Sweet one for a sweet one

My interpretation of "Such Great Heights." Originally by The Postal Service, though this version owes more to the Iron and Wine one.

Could you have more fun while playing music?

In through the back door

This is why musical semiotics is so, so, very fun. Such a brilliant idea to have decided to write an honours essay on it. Is it any wonder it's taken me an extra year?



Figure 5. Shepherd and Wicke's model of sonic signification.
(From Music and Cultural Theory. Mostly pages 152-82, but see especially their diagrams on 165 and 173 )

Why Anthropology?

"The famous anthropological absorption with the (to us) exotic — Berber horsemen, Jewish peddlers, French Legionnaires — is thus, esseentially a device for displacing the dulling sense of familiarity with which the mysteriousness of our own ability to relate perceptively to one another is concealed from us. Looking at the ordinary in places where it takes unaccustomed forms brings out not, as so often been claimed, the arbitrariness of human behaviour (there is nothing especially arbitrary about taking sheep theft for insolence in Morocco) but the degree to which its meaning varies according to the pattern of life by which it is informed. Understanding a people's culture exposes their normalness without reducing their particularity. (The more I manage to follow what the Moroccans are up to the, the more logical, and the more singular, they seem.) It renders them accessible: setting them in the frame of their own banalities, it dissolves their opacity."
-Clifford Geertz. The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books) p.14.

This is why I sometimes tie myself into knots with words

How can any expression be believable and authentic if it isn't qualified and self-doubting? (Somehow questioning itself, self-undermining...)

This rocks pretty damn hard

Such a massively gorgeous drum and guitar sound. And sheer fun instead of the dreary seriousness of so much 'hard rock.'

If you want to watch it within the youtube site try:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu6wJveSWRU

Donald's story

[See the last blog entry for background on this story.]

Donald was a pleasant-looking man, a visible minority in the context of an innercity Chicago shelter (i.e. he was white). He was almost violently inoffensive, in a world where so many are brash and prickly. He spoke little and kept to himself. He was part of the day program (something that involved doing some classes, volunteer work, and frankly, a lot hanging out and watching tv) without ever really being part of it. In fact, he was always there without really being there.

Donald wasn't well. The majority of the men sleeping overnight with us had some sort of problems with mental illness (and many of their addictions amounted to a sort of self-medication), but Donald stood out. It was obvious when you spoke to him. He was always very polite, but his words seemed to come from a distance and cost him some effort.

He didn't really seem able to relate at all to anyone else. He was completely by himself even while surrounded by people, and the complex social system of the shelter and the streets. There was something a little child-like about him, and people looked out for him – partly just by leaving him alone.

During my last few months at the shelter, Donald starting getting worse. He would talk to himself a lot, and smile and laugh. His personal hygiene slipped; his hair stuck up at odd angles.

(It's hard living in a shelter 24 hours a day for weeks and months on end; it is highly stressful being crammed in with so many people, and such a volatile group at that. I can't imagine anyone's mental health doing anything but deteriorating in such a place).

Finally Donald snapped. He went on a loud, profanity-filled rant where he claimed to be Jesus and that he owned the shelter, and threatened to cut everyone's throats. (Threatening people's lives pretty much automatically led to being temporarily banned from the shelter).

My friend and co-worker Scott had spent the most time with Donald, and he did what you are 'supposed' to do in situations like this. He called the police, and filled out a form requesting Donald be placed in 'protective custody' – this is for people that haven't commited a crime (so they can't be arrested), but that are sick enough that they have become a danger to themselves or others.

In theory, this would lead to Donald being mentally evaluated by a professional, which would hopefully lead to him getting some help, even if this involved getting commited.

In a way, this should have been a blessing in surprise. Living at the shelter was not good for Donald, and he needed far more help than we could give him. Now we had something more concrete than 'he's not all there when you talk to him' to tell mental health authorities.

(Yet as you do this, you feel guilty and worry that these mental health authorities won't do him any good, but you have to hope they will).

But the two cops that showed up didn't buy it. They refused to take him into protective custody, or do anything for that matter.

Meanwhile, Donald (understandably) felt hurt and betrayed because we had tried to do this to him. In his own mind he was perfectly fine, and I'm sure he managed to speak quite well and calmly to the police. He was angry with us and determined to leave. Yet all the shelters in town were perpetually full. We tried to track down some next of kin that could come look after him, but he seemed to have no one.

So he left. Would he even be able to survive, to look after himself? As far as I know, no one from the shelter ever saw him again. Scott was almost inconsolable.