"What really alarms me about President Bush's 'War on Terrorism' is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? ... How is 'Terrorism' going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles, that it's very hard for abstract nouns to surrender."
-Terry Jones, Terry Jones's War on the War on Terror
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Dancing About Architecture
(An Untimely -- seriously, it might have been three in the morning -- Meditation on Writing About Music -- and other silly things -- prompted by an essay on jazz I was struggling to finish)
Would a jazz essay be one you an essay you wrote -- improvised -- on the spot, without reference to notes? Or an oral presentation, given without notes? Would a free jazz essay then be a stream-of-consciousness spoken-word piece that refused to follow the tyranny of linear logic and grammar? Then a fusion jazz essay would be an improvised oral presentation with Powerpoint. A bebop jazz essay would be an improvised oral presentation given while high, and a swing jazz essay would be given while dancing, and a Marsalis-inspired essay would take itself so seriously that it would rob the improvisational process of any fun or excitement.
Would a jazz essay be one you an essay you wrote -- improvised -- on the spot, without reference to notes? Or an oral presentation, given without notes? Would a free jazz essay then be a stream-of-consciousness spoken-word piece that refused to follow the tyranny of linear logic and grammar? Then a fusion jazz essay would be an improvised oral presentation with Powerpoint. A bebop jazz essay would be an improvised oral presentation given while high, and a swing jazz essay would be given while dancing, and a Marsalis-inspired essay would take itself so seriously that it would rob the improvisational process of any fun or excitement.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
How to fall in love with old-time music
-Wean your fledgeling tastes on authentic (whatever that means) grunge, punk, metalcore, anti-folk or any other kind of music that values a raw sound and a delivery that's got some blood and guts to it.
-Fall in love with Johnny Cash through his American Recordings. (Listening to Willie Nelson's Teatro album doesn't hurt either). Repudiate your belief that country is inherently crappy (that's probably just urbanite prejudice anyways).
-Watch O Brother Where Art Thou? Realize how much fun the music is.
(Later it will strike you as just a touch smooth and overproduced).
-Watch Ghost World. Share Enid's entrancement with 'Devil Got My Woman.'
-Listen to New Orleans Jazz, possibly the most joyful music ever made.
-Discover Lightnin' Hopkins, the gateway drug to old acoustic blues.
-Revel in the aching beauty of the Stanley Brothers. They put the blue in bluegrass.
-Listen to Skip James and the Carter Family, the lonesomest, spookiest, most gorgeous music you can imagine.
-Dig deeper and find the dirtiest, rawest music out there... Son House, Blind Willie Johnson, and Roscoe Holcomb. (Mix Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson in to taste).
-Enjoy.
-Share with others
Specific recommendations:
Lightnin' Hopkin's 'Best of' put together by Columbia actually is. Check out Mississippi John Hurt's Folkways recordings, while you're at it for a really genial, wonderful take on country blues.
I like the Stanley Brother's Columbia Sessions, but a lot of bluegrass fans prefer the Mercury recordings.
The Carter Family's Decca Sessions, though the Columbia ones are also good.
The definitive New Orleans Jazz band was King Oliver's Creole Band, especially during the years Louis Armstrong was playing second cornet. These recording are also criminally hard to get a hold of, unfortunately.
"The Legendary Son House, Father of the Folk Blues" has been re-labelled and re-packaged various ways. The original copyright holder should be Columbia, the recording made in the 40s.
Roscoe Holcomb has a couple of recordings on the Smithsonian Folkways Record label. Start with the first.
Blind Willie Johnson and Robert Johnson only recorded enough music to fit on one album, so in whatever form and with whatever title you find it it will probably be complete.
Ditto for Skip James when it came to his original recordings in the '20s and 30s. Avoid his '60s folk revival recordings, at least for the first taste.
-Fall in love with Johnny Cash through his American Recordings. (Listening to Willie Nelson's Teatro album doesn't hurt either). Repudiate your belief that country is inherently crappy (that's probably just urbanite prejudice anyways).
-Watch O Brother Where Art Thou? Realize how much fun the music is.
(Later it will strike you as just a touch smooth and overproduced).
-Watch Ghost World. Share Enid's entrancement with 'Devil Got My Woman.'
-Listen to New Orleans Jazz, possibly the most joyful music ever made.
-Discover Lightnin' Hopkins, the gateway drug to old acoustic blues.
-Revel in the aching beauty of the Stanley Brothers. They put the blue in bluegrass.
-Listen to Skip James and the Carter Family, the lonesomest, spookiest, most gorgeous music you can imagine.
-Dig deeper and find the dirtiest, rawest music out there... Son House, Blind Willie Johnson, and Roscoe Holcomb. (Mix Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson in to taste).
-Enjoy.
-Share with others
Specific recommendations:
Lightnin' Hopkin's 'Best of' put together by Columbia actually is. Check out Mississippi John Hurt's Folkways recordings, while you're at it for a really genial, wonderful take on country blues.
I like the Stanley Brother's Columbia Sessions, but a lot of bluegrass fans prefer the Mercury recordings.
The Carter Family's Decca Sessions, though the Columbia ones are also good.
The definitive New Orleans Jazz band was King Oliver's Creole Band, especially during the years Louis Armstrong was playing second cornet. These recording are also criminally hard to get a hold of, unfortunately.
"The Legendary Son House, Father of the Folk Blues" has been re-labelled and re-packaged various ways. The original copyright holder should be Columbia, the recording made in the 40s.
Roscoe Holcomb has a couple of recordings on the Smithsonian Folkways Record label. Start with the first.
Blind Willie Johnson and Robert Johnson only recorded enough music to fit on one album, so in whatever form and with whatever title you find it it will probably be complete.
Ditto for Skip James when it came to his original recordings in the '20s and 30s. Avoid his '60s folk revival recordings, at least for the first taste.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Telling it like it is
Sometimes the best political commentary doesn't come from the talking heads.
"...if 'they' are protecting a religion of peace by doing violence, we are protecting democracy by betraying it."
-film reviewer Jay Stone, trying to articulate what the movie Body of Lies may be saying about the War on Terror ("Shades of Grey," Ottawa Citizen, Oct 18, 2008, F1)
"...[they're] rigging a game that privatizes profit but socializes risk..."
-cartoonist GB Trudeau (9 Oct 2008 Doonesbury)
"...if 'they' are protecting a religion of peace by doing violence, we are protecting democracy by betraying it."
-film reviewer Jay Stone, trying to articulate what the movie Body of Lies may be saying about the War on Terror ("Shades of Grey," Ottawa Citizen, Oct 18, 2008, F1)
"...[they're] rigging a game that privatizes profit but socializes risk..."
-cartoonist GB Trudeau (9 Oct 2008 Doonesbury)
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Caveat and Addenda
Further to that thing on Marxism from the last post...
1) The last paragraph is assuming either of those actions -- ending economic exploitation or dismantling just about all systems of power and exploitation -- is possible. I realize that's a huge assumption and nobody's done it yet. (Hunter-gatherer society is essentially free of exploitation, but nobody seems to have managed to return to that ideal yet, either by literally returning to the pre-modern or coming up with some postmodern decentralized exploitation-free community -- tantalizing hints nonwithstanding). But of course, just because something hasn't been done yet, doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
2) Marx didn't just create a powerful idealogy. He created a powerful ideology that was explicitly violent, and that bought into the idea that 'the means justify the end.' This ideology gave evil people a powerful excuse to kill and oppress others -- and believe they were doing good! Like other poisonous ideologies, it clearly defined almost anyone that disagreed with them as 'the enemy' -- the enemy of peace, justice, freedom, etc.
3) This was not just all theoretical. Marx himself put his ideas into practice in authoritarian ways -- witness how he seized control of the pre-existing communist movement, and especially the First International. The First International was created to unite socialists of all kinds and create solidarity between them across national boundaries. Of course, by the time it was done, anarchists, labour unions, and just about any other socialist other than Marxist communists had been forced out. Marx's main opponent in the First International, the anarchist Bakunin, predicted that if Marx's followers ever took power they would be as bad as the rulers they replaced, and commented that "Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice, but socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality."
1) The last paragraph is assuming either of those actions -- ending economic exploitation or dismantling just about all systems of power and exploitation -- is possible. I realize that's a huge assumption and nobody's done it yet. (Hunter-gatherer society is essentially free of exploitation, but nobody seems to have managed to return to that ideal yet, either by literally returning to the pre-modern or coming up with some postmodern decentralized exploitation-free community -- tantalizing hints nonwithstanding). But of course, just because something hasn't been done yet, doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
2) Marx didn't just create a powerful idealogy. He created a powerful ideology that was explicitly violent, and that bought into the idea that 'the means justify the end.' This ideology gave evil people a powerful excuse to kill and oppress others -- and believe they were doing good! Like other poisonous ideologies, it clearly defined almost anyone that disagreed with them as 'the enemy' -- the enemy of peace, justice, freedom, etc.
3) This was not just all theoretical. Marx himself put his ideas into practice in authoritarian ways -- witness how he seized control of the pre-existing communist movement, and especially the First International. The First International was created to unite socialists of all kinds and create solidarity between them across national boundaries. Of course, by the time it was done, anarchists, labour unions, and just about any other socialist other than Marxist communists had been forced out. Marx's main opponent in the First International, the anarchist Bakunin, predicted that if Marx's followers ever took power they would be as bad as the rulers they replaced, and commented that "Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice, but socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality."
What's Wrong With Marxism (The anarchist critique) or "It's power, stupid!" .
Marx is awesome. Seriously. A large part of 20th century intellectual history mostly consisted of working out his original thoughts, especially if you include attempts to oppose and disprove his ideas. His analysis and critique of capitalist society and industrialism is brilliant, insightful, and remarkably prescient (given how the Industrial Revolution was still in a... well, not embryonic but at least 'toddler-ish' state). But like a lot of other thinkers that graced us with brilliant, stirring diagnoses of the problems of modern society (Rousseau and Nietzsche spring to my mind) , he's wasn't so hot when it came to offering a solution. Which proves once again that it's easy to criticize, but much harder to offer a positive, superior alternative. (Please recognize the irony in me writing that last sentence considering what this entry is called).
Most put-downs of Marx are based on gross oversimplifications, if not misrepresentations, of his thought so why not add one more? It's also extremely dangerous to generalize about a movement as diffuse and resolutely unclassifiable as anarchism, but I'm going to presume to speak for anarchism here, and articulate 'the' anarchist critique of Marxism, (an act of almost unparalleled folly and pride). Here goes.
The problem with modern society isn't capital, it's power. People desire and wield power to dominate and exploit others, thinking this will make them better off. They'll use whatever means they can get their hands on: violence, hierarchy, institutions, structures, ideology, tradition, etc. Economics is a particularly powerful one — maybe the means par excellence, and capitalism grants oppressors one of the best economic tools of exploitation yet invented. It's all-embracing, insatiable, innately and constantly expansionary, and in a way quite subtle — much more so then slavery or serfdom, for example. (Though it's potentially less sustainable — will the capitalists manage to rule as long as the Pharoahs?).
But it's not the only way, and exploitation will not just automatically disappear if you eliminate economic exploitation. It certainly won't if you don't systematically dismantle all the other systems of power and domination in society. By creating such a powerful ideology (powerful because there's so much truth in it), Marx handed a excellent tool to those who oppress and exploit. The blood of a hundred million people killed in the name of Marxism bear witness to this fact.
Most put-downs of Marx are based on gross oversimplifications, if not misrepresentations, of his thought so why not add one more? It's also extremely dangerous to generalize about a movement as diffuse and resolutely unclassifiable as anarchism, but I'm going to presume to speak for anarchism here, and articulate 'the' anarchist critique of Marxism, (an act of almost unparalleled folly and pride). Here goes.
The problem with modern society isn't capital, it's power. People desire and wield power to dominate and exploit others, thinking this will make them better off. They'll use whatever means they can get their hands on: violence, hierarchy, institutions, structures, ideology, tradition, etc. Economics is a particularly powerful one — maybe the means par excellence, and capitalism grants oppressors one of the best economic tools of exploitation yet invented. It's all-embracing, insatiable, innately and constantly expansionary, and in a way quite subtle — much more so then slavery or serfdom, for example. (Though it's potentially less sustainable — will the capitalists manage to rule as long as the Pharoahs?).
But it's not the only way, and exploitation will not just automatically disappear if you eliminate economic exploitation. It certainly won't if you don't systematically dismantle all the other systems of power and domination in society. By creating such a powerful ideology (powerful because there's so much truth in it), Marx handed a excellent tool to those who oppress and exploit. The blood of a hundred million people killed in the name of Marxism bear witness to this fact.
"On the Origins of Art"
"Maybe urban people invented art to make up for the lack of beauty in their lives."
-(Me... after looking at another spectacular view of the St. Lawrence River, 2 weeks into a bike trip through rural Quebec)
-(Me... after looking at another spectacular view of the St. Lawrence River, 2 weeks into a bike trip through rural Quebec)
Life in a Christian Commune (My year at JPUSA)
The main thing that inspired me to start this blog was a desire to post this. 'This' is a paper I wrote in a first-year anthropology about Jesus People USA, a Christian commune in Chicago that I lived with for almost a year before starting university. (Founded in 1972 and now numbering around 500 people, JPUSA is one of the largest and longest-running communes around). There's nothing particularly scholarly about it, though I passed it off by calling it 'a field notes write-up' — basically, I just told stories about JPUSA and tried to explain how it works and what it's like to live there. In a lot of ways, it was just an excuse to get a lot of my memories and thoughts down on paper, partly so I could look back on it years later.
Ever since I wrote it, I've wanted to get it up on the Internet somehow. There isn't really anything like it out there... most of the stuff on JPUSA on the Internet is either material from their official site, or paranoid 'they're a crazy cult!' kind of stuff. I definitely am pretty sympathetic to them in what I wrote (JPUSA was good to me, on the whole, after all), but I'm also definitely not candy-coating anything. I hope this will be a help to those considering spending at time at JPUSA themselves, as well as anyone else wanting to learn more about them.
It also shouldn't be taken as an exhaustive, or definitive, treatment of JPUSA. I was only there for a year, which in some ways is a long time, and in some ways, no time at all. I'm primarily concerned by how JPUSA was experienced by new young single members, because that was what I and those closest to me experienced. Broader generalizations (about other areas, about structure, long-term trends and how 'things normally are') are at best how they seemed to a relative newcomer.
WARNING: It's really long! If you were to print it out, it would total over a hundred pages. Hopefully it's very thorough, too. I'm also a little embarassed by some parts of it, and by the writing stye in general (it was 4 years ago), but here it is, warts and all!
Click on the links below to get started.
Introduction
Part 1 - JPUSA's History ; Part 1 Endnotes
Part 2 - JPUSA Today - Structure
Part 3 - JPUSA Today - Social
Part 4 - Coming and Going
Part 5 - The Future
Afterword
Ever since I wrote it, I've wanted to get it up on the Internet somehow. There isn't really anything like it out there... most of the stuff on JPUSA on the Internet is either material from their official site, or paranoid 'they're a crazy cult!' kind of stuff. I definitely am pretty sympathetic to them in what I wrote (JPUSA was good to me, on the whole, after all), but I'm also definitely not candy-coating anything. I hope this will be a help to those considering spending at time at JPUSA themselves, as well as anyone else wanting to learn more about them.
It also shouldn't be taken as an exhaustive, or definitive, treatment of JPUSA. I was only there for a year, which in some ways is a long time, and in some ways, no time at all. I'm primarily concerned by how JPUSA was experienced by new young single members, because that was what I and those closest to me experienced. Broader generalizations (about other areas, about structure, long-term trends and how 'things normally are') are at best how they seemed to a relative newcomer.
WARNING: It's really long! If you were to print it out, it would total over a hundred pages. Hopefully it's very thorough, too. I'm also a little embarassed by some parts of it, and by the writing stye in general (it was 4 years ago), but here it is, warts and all!
Click on the links below to get started.
Introduction
Part 1 - JPUSA's History ; Part 1 Endnotes
Part 2 - JPUSA Today - Structure
Part 3 - JPUSA Today - Social
Part 4 - Coming and Going
Part 5 - The Future
Afterword
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