So, I think I’m going to put this blog into semi-retirement. I just don’t update it enough anymore to feel right calling it “my blog.”
Most of my posting these days is on . So that’s where I’ll turn my attention, while reserving this space for the sort of longer-form writing for which it’s best suited.
Until I figure out the difference between this blog and my Tumblr—and decide whether to continue maintaining one, both, or none of them—you might as well head over there. If you return to this blog it’ll be because I linked to it from there.
For several years I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Minneapolis supermusician Shawn Neary, whom I first met when his old band, Boy With Stick, played with my old band, Nolan. He’s from Iowa too, and when I moved up to Minneapolis he’d already been here a few years, playing with Boy With Stick but also with a little band called Tapes ‘n Tapes (whatever happened to those guys?), the delightful pop trio Seymore Saves The World, and finally taking on bass duties for beloved local juggernaut Cloud Cult. Shawn is the best evidence I’ve seen that a person can have a successful career in music while remaining a genuinely nice guy.
He’s also been quietly carving out a (side? solo?) project called , named for a river in Iowa. The other day, Shawn walked straight into my workplace and handed me the band’s first album, San Geronimo, hot off the presses, and I was abundantly grateful. The Wapsipinicon is playing a CD release show at the Kitty Kat Club on March 6. Here is my favorite track from San Geronimo (so far), called “Get Out of My Town.”
Since I made my students do a freewrite today, I figured it was only fair that I do it too. The prompt was “Write about whatever song is stuck in your head right now.” All day, I’ve had “Accidents Waiting to Happen” by 12 Rods swirling in my brain, playing the frantic drum part on my teeth, despite a long bus ride soundtracked by iTunes shuffle and an episode of This American Life.
The thing is, this isn’t even one of my favorite songs from Lost Time, or one of my favorite 12 Rods songs, period. My favorite off Lost Time is probably “Terrible Hands,” the sort of song you can tell would have fit right into a Dismemberment Plan set. Not that “Accidents” wouldn’t. Not at all.
For Christmas I received a which will allow me to convert hours of old 8 mm tape to grainy, slightly out-of-sync video, archive it on an external hard drive, and then forget it forever.
The new decade, coupled with my occasionally uncomfortable revisiting of this old footage, reminds me that while a monumental leap occurs between a person’s second and third decade of life—teenagers graduate from high school, gain weight, develop various bad habits, get jobs, make mistakes they hope aren’t irreversible—the transition that occurs over the course of one’s twenties and early thirties is more subtle but no less striking: the people in these old videos are committing various ill-advised acts of debauchery and naivete, but have survived, flourished, started families, and cultivated new lives that elaborate on but never entirely supplant their old hedonistic ones.
As a recovering nostalgia addict, I am careful never to dwell or wallow for too long in the past. Especially now that ten years ago doesn’t feel as deep in the past as it used to, I have to be careful about ascribing too strong a negative or positive quality to it. It just was. These videos from that era provide the most objective viewpoint I’ll ever have, and the subjective one is there if you’re looking for it: I was young, cocky, and a little pudgier than I am now. I had potential. I was done with school but still had a lot of growing up to do. I could play the drums and I could write and I had no idea what to do about it. Read more »
I rang in the year 2000 indulging pretty much all of my vices at once. I finished college. I didn’t have a cell phone or a broadband internet connection. I lived in a series of rental properties. I discovered the Dismemberment Plan. I taught ninth- and tenth-grade English. I moved to Iowa City. I became a substitute teacher. A friend died. I discovered Music for 18 Musicians. I got a job at a bookstore. I recorded an album in New York. My band broke up. I got a new computer. I woke up late on September 11. I got my first cell phone. I went to London. I joined two new . I ran my first 5K. Neil moved away. Wes moved away. I started a blog. My drums were stolen. I got a job scoring standardized tests. I bought new drums. I recorded an album in Iowa City. I was fired from my job scoring standardized tests. I went to California. My dad died. I quit my job at the bookstore. I got a job at a day care. I read Infinite Jest for the second time. I moved in with my mother. Mark moved away. I joined Friendster. I went on tour. Phil moved away. I moved to Chicago. I got a job at a sign-making company. I discovered Talk Talk. I quit my job at the sign-making company and got a job at a corporate law firm. I joined a kickball team and an . I joined MySpace. I got a new computer. I discovered Stars of the Lid. I got into grad school. I quit my job at the law firm. I read Infinite Jest a third time. I moved to Minneapolis. I got a new bike. I made new friends. I joined Facebook. I lived in a horrible rental property. My new bike was stolen from my horrible rental property. I got a job working for Garrison Keillor. I shaved my head. Garrison Keillor fired me. I moved into a nicer rental property. I turned thirty. I joined a . I went to a lot of weddings. I quit drinking. I discovered Subtle. I got a new bike. I got a job at a café. I shaved my head again. I took up yoga. I got a new computer. I went to London again. The bridge fell. I wrote a book. A lot of my friends moved away. I wrote for some . I joined Twitter. I got a job teaching writing. I met . I joined a new . I got an iPhone. I read Infinite Jest for the fourth time. I quit my job at the café. Iowa got civil rights. I got a job at a coop. I got a tattoo. I went on tour again. I got another job teaching writing. I went to the beach. I moved into a new rental property. I got a new computer. I recorded my first day album. I got proper winter boots and a proper winter coat. I woke up early and walked to work, in the snow, and the sun hadn’t risen yet.
Musician, cultural theorist, and Brian Eno says that . The cool vs. uncool distinction is no longer meaningful, he says, largely due to the explosion in access, hybridization, and genre bifurcation across every aesthetic plane.
We’re living in a stylistic tropics. There’s a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don’t have the same localised stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It’s all alive, all “now,” in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.
If anyone is cool enough to tell us when we can stop worrying about being cool, it’s the coolest 61-year-old on the planet.
This is good news for me, since I am approaching that age where I care less and less, with each passing day, about what’s cool, much less how to define the term. The inexorable uncoolness we swore we’d outrun at any cost, even as it devoured our parents, is nipping at my heels, and I’m okay with that.
Were this a critical essay, I’d have to go to all the trouble of defining what cool even means, and triangulating Eno’s argument against others, but fortunately I can just link to his essay and consider how it refracts the points made by an older one that’s always been a favorite: “Against Cool” by Rick Moody (not available online, but it is in the of the Best American Essays).
And with the time I saved, I can now go listen to Another Green World. Thanks, laziness!
Homer: You know what the song says: “It’s hip to be square.” Lisa: That song is so lame. Homer: So lame that it’s… cool? Bart and Lisa: No. Marge: Am I cool, kids? Bart and Lisa: No. Marge: Good. I’m glad. And that’s what makes me cool, not caring, right? Bart and Lisa: No. Marge: Well, how the hell do you be cool? I feel like we’ve tried everything here. Homer: Wait, Marge. Maybe if you’re truly cool, you don’t need to be told you’re cool. Bart: Well, sure you do. Lisa: How else would you know?
I would not be a very good Infinite Jest/David Foster Wallace enthusiast if I didn’t observe the fact that SPOILER ALERT the primary action of his most famous novel takes place in what is established to be November of the year 2009.
Upon noting that a bulk of the novel’s action has transpired by November 23 of the Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment, I began wondering how our version of 2009 stacked up against DFW’s. Not as entertaining, or as dystopian, but equally unsettling, I bet. After all—to paraphrase Hal on page 12—Johnny Gentle is just Sarah Palin in a dark mirror.
Infinite Jest Time
Our Time
1950: James Orin Incandenza is born.
Randy Quaid is born.
1981: Don Gately is born.
is born.
1992: Hal Incandeza is born.
Miley Cyrus is born.
11/07/2000: Johnny Gentle elected President.
George W. “elected” President.
09/10/01: Orin Incandenza leaves tennis for football.
09/11/01: Al-Qaeda attacks the United States.
2002: Subsidized Time begins.
Republicans sweep midterm elections, accelerate plans for preemptive war on Iraq.
04/01/04: James Incandenza commits suicide.
Google introduces Gmail.
09/11/08: Don Gately enters substance-abuse treatment.
09/12/08: David Foster Wallace commits suicide.
04/30/09 – 05/01/09: Marathe and Steeply rendezvous near Tucson.
Chrysler Motors declares bankruptcy.
10/15/09: Mario Incandenza encounters the USS Millicent Kent in the woods.
Balloon Boy is found safe in his attic.
11/08/09: Interdependence Day / Eschaton.
Health care reform passes in the House.
11/09/09: The AFR take control of Antitoi Entertainent [sic].
The world observes the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s collapse.
11/12/09: Gately lands in the hospital.
Carrie Prejean of an interview with Larry King.
11/14/09: Tony Krause has a seizure.
The New York Times .
11/17/09: Hal visits Ennet House.
HarperCollins publishes Sarah Palin’s “memoir” .
11/25/09: Mario turns 19.
Meg Ryan turns 48.
12/12/09: Hal does poorly on the SAT.
The Mayan apocalypse arrives three years early. (SPOILER ALERT)
The themes of nightmares, however, seem to be surprisingly universal. In the few studies that have been done across different cultures, the most common scenario involves the dreamer being pursued or attacked. … Some other common subjects are finding yourself in threatening surroundings, taking a test for which you aren’t prepared, suffering paralysis, and having people close to you die or disappear. Then there are the common scenarios that are disquieting, if not exactly nightmarish: suddenly having all your teeth fall out, for instance, or showing up in public naked. People around the world seem to alight on the same sturdy metaphors for shame, loss, and mortality.
— The New Yorker, November 16, 2009.
1979-1986. My feet are stuck to the blacktop of a very large playground and my parents are walking away from me very quickly; I cry for them to stop but they can’t hear me. I have to get to the front door of my house but the lawn is completely covered in huge writhing snakes. My father’s office building is completely covered in huge writhing snakes, hanging off the roof and down the walls. My parents are dead. My teeth are falling out. I am naked at school.
1987-1991 I suddenly can’t read; the printed English language is indecipherable and the spoken English language sounds like gibberish. My hands are splitting open and rotting and I can’t stop picking at the sinew inside. I am riding my bike off the balcony off a very tall building and falling dozens of stories. My parents are dead. My teeth are falling out. I am naked at school.
1992-1999 There is a test I have not studied for. I have forgotten how to play the drums. Any number of family members are dying. A jumbo jet is crashing in my backyard. My best friends decide they hate me. Members of the opposite sex subject me to countless sexual and/or romantic humiliations. My teeth are falling out. I am naked at school.
2000-Present. I have flunked out of college. Ex-girlfriends are trying to seduce and/or attack me. I have cheated on my significant other. There is a big gig coming up that I have not practiced for, and I can’t get my drum kit set up fast enough. I am reuniting with old bands with disastrous circumstances. I am drinking again (2006-present). My father is alive again but only temporarily (2003-present). I meet Barack Obama and he hates me (2008-present). The other members of my band are moving to remote parts of the world. I am revealed to be a fraud. I am revealed to be a criminal. My teeth are falling out. I am naked at work.
This is about a month overdue, but this year marks my seventh as a blogger. I took the self-indulgent time to self-indulgently browse my self-indulgent blog entries from the past self-indulgent year and self-indulgently pick the ones that I self-indulgented the most.
A couple weeks into teaching a new session of my blogging class, and I feel like a hypocrite because I’m not following any of the advice I’ve given my students, chiefly the following two cardinal rules of blogging: Keep it Short, and Update Often.
If I were to teach the class based entirely on my own blogging practices, I’d tell them to only update three times a month and to make sure each post is a million words long and glutted with florid descriptions of obscure music. The Decade of Music project was interesting in theory, but time-consuming to execute.
“Life is short, and tastes like chocolate.” —Tom Hanks, 1956-2012*
So I want to go back to updating every couple of days. I want my posts to be short and minimally edited. I want them to be blog posts. I want to not take them so seriously. And then I want to figure out if I want to keep maintaining this blog or retire it and move on to the next thing, whatever that is.
*”The Mayans were right. IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD!” —John Cusack, 1966-FindoutNovember13!!!