Resolution: write

My New Year's resolution is to write more or rather to write. Here are a few ideas that have been floating around my head or just in this moment came to me:

Icelandic arcs: A story about Iceland and its people; the financial crisis; tourism boom; and society's shifting landscape. I'd approach these ambitious topics through a profile of Hadda and Haurkur, who own and operate Hrifunes Guesthouse and Iceland Photo Tours. I stayed with H&H at their guesthouse in November. I want to explore the tension between hard work and gambling: how H&H worked to build things, and in contrast how hot shot bankers profiteered from gambles that eventually landed the 300,000 Icelanders with billions in debt. The premise is that individuals, including those that head up institutions (i.e. banks, governments) operate by principles. Haurkur and Hadda reflect good principles; many bankers reflect bad ones. Most clearly, the latter ended up living large on borrowed money and dropping their debts on the likes of Haurkur and Hadda. However, now H&H are thriving on the unexpected result of the speculative investing: the weaker krone has precipitated a tourism boom that is reshaping Iceland's many contours.

Dying migrations: A ruminative encyclopedia of migration with a focus on extinct, perishing, hampered, and mutated migrations (are there any?). The unit of analysis here is the migration itself, the periodic, ritual journey of procreation and renewal. I'd build up from the journeyers to the journey, synthesize across journeys, and then delve into dying migrations. I'd interrogate first, what is the purpose migrations? Who journeys and why? What is the salmon's motive, the goose's, the whale's, the antelope's? Are there human migrations? Why? I'd close with philosophical thoughts, untethered to great thinkers, on the loss and mutability of things. 

Dormant connections. In the mid- to late-1900s, the University of Pennsylvania partnered with a technical university in Shiraz, Iran called Pahlavi University, since renamed Shiraz. Penn worked extensively with Pahlavi to redesign the university in the American model. Students and teachers shuttled back and forth. Professors collaborated. Pahlavi awarded President of Penn, Gayord Harnwell, an honorary degree for his work. Then the Islamic Revolution happened, ended the collaboration, dug a nigh-uncrossed chasm between the universities and the countries. I'd like to explore the dormant connections and the potential for reconciliation in the political dynamics. I don't want to harken back to a better era. The earlier intercourse rested on imperial, autocratic, and unequal foundations. The Penn-Iran connection betrays a similar inequality of flow, an unevenness, elements of paternalism and imperialism. It was beautiful but it was imperfect and perhaps it fed the discontent that drove the revolution. Nonetheless, I'd like tot talk about the relationship, current political events, and prospects for reviving the lost relationship between Shiraz and Penn and Iran and the US.

Notes to self

Sometimes I think "Everyone admires what in me I don't think highly of" referring to my higher education, my work, and my travels. But when I said something of this to my Dad, he said, "Society doesn't care about you," and a little later, "You're not different than anybody else."

My dad's observations light up how in overfocusing on myself I end up in the absurd. There is no society. Even if there were, it wouldn't give a damn about me. Nobody cares. My friends and family care but only in that they want the best for me. And if I please one person, it ought to be me; the rest will follow.

My dad pointed out how little I've committed to anything in my life. Which is too true. I'm a dabbler, a dilettante, a tourist of trades and travels. I loathe this about myself.

I've sunk years into toil that I despise. Is this my idea of how to live a life? Then again, whose idea is it? My parent's? Well, yeah, there's some of that. They convinced me to stay the course when I strayed from economics and "wanted to read more Shakespeare." Yet here I am again.

I guess I would retrace my steps, for the most part, not knowing where other paths might have swept me off to. I just wish I'd built up all the while some reserve storehouse of skills and knowledge that I respect. I'm very much an asshole to myself, but partly because I've let myself down so.

I must also laugh and say to myself, "You goof, you self-immolating, ass-backwards, self-befuddling son of fortune. How now this gloomy navel gazing when sun is for basking, seas are for soaking, soulful souls are for loving? Seriously, why so serious? Late, inherited Christian crisis mentality has you by the cobblers."

"Get over yourself. Looking within has only confused you; time to turn outward. Record, depict, shape, impact. Be as a child, new to the world. Revel in its strangeness. Look to others. Cast your net outward and find solace in action."

"Make a break. Start. Start small. Just do it. Things have a way of carrying you away, which is what you want and need to get back your self respect."

Technological travails

Life has taken a sharp turn for the worse. I've been in a Stop n' Shop for about 2 hours. Ideally I'd never enter a Stop n' Shop or a Walmart or a McDonalds, among other omnipresent, obtrusive centers of commerce and diabetes. Stop n' Shop isn't even all that bad; it's more a matter of principle.

Nonetheless, I ended up here. What happened is this: I screwed up synching my iPhone with iTunes and, since I don't have wifi at my apartment, I had to venture forth to restore the phone's operating system. Stop n' Shop boasts wifi internet and Starbucks and cookies so here we are.

Then when the restore was on the cusp of completion, the computer lowed an emergency low battery distress signal and summarily died. Devastation! I had to restore the blood sucker and re-synch all of everything and I'm mid process. My life resides on that devilish device.

All of this has served to remind me why I don't have wifi in the apartment in the first place: technology--at least high technology--does not by and large make my life easier, let alone better.

It does, but it doesn't. I must, as always, blame myself first and foremost. I am me. And I am not an adept, precise, or meticulous problem solver when it comes to technological complexity. I'm all thumbs. My neurons are wearing oven mitts.

I believe this is because I harbor a more romantic, synthetic, gestalt-based sensibility. I mean, I want things to work and be beautiful. I want beauty to surge muse-beckoned out of my pure and unhindered soul. Things should work, should they not? I'm no concrete, technological, engineering, analytical fixer. I can't fix a chicken sandwich let alone a faulty circuit or corroded whatsit. Thus, rather than master my technology my technology masters me.

This may be a tolerable state of affairs. It depends on what I'm aiming to optimize for: poetry, motorcycle maintenance, financial analytics, journalism, funk music, teaching, child rearing. What do I want, and what do I want to do, and what do I want to do well?

I need to iron out the factors in production here, because it's not like understanding the technical, analytical relationship between factors in a poetic form inhibits poetic expression. Perhaps the dichotomy is false and quality inheres in a fusion. Let's see if unstructured intuitive creativity will solve this.
***

PS I hate how Facebook pushes its push notifications and friend lookup and other crappy crap. It's basely procreative but annoying nonetheless. And YouTube commercials now induce in me a rage that's rapidly overwhelming any pleasure I get from the site's music, comedy, Ted Talks and junk. And what about the latest iTuneses? Insidious monstrosities that make me want to commit technical seppuku. Someone save me from these technology travails

I want to date...

i want to date a boy with cojones, pendulums producing forms that clash with the collective. a boy whose musk suffocates, whose eyebrows choke, whose knees cleave the warm soil. a boy whose ache for me is surpassed only by mine for him. a boy who demands but doesn't take, whose will shelters me and strips my defenses. i want to date a boy who carves me from stone, lubricates me with forlorn tears, erects a pedestal of sand at the sea's edge. i want a boy with cojones, who penetrates the pabulum, whose glance is a call to power and whose caress a call for peace.

inspired by ghostbongweedofthesamurai.

In consequentialism

I am a pixel in a
gray panorama.
My father was before
Me and furthermore
So is she.
But she likes me.
So wait, why gray?
Why not luminous rays
In viridian seas
Ribald reds
In Rothko's head
The absence of light
In the singular night
After all gray is made
Of multitudinous shades.

Twitter poetry will not be forgiven

Daybreak.

The burgher's bilious guts erase the dawn like too-much-mayo tuna salad.

Borrowed couch. Cushions are the bulwarks of arms.

Politeness is the cushion of cowardice. 

Somewhere, a feline feeds.

Nightbreak. 

Diurnal dreams disrobe in the dark. 

Mimes know not their boxes' surfaces nor subtle beasts their desires' insides.

Don't judge my crimes by the wan light of smart phones.

Take me out to feel the suns' rays.

Find your devices useless in the glare.

Demasiado texto

Quotations: poetics

William Hazlitt: "Poetry dwells in a perpetual utopia of its own." (*)

Philip Larkin: "Envoi"

The question of poetry, of course,

Is difficult: some say a poet should

Mix with his fellows, be a social force;

Others say he should be simply good;

Others, that he should be a communist;

Perhaps a scholar, even drive a van;

Or spend his waking hours in being kissed;

Or all these, and become a Complete man.

//

Myself, I think that poetry is merely

The Ego's protest at the world's contempt,

And that there are no normal poets, really.

Therefore, if as tonight, dear, he should move

In motions of spending and the acts of love,

He has lived his poem; all his power is spent. (*)

Charles Simic: A poem is like a girl at a party who gets to kiss everybody. No, a poem is a secret shared by people who have never met each other. Compared to the other arts, poets spend most of their time scratching their heads in the dark. That’s why the travel they prefer is going to the kitchen to see if there is any baked ham and cold beer left in the fridge. (*)

John Steinbeck: Tom wrote secret poetry, and in those days it was only sensible to keep it secret. The poets were pale emasculates, and Western men held them in contempt. Poetry was a symptom of weakness, of degeneracy and decay. To read it was to court catcalls. To write it was to be suspected and ostracised. Poetry was a secret vice, and properly so. (*)

Walt Whitman: Life...unrhymed poetry. (*)

William Carlos Williams: 
      It is difficult
to get the news from poems
         yet men die miserably every day
                     for lack
of what is found there. (*)

Halloween reflections

This blog was born on Halloween evening 6 years ago. I tapped into the coconut telegraph to despair at my own costume procrastination, to condemn my indecision. And the next day I tuned back in to describe the triumph of my last-minute genius. Against all odds, I'd done it.

Such has been the pattern of my achievements: inaction, despair, breakthrough. I am not one to stay on task out of some inner urge. My ambition, like my efforts, has always followed the law of eternal oscillation.

But I've progressed and triumphed apace nonetheless. Tomorrow I start a job. And at the same time I circle around to the central pillar of my Syracuse study: economics.

Naturally, there have been variations on the theme. I've dedicated the lion's share of my attention to micro-economic theory and mathematics, statistics and econometrics, and the history and philosophy of economics.

At Moody's Analytics I'll work on the questions and components of the macro-economy. How wonderful to be attending to issues of vitality, academic and practical relevance, and graspable complexity.

Becoming Associate Economist at Moody's is one of few large undertakings about which I've felt unequivocally positive. I believe it will give me structure, instill increased discipline, and encourage great growth both on and off the job.

The time is, as always, now. Happy Halloween!

Reading: Robert Skidelsky's John Maynard Keynes: Hopes Betrayed (1883-1920)
Listening: Daina Dieva, Svart1 "Incubi-Succubi"

Vampire Weekend's Contra

The proliferation of essays on Vampire Weekend’s obscurely-titled, new album–Contra–should surprise no one. The independently released album, by XL Recordings, is now enjoying the top spot on the Billboard Album Chart.

VW is the polemical double-debutante of the indie pop scene. It has an appeal like a fruity, sugary, jolly Tootsie pop – a glossy sheen of pop prowess, and a mysterious center. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Vampire Weekend album?

There are two ways to approach Contra: To achieve the elusive center, we can either deliver a swift and severe bite, like the peckish owl, or we can bestow lick-caresses, patiently and earnestly, while the musical dye stains our tongues.

Consideration between these two methods immerses us in an age old dialectic about musical analysis. Musicologists, academic and amateur, have long debated the merits and deficiencies of discussing just the music or, alternatively, the whole musical milieu.

Method one would be the brisk bite, and is sometimes referred to as positivist, structural, or scientific. It takes the recorded music to be a discreet artifact, and removes it from its social and cultural influences.

Method two would be the languid lick-job.This might be informed by sociology or cultural studies, and it would examine the history, cultural embeddedness, and mystique of the music and musicians. Both methods are useful, inevitable, and clearly complimentary. By combining the two, we balance the analysis and can dance around some of the common criticisms – that VW is preppy, elitist, lyrically remote, or that its combination of styles, including African soukous, represents a blithe cooptation of the authentic for commercial gain.

I restrain myself from going into too much detail here, because sophisticated and in-depth song-by-song analyses have been done elsewhere, such as this one in The New York Times. VW’s music is unapologetically poppy. By which I mean, it is mellifluous, lyrically accessible, relatively simple in structure, and chock full of memorable hooks and repetitive choruses.

While the adjectives “poppy” or “mainstream” can sometimes seem derogatory–and may be valid as such – Saul Williams expresses my opinion on the subject best: “That’s only a criticism if you’re a loyalist to the underground as opposed to a loyalist to good shit.”

Is Contra good shit? From the positivist perspective, the album is a collection of songs which are relatively simple, structurally, but that does not make it uncreative. To the contrary, the gentlemen of VW–led by singer Ezra Koenig–keep the rhythm and speed of the songs varied throughout, and the ebb and flow guarantee a strong level of titillation.

Contra’s instrumentation is lush and heterogeneous, representing the cherry-picked best of American, African, and English styles. Koenig’s vocals range from the strident to the spectral. VW also pumps up the post-production, relative to their self-titled debut. Those methods are particularly effective in opening space in their laconic songs for innovation and novelty.

For instance, the distorting, Auto-Tune effect on Koenig’s voice in “California English” is a refreshing embellishment to the brisk, purportedly Afro-pop sensibility. Also, check out the yelping skat on “Cousins,”–their first single and, ironically, one of my least favorite songs on the album – the strings and–what the hell is that?–harpsichord on “Taxi Cab,” the horns on the straight-forward pop-tune “Run,” and the African drum–djembe, I think–on the ballad, “I Think Ur A Contra.”  Then “Diplomat’s Son” is musically kaleidoscopic, and the most characteristic song as an appropriate analogy for the diversity of the album as a whole.

As we lick towards the full picture on VW’s Contra, it must be conceded that the underlying diversity of the album can be a double edge sword. It implies that, for every listener, there are to be some songs which grate or bore. “Holiday,” for instance, strikes me as sub-par in its redundancy, melody, and instrumentation. It tries for a British pop-punk sensibility, but falls flat. “Holiday,” along with “Cousins,” are the two most simplistic, poptastic, and repetitive songs on the album.VW balances on a tightrope of accessible and intriguing and can easily lose its sophistication and end up sounding sophomoric. Or, importantly, this is just the part of the album that appeals least to my sensibility. Chances are that some listeners prefer these songs and dis-prefer those I find most fresh and electrifying.

Lyrically, Contra is somewhat obscure, which can also be seen as arrogant or remote by some listeners. It is erudite on pop culture and redolent of international travel and American upper-middle-classism. One can be turned off by this, but I take it to be an opportunity for education and rich interpretation.  “California English,” for instance, is packed with references: to “Hapa Club” (Hapa refers to a person of mixed Asian or Pacific Islander ethnic heritage), “carob cake” (from a tree found only in the Mediterranean) as well as a high-flying geographic panoply, not to mention Tom’s Organic Toothpaste.

VW’s music is representative of the eclecticism of the contemporary age, what with globalization and the rise of youth-inspired cosmopolitanism. The gentlemen of VW are unbounded, like the wealthy youth of the western world (and, more and more, the youth of the world): internationally minded, cultural cherry-pickers, innovative about mixing and melding.

They channel the feeling of internationalized manifest destiny which is unique to today’s millenial generation. That they are somehow elitist and prepified is undeniable: they represent a cultural trend which is rooted in wealth and the inequality of international globalization. However, to criticize them for those external cultural aspects is to create an ad hominem, which has no bearing on the discreet artifact that is their recorded music.Those that emphasize the relevance of this fact, more often than not belong to and benefit from the same generational and cultural mold.

The fact that VW’s music is called “Upper West Side Soweto,” and derives influence from Congolese soukous is an object of interest, but more importantly, integral to the band’s commercial success. We do not care all that much what soukous is or what elements of it are in VW’s music. If we have dire fears of cultural imperialism, the hegemony of commercial capitalism, or the cooptation of the “authentic” for the sake of the “artificial,”  they are not reflected in patterns of musical consumption. We just like the music and adore the international flair, the sheen of mystery. Unlike the contra-revolutionaries of late 20th century Nicaragua, we are contra-nothing except bad taste and mediocre music.

Vampire Weekend has done a particularly good job of exploiting our (some combination of American; international; youth; upper-; middle-; class) omnivorous multiculturalism, growing apathy and agnosticism towards origin and authenticity, and our inherent privilege and prepiness, even in those who do not dress like Oxford dons.

-Note: Reprint from when I was editor and contributor at WERW 1570's student radio and music blog at Syracuse University. Contra was released January 12, 2010. My show was called Brad and The Unbounded One.