Designs

I mark my post-graduate life in this brave new world by eras of employment, or lack thereof. There was Unemployment I, which was the three months immediately after getting my diploma. There was The Retail Era, where I gave up on finding a "real" job and decided I just needed money to continue my search. There was the Production Assistant Era which was really just 10 days before I rationalized my way out of that plan. There was The Golden Internship Era, where I worked at a magazine for 6 months in what was probably the coolest thing I've ever done.

The longest era, the longest thing I had ever done since graduation, came in at just under 10 months: Unemployment II, the period of dark nothing that came after my internship. I don't have any explanation as to why it lasted so long. It's like asking a man why he was drowning for so long -- because he can't swim and that's how long it took until he caught a line. I was about to crack, again, and had lined up a food service interview right before I picked up a pretty decent administrative job. I am typing at a coffee shop across the street from work, passing time while the freeways clear up. 

"Pretty Decent" is probably the best way to describe it. It's not inspiring work, but it is challenging in the way that everything is an unending logic puzzle. Although I've been here for 3 months, I don't yet feel like a hot shot wiz kid, which is something that's happened in some capacity everywhere else I've worked. I haven't proven myself to be invaluable in some specific way. The pay is completely acceptable, more than I've ever been paid, and is allowing me to not just buy things, but to save and build towards things. 

This is, by all accounts, what I wanted. Something far enough away from home to make moving a requirement. Something, if not in my chosen field, that is within my capabilities but doesn't kill my soul. At the worst of Unemployment II, I could pass the time just fantasizing about mundane things: going out to dinner, investing into my aspiring writing career, buying books on how to do shit and then doing it. I dreamed of living a life where a parking ticket didn't mean I had to skip lunch for a week.

So now I'm here. In one or two paychecks, I'll hit the all-time high score on my bank account, which isn't much, but it means a lot to someone like me who struggles with an irrational obsession with money management. But all those fantasies I had, about using this newfound security as a launching pad for the real work? That's harder to initiate than it is to plan.

It's only been three months, yes, but sometimes that's just a lazy coward's excuse for complacency. Even when I do make moves toward the future, I am always running into new things. Not really obstacles, but little nuances about this pre-production stage of my life that I have to figure out. 

First, enough isn't enough, and I think I knew this would happen. When I was making $8 an hour, I thought, "if I just made a few dollars more, I'd be in the clear." Now that I make a few dollars more, I think, "if I just made a few more dollars on top of my few dollars, I could really get something done." It's the typical evolution of human need, that I am sure will only end when I'm a playboy billionaire psychotic on par with Bruce Wayne. Capitalism is funny like that.

Secondly, there is the time factor. Full-time work is great in that there's now a reason to get out of bed in the morning, but it comes with a cost. Commute should only be 30 minutes or even less, but as this is LA, and that is the 405, it is usually an hour one way. If there is an accident, or even the tiniest bit of precipitation, then it is an hour and a half. Going back is a similar, variable nightmare. All of this is to say: I lose a lot of time to traffic. In-between work and commuting, that's 10 hours out of my day. When I get home at 7 PM on most days, that leaves me 4 or so hours to do what I need to do for the day: Iron laundry, eat dinner, read book, write thing, whatever. Depending on what is on my plate, it is often impossible to do all of it in one day, especially with my fluctuations in discipline, so then it gets added to tomorrow's queue.

So now the game is: If I lived closer to work, that would save me a bunch of time in the long run. But at my meager pay, that's going to be an unbelievable rent burden, so if that's the plan I'd have to do some serious finance wizardry. Mostly, I just come to the conclusion to make due with what I have. Use my time wisely, make every second count, and get that discipline in check. I'll let you know if it works out.

My Dropbox has 64 idea files that need to be fleshed out/evaluated for decency. I have upwards of 12 short fiction things that haven't been touched since their second draft. I'm supposed to take this whole blog thing to 'nother level soon and revamp it as a professional-looking home base I can include on my resume and in inquiry e-mails. I should really read more books, and faster.

It's not that starting is the hardest part, or even knowing where to start. It's that when there's so much to do, so many ways to work on launching, it can all seem so intangible and unreal. Because I'm not really doing anything. Not yet. It's such a slow, blind process where no one will validate you, except yourself, if you have that ability. It's a thing that drives me nuts time and time again. I have plans for the future, but in this stage when it's all just ideas that you want and images of a future that make you a tiny bit happy, it's hard not to see that it's exactly the way pipe dreams work.

I don't know if this memory is even remotely correct, but there might be an episode of Saved by the Bell where the gang goes surfing except Screech who says he has to wax his surfboard first. Except he's waxing his board the whole time, as a stalling measure, telling everyone he'll be right there. In actuality, he doesn't know how to surf, he just wants to fake it until the social pressure is gone. He's a fake, and we laugh at him for it.

I may be making up that whole gag, or it may be an amalgamation of several similar gags from film and television. It's my main anxiety these days, the thing that surfaces when I don't keep distracted. I used to worry about not being good enough, or about the steep odds of success. Those things are still there, but in my limited time away from staring at Excel spreadsheets, I worry that my fancy, high-falutin designs for the future are just intellectual posturing. Failing is a draining thing, but being a fake is worse.

How The Notes All Bend And Reach Above The Trees

I saw Jeff Mangum perform last Monday night, at the Orpheum Theater in Downtown Los Angeles.

Concerts, for me, are a bit about chasing the dragon. I'm always trying to pursue an exclusive, meaningful and rare live moment that I can always look back on. In service of this hunt, I jump at secret shows, fan club mailing lists, or special venues like the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. I don't know what kind of special moment I'm looking for -- a rare guest, a legendary performance -- but I'll know when it happens. 

Indie fans broadly believe that the music they listen to is special anyhow. Part of the surface appeal of indie music being so intimate and underground is that it can easily feel personal. It beckons the listener to not just be a fan, but to make it part of their identity and emotionally invest in the culture. That's generally how all music fandom works, but in indie rock, it's one of the most potent ingredients that goes into the stew.

When it comes to special, there are as few as special as Neutral Milk Hotel. If indie rock has unfinished plot threads, the NMH one is of its most legendary payoffs. Their status came about from making a standout album in In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, calling it quits afterward, and then rereleasing the album in 2005, when indie music blogs were hitting their stride. So when Jeff Mangum announced a national tour, the decision was easy.

Although I regret not springing for Coachella this year, getting a chance to see Mangum the Monday after was a good consolation prize. I secured front balcony seats and hoped that this would be Something Special -- perhaps even the ultimate Something Special. How could it not be? Here was Jeff Mangum, returning from his Salinger-like retreat, for the first time in 14 years. This is a build-up that doesn't come to artists often.

I've become more conscious of my fanboy mythologizing in the last few years. It's not a healthy way idealize artists, and some actively resent it. There's also the possibility that they'll disappoint you eventually -- with some boneheaded comment, or outrageous act, or terrible album. So I try and temper my enthusiasm, separate art from artist, and work on my hyperbole. Despite this, the hype and story behind Mangum is hard to resist. Even I, as a Johnny-come-lately who discovered the band in 2005's rerelease, was taken by the thought of seeing Mangum live. I listened to that album and their debut, On Avery Island, endlessly, because they were so good, and because there was nothing else. A couple dozen songs, that's all we had, so we made them count and then some.

The Orpheum is a classy art deco theater, which is not especially rare in LA, but what sets this apart is that it's large. The ceilings are higher than The Wiltern, and the intricate flourishes stretch all the way from top to bottom. There is minimal leg room in the balcony seating, but it's escalated in the way so that everyone has a reasonable view. The show was opened by Scott Spillane of Neutral Milk Hotel accompanied by Andrew Rieger and Laura Carter, billed only as "Scott, Laura and Andrew." They're a trio of multi instrumentalists, playing some great, sparse and melodic ballads that fit right into the weird 90's alt-rock/folk sound that Neutral Milk Hotel springs from. It was decidedly appropriate and they dished out a few delightful covers.

Some time before 10 o'clock, Mangum took to the stage. It was a short, determined walk and he began strumming almost immediately. He didn't let the audience get the applause out, he didn't start with some banter, he made a b-line for his seat and started playing. Normally, I would take this as a sign of an artist being uncomfortable on stage, perhaps feeling more comfortable singing than being the center of adulation, the way Elliott Smith allegedly was. But Jeff Mangum is a mystery, and it felt pointless to guess.

The mystery is part of it. Because of his hiatus and the myth cultivated around him, everyone in the audience was hungry to know something about him. Every break between songs was an opportunity to break through the fog and learn a tiny bit. People shouted questions and requests at him. How was Coachella? It was great. Can you play "Engine"? Sure, I'll play “Engine” later. Play whatever you want! How about “Ghost?"

It shouldn't have surprised me that he would talk back. When someone is a blank canvas for so long, your imagination takes over and projects personality types that best suit your needs. Early in the evening he asked in a strange and quiet way: “Are you guys happy?” The crowd hooted briefly. “Will you guys sing for me?” The crowd hollered, this time loudly.

The sing-a-long aspect of concerts is tricky. I always remember a terrifying Bright Eyes story that was going around the internet message boards when I was in high school: during a song, the crowd began to sing along, and Oberst stopped immediately to tell them to shut up. I can understand how the participation of 1,200 eager fans can ruin the intimacy of a song, especially a quiet, extremely personal ballad. At the same time, some songs are so infectious that singing them with a massive crowd, without fear or shame, is one of those special concert moments. In Mangum's case, the crowd was happy to oblige, and whenever they began to falter he would ask again. I wondered what it meant. Again, was it a shyness thing? Was he more comfortable, able to lose himself in the crowd, if everyone was singing along? “I want you guys to drown me out,” he said, and we tried.

There is no getting past the power of his voice on those songs, though. He's not a flashy singer, but he wasn't afraid to show off his pipes. He would extend the “eeee” at the end of a “dee dee dee” riff, the way pop singers hold high notes, and then just when you think he should run out of air, he goes right into “The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 2 & 3.” It's a deliberate, impressive move, and a well-earned confident bit of showing off. It struck me that this is as powerful as “folk” music can get. I'm not sure about applying the genre to all his music, since the term has always been weirdly defined and used as shorthand for decades, but let me put it this way: when I watch “No Direction Home,” and I see archival footage of Bob Dylan strumming simple chords at a mic set up at a railroad station, and singing his throat out, I feel like I now have an idea what that was like. Even on CD, Mangum has always had such commanding and unwavering melodies. His simple strums sound larger than they are, filling in for an entire band, wrapping up the tension of the drums and bass in one instrument.

Because of the way Neutral Milk Hotel songs are built, each song was a trip. They're built on a series of standout moments, constantly with a forward momentum, each powerful line leading onto the next. The audience would come to anticipate them the further he went into a song: “We know who our enemies are” on “Oh Comely,” or “God is a place where some holy spectacle lies,” on “Two Headed Boy Pt. 2” or “Save my soul from all these troubled times, and all thedrugsIdon'thavethegutstotaketosoothemymind,” on “Song Against Sex.” Like all the best poets, Mangum's writing makes sure that every line counts.

The last song is one of the most important parts of my concert experience. Part of the waiting-in-line fun is to try and figure out what would end the main set and what would finish off the encore, concluding the entire night. The setlist at The Orpheum was a little nuts – he had started with “Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2,” one of the emotional highpoints of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and before the encore had killed it on “Two-Headed Boy Pt. 1” and “Oh Comely,” the other anchors of the album. He even brought a Daniel Johnston cover, “True Love Will Find You in the End,” which caused a whispered “Wow” to fall from my lips. During the encore, when he announced the next song would be his absolute last, I couldn't figure out what it could possibly be. “Communist Daughter?” A bagpipe romp through “Untitled?” Dare I say it, something new? What was I forgetting?

But, of course, it was the title track “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.” He asked us once more to “sing really fuckin' loud” and the audience stood up, unprompted. The back right corner of the balcony had turned into a dance floor, where skinny kids were flailing their arms as hard as they could during anything uptempo, and swaying in unison during the slower pieces. For this last song, during this limited tour, they made sure to get everything out.

It's a pretty song with a lot of good feelings, but not what I would have expected to be a concert ender. But being there, after going through 16 songs from his two albums released over 14 years ago, it felt stunningly appropriate and final. “One day we will die, and our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea; but for now we are young, let us lay in the sun, and count every beautiful thing we can see.”

It captured the whimsy and weirdness in the way we have constructed a myth and magic around him. He's not a sacred figure in music, and only time will tell how legendary he will be in the larger music culture. But on that night, we were all unapologetic myth makers, casting spells on ourselves, on each other, on the night. “Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all,” he sang, and then walked away with our applause.

The Will to Blog

The past two years were really good for my blogging routine. I can't claim that they were all well-written pieces with clear focus and solid execution, but I had reliably published an average of 3 a month, which is a big deal for me. Discipline is one of the most important and essential tools for writers, and one of the areas where I am severely broken. So while 3 a month isn't exactly the "write for 4 hours everyday" type of routine that gets people better at words, it was a marked improvement to be able to think up and commit to a piece that I would publish in this public-to-hidden blog.

That has, as you can probably see dear-random-search-engine-landing-reader, all but fallen apart. Part of it is that I am working full-time for the first time, and I have not yet acclimated to my new lack of time. Another is that as my freelance writing projects ramp up, I am rerouting all my idea juice to places that people actually read. Thus, this thing, with a shining 36 pieces a year, is probably going to fall below 30 unless I kick myself in the butt and find the will to blog twenty times in a single month.

Well, actually, there has been a will to blog in the past few months. In fact, it was often very strong with real urgency. The problem is that I've been dying to blog about the most overblogged topics the internet has to offer. My only drive to say something is to say something that others have said. That's all that essays, blog posts and thinkpieces are: adding a voice to the conversation, even if it's already out there, just because you want the satisfaction of hearing it in your words.

It's pretty much the same selfish and compulsive need to enforce my corrections on anonymous internet strangers, except you have all the time and space to respond with no responsibility to address anyone specifically. These days, it's been the recent, and admittedly over-done, criticism and defense of HBO's Girls. Just typing that last sentence makes me want to spend the next four paragraphs deconstructing the arguments and putting in my own. Seeing something like this, from the bold assholes at VICE, fills me with the need to type one or two thousand words about what points the article is misinterpreting, or glossing over, or getting just plain wrong. And I came very nearly close to throwing my redundant blog onto the pile, not because I thought it needed to be added, but because it would have just felt good to know that it was out there. Luckily there are people like Max Read who have a bigger internet presence, better words, and similar ideas, whom I can vicariously blog though with responses like this.

I haven't been writing as often because when I do have the need, it's not original enough to warrant the time and energy, although it is urgent enough. Though now that I think about it, when has anything here been original? I guess I'm trying to look out for my growth as a writer. If I want to be serious about this shit, I need to start formulating organic, well-reasoned and original thoughts. I haven't been writing as often because I've been holding back.

Do you know how hard it was to not blog about Lana Del Rey and the definition of indie in today's--

Okay. I'll stop.

Because my commute to work is about an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, sometimes I wait out the traffic at the nearby coffee shop with my trusty brand new netbook. I write for a couple of hours, shivering in the air conditioning, until it gets dark and the freeways clear. It's one of the most reliable ways I can get stuff done. When I first got the netbook, the ideal fantasy was that it would be a brand new impetus to write, since I'd have a shiny new and highly portable tool to get it done anytime, anywhere. It's turned out to be a partial truth. I write because I'm driven to make that $250 purchase worthwhile, but it hasn't been satisfying. There's always more to do -- my dozens of unfinished short fiction pieces, revamping this blog, doing better freelance writing -- and it leaves me with an unsatisfying, never ending to-do list. But one of those nights, I'm going to come up with something worth writing about.

A History of Arguing on the Internet

Here is something few people know about me: If I don't keep myself in check, I will very easily lose hours and hours arguing with people on the internet. I know this is a common compulsion. Many have probably followed an internet thread, maybe on Reddit or a forum or even YouTube and have suddenly found themselves refreshing every hour to see if their idiot opponent has replied. Because every opponent is an idiot -- not merely someone with a different opinion, or world view, or values, but a flat out tried and true idiot. This is what happens in the anonymous theater of the internet.

I probably started arguing on the internet sometime around middle school in the late 90's and boy, was I good at it. Not good in the sense that I put out well reasoned points and was understood while understanding. I mean that I was a massive, relentless jerk until I "won" -- meaning, the other person grew tired and stopped replying, which is the only win condition in these sort of things.

I knew little about logical fallacies and even less about proper debate etiquette, and so my style consisted of picking apart responses line-by-line, setting up strawmen and then just layering it with obnoxious sarcasm. It worked, I guess, for a 13 year old. Most of the arguments were philosophical (religion, racism) or political (the war in Iraq, welfare entitlement). I know: pretty heavy stuff for a bunch of children on a video game forum, right? But imagine these nuanced, complicated and eternal arguments boiled down to a level a bunch of 8th graders could understand. Imagine the arrogance and assumptions and unwavering confidence required for a bunch of kids to do that.

Still, I have no regrets on that. I attribute a lot of my personal growth and learning to my early inclination to call out strangers on their weird political bullshit. It got me into researching, into deconstructing how I felt and why, and eventually taught me how to properly structure an argument. It may be grating and annoying to think about now, but it all worked out in the end.

Except today, I still have that compulsion, and even though I've seen that famous mocking XKCD strip, I can't shake the feeling that someone could be so completely and abhorrently wrong about something I care about. It's easy to shake off in real life. Someone says something dumb, or posts some serious dumb shit on Facebook, and I can think, "Hey, I know this person. This person is a rad dude otherwise. There's no way I can reach that deep into someone's soul and change them, it has to be a situational thing, and hopefully the time and opportunity will come for them to see another side of this thing."

But online? On Reddit?

It's hard not to revert to Internet Batman mode, psychotically and obsessively cleaning up the streets of cyberspace with words. Someone will be all like, "I don't think stereotyping is wrong if it's true" and BANG I'LL COME SWOOPING IN FROM THE SKY "STEREOTYPES ARE A LAZY PREJUDICE YOU CRIMINAL SCUM"

And then we're off to the races for 3 or 4 days. What's new about my more diplomatic, well-reasoned and mature compulsion to arguing with strangers on the internet is that it will get to a point where I dread continuing this deathly parade. Sometime during day 2, we will get to the absolute core of the argument, a flat difference in values where we see the same thing and take it differently based on how we were socialized. But the argument continues, in circles around this one thing, and we both know it. Now it's a game of chicken, and now none of us really want to continue, but we know to move on with our lives is the lose condition.

We can never really change the other. But if they fall into silence, to lead a happier and more fulfilling life, then we can assume that we have rocked their world and converted one to the cause. Or at least, shook up someone who had not been shook before.

I don't wish that I would stop doing this. I just wish all the arguments were simple and effective. Easy wins. I wish they weren't so draining, and exhausting, and futile thought exercises. Some day, I may have to learn my lesson.

Skepticism and Activism and Colonialism and...

The Kony 2012 campaign by Invisible Children has been one of the most interesting spectacles and teachable moments of activism in a long time. We don't often get this opportunity to talk about these things: the way to go about making a difference, the ways your intentions are not sacrosanct, and how it can all go wrong. And how people are just licking their chops waiting for it to go wrong.

I'm not writing this as some kind of activist expert or entrenched community organizer. I had my brush with doing the big work in college, as a lot of us did, when the privilege to do so was more plentiful. These days, I can mostly manage to throw a few dollars when the liberal guilt strikes me. But I had seen a wide sampling of different types of activism: different organizations, movements, causes, even styles. I'm not positioning myself as the ideal activist archetype, but just as someone who had spent a few years in that world: the conferences, the organizations, the politics and more.

So when the Kony 2012 video came out, I recognized it immediately as coming from that world. I had never been apart of Invisible Children, but they had always been well-meaning and dependably inclined toward the causes I was involved in. It was the trendiest of the organizations, sure, but they were nice enough folk and I understood how using every tool available, even trendiness, was important to growing a community.

But when I think about Invisible Children, I also think about this old post secret card. It's a sentiment that's totally unaware of privilege in activism, or the dangers of generalizations or the weakness of anecdotal evidence and a constant reminder that even in anti-racist movements there are oblivious racists.

The video went viral, and why wouldn't it? It was stylish, young, and appealing to a generation of people growing up taking pictures of themselves. That thing where the guy explains to his kid about Kony? Classic internet generation vanity. Not Michael Moore vanity, where he insists on showing himself consoling crying people. The kind of GPOY vanity that's an integral part of our online identities.

Then there was the big word that I have been struggling to properly convey for much of my adult life: colonialism. Colonialism is out in full strength in IC's western military intervention hopes. It's something that is always difficult to properly get people to understand because it runs against the grain of common sense: if something fixes a country, then who cares if it comes from an outside source, right?

But colonialism, especially in its newest neo- forms, can never be a dependable, ethical answer to the ills of the world. Ben Affleck gets it. Solutions can only come from a local level in political climates that have been so thoroughly ravaged by a history of outside intruders that took it upon themselves to right things. Will local solutions produce the right answer? Not always. But they'll provide their answer -- something they can control and change if it goes awry. If it comes from a benevolent, powerful hand, then an outcome that becomes a mistake will be much costlier: it becomes a target for hatred and undoes any benevolence.

Anti-colonialism doesn't mean hands off, though. This is where it's hard to get people on board: there has to be support for people coming to their own solutions, but we can't be so arrogant and assuming as to give them those answers. Intent isn't always king, and over time, intent will be lost.

Most of all, the Kony 2012 campaign was easy. Click a share button, retweet, and you're already doing your part. It was tailor made for so-called "online slacktivism." It required merely that you care enough to put it in your internet feed of choice, and you were already doing your part. If you were mega serious about feeling good, you could buy a trendy, hip bracelet that would go well with your outfit. It was easy.

And what's wrong with easy? As we saw from the pushback, a lot of things: reductive solutions, questionable practices and beliefs, a whole lot of disdain for bandwagon jumpers. It was only easier to write off when the guy was found in San Diego having a public nervous breakdown in his underwear.

But at the same time, this was no good, and echoed the problem that all activism faces, even the trendy, one dimensional kind: people don't want to care. Give them a reason to write you off and they will take to it, whatever preserves the status quo of the mind, which, really, only has so much space to give a shit about the big things before it collapses onto itself in a harrowing storm of how hopeless everything is. It's nothing to be ashamed of, just a simple fact of how much time, energy and privilege we realistically have.

It is appropriate though to be ashamed of how cathartic people found the character assassination of Jason Russel. As if, "Oh, good, now I'm totally justified in being against this trendy campaign." Make no mistake: they were never the bad guys in this story. They were just sloppy and had their values in the wrong spot. Russel's quote about being "the pixar of human rights" showed that. A man catapulted to both fame and villainhood could justifiably break him down, and that's never a "I told you so" moment.

Skepticism is important and keeps people honest. Reactionary anti-bandwagon anti-hipster counterculture is a drain on activist culture, political discourse and everyone that hopes to make a small difference. Maybe the whole campaign is dead in the water now that the news is trying to portray Russel as a drugged out public masturbator. We didn't lose a chance  to inflict change to the state of Uganda, but we did gain another victory for smug, naysayer apathy.