did something abnormally normal last night: went to the mall, ate and saw a movie--'the social network'. a saunter through the monmouth mall almost inspired me to poetry of the post-postmodern: i gaped at the face-slapping irony of glitzy window-loads of sportswear being peddled to overweight, and in certain cases, obese teens and 'tweens'...immediately i realized that this was the fate of pretty much all of us against the leviathan of total consumer media saturation, as it must be...for why would a self-assured, healthy person need discretionary products in order to feel good about his/her self? the answer: they wouldn't and don't. so, go ahead...be an elite athlete, you fat fuck! or at least buy the sneakers...
as a child and pre-teen, i never felt like i had to wrestle with the cunningest of cunning madison ave minds...even the most well-meaning and well-prepared of critically-thinking adults are hopelessly outgunned in the cultural showdown for hearts and minds--hearts are subliminally won, while the mind shuts off and is pulled along. meanwhile, children are just dead fish in a barrel. not a chance! what's even worse is that the whole enterprise of a mall is like a giant tv of constant commercials, through which you can walk and only spend your way out, interbred with a low-lying, child-level checkout aisle candy rack: the kids grab, the parents pay and are converted into child-abusing curmudgeons if they don't. in fact, i feel that any dissent from or critique of the system instantly makes the critique-er/dissenter into the same. i feel it now, writing this modest blog entry. to even question malls is to hate puppies and children and sacred cows. [no, i don't hate any of the above.]
speaking of that: another sad moment for me...seeing boy scouts selling popcorn at the mall in order to fund their existence. i fondly remember being in the scouts, but don't remember having to do anything remotely as commercial and separated from 'community service', which was an integral part of the entire scouting experience! i felt bad and gave them money without accepting the popcorn. this action seemed to blow their minds even while they thanked me. good scouts...
so, the movie...as a film, it was very good, engrossing even to a non-gen-y-non-facebook-user...i see the facebook phenomenon as strikingly similar to my mall experience, actually: a non-place space to be where everybody is and to see what everybody else is doing. in a word: gossip. in the old world: the town square. my intuition about the trajectory of such an enterprise: right now represents an age of digital communalism/feudalism, wherein everybody except the old wants in---if i may map the historical development of [western] economies onto the development of the internet as a commercial medium...next, i feel that colonization can/will happen, pulling developing nations into the fold [just like getting them cars and cigarettes----new markets, my son, new markets!]...
once everybody's in the pot and being stirred, we'll have to pay---probably a premium---in order to get out....just like at the mall, just like the suburbs vis-a-vis the city! the future luxury of anonymity! this stage would represent the 'bourgeoisie-ification' of our internet society. a current example from our commercial culture is paying more for products without the cheap and sometimes harmful additives expedient to industrial mass-production, but not necessarily to humanity. in an age of total or near-total connectivity, anonymity will be a sought-after/bought-after privilege.
this past week, at the shop, a co-worker talked about the hypothetical tooth-implanted music chip we'll all have...it then came to me that we'll probably have to pay for silence, too....we already do: exclusive living away from the noisy mass, vacations...'getaways', in a word...pay to get away...away...away from....you and you and you and you....
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
beach bum
Sunday, September 26, 2010
roots and rootlessness
...so...in the face of last post....what would my 'roots' be? in which cultural milieu would i find my melodies, dances and participation in an authentic way? i know that 'authentic' is a very slippery slope, indeed---especially for a suburban white guy like myself who inherited a culture of 'no-culture' [or ALL cultures, depending on how one looks at the issue]...on a side note, i just heard an npr interview with robert plant, who claimed the same 'culture-of-no-culture' for himself whilst ignoring and actually denigrating his 'real' native, ancient, well-established anglo-saxon culture...african-american music spoke to him from across the atlantic....and the rest, as they say, is history...
back to me: where i grew up was settled by the dutch and used for farming since the 1600's. before that, i've heard it described as 'prime indian hunting grounds'....so what would that melody sound like? ironically, i've also heard it said, and found it to be true, that the dutch don't really have music of their own, and thus are avid catalogers of the music of others. did the rootlessness of the dutch rub off on new jersey suburbia, literally planting a root of rootlessness? i listen to the amazing dutch radio station, concertzender, as i type this...
recently i received a forward from my mother of an email from my cousin who has been involved more than anyone in the family in plumbing our geneology. three pictures were attached. one is believed to be my great grandmother:
..stern, czech, classical...these seem to be my authentic roots. her brother, named josef franzl, [if she in the photo is indeed my great grandmother] was a well-known, accomplished french horn player with various groups in nyc during the early 1900's; well-known enough for my cousin to have gotten in touch with a horn collector who recently bought a lot of franzl stuff on ebay! this is blowing my mind...i searched the new york times archives for mentions of josef and there are a few concert announcements. supposedly he composed, too. that would be a holy grail for me: find and procure franzl manuscripts!
back to me: where i grew up was settled by the dutch and used for farming since the 1600's. before that, i've heard it described as 'prime indian hunting grounds'....so what would that melody sound like? ironically, i've also heard it said, and found it to be true, that the dutch don't really have music of their own, and thus are avid catalogers of the music of others. did the rootlessness of the dutch rub off on new jersey suburbia, literally planting a root of rootlessness? i listen to the amazing dutch radio station, concertzender, as i type this...
recently i received a forward from my mother of an email from my cousin who has been involved more than anyone in the family in plumbing our geneology. three pictures were attached. one is believed to be my great grandmother:
..stern, czech, classical...these seem to be my authentic roots. her brother, named josef franzl, [if she in the photo is indeed my great grandmother] was a well-known, accomplished french horn player with various groups in nyc during the early 1900's; well-known enough for my cousin to have gotten in touch with a horn collector who recently bought a lot of franzl stuff on ebay! this is blowing my mind...i searched the new york times archives for mentions of josef and there are a few concert announcements. supposedly he composed, too. that would be a holy grail for me: find and procure franzl manuscripts!
Saturday, September 25, 2010
melody/memory
an interesting thing is happening as i'm able to hold a pick and play guitar again, after 10 years of battle with the you-don't-want-it condition, focal dystonia. during the entire past ten years, along with losing control of the fine motor skills in my right hand, another curious neurological wipe occurred: that i was practically incapable of perceiving melody!! melodic continuity was just as scrambled as the kinetic instructions to my right hand! now, however, both activities are sprouting some exciting new growth...i believe the two go 'hand in hand'...
my 'amelodia' was almost the more frightening of the two conditions. picture a sampler with a memory of 4-5 seconds only able to reproduce a clipped mockingbird form of music. however much i tried i couldn't anticipate or perceive music, melody and/or meaning beyond the 4-5 sec. limit! it simply would be processed. i was stuck in a very short loop, indeed. my mind could only collage, rip a few words and paste them on a small surface and was denied the richness of original paragraphs and chapters. an ocd adhd rut.
it feels to me now that my body was experiencing [and still is, though to a much lesser extent] what our culture, especially music, has experienced over the past 30 years. a self-fulfilling rut. imitations of imitations ad infinitum---the effects of total media saturation...the telephone game converting english into unintelligible chinese whispers....ooooh, and how horrible that feeling feels! another notion comes to me: that melody transmission is rooted in identifiable strains of culture [now reduced to 'genres' or 'styles']----not knowing the songs is not knowing the dances is....not knowing and not being able to participate in the culture in a meaningful way...melody is meaning...and losing melody is losing meaning, a huge chunk of language!
i welcome back melody and meaning in my life....and hope they stick around....its been lonely, fragmented and frankly nonsensical without them....
my 'amelodia' was almost the more frightening of the two conditions. picture a sampler with a memory of 4-5 seconds only able to reproduce a clipped mockingbird form of music. however much i tried i couldn't anticipate or perceive music, melody and/or meaning beyond the 4-5 sec. limit! it simply would be processed. i was stuck in a very short loop, indeed. my mind could only collage, rip a few words and paste them on a small surface and was denied the richness of original paragraphs and chapters. an ocd adhd rut.
it feels to me now that my body was experiencing [and still is, though to a much lesser extent] what our culture, especially music, has experienced over the past 30 years. a self-fulfilling rut. imitations of imitations ad infinitum---the effects of total media saturation...the telephone game converting english into unintelligible chinese whispers....ooooh, and how horrible that feeling feels! another notion comes to me: that melody transmission is rooted in identifiable strains of culture [now reduced to 'genres' or 'styles']----not knowing the songs is not knowing the dances is....not knowing and not being able to participate in the culture in a meaningful way...melody is meaning...and losing melody is losing meaning, a huge chunk of language!
i welcome back melody and meaning in my life....and hope they stick around....its been lonely, fragmented and frankly nonsensical without them....
Friday, September 17, 2010
coming up for air and sea
so....since last entry i've relocated to my new temporary boathouse residence in highlands, nj ['where the jersey shore begins' and it does] and started a guitar repair apprenticeship program. any move is difficult even when it's as physically easy as mine was: i moved myself in one car in about 20 mins. [i've moved about 15-20 times over the past 17 years, depending on what one defines as a 'move'] ah, no matter how hard i try, i can't escape my father's business [moving]!
yes, i'm alive and well even if i haven't been able to call you---universal winking irony would have it that i should move to the only [literally] small spot in monmouth county not serviced by my cellphone company!
oh, it feels so good to get into a shop with tools...so many things philosophical and spikey that i can say, but i'll try to sum it up: for years i've felt like an imposter and in certain respects i have been...my roots are blue collar, no matter what heady proclivities i've developed. i'm very far from anti-intellectual, but i've always felt the discrepency between me and the educated/ivy league/intellectual people with whom i've associated over the years. the discrepency comes down to class. yes, that elephant in the american parlor!
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