As I Was Saying

This is a blog. A public forum. Stuff I write here can be read by anybody with a Web browser, which even at this early point in Internet history (compared to Stonehenge) is millions and millions of people.

So it’s difficult to decide what to write in my weekly posts. I could say what’s really on my mind, and take the risk that the people involved no long care enough about me to bother reading my blog. I could make veiled allusions to what’s really on my mind, like I did last week. I could write about things that are only on my mind right this minute, like what YouTube is going to become once they remove all the fan-posted copyrighted content.

Basically, Google has decided to remove all the Daily Show and Colbert Report clips from YouTube. I haven’t read anything about it other than the headline, so I dunno the whys or whos of the decision. But it makes me speculate on the future of YouTube– what will it look like in a couple years?

I suspect that it will be filled with commercial video, which has been paid for by sponsors. Followed by the stuff that YouTube has licensed for display, like libraries of music videos and such. And then there will be the user-created content areas, ghettoized. And then the wanna-be commercial videos, utilizing some ad-based system instituted by Google where you make a video and share in the ad revenue, but you’re not a big media or marketing company.

It’s a shame the copyright owners can’t figure out some way to allow the current YouTube to continue, where the fans filter through the massive amounts of STUFF out there and bring us only the good bits. Surely there’s money in that somewhere– how many people watch those Daily Show clips? Can’t they get a nickel from somebody somehow?

What’s at stake is the very soul of YouTube. It’s become huge over the last year, precisely because anybody and everybody was posting anything and everything, sans regard to anything other than how cool or interesting or funny it is. Take that away, and YouTube will melt into the Internet like Friendster.

Anyway, that’s what I was thinking about writing about when I opened up my iBook a few minutes ago. YouTube. How petty, how small, how appropriate, how predictable. A blog talking about YouTube and bullshitting about the future of the Web or some such. Yawn.

But if I fed you what you really want (because everybody likes gossip), which is the juicy details of what’s going on in my head and in my life and in my relationships with everyone around me, I risk ruining those same relationships, and I risk revealing my vulnerabilities, my secret fears and anguishes. We’re still animals you know, and we still hunt. We give in to predatory instincts all too often, if not out loud, but in our heads. “That poor guy. Ha.”

Ok maybe you don’t. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I find secret hope in the failure of others, because their failure makes a little room in the continuum for me to succeed. When Demi and Ashton inevitably divorce, I will smile a little in my heart. That guy who had everything is suffering too. *cackle* Plus now I have a chance with Demi!

That’s not the only animalistic behavior I exhibit. I also like to lick my wounds. When I experience some sort of trauma I’ll hole up, and you won’t see me for a while. I’ll be up here in my room watching tv/listening to Peter Gabriel’s “So” over and over, and manfully willing myself not to bawl like a baby, but occasionally giving in to the indulgence, the gluttony, the shame of tears. Wallowing like a hog. Heh.

Of course all the while I’ll be wishing that somebody would call and tell me they miss me and that I’m great and it’ll be ok and here’s some soup and I bought you a comic book and would you like me to give you a back rub.

These are things you get when you’re twelve and you’re not supposed to be able to take care of your own emotional needs. You’re allowed to be childish because you are a child. But at some point we’re taught that we should be beyond the fear and trepidation and anger and angst that we feel as children. Stuff it into a little ball, Lisa. Put away those childish things!

At least, that’s the impression I get, from society, and from other people who seem not to understand, in the moment, how someone else may be feeling. The depth of it. Or maybe they do understand but don’t know how to react to that understanding. What does the other person want you to do in those vulnerable situations? What can you afford to do when they occur? Afford to do, because make no mistake, it’ll cost you something. What you do once, you’re expected to do always. Don’t feed that stray cat, don’t give that homeless guy a dollar. The cat will be waiting for you outside every day, and the homeless guy will hit you up every time you walk by.

So is it better to pretend to ignore the cartoony black vibes wafting from the head of the guy walking next to you on your way to lunch? Is it better to go buy him a lollipop? Is it better to totally smother him with concern? I’m like Ralph Hinkley, and I’ve lost the instruction book for my super-suit. What am I supposed to do??

I don’t know, and obviously neither does anyone else, or they’d be doing exactly the right thing for me when I’m feeling bad, mad, sad, or even glad. Human reactions are strange, marred and distorted by the conflict between instinct and reason.

For example, two of my friends are getting married. They recently announced it. It’s hard for me to sort through the feelings this news causes. My first reaction is to just well up and overflow with happiness and joy for them. Seriously, I feel a physical reaction of giddiness. I am genuinely, incredibly, enormously happy for them.

My second reaction is self-pity. My third reaction– guilt. I’m one of the generation who was told that people are starving in Africa, so stop your complaining, and stop being so jealous. Yeah, I know it’s supposed to be that they’re starving in Africa so clean your plate. But that’s not my lesson, because in addition to the starving people in Africa there are

• the people with cancer,
• the people with systic fibrosis,
• the people children who have trisomy 21 (“Down Syndrome”),
• the people with psychosis,
• the families of people with psychosis,
• the people being persecuted,
• the people who lost a limb in a thresher.

They’re all worse off than me, so no matter what happens, until it’s as bad as one of those things I have no business wallowing in my petty little problems. Right? That’s what Church taught me. I think, or maybe it was an afterschool special, or maybe Reader’s Digest. Definitely Reader’s Digest.

I do try, of course, to tell myself that “even though you haven’t had your arm torn off by an industrial clothes-press, you’re still sad. You have the right to be disappointed. You have the right to be upset. It’s your life and you’re living it, and when things go wrong it’s all relative and there’s nothing wrong with your feelings.” That works sometimes. Only sometimes.

Talking is supposed to help to get it out of your system somehow. Telling your feelings to somebody. But who to tell? I don’t have any confidants that close. I don’t know anybody I can trust not to breathe a word. Maybe I need a shrink. I certainly can’t tell you people, here.

So when it comes to this blog post, which I need to write, for myself, because I said I would, to myself… I’ve lost the thread… Oh right, when it comes to writing on this site, what do I say? There are so many, so many subjects I can use to postpone my problems for a half hour or so; but I need to choose. Because I don’t want to be here all day. Because I’m writing this right now, and I have to decide.

Cynicism

I guess if I had a motto, it might be Google-esque: “Don’t be cynical.”

I try not to be. I think I’d even rather be pessimistic than cynical. I recognize cynicism as a defense mechanism, allowing one to continue on despite a situation that’s perceived as untenable yet inescapable. But cynicism also seems to be a kind of capitulation, as if you’ve no longer got the modicum of enthusiasm required to be disappointed in things. Pessimists are the soul of disappointment. They expect the worst, but their very negativity indicates that they WISH things were different. Can one retain ambition if one cannot be disappointed? Can one?

Politics Make Me #&$%! Cynical
Right now I’m watching “Meet the Press” with Tim Russert, one of those Sunday-morning political shows that really tests my resolve not to be cynical. Watching him interview Barack Obama, seeing Barack Obama backtrack on a statement he made in 2004 that he would definitely not run for President or Vice President in 2008. On the one hand, I want to think “well that’s what he thought then, and this is how he’s thinking now.” On ze uzzer hand (heh, I’m Tevye) I can’t help going “Why the Hell did he say that in such uncompromising terms? How contextually manipulative!”

And then the cynical me says, in its tiny, yet carrying, voice: “Typical.”

Now the “round table” is on, which is often a bunch of partisan hacks making sure their particular interests get enough play during the half hour. On this day they’re discussing the upcoming mid-term Congressional elections. The big news is that Democrats are ahead in almost all of the polls, and the president and congress’s approval ratings are down in the cellar.

The round-table’s consensus is that the Democrats will pick up enough seats in the House to gain control of that body, but that the Senate is too close to call. One comment by Robert Novak (why isn’t he in jail?) gave me the flashback deedly-deets. To paraphrase, he mentioned that even though all these polls say that the country has so little confidence in Congress, so little confidence in the President, that we’d be better off with Democrats in power, and despite the fact that so many of the races have the Democratic candidate ahead, despite all this evidence the pundits are still hedging and saying that it will be a really close election.

Novak’s explanation for this seems to play to his conservative benefactors, so I ignored it; can’t even remember what it was. Later on, he went on for a bit about how this is the least important election ever, which I think was just more partisan baloney for his sugar-daddies. Whoops, I’m being cynical.

Don’t we all really know why people are saying it’s going to be close? It’s because we were burned. In 2004, all the polls said Kerry was going to win. Zogby himself went on the Daily Show and told us in no uncertain terms that it was a sure thing.

That’s why for this election, we’d still be saying “yeah, maybe” even if the President and Congress had a 0% approval rating. We’ve had cynicism fairly ground into our skins by the mortar and pestle of experience.

I didn’t watch the Daily Show for almost two years after the election. Seriously. Not a single episode. Recently I’ve recovered my… whatever it is that you have to have in order to pay attention to politics. It’s recharged, and the Daily Show doesn’t make me bitter and sick to my stomach any more. Until November 8, that is.

Domestic Turmoil Encourages Cynicism
Of course my contractor isn’t doing what he said he’d do. Of course there’s a hole in my new comforter. Of course my sister’s dog shit on the floor, and then did it again the next day. Of course my cats peed on the carpet. Of course it costs an arm and a leg to have a tree removed, and then you wind up with a four-foot-tall stump in your back yard. Sigh.

I hired a contractor to waterproof my basement. That meant moving everything out of my basement. Which meant either renting storage space or putting a wall on my garage, and putting my stuff in there. So with help from my neighbor, I built a front wall on the garage behind my house, with a door and everything. I felt pretty un-cynical during the process, and was glad to have it done and to have my neighbor’s help. He’s a cool dude.

But surrounding that exercise in practicality and manliness are things that make me cynical. This list is a bit of a dangerous revelation, because it might involve you, dear reader:

• My house, and its watery basement. It’s not supposed to do that. It is specifically not supposed to do that; it says so in my sales contract.
• The waterproofing contractor I hired to fix the problem, requiring that everything be moved out of the basement. It would be so nice were they to tell me when they were coming, when they were going, when the work would be finished, and why they didn’t do what’s called for in my contract. Oh, I could go on.
• Public Storage, a nearby storage facility that I refuse to use because of really terrible service.
• My friends, who express shock that I know how to use a saw, or that I would have gotten up the gumption to do some kind of physical work, or assume that my neighbor did the work, and look at me askance when I assure them otherwise. How did I give them this impression of me? I grew up on a farm, for crying out loud. Maybe they don’t know what that entails. Let’s go bale some hay, see who peters out first.

Even when I’m doing something non-cynical, it’s surrounded by things that encourage cynicism. Is cynicism an inevitable result of modern society? Hmmm. I’m led to this theory by the New Yankee Workshop, believe it or not. The New Yankee Workshop is a wood-working show on PBS, and it’s about the least cynical thing in the world. This guy just basically goes through the steps of building something out of wood, using the tools in his workshop. Step by step, like CSI in reverse. Uh, and for wood-working.

But the New Yankee Workshop is presented like something out of time. It’s straightforward, pleasant, and without any trappings of masculinity other than that the host is a man and that we traditionally think of wood-working as a masculine act. What few tweaks of character they do add to the script are so vanilla you could make them into a wafer and dip them in a glass of milk.

It’s this timeless placidity, crossed with the inherent creativity of the act of wood-working that makes me think that more practical-minded times were probably less cynical. When you’re thinking in terms of “how do I get from A to B” you don’t have much time for thinking about how when you get to B it won’t have been worth it, but isn’t that just typical of B. Is cynicism a disease of the idle mind? Of a mind ill-at-ease with society?

Man, I fight that cynicism every day. I want to be positive. Positivity gets results, where a house is concerned. It gets a door on your garage, it gets the hole in your comforter sewn, it gets dog poo cleaned up, it gets your basement waterproofed.

Cynicism is how you wind up with an old washer in your front yard.

The Ladies, Oh How the Ladies Make Me Cynical
God, what a source for cynicism women are. I’m saying this as a man, who has trouble understanding them, and finds a great deal of motivation towards cynicism in the lack of understanding that I share with them. I’ve spent a lot of time, as you have, trying to understand women.

Actually, I’ve lately been feeling a heightened difference between the way I think and the way other people in general think and behave. I feel myself growing cynical about their responses to external stimuli. They’ll react selfishly, short-sightedly, unsubtly, stupidly, and they won’t see the things I see. God, what egotism!

Does egotism naturally accompany depression? Sometimes late at night I’ll lapse into that “nobody understands me” mind-set. I can get pretty maudlin, here inside my head. Does everybody do that? I’ve heard my sister saying similar things, loudly, at 4 AM, when she comes home “tipsy.” Nobody understands her except her dog. I guess that feeling is embodied in the cliche “Nobody ever really knows anybody.”

But when I notice those differences, when that egotism sprouts like a Giger alien from the loins of my id, I’m pretty sure it’s fertilized by girl trouble. Because when you’re in a good place with girls (or boys, if you’re gay, I’m talking male perspective here), all of a sudden it’s so much easier to be optimistic with regards to the entire human race. When you feel like you know where you stand, when you feel like there’s somebody on your team, when you are, in the words of Holden from “The Good Girl“, being gotten. Of course then you’re insufferable because you think you’ve got it all figured out and what’s the matter with that poor schlub crying in his beer?

How to avoid the cynicism that goes with woman-related angst!? It’s so hard! The effort alone makes one cynical!

Cynicism at the Job Site
Then there’s work, an area of life where people have made hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars exploiting cynicism. Most of them are named Scott Adams.

It’s so easy to be cynical at work. Feels so much better to be cynical than constantly disappointed, right? Not to mention that I work with computers– but cynicism towards computers is a good survival tactic. Everyone should be cynical where computers are concerned, I think. It would make everyone much more tolerant of the realities of technology.

But perhaps you’re more fulfilled at work than I am right now. Perhaps you are constantly challenged and intrigued by new projects, and perhaps your opinions and ideas are acted on and taken as seriously as you think they should be. Lucky.

Maybe you’re just an inherently sunny person, who wonders what’s wrong with me. If you are, please stop reading my blog.

My attitude towards work is like many things in life: pendulum-ey. (Pendulous isn’t right. Pendulish? Pendulastic?) When it’s busy I’m happy, then it gets too busy and I’m not happy, then it gets not busy at ALL and I’m even not happier, then it starts getting busy again and I feel better once more. Been like that for ten years, give or take a couple at the beginning when everything was new. The Internet that is. It was all basically brand spanking new, and we were all learning so much every day. But at this point a lot of my job is “been there, watched that flop” and tap tap tap here’s 1000 words on configuring your email program, let’s have lunch.

How do novelists, how do actors, freelancers of any sort deal with constant rejection and the failure to understand on the part of their fellow human beings, and not turn completely cynical?

Art – Cynicism = Suicide?
I feel rejected at work a lot, but it’s not usually in the course of my regular workload. It’s the extra things, the ideas, the theories, the stuff I do over and above in order to try and help– the company, my colleagues, etc. There are several reasons for this rejection (possibly including that my ideas just aren’t any good, I guess).

But my everyday efforts are rarely rejected. On the contrary, at this point I have enough experience that the majority of my work is accepted with gratitude. It’s what keeps me working, actually, that bit of respect.

So thanks, universe, for that. But what if I didn’t have that? What if I faced rejection at almost every turn? Rejection is part and parcel of being a creative freelancer like an artist, writer, or actor. Cynicism would seem the death-knell of an artist. How many great works of cynicism are there– which weren’t subsequently followed by suicide? True cynics don’t commit suicide. But I think there are many cases of cynicism masking despair, exposed like the inside of a skull, by suicide.

I feel that in my art. Yeah, art. I’m an artist. I’m making art right now, don’t you know, with this very word. And these. And I write songs. Did you know that? Your (yes, you) reaction to a song is one of the things I live for in life… finding that means to communicate something to someone else via music and verse. When you get it, and you TELL me you get it– even it’s not the message I thought I was sending– it’s better than sex. Or maybe it’s not that you “got” it, it’s that you got something out of it.

But artists, listen up. I have some advice here for you: Mostly, people won’t react to your art. They just won’t. Most people will be indifferent. The vast majority of your audience, if they appreciate what you’ve done, will make little effort to let you know. The people who love you will support you, but they probably won’t care about the ART, only about telling you how good you are for making it and how proud of you they are.

Indifference is hard to stomach, and it’s almost as hard to take that blind support from your loved ones. But the key to survival is, ironically, cynicism. Becoming cynical about The People’s general reception of art and the things you care about, without becoming cynical about the art itself is how you keep the shotgun out of your mouth. Live for the occasional person you’ve reached, but don’t expect to hear from them.

Or find the clues to your audience through other mechanisms. Downloads, sales, references on the Web, stuff like that. More subtle indications that you’re being heard/read/seen/etc.

You might wonder why I haven’t said artists should create art for its own sake. It’s because I think that’s bullcrap. Art is communication, and artists are trying to communicate SOMETHING to SOMEBODY. That’s my opinion on art.

It’s Fun to be Cynical about the Media
Remember, Goodies is a powder, so nothing gets rid of your pain faster. Richard Petty, pain-relief expert, just told me that. Everybody knows that powders are just faster. I mean, it’s a powder.

Yeah, it’s a television commercial. Speaking of which, let’s just not go there. Too much room for cynicism in all of the media. Besides, being ironically cynical about commercials is one of the great pleasures in my life. I choose not to examine this very closely.

But the amount of cynicism I feel towards the media in general and news organizations in particular is so powerful, so all-consuming, that it could probably land a man on the Moon. I basically don’t believe a word they say, and nothing they do can surprise me. I wish I felt more Disney about things, but it’s just impossible. They lie so much, and it’s just for money. Just for money. Ugh. Disgusting, but for some reason amusing.

Coping With Cynicism
One could write a book about cynicism, without even doing research. Just like, “Impressions of Cynical Motivators in Life.” Well, not a book anybody would want to read, but you could FILL such a book. Or a journal. If you wanted to focus on your cynicism to that extent.

But then, maybe that’s a good idea. There this book called “The Artist’s Way” which is kind of a guide to rediscovering your creativity. It’s a bit spiritual for my taste, but in a realistic sort of way. One of the primary methods for rediscovering your creativity (according to the book) is something called “the morning pages.” Basically you wake up in the morning and fill three pages of a spiral-bound notebook with everything that you’re thinking about. It’s meant to get all that crap out of your system, and the book mentions making your worries and cares part of your writing.

The morning pages make me think of National Novel-Writing Month, also known as “NaNoWriMo,” because it’s basically writing without thinking too much about it. Just spewing the words out in order to fill your quota. Literary gurgitation. I’ve thought of attempting NaNoWriMo this year (November is NaNoWriMo), but cynicism rears its hoary head and I frequently feel like I shouldn’t bother. Maybe. I have to decide soon. I’ll let you know.

There’s a scene in Chuck Palahniuk’s “Fight Club”– actually, it’s in the movie, I haven’t read the book– where [hey, spoiler alert] Ed Norton sticks a gun in his mouth and surgically removes his second personality, embodied in the movie by Brad Pitt, somehow. You know that scene in Fight Club where what’s his name uses the gun on himself. I’d like to do that, somehow, to my cynicism. Figuratively. I’m pretty sure the gun thing is a bad idea.

Final Section Header Goes Here
If you’ve reached this far, congratulations. Remember what I said about art and disinterest towards same? There’s a movie, “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” and in this movie a lady artist sends a lady curator a video, which the artist hopes the curator will add to a collection to be shown in a museum. The video is a piece of art, and yeah, I have trouble with video as art too, but it’s a really good part of a REALLY good movie. In the scene where the curator is watching the artist’s video, there’s a point in the video where the artist speaks directly to the curator. She asks that, if the curator has watched the video that far, just to call and leave her voicemail consisting of just the word “macaroni.”

I’m not going to ask quite so much of the Internet that someone reading this should go to the trouble of picking up a telephone and dialing some number I come up with to leave me a message. But if you have read this far, first of all, thanks. Second of all, I hope you found the piece interesting. And third of all, would you do me the favor of leaving a comment? It can be anything you want. It can just be a word. Say, “macaroni.” If you’ve read this far, just leave the comment “macaroni.” You don’t even need to leave your name.

Reading through this post, editing a bit, it seems kind of dour and sad. 3000 words on “cynicism,” egad. Two references to suicide. Eesh. I’ve basically been writing this thing all day long, with breaks to go bowling, paint my shed (note to self, avoid oil-based paint in future), and see “Marie Antoinette,” a film which didn’t really help my mood (although I think I liked it quite a bit).

Someday soon I know that I’ll look back on these words and wonder what was in my head. I can’t wait until I can’t understand the place I’m at right now, although I hope I’ll remember that such a place exists, and kind of the way to get here. Then maybe I can figure out another route. If only I had a map.

So Much Music

This is the latest, so far, that I have eaten Sunday brunch. Monday afternoon. Heh.

In lieu of writing something new, or cribbing from my old MySpace blog posts, here’s one stolen from my goof-off, daily whatever-is-in-my-head-at-the-moment community blog called Why Oh Why. It’s from a few years ago, but still…

Anyway, follow me into the past. Dateline Monday, January 8, 2001:

I need 8 more hours in the day to listen to all the music I want to listen to. First I have to listen to all the music I’ve already heard that I love and then I need to listen to all the music that I have yet to hear but want to.

Which begs the question, why listen to crap in the first place? I know I’m going to hate that Peabo Bryson song, but I’ll almost surely like the new Beck. (And I do, by the way. I bought it this weekend.)

And that’s just the pop music. It doesn’t include stuff like this Steve Reich tape I found at The Wall a few weeks ago for $1.99, buried in the reject tape bins next to a remarkable amount of crap churned out with love, hard work, and great expense by a thousand uninspired musicians. I hope somebody finds each of those tapes and loves them as much as I love this one.

The Wall was a record store chain, formerly “Wall to Wall Sound and Video” and now merged with Camelot and some other chains to become “FYE” which stands for “For Your Entertainment” and which I think should be pronounced FIE, because everybody who works there seems to be determined not to let me buy anything.

It’s called “Music for 18 Musicians” and it’s beautiful. Tonight I had to sit in my car and listen to it for about ten minutes before starting my drive home. I had forgotten it was in the tape deck, and didn’t even know which tape was sitting there. Anything to get away from Top 40 radio, and I had forgotten my CDs at home. And then I pushed the tape in, it started playing, and it was like discovering the piece all over again.

I have no idea where the tape is now. Need to buy that again, this time for full price I’m sure. Unless I, er, acquire it somehow… nah. It’s great music, I don’t mind paying for it. The first time, it was kind of happenstance, I didn’t know what I was getting into. So $1.99 was perfect. Now though, it’s more like Dvorak’s 9th symphony, which I know I’m gonna love. I’ll probably buy that about 20 more times before I die.

Steve Reich is a minimalist. He writes pieces that seem as if they were born with the universe, and we’re only hearing a fractional slice of the skein. The music seeps into you, seemingly electronic but all acoustic. Every note made by human beings. A bass clarinet sends pulsating tones in graduated dynamics out across the listening space while other instruments shimmer and float in the background.

I didn’t come up with that “slice of an infinite whole” bit, I stole it from one of my college music professors. But he didn’t come up with it either, and it’s probably what Reich was going for in the first place– IIRC, that’s one of the goals of minimilistic composition. At least, according to that professor. Maybe he was full of crap! OMG. But I digress:

Instruments and motives surface and submerge in alternating patterns. Yeah, it can zone you out, but it can also be energizing, refreshing. It always seems to fill the need that I have at the moment. Tonight its purpose was to relax, drive some of the tension from my shoulders, and then help me drive home in a fog of sound, watching the road and the scenery float by to a soundtrack of hums and throbs.

Originally I used the word “ennervating,” which I didn’t even spell correctly, and which did not mean what I thought it meant. Inconceivable! I still think that word sounds totally different than it should in order to mean what it does. Which is basically the opposite of what I wanted to say.

When we go to heaven I think we’ll get to hear every piece of music ever made, as we like it and in perfect fidelity, should we so choose. That’s gotta be the way it is, ’cause otherwise why would I want to go?

And God will pick only the stuff He knows we’re gonna like. Or, maybe we’ll just love everything. That kind of makes me nervous. But if it happened, how would I know? I’ve already found myself kind of grooving to Bruce Springsteen’s “Brilliant Disguise”, which I’ve basically hated all my life. What’s happening to me? Does this happen to everybody? Is this why Sting sucks now? Will I start liking “Ten Summoner’s Tales” all of a sudden when I turn 40? Will I have to throw out my Jack Johnson voodoo doll?!?!

Metal Madness

Saturday morning, and I woke up spontaneously at 8:30 due to a pressing bladder event, an after-effect of beer at the bowling alley with my neighbors. I bowl poorly when drunk; latest discovery.

I briefly contemplated going back to sleep, but while in the bathroom I got involved in this Harper’s article about the industrialization of China. Started out good but eventually got into hating on the US, and for a while there it seemed to be arguing that it’s OK for China to pollute all it wants, since it’s got so many people and on a per-capita basis the pollution will never equal ours. So that was aggravating. But still, an interesting article.

Then I read a story about this guy who got a tattoo of his Dad’s initials. He had two, one who died when he was a young boy, and a stepfather whom he knew for much longer and was more like a real Dad. It was interesting, if a bit more navel-gazey than I prefer. I like to do my own navel-gazing, thanks very much.

Having tired of endless Harper’s articles, I’m lying in bed watching a concert from 2004 on VH1 Classics. It’s Judas Priest. I’ve never really listened to them aside from knowing the main riff from “Breaking the Law”, like everybody else, and I’m sure I learned that from Beavis and Butthead.

Rob Halford, the gay frontman for this group, kind of stalks around the stage with his head mostly bent down, yelling into the microphone. I think he must have scoliosis or something, because he apparently just can’t pull his head up. Occasionally he’ll raise his hands in triumph.

The crowd, by the way, is going in-fucking-SANE. They love everything about this group and what’s happening on stage.

Halford just drove onstage on a chopper, totally dressed up in shiny leather biker gear. He’s like an honorary member of the Village People: Bondage Dude. He drove onstage with his head down. All a prelude to “Hellbent for Leather”.

The music is ridiculous to me. It’s flashy guitar licks, and the kind of tough-guy lyrics that it seems to me like you’d have to willfully subsume your intellect in order to take seriously. Unless you’re being all ironic n’ shit. But that’s way more irony than I can stomach, and I have a large appetite.

Now they’re playing “I’m a Rocker”. Halford actually pumped up the crowd with some kind of speech, ending with the title of this song. You know how bands do that? I hate that.

I’ve always wondered at the whole musicians-as-tough-guys phenomenon. I can understand the impulse on the musicians side well enough. When I was in college, a group of us he-man music majors decided to go play football on the band’s practice field. Tackle football. One of us was subsequently hit hard enough to black out for a second. Fuckin’ morons, all of us.

But we had something to prove, just like musicians who play any kind of aggressive style of music. They’re musicians. Their passion is for something inherently intellectual. The Judas Priest style of metal is especially so; I’m speaking musically not lyrically. The guitar solos are full of modal shifts and incredible technique, lightning-fast runs tenuously connected to the key of the song.

To me, there’s a disconnect between the image of a rocker as tough-guy and the actual act of being a rocker. If you’re the singer in a rock-n-roll band, you make your living SINGING. You’re a communicator. Tough-guys don’t communicate. No matter how hard you try, you’re not gonna be tough.

I’m not speaking of the glam-rockers or the hair-metal jackabramoffs. Those guys were invested in drugs, girls, and image. I don’t think they were ever doing anything other than exploiting a moment; they weren’t trying to be tough. They were being ambiguous. “You’re in Love” by Ratt, for example. Lots of makeup, tight pants, etc. Just kinda shouting a metaphoric “FUCK ME, PLEEEEZ FUCK ME” to the audience. The hair-metal bands were almost parodic of the conventions of heavy metal, crossed with the uncritical emotionalism of classic rock.

Picture Sebastian Bach singing “Remember Yesterday”, his lower lip trembling with each warble of vibrato. He’s wearing lip gloss. Sebastian later went on to star in Jeckyll & Hyde on Broadway. Not very metal. He sure was pretty back then. Long hair, but shaven, accentuating the androgynous femininity of that whole scene.

It seems somewhat different for punk. Old-school punk that is. Musicianship was less of a focus, the music served as an outlet for social angst. They didn’t seem to be trying to be tough, so much, I mean except the skinheads, or straight edge (talk about fucked up) kids. I think Henry Rollins has a bit of the tough-guy complex, just like ol’ James Hetfield. TGC.

Metallica as a whole has TGC, definitely. That lead guitarist has the least of it, I’ll admit, all balding and nerdy. But Lars, stop making those faces, you’re a drummer. Yes it’s physical, and even sort of violent. But I bet you could go on at length about padafluflahs, paradiddles, how to tune a drum, what kind of sticks you use, the nuances of different kinds of hihats, and on and on and on. I know drummers.

Metallica basically sacrificed any tough-guy cred their loud amplifiers had built up when they let a filmmaker capture their therapy sessions for the “Some Kind of Monster” documentary. Ok, you pussies, tough-guys don’t go to fucking THERAPY for fuck’s sake. Not very metal. But when you’ve got more money than God I guess you might stop caring quite so much about your image. Until you’ve made the sacrifice and realize that you probably value that image more than the money. Look for Metallica, at some point, to start making a big point about how tough they still are. “Our new record is the most hard core we’ve ever made. It’s more raw.” Bands are always saying their new record is more raw.

Ok Alice, go play with some snakes.

Motley Crue split the diff between punk, metal, and the faux-metal jackabramoffs. They acted out like punks, they put on airs like metalheads, and they played up their androgynous style like every other 80’s band and got lots of pussy for it. “Smokin’ in the Boys Room” should be enough evidence to forever cement Tommy Lee’s image at the bottom of the “big pussy” vat. Enormous penis notwithstanding. Did you ever notice that nobody ever cums in those celebrity sex videos? Ok, keep pretending you haven’t watched at least a little bit of them.

Rob Halford is now going “whoauohhuohhyeah” repeatedly, in a call-and-response with the audience. The congregation rather. It’s a little scat thing, nonsense words shouted back and forth in tune. The congregation has a pretty damn good collective voice, actually. I’d like to hear this Judas Priest crowd sing a hymn. Hell, they’re actually more in tune than Rob at points. Holy shit, how long is this going to go on? It’s not faintly ridiculous, it’s a clear, brightly-shining ridiculosity. The Pompeii of ridiculous. Krakatoa. Dear Lord.

Oh wait, it’s at the Budokan, in Tokyo Japan. That explains… something. At the very least it explains how in 2004 Judas Priest can fill a stadium. Is the music and the whole show so foreign to other countries that it just never loses its appeal? It’s like they can’t recognize the stale stench of just-out-of-date American pop-culture. At the same time, Japanese trends fall faster than sparrow-tipped dominoes.

50,000 Japanese Judas Priest fans singing “Amazing Grace” in four-part harmony. It would be beautiful.

I think the ambition to tough explains a lot of bad behavior. They’re embarrassed to be musicians. To make a living with their fingers, their fine muscle control, their grasp of music theory, their ability to line up tropes and melody in a way that sounds natural. It ain’t easy. They sing, they manipulate electronics, they talk about things they, and their audience wish they could accomplish or experience. These aren’t things tough-guys do. They relate their impression of the world to other people. They’re minstrels. Minstrels aren’t tough. Minstrels get beat up. Especially gay minstrels like Rob Halford. And they don’t take it like a man.

Those Scandinavian Black Metal bands, for example. They’re wrapped up in this imagery they’ve created, and they can’t get out of it. So amorous of the tough-guy image, so desirous of living the part of an evil being, they do stuff like set each other on fire or cut each other’s heads off and throw body parts in the stewpot. Evil things. But they’re still musicians, even if they’re more fucked up than usual. And musician, I’m sorry but it’s true, equals pussy. Whiny, devil-worshipping, cannibalistic pussy. The sequel to C.H.U.D.

I think Hemingway might have wrestled with some of these issues. By all accounts, he was a tough guy. But he was a writer, foremost, making a living by telling stories, by THINKING. Could the war between being a man of the world, of physicality, and being a man of the mind have contributed to some of his antics? Fighting in the Spanish civil war (I think that’s him, right?) Running with the bulls? Shooting sharks with a Tommy gun from the deck of his boat? Commiting suicide via shotgun? A manly way to go, but still. You’re a writer, dude. You and William Burroughs, peas in a pod.

Rob just said “sayonara”, and has deigned to lift his head to say goodbye. The closing music, played over the sound system as the priest boys take a bow, is some song with the lyrics “United united united we stand, united we never shall fall.” In leather, with spiked collars.

Perhaps the problem is that it’s difficult to live up to that tough-guy image created by movies and novels. In real life it’s hard to get the lighting right. It’s hard to conjure up a black-and-white situation in which to act. If you’re a real tough-guy you’re most likely inclined to things the average person with a tough-guy complex would find repellent. Live in squalor, for example. Take a beating. Be dirty.

Plus the average person doesn’t have the style chops to be a tough-guy. That calculated tough-guy image is very style-conscious. Which is definitely not something a tough-guy thinks about. So there’s another aspect to the heavy-metal exercise that flies in the face of their apparent goal– metal has that whole black/leather/spikes bullshit going on, which obviously takes a lot of sartorial thought, misguided though it may be. And that kind of thing isn’t very tough.

VH1 follows the Budokan concert up with a couple Priest videos. One called “Love Bites”, from when Halperin had hair and no goatee. And now some concert footage– ooh, Rob just floated up onstage via some kind of lift in a trap door. Very slick. This concert video is “Here Comes the Revolution”. Heh, Halperin in shades makes me think of Cartman shouting “Respect mah authoritah!”

The crowds always eat it up, of course. They love their Judas Priest. They love those album covers, they love to thrash their heads, raising their fists or a single pointed finger to the sky. Apparently a good number of them like to wear their hair long, but with copious facial hair. Is the facial hair an attempt to offset the feminine aspect of having long hair with visual proof of your manly potency via an unkempt mass of scratchy hair climbing down your neck? You don’t want to look like Sebastian Bach, not if you’re metal.

Anyway, I just don’t get the whole metal tough-guy thing. I’m sure they’d kick my ass for saying so, but I’m not trying to be a tough-guy. I’m a writer. I’ll kick your ass on paper, but that’s about it. Hmmm… a lot of these metal guys are tenors, too. There seemed to be a competition beetween the heavy metal lead singers to see who could sing the highest and hold the longest note. Yo dudes, I think Mariah Carey would win. Oh, and the makeup, like KISS. It’s makeup, yo! That’s not tough. Clowns wear less. Plus, you’re on fucking VH1 for crying out loud. Even if it’s a bastard child of VH1 like “VH1 Classic”. That’s not tougher, it’s just more obscure.

It’s all very Spinal Tap. They were huge in Denmark, I hear. Heh, this whole blog post can be boiled down to Harry Shearer, the bass player for Spinal Tap, trying to go through an airport metal detector with a foil-wrapped cucumber down his pants. And then later, in interview, smoking a long Sherlock-holmes style pipe.

If you want tough music, try “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” by Penderecki. But it’s made by artists, not tough-guys. Art music, though, is a different breed of tough. It’s an expression with artistic intent. Or emotional intent. Somewhat like punk, I think. Somebody should write a thesis about that.

I’m not immune, obviously. I was in the middle of that music-major football game, even as I was thinking how fucking stupid it was. I had something to prove too. I’m sure I still do. It serves a human need, I think, letting tech writers, MBAs, system admins and accountants pretend they’re tough for a few minutes, even if it’s completely foolish.

I like cranking System of a Down in my car. I admit it. I crank other “loud” stuff, like The Weakerthans or Hole, but they don’t make me feel tough. They make me feel better, or happy, or sad. SOAD lets me feel tough (and righteous), pounding on my steering wheel after a long day of typing on a damn computer about which kind of CD-R people should buy, or how to use your Web browser.

The lead singer of the Scorpions kind of looks like Michael Bolton.

So as much as I revel in the stupidity of musicians striving to appear tough in the eyes of fans, or taking advantage of the public’s desire for pop music combined with larger-than-life Sensitive Men Who Don’t Take Crap From Nobody, I’m a sucker for it myself. It’s ridiculous, but also ridiculously entertaining. In moderation. The days when the music that’s on VH1 Classic right now was the only thing you could hear on the radio were just fucking TORTURE. The recent phenomenon of “nu-metal” was just as torturous, and the latter days of Grunge weren’t any better. For every Nirvana we had thirty Candleboxen. Gah. I hope in twenty years I’ll be able to listen to that terrible, terrible Candlebox “song” and find it as amusic as “I’m a Rocker” by Judas Priest.

But I doubt it, ’cause it’s been 16 years since Stevie B’s “Because I Love You”, and that song still makes me want to dig my eardrums out of my head. With a rusty nail, because I’m a tough-guy.

Regrets

It’s a weird world. Here’s a cliche: “You don’t regret the things you do, you regret the things you don’t.” There are variations which make a little more sense, but let’s stick with that and examine it for a paragraph or three.

Of course, the cliche is just an attempt to motivate you to do the things you really want to do, or, in the opinion of the speaker, should do. But when you think about it, it’s impossible to be not doing anything, because not doing something is doing something. Consider this: killing yourself while skydiving is the easiest thing in the world– just don’t pull the ripcord.

Rush addressed the issue in one of their few actually catchy songs “Free Will“:

“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.“

Of course, Mr. Peart (the drummer/lyricist for the band) was talking about how he would rather believe there is no God than the one he hears everybody talking about. In that respect, he may have something in common with Iris Dement:

“Everybody is wonderin’ what and where they all came from.
Everybody is worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done.
But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.“

One of my favorite songs ever, btw. But I’m getting off track.

I already regret both things I have done and opportunities long since flown. And then there’s stuff I might not regret but I won’t know until I’m closer to dead. For example, I doubt that on my deathbed I’ll be lamenting the fact that I didn’t punch my 8th grade English teacher in her stupid face, but maybe I will– she treated poor little insecure, misunderstood, 20-years-ago JB so poorly that today’s JB is still really pissed at her. Those early hurts just don’t seem to go away. When I’m on my deathbed, will these be my last words?

Here lies JB
1972-2046
“Mrs. D, you bitch, burn in hell.”

That’s all on me, though. One of those regrets that relates basically only to myself. Mrs. D doesn’t remember me, I’m sure, ’cause I was one out of hundreds that she ridiculed and debased 42 minutes five days a week for 9 months in 1986. Not to mention the thousands over her career. Plus she’s probably getting up there in years and will soon be dead, so she has other things to worry about than my emotional baggage.

But yeah man, although nobody does a number on your psyche better than your own little self, other people will fuck your head up but good. It’s easy for them! They basically just have to stand there and let time pass and the dids and didn’t dids will pile up. Nondids? Undids? BRAINS.

Ahem.

You’ll also regret the things you do that hurt other people in your life, even if it’s just drenching that poor schmo with fetid muddy water as you drove by on your way to the chiropractor or something, yelling along to that fantastic new Audioslave song and paying no attention to whether it just rained and if there’s a puddle at the side of the road where said schmo slouched against a bus stop sign.

And you’ll regret the things the people you love were disappointed in you for not doing. No matter how hard you try, you’re always going to be not-doing something they really wish you would. And you’ll be regretting not-doing or saying things they didn’t even know you were thinking about doing or saying. I have that one. Why am I so tight with That Word? The penguin isn’t afraid to say it, why am I?

But with regard to disappointing others (and regretting it) I guess their level of interest depends on how much a person has at stake. Your parents have a lot at stake, it’s undeniable, whether they admit it or not. A person is inevitably judged by how they treated their children, how successful their children were, no matter how miserable a failure they may have been in other areas of life.

Your significant other has a little bit less at stake, but nevertheless a good amount. They’re going to accept that there are some things about you that you’re going to struggle to work on, or they’re going to keep making you regret the way you are, or they’re going to disappear from your life. If they don’t give a crap, your s/o is just an o. No?

Society at large is probably not going to know you from Adam. But with society it seems like you get to make a choice. It’s a lot easier to get them to hate you than it is to love you. But depending on your goals, perhaps that’s not a cause for regret. Unless the reason they hate you is an accident of some kind. Then you’ll have cause for regret. But can you regret the things you didn’t do where society is concerned? What difference does it make?

Yeah, I guess this post doesn’t make a lot of sense. Sorry. There’s a lot going on inside. It’s not apparent from without I bet; I do realize that I’m good at seeming to be unaffected. But you should know that today I’m a seething mass of angst and despair. I’m rambling. I’m hurt. My house is messy, and it’s all my fault. I’m either going to clean it today or burn it down.

Here’s the song I wrote on Friday instead of going to this party at this bar I’ve never been to thrown by this girl I only know because she thought my Elvis cart was funny:

[ Listen to "Friday Song" by JB >> ]