I ASKED FOR WONDER

Life in the "-ness" world or 1000+ words on teaching for the first time

2010-07-05T17:09:00.002-04:00

As of this past Saturday, July 3rd, I have completed my first teaching assignment. This job was not one where I lead discussion groups on modal logic or an Introduction to Philosophy class filled with indifferent and frequently absentee freshmen, rather, it was a summer class filled with 19 rising 14-16 year-olds. These kids are also the top 25% of the top 1% of PSAT takers. In other words, these kids are crazy smart. If I were to ask for a better group of students to begin my teaching career with, I suggest that I could not find anyone else. Even now, after an exhausting 3 weeks of living off of too little sleep, too much caffeine, and ample amounts of sun, I miss them a lot and wish I got to see them next term.

I have often thought of the life of teaching as something one is called to and rarely, on my better days, I've thought of it as a gift. Every day I woke up here in Durham I was reminded that getting to share in the lives of students is one of the highest of blessings and that it should be treated as such. I was reminded at every turn that this shared life of the mind is not a right; it is a privilege. I get the privilege of discussing some of the most interesting and important ideas in the history of the world with some of the brightest and funniest people I have ever met. It is a gift, always a gift, and should be treated as such.

Shedding such sentimental thoughts for a while, I figure I ought to talk about how much these kids and this experience has transformed the way I think about education and about philosophy as a whole. The first thing I should say is that they love to re-name things. For example, we philosophers refer to Plato's ideal world as the intelligible world. My students, however, took to referring to it as "the ness world", as in "where chairness lives". They also became obsessed with two meme-like things. First, they loved to make the whale noises from the beginning of the Carl Sagan youtube song "A Still More Glorious Dawn". When the class would get quiet I could always count on somebody to throw in a "whoop!, uhhhh". Secondly, they loved loved loved Kant puns. I took to writing their names on a quasi-fictional "no-no list" for excessive Kant puns. I also took to having them bribe my exceptionally awesome TA Peter and me with epically awesome imagined things. Such bribes included a snowblower powerful enough to move the island from Lost to a different location and Immanuel Kant brought to the future and forced to wear Peter's ever-present teal running shorts and carrying crumbly cookies from our dinning commons (the very reward I promised to those kids who won games we played).

On a more serious note, these students drew from so many more sources than I had ever thought high school kids would know. I had one student who made a connection between the Heraclitean idea of time and Einstein's special and general Relativity. This same student wrote a fantastic paper on the way that synaesthesia effects human perception and in particular our conceptions of temporality. I had another student write a paper that would get an A in a college philosophy class and she was only 16. They were exceptionally bright kids, and I can't gush over how wonderful they were enough.

After about a week of working with them I began thinking about two things. First, how do I get back to such a great environment as the Duke East TIP campus? This environment is one where I had great bosses, great colleagues, and exceptional students. Who wouldn't want to work in such an environment? Secondly, how do I get to the kind of school where I can teach these kids in college? That's the harder question to work through than the first one because it entails rethinking my ideas concerning higher education. Do I enter the gates of the walled city in order to get to teach them? How much of their exceptional qualities are the result of economic advantages? What about those kids who can't afford to come to TIP but are still just as exceptional? It also might entail thinking how "East Jesus Nowhere" becomes a place for the best and brightest and what such a reimagining of higher ed might mean.

Finally, I'd like to say a word about a subtle reminder of the deficiencies of the academy in light of this amazing experience. At both BC and SIUC, the Philosophy Department seems cut off from other areas of the academy. It is very easy to get so wrapped up in my own discipline that it becomes the only think I can talk about. Yet here, amongst a sea of English and Literature grad students, I was reminded about what it means to collaborate with others. I was reminded that, just as was the case with Socrates, knowing myself and my discipline meant knowing my limits be they personal or philosophic. I got to talk with medievalist who discussed time and eternity in Augustine and Aquinas, modernists who talked about eschatology in popular culture, and played a lot of Tetris against some truly formidable English, Music, History, Economics, and Computer Science guys. Its very hard being an introvert and also being in an insular discipline. Not that philosophy is the only insular discipline, nor that the academy as a whole isn't insular. What I am trying to say is that a defensive stance is not always the best stance to take regarding other disciplines. In a wonderful conversation I had with a TA from UNC, we discussed how we look for different things in the great texts of Heidegger, Derrida, and Sartre. We talked about how hard it is to be taken seriously and to take others seriously in the graduate environment. We also agreed that such closed-off stances are foolish. Collaboration and experimentation was pushed here at TIP and I hope to bring such an attitude to my other environments be they academic or otherwise.

The life philosophic as well as the life academic is a gift and it ought to be treated as such. After just a single month, this is the best summer I've had in years and I'm so thankful for the opportunity to be a participant in such a great program. I told my kids that this is not a summer-survival job but this is a dream fulfillment job. I rarely say truer things than that.

Niche Culture, Niche Values or 1001 words on being misunderstood

2010-05-16T15:06:00.000-04:00

What happens when niche-culture becomes the herald for niche-values? Don’t get me wrong, in many ways niche-culture—that transformation of the ways in which popular culture disseminates amongst various peoples allowing more obscure and previously overlooked elements to be given attention—has done wonderful things and represents something great. The fact that I am no longer bound culturally to my own geographic location is the kind of freedom lovers of art in all its forms have longed for. It used to be that if you lived in a town where the DJs sucked, your cultural choices were, as it were, screwed. But the internet (amongst other innovations) allowed us—we, the viewers, observers, hearers, and patrons—to explore the oddest, weirdest stuff we wanted. And some of us do. But something else ends up happening.
We human beings have, what I like to call, a tendency towards sedimentation. In other words, we take something that is new or odd or different and over time we transform it into something familiar, understandable, and limited. Its not that this process is good or bad either, it simply happens. What’s more is that we still think that it is innovative (and niche’s still might be but on a smaller scale) when in reality, what has happened is that rules have been established, parameters marked off, and horizons set in place. What is possible creatively, what is determined as legitimate, what determines legitimacy, all of this takes place within the rules of the niche. So there are limits to what is possible to be done in any given niche even though we don’t want to admit to those limits because, for the most part, admitting that there are limits is forbidden in a great number of (I say this with some irony) dominant niches.
What I find more interesting than the way that niche-culture has transformed popular culture is the ways in which it has transformed our social spaces. We have become participants in a multitude of different conversations each with their own rules. Its not that we weren’t participating in conversations before—no, it’s that the number of conversations has grown exponentially. Furthermore, the amount of information that is distributed amongst these conversations has become so plentiful that the overlap between conversations becomes difficult. And oftentimes, we confuse the conversations.

Confusing the conversation has less to do with confusing information, as it has to do with confusing the value of that information. As I said earlier, each niche has its own conversation rules or logic internal to it. And these conversation logics are based not entirely on reason so much as they are based on values. Specifically, each logic might be said to have a value or number of values that are esteemed more important than others. So people can be conversing with one another regarding the same information but, because of different niches or logics, they can never be talking about the same thing.

Moreover, we are able to participate in multiple conversations. This means that we can be participants in cultural niches whose values are in conflict with one another and not even realize it. It’s often an enigma as to how people can behave one way in a certain social setting and drastically different in another. One way of explaining this might be to say that they are participants in conversations that are operating under completely different sets of values. Such difference in behavior makes sense within the specific context because the logic aligned to the context demands behaviors that, from another perspective, are contradictory.
There’s a tendency amongst graduate students to feel disconnected from their peers who are not toiling away in libraries or cramped offices. You become so accustomed to specific conversation logics that you can have a hard time talking about things that you care a great deal about with people who are not within your specific niche. This happens even between people in different departments. Just ask my friend Kate how hard it is for the two of us, both graduate students in the humanities, to be on the same page about anything concerning our academic interests. It is perhaps because we are able to converse in another niche that we share that we are able to communicate.

The feeling of disconnection can take the form of feeling left behind by one’s peers or misunderstood because the niche that becomes dominant in one’s friends is not the same as that of our own. This happens to me all the time. I can devote a great deal of effort to work and thought within one specific niche but that niche is not as dominant or popular as the niche that my friends and peers participate in. This can result in a sense of pressure to adhere to the values esteemed by other niches even if such niches don’t question their own internal logic. This pressure is, I think, similarly felt by those who have graduated from college but have yet to obtain the kind of job they’d like, have yet to be in a longstanding partnership, etc.
With the loss of a central and totally dominant mainstream culture niches have emerged. The values central to these niches must be explored and examined if we are to progress towards conversations full of meaning and not as much misunderstanding. Human connection is not devalued in this niche-culture of ours so much as it is distracted and disrupted. So, where is our transvaluation of all values now? Is it turning inward into smaller and smaller niches (a la Dwight Schrute’s creation of a 2nd life inside of the actual second life)? Can we even get past the limits of our own niches and actually communicate with others? Do we even want to?
I would certainly like to move beyond the limits of my own academically inclined niche or my obscure pop-culture niche but I make no promises. I do, however, hope to participate in meaningful cross-niche conversations beyond such pressures.

The Blogtastic Voyage Pt. 2

2009-12-25T00:25:00.002-05:00

I cannot find my cell phone charger and it is extremely annoying that it is lost. Perhaps I will have to wait until morning to find it. Tonight is the night. The star, the sheep herders, the astrologers, the lowly...it's all in this night. A whole season waiting for this night and for the breaking of a still more glorious dawn when Christ is born. I have to admit that this December has not been as outrightly advent-driven as in previous years. The surprise bonus of such a distance from this season is that I haven't felt drawn to the commercialism so derided (and yet so followed) nor felt the pressures of obligations that used to be much beloved traditions. In fact, the only thing that I feel has been retained of this season is the waiting itself. Perhaps, to be more specific, it is not just the waiting but something that is at work inside of the waiting. A certain tension. I'll call it, the tension between hope and expectation.

I remember way back in 2004 being in a homiletics class which required an advent sermon as one of the assignments. I'll be charitable and say that what I wrote was much closer to an advent lecture than anything sermonic. Still, I remember discovering something open-ended and elusive to this whole advent position of waiting. There is the tension between the openness and perpetualness of hope and the very concreteness and very particularity of expectation. Jesus doesn't come as we expect him to. (I concluded thusly before even a word of Derrida had crossed my path) We hope beyond the particularities and limitations of our own ideas of what a savior or a king would be. We hope out of humility, out of the feeling that our sight is feeble and our thoughts are short-sighted.

But why did I feel that my sight was feeble and my thought's short-sighted. Because of that very strange, terrifying, and wonderous thing known as particularity. I cannot but hope from out of the feeble and short-sighted peculiarity and particularity of my own body, mind, and very peculiar self. The openness of hope is not without the determination of such particularity and peculiarity. And isn't it that strange, terrifying, and wonderous think known as the incarnation that we celebrate at advent? Isn't it the strangeness God made flesh that captures our imagination and also our fears. Our fears that what we hope for will, in fact, be what we expect; that our short-sightedness will get the better of us and we'll miss the messiah entirely. This is what I fear about this season. Will the waiting be in vain? Will I wait expectantly and call it hope?

I have been blessed to have read some truly wonderful reflections on advent from a friend and the friend of a friend; reflections that have spurred my thinking in directions previously occupied by the obligations that graduate study bestows at this time of year. Advent isn't advent so much as it is paper-writing season (or application finishing season). This isn't true of course; just because I'm preoccupied with the productive dialectic of Ideology and Utopia as it pertains to John Winthrop's "A Modell of Christian Charitie" doesn't mean that waiting is not the posture I should take. Advent doesn't go away; the monster or the messiah trekking towards Bethlehem is not stopping. That baby is coming and there's no stopping it.

I have been thinking, as of late, about typography. Typography, that old Christian practice of reading the stories of scripture and the tradition into the present, can be a dangerous enterprise (see: American and Muslim Fundamentalisms or Manifest Destiny/National Covenant). Still, keeping such dangers in mind, might there be a way to read the seasons of the Christian year into one's life. Might there be a way that I can view my life as a particular season requiring a particular "posture?" Might we think about time, not as a succession of days, but as something much more fluid and fluctuating?

I'll take as my example this season, the season of Advent. The posture one assumes during advent is, as has been mentioned above, one of waiting. Inherent to this posture is the tension between the particular and the open-ended, the ever-new; the tension between hope and expectation. Yet, what if this season and its posture extended beyond the winter? What if I experienced Advent during the summer, in the middle of ordinary time? Anyone who's gone through the application process for college or grad school knows that the most anxious waiting takes place in late February and on into the Spring and certainly not in December. Advent's status as a marker of a certain time, as a season, becomes exaggerated here. One's life is marked by a season of waiting, of being held within the tension of the openness of hope and the particularity and peculiarity of expectation, of a time that cannot simply be marked by dates on a calendar.

For a while now I have felt that my life has been one of Advent-ish waiting. The particular has presented itself but it does not satisfy the openness of hope, of desire. Perhaps that is what is most particular to hope itself, its inability to be exhausted or satisfied. I await, sometimes patiently sometimes rather impatiently, the coming of a particular fulfillment to a particular need, whatever the need might be. I also await something more. Something open and endless, something that gives itself in such a way that the adventure of exploring it in its fullness will never cease.

Yet, waiting is not all there is. There are seasons of simplicity and repentance that extend far beyond the limits of Lent. There are epiphanies that are experienced every day regardless of the time. There are whole years that feel so ordinary that they seem like they will never end. Still, this season is the season of waiting. Maybe next season will also be a season of waiting. I pray our postures will be appropriate to whatever season it is.

Merry Christmas all.

The Blogtastic Voyage Pt. 1

2009-12-19T00:40:00.003-05:00

First of all, not writing for about 2-3 months has to qualify as a Homeric fail (Karl? Jon? What's the criterion for the scale? I know it's at least at level Wagner...). Still, one gets busy with reading or conversing or playing way too much wii baseball that your neck hurts in the morning and all of a sudden its been two months. To be honest, I've attempted to follow up at least a half dozen times and every attempt, as has certainly been observed, was scrapped. I figured that no one really wants to hear me rambling on from the depths of the vertiginous Derridean stew which owned me this semester (seriously, I'm done with Derrida until late January...I promise).

So what now? Well, if history is to be believed, then we have the infamous year end list to throw down. That said, I want to mix things up a bit this year. This year was kinda funny when it comes to best albums and songs. I feel like this was the year that we became so vastly aware that there is some kind of culture machine which operates with or without our participation that we started jokingly referencing it. Perhaps this was already happening and this year was just the tipping point or perhaps I've been stuck beneath too many books to notice until now but it appears that something has changed. I remember looking at a blog post about The Dirty Projectors' "Bitte Orca" before it was even out asking "Is Bitte Orca the best album of 2009?" Before it was out! I thought this was completely absurd until I began to think about what records I knew would be coming out and how they would on a year end list somehow. Was I surprised by any of them? Maybe by one or two but that's mostly with the lesser knowns who came up big. Still, major talent's owned this year even if they come from within that weird incestuous narcissistic world known as the indie-rock-blog-community. But mixing it up is the name of the game so let's begin.

First off...Albums 2009.

Now, there are several ways to go about such a list as this. I could make a favorites list or a "best" list or a most played list or a most influential/important list to name a few. I think that I'm gonna go with a little bit of all of them because, let's face it, who wants to admit that their favorite album kinda sucks. I truly believe that deep down we all love excellent things, we just sometimes don't know what those excellent things are. I also believe that my limitations prevent me from ever being certain that my choices about culture are ones that exhibit excellence, but I hope that they do. Having said that, here we go...

The Champion's League:
Curse Your Branches--David Bazan. I love love love this album. I love how it's a record in a very literal sense. A record of the man's struggles, of his doubts, and of his hope. It the second best thing he's done since Control and it shows a master craftsman at work. I'm not putting up numbers on this list but, if I were, this record would be the undisputed number one. I've rarely been as inspired as I was listening to the master.

Veckatimest--Grizzly Bear. I somehow knew that this record was gonna be great when I saw them play "Two Weeks" on Conan back when he was still in NYC. I've not been a believer in these guys until I saw that performance and then heard this album. It's got such a great sound (has anyone else, since MBV, done so many things with reverb and done it this well?) and is such a carefully pieced together work. I thought I'd get bored with it but it keeps coming back. If it rains outside I usually turn to Kid A or Bon Iver but now, now I've got a new rainy day record.

Middle Cyclone--Neko Case. "This Tornado Loves You" is one of the most brilliant pieces of wordplay I've ever heard and turns out to be a fantastic song too. Neko swallowed a cannon somewhere and she showcases her booming voice here with poise and precision. When the songs need to soar they do, when they need to be intimate they are. Nobody sounds like her and this record certainly makes us aware of that fact.

Merriweather Post Pavilion--Animal Collective. If AmCo makes records this good all the time then I don't care if they are a band "created by/for/in/because of the internet." I don't care if they are the poster children for the Williamsburg scapegoating that has gained sway. "My Girls" is a brilliant pop song. So is "Summertime Clothes". The album as a whole finds a way to make electronic samples sound warm and inviting rather than isolating and digitized. Maybe it's because they don't abuse autotune...

The Hazards of Love--The Decemberists This is the record they had to make. It's not as poppy as The Crane Wife but it picks up where that album took off and explores even more epic territory. Colin Meloy tells a weird but ultimately compelling story full of great performances (My Brightest Diamond brings it home like no other and the organist goes full on Yes/Styx). This is an album for Lit nerds by Lit nerds. I didn't like it at first but my friend Jon made me play it so much when we rode around the Hub that it grew on me.

The New-ish Ones

Young artists came up big this year and artists who were on the verge of excellence moved even closer. I'll mention these with a bit more brevity.

Manners--Passion Pit. I never thought I'd really be into dance music just like I never thought that I'd enjoy dancing and then somehow both become true. I can't help but love these songs. They remind me of sweaty summer nights in Boston forgetting that I had French to study.

The First Days of Spring--Noah and the Whale. I don't like his guitar tone. That is basically all I can say about this record that I don't like. It's a complete piece and one that I think is best experienced sitting down and listening to it the whole way through. I think we need to get back to just sitting around and listening to albums as a whole...and doing nothing but listening...who's with me?

Wolfgang Ammadeus Phoenix--Phoenix Maybe the best pure pop music I've heard this decade. Another record from the summer that was constantly playing and thoroughly loved.

Oh My God, Charlie Darwin--The Low Anthem. The title track is worth it. Its so beautiful and so sad. The rest of the record is great and a bit more uplifting without getting too saccharine.

Mama, I'm Swollen--Cursive Man did I sweat this record when it first came out. I still do because Tim Kasher knows how to throw down and the band sounds so great even though they don't have a cellist any more.

Biggest Surprise: Axe to Fall--Converge. I'm not really a metal guy nor do I fully appreciate Converge's monolithic "Jane Doe" as much as one mr. Chase Macri but I really like this record. The guitars sound so good and the songs offer a lot more textures than the other metal record I enjoyed this year (ABR's Constellations).

Biggest Disappointment: The Most Serene Republic and Headlights. They put out two of my favorite albums of 2007 and then completely let me down with their latest. Both are snooze-tastic.

Why Didn't I Have This Record Yet 2009 Edition: It seems like every year I have one or two albums from years past which I'm shocked I didn't listen to and obsess over already. In 2007 it was Minus the Bear's "They Make Beer Commercials Like This In Heaven", 2008 was "Boys and Girls in America" by The Hold Steady and "Z" by My Morning Jacket. This year it's "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" by Neutral Milk Hotel. Seriously, how did I miss it? Its so so so good.

I need to go practice guitar more record: Animals--This Town Needs Guns, Antidotes--Foals. So I got interested in some math rock-y stuff this year and now I need to go practice super-compressed single-coil finger tapping....le sigh...

Book You Really Need to Read: Home--Marilynne Robinson. She's brilliant and wrote my favorite book of all time (Gilead) and does it again with this book. It will make you want to be more graceful and forgiving.

I don't have film recommendations because I didn't see any that made me really excited to get on DVD besides not seeing many. But I will say this...if you ever get the chance to see Pulp Fiction on the big screen, DO IT! So worth it...great movie and a great experience seeing it in a theater.

Well, that's all I got for this part. Stay tuned...in three months I might post pt. 2...

Under Big Skies

2009-08-30T19:17:00.006-04:00

I had forgotten how beautiful and open the skies in Illinois can be. I had grown too accustomed to light pollution and hills that seemed to leap from the soil at random. The northeast is gorgeous in its own way, famous for its mountains and dense forests, and it makes one marvel rather quickly at the wonder that is the north American continent. However, I had noticed myself longing for something wider. Something more expansive. A place where there was room to take deep breaths and not feel like you were stealing air, like Internet, from your unknown neighbors. As route 70 turned into route 57 on the southeastern side of Illinois, that place I had been longing for opened up in all of it's splendor. I had forgotten how large the clouds were, how blue a sky could be, and how the sun cast shadows in some places and put forth pockets of resplendence which painted the land like a checkerboard.

There are some images that bring forth imaginings and then explode them, tearing to shreds the fictitious with the luminosity of that which is. (This is why phenomenology is, for me, a remarkably christian endeavor.) Witnessing that sea of grass and corn and sky and cloud was such an explosion. It reminded me of when I pulled off of 70 for the first time and drove with my parents into Greenville. There is a feeling that can be described as a home that's been waiting for you--that's the feeling I had as the imagined return to the middle west fractured before the revelation of what I was actually seeing.

There is also a romance about the middle west which is not the whole truth. But what I talk about when I see the flatness and the enormity of the sky is not this romance. Spend just a little bit of time in Granite City or even in parts of Carbondale where I live, and you will see something very unromantic. Size and expanse make a distinct culture something difficult to see. It doesn't help that the culture of the middle west has been caricatured and propagandized like pretty much everything else. The exploding of this image, the putting to the side of the negative associations that accompany living in a kind of isolation, is something that takes work. And this work cannot simply be putting it all away from your mind. That would be creating a whole new romance which is naive and fearful and untrue.

To think the isolation--and therefore the loneliness, the sense of limited possibilities, the different kinds of poverty and addiction that are found here--is to think this place in its fullness. But it's too much all at once and maybe that's what I love so much about this place. The simplicity of the landscape, the openness and the largeness of the sky; all of these reveal a place full of complexity and nuance that does not demand you pay attention but invites attention. How very middle western.

I have finished my first week of classes at my first non-religious school since high school. It wasn't as big a deal as I had feared it would be. Philosophy is philosophy and it doesn't have to be in a professors office for an independent study or in the magisterium known as BC to be well done. I am excited about my classes for numerous reasons but mainly because, after a summer of French and fiction, I'm back to the work that I love to do.

Living in Carbondale, I am without a lions share of the luxuries that Brighton, Brookline, and Allston provided as everyday occurrences. They don't have software to track the school shuttle, they don't have a Whole Foods or a Trader Joe's or even a Target. I've yet to find a really great coffee shop to study in. The library looks too new, not enough stained glass and stone. Still, every day brings more comfort to me. Every day brings more acceptance and excitement to live in so simple and complex a place as this. To see the grace bestowed that is my time allotted here in southern Illinois, that is a task worth undertaking.

Mosquitos Love Me This Time of Year

2009-08-18T02:43:00.003-04:00

With but a short pause amidst the dedicated and methodical movements of packing away my belongings, I thought today about adulthood. Sorting bags full of smaller bags full of books full of words, I wondered about faulty pressures felt more than observed. You should be married already, you should be completely independent already, you should have a mortgage already, you should be climbing up that ladder of your career already, you should be mowing lawn and trimming shrubbery already. You should be wearing a tie to work already. But I was not living inside of these thoughts for they were that felt pressure carving out a voice for themselves. Instead, I was putting large gray bins full of books into the bed of my father's pickup truck and taking breaks to listen to WXPN play whatever folksy-roots songs they saw fit, lessening my thirst with iced tea straight from the jug. Instead of trimming hedges, I was washing clothes bought at Goodwill or stolen from my father's hamper.

I have been found myself pausing to consider adulthood because I don't think it really exists. Having moved from Boston, I have lost my favorite human observation facility--Common Ground's 80's night--my local Allston haunt. This weekend, however, I was blessed with the observation of my family at a barbecue. I saw people there who were not the gray-haired conversationalists of my childhood but something rather strange. I saw people who accepted this thing called adulthood because they believed it foisted upon them many years prior. But all the same interactions were there that seemed to have been there from their childhood. My mother, the facilitator, one uncle the instigator, one the speaker of presumed wisdom, one the constant clown, and a handful who were old in their minds before they were old in body. I've seen children act this same way and so I have a hard time believing that adulthood is some stable thing, some consistent state of being.

It appears to me that perhaps all of these pressures concerning adulthood are brought forth by an "ordering voice" that longs for nothing more than the hearing of its own pontifications which are little more than prevarications. Adulthood seems like the assumption of responsibility but when have I not needed to assume responsibility? When I didn't know things? How much has the last 5 years of my life proven that I know far less than I ever thought possible? Am I to be responsible for things I don't even know about yet prior to knowing them?

But then I see friends and acquaintances acting in a way that I can only call childish and I wonder about the other side of adulthood. Perhaps adulthood is that remarkable country where we can shoulder the wounds of childhood just a little bit better, where we can let things go. Knowing how nursing a grievance like an old wound can actually provide a place of stability, I doubt this is true. So I don't believe that adulthood exists. We just get better at being children.

The Cultural Artifact circa summer 2009

2009-07-29T23:31:00.004-04:00

The thickness of late summer air in the east has found its way up north to those of us here in Boston. The air has a heaviness to it that marks those who travel through it with an odd sticky film. It is the mark of summer that is not as aesthetically pleasing as a tan nor as pleasant as a breeze in the park under the canopy of an oak. However, walking down Commonwealth Avenue and across campus last night I was reminded of the beauty of a humid night. Every light has an extra glow. The greens and reds and yellows of stoplights are warmer and more alive. The blues of emergency stations seem to hang in the air much like the moisture. All the miracle, mystery, and authority that BC attempts to muster in its gothic architecture is softened by the glow of lights on a muggy evening.

I have burned through and burned for more books than I thought I would want to this summer. There were gentle and grace-filled books and there were raw sexual and political escapades (in the books. My life is nowhere near that interesting.) A good piece of fiction can cover a multitude of sins. A great essay can do the same. Learning the origin of the essay in my French class was quite helpful in my appreciation of that genre of writing. In French, to essay is to try. It is an attempt at something. There is a notion of an essay being a shot in the dark, an potential answer but by no means the final word. There are always more attempts to be made.

Words have very much been on my mind this summer, which is no departure from the fall, the spring, or whatever other seasons there might be. I have been thinking about how lightly I use them. Humor as justification for the lightness of words is only so much of a justification. I fear that the words set forth are done with far less heft than they can carry. Part of this comes from Marilynne Robinson's writing style. It is prudent and thrift without being too minimal. The same could be said for Flannery O'Connor's style. I wonder if place shapes these words and the way they are delivered. The isolation of the O'Connor farm or Iowa City might give rise to a subtler literary voice. It might also make one crave company and overstuff the times spent with others with words like a pillow with too small a pillow case. A tendency of mine, which has been suffered by my always more than patient friends, is to see every detail as important, every connection as relevant, and every person in need of a backstory. Perhaps there is a way for me to sift through the connections and the details and the characters of my own tales in such a manner as to disclose them in their fullness without providing an unneeded surplus of words. I have yet to find it.

Still, the cultural artifact. There is a kind of spiritual art which stands out to me. It is art that is deeply personal and acquainted with sorrow and joy which fails not in its creativity nor its compassion. I can list off those whose works bring forth this spirit but it is by no means exhaustive. David Bazan, Marilynne Robinson, Wendell Berry, Flannery O'Connor, mewithoutYou, and several others. I do not know how to describe the spirit of their work in any other way than to say that they could all easily say the line: "Its a cold and its a broken hallelujah". And these artists seem connected to a much deeper and much older tradition than other works. Theirs is a spirituality that is unsettling, theirs a God who is trouble, theirs a spirit who haunts. Their Jesus has flesh on his bones. I don't really know what to say other than that my mind and my spirit has been continually blessed by listening to "Control" whilst reading "The Lame Shall Enter First". If you know some good visual artists who exhibit this same spirit--if it even makes any sense--please let me know. I feel that's missing from this collection of cultural artifacts.

The Depths of Nerdery

2009-07-11T22:56:00.000-04:00

I want to talk about the word Nerdery. I love it, it does so much more than other words do, and better yet, it's a neologism. Some words are what you make of them (like a couple of my favorite things in life) and nerdery is certainly one of them.

Nerdery: (verb). to engage in activities deemed "nerdy" by the populace. Also to act in the manner of one who would be called a Nerd.

Nerdery: (noun). as in, "the nerdery". A place in which nerdy activities--usually those involving mathematics, literary, historical, and philosophical theoretical discussions, and the repeated neccessity to either a)continuously define and redefine words or b)roll a 20+ sided die to determine hit points--take place. Typically found within places called laboratories, libraries, your mom's basement, record stores.

Why do I talk about nerdery? Isn't it obvious. I love my nerdery. I love being in a nerdery. However, several things that have come to mind over the course of the past week that prompted me to attempt to post about how much of a nerd I am and about why. Now, of course there is the age old difference between geeks and nerds which is constantly up for debate in these, our postmodern times. However, I am certainly not an expert in this field and so I would commend to all interested parties the excellent analysis that John Hodgeman provides concerning this matter.

What prompted this inquiry is actually the limits of words. I've been toying around with writing some fiction and found that I was getting frustrated with the limitations of the english language. Specifically, I'm frustrated that we really only have one good word for feet. Feet. Sure you can say hoof, or trotters, but when you're not going for the whole "man is a beast" angle, it's really frustrating. We have all of these words that we use for other body parts (i.e. mouth: jaws, chompers, mandibles, etc.) and we've imported a great assortment of words from other languages to talk about something like ghosts. Ghost, spook (not in the Phillip Roth sense), spectre, poltergeist, spirit, etc. So many words for an etheral being and yet when it comes to our own feet, we've only got one good word. Tis a shame.
(courtesy of Marvel Comics website)

So there is the word nerdery but there is certainly more. If it's just a word that I'm complaining about then just call me Wendell Berry and point me to the farm. Let me tell you about the nerdery that I miss most up here in Boston. It is the kind of nerdery that was ever-present in Greenville and the kind that I've found myself subjecting my friends to because, well, I can't help myself sometimes. I'm talking about the kind of nerdery known as gear nerdery. I first realized that this was a unique kind of nerdiness for me to exhibit up here when I found myself combing the recently added gear page on Musicians' Friend on a whim. A frequent whim actually. It's the kind of nerdiness that sees a friend's question about fuzz pedals as a reason to start researching the different kinds of transistors that go into making a good fuzz sound (SF363 transistors for the original Arbiter Fuzz Face which are, with a few exceptions--namely the London Fuzz that Bender and I discovered--still the cream of the crop of fuzzes in my opinion) . Granted, there are guys who like gear and then there are gear nerds. I like to think of myself as somewhere in the middle but then two things happened. First, I was listening to Michael Jackson songs in my friend Jon's apartment and I then turned to my friend Emily, who was on the couch with me, and proceeded to talk for a good 15 minutes or more about compression debates between sound engineers. And then proceeded to theorize about the connections between the R&B guitar sound which uses a compressor pedal and the commercial country music with which that particular guitar sound has become synonymous. But what really made me light up was when Emily looked at me confused and I went, "Oh, I'm sorry, you're probably wondering what compression is, in itself". She wasn't, but I show no mercy.

Earlier today, when I was off getting a strap for my Jag and contemplated getting straplocks, I had this conversation with myself. "You know, I've had both the Schaller and the Dunlop ones. The Dunlop's are definitely cheaper, but only by a couple of bucks, and besides, the Schaller's are quality and my other strap has them so they would be interchangeable even though the blue of the other strap is aesthetically displeasing with the red of the guitar. Anyway, what's really bugging me is that, it seems like the more adult thing to get the Schallers. They're just more mature by way of strap-locks than the dunlop and that's pretty much all there is to it."

Indeed. More adult. Gear nerdery strikes when it is least expected. But it is still, not the weirdest form of nerdery that I love passionately and more or less without shame. Perhaps I should love it but shamefully. I am speaking, of course, about my book fetish. I still refer to it as my greatest vice. I go to Brookline Booksmith about twice a week just to look at the books. They don't change the books they receive very often. But I go to be amongst friends. I go to be with Flannery and Marilynn, with Paul and Soren, with Rainer and Homer. I also go because I am eagerly awaiting the day when Marilynne Robinson's book "Home" comes out in paperback. And here's the kicker, I'll be disappointed if it comes out in paperback and it was published by Picador. Now, I am such a book nerd that I have a favorite publishing house (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux) and Picador is an imprint of said publishing house. But I'm still disappointed. Can't really tell you why. Maybe its because Flannery O'Connor's stuff is FSG, and The Metaphysical Club too. These are books I love. I wish FSG published philosophy texts, for obvious reasons.

But I love being in the nerdery of Brookline Booksmith and Mr. Music and Cafe Fixe/Athan's. I love engaging in nerdery like discussing the limitations of dream-logic (i.e. what the correct cheat codes would be when you have to battle an army of vampires in your dream and all you have to defend yourself is a NES controller). Plumbing the depths of nerdery is nothing but rewarding. And it's all around us. Two of my favorite bloggers, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Bill Simmons are both huge nerds but in different fields that are not typical nerderies. And yet there they are, doing it right.

Under Influence

2009-06-30T23:18:00.000-04:00

In honor of Wilco's new album (Wilco (The Album)) and inspired by Nels Cline I've decided to engage in a bit of musing over the guitarists that have influenced me. Nels has this great list which includes just about everybody to ever pick up the guitar. My list is not as long but it's a bit more involved.

Why might I engage in such an act of seeming vanity? Well, because things don't come from nowhere for starters. "We stand on the shoulders of giants" is one of my favorite quotes of all time (its by Sir Isaac Newton if anyone's asking) and rightly so. I'm also taking a cue from the lists of 15 life-changing albums, specifically Chase's evolving one largely because he includes these interesting discussions about musician growth as well as why the albums themselves are influential. I want to talk about where and why and how what I play comes from and where I want to go or not go again.

I'll start with gear. From as far back as I can remember, I wanted two specific pieces of gear: A black Les Paul Standard guitar and a Marshall Combo amplifier. I've had two Les Paul's now and had and lost a Marshall Combo. Neither of the two were what I originally wanted but one of the things you learn about gear is that they are very particular. The amp sounded great when I got it and I would have had it for a long time had it not gotten stolen. It was a valvestate combo which means that it had a tube preamp but a solid state poweramp. Better than the tiny Peavey I started out with but not as good as what I've played through since. The option for the black Les Paul standard was there but in the end, i ended up going with a Honeyburst Les Paul classic. When all is said and done, guitars come down to feel. The classic felt like my guitar and that feeling has only increased. As I've learned the nuances of the instrument, I've grown to love it for its own voice more and more. There is still no roar quite like digging into a Les Paul.

Gear can have a serious effect on how you play but ultimately, it comes down to how you hold the instrument. Tone is in the fingers as countless guitarists have said and it's true. But knowing what you're working with is important, and it takes time. Some things are immediate, some are surprises, but most take time to learn and appreciate.

So what of the influencers? Chronological, Alphabetical, Depth of Influence-ordered? How about stream-of-consciousness, as in, how they come to mind.

The Edge: Ask anybody who went to GC who knew me and they'd tell you that I like delay...probably too much. As is the case with most christian young men of a certain age, I had my U2 phase. I listened to everything they did and especially the edge. The jangle, the rhythm, the minimalism, and the epicness. The Edge has a sound all his own and like it or not, you know its him when you hear it. I loved the rhythmic part of his playing and the layering of sound. I loved how the guitar didn't just have to strum along but could add a dramatic element through playing less or letting things ring off. I discovered that if you learned about 5 chord shapes and how to match up a certain way of playing those shapes with certain delay times you could basically sound like the Edge (technique-wise). Tone is a whole other matter. I didn't want the thinness of his Strats through AC30's. I wanted "Until the End of the World". The U2 sound was about something epic and huge and heart-on-sleeve which is perfect for a guitarist who cut his teeth playing praise and worship music.

Jim Adkins and Tom Linton (Jimmy Eat World): This was the music that changed my life truly for the first time. It was punkish without being brash. It, like U2, was heart-on-sleeve. It was ballsy and melodic. It was a Les Paul roaring alongside interesting rhythms. Jimmy was my first exposure to Drop-D tuning and to what some have called "emo". (This is not entirely true. I was the owner of The Juliana Theory's first cd way back but I didn't know it was emo and didn't like it because I wanted it to sound more like Audio Adrenaline.) I absorbed their cd "Bleed American" listening to it over and over again, trying to get the thickness that they had in their sound. I still like their sound (mostly Clarity and Futures) but I've moved on. What they gave me was a way of playing rhythmically in a different way. And the power of arpeggios. Playing with a melodic repetitiveness. Its hard to think of them without thinking of the next big influence.

Brian Lee (For All the Drifters, The Rosenfalls): Brian Lee plays how I want to play. At least, when i heard his playing for the first time I knew where I wanted to go guitar-wise. There was the Jimmy influence in his playing to be sure but there was more. It was at times dissonant, and the man knew how to dig into a telecaster and make it scream. I hated his tone at first and then the Drifter EP came out and I was in awe. It was crunchy and precise but branching out in places that I hadn't heard in other emo-influenced music. Brian was able to craft interesting riffs and match them with a theremin solo or a squeal of feedback. I decided to get a Fender DeVille amp because Brian had played one. It was a good choice. I have come to love the sound of my Les Paul through the DeVille, especially dirty. This was how I found the thickness of sound that I had wanted from listening to Jimmy.

Explosions in the Sky: Almost unparalleled influence. EITS was a band that knocked me on my rear from the moment I first heard them. Here was guitar music so pure that no words were needed. It was fenders played through fenders. It was expansive and cinematic. It was moving. And the sound was so unique. I started to pick up licks from them on purpose. I started working on my right-hand speed. I started playing with more reverb. I learned to craft my tone all over again. Rather than learning how to shape my dirty sound and then worry about clean, I did the reverse. Start with a great clean sound and then add the rest. This is the mentality that led me not to buy a strat and a twin reverb but to get a jaguar and an AC15. Clean done well is a rare thing indeed. I guess you could throw Sigur Ros into this influence as well. Jonsi's guitar playing was unlike any I had heard as well. It was long and droney and had a lot of bite to it dynamically if not tonally. The droneyness and the desire to let the notes ring out...to let the instrument breathe (as it were), was the goal here. These post-rock guys taught me to slow down and listen to the spaces between the notes.

Johnny Greenwood (Radiohead): Only the good Lord knows how much I wish I could play like him. Nobody can. But somehow I feel that Matt could do it better than I could. Most people think of Radiohead guitars as just making noise or playing "weird". There is certainly that element to the playing of Johnny and Ed but there is so much more. Paranoid Android changed the way I thought about the guitar as a music maker. But it was not until I started learning stuff off of Hail to the thief that I began to realize what Johnny was doing besides playing aggressively. His playing on "There, There" as well as the spacey stuff he did on OK Computer are what really get to me. The aggressive angular stuff is what I long to play but what I hear in what I try to play is far more arpeggiated and textured than it is jagged.

Dan Hoerner (Sunny Day Real Estate): There's this one Amnesty Letters song where the part that I play was trying to be like Dan's work on "Every Shining Time You Arrive." That and his tone. I'm a tone guy what can I say. But the sound of Sunny Day's later work was really influential on me. It was mostly listening to Dan in the background teaching me how to be a sideman. How to play a simple riff and compliment a song. Sunny Day influenced a bigger influence of mine but Dan's playing remains something I turn to for ideas (aka licks to steal).

Mike Weiss (mewithoutYou): Torches Together hit me like a bullet in the stomach. Tone was there. Creative use of reverb too. And a way in which the guitar could be less thick than in Jimmy or FATD's work but was nonetheless aggressive. Mike and his co-guitarist also used feedback really well. There were times when the rhythm section would drive the song and the guitars would sit back and create atmosphere. I really liked that and decided to try it. There was another Amnesty Letters song where I aped this idea from Mike (Monsters, I think). Also, my first mewithoutYou show was in Reading PA where, after the show, my bandmate Mike and I talked with Mike Weiss for about 45 minutes about gear and style and life I guess. He was all about letting the guitar shape the sound. Listening to the new record, I have to say that I love how Mike has moved more into the background and adds to the songs rather than driving them with riffs. And his tone is even better now.

That's all I can think of at the moment. I have this blues influenced classic rock jumble in my memory that occasionally comes out in what I play but I can't pin down any specifics. And I love the playing of sideman guitarists on over the rhine's "Changes Come Live" disc and "Cold Roses" by Ryan Adams and The Cardinals. But I don't know what else I sound like. Hopefully myself I guess.

where does your playing come from? Come on music nerds, lets discuss.

The Bug Saga pt. 2

2009-06-17T22:31:00.000-04:00

this is from a few days ago when I got sick and couldn't sleep. After the break is when I resumed post-sickness.

Pt. 2: The Hinterland’s Song
(In a few months you’ll be beggin’ for this weather)

Once or twice, in my more wise moments of clarity, I determined that one should not attempt to write or to make important decisions while either a) sleepy or b) sickly. It is June right now and it is 56 degrees outside but it feels colder. It feels like a cold that has set up in my bones. Perhaps this is the mark of a week and a half spent attempting to sleep on a terrible mattress that leaves me sore when I wake up. Perhaps my fridgidity is the result of a sudden sickness that has sprung upon me without remorse. Either way, I will attempt to recount the origins of my struggle with the bugs—against my better judgement to be sure—by working through the discomfort. I do not have high hopes for this part of the story for it began in what seems like years ago although it was only a mere four months or so when the actual troubles began. Nevertheless, I will see if I can recount all of the shock and naivite that comes with the beginnings of a great struggle. Pray my effort is sustained throughout this ordeal.
As early as September, my roommate Kevin (this is Kevin no. 1 for those in the know) noticed a peculiar looking insect perched upon the tweed exterior of his guitar amp. It was flat and brown and slothful in its gait but it nonetheless aroused his curiosity. This curiosity quickly waned as he remembered the crucial early fall survival mechanism known as the open and be-fanned window in our room. Figuring the bug had come from the outside and knowing nothing about its origins save for what his intuition relayed to him, Kevin #1 smooshed the bug and discarded it into our trash can. And for the entirety of the fall, that was all that was thought of regarding the bug. No freakouts or panicked calls to the landlords; no home-made remedies either. Simple forgetfulness and nothing more. It’s strange to look back on this singular little event and realize that it was still very much the beginning of our stay in this apartment that we enjoyed but it was also a harbinger of the coming storm that would ravage the simple structures and routines of our urban existence.
You don’t see these little things as big things without having knowledgable eyes. The eyes of experience would tell you that there was trouble brewing if, in the middle of a room and for no good reason, a bug decided to crawl on top of an amplifier. In fact, coming from an undergraduate environment where the houses that we lived in were not what one might call ‘without spot or wrinkle’—indeed, quite the opposite—you might say that we were predisposed to overlook such a peculiar scene as a flat little brown bug crawling on a Fender. Far too much has been said about the wisdom of hindsight and the fortune of misfortune but these words are often lost on the young. And if this experience has taught me anything, it is that vestiges the old Achilles’ heel of youthful invincibility remain longer than anyone thinks they have. Scarier still, invincibility seems to be subtly bolstered when manifested in numbers. The more youthful men you get together, the more apt they are to believe in their capacity for world domination, or at least entertain serious doubts about the stability of their own lives. In spite of all the shifty-ness of the urban-dwelling twenty-something American male, it should be well known that his ability to blind himself to his true weaknesses knows few bounds.
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And then there is the first bite. The first blood drawn. It does not happen in September when the first of these tiny monsters is discovered. No, in the dead of a Boston winter, when it is frigid and the world has gone completely gray, that is when they choose to strike. Little Kevin is bitten thrice on the arm and the rest of us are unmarked. What creature would bite three times? What mosquito would be alive this late into February? We wonder collectively but lack the ability to diagnose the problem. So the Kevins ask around and the horrible words are brought up: bed bugs. Could it be something that bad? ‘No’, we say, ‘it must be spiders.’
There is something terrifying when those things we young Americans incorrectly recognize as being clichéd rather than repetitive start to happen to you. It couldn’t be X, that wouldn’t happen to us. It can’t be that bad, can it? Those sorts of things are terrifying because you know the answer before you even give voice to the dismissive words. And you dismiss the awful anyway because, let’s face it, it really could be worse. Lumberjack Kevin (I assure you there are only 2 Kevins) was sitting at his desk built into his lofted bed reading a book. As he turned the page he noticed an odd little shape moving along the spine of the book. It was small and brown and more circle-shaped than most insects. And he knew. He just knew. There wasn’t a question in his mind that this could be anything other than the worst that could happen to us. We had the bugs. They had corrupted the sacredness of our apartment with their bloodlust and we were doomed.
“We have bugs” Kevin said with a stoic certainty. He looked like someone who had returned from the DMV after giving a little too much blood at a red cross event. Defeat is too light a word to apply to the gravity with which those three words and his stony visage brought themselves down upon the rest of us in that apartment. I tried to remain optimistic. “We’ve just got to tell the property managers. They’ll take care of this.” Such acceptance of authorities in my life to solve the problems that would appear to be within their responsibility is lost on me now. Then, back when the bugs were first an issue, I believed that landlords could handle a problem like ours. Oh the naïveté of the uninitiated.

It was a frigid time of the year and we were trapped with these things. There were many ashes and much gnashing of teeth.

The Bug Saga Pt. 1

2009-06-08T00:17:00.000-04:00

In Which Our Narrator Begins His Narrations or Nostalgia Just Ain't What It Used To Be

For being positioned directly in front of a semi-conductor, the view from Fitzpatrick 203 is not bad. There is enough tree cover to hide the massive cylinder of galvanized steel and the protrusions of black cable carrying power to the rest of campus. Nature is used to conceal technology, as if the control of electricity were something to be ashamed of. But they have used nature as technology too. Technology to hide technology. As if nature and technology were radically opposed to one another at their very core.

Still, the view is not bad. Better, in fact, than the view I had of the carwash my roommates and I thought was a front for drugs or the shouts of drunken Allstonians as they staggered towards their dilapidated abodes. I am, in many ways, miles and years away from that place, from that vista. And the funny thing is, I don’t know which direction—further back or further ahead—those miles and years have taken me. There is a circularity to life which is attested to in Nietzsche’s writings (although he is not the only one to speak of such things) that I have come to experience on more than a few occasions. Right now, in this present moment, the moment stretched just long enough to be perceivable before being consumed by the growling stomach of memory, I am once again in a new place that is far too familiar to keep me settled. In the present moment, I sit in my dorm room—the aforementioned Fitzpatrick 203—located on the upper campus of Boston College. I sit here and I stare out my window through the trees at the semi-conductor. I sit here at the top of this “city on a hill” as pretentious and crazy as that notion is.

Five years after I left the dorms for good I have returned. In the interim I have lived in one shed-like cabin, three houses, two apartments, and countless friends couches. I have toured, recorded, made all manner of latte, bound books, written papers, completed around 20 grad school applications, presented at a conference, studied and stressed more than I ever thought was possible, and gotten (well almost) a master’s degree. All of this happened outside of living in a dorm room. And yet, absurdly, here I am in Fitzpatrick 203. There is a crazy journey that led to feeling like such an adult with all the responsibilities and certainly all the bills to being a dorm resident. I, of course, still have the bills but lack all the perks.

From this dorm room perched high atop the city on a hill that is a light to the nations I must tell my tale. My main task right now is to open the story. It is to introduce you to the characters and somehow make you care about them as if they were real people (which they are—most of them). I have to lay down the setting for you with all the appropriate metaphorical flourishes that allow for you to see what is coming up ahead thematically. "Oh I get it, the transformation of the trees into technology is a metaphor for the effects of industrialization on the purity of the earth" you might say. And you wouldn't be wrong. You just wouldn't be thinking what I'm thinking when I tell this story. For the record, the setting is not the dorm room. This is where it kind of ends. Where it begins, well, that origin is found in the view of drunken Allstonians wandering the frigid streets in February.

This is not a story that has heroes or wise old sages of the ‘mystical wisdom (insert non-anglo ethnicity here)’ variety. It is not a romance nor is it merely a tragedy or merely a comedy. Well, any romance that happens in this story certainly doesn’t involve me. Although the tragedy and the comedy, they most certainly include me. And I guess there might be a mystical wisdom pastor or professor or janitor scattered throughout but I wouldn’t count on it. But there are vampires. Lots of blood-sucking little vampires.

Some might say that the vampires are the most important part; that they are the whole story. I got bugs, they made a nice apartment unlivable, and then I moved. Finished product. This take on things would be to leave out all of the little eccentricities that make this a good story. The vampires are, in all honest, very flat characters. They do one thing and one thing only: suck blood. It is in the reactions, the quiet desperations, the breakdowns, the untimeliness of it all that this story has any worth in telling.

So that is my charge. To tell the bug saga. The rise of an empire of vampire bugs who devastated the lives of four men who chose to live together and the chaos that ensued.

Goodbye to all that

2009-05-01T22:33:00.001-04:00

This, then, will be a list of all that will go:

Furniture:
5 bookshelves
1 coffee table
1 bed
1 desk
1 futon and futon mattress
1 super comfortable recliner
1 super comfortable mattress (maybe)
Excess Clothes
lots of paper stuff--hopefully no books.

if you've ever seen the movie version of Everything Is Illuminated, you will have a sense of what my life will be like for the next year or so (so I believe). Specifically, it will be one where all my things are in plastic bags to keep them from contaminating other things. it will be weird but when has my life not been weird, or myself for that matter.

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Why would God create a creature whose sole purpose appears to be to make other beings' lives utterly miserable? This is worse than the platypus.

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That said, I've always had romanticized notions of living with a box of books, a bag of clothes and my guitar. That is naivete at its best. Maybe several boxes of books...in plastic bags...in milk crates or something like that... Clothes in bags...a mattress (if i keep it) in a bag too.

What sucks about all of this is that it's taking up valuable time from paper writing and comp studying. And tempers are high. I've kept my cool but its easy when under stress about the future and whatnot to have to prep for moving without actually moving.

Prayer is needed. And patience and diligence and perseverance. I'm almost done and yet, not quite there. Finishing strong has always been difficult for me. I pray that this time I can follow through.

I also hope that the owners of this place can find a way to salvage the property and end up doing okay in the long run. They're nice people who don't understand us at all.

such is life.

An Exercise in Creativity

2009-01-27T02:03:00.001-05:00

Vanity...Perhaps. An exercise in creativity and the immediate (on a good day) found from the internet. Perhaps that too. In any case, its worth a try.

Purity of Heart, or The Contemptible King of Mirrors

"I've been wading through this puddle of human excrement for so long that asphyxiation would be too cheap a mercy for the good fuckin' Lord to bestow upon me"

Were he the progeny of lesser creatures, the excess of hair and prospect of fangs might have justified Evan's foaming mouth. As it was his venomous declaration did little to break the silence of his daily return from school. Always by his side, like a faithful trappist, was Jude. The adolescence of their companionship did not discount Jude's preternatural ability to serve as Evan's pack animal; more a yoke-laden ox than a loyal friend.

"They fuck-ing expect me to pay them to do absolutely nothing while I am forced to suffer for their ineptitude. While Darwin may have correctly speculated on our ascension into creatures with rational faculties and the irreplaceable opposable thumbs those troglodytes seem to have missed the memo."

Venom was Evan's modus operandi and rightfully so. Few sad literary men, boys really, demonstrated such affinity for the most sanctimonious uses of vulgarities. No one in Evan's world could deliver the indignities propelled from his mouth with such poise and creativity. "It is an underappreciated art-form", he is rumored to have once said, "which demands that one be well practiced."

These two journeymen traversed the partially shoveled sidewalks as if set adrift in inescapably separate worlds. Evan plodded along unevenly. His steps matched the divisions within his own thought patterns. At times both crunching the ice beneath him and traipsing atop the compacted plow-drifts, Evan's gait--like most men his age--told far more of him than his own percolating malices set afire by his tongue. He crushed the ice with such enmity that no words, not even his own righteous indignities, could match its undiluted meaning. Yet his oscillation to lightly treading upon the snow-drifts lining either side of the walk led one to believe that he was little more than a child playing a game he did not quite understand. The simple joys of a toddler at their most ornery stage--all innocence and uncompromising evil--leaked out through these light steps and almost made his indignities forgivable.

The steady eye of Jude, a student of Evan's erratic steps, was one of the few who could see all of this in those steps. Jude chose to carefully place his feet in the chasms already well worn by larger boots than his. He pictured himself a pilgrim, retracing what appeared to be ancient steps substantially dirtied by many others who chose the same path as he. Snow does not stay porcelain for long, he thought to himself. "At least the sight of my breath remains unyielding to the particles of dirt which unquestionably surround it. Well, to my own eyes anyway."

"I mean, god-damn. God Damn Jude. These fuckers think they can cover up their own ineptitude with extra paperwork to be processed and then stick me with the fault. I didn't see that the fucking class was not fucking dropped until it was too late. And then, AFTER I explain it to them in the Queen's fucking English--every last fucking detail--they still don't understand why I'm upset that they are sitting there playing fucking minesweeper on those machines of theirs. I bet they're so slowed by porn they can't even update the fucking class list but a week at a time..."

Jude was no longer listening. Evan did not appear to care either way. They walked along one evenly stepping through the cold, the other fighting off the freeze with his own unique expulsion of noxious fumes, not unlike the kind he had yet to receive as the Lord's providence.

"We ain't going to the town, We're going to the city"

2009-01-05T00:21:00.000-05:00

Bodie: what about the pawns, how do they get to be the queen
D: it don't work like that
Bodie: but i wanna be the queen
D: bode...the pawns just get pushed around by the bigger pieces. they almost never make it. that's how the game is played.
Bodie: yeah, unless they some smart-ass pawns.

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Love costs a great deal of energy. It demands understanding, patience, the recognition that one gets out of the way and celebrates someone else. I am utterly exhausted after my long vacation. Nothing too spectacular but that's how I like it. Home and then Norway. Illinois. It was so good to see those harvested crop fields spread out as far as the horizon would allow. It was also so good to see people whom I love dearly. Especially those who I see but twice a year now. But I'm exhausted and back in Boston where I get work done.

There is always more work to be done.
------------------------------------------

I've been listening to Interpol almost non-stop save for the occasional detour. I can't tell you why Interpol or why now...it just is. I've also been on a HUGE Milch kick. Watched all of his lectures that I had and watched all the behind the scenes stuff for both Deadwood and John From Cincinnati. And I decided to try to adopt his ideas about "resting transparently in the spirit which gave you rise" and "ego suppression at depth" for the actual work of philosophy. Get the self-conscious neuroses about being good enough--will the professor like it--is this even what I should be doing--get all of that out of the way and focus on the task at hand.

So far, so good.
-----------------------------------------

Pray for my WPS paper...I fear I might have no idea what I'm doing. But I might also be okay with that for now.

rest transparently friends.

You come at the King, you best not miss...

2008-12-12T01:29:00.000-05:00

Inspiration is a cruel mistress. And an ironic one at that. Derrida is what got me on this philosophy path for real and now that I'm required to write on him...of course I'd be tired of writing. Yet I need to write it. Perhaps more because of the thought that it evokes than for the actual paper itself.

It's a paper about mourning. It came out of the questions I had concerning mourning after Justin died. What exactly is this work of mourning that was so horrible and yet so necessary? I work through the feelings of narcissism, denial, and self-delusion. I am not alone in this. But the paper's generation out of the expiration of that beloved friend only marks it as a betrayal. The confinement of genre betrays the expansiveness of who Justin was, of the plurality of relations he had, of the entire world that he worlded that is no more. So I betray my friend by trying to keep faith with him.

He'd have said my paper wasn't that good anyway. And then beat my ass at halo...with grenades. Always grenades

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The Wire is the second best television show I've ever seen next to Deadwood. Arrested Development comes in third. The pattern that emerges from these three shows is that I enjoy complex plot maneuvers, fully developed characters, and deep content. Exception being AD which doesn't offer up the deep content but rather mocks it and mocks it well. I like my TV to make me think and not just be something passive. That's what videogames are for.

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

"Just because you surround yourself with interesting things doesn't make you an interesting person" wrote Ben Gibbard in Paste earlier this year. No, Benji, it doesn't make you interesting but it doesn't hurt you either. I like to surround myself with excellent things. Or at least I want to be associated with excellence. It won't make me a good scholar or a better philosopher. Won't hurt either. And maybe just maybe I'll get to come back at Gibbard with a quote by Ricky Bobby.

"I piss excellence."

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

There really are too many arbitrary new web mooblies to make hardly any of them matter to me. Sorry friends, organizing data just aint my thing. Give me a good book, a good cup of coffee, and a few hours to talk about the ideas that make this world such a wonderous place. DB is okay I guess.

2008: The year that kinda wasn't in music

2008-12-03T23:51:00.000-05:00

So I'm still in love with the music from 2007. It was a cultural onslaught unlike any year of music and film I've experienced. So much good, so much to be excited about. Unfortunately, this year has been a bit more stale. I've only gotten excited about a handful of music and as a result I went back to stuff I had missed. This was the year that I discovered My Morning Jacket and The Hold Steady despite their best albums being made in 2005. They both had records come out this year and I like them both. But nowhere as good as Z and Boys and Girls in America. So here are two lists...first what I actually listened to the most this year courtesy of Last.fm and followed by what i thought were the "best" records of this year.

Last.fm List
1. tie (Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago, Minus the Bear: They Make Beer Commercials Like This in Heaven)

2.The Album Leaf: In a Safe Place

3. Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes

4. mewithoutYou: Brother, Sister

5. Tie (Sufjan Stevens: Illinois, Pedro the Lion: Control, Headlights: Some Racing, Some Stopping)

6. Owen: At Home With Owen

7. Marvin Gaye: #1's

8. The Swell Season: The Swell Season

9. Explosions in the Sky: The Earth is not a Cold, Dead Place

10. My Morning Jacket: Z

I'm surprised at how many times i listened to minus the bear but that ep really is damn good. Some of these I swear I just left the computer running while I went out for the day...lame I know. Anyway, here's my personal list.

1. Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago
2. Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes
3. M83: Saturday = Youth
4. Broken Social Scene Presents Brendan Canning: Something for all of us
5. Deerhunter: Microcastle
6. Headlights: Some Racing, Some Stopping
7. Paper Route: Are we all Forgotten EP
8. Old Crow Medicine Show: Tennessee Pusher
9. The Notwist: The Devil + You and Me
10. Stars: Sad Robots EP

i think i'm a big believer in the ep as this list attests. honestly, the only music i got really excited about was the first two although m83 has been coming on stronger with each listen.

Honorable Mention: MGMT, Colour Revolt, Sigur Ros

The Culture of Life

2008-10-06T01:32:00.000-04:00

There is only one thing that I will say in regards to the political theater that was the vice-presidential debate. It is nothing concerning the policies of the candidates. Nothing about their demeanor or their body language. Nothing about vacuous answers or repeated talking points. What I have to say stems from something Sara Palin said but never elaborated on. At one point during the rambling-more-than-the allman bros.-never-pronounce-g's-on-the-end-of-words response to the question regarding abortion she said "we need a culture of life." Granted, this term is probably politically loaded, like saying you're "for the little guy" or that "Delaware does not deserve statehood" (it's a PA thing) but I also found it a rather interesting notion.

What would a culture of life look like? What constitutes culture such that it is not immediately associated with life, bios, zoe, etc.? If what is needed is a culture of life, are we presently residing in a culture of death? And what constitutes a culture of death?

To make an ambiguous statement like she did is not, in itself, a bad thing. It might be the only thing that I agree with her saying. But what this means, what this relationship between a culture, that is, something we make with others and life in all its permutations and levels seem much deeper than what is intended by making that statement in a debate in the middle of other commonly understood phrases. The ambiguity of the statement and its intention to sound good conceals the radical nature of a statement such as "we need a culture of life." It's that radicality which I am so interested in.

To say that we need a culture of life presupposes that culture is not immediately linked to life and also assumes that "life" is something that is understood (and that "culture" is understood for that matter). Culture, cultus, cultivate...there is a kind of non-natural creating that goes on in culture. It is not self-generating but communally generating. I cannot create culture. Only when I am in relation to the other is culture possible. That other may be the natural world (say a plant or squirrel that is angry at having his park bench occupied) or another being but they are what is essential to culture.

Life, on the other hand, is a bit harder to interpret. I will focus on meanings of life related to physis, or "nature" as precarious, provisional, and narrow as that description might be. Life, as I describe it, here refers to growing and dying, generation and termination, a process of flourishing and floundering. It is a kind of self-generating. More than just a biological (though not excluding this aspect) account of life, we can look to the imaginative, spiritual, social, and emotional accounts to round out this idea of "life".

If it has not yet become apparent, there is an entangling of culture and life at the very core of their meaning. Life is generating AND dying; we can have a culture of life and a culture of death. This has clarified this concept of a culture of life only provisionally. If anything, thinking about "culture" and "life" along these lines has problematized the idea of a "culture of life." However, if there is to be a culture, a creative and creating set of relationships, that is "of life", related to life, valuing life, emulating life, then would it not be one that embraces more than just an anti-abortion stance? Would it not focus on a culture which sees this process of generation and termination, life and death intertwined? Is the life of which this culture is a part directed towards the horizon of its own impending demise?

I find it difficult to understand how a simple phrase like "we need a culture of life" can clarify the present problems with american, or for that matter global, culture at large. If it is to be a culture of life then it will have a culture of death present within it already. It will be acquainted with the dead, with death, with dying and termination alongside birth, becoming, generation and life. I guess, in a practical sense, it is hard for me to accept the idea that an anti-abortion stance is precisely the very thing that qualifies what one might call a culture of life. What if a culture of life were more exhaustive? What if it included cultivating a concern for the biological world we live in, a concern for the emotional health of its creators and participators, a concern for the loss of arts and imagination as an essential part of education and critical thinking, a concern for the "culture of death" which devalues other human beings to the point where they are still sold into slavery, ravaged by famine, disease, and war? What if it included those things? How would that change your policy stance? How would that shape the way that you mobilize the state?

Yes, I think we need a culture of life. But we need one that focuses on more than just one issue, one policy stance, and pretty sounding platitudes that answer nothing. I long for a culture of life that embraces natality and mortality, birthing and dying, arts and sciences, books and movies, music and silence, solitude and friendship, peace and suffering and all the ways that "life" is intertwined.

I do scholarly things

2008-09-30T01:09:00.000-04:00

The year has begun officially for me. The amount of work I do now trumps any previous year but I, unsurprisingly, love it even more now. Anyway, despite being bogged down with Derrida and Plato's Theaetetus, I have determined that the time has come for me to begin to submit papers to conferences. That is, it is time for me to do scholarly things. So here, below, is my first paper proposal. I find it an interesting dilemma to think about given our current political climate and the identity politics that go along with it.

(On a side note: why are we not encouraged to ask great philosophical questions when the two candidates debate one another? What could be more needed than a mediation on the differences between the importance of judgment (Plato's Republic) and experience (Aristotle's Nicomachian Ethics Book 1)? I tend to side with Plato on the matter...but seriously, where's the questions about the importance of these "virtues")

Paper Proposal for Wesleyan Philosophical Society Conference 2009

Narrating Evil: Emplotment, Truth, and Human Suffering

The experience of evil and the human suffering caused in its wake lends itself to narration. The emplotment of these experiences serves as a basic human act which intends moving from a sense discordance to concordance; from disorder to the semblance of order. However, within this act of narration, one finds that the experience of a common life-world and the experience of interacting with the other creates the possibility of a conflict of interpretations regarding experiences of evil.
My question, then, is “what are we to do when narratives of evil and suffering come into conflict with one another and yet remain true?” Other, related questions might be “How do we account for the omission of acts of evil in certain narratives or the inclusion of innocent parties in evil actions?” and “What is the responsibility of the narrating subject to account for what would appear to be a conflicting or contradictory interpretation of the truth of events of evil?” My proposal for exploring this issue is to use the hermeneutic work of Paul Ricoeur as a guide for delimiting the act of narration and relation to conflicting notions of the truth of an event, determining the role of responsibility on the part of the narrator and the reader/hearer of such a narrative, and making a gesture towards a hermeneutics of narrativity that can account for both the suspicions and affirmations one might have concerning the truth of any story.

It would be nice, and terrifying, to get this accepted. But I hope I do.

The New "Old, Weird America"

2008-09-01T21:40:00.000-04:00

I've always been nostalgic for that "old, weird" America that we dream up in our songs. A land where people work harder than they should and stand up for others and do whats right 80% of the time. The rest of the time they are the connoisseurs of vice and perversion. The swindlers with a heart of gold. Hoboes, hippies, beats, punks, and maybe--if they're lucky--hipsters. They're all swindlers, and I'm one of them, sometimes proudly sometimes not. We dream of a world that never really existed and even if it did, it was never ours. I guess it's the romantic in me that longs for a promised land that isn't quite utopia but it's close. Then again, utopia has always been with us, always longed after, popping up in all those weird places that make America what it is.

There are a couple of analyses of utopia (Graham Ward and Paul Ricoeur in particular) that point out this impulse. It is most prevalent today in the dream of the suburbs, our idea of what the 1950's were like, and in political rhetoric. What becomes most disconcerting to me is that, as Ward has pointed out, the utopian dreams of "cities of endless desire" or "cities of eternal ambition" are dystopian from the start. As any urban hipster who digs folk and old-timey music will tell you, city living is no utopia. We city dwellers have become The Hollow Men. Perhaps we're not as desperate as these headpieces filled with straw, at least I don't feel that desperate, but I do find that the utopian dream remains.

Perhaps its not such a bad thing, to dream of the world as it is not. Certainly, the utopian dream can lead to a neglect of the sufferings of the present but it doesn't seem like the wrong dream to have. It is simply a different kind of utopia that I actually desire. It is the promised land of Woody Guthrie songs, John Steinbeck novels, and Wes Anderson movies. It is the "old, weird America" that Greil Marcus documents in his book of the same name that I long for. But it is the New, Weird America that I live in.

The New, Weird America bears a striking resemblence to the old one. Except this one has technology. Less hand cranks, gears and sprockets; more cables and remotes and keyboards. And the utopian dream still lives on in the new, weird america but it takes on new ways of dissemination, that is, new forms of distribution. I'll focus on one aspect of the new, weird america--partisan narratives.

As a philosopher partial to Narrative thought I should be happy about the way that people are throwing around narratives for their parties and how knowledgable about their construction. But my problem is precisely that which, I believe, most important: Content Matters. What the old, weird america did was create a narrative based on issues (at least from my recollection). Problems had solutions and you chose what solution you wanted. I know that I am generalizing and maybe overly so. What I've noticed in our political rhetoric, what angers me the most, is that these narrative swindlers spin their stories not about issues but about ways of life. My people, their people, us v. them, the people v. the elites, etc. On and on they go until they've made us suspicious of our neighbors. Maybe this is what they mean by identity politics. The problem with this, besides its questionable morality, is that it thinks that ways of life are fixed. But any student of history knows that the narrative keeps changing. Aristotle reminds us in his Poetics that action is what makes a drama a drama.

So when there's a farmer buying parts for his tractor on ebay and an urban hipster like myself listening to Dr. Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys without the slightest feeling of irony or anachronism, the narrative hucksters are dead in the water. Those narratives about dumb hicks loving their guns and porn and nascar are just as absurd as those narratives about the coastal ivy-leaguers with their indie music, art films, and smarterer-than-thou attitudes. Certainly, there are those people who we all know who make those stereotypes somewhat true. But to craft a whole demographic of people who are ruining it for everybody because they live a certain way, like certain music, movies, restaurants, etc. is completely bogus.

Sometimes these narratives are necessary; in particular I am thinking of energy use narratives. They give us a story by which to judge our actions and in the best cases, give us reasons to change. Here, in the New, Weird America, we can tell the most outlandish stories because they are true, Ivy-Leaguers do actually love appalacian music and farmers do have ipods. And if these narratives are good, they'll be big enough to incorporate both farmers and pharmacologists into their tale and hopefully provide us with new, weird utopian dreams to hope for.

Cultural Artifacts pt. 2

2008-07-11T23:10:00.000-04:00

Doodles.

popesaysitsgood #1

that son you planted grew into a fine tree

its a lot bigger than you thought it would be

The Cultural Artifact

2008-07-04T23:56:00.000-04:00

Right now I'm watching one of my favorite things ever put on film...Danielson: A family movie. Its hard to describe how a movie about a band I don't like filled with music that can be repulsive at times makes me feel positively joyous. Things with integrity do that. It's why My Morning Jacket's "Z" is a phenomenal record. It's why "For Emma, Forever Ago" by Bon Iver is a phenomenal record. Its why "Gilead" is a phenomenal book. Integrity.

Anyway, watching this documentary has me thinking about cultural artifacts. One of the ways that we construct how people used to live is by reconstructing the culture that they lived in. What books they read, what movies they saw, what games they played, etc. So I guess I'm wondering how would you use cultural artifacts to describe a specific place and time? Or maybe how you would use media and art to describe your life? The best parts or the worst parts or both?

Perhaps I'm not being clear. I don't think I'm clear about it for myself. So I guess I'll just make my list of the things that remind me of the best parts of life.

-"Torches Together", mewithoutYou!
-The Bleached Madonna
-Recording the last/lost Amnesty Letters songs in the basement of Young House
-Compline by candlelight
-Danielson: A Family Movie (Or Make a Joyful Noise Here)
-Arrested Development (as a whole)

Like I said, I don't know exactly what I'm talking about. I guess I'm groping at some feeling I have about history and culture and memory and the gumbo it's mixture produces.

Full of Tone Full o' Tone

2008-03-30T17:32:00.000-04:00

Some of you know that, while I'm not the worlds worst tone freak, I take my guitar tone pretty seriously. Debates about true bypass vs. active bypass not withstanding (i tend to side with the mentality that you need active bypass at the beginning and end of your signal but the middle is fair game) I have been in pursuit of a really good sound for a long time. While the amp that I really want is out of my price range, I've managed to gradually make my tone better. It's weird for me to think back to being at Greenville and running my DeVille's overdrive as my only overdrive. Or when I had that boss dual overdrive moded. It did sound good but sadly...it had to go in place of something far better....the Jekyll and Hyde. For a time I even used my Turbo-Tubescreamer in conjunction with the JK. It's what's on the Marcel ep and, honestly, I think it sounds pretty good.

Sadly, the JK has seen better days. I've been having trouble with it and it's to the point where it works only when it wants to. In the words of Derrida, this is not sufficient. So I've been doing some research...seeking out that pedal that would meet all my needs. It has to be thick but not muddy or sound too much like fuzz. It has to have multiple forms of overdrive, that is, it has to be versatile. And most of all, it has to sound good. I walked into guitar center today looking for a reverb and found them very lacking (why am I not surprised). However, I was struck that they carried a certain boutique overdrive pedal that I had been thinking about. Maybe 30 seconds into playing it I knew that I had found what I was looking for. Thick, versatile....sexy? Probably not but it sounds damn good. So I have now joined Wes, Chase, and Mike in being the proud owner of a Fulltone Fulldrive 2.

Yes, yes, I know I've committed post-rock heresy by not getting a big muff but that's just not my bag. Besides, bigmuffs are uglyass pieces of equipment and rarely sound good. But I'm super happy with the overdrive and am getting happier with my setup and overall tone the more I play it. for any who are interested here it is.

[Gibson Les Paul Classic-->Boss TU-2 tuner --Fulltone Full-Drive 2--Line 6 Delay Modeler--Digitech Digiverb--->Vox AC15]

so now that I've engaged in such vanity as writing about my pedals...i'm gonna go play.

Twentysomething? or If you weren't cool two years ago now you'll never be

2008-03-19T12:34:00.000-04:00

Holy week. Its about this time that I remember lent. I attempted to be more responsible with my life over the course of this season and what a disaster that has been. Perhaps disaster is the incorrect word to describe my "lenten journey" as it is so called. Fizzle is a better word for it. Forgetfulness, non-intentional, laziness, malaise...all of these are good words to describe what happened in a corporeal sense. Reflecting back on the past forty days, the only thing that seems to have benefitted from this attempt at responsibility is reflection itself. I have found myself asking "am I being responsible if I do X, Y, or Z?" This, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. Far from it. But the attempt was to bring the whole of my life-the mental, material, and interpersonal-into some sort of responsible practice. Did that happen? Not entirely. Parts of it did. I don't eat out as much. I'm more mindful of what I devote my time to. I ended up practicing guitar (doing scales and chords and exercises and such which i never do) which has been a pleasant surprise. I read more but that's nothing new.

Along the way of this church season, I became acquainted with this little internet based show called "Quarterlife". It's not terrible but it isn't an amazing show like The Wire, The Office, etc. What it tries to do is both comment upon twentysomethings and speak for them, er, us. That tends to be a difficult task when you are in your 40's like the writers are. However, their portrayals of what it means to be a post-college middle-class (white) American is fascinating to me. The biggest thing watching this show has done, combined with the Lenten accentuation of reflection, is lead me to question what it means to be a young white American male in the city. What does this time mean?

Meaning is a volatile mistress, provoking one to wrestle with the many possibilities, both good and bad, that any actions or times might have. So what is the meaning of being a post-college twentysomething? Where does one find purpose in one's vocation? But I guess the question that plagues me the most is:

What good can a graduate student in the humanities, specifically philosophy, do to make the world better through one's vocation?

Of course the philosopher in me begins to deconstruct the very question I've asked at the moment it comes into being. Why portray the humanities in a negative light? In an age where science abounds and technology is the double-edged sword that provides a myriad of possible connections and yet pushes us more into atomized existence...do we not still need to understand what it means to be human? Why is philosophy seen as such a superfluity (unnecessary discipline)? Is it not important to ask these questions of meaning, to question meaning, to question questioning, etc?

Sometimes, I find this rather funny blog "Stuff White People Like" kind of depressing. The entry on Grad-School is particularly unnerving albeit something of a truism (especially if you ever go to a philosophy party). Honestly, it got me a little depressed for a bit. And then I read some Heidegger and it made me feel better (how weird is that). But I guess the point of this is that the majority of people see philosophy as less than worthwhile. The concern is with something other than the history of ideas, or new ways of thinking. So it's kind of depressing when you find out that you're going to be studying something that people won't value near as much as other things. And yet, I am reminded that I didn't get into this world of academics because I wanted to be valued or thought of as cool. I didn't get into it because it fulfilled my need to have my intelligence validated. I got into it because I saw the worth in learning about the way that we view things, the way we value things, the questions of what it means to be human, to live in the world, to do the right thing, etc. I got in because I didn't want to be the kind of academic that perpetuates the ivory tower but the kind that as my cousin in the Navy says "breaks it down to show that war is not the answer."

There is, I think, a myriad way of living life as a twentysomething. More than any show or blog could chart or describe. Certainly, there are trends and funny quirks that are elevated over others but there are also idiosyncrasies that are untellable and inexpressible to more than the parties involved. And there are so many questions. There is the wrestling with the idea of "a way of life" that seems to be highlighted in these middle twenties that I"m progressing through that doesn't lend itself to an easy answer.

Identity, purpose, communication...all of these things don't go away as I move on. Some answers become more adequate, others are revealed to be little more than a mask. But I think that the comedian and philosopher Steve Martin revealed the best way to move through these questions. In a recent interview with Charlie Rose he said (I'm paraphrasing)

"Be so good that you can't be ignored"

Timely advice. And in light of the resurrection, there is a touch of the divine in those words. A rumination of what that means is for another time, but at least there is comfort coming at the end of this afflicting season of Lent.

This Picture Looks Dusty

2008-02-11T17:16:00.000-05:00

Lent is here. I never participated in Lent when I was growing up largely because the church I attended didn't practice the Christian year. There were three holidays that we celebrated with vigor: Christmas, Easter, and the 4th of July. So sacred time is still a relatively new idea for me. I started out with Lent around my freshman year of college (Spring 2003...man that seems so long ago) and gave up soda for a while. It was easy-ish and was combined with learning about the Christian year, sacred time, and all that those things entail. Now, however, my perspective is different.

My life, and I would venture to say that most lives, consist of patterns of behavior that were started, intentionally or as a reaction to something, and now seem beyond immediate control. What I mean is something like this: you did not naturally start brushing your teeth. You were taught and now it is a habit that is not immediately under your control...you probably don't constantly think "oh man, i need to brush my teeth in 5 hours" although I wouldn't put it past some people...it is a part of the pattern of your life. But this Lent, I'm stepping back from that pattern and trying to look at what constitutes how I spend my time, how time spent places value on activities and objects, and how this pattern of my life is a part of other patterns. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel like the pattern of my life is not as intentional as I have thought it to be and that it is crucial for me to examine what is going on in order to assess where meaning is to be found.

Automatically, my philosopher's ears cringe at the thought of solipsism, that is, of being all wrapped up in oneself. But self-assessment is not entirely about being wrapped up in oneself or being focused on the self before others. Self-awareness can be the result of the collision of egos, of the experience of other people, of other things, of different places, of patterns changing. All of these things are beyond control and tend to happen beyond any intention for them to happen. Being a shy man, I tend not to assert myself into conversations with people which explains my ineptitude at small talk. But conversations happen to me.

This gets to a bigger phenomenon I've noticed. Patterns of life that are interrupted beyond the intention to be can involve a kind of giving over of the self to new ways of living or behaving or even pattern making. In other words, when we interact with things that are different, truly and remarkably different, they can change our patterns of living. I am one who believes that the truly and remarkably different is to be found all over---but I am distracted. I am distracted by the larger pattern of goods and services that attempts to assess the amount of meaning my life can have and tries to fit me into it's pattern. However, this is not necessarily the best way to live. A lack of self-reflection leaves me blind to the patterns that I have unintentionally given myself over to or have imposed themselves gently on my life. This should not be.

So this Lent, this season of reflection, I'm attempting to look at the pattern of my life and see just what is driving it. What guides my movements, what blinds me to the remarkable and extraordinary that surrounds me, what demands me to value some things and services over others? These are the questions I'm asking, difficult as they might be.

One more thing. You should check out The Story of Stuff to get a decent view of what I would call the larger pattern of goods and services. It's a fun, simple little video.

It's not the devil in your bed but the angel on your shoulder that's causing you to lose sleep

2008-01-07T22:18:00.000-05:00

So this is the new year and my how things are different. I find it amazing and humbling to be here in Boston doing what I really feel I'm supposed to be doing where I'm supposed to be doing it. I am so much more aware of how blessed I am to be here and so much more aware of how my life is built upon the foundations of those who have come before. A trip to Greenville will do that.

I've never been more convinced that community is the most radically subversive and radically necessary element of human existence. Seeing all those friends together around a table sharing a meal and not needing anything other than each others company to be nourished. Rarely has the eucharist been so alive for me. Holy moments like a shared meal, a picnic by the dinning commons, a frisbee toss in cornfields, and the singing of songs, sneak up on me. Rarely do I realize just how sacred, just how separated from the mundane they really are. Nor do I realize that it is in these moments that come so naturally, despite being so rare, I am being transformed.

Why is it that around these people I feel like I can actually be good? I can be funny, and begin to become wise? Perhaps wisdom, not intelligence, exists only in a community of people.

Concerning the rose which blooms but knows not why

2007-12-14T20:59:00.000-05:00

So I have finished up my first semester of graduate work and I cannot be happier with my school, my program, the classes I took. It's been a very rewarding time these past few months. Although, I do miss my friends and I do miss the songs we sang and the chords we strummed. But, oddly enough, just like when I got to GC and felt like that was where I was supposed to be, I feel like BC is where I'm supposed to be for now.

That said, I have a surprisingly beautiful quote from St. Augustine which I need to share. It's from book X of his Confessions and sometimes gets called "Late Have I Loved Thee." For me, it's up there with Rilke. At least for now.

Too late have I loved you,
O Beauty so ancient and so new,
too late have I loved you!

Behold, you were within me, while I was outside:
it was there that I sought you,
and, a deformed creature,
rushed headlong upon these things of beauty
which you have made.
You were within me, but I was not with you.
They kept me far from you,
those fair things which,
if they were not in you, would not exist at all.

You have called to me,
and have cried out,
and have shattered my deafness.
You have blazed forth with light,
and have shone upon me,
and you have put my blindness to flight!

You have sent forth fragrance,
and I have drawn in my breath,
and I pant after you.
I have tasted you,
and I hunger and thirst after you.

You have touched me, and I have burned for your peace.

Do Anything Special?

2007-12-01T00:37:00.000-05:00

So papers are needing to be written but I have discovered a new addiction. Well, make that two. In the midst of thinking about differance, undecidability, the condition of possibility for ethical action within the intersubjective relation and divine economy, participation and separation, ontological difference, etc...I have been introduced and consequently held hostage by two shows.

[1] Heroes. I was extremely skeptical of this show when it first was advertised and because I usually worked mondays I didn't get to see it. Well, I've put off writing papers to watch the first season. I've stayed up later than I should to watch the show. I think the charm comes from a creative use of traditional heroic archetypes. The most interesting characters are usually those who don't have any abilities (the cheerleader's dad, the politician) because there is more to gain/lose and I can't tell whose side they're on pretty much ever. In some ways, it reminds me of Firefly

[2] Flight of the Conchords. can help myself. like i said before...it's brilliant.

p.s. you should listen to midlake.

The Curious Incident of a Butterball Turkey Stuffed With Rice and Other Assorted 'Fixins' or How I Spent My Puerto Rican Thanksgiving

2007-11-24T22:44:00.000-05:00

This will be a short list of insight (not to be confused with the tome of the same name by Bernhard Lonergan which i would probably use as a doorstop although who uses doorstops anymore?)

-I am allergic to Pennsylvania
-The train is exponentially more comfortable than any airplane I've been on
-Sometimes I miss Philadelphia but mainly because of the music
-Through a strange miscommunication I ended up being unable to drive and had to be driven around by my parents like I was 15 all over again.
-The National and Editors. You need to know about them if you don't already.
-I couldn't be a yuppie if I tried...I felt legitimately sick when I walked into Banana Republic looking for a jacket.
-I am really happy here in Boston. Much more than I anticipated
-Flight of the Conchords is brilliant
-No Country for Old Men might be the second best film the Coen bros. have made (next to the big lebowski...don't get me wrong, fargo was good but it wasn't this good)
-I am really glad I don't have a tv...I certainly get more work done.
-Speaking of work...I've got around 8 pages of a 12 pager done and I'm barely on the second of three parts...what is wrong with me?

well...that's all I got for now.

Passing Notes

2007-11-05T01:51:00.000-05:00

Man, there are some days that I really miss making music (how's that for alliteration). It's always been a communal thing for me and rarely do I make anything I find worthwhile on my own. That said, I've become more and more inspired by my artist friends. If you haven't heard the new Berry you need to. The song "Sing Out" is worth it alone but the whole new ep "floundering" is excellent. Nick and I saw them in Philly back in february and man were they tight so do yourself a favor and give them a listen.

They're based in Chicago now which is the same place as Enoch and Jadiid (Peter Matt Boll). Enoch sounds like...well I don't know what he doesn't sound like. It's passionate and beautiful and quite possibly the most honest thing I've heard in a long time. Jadiid reminds me of Matt Pond PA and has one of those unforgettable Aaron Appleton basslines that make me miss that guy a lot.

Hopefully, a great and mighty wind of inspiration will sweep over me and I'll feel the need to write something. until then, you know I'll be listening to stuff non-stop.

Other Music of Note:

Kevin Drew: basically, broken social scene without women (he's the leader or something)
Midlake: if you are not yet listening to them you are not worth knowing. The best album i bought last year (better than brother sister maybe...)
The Mercury Program: sound a lot like the album leaf but more guitar driven i guess.
Dave Bazan: I think he's the best songwriter I've ever heard. I think he could write anything.

A Good Day For Questions

2007-10-30T22:07:00.000-04:00

Perhaps it has something to do with deciding that I was going to dress like a grad student and not like a musician. Perhaps it was the autumnal chill that has settled (finally) in the Town of Boston complete with the beginnings of color change in the leaves. Whatever it was, today was a great day for questions. There are times when I feel the only questions I ask when I'm reading something or listening to a lecture are "what are you trying to say?" or "is this supposed to sound like nonsense?" Today was much different. Maybe Sartre is an easy target but his concept of the relation between perception and imagination just wasn't cutting it for me.

So I asked, "Is there ever a phenomena that exceeds the imaginative capacity of the subject?" Put another way, is there ever anything that presents itself to us that is bigger and beyond our ability to understand it? There are obvious theological undertones within the question but I think that there are non-religious phenomena that exceed our conception of them. Like another person.

That was my favorite question from today and, as most good questions do, it lead to more questions. So I ask this:

Is God a phenomenon that would exceed our imaginative concepts? Does God appear as a phenomenon at all? Is it through other phenomena that God is perceived?

Just Bring It Down From The Mountain To Me

2007-10-26T00:48:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about community and identity today (amongst other things). What does it mean to live in a community that would welcome others and yet maintain a sense of what that community's identity is?

I've also been thinking about this line from a Derek Webb song "new law" which I heard while listening to the Speaking of Faith podcast on new monastics...

(Shane Claiborne and the New Monasticism)

...anyway...the line goes like this

"don't teach me about/moderation and liberty/i just want a shot of grape juice"

hmmm....

Something New

2007-10-25T13:13:00.000-04:00

I thought that I would start something new here. I just got tired of the look of the old site...as tends to happen every 3 years or so. I remember changing the colors to look like a book I got for my thesis because I really liked the design...but now I need something other than green(s).

I've been thinking recently about what it means to be an evangelical. I can't find anybody with "straight" answer. So what do you think it is?

I tend to explain it in two ways:

[1] from the greek evangelion. It means good news. But it is also the word also means the gospel as in the writings about Jesus. I tend to see Jesus and the gospels as the hermeneutic 'lens' through which the rest of scripture is read if it is to be a Christian reading of scripture. As a result, this reading, and the tradition which follows it, is both the narrative tradition I am a part of and the one that I am also curious about. So the gospels and the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the hermeneutic 'lens' through which I engage in questioning my world.

In this sense I am evangelical (adjective).

[2] A term used to explain a large group of predominantly conservative, non-mainline Christians. Evangelical Christianity has it's own culture and traditions, arguably it's own liturgy even though it might not be in a published form. (Notice how everyone knows when to stand and sit during a worship service and how familiar the order of the service is and you'll be witnessing something of an evangelical liturgy.) This is the culture out of which I was raised and from which I became disillusioned but never really left.

In this sense I am or used to be an evangelical (noun).

But what separates evangelical as a descriptor from being added to some catholics or even eastern orthodox practitioners? Why would some intellectual movements (such as radical orthodoxy) have such an aversion to the term?

I have my thoughts on the matter...but my church history is rusty so I'm eliciting the thoughts of others.

let the great experiment begin.