily paper and a 42-inch television screen.

Goethe and a Modern Work of Art

2007-05-09T15:19:00.000-07:00

Goethe’s observations on the Laocoon statue were an attempt at establishing recognizable principles that determine true works of art. His ideas help develop the necessary tools to instigate a discourse of art. In the tradition of this democratic method of artistic discourse one can consider Goethe’s theory with a veil of contemporary artistic sensibility. Through the application of this new receptivity, a detailed assessment of Joseph Beuys’ installation “Plight” at the Centre Pompidou demonstrates the modern applicability and usefulness of Goethe’s development of a normative artistic aesthetic.
Joseph Beuys’ “Plight” is neither a traditional sculpture nor a painting on a canvas. Rather, it consists of a large ballroom-style space adorned with thick, bulbous rolls of felt covering its high walls with only a single mercury thermometer to break the uniformity. The floor is wood while a black grand piano sits silently to the right of the entrance. Upon entering the room, the viewer immediately notices the warmth provided by the insulation of the felt covered walls. Secondly, the viewer notices the compression of sound. The room despite its magnitude is completely without an echo. “Plight” is a visual piece that also affects the physicality of the viewer. Despite the lack of existence of such art during Goethe’s time, “Plight” does coincide with some of the required elements of Goethe’s rules.
Goethe begins his theory by declaring that true works of art must make an impression upon us, but cannot necessarily be fully understood nor its essence thoroughly defined. Goethe additionally concludes that an understanding of the different parts in regards to form and effect must be displayed within the work. He assessed that specific qualities must be presented in an isolated manner in order for one to outline a significant mutual relationship between the various elements or characters within the piece.
In “Plight”, Beuys has produced a space that is foreign to us. The materials utilized to create this environment emerge beyond the materialistic familiarity of felt, wood, and the black piano to create a truly distinctive space. The viewer understands how such is created, but up until their entrance into the room had never fathomed such a place. Furthermore, the atmosphere of the piece prevents a verbal and accurate description due to the physical effect it has on the viewer. One must be inside the room to even begin to fully experience the piece. In addition, “Plight” clearly establishes a relationship of opposition between its elements. The viewer enters a large room without a draft or an echo caused by the implementation of the felt. Immediately, the viewer notices this sensation and the opposition it has to what would normally be sensed in a room of this size. The thermometer on the wall is consciously placed to remind the viewer of the warmth experienced in the room while the compression of the sound directly relates to the piano that remains silent. Beuys’ has developed an environment full of that which we do not expect not only visually, but physically as well. “Plight” thoroughly establishes an association within the elements of the piece and the viewer. It ultimately succeeds in making an impression while steeped in ambiguity; essential elements to Goethe’s theory.
However, another necessary element in Goethe’s theory is the idea of grace. Goethe determines grace to be subjected to the rational laws of art such as order and symmetry, repose or motion, opposition and gradation. Goethe further determines that such elements must be organized in a rational and intellectual way. He establishes that something should be developed or chosen by reason and not by whim; foundational ideas of the middle-class sensibility of that time which Goethe helped develop. Goethe further stresses in his observations the importance of the artist to choose the ideal moment so that the viewer may recognize the peak level of action which the piece was meant to represent. By containing an infinite, defining moment, the piece will transcend the materials which construct the piece. Goethe ultimately asserts that this transcendence helps define the beauty of the piece. Finally, this beauty must be a balance between the sensual and the intellectual. Goethe determines that all tragedy, opposition and other elements of the piece must be tempered by the existence of this composed grandeur.
Beuys’ piece contains the necessary elements to Goethe’s idea of grace. The felt on the walls of the installation are uniform and of the same length. The room does not consist of a center; therefore the placing of piano seems arbitrary. However, behind the piano, there exists another portion of the room that the viewer cannot fully see. Since the centerpiece of the installation is the piano, it leads one’s eyes to purposely look beyond the piano and into the other partially unseen section of the room. The piano remains closed and silent. Instead, of displaying the capabilities of the piano in regards to sound, Beuys’ leaves the piano in repose to only to express physical grandness. Thus, the materials and their manner within “Plight” are chosen by reason and purpose; to develop a clear relationship between the materials utilized and the viewer.
However, difficulties immediately arise without the existence of representations of life within the piece. Despite the metaphorical relationship of its elements, “Plight” is without consciousness and thus without emotion. Goethe found magnificent, yet delicate beauty in the everlasting sigh of Laocoon, and his theory is driven off this emotionality. For Goethe, Laocoon transcended the depiction of a fatal moment. Rather, it additionally represented that critical instant of realizing one’s own fate. Such emotional elements help the piece transcend beyond a stone carving and are essential to Goethe’s theory of a true work of art. “Plight” fails to fully coincide with Goethe’s idea of the perfect moment and lacks such transcendent emotionality or implication.
Ultimately, the idea of the “perfect moment” applied to “Plight” can only be determined by the moment when the viewer exists in and is apart of the piece. Unlike in Laocoon, where once the viewer has left, the narrative of the statue still exists forever frozen in the moment, “Plight” fails to recognize such a moment by creating a space, rather than a story. “Plight” remains unrestricted by any passing moment. It is only the viewer who recognizes the passing of time and thus determines when the piece begins and finishes.
The beauty of “Plight” ultimately only lies in its environment which is both obtrusive and yet, engaging. The room is both embracing and womb-like but also sterile and restrictive. The sound of the viewer’s voice is muted, yet absorbed by the room as well. Thus, “Plight” is able to temperate its eccentricity and grandness in scale through its uniformity, and physical effect on the viewer. Such elements coincide with Goethe’s theory, however fail to induce to full emotionality aspects he demanded.
Goethe theory on art is a return to the aesthetics of the past and romanticizes the idea of a flourishing ancient culture. This return to classical aesthetics seeks to find a balance between the sensual and the intellectual within art. Ultimately, Beuys’ piece weighs heavily on the intellectual and thus is not an accurate example of this type of art. “Plight” does not fit entirely into the context which Goethe develops in his Laocoon observations. However, by considering the inclusion of a more contemporary artistic sensibility, Goethe’s guidelines prove still helpful and useful in a critique of a such works of modern art.

Embracing your mid-20's, blogs and America.(not really)

2007-04-06T01:51:00.000-07:00

Well this was a Europe blog. However, I dont plan on finding myself in Europe until the winter. (Berlin...anyone? Holla.) In addition, I find myself radomnly coming back to this blog and not knowing what to do with it. Should I just let it remain as it is? Should I...continue to write on it...? I dunno...
Perhaps it is becoming a symptom of beginning to be in ones mid-20's but I suddenly have embraced the idea of a blog. At first I was skeptical. I found it only useful in Europe as an easy way to communicate to everyone I knew. A simple way to freely put out what I am doing...only leave it you to read it. In the end...it worked out. People read what they wanted and many of those who I thought would read every word... didnt read anything.
Fine. Perfect. Done.
What about now though? What do I have to say. Should I utilize a blog? Should I further embrace this seemingly absurd modern life, save a tree and use cyberspace instead of a trusty black moleskin to record my thoughts?
Perhaps...
Anyways...I think it is time to start this shit up again. The extent of my dedication? Who knows. Let me remind you that I am still heavily involved in school.
However, " da space" is becoming more and more unappealing...and this medium of...err..."cyberspace interaction" is becoming seemingly more appropriate. At least when it comes to a blog...

Final Days(in reflection)

2006-09-01T09:52:00.000-07:00

As I begin to write this I find myself sitting on the floor of a run down apartment in San Jose. I have been back in the states for about 2 days now. Since my arrival back, I have been staying with my friend Johnny at his new place. It’s a bit more that fixer-upper. Originally, I thought perhaps it would be a good way to reintegrate myself back in the American culture. However, I am second guessing that. I find San Jose to be nothing more than some sort of weird transitional state of purgatory. This town sits between the ocean and the bay. (Santa Cruz-San Francisco). Its big with wide streets, contains countless apartment complexes, a few towering buildings that make up this odd area of town which is filled with nothing but high end hotels and yuppie-filled business bars. It is wholly and utterly ordinary, unfortunately familiar, and lacks any uniqueness or appeal whatsoever. It feels so typically suburban, anywhere America. If it wasn’t for the occasional yummy Mexican taqueria; I feel I could be in anywhere right now. Indiana, Florida, Colorado…fucking ten minutes down the street. It doesn’t matter. It lacks culture; it lacks history…thus the condition of many places in our country. We are young and big and have a lot of people who like to spread themselves all over this land. It’s not bad, it’s not good, it is just different. And this definitely is not the ideal place to come back to become an American again. Whatever that means anyways.
However, I find myself in the passenger seat of a Honda civic, flying down the freeway with the windows down, my hair slapping against my face and I am having a hell of time keeping my eyes open. Of course, the California sky is completely cloudless and a faded blue and the horizon are stained with a light brown. And as I find myself in this position, I can’t help to find some sort of comfort in it. It is what I grew up on. This experience is like a house to me, its home. The endless chain-link fence interspersed with the 8 foot concrete block walls that line the freeway. The droopy trees and their dusty, dirty leaves that arbitrarily appear to poorly decorate the 10 lanes of asphalt. The self storage buildings and the labyrinths of industrial areas colorfully adorned with sedans, gas stations, green and white signs telling you how many miles until your next exit and of course, the billboards; advertising a friendly reminder of how wonderful alcohol, vacations to Hawaii and low interest rates can be. It was what I was nursed on for the first sixteen years of my life. And as much as I do not particularly enjoy its presence now, I can not help to find some sort of strange familiarity that feels like home. At last, welcome back…?
There is one particular day I go back to as the beginning of the end in Europe. Or perhaps my realization that it was almost over. I had just got out of class and was back at the foyer. Eddie and I sat in his room, making sandwiches out of baguettes, drinking wine, and listening to Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto. It was partly overcast, his window was open and a slight breeze came through. Although, we were listening to music, the leisurely French attitude and quietness of the town surrounded us and seemingly invaded our minds. You could just feel it. Maybe that’s why this moment sticks out. Nothing particular was happening, however, it just felt like a perfect example of the sometimes indescribable fundamental difference between Angers, Europe and anywhere I have ever been in the states. I say this with no contempt or negativity towards the states. It’s just different. Upon my return to the States, Johnny asked me if I gained any sort of appreciation for aspects of American culture now that I have been to Europe. Hm. Not really. The beer is cheaper and the Mexican food is better, and yes I am pretty damn proud of being from the West Coast. However, my appreciation hasn’t gained. If anything it has made the difference between the style of life and the general attitude of the people more apparent. I enjoyed it while it lasted. Sitting in Eddie’s room, eating baguette and cheese, drinking wine, letting the rest of the day slowly pass, I realized that in many ways Europe compliments me well, and I was going to miss it.
The last week in Angers was a wild one and I think Europe and I parted well. Each night I went out to a bar and stayed out until at least 1. However, usually it was until 2. In this week, I really got to know the French people that worked in my program and I was speaking French more than I had the whole time I was there. The last day of the program an “International Soiree” was put on by the school. At this soiree, each country was suppose to get together with other people of their country in the program and put on one or a couple of performances that supposedly represented a part of their countries culture. At first, I did not want to really have any part of it. My reasoning for this is that I honestly did not like almost all the other Americans in the program. I can sum up their general attitude with a big loud sigh. “Pfffff” (hang head low…mumble something about missing your boyfriend, Jack in the Box or how weird France is…etc.) On a side note, it really is a bummer that the lamest people in the program were pretty much the Americans. Maybe I was just more aware of their attitudes because I am American. However, the perfect example of their lameness is that they were the only ones who could not put together a performance and almost altogether flaked out. This is where Eddie and I come in. Two days before the performance, one of the monatrices who we were a bit more friends with, came to us asking us to help her because all the Americans had flaked. She was in charge of getting the Americans to put on a performance and was extremely frustrated with their attitudes. So…in two days time, we put together a rousing performance of… “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum”
Classic folk song. Check out the Pete Seeger version.
The performance went over relatively well and was funny compared to some of the other performances which might of…err…represented…their country a little bit…err…more…accurate.?
AHEM.
Nevertheless, the rest of the night was wonderful. And I would cut the story short if I did not say I feel in love with a hand full of people that evening. In my experience, the French seem to sort of throw around this term a lot. Maybe it is just when they are speaking English. But many times, upon speaking to some of French I got to know, they would say how in love they were with something or someone they really liked. In the states, I feel we use this term only on much more serious terms. So taking a cue from them, this night, being the last that I would see most of these people possibly forever, I began to realize how unique some of these people are. A month since my arrival in Angers and three days before I departed, I finally found myself creating true friendships. Conversations finally went elsewhere. Il passé trop! (It goes quickly)It’s those fleeting moments and faces of people that always seem to leave me momentarily changed for a few days. I don’t know how to understand these people and these moments in the context of my life. What was their affect? Where has it left me? What was the point? Those whose faces remain imprinted upon my memory so vividly for a few days afterwards. The intensity when they spoke, their smiles, the laughter, the confusion when language broke down and we found ourselves grabbing for words and descriptions to explain that which up until then had never needed any explanation because it was always understood. It’s all apart of the experience and all apart of what leaves you sort of melancholy the next day when it’s all said and done.
That night, I stood outside a bar and defended myself to a quiet Russian girl named Dasha after she called me a strange American. I stood briefly face to face with French police men who arrived at the bar because of a call from the owner. There were so many people there he couldn’t close the place. I backed away through a thick crowd into the establishment and finished my beer. Walked, ran, piggy backed down the streets of Angers with students and French alike. Danced to James Brown in a small French apartment in the midst of several people and several different languages. Spoke mildly serious with a monatrice named Aline. We concluded our conversation with an agreeing that we both wish we could speak each others languages better. Angelique made me speak like a cowboy-hick in front of everyone because they think it’s hilarious. Champagne. Cigarette smoke. Jumping jacks to keep yourself awake. Ray Charles. Looking out a window at the top of a four story building onto an empty street and noticing the faint horizon briefly becoming illuminated over a quiet town. Hammocks in the living room. Post-modern light bulbs in the hall entrance. Goodbyes to Eddie at 6 in the morning as he left to take a train back to Paris then onto the states. Falling asleep on a floor with your shoes and jeans on. Waking up two hours later with it all over and done, the morning light rudely scratching at your eyelids and running back to the Foyer because we had to move out by 9. It was 8:40 when I arrived.
The next two days I spent in another small apartment with a friend from my program named Markus. He is Austrian and had a big laugh that will scare you when you first hear it. He was spending the next 6 months in Angers and let me stay two night in his place until I finally left to go back home. The next day I found myself drinking coffee in his quirky apartment, church bells ceaselessly rang from the nearby chapel. I felt partially empty and melancholy. Almost everyone was gone now. And in two days time I would be as well. My mother related back to when you perform in theater. You spend a good portion of your life for a couple months in the midst of the same people. 8 hours a day, in and out, and then when the performance has run its course; you must part. It is truly bittersweet. You made great relationships and had wonderful experiences but now you must part. However, that is all as much apart of the experience as well. The goodbye. Everything has a farewell. And afterwards you find yourself questioning if these moments even ever really existed. In the span of a one’s memory it seems to become so brief. Just a shadow, a brief existing human who once sat at the banks of a river, in the presence of a chateau built in 900 AD. To not be stone like its walls. Only to be 22, spend 29 days in its presence and wander around its streets, then disappear. Conclusion unknown. Remnants undefined. Actuality of existence unclear. I sat in Markus’ apartment for two days doing almost nothing. I watched the shadows change on the kitchen table, read, wrote and tried to take in France, Angers, and my whole European experience as much as I could. Breathe it in and hold it in as much as possible. Make it stay.
Au revoir la France
« dimanche
tombe sur moi seulement ici
sans difficulté »
My last day in France, I got an early morning train to Paris. When I arrived it was raining. I had ideas of staying in a park and taking a nap until the time came to hope another train and catch my flight back to London. I sat in a train station for an hour contemplating what I was to do since the precipitation had ruined my loose plan. I texted a new friend who had recently moved to Paris the day before. See if she could take me in briefly; offer me a cup of coffee. Never got a response. So I wandered around the neighborhood for two hours. Cut through Montparnasse cemetery. Half way through looked to my left and noticed I was in front of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simon De Beauvoir grave. I stopped. Let the rain fall. Spend the next 2 hours sitting in a McDonald’s window, writing emails and watching Paris life for the last time on this trip. It was grey and rained the entire time. 4 hours later I was gone. I stepped off a train in London. It was dark. The street lights hung low and seemed to illuminate only a 6 foot orange circle on the sidewalk. The shadows of London were enormous. The brick was overwhelming. Sweeny Todd and Jack the Ripper brushed by me.
London.
Fucking eerie.
A friend rescued me and I spent my last remaining hours in Europe talking to him of literature, the “English literature crisis” of the last 40 years, sex, stereotypes, work, the differences between the states and Europe and various other things. The conversation was wonderful. We drank about 5 cups of tea each until the milk ran out. Then I rested for a couple hours. Wondered back to Heathrow through the thick, fast paced underground of London, and hours later bid ‘Adieu’ to this side of the Atlantic, but definitely not my final goodbye.
Anyone care to join me in 6-9 months time for another rousing trip?
Maybe we can get lost there…

Sunday

2006-08-13T06:43:00.000-07:00

Sunday is Angers is quiet. In general, it is a quiet town. Most of the streets you walk down are almost completely vacant. To further extend this feeling of emptiness, most of the shops in town are closed for the month. This is a normal occurrence in France. Supposedly there are 200,000 people in this town but it feels like 1000. Sundays it feels more like 100. Being that I am in a very catholic country, Sunday is the day of rest here. There is no question about it. A few of the Tabacs are open and maybe a couple restaurants and cafés, but for the most part the only thing open is Church.
Today, I went and did my laundry. I sat in the Laundromat for most of the time alone. A few people every now and then walked by. Afterwards, on the walk home, I could not help but notice how quiet everything was. I could hear the occasional car from a distance, but mostly all I could hear were a few birds, the wind rustling the leaves in the trees, the wind blowing past my ears, my breath and my footsteps. It is such a contrast to the rest of my time spent here Europe. It is nice but it makes the days long. It reminds me of when I was younger living in Orange County. On the weekends at my mom’s I use to just watch the days slowly fade. The endless blue sky, the sound of planes overhead, the occasional car cutting through our street, water sprinklers, front lawn grass between my toes after running across the hot concrete, the shadows that slowly began to take shape inside the house, and the lights of the house that we seem to procrastinate switching on until it was completely necessary. I haven’t been in the midst of such a quiet environment nor felt so quietly calm inside for such a long time. To a certain extent, it is really nice. I think the last time I was able to lazily watch the weekend pass on a regular basis was sometime when I was 16! At least it feels that way. On the other hand, the slow day allows the mind to wander and I find myself missing people the most on Sundays. It’s good though. It’s good to experience this. However, when I think about my journey back home it seems so long. I feel so far away sometimes.
My weeks in Angers are not so lazy. Rather they are the opposite. I get up everyday around 7 in the morning; I am usually out of the Foyer by 8 ish. I stop by this Boulangerie(sort of like a bakery) on the way to school. The lady usually greets me with a big smile and a “Bonjour”. I order my usual(pain au chocolat and un grand café ). I sit facing the window while consuming my food. It faces a busy intersection and I enjoy the 15 minutes I spend there alone, watching the French workday begin. Bikes, buses, mopeds, and roundabouts. I spend the next 8 hours at school. I get the occasional 5 minute break from class and an hour break to consume the cafeteria food which doesn’t need to be mentioned again. I go home, do my homework, maybe go hang out with some people for an hour or two and I am usually in bed by midnight. Ready to do it all over again. My classes are enjoyable but hard and long. My language professor really likes me but also makes fun of me almost every class. I don’t know why. I take it as good thing.
I believe Angers is a pretty normal French town. Its sort of weird, life is slow, and everything except for the bars seems to shut down by sundown. In all honesty, the best part of Angers is the weather. I know that sounds silly but it is true. The morning grey usually doesn’t burn off until about noon and for the rest of the day it is warm with a cool breeze. It is like this almost every day and I love it. The other aspect of Angers that is cool is the Chateau in the middle of town. When you’re walking home from a bar or sitting by the river with some friends you see it. Every time I cant help to think how old it is. There it is, built from stones placed there by men over 1000 years ago, which you can go up to and touch. Life goes on. It remains. Sort of a trip…
Yesterday evening I played soccer again with the Polish kids. We went someplace new to play. It was surrounded by fields and remnants of construction which had halted for the weekend. Everything around us was flat. I have never been to the Midwest but I can imagine that it was similar. I could see the sky forever, and as the game went on the grey clouds in the distance eventually covered us. Once again it was quiet all around except for sounds of the game.

quickie

2006-08-11T05:23:00.000-07:00

lots of studying and the occasional pick up game of soccer

the polskis are quickly finding out i am one hell of a goalie....for an american

check out this link....click the photo...

http://www.angers.maville.com/actu/Detail.asp?idDOC=322398&idCLA=18

yo....photo...yo

2006-08-05T04:12:00.000-07:00

Top to Bottom: "How to Survive in Paris: Apples and Wine"/Rad Egyptian stuff at The Lourve/Indian Woman outside my Hostel in Paris/5 Euro Mary/I.M. Pei's pyramid at night outside of Lourve/ Me keeping in hella west coast in Angers...