Hidden messages?
Tonight I am cleaning my room. Doing my laundry. Sorting out my old emails. Reminding myself who I haven't been in touch with for awhile, and planning to change that. Listening to Malian music by Tani Diakite. Spacing out. Planning what to pack for Paris. Looking for the hidden messages in things. Pondering a random trip to New Zealand. Thinking about stuff differently.
I rode down to the bike shop today to get a water bottle and holder, my own tire pump, and a different shim to fasten my lock to my bike. Then I rode home and installed or otherwise employed these various devices. I enjoyed the physicality of it; I've been lost lately in abstractions, both philosophical and technological. It's good, sometimes, to see a thing with your eyes, touch it with your hands.
It struck me today how tragic and disappointing it is that our culture has turned the making of music into an economic undertaking instead of an artistic one. There is a certain class of "musician" we've invented whose intention is not to make music, but to make a career out of the making of music. True music is a natural product of bright souls living; it is the blood of culture that must be shared with everyone, to nourish their hearts. Only when it becomes a tool to make profit do things like piracy even have meaning, and then it is not art which is being pirated, not living blood, but dead skin.
I occasionally have existential crises involving the different people throughout recent history who have borne my name. There was, for example, this fellow in Minneapolis circa 1999 who had the same name as me. He had some neat ideas, and I do think fondly of him, but we have a hard time finding any really solid connection. Another guy down here in Madison just last July, we even had the same birthday. Creepy. We had some good times, actually.. he's definitely got a good view of things, he just had some issues to work out in practice. Hope he's doing well, though. Anyway, part of the problem is, I can never nail down when they each begin and end. It's like they run together, one into the next, except they're so distinctly different. Then I realize that I don't even know when I began, exactly, or when I'll case to be, or who will be next. Very disorienting.
On a less cerebral note, I am getting more excited about moving back to Minneapolis. It'll be a chance to break some habits, start new ones; a little disruptive eddy in the current of my life that I can try to catch and ride to some new places. Very exciting. It's not that I wasn't excited before, it's just.. these things come slowly to me. Even after I've discerned the right path, it still takes time to really understand why it was the right path. But I'm starting to get it now, and I'm basking in the tranquility of it.
Blogs are inherently self-aggrandizing. This doesn't make them bad; Western culture typically frowns upon self-promotion or the expression of self-importance, but would disintigrate if its people began earnestly living by selfless philosophies. The blog becomes, then, a sort of perverse indulgence of self-centrism, an accepted outlet for the underlying faith of each individual in their own principality. Blog writing styles reflect this in the frequency of the first person; a blog loses its natural flow when the first person is avoided, because the reader expects a certain self-centrality of the text and is jarred by its absence. For example, note the pattern of the previous five paragraphs; in each one, the first person is referenced within the first sentence, in all but one case within the first three words. In fact, over 80% of the complete thoughts expressed in those paragraphs contain an implicit or explicit first person pronoun.
Which is to say, I'm wanking.
But that's okay, because that's exactly what blogs are for, and you wouldn't be here if you didn't want to read the result. I am vindicated by the contract of your expectations.
My laundry is now done, my emails sorted, my plans (for the moment) made, my space outed. Next, a hot shower, some food, and maybe a phone call. Then Paris for a week.
(Worry not, I know how spoiled I am.)
I rode down to the bike shop today to get a water bottle and holder, my own tire pump, and a different shim to fasten my lock to my bike. Then I rode home and installed or otherwise employed these various devices. I enjoyed the physicality of it; I've been lost lately in abstractions, both philosophical and technological. It's good, sometimes, to see a thing with your eyes, touch it with your hands.
It struck me today how tragic and disappointing it is that our culture has turned the making of music into an economic undertaking instead of an artistic one. There is a certain class of "musician" we've invented whose intention is not to make music, but to make a career out of the making of music. True music is a natural product of bright souls living; it is the blood of culture that must be shared with everyone, to nourish their hearts. Only when it becomes a tool to make profit do things like piracy even have meaning, and then it is not art which is being pirated, not living blood, but dead skin.
I occasionally have existential crises involving the different people throughout recent history who have borne my name. There was, for example, this fellow in Minneapolis circa 1999 who had the same name as me. He had some neat ideas, and I do think fondly of him, but we have a hard time finding any really solid connection. Another guy down here in Madison just last July, we even had the same birthday. Creepy. We had some good times, actually.. he's definitely got a good view of things, he just had some issues to work out in practice. Hope he's doing well, though. Anyway, part of the problem is, I can never nail down when they each begin and end. It's like they run together, one into the next, except they're so distinctly different. Then I realize that I don't even know when I began, exactly, or when I'll case to be, or who will be next. Very disorienting.
On a less cerebral note, I am getting more excited about moving back to Minneapolis. It'll be a chance to break some habits, start new ones; a little disruptive eddy in the current of my life that I can try to catch and ride to some new places. Very exciting. It's not that I wasn't excited before, it's just.. these things come slowly to me. Even after I've discerned the right path, it still takes time to really understand why it was the right path. But I'm starting to get it now, and I'm basking in the tranquility of it.
Blogs are inherently self-aggrandizing. This doesn't make them bad; Western culture typically frowns upon self-promotion or the expression of self-importance, but would disintigrate if its people began earnestly living by selfless philosophies. The blog becomes, then, a sort of perverse indulgence of self-centrism, an accepted outlet for the underlying faith of each individual in their own principality. Blog writing styles reflect this in the frequency of the first person; a blog loses its natural flow when the first person is avoided, because the reader expects a certain self-centrality of the text and is jarred by its absence. For example, note the pattern of the previous five paragraphs; in each one, the first person is referenced within the first sentence, in all but one case within the first three words. In fact, over 80% of the complete thoughts expressed in those paragraphs contain an implicit or explicit first person pronoun.
Which is to say, I'm wanking.
But that's okay, because that's exactly what blogs are for, and you wouldn't be here if you didn't want to read the result. I am vindicated by the contract of your expectations.
My laundry is now done, my emails sorted, my plans (for the moment) made, my space outed. Next, a hot shower, some food, and maybe a phone call. Then Paris for a week.
(Worry not, I know how spoiled I am.)
posted by a at
8:15 PM
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