I don't know. That's not true, I do know. I get scorched sometimes. Emotionally. Not by anyone specifically or the selves within myself. It's that the act of creation is a burner. I have to crank it up to high and hear the igniter tick over and tap and I do not always know what the igniter will be. The ignition coil accepts voltage over the course of hours and sometimes days and sometimes months. It does not always click. I would go as far as to say that often times, more often than otherwise, it does not click and the ignition coil never accepts enough voltage to arc and I have to hold a lighter down on that gas line and hope it takes before the house burns down and I'm sitting in the backyard smoking with no eyebrows wondering how I got there because the kitchen exploded and I was high off of my ass on fumes well before it happened. I want it to work every time. That's wishful thinking. I get scorched a lot. I am highly flammable. Just the way the genes shook out.
Sometimes I wonder what kind of a writer I would be, could be, with greater mental stability, and then I laugh. Because I would have bored myself to death in high school with pen and paper and I realize I would be the mathematician or the economist or the engineer or the welder who did it because it was something they could do mechanically and do well and do with hi fidelity in a very stable pattern and my interest would've waned and I would have sought out something more dynamic. No wait. That's me. Me now, projecting myself backward and extrapolating to now. Not what I was trying to describe at all. I would have done those things and been happy to do them and never would have branched out to something I could be wrong at and still pursue with passion as though I was baseline perfect and sometimes brilliant, but not nearly enough to make that one diamond sparkle to my eye enough to push me to try for something with more cuts and more shine and more heart. At least that's what I like to think. Would happen if I were more stable.
Do I want the things that come with stability? Of course. You'd have to be a moron not to. Do I want the things that come with instability? Of course. Not all of them, but at least 70% of them. Maybe closer to 60%. Thinking back, I never really was a very stable human being. I remember getting into a spat at a summer camp when I was very young, came back to me today, cannot remember for my life what camp it was or if it was bible camp or something more or less or forced or if I asked to go to it. It was a moment where myself and my peers were unsupervised and they were making fun of my shoes again because I had very bad knock off shoes. Very bad. Not even stylistically speaking. Simply very poorly engineered shoes. The soles were made of this weird psuedo plastic, translucent, compound so whenever we played "Duck Duck Goose" or "Steal the Bacon" in gym I would have to work ten times harder than everyone with regular rubber to make cuts and accelerate and slow down because the plastic stuff would glide on the waxed wood floor like skates. I still won my fair share. Unfair share? I should have been undefeated. It's probably how I got to be so fast early on and kept going from there. Also probably how I got to be so frustrated when I get a job and don't have the right equipment today.
Anyway, where was I going.... so myself and my peers were unsupervised and I was being teased relentlessly and I didn't do anything for a while except shut up. Partly because I knew however I spun it I would get the beating of a lifetime up until that point once I got home, and partly because I wanted to go grab a chair and beat him to death. So I went straight for his throat because the middle ground was dealing with them making fun of you for having dirty nails, them not realizing you were keeping them as long as your mom could stand before digging that hook thing underneath or cutting them specifically for the instance when you may need to claw someones throat out of their neck. It worked out pretty well. He bled some and I was not nearly as strong as I thought I was then so he only lost some skin, but he was so freaked out he didn't even tell on me. Or maybe he did and I've just blacked the aftermath out of my memory. Anyway, I just remember thinking "awesome, why did I not do that sooner." Strange days back then.
And now. I know I can't be, but I believe I can be the greatest of all time. I get scorched. I melt down. I've been so high strung emotionally with human contact. It's rough. Parsing things. Knowing what to tell and what not to. KNowing who to tell and who not to. Going over events to parse what happened and what did not happen, but was later re-engineered from memories I didn't have, but took to heart regardless. People I thought I talked to in depth, but never said one word to. Real people that I see that I know I will not see again for some time. Longing and wanting more and knowing I would mismanage it if it did happen. The things that did happen that are stranger than fiction that I hesitate to retell to anyone because they wouldn't believe it either if they were there. It's gutting.
A tough road, the feeling it. The feeling writing. Taking it beyond exercise to experiment and beyond experiment to theory and beyond theory to intent. Taking intent back to exercise to ingrain it and then back to experiment to expansion packs. Managing circuitry. Without tripping breakers is a 99 by 99 game of Windows 95 vintage Minefield. I was trying to explain to someone how communication, as I've learned it, is an experience of exchanged violence. The base set of symbols. Love growing from that basic set of characters. Sometimes writing offers no release. I can deal with that. It's not so much that it's something that has to get out. Someone else tried to put it to me that way and I accepted the assessment because I had no rebuff at the time. To a small degree it is. To a much larger degree it is conversation, within and without. Some internalized and leaking and some extroverted and speaking.
I'm taken back to the original mission. The blueprint for the creation as a method of legacy. I go back and forth often between life and death. Self extermination versus procreation. I do not play into it as often as I would like, or maybe, more likely, as often as I would feel comfortable with. Is there a way to commit altruistic suicide for the greater good? Yes. I toy with the idea of dying of natural causes. Thinking about having children and the million reasons why it would be better for that kid to never meet me. I toy with big ideas of retirement and doing what I love, but even on that time scale of 60, 70, years, it's a long pipe. What you want, sucka? Not much. I already have most of it. It's getting to the point of formality and self improvement. Competitive spirit. How good can I possibly get? I think that keeps me awake more often than any other meter. When I know the answer, I'll rip the chord and bug the fuck out. Selfish. It makes me laugh to feel that way sometimes.
I get scorched. I get thoroughly displeased with the quality of what comes out of me, but I know there's so much psychological garbage to sort through, there is no way I'm going to knock anything out of the park on a regular basis. I play against myself. It gets troubling. Becomes troubling. When your heckler is you. Your clown is you. You are your dealer and your fiend. I used to do it for other people. I used to do it for my mom and my dad before I realized the packages of carefully selected works were doing little more than collecting dust as soon as they unwrapped them. When I realized sending them books for christmas was a waste of money and passion.
One of the best experiences I ever had was taking some of them back one of the times I was back home and never once hearing a single question about where any of them went. XD. I still get a rise out of that. I was hot blooded for so long over it and then I realized it wasn't worth holding against anyone. I think that's where a lot of my happiness stems from. The knowing that there are people you can love and people you cannot love. And I'm okay with that. I still get scorched sometimes. The factory floor fire spreads and work stations are abandoned and the fire spreads and the suppression systems kick in and they can't contain a god damn thing on the scale of what you are experiencing because you designed them in good times with hypotheticals and grossly miscalculated how swift and vast the psychotic destruction would advance.
So now I am back again and kicking at embers and trying to reimagine what it all was before the fire broke out. Gathering the caucus. Sending the calls and hoping to get a ping back from somewhere. Anywhere along the rise and fall of consciousness. Reinstalling routines. Rebuilding structure. Recreating from memory the blueprint and it's different every time.
If, at the end of it all, I can assemble something to make a future iteration of myself feel less daunted, or less alone, or less wrecked, or more hopeful for sunrise, or more comfortable with no one to sing to but the moon and the tone deaf clouds, I will be happy. I don't always do good, but I do the best I can. I know the cycle will eventually end and I won't be blown clear and the fire will consume, but what is the high worth if you'll never know just how high you could've been? I'm not talking the highs that come with squared proportions. False peaks? I mean, would I trade the 40% bad outcomes for 100% decent outcomes? No. I don't think so. In the worst times, yes. Of course. No. I don't think so. And it is difficult to wrap my head around. Difficult to work around. Difficult to not fall into myself standing on the foundation slab in a wilderness where a home used to stand and not feel something for everything and everyone who died in their beds who would have gotten up to jobs and friends that morning when the leaves were still wet with night and the paper boy was sucking oxygen looking at the weeks rounds on his front porch and the dogs were still dreaming and the shots in the dark were unreported and the spiders still had games to play and the cigarette burns still bled and fuck
As promised: two pack.
///Five Deez - "So Good" it's nice to be back. nice to be feeling something.
///Amon Tobin - "Untangle" slow verbs.
Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
Showing posts with label four tet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label four tet. Show all posts
9/3/12
11/14/11
Work and Workarounds
Cued: writing music and word inducing fluids to maybe produce some super fluidity. So lets get through this in one piece, because time is precious and hacks do two takes. I kid. But seriously, there's a lot less to worry about when you know your nose keeps bleeding because you've been snuffling coke. There's a lot more to worry about when your nose keeps bleeding and as far as you know you've kept it clean. So maybe it's just the winter crush I've been sucking into my lungs and things will balance up. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just prone to nose bleeds. Maybe I've just been sniffing too much paint. Maybe I shouldn't keep sleeping at 48 degrees. Maybe I should stop worrying because at the end of the day, if I finish up with as many body parts and organs as I started with, things are pretty much as good as it gets.
Slugging my way through another work day I got to making conversation. There's only so many times you can walk by the people you don't want to talk to or have anything to do without having to say something. As I walked in the manager shook my hand. Both managers did. And I was immediately accosted by a union lifer suggesting I was buddy buddy with management. By itself laughable. Apparently the managers have never shaken hands with him first thing in the morning in all his 34 years. Which really makes me wonder: am I that much better than them? I've done nothing untoward to provoke a positive response from the high ups. I just do my shit and go home. Apparently having that much work ethic puts me at odds with my fellows and in the good graces of the up and ups. Which is hilarious. When you think about how inefficient things can be, how many times people can spin around in a circle to collect a paycheck instead of doing their jobs, it probably doesn't occur to you that having the ability to walk in a straight line could ever be that much of an asset. I laughed, shrugged, and went on doing my shit. I'm not concerned in the slightest. If anything, I know that if I show up I'm already ahead of most of the pack.
Which brings me to another conversation. I was talking to a guy who is apparently the heir apparent or at least the stop gap when managerial shifts are changing. The guy who's supposed to keep the ship righted, but everyone's been on the ship more than long enough to know what they're supposed to do and get it done without any supervision to speak of. He's "that guy" who's been around long enough to know what's up, but is absolutely incapable of leading effectively for any length of time, and so has been thrown a bone so he doesn't realize he is exactly the same for all of his time and would be better served doing something else entirely that pays better. Probably the reason they don't out right promote me (because I will immediately leverage that shit into a better position elsewhere), but anyway...
...I was talking about a coworker whose name I did not know and talked about him being the guy who makes the dirty jokes. To which, I will refer to him here as the fucking mook, the mook responded before I could finish my thought, "ah yes, you are talking about so and so. I'm the one who makes the good clean jokes." I literally had to stop what I was doing to close and rub my eyes out of frustration and disbelief. The jokes he makes are terrible. I mention off hand that time flies, he rejoins with a long diatribe about scientific principles and a crock of other fragments that essentially end two minutes later with the punch line "time can never actually fly." I had to pause to weigh punching his lights out and the satisfaction that would bring versus the satisfaction of having a job and getting a paycheck. Pros and cons floated around for a few silent moments and I shook my head and walked away.
First of all, the fact that he would not understand that his sense of humor is absolutely terrible and steeped in enough dungeons and dragons dice rolling logic to make me want to hang myself on the hour every hour we occupy the same space is tough to deal with, but I do. Can't get paid if I'm dead. Second of all, the mook didn't even let me finish my thought. I paused for maybe five seconds to move some boxes while he stood around whining about how hard work is, citing examples of exertion fractions of what I did on the regular at my other job (holding my tongue so he could feel good about himself, because I like people to feel good around me), and he chimes in about being more valuable to me because he is the "good joke teller." My thought finished with "and the sex jokes are totally hilarious." They are. That's the thing about associating with older people. They've got smut, slut, muck in the rut down right filthy jokes you've never heard before and hearing these jokes in the family oriented brightly lit grocery store instead of a dark dive bar makes them all the more side splitting. Thirdly, few things pet me the wrong way harder than people that think they're funny. If you've got some albums recorded and played comedy central or some night clubs with success, then maybe you can say that. It's one of those things. How are you going to tell me that you are funny to me? That laugh coming out of my mouth is not directed to what you said, it's directed to what everyone else around me said about what you said. Sometimes it's in line, if you are actually funny to us. But if you are not funny at all, there's a real good chance I'm laughing at their heckling more than anything else.
It just makes me laugh most of all though that this mook tries to posture like he knows whats up. I've been on the new job for a week and already they all know I get shit done faster, more efficiently, and with higher fidelity than anyone there right now who is not also a manager. He asks me to do things and I do them, because I could care less who is actually in charge. I just do my eight and go home. The people I respect are the people that do it as well or better than me. He's not one of them. I'm not trying to start anything. We're breaking down pallets of products to carts and everything is being separated out to the finest scale, wasting huge amounts of time. Things are being left on pallets because "they're too heavy" to move. And I'm laughing the whole way. It takes this dude the entire day to shuffle five pallets. I was doing that in 1 and 2/3 hours where I was working before. People are hunching to catch their breath and rest their limbs and I am dumbfound by how weak they are. Dude is taller and heavier than me, but apparently he just wears his clothes well because he's all dough and his helper is made out of lightly whipped fluff. Tell me this isn't the average fitness level of 22 year olds these days. Seriously, if I got into a fight with someone in the backroom, the entire daytime crew couldn't stop me from killing him if they all fought against me together. I'm not saying I'm super human. I'm saying they're about as functional as cardboard cutouts with souls duct taped to them.
Then he keeps asking me if I need a hand with X and Y and I said yes at first because I thought he wanted to be helpful, until I realized he was using me to dodge doing anything actual. Because I work at a relatively high octane he was basically sucking around in my wake to put in face time. So the next time he asked and said "I would offer to give you a hand but the space you're working in is pretty small" (I intentionally walled myself into the pallets a good foot taller than me with no elbow room so I could get shit done without having to deal with bullshitting this idiot with small talk) I said "you don't need to offer me a hand ever, and yes, there's enough space for me and my thoughts and nothing else." Not trying to be rude, but I get blunt when I'm trying to get things done. Nevertheless, the mook follows me out into the aisles and starts touching the stuff I loaded up and I just walk away. If he wants to work my shit that badly then fine. Have at it. One thing I can't tolerate is people nipping at my work and then claiming it was all them when it's time to hand out kudos. Sure I could step up and say "hey he didn't do shit", but I'm much more the sort of person who prefers to let work speak for itself and hope the people up top can make that distinction on their own: "hey so and so doesnt get a damn thing done when person X isn't here too. Maybe it's all person X?"
Does that actually ever happen? I don't know if they ever do, but I guess I'm just soft spoken. Let the work speak. Like if I get an 85 on my final paper DONT FUCKING FAIL ME BECAUSE I MISSED CLASS TOO MANY TIMES YOU FUCKKKK!@#@##%!!@%!@#. Yeah, that TA phd student who wore the skinny jeans and faux hawk in my media studies class back in 2008 is still on the list of people who are going to be strangled to death with my hands if civilization and law and order give out. Maybe not. Maybe just when I have nothing else to do besides dodge the law and balance the karmic checkbook that is still pretty far out of whack. But thats years off (if I win the lottery, dodging the law is expensive) or decades. Depends on how much I actually get done. Let the work speak for itself.
I realized today that my internal conversations were seeping out when I heard someone say "you unconscionable fat bastard" in my voice while I was walking behind someone. Definitely need to restore some volume control there. People shouldn't have to feel awful just for being coincident with me in space and time. That's just not fair to chance and circumstance. Plus it's not like they made me late for something. Not like the woman driving in front of me on a one lane one way road with cars parked on both sides who cruised at seven miles per hour. I was about ready to ride my bike over her back bumper, right over the roof, and down the hood of her car while flipping her double barreled fuck yous. I was about twenty minutes in to a conversation with myself when I reached the conclusion that I had to go take a dump. What I didn't realize was that I said that out loud, in mumbling tones no less, but someone caught enough of it and absolutely shot me the meanest 60 year old sour face ever. I laughed. At how lemon juiced her face looked. She flipped her cart around and strut away. Point taken, though. Need to guard my gates a little tighter. I can't always control what goes on in the compound, but I can at least try to control who and what goes in and out. Work around it, na mean?
///Four Tet - "A Joy" consciousness is noisy
Slugging my way through another work day I got to making conversation. There's only so many times you can walk by the people you don't want to talk to or have anything to do without having to say something. As I walked in the manager shook my hand. Both managers did. And I was immediately accosted by a union lifer suggesting I was buddy buddy with management. By itself laughable. Apparently the managers have never shaken hands with him first thing in the morning in all his 34 years. Which really makes me wonder: am I that much better than them? I've done nothing untoward to provoke a positive response from the high ups. I just do my shit and go home. Apparently having that much work ethic puts me at odds with my fellows and in the good graces of the up and ups. Which is hilarious. When you think about how inefficient things can be, how many times people can spin around in a circle to collect a paycheck instead of doing their jobs, it probably doesn't occur to you that having the ability to walk in a straight line could ever be that much of an asset. I laughed, shrugged, and went on doing my shit. I'm not concerned in the slightest. If anything, I know that if I show up I'm already ahead of most of the pack.
Which brings me to another conversation. I was talking to a guy who is apparently the heir apparent or at least the stop gap when managerial shifts are changing. The guy who's supposed to keep the ship righted, but everyone's been on the ship more than long enough to know what they're supposed to do and get it done without any supervision to speak of. He's "that guy" who's been around long enough to know what's up, but is absolutely incapable of leading effectively for any length of time, and so has been thrown a bone so he doesn't realize he is exactly the same for all of his time and would be better served doing something else entirely that pays better. Probably the reason they don't out right promote me (because I will immediately leverage that shit into a better position elsewhere), but anyway...
...I was talking about a coworker whose name I did not know and talked about him being the guy who makes the dirty jokes. To which, I will refer to him here as the fucking mook, the mook responded before I could finish my thought, "ah yes, you are talking about so and so. I'm the one who makes the good clean jokes." I literally had to stop what I was doing to close and rub my eyes out of frustration and disbelief. The jokes he makes are terrible. I mention off hand that time flies, he rejoins with a long diatribe about scientific principles and a crock of other fragments that essentially end two minutes later with the punch line "time can never actually fly." I had to pause to weigh punching his lights out and the satisfaction that would bring versus the satisfaction of having a job and getting a paycheck. Pros and cons floated around for a few silent moments and I shook my head and walked away.
First of all, the fact that he would not understand that his sense of humor is absolutely terrible and steeped in enough dungeons and dragons dice rolling logic to make me want to hang myself on the hour every hour we occupy the same space is tough to deal with, but I do. Can't get paid if I'm dead. Second of all, the mook didn't even let me finish my thought. I paused for maybe five seconds to move some boxes while he stood around whining about how hard work is, citing examples of exertion fractions of what I did on the regular at my other job (holding my tongue so he could feel good about himself, because I like people to feel good around me), and he chimes in about being more valuable to me because he is the "good joke teller." My thought finished with "and the sex jokes are totally hilarious." They are. That's the thing about associating with older people. They've got smut, slut, muck in the rut down right filthy jokes you've never heard before and hearing these jokes in the family oriented brightly lit grocery store instead of a dark dive bar makes them all the more side splitting. Thirdly, few things pet me the wrong way harder than people that think they're funny. If you've got some albums recorded and played comedy central or some night clubs with success, then maybe you can say that. It's one of those things. How are you going to tell me that you are funny to me? That laugh coming out of my mouth is not directed to what you said, it's directed to what everyone else around me said about what you said. Sometimes it's in line, if you are actually funny to us. But if you are not funny at all, there's a real good chance I'm laughing at their heckling more than anything else.
It just makes me laugh most of all though that this mook tries to posture like he knows whats up. I've been on the new job for a week and already they all know I get shit done faster, more efficiently, and with higher fidelity than anyone there right now who is not also a manager. He asks me to do things and I do them, because I could care less who is actually in charge. I just do my eight and go home. The people I respect are the people that do it as well or better than me. He's not one of them. I'm not trying to start anything. We're breaking down pallets of products to carts and everything is being separated out to the finest scale, wasting huge amounts of time. Things are being left on pallets because "they're too heavy" to move. And I'm laughing the whole way. It takes this dude the entire day to shuffle five pallets. I was doing that in 1 and 2/3 hours where I was working before. People are hunching to catch their breath and rest their limbs and I am dumbfound by how weak they are. Dude is taller and heavier than me, but apparently he just wears his clothes well because he's all dough and his helper is made out of lightly whipped fluff. Tell me this isn't the average fitness level of 22 year olds these days. Seriously, if I got into a fight with someone in the backroom, the entire daytime crew couldn't stop me from killing him if they all fought against me together. I'm not saying I'm super human. I'm saying they're about as functional as cardboard cutouts with souls duct taped to them.
Then he keeps asking me if I need a hand with X and Y and I said yes at first because I thought he wanted to be helpful, until I realized he was using me to dodge doing anything actual. Because I work at a relatively high octane he was basically sucking around in my wake to put in face time. So the next time he asked and said "I would offer to give you a hand but the space you're working in is pretty small" (I intentionally walled myself into the pallets a good foot taller than me with no elbow room so I could get shit done without having to deal with bullshitting this idiot with small talk) I said "you don't need to offer me a hand ever, and yes, there's enough space for me and my thoughts and nothing else." Not trying to be rude, but I get blunt when I'm trying to get things done. Nevertheless, the mook follows me out into the aisles and starts touching the stuff I loaded up and I just walk away. If he wants to work my shit that badly then fine. Have at it. One thing I can't tolerate is people nipping at my work and then claiming it was all them when it's time to hand out kudos. Sure I could step up and say "hey he didn't do shit", but I'm much more the sort of person who prefers to let work speak for itself and hope the people up top can make that distinction on their own: "hey so and so doesnt get a damn thing done when person X isn't here too. Maybe it's all person X?"
Does that actually ever happen? I don't know if they ever do, but I guess I'm just soft spoken. Let the work speak. Like if I get an 85 on my final paper DONT FUCKING FAIL ME BECAUSE I MISSED CLASS TOO MANY TIMES YOU FUCKKKK!@#@##%!!@%!@#. Yeah, that TA phd student who wore the skinny jeans and faux hawk in my media studies class back in 2008 is still on the list of people who are going to be strangled to death with my hands if civilization and law and order give out. Maybe not. Maybe just when I have nothing else to do besides dodge the law and balance the karmic checkbook that is still pretty far out of whack. But thats years off (if I win the lottery, dodging the law is expensive) or decades. Depends on how much I actually get done. Let the work speak for itself.
I realized today that my internal conversations were seeping out when I heard someone say "you unconscionable fat bastard" in my voice while I was walking behind someone. Definitely need to restore some volume control there. People shouldn't have to feel awful just for being coincident with me in space and time. That's just not fair to chance and circumstance. Plus it's not like they made me late for something. Not like the woman driving in front of me on a one lane one way road with cars parked on both sides who cruised at seven miles per hour. I was about ready to ride my bike over her back bumper, right over the roof, and down the hood of her car while flipping her double barreled fuck yous. I was about twenty minutes in to a conversation with myself when I reached the conclusion that I had to go take a dump. What I didn't realize was that I said that out loud, in mumbling tones no less, but someone caught enough of it and absolutely shot me the meanest 60 year old sour face ever. I laughed. At how lemon juiced her face looked. She flipped her cart around and strut away. Point taken, though. Need to guard my gates a little tighter. I can't always control what goes on in the compound, but I can at least try to control who and what goes in and out. Work around it, na mean?
///Four Tet - "A Joy" consciousness is noisy
10/21/10
Beautiful Image and Music Launch (@ Factory Lube)
Hai,
I've got something special for you today :D "The Music that Makes the Living" is the music chronicling blog. I tried to make a feed of last.fm and it didn't track it over time. So this will. That's it. the background was more difficult to make than I thought it would be and then it took another hour to set up the colors to play nice with it, but easy isn't worth wasting time on. Had to hit the dimmer switch. The original was like a unicorn came on an automated welding machine. Which was awesome, but unreadable. And easy isn't worth doing unless it's video games. Hard video games make me want to kill other people. Next up is suicide diary. Productivity is sometimes it's own reward. Spoken like a truly conceited fuck. I definitely take that back. Sometimes distraction is it's own reward. And that reward is only as good as the alternative is potentially bad. That is what I meant to say. Suiterate.
///Four Tet - "Love Cry"
I've got something special for you today :D "The Music that Makes the Living" is the music chronicling blog. I tried to make a feed of last.fm and it didn't track it over time. So this will. That's it. the background was more difficult to make than I thought it would be and then it took another hour to set up the colors to play nice with it, but easy isn't worth wasting time on. Had to hit the dimmer switch. The original was like a unicorn came on an automated welding machine. Which was awesome, but unreadable. And easy isn't worth doing unless it's video games. Hard video games make me want to kill other people. Next up is suicide diary. Productivity is sometimes it's own reward. Spoken like a truly conceited fuck. I definitely take that back. Sometimes distraction is it's own reward. And that reward is only as good as the alternative is potentially bad. That is what I meant to say. Suiterate.
///Four Tet - "Love Cry"
9/15/10
Why I'd Rather Be Hispanic, Artificial Self Confidence, and a Root
Walking home from a training day for a job I may or may not have a thought occurred to me: I would rather be anything, but black, in today's America.
Sounds ridiculous right? The simple fact is it is still very uncomfortable being black in America. I mean, think about it, people haven't decided whether or not we can even be called black people or if we need to be called African Americans. At least with Latinos and Hispanic people it's not a choice between obviously politically delicate and offensive terms. Or maybe it is, since I've never been Hispanic or a Latino. Seriously though, every time you refer to a black person isn't there a little twinge in the back of your neck that makes you wonder if you're using the right word, or if you would look worse by using a term that throws racial consciousness in the reader's face, even if it's only for a moment?
Think about the stereotypes. If I were to make a mental list of pros and cons with respect to stereotypes, who would come out more favorably? Sure there are local pockets of better and worse viewpoints (border states, places with "little (insert south eastern country)s", and places with very visible very active gang cultures, but across the entire spectrum of America I feel like black people aren't necessarily losing ground, but aren't really improving either whereas other minorities are either receiving more than token attention or are at least viewed more favorably on the whole. I feel a lot like the very "interesting" back story of white America and black America has made the situation a lot like a landlord who needs a renter to pay on time and shut up about the property's needs and a renter who badly needs a place to rent and can't afford anything else. I guess when I think about the stereotypes, I can see positive ones for most other ethnicities that allow some type of positive integration with society beyond sports, music, sex, and street dance (you know, the things people have to do to support families and build generational wealth and own homes and cars and have stable year to year lives and retire) and absolutely none for the blacks in America.
And it's a little discouraging. It's like the problem of integration was never really solved beyond the physical interface and instead of a defacto solution, patches were administered. Patches were slapped on top of patches and policy plaster was slapped on top of the patched patches until people got tired of dealing with it. Or maybe until the job looked done enough from the standpoint of the people outside of it, but as someone who is a part of the structure of black America it's pretty obvious there are gaping holes in perception that continue to lead to gaping holes in... I dunno. I'm getting tired just thinking about it. It's not fixable. I'm not trying to be fatalist or anything like that, I just have to do my part with my kids to let them know that they do belong here.
That's it! I think I just stumbled on an answer. Black history. Being raised with such a heavy bent toward black history and it's burden on modern history and having to live every year with the idea that I'm permanently indebted to a project of acceptance that will be in progress from the day I'm born to the day I die was a mistake. Historical perspective is a good thing. Having historical perspective hammered into me with a distorted and disproportionate focus placed on the "right" and "wrong" expressions of stereotypes within that culture is what has left me with this feeling of malaise. Black history is important, but not more or less important than American history. It's not a separate story. Having the idea that I'm different and special and separated from America by black history has caused much more damage than confidence boosting good. The short term benefit of confidence has been far eclipsed by the long term effect of powerful feelings of isolation.
I guess the simplest branch, the main root of all of this is belonging may not boost individual confidence, but will ease future growth and development of identity. Telling someone they're special artificially boosts their self confidence. Someone learning they are special through time and experience and on their own allows them to build a lasting self confidence that will not be eroded as soon as the encouraging voices are taken away. Not constantly reinforcing a person's specialness and differentiating characteristics may hurt their self confidence in the short term, but will ease their interactions over time because they will have belongingness as the most basic premise of their relationship to the world around them.
If belongingness is the most basic premise of their relationship to the world around them, then they are free to pursue many more avenues of existence without having to consider questions of perception and practice, and while the questions may be there, they will not be central to the person's identity. If a person's most basic premise is that they are permanently different from the world around them they will, when (not if) self confidence fails to motivate action, be forced to constantly answer and ask and re-ask questions of perception and practice in a never ending cascade of attempts to join a world they can never really be a part of basic their most basic premise of existence is that they are permanently outside of and apart from the world at large.
So I guess the root of the problem with black America is really sourced from within every black American home and public classroom in the month of February. But, don't tell them that. They never seem to take criticism well even from "their own people". Trust me, I know. Responsibility is probably the second branch on the tree of stunted potential.
///Four Tet - "You Were There With Me" Just reminds me of thinking about the future sitting at the edge of an apple orchard and watching shafts of sunlight roll like lazy spotlights across empty fields and after the second hour noticing that the little things on the horizon aren't high tension transmission lines, but are the blades of still windmills.
Sounds ridiculous right? The simple fact is it is still very uncomfortable being black in America. I mean, think about it, people haven't decided whether or not we can even be called black people or if we need to be called African Americans. At least with Latinos and Hispanic people it's not a choice between obviously politically delicate and offensive terms. Or maybe it is, since I've never been Hispanic or a Latino. Seriously though, every time you refer to a black person isn't there a little twinge in the back of your neck that makes you wonder if you're using the right word, or if you would look worse by using a term that throws racial consciousness in the reader's face, even if it's only for a moment?
Think about the stereotypes. If I were to make a mental list of pros and cons with respect to stereotypes, who would come out more favorably? Sure there are local pockets of better and worse viewpoints (border states, places with "little (insert south eastern country)s", and places with very visible very active gang cultures, but across the entire spectrum of America I feel like black people aren't necessarily losing ground, but aren't really improving either whereas other minorities are either receiving more than token attention or are at least viewed more favorably on the whole. I feel a lot like the very "interesting" back story of white America and black America has made the situation a lot like a landlord who needs a renter to pay on time and shut up about the property's needs and a renter who badly needs a place to rent and can't afford anything else. I guess when I think about the stereotypes, I can see positive ones for most other ethnicities that allow some type of positive integration with society beyond sports, music, sex, and street dance (you know, the things people have to do to support families and build generational wealth and own homes and cars and have stable year to year lives and retire) and absolutely none for the blacks in America.
And it's a little discouraging. It's like the problem of integration was never really solved beyond the physical interface and instead of a defacto solution, patches were administered. Patches were slapped on top of patches and policy plaster was slapped on top of the patched patches until people got tired of dealing with it. Or maybe until the job looked done enough from the standpoint of the people outside of it, but as someone who is a part of the structure of black America it's pretty obvious there are gaping holes in perception that continue to lead to gaping holes in... I dunno. I'm getting tired just thinking about it. It's not fixable. I'm not trying to be fatalist or anything like that, I just have to do my part with my kids to let them know that they do belong here.
That's it! I think I just stumbled on an answer. Black history. Being raised with such a heavy bent toward black history and it's burden on modern history and having to live every year with the idea that I'm permanently indebted to a project of acceptance that will be in progress from the day I'm born to the day I die was a mistake. Historical perspective is a good thing. Having historical perspective hammered into me with a distorted and disproportionate focus placed on the "right" and "wrong" expressions of stereotypes within that culture is what has left me with this feeling of malaise. Black history is important, but not more or less important than American history. It's not a separate story. Having the idea that I'm different and special and separated from America by black history has caused much more damage than confidence boosting good. The short term benefit of confidence has been far eclipsed by the long term effect of powerful feelings of isolation.
I guess the simplest branch, the main root of all of this is belonging may not boost individual confidence, but will ease future growth and development of identity. Telling someone they're special artificially boosts their self confidence. Someone learning they are special through time and experience and on their own allows them to build a lasting self confidence that will not be eroded as soon as the encouraging voices are taken away. Not constantly reinforcing a person's specialness and differentiating characteristics may hurt their self confidence in the short term, but will ease their interactions over time because they will have belongingness as the most basic premise of their relationship to the world around them.
If belongingness is the most basic premise of their relationship to the world around them, then they are free to pursue many more avenues of existence without having to consider questions of perception and practice, and while the questions may be there, they will not be central to the person's identity. If a person's most basic premise is that they are permanently different from the world around them they will, when (not if) self confidence fails to motivate action, be forced to constantly answer and ask and re-ask questions of perception and practice in a never ending cascade of attempts to join a world they can never really be a part of basic their most basic premise of existence is that they are permanently outside of and apart from the world at large.
So I guess the root of the problem with black America is really sourced from within every black American home and public classroom in the month of February. But, don't tell them that. They never seem to take criticism well even from "their own people". Trust me, I know. Responsibility is probably the second branch on the tree of stunted potential.
///Four Tet - "You Were There With Me" Just reminds me of thinking about the future sitting at the edge of an apple orchard and watching shafts of sunlight roll like lazy spotlights across empty fields and after the second hour noticing that the little things on the horizon aren't high tension transmission lines, but are the blades of still windmills.
6/30/10
Impossible Happens, Sort Of
Remember all of those changes I promised before? Well I do. I'm not going to quote myself. That would just be arrogant. Sort of. But the point is I've been staying up way too late so I'm going to sleep right now. I've been practicing with the brand spanking new used pen tablet and I am loving it like pedophiles love the portrait offices at Wal Mart. I thought it would months or years before I ever got a chance to use one, but I was gifted one by a pal I went to high school with. Easily the best thing that's happened to me this year. I am so excited to play with it some more.
Here's the first thing I made with it:
Ultimately that will end up being the background for auralport.blogspot.com, a.k.a. the poetry corner thingy. Aren't you proud of me? Well I'm proud of me. I mean if I had to pick a guy and the only criteria the head office gave me was that they wanted a winner who could also punt a baby over a small house in a pinch I would definitely pick me. Plus if you ever found yourself stranded in some Russian frontier town and the only thing standing between us and death by murderous drunk Siberian bear men was an Indiana Jones style drinking contest I would win it by a mile and instead of getting killed we'd get that weird amulet thing and find the ark and then take over the world and then fire our boss and then make me permanent employee of the month and change the future employees of the month to assistants to the employee of the month and the only thing I would have the assistants do is battle to the death using only supplies found in the supply closet and all for my personal amusement because I am more awesome than that evil guy in The Road Warrior.
In short: raucous applause for this guy. Did I say 5 days to implement all of those changes? I think I did. How about tomorrow? Tomorrow will be the big day.
And of course, my apologies for the poetry. Updates will now resume their daily march.
///Four Tet - "Glue of the World" I love it when a song is well mastered and then the producer turns it lo-fi and you get all kinds of interference and a glossless lossy sound and it pulls the whole track together and sets it apart from the realm of atmospheric and puts it squarely in the realm of meaningful whether the song's author injected the meaning and emotion or not. It sounds cheesy to say, but it reminds me of a choose your own adventure book except instead of the song writer telling you how to feel, the song writer is asking you how it makes you feel.
Here's the first thing I made with it:
Ultimately that will end up being the background for auralport.blogspot.com, a.k.a. the poetry corner thingy. Aren't you proud of me? Well I'm proud of me. I mean if I had to pick a guy and the only criteria the head office gave me was that they wanted a winner who could also punt a baby over a small house in a pinch I would definitely pick me. Plus if you ever found yourself stranded in some Russian frontier town and the only thing standing between us and death by murderous drunk Siberian bear men was an Indiana Jones style drinking contest I would win it by a mile and instead of getting killed we'd get that weird amulet thing and find the ark and then take over the world and then fire our boss and then make me permanent employee of the month and change the future employees of the month to assistants to the employee of the month and the only thing I would have the assistants do is battle to the death using only supplies found in the supply closet and all for my personal amusement because I am more awesome than that evil guy in The Road Warrior.
In short: raucous applause for this guy. Did I say 5 days to implement all of those changes? I think I did. How about tomorrow? Tomorrow will be the big day.
And of course, my apologies for the poetry. Updates will now resume their daily march.
///Four Tet - "Glue of the World" I love it when a song is well mastered and then the producer turns it lo-fi and you get all kinds of interference and a glossless lossy sound and it pulls the whole track together and sets it apart from the realm of atmospheric and puts it squarely in the realm of meaningful whether the song's author injected the meaning and emotion or not. It sounds cheesy to say, but it reminds me of a choose your own adventure book except instead of the song writer telling you how to feel, the song writer is asking you how it makes you feel.
5/1/10
life snobs
for a while i was afraid that what education ive pieced together over the years has made me a snob. like a life snob. the kind of person who turns their nose up at everything because of things encapsulated in the following phrases:
"the book was better"
"the original from (insert obscure year) was better"
"i wouldnt buy that if i were you"
"i researched X Y and Z and this is my informed opinion"
"i heard on npr the other day..."
"i read on bbc.co.uk the other day..."
"thats just history repeating itself if you look back to (insert obscure date and event)"
"that was actually a sample from (insert less known band)"
"if you weight the pros and cons of it..."
"i think you are definitely mistaken..."
"well if you think about it, thats what they want you to think..."
"thats how the system works..."
and so on. any one of the above phrases can be exchanged for simpler cruder and more direct and colloquial phrases like "you dumb shit"... and "that is some nigga shit right there" and on and on so the point is.... the point is that normally i would be extremely self conscious about these kinds of things and go home and worry that people think that i must think im some kind of poindexter life snob who knows more than he should about anything and tries to lord it over his peers cuz he has no friends and sleeps with a teddy bear and a dictionary under his pillow.
but the fact of the matter is... haha what an ugly phrase... how about the simpler answer to this conundrum is that all this percieved snobbery is a machination of being American. Simple as that. America encourages simple, muddy, plain as dirt thinking for the masses. Sure schools don't (usually) but the other school, the tv, does and continually. whats more is that any show of discernment, of critical consideration, automatically punts you up to the ugly "elite" class... those people that are too smart for their own good that fuck up the country for everyone, regardless of what your actual income is. im broke as hell most of the time, but im 99% certain that my parents think im some uppity smart ass who doesnt understand the value of a dollar. whatever the fuck that means
so i guess what im trying to say is that the french aint so bad. or the brits. what passes for snobbery now used to just be critical thinking skills and the ability to turn down cheap and instant for slightly more costly and much longer lasting. the desire to turn max profit out of everything has essentially made anything less into snobbery, when in fact most profits should not be measured in dollars despite the thousand dollar bills the tv smacks us with continually. but thats snobbery. dont be a snob. dont make your own sandwiches because they taste better. just shove some mcdonalds in your throat. its cheaper too so you get to put more money in your pocket. no brainer.
everyone has become so obsessed with no brainers when the honest to god truth is the people that keep the brains in their skulls and turned on have a hard time passing in the world of the no brainers. so many things happen and we have to say to ourselves ... wait what the fuck just happened there... but what have to say it internally because if we said it out loud we would sound crazy. if we said half of the things we actually thought about we would probably be called crazy.
i dunno.... maybe the problem here is that my thirst for knowledge has vastly outpaced my station in life. that could be seen as the problem. if i was a lot dumber. like a lot fucking dumber.... i would be happy as a skunk doing whatever it is skunks do the 23 hours and 55 minutes i dont see them walking across my parents back yard. i would be happy to be at home doing nothing. happy to eat food and wash dishes and mow the lawn and happy to listen to my mom talk about her bleeding fucking toes and my dad talk about how he has to beat the sluts off of his fat disgusting body all day while he works as a phone technician. christ... the root of this entire existential crisis is my education.
at least thats what a no brainer might say. and you know what... in the current setting... in this state of the union... they'd be right. fuck them. my brain is strapped on at all times and it might be the death of me, but god damn it, if thats the case then im ready to die.
///four tet - "Untitled [SAW2 CD1 Track1] (Four Tet remix)" this song has brought me nothing but joy. i came across the four tet remix album in the second lowest pit of my life. it wasnt a shovel. it wasnt water in the desert. it was meaning and reason and design written across the formless mass and black and blue of life's crush. and thats why i still like it. and thats why i still love it.
"the book was better"
"the original from (insert obscure year) was better"
"i wouldnt buy that if i were you"
"i researched X Y and Z and this is my informed opinion"
"i heard on npr the other day..."
"i read on bbc.co.uk the other day..."
"thats just history repeating itself if you look back to (insert obscure date and event)"
"that was actually a sample from (insert less known band)"
"if you weight the pros and cons of it..."
"i think you are definitely mistaken..."
"well if you think about it, thats what they want you to think..."
"thats how the system works..."
and so on. any one of the above phrases can be exchanged for simpler cruder and more direct and colloquial phrases like "you dumb shit"... and "that is some nigga shit right there" and on and on so the point is.... the point is that normally i would be extremely self conscious about these kinds of things and go home and worry that people think that i must think im some kind of poindexter life snob who knows more than he should about anything and tries to lord it over his peers cuz he has no friends and sleeps with a teddy bear and a dictionary under his pillow.
but the fact of the matter is... haha what an ugly phrase... how about the simpler answer to this conundrum is that all this percieved snobbery is a machination of being American. Simple as that. America encourages simple, muddy, plain as dirt thinking for the masses. Sure schools don't (usually) but the other school, the tv, does and continually. whats more is that any show of discernment, of critical consideration, automatically punts you up to the ugly "elite" class... those people that are too smart for their own good that fuck up the country for everyone, regardless of what your actual income is. im broke as hell most of the time, but im 99% certain that my parents think im some uppity smart ass who doesnt understand the value of a dollar. whatever the fuck that means
so i guess what im trying to say is that the french aint so bad. or the brits. what passes for snobbery now used to just be critical thinking skills and the ability to turn down cheap and instant for slightly more costly and much longer lasting. the desire to turn max profit out of everything has essentially made anything less into snobbery, when in fact most profits should not be measured in dollars despite the thousand dollar bills the tv smacks us with continually. but thats snobbery. dont be a snob. dont make your own sandwiches because they taste better. just shove some mcdonalds in your throat. its cheaper too so you get to put more money in your pocket. no brainer.
everyone has become so obsessed with no brainers when the honest to god truth is the people that keep the brains in their skulls and turned on have a hard time passing in the world of the no brainers. so many things happen and we have to say to ourselves ... wait what the fuck just happened there... but what have to say it internally because if we said it out loud we would sound crazy. if we said half of the things we actually thought about we would probably be called crazy.
i dunno.... maybe the problem here is that my thirst for knowledge has vastly outpaced my station in life. that could be seen as the problem. if i was a lot dumber. like a lot fucking dumber.... i would be happy as a skunk doing whatever it is skunks do the 23 hours and 55 minutes i dont see them walking across my parents back yard. i would be happy to be at home doing nothing. happy to eat food and wash dishes and mow the lawn and happy to listen to my mom talk about her bleeding fucking toes and my dad talk about how he has to beat the sluts off of his fat disgusting body all day while he works as a phone technician. christ... the root of this entire existential crisis is my education.
at least thats what a no brainer might say. and you know what... in the current setting... in this state of the union... they'd be right. fuck them. my brain is strapped on at all times and it might be the death of me, but god damn it, if thats the case then im ready to die.
///four tet - "Untitled [SAW2 CD1 Track1] (Four Tet remix)" this song has brought me nothing but joy. i came across the four tet remix album in the second lowest pit of my life. it wasnt a shovel. it wasnt water in the desert. it was meaning and reason and design written across the formless mass and black and blue of life's crush. and thats why i still like it. and thats why i still love it.
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