I love WTJU as though it were my own bratty prodigy

There's four kinds of Modern Intelligensia these days -- most of them, the ones I know at least, are quirky, esoteric, obscurity-loving, idealistic, fringe-living post-adolescents who both annoy and interest me (that whole fascinating/horrific dynamic):

Type #1, with Subtypes A and B: The truly honestly brilliant kid who really did grow up reading kierkegaard at the dinner table and listening to his dad's synth-accordion records in the dark, who doesn't pay attention to what's popular or cool, he's just interested in what interests him, and he's smart and usually poor or ignored enough that what interests him are difficult languages and ideas that the mass media tries to chew into its system but instead barfs up, finding the substance too, well, substantive, and delicately flavored.

If he (I say he, because most of these are males; will discuss this later) drops names of authors and music 99% of people his age have never heard about or if he wears salvation army knickerbockers, it's just because that's the easiest place for him to find pants that don't get in the way of his book-shelving or mushroom-divinng practices.

This kind of person can be really annoying, because he's never heard a michael jackson album, never seen star wars, can't dial in for small talk (he either doesn't have a phone or he's got superduper broadband- he's either (subtypeA) super Luddite or (subtypeB) super techhead), doesn't wash his feet on a regular basis, would rather read a Moravian dictionary, teach himself C+, or study the sex life of slugs than dust his shabby apartment, and eats all your food and drinks all your beer and just would not survive on the set of Friends. However, this person (yes, I have two of these in my life) is so purely sincere and fascinating and humble and smart - that he is either (subtypeA):
Jesus-like, if you must - he doesn't look down on people for their superficial interests, and he's a good listener, if not a good talker, and you know he won't say anything he doesn't mean, which is the Rarest of Rare qualities these days. OR
(subtypeB) a nonstop talker who says everything he thinks or feels with no editing, which is both refreshing and annoying/hurtful, who tends to be impatient, and doesn't, therefore, get along with subtypeA. Subtype B actually not only has seen all the Star Wars movies in the theater on the night of release, but he's downloaded all the Star Wars mockumentaries and parodies he can find, maybe even written a few of his own...

Both subtypes of Type1 live murkily on the fringes of society, don't get normal jobs or keep them for long, and only vault to fame and fortune by accident or the fortune of a sponsor with savvy and prowess to promote them to a professorship or other revered status despite the fungi growing between their toes and teeth. They tend to be depressed, introverted, and bad at chess.

Type 2: Most of these kinds of people are good at chess. I know this, because Type 2s let everyone know they are good at chess. They are overly proud of this talent, mistakenly believing that winning a chess game marks them as a superbeing. While Type 2s are indeed wickedly smart, they are, unlike #1, painfully aware of What's Cool and that they are not included in this category -- at least, at first. They become poseurs, not because they couldn't sincerely be as into Balinese forest music or the secret lives of Austrailian butterflies or Kraftwerk covers, but because only by acting themselves, by applying a patina of nerdiness to their nerdiness, controlling their image, posturing their positions, can they smear a protective swath of emotional vaseline over their raw and aching egos and survive modern life.

I know a lot of people like this, though I tend to not put up with them for long, because one byproduct of their babyrash egoism is a constant need to rant about their Trivial Pursuit triumphs, their latest score on an Atari game, all the while quoting Wittgenstein and balking if anyone questions their actual understanding of language games. These people get so annoying because, if challenged, they crumble, get defensive, and turn out to be so uninteresting, because they've betrayed their innate intelligence and creative passions by becoming consumed with branding and marketing themselves and getting invited to jazz fusion concerts.

By the time the #2 type reaches 30, he or she is so hip and so dippy, they secretly eat store brand ice cream and watch Cheers reruns, I know it. They get a stable, corporate job where they wear funky ties or chunky glasses. They becoming boring, redundant members of the snobby middle vintage-clothes wearing urban yuppie class and start reading the New Yorker. Or they're just the office knowitall. Ugh. Type 2s have the intelligence and creativity to really add something to society, but the males end up acting as sexist as their fathers, never get over themselves and their small penises, and the women try being lesbians before giving up and working as bitchy editorial supervisors who eat hummus and go to 'spin' and pilates classes.

I knew a guy in high school who was apparently brilliant and got the highest grades, but the only social talk he could muster up in the hallway had to do with his first BMW purchase. I've met tons of these people, but he was my first run-in with the type. I resented him immensely; not only for having great grades effortlessly, but for having them but turning out to be Boring. What a waste.

3) The #3 types are the quite normal and well-adjusted artisticish types who have fallen into the trap of not paying attention to science, facts, Walmart, reason, organization, structure, or anything else that at least on the surface seems too Corporate, too Materialistic, too Capitalistic, etc., even if it makes sense or has its place. These are people who shop at Whole Foods only because they wouldn't be caught dead in Food Lion, even if they're buying the exact same things, only at an obviously much higher price. These people have moderate to wild success doing things they reasonably love, but they would never attest to this, admit that they are happy, because to do so would somehow go against their assumed Hatred of the System. Artists are not supposed to be happy. Intellectuals cannot be content.

Which begs the question, is type #3 really an artist or intellectual? I mean, aren't we all, until we get cut into the proper shapes by the Market's human talent production machine?

Charlottesville is filled with type#3. This is a relatively great place to live for chic liberals, and yet there's a lot of restless opposition and protests, not really because there's that much to protest, but because if they didn't protest, these people wouldn't feel they were fulfilling their place in the world. I mean, I guess a lot of them are Boomers who grew up protesting, so that's What They Do. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong and everything right about involvement and investment in the political life of your town -- it's just that type #3 would have a larger audience, be more intellectually and artistically rigorous, more politically astute and revolutionary, etc. if he/she/they were not so concerned with the Appearance of Bucking the System so as to avoid all interesting compromise and collusion with practicality... In other words, type#3 is the same as type#2 in both intelligence/artistic talent/geekiness and concern for appearances, except that, where type#2 essentially fails at surmounting their wonky otherness, type#3 manages to come out looking quite Appropriate -- mature enough to, as a group, establish a Norm of behavior and footwear and NPR membership, but drizzled with squirts of edginess, basted in subbacultureness, so as not to be mistaken for having Given in to The Man.

WTJU fits into this last category. It's a great radio station. My favorite show is the Show Show -- actual show tunes on the radio! I also love the Arabic dance music, and lately I fell in love with Gamut, a "classical" music show that plays a wide range of stuff, including modern and female composers (yay!) in a very non-snobby, informative way...

But because WTJU is in #3, they can't have a schedule that is in any way either intuitive or regular, I guess that would be too structured, too regular-radio-stationish, too predictable? I don't know, but it frustrates me, because I love it so! It also doesn't seem to care about requiring some of their announcers to talk loud enough for the audience to hear them. There's something "intelligent" or "natural" about mumbling in the dark. Half the time I turn the knob to their frequency, I hear only dead air. I get the feeling bothering about losing audience because of timing is beneath them (probably not, but that's what I end up thinking). I also really like to listen to music that's popular sometimes, and I think some of their shows could benefit from mixing up the more obscure with the more popular musicians.

The recent Prism brouhaha is to me a clash of types, in that Cvillians are actually pretty civil, even if one of the above types, and the defensiveness and ego problems that come along with being a typical Type2 just doesn't fly. Also, the Prism charged way too much for shows featuring people I'd never heard of, and no liquor to boot.

Type4s: All the secure, successful, famous, and truly thoughtful people who get published, get on screen, get produced, know each other, eat the right foods, drive the right cars, strive to remain true to their inner core, and seem genuinely happy. I don't know any of these people, but I read their books, watch their witty shows, skim their snappy articles, enjoy their initimate artistic projects. They don't need to pose, defend, or hide, because they've Made It. They have enough money to not have to worry about shopping at Walmart; they can buy their own ecologically sound island -- enough money not to face philosophical and moral crises the rest of us have to deal with on a daily basis. It is easy to be Good when you've got it Easy.

That was a long and extremely flawed rant. I don't want to believe in types, but I feel like I keep running into them. Maybe it's just me, I'm a type who types, who types about types, rendering herself quite typical?

The Noise in the Middle of the Night

Has anyone else heard it? I am actually scared to even write this publicly... not only because I swore I'd never give into CTP (Conspiracy Theoryesque Paranoia) but because if it's true, and They find out, maybe they'll Get Me.

But I'm curious. What is that damn noise?

I first heard it in Northern Virginia (aka Hell), when I'd wake at 4 in the morning with bad dreams -- kind of like a power surge, as if all the electrical wires wrapping the condominiums in their slithery arms were charging up and growling. But it was pretty Loud and steady and strange -- and I heard it again the other night, here in Charlottesville.

When I first moved here, I used to joke that there was some kind of mind control going on making everyone jog, as evidenced by the blank look of brain blitz on most of the poor schmucks out there who just don't look like joggers -- old men, nerds, etc... But I've heard that there's a lot of experimentation with controlling masses through noise... and it's not just the jogging... look at France. Look at people rioting. Look at people protesting things around the world, and not us -- (and I mean real things, like our government doing illegal things to its people, not UVA's pay grades). I mean, I know we're Fat Comfortable Cats, our stomachs too engorged for us to be motivated by righteous anger to move off our sanctimonious / therapy couches... but still.

What if there IS a noise? What if there is control going on? Would that explain our sluggishness? (I know all the people who run marathons and hold 'honk if you want peace' signs on the downtown mall are really pissed at my generalization, sorry.)

What is that noise? Is it the Collective Snore of a people who just find injustice boring compared to 'Deal or No Deal'???

Toilet Note (#1)

I will confess it: I do not like to sit down on public toilet seats.

And no, the paper covers do no good. They make the experience more crinkly, but not more sanitary, and certainly not more comfortable.

Not that I’m that concerned with sanitation, mind you; it’s more like the appearance of sanitation that concerns me.

I have awesome thigh muscles from all the squatting.

BUT sometimes I do sit down, if I scan the area in question and it seems okay enough – or I’m desperate enough.

And today, when I did so, after a few seconds I heard a THUMP.

I felt a THUMP.

Thump?

Like someone else had sat down on the toilet, too… and it eventually became apparent that my toilet was connected to someone else’s toilet on the other side of the wall, namely, a man in the men’s room… like a seesaw, we were sitting on the same plank of toilet, facing in opposite directions…

Is that not the Grossest Thing Ever? To feel a stranger’s bottom shudders vibrating through your own? To excrete in tandem with a faceless other? Against my will???

Beauty, Truth, Fact, Fiction - Springtime Rant

Maybe it's because it's spring, but I'm feeling a resurgence of love for the Romantics.

Truth is beauty, beauty, truth -- a phrase I must admit I didn't really get when I was younger, found it to be too abstract and big and over-the-top (as most Romanticism is) -- I wasn't a fan of the Romantics, dawdling around fields and babbling about birds --

But it's been haunting me, recently, the idea that beauty, the absorption, the worship, the invoking, the rapture of is so necessary, so part of what we call our 'spiritual' experience as humans... Because beauty points only to itself. Beauty is Good for no other reason than because it is what it is.

The functional, utilitarian part of me internally scoffs at embroidery on pillows, how ridiculous, how pointless; all the fuss that goes into hair and makeup and home decor; all this pretty-upping of our habitations, for what? Just to give bigger profit shares to Lowes?

But then I think, is the effort to decorate our clothes, our homes, our cubicles, our bodies -- is that not the pursuit of beauty, of delight, of enjoyment of the things we use and inhabit? Isn't there a point to that? I mean, we're here on this earth, dawdling in the field of existence, we might as well be happy... and happiness - for me at least - comes from the realization of beauty...

Beauty is the Moon, not the finger pointing at the moon. It refers only to itself. It glows.

I mean, when you smell a beautiful woman, or visit a beautiful painting, or touch a dandelion or hear a child laugh or find bliss in a cloud or a rainbowy oil spill -- the moment of "ah" when you feel your heart expanding as it welcomes the beauty in -- like air, you don't want anything more than just that to breathe, to be. (and if you do, if you want to destroy, if your reaction to beauty is defensive or hostile, is that evil?)

So that is why beauty is "truth," if we think of truth as being the Utter Thing, the Absolute. Not that it isn't also relative.

Take this quote from Iris Murdoch's novel The Green Knight- and mentally replace "historians" with "humans":

History is not a science, nor is it an art, though the historian must, as writer, be an artist too... What is history? A truthful account of what happened in the past. As this necessarily involves evaluation, the historian is also a moralist... Historians are fallible beings who must make up their own minds, constantly aware of the particularised demands of truth. ... Of course it is a truism, of which much has been made, that we cannot see the past. But we can work hard and faithfully to portray it, to understand and explain it. We need this is we are to possess wisdom and freedom. What brings down dictators, what has liberated eastern Europe? Most of all a passionate hunger for truth... You are on your own, thinking your own thoughts, be calm, be patient, endure an infinite slowness... Love and seek perfection.

This exhortation struck me as an interesting defense of the Truth as something different from Fact, yet still to be sought, revered, believed in, as existing. Even if we help construct it, it exists, it has "particularized demands." We live in an era where fact, let alone truth, is completely conditional, where presidents and media and everyone else invents it all, and the idea that we can rely on anyone's conception of either is hampered by the taint of 'perspective,' which we view as corroding any Truth or Fact...

But I believe still in them, just maybe not in the way they've previously been defined...

The thing is, even if beauty and truth depend upon interaction, even if they are dynamic forces created by relationships between mind and thing and other minds -- that is viable, valid... I'm not explaining myself well. I'll try again later.

Goodness & CSLewis

I saw an interview on Book TV the author day with a CSLewis biographer. He answered the question on why Lewis remains such a popular author these days with the idea that Lewis presents a vision of goodness and beauty that is attractive to people and holds up this vision as something to strive for.

Even just hearing this guy talk about someone else loving goodness made my insides shine. Made me want to do the same thing -- what other pursuit is as worthy, than to create or reveal or find or present loveliness and truth and goodness, to hold it up, to share it, meditate upon it?

Here I am, blogging dirt. Commentators on TV and radio are either vapid or sarcastic, mudslinging or abusive or irrelevant. The traffic on the web, the magazines we read, the conversations we engage with acquaintences and coworkers -- how often are they of real substance, how often are they about sweetness and light? I know we're in the postPostmodern era; we tend to think people who want beauty are soft in the head, childish, people who believe in purity are stupid, people who love the good are retro and outdated.

And yet, I for one am hungry for it. I miss the innocence of childhood, not because I miss the ignorance of childhood, and not because I was innocent, but I believed in goodness still, I went to church and felt it was sacred, I believed in trying to be Good and in Telling the Truth. I saw and knew about bad, awful things, I wasn't dumb or sheltered. But I believed that these qualities, these principles, these things, existed.

I loved CSLewis as a child, and not just the Narnia books, but his nonfiction as well. I feel like it's time to revisit those works, get a dose of his vision, however unhip it is. I feel beat down from lying politicians and power hungry board members and superficial paris hiltons. Is that all that's left in this world?

break or bend?

Today's question is: what is the difference between breaking a rule and bending it?

If you bend it, the idea is you're not really breaking it, but if you bend it, aren't you breaking it? Isn't bending just a hairline fracture?

Of course, a good Taoist might say at this point something about reeds that are supple enough to bend in the wind vs. hard sticks that break -- an analogy from the Tao te Ching about how we humans should behave and react -- not with rigidity, but with strong, flowing balance, so that we can move with stress and not fight it... [Not that I know any Taoists good or otherwise who would interject... because Taoists by definition don't need to be called Taoists?]

I much prefer the letter vs. the spirit of the law type of reasoning for dealing with rules and laws and such. The point of a speed limit is safety, right? So if you speed up to avoid a car that's weaving around, so that you can avoid an accident, you may be breaking the letter of the law, but you're complying with its intent or spirit, so to me, that's OK...

But bending the rules, I still don't get that. I can't think of an instance where it's not really just breaking. I'll have to think about that more.

it's the pits! I miss the mosh pits!

First off: is it pitt or pit? Is a mosh pit analogous to a pit of lions and bears with a few Christians thrown in for fun, or is it a pitt like the center of an apple, a rumble of seeds?

Either way, I loved the early 90s, when you'd go to a concert and that dangerous galaxy knot of angry combat boots and dirty hair began swirling in the center of the dark audience, a twister of angst picking up dust and momentum and elbows.

No, it wasn't as safe as line dancing, but it was better than drugs or gang fights or other cathartic activities with which one might try to deal with hormones and disillusionment and loneliness, the various pangs of growing up.

It was a rite of passage to get in, stay afloat, and come out. No one treated me tenderly because I was younger or smaller or female or anything else. It wasn't about tenderness. It was about grief.

Yes, I did witness violence -- there were some straightedgers who attacked the punks at my favorite place one time, and a bunch of us got thrown against a wall in the melee. One time a big guy clocked me in the head and I punched him back. But for the most part, they were exhilirating and fun.

Forget rope courses -- sometimes after a day in the office, I think the best way for all of us frustrated coworkers to get over ourselves and our jobs and bond would be to put on some Dead Kennedys in the conference room and just start kicking.

mishMosh: fake British accents

In a meeting the other day, a dude said "mish MOSH" instead of "mishMASH," out of his need to affect a British accent. The guy's a verty articulate speaker, and I felt kind of bad for him when this faux pas popped out of his little bowtie mouth -- it was so obviously ridiculous, so funny.

But it happens sometimes, even involuntarily: you're at a party, maybe an art opening, and some mechanism in your mouth determines that the situation calls for that little extra to make you seem intelligent. And since we're a form over substance kind of people, we change how we're saying the words, instead of actually upping the anty on what we're saying.

We're Americans; we're partly so defensive about the rest of the world's stereotype of us as dumb and belligerent because we know it's true. We buy into the notion that Brits are more civilized and the French more cultured. Walt Whitman's poetry was revolutionary in its use of and praise of an American voice, but there were plenty of writers then and since who found his turn of phrase just plain uncouth.

I personally like the idea that we can be brash and uncouth and still like ourselves, but our national and cultural identity has yet to pluck this inferiority complex. We still feel like adolescents -- because we are. Impetuous and arrogant and believing we're better than everyone else, while knowing we really aren't -- America's a swaggering sixteen years old still!!

And just like any 16 year old, we have moments, individually and en masse, when speak, not in our own words, but imitating the adults around us, which just makes us sound so so young.