San Francisco is blessed with a large homeless population. When I moved to the Bay Area from Iowa in 2000, interacting with homeless people was a new experience for me. Willie Brown, the mayor of San Francisco at the time, was engaged in an active battle against the homeless. Millions of dollars were spent on things like confiscating shopping carts and removing park benches. There were no public restrooms and busking (street performing) required purchasing a permit. Meanwhile, housing costs soared, largely due to an influx of money from Silicon Valley, and the climate remained balmy year round, so the net effect of these policies were solely to increase the suffering of the homeless.
I couldn’t afford to live in San Francisco, so I lived in Richmond on the Easy Bay. When Amy and I moved there, I quickly got a part-time job as a barista at the coffee shop in Borders books in Emeryville, landed an internship at a recording studio complex in The City and joined a weekly jazz improvisation workshop. (For the unaware, “The City” is San Francisco’s rather smug and, if you live there, only acceptable nickname.) Amy got a full-time job in Berkeley. We shared a 1986 Toyota Tercel- she usually used it during the day and I used it whenever I had to haul my drumset somewhere. Most of the time, I got around using BART, the area’s monorail system, whose furthest north station was very close to our quadplex apartment, where rent was $800 per month plus utilities.
In San Francisco, I worked in the Tenderloin district, which is sort of in the middle of town but well removed from tourists, in a well-tagged (graffitied) area full of amazing Thai restaurants and taquerias. The recording studio was about four blocks north of the Civic Center Plaza BART station. The train ride took 45 minutes and costed something like $3.25 each way. The last train left the first station at midnight, and whenever I missed it I slept on a couch in a hallway of the studio.
One day, not long after I’d starting working at the recording studio, an engineer was chatting with me about the homeless in the area. He had a BMW motorcycle, and felt bad that he worried about parking it at the motorcycle parking area next to the BART station, because there were always so many people milling about it. What he would do, when he parked his bike, was give money to a nearby homeless person and say, “Could you watch my bike while you’re, please?” His worry was when he returned and if the same person was there, things could get socially awkward, because, well, dealing with homeless people is awkward.
During this conversation, I buzzed Paul Stubblebine in through the heavy blue door. Paul was a highly-regarded mastering engineer who had presumably worked at the studio for awhile, and was one of those guys who you immediately realized was highly competent. In truth, as I would find out later, he was an extraordinary human being. I’m going to segue a bit here so I can tell my Paul Stubblebine story:
On two occasions while I was there, Paul was hired as a recording/mixing engineer and I was assigned to be his assistant. During one of these sessions, Paul went to the restroom while the band was listening to a mix he had done. While he was away, one of the band members asked if I could turn the guitar up and vocals down a little. Strictly speaking, this was a major no-no; I had no business touching the famed Neve 8038 console. But, being a brash kid, I marked the location of the faders in question with a grease pencil and moved them both half a decibel. Now, answering the question, “How loud is a decibel?” is a complicated one; it doesn’t even make sense to describe decibels in terms of how far you move the fader. Roughly speaking, an increase of 10 decibels is twice as loud. (To truly understand how decibels are calculated, you have to understand the neper, and I don’t.) Half a decibel is about how far you need to adjust the volume to create a minimally perceptible difference. The minimum you can adjust most modern consumer volume knobs is a full decibel.
Paul returned to the mixing room, and while sitting down- so before he was even situated between the speakers- he nonchalantly reached out and adjusted the two faders back to where I had marked their original locations. Everyone who witnessed this realized the appropriate volumes of the guitar and vocals within the mix were definitive. I was too speechless to ever admit I had even moved the faders. It was, and is, the most superhuman thing I have ever witnessed a person do. The only other thing I can think of that comes close is watching Barry Bonds effortlessly crush a baseball.
Anyway, the engineer with the motorcycle asked Paul how he dealt with the homeless. Paul said he followed advice he had been given when he had first come to the area- find one homeless person that resonates with you and give them whatever change you have in your pocket every time you see them. When he said this, I immediately thought of a person who I had ignored asking if I wanted to buy a poem a few days prior.
The person in question was a gaunt, sickly woman draped in layers of rags who looked to be in her 50’s, with long, thinning reddish-brown hair. It was evident she had a drug problem.
People often say that they don’t like to give money to homeless because they will just spend it on booze and drugs. This rationalization hides behind the arrogant premise that we are qualified to judge what others spend their money on. These same people will then proudly explain that their concern is for the other’s health and safety. To follow this logic, the reason they don’t give is out of compassion and charity. They would rather give food, shelter or jobs to the homeless. They don’t do any of those things, of course, but that’s what they “would rather” do. It is telling of our society that those who have a place to sleep at night become so haughty toward those who don’t. I didn’t have food, shelter or jobs to offer, so I began giving this lady my spare change whenever I had it. When I did not have change, I would at least smile and say, “hi!”
In return, she would sometimes give me incoherent scribbling on scraps of paper. Some days, she would chat with me in slurred, garbled speech that I could barely decipher, and I would find myself struggling to stand, smile and listen instead of hurrying on my way. Other days she would be listless and sad and I would feel compelled to talk to her. I found out her name was Candi. I would not have pegged her as a Candi- those kinds of names were more common further up by Van Ness and Post- but I never did find out much about who she was or where she had come from.
One day Candi said she had written a poem especially for me. She fished through her pockets, found it and gave it to me. It was basically, “Andrew I love you.” I felt honored that she actually knew my name. For me, Candi was a face among the faceless. Until then, it had not really occurred to me that I was the same for her.
I would often see Candi twice a day for the next couple of years, and it was the thing I most looked forward to on my trips to and from work. Of course, sometimes she wouldn’t be there. If I didn’t see Candi for a week, I would begin to worry. She wasn’t the type of person about whom you’d think, maybe she found a place to live. In the end I was the one who disappeared for good- and I suppose this was something she was used to.
I have been privileged to meet many amazing people throughout the years, including Paul Stubblebine, but no one has been more important or influential on me and how I perceive the world than Candi. I wish I had thanked her.
Showing posts with label opinions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label opinions. Show all posts
Monday, January 5, 2015
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
The Importance of Regret
I don’t understand why people are frequently insisting, “I don’t have any regrets.” Maybe others intend it as a polite social convention, like saying, “I’m fine. Everything’s perfect!” Maybe it’s a prudent way of avoiding the inevitable follow-up questions to admitting regrets. But I’m a literally-minded person who doesn’t get the point of saying things that are untrue.
Personally, not a day goes by where I don’t say or do something I regret. I’m constantly wishing I had given a better explanation, been more patient or empathetic, demonstrated more concentration, thought things through before acting or put forth more effort. I have big regrets too: ties with friends that I caused to be severed, work that I failed at, skills I should’ve acquired, relationships that I imprudently pursued, relationships that I ruined and places I shouldn’t have gone. I feel like I could list a thousand regrets before pausing to think. At the same time, I am also very grateful to have never made a truly idiotic move that got someone injured or arrested or whatnot. I am able to keep the perspective that the things I regret are relatively minor. Perhaps the most important aspect of making mistakes is minimizing the gravity of the consequences.
I dwell on regrets, too. Just yesterday I was thinking about the time I threw a vacuum cleaner part into the street and forgot to pick it up. That happened at least five years ago.
Often we say we regret doing something but then behave the same way the next time a similar situation arises. Sometimes we don’t regret what we did but regret getting caught. True regret involves understanding the direct consequences of your actions and wishing they had been different than what they were. I think they have to be specific actions, but maybe not. People will say things like, “That’s five years of my life I regret,” and that seems terrible to me. I realize that a regrettable decision on one day can lead to five years (or more) of turmoil, but if you regret the actions of one day and then the next day you regret those actions as well to a degree that you now have two days full of regret, it seems to me you really need to examine the choices you are making in life. Not everything is a mistake; forgetting the brilliant ideas and wonderful times just because there were lousy parts seems an unjust and unnecessary punishment to inflict on ones self.
Many things happen due to misfortune that no decision could have avoided. For example, someone might say, “I regret going to work that day because that’s the day I got into an accident.” That demonstrates a lack of perspective because there’s absolutely no correlation between the action and the consequence. This is the type of regret that there’s no point in having or pondering. Once self-pity is eliminated as an option, there is often nothing left but to accept your fate. It doesn’t make any sense to regret being born, because you weren’t given an alternative option.
I am of the opinion that criticism provides information to learn from while praise is essentially vapid. My main method for learning is by messing up. I’ve never been able or willing to take anyone’s word for anything. Anything everyone else says always seems nonsense to me until I discover for myself that they were right. I am a slow but thorough learner. I sometimes regret being stubborn, but I more often regret taking another’s advice instead of doing the research myself.
When we make a mistake affecting another, the first thing we are taught as children to do is apologize. As adults, we find apologizing excruciatingly difficult. We don’t want others to accurately accuse us of doing things we shouldn’t have done. We would much rather eschew responsibility, shift blame and make excuses. We do these things even when all another wants is an apology, because, ironically, we demand apologies all the time. We think that our shortcomings are justified: we boast of our phobias, using them to relinquish ourselves of duty, instead of using the opportunity to strive to overcome them. At the same time, we find the shortcomings of others ridiculous and inexcusable. We wonder why others are so inept at doing things we would never do ourselves. This is because we live in a society where we are wired to find opponents to destroy instead of relationships to build.
Some people are afraid of making mistakes. I really only have that problem when it concerns social interaction. Because of this, I have been forced (unless I wanted to become a crazy person) to ignore and overcome fear most days of my life. I suppose that is why I consider being afraid something to embrace instead of avoid. I’d rather regret doing something that I thought was the right thing to do than not doing something for fear of failure. Most of the time, I am over-confident and when I blow it am startled by the result, even when it should have been expected.
There’s a quote attributed to Theodore Roosevelt that goes something like, “The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything.” People will mull over decisions even when there is literally no way of anticipating the outcome. I’ve witnessed others become completely overwhelmed by something as benign as choosing from a menu even though the only guaranteed way of knowing whether you like a dish or not is by eating it. One can either fight through this fear of the unknown or remain in a small, familiar world. For many, expanding knowledge and experience is less important than avoiding regrets, complications, embarrassment or disrespect.
Life can quickly become unbearable without maintaining our senses of humor and beauty. Your existence might be the most important thing there is, but you just can’t take it too seriously. Playing the “Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda” game gets tedious really fast. It’s prudent to remember that perceiving past mistakes is due to having gained an improved perspective- and improvement is a good thing. Hindsight is a bit like knowing the answer after it is given to you; it’s a lot easier than knowing the answer before it’s revealed but feels like you should have known it all along. It also gives the false impression that we know what the outcome would have been had we altered the past. The fact is we don’t actually know what might have happened had we done things differently.
I played football in seventh and eighth grades. Our team was terrible; we never won a game. There were twelve kids on the team, so another kid and I only had to participate in every other play. My job on offense was to go in from the sideline, relay the next play the coach had given me to the quarterback and then fill in as the weak-side tight-end. For two years, every single play was a running play. The other teams figured this out and would simply rush the quarterback at the snap, bowling over me in the process. Over at the sideline, I mentioned to the coach that the quarterback should throw me a quick screen pass. He decided that wasn’t a good idea. One time, just one time, I wish I had gone into the huddle and told the quarterback to throw me a screen pass, ignoring whichever running play the coach had given me.
Even this example begs the unanswerable question: is it more beneficial to have lived a life having called an audible or to have determined (without concrete evidence) that an audible should have been called? That’s the beauty of regret; it can be a powerful motivator and catalyst for change. If I were to go back and fix a mistake from early in life, when would I have learned to not make that mistake on a subsequent occasion? Another way of addressing the issue is realizing the incalculable influence of our assumptions on our behaviors. Would my distrust of authoritarian demands be as strong today had I opposed them back then, or has the assumption that I should have acted to change the situation been necessary for building my character? (Perhaps I’d watched enough Twilight Zone that it wouldn’t have made a difference either way.)
“Time and tide wait for no man.” There is nothing more calming than watching the ocean, I think in part because it conveys the realization that there is nothing you can do but watch it. In its presence, we are but another grain of sand. The waves are relentlessly unconcerned with where they will land, and both build and destroy with impartiality and impunity. We are not the ocean, but neither are we the sand, for the sand does not care what becomes of itself. Insurmountable obstacles and regrets notwithstanding, we must persevere through life or it loses all meaning. For many, being better off than others is good enough, but basing your successes on the relative suffering of others is demented.
Trying to change the past begs questions; working to change the future finds answers. Nobody likes to make mistakes, but too many people refuse to admit them. When we don’t acknowledge when we’ve goofed and then work towards improving our future behaviors, we remain stuck making the same mistakes over again and wondering why bad things keep happening to us. The only two ways of not having any regrets are by lacking self-awareness or being perfect. Admitting regrets demands humility and courage; qualities underrepresented and undervalued in our society.
Personally, not a day goes by where I don’t say or do something I regret. I’m constantly wishing I had given a better explanation, been more patient or empathetic, demonstrated more concentration, thought things through before acting or put forth more effort. I have big regrets too: ties with friends that I caused to be severed, work that I failed at, skills I should’ve acquired, relationships that I imprudently pursued, relationships that I ruined and places I shouldn’t have gone. I feel like I could list a thousand regrets before pausing to think. At the same time, I am also very grateful to have never made a truly idiotic move that got someone injured or arrested or whatnot. I am able to keep the perspective that the things I regret are relatively minor. Perhaps the most important aspect of making mistakes is minimizing the gravity of the consequences.
I dwell on regrets, too. Just yesterday I was thinking about the time I threw a vacuum cleaner part into the street and forgot to pick it up. That happened at least five years ago.
Often we say we regret doing something but then behave the same way the next time a similar situation arises. Sometimes we don’t regret what we did but regret getting caught. True regret involves understanding the direct consequences of your actions and wishing they had been different than what they were. I think they have to be specific actions, but maybe not. People will say things like, “That’s five years of my life I regret,” and that seems terrible to me. I realize that a regrettable decision on one day can lead to five years (or more) of turmoil, but if you regret the actions of one day and then the next day you regret those actions as well to a degree that you now have two days full of regret, it seems to me you really need to examine the choices you are making in life. Not everything is a mistake; forgetting the brilliant ideas and wonderful times just because there were lousy parts seems an unjust and unnecessary punishment to inflict on ones self.
Many things happen due to misfortune that no decision could have avoided. For example, someone might say, “I regret going to work that day because that’s the day I got into an accident.” That demonstrates a lack of perspective because there’s absolutely no correlation between the action and the consequence. This is the type of regret that there’s no point in having or pondering. Once self-pity is eliminated as an option, there is often nothing left but to accept your fate. It doesn’t make any sense to regret being born, because you weren’t given an alternative option.
I am of the opinion that criticism provides information to learn from while praise is essentially vapid. My main method for learning is by messing up. I’ve never been able or willing to take anyone’s word for anything. Anything everyone else says always seems nonsense to me until I discover for myself that they were right. I am a slow but thorough learner. I sometimes regret being stubborn, but I more often regret taking another’s advice instead of doing the research myself.
When we make a mistake affecting another, the first thing we are taught as children to do is apologize. As adults, we find apologizing excruciatingly difficult. We don’t want others to accurately accuse us of doing things we shouldn’t have done. We would much rather eschew responsibility, shift blame and make excuses. We do these things even when all another wants is an apology, because, ironically, we demand apologies all the time. We think that our shortcomings are justified: we boast of our phobias, using them to relinquish ourselves of duty, instead of using the opportunity to strive to overcome them. At the same time, we find the shortcomings of others ridiculous and inexcusable. We wonder why others are so inept at doing things we would never do ourselves. This is because we live in a society where we are wired to find opponents to destroy instead of relationships to build.
Some people are afraid of making mistakes. I really only have that problem when it concerns social interaction. Because of this, I have been forced (unless I wanted to become a crazy person) to ignore and overcome fear most days of my life. I suppose that is why I consider being afraid something to embrace instead of avoid. I’d rather regret doing something that I thought was the right thing to do than not doing something for fear of failure. Most of the time, I am over-confident and when I blow it am startled by the result, even when it should have been expected.
There’s a quote attributed to Theodore Roosevelt that goes something like, “The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything.” People will mull over decisions even when there is literally no way of anticipating the outcome. I’ve witnessed others become completely overwhelmed by something as benign as choosing from a menu even though the only guaranteed way of knowing whether you like a dish or not is by eating it. One can either fight through this fear of the unknown or remain in a small, familiar world. For many, expanding knowledge and experience is less important than avoiding regrets, complications, embarrassment or disrespect.
Life can quickly become unbearable without maintaining our senses of humor and beauty. Your existence might be the most important thing there is, but you just can’t take it too seriously. Playing the “Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda” game gets tedious really fast. It’s prudent to remember that perceiving past mistakes is due to having gained an improved perspective- and improvement is a good thing. Hindsight is a bit like knowing the answer after it is given to you; it’s a lot easier than knowing the answer before it’s revealed but feels like you should have known it all along. It also gives the false impression that we know what the outcome would have been had we altered the past. The fact is we don’t actually know what might have happened had we done things differently.
I played football in seventh and eighth grades. Our team was terrible; we never won a game. There were twelve kids on the team, so another kid and I only had to participate in every other play. My job on offense was to go in from the sideline, relay the next play the coach had given me to the quarterback and then fill in as the weak-side tight-end. For two years, every single play was a running play. The other teams figured this out and would simply rush the quarterback at the snap, bowling over me in the process. Over at the sideline, I mentioned to the coach that the quarterback should throw me a quick screen pass. He decided that wasn’t a good idea. One time, just one time, I wish I had gone into the huddle and told the quarterback to throw me a screen pass, ignoring whichever running play the coach had given me.
Even this example begs the unanswerable question: is it more beneficial to have lived a life having called an audible or to have determined (without concrete evidence) that an audible should have been called? That’s the beauty of regret; it can be a powerful motivator and catalyst for change. If I were to go back and fix a mistake from early in life, when would I have learned to not make that mistake on a subsequent occasion? Another way of addressing the issue is realizing the incalculable influence of our assumptions on our behaviors. Would my distrust of authoritarian demands be as strong today had I opposed them back then, or has the assumption that I should have acted to change the situation been necessary for building my character? (Perhaps I’d watched enough Twilight Zone that it wouldn’t have made a difference either way.)
“Time and tide wait for no man.” There is nothing more calming than watching the ocean, I think in part because it conveys the realization that there is nothing you can do but watch it. In its presence, we are but another grain of sand. The waves are relentlessly unconcerned with where they will land, and both build and destroy with impartiality and impunity. We are not the ocean, but neither are we the sand, for the sand does not care what becomes of itself. Insurmountable obstacles and regrets notwithstanding, we must persevere through life or it loses all meaning. For many, being better off than others is good enough, but basing your successes on the relative suffering of others is demented.
Trying to change the past begs questions; working to change the future finds answers. Nobody likes to make mistakes, but too many people refuse to admit them. When we don’t acknowledge when we’ve goofed and then work towards improving our future behaviors, we remain stuck making the same mistakes over again and wondering why bad things keep happening to us. The only two ways of not having any regrets are by lacking self-awareness or being perfect. Admitting regrets demands humility and courage; qualities underrepresented and undervalued in our society.
Saturday, November 1, 2014
The Importance of Elliott Smith
When I was an audio engineer, I had a subscription to Tape Op magazine. Around 2000, I read an interview with Elliott Smith which intrigued me enough to listen to his latest album. I didn’t like it. Another whiny white male, I thought.
I blaming my reaction on Coldplay, who had just come out with a terrible song called “Yellow,” that was wildly popular for some reason. The lyrics are stupid, trite and unironically nonsensical. Here’s a sample:
I take issue with people and things that are disingenuous. Males have established a long tradition of trying to get in girls’ pants by telling girls what they think they want to hear that really annoys me. The annoying part is that girls actually fall for that crap. So did he jump or did he swim? Obviously he’s flat out lying. When a guy is trying to woo you and instead accidentally calls you a coward and then gives an ultimatum, which he admits is cowardly on his part, my advice is to run away from him. But what do I know. I suppose being a songwriter with no grasp of language doesn’t necessarily make him a bad person.
Another thing I don’t understand is chronic depression. What are so many people so sad about? Obviously there are a lot of bad things in life, but they are either within our ability to change or they aren’t, so your options in life are to be confident you can change and hopeful others will. See? There you go- I was just able to solve everybody’s problems with one sentence. With that attitude, it is understandable why white males sobbing over their presumably posh lives tend to annoy me. I am usually a very rational and objective thinker, so I tend to be incredulous that people can’t just get over their petty selves and strive on.
A few years after first dismissing Elliott Smith I heard him again, after moving in with a roommate whose two favorite musicians were Smith and Syd Barrett. I didn’t get the appeal of Barrett when I first heard him either, but just last year I was challenged to listen to the debut Pink Floyd album. I’ve never liked Pink Floyd- pretentious drivel is what I’d call it. “Piper at the Gates of Dawn” was actually pretty good, though, which caused me to revisit Syd Barrett and find him much more interesting than I’d remembered. It was through this circuitous route that I decided to give Elliott Smith another try.
Smith’s style fits snugly between late Beatles and John Lennon solo. He probably spent a lot of time listening to Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks (1975). He doesn’t seem to be someone with an extensive musical library, but rather someone who has spent a lot of time shut up alone writing, rewriting and practicing. And that’s the thing about Elliott Smith- after listening to his music, you automatically assume you know everything about the guy. It’s funny to realize that, perhaps, he’s never broken up with a girl he loves; it’s just a topic he enjoys writing songs about. Smith’s songs are so utterly heartfelt, personal and convincing the proposal that they could be just stories seems preposterous.
I’ve had my heart broken by my fair share of girls, but would like to think I’ve never whined about it as much as this guy. In fact, I hope nobody’s taken a break up as hard as Elliott Smith. Holy Christ, dude, get it together. He alternatively blames self for his own inadequacies and spews anger towards his ex. Running together the lyrics from “I Didn’t Understand” and “A Question Mark,” both from XO (1998), makes it pretty obvious that Smith has some maladaptive coping strategies:
…
Even though the subject matter and instrumentation are the same, these two songs have completely different vibes- one is a cappella and the other features a full band, including a peppy baritone sax. It’s almost as if he’s cursed to keep writing on the same topics despite his uncanny ability to write songs that don’t sound derivative. Smith is not oblivious to how extreme his inability to let go and move on comes across. He not only perceives this, but responds to this criticism in a couple songs, including “Southern Belle,” from Elliott Smith (1995):
Smith tends to drown his vocals in either a sea of close harmonic overdubs or a Leslie organ speaker, giving the impression he must be uncomfortable with the sound of his own voice. One wonders whether he is insecure with his talents or in revealing the subject matter. Wrapping the words into this almost surreal cloud forces the listener not only to want to understand the lyrics but pay close attention in order to do so. In the end, the vocal effect provides an honest, distressed and soul-bearing atmosphere that effectively creates contrast on the rare occasion he reveals his actual naked, lonely voice.
The production sensibility is one way in which Smith informs the audience that the words must be personally meaningful. Another is by the unembellished frankness of the lyrics themselves.
This song in particular reads to me very much like a Charles Bukowski poem. Bukowski is the type of poet who can convince you the only solace in life is at a horse race, even though you’ve never been to a racetrack. One thing Bukowski is masterful at is putting details into poems that wouldn’t really make sense to be there unless they were true, and this is a concept that Smith also exploits. But while Bukowski is resolute and defiant, Elliott Smith is obsessed with missed opportunities and unfulfilled potential. He is a staunch pessimist.
I, on the other hand, am an optimist. Some might think I’m not because I tend to be overly critical, but that is precisely because I seek out the best of the best. I am wired to value productivity, and neither negativity nor dwelling on the past are useful. I dislike time-wasting and have never understood procrastinators. I’m easily amused and can entertain myself effortlessly. I'm a pretty normal guy. I don’t have much in common with Elliott Smith.
Figure 8 would be Smith’s final studio album. The first track from it makes us acutely aware that his mental issues may be far worse than we imagine:
This song, which is played in a haunting minor key and includes disorienting bridges, is downright frightening, and I don’t quite know what to make of it. I like to read about serial killers because their mindset is fascinatingly unfamiliar. This distinguishes "Son of Sam" from perhaps my favorite Elliott Smith song, "Between The Bars," from either/or (1997). In this song, he makes the first person character a sort of tragic, desperate wanna-be hero trying to save the wrong person and making unkeepable and ill-advised promises.
I like this song because, unlike most of Smith’s work, I can actually relate to it. I bring this up specifically because I think one of the most wonderful things about art is also something we need to be wary of- we tend to embrace art we can relate to and reject art we can’t. And that’s why Elliott Smith is important- he is a veritable window into mental illness. He acts as a voice for millions of people battling depression especially and mental diseases in general. Despite the fact that I have a BA in psychology and have dated a couple crazies, I don’t know much about mental illness. As un-hip as it is to admit it, I’m relatively sane. While those of us that don’t struggle with these issues tend to imagine them not dissimilar to how we feel upon finding expired milk in the fridge, Elliott Smith tells us how it really feels- and we should all be taking notes and learning from him for the betterment of human kind.
People who feel like Elliott Smith have lost access to perspective. Programs utilizing psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers trained to help these people regain an undistorted viewpoint are severely under-funded in America. In fact, our mental health care system ranks last among first world countries. In many ways, we have simply written off mental illness as an inevitable and unavoidable part of our culture. As a result, millions suffering from mental illness end up becoming homeless, abused or violent.
Elliott Smith died from two stab wounds to the chest on October 21st, 2003. They were probably self-inflicted.
I blaming my reaction on Coldplay, who had just come out with a terrible song called “Yellow,” that was wildly popular for some reason. The lyrics are stupid, trite and unironically nonsensical. Here’s a sample:
I swam across
I jumped across for you
Oh what a thing to do
'Cause you were all yellow
I drew a line
I drew a line for you
Oh what a thing to do
And it was all yellow
I take issue with people and things that are disingenuous. Males have established a long tradition of trying to get in girls’ pants by telling girls what they think they want to hear that really annoys me. The annoying part is that girls actually fall for that crap. So did he jump or did he swim? Obviously he’s flat out lying. When a guy is trying to woo you and instead accidentally calls you a coward and then gives an ultimatum, which he admits is cowardly on his part, my advice is to run away from him. But what do I know. I suppose being a songwriter with no grasp of language doesn’t necessarily make him a bad person.
Another thing I don’t understand is chronic depression. What are so many people so sad about? Obviously there are a lot of bad things in life, but they are either within our ability to change or they aren’t, so your options in life are to be confident you can change and hopeful others will. See? There you go- I was just able to solve everybody’s problems with one sentence. With that attitude, it is understandable why white males sobbing over their presumably posh lives tend to annoy me. I am usually a very rational and objective thinker, so I tend to be incredulous that people can’t just get over their petty selves and strive on.
A few years after first dismissing Elliott Smith I heard him again, after moving in with a roommate whose two favorite musicians were Smith and Syd Barrett. I didn’t get the appeal of Barrett when I first heard him either, but just last year I was challenged to listen to the debut Pink Floyd album. I’ve never liked Pink Floyd- pretentious drivel is what I’d call it. “Piper at the Gates of Dawn” was actually pretty good, though, which caused me to revisit Syd Barrett and find him much more interesting than I’d remembered. It was through this circuitous route that I decided to give Elliott Smith another try.
Smith’s style fits snugly between late Beatles and John Lennon solo. He probably spent a lot of time listening to Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks (1975). He doesn’t seem to be someone with an extensive musical library, but rather someone who has spent a lot of time shut up alone writing, rewriting and practicing. And that’s the thing about Elliott Smith- after listening to his music, you automatically assume you know everything about the guy. It’s funny to realize that, perhaps, he’s never broken up with a girl he loves; it’s just a topic he enjoys writing songs about. Smith’s songs are so utterly heartfelt, personal and convincing the proposal that they could be just stories seems preposterous.
I’ve had my heart broken by my fair share of girls, but would like to think I’ve never whined about it as much as this guy. In fact, I hope nobody’s taken a break up as hard as Elliott Smith. Holy Christ, dude, get it together. He alternatively blames self for his own inadequacies and spews anger towards his ex. Running together the lyrics from “I Didn’t Understand” and “A Question Mark,” both from XO (1998), makes it pretty obvious that Smith has some maladaptive coping strategies:
Thought you'd be looking for the next in line to love
Then ignore, put out, and put away
And so you'd soon be leaving me alone like I'm supposed to be
Tonight, tomorrow, and every day
There's nothing here that you'll miss
I can guarantee you this is a cloud of smoke
Trying to occupy space
What a fucking joke
What a fucking joke
I waited for a bus to separate the both of us
And take me off, far away from you
'Cause my feelings never change a bit
I always feel like shit
I don't know why, I guess that I just do
You once talked to me about love
And you painted pictures of a Never-Never land
And I could have gone to that place
But I didn't understand
I didn't understand
I didn't understand
…
I got a question mark
You got a need to always take some shot in the dark
I don't have to make pretend the picture I'm in is totally clear
You think that all things have a way they ought to appear
'Cause you know you know you know you know
You know you know you know you know
You know I don't
I dream
Don't know what you mean
Panic called you out and took you in
Giving you an easy game and letting you win
Giving back a little hatred now to the world
'Cause it treated you bad
'Cause you couldn't keep the great unknown from making you mad
'Cause you know you know you know you know
You know you know you know you know
You know I don't
I dream
Don't know what you mean
Said your final word, but honesty and love could have kept us together
One day you'll see it's worth it after all
If you ever want to say you're sorry you can give me a call
Even though the subject matter and instrumentation are the same, these two songs have completely different vibes- one is a cappella and the other features a full band, including a peppy baritone sax. It’s almost as if he’s cursed to keep writing on the same topics despite his uncanny ability to write songs that don’t sound derivative. Smith is not oblivious to how extreme his inability to let go and move on comes across. He not only perceives this, but responds to this criticism in a couple songs, including “Southern Belle,” from Elliott Smith (1995):
Killing a southern belle
Is all you know how to do
That, and give other people hell
It's what they expect from you too
But I wouldn't have you how you want
I don't want to walk around
I don't even want to breathe
I live in a southern town
Where all you can do is grit your teeth
But I wouldn't have you how you want
How come you're not ashamed of what you are?
And sorry that you're the one she got?
Ain't nobody looking now
Nobody nothing's said
No one's about to shout
Nobody's seeing red
But I wouldn't have you how you want
You're killing a southern belle
Killing a southern belle
Killing a southern belle
Smith tends to drown his vocals in either a sea of close harmonic overdubs or a Leslie organ speaker, giving the impression he must be uncomfortable with the sound of his own voice. One wonders whether he is insecure with his talents or in revealing the subject matter. Wrapping the words into this almost surreal cloud forces the listener not only to want to understand the lyrics but pay close attention in order to do so. In the end, the vocal effect provides an honest, distressed and soul-bearing atmosphere that effectively creates contrast on the rare occasion he reveals his actual naked, lonely voice.
The production sensibility is one way in which Smith informs the audience that the words must be personally meaningful. Another is by the unembellished frankness of the lyrics themselves.
"Clementine" from Elliott Smith
They're waking you up to close the bar
The street's wet, you can tell by the sound of the cars
The bartender's singing "Clementine"
While he's turning around the Open sign
"Dreadful sorry, Clementine"
Though you're still her man
It seems a long time gone
Maybe the whole thing's wrong
What if she thinks so but just didn't say so?
You drank yourself into slow-mo
Made an angel in the snow
You did anything to pass the time
And keep that song out of your mind
"Oh my darling
Oh my darling
Oh my darling Clementine
Dreadful sorry, Clementine"
This song in particular reads to me very much like a Charles Bukowski poem. Bukowski is the type of poet who can convince you the only solace in life is at a horse race, even though you’ve never been to a racetrack. One thing Bukowski is masterful at is putting details into poems that wouldn’t really make sense to be there unless they were true, and this is a concept that Smith also exploits. But while Bukowski is resolute and defiant, Elliott Smith is obsessed with missed opportunities and unfulfilled potential. He is a staunch pessimist.
“No Name No. 5” from Figure 8 (2000)
Got bitten fingernails and a head full of the past
And everybody's gone at last
Sweet, sweet smile that's fading fast
'Cause everybody's gone at last
Don't get upset about it
No not anymore
There's nothing wrong that wasn't wrong before
Had a second alone with a chance let pass
And everybody's gone at last
Well I hope you're not waiting
Waiting 'round for me
'Cause I'm not going anywhere, obviously
Got a broken heart and your name on my cast
And everybody's gone at last
Everybody's gone at last
I, on the other hand, am an optimist. Some might think I’m not because I tend to be overly critical, but that is precisely because I seek out the best of the best. I am wired to value productivity, and neither negativity nor dwelling on the past are useful. I dislike time-wasting and have never understood procrastinators. I’m easily amused and can entertain myself effortlessly. I'm a pretty normal guy. I don’t have much in common with Elliott Smith.
Figure 8 would be Smith’s final studio album. The first track from it makes us acutely aware that his mental issues may be far worse than we imagine:
"Son of Sam"
Something's happening, don't speak too soon
I told the boss off and made my move
Got nowhere to go
Son of Sam, son of the shining path, the clouded mind
The couple killer each and every time
I'm not uncomfortable, feeling weird
Lonely leered, options disappeared
But I know what to do
Son of Sam, son of a doctor's touch, a nurse's love
Acting under orders from above
King for a day!
Son of Sam, son of the shining path, the clouded mind
The couple killer running out of time
Shiva opens her arms now to make sure I don't get too far
I may talk in my sleep tonight 'cause I don't know what I am
I'm a little like you, more like Son of Sam
This song, which is played in a haunting minor key and includes disorienting bridges, is downright frightening, and I don’t quite know what to make of it. I like to read about serial killers because their mindset is fascinatingly unfamiliar. This distinguishes "Son of Sam" from perhaps my favorite Elliott Smith song, "Between The Bars," from either/or (1997). In this song, he makes the first person character a sort of tragic, desperate wanna-be hero trying to save the wrong person and making unkeepable and ill-advised promises.
Drink up baby, stay up all night
With the things you could do
You won't but you might
The potential you'll be
That you'll never see
The promises you'll only make
Drink up with me now
And forget all about
The pressure of days
Do what I say
And I'll make you okay
And drive them away
The images stuck in your head
People you've been before
That you don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will
I'll keep them still
Drink up baby, look at the stars
I'll kiss you again between the bars
Where I'm seeing you there
With your hands in the air
Waiting to finally be caught
Drink up one more time
And I'll make you mine
Keep you apart
Deep in my heart
Separate from the rest
Where I like you the best
And keep the things you forgot
The people you've been before
That you don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will
I'll keep them still
I like this song because, unlike most of Smith’s work, I can actually relate to it. I bring this up specifically because I think one of the most wonderful things about art is also something we need to be wary of- we tend to embrace art we can relate to and reject art we can’t. And that’s why Elliott Smith is important- he is a veritable window into mental illness. He acts as a voice for millions of people battling depression especially and mental diseases in general. Despite the fact that I have a BA in psychology and have dated a couple crazies, I don’t know much about mental illness. As un-hip as it is to admit it, I’m relatively sane. While those of us that don’t struggle with these issues tend to imagine them not dissimilar to how we feel upon finding expired milk in the fridge, Elliott Smith tells us how it really feels- and we should all be taking notes and learning from him for the betterment of human kind.
People who feel like Elliott Smith have lost access to perspective. Programs utilizing psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers trained to help these people regain an undistorted viewpoint are severely under-funded in America. In fact, our mental health care system ranks last among first world countries. In many ways, we have simply written off mental illness as an inevitable and unavoidable part of our culture. As a result, millions suffering from mental illness end up becoming homeless, abused or violent.
Elliott Smith died from two stab wounds to the chest on October 21st, 2003. They were probably self-inflicted.
“Oh Well, Okay" from XO
Here's the silhouette, the face always turned away
The bleeding color gone to black, dying like a day
Couldn't figure out what made you so unhappy
Shook your head to say no, no, no
And stopped for a spell
And stayed that way
Oh well, okay
I got pictures, I just don't see it anymore
Climbing hour upon hour through a total bore
With the one I keep, where it never fades
In the safety of a pitch-black mind
An airless cell that blocks the day
Oh well, okay
If you get a feeling next time you see me
Do me a favor and let me know
'Cause it's hard to tell
It's hard to say
Oh well, okay
Oh well, okay
Oh well, okay
Monday, October 27, 2014
The Importance of Tattoos
Some consider tattoos a waste of money, and in many ways they are. I consider things like big houses, fancy vehicles and jewelry a waste of money, but I don’t have those things. I have tattoos. I believe tattoos offer something beyond the feelings of identity and pride that we Americans seek in the things we buy. I don’t know whether tattoos offer anything that justifies the expense, but I think there’s an unfair juxtaposition between the perceptions of having a sports car and getting tattooed- whereas one is lauded for indicating success, the other is derided for demonstrating a lack of judgment.
At the root of this issue is a significant misunderstanding among the uninitiated as to why people get tattooed. This in turn means there are vastly different reasons why people get their first tattoo and why they get their second one. I’m not going to pretend I know the myriad of reasons why people get tattooed; my intention is to use my subjective experiences with tattoos to attempt to give non-tattooed people a fuller perspective on tattoos than what American culture generally provides.
Part I: The First Tat
Most people want their first tattoo to be some object that is personally significant and meaningful. They usually want it to be small and hide-able. On the other hand, first timers who get large tats or tats in visible areas are likely either tattoo artists themselves or want to impress others; the latter might fit the stereotype of being socially defiant or in a gang. Personally, I’ve always thought tattoos were cool. The great philosopher Immanuel Kant recommended not trying to decipher human motivations because they are far too abstract.
First-timers figure it’ll probably hurt a bit. How getting tattooed actually feels depends on size, density, placement and, most importantly, mental state, and can run the gamut from ticklish to excruciating, but generally feels like a combination of being burned and scratched. Tats are generally created in three passes: hard lines, greyscale shading and then color- with color sometimes including several passes. There can be another pass of line detailing over the top of all that. Multiple passes over the same area of skin during a one-session tat can be a bitch. The process is accompanied by an endorphin rush that peaks after about an hour and a half to two hours and crashes around three and a half to four hours. Therefore, tats that take less than an hour can act as teasers where you end up wishing the experience had taken longer. (If you think a tattoo lasting less than an hour is extremely painful, I’d kindly suggest you are a wuss.) Tats lasting longer than four hours require either a high pain threshold or a strong mental attitude toward overcoming the pain.
One’s own reaction to their first tattoo is either extreme pride or extreme shame; the basic thought in both cases being, “I can’t believe I did that!” Those experiencing pride will be the ones wearing a cut of clothing specifically chosen to show-off their tattoo, even if it is a bad one, which a normal outfit would have covered up. Wondering why another is not ashamed of their tattoo that you would NEVER get reveals your character to be wanting, not theirs. Our species could benefit from being a lot less judgmental and feeling a lot less shame.
These days, it seems like there’s a tattoo parlor on every street corner, but even now, on most days an artist that you don’t have to make an appointment with is either a novice or had a cancellation (which is very common). In the old days, you’d choose your tattoo from a set of “flash” or drawings the tattoo artist had displayed. Sometimes these were designs from the artist themselves, and sometimes they were cribbed or purchased from another tattoo artist. Today, everybody wants a “custom” tattoo. This causes two problems- you may be asking for something that that tattoo artist doesn’t know how to render in tattoo form and your idea might be stupid. I recommend considering any tattoo idea from the perspective of how you’d react to it if you saw it as flash advertised by a tattoo artist. Great t-shirt ideas do not always make good tattoos.
Artists tend to have photograph examples of pieces they’ve done and enjoyed doing. The best thing to do is find a portfolio with images you appreciate, and ask for something that you want done in that artist’s style. Tattoo placement is another important factor that the artist will likely understand the repercussions of better than the canvas. People may not realize that tattoo artists will generally ask questions like, “What do you do for a living?” and desire for a third-party reaction of, “Oh my god, who did that?” to be akin to that of a museum patron and not a homicide investigator. Tattoos should be thought of as collaborations, with the person holding the gun being the technical and artistic expert.
If you have some friend coercing or shaming you into getting a tattoo, that person is a douchebag that you should stop associating with. If you want “Believe” written on your ankle, you don’t need an artist with a six month waiting list. You do, however, want to see examples of lettering from the artist and need to make sure it gets spelled correctly. Another thing to be mindful of is to make sure an artist hasn’t accidentally mirrored an image when making the stencil- which can be especially confusing when you’re looking at the image in a mirror.
For the first few days, a new tattoo will feel like a sunburn; then it’ll start to peel and itch. Closely follow the artist’s recommended two week aftercare program- unless you want a splotchy, faded or infected tat. (On a back piece, assistance in applying cream/lotion during this time is essential.) Applying sunscreen is NOT the same as keeping it out of direct sunlight. One thing that is often not articulated is that if you apply pressure to a fresh tat, it will stick to and transfer itself to fabric. If this happens, you have to soak the fabric with water before gently removing it from your skin.
Part II: The Repeat Customer
The experience of getting a tattoo offers an acute, heightened awareness of one’s own body unlike anything else. The nervous system is a fascinating thing, with different parts of the body sending different interpretations of the same sensation to the brain. If you’re not watching, it is often impossible to guess exactly which part of a tattoo is being worked on. Adapting to the sensation of being jabbed with rapidly-vibrating needles is a skill that can be improved upon over time. Not only are coping strategies acquired, but your body builds up a tolerance to the pain. As you become accustomed to getting tattooed, future sittings hurt less. It still hurts, though.
The best way to deal with the pain is to accept it. Compared to the pain of having your limbs ripped off by horses or getting punched by Brock Lesner, it’s really not that big of a deal. When an artist is really digging in with a fifteen needle bar, I remind myself that’s the feeling of progress. You can also focus on appreciating the warmth of the tattoo gun, thinking of it as a localized heating device. Your body tends to want to go into fight-or-flight mode, but if you fight or struggle against it, not wanting it to hurt, you won’t be able to stay relaxed and your body will start to twitch, tighten and flinch. Distracting your mind (choosing the “flight” response) by thinking of anything and everything you can also works to make the experience less painful, but only in spurts. How you deal with pain reveals character. Tattoos not only demonstrate but also teach discipline, commitment and humility. This is why people go back for more. It is no wonder they are popular within organizations that value loyalty.
Eventually, it doesn’t matter to the wearer whether his tattoos are visible to others. These tattoos are not necessarily there for others to notice or comment upon. People will ask, “What’s that say?” and I’ll have no idea what their talking about because, in general, I don’t think about or notice my own tattoos any more than, for example, my own ears. When I see another’s tattoo, I might think, Wow, that’s small, but only an idiot would actually share their opinion of another’s tat as if it mattered. (Perhaps the strangest comment I’ve gotten from another upon seeing one of my tattoos has been, “Did you get bored one day or something?” I can’t relate to thinking of a tattoo as being something done on a whim.) The arms are the least painful area to get tattooed and the neck is the most painful, so those are incentives to get those areas done; reasons that have nothing to do with being socially defiant or a gang-banger. (For the curious, the shin, ribs and clavicle are the most painful areas I’ve had tattooed.)
Everyone with a tattoo participated in its creation. The shape and skin tone of your unique body irreplicably contribute to the finished piece. The final product becomes a literal part of its owner that can be felt for the rest of their lives. (Tats itch in cold weather.) Repeat customers understand that tattoos are a medium through which artists can express themselves. We respect and trust the tattoo artist fully. After the first, it is realized the meaning and symbolism of the tattoo runs deeper than whatever object it happens to be. Only a tattoo virgin would see someone with roses on their arm and declare, “You must really like roses!” What a tattoo is of is almost beside the point.
America is a country with a lot of spoiled brats- whites especially- getting through life by avoiding any experience that involves discomfort and pain. This strategy makes us vulnerable and unprepared when the inevitable illness, disease or confrontation occurs. Tattooing offers a safe and beautiful way of experiencing and overcoming pain, and leaves us with a permanent reminder of that achievement. There is nothing more dangerous than a culture that condones conformity, homogeneity, passivity and painlessness while rejecting individualism. Intolerance is the single greatest threat to humankind. When we eschew our ability to have personal experiences and preferences, we increase the risk of being stripped of those privileges. We should not be speaking disparagingly about the barbarism of tattoos but instead lauding them for being an essential part of a progressive civilization. Tattoos are art, and without art, life is meaningless.
At the root of this issue is a significant misunderstanding among the uninitiated as to why people get tattooed. This in turn means there are vastly different reasons why people get their first tattoo and why they get their second one. I’m not going to pretend I know the myriad of reasons why people get tattooed; my intention is to use my subjective experiences with tattoos to attempt to give non-tattooed people a fuller perspective on tattoos than what American culture generally provides.
Part I: The First Tat
Most people want their first tattoo to be some object that is personally significant and meaningful. They usually want it to be small and hide-able. On the other hand, first timers who get large tats or tats in visible areas are likely either tattoo artists themselves or want to impress others; the latter might fit the stereotype of being socially defiant or in a gang. Personally, I’ve always thought tattoos were cool. The great philosopher Immanuel Kant recommended not trying to decipher human motivations because they are far too abstract.
First-timers figure it’ll probably hurt a bit. How getting tattooed actually feels depends on size, density, placement and, most importantly, mental state, and can run the gamut from ticklish to excruciating, but generally feels like a combination of being burned and scratched. Tats are generally created in three passes: hard lines, greyscale shading and then color- with color sometimes including several passes. There can be another pass of line detailing over the top of all that. Multiple passes over the same area of skin during a one-session tat can be a bitch. The process is accompanied by an endorphin rush that peaks after about an hour and a half to two hours and crashes around three and a half to four hours. Therefore, tats that take less than an hour can act as teasers where you end up wishing the experience had taken longer. (If you think a tattoo lasting less than an hour is extremely painful, I’d kindly suggest you are a wuss.) Tats lasting longer than four hours require either a high pain threshold or a strong mental attitude toward overcoming the pain.
One’s own reaction to their first tattoo is either extreme pride or extreme shame; the basic thought in both cases being, “I can’t believe I did that!” Those experiencing pride will be the ones wearing a cut of clothing specifically chosen to show-off their tattoo, even if it is a bad one, which a normal outfit would have covered up. Wondering why another is not ashamed of their tattoo that you would NEVER get reveals your character to be wanting, not theirs. Our species could benefit from being a lot less judgmental and feeling a lot less shame.
These days, it seems like there’s a tattoo parlor on every street corner, but even now, on most days an artist that you don’t have to make an appointment with is either a novice or had a cancellation (which is very common). In the old days, you’d choose your tattoo from a set of “flash” or drawings the tattoo artist had displayed. Sometimes these were designs from the artist themselves, and sometimes they were cribbed or purchased from another tattoo artist. Today, everybody wants a “custom” tattoo. This causes two problems- you may be asking for something that that tattoo artist doesn’t know how to render in tattoo form and your idea might be stupid. I recommend considering any tattoo idea from the perspective of how you’d react to it if you saw it as flash advertised by a tattoo artist. Great t-shirt ideas do not always make good tattoos.
Artists tend to have photograph examples of pieces they’ve done and enjoyed doing. The best thing to do is find a portfolio with images you appreciate, and ask for something that you want done in that artist’s style. Tattoo placement is another important factor that the artist will likely understand the repercussions of better than the canvas. People may not realize that tattoo artists will generally ask questions like, “What do you do for a living?” and desire for a third-party reaction of, “Oh my god, who did that?” to be akin to that of a museum patron and not a homicide investigator. Tattoos should be thought of as collaborations, with the person holding the gun being the technical and artistic expert.
If you have some friend coercing or shaming you into getting a tattoo, that person is a douchebag that you should stop associating with. If you want “Believe” written on your ankle, you don’t need an artist with a six month waiting list. You do, however, want to see examples of lettering from the artist and need to make sure it gets spelled correctly. Another thing to be mindful of is to make sure an artist hasn’t accidentally mirrored an image when making the stencil- which can be especially confusing when you’re looking at the image in a mirror.
For the first few days, a new tattoo will feel like a sunburn; then it’ll start to peel and itch. Closely follow the artist’s recommended two week aftercare program- unless you want a splotchy, faded or infected tat. (On a back piece, assistance in applying cream/lotion during this time is essential.) Applying sunscreen is NOT the same as keeping it out of direct sunlight. One thing that is often not articulated is that if you apply pressure to a fresh tat, it will stick to and transfer itself to fabric. If this happens, you have to soak the fabric with water before gently removing it from your skin.
Part II: The Repeat Customer
The experience of getting a tattoo offers an acute, heightened awareness of one’s own body unlike anything else. The nervous system is a fascinating thing, with different parts of the body sending different interpretations of the same sensation to the brain. If you’re not watching, it is often impossible to guess exactly which part of a tattoo is being worked on. Adapting to the sensation of being jabbed with rapidly-vibrating needles is a skill that can be improved upon over time. Not only are coping strategies acquired, but your body builds up a tolerance to the pain. As you become accustomed to getting tattooed, future sittings hurt less. It still hurts, though.
The best way to deal with the pain is to accept it. Compared to the pain of having your limbs ripped off by horses or getting punched by Brock Lesner, it’s really not that big of a deal. When an artist is really digging in with a fifteen needle bar, I remind myself that’s the feeling of progress. You can also focus on appreciating the warmth of the tattoo gun, thinking of it as a localized heating device. Your body tends to want to go into fight-or-flight mode, but if you fight or struggle against it, not wanting it to hurt, you won’t be able to stay relaxed and your body will start to twitch, tighten and flinch. Distracting your mind (choosing the “flight” response) by thinking of anything and everything you can also works to make the experience less painful, but only in spurts. How you deal with pain reveals character. Tattoos not only demonstrate but also teach discipline, commitment and humility. This is why people go back for more. It is no wonder they are popular within organizations that value loyalty.
Eventually, it doesn’t matter to the wearer whether his tattoos are visible to others. These tattoos are not necessarily there for others to notice or comment upon. People will ask, “What’s that say?” and I’ll have no idea what their talking about because, in general, I don’t think about or notice my own tattoos any more than, for example, my own ears. When I see another’s tattoo, I might think, Wow, that’s small, but only an idiot would actually share their opinion of another’s tat as if it mattered. (Perhaps the strangest comment I’ve gotten from another upon seeing one of my tattoos has been, “Did you get bored one day or something?” I can’t relate to thinking of a tattoo as being something done on a whim.) The arms are the least painful area to get tattooed and the neck is the most painful, so those are incentives to get those areas done; reasons that have nothing to do with being socially defiant or a gang-banger. (For the curious, the shin, ribs and clavicle are the most painful areas I’ve had tattooed.)
Everyone with a tattoo participated in its creation. The shape and skin tone of your unique body irreplicably contribute to the finished piece. The final product becomes a literal part of its owner that can be felt for the rest of their lives. (Tats itch in cold weather.) Repeat customers understand that tattoos are a medium through which artists can express themselves. We respect and trust the tattoo artist fully. After the first, it is realized the meaning and symbolism of the tattoo runs deeper than whatever object it happens to be. Only a tattoo virgin would see someone with roses on their arm and declare, “You must really like roses!” What a tattoo is of is almost beside the point.
America is a country with a lot of spoiled brats- whites especially- getting through life by avoiding any experience that involves discomfort and pain. This strategy makes us vulnerable and unprepared when the inevitable illness, disease or confrontation occurs. Tattooing offers a safe and beautiful way of experiencing and overcoming pain, and leaves us with a permanent reminder of that achievement. There is nothing more dangerous than a culture that condones conformity, homogeneity, passivity and painlessness while rejecting individualism. Intolerance is the single greatest threat to humankind. When we eschew our ability to have personal experiences and preferences, we increase the risk of being stripped of those privileges. We should not be speaking disparagingly about the barbarism of tattoos but instead lauding them for being an essential part of a progressive civilization. Tattoos are art, and without art, life is meaningless.
Friday, August 8, 2014
Likes vs. Dislikes
“Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” –from Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, as are all italicized quotes throughout.
I once took one of those internet quizzes testing how high maintenance I was and got 0%. The quiz summary of that result began, “You seem to be a pretty boring person.” It is true- I am kind of boring. I don’t really enjoy small-talk or gossip and avoid drama. In fact, I get bored by others fussing over nonsense. I prefer for things to remain calm and serene. Simple things closely inspected are boring only when they are blatantly plagiarized or derivative; the rest is boring only to those who desire for things to be obvious. The feeling of boredom belongs to those lacking both imagination and drive; those complaining of being bored end up trying to entertain themselves with hackneyed imitation.
The majority in our society are addicted to external distraction. To fulfill that desire, we become obsessed with finding flaws, which are blamed for causing us stress, frustration and disappointment. Everybody wants to find the defect but nobody wants to be it, so taking responsibility without having a scapegoat is avoided. For every person who does something, there are a thousand proclaiming how it should have been done. People will do almost anything to not have to do almost anything- it boggles my mind that anyone would rather eat processed food than learn to cook. We remain inside our climate-regulated shelters, except for when we must quickly move to our climate-regulated vehicles to transport ourselves to another climate-regulated shelter, all the while discussing the weather with enthusiastic aplomb. When something goes awry with either shelter or transportation, we find another to fix it as quickly as possible, and complain about the expense. “The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way, are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose.”
Our adeptness at being distracted causes us to accumulate a disproportionate number of aversions. We rile against absurdly mundane things like tall grass, weeds, displaced rocks, dirt patches, insects, rodents and dust. We act as if we would prefer to be sealed in a hyperbaric chamber were it not for the inability to fit our possessions into it. Symmetrical apples, matching plates and color-coordinated clothes are insisted upon while individuality, diversity and candor are ridiculed, condemned and shunned. “Our life is frittered away by detail.” The goal, it seems, is to keep the world as homogenous, regulated and saccharine as possible. Anything which catches our attention is considered offensive, and must be eliminated, with the implied goal that perhaps one day everything- and everyone- can be ignored. But that day will never come, simply because it would deny us the satisfaction of pointing at something and declaring, “That is why I suffer.”
Thoreau said, “My greatest skill has been to want but little.” He explored an alternative method for enabling us to have everything we want, which began by breaking things down to understand what we truly need and how those needs can be most efficiently procured. He then sought to fully appreciate the beauty in what those basic necessities provided, so that everything we could ever want could be found in having only what we need. ”I wanted to live deep and suck out the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that are not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life to a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.” Thoreau sussed out what was essential so that he could disregard the superfluous and explore that which was unencumbered, undiluted and undistracted in order to emulate and embody those traits. Instead of pursuing cosmetic blemishlessness, he aimed to do the right thing.
Mental or physical illness or disability, war and oppressive overlords inescapably complicate things by adding a variable to decisions that must be prioritized. A safe and healthy person, however, is free to choose from a vast number of options. The preferences of a healthy person are, too often, devoid of grounded intention and instead influenced by things like lethargy, mania, etiquette, custom or nostalgia. These whims are then presented so as to feign being the most logical choice. We look down upon those who fail to convincingly emulate and reflect the prevailing cultural customs while deriding all other customs as being ignorant and absurd. We distort the importance of tradition until it becomes more sacred than life itself.
We allow others to do not only our thinking but also our work for us, admiring our own cleverness in being able to reap the rewards of their labor without considering that we are robbing ourselves of opportunities to learn, improve and excel. We expect, depend upon and demand that there will always be someone around to help us, or that there will always be someone to work for and obey, because either way we have someone to blame for whatever fails to impress. While we could be spreading good deeds in private, we instead purchase extravagances that proclaim to all our ability to waste, because excess proves success. “Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only.” We hope that others look upon our things with admiration while nervously trying to avoid their inevitable deterioration.
A dichotomy can be created between likes and dislikes so that we can see which outweighs the other.
Sometimes we like sleep more than we dislike being late. Sometimes we dislike doing dishes more than we like clean counters. Sometimes we dislike confrontation more than we like being honest. Sometimes we like surfing the internet more than we like reading or writing. Sometimes we dislike weeding more than we dislike weeds. Our values are revealed by our actions.
I, like most, find it much easier to complain than praise. To counter negativity, I endeavor to find one thing I can appreciate and then passionately learn about it, so that my focus remains on something constructive or positive. “To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.” When you are truly dedicated to improving at a craft, you won’t let anything distract you from it; there are no excuses. Success and failure are equal parts of the process. It is not the thing but rather our chosen reaction to it that dictates how we feel. “The thrills of joy and thrills of pain are indistinguishable.” Our chosen reactions shape our habitual, instinctual, immediate ones, and if we can learn to control those, we have conquered ourselves and become the rulers of our own existence.
My whole approach to living has been extremely influenced by the writings of Thoreau, whom I first learned about in second or third grade through a children’s book called My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George, about a boy living alone in the wilderness. I have always been quite fond of being in nature. I highly value the ability to survive alone in the wild, and therefore appreciate anything relating to that task, including being independent, resourceful, durable, adaptable and long-suffering. These days, I get outdoors by playing a lot of disc golf, a sport in which players wander around in the woods and grass throwing over-engineered Frisbees around the trees. I like playing disc golf more than I dislike being tired, playing poorly or bugs. “Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails.”
Happiness is not difficult to attain. I think a lot of people resist happiness because it’s, you know, boring. In America, we are taught that happiness is won through demonstrating dominance by acquiring assets, acceptance or obedience. Contentment and satisfaction are considered lazy. We want spectacle. We want war. We run through the forest, avoiding the trees, in hopes of finding the enchanted castle. What splendor, elegance, mystery or charm, pray tell, could any castle possibly have that surpasses that of a forest? The most opulent restaurant in the world cannot make food taste better than that which can be collected in the wild by a wandering nomad and cooked over an open fire pit. We are so well trained at wanting more that the concept of wanting nothing except to appreciate what we already have seems absurd. “Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive. As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.”
Nobody on their death bed reminisces about the day a slow driver in front of them that made them late for work. A lot of things that really annoy us just aren’t important at all, and yet we give them our utmost energy and attention. When we are able to step back and take the time to consider what is really important, we find now, the present, unfolding from the future and disappearing into the past, staring back. Only after letting go of distractions, annoyances and imperfections can we go about living the life that is in front of us. “When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced.”
I once took one of those internet quizzes testing how high maintenance I was and got 0%. The quiz summary of that result began, “You seem to be a pretty boring person.” It is true- I am kind of boring. I don’t really enjoy small-talk or gossip and avoid drama. In fact, I get bored by others fussing over nonsense. I prefer for things to remain calm and serene. Simple things closely inspected are boring only when they are blatantly plagiarized or derivative; the rest is boring only to those who desire for things to be obvious. The feeling of boredom belongs to those lacking both imagination and drive; those complaining of being bored end up trying to entertain themselves with hackneyed imitation.
The majority in our society are addicted to external distraction. To fulfill that desire, we become obsessed with finding flaws, which are blamed for causing us stress, frustration and disappointment. Everybody wants to find the defect but nobody wants to be it, so taking responsibility without having a scapegoat is avoided. For every person who does something, there are a thousand proclaiming how it should have been done. People will do almost anything to not have to do almost anything- it boggles my mind that anyone would rather eat processed food than learn to cook. We remain inside our climate-regulated shelters, except for when we must quickly move to our climate-regulated vehicles to transport ourselves to another climate-regulated shelter, all the while discussing the weather with enthusiastic aplomb. When something goes awry with either shelter or transportation, we find another to fix it as quickly as possible, and complain about the expense. “The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way, are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose.”
Our adeptness at being distracted causes us to accumulate a disproportionate number of aversions. We rile against absurdly mundane things like tall grass, weeds, displaced rocks, dirt patches, insects, rodents and dust. We act as if we would prefer to be sealed in a hyperbaric chamber were it not for the inability to fit our possessions into it. Symmetrical apples, matching plates and color-coordinated clothes are insisted upon while individuality, diversity and candor are ridiculed, condemned and shunned. “Our life is frittered away by detail.” The goal, it seems, is to keep the world as homogenous, regulated and saccharine as possible. Anything which catches our attention is considered offensive, and must be eliminated, with the implied goal that perhaps one day everything- and everyone- can be ignored. But that day will never come, simply because it would deny us the satisfaction of pointing at something and declaring, “That is why I suffer.”
Thoreau said, “My greatest skill has been to want but little.” He explored an alternative method for enabling us to have everything we want, which began by breaking things down to understand what we truly need and how those needs can be most efficiently procured. He then sought to fully appreciate the beauty in what those basic necessities provided, so that everything we could ever want could be found in having only what we need. ”I wanted to live deep and suck out the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that are not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life to a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.” Thoreau sussed out what was essential so that he could disregard the superfluous and explore that which was unencumbered, undiluted and undistracted in order to emulate and embody those traits. Instead of pursuing cosmetic blemishlessness, he aimed to do the right thing.
Mental or physical illness or disability, war and oppressive overlords inescapably complicate things by adding a variable to decisions that must be prioritized. A safe and healthy person, however, is free to choose from a vast number of options. The preferences of a healthy person are, too often, devoid of grounded intention and instead influenced by things like lethargy, mania, etiquette, custom or nostalgia. These whims are then presented so as to feign being the most logical choice. We look down upon those who fail to convincingly emulate and reflect the prevailing cultural customs while deriding all other customs as being ignorant and absurd. We distort the importance of tradition until it becomes more sacred than life itself.
We allow others to do not only our thinking but also our work for us, admiring our own cleverness in being able to reap the rewards of their labor without considering that we are robbing ourselves of opportunities to learn, improve and excel. We expect, depend upon and demand that there will always be someone around to help us, or that there will always be someone to work for and obey, because either way we have someone to blame for whatever fails to impress. While we could be spreading good deeds in private, we instead purchase extravagances that proclaim to all our ability to waste, because excess proves success. “Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only.” We hope that others look upon our things with admiration while nervously trying to avoid their inevitable deterioration.
A dichotomy can be created between likes and dislikes so that we can see which outweighs the other.
Sometimes we like sleep more than we dislike being late. Sometimes we dislike doing dishes more than we like clean counters. Sometimes we dislike confrontation more than we like being honest. Sometimes we like surfing the internet more than we like reading or writing. Sometimes we dislike weeding more than we dislike weeds. Our values are revealed by our actions.
I, like most, find it much easier to complain than praise. To counter negativity, I endeavor to find one thing I can appreciate and then passionately learn about it, so that my focus remains on something constructive or positive. “To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.” When you are truly dedicated to improving at a craft, you won’t let anything distract you from it; there are no excuses. Success and failure are equal parts of the process. It is not the thing but rather our chosen reaction to it that dictates how we feel. “The thrills of joy and thrills of pain are indistinguishable.” Our chosen reactions shape our habitual, instinctual, immediate ones, and if we can learn to control those, we have conquered ourselves and become the rulers of our own existence.
My whole approach to living has been extremely influenced by the writings of Thoreau, whom I first learned about in second or third grade through a children’s book called My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George, about a boy living alone in the wilderness. I have always been quite fond of being in nature. I highly value the ability to survive alone in the wild, and therefore appreciate anything relating to that task, including being independent, resourceful, durable, adaptable and long-suffering. These days, I get outdoors by playing a lot of disc golf, a sport in which players wander around in the woods and grass throwing over-engineered Frisbees around the trees. I like playing disc golf more than I dislike being tired, playing poorly or bugs. “Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails.”
Happiness is not difficult to attain. I think a lot of people resist happiness because it’s, you know, boring. In America, we are taught that happiness is won through demonstrating dominance by acquiring assets, acceptance or obedience. Contentment and satisfaction are considered lazy. We want spectacle. We want war. We run through the forest, avoiding the trees, in hopes of finding the enchanted castle. What splendor, elegance, mystery or charm, pray tell, could any castle possibly have that surpasses that of a forest? The most opulent restaurant in the world cannot make food taste better than that which can be collected in the wild by a wandering nomad and cooked over an open fire pit. We are so well trained at wanting more that the concept of wanting nothing except to appreciate what we already have seems absurd. “Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive. As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.”
Nobody on their death bed reminisces about the day a slow driver in front of them that made them late for work. A lot of things that really annoy us just aren’t important at all, and yet we give them our utmost energy and attention. When we are able to step back and take the time to consider what is really important, we find now, the present, unfolding from the future and disappearing into the past, staring back. Only after letting go of distractions, annoyances and imperfections can we go about living the life that is in front of us. “When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced.”
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Why We Don't Learn
While I was in college, my grandpa asked what I planned to do with my education. “I don’t know, I’m just going to college to learn,” I announced.
“Well, you have to think about investing in your future. You want to focus on courses where you can best capitalize on your investment. You have to look at the market, and the demand, and how you can best use your education to exploit that demand,” he instructed.
I found this concept repulsive. I felt that exploitation was bad and sacrificing the present for the future even worse. I wasn’t interested in money; I found it a distraction from the important things in life: equality, integrity and truth.
Today, I vividly understand and appreciate that grandpa was giving sound advice. I have never used my degrees in philosophy and psychology for anything practical, and consequently have only been hired for jobs requiring a high school education, if that. Not only do these types of job not pay as much, performing them means certain others are likely to assume I’m a moron. On the contrary, I have almost always had jobs that I enjoyed and currently make enough money to save a couple hundred dollars every month. I never took out student loans and currently don’t have debt of any sort: no car payments, mortgage payments or credit card bills. That makes my net worth more than most Americans. I am not owned by money.
The most prominent distraction related to money is excess. A few years ago, I decided to move and knew I couldn’t take my beloved 1993 Toyota pickup with me. I had just stupidly paid $2400 to rebuild the engine. I put out an ad asking $1000 and got a call. It went like this:
“Hello?”
“I’m calling about the truck for sale?”
“Yes, I still have it.”
“It has a 5-speed manual transmission?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“And it says here in the ad it doesn’t have anything automatic, by which I assume you mean windows and locks, but obviously it has things like power steering.”
“No, it does not have power steering.”
“Does it have a CD player or just a tape deck?”
“Neither. It doesn’t even have a radio. Just a hole in the middle of the dashboard.”
“A/C?”
“No, but you can crank down the windows”
“How’s the condition of the body?”
“It’s okay. There’s a fair amount of rust and the back bumper’s missing, but the tailgate works.”
“So basically, all you have is a manual engine in a shell.”
“Yes. It runs great. I’m not sure what else you’d need.”
He hung up.
I don’t know whether you can purchase love, but I am certain you can’t buy contentment. Capitalism calls contentment a lack of ambition, and I do agree that people are far too eager to be as lazy as possible. But instead of lauding satisfaction, Americans like to impress others with their things. Absurdly, people actually do seem to be impressed by the things of others. I’m much more impressed by humility, but this is so antithetical to Western culture the declaration comes across as coy.
Humility is important because it makes learning possible. Most people don’t like to learn because it requires overcoming the reality that one doesn’t already know everything. Learning, by definition, requires confronting the unknown, which is a major stressor. Accepting the reality of one’s personal shortcomings can be profoundly affective, evoking anything from frustration to physical pain. Most would rather persist in being wrong than endure the experience of learning. “I love you” is simple to say compared to “I don’t know” or “I was wrong.” Most would rather lie, invent or insist upon untruth than concede ignorance or guilt. People don’t even want to hear “I don’t know,” and assume being able to spew placating bullshit is a demonstration of competence.
When I was in college, I figured out that the most successful method for getting good grades on multiple choice tests was to choose the answer that best reflected the values and opinions of the teacher. This reveals something fascinating about what a multiple choice test teaches. Knowing the answer is less important than telling another what they want to hear. Towards that end, we become experts at things like understanding accepted norms and reading body language. These are indeed important survival skills to learn, but also develops a dependence upon external validation. The overriding concern of most is not how to excel, but how to convince others they are excellent. In the end, people don’t generally care whether they’re wrong- they just don’t want to get called out for it. Honesty is considered mean, imprudent and rude.
We usually expect to be right. In situations where we lack confidence in our competence, we tend to defer to whoever seems to have the most confidence in their opinion. This bizarrely includes situations where “right” in an objective sense does not even exist. While still in high school, I had a conversation with an adult who had expressed her dislike for the philosophy class she had been required to take in college. She didn’t understand why the professor toyed with the class by asking them questions instead of just giving them the answers. This would actually be funny if it wasn’t so depressing. I’ve had arguments with religious fans who insist there must be a god because otherwise nobody would have all the answers. People don’t want accuracy, they want answers.
Tests are sometimes graded on a curve in order to measure what you have learned relative to your peers. I was always considered one of the smartest kids throughout school, so I knew the goal of curved tests for a lot of others was to get as good a score as me. Therefore, as I took these tests, I would intentionally mark wrong answers. Then, just before turning it in, I would go through and change those answers to the correct ones. I would score well on these tests not necessarily because I was the smartest, but because others thought I was smatter than them and were therefore cheating off me.
People often think of learning in competitive terms- you only have to know enough to stay ahead of those around you. People read overviews of topics they know nothing about to impress at parties. This results in a lot of specific superficial knowledge but often lacks learning sophisticated enough to be prudently and effectively applied. The result of only having ever read the Cliffs Notes on a work is it seemingly justifies you to smugly ridicule those who actually read the source material and should therefore be experts but obviously aren’t smart enough to understand it. The easiest trick for staying ahead of others is not simply through growth but by restricting the progress of others. This is accomplished in many ways, including sabotage, propaganda and belittling. Making others believe that they are inferior is a powerful force, but it can only go so far. The confidence gained by believing others are inferior, on the other hand, knows no limits.
The people I despise most are those with a sense of entitlement. People claim they get paid a higher wage because they work harder. On the contrary, people get paid a higher wage so that they don’t have to work as hard. If you think blue collar work is beneath you, what does that say about your opinion of those who do the job? It should tell you that you’re an asshole, and if you can’t figure that out, you’re also a dumb ass. The person who works should always be revered by those he is doing the work for, and even moreso by those profiting from the work. Telling another to do something and then wondering why they can’t perform to your expectations without being able or willing to perform and teach that task yourself is unacceptable. Pondering hypotheticals is much easier than dealing with realities. If there was as much getting done as there was talk about how things should be done this world would be a much better place.
I assume most are familiar with the story of the sword in the stone, from the King Arthur legend. Whoever could pull the sword out of the stone would become king. Thus, men traveled from around the world to try. This is a great allegory revealing man’s bias toward egocentrically assuming they are singularly destined for great things. (Maybe a few women tried too, but for the most part they, do to their culture, would assume they had no chance.) Certainly the strongest men assumed they had the best chance. Logic sees no reason why physical strength would qualify one for political savvy, and yet we still tend to perceive physical prowess as an indicator of leadership. All you need to do to remove the sword is apply force greater than the resistance, right? Everything is easy in theory.
In the early 20th Century, prominent behaviorist psychologists such as John B.Watson and B.F. Skinner stated that you can completely control the actions of others, as what people do are a reaction to the information received by their environment. Behaviorism teaches that actions are learned as a result of being manipulated by reinforcement and punishment. This concept has been adapted by governments, advertisers, employers and whoever else feels they can use it to gain power and money. A fundamental premise of Behaviorism is that internal thoughts are irrelevant, but in reality that is only accurate if internal thoughts are kept to a minimum, and the best way to do this is by distracting us from having them. Think about it, people. Think. About. It.
Perceiving education as a form of manipulation makes many suspicious of both the educated and exposure to information. Those possessing knowledge are considered uppity and snobbish. It’s rebelliously hip to be dumb. “We don’t need no education.” This is exactly what those selling want you to buy. Learning is antithetical to a consumer-driven society, which relies upon the masses to continue purchasing. Toward that end, they must be continually made aware of things they need. This entails encouraging material dependence and discouraging self-sufficiency. I am constantly surprised how quickly others want to purchase replacements instead of fixing and maintaining what they have. Others will say they don’t have the time or patience. These are the same people who can’t understand why others trying to fix things are taking so long.
Education is considered a luxury of the affluent, but that downplays the significant education and discipline required to excel at things like hunting, farming, cooking, constructing and sewing. These skills are tied to actual instead of theoretical results. You can’t chalk up a bad harvest to having been misunderstood. Well, unless you introduce religion, which is mankind’s ultimate invention for eschewing responsibility. I don’t have a problem with religion; I have a problem with people who insist that what someone else told them to believe or what they want to believe is the only thing that everyone needs to learn.
Learning does not have to happen in a structured setting with somebody telling you what they think you should know. The priorities of education should include respecting life, diversity, beauty, logic and languages. I cannot fathom why fostering tolerance in an environment of peers is not touted. Our group-based education system lends itself perfectly toward promoting an appreciation and empathy for others in unfamiliar circumstances but, inexplicably, human interaction is generally regarded as beyond the bounds of the academic curriculum. I personally think America’s current system spends far too much time teaching us who to be impressed by, and firmly believe any education system that does not place utmost importance on teaching its students how to survive is a failure. Even worse is an education system that does not ignite and foster in its students the desire to learn and work.
It is vogue to discuss that people have different types of intelligences, but that is usually interpreted in public perception as a hierarchy of intelligences mostly paralleling our social hierarchy. I contest that notion wholeheartedly. Allow me an attempt to demonstrate using the following illustration:
The question is: Assuming the yellow apparatus is a three-dimensional screw, which direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise) do you turn the red handle in order to lower the blue lift and connect it with the green platform? To some, this may look like the type of thing that would be on an IQ test. I am interested in whether you chose: A) Don’t know, don’t care, B) I’ll just guess, because I have a 50% chance of getting it right, C) I’m not sure, but give me a few minutes to try and figure it out, or D) I know fairly quickly. My hypotheses are: of the four options, the least chosen will be C and those who choose D are more likely to be manual laborers. People such as car mechanics, construction workers and plumbers deal with this type of problem-solving all the time. I did, after all, design the illustration on an adjustable (Crescent) wrench. I have another hypothesis: after receiving that information, many are more likely to try and discern the solution, because they will suddenly assume it is easier than they did when they thought it was an IQ test puzzle. It doesn’t take a genius to work a wrench, right? Well, perhaps it doesn’t take a genius to master logic puzzles, either.
Learning takes effort. People vary in which things to learn are more intuitive as well as the scope of their learning potential, but without effort, potential remains dormant. Repetition and practice are great ways to learn, but do not necessarily lead to an improvement in knowledge or execution of a task. People are constantly stating how many years they’ve been doing a job as if it’s understood that none of that time was wasted. There is no limit to how many times the same mistake can be repeated. A stubborn refusal to change is a sign of ignorance rather than insight. A better assessment of wisdom can be found in how long a person has devoted to learning and improving. We learn from our mistakes only as long as we confront them.
People consistently think that their reasons for not being able to do things are perfectly reasonable while being appalled by the excuses of others. We are constantly searching for someone else to be able to blame. People think that others should do the things they don’t want to, and don’t understand why those others don’t appreciate the opportunity they’ve been generously granted. A local newsletter column writer explained that she has her husband put gas in the car because she doesn’t like the smell of gasoline on her hands. This only makes sense if her husband does like the smell of gasoline on his hands. Everyone, including those reading this, thinks they’re the exception and not the rule. Just this morning, a co-worker, referring to a discussion in the background, exclaimed, “Bitch, bitch, bitch- that’s all anybody freakin’ does around here!” That’s not ironic at all.
The truth about learning can be ascertained with a few questions: Have you studied any topics in the past to the point that you are now confident they’ll never need revisited by you? Do you tend to think things are common sense? Do you tend to think they best way to do things is the way they’ve always been done? Do you tend to think all opinions contrary to your own are ignorant and absurd? If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, there is a high probability that you resist learning. If you are now instantly qualifying or changing your answer or have immediately decided that that test was bogus, you almost certainly resist learning. I myself often resist learning and need to remind myself of its importance on a daily basis.
People don’t like chaos. We don’t want to believe it exists or be exposed to it. We demand for answers to be concrete and eternal. Towards that end, we become dependent on maintaining ignorance and denial. Our desire for control overwhelms us to the degree of being outraged by the sight of anything that does not belong to us, like bugs and stray hairs. We harden our reclusive, protective shells in which everything makes sense. When camping in nice weather, why use a tent? People fear exposure. Even while sleeping in the dark, we want to be able to have a divider between ourselves and reality.
“When I look back on all that I’ve seen, the one thing I see is that I haven’t truly seen anything.” - Socrates
“Well, you have to think about investing in your future. You want to focus on courses where you can best capitalize on your investment. You have to look at the market, and the demand, and how you can best use your education to exploit that demand,” he instructed.
I found this concept repulsive. I felt that exploitation was bad and sacrificing the present for the future even worse. I wasn’t interested in money; I found it a distraction from the important things in life: equality, integrity and truth.
Today, I vividly understand and appreciate that grandpa was giving sound advice. I have never used my degrees in philosophy and psychology for anything practical, and consequently have only been hired for jobs requiring a high school education, if that. Not only do these types of job not pay as much, performing them means certain others are likely to assume I’m a moron. On the contrary, I have almost always had jobs that I enjoyed and currently make enough money to save a couple hundred dollars every month. I never took out student loans and currently don’t have debt of any sort: no car payments, mortgage payments or credit card bills. That makes my net worth more than most Americans. I am not owned by money.
The most prominent distraction related to money is excess. A few years ago, I decided to move and knew I couldn’t take my beloved 1993 Toyota pickup with me. I had just stupidly paid $2400 to rebuild the engine. I put out an ad asking $1000 and got a call. It went like this:
“Hello?”
“I’m calling about the truck for sale?”
“Yes, I still have it.”
“It has a 5-speed manual transmission?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“And it says here in the ad it doesn’t have anything automatic, by which I assume you mean windows and locks, but obviously it has things like power steering.”
“No, it does not have power steering.”
“Does it have a CD player or just a tape deck?”
“Neither. It doesn’t even have a radio. Just a hole in the middle of the dashboard.”
“A/C?”
“No, but you can crank down the windows”
“How’s the condition of the body?”
“It’s okay. There’s a fair amount of rust and the back bumper’s missing, but the tailgate works.”
“So basically, all you have is a manual engine in a shell.”
“Yes. It runs great. I’m not sure what else you’d need.”
He hung up.
I don’t know whether you can purchase love, but I am certain you can’t buy contentment. Capitalism calls contentment a lack of ambition, and I do agree that people are far too eager to be as lazy as possible. But instead of lauding satisfaction, Americans like to impress others with their things. Absurdly, people actually do seem to be impressed by the things of others. I’m much more impressed by humility, but this is so antithetical to Western culture the declaration comes across as coy.
Humility is important because it makes learning possible. Most people don’t like to learn because it requires overcoming the reality that one doesn’t already know everything. Learning, by definition, requires confronting the unknown, which is a major stressor. Accepting the reality of one’s personal shortcomings can be profoundly affective, evoking anything from frustration to physical pain. Most would rather persist in being wrong than endure the experience of learning. “I love you” is simple to say compared to “I don’t know” or “I was wrong.” Most would rather lie, invent or insist upon untruth than concede ignorance or guilt. People don’t even want to hear “I don’t know,” and assume being able to spew placating bullshit is a demonstration of competence.
When I was in college, I figured out that the most successful method for getting good grades on multiple choice tests was to choose the answer that best reflected the values and opinions of the teacher. This reveals something fascinating about what a multiple choice test teaches. Knowing the answer is less important than telling another what they want to hear. Towards that end, we become experts at things like understanding accepted norms and reading body language. These are indeed important survival skills to learn, but also develops a dependence upon external validation. The overriding concern of most is not how to excel, but how to convince others they are excellent. In the end, people don’t generally care whether they’re wrong- they just don’t want to get called out for it. Honesty is considered mean, imprudent and rude.
We usually expect to be right. In situations where we lack confidence in our competence, we tend to defer to whoever seems to have the most confidence in their opinion. This bizarrely includes situations where “right” in an objective sense does not even exist. While still in high school, I had a conversation with an adult who had expressed her dislike for the philosophy class she had been required to take in college. She didn’t understand why the professor toyed with the class by asking them questions instead of just giving them the answers. This would actually be funny if it wasn’t so depressing. I’ve had arguments with religious fans who insist there must be a god because otherwise nobody would have all the answers. People don’t want accuracy, they want answers.
Tests are sometimes graded on a curve in order to measure what you have learned relative to your peers. I was always considered one of the smartest kids throughout school, so I knew the goal of curved tests for a lot of others was to get as good a score as me. Therefore, as I took these tests, I would intentionally mark wrong answers. Then, just before turning it in, I would go through and change those answers to the correct ones. I would score well on these tests not necessarily because I was the smartest, but because others thought I was smatter than them and were therefore cheating off me.
People often think of learning in competitive terms- you only have to know enough to stay ahead of those around you. People read overviews of topics they know nothing about to impress at parties. This results in a lot of specific superficial knowledge but often lacks learning sophisticated enough to be prudently and effectively applied. The result of only having ever read the Cliffs Notes on a work is it seemingly justifies you to smugly ridicule those who actually read the source material and should therefore be experts but obviously aren’t smart enough to understand it. The easiest trick for staying ahead of others is not simply through growth but by restricting the progress of others. This is accomplished in many ways, including sabotage, propaganda and belittling. Making others believe that they are inferior is a powerful force, but it can only go so far. The confidence gained by believing others are inferior, on the other hand, knows no limits.
The people I despise most are those with a sense of entitlement. People claim they get paid a higher wage because they work harder. On the contrary, people get paid a higher wage so that they don’t have to work as hard. If you think blue collar work is beneath you, what does that say about your opinion of those who do the job? It should tell you that you’re an asshole, and if you can’t figure that out, you’re also a dumb ass. The person who works should always be revered by those he is doing the work for, and even moreso by those profiting from the work. Telling another to do something and then wondering why they can’t perform to your expectations without being able or willing to perform and teach that task yourself is unacceptable. Pondering hypotheticals is much easier than dealing with realities. If there was as much getting done as there was talk about how things should be done this world would be a much better place.
I assume most are familiar with the story of the sword in the stone, from the King Arthur legend. Whoever could pull the sword out of the stone would become king. Thus, men traveled from around the world to try. This is a great allegory revealing man’s bias toward egocentrically assuming they are singularly destined for great things. (Maybe a few women tried too, but for the most part they, do to their culture, would assume they had no chance.) Certainly the strongest men assumed they had the best chance. Logic sees no reason why physical strength would qualify one for political savvy, and yet we still tend to perceive physical prowess as an indicator of leadership. All you need to do to remove the sword is apply force greater than the resistance, right? Everything is easy in theory.
In the early 20th Century, prominent behaviorist psychologists such as John B.Watson and B.F. Skinner stated that you can completely control the actions of others, as what people do are a reaction to the information received by their environment. Behaviorism teaches that actions are learned as a result of being manipulated by reinforcement and punishment. This concept has been adapted by governments, advertisers, employers and whoever else feels they can use it to gain power and money. A fundamental premise of Behaviorism is that internal thoughts are irrelevant, but in reality that is only accurate if internal thoughts are kept to a minimum, and the best way to do this is by distracting us from having them. Think about it, people. Think. About. It.
Perceiving education as a form of manipulation makes many suspicious of both the educated and exposure to information. Those possessing knowledge are considered uppity and snobbish. It’s rebelliously hip to be dumb. “We don’t need no education.” This is exactly what those selling want you to buy. Learning is antithetical to a consumer-driven society, which relies upon the masses to continue purchasing. Toward that end, they must be continually made aware of things they need. This entails encouraging material dependence and discouraging self-sufficiency. I am constantly surprised how quickly others want to purchase replacements instead of fixing and maintaining what they have. Others will say they don’t have the time or patience. These are the same people who can’t understand why others trying to fix things are taking so long.
Education is considered a luxury of the affluent, but that downplays the significant education and discipline required to excel at things like hunting, farming, cooking, constructing and sewing. These skills are tied to actual instead of theoretical results. You can’t chalk up a bad harvest to having been misunderstood. Well, unless you introduce religion, which is mankind’s ultimate invention for eschewing responsibility. I don’t have a problem with religion; I have a problem with people who insist that what someone else told them to believe or what they want to believe is the only thing that everyone needs to learn.
Learning does not have to happen in a structured setting with somebody telling you what they think you should know. The priorities of education should include respecting life, diversity, beauty, logic and languages. I cannot fathom why fostering tolerance in an environment of peers is not touted. Our group-based education system lends itself perfectly toward promoting an appreciation and empathy for others in unfamiliar circumstances but, inexplicably, human interaction is generally regarded as beyond the bounds of the academic curriculum. I personally think America’s current system spends far too much time teaching us who to be impressed by, and firmly believe any education system that does not place utmost importance on teaching its students how to survive is a failure. Even worse is an education system that does not ignite and foster in its students the desire to learn and work.
It is vogue to discuss that people have different types of intelligences, but that is usually interpreted in public perception as a hierarchy of intelligences mostly paralleling our social hierarchy. I contest that notion wholeheartedly. Allow me an attempt to demonstrate using the following illustration:
The question is: Assuming the yellow apparatus is a three-dimensional screw, which direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise) do you turn the red handle in order to lower the blue lift and connect it with the green platform? To some, this may look like the type of thing that would be on an IQ test. I am interested in whether you chose: A) Don’t know, don’t care, B) I’ll just guess, because I have a 50% chance of getting it right, C) I’m not sure, but give me a few minutes to try and figure it out, or D) I know fairly quickly. My hypotheses are: of the four options, the least chosen will be C and those who choose D are more likely to be manual laborers. People such as car mechanics, construction workers and plumbers deal with this type of problem-solving all the time. I did, after all, design the illustration on an adjustable (Crescent) wrench. I have another hypothesis: after receiving that information, many are more likely to try and discern the solution, because they will suddenly assume it is easier than they did when they thought it was an IQ test puzzle. It doesn’t take a genius to work a wrench, right? Well, perhaps it doesn’t take a genius to master logic puzzles, either.
Learning takes effort. People vary in which things to learn are more intuitive as well as the scope of their learning potential, but without effort, potential remains dormant. Repetition and practice are great ways to learn, but do not necessarily lead to an improvement in knowledge or execution of a task. People are constantly stating how many years they’ve been doing a job as if it’s understood that none of that time was wasted. There is no limit to how many times the same mistake can be repeated. A stubborn refusal to change is a sign of ignorance rather than insight. A better assessment of wisdom can be found in how long a person has devoted to learning and improving. We learn from our mistakes only as long as we confront them.
People consistently think that their reasons for not being able to do things are perfectly reasonable while being appalled by the excuses of others. We are constantly searching for someone else to be able to blame. People think that others should do the things they don’t want to, and don’t understand why those others don’t appreciate the opportunity they’ve been generously granted. A local newsletter column writer explained that she has her husband put gas in the car because she doesn’t like the smell of gasoline on her hands. This only makes sense if her husband does like the smell of gasoline on his hands. Everyone, including those reading this, thinks they’re the exception and not the rule. Just this morning, a co-worker, referring to a discussion in the background, exclaimed, “Bitch, bitch, bitch- that’s all anybody freakin’ does around here!” That’s not ironic at all.
The truth about learning can be ascertained with a few questions: Have you studied any topics in the past to the point that you are now confident they’ll never need revisited by you? Do you tend to think things are common sense? Do you tend to think they best way to do things is the way they’ve always been done? Do you tend to think all opinions contrary to your own are ignorant and absurd? If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, there is a high probability that you resist learning. If you are now instantly qualifying or changing your answer or have immediately decided that that test was bogus, you almost certainly resist learning. I myself often resist learning and need to remind myself of its importance on a daily basis.
People don’t like chaos. We don’t want to believe it exists or be exposed to it. We demand for answers to be concrete and eternal. Towards that end, we become dependent on maintaining ignorance and denial. Our desire for control overwhelms us to the degree of being outraged by the sight of anything that does not belong to us, like bugs and stray hairs. We harden our reclusive, protective shells in which everything makes sense. When camping in nice weather, why use a tent? People fear exposure. Even while sleeping in the dark, we want to be able to have a divider between ourselves and reality.
“When I look back on all that I’ve seen, the one thing I see is that I haven’t truly seen anything.” - Socrates
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Jay, My Hero
I spent a significant portion of fourth through sixth grade, which spanned 1985-1988, reading Marvel comic books. My main source for reading material was my classmate JJ, who had two or three much older brothers, which meant he had a library of comics that covered some of the 60’s, mostly what was available as reprints, and all of the 70’s and 80’s. I read them as often as possible during class, keeping them hidden beneath my desk and ready to slip into the storage area under the hinged top in case of an emergency. It is difficult to convey how steeped I was in the Marvel Universe without inciting incredulity, but among the comics I read included: some Fantastic Four, Alpha Flight, Punisher, Captain America and Master of Kung Fu; a lot of Spider-Man, especially the Venom suit saga; the bulk of Thor, The Incredible Hulk and The (East Coast) Avengers (all of which were already long-running titles) and virtually the complete works of X-Men, both the “Classics” written by Stan Lee and the more familiar revamp mostly authored by Chris Claremont, Silver Surfer, Daredevil, West Coast Avengers, Iron Man, Moon Knight, The New Mutants, X-Factor, Excalibur and, of course, Wolverine. I asked the art teacher if she could teach me how to draw super heroes and she suggested I might be better suited at being a comic book writer. Chris Claremont was my favorite writer but it seemed obvious to me that the penciller had the superior job, and John Buscema and Frank Miller were my favorite artists. Bescema was a pioneer who had established the typical style of the time, but Miller did his own heavy, high-contrast inking that would set the tone for the future.
Something hard-wired into my nature, which would take me, oh, about 35 years to realize is not a trait ingrained in everyone, is a compulsion to be loyal. I am passionate, some would say to a fault, about the things and people I enjoy. I stand by my convictions, which fortunately prioritize the importance of conceding to logic and humility, and don’t do ambivalence well. Once I start on a course, I tend to see it through to its completion. I don’t jump ship and never make alternate plans. One thing that highly irritates me is when others start second-guessing or changing plans. I always try to keep my word, even when I know doing so will be detrimental to me, because from my perspective, my word is more important than myself. In my worldview, this is known as integrity, which, if I am to be frank, is a thing few others seem to understand.
Anyway, it should go without saying that I didn’t read DC comics… that is, until Frank Miller wrote and drew their Batman: The Dark Knight Returns saga. It was good; really good. This created not only a moral but practical dilemma, because the only person I knew who had DC comics was a junior high kid named Jay, whom I had never personally spoken to, although I often stood beside JJ while they quickly traded comics between backpacks. Jay had a quirk of being highly secretive about his comic book reading habits, which I found strange. Beyond that, discussing comics with him was complicated by the fact that I have always been and probably always will be uncomfortable engaging in conversations with people I don’t know well.
I went to a Kindergarten-12th grade school which had 100 students total, so we all ate lunch at the same time. One day during lunch, when I was in sixth grade, the cafeteria was disrupted by a kid in the table behind me loudly taunting another kid. The latter, I discovered when I turned around, was Jay. Suddenly, and without speaking a word, Jay slammed down his fist onto the other kid’s lunch tray and smashed the unopened milk carton with a loud pop that exploded white liquid all over everyone in the vicinity. Then, Jay stood up and walked straight into the principal’s office. This was a highly-unique and therefore memorable event. In other words, it was basically the coolest thing I had ever seen. Without ever knowing the full story, I egocentrically assumed Jay was being mocked for reading comic books and milk-smashing was his Marvel-esque way of defending his honor. I resolved to always defend my comic book-reading ways no matter how old I got.
I never did speak to Jay. After sixth grade we moved, and I found myself in a school where nobody read comics. I wouldn’t pick them up again until several years later, when I was 16 and armed with a driver’s license. There were three comic book shops in Des Moines, and I started a routine of driving from one to another, getting caught up on X-Men and Wolverine as well as discovering Frank Miller’s Sin City and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. Along the way, I would also read the current issues of those same comics at Barnes & Noble. In this fashion, I could read 10-12 comics in a day while paying only for gasoline, although I did occasionally purchase Wolverine back-issues. I also began reading Shakespeare’s plays precisely because they had been a sub-plot in several Sandman issues. Even after college, Sandman and Frank Miller’s 300, as well as Howard Zinn, inspired an interest in world history that I had never had while in school.
When I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2000, I got a part-time job as a barista at Borders Books and began reading Japanese manga while there. Eventually, I once again started hanging out in comic book stores to discover more manga and even got into playing sanctioned Yu-Gi-Oh tournaments until the cards got too expensive and I sold my two decks for a profit. I still read manga occasionally today, religiously refusing any edition that doesn’t read right to left. A couple weeks ago, I found myself correcting a random lady in a thrift shop calling it “anime.” I watch a lot of anime, too, but it should go without saying that graphic novels and television shows are vastly different mediums. One advantage of comics is the pace of the story’s development is dependent upon the reader. Instead of passively watching the characters, you move alongside them, discovering as they do. Another difference is instead of viewing a rectangle of a fixed size, comic panels can change size, shape and location at will. This can be used to great effect in keeping the reader actively engaged in both focus and mood. During a chaotic climax, for example, a reader can find himself feverishly attempting to decipher the order in which the panels unfold.
Even with the exploding popularity of conventions like Comic-Con, comic books themselves have mostly remained a niche consumed by introverts. One difference is many characters that began their lives there are now popular mainstream successes. To say I have mixed feelings about this would be a lie; I flat out hate it. I’d like to smash the milk carton of every jock in America who thinks he’s a big Thor fan but doesn’t even know who Jack Kirby is. You have to be pretty pathetic to be too lazy to read a picture book. I can’t really explain why I find it so annoying, but it has something to do with loyalty and integrity.
A couple years ago I was dating a talented poet who, presumably for lack of anything better to do, attended a Neil Gaiman lecture at the university where she was attending grad school. She had never heard of him before, so was very confused as to why hundreds of students had shown up to see him talk. “He read a few excerpts and they weren’t very good,” she declared. I shrugged and said, “Yeah, his work is pretty popular but maybe he’s not that great of a writer.” I am ashamed to admit I had forgotten about Jay. In part, I knew any attempt to defend Gaiman’s work to this person in particular would be futile. But, to be honest, the first thought to cross my mind was, Well, he does just write comics.
And Shakespeare just wrote skits.
Something hard-wired into my nature, which would take me, oh, about 35 years to realize is not a trait ingrained in everyone, is a compulsion to be loyal. I am passionate, some would say to a fault, about the things and people I enjoy. I stand by my convictions, which fortunately prioritize the importance of conceding to logic and humility, and don’t do ambivalence well. Once I start on a course, I tend to see it through to its completion. I don’t jump ship and never make alternate plans. One thing that highly irritates me is when others start second-guessing or changing plans. I always try to keep my word, even when I know doing so will be detrimental to me, because from my perspective, my word is more important than myself. In my worldview, this is known as integrity, which, if I am to be frank, is a thing few others seem to understand.
Anyway, it should go without saying that I didn’t read DC comics… that is, until Frank Miller wrote and drew their Batman: The Dark Knight Returns saga. It was good; really good. This created not only a moral but practical dilemma, because the only person I knew who had DC comics was a junior high kid named Jay, whom I had never personally spoken to, although I often stood beside JJ while they quickly traded comics between backpacks. Jay had a quirk of being highly secretive about his comic book reading habits, which I found strange. Beyond that, discussing comics with him was complicated by the fact that I have always been and probably always will be uncomfortable engaging in conversations with people I don’t know well.
I went to a Kindergarten-12th grade school which had 100 students total, so we all ate lunch at the same time. One day during lunch, when I was in sixth grade, the cafeteria was disrupted by a kid in the table behind me loudly taunting another kid. The latter, I discovered when I turned around, was Jay. Suddenly, and without speaking a word, Jay slammed down his fist onto the other kid’s lunch tray and smashed the unopened milk carton with a loud pop that exploded white liquid all over everyone in the vicinity. Then, Jay stood up and walked straight into the principal’s office. This was a highly-unique and therefore memorable event. In other words, it was basically the coolest thing I had ever seen. Without ever knowing the full story, I egocentrically assumed Jay was being mocked for reading comic books and milk-smashing was his Marvel-esque way of defending his honor. I resolved to always defend my comic book-reading ways no matter how old I got.
I never did speak to Jay. After sixth grade we moved, and I found myself in a school where nobody read comics. I wouldn’t pick them up again until several years later, when I was 16 and armed with a driver’s license. There were three comic book shops in Des Moines, and I started a routine of driving from one to another, getting caught up on X-Men and Wolverine as well as discovering Frank Miller’s Sin City and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. Along the way, I would also read the current issues of those same comics at Barnes & Noble. In this fashion, I could read 10-12 comics in a day while paying only for gasoline, although I did occasionally purchase Wolverine back-issues. I also began reading Shakespeare’s plays precisely because they had been a sub-plot in several Sandman issues. Even after college, Sandman and Frank Miller’s 300, as well as Howard Zinn, inspired an interest in world history that I had never had while in school.
When I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2000, I got a part-time job as a barista at Borders Books and began reading Japanese manga while there. Eventually, I once again started hanging out in comic book stores to discover more manga and even got into playing sanctioned Yu-Gi-Oh tournaments until the cards got too expensive and I sold my two decks for a profit. I still read manga occasionally today, religiously refusing any edition that doesn’t read right to left. A couple weeks ago, I found myself correcting a random lady in a thrift shop calling it “anime.” I watch a lot of anime, too, but it should go without saying that graphic novels and television shows are vastly different mediums. One advantage of comics is the pace of the story’s development is dependent upon the reader. Instead of passively watching the characters, you move alongside them, discovering as they do. Another difference is instead of viewing a rectangle of a fixed size, comic panels can change size, shape and location at will. This can be used to great effect in keeping the reader actively engaged in both focus and mood. During a chaotic climax, for example, a reader can find himself feverishly attempting to decipher the order in which the panels unfold.
Even with the exploding popularity of conventions like Comic-Con, comic books themselves have mostly remained a niche consumed by introverts. One difference is many characters that began their lives there are now popular mainstream successes. To say I have mixed feelings about this would be a lie; I flat out hate it. I’d like to smash the milk carton of every jock in America who thinks he’s a big Thor fan but doesn’t even know who Jack Kirby is. You have to be pretty pathetic to be too lazy to read a picture book. I can’t really explain why I find it so annoying, but it has something to do with loyalty and integrity.
A couple years ago I was dating a talented poet who, presumably for lack of anything better to do, attended a Neil Gaiman lecture at the university where she was attending grad school. She had never heard of him before, so was very confused as to why hundreds of students had shown up to see him talk. “He read a few excerpts and they weren’t very good,” she declared. I shrugged and said, “Yeah, his work is pretty popular but maybe he’s not that great of a writer.” I am ashamed to admit I had forgotten about Jay. In part, I knew any attempt to defend Gaiman’s work to this person in particular would be futile. But, to be honest, the first thought to cross my mind was, Well, he does just write comics.
And Shakespeare just wrote skits.
Friday, November 15, 2013
The Importance of Ice Cube
Growing up in rural Iowa did not provide many opportunities for interacting with black people, so my exposure to them came through 80’s mass media. If Run DMC and The Cosby Show were any indication, black people were talented, popular and well-respected. Besides those two examples, every black on television was either a fast athlete with trend-setting attire, an excellent singer and/or dancer with trend-setting attire or a good-natured, naïve orphan dependent upon white adults and peers to prevent them from making poor decisions. In retrospect, this may seem like a joke or exaggeration, but, um, nope. Remember, MTV was very hesitant to show blacks and only did so selectively and calculatedly until Michael Jackson blew that barrier apart after he began making elaborate and impressive videos that couldn’t be refused or ignored in 1983.
This disturbing reality is the backdrop for the most shocking thing I’d ever encountered in my 12 years of life, when, in seventh grade, I heard “Fuck Tha Police,” By NWA, being played through a boombox in the clay modeling area of the art room.
Upon hearing the unavoidable chorus, I wondered why anyone would say something like that. Simply listening to the verses reveals this song is about racial prejudice within the LA police enforcement and judicial system. More importantly, this song is a series of first-person accounts of what it is like to be a young black man living in the LA projects. As a young white man living in rural Iowa, I had literally no first-hand experience of police enforcement or the judicial system. One of my favorite television shows, however, had been Dukes of Hazzard, and so I sort of just figured cops were incompetent, unthreatening blowhards who ticketed bad drivers.
Public outcry protesting both the song and the band was loud and furious. The FBI sent the members of NWA a threatening letter accusing them of “advocating violence against and disrespect” for police officers. Parental Advisory stickers, which had been a compromised result of a 1985 Senate censorship hearing but had rarely been used, were suddenly omnipresent. (The first use of the sticker had been on Ice-T’s debut album in 1987.) It is extraordinarily important to recognize that, despite all the attention and backlash “Fuck Tha Police” received, nobody seemed at all concerned with investigating the LAPD or the California judicial system. The general public was shocked that this song was exposing their children to the f-word, not that this song was exposing racial injustice. It was deemed crucial that anger and violence should not leave the black neighborhoods; that was their problem… and their fault. When you peel away the layers, you find that the real concern was not to protect the children, but to silence the voice of the minority daring to speak against the unfair treatment they are receiving.
This wasn’t the first time I had encountered lyrics that shocked me. The first time was on a bus enroute to a little league baseball game, when I heard The Beatie Boys’…
“(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!)”
You wake up late for school, man, you don't wanna go
You ask you mom, "Please?" but she still says, "No!"
You missed two classes and no homework
But your teacher preaches class like you're some kind of jerk
You gotta fight for your right to party
You pops caught you smoking and he said, "No way!"
That hypocrite smokes two packs a day
Man, living at home is such a drag
Now your mom threw away your best porno mag (Busted!)
You gotta fight for your right to party
Don't step out of this house if that's the clothes you're gonna wear
I'll kick you out of my home if you don't cut that hair
Your mom busted in and said, "What's that noise?"
Aw, mom you're just jealous- it's the Beastie Boys!
You gotta fight for your right to party
This asinine song encouraging teenage disobedience has no socially redeeming qualities. However, of all the songs on Beastie Boys debut album, Licensed to Ill (1986), this one is the least offensive. Some of them have a verse about shooting people followed by one about raping girls. The rest are about drinking, eating junk food and dealing with girls. “Paul Revere” even mentions cops: The sheriff's after me for what I did to his daughter- I did it like this, I did it like that, I did it with a whiffleball bat. Why didn’t anybody freak out about The Beastie Boys lyrics? They were hugely popular and influential while avoiding disparaging mass protests, threatening government letters or even a parental advisory sticker. They are also three Jewish kids from New York, so perhaps there couldn’t be more of an apples and oranges comparison.
Straight Outta Compton (1988) opens with the declaration, “You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.” Besides “Fuck Tha Police,” it contains songs that run the spectrum from “Parental Advisory Iz Advised” and “Express Yourself” to “Gangsta, Gangsta” and “Dope Man.” (Another highly controversial song, “A Bitch Iz A Bitch,” was a single added to the remastered version of Straight Outta Compton in 2002) Almost all of the lyrics on the album were written by O’Shea Jackson, using the pseudonym Ice Cube. His lyrics never quite go where you’d predict, for example “Dope Man” derides drug addicts. The characters in his songs almost always end up in prison. Ice Cube refuses to turn a blind eye to grim realities, and black on black violence is a central issue. Despite the grim subject matter, there is always wittiness in spades, and this is the key to NWA’s success. “Gangsta, Gangsta,” which is about a group of black kids driving around and terrorizing the neighborhood because they are bored, contains this gem:
Sweatin all the bitches in the biker shorts (but) we didn't get no play from the ladies- with six niggaz in a car, are you crazy?
One mustn’t lose perspective that Ice Cube is primarily an entertainer. He’s not a politician, physicist, psychologist or whatever- he’s a goddamn rapper. Ice Cube is a persona, a caricature played by a man named O’Shea Jackson. His lyrics weave freely between clowning and sincerity, gravitating toward whatever’s most entertaining. Ain’t nothin’ in life but to be legit- don’t quote me now; I ain’t said shit. He consistently defrays anyone from looking up to him as a role model, and makes it obvious that he’s exposing inner city violence as something to escape and not glorifying it.
Ice Cube’s lyrics contain a lot of tough talk and posturing, and while the outside world would cite that as a reason why they are baseless fiction to be ignored, in the inner city this is a necessary survival tactic. Street knowledge is basically the art of knowing how to handle yourself in a hostile environment. In the inner city, you have to wear a thick skin and retain a strong will to protect yourself from various pressures from people desperate to make a buck.
From 2000-2004, I lived in a neighborhood known as the “Iron Triangle” in Richmond, California. It was a close-knit community where knowing your neighbors was not an option but of the essence. During that same time, I was working late nights at a recording studio in the Tenderlon District in San Francisco, where I met and worked with dozens of rap artists, and playing avant-garde and experimental music in underground clubs in Oakland, including several centers run by the Black Panther party. In 2004, I moved to Oakland for a year. Those five years taught me a lot of lessons and showed me a lot of things, some of which would raise the hairs on the back of your neck. I will attest that to this day, when I feel threatened by someone or that they are trying to intimidate me, my first thought is to exclaim, I from fucking Oakland bitch; don’t even try an’ fuck wit’ me. Similarly, when I see a car driving down the street at five miles per hour, which is a frequent occurrence in the sleepy rural Iowa town in which I now reside, I still think, They either lookin’ to shoot or get shot. You never, ever act suspiciously in the ‘hood. You don’t want to look like a tourist. In Iowa, everyone basically acts like a tourist. Of course, they would likely have no idea what I mean by that, but it’s a convenient coincidence that the state’s name is an acronym for Idiots Out Wandering Around.
People in the inner city enjoy competition in a sporting sense. It is common to see men in open garages playing cards or families gathered around dominoes while cooking large meals together. This helps generate a strong bond of community. Gangs consist of a few greedy control freaks and a whole lot of teenagers desperate for a modicum of recognition and respect, but the vast majority of the community works hard to discourage gangs and remain safe. Moments of intense violence are borne from desperation, a lot of which relates to drugs, but also inner-turmoil stemming from deep-seated values of pride and familial loyalty. You don’t dare talk badly of anyone behind their back unless you are also willing to say it to their face. Speaking directly, decisively and frankly is expected and appreciated.
In contrast, people in Iowa tend to survive by being insular. They stay close to those they’ve known for years and try not to attract too much attention from outsiders. Iowans are not neighborly; in fact most prefer no or few neighbors. The degree to which Iowans will go to avoid communication or even eye contact with strangers in a public place is beyond impressive. Iowans are not used to handling stressors. They think traffic is a slow-moving vehicle (aka a tractor) that they’d need to pass to continue toward their destination at the speed limit. When confronted with any sort of direct challenge to any behavior, Iowans tend to completely lose their shit and respond with passive-aggressive immaturity and back-stabbing. As a result, Iowans are very suspicious of each other. People in Iowa enjoy staying in agreement and away from any competitive friction. They watch sports but don’t generally play them. They talk about the weather and how messed up the rest of the world is. Iowans think anything outside of their comfort zone sounds awful and is best avoided.
These culturally based ways of experiencing the world are mutually exclusive. No black person can go unnoticed in a rural Iowa town for the simple reason that there just aren’t that many people of color around here. An easy way to overwhelm an Iowan with panic and fear is to drop one in the ghetto. Even in places where it is more common, white people throughout the United States tend to be much more comfortable with blacks in isolation rather than in groups.
Iowans think, “If you don’t want trouble from the cops, don’t do anything illegal.” In the ‘hood, that assumption is straight up ign’ant. This assumption comes from experiences such as one that happened a few months ago, when a police officer in Iowa City hollered out the window at my white girlfriend while parked next to her at a stoplight that she had a headlight out. About a month ago, I was pulled over on a country road and given a warning for speeding, and as I drove off, I noticed I had three empty beer bottles sitting on my passenger seat which the officer didn’t inquire about. The fact that many are suddenly wondering the story behind the bottles illustrates my point perfectly. Two weeks ago, an officer in almost the same location flashed his lights at me to signal to slow down, and I obliged. I highly doubt any black person in America can relate to these experiences. Perhaps the biggest similarity between Oakland, California and the tiny towns littering Iowa is the main roads leading out of both are often hidden and unmarked. However, two other important shared traits are an appreciation for church and self-referential humor. One big difference is that if you talk shit about the ghetto to a hoodlum, it’s understood, but if you say anything bad about Iowa to an Iowan, heaven help you.
Part II
1990 was a world dominated by MC Hammer and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, but it was also the debut of In Living Color on Fox, which shone like a ray of hope above anything on television featuring blacks. At first, I would watch it on Sunday nights in secret, not knowing whether it would be considered a bad influence. It laughed loudly at both the cultural treatment and media portrayal of skin color and race in America. Eventually, I used its sketches as starting points to instigate conversations about race relations, because the show seemed able to delineate the line between absurd and unacceptable.
1990 was also the year of Amerikkka’s Most Wanted, Ice Cube’s superb solo debut album produced by The Bomb Squad, best known for their work with Public Enemy. Many of the songs begin with sampled clips of mass media degrading American blacks and himself, contextualizing his lyrics as responses to and the result of white majority attitudes. A parody of himself being electrocuted after spouting the last words, “Fuck all ya’ll” is followed by a defiant rap that loudly mocks the claim that he’s the villain while drawing parallels between his lyrics and a drive-by shooting. He also demonstrates that the solutions are just as absurd as the problems.
"The Nigga Ya Love To Hate"
I heard payback's a motherfucking nigga
That's why I'm sick of gettin’ treated like a goddamn stepchild
Fuck a punk cause I ain't him
You gotta deal with the nine-double-M
The damn scum that you all hate
Just think if niggas decide to retaliate
They try to keep me from running up
I never tell you to get down it's all about coming up
So what they do go and ban the AK?
My shit wasn't registered any fucking way
So you better duck away, run and hide out
When I'm rolling real slow and the light’s out
‘Cause I'm about to fuck up the program
Shooting out the window of a drop-top Brougham
When I'm shooting let's see who drop
The police, the media and suckers that went pop
And motherfuckers that say they too black
Put ‘em overseas they be begging to come back
They say keep ‘em on gangs and drugs
You wanna sweep a nigga like me up under the rug
Kicking shit called street knowledge
Why more niggas in the pen than in college?
Now ‘cause of that line I might be your cellmate
That's from the nigga ya love to hate
(background voice) Fuck you, Ice Cube!
Yeah, ha-ha, it's the nigga you love to hate
(background voice) Fuck you, Ice Cube!
You know, baby, your mother warned you about me
It's the nigga you love to hate
Yo, you ain’t doing nothin’, pops
You ain’t doing nothin’, pops, fo’ us boys
What you got to say for yourself?
You don’t like how I'm living? Well, fuck you
Once again it's on, the motherfucking psycho
Ice Cube the bitch killa cap peeler
Yo runnin through the line like Bo
There's no pot to piss in I put my fist in
Now who do ya love to hate
‘Cause I talk shit and down the eight-ball
‘Cause I don't fake you're begging I fall off
The crossover might as well cut them balls off
And get your ass ready for the lynching
The mob is droppin’ common sense in
We'll gank in the pen
We’ll shank any Tom, Dick and Hank or get the ass
Fakin’ it ain't about how right or wrong you live
But how long you live
I ain't with the bullshit
I meet cold bitches no hoes
Don't wanna sleep so I keep popping No-Doz
And tell the young people what they gotta know
‘Cause I hate when niggas gotta live low
And if you're locked up I dedicate my style in
From San Quentin to Rykers Island
We got ‘em afraid of the funky shit
I like to clown so pump up the sound
In the jeep make the old ladies say
Oh my god wait it's the nigga ya love to hate
(background voice) Fuck you, Ice Cube
Yeah, come on fool
It's the nigga you love to hate
(background voice) Fuck you, Ice Cube
Yeah, run up punk
It's the nigga you love to hate
(Yo-Yo) ‘Who the fuck do you think you are you calling girls bitches?
You ain't all that
That's all I hear, bitch, bitch
I ain't nobody's bitch!’
A bitch is a....
Soul Train done lost their soul
Just call it train cause the bitches look like hoes
I see a lotta others damn
It almost look like the Bandstand
You ask me did I like Arsenio?
About as much as the bicentennial
I don't give a fuck about dissing these fools ‘cause they all scared of the Ice Cube
And what I say what I portray and all that
And ain't even seen the gat
I don't wanna see no dancing
I'm sick of that shit listen to the hit
Cause yo if I look and see another brother
On the video tryin to out-dance each other
I'm a tell T-Bone to pass the bottle
And don't give me that shit about role model
It ain't wise to chastise and preach
Just open the eyes of each
‘Cause laws are made to be broken up
What niggas need to do is start loc’ing up
And build, mold and fold they-self into shape
Of the nigga ya love to hate
Throughout the album, Ice Cube loudly rejects the status quo and refuses to yield his perspective. He reminds the listeners he still hates cops. In a song featuring the annoying Flavor Flav called, “I’m Only Out For One Thang,” Ice Cube very subtlely admits that not having his voice silenced has become a high priority. From his NWA days, Ice Cube had frequently declared his motivations were “money and bitches.” This is patently offensive, but also jarringly honest. Imagine if everyone who was motivated by those things admitted it. He specifically says this to cynically demonstrate his shortcomings: In “Gangsta, Gangsta,” he writes, Do I look like a motherfuckin’ role model? To all the kids lookin’ up to me- life ain’t nothin’ but bitches and money, which is juxtaposed by a KRS One sample in the chorus that says, It’s not about a salary, it’s all about reality. Anyway, in what sounds like an improvised throw-away outro of “I’m Only Out For One Thang,” Flavor Flav jokingly persists in asking Ice Cube to clarify what one thing he’s after and Ice Cube finally responds, I’m out for the pussy, the money and the mic. The humor reminiscent of Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition sketch is obvious, but even keeping that intact, any long-time listener would have anticipated his answer to be “bitches and money.” This makes the addition of “mic” stick out as a declaration that being able to speak whatever it is he has to say is an essential goal.
The rap genre as a whole, and Ice Cube specifically, have been heavily criticized for being misogynistic. This is somewhat justified and one factor is the cultural impact of outspoken black male-chauvinists like Louis Farrakhan. Amerikkka’s Most Wanted introduces a female rapper named Yo-Yo in a song which attempts to reconcile perspectives on gender. Ice Cube takes the role of someone who thinks women should serve men, and Yo-Yo insists women deserve equality and respect.
Yo-Yo would go on to put out at least three very good albums, one of which Ice Cube co-produced and rapped on, and when Ice Cube started his own record label in 1994, he put Yo-Yo in charge (according to wikipedia.org). Although she had moderate success, Yo-Yo somehow never became a huge hit like her male peers. This ugly fact demonstrates the accuracy with which Ice Cube successfully captures not only localized attitudes but those of America as a whole in his lyrics. Like Archie Bunker, Ice Cube is both entertaining and relevant because he is publicly echoing thoughts that are claimed to be outdated but many silently cling to.
On March 3, 1991, a black man named Rodney King was filmed being brutally beaten by several Los Angeles police officers while other police officers stood by. After this incident became the top news story, the members of NWA should have received a whole lot of letters of apology for having criticized and been insulted by their claims of police violence on blacks instead of giving them diligent consideration. Instead, a jury demonstrated it wasn’t that the claims weren’t believed, but that police violence on blacks was acceptable. Inaction in striving for equality of justice could no longer be blamed on ignorance, but wholly on apathy. Tom Brokaw’s frank assessment that “Outside the South Central area few cared about the violence, because it didn’t affect them,” which had been used as a sample on Amerikkka’s Most Wanted, was once again validated.
John Singleton’s directorial debut, Boyz N the Hood (1991), came to theaters almost immediately after the Rodney King video broke with the tagline, “Once upon a time in South Central L.A... It ain't no fairy tale.” The title is borrowed from the title of the Ice Cube penned song that became the impetus for forming NWA, and includes Ice Cube in his acting debut. Today, the movie comes off as clunky and dated, but it accelerated the cinematic concept introduced by Spike Lee of giving an uncensored portrayal of the challenges and obstacles faced by black teens in the projects in movies like the seemingly prophetic Do the Right Thing (1989).
Death Certificate (1991) and Predator (1992), Ice Cube’s second and third solo albums, are just as good as Amerikkka’s Most Wanted. He also helped introduce Del the Funky Homosapien and produced Da Lench Mob’s magnificent Guerillas in the Mist (1992). In 1992, he also married Kimberly Woodruff. They are still married and have four children. In late December 1992, so basically 1993, another former NWA member Dr. Dre, now signed to a label financed by a real-life gangster named Shug Knight, released his solo debut. Although Dre was the famous name on The Chronic, it showcased the talent of a young unknown named Snoop Doggy Dogg and acted both as an introduction and test market warm-up for Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Doggystyle (1993). Both of these albums are over-rated, but they had a ton of commercial success. The failure of Ice Cube’s fourth album, Lethal Injection (1993) was that he seemed to lose confidence that the stuff he had been doing in the years between NWA and The Chronic was way better than The Chronic.
Acting is possibly a better fit for what Ice Cube attempts to communicate than rap. For example, when you rap about being a drug dealer, people assume you’re a drug dealer, whereas when you play the role of a drug dealer in a movie, people realize you’re acting. Ice Cube is not an exceptional actor, but he exudes confidence in front of the camera. When he turned down the male lead in John Singleton’s second movie, Poetic Justice (1993), Ice Cube recommended another gifted songwriter named Tupac Shakur.
For two years, I was the Assistant Engineer for the engineer who had mixed Digital Underground’s self-titled breakthrough album, and he often recounted the quickness and ease with which Tupac could listen to a beat, write a verse of lyrics and rap those lyrics over the beat in such a way that you could never imagine one had ever existed without the other. It is unfortunate that those who have decided they don’t like rap music will never get to appreciate how much more advanced rap lyrics are than what is found in any other American musical style.
With the successful rap producer DJ Pooh, Ice Cube co-wrote the hugely-successful comedy Fridays (1995), which launched the acting career of stand-up comedian Chris Tucker, and two sequels. He would re-join the cast in Singleton’s third movie, Higher Learning (1995), which is a creepily poignant depiction of how gangs are formed.
Hopefully the day will come when American blacks are given the same recognition and respect as white Americans, but, until then, it will remain essential for people like Ice Cube to bring the voice of the minority to the masses. This needn’t require heavy-handed preaching; simply re-telling entertaining stories from the point of view of those oppressed can be enough to trigger discussion, generate empathy and remind us of injustices. This will always bring strong resistance from those benefiting from the desperate, but boldly persisting in defying the roles society assigns us offers hope, at least for a time.
"Once Upon A Time In The Projects"
Once upon a time in the projects, yo,
I damn near had to wreck a ho
I knocked on the door - "Who is it?"
“It's Ice Cube, come to pay a little visit to you
And what's up with the niggas in the parking lot?”
She said, “Fuck ‘em, ‘cause they get sparked a lot.”
I sat on the couch but it wasn't stable
And then I put my Nikes on the coffee table
Her brother came in he's into gangbanging
‘Cause he walked up and said, "What set you claiming?"
I don't bang I write the good rhymes
The whole scenery reminded me of good times
I don't like to feel that I'm put in a rut
By a young nigga that needs to pull his pants up
He threw up a set and then he was gone
I'm thinkin to myself, Wont this bitch bring her ass on.
Her mother came in with a joint in her mouth
and fired up the sess it was sess no doubt
She said, “Please excuse my house,” and all that
I said, “Yeah,” ‘cause I was buzzed from the contact
Lookin’ at a fucked up black and white
Her mom's bitching ‘cause the county check wasn't right
She had another brother that was three years old
And had a bad case of the runny nose
He asked me who I was then I had to pause
It smelled like he took a shit in his little drawers
I saw her sister who really needs her ass kicked
Only thirteen and already pregnant
I grabbed my forty out the bag and took a swig
‘Cause I was getting overwhelmed by BeBe Kids
They was runnin’ and playin’ and cussin’ and yellin’
and tellin’ and look at this young punk bailin’
I heard a knock on the door without the password
and her mom's got the 12 guage Mossberg
The nigga said "Yo, what's for sale?"
and the bitch came out with a bag of ya-yo
She made the drop and got the 20 dollars
from a smoked out fool with ring around the collar
The girl I was waiting for came out
I said, “Bitch, I didn't know this was a crack house!”
I got my coat and suddenly...
(Stop, the police, don’t move. Freeze, or I’ll kill ya!)
The cop busted in and had a Mac-10 pointed at my dome
and I said to myself once again it's on
He threw me on the carpet, and wasn't cuttin’ no slack
stomped on my head and put his knee in my back
First he tried to wrap me up, slap me up, rough me up
They couldn't do it so they cuffed me up
I said, “Fuck, how much abuse can a nigga take?
Hey yo, officer, you're making a big mistake!”
Since I had on a shirt that said I was dope
He thought I was selling base and couldn't hear my case
He said, “Get out of my face!” He musta had a grudge
His reply, “Tell that bullshit to the judge.”
The girl I was with wasn't saying nothin’
I said, “Hey yo, bitch, you better tell ‘em something.”
She started draggin’ and all of a sudden
we all got tossed in the patty wagon
Now I beat the rap, but that ain't the point
I had a warrant so I spent two weeks in the joint
Now the story you heard has one little object
Don't fuck with a bitch from the projects!
This disturbing reality is the backdrop for the most shocking thing I’d ever encountered in my 12 years of life, when, in seventh grade, I heard “Fuck Tha Police,” By NWA, being played through a boombox in the clay modeling area of the art room.
Upon hearing the unavoidable chorus, I wondered why anyone would say something like that. Simply listening to the verses reveals this song is about racial prejudice within the LA police enforcement and judicial system. More importantly, this song is a series of first-person accounts of what it is like to be a young black man living in the LA projects. As a young white man living in rural Iowa, I had literally no first-hand experience of police enforcement or the judicial system. One of my favorite television shows, however, had been Dukes of Hazzard, and so I sort of just figured cops were incompetent, unthreatening blowhards who ticketed bad drivers.
Public outcry protesting both the song and the band was loud and furious. The FBI sent the members of NWA a threatening letter accusing them of “advocating violence against and disrespect” for police officers. Parental Advisory stickers, which had been a compromised result of a 1985 Senate censorship hearing but had rarely been used, were suddenly omnipresent. (The first use of the sticker had been on Ice-T’s debut album in 1987.) It is extraordinarily important to recognize that, despite all the attention and backlash “Fuck Tha Police” received, nobody seemed at all concerned with investigating the LAPD or the California judicial system. The general public was shocked that this song was exposing their children to the f-word, not that this song was exposing racial injustice. It was deemed crucial that anger and violence should not leave the black neighborhoods; that was their problem… and their fault. When you peel away the layers, you find that the real concern was not to protect the children, but to silence the voice of the minority daring to speak against the unfair treatment they are receiving.
This wasn’t the first time I had encountered lyrics that shocked me. The first time was on a bus enroute to a little league baseball game, when I heard The Beatie Boys’…
“(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!)”
You wake up late for school, man, you don't wanna go
You ask you mom, "Please?" but she still says, "No!"
You missed two classes and no homework
But your teacher preaches class like you're some kind of jerk
You gotta fight for your right to party
You pops caught you smoking and he said, "No way!"
That hypocrite smokes two packs a day
Man, living at home is such a drag
Now your mom threw away your best porno mag (Busted!)
You gotta fight for your right to party
Don't step out of this house if that's the clothes you're gonna wear
I'll kick you out of my home if you don't cut that hair
Your mom busted in and said, "What's that noise?"
Aw, mom you're just jealous- it's the Beastie Boys!
You gotta fight for your right to party
This asinine song encouraging teenage disobedience has no socially redeeming qualities. However, of all the songs on Beastie Boys debut album, Licensed to Ill (1986), this one is the least offensive. Some of them have a verse about shooting people followed by one about raping girls. The rest are about drinking, eating junk food and dealing with girls. “Paul Revere” even mentions cops: The sheriff's after me for what I did to his daughter- I did it like this, I did it like that, I did it with a whiffleball bat. Why didn’t anybody freak out about The Beastie Boys lyrics? They were hugely popular and influential while avoiding disparaging mass protests, threatening government letters or even a parental advisory sticker. They are also three Jewish kids from New York, so perhaps there couldn’t be more of an apples and oranges comparison.
Straight Outta Compton (1988) opens with the declaration, “You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.” Besides “Fuck Tha Police,” it contains songs that run the spectrum from “Parental Advisory Iz Advised” and “Express Yourself” to “Gangsta, Gangsta” and “Dope Man.” (Another highly controversial song, “A Bitch Iz A Bitch,” was a single added to the remastered version of Straight Outta Compton in 2002) Almost all of the lyrics on the album were written by O’Shea Jackson, using the pseudonym Ice Cube. His lyrics never quite go where you’d predict, for example “Dope Man” derides drug addicts. The characters in his songs almost always end up in prison. Ice Cube refuses to turn a blind eye to grim realities, and black on black violence is a central issue. Despite the grim subject matter, there is always wittiness in spades, and this is the key to NWA’s success. “Gangsta, Gangsta,” which is about a group of black kids driving around and terrorizing the neighborhood because they are bored, contains this gem:
Sweatin all the bitches in the biker shorts (but) we didn't get no play from the ladies- with six niggaz in a car, are you crazy?
One mustn’t lose perspective that Ice Cube is primarily an entertainer. He’s not a politician, physicist, psychologist or whatever- he’s a goddamn rapper. Ice Cube is a persona, a caricature played by a man named O’Shea Jackson. His lyrics weave freely between clowning and sincerity, gravitating toward whatever’s most entertaining. Ain’t nothin’ in life but to be legit- don’t quote me now; I ain’t said shit. He consistently defrays anyone from looking up to him as a role model, and makes it obvious that he’s exposing inner city violence as something to escape and not glorifying it.
Ice Cube’s lyrics contain a lot of tough talk and posturing, and while the outside world would cite that as a reason why they are baseless fiction to be ignored, in the inner city this is a necessary survival tactic. Street knowledge is basically the art of knowing how to handle yourself in a hostile environment. In the inner city, you have to wear a thick skin and retain a strong will to protect yourself from various pressures from people desperate to make a buck.
From 2000-2004, I lived in a neighborhood known as the “Iron Triangle” in Richmond, California. It was a close-knit community where knowing your neighbors was not an option but of the essence. During that same time, I was working late nights at a recording studio in the Tenderlon District in San Francisco, where I met and worked with dozens of rap artists, and playing avant-garde and experimental music in underground clubs in Oakland, including several centers run by the Black Panther party. In 2004, I moved to Oakland for a year. Those five years taught me a lot of lessons and showed me a lot of things, some of which would raise the hairs on the back of your neck. I will attest that to this day, when I feel threatened by someone or that they are trying to intimidate me, my first thought is to exclaim, I from fucking Oakland bitch; don’t even try an’ fuck wit’ me. Similarly, when I see a car driving down the street at five miles per hour, which is a frequent occurrence in the sleepy rural Iowa town in which I now reside, I still think, They either lookin’ to shoot or get shot. You never, ever act suspiciously in the ‘hood. You don’t want to look like a tourist. In Iowa, everyone basically acts like a tourist. Of course, they would likely have no idea what I mean by that, but it’s a convenient coincidence that the state’s name is an acronym for Idiots Out Wandering Around.
People in the inner city enjoy competition in a sporting sense. It is common to see men in open garages playing cards or families gathered around dominoes while cooking large meals together. This helps generate a strong bond of community. Gangs consist of a few greedy control freaks and a whole lot of teenagers desperate for a modicum of recognition and respect, but the vast majority of the community works hard to discourage gangs and remain safe. Moments of intense violence are borne from desperation, a lot of which relates to drugs, but also inner-turmoil stemming from deep-seated values of pride and familial loyalty. You don’t dare talk badly of anyone behind their back unless you are also willing to say it to their face. Speaking directly, decisively and frankly is expected and appreciated.
In contrast, people in Iowa tend to survive by being insular. They stay close to those they’ve known for years and try not to attract too much attention from outsiders. Iowans are not neighborly; in fact most prefer no or few neighbors. The degree to which Iowans will go to avoid communication or even eye contact with strangers in a public place is beyond impressive. Iowans are not used to handling stressors. They think traffic is a slow-moving vehicle (aka a tractor) that they’d need to pass to continue toward their destination at the speed limit. When confronted with any sort of direct challenge to any behavior, Iowans tend to completely lose their shit and respond with passive-aggressive immaturity and back-stabbing. As a result, Iowans are very suspicious of each other. People in Iowa enjoy staying in agreement and away from any competitive friction. They watch sports but don’t generally play them. They talk about the weather and how messed up the rest of the world is. Iowans think anything outside of their comfort zone sounds awful and is best avoided.
These culturally based ways of experiencing the world are mutually exclusive. No black person can go unnoticed in a rural Iowa town for the simple reason that there just aren’t that many people of color around here. An easy way to overwhelm an Iowan with panic and fear is to drop one in the ghetto. Even in places where it is more common, white people throughout the United States tend to be much more comfortable with blacks in isolation rather than in groups.
Iowans think, “If you don’t want trouble from the cops, don’t do anything illegal.” In the ‘hood, that assumption is straight up ign’ant. This assumption comes from experiences such as one that happened a few months ago, when a police officer in Iowa City hollered out the window at my white girlfriend while parked next to her at a stoplight that she had a headlight out. About a month ago, I was pulled over on a country road and given a warning for speeding, and as I drove off, I noticed I had three empty beer bottles sitting on my passenger seat which the officer didn’t inquire about. The fact that many are suddenly wondering the story behind the bottles illustrates my point perfectly. Two weeks ago, an officer in almost the same location flashed his lights at me to signal to slow down, and I obliged. I highly doubt any black person in America can relate to these experiences. Perhaps the biggest similarity between Oakland, California and the tiny towns littering Iowa is the main roads leading out of both are often hidden and unmarked. However, two other important shared traits are an appreciation for church and self-referential humor. One big difference is that if you talk shit about the ghetto to a hoodlum, it’s understood, but if you say anything bad about Iowa to an Iowan, heaven help you.
Part II
1990 was a world dominated by MC Hammer and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, but it was also the debut of In Living Color on Fox, which shone like a ray of hope above anything on television featuring blacks. At first, I would watch it on Sunday nights in secret, not knowing whether it would be considered a bad influence. It laughed loudly at both the cultural treatment and media portrayal of skin color and race in America. Eventually, I used its sketches as starting points to instigate conversations about race relations, because the show seemed able to delineate the line between absurd and unacceptable.
1990 was also the year of Amerikkka’s Most Wanted, Ice Cube’s superb solo debut album produced by The Bomb Squad, best known for their work with Public Enemy. Many of the songs begin with sampled clips of mass media degrading American blacks and himself, contextualizing his lyrics as responses to and the result of white majority attitudes. A parody of himself being electrocuted after spouting the last words, “Fuck all ya’ll” is followed by a defiant rap that loudly mocks the claim that he’s the villain while drawing parallels between his lyrics and a drive-by shooting. He also demonstrates that the solutions are just as absurd as the problems.
"The Nigga Ya Love To Hate"
I heard payback's a motherfucking nigga
That's why I'm sick of gettin’ treated like a goddamn stepchild
Fuck a punk cause I ain't him
You gotta deal with the nine-double-M
The damn scum that you all hate
Just think if niggas decide to retaliate
They try to keep me from running up
I never tell you to get down it's all about coming up
So what they do go and ban the AK?
My shit wasn't registered any fucking way
So you better duck away, run and hide out
When I'm rolling real slow and the light’s out
‘Cause I'm about to fuck up the program
Shooting out the window of a drop-top Brougham
When I'm shooting let's see who drop
The police, the media and suckers that went pop
And motherfuckers that say they too black
Put ‘em overseas they be begging to come back
They say keep ‘em on gangs and drugs
You wanna sweep a nigga like me up under the rug
Kicking shit called street knowledge
Why more niggas in the pen than in college?
Now ‘cause of that line I might be your cellmate
That's from the nigga ya love to hate
(background voice) Fuck you, Ice Cube!
Yeah, ha-ha, it's the nigga you love to hate
(background voice) Fuck you, Ice Cube!
You know, baby, your mother warned you about me
It's the nigga you love to hate
Yo, you ain’t doing nothin’, pops
You ain’t doing nothin’, pops, fo’ us boys
What you got to say for yourself?
You don’t like how I'm living? Well, fuck you
Once again it's on, the motherfucking psycho
Ice Cube the bitch killa cap peeler
Yo runnin through the line like Bo
There's no pot to piss in I put my fist in
Now who do ya love to hate
‘Cause I talk shit and down the eight-ball
‘Cause I don't fake you're begging I fall off
The crossover might as well cut them balls off
And get your ass ready for the lynching
The mob is droppin’ common sense in
We'll gank in the pen
We’ll shank any Tom, Dick and Hank or get the ass
Fakin’ it ain't about how right or wrong you live
But how long you live
I ain't with the bullshit
I meet cold bitches no hoes
Don't wanna sleep so I keep popping No-Doz
And tell the young people what they gotta know
‘Cause I hate when niggas gotta live low
And if you're locked up I dedicate my style in
From San Quentin to Rykers Island
We got ‘em afraid of the funky shit
I like to clown so pump up the sound
In the jeep make the old ladies say
Oh my god wait it's the nigga ya love to hate
(background voice) Fuck you, Ice Cube
Yeah, come on fool
It's the nigga you love to hate
(background voice) Fuck you, Ice Cube
Yeah, run up punk
It's the nigga you love to hate
(Yo-Yo) ‘Who the fuck do you think you are you calling girls bitches?
You ain't all that
That's all I hear, bitch, bitch
I ain't nobody's bitch!’
A bitch is a....
Soul Train done lost their soul
Just call it train cause the bitches look like hoes
I see a lotta others damn
It almost look like the Bandstand
You ask me did I like Arsenio?
About as much as the bicentennial
I don't give a fuck about dissing these fools ‘cause they all scared of the Ice Cube
And what I say what I portray and all that
And ain't even seen the gat
I don't wanna see no dancing
I'm sick of that shit listen to the hit
Cause yo if I look and see another brother
On the video tryin to out-dance each other
I'm a tell T-Bone to pass the bottle
And don't give me that shit about role model
It ain't wise to chastise and preach
Just open the eyes of each
‘Cause laws are made to be broken up
What niggas need to do is start loc’ing up
And build, mold and fold they-self into shape
Of the nigga ya love to hate
Throughout the album, Ice Cube loudly rejects the status quo and refuses to yield his perspective. He reminds the listeners he still hates cops. In a song featuring the annoying Flavor Flav called, “I’m Only Out For One Thang,” Ice Cube very subtlely admits that not having his voice silenced has become a high priority. From his NWA days, Ice Cube had frequently declared his motivations were “money and bitches.” This is patently offensive, but also jarringly honest. Imagine if everyone who was motivated by those things admitted it. He specifically says this to cynically demonstrate his shortcomings: In “Gangsta, Gangsta,” he writes, Do I look like a motherfuckin’ role model? To all the kids lookin’ up to me- life ain’t nothin’ but bitches and money, which is juxtaposed by a KRS One sample in the chorus that says, It’s not about a salary, it’s all about reality. Anyway, in what sounds like an improvised throw-away outro of “I’m Only Out For One Thang,” Flavor Flav jokingly persists in asking Ice Cube to clarify what one thing he’s after and Ice Cube finally responds, I’m out for the pussy, the money and the mic. The humor reminiscent of Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition sketch is obvious, but even keeping that intact, any long-time listener would have anticipated his answer to be “bitches and money.” This makes the addition of “mic” stick out as a declaration that being able to speak whatever it is he has to say is an essential goal.
The rap genre as a whole, and Ice Cube specifically, have been heavily criticized for being misogynistic. This is somewhat justified and one factor is the cultural impact of outspoken black male-chauvinists like Louis Farrakhan. Amerikkka’s Most Wanted introduces a female rapper named Yo-Yo in a song which attempts to reconcile perspectives on gender. Ice Cube takes the role of someone who thinks women should serve men, and Yo-Yo insists women deserve equality and respect.
Yo-Yo would go on to put out at least three very good albums, one of which Ice Cube co-produced and rapped on, and when Ice Cube started his own record label in 1994, he put Yo-Yo in charge (according to wikipedia.org). Although she had moderate success, Yo-Yo somehow never became a huge hit like her male peers. This ugly fact demonstrates the accuracy with which Ice Cube successfully captures not only localized attitudes but those of America as a whole in his lyrics. Like Archie Bunker, Ice Cube is both entertaining and relevant because he is publicly echoing thoughts that are claimed to be outdated but many silently cling to.
On March 3, 1991, a black man named Rodney King was filmed being brutally beaten by several Los Angeles police officers while other police officers stood by. After this incident became the top news story, the members of NWA should have received a whole lot of letters of apology for having criticized and been insulted by their claims of police violence on blacks instead of giving them diligent consideration. Instead, a jury demonstrated it wasn’t that the claims weren’t believed, but that police violence on blacks was acceptable. Inaction in striving for equality of justice could no longer be blamed on ignorance, but wholly on apathy. Tom Brokaw’s frank assessment that “Outside the South Central area few cared about the violence, because it didn’t affect them,” which had been used as a sample on Amerikkka’s Most Wanted, was once again validated.
John Singleton’s directorial debut, Boyz N the Hood (1991), came to theaters almost immediately after the Rodney King video broke with the tagline, “Once upon a time in South Central L.A... It ain't no fairy tale.” The title is borrowed from the title of the Ice Cube penned song that became the impetus for forming NWA, and includes Ice Cube in his acting debut. Today, the movie comes off as clunky and dated, but it accelerated the cinematic concept introduced by Spike Lee of giving an uncensored portrayal of the challenges and obstacles faced by black teens in the projects in movies like the seemingly prophetic Do the Right Thing (1989).
Death Certificate (1991) and Predator (1992), Ice Cube’s second and third solo albums, are just as good as Amerikkka’s Most Wanted. He also helped introduce Del the Funky Homosapien and produced Da Lench Mob’s magnificent Guerillas in the Mist (1992). In 1992, he also married Kimberly Woodruff. They are still married and have four children. In late December 1992, so basically 1993, another former NWA member Dr. Dre, now signed to a label financed by a real-life gangster named Shug Knight, released his solo debut. Although Dre was the famous name on The Chronic, it showcased the talent of a young unknown named Snoop Doggy Dogg and acted both as an introduction and test market warm-up for Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Doggystyle (1993). Both of these albums are over-rated, but they had a ton of commercial success. The failure of Ice Cube’s fourth album, Lethal Injection (1993) was that he seemed to lose confidence that the stuff he had been doing in the years between NWA and The Chronic was way better than The Chronic.
Acting is possibly a better fit for what Ice Cube attempts to communicate than rap. For example, when you rap about being a drug dealer, people assume you’re a drug dealer, whereas when you play the role of a drug dealer in a movie, people realize you’re acting. Ice Cube is not an exceptional actor, but he exudes confidence in front of the camera. When he turned down the male lead in John Singleton’s second movie, Poetic Justice (1993), Ice Cube recommended another gifted songwriter named Tupac Shakur.
For two years, I was the Assistant Engineer for the engineer who had mixed Digital Underground’s self-titled breakthrough album, and he often recounted the quickness and ease with which Tupac could listen to a beat, write a verse of lyrics and rap those lyrics over the beat in such a way that you could never imagine one had ever existed without the other. It is unfortunate that those who have decided they don’t like rap music will never get to appreciate how much more advanced rap lyrics are than what is found in any other American musical style.
With the successful rap producer DJ Pooh, Ice Cube co-wrote the hugely-successful comedy Fridays (1995), which launched the acting career of stand-up comedian Chris Tucker, and two sequels. He would re-join the cast in Singleton’s third movie, Higher Learning (1995), which is a creepily poignant depiction of how gangs are formed.
Hopefully the day will come when American blacks are given the same recognition and respect as white Americans, but, until then, it will remain essential for people like Ice Cube to bring the voice of the minority to the masses. This needn’t require heavy-handed preaching; simply re-telling entertaining stories from the point of view of those oppressed can be enough to trigger discussion, generate empathy and remind us of injustices. This will always bring strong resistance from those benefiting from the desperate, but boldly persisting in defying the roles society assigns us offers hope, at least for a time.
"Once Upon A Time In The Projects"
Once upon a time in the projects, yo,
I damn near had to wreck a ho
I knocked on the door - "Who is it?"
“It's Ice Cube, come to pay a little visit to you
And what's up with the niggas in the parking lot?”
She said, “Fuck ‘em, ‘cause they get sparked a lot.”
I sat on the couch but it wasn't stable
And then I put my Nikes on the coffee table
Her brother came in he's into gangbanging
‘Cause he walked up and said, "What set you claiming?"
I don't bang I write the good rhymes
The whole scenery reminded me of good times
I don't like to feel that I'm put in a rut
By a young nigga that needs to pull his pants up
He threw up a set and then he was gone
I'm thinkin to myself, Wont this bitch bring her ass on.
Her mother came in with a joint in her mouth
and fired up the sess it was sess no doubt
She said, “Please excuse my house,” and all that
I said, “Yeah,” ‘cause I was buzzed from the contact
Lookin’ at a fucked up black and white
Her mom's bitching ‘cause the county check wasn't right
She had another brother that was three years old
And had a bad case of the runny nose
He asked me who I was then I had to pause
It smelled like he took a shit in his little drawers
I saw her sister who really needs her ass kicked
Only thirteen and already pregnant
I grabbed my forty out the bag and took a swig
‘Cause I was getting overwhelmed by BeBe Kids
They was runnin’ and playin’ and cussin’ and yellin’
and tellin’ and look at this young punk bailin’
I heard a knock on the door without the password
and her mom's got the 12 guage Mossberg
The nigga said "Yo, what's for sale?"
and the bitch came out with a bag of ya-yo
She made the drop and got the 20 dollars
from a smoked out fool with ring around the collar
The girl I was waiting for came out
I said, “Bitch, I didn't know this was a crack house!”
I got my coat and suddenly...
(Stop, the police, don’t move. Freeze, or I’ll kill ya!)
The cop busted in and had a Mac-10 pointed at my dome
and I said to myself once again it's on
He threw me on the carpet, and wasn't cuttin’ no slack
stomped on my head and put his knee in my back
First he tried to wrap me up, slap me up, rough me up
They couldn't do it so they cuffed me up
I said, “Fuck, how much abuse can a nigga take?
Hey yo, officer, you're making a big mistake!”
Since I had on a shirt that said I was dope
He thought I was selling base and couldn't hear my case
He said, “Get out of my face!” He musta had a grudge
His reply, “Tell that bullshit to the judge.”
The girl I was with wasn't saying nothin’
I said, “Hey yo, bitch, you better tell ‘em something.”
She started draggin’ and all of a sudden
we all got tossed in the patty wagon
Now I beat the rap, but that ain't the point
I had a warrant so I spent two weeks in the joint
Now the story you heard has one little object
Don't fuck with a bitch from the projects!
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