I'm back!

Well, that about wraps up this seasons X-mas concerts for me. So I should have some time to sit down and think actual thoughts (that is if I can get all these blasted jingle bells out of my belfry.)

I was pretty happy with my singing at these concerts (though I was not happy with my voice)-- I hope to put up an MP3 of one of the pieces as soon as I can. It's an interesting thing that we do as singers-- to train ourselves to get up and give a fearless performance even though it feels like rats have been gnawing at the vocal folds. Intellectually I know that most of that harmonic intereference we hear when in bad voice is inefficient and it does not make it to the audience, but it sure doesn't make it FEEL any easier.

Chapter 5-- make sure to read chapter 4 first!

While we're on the subject of time, let me inform you still-breathing lucky mortals something about the nature of the universe. Though the dead are free to move about time, we can't jump the tracks. In deadth, one discovers there is something quite ridgid about time.

When you die, the whole of your life is opened up to you, and you can see the whole thing as an inseperable fabric of cause and effect-- the events marching on with forboding destiny. When one examines the influence of biology and then the layers of experience compounding over time, the idea of free will is revealed to be something of a sham. For the failures among the unliving this is quite a relief, but the successful are usually somewhat disapointed. There is an experiment that I have been free to conduct thousands of times since my death, the results, thus far, have been conclussive:

Free will implies that in any given situation, a human being has a choice. For their to be a choice, the subject must be free to act without cooersion. This includes the cooersion of physical law. For example, an unsupported ball hovering over the earths surface has no choice but to fall. It is coerced by gravity. Humans are equally coerced by external physical events, but also by the physics of chemical reactions occuring inside their heads. Each choice a human is confronted with is run through the same process:

1. The brain receives the incomming sensory information about the dilemma at hand.
2. The brain begins to compare the event to the whole of its past experience.
3. A very predictable chemical reaction occurs based on the existing body of reference the brain has at hand.

"Do you want a cookie?' The brain goes into action. You happen to have a genetic predisposion towards eating sweets, however you ARE on a diet. But the offer of a cookie triggers a conditioned emotional response and "cookie=good" endorphins are released into your blood. A whole series of airtight cause and effect relationships trigger in your brain as you justify eating the cookie. The brain sends out a signal to the hand "take the cookie!" You gobble down like cookie clown.

So to test free will, two entities would have to be subjected to the exact same physical circumstances and be able react differently. But for the physical circumstances to be identical they would have to have identical biology-- to rule out biological predisposition. And they would have to have exactly identical external circumstances-- so to rule out any external coercion. And they would have to have exacly identical life experinces, so to rule out the physical determination of chemical reactions inside their brains. Infact, to avoid physical coersion, the event would have to play out exactly the same for both entities right up to the exact moment the correct brain cells fire making the "choice." The subjects would both be confronted with the choice, all of the brain reactions would be identical-- they would share the same genetic predisposition, and their brains would process the new event through the same past experiences-- the factors would add up in exactly the same way and their brains would fire exactly the same circuits and thus send out exactly the same signals "take the cookie" and for free will to exist, one of the subjects, despite the exact same external and internal physical circumstances and brain response, would have to somehow resist physical law and decline to take the cookie.

As a dead person, I am an ideal candidate to run this experiment. I can relive the same choice over and over, with exactly identical physical circumstances and biology and experience and neurology and wait for a different result. Over 1000 times I have relived the same event now, with identical "causes." each time waiting for a different "effect." As the living, we hope against hope that there can be a different effect, that there can be a "choice." Here is what the dead can all tell you: you always take the cookie, its always the same, the effect always flows out of the unquestionable logic of cause.



And although this matter of time and free will is bound to play a role in our mystery, it's time to return to our task. As I promised before, we've had enough of my moping about the land of the dead. It is time to rise form the grave in serious voodoo fashion and walk the land of the living in search of my murderer.

I find that core of doubt inside myself and I bear down on it with all of my soul. I feel the color of life again and the smell of the living world, shape has meaning again, and I feel myself briefly in my familiar physical shell, trapped in the dark, in my coffin, in useless body and terror overwhelms me.... I remember what my buddhist friend joe used to tell me and I let go of my attachment to body. I feel myself rise lightly sans corps to the surface and take my first breath of air in what seems like centuries. After realizing that I don't have lungs to breath with, I look around. I'm in a cemetery just two days after my funeral. I'm not alone.

NEW!!!! Add on Chapter 4!!!!

In lue of any onther Medium picking up the pen in the name of our dearly departed hero, I once again chanel our beloved shoe salesmen lost in Uzbekistan....

the table shakes, my eyes roll about in my head...

the lights dim, and candles spontaineously combust...

Ectoplasm oozes from my skin to form a perfectly stacked pile of moist towellets which I wll save for use the next time uncle Evan makes his decliciously sticky barbeque ribs-- this is a gift of my late Grandfather, who claimed to have been the true inventor of what he called "damp hankies," thanks Gramps....

Uuuuuuuuugghhhhhhhhh Nike shoes, nike shoes, nike shoe....



Harken, the dead man speaketh:

Its a well known scientific fact that the dead are not constrained by the laws of thermodynamics. Hence we are the freest of the freeence deance. With the time-glue of entropy come undone, the dead loiter through their lives like 28-year-old reunionees through the vacant halls of their alma mater-- poking through the old locker, and stolling past dead memories.

I myself have relived one particular event 476 times. When I was in Jr. Highschool, my best friend Mark was, well, lets just say he was going through an awkward period. I on the other hand was sipping my first shots of popularity. I wish I had been strong enough in life, to be a good friend to Mark but I wasn't. So 476 times now, without the shackles of entropy, I have relived this event backwards, and I have acted like the friend I should have been. When I relive this event in reverse, here's how it goes:

I feel terrified and ashamed. Mark stands in front of me in the crowded lunchroom-- someone has splattered food all over his shirt. He looks as ashamed and terrified as I feel. I laugh and look around at the "in crowd" apparently applauding me. Boldly, I suck the food off of his shirt, and pull it back onto the plate in my hands, and I set it safely on the table behind me. Mark looks happy again. He says to me these strange words that seem to be magical: "?uoy ot txen tis I naC" Suddenly I feel happy again, and I walk away from that table of judgemental jocks, laughing with my best friend.

I don't often revist my highschool years, where our roles were reversed. Mark would eventually become a great athlete and a college quarterback, with all the popularity that goes with that. I on the other hand would become insufferably geeky. Where I had failed, though, Mark would often talk to me and try to be nice, but we were never really friends after Jr. High.

--------------------

"Dark Lord Renzarvrador's weakness is long division!"

So I was reading with my girlfriends lil' brother the other day, and I had this idea: someone needs to write some book/video games, where kids actually need to read in order to discover new things about the game they are playing. And yeah, I know that some companies already do this, but I mean something different, like, you know, with games that don't suck.

And yes, my porpose, uh well my purpose, (and my porpose too if you must know) is educational. But the worst possible thing you can do with something like this is try to make it educational. when you do that you always end up with crap like:

MATH QUEST
discover amazing secrets of addition and subtraction!
Battle the polynomial persons!
Defend mathville from collapsing triangles by correctly figuring the missing angles!


Those educational things are always like that, kids see right through it. Then there are those games where they try to hide the geeky educational value, and when kids discover it they just feel betrayed.

And now, our hero needs to do battle with horrible blood sucking, brain eating gremlin creatures with his double bladed light lazer sword and heat seeking lazer guided eyeball munitions, until at last he conquors the evil darklord Renzarvrador in a blood filled stomach turning battle!!!! the world hangs in the balance--, but can our hero memorize his multiplication tables?

Now when my mom wanted me to read, she left copies of Clockwork Orange and 1984 (or stuff by Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut, Rita Mae Brown, Flannery O'Conner....) around the house, and then forbade me to read them.

Worked like a charm.

She basically got me into the habit of searching through banned books lists for my reading material-- and as everyone knows, most of the books worth reading are banned somewhere! Thanks to her, I was probably the best read college freshman around (don't quiz me, I'm a bit behind the curve these days-- it's all the damn music learning time)

So we really need to do the same thing with video-game/book combos. Make it like grand theft auto, and then have the characters drop hints about stuff in tertiary books like Wiseblood or Jitterbug Perfume, and you'll convert the ADD generation, who cant focus their eyes long enough to read a single sentence, into a great generation of literate citizens.

Class Warfare

Geez, rereading that post from a few days back I sound like a regular ol' money hating marxist. And although that is true, it's not true to the degree that you would think from reading that post about my ex..

I said somewhere before that I think that our brains get into the habit of seeing everything through a certain filter. The person who gave the lecture about class was an expert of class-- and had conditioned herself through years of study to see everything through that class filter. After attending her lecture, I had a tendency to see everything through the same filter for a few days. Perhaps this filter provides a good model for understanding a few special problems, but we get into trouble when we try to make a unifying theory that will apply to everything. For example, I lose track of cause in effect in something like this....

For example, one of the "values of poverty" that she talked about dealt with how classes see success. Generational poor see success as a matter of fate-- middle class people got lucky where I was unlucky. Middleclass people (so the theory goes) see success as a issue of choice. "I made good decisions so I'm well-to-do where as yonder poor folk made poor decisions." The wealthy, on the other hand, agree with the poor-- they see their own riches as a matter of destiny. This is the reason that the tax cuts in the US and the "hurricane relief" focus on the mega wealthy (over $500,000 a year.) You see, they were destined for great things, and this tragedy could come in the way of their destiny, where the poor people would have just been poor anyway!

Now, while I see some point to this model (I think the explaination of Bush policy is cute if not accurate) I think there are big problems. For example this theory sees these items as social values passed on by the generations, which keep poor people poor, and middle class middle class....

But I would make the arguement that this is an example of primary attribution error. Poor people believe in fatalism because that's what they see. Middle classes believe in choice because that is what they see. Rather, that is what they are hardwired to see.

Primary Attribution Bias is the idea that humans have a tendence to see things though this sort of filter: if I do well, I believe it is choice, if I do poorly I believe it was due to external circumstances or luck. If "the other" does well I believe "they just got lucky" if they do poorly, I believe it was due to poor choices. Now I'm convinced that there is something to Primary attribution Bias and that humans seem programed to see things this way. If this is true, it would explain why poor people see success in terms of luck and middle classes as the effect of choice. And if socializaiton is taken out of the process, then the above "class values" theory is rendered meaningless....

Turkey

Hot damn kids, I just love turkey.

This year, we went to Kim's Aunts house for T day. Unfortunately, the Uncle on that side can't have sodium, which made for quite a bland feast. So, when we returned home we had a second T-day feast, which is good, because the whole point of the "holiday season" is to make yourself so tired of turkey that you don't want any for the rest of the year. I think I'm well on track to meet my STUFF (or Sick of Turkey Until Following Fall) quota.

On another note, James bond marathons are cool. I think they're supposed to work the same way as the Turkey, you watch so much bond in your Turkey induced stupor that you don't need to watch it again until the next bond marathon (in three weeks.)

"Music Brain = Rubbish"

Well, it's true, all work and no play do make for a very dull boy-- even if your work is a lot like play.

Since my head is all filled up with little snippets of music, I can't seem to put my brain to any kind of practical use. I'll be posting some very short little tidbits-- not really even complete thoughts, but it's all my poor little brain can handle at this time.

uh....

The Glamorous life

Well the holliday season is upon us, and between rehearsals, performances and the end of the academic semester, I have lost my writing time, well, actually, I've lost all my free time...

Which is really too bad because I have so much to write about now. Last week, I was at a ESL/Adult Ed/Linguistics conference, and I attended a seminar on the "hidden language of poverty." The point was easy enough, that there are hidden values that the multigenerational poor have that keep them poor. Myself being from 4 or more generations of America's poorest white people, I was continuously confronted by the fact that I hold many of these values. And I was at the same time deeply offended by the assumption that "middle class values" were supperior. This is true when you judge them soley on the pragmatic basis of making money-- if you value money above all things you will certainly make money-- but do you lose your soul doing it?

This is something I've recognized since my first real girlfriend. She was from a definatively middle class upbringing, and I was constantly appalled by her values. Her parents had divorced early in their marriage because her dad valued family time first and her mom valued achievement first. She constantly criticized her dad-- "what a waste of potential, he could have made something of his life." He put aside his college degrees and did the most disgusting thing his middle class wife could imagine-- he went to work as a union organizer. He still worked hard, and he made a comfortable living, but when the work week was done, he wanted to spend his time with family. And what he wanted to offer his children was his time-- but what his daughter learned to want from him was his money. "He should have worked harder to save money for me to go to college." She would always say with complete contempt. He eventually found a family that valued him for what he was-- a great Dad, but his daughters from his first marriage never learned to see it.

Busy

I've been singing and rehearsing a lot lately-- and blogging?

Well....

Don't worry my little bloggy, daddy's coming home soon, yes he is-- you're such a good boy!

Yes you are!

Good blog!



And off I go to class where several of my students will have seen snow for the first time today. Unfortunately, it was not the magical fluffy kind of snow, but the cold as balls kind of freez yer butt off snow. I'll probably have to talk them into staying in the US- if they haven't already bought their tickets back to south america!

Hey, what am I talking about, why in heavens haven't I bought my ticket yet...?

This is lucky, signing off until next time....

Music V. Words

In a way, when I'm in my musical mind, I get dumber.

I think this says something about the way we are constantly creating our reality.

For a while, I was playing the old Nintendo game "bubble bobble" with my Fiancee a lot. One time, after a fiercly competitive round of "bubbling" little digital evil-dooers, I sat down to balance my check book or something. What I noticed was this: I had a tendency to process the information in my checkbook the same way that I was processing the information in the game. It was difficult for me to mentally perform the tasks of visualization necessary to do the math in my head.

After this, I started paying attention to the way videogames would carry over into life. If I was playing an RPG, I would start seeing my daily challenges in terms of "leveling up" and such.

When I am in my 'musical mind," "thinking" is mostly visualization-- both auditory and visual. When my mind is filtering reality through this process, I find it difficult to write or even carry on a conversation with the ease that I do at other times. At the same time, when I'm teaching my English classes, I find it difficult to sing well. I've tried to sing for my students before, and it requires a sort of brain shift to a more spontaneous "in the moment" mind set. I definately feel a shifting of gears to a less verbal way of thinking.

And I've noticed this phenomenon of needing to reset in other ways too-- think about when you go on vacation, and you're body is still telling you you have to get "those reports" (fishing, swimming, sight seeing...) done

Again, I think this has something to do with the phenomenon of "brain waves" as a part of constructing our "normal reality" or "what it feels like to be ME." We are constantly patterning a "me" to compare to the current state of things.

Excited

No words in my head this morning, only music. It's only November, and I've already got my head all stuffed full O' Christmas Cheer. This friends, is one of the hazards of the singer lifestyle. Today I'll be meeting with my quartet for our regular thursday rehearsal. We all decided to take the gig because it pays quite well for the minimal amount of work involved. Since we were all just "in it for the money," we were quite surprised to find that we kick butt. I'm curious to see how we sound today, now that everyone has had a chance to look over the music more....

We all just keep laughing nervously and saying "gee we should take this on the road" as sarcastically as we can muster. The thing is, most of us have done long-term professional chorus work before and we all left it to try for free-lance soloist life.... These days though, I must admit I look back longingly on the relative financial security of "A" house chorus work....

Brief musical thoughts for the morning:

Henryk Gorecki's 3rd Symphony.... I was listening some yesterday. This is a piece of music that always instantly reduces me to an emotional wreck, and leaves me, with it's last notes, feeling somehow new and whole again. I know of no other work that is so minimalist in emotional appeals and at the same time so emotionally potent....
For those of you who don't know it, it is a sort of requiem for the holocost. Some of the words are taken from cell walls of Nazi prison camps. With perhaps only Mahler's Kinder toten lieder as company, it is the simplest and most profound piece of music I know-- so completely lacking in Romantic emotionalism..... movement three is built for the most part on a two-chord repeating pattern without even the use of dynamic variation and only the simplest folk melody-- and there is a golden moment, the first time the two chord pattern breaks and we get a chord change (I-IV-V-IV-I progression for you music people.) For the first time the orchestra swells to just above a whisper... I ALWAYS sob here like a child... I can't even control it....

Ever get a song stuck in your head?

I hate it when THIS happens. And yes, this links to an annoying song flash file, so if you don't want the boss to know your "rockin' the cubical" then don't click here. And yes, it's Homestar runner again, and I promise it's the last time I'll link to these guys....

Brats OR "arggh! I'm lucky the pirate!"

Every couple of semesters my English classes all read a story called "Brat" from the "True Stories" series of readers. This story is about a "worlds biggest brat" contest that was held several years ago. It features, for example, a little girl that sticks an ice cream sandwich in the VCR, flushes her mother's wedding ring down the toilet and fills the gas tank on the family car with water. Another little boy goes crazy with the scissors whenever his family is sleeping: he cut off half of his fathers mustache, his brothers eyebrows, and most of his mother's hair.

We just read this story in one of my classes, and it always reminds me of a certain annecdote from my childhood. So, after reading the story, and discussing any brats we have ever known, I tell my class that I was a perfect little angel. After my class stops laughing, and protesting, I finally admit that, "well, there was one time..."

And here's what happened.

Sometime around fourth or fifth grade, I got it into my head that I had more important things to do than whatever boring stuff we'd be doing in school that day. So, that morning, I said bye to my Mom and Dad, and I walked out to get on the bus. However, when the bus came, I didn't get on it, I hid in some bushes instead. After my parents had left for work, I went back inside, and thought about what glorious non-school related activity I wanted to do first. Well, I decided that I had some important work to do on a model airplane that had been sitting on the closet shelf for too long. So, I made myself a glass of chocolate milk, and got to work.

Now, let me tell you something about model glue: it's really sticky stuff.

I must have somehow gotten some of that glue on the back of my hand, because at some point, I carelessly rubbed my eye, and I knew that I had a problem when, to my surprise, it wouldnt' open back up.

"Oh crap! I glued my eye shut, the good times are over"

I tried to flush my eye out with water, but I still couldn't get the damn thing open-- I knew I had to make the call:

Me: (sobbing) Mommy, I had an accident.
Mom: what happened?!
Me: Um, I glued my eye shut.
Mom: Well, don't worry, I'll come right to school and pick you up.
Me: (long silence) Um, I'm not at school...


Needless to say, I got in a little trouble for that one....

On the bright side, I DID get to wear an eye patch for the next two weeks. Ah, for those two weeks, Lucky the pirate was the coolest kid in the class.

Even More on Karate Chopping Robots

Scott wrote:

"And should any artist have to make fricken commercials for running shoes?"

Well, there's the problem right there. No artist should have to make running shoe commercials, or put a big mac in God's hands. And they don't. That's the unfortunate love child of creativity and money...

What I mean is this. We have our need to express our ideas and feelings. We have our need to support ourselves and our families.

Only the very luckiest of us, in my estimation, get to mix the two.

This is very well said. It reminded me that in all of history, there has never been some golden age where artists were paid what they were worth. Infact, modern Hollywood might be the epitome of artists being remunerated for their services. However this is probably a hinderance to the cultivation of art, and not a positive trend.

But no, starving artists are nothing new, and no artist is forced to "sell out." But here is what IS new-- the rise of mass media is contributing to a concentration of artistic influence. Here are some of the problems I see:

1. Some arts being lost. Some arts just don't have mass appeal, or they do not lend themselves well to mass media. Argueable the greatest of the arts have this in common: the accomplish the impossible-- human perfection. It is these arts in particular which are being lost today. Novel writing, ballet, violin.... these arts require a rare devotion and years of study. Classical musicians know that to be concidered competitive, they need to practive a minimum of six hours a day. What "day job" can they get that would allow them this sort of practice time? But there are fewer and fewer resources for society to nurture these young potential aritsts. And so this art is being lost. And the same is true of novel writing-- could writers like Melville, Hemingway or Flannery O'Conner find buyers for their novels today? And I could say the same of certain kinds of acting today....

2. Art is being cheapened. I love expressionist art. One of the most beautiful things I've ever heard is a quote from painter/composer Arnold Schoenberg, "When life is so ugly, how can I make beautiful art?" Yet, in today's culture, there is no apetite for truth in art, only escapism. True, because there is so much money in Hollywood, occassionally a film gets made that bucks this trend, but in the other arts, expressionism is all but lost.

3. Art is losing local flavor. As art is being concentrated by mass media, fewer artists at the local level are able to support themselves-- this is especially true of young people who lack money from heaven.

4. I could also say that creates artificial trends in art. Todays artistic trends are governed less by what artists have to say about society, and more about what we are willing to tolerate. Our "art" no longer fully reflects society, except in a sort of vaccuous way.

Really, I guess everything I'm trying to say Andy Warhol said better without the use of clumsy words.Ah, Andy....

Capitalism, it's whatever we got.

Anyone big on history of economics out there?

So it is taken as an article of faith that the American economy is a "capitalist" one, but I was also taught that we simply use that term as short for "modified capitalism."

Here is the question: if the definition of capitalism is the lack of government involvement in the market, and if the "philosophical father" of capitalism, Adam Smith successfully showed that historically, corporations were an instrument of national mercantile economic war... and he defined capitalism (in wealth of nations) as the lack of corporations and monopoly,...

how did "modified capitalism" come to be the term that describes a system in which corporations, monopoly and nationalistic protectionism are the dominant force? Isn't that like calling the color BLACK "modified white?"

Or is "Capitalism" just the word for whatever the heck the US is doing at the time the word is used?

Gods

The main reason why I started this blog is because I thought it might help me put certain ideas into words, and THIS idea in particular. To make this easier on myself and those of you who would be so kind as to offer any comments, I've decided to chop this into nice little blog-sized portions.

Lets start with something from the comments below:


In yon thread, josephknecht said...
All patterns progress towards an entropic state. This is as true of the universe, as of society. The reason that it feels bleak, I think, is that 'enlightened society' as you describe it looks unlikely: all matter tries to resist entropy. It just can't.
Raging against the dying of the light is a natural tendency.


Luckymortal replied to this with something completely garbled. Here is his second attempt:

What you say is true.
And when we build a fire, and it is an open system, we can predict with great certainty the results of entropy.
But when we build a complex social system, I'm not sure that we know what an state of greater entropy would necessarily look like.
Furthermore, I see no clear evidence that social systems are constrained by the laws of thermodynamics....
At least not in the same way as the swirling bits of mater that carry the memes that make up social systems....

For these reasons, I allow myself to be incredibly optomistic about the direction the laws of nature ensure for the human animal. I believe that MLK JR. was tapping some prophetic source of truth when he said that the "arch of history is long, but it bends toward justice."

At some point, if the Universe is destined to that grey soupy future (if the insufficient gravity of the Universe infact renders it an open system) then, of course, our gods die with us...

But our social systems are our gods! Not because I use that word, but because early humans MADE the word GOD to explain the phenomenon of self organizing systems and their emergent properties--that was the true definition of "god" before powerful intrest groups coopted it for social domination. Early humans experienced a certain emergent property in increasingly complex systems, and the symbol that they assigned to this phenomenon was "gods."

This is like what Trungpa said about "magic" or "drahla," and it is how I answer now when people ask me if I believe in magic. He said that if you make your Kitchen sink "sacred," there would never be dirty dishes in it. The native peoples of the SW United States lived in an area extremely inhospitable to agriculture, and yet they were apparently able to produce yields that we fail to recreate with all our modern technology and understanding. How? Because they used "magic." They treated the land, and the corn like it was sacred, and used the greatest care in planting and maintaining their crops.

Now you may say that there is nothing "magic" about this, they just used more water and bred the corn properly and so on, but you would be wrong. Infact, the word "magic" was created to explain how a confluence of factors too complex for humans to understand the full causal relationship. It is a word used to describe an unexpected outcome, achieved by special human emergent properties. You might not see anything "supernatural" about cleaning the dishes more often, but for many people, myself included, having clean dishes is an unexpected and magical outcome!

This same thing is true of the word "god."

And the gods have an ability to animate human action far beyond our comprehension.

I'll write more about this later in the week.

NFCS

For those of you who are singers or musicians (I was thinking of JosephKnecht here), let me recommend you check out NFCS

I especially recommend doing a search for posts by Italian Tenor and Turidu.

"ESL BLOGS"

Ok, my apologies to the bloggers that I've labled as "ESL blogs." These are incredibly well written blogs that are fun to read, for everyone, not just ESL students. I just wanted to give these blogs a special recommendation to my English students.

So everyone, go pay these bloggers a visit!

ADD ON NOVEL --CHAPTER 3 (1 and 2 below)

Chapter 3 by me-- Who wants more? Write chapter 4!

Gorgeous and fat-- Ah.... It was for my cousin that I first found myself in that sweltering bunghole of a town in rurul Uzbekistan. We were lost in the market and surrounded by incomprehensible men in caftans who flocked to the rare Americans to peddle their desert doodads.

I began to regret that little white lie that I had told Megan, my relation both lovely and plump, that I was fluent in Arabic. It seemed so harmless at the time, and when she cooed about how brilliant I was, I couldn't admit that I was only joking. So when she asked me a month later if I would take her to visit her friend in Khiva, I was off to the library to check out the "Complete Berlitz Arabic", "Arabic for Dummies" and "common Arabic Phrases for Lying Scumbags." I never could say no to Megan. Besides, I certainly wasn't getting famous selling running shoes in Iowa. And I hadn't done anything as interteresting as visiting a former Soviet republic in... well, ever.

Now for those of you who don't know, Uzbekistan is famous for 4 things: camels, oil, torture and the CIA. Camels aside, one might expect oil and the CIA to go together. In the old days of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan was an infamous KGB outpost-- infact the governor there was a former head of the KGB. Because the KGB presence there was an "open secret," the small state became a hotbed of agents and nafarious organizations of all kinds. Today, the former KGB head, turned governor has declared himself the glorious father/god/leader of that nation. Now, for those of you who don't know, the Uzbek president has a passion for 4 things: camels (don't ask) oil, torture and the CIA. So today, as in the past, the nation of Uzbekistan remains a confluence of rottenest, most secretive, and exclusive organizations on this planet.

Pardon me, but it is a a certain cliche that the dead spend too much time living in the past. It is also an inherent flaw, as it is impossible for the dead to live in the present. But I will soon throw off this tired tradition of laying around inactive and rise from the grave, in serious voodoo style, to get to the bottom of this mystery. But first, I have to tell you one more thing about that day in the market. We were there surrounded by camels and arabs, and I was trying to be brave, so that Megan wouldn't know I was about to sob outloud, when a voice from behind us stated in the clearest Brooklyn accent:
"Hey, you guys lost or somethin'?"

I turned around expecting to see a gleaming American face in the sea of mediterianian complexions, but I saw only more caftans. However when I looked down, I was certain that we had found someone who would be able to help us, someone we could trust. Amid a sea of sandled feet, we had found a pair of white Nike crosstrainers. Size 11 1/2 to be exact.

And though we were in a nation full of ruthless agents, true believers, barbarians and madmen, I fear that this one man in nike running shoes had more to do with my death than any other.

Except perhaps for that neigbor in the Speedo.

Chapter 2 submitted by Je Suis

Despite all the inventive slandering and ceaseless shouting, the Muslims hadn't killed me, I was pretty sure about that. They seemed to be a pretty angry bunch, those ones, especially the more radical Muslims, who appeared to have grudge against me for being one, white; two, western; three, breathing. But the various terrorist squads out there had always remained a little outside of my social circle, you know? Ditto the Chinese, Egyptians, Starbucks baristas, Marxists, and people who shopped at Wal-mart. Also, my parents, seeing as they were dead. This, by the same logic, means Mark Twain did not kill me, Francis Ford Coppola had no hand in my death, and no member of the Ghandi clan or the French Revolution ever conspired against me. More's the pity, because if no one famous killed me, that meant my chance of being famous after my death was quickly diminished, possibly beyond all hope of restoration. I would like to be famous, even now, when I’m dead. Curious desire, this. I had never been remarkable for very much outside of my private circle of acquaintances. There was the time I auditioned for the post of weatherman down at the local television station. Those people probably still had my demo tape somewhere, probably filed under W for "We Are Absolutely Never Going To Hire This Idiot". "Looks like rain," I remember declaring confidently on that tape as I stood in the sun-warmed spray of the sprinkler on my neighbour's front lawn while his kids screamed and chased each other around me. "Pervert," their mother had yelled at me as she ran down the steps, and, after I had reasonably replied to her charge, "Yeah, well you can go to hell yourself, Speedos are NOT pants. And get off my property." Well, maybe she killed me. Which would have been unkind of her. I would never have touched her kids. Everybody who knows me – dammit, knew me - knew I only liked either gorgeous women or fat women. And also my cousin. But she was both gorgeous and fat.

Chapter 1

"Darn it! Why can't I move...."

That was my first thought when I learned that I was dead.

At first, when the pictures all stop coming, the thing that gets you is, you know, being dead. But after a while, it's the little things: not breathing, not drinking, not seeing, well not exactly anyway, because it's not like you can use your eyes.

But I guess being dead is the kind of thing you get used to, I mean, you have a long enough time to get used to it...

Being dead is like having all of the fabrics of your life folded up, and placed in the closet. All of the different textures that make up living fade away. There are no more folds, no unclean little nooks-- everything is just sort of evened out. All of the things that consume the living are irrelevant now-- I'll never get the things I want, but I will never fail again either-- I don't even have to worry about where my next meal is coming from. All of that is gone now. And that is what being dead is supposed to be like. But for me it was different. For me, there was this one little thing that wouldn't go away. For a dead person, it really was a very small thing, since nothing really maters anyway....

But, even though it was the littlest thing, just by the fact of it's existence, it became huge to me. With all the colors of life faded away, this little tiny little spot on the canvas began to give me meaning again, it gave me definition again, and so it gave me life again.

It was a small, small thing. If I had a heart to feel with, it might feel like a doubt. And now I need to find out how I died-- not to find out who did it...

but to be sure of who didn't do it.

Art in America OR "16 ways to karate chop a robot" OR more on our lost generation

"Too many colors deaden the eye"

I think it says that in the Tao te Ching.

Now, I have no idea what that means, but it sounds good. Oh, uh... and I do wear glasses, so I think the "dead eye" thing is relevant here.

Now everytime I go to buy a new pair of glasses I think: "cool, I get to express myself with some sweet new shades." I always want to get some really funky gothic looking specs like my neighbor Bill has-- you know those cool black framed glasses like Clark Kent used to wear... or maybe some of those cool Ben-Franklin-lookin' glasses that were meant to be reading glasses, but look so cool that you wear them all the time anyway. Or possibly those purple cat-rimmed glasses that Grandma used to wear-- now those are some artsy glasses.

But when I get to the optometrist's office, I freeze. There are just SOOO many different frames to choose from. There are 72 different Ben Franklins, 98 different Clark Kents and a full 437 Grandmas on display. What is a guy to do? So everytime, I go for basically the same pair of glasses that I've been wearing for 10 years now.

And maybe that's the reason that in the land of the world's greatest art beers everyone drinks characterless beer-flavored wine coolers like Miller Lite and Budweiser.

I don't know what it's like in other countries these days, but I do know about the state of the arts (and not just the state of the state-of-the-art arts either) in the US of A. And it's not that Americans don't care about art, it's just that they care about money more. And with the internet and libraries and museums and concert halls and that weird guy on the street corner... art is just too... confusing.

Americans do care (at least a little bit) about movies. Not FILMs though. Just movies. And there is a difference. A movie is any picture show with robots or ninjas, or robot-killing ninjas....

Film is more like this:

A film by bob.

Title: man on toilet drinking booze from broken VCR.

Cut to scene 1: Dirty man sits on toilet drinking booze from a broken VCR. Man throws down VCR, smirks, and lights a cigarette.

The End.


So why would any American part with his hard earned cash to support "the arts?" I mean, artists are weird, and they hardly ever karate chop robots. And this is why at one of my last rehearsals, my director cried in front of us, because the "money people" had just told her that Mozart was no longer economically viable in the US...."maybe if there were robots or something...."

About the add on novel below

Please feel free to add to the novel-- write a chapter, paragraph, sentence or word. Please don't feel the need to keep to any sort of style, and don't be too modest-- this is only a fun writing exercise. You can add by posting to the comments for the novel-- I will post the comments to the main page in the order I receive them without any judgement.

Have fun,

written in 6 minutes-- Chapter 1 of the ADD ON novel--

"Darn it! Why can't I move...."

That was my first thought when I learned that I was dead.

At first, when the pictures all stop coming, the thing that gets you is, you know, being dead. But after a while, it's the little things: not breathing, not drinking, not seeing, well not exactly anyway, because it's not like you can use your eyes.

But I guess being dead is the kind of thing you get used to, I mean, you have a long enough time to get used to it...

Being dead is like having all of the fabrics of your life folded up, and placed in the closet. All of the different textures that make up living fade away. There are no more folds, no unclean little nooks-- everything is just sort of evened out. All of the things that consume the living are irrelevant now-- I'll never get the things I want, but I will never fail again either-- I don't even have to worry about where my next meal is coming from. All of that is gone now. And that is what being dead is supposed to be like. But for me it was different. For me, there was this one little thing that wouldn't go away. For a dead person, it really was a very small thing, since nothing really maters anyway....

But, even though it was the littlest thing, just by the fact of it's existence, it became huge to me. With all the colors of life faded away, this little tiny little spot on the canvas began to give me meaning again, it gave me definition again, and so it gave me life again.

It was a small, small thing. If I had a heart to feel with, it might feel like a doubt. And now I need to find out how I died-- not to find out who did it...

but to be sure of who didn't do it.

Chapter 2 submitted by Je Suis

Despite all the inventive slandering and ceaseless shouting, the Muslims hadn't killed me, I was pretty sure about that. They seemed to be a pretty angry bunch, those ones, especially the more radical Muslims, who appeared to have grudge against me for being one, white; two, western; three, breathing. But the various terrorist squads out there had always remained a little outside of my social circle, you know? Ditto the Chinese, Egyptians, Starbucks baristas, Marxists, and people who shopped at Wal-mart. Also, my parents, seeing as they were dead. This, by the same logic, means Mark Twain did not kill me, Francis Ford Coppola had no hand in my death, and no member of the Ghandi clan or the French Revolution ever conspired against me. More's the pity, because if no one famous killed me, that meant my chance of being famous after my death was quickly diminished, possibly beyond all hope of restoration. I would like to be famous, even now, when I’m dead. Curious desire, this. I had never been remarkable for very much outside of my private circle of acquaintances. There was the time I auditioned for the post of weatherman down at the local television station. Those people probably still had my demo tape somewhere, probably filed under W for "We Are Absolutely Never Going To Hire This Idiot". "Looks like rain," I remember declaring confidently on that tape as I stood in the sun-warmed spray of the sprinkler on my neighbour's front lawn while his kids screamed and chased each other around me. "Pervert," their mother had yelled at me as she ran down the steps, and, after I had reasonably replied to her charge, "Yeah, well you can go to hell yourself, Speedos are NOT pants. And get off my property." Well, maybe she killed me. Which would have been unkind of her. I would never have touched her kids. Everybody who knows me – dammit, knew me - knew I only liked either gorgeous women or fat women. And also my cousin. But she was both gorgeous and fat.

Fiction project

I'm thinking of starting an ADD ON style fiction project where people can submit chapters of a novel....

I think that it would be a good way to take the ego out of being creative. And perhaps the sum will be greater than the parts...

If anyone has a good 1st chapter, feel free to submit it to the comments, and I will post it....

A Lost Generation

Well, "lost generation," at least that's something, right.

I mean, they're "lost" right? That at least put them on the map, it gave them something to hang on to....

Our generation? We got nothing. We're lost alright, adrift amongst new creative technologies that only our grandchildren will finally put into perspective, but we can't even call ourselves lost-- that's SOOO 19X6.

Where are the arts now? What the heck do people care about?

Bloggy Fiction-- Chapter 1 (more to come!)

Greetings dear reader,

Thank you for reading this book. It means more to me than you could possibly know.

So that you can understand this better, I would like to share some things with you, before we really get started. Firstly, I feel that I should tell you what my therapist said is the reason that I wrote this book:

Because I want you to like me.

I am going to share with you some thoughts about what the meaning of this book is, but you should probably keep that one thing in mind, that I want you to like me. It hadn't actualy occurred to me that way until my thereapist told me so, but more and more, I suspect that she might be right!

Secondly, dear reader, I have to admit that in this book, I will pretend to be many different things, a sociologist, a biologist, a physicist, a musician, magician, scholar and author. I also pretend to be technically saavy. I should warn you in advance that I am none of these things. Because this book is so important to me, I feel that I need to be honest with you up front, I am nothing more than a high-school custodian at my own alma matter- a job which I enjoy, but which I've often had problems feeling pride in. But, I'm still young, i'm still young....

And yes, this novel is largely autobiographical, in a strange way, and you're invited to live almost all of the interesting things that have ever happened to me, and love all of the people that I have loved, vicariously through my characters.

And so I must also admit that in this way I pretend that I am handsome, charming and well-read, at least much more so than in real life. Perhaps if I could hold back the blush, I'd say that these characters look from the outside the way I look on the inside.

Why am I being so honest? A few months ago, I found by accident a private blog that a high-school classmate keeps as an online journal. I'm fairly confident that she has no idea that the blog is public and that other people can read it. She writes things that no person would ever write publicly-- for example, about her relationship with her new husband and why she has already been unfaithful only a month after her wedding. In other words, she is completely open, and I am completely addicted to this guilty little pleasure. If you're lucky, I may even share a few of her posts with you.

And so reader, because I want you to like me, I am willing to make this little Faustian bargain: I too will try to be completely open, you naughty little voyeur, you.

But you should also know this, though I may indulge in a little private blog reading, I otherwise seem to care very little about people. My therapist tells me this is because I see other people as mindless automotons. This is true. When I look at people, I'm prone to imagining that I can see exactly what they looked like at every other point in the whole of their lives-- when their lovers left them, when they masterbate, deficate, urinate and pontificate-- I see it all right now. And when I consider their actions I can't separate their most recent action from the fabric of their entire life. And if I went back in time and changed just one little thing, I can see that they would be a completely different person. So I care about the ideas that motivate people, The things that wound them up in the first place, that make them bounce around so commically in this plinko board of life.

So this may be less a novel than a history. It is the story about forces much larger than a single person, battling eachother for global domination like two giant monsters hand-trapping over Tokyo. It is a story about the conflict between people and these forces. But I don't want to give away the end too early....

And then again, as I think about the words of my Therapist, it's a story about you liking me. Yes, this may very well be a story about me, and my relationship to a world that I don't understand. Oh and if that's true, then this is a mystery too! But I wouldn't want to give too much of that away just yet either....

Romanace

Director Kurt Wimmer has said that action is how men express romance.

I think that is probably true, but I'll also add that ideas are how some men show romance.

People accept other peoples ideas like little love letters-- even bad ideas are often adopted as valantines. This isn't a man/Woman thing, and I don't think it is a class thing either. But I think that it is yet another way of dividing up humans-- those who use ideas like gang signs, and those who would rather get caught with a cheap hooker than even share ideas. And I hope that there is a third group that is aware that humans use solutions as social currency....

Thoughts about the end of empire.

Thoughts about the end of empire.

Basic idea:

As we find out more about what causes the decline and death of single organisms we may find that very similar forces are at work in the decline of civilizations. Look at Rome, look at the great age of China, look at the Indian civilizations and south American, and the golden age of the Islamic Caliphite.... All of these civilizations have eclipsed "western" civilization at one point or another. Actually, it may be that we are too biased in favor of ""western "civilization in some ways. Our reading oh history places the West and Especially the US as the victors in some sort of race for supreamacy. But it really only looks that way from the vantage point of the last 6o years or so. Really, the US wasn't even a competitor until after WW2.

"That's really quite sad."

That's funny I find it hopeful.

"How can you? If you're right, then civilizations run their course, and then they die or decline, right? That means that we will never reach any lasting peace, and that even if we are able to establish an enlightened society in the future, then it too is doomed to eventual death."

Maybe only if we continue to hold on to our current ideas about identity. The very definition of violence seems to be resisting these natural paterns. Who's to say that in the future, as we understand our gods better, that we won't find a way out of this cycle of samsara. It seems to me that an enlightened society might accept these natural rises and falls as we accpet the seasons. Perhaps our future enlightened societies will be cyclic-- they will decline, only to grow green again in the spring. The problems start to beat us down when we can only accept unlimited growth model. The more the US for example tries to exert it's world dominance in the future the more turbulance we cause, and the more violence we cause in the sine wave. But what if instead we accepted this temporary winter, this temporary stagnation or even decline, what would happen?

We invent a new refridgerator. There is a great period of growth. But at some point, everyone owns a refridgerator. We we can blah blah blah.

The Wicca of making a living

"So, what do you do?"

"Whatever the hell I want, what do you do?"


So my first problem is trying to explain exactly what it is that I do. When I say that I am a Factotum, I mean that I am....Hmm. Well here's what I don't do, I don't work for some boss that I hate, I don't beat myself over the head with some ridiculous work schedule, I don't dull my mind with the stupifying monotony of every "day job" I've ever had, and I don't make a lot of money. But I do manage to to feed clothe and house myself.

At one point, I was working for UPS full time and taking college classes, pretty common stuff for early twenties guy. Infact, I've had more than my fair share of miserable day jobs: I've been a secretary and Adminstrative assistant for several companies, worked on the trade floor of a major corporation, worked at carnivals, sold baby clothes, worked in fast food, worked for UPS, and on and on, and I'm not yet 30! But I just wanted to bust out, and become extraordinary, but I had no idea what that even meant. I felt like I was working to make money so that I could keep working so that I could make more money so that I could.... You see where this is going? I started looking at everyone I met, and started asking them questions, and it seemed that only 1 in 100 was happy with their work. Worse off, they were ALL willing to commit what they admit are horrible sins against their fellow man, because they feel so imprisoned by their daily grind that they have no other choice. Through grad school I started invisioning a new way of living. In a way, it was like the alcholics I've met in Flint who can't keep a real job so they get really creative about finding money for their coors light and Marajuana. I'm like that, only smarter, clearer and soberer. Well, usually soberer. I began to imagine that if I didn't keep a day job, I'd get pretty creative about how I paid my rent really fast. But more importantly, I would be an activist. If only I could show people how to be happy with their lives without accepting the same old economic slavery their parents lived in. What if we could all find something to make of our time than money? we really could make a better world.

So, cut to three years later, when will I ever get my dream? I've been scrambling around trying to pay my rent, never sure where my next job is coming from, always with too much work to even know where to begin, and then it struck me-- hey, I MADE this miserable, beautiful existance. My dreams have come true!

Over the last couple of years I have, and continue to make a living as a: professional singer and actor, teaching college classes, designing and teaching classes on musical creativity, giving private voice lessons, mystery shopping and more. What will I be doing come January? I have no idea, but I will find something.


This is a Journal about finding meaning in work. It is a Journal about people getting exactly what they want, and then not wanting it anymore. It's a Journal about throwing away the security of the 9-5 grind, and making work come to you. This is a blog for anyone who wants desperately to be something more than what they see everyone else doing.

Crap

Ach! you piece of crap, why arn't you working.KageasdggAAAHHHHHHGGGG! I'll get you BLOGGER, I'll get you!!!!!