When I bought my first car (it was really the second one I drove, but since the first one was really my dad's, and I wrecked it after a month, it doesn't really count), it came with its original radio. This was a problem, because the car was a 1973 Plymouth Valiant, and the original radio was a tube-powered AM radio. It had to warm up before I could enjoy the glorious selection of the Jacksonville AM radio market. As I was a big music fan, I found this arrangement to be less than satisfactory.
So I saved up some of my Little Caesars money, made the trip to Circuit City, and bought a Mitsubishi cassette player and Coustic (I think) speakers...which, as my automobile was a piece of crap, effectively gave me a more expensive car radio than car. The radio sounded pretty good, but more importantly, it was loud. When I would have to go to work meetings, I'd pick up a co-worker (who later stole my job), throw in ...And Justice For All, and turn up the volume until the windows started to shake...which worked better than coffee.
It was a good stereo. The problem with it, though (apart from being in a crappy car), was that it was a cassette player...not that there were many alternatives. Having a cassette player made it a necessity to learn basic cassette reconstruction techniques. If the tape flipped out of the shell and got caught on the player heads, I had to be able to fish out the ribbon while inflicting minimum damage. I became adept at re-spooling tapes when the case would crack. Every so often, a cassette would start emitting a high-pitched whine when playing. I quickly learned this could be fixed by throwing the cassette as hard as I could on the floor.
The tapes themselves required a certain care to minimize the playing malfunctions. Leave a tape in a car in Florida in the summer, and it would instantly stretch and warp to the point of sounding unlistenable (I would've used the "experimental label, but I didn't know it back then). In the best case, cassettes had a limited lifespan and would simply wear out. I could directly quantify how much I liked an album by how many copies I went through; Appetite for Destruction, Operation: Mindcrime, ...And Justice for All, and For Those About to Rock all warranted at least three re-purchases.
I was far from alone in having to buy these cassettes over and over. For one thing, cassettes sucked for everyone, not just me. But more importantly, many of the people I knew similarly blew through multiple copies of each of these specific albums. Is there anyone in existence who only owned one copy of Appetite? Nah, not only did everyone buy the Guns n' Roses debut, they inevitably had to replace it more than once. Similarly, every metalhead I knew had Operation: Mindcrime multiple times, and ...And Justice for All similarly seemed to be in every single person's car more than once...a working copy in the tape deck and a crushed copy on the floorboards.
While I'm sure each of these albums can thank the crappy nature of cassettes for a certain portion of their high sales figures, there is another factor at work: each of these albums was especially popular. Sure, Mindcrime had a limited base of appeal, but pretty much anyone who might like it did in fact own it. Metallica crossed over to mainstream with ...And Justice (before, it should be noted, they went commercial), and it was impossible to throw a rock in a local mall without hitting at least one burgeoning teenage GnR fan...visible by the patch on the back of their jean jacket. Hell, Appetite for Destruction reached a certain level of omnipresence among people I know. I hesitate to think of it as a touchstone of my generation, but it probably is more accurate of a characterization of that album than I would like to admit.
It's not really a mystery why it worked this way. Of course we all listened to pretty much the same stuff. How would we ever find out about different stuff? MTV was still playing videos, but it wasn't like they had great access for anyone other than the few bands major labels pushed. We could listen to the radio, but the local stations pretty much only played arena rock from the seventies. We could look at the music magazines, but they stuck on the same several bands which actually managed to hit MTV airplay. If we talked to our friends, they might recommend something they heard of...either on MTV, radio, or in a crappy music mag.
I've been thinking about this for some time. Back in November, I was looking up some band on Amazon, and I just kept following the "people who bought this also bought..." link until I found something I liked...so I was able to discover, purchase, and download an album (the debut from Yuck) from a band I would've never heard of if not for the internet. And if you like one indy band, it's increasingly easy--via mailing lists, bandcamp, and the like--to discover twenty or thirty similar bands; for me, Son Volt led to Uncle Tupelo, which led to Wilco, which led to Drive-By Truckers, which led to Slobberbone, which led to Two Cow Garage, which led to Glossary, which led to Lucero, and so on. It's truly a wonder.
Every so often, I'll read someone complaining about how our ever-increasing media access has led us, as a culture, to increasingly divergent tastes. The critic will continue on, lamenting the days where people used to share more cultural experiences; nowadays, the writer will continue (with a tear on their choice of font), we're growing increasingly apart from too many entertainment choices. Will we ever be able to be a single people, they end, without a shared monoculture?
Admittedly, I'm not usually one for nostalgia, but the nostalgia for a monoculture makes even less sense than normal. After all, if I would've had choices, if I would've known of my options, would I have really invested so much of my youth into Motley Crue? Probably not...and I would've been a better person for it.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Thursday, March 08, 2012
floating, not sinking
I've been thinking lately of out of body experiences...and what makes me think of them is not psychic Soviet spies (which would, it should be stated, be very cool indeed). Instead, I think of sickness and stress.
When I was a grad student, I had use of the student health center. While everyone I ever saw there was relatively nice, they also were proponents of the "open the patient's mouth and throw a handful of pills at them" school of medicine. I went in there my first year of grad school because I had a bad cold, and the coughing was keeping me up at night. The doctor, without doing anything other than a cursory examination, gave me a codeine prescription.
I am, for the record, never going to become a drug fiend. I have to admit, though, that codeine was rather fun. I could feel my body going numb and my mind getting a little loopy...but I could do so with complete detachment. It was almost like I was floating above this guy whose behavior was slowly deteriorating...albeit in a fairly hilarious way.
As anyone who's been through its ranks may tell you, grad school was, by and large, not all goofy drug-induced laughs, By the end of my time in grad school, I was facing a dissertation which started sprawling out of my reach while the job market, which I was soon to enter, was not so much contracting as imploding. I found myself indulging in very un-Mike-like behavior. I didn't want to do any work...hell, I didn't want to do much of anything other than lay on the couch in silence and eat too much, maybe while gently rocking back and forth for variety. When I did interact with people, I either became silent or snapped at those around me. I could see myself turning into someone I did not like, and while I wasn't exactly a disembodied Mike floating above the scene as per bad sci-fi, I did experience it as someone else--someone very dark--taking over who I thought of as "me."
One night while my (future) mother in law was over, my (future) wife asked me something about my day, and I bit into her, spewing gloom and hopelessness. I saw her face drop, and, all of a sudden, the two of them realized they needed to run to the store...or do something, anything to get out of my sight. Again, it wasn't me...and there was really nothing I could do to stop the outburst. Hell, I was as disturbed by it as anyone, because it was the type of behavior I didn't think I would do.
The next day, I made an appointment to the over-prescribing student health center. I told the doctor about my blackness and my outbursts. She asked me rather matter-of-factly if I was suicidal while writing me a prescription for Zoloft. After a month or so, I started to feel more like myself. My (then) girlfriend was shocked when I started to discuss my depression treatment with friends. What was more shocking was how many of them either were on or had been on anti-depressants themselves. One friend commented, "It's more surprising if someone has been through grad school and hasn't been on anti-depressants." It seemed like we were all floating above our own heads, pushed away from who we really were...but I was the first one to start talking about it.
Years passed. The closest I got to out of body experiences during was the severe boredom of student conferences. After somehow landing a teaching position in a field far from my own and marrying my sweetie, my life stabilized. My performance on the job market never actually improved...in spite of re-branding myself as an academic and publishing eight articles (and being told by a boss I was publishing more than many tenure track faculty). Eventually, I felt I had settled into life. I became okay with my out-of-my-field job. I accepted I would never hit the tenure track. I joined a band. All was good.
It's funny, though...while I knew I would never be thought of as perky or happy-go-lucky, I honestly believed I was relatively doubt-free...at least in big-picture terms. All those worries and anxieties, however, have a way of coming back at the least expected time.
My wife and I decided to have a child. When she officially got pregnant, we hugged...and I was honestly joyed. However, this is when a lot of old doubts started flying to the surface. Even though I had given up on the job market ages before, I started to actively think of myself as a failure in terms of my career. This made me re-question whether I believed success was even possible...which made me in turn re-question things like justice, honor, hope, what it meant to be a success anyway, was it worth it to even try to work hard? to be honest? to be a good person?...all of which made me start to ask the really big question: what would I tell my child? When my kid was old enough, would I say "you can be anything you want to be" even after I no longer believed it to be true? Would I be a depressingly honest father or a lie-filled hopeful dad?
This was compounded when my beautiful girl, somewhere around the second month, starting to scream for hours on end. I tried to soothe her the best I could, and there were times where I was pretty good at it...mostly when singing to her. But I quickly learned I was, for some reason, absolutely horrible at calming her at night. There was one night where I got up to give my wife a rest...but my girl would not quit crying. I tried singing. I tried rocking her. I tried shushing her. My girl, however, just ramped up the screaming into Exorcist-esque squeals. It drove me to tears, and my wife had to relieve me. Moreover, she had to assure me it was just one of those things, as I had immediately assumed and was sure my daughter simply hated me.
Our girl also had some sort of digestive issue early on...either acid reflux or some food intolerance via mom-juice. This caused the poor girl to get into screamy fits rather often if unpredictably. Usually, she would balance out screamy and cute. There were days, however, where she turned very screamy for most of her awake portions. I remember one particular Wednesday where she was fine in the morning but unpleasant through the afternoon. The next day, she was just relentlessly unhappy the entire day. I did not deal with this well. At one point, black thoughts entered my head as I held my screaming baby, things I still don't want to admit to myself or anyone else...and I had to set her down in her crib, go into my bedroom, lay down in the fetal position, and cry. I'm normally not prone to such displays, but this time, it was unavoidable. When my kid was yelling at me, I would think "why did we even bother to have her?"...and the fact I realized I had thought this would make me feel worse than I thought possible. When my wife got home, I had to pass off our girl, go back to the bedroom, and resume my whimpering.
Not all days were this bad. Enough of them were, though. I found the early days (before she started smiling or laughing) to be particularly hard, and I assumed that, when she developed a bit more, it would get better. However, after she showed flashes of the happy, joyous baby she could be, it actually made the screamy fits--even if less common--to be that much worse in emotional impact. Fit this together with my job depression recurrence and my social isolation, and there were enough times where I could see me tumbling away from myself, becoming the black soul which I feared.
So I went to my doctor and told him about my depressions...both past and present. Instead of just throwing pills at me, though, he actually talked to me. He thought I was probably not fully into depression and might benefit more from talking to a professional. He gave me a name. I called. They told me it would take a month or more before they could fit me in. This depressed me further. I'm on the edge of depression, and you want me to wait a month?
I knew I should probably look for other people, but I didn't want to trust my mental health to someone I picked out of the phone book...yellow pages ads should not determine one's mental status. I asked a friend who works at my doctor's office, and she gave me a list of other therapists in the area. I called about seven of them, but none of them would even return my calls. So now I was still without an appointment and still depressed in general...but now I was also depressed about the state of the medical industry. So I called my original therapist to get an appointment, and this time, I had to wait six weeks. But I could hold it together for that long...right?
I finally got to the doctor. He seemed a nice guy...very interested in me and a good listener. So I spelled out my situation. I described my previous depression. I told him about my scholarship failures. I went through my repeated failures on the job market. I told him about my failed attempt to re-brand myself as a scholar. I then walked him through my difficulties adjusting to being a new father. I mentioned my feelings of isolation. I described in great detail the days where I broke down and cried. I built everything up to my ultimate philosophical crisis: how do you cope when you discover everything you believed, everything which used to drive you, how all of that was a lie?
As I said, he seemed like a really nice guy. Near the end of our hour together, though, I realized that he'd only been listening and not really constructively contributing. There was not even a hint of "this is what you can do about it" or "so this is a way to cope." And when I finished, instead of discussing how we'd work together, what we wanted to do, what course my therapy might take, he simply told me it was nice to meet me. I walked out, shaking my head. I went to the receptionist to pay my co-pay, and I noticed she had a radio playing the song "Every Rose Has Its Thorn"...which seemed a particularly ominous number for a psychiatrist's office.
I tried to hold it together on my own, but then I had a bad week. I had to negotiate some language on my job evaluation letter, because the verbage made me look like an idiot and a bad teacher. Then my band was set to finish recording an album, but instead of getting together, there was a big blowup on Facebook which ended a few days later with us losing our rhythm section. These things hit me harder than they should and make me a worse person than I was. I got a doctor's appointment, and he gave me a prescription for brain pills. And while there will still be bad days (last Thursday, for instance, my daughter forgot it was my birthday and just stayed in a bad mood which, by the time my wife came home, had reduced me to tears several times over), they hopefully will become less. I have a few things going for me: my wife is utterly wonderful, my daughter has the best laugh in the world, and soon, the anti-depressants will kick in and I will start to level out.
However, "leveling out," although a common and unavoidable phrase when describing depression, is the wrong metaphor. It's not that it's inaccurate. In many ways, the person who I become when depressed is me...just a lower version of me. He is meek, hopeless, lethargic, gloomy, stagnant, and a sucking vortex of joylessness. But if I think of my depression as being part of me, it will be easier for me to slide back into being him. If, however, I think of my depressed self as being someone else, it puts a bit of distance between us, and it makes it easier for me to find ways to increase that distance...until hopefully I can him out of existence entirely.
After all, it's more important to be the kind of person I want to be. If I can disown the negative, I can transcend it, conquer it, rise above.
Right?
When I was a grad student, I had use of the student health center. While everyone I ever saw there was relatively nice, they also were proponents of the "open the patient's mouth and throw a handful of pills at them" school of medicine. I went in there my first year of grad school because I had a bad cold, and the coughing was keeping me up at night. The doctor, without doing anything other than a cursory examination, gave me a codeine prescription.
I am, for the record, never going to become a drug fiend. I have to admit, though, that codeine was rather fun. I could feel my body going numb and my mind getting a little loopy...but I could do so with complete detachment. It was almost like I was floating above this guy whose behavior was slowly deteriorating...albeit in a fairly hilarious way.
As anyone who's been through its ranks may tell you, grad school was, by and large, not all goofy drug-induced laughs, By the end of my time in grad school, I was facing a dissertation which started sprawling out of my reach while the job market, which I was soon to enter, was not so much contracting as imploding. I found myself indulging in very un-Mike-like behavior. I didn't want to do any work...hell, I didn't want to do much of anything other than lay on the couch in silence and eat too much, maybe while gently rocking back and forth for variety. When I did interact with people, I either became silent or snapped at those around me. I could see myself turning into someone I did not like, and while I wasn't exactly a disembodied Mike floating above the scene as per bad sci-fi, I did experience it as someone else--someone very dark--taking over who I thought of as "me."
One night while my (future) mother in law was over, my (future) wife asked me something about my day, and I bit into her, spewing gloom and hopelessness. I saw her face drop, and, all of a sudden, the two of them realized they needed to run to the store...or do something, anything to get out of my sight. Again, it wasn't me...and there was really nothing I could do to stop the outburst. Hell, I was as disturbed by it as anyone, because it was the type of behavior I didn't think I would do.
The next day, I made an appointment to the over-prescribing student health center. I told the doctor about my blackness and my outbursts. She asked me rather matter-of-factly if I was suicidal while writing me a prescription for Zoloft. After a month or so, I started to feel more like myself. My (then) girlfriend was shocked when I started to discuss my depression treatment with friends. What was more shocking was how many of them either were on or had been on anti-depressants themselves. One friend commented, "It's more surprising if someone has been through grad school and hasn't been on anti-depressants." It seemed like we were all floating above our own heads, pushed away from who we really were...but I was the first one to start talking about it.
Years passed. The closest I got to out of body experiences during was the severe boredom of student conferences. After somehow landing a teaching position in a field far from my own and marrying my sweetie, my life stabilized. My performance on the job market never actually improved...in spite of re-branding myself as an academic and publishing eight articles (and being told by a boss I was publishing more than many tenure track faculty). Eventually, I felt I had settled into life. I became okay with my out-of-my-field job. I accepted I would never hit the tenure track. I joined a band. All was good.
It's funny, though...while I knew I would never be thought of as perky or happy-go-lucky, I honestly believed I was relatively doubt-free...at least in big-picture terms. All those worries and anxieties, however, have a way of coming back at the least expected time.
My wife and I decided to have a child. When she officially got pregnant, we hugged...and I was honestly joyed. However, this is when a lot of old doubts started flying to the surface. Even though I had given up on the job market ages before, I started to actively think of myself as a failure in terms of my career. This made me re-question whether I believed success was even possible...which made me in turn re-question things like justice, honor, hope, what it meant to be a success anyway, was it worth it to even try to work hard? to be honest? to be a good person?...all of which made me start to ask the really big question: what would I tell my child? When my kid was old enough, would I say "you can be anything you want to be" even after I no longer believed it to be true? Would I be a depressingly honest father or a lie-filled hopeful dad?
This was compounded when my beautiful girl, somewhere around the second month, starting to scream for hours on end. I tried to soothe her the best I could, and there were times where I was pretty good at it...mostly when singing to her. But I quickly learned I was, for some reason, absolutely horrible at calming her at night. There was one night where I got up to give my wife a rest...but my girl would not quit crying. I tried singing. I tried rocking her. I tried shushing her. My girl, however, just ramped up the screaming into Exorcist-esque squeals. It drove me to tears, and my wife had to relieve me. Moreover, she had to assure me it was just one of those things, as I had immediately assumed and was sure my daughter simply hated me.
Our girl also had some sort of digestive issue early on...either acid reflux or some food intolerance via mom-juice. This caused the poor girl to get into screamy fits rather often if unpredictably. Usually, she would balance out screamy and cute. There were days, however, where she turned very screamy for most of her awake portions. I remember one particular Wednesday where she was fine in the morning but unpleasant through the afternoon. The next day, she was just relentlessly unhappy the entire day. I did not deal with this well. At one point, black thoughts entered my head as I held my screaming baby, things I still don't want to admit to myself or anyone else...and I had to set her down in her crib, go into my bedroom, lay down in the fetal position, and cry. I'm normally not prone to such displays, but this time, it was unavoidable. When my kid was yelling at me, I would think "why did we even bother to have her?"...and the fact I realized I had thought this would make me feel worse than I thought possible. When my wife got home, I had to pass off our girl, go back to the bedroom, and resume my whimpering.
Not all days were this bad. Enough of them were, though. I found the early days (before she started smiling or laughing) to be particularly hard, and I assumed that, when she developed a bit more, it would get better. However, after she showed flashes of the happy, joyous baby she could be, it actually made the screamy fits--even if less common--to be that much worse in emotional impact. Fit this together with my job depression recurrence and my social isolation, and there were enough times where I could see me tumbling away from myself, becoming the black soul which I feared.
So I went to my doctor and told him about my depressions...both past and present. Instead of just throwing pills at me, though, he actually talked to me. He thought I was probably not fully into depression and might benefit more from talking to a professional. He gave me a name. I called. They told me it would take a month or more before they could fit me in. This depressed me further. I'm on the edge of depression, and you want me to wait a month?
I knew I should probably look for other people, but I didn't want to trust my mental health to someone I picked out of the phone book...yellow pages ads should not determine one's mental status. I asked a friend who works at my doctor's office, and she gave me a list of other therapists in the area. I called about seven of them, but none of them would even return my calls. So now I was still without an appointment and still depressed in general...but now I was also depressed about the state of the medical industry. So I called my original therapist to get an appointment, and this time, I had to wait six weeks. But I could hold it together for that long...right?
I finally got to the doctor. He seemed a nice guy...very interested in me and a good listener. So I spelled out my situation. I described my previous depression. I told him about my scholarship failures. I went through my repeated failures on the job market. I told him about my failed attempt to re-brand myself as a scholar. I then walked him through my difficulties adjusting to being a new father. I mentioned my feelings of isolation. I described in great detail the days where I broke down and cried. I built everything up to my ultimate philosophical crisis: how do you cope when you discover everything you believed, everything which used to drive you, how all of that was a lie?
As I said, he seemed like a really nice guy. Near the end of our hour together, though, I realized that he'd only been listening and not really constructively contributing. There was not even a hint of "this is what you can do about it" or "so this is a way to cope." And when I finished, instead of discussing how we'd work together, what we wanted to do, what course my therapy might take, he simply told me it was nice to meet me. I walked out, shaking my head. I went to the receptionist to pay my co-pay, and I noticed she had a radio playing the song "Every Rose Has Its Thorn"...which seemed a particularly ominous number for a psychiatrist's office.
I tried to hold it together on my own, but then I had a bad week. I had to negotiate some language on my job evaluation letter, because the verbage made me look like an idiot and a bad teacher. Then my band was set to finish recording an album, but instead of getting together, there was a big blowup on Facebook which ended a few days later with us losing our rhythm section. These things hit me harder than they should and make me a worse person than I was. I got a doctor's appointment, and he gave me a prescription for brain pills. And while there will still be bad days (last Thursday, for instance, my daughter forgot it was my birthday and just stayed in a bad mood which, by the time my wife came home, had reduced me to tears several times over), they hopefully will become less. I have a few things going for me: my wife is utterly wonderful, my daughter has the best laugh in the world, and soon, the anti-depressants will kick in and I will start to level out.
However, "leveling out," although a common and unavoidable phrase when describing depression, is the wrong metaphor. It's not that it's inaccurate. In many ways, the person who I become when depressed is me...just a lower version of me. He is meek, hopeless, lethargic, gloomy, stagnant, and a sucking vortex of joylessness. But if I think of my depression as being part of me, it will be easier for me to slide back into being him. If, however, I think of my depressed self as being someone else, it puts a bit of distance between us, and it makes it easier for me to find ways to increase that distance...until hopefully I can him out of existence entirely.
After all, it's more important to be the kind of person I want to be. If I can disown the negative, I can transcend it, conquer it, rise above.
Right?
Saturday, February 25, 2012
on inevitability
I had several weird dreams last night. I dreamed I was in a cooking competition and won after I invented Spaghetti Pizza. Then my wife and I were walking around malls and talking about moving, but when we got to our place, we realized we only had two days to pack and get out. Then my old band Analog Revolution was playing a show, and, for the noise montage at the end of one of our more popular songs, I jumped on top of one of the line of tables and duckwalked its length as I created strange and annoying sounds.
I awoke with Micheal Jackson's "Man in the Middle" stuck in my head. After laying with my wife in my arms for a seven and a half minutes, we heard my girl cry out. I got up real quick, closed the door (so my wife could get a bit more rest), pulled on my dirty clothes, yanked a bottle out of the fridge, went to grab my girl...and she was back asleep. So I decided to eat breakfast while I could and check the interwub. I fired up the computer, and when my e-mail appeared, the top message was from my sister, telling me it looked (from the last photo of me and my daughter) like I wasn't getting enough sleep. An adequate amount of sleep...is it even possible?
As soon as I sat down and tucked into my Greek yogurt and granola (made last night, with dried cranberries, raisins, and dried blueberries--party!), the MJ song went away, replaced by "Banditos" by The Refreshments...a much more appropriate choice for my mood lately, particularly as my frontal cortex was focusing on the line "Everybody knows that the world is full of stupid people." Think about that for more than a second, and you will know the kind of week I just had.
I'm busy beyond belief. I'm so dumped with work, chores, and tasks that I feel I may never emerge. I'm simultaneously being judged and being ignored. My mood is back to that as reflected in my November blog posts. I'm bursting with stuff to say and unsure of when I will have the time to say it. I have been making loud noises with my guitar and effects pedal army not nearly enough. I am behind on projects galore. I feel, in short, as if I've been knocked off the path permanently and have utterly lost any sense of direction.
I know I've always been in similar circumstances. I just thought things would eventually change. I keep forgetting, though: optimism is for chumps.
I awoke with Micheal Jackson's "Man in the Middle" stuck in my head. After laying with my wife in my arms for a seven and a half minutes, we heard my girl cry out. I got up real quick, closed the door (so my wife could get a bit more rest), pulled on my dirty clothes, yanked a bottle out of the fridge, went to grab my girl...and she was back asleep. So I decided to eat breakfast while I could and check the interwub. I fired up the computer, and when my e-mail appeared, the top message was from my sister, telling me it looked (from the last photo of me and my daughter) like I wasn't getting enough sleep. An adequate amount of sleep...is it even possible?
As soon as I sat down and tucked into my Greek yogurt and granola (made last night, with dried cranberries, raisins, and dried blueberries--party!), the MJ song went away, replaced by "Banditos" by The Refreshments...a much more appropriate choice for my mood lately, particularly as my frontal cortex was focusing on the line "Everybody knows that the world is full of stupid people." Think about that for more than a second, and you will know the kind of week I just had.
I'm busy beyond belief. I'm so dumped with work, chores, and tasks that I feel I may never emerge. I'm simultaneously being judged and being ignored. My mood is back to that as reflected in my November blog posts. I'm bursting with stuff to say and unsure of when I will have the time to say it. I have been making loud noises with my guitar and effects pedal army not nearly enough. I am behind on projects galore. I feel, in short, as if I've been knocked off the path permanently and have utterly lost any sense of direction.
I know I've always been in similar circumstances. I just thought things would eventually change. I keep forgetting, though: optimism is for chumps.
Friday, February 10, 2012
goodbye, artifacts
My parents tell me I always liked to read. As a kid, long before I could actually read, I would be sitting on the couch, thumbing through a book, staring intently at the pages. When my mom would ask me what I was doing, I would tell her I was "reading."
I don't remember this personally, of course. My earliest memory of books is thumbing through--scratch that, actually reading--several Classics Illustrated books. I remember reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (which doesn't actually sound right, as it's a fairly gruesome book near the end, but that's what I remember). Later, there was the Scholastic Book Club one sheet order forms we got in school, which lead to a lot of classics, including an abridged Journey to the Center of the Earth. Someone (a fellow student? or was it in our English text?) introduced me to Encyclopedia Brown, which lead to Alfred Hitchcock's Three Detectives stories. Later, the fateful day in middle school library where I ran across The Hobbit...which led me to beg my parents to buy my own copies, and then, somewhere during my third read-through, have them cover the paperbacks with contact paper to protect them. Later still, when I found a Stephen King book in my high school study hall desk, my fate/addiction was sealed.
Somewhere during my growing reading obsession, I started to fall in love with the books themselves. Given the option, I would look for hardbacks over paper. I started to prowl Chamblin's Book Mine (the world's best used book store) for cool, unexpected titles, all the while wondering why anyone would not just keep their used books yet still being thankful for their oversight whenever I made another discovery.
My love became more obsessive and ornate. I used to drive up to the recently opened Barnes & Noble and spend whatever was left over in my paycheck. Whenever I found a leather-bound (or even pleather-bound) edition--particularly if on the bargain bin tables--I would swipe it up. Much of these visits was spent staring longingly at the leather-bound and lavishly illustrated Lord of the Rings collection, but I could never bring myself to pull the trigger. I would go to see whatever obscure writer my university would bring in, buy a book, and get an autograph. Eventually, I started dreaming of owning a house mainly so I could have my own library (wood-paneled, of course) of leather-bound and hand-signed editions...you know, a gentlemanly room in which I could dwell when I retired, maybe while wearing a tweed jacket and enjoying a snifter of cognac.
When I moved from Florida to Ohio, a good half of my U-Haul was paper boxes full of books. I had bookshelves in my living room, bedroom, and study that first year in my new apartment. Then I had to get a roomate, so there was a contraction...some books went to a used bookstore, others went for sale online. After another roommate, my then-girlfriend moved in with more stuff, so another contraction. Pulled by the allure of washer and dryer hookups, we moved to a smaller house...and another contraction. The more stuff we acquired, the more books went bye-bye. When we started to turn the study into a nursery, it brought on (you guessed it) yet another contraction.
Too many books have, through the years, gone away. I realized long ago I'm never going to have the wood-paneled library...hell, I'm probably never going to own my own house and certainly will never be able to afford to retire, so the lack of a library in which to hang isn't really a big deal. I still have a lot of those old and leather-bound editions, but I never read them. Hell, I hardly even think of them. Instead, when I think of books, I think of my fourth copy of Neuromancer, my second copy of Snowcrash, or my still-contact paper-bound Lord of the Rings set. I can and quite often do close my eyes and recall scenes, lines, whole passages from each. I can, however, do the same with the Bill, The Galactic Hero series and about fifty other books, all of which are considerably more low-brow...and all of which, unfortunately, are lost in the book-contraction breeze.
This year for Christmas, my parents bought me a Kindle. I'm relatively broke, so I immediately downloaded a ton of out-of-copyright classics. It now has tons of Twain, Burroughs, Verne, and Wells residing on it, just waiting to be (quite literally) thumbed through. Immediately, though, I thought about buying a copy of Neuromancer, my perennial candidate for best novel ever. It would be nice, I considered, to have a copy whose binding would never break. And then get copies of all my other personal classics. And then get copies of all the goofy sci-fi and horror I've plowed through. I could, on this one little device, hold the library of my dreams and the library of stuff I've actually read.
Then it occurred to me: if I could have every book I've ever wanted on this one device and back up said library on the computer...what did I need books for?
Artifacts are going away. I've already moved into a post-artifactual music collection. While I have some dvds, they usually remain in storage, as my dvr is a much better storage medium. My papers and teaching material have long been digital. I now store lyric and music ideas on a hard drive rather than cassettes and notepads.
What is my world going to look like when I finally make the complete move to virtual storage? My stuff is losing its tangibility...and I'm surprised to find myself perfectly fine with that.
I don't remember this personally, of course. My earliest memory of books is thumbing through--scratch that, actually reading--several Classics Illustrated books. I remember reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (which doesn't actually sound right, as it's a fairly gruesome book near the end, but that's what I remember). Later, there was the Scholastic Book Club one sheet order forms we got in school, which lead to a lot of classics, including an abridged Journey to the Center of the Earth. Someone (a fellow student? or was it in our English text?) introduced me to Encyclopedia Brown, which lead to Alfred Hitchcock's Three Detectives stories. Later, the fateful day in middle school library where I ran across The Hobbit...which led me to beg my parents to buy my own copies, and then, somewhere during my third read-through, have them cover the paperbacks with contact paper to protect them. Later still, when I found a Stephen King book in my high school study hall desk, my fate/addiction was sealed.
Somewhere during my growing reading obsession, I started to fall in love with the books themselves. Given the option, I would look for hardbacks over paper. I started to prowl Chamblin's Book Mine (the world's best used book store) for cool, unexpected titles, all the while wondering why anyone would not just keep their used books yet still being thankful for their oversight whenever I made another discovery.
My love became more obsessive and ornate. I used to drive up to the recently opened Barnes & Noble and spend whatever was left over in my paycheck. Whenever I found a leather-bound (or even pleather-bound) edition--particularly if on the bargain bin tables--I would swipe it up. Much of these visits was spent staring longingly at the leather-bound and lavishly illustrated Lord of the Rings collection, but I could never bring myself to pull the trigger. I would go to see whatever obscure writer my university would bring in, buy a book, and get an autograph. Eventually, I started dreaming of owning a house mainly so I could have my own library (wood-paneled, of course) of leather-bound and hand-signed editions...you know, a gentlemanly room in which I could dwell when I retired, maybe while wearing a tweed jacket and enjoying a snifter of cognac.
When I moved from Florida to Ohio, a good half of my U-Haul was paper boxes full of books. I had bookshelves in my living room, bedroom, and study that first year in my new apartment. Then I had to get a roomate, so there was a contraction...some books went to a used bookstore, others went for sale online. After another roommate, my then-girlfriend moved in with more stuff, so another contraction. Pulled by the allure of washer and dryer hookups, we moved to a smaller house...and another contraction. The more stuff we acquired, the more books went bye-bye. When we started to turn the study into a nursery, it brought on (you guessed it) yet another contraction.
Too many books have, through the years, gone away. I realized long ago I'm never going to have the wood-paneled library...hell, I'm probably never going to own my own house and certainly will never be able to afford to retire, so the lack of a library in which to hang isn't really a big deal. I still have a lot of those old and leather-bound editions, but I never read them. Hell, I hardly even think of them. Instead, when I think of books, I think of my fourth copy of Neuromancer, my second copy of Snowcrash, or my still-contact paper-bound Lord of the Rings set. I can and quite often do close my eyes and recall scenes, lines, whole passages from each. I can, however, do the same with the Bill, The Galactic Hero series and about fifty other books, all of which are considerably more low-brow...and all of which, unfortunately, are lost in the book-contraction breeze.
This year for Christmas, my parents bought me a Kindle. I'm relatively broke, so I immediately downloaded a ton of out-of-copyright classics. It now has tons of Twain, Burroughs, Verne, and Wells residing on it, just waiting to be (quite literally) thumbed through. Immediately, though, I thought about buying a copy of Neuromancer, my perennial candidate for best novel ever. It would be nice, I considered, to have a copy whose binding would never break. And then get copies of all my other personal classics. And then get copies of all the goofy sci-fi and horror I've plowed through. I could, on this one little device, hold the library of my dreams and the library of stuff I've actually read.
Then it occurred to me: if I could have every book I've ever wanted on this one device and back up said library on the computer...what did I need books for?
Artifacts are going away. I've already moved into a post-artifactual music collection. While I have some dvds, they usually remain in storage, as my dvr is a much better storage medium. My papers and teaching material have long been digital. I now store lyric and music ideas on a hard drive rather than cassettes and notepads.
What is my world going to look like when I finally make the complete move to virtual storage? My stuff is losing its tangibility...and I'm surprised to find myself perfectly fine with that.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
what they sang decades ago
One of the many changes having a child in the house has caused is the conscious effort I have to make to not have a television playing. Lest you get the idea that I ever had an array of "afternoon programs," let me assure you I did not. But background noise is good. And I usually try to avoid music as background noise...because I just end up listening to the music instead of doing my work. I understand people who listen to tunes as they write not at all.
But while I am not one of those people who think of television as evil (I used to be a media scholar, after all), I don't want my daughter too overwhelmed by television. My wife has caught her staring at it several times...even when it's turned off. On the other hand, the sound of an empty house has always struck me as kind of creepy. My compromise? I have the tv on the 60s Digital Music channel a lot. But as always, my mind refuses to shut off completely when it's on...so I now have a list of things I know beyond a shadow of a doubt about the sixties...at least in terms of music.
As usual, I will probably fight to the death defending any of these claims...particularly if you catch me in a bar.
But while I am not one of those people who think of television as evil (I used to be a media scholar, after all), I don't want my daughter too overwhelmed by television. My wife has caught her staring at it several times...even when it's turned off. On the other hand, the sound of an empty house has always struck me as kind of creepy. My compromise? I have the tv on the 60s Digital Music channel a lot. But as always, my mind refuses to shut off completely when it's on...so I now have a list of things I know beyond a shadow of a doubt about the sixties...at least in terms of music.
- A huge portion of the music made by whites (particularly in the beginning of the decade) is horrific. Frankie Avalon? Frankie Valli? Gawdawful. People who think today's pop is bland and generic should listen to the pop of the past. Pop music has always been bland and generic.
- On the other hand, the more I listen to this channel, the larger my appreciation for The Funk Brothers (the awesome backing group of Motown) grows. Is everything Motown awesome? Of course not, but this band might have the best arrangements of anyone. Whenever I hear Jack Ashford's tambourine play, I get happy.
- There is a huge difference between The Beach Boys when they were really firing on all cylinders ("Sloop John B." or "Wouldn't It Be Nice?") and when they were playing half-heartedly (their awful cover of "Rock and Roll Music"). They really could've been one of the best bands in the world (if you doubt this, you should go now to listen to "Help Me, Rhonda"), but drugs? egos? something stopped them from being at all consistent.
- I often wish I would've been a musician back during this time...because the state of the art (particularly in the beginning of the decade) was not all that good and I would look like a genius by comparison. Early rock and roll guitar solos were often (if not regularly) just the song's melody line. Anyone nowadays could do better. Hey, maybe that's why people used to think Clapton was good.
- The state of the art, though, really did improve as the decade came to an end. While they weren't all brilliant, I will argue that drummers were generally better at the end of the sixties (particularly in heavy blues rock) than they are now. Really: John Bonham, Mitch Mitchell, Bill Ward, Keith Moon, and so forth. What the hell happened to drummers? Why have they become in general so unadventuresome?
- I've realized that although I prefer the later Beatles, I still kinda like their early bubblegum stuff. The early work of the Rolling Stones, though...much less convincing. They don't do good hippie stuff. Their 70s material more than makes up for it, though.
- One final certainty: Vanilla Fudge's version of "You Keep Me Hanging On" is the heaviest object in existence.
As usual, I will probably fight to the death defending any of these claims...particularly if you catch me in a bar.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Another Damn Monday
Tired after sending tons of "you haven't done any work in three weeks so you probably won't pass" e-mails? Wondering if anyone will ever call you and ask you to go to a bar? Feeling sorry for yourself? Fearful of how much your daughter will turn into a demon child from the netherworld throughout the night? It's time for a new drink! I call this one the "Another Damn Monday":
- Place some ice in a pint glass
- Fill the glass 1/4 up with vodka
- Fill to the halfway mark with white grape juice
- Top off the glass with ginger beer
- Try not to think of it only being the beginning of the week
Thursday, January 26, 2012
on genocide and dry eyes
Today, I spent entirely too much time in front of the computer, and as a result, my eyes got a little bloodshot. I tore the house apart, but I couldn't find the eye drops anywhere...so although I was in utterly no pain, I had no choice but to go around looking like I either had pink eye or had consumed a large amount of various illegal substances.
Later in the night, I found watching television on the couch with my wife when the following conversation occurred more or less verbatim:
"You know, I think I have a solution."
"To your ugly eye?"
"Yeah. It just occurred to me that I have a kitchen...and a knife...and an onion."
"Oh, no, Mike, you don't want to do that."
"Why not? It would make me cry."
"Yes, but it would inflame the membranes."
"Oh."
"You should just try and think of something sad...like the Holocaust."
This is why, by the way, my life is completely awesome.
Later in the night, I found watching television on the couch with my wife when the following conversation occurred more or less verbatim:
"You know, I think I have a solution."
"To your ugly eye?"
"Yeah. It just occurred to me that I have a kitchen...and a knife...and an onion."
"Oh, no, Mike, you don't want to do that."
"Why not? It would make me cry."
"Yes, but it would inflame the membranes."
"Oh."
"You should just try and think of something sad...like the Holocaust."
This is why, by the way, my life is completely awesome.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
an anniversary tale
Me and my beautiful spousal unit got married in January of 2003. We met at the mayor's office and were officially hitched in the city counsel chambers. Actually, I sat outside the mayor's office waiting for her to show up, and she waited outside in her car for me to show up. There was a tense few minutes there where I worried she might've returned to her senses and taken off for North Dakota or parts unknown.
But she came in and, against all logic, married me anyway. While I don't understand this, I am eternally grateful...particularly every January 24th. While we try to do something nice, we suffer the setback of being dead-ass broke, so rather than the traditional gifts, we just settle on a modest meal somewhere. This year, though, I mad a serious effort to do things properly.
First, I went and opened our firebox to look at the certificate...and with a quick glance at the form, I saw "2002." Hah, I thought, I could've sworn we were at nine years...not ten. I was happy I discovered the mistake in advance, though...nothing like avoiding looking like an idiot, particularly when anniversary dates are concerned.
I really had no idea what the standard gifts were for the tenth year. So I did what people in the 21st century: I googled it. The traditional gift was aluminum. This didn't really help. They offered gift suggestions, but I didn't think an anodized saute pan would really say "thanks for being married to me"...particularly as I'm the one who does the cooking.
They did list a modern gift equivalent, though, and it was...pewter. This didn't really help; I live in a small town where House of Pewter has yet to open up a franchise. I sent an e-mail to a local jeweler asking for suggestions. They wrote back, saying they didn't have any pewter jewelry, but (of course) diamonds were a perfectly acceptable substitute! I did some browsing online, and I did find a diamond ring I could afford...which had a genuine 1/20th of a carat rock. I could afford the ring, but the magnifying glass it would require to see the thing would put me over budget. I wrote and explained this to my wife, but she rejected my alternative offer to do origami out of aluminum foil.
When I recounted the full story to my wife after she returned from work, she told me we had in fact been married in 2003, not 2002. I went back to the form, and the "2002" I was was when we got our marriage application. I then googled the ninth anniversary, and the appropriate gift was leather. That I could've done.
However, I would've felt weird giving her a leather gift in front of our 7 month old.
But she came in and, against all logic, married me anyway. While I don't understand this, I am eternally grateful...particularly every January 24th. While we try to do something nice, we suffer the setback of being dead-ass broke, so rather than the traditional gifts, we just settle on a modest meal somewhere. This year, though, I mad a serious effort to do things properly.
First, I went and opened our firebox to look at the certificate...and with a quick glance at the form, I saw "2002." Hah, I thought, I could've sworn we were at nine years...not ten. I was happy I discovered the mistake in advance, though...nothing like avoiding looking like an idiot, particularly when anniversary dates are concerned.
I really had no idea what the standard gifts were for the tenth year. So I did what people in the 21st century: I googled it. The traditional gift was aluminum. This didn't really help. They offered gift suggestions, but I didn't think an anodized saute pan would really say "thanks for being married to me"...particularly as I'm the one who does the cooking.
They did list a modern gift equivalent, though, and it was...pewter. This didn't really help; I live in a small town where House of Pewter has yet to open up a franchise. I sent an e-mail to a local jeweler asking for suggestions. They wrote back, saying they didn't have any pewter jewelry, but (of course) diamonds were a perfectly acceptable substitute! I did some browsing online, and I did find a diamond ring I could afford...which had a genuine 1/20th of a carat rock. I could afford the ring, but the magnifying glass it would require to see the thing would put me over budget. I wrote and explained this to my wife, but she rejected my alternative offer to do origami out of aluminum foil.
When I recounted the full story to my wife after she returned from work, she told me we had in fact been married in 2003, not 2002. I went back to the form, and the "2002" I was was when we got our marriage application. I then googled the ninth anniversary, and the appropriate gift was leather. That I could've done.
However, I would've felt weird giving her a leather gift in front of our 7 month old.
Monday, January 23, 2012
my changing relationship to music
(first in a series)
I've been trying (in some respects) to be a proactive parent. So, not too long after we learned my wife was preggers, I realized I was going to have to rethink my relationship to music.
Bear with me. While like most parents I had no true idea what I was getting myself into, I did know that we were going to have a little person roaming around the house. This naturally means baby-proofing. I knew I would have to move electrical cords and lock up household chemicals (which we used to just keep in the liquor cabinet). What scared me, though, was learning the DuBose-to-be would be mobile at some point...and while I really couldn't picture my child at the time, I would picture this potential infant learning to crawl, heading over to my wall of cd cabinets, pulling cds out at random, pulling the disks out of the cases, and hurling them all into a giant, jagged pile.
I didn't want to have to decide between my love for my child-to-be and my love for music, so I spent hours online searching for good storage options. New cd shelves with doors, though, were quite costly...and since we can't even afford to move out of our two room wooden shack with dirt floors, I realized quickly that purchasing expensive storage shelves with doors was not the solution. I considered then rejected making my own doors, because I really didn't want to count myself among the ranks of those home repair and woodworking enthusiasts who have lopped off fingers. I briefly thought about rigging up some kind of strap system to lash the cds into place but rejected each plan as being too Goldbergian.
It was clear there were no other options. I had to get rid of my cds.
I spent about two months sorting cds and ripping them to mp3. I would take my time, gazing at the prisms of light reflecting off the disk as I poured over the packaging for the last time, all while trying to remember where I bought the disk in the first place. Music ripped, I would then file the disk away in a big plastic tub for easy transport to a relative for safe-keeping.
It all seemed too big to me, the end-of-an-era-type event. I remembered getting my first cd player...one of those portable units which skipped whenever you tripped or stumbled. I found my way to a pawn shop and bought a dozen used disks, two dollars apiece. I then joined one of those music clubs to jump-start my collection. They outgrew my shelf. Then my collection outgrew the carousel storage unit. Then I bought my first shelf...then another...then another...until I had seven shelves and a few thousand disks. Now, though, I would have an empty wall and a number of used bytes on my computer. It seemed...inadequate.
Moreover, it was unprecedented. I never really liked cassettes all that much...they were too disposable of a medium, and if a tape was of an album I really enjoyed, I would most certainly go through three or four copies...so getting rid of them was no big deal. I liked records, particularly because of the artwork, but my stereo receiver died a few years before I finally divested myself of all my vinyl. Besides, all of these were a move from one media to another. The end of cds was a larger event in that it meant the end of artifacts. Yeah, I still had the songs, but there was no "thing" attached to them. For the first time in my music-consuming life, it was impossible for me to sit and hold my favorite album.
I moped for a while. Abandoning my cds was a move I had to make. I knew that. A child, my very own child, was much more important. I knew that. I couldn't, however, stop myself from being a little sad from thinking of the empty spaces where my racks of cds once stood as standing for something more...a hole within me, perhaps.
Then my daughter came...and I found myself not thinking very much of my cds at all.
Christmastime came. Me and my wife knew we wouldn't really need to buy each other piles of gifts. We were broke, yes, but my wife has long insisted on having at least some level of presents, so she could tear open wrapping paper with her hands...because she is, as she feels free to tell you, a little kid. Christmas is (and will increasingly become) all about our daughter. But we agreed to still give each other at least a token gift.
We decided on on the massively sentimental and romantic present of gift cards...and, as the actual holiday hour approached and our lives as a result became more frazzled, we didn't even put them in envelopes.
I got a gift card to Amazon. First thing I did was buy a couple of albums I'd been wanting...but as I had no more cds, as there were no more artifacts of music, I found the downloads to be cheaper...so instead of two cds, I could get five albums! Furthermore, as I wasn't getting anything physical, I didn't have to wait to get my music. In five minutes, all of my new albums were sitting on my hard drive, ready for consumption.
Yes, I no longer had the artifacts. I did, however, have increased access to the music.
Realizing this is a bit of a game-changer for me. How long before my Kindle renders my bookshelves moot? Should I get a streaming service and do away with my dvds? What is next? I dream of a future where I buy a fiber optic tee shirt and download its graphics directly from the bands.
Why not? It's the end of the artifact. Let's hope it makes content more important.
I've been trying (in some respects) to be a proactive parent. So, not too long after we learned my wife was preggers, I realized I was going to have to rethink my relationship to music.
Bear with me. While like most parents I had no true idea what I was getting myself into, I did know that we were going to have a little person roaming around the house. This naturally means baby-proofing. I knew I would have to move electrical cords and lock up household chemicals (which we used to just keep in the liquor cabinet). What scared me, though, was learning the DuBose-to-be would be mobile at some point...and while I really couldn't picture my child at the time, I would picture this potential infant learning to crawl, heading over to my wall of cd cabinets, pulling cds out at random, pulling the disks out of the cases, and hurling them all into a giant, jagged pile.
I didn't want to have to decide between my love for my child-to-be and my love for music, so I spent hours online searching for good storage options. New cd shelves with doors, though, were quite costly...and since we can't even afford to move out of our two room wooden shack with dirt floors, I realized quickly that purchasing expensive storage shelves with doors was not the solution. I considered then rejected making my own doors, because I really didn't want to count myself among the ranks of those home repair and woodworking enthusiasts who have lopped off fingers. I briefly thought about rigging up some kind of strap system to lash the cds into place but rejected each plan as being too Goldbergian.
It was clear there were no other options. I had to get rid of my cds.
I spent about two months sorting cds and ripping them to mp3. I would take my time, gazing at the prisms of light reflecting off the disk as I poured over the packaging for the last time, all while trying to remember where I bought the disk in the first place. Music ripped, I would then file the disk away in a big plastic tub for easy transport to a relative for safe-keeping.
It all seemed too big to me, the end-of-an-era-type event. I remembered getting my first cd player...one of those portable units which skipped whenever you tripped or stumbled. I found my way to a pawn shop and bought a dozen used disks, two dollars apiece. I then joined one of those music clubs to jump-start my collection. They outgrew my shelf. Then my collection outgrew the carousel storage unit. Then I bought my first shelf...then another...then another...until I had seven shelves and a few thousand disks. Now, though, I would have an empty wall and a number of used bytes on my computer. It seemed...inadequate.
Moreover, it was unprecedented. I never really liked cassettes all that much...they were too disposable of a medium, and if a tape was of an album I really enjoyed, I would most certainly go through three or four copies...so getting rid of them was no big deal. I liked records, particularly because of the artwork, but my stereo receiver died a few years before I finally divested myself of all my vinyl. Besides, all of these were a move from one media to another. The end of cds was a larger event in that it meant the end of artifacts. Yeah, I still had the songs, but there was no "thing" attached to them. For the first time in my music-consuming life, it was impossible for me to sit and hold my favorite album.
I moped for a while. Abandoning my cds was a move I had to make. I knew that. A child, my very own child, was much more important. I knew that. I couldn't, however, stop myself from being a little sad from thinking of the empty spaces where my racks of cds once stood as standing for something more...a hole within me, perhaps.
Then my daughter came...and I found myself not thinking very much of my cds at all.
Christmastime came. Me and my wife knew we wouldn't really need to buy each other piles of gifts. We were broke, yes, but my wife has long insisted on having at least some level of presents, so she could tear open wrapping paper with her hands...because she is, as she feels free to tell you, a little kid. Christmas is (and will increasingly become) all about our daughter. But we agreed to still give each other at least a token gift.
We decided on on the massively sentimental and romantic present of gift cards...and, as the actual holiday hour approached and our lives as a result became more frazzled, we didn't even put them in envelopes.
I got a gift card to Amazon. First thing I did was buy a couple of albums I'd been wanting...but as I had no more cds, as there were no more artifacts of music, I found the downloads to be cheaper...so instead of two cds, I could get five albums! Furthermore, as I wasn't getting anything physical, I didn't have to wait to get my music. In five minutes, all of my new albums were sitting on my hard drive, ready for consumption.
Yes, I no longer had the artifacts. I did, however, have increased access to the music.
Realizing this is a bit of a game-changer for me. How long before my Kindle renders my bookshelves moot? Should I get a streaming service and do away with my dvds? What is next? I dream of a future where I buy a fiber optic tee shirt and download its graphics directly from the bands.
Why not? It's the end of the artifact. Let's hope it makes content more important.
envoi to silence
There were parental and in-law visits. There was the crush of holiday planning. There was an urchin in the midst of a perfect storm of cold, then unexpectedly early teething, then a growth spurt. There was class prep (after way too long away from work). There was a mild case of seasonal affective disorder. There was playoff football. There was a long-delayed and ultimately surprisingly inconsequential visit to a mental health professional. There were new albums to digest. And then, just as everything seemed to clear, there was a computer unexpectedly dying...which of course necessitated pulling all the data from the old computer, shopping for a new computer, purchasing a new computer, trying to figure out how to afford a new computer, removing bloatware from the new computer, installing needed software onto the new computer, and transferring all my files over from the old to the new computer. And then was my quite successful attempt at making mushroom and onion soup.
Suffice to say: I'm back...and I got a lot of stuff to say.
Suffice to say: I'm back...and I got a lot of stuff to say.
Monday, November 28, 2011
don't wanna be...
Fatherhood has brought me many unexpected circumstances, attributes, and attitudes. One I really was not expecting, though, was the loneliness.
I love my daughter wholeheartedly. Her smile makes me melt, and her laughter makes my heart explode. But, despite my best efforts, she's not speaking yet...damn lazy five and a half month old. So when I spend time with her, there's very little variety of interaction. She can only ask for a few things, and she really only has one preferred way of asking for anything...namely, screaming at the top of her lungs. She screams as if stabbed when she gets hungry. She screams as if stabbed when she's had enough to eat. She screams as if stabbed when she wants to sleep, be changed...you get the idea. And yes, I realize she gets the drama from my side of the family. She also grunts, groans, and occasionally bursts out into peals of laughter (a sound which is all too rare...not that she's an unhappy kid, but this is the greatest sound in the world, and I just don't hear it nearly enough). The majority of our interactions, though, are me talking to her and her either grunting, groaning, or yelling...which, while I love her dearly, can be isolating.
I don't see my beautiful wife as much as I would like. When she gets home, she takes care of our daughter...which means her attention is (quite naturally and understandably) on our kid, not on me. My wife also puts our daughter to bed...but as our kid, as a result of her 3-4 hour "go to bed" process, might very well be renamed "She Who Will Not Sleep," this means we get very little husband/wife time. So even when she's under the same roof as I, I miss her.
I also don't get to see my friends all that much. Of course, I knew I would not be going out nightly, so this was one for which I could kinda prepare. And I do get to practice on Tuesdays, hang out afterward, and maybe escape one weekend night. Still, people tend to think more of me as "new father" rather than anything, and the new father is not the one people think to call and invite out. I can really only remember one time in the last couple of months where a friend specifically contacted me to ask me out. People don't come by the house, either...I guess the possibility of encountering a potentially loud kid doesn't entice visitors. All understandable, I guess, but it doesn't help the loneliness all that much.
But now I have a cold...and this means I can't hug my wife. It means I cannot hold my daughter. So, even though I am in the same house as the two people I love more than anyone, I still feel isolated.
When I was single, I'd often get lonely. At this stage of my life, though, I wasn't expecting more loneliness.
I love my daughter wholeheartedly. Her smile makes me melt, and her laughter makes my heart explode. But, despite my best efforts, she's not speaking yet...damn lazy five and a half month old. So when I spend time with her, there's very little variety of interaction. She can only ask for a few things, and she really only has one preferred way of asking for anything...namely, screaming at the top of her lungs. She screams as if stabbed when she gets hungry. She screams as if stabbed when she's had enough to eat. She screams as if stabbed when she wants to sleep, be changed...you get the idea. And yes, I realize she gets the drama from my side of the family. She also grunts, groans, and occasionally bursts out into peals of laughter (a sound which is all too rare...not that she's an unhappy kid, but this is the greatest sound in the world, and I just don't hear it nearly enough). The majority of our interactions, though, are me talking to her and her either grunting, groaning, or yelling...which, while I love her dearly, can be isolating.
I don't see my beautiful wife as much as I would like. When she gets home, she takes care of our daughter...which means her attention is (quite naturally and understandably) on our kid, not on me. My wife also puts our daughter to bed...but as our kid, as a result of her 3-4 hour "go to bed" process, might very well be renamed "She Who Will Not Sleep," this means we get very little husband/wife time. So even when she's under the same roof as I, I miss her.
I also don't get to see my friends all that much. Of course, I knew I would not be going out nightly, so this was one for which I could kinda prepare. And I do get to practice on Tuesdays, hang out afterward, and maybe escape one weekend night. Still, people tend to think more of me as "new father" rather than anything, and the new father is not the one people think to call and invite out. I can really only remember one time in the last couple of months where a friend specifically contacted me to ask me out. People don't come by the house, either...I guess the possibility of encountering a potentially loud kid doesn't entice visitors. All understandable, I guess, but it doesn't help the loneliness all that much.
But now I have a cold...and this means I can't hug my wife. It means I cannot hold my daughter. So, even though I am in the same house as the two people I love more than anyone, I still feel isolated.
When I was single, I'd often get lonely. At this stage of my life, though, I wasn't expecting more loneliness.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
misery without company
I'm a terrible sick person.
Whenever I get ill, I feel like the world's biggest wimp. I cannot handle being sick in any way. I whine, I moan, I become horribly neurotic and high maintenance. Yes, I know many may claim I am that way all the time...it's one of the side-effects of having perpetually low self-esteem. I honestly do strive toward self-sufficiency, and I try to be a good man, a strong man, a worthy man. But when I'm ill, I lose any of the resiliency and cheer to which I aspire. I become a sad, pathetic little man.
I'm always astounded when I accidentally give my wife a cold. I will go through my death-throe convalescence. Then my wife starts to display my symptoms of a few days earlier, and I leap over myself to apologize for infecting her with my death-cold. I promise to be as good to her as she was to me. Then, as her cold progresses, I compare her stages to mine...and I wonder if she just picked up some lesser-variant virus or if I'm as bad of a patient as I suspect. Where I was aching, moaning, holding onto walls, chugging cough syrup, she is light, sprightly, and tough beyond ken.
Now, though, it's infinitely worse. I still ache. I still have to stop my head from spinning when I get up. I still surround myself with a siege-worthy cache of tissues, cough syrup, and canned soup. But instead of just swelling in misery, I'm now dwelling in misery, watching my gorgeous wife care for my gorgeous child, immensely sad that I can't touch either of them, can't kiss either of them, can only love them from afar. The two people I love most are next to me, but I have to keep them at arms (or virus's)-length
.
Sad and lonely indeed.
Whenever I get ill, I feel like the world's biggest wimp. I cannot handle being sick in any way. I whine, I moan, I become horribly neurotic and high maintenance. Yes, I know many may claim I am that way all the time...it's one of the side-effects of having perpetually low self-esteem. I honestly do strive toward self-sufficiency, and I try to be a good man, a strong man, a worthy man. But when I'm ill, I lose any of the resiliency and cheer to which I aspire. I become a sad, pathetic little man.
I'm always astounded when I accidentally give my wife a cold. I will go through my death-throe convalescence. Then my wife starts to display my symptoms of a few days earlier, and I leap over myself to apologize for infecting her with my death-cold. I promise to be as good to her as she was to me. Then, as her cold progresses, I compare her stages to mine...and I wonder if she just picked up some lesser-variant virus or if I'm as bad of a patient as I suspect. Where I was aching, moaning, holding onto walls, chugging cough syrup, she is light, sprightly, and tough beyond ken.
Now, though, it's infinitely worse. I still ache. I still have to stop my head from spinning when I get up. I still surround myself with a siege-worthy cache of tissues, cough syrup, and canned soup. But instead of just swelling in misery, I'm now dwelling in misery, watching my gorgeous wife care for my gorgeous child, immensely sad that I can't touch either of them, can't kiss either of them, can only love them from afar. The two people I love most are next to me, but I have to keep them at arms (or virus's)-length
.
Sad and lonely indeed.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
illness and time
How much is time worth?
Where's the point of no return?
I'm wondering this for several reasons. First, I'm sick and on cough medicine, and that brings back memories. I make it a point to record interesting-looking films from time to time..I want a backlog of them on my dvr for a rainy day...for sick days and such. A few illnesses ago, I watched the classic Soviet science fiction film Solaris. It wasn't particularly wonderful. It looked good, but to call it slow would be an understatement (particularly the massive/eternal/never-ending "driving to the airport" scene). But it had been talked up so much, I felt I had to finish it. Maybe I missed something that further viewing would clarify. Maybe perseverance was the key. Maybe there was some ultimate grand payoff which would bring enlightenment. So I watched.
I finished the film. There didn't seem to be anything with which I could connect. I chalked it down to a difference in cultural attitudes...and the cold and its corresponding medications.
Today, I again have a cold. I went to bed last night with the slight tingling in the throat. I woke up feeling bad. As the day progressed, I felt progressively worse. After my wife went to put my child to sleep for the third time tonight, I was searching my dvr for something to watch. I had already plowed through whatever light, frivolous material I had. I had watched the Bogie-starring vehicle Sahara (which started out with grand pretensions yet ended up not able to become as notable as it dared). I came down to the 2002 Clooney remake of Solaris.
Clooney is one of my favorite actors. I had the relevant cultural context. I was, as when I watched the original, dazzled by the direction, the photography. The film, though was still exceedingly slow. It was like the song which refused to kick into the power chorus. It never improved. Still, I watched. Was it the cold which was doing it? Or did I just consider my illness-addled time to be so valuable as to not waste the thirty minutes or so I had invested?
Is it because my sick time is just not all that valuable? Feeling rotten, apparently, just is not enough.
Where's the point of no return?
I'm wondering this for several reasons. First, I'm sick and on cough medicine, and that brings back memories. I make it a point to record interesting-looking films from time to time..I want a backlog of them on my dvr for a rainy day...for sick days and such. A few illnesses ago, I watched the classic Soviet science fiction film Solaris. It wasn't particularly wonderful. It looked good, but to call it slow would be an understatement (particularly the massive/eternal/never-ending "driving to the airport" scene). But it had been talked up so much, I felt I had to finish it. Maybe I missed something that further viewing would clarify. Maybe perseverance was the key. Maybe there was some ultimate grand payoff which would bring enlightenment. So I watched.
I finished the film. There didn't seem to be anything with which I could connect. I chalked it down to a difference in cultural attitudes...and the cold and its corresponding medications.
Today, I again have a cold. I went to bed last night with the slight tingling in the throat. I woke up feeling bad. As the day progressed, I felt progressively worse. After my wife went to put my child to sleep for the third time tonight, I was searching my dvr for something to watch. I had already plowed through whatever light, frivolous material I had. I had watched the Bogie-starring vehicle Sahara (which started out with grand pretensions yet ended up not able to become as notable as it dared). I came down to the 2002 Clooney remake of Solaris.
Clooney is one of my favorite actors. I had the relevant cultural context. I was, as when I watched the original, dazzled by the direction, the photography. The film, though was still exceedingly slow. It was like the song which refused to kick into the power chorus. It never improved. Still, I watched. Was it the cold which was doing it? Or did I just consider my illness-addled time to be so valuable as to not waste the thirty minutes or so I had invested?
Is it because my sick time is just not all that valuable? Feeling rotten, apparently, just is not enough.
Monday, November 14, 2011
an apology
I would like to officially offer this formal apology:
To anyone I've engaged in conversation with about the future of academics, I would like to formally apologize for the tone and content of my interactions. The last thing I want to do is to let my poisoned mood infect anyone who still believes and still has faith.
The problem? I used to be a believer. I used to believe in the power of thought, the power of thinking, the power of discussion, the power of learning. And while I never thought I would be a superstar in academics, I always thought there was at least a place for me within the ranks of thinkers. Over the last six months, I am starting to fully realize the extent to which all of this was wrong...at least for me.
And there's a lot of reasons why I think I failed. I am, for the record, fully willing to admit blame for much of my academic failure. There was always more I could do; in the words of one of my favorite songs, I definitely "could've been stronger, could've been smarter"...and I know this. I still feel overwhelmed by the structural roots behind my personal failures, but I am going to try to quit bringing them up...as they are probably news to no one (particularly anyone who's read this blog).
I am, for the record, trying to work on it. I realize I've been dwelling on all this way too much, and I realize it is one of the major (although not the only) reason behind my current slide toward depression, a slide I am trying desperately to halt and to not share.
So here's what I'm going to do. I promise only to participate in academic discussion when someone specifically asks me to do so. I promise to blow by scholarly links, discussions of the job market, blanket invitations for interactions. If you post something somewhere that raises my gloom, I will do everything I can to look the other way...and I will by no means indulge in an effort to spread my gloom. As it's clear the academic world really doesn't consider me a member, I'm going to try and quit bemoaning that fact or dwelling on it in any way. I would really hate it if my own bad attitude got into someone else.
Let me make clear that I do in fact envy all of my academic believer friends...more than you can know. For those whose career has worked out or is steadily progressing, I salute you. But more importantly, for all those who still get excited by ideas and think there's a future in pursuing them, I covet your faith and your optimism and wish you the greatest success imaginable. The life of the mind is a truly noble goal...and I wish you better luck than I experienced.
To anyone I've engaged in conversation with about the future of academics, I would like to formally apologize for the tone and content of my interactions. The last thing I want to do is to let my poisoned mood infect anyone who still believes and still has faith.
The problem? I used to be a believer. I used to believe in the power of thought, the power of thinking, the power of discussion, the power of learning. And while I never thought I would be a superstar in academics, I always thought there was at least a place for me within the ranks of thinkers. Over the last six months, I am starting to fully realize the extent to which all of this was wrong...at least for me.
And there's a lot of reasons why I think I failed. I am, for the record, fully willing to admit blame for much of my academic failure. There was always more I could do; in the words of one of my favorite songs, I definitely "could've been stronger, could've been smarter"...and I know this. I still feel overwhelmed by the structural roots behind my personal failures, but I am going to try to quit bringing them up...as they are probably news to no one (particularly anyone who's read this blog).
I am, for the record, trying to work on it. I realize I've been dwelling on all this way too much, and I realize it is one of the major (although not the only) reason behind my current slide toward depression, a slide I am trying desperately to halt and to not share.
So here's what I'm going to do. I promise only to participate in academic discussion when someone specifically asks me to do so. I promise to blow by scholarly links, discussions of the job market, blanket invitations for interactions. If you post something somewhere that raises my gloom, I will do everything I can to look the other way...and I will by no means indulge in an effort to spread my gloom. As it's clear the academic world really doesn't consider me a member, I'm going to try and quit bemoaning that fact or dwelling on it in any way. I would really hate it if my own bad attitude got into someone else.
Let me make clear that I do in fact envy all of my academic believer friends...more than you can know. For those whose career has worked out or is steadily progressing, I salute you. But more importantly, for all those who still get excited by ideas and think there's a future in pursuing them, I covet your faith and your optimism and wish you the greatest success imaginable. The life of the mind is a truly noble goal...and I wish you better luck than I experienced.
Monday, October 31, 2011
on kids and definitions.
A couple weeks ago, I realized that I didn't know how many weeks old my daughter was. Moreover, I started to think of her age in months rather than weeks. Eventually, I'll start thinking of her age in fractions of years...then years. I will probably think of her grade as her age for a little while. Then it will go back to years.
Right now, my daughter is still X inches long. At some point, that will become "tall" instead of "long." Then feet will be added to the equation.
Right now, I think of my daughter as weighing X pounds Y ounces. Pretty soon, ounces will no longer be a consideration.
I never guessed how much fatherhood would make me aware of definitional terms.
Right now, my daughter is still X inches long. At some point, that will become "tall" instead of "long." Then feet will be added to the equation.
Right now, I think of my daughter as weighing X pounds Y ounces. Pretty soon, ounces will no longer be a consideration.
I never guessed how much fatherhood would make me aware of definitional terms.
fallen metal
Tomorrow, the most anticipated (by comedians, anyway) album of the year comes out: Lou Reed and Metallica. Yeah. We know. But it does put me in the mind to reflect upon the Metallica I used to know.
The first time I heard Metallica, Ride the Lightning was still an indy record. I was used to heavy...after all, I listened to Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. Nothing, though, could've prepared me for my first listen of the bay area thrash band. A friend of my brother's made a cassette, and I remember him telling me I "had to hear this." "Fight Fire with Fire" came on, and I stopped in my tracks. Could you even DO that? Could music actually sound like that? They seemed to be breaking rule after rule...and it worked! Over the course of the next year, I utterly devoured that album.
Later, I went to a record store (remember those?) to try and find Metallica's first album. When I went up to the counter to pay, the clerk complemented me on my taste and told me their new album was coming out the next day...did I want it? Hell, yes, I wanted it. When album four came out, I would throw the cassette in my car radio, drive around endlessly, and turn up the volume until my windows shook.
Then Metallica's fifth album (The Black Album) came out. I bought it on my way to work. Heard the commercial polish and sheen. Got through the first six songs. With each song, my heart dropped. Quoting nursery rhymes? Ballads? Why on earth was the most innovative band on earth (or at least in my (admittedly limited) listening experience) moving closer to the mainstream? Why did they sell out...after hitting it big? I sold the cassette to someone at work that very day.
Ever since, Metallica has dropped further and further away from my attention. The only real time I think of them is when I find a student wearing a Metallica shirt. What does Metallica sound like to them? I have tried to explain to a few what hearing "Fight Fire With Fire" (or any song off their debut) was like, but I know I'm never going to come close. What was once the most exciting band in the world to me has become classic rock....and rather lame classic rock at that. When they announced the Lou Reed collaboration, my only thought was "of course they'd try something so obviously stupid."
I used to love Metallica...and the saddest thing is I know I will never think of them in quite the same way. But at least I still have their old...their REAL music.
The first time I heard Metallica, Ride the Lightning was still an indy record. I was used to heavy...after all, I listened to Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. Nothing, though, could've prepared me for my first listen of the bay area thrash band. A friend of my brother's made a cassette, and I remember him telling me I "had to hear this." "Fight Fire with Fire" came on, and I stopped in my tracks. Could you even DO that? Could music actually sound like that? They seemed to be breaking rule after rule...and it worked! Over the course of the next year, I utterly devoured that album.
Later, I went to a record store (remember those?) to try and find Metallica's first album. When I went up to the counter to pay, the clerk complemented me on my taste and told me their new album was coming out the next day...did I want it? Hell, yes, I wanted it. When album four came out, I would throw the cassette in my car radio, drive around endlessly, and turn up the volume until my windows shook.
Then Metallica's fifth album (The Black Album) came out. I bought it on my way to work. Heard the commercial polish and sheen. Got through the first six songs. With each song, my heart dropped. Quoting nursery rhymes? Ballads? Why on earth was the most innovative band on earth (or at least in my (admittedly limited) listening experience) moving closer to the mainstream? Why did they sell out...after hitting it big? I sold the cassette to someone at work that very day.
Ever since, Metallica has dropped further and further away from my attention. The only real time I think of them is when I find a student wearing a Metallica shirt. What does Metallica sound like to them? I have tried to explain to a few what hearing "Fight Fire With Fire" (or any song off their debut) was like, but I know I'm never going to come close. What was once the most exciting band in the world to me has become classic rock....and rather lame classic rock at that. When they announced the Lou Reed collaboration, my only thought was "of course they'd try something so obviously stupid."
I used to love Metallica...and the saddest thing is I know I will never think of them in quite the same way. But at least I still have their old...their REAL music.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
the baby headache silencer
Have the most beautiful girl in the world, but she loves spending days being (how shall we say) grumpy? Why, you need a mixed drink! I call this one "the baby headache silencer":
- make one glass of cocoa
- note: while you can use any cocoa you like, home-made is best. here's a recipe:
- combine 2 cups powdered sugar, 1 cup Dutch-process cocoa, 2 1/2 cup powdered milk, 1 tsp salt, 2 tsp cornstarch, 1/4 tsp ground chipotle
- mix well, store in a sealed container
- use 1/4 cup of this mix for each cocoa mug
- combine 2 cups powdered sugar, 1 cup Dutch-process cocoa, 2 1/2 cup powdered milk, 1 tsp salt, 2 tsp cornstarch, 1/4 tsp ground chipotle
- note: while you can use any cocoa you like, home-made is best. here's a recipe:
- add one splash of peppermint schnapps
- add one splash of wild strawberry liqueur
- stir
- take painkiller of your choice
- enjoy while trying to remember what it was like to be pain-free
- apply heating pad to shoulders
final frozen food fantasy
For those of you keeping track of such things, I decided to give my frozen food thing one more try. I was planning to do steakums, but one box now costs over $11...which, if you follow the math, means a full cow would retail for the price of a small house in a quiet suburb. Instead, I got a box of frozen chicken cordon bleus.
I've been trying to figure out a good metaphor. White board eraser? A cross between cardboard and packing foam? All I know all the moisture was cooked out around it...along with all the cheese.
I have come to two ultimate conclusions. First, frozen food might've actually gotten worse in the last few decades. Second, there's utterly no way I'm going to eat any more of it than absolutely necessary.
I've been trying to figure out a good metaphor. White board eraser? A cross between cardboard and packing foam? All I know all the moisture was cooked out around it...along with all the cheese.
I have come to two ultimate conclusions. First, frozen food might've actually gotten worse in the last few decades. Second, there's utterly no way I'm going to eat any more of it than absolutely necessary.
a post about competing songs
One of the reasons I love my wife is that she understands my need for release. She understands that I love her and my kid entirely...but I still gotta have something else. And since that day I bought my first guitar (a Chicago-brand Les Paul copy) with saved-up lunch money, that thing I need most is music. It is my sanity, my release...and possibly the the only thing keeping me sane at this point.
Last Friday, my band played a show in Bowling Green. Things went rather well. Several friends showed up (more than for my first Black Swamp Rats gig). The other acts (Mark Hutchins and The Half Hearts) were both awesome. I only moderately aggravated my bad shoulders loading my gear in and out of the bar (via the fire escape, mind you). And if my friends are to be believed, I even played well. Well, hell, don't take my word for it:
I would be lying, though, if I said I didn't feel guilty about leaving the wife and kids to play...but experience has taught me that it's much worse, though, for everyone involved if I don't have music as my outlet. In spite of shoulder pain and slightly ringing ears, I was a much better person after this night than before. Still, though, as I made my way into my house and crawled into bed, a song popped into my head:
Yeah. It's just like that...except Kenny was a rich man singing about someone who's poor but still thinks he might possibly be able to make it. I, on the other hand, am poor and hold no illusions of ever being otherwise. The need for what we do, though, is the same.
Oh yeah, our song is better.
Last Friday, my band played a show in Bowling Green. Things went rather well. Several friends showed up (more than for my first Black Swamp Rats gig). The other acts (Mark Hutchins and The Half Hearts) were both awesome. I only moderately aggravated my bad shoulders loading my gear in and out of the bar (via the fire escape, mind you). And if my friends are to be believed, I even played well. Well, hell, don't take my word for it:
I would be lying, though, if I said I didn't feel guilty about leaving the wife and kids to play...but experience has taught me that it's much worse, though, for everyone involved if I don't have music as my outlet. In spite of shoulder pain and slightly ringing ears, I was a much better person after this night than before. Still, though, as I made my way into my house and crawled into bed, a song popped into my head:
Yeah. It's just like that...except Kenny was a rich man singing about someone who's poor but still thinks he might possibly be able to make it. I, on the other hand, am poor and hold no illusions of ever being otherwise. The need for what we do, though, is the same.
Oh yeah, our song is better.
in perfect harmony
- should've been smarter
- should've been stronger
- should've been smarter
When I sing, my girl is my audience...and she's the best audience in the world.
She doesn't judge me. She doesn't, upon hearing my voice, break into wild laughter as did one former band member. She doesn't leave the room as has my wife (to be fair, though, as she's only four months old, she doesn't walk yet and thus couldn't walk out...but I like to think she'd listen to me even if she had the option of leaving). She finds my voice calming, soothing...as much, that is, as her mood, health, and general disposition allow her to find anything soothing.
Nevertheless, I find myself undergoing a crisis of songs, of singing.
I have a pretty good vocabulary of songs I can sing. I generally, while singing my girl to sleep, last about an hour ten before having to repeat myself...and this is, mind you, just the lyrics...it excludes instrumental breaks and the like. But I need more...because so many songs are, the more I think about it, just not suitable for the occasion.
Some are just too peppy or weird for sleep time. Can you imagine, for instance, falling asleep to Hendrix's "Manic Depression?" Others seem inappropriate. The first time I performed the Rolling Stones song "Dead Flowers" for her, I caught myself before I got to the line about being "in my basement room with a needle and a spoon"...because their first year of life is just a itty bit too early for heroin references. There are a few Wilco songs which got pushed out right away for having poetic lyrics which get a bit too close to spousal abuse for my taste...and while I understand irony and metaphor (and thus understand what Tweedy was getting at), it will be at least a year before my girl reaches that level of lyrical sophistication.
I mentioned earlier that my girl likes the Eagles. Therein lies another problem, though, because most of their songs are of the "trials of men and women in relationships." This is what most of all songs are about, though...which adds an additional level of difficulty.
I am worried about my daughter getting (on some level) the idea that people are only defined by their status in relationships. I have seen this happen to many people, and it is sad--someone walking around the earth, desperate for someone to "complete them." I am also worried about the normalization of drug use, the damage to self-worth, the use of violence (ironic or not) as a metaphor for...well, anything. There are a lot of ideas in music which, if one is not prepared to take them in context...or see them with irony...or understand them as metaphors...well, they have the potential to wreak havoc.
None of these reasons, however, are why I'm having a crisis of songs.
I have, as of late, found myself singing Two Cow Garage (my favorite band in the world) to my girl. I love Two Cow wholeheartedly, unreservedly. I love them for many reasons, but one of the chief ones is that they are fully aware of what it means to be a non-major band. They sing quite often about what you do when all hope of ultimate success is gone. What if you knew you would never achieve your dreams? What would you do? How would you act? Would you fight?
This is all well and good for me. Hell, many of the bands I listen to have similar lyrical concerns. I have known for ages that I'd never be a star, never be a success, never be a mover and shaker. First I gave up hope of being a professional musician. Then I gave up hope of being a scholar. I am, in the end, used to giving up hope....and I need art which speaks to my personal needs, my personal disappiontments.
I don't, however, need or want that for my child. Instead, I want her to see a world of possibilities. I want her to discount limits. I want her to ignore barriers. I want her to dream big.
How, though, do I do this when I myself have essentially quit dreaming? How can I help her hope when I can't make myself hope? When I don't believe in hope? How can I inspire her towards something I don't believe anymore exists?
What songs can I sing?
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