Cosmo-consumption: liking “everything” and meaning It

You will have noticed how counterproductive it has become to ask, “So, what kind of music are you into?” Invariably the respondent – as sick with this question as you are – answers, “You know, like, everything.” And they’re ingenuously and more or less correctly representing their preferences. There’s nothing wrong with this answer; the inanity is in the query itself.

Allow me to approach this question of “everything” from an analysis of “a little less than everything.” Despite my claim above, sometimes the respondent feels like reducing the field. Thus, to “everything” they might add, “… except country and/or rap and/or electronic and/or some other type of music.” By arguing that this sort of categorical reductionism is questionable, I hope to show the utility and veracity of the “everything” answer.

There are two reasons why I think eliminating whole genres of music from one’s repertoire is foolish: (1) ignorance and (2) hybridization.

Clearly, no person can catalog, interrelate, and understand the wealth of music that exists today. Yet, when someone claims that they dislike a certain genre, it is assumed that they know the genre. Consider quantifying “knowledge.” On a rule of thumb basis, how many artists from a genre would you expect somebody to “know,” before you would certify them knowledgeable about that genre? I think a lax lower-bound would be twenty artists.

Now try to list twenty artists belonging to a genre you like. This can be as vague and prodigious a category as Rock, Funk, Hip-Hop, Jazz, or Electronic – the genres I chose. When you have completed this challenge, try the same exercise for your ambivalence or punching-bag genres. For me, completing the first five was less than effortless, but I failed Country (miserably) as well as Soul (which I adore; see results below). Obviously, people  know less about genres they claim to dislike than those they claim to like. But, how can you dislike a genre you don’t even know?

My claim is that when people decide to narrow their field of musical preference with a categorical exception, they almost always do it in a state of ignorance. If the former experiment does not convince you, test the next person that evinces this behavior. Take them to task. Undoubtedly they’ll complain: there’s no incentive to know about a genre that you dislike; they’ve heard the music, they just can’t produce names; and it’s common knowledge, after all. Everybody knows what Hip-Hop, Country, and Electronic music more or less sound like, don’t they?

The answer is a radical “NO!” No, they do not! Even a person cognizant of twenty artists in a genre does not know the genre. Any umbrella category such as the ones discussed here is best characterized as vastly heterogeneous. There may be recognized pioneers, paradigmatic artists, and common technical elements, but there is no representative sound. Knowledge is scarce, and rejecting a musical genre from a state of ignorance is preposterous.

My second reason for rejecting genre reductivism is also illustrated by the exercise above. When you list twenty artists according to genre, you inevitably find boundary-stretchers and outliers. These are more often than not some kind of hybrid. Artists almost always represent more than one genre. Sometimes, they hybridize so weirdly that they do not seem to fit anywhere (this is common: I suggest The Books and Matmos & So Percussion).  In any case, all genres significantly interpenetrate and overlap. There is no purity. One cannot limit the contagion of an unliked genre by will alone.

If you follow my argument thus far, you should be convinced that reducing your field of “liked” music from “everything” to “everything but…” is a dubious and somewhat arbitrary practice. If you’re like most of the people I’ve queried about their musical tastes, you are probably much closer to liking a little bit of everything than you are to responsibly amputating swaths of the spectrum. 

This, I think, is one of many idiosyncratic and positive features of the past couple decades and the modern cosmopolitan, aesthetic outlook. Of course, it’s not without its controversy – it’s caught up in debates about the authentic, cultural imperialism, inequality (because ‘cultural’ range and sophistication are usually predicated on wealth), and a whole host of unmentionable post-isms. In short, lots of stuff to think and write about in the future.

If I am dogmatic about expansive tastes, well, one has to stand up for something. I am a fan of liberal draughts of trying and tolerance. Of course, I concede that one can be rationally picky or dislike something through relative disinterest. Nonetheless, I beg you, be wary. Explore a genre patiently, expansively, and with an open mind before you write it off. You may find that what you thought you knew was just stereotype and caricature and that what you thought you liked can be nourished and grown almost without bound.

See expanded text for "Super fun game!" and my results.

Words to live by

I recently noticed how much of my prosaic philosophy corresponds to innocuous song titles and lyrics (and a Movie quote). Although the implications of this are deep, in this article, I will not expound on how our identities are formed by the constant buffeting of structural variables. Instead, I will lay out a couple examples of this phenomenon for your perusal, and allow you to draw your own conclusions. As always, I invite you to share your own experience and comments.

1.”Todo cambia” – Mercedes Sosa “Todo Cambia”

I begin with a bit of banality. It is well known that everything always changes. Big deal. I agree, but don’t let the banal obscure the profound. It can be enriching, from time to time, to ponder the fact that everything we know is mutable and transient – perpetually shattered and recombined into new forms. The human order slides towards discord. Furthermore, one might note that what we conceive of as precious is invariably fragile, transient. To some degree, love emerges from fear.

2. “Everything In Its Right Place” – Radiohead

In stark contrast to the first quote, this lyric is about my personal quest for order. In my petite studio apartment, I obsess over tidiness and harmony, not in a feng shui way, but in a Stalin way. It’s not about energy flow, it’s about control: I’m a totalitarian about my body and environment. On occasion, jeans slip down to one or the other side of the hanger; anarchic socks and shirts scatter across the floor; food sours in the fridge; fingernails rebel intrinsically. In short, everything needs to be put in its place – it’s right place. And I go on organizing, battling fruitlessly as the dust accumulates with ambivalence, sure of its inevitable glory.

3. “I Need a Woman!” – Federico Fellini’s Amarcord

I know I’m not the only one who, when single, feels like roosting in a tree and yelling out an impassioned but fruitless, “I need a companion!” (VOGLIO UNA DONNA!) This is at least what the “mad” Uncle Teo does in Fellini’s slow-moving, autobiographical memory flick. I find his words appearing on my lips from time to time.

4. “Get it Together” – Tm Juke feat. Bread & Water from Maps from the Wilderness

TM Juke is a UK-based producer of hip-hop, soul, and electronica music. Bread & Water is ostensibly a rapper or hip-hop group about whom I have no information. The track speaks, to me, about the failure and insecurity that stalk all of us at one time or another – about times of despair when you feel  you just “need to get it together.” The song conjectures that we’re all prone to such moments on occasion, and counsels modesty, detached self-appraisal, and eradicating sources of negativity. Without abandoning hope for advancement , Bread & Water recommends being cool with the status quo. Although this is obviously easier said than done, this song helps soothe the demoralized ego.

5. “I Feel it All” – Feist

Far from a Buddha-like detachment, I routinely find myself walking on affective embers. At such times of emotional super-sensitivity, I may yearn for an emotional tranquilizer or an effective distraction. Of course, I would never actually dope away my sensitivity. I’d rather “feel it all” than “feel nothing.” Which leaves us with one of those ubiquitous Goldilocks conundrums: Not too hot, not too cold… just right! But that facile formula doesn’t take away the pain during the down-in-the-dumps days. Neither does Feist, but her message does contextualize emotional stress and control in the locus of sensitivity.

Acts of stupidity

Those who know me will agree that I am quite frequently full of tomfoolery. I'm late for engagements, I forget about commitments, I misplace precious belongings, and perpetrate an ever changing assortment of blunders. As much as I've actively and self-consciously pursued higher levels of focus and efficiency, acts of stupidity continue to be my M.O.

For your entertainment, here are some of my recent snafus and idiocies:

-Because I have deficient kitchen counter space, I do not own a microwave. Because I prefer to make my coffee in a French press, I regularly have cold half-pots of coffee sitting around that I'm too poor to allow to go to waste. Because I happen to have an aluminum camping mug from Ecuador, I heat up my coffee in the cup on the stove. It is a recurrent blunder of mine to leave the mug toasting on the stove until and after the coffee starts to boil violently. This truly stupid mistake was once compounded when I outright left my apartment, stove on, coffee cooking away to sludge. Luckily, before I had gone more than four blocks down the street, I ran into my buddy Don Everhart. During our courteous exchange of palaver, I recalled the mug, and ran back to extinguish the burner. By that point, I was appreciably late for class.

-Keys are like little parasites that have you by the balls (or ovaries, depending on the physiology) - you just cannot do without them. Unless, of course, you are willing to be robbed while never being able to access your mail. Despite how often I carry and use my keys, I am strangely little inclined to losing them. Instead, I leave them in the lock of my apartment, on the outside, for any random predator to purloin. This only happened once, but c'mon, for the love of god.

-The other day I ran to "the bean" - the "Cloud Gate" sculpture in Millennium Park, the Loop. Although it might have been 10 degrees out and snowing, that's neither here nor there. The asinine aspect of the trip was that I hadn't bothered to bring either transit card, credit card, or cash. I could have run back, but I wasn't planning on it, plus I was meeting with a friend for lunch (Harold's fried chicken, obviously). Luckily my running companions were more prepared than I was, and they paid for my one-way on the bus.

-In Santiago, Chile, I used to have a habit of getting on the wrong trains, going the wrong directions on the right trains, or missing stops. In Chicago, I've had limited reappearance of this phenomenon, but today I was heading uptown, and I needed to make a transfer. Two stops ahead of time, I galumph out of the train and then peer all about shortsightedly searching for the transfer tunnel. Of course, by the time I realize I'm on the wrong platform, the doors have shut forever, and I'm stuck, in the cold, waiting for 10 minutes. The kicker is that the reason, the sole reason, I was dumb enough to emerge so early was music. I was so getting jiggy with Yin Yang by Jarabe de Palo that I was exited out of over-excitement. Clearly, I'm a buffoon.

The eternal oscillation

From Jeffrey Gerres

Smiling is sexy

Smiling is sexy, but it's hard to grin,
When you've got an extra appendage,
Disconnected from its foundation,
By consensual sacrilege.
Intangible, parallel to the earth,
Full of memory, bereft of berth,
A bridge to nowhere, disused
Function, no longer fused
To another, it decays with haste.
The cthonian vole and sprightly
Chrysanthemum contribute imperceptibly
To its demise, reprocessing without waste
Once-merged soul soil now expired,
Reveling in love and life inspired.

IOU for borrowed music

Who actually pays for music any more? What are the ramifications of the free-marketization of contemporary music? I've always felt in my gut that obtaining music by Napster, Limewire, Soulseek, Bit Torrent - even potentially by interpersonal transfers - is wrong. Everybody knows that artists, musicians included, have to make that bread and butter. Downloading produces little to no direct revenue for the artist. It's stealing.

There are regular rejoinders to this argument. For one, artists find other ways to make revenue. Back in the day, artists would play shows to get people to purchase their CDs. Now that the latter is a no-go, do they disseminate their music for free or on the cheap, or look the other way because it is beyond their control, hoping that more people will pay to attend their concerts? Personally, of all the bands whose music I have downloaded or been given free of charge, I might have been to concerts for about 1% of them, or less. I don't know about you, but I think this is a pipe dream, an illusion, and a rationalization.

In another vein of complaints, it is claimed that artists do not receive revenues from CD sales; record companies do. This may be true for the big concert blockbusters and/or indentured servants of some of the bigger and more predatory labels. Yet, even before the proliferation of independent gigs and artist-generated and -managed labels, it is fallacious to say that artist's received little to no profit from record sales. Some did and some did not. Either way, both bands and record labels serve artistic and economic functions which deserve market remuneration.

Then there was the "I'm just trying the music out, man" argument, which really was always bunk, and which has been definitively nullified by Youtube, Last.fm, Pandora, Spotify, and listening stations at Best Buy and other music shops.

Finally, there's a technological determinism argument: free music or novel, internet-particular ways of dissemination are the way of the future and should therefore be accepted. If everybody's doing it, and it only seems to be becoming more rife, why not me?

I'm putting more work into convincing you that free downloads constitute theft than I had initially intended. I am myself one of the most prolific thieves on the interweb. I feel perpetually guilty, understand the moral cost of these violations, and hope to one day make amends. In fact, the intended point of this post is: artists should have remuneration drop boxes. Ideally it would work something like this: while poor, we steal. When we make money, we pay back. It's like an honor code IOU system for art and music consumption.

This makes sense given the current and recent historical inadequacy of protections on intellectual property, especially music.

Here's one of my recent acquisitions. Rest assured, the artist - Portico Quartet - is on my IOU list. I hope that by the time I've obtained an income flow, my drop-box remuneration idea will have caught on. Otherwise, I hope snail mail is still operating: I'll send my contribution to these Brits in the post!

Haikus

                                          solemn tea party

                              dainty pinkies rise over

                                               alabaster sea

sup-salubrious           
numinous, omnipresent
winterwonderland       

transitional state:                                    

gelid sensuality                                       

and stark aloneness                                 

                                                                                a-monkey-barring

                                                           we go lofting through the snow

                                                                                angelic swimming

Countless strands

Reflections on being a longhair

Shearing time = crying time. I'm like an infant at circumcision. Or now I know what it feels like to become a eunuch. Except in this case it's voluntary amputation, and its womanhood (of the strictly and crassly superficial variety), not manhood, to which I bid adieu.

In fact, I'm saying peace to nigh two years of identity formation. How important has this longhair aberration been? And why did I pursue this path, persist, and then finally decide to give it up? These answers are not altogether clear. They're bound up with my contested and mercurial self-appraisal. Allow me to explore some thoughts in somewhat-candor.

Social influence has been instrumental on my hair habits. I am rather impressionable. Consider this sequence of events: Between January and May 2009, three long-haired men entered and exerted considerable influence on my social reality. I respected and emulated all of them in various ways. All were longhairs. After getting a haircut in February, 2009, I wouldn't trim for another 14 months. Coincidence? I think not.

I have since fallen out of contact with these gentleman. I am in Chicago. Nobody I know has long hair; some people have come out in opposition to the institution. In fact, short hair is hegemonic among men in this professionalized, rigorous academic atmosphere. This has sown doubt where secure ambivalence reigned before. Even if people like it, the bureaucracy's impersonal regulations squash atypical expression. And I fear failure. Worse, I have not done superlatively on midterm examinations and feel tenuous.

Sometimes I think that abnormality and anti-conformist expression are normatively praiseworthy. I get worked up about aesthetics, art, and all forms of cultural and personal production. Hair and fashion, in this view, are modes of public art. Even the fruits of egotism can have positive externalities.

Sometimes I eschew ostentation, superficiality, and the hubris of special-feeling. I condemn myself. Special? Like I'm superior 'cause I have a freaking weird, pac-man pufftastic frizzle fro? Oh, man! What arrogance, what overlyanalyzed hogwash. I'm an unremarkable insect.

Cutting is part of my yearning for an elusive austerity. There was a time when I thought I should enter the army (Thank you, Robert A. Heinlein, yet again, for fueling this obsession which, like so many of other social and intellectual preoccupations, never became anything other than hypothetical idealism). Inculcate in me diligence and mental power, army, society, cryptic authority. Self-help-me. I am a lemming, leaderless. A sheep without shepherd.

Baaaaaaaah, shear me!

Of course, the hair was anti-sheep. But it is no surprise that social pressure operates even among the most marginal. Social norms, fads, and fashions exert and represent power ubiquitously. Thus the bumper-stickers disclaiming "you are so alike in your nonconformity" or "nonconformity is the new conformity."

Despite the somber tone of the text, I do sincerely feel that my hair exploration has been overwhelmingly gratifying. It was a means of personal exploration and innovation. I think I know me now better for the manifold experiences it impressed on me. Cornrows cannot exist independent of long hair. Nor can the endearing acts of the strangers who found the fro inspiring enough to comment upon or poke. Most nearly everybody was positive about it. If I want to be really optimistic, I could go as far as to say that I did my part to rescue male longhairism from social denigration, just by being a model citizen in action.

But what about the stereotypes? The drug-connotation, the inherent sloppiness, the air of oddity, the look of the 'douchebag snowboarder,' skater, or young punk. I was certainly ambivalent to this kind of short-sighted idiocy most of the time, but that still left space for me to be sensitive about it some of the time.

The internal debate ranged constantly: to cut or not to cut.

Then there were the prosaic considerations: the requisite level of long-hair-care and the fact that it was always getting into my eyes, invading the screen of my camera, falling into my food, and other annoyances. These things became severe only during periods of extreme length. They also appear to exacerbate my habitual scalp scratching.

Allow me to argue something of which I am not wholly convinced: it just doesn't matter much. Hair styling is a superficial and trivial variable. Furthermore, it is not overly determinant of physical attractiveness. It makes a difference, of course, and there is some favorable person-hairstyling matchmaking, which is valuable. But even exclusively in terms of sexiness, hair is just one of a dozen important variables. And when it comes to the symbiotics analysis, what the hair 'says,' recall that I'm still floating about in academia. I could have been successful here with the hair helmet.

Nevertheless, in terms of existential and material conditions, hair has become more of a distraction than a determinant of happiness.

I need to abstract away from irrelevancies. I need an influx of confidence. I yearn for an enlightened ascetism I do not have faith I will ever achieve. At least for now, I can stop worrying about the travails and dilemmas of hair, and focus on other forms of self-improvement.

Alien insect invader

It is not often that one comes into contact with an alien creature. With a beast so repugnant and otherworldly, whose existence belies any earthly explanation. Tonight I came jaw to mandible with such a beast. Train your eye to the image above to see the creature in question. Suppress your repugnance as I relate the circumstances of my alien encounter.

Consider the bathroom. Although not the most pleasant and beautiful of places, I submit that there is a special serenity to the bathroom. Not just any bathroom, but one's own bathroom. It is something of a sanctuary, a place of ritual and ablution, a place of utmost peace and aloneness. In a word, the bathroom is a safe place. Or so I thought.

This very evening, I was in my bathroom. I was in a state of Zen, brushing placidly, at peace with my surroundings. All of a sudden, to my shock and dismay, I realized I was not alone - I perceived a beast menacing me from the shower knob. If I screamed, you can hardly blame me. Not only was the illusion of immaculate security shattered, the agent of destruction was an alien creature of unparalleled repugnance. Having seen the artist's rendering, you cannot but agree with me. Obviously, the monster is not of this world.

Naturally, my second reaction was to document the happening - it's not everyday that one encounters extra terrestrials. It is thanks to this enterprising impulse that you are able to view the beast in all its glory.

I cannot look at her but experience a shudder. The obsidian bug-eyes, the mandibles, the sinuous, probing antenna, formidable carapace, and hairy legs. Note the amputated posterior hindquarter - most likely a battle wound. What kind of demonic, alien freak?!

Although it took only moments, when I had returned from examining the photos on my computer, the beast had disappeared. I suspect that it recognized my superior fighting capabilities and slunk off back down its hidey hole -the drain pipe in my bathtub.

I accepted the creature's capitulation, craven though it may be. I decided not to eradicate the beast in a horrific wave of inescapable water. Who am I to kick a living thing when it's down? Empathy is the supreme anti-sin, of which even insects are deserving. If my challenger has retired to regenerate its blighted limb, so be it: I will accept her challenge anew when she returns!

UPDATE (Nov. 3, 2010): The narcoleptic freak returned last night only to find Brad in full martial mobilization. I stumbled upon the beast apparently harvesting or sowing some unspeakable evil from or into my washcloth. I approached with a glint in my eye and she moved. For a gimp, I was astonished nearly to the point of defecation by her alacrity. You know what they say: you can't fault a guy for sharting in moral peril. After doing a somersault or other aerial maneuver too fast for my eyes to follow, our bitch (a veritable Grendel's mother) clung to the bottom of the cloth, batlike. Taking my life in my hands, I used kitchen tongs to sweep the washcloth and passenger into a bucket. Once inside the rabid roach whizzed about like a pinball in circles. It must be that she was dazed, perhaps by the light, for to have climbed out and brought the attack to my eyes would have been the work of a millisecond. Using the tongs to grasp the side of the bucket, I swiftly clothed myself in bathrobe and rushed to exit the building. Take a second now to appreciate my superhuman concern for species rights. Even in open war, I avoid murder. If I was muttering imprecations in the stairs, what of it? Admittedly, it wasn't very gentlemanly or empathetic to start screaming, "Get out! Get the fuck out of my bucket! Fuck you," when I reached street-level. As if in conciliatory response to my hysterics, the beast transported herself beneath a leaf. I picked up my bucket, and the battle was concluded. VICTORY!