Political {Creation} Scientist

When I first heard this song, it was not what I was expecting from Ryan Adams.  My exposure to his work was pretty limited. I hadn't heard much beyond Whiskeytown's officially released albums, and none of his solo work outside of the singles up to that point, and what many considered a career outlier at that point Rocknroll.  I love waltzes, as I'm sure I've attested before, I also love stark piano chords sustained for full bars, then overlain with arpeggios. I also like songs that start bare and atmospheric and swell to epic proportions before breaking down into full-out games.  So yeah, this is a winner all around as far as I'm concerned.  You could say he out played Coldplay at the time, back when they were still a melancholy midtempo adult alternative band.  There is something else I want to express that this title is a simple segue towards...

Faith and Economics is an area where I have very strong convictions.  As a result my politics reflect these convictions.  The most important things I learned about Social Science, Communications Arts, and Theology coalesce.  Instead of delineating every value and opinion I hold I'm just going to do a little ramble using moral/ ethical concepts of a theological nature, and the intellectual applications of those concepts in relation to the aforementioned fields of study.

Greed, Gluttony Lust - a corrupting force towards evil - a motivational factor in economic success.  We are taught that competition is the key to our economic system flourishing.  Ambition fuels the competitive spirit, and the ambition is fuel by either a desire to assert one's self over the competition, or to acquire some reward.   The notion of putting limits on attainment, personally or systematically, is viewed negatively in our culture.  As a result the notion of unfettered attainment is promoted as a function of our system, but why else would someone want more than they could possibly ever have use for other than greed or gluttony?  Particular to lust, it's one of the more effective tools in persuasion theory, on which advertising and marketing is based.  As the saying goes, "Sex sells."  Whether it be advertising or the actual intellectual content of what you find on TV, lust is a pervasive tool to get and keep people's attention.  Why do they want people's attention?  To draw in an audience so they can sell time to advertisers, who will in turn create ads to sell you products. Why would you buy those products?

Vanity, Envy, Pride - each a corrupting force towards evil -  in persuasion theory, appeals to a person's insecurity about themselves, or themselves in relation to other are especially effective. Products and services are marketed and sold to make us feel better about ourselves and our prospects in life by either fixing what we've been told is inferior about us, or propping up what we've been told is good about us.

Looking at it what way, win prices for things go up, it makes sense than people experience some degree of Wrath.  Most people would feel threatened if there was something getting between them and the attainment of their basic material needs: food, clothing, shelter.  The catch is, our commercial enterprises have positioned themselves to present their products and services (and our wants) as needs.  Entitlement has been sold to us, and feeling rejection has become an intolerable pain for anyone to suffer, thus being denied is grounds for enmity between the rejected and those denying them.  Wrath is also a corrupting force towards evil.

All that said, if we are to judge a tree by its fruit, I have and will always, view our commercial culture as amoral and destructive.

As a wise king once said:

¹⁶There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him:
¹⁷haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood,
¹⁸a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil,
¹⁹a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.

~Proverbs 6:16-19  New International Version (NIV)

 If you don't believe in God, or Love, or Absolute Truth in some fashion, I understand that what I've rendered above only has merit based on your own whims.  To each their own.  This is mine.

There's Beauty In the Breakdown

It's always interesting to listen to music that takes on a meaning apart from your life experience because it was brought into you life by someone you have no attachment to, other than an appreciation of music as an art form or entertainment experience.  Imogen Heap is an artist that I only vaguely knew of by name, with no understanding of her work prior to following up on word of mouth, well actually word of Keyboard.  It was a pleasant surprise when I heard her work as a solo artist, and as a member of Frou Frou.  It made a few things fit together that had otherwise puzzled me up to that point, particularly what electronic alternative pop that wasn't melancholy should sound like.  It was a sub-genre that I'd been mining for 3 or 4 years prior to the release of Details (2002), Frou Frou's sole release.

Somewhere between Scarlet's Walk & Medulla I noticed a definitive move away from Trip Hop influenced production in the Songwriters I followed, little did I know a crop of younger artists were fostering their careers mining that sound, because it's what they came of age to, vs. established artists who embraced it as a matter of staying relevant, like Madonna for example.  The thing was, at that point in my life, I was discovering an entire world of indie rock bands who were influenced by what I would have called Emo or Math Rock 5 years prior.  I was immersed in that music for the better part of the Y2Ks, completely satisfied with its breadth and expanse, satisfying my listening desires.  To me, it was what Alternative was between 93-95' when grunge receded from being the only sound relevant to the press and public, and bands opened up to psychedelic influences, and electronic elements began to evolve past techno flourishes to become sounds unto themselves. To me, that was the prime of all those artists' output, and though great works followed, it was then that the template for my musical taste was solidified.

Those were years 17-19 in my life, so I was no doubt highly impressionable, and it would be a lie to not concede that the seeds planted in those years took me several years to fully mine, as my peer groups and resources changed, giving me the freedom to discover things as I shed ideas of who I was, or what was "for" me.  This is something that has continued, and when I was introduced to Imogen Heap, that was such a time.  I'd pulled myself off of Internet communication outside of email with real world friends for the better part of 10 years for justifiable reasons up until 2008, when I began to explore that mode of social interaction again.  My real world social relationships didn't have the salience to satisfy my emotional needs at the time, largely because I'd exhausted my relational clout with the drama I'd been a part of.

After Blurting my way through a nasty break-up I found myself with time and started making note of what was new in this evolved world wide web. I found many people struggling with transitions at varying stages of their life, and others comfortable in the flux of things.  The music they sound tracked their lives with was reminiscent with the music of a decade past that I wished was still being made.  The thing about wishes is, chances are they have been fulfilled, we simply don't know where to look for their fulfillment.  The key is to listen, and understand that our presumptions about what is, and isn't, are limited to our field of vision.  Sometimes you have to accept that you maybe blind to an external reality that will bring you joy and peace, if only you stop searching, and allow yourself to be led, and accept what you find on its own terms.

I've been saying "Change is the only constant" for possibly half my life, but that statement offers no solace or perspective.  We see what we want, and feel accordingly, so the key is not recognizing change for what it is, it's seeing the potential couched within it.  That is the key to having hope in otherwise despairing times. I have always taken exception to the idea that we need the contrast of pain to appreciate pleasure, sorrow to appreciate joy, but I accept that logic.  I would much rather work on a scale of minimal joy to maximum joy, with the contrast being between two positives, instead of a positive and a negative, but the reality is more complex than my whims.  But as I said, a large part of the challenge is in our own perception of what is and what could be.  Sometimes we have to lose our grip, have our frame of reference broken, before we can see things differently.  Ultimately that might be just what the doctor ordered.

"Sleep tight for me..."

So, I just woke up, after getting all the sleep I could ever want within a 24 hour period, something that wasn't a reality for me during my work weeks.  I've been waking up between 3am and 5am after going to bed sometime around 11pm on most nights, and that just wasn't getting the job done.  That's pretty much how it went down yesterday, save for the location being my Mother's house instead of my own.  I woke from a strange dream, meandered around, hopped on the computer, watched the GI Joe Retaliation trailer & failed a number of IQ and memory tests on the viral marketing Cobra Recruitment website, got my blog on, and headed for the door once I was clearly conscious.

It was frigid out, ice particles forming on all the cars. I'm not one to waste gas, or energy, so I couldn't be content waiting for the car to warm up or scraping ice off the windshield, so I drove off with a nice screen saver of sorts providing a seasonal theme to my field of vision from the driver's seat.  It was a nice uneventful 3 minute commute to my driveway.  One Apple Cinnamon bowl of instant Oatmeal and half a stack of Townhouse crackers with Fat Free Cheddar Cheese later I found myself dreaming of trying to get out and go drinking.  Those plans falling apart, I went about visiting my cousin's house, occupied by a younger sibling they don't have, that has never existed.  At that point, I may or may not have made a trip back north to my Aunt's old house in Pennyrich Farms. It's fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure that's where I was, in the dining room, when Lazytown must have come on, and my subconscious brain assumed it was a cartoon, since the first time I'd ever see the show would be when I woke up and it was still on.

My dreams sometimes serve an important emotional purpose for me. They clear the decks.  Whenever there is an irreconcilable situation in my life, by circumstance or personal choice by the parties involved, I've been bailed out in my dreams.  By hook or crook the situations get resolved there, and though the resolution isn't real, it's enough for me to wake feeling liberated from the burden of regret or disenchantment.  It's like my life is my own again, and not the feelings that have been eating away at me on some level.  The feeling runs deep enough that it allows for me to approach those situations or people with the weight off my shoulders and a fresh set of eyes.  Maybe I'm maladjusted to some degree, embracing this sort of detachment?   I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.  I mean, making time to sleep in is far more convenient for me than drugs or therapy, especially when it's pedestrian life matters that get me psychologically wound up more often than not.  I save those greater existential questions  for prayer and meditation, which usually gets the job done as far as quelling the stirring in my mind.  It's truly a relief to wake up and not be who I was when I fell asleep, but I have to wonder, am I more myself or more someone, something else?  Who's am I? What am I becoming?   Apparently, I am still a Huge fan of Tighter and Tighter by Soundgarden, which is the song I have linked and quoted for the title of this post.  That hasn't changed in 15 years, though I have.

Sleep to Dream

15 or so years later, you've gotta admit Jon Brion and Fiona Apple outdid themselves on Tidal.  I think it's fair to say she was a prodigy, turned prodigal...

Now, me, the choice of titles today was directly inspired by my subconscious mind's protest of my current desire to reboot my reality.  It seems to be stuck on the here and now, the pre-existing preoccupations, familiar faces in unfamiliar places.  I have these reoccurring settings, specific ones, in my dreams, some from reality, some that only exist in my mind as far as I know.  Last night's dream took place in this hilly part of some nowhere town that has the look of a bleak suburbia with every house built on this hill, with all their fronts facing the upside of the hill.  Before I was a home owner I dreamed of buying a dilapidated derelict two-story flat type house that wasn't too different than the flats you'd find in South St. Louis when I was a kid.  In the dream I moved from one to a shotgun type house that resembled some of the houses on Pierce Street near Jack's Apple Market on Highway 63 in Kirksville, specifically the one Sarah & Abrey lived in.  Don't quote me on those spellings.

Anyway, I dreamed of those broke down houses many a time, exploring their attics and basements full of cobwebs and insulation, always in disrepair. This dream, maybe my first or second as a home owner, had me there again, but in a smaller version of these houses on hills, more of a ranch house. What may or may not have come next, or before, was what in my mind was the California car caper.  Near my house was a parking lot, where I apparently parked a blue 60s corvette type car, which was conspicuously a nod to the convertible my exes' dad bought and fixed up a few years back.  Adjacent to this lot was a guy who worked on lots of cars.  I came out to get in my car, and there was a orange convertible that looked like a plastic matchbox car in it's place.  My ride had been swapped out.  What followed next was an odd sequence that involved a dramatic weather change, a van load of guys driving by with automatic weapons in hand as I approached some road house on a hill where a band was playing

 I ended up in what looked like one of the Lounges in the Millennium Student Center at UMSL for a banquet or Christmas Party, and everyone started singing a popular song, and one person was leading and I was determined to sing along with her note for note, at max volume. It was awkward.  There was an older gentlemen there, very stately, that in my mind was supposed to be my middle school biology teacher's husband, who himself taught high school civics, but in the dream I couldn't recall his name and he corrected me, to the effect of saying it was Stoudamire, which in reality it was not.  That was my dream state's haphazard recollection of another teacher's name.

I was also there with family, and even a few coworkers, thought I was leery to interact with them, because I have 0 interpersonal contact with them outside of the workplace, which is how it's always been for me since I began working. Friendly coworker yes, friend outside of work, no. The exception was Charles Rupert Rinehart, the elder of  the Rineharts.  In that regard he was more of a mentor, but i'd say I was a friend of the family, I guess that's fair.  I was a friendly patron, who became a friendly employee, not because I needed work, but because they needed a hand, and I think that is what made me more of a friend and less of a worker.  Besides, to me it wasn't work, I was doing something I enjoyed at a time when I was reticent to do what was required to fulfill my degree requirements, and felt no joy in.  It was a formative experience to say the least.

Well, in all this recollection, the main point remains: the last week has been trying. Times and schedules in conflict, opportunities evaporating, the impermanence of time being hammered home again and again.  The feeling of resignation that comes when you're subject to circumstance, confronted with the limitations of mind and body, time and space, leaves you with limited options for coping.  This was a week where, as they have in the past, vices seemed the quickest path to escapism, but I know they aren't escapes, just roundabouts.  Sleep itself, losing consciousness, the respite of choice for the un-medicated, eventually gives way to waking, where you are posed with the reality you let go of when you drifted off.  But somehow, sometimes in the most illogical and mundane scenarios they present, dreams offer some sort of relief, a loosening of tensions.  Not always, sometimes they can make the state of your heart and mind worse, but at least for today, I can say that I feel better for having slept long enough to let a dream run what seemed its course.

The dream ended with discussion of my moving out of the dilapidated house, furniture needing to be rearranged at a family members, my trying to drive the orange plastic convertible.  Those things are a reflection of my desire to accept the changes taking place in my life right now, none of which I planned, or were excited about, but they are happening.  As things progress I have no choice but to embrace them.  Life goes on, not always how I'd like it to, but so it goes.  I have to navigate it cautiously, and it never hurts to be able to recognize when it's time to move on from situations, feelings.  Fall and Winter are the personification of this, and I think that is at the heart of Seasonal Affective Disorder.  Slapping festive occasions over the top of a time period when our part of the world withers and people's health is constantly at risk, it does a number on some of us.  It just rings false.  I don't sleep well when I am cold, and when I wake up I am always worse for wear.  My dreams are bleak and turn nightmares.  I need warmth, in all forms, literal and figurative, to sleep well, and dream sweetly.  I wish that for everyone.

Frustrated...

To be honest, I only ever liked the bridge of this song, but I can appreciate it a lot more when I'm in the right mood.  It reminds me of Bon Jovi and Aerosmith but it's Soul Asylum I'm talking about.  The song is Misery, and what I'm about to say will make no sense if you don't listen to the song and read the lyrics, cause I'm not miserable, I'm just sick of myself.  It might be a lack of patience, simple exhaustion with the state of the world, my world. 

Regardless, I'm just underwhelmed by the things in my life that depend on other adults to come to fruition.  I got to the point where I just embraced my inner "No" and started withdrawing, textbook me, to the point where I just didn't have to be bothered with any of it.  The problem is, in getting wrapped up with others I lost touch with myself, and now that I've made time for myself, I realize that the things I used to enjoy because I had an audience, aren't enjoyable anymore.  They're just things to do. 

There is something to be said for the thrill of impressing and pleasing people with your efforts.  There's a humbling lesson that comes with the futility of being cut off from that audience and inundated with a surplus of time to yourself.  That's what it took to make me really like this song, I'd rather feel like I did back in 94-95' when I just didn't get it at all.

Not the Same

I remember trying to justify my appreciation of Days of the New back in the day.  It was always a slippery slope, but I wasn't one to relent.  Why, because of the album tracks and sentiment behind a lot of Travis Meeks lyrics. To be such a young guy he was able to tap into a world weariness that was beyond his years.  His youth was more than likely a major factor in his personal and professional missteps back in the late 90s.  He was a teenager after all.  He was also an ambitious musician, and this song is just one of the many examples of his ability to push the envelope of the aesthetic he created with the simple idea of what basically started off as acoustic grunge.

How does this song relate to me?  Well, as someone who's felt miscast, misunderstood, vilified, and guilt-ridden, I know what it feels like to want to be empathized with, validated, justified.  Finding an audience with your persecutors or victims isn't something that comes easy.  When people write you off, sometimes that's the end of it.  Sometimes that last cutting thing you say to them, is the last they will ever be bothered to hear. Sometimes that last whispered rumor about you that someone hears is enough for them to never ask you about it and get it from the horses mouth.

It's human to want to get your say, have your day in court, to speak your truth.  It's just not promised.  So, this song resonated with me at a time in my life when I desperately felt the desire to plead my case after years of people interpreting my actions, intentions, and feelings inaccurately, particularly in situations where I didn't have enough information to make up my own mind as to how I felt about all the goings on.  In some cases it may have been precisely because people didn't trust me with the information in the first place for one reason or another.  In the grand scheme of things I may deserve that for not honoring the confidence of others in my youth.  That was then... this is now, and I'm not the same... or am I?  This blog may be evidence to the latter.

The Loner ( Rides Again)

Where was I?  So, I love Neil Young's song the Loner, always had an affinity for the reputation Neil had for being a talented recluse, unpredictable and prone to wanderlust.  Stephen Stills was in many ways his partner in crime, equally talented, but possibly less reclusive.  Maybe just as much a hard ass when it came to asserting his will, but he could back it up with his craft.  When I bought Illegal Stills and this song came on, I didn't immediately recognize that it was a cover of Neil Young's, partially because at the time I listened to music in the chronological order it was released, a couple of artists at a time, so a long time passed between listening to Neil Young's self title debut from 1968, and Stills 1976 record (released the month I was born no less).  But when the hook comes in, complete with CSNY-style harmonizing it hit me.  The main arrangement sounds like it could be used to back action sequences in Magnum P. I. or the A-Team, but that hook honors the original.  And of course, the crux of the song is the lyric, the subject of the song, which in my head is still the cagey, uncompromising, contrarian.  You could argue that I saw that as autobiographical of Neil Young, in all his ramshackle virtuosity. He, the master of grooves and vibes, with a propensity for deconstruction, certain songs seeming like architectural marvels that are then imploded for the thrill of it, so he can then play with the newly formed fragments that litter the pit where the building once stood.   I saw myself in that, but not until I was older. Not until I was trying to become a singer-songwriter in my own right.  It took some strange and informative life experiences to get me there, which is saying something given what I'd already experienced in my life up to that point, so I better get back to that.

Once I literally got back on my feet after my surgery, I remember reading Lord of the Flies in English class, and nothing could have been more topical and timely for me.  I tried to figure out where I would fit into that story, how my personality would assimilate into that situation. That in turn made me think of how I fit into the social groups that existed in that class. I didn't. I moved into that school district in 5th grade, so all the would-be friends I met had pretty much established their childhood peer groups. I found a place over time, but then our small group was bused to the other side of the district as a minority among all the kids from that side of the county who'd gone to school with each other, at larger elementary schools. By the time we entered high school we had gotten to know a lot of these kids, for better or worse, and then had to endure the upperclassmen. So making it through the isolation of my post-op experiences in the wheel chair and trying to rehabilitate my social life primed me for some sort of transformation, then the death of several people I looked up to steeled my resolve to find myself and have some altruistic purpose in my existence, which I had lost clear sight of since my childhood.

By the time I was finishing High School I'd come to realize the magnitude of my own psychological shortcomings, and was ready to do what was necessary to overcome them, even if it meant being vulnerable. I was finally content with rejection, emboldened by fully accepting the idea of being an outcast.  It was easy for me, I'd developed the expectation of rejection as part of the particular Christian ministry I'd been exposed to.  The parts of  my identity that didn't prosper me were discarded.  I was self-righteous and conflicted, severely alienated, and found myself going off to college with no friends in tow, having fallen out with my best friend by nature of being perpetually indignant towards each other.  So college was a new beginning, in an entirely new environment, full of possibilities, including ample opportunities to be disappointed with and by situations, and personality types I'd never dealt with before. And so it went.

Essentially, what was at issue was, I truly was all over the place, interested in so many things, that I refused to conform, and instead isolated myself  and compartmentalized aspects of myself so I could have the freedom to pursue those interests and dedicate myself to them in my own time, in my own way.  I was undiplomatic and didn't want to do anything on anyone's terms if I felt that compromised my own state of well-being.  I was always one or two things shy of being able to fit into a social circle.  My attempts to reconcile contradictory values were always a year or two too early, such that things I was searching for in culture and community hadn't evolved enough so those I knew at the time felt it belonged in their diet for cultural consumption.  I willfully and vocally celebrated these things when they came to pass, but usually all I did was bias my friends against them by overselling whatever it was I thought was the best thing since whatever the last best thing was.

A lot of this was my effort to cope with the deaths of friends and family, and an inability to broach those subjects with anyone close to me, and no desire to self-medicate with anything other than music and media.  This was all part and parcel with the fragmentation and dissolution of my peer groups over time each passing year as a meandering undergrad.  By the time I was finished with college I was known-of by many, known by few, and faced with the reality that the new friends I'd made on somewhat my own terms, weren't going to be anywhere near me when school was over as far as I was concerned.  No job, no car, no long distance phone, no internet, just USPS.  I was going to be isolated even more than ever, especially since my family have moved my freshmen year of college and I would now be in what I felt was a remote part of the greater St. Louis Area, as far as I was concerned, with no means to escape. And that's when I began to focus on my songwriting, exploring my psychological and spiritual state, and how I felt about the world.  That's when I made an effort to become a performer, and embraced social engagement as a means to an end, and accepted that being social was going to be a skill I had more than a desire I would pursue.  I'd been bred by circumstance, and on some level, my personality, to accept isolation could potentially be the predominant condition of my existence.

I'd come full circle, thinking back to Robin Williams as Popeye when I was oh so young.  My convictions took roots, and it became easier to express them, and easier to accept that others would reject them.  It was enough that I held them, validation was nice, but not necessary. I knew better than to bank my peace on the world embracing what I might have felt was sound judgement and altruistically good.  My experience paralleled the rise of entitlement culture, the advancement of cultural and generational pluralism and isolation for the purpose of marketing. Society has been evolving to serve the market place, and nothing serves the market place greater than individual attainment trumping communal ownership and sharing.

If everyone wants everything for themselves on their own terms, we have to expend more to acquire it, which means those providing the things we all want will profit from our expenditures.  By fostering a culture where everyone has to have their own something or another Demand increases, which allows for price increases.  It's simple supply and demand. It's social science, and as I have aged, I have learned to see that the social factors that have influenced my life along the way were a product of the prevailing culture influencing the people in my life and myself just as much as any personality quirks we had.  I don't know if anything alienated me more than studying Sociology, Anthropology, and Communications, but to the credit of those fields, they pulled the veil back on just what has been and continues to be done to persuade and influence people's perceptions and behaviors towards their circumstances, and each other.  This realization makes all the dysfunction I see make sense.  It informs my notion of Evil, the power of Sin, it allows me to look at humanity with a even keel.  It tempers any misanthropy I may suffer with the knowledge that there are social mechanisms in place that are served by promoting alienation and insecurity, and unfortunately they have co-opted many of the efforts to undermine them, turning them into alienated commodities, or marginalizing them by polarizing the rhetoric.  But beyond all the philosophical and theoretical analysis, I am still a human being, who more often than not, by virtue of the vessel my consciousness is housed in, and the things I have experienced, feels on the outside looking in, with no desire to pretend to feel otherwise, especially when that feeling is reinforced so regularly.  But you know, the person who doesn't fit in anywhere, knows their place everywhere.