What is Original Anymore?

Inundated with music, saturated with old ideas, it is refreshing to see somebody do something truly new.

Diego Stocco - Music From A Tree from Diego Stocco on Vimeo.

Picking Teams

If I was playing basketball (which I would not enjoy in the slightest, because it's not a real sport), and we were picking teams, and one of the captains picked two white guys in a row, and the white guys who were picked first "raised the roof" and said "Sweet! White guys! I'm glad we have a bunch of white guys on this team!"

I would feel strange, uncomfortable.

If one of the captains picked a black dude, and the other black guys gave him a fist bump and started busting out some freestyle that expressed the equivalent of "bruvahs in da house yo"
I would feel equally uncomfortable.

If there was only one Jew, and he got picked and the other guys on the team were like "Sweet, we got a Jew." (perhaps Jews are good luck?)
I would be uncomfortable.

For the most part, when it comes to sports, you get a chance to see people rise to attention and fame and money based on talent, based on skill or strength. People do like to talk about details, but they are trivial, circumstantial, irrelevant to what is really going on.

If I were captain, and I had to pick somebody for my team, and I already had a Jew (lucky) and I already had some black dudes and some white guys, and there was a choice between a Mexican dude and a white dude, and I was gonna ask a humongous favor of every Mexican that I knew in a few years, and they were pretty much evenly matched (it's not like I knew them super well), and I knew that no matter who I picked, there was gonna be some bitching and moaning about it, I would pick the Mexican dude. Even if I wasn't gonna ask that favor of every Mexican I knew, I would still pick the Mexican dude. I would pick that guy because an effort to blend classes, to blend origins, to combine races, to be inclusive and actively so, is an attempt to be blind to race when we very much are not. Until we are not, perhaps we have to pretend to be.

I have the same instinctive reaction as many when I hear people talk so much about race. It bugs the piss out of me, in the same vein that white people celebrating whiteness would, just without the humongous history behind it. There is an unfortunate instinctive trait in us to be only with those who look like us-- tribalism. It used to keep us safe. These attempts at a higher morality are in direct opposition to something that is ingrained in us. I am happy to meet people who have grown up without that somehow (I am not one of them). In a place like Baltimore, strangely enough, they are few and far between.

Observation: Holding the Door

I am 20 feet behind the girl. She is walking through the door. She makes no effort to hold the door. She lets it fall back, leaves it for me to push.

It is something that I do very intentionally, every time I walk through a door. I am trying to change the world. I am trying to get people to let go of this silly, stressful habit-- if somebody is behind you in any way, shape, or form, you must hold the door. Complete foolishness.
Somehow I am pissed off by her nonchalance, by her care-free "why should I give a damn about you having to push open a door". It is an instinctive reaction. I have successfully been programmed.

I don't like to run to get to the door when somebody stops and holds it, with easily 20 seconds before I would get there, if I didn't have to worry about them standing there, holding the door. Somehow we've created an environment where walking through doors (a common activity, and one that only slightly interrupts mindless motion with minutely sentient activity) has become, much like conversation with an unwelcome proselytizer, who has interrupted an otherwise meaningful stream of existance with abstract awkwardness, like an invitation to dance, silently with them, and I am trying to remember the correct moves so it's not too awkward-- but I am dancing in my doorway, trying to be polite and locate the magic words to make them go away.

And I am running when I could be walking, because this asshole thinks if she doesn't hold the door it will instantly categorize her as a bad person. We are paranoid, superstitious idiots.

And yet this girl pisses me off, just shoving the door aside and letting it swing back, like a large flat weapon, like there's not people walking here, about to get there. It's probably just that time of the month. Where have manners gone in this day and age?

New song posted

I find that when I present instrumental music, people are quite comfortable and pleasant about it. I line up all the notes correctly, and they say, "That's very nice."

But when I throw words on top, and screech them mercilessly into my computer, so it can then screech them, mercilessly, into somebody's head-holes, I am more likely to get a reaction that a 12 year old can expect to receive when they announce that they have gone to the potty, all by themselves.

*disconcerted brow furrow*

"That's very nice. Keep it up."

New song is on top, and I am aware that the long songs cut off before they are finished. That's why I don't listen to my music. Why should you even care? It's called Tell me How to Walk

The first few words of a song I may never finish...

I think the title or chorus of this song is:

That which doesn't kill you just might break you down

Verse:

let's just assume that pregnancy and birth are perfect,
That condom-less pill-less sex was worth it,
Nobody has ever been born evil,
And all babies are created equal.

The primary question of the song is: If babies can be born with, oh I don't know, Rett Syndrome, or be born Sociopaths, we all stand a chance of being randomly screwed by chance. But let's pretend this is not the case. It gives us the opportunity to blame people, rather than nature (or God, that stupid bastard): blame the parents. Blame the schools. Blame the priests. Blame video games. Blame voodoo, or whatever happens to have been there for the fourteen years before the parents noticed their sweet boy catching animals on fire. It's a terrifying thought to think that my son (I have one) might just grow up to be what people like to call evil. How dare you judge my two year old, when he has just killed, when he has just raped, when he has just led hundreds of thousands to kill and rape for him; but not for him. No. For God and country of course.

I am vulnerable. I am weak. I am a mere person in the face of this torrential, massive wave of influence. My son is more so. He is fine, dry sand in a hurricane. I am desperately trying to hold on, clutching dry sand to my chest, with the aid of my many fingered wife, but the gaps in my fingers are so big. I can watch specks of him fly away, no longer in my control, no longer in his.

What do you tell a parent who's teenager is in Juvenile hall? When you are not facing them, you say: "Shame on you, you should have beaten them more", or "You should have beaten them less". When you are facing them, you say: "Do not fret, I know another boy who..." or "But he's such a sweet kid..." or "He'll grow out of it". I grew up with absolute surety that parents were responsible, and parents were to blame. Why do absolutist talking heads get to tell us how this is? Why did I grow up thinking that parents were responsible, and yet feel sorry for them that I did not turn out a certain way? Why do I feel like I controlled my own destiny when I was but a wee lad? Just because I'm driving the car does not mean that whatever comes flying through the windshield, killing the passengers, or killing me, or sending us all straight to hell, is my fault. Just because you are older does not mean you can tame this beast: This Chaos.


The funny thing: if my son grows up to be a mass murderer, or a huge prick, I expect to blame nobody but myself, and it will be devastating.

New Widget

I have just now added a new widget-- the Huffington Post's most popular stories, to my web log. I was thinking, 'now, at the very least, if people find nothing of interest on my web log, they will see a great news story on the sidebar', like Ryan Grimm's story on the LSD use of Steve Jobs, he calling it "One of the two or three most important things I will ever do", or Nico Pitney's Iran Uprising Live-blogging series (a very nice example of the utilization of modern technology in the thwarting of Orwellian censorship).

My first glimpse was disappointing. The widget was filled with trash, not news. Three of the stories were about Sarah Palin. One of them was Michelle Obama's fashion. These, America, these are the stories that mean the most to you. This is what you live on, you feed on, you perpetuate your droll, voyeuristic lives on-- your sawdust filled grain. Can we please have steak for dinner? Why can't we just have something nice for once, that tastes good and is good for us? A salad perhaps. A sweet and salty dressing on top of crisp leaves, that leaves us refreshed, healthy, better. No, please, I don't want Taco Bell again. There's no food in those pastel wrappings. There is only trash.

I do not hate the media. The 24 hour networks do what they do because it is what we ask of them. They would not do it if it was not profitable. They are merely businesses. The reason that Michael Jackson is still crowding out the sick, the dying, the suffering, the starving, and the oppressed is because we are the ones who inflated him, collectively put our mouths to the nozzle of this giant freakish blow-up doll; and that air will be a long time in escaping, especailly after death. Especially after death because death is just the kind of drama that gets our saliva flowing. That and Sarah Palin I guess.

{update: 1 day later I have removed the widget. Over a period of 24 hours, the top stories have changed in author, have changed in wording, but have changed far too little in content. I will recommend the widget to the next fashion blogger or completely wasteful bullshit blogger I run across}

On Religion, post one of infinity

I recently wrote a letter to a friend who I still call a friend, but have spoken to so little in the last few years that-- how is he different from anybody else now, be they the really nice homeless person or the slightly less nice person who I used to talk to with my wife at coffee, who we are unsure has a home, but he says he does. He had a boat, but says it sank. He says he owns a doctor's office, and is very fond of children, but we don't know if he even has a home. We don't know if he sleeps at night underneath the tugboat company that sits out over the water of the Baltimore inner harbor because he hates his devout, Protestant wife, like he says, or if there is another reason-- something more sad. In the middle of the letter, I talk about religion:

My sense of spirituality only goes so far as what I know to be absolutely true. I do not know that the Bible or the Koran, or the Torah or the Tibetan Book of the Dead, or the Harry Potter novels are fact or fiction, whether we are watched by ghosts or by Greek Gods or by Jesus or by the god of the old testament. There are plenty of people who would love for me to believe one of these things, or one of the thousands of other things. They want me to because they are concerned about my soul, and worry about how shitty it’s gonna be for me in hell after I die. I don’t even know how many of these people are right. How the hell would I know? Everybody has proof, and everybody refutes everybody else’s. 
 What I do know is that I was born who I am. I could have been African, born into a tribe at war with other tribes, convinced that this was right. I would believe in the indigenous religion I was taught. Perhaps some missionaries: Mormon or Protestant most likely: would come and convert me. Then I would believe that my family was in danger of going to hell, for holding onto their religion and not accepting Jesus or Joseph Smith or whoever. My parents would be ashamed of me, for not holding onto the one true faith. 
But I was born Orthodox Christian. I left the church when I was 18, and am silently rebuked by the world I came from for letting myself be dragged away by demonic powers (I am sure my wife is blamed by many). I do not condemn religion. I do not think there is anything wrong with religion. Go ahead, it might make you a better person and give you a good life and explain your world and make you happy and convince you to help others. I do think that there is something wrong with nearly every religion though. Because somewhere in the massive list of details, there are almost always condemnations, there are almost always hurtful and derisive rules. No mother should think their son is going to hell for being a homosexual. No Catholic homosexual should feel like they might as well become a priest because they’re never going to know a happy marriage. No Catholic should ever feel devastated when their Protestant or Muslim friend dies because they’re going to hell for sure. Nobody should ever be afraid to talk to another person, to marry another person, to befriend another person, to listen (really listen) to another person, allow that person to sway them in their foundation, or to question their reality and their own religion. Everybody told me they were right. Everybody told me they had proof. The only logical conclusion I could come to was: there’s no way this really matters. I don’t believe in a god who thinks special words and special moves and special ropes and special food are our only salvation, or even a part of our salvation at all. I think god is better than that. My god is smarter than your god.

Note: I didn't tell my friend that I thought my god was smarter than his god. I thought it fit in the Blog format.