tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-537202338302434712024-03-13T23:01:59.008-05:00Liz's Masonic Lodgewon't you come in? mind if i take some notes? are you comfortable? want a cookie? coffee? tea? gum?Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.comBlogger146125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-68050573067661651182016-03-22T02:45:00.004-05:002016-03-22T02:47:41.287-05:00Has Anybody Made a "Suppressive Person" T-shirt On Cafe Press?: On Alex Gibney's "Going Clear" & Fiona Maazel's "Woke Up Lonely"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Joe and I watched the documentary <i>Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief</i> about Scientology, and of course the first thing out of my mouth afterwards was, "How much do you want to bet if we went on the internet right now we'd see somebody has made a <a href="http://www.cafepress.com/+suppressive-person+t-shirts" target="_blank">"Suppressive Person" t-shirt on Cafe Press</a>?" Sure enough, there it was. As usual, because I'm a total shallow asshole the<i> actual</i> message of the movie -- how dangerous a powerfully financed cult can be against individuals, groups and the government -- was secondary to my preoccupation with Scientology's place in popular culture. So although I might be accused of lacking a certain empathetic humanity, I'd certainly never be accused for lack of discerning taste in clothing; Cafe Press didn't have quite the style I was looking for so I convinced Joe that we should design our own t-shirts, and that's exactly what we did at the T-Shirt Deli down the street. The front of mine says <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressive_Person" target="_blank">"Suppressive Person"</a> (in yellow "mini cooper" lettering), and the back says <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressive_Person" target="_blank">"Potential Trouble Source,"</a> while Joe's is in reverse. And they're printed on a Scientology blue shirt, which, I should mention, is also the color of the Freemasons (aka the <span style="color: blue;">Blue</span> Lodge), not that I'm drawing any similarities, but I do think that's hilarious. These shirts were our valentine's gift to each other. In a hilarious twist of coincidence, blue is also the color of the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/blueribbongleeclub" target="_blank">Blue Ribbon Glee Club</a>, the a capella punk rock glee club we sing in. Joe and I have taken to wearing these shirts when we perform, in tribute to the absolutely ludicrous Scientological lite-rock <a href="http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/videos/a34002/scientology-music-video/" target="_blank"><i>We Stand Tall</i> video</a> featured in the documentary, because again, well, we're assholes.</div>
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In <i>Going Clear</i> a few people talked about joining because they wanted to learn about some of the things Scientology claimed to help someone do, but it seemed like a fair amount of people joined because actually, they were lonely. A number of ex-members talked about how much they enjoyed the social aspect of the "auditing" interviews "clearing them," and they often talked about auditing sessions as moments where they felt as though they were bonding with their auditors, making it very social. Also, they talked about auditing being like therapy for them that could, as religion researcher Hugh B. Urban phrased it <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditing_(Scientology)" target="_blank">(as cited on Wikipedia here)</a>, "trigger personal insights, and cause dramatic changes in one's psychological state. The recalling and expression of old hurts in response to the auditor's questions may [have] feel like an unburdening."</div>
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Interestingly, around the same time I saw this movie I finished reading <a href="http://quimbysbookstore.mybooksandmore.com/web1/actions/searchHandler.do?key=9781555976729&nextPage=booksDetails&parentNum=12680" target="_blank">Fiona Mazel's novel <i>Woke Up Lonely</i></a> (Graywolf Press). It's about his guy who starts a Scientology-ish cult called the Helix that promises to eradicate loneliness. (Strangely, I recently ran into the imagery of the helix in the movie <i>Her</i> that I finally watched from a few years ago about falling in love with or becoming BFFs with a computer operating system as an AI in all its Singularity glory, which I LOVE, LOVE, LOVED. I think the helix was like, the icon of the company that made the OS, if I recall, but weirdly and poetically, the internet is NOT helping me confirm. What I have not watched: that show <i>The Helix</i> that was on for 2 seasons.)<br />
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In <i>Woke Up Lonely</i> there's all this stuff about the cult founder, who is actually really lonely, and he misses his ex wife and daughter. There are adventures about his ex wife being a spy, some hostages, North Korea, all this other stuff. And oh, a fake fat suit. Can't forget that. Lots of ridiculous disguises and this bizarre, awesome relationship between the ex-wife/spy and the man who does her makeup for her disguises. The ex-wife is tasked by the government to crack down on the cult leader, but she she actually tries to thwart the cracking down; it's kind of a tricky situation. Her relationship between with the make up artist is what I imagine it must be like with performers who do shows over and over, where they see the same artist every day. A relationship develops.<br />
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In the book the Helix is a cult (although in true cultish mode, members argued it wasn't) about banishing loneliness. They have functions like speed-dating and confession sessions, and there obvious are Scientology parallels. Everybody knows about the Scientology "auditing" sessions, which is the Scientology version of (sort of) therapy and (sort of) social bonding. Two seconds of searching on the internet told me that I am not the first person to make this parallel in Mazel's book and Scientology, and I have to imagine she was inspired by some amount of research, so it's not like I'm going to make some big revealing analysis. It was just weird that I personally read the book and saw <i>Going Clear</i> around the same time. Is the world trying to tell me something? Am I NOT supposed to be going to potlucks at the Chicago TM center?<br />
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I guess I never thought about it until then that maybe the biggest reason someone might join a cult is that of loneliness. I myself, can be lonely at my own birthday party because I have such social anxiety. However, for me personally, me being who I am the main reason I would ever join a cult, would be if it promised me something otherworldly. I don't want a cult that promises me merely community. I want some mystic action! I want to be promised cosmic wisdom and higher vibrational effervescence! Friends are nice and all but what I would really want is some holistic, inter-dimensional, Terence McKenna fulfillment. And answers! I want some god damn answers! <i>What is time? What is reality? What is consciousness? </i>All that shit.<br />
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Weird that these two things would cross my path at the same time. Clearly the universe are trying to tell me something. And that isn't that "Love the people in your life, all that we have in the end, after all is said and done, is love, and that is what sustains us."<br />
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Clearly the universe is telling me that Cafe Press makes shitty t-shirts. Hail Xenu.<br />
_______________________________<br />
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In case you're curious: some of my favorite quotes from <i>Woke Up Lonely.</i><br />
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I enjoyed the banter in <i>Wake Up Lonely </i>between wry characters. One character, Rita said this and I loved it (p 77):<br />
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<span style="color: orange;">"You know, most of the radicals in this country are fixated on their commitment to revolution way more than on the revolution itself. They don't want to succeed. because if they did, they couldn't be radicals anymore, and a radical is most interested in his sense of being a radical."</span></blockquote>
There was some delicately incisive poetics that I kept reading over and over, sort of beautiful crystalized little gems of wisdom, even if in the mind of fictional characters:<br />
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<span style="color: orange;">"I suspect there's more than one path leading away from estrangement, though for some people, there are no paths at all...There is no lonely course that doesn't still belong to the plexus of human experience being lived every day." -Thurlow, 180-181</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: orange;">"When you grow up neglected by the people you love the most, it tramples your self-esteem, and when you are adult enough to stop blaming them, you end up blaming yourself, which means, <i>wamu! </i>even less self-esteem." p195</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: orange;">"Do we love people for the way they treat us or who they are? Is there a difference?" p200</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: orange;">"In sleep, though, people forget themselves, or come into the selves they've spent most of their lives trying to repress." p206</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: orange;">"They had been happy once. Since then it had been <i>x</i> days, months, years, and she missed him with a degree of agony that would have sent most people running back to him a long time ago. But not Esme. Instead, she had ignored the need, boxed it up, put it away, acquired new experiences to box and pile until her tower had grown nine thousand boxes high and there was no chance she could feel that first box on the bottom, right? Princess and the pea. Such a deranged moral to offer a child. The more sensitive you are to pain welled deep in your psyche, the more noble your spirit? It was better to be noble than happy? She pressed her ear to the wood. And the weeping she hears inside needed no interpretation. It's true that when your subject weeps and so do you, it is hard to tell your hurt form his. For a person who listens, rare are the moments you don't have to." p227</span><span style="color: orange;"> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: orange;">"At home a sick mom and the burden of caring for this sick mom, which would fall to her alone. That, plus an emotional terrain that smoldered as though after a great fire but that could yield up nothing new, and in this paradox of trauma: the past could live on in you with an energy you could never muster for the life that was happening to you now. And just think: tomorrow, she could be returned to all of that. Unharmed, unchanged." -p249</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: orange;">"What is tolerable in a person you love? Or want to love so much you will tolerate most anything?" -2p69</span></blockquote>
I got this book as an uncorrected proof from the publisher a million years ago, and it's kind of crazy that I would happen to pull it off the shelf to read it now. Why is that?<br />
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<br />Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-62087132495995544502016-02-10T01:49:00.001-06:002016-02-10T02:39:31.837-06:00Unretrieved Rabbits, Zero-Density & The Second Oldest Profession: On Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So I said I was going to start using my blog as a place for talking about the books I'm reading and sharing the quotes I enjoy from them, sixteenth century "commonplace book" style. I am not a speed reader but I will say the books are piling up faster than I can get to writing about them. I think it would easier if I was just putting the quotes I like from the books, but I feel like I should be saying something about each quote, or something bigger about each book (and no, not every book has memorable quotes but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good book, like Al Jourgensen's memoir <i>Ministry: The Lost Gospels According to Al Jourgensen</i>, for example.) So then, the book doesn't get mentioned on my blog. But I'm not here to write book reports. If I were smarter and a better writer I would say that I would be writing <i>book criticism</i>, but I feel like a shitty writer writing criticism about a book is really just someone writing a book <i>report</i>. And I don't want to be that person. I feel like what I do is somewhere in-between book reports and book criticism, but it's not really either. (Hey! That's the internet for you. Not quite <i>this,</i> not quite <i>that</i>, somewhat memoir-based and kind of all based on opinion, TOTALLY unofficial and certainly written by someone who has been sitting in one place for too long and should have gotten up to get circulation going HOURS ago.) So I'm not blogging about every book I read, just the ones with quotes that I've liked enough to mark in the margins.</div>
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My blogging about books went on the back burner because frankly, in order to get the quotes I want to talk about, I hate having to retype it all or scan it or take a picture of it. It all takes so long and is too much work. Just now I figured out that I could just read quotes into my phone and from there e-mail myself the transcription. I can fix any mistakes the transcription made, and voila! A high maintenance task has become much easier. How did I not figure that out earlier?</div>
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All that is to say, although I finished Neil deGrasse Tyson's <i>Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries</i> a while ago I'm finally getting around to blogging about it now<i>. </i> It's a Best of (of sorts) of pieces that originally appeared (in one form or another) in <i>Natural History</i> magazine under the heading "Universe" between 1995-2005. It's interesting and I learned a lot, but I was also extremely entertained, as I knew I would be, based on any time I see, hear or read anything by the author, who is delightful.</div>
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I already knew the concept of gravity as Newton's idea of the force that holds objects near each other, and I also knew of gravity in regards to how Einstein moved the concept of gravity up to the next, next level, as in regards to his Theory of Relativity, with all its warps and curves in the fabric of space and time, but I really I loved this discussion of gravity, taken to a very personal level in <i>Death by Black Hole</i> on page 46:</div>
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In Einstein's universe, the fabric of space and time warped in the presence of mass. This warping, and the movement of objects in response to it, is what we interpret as the force of gravity. When applied to the cosmos, general relativity allows the space of the universe to expand carrying its constituent galaxies along for the ride. </blockquote>
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A remarkable consequence of this new reality is that the universe looks to all observers in every galaxy as though it expands around them. It's the ultimate illusion of self-importance, where nature fools not only sentient human beings on earth, but all life-forms that have ever lived in all of space and time.</blockquote>
So, so poetic. We all think we are the center of the universe. And we make little ripples that venture out from us, thinking we're making a huge difference in things. Sometimes we make bigger ripples than others. That's kind of a poetic take on the Theory of Relativity. If the Sun disappeared, say if it imploded, it would create a wave in space-time from its implosion, and that wave would push us out of orbit. You know how long it would take the earth to fly away from our orbit if the sun imploded? 8 minutes. It takes 8 minutes for light from the sun to reach us, which is also how long it would take the wave from the dip in space-time from when the sun imploded. Hope you packed an emergency overnight bag to be ready to leave our orbit so you can be ready in less than 8 minutes! I guess it wouldn't just be an overnight bag you'd need, because it will be all night all the time, being that there's no sun.</div>
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And why would the sun be imploding? I don't know. Ask Newton. The whole "sun disappearing" thing which throws planets out of their orbits was his idea.</div>
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I enjoyed the playful sense of humor in <i>Death by Black Hole</i>:</div>
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"By the way, were we to find life-forms on Venus, we would probably call them them Venutians, just as people from Mars would be Martians. But according to the rules of Latin genitives, to be "of Venus" ought to make you a Venereal. Unfortunately, medical doctors reached that word before astronomers did. Can't blame them, I suppose. Venereal disease long predates astronomy, which itself stands as only the <i>second</i> oldest profession." (pg 80-81)</div>
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"As a child, I knew that night, with the lights out, infrared vision would discover monsters hiding in the bedroom closet only if they were warm-blooded. But everybody knows that your average bedroom monster is reptilian and cold-blooded. Infrared vision with thus miss a bedroom monster completely because it would simply blend in with the walls and the door." (pg 157)<br />
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Yesssssssssssss. Bedroom monsters are totes reptilian and cold-blooded.</div>
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Also, I love this bit. The "unretrieved rabbits" sounds like something out of <i>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:</i><br />
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"Among those who dabble in metaphysics, some hypothesize that outside the universe, where there is no space, there is no nothing. We might call this hypothetical, zero-density place, nothing-nothing, except that we are certain to find multitudes of unretrieved rabbits." (143)</div>
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I have often thought about this. What is beyond where the universe ends? Whenever I think about this I work myself into a giddy lather of anxiety that is also a sort of pleasurable numinousness that I can't quite explain with words but that I can FEEL MY EYES DILATE the minute the topic comes up.</div>
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To add to this, I wonder if right outside our dimension but then not quite into the nothing-nothing zero-density place, is there a never-neverland where stuff we've mysteriously lost goes to? Tools, marbles, office supplies, the coffee punch card where I'm eligible for the free latte from filling the card up. (Yes, I looked <i>under the fucking couch cushions</i>, I'm not an idiot.)</div>
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I learned some other interesting stuff from this book. </div>
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*The universe is actually "a light shade of beige, or perhaps, a cosmic latte" based on a survey of visible light from the spectrum of 200,000 galaxies.</div>
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*Jupiter's moon Io is the most geographically active place in our solar system. It has volcanoes, surface fissures, and plate tectonics!</div>
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*The colors on images from the Hubble telescope have been adjusted to show the types of light the human eye can't see, but they <b>are</b> the actual colors. Hubble photos are three composite images, and they generate a color picture that resembles "what you would see if the iris in your eyes ball were 94 inches in diameter" (166). On the next page, he writes: "I maintain, however, that if your retina were tunable to narrow-band light, then you would see just what the <i>Hubble</i> sees. I further maintain that my 'if' in the previous sentence is no more contrived than the 'if' in 'If your eyes were the size of large telescopes." (p 167) It got me going on a hell of Hubble Google wormhole (there's a joke in there somewhere, something about wormholes obviously):</div>
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"With or without warp drives, the long-term fate of the cosmos cannot be postponed or avoided. No matter where you hide, you will be part of a universe that inexorably marches toward a peculiar of oblivion. The latest and best evidence available on the space density of matter and energy and the expansion rate of the universe suggest that we are on a one-way trip: the collective gravity of everything in the universe is insufficient to halt and reverse the cosmic expansion." (266)<br />
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For some reason this reminds me how characters in <i>Battlestar Galactica</i> would say things like "All of this has happened before. And all of this will happen again." I was going to say that it was mostly the Cylons that say it but I went to remind myself of the quote and found a slide from a lecture with a list of who says the quote, which reminded both humans and Cylons say variations of it:</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/rob_jewitt/mac387-battlestar-galactica-contemporary-us-scifi" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-Omgeh1N-5lVO6lSKmQNUvZ4p90eRRpWndd0ORB2l0qxm0M1XJ_8aLveoN7a38MC-eSH6Acpy_d3dCtMS5faVurN5Zvl0Oj0-MNdhpsXV5v8kO2aEd7ZpmK4uu_anwC2cKckEmrGUDQ/s400/mac387-battlestar-galactica-contemporary-us-scifi-2-638.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">Session slide from <br />
Rob Jewitt's Level 3 lecture <br />
<i>Battlestar Galactica: Visions of Trauma and Terror in Sci-Fi Post-9/11</i><br />
at the University of Sunderland</td></tr>
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If only the humans and the Cylons could remember how much they had in common! CAN'T WE JUST GET ALONG? No? OK, well, the Singularity is here and the machines are taking over. How much worse can that be than the sun suddenly up and disappearing?</div>
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What if the universe stopped expanding and then imploded and then there was another Big Bang, and this just kept happening over and over, a totally different type of singularity, BTW? We think of the universe as having a definitive beginning and ending but what if was just constantly inflating and deflating? Better yet, what if there was some kind of force that acted as some kind of cosmic bellows that inflated it and deflated it? What if there was a god and it was bellows? Yes, god is an air bag. An air bag that blows air into a fire! Air bag made in his image. The jokes you could come up with, riffing on this.<br />
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DeGrasse Tyson additionally writes: "The short list of corpses may sound familiar: black holes neutron stars (pulsars), and white dwarfs are each a dead end on the evolutionary tree of stars. But what they each have in common is an eternal lock on the material of cosmic construction. In other words, if stars burn out and no new ones are formed to replace them, then the universe will eventually contain no living stars." (267)</div>
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Well and so there's <i>that</i>. That explains why all these stars have been dying. No more Bowie, no more Lemmy. Wow, the universe really is ending.</div>
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But I will keep this quote from pg 222 in mind:</div>
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"Yes, not only humans but also every other organism in the cosmos, as well as the planets or moons on which they thrive, would not exist but for the wreckage of spent stars. So you are made of detritus. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?"</div>
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Oh the coolest!</div>
Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-27337439308540925552016-01-11T16:31:00.000-06:002016-01-11T16:55:30.744-06:00An Unlimited AdventureDid I tell you about the weirdo bookstore I went to out in the middle of nowhere? We (me and the husband) had been talking about going there forever and ever, and because we don't have a lot of money, our vacations are day trips or exploring things in our own town that we've never done.<br />
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So we took a day trip to the <a href="http://www.adventuresunlimitedpress.com/bookstore_locations.php" target="_blank">Adventures Unlimited Bookstore</a> in Kempton, Illinois, which is also the Headquarters of the World Explorers Club (where the annual Ancient Mysteries Conferences are held). The bookstore is attached to the publisher <a href="http://www.adventuresunlimitedpress.com/" target="_blank">Adventures Unlimited</a>. They publish a lot of the awesome weirdo outer-limits and conspiracy books: <i>Anti-gravity crafts, cryptozoology, ancient Egyptian astronauts, aliens and secret societies, Atlantis, </i>all that stuff.<i> </i>The store was all I wanted it to be and more.<br />
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When we got there some of the lights were off when we walked in and it wasn't until a few minutes in that the woman working was all, "Oh! Sorry! I should turn more of these lights on!" which was awesome and hilarious and exactly the type of thing I wanted to happen.<br />
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I'd always heard it was a cafe also, but the cafe part might not, well, be a cafe anymore. It was more like there was a coffee pot and a few snacks with price tags on them. There was also an additional room that was clearly the office (formally a cafe?). I peeked my head into and I guessed it's where they did the publishing because I saw the computers, stacks of books, paper. I theorized it was where they conspired about the lizard beings from Sirius B who settled on Easter Island who shot Kennedy . You know, Mulder's office.<br />
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In addition to all their own Adventures Unlimited titles (<a href="http://www.adventuresunlimitedpress.com/catalog.php" target="_blank">might I suggest ordering their free catalog?</a>), the books that they sell were used books mostly, of the mayhemic sort you would expect, like as if Quimby's were a used bookstore. I stocked up with some pretty awesome ones. My favorite was <i>Hollywood and the Supernatural</i> by Sherry Hansen-Steiger and Brad Steiger.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHGIfRcHJpdx5gdioOKKEgmxGjsI0cjvsmHQNZtNXTd-4VGQv5oKaC1MI3MTlP-z-dgSBgKAL8JbM34kvg3JJrGAZj957qBWGMUL5E7mvGmMrQOrSiW5cl7Sq4NoblJa_QoYnfzLcX8w/s1600/Photo+on+2016-01-11+at+14.42.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHGIfRcHJpdx5gdioOKKEgmxGjsI0cjvsmHQNZtNXTd-4VGQv5oKaC1MI3MTlP-z-dgSBgKAL8JbM34kvg3JJrGAZj957qBWGMUL5E7mvGmMrQOrSiW5cl7Sq4NoblJa_QoYnfzLcX8w/s320/Photo+on+2016-01-11+at+14.42.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This book is preposterous of course, in the best possible way, like clearly all constructed out of hearsay, grocery store headlines and things everybody knows<i> (Elizabeth Taylor had a feeling her husband would die in a plane crash, AND HE DID! Celebrities hire psychics! Polanski filmed Rosemary's Baby in the same building outside of which John Lennon was shot, DISMISSED AS COINCIDENCE!) </i>But still, I can't get enough of it. What I would <i>love</i> is for someone to do a <i>Hollywood Supernatural Babylon</i>, which this book isn't that, but I'm just saying. It would be awesome if the writer was an angry-queen-like-Kenneth-Anger-equivalent. And the topic would be not just Hollywood gossip but supernatural Hollywood gossip.<br />
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But back to this book, my favorite quote is from Gene Roddenberry, on pg 221:<br />
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"I don't know how many worlds are going on all at once. All of us may be living in a different world on which we just sort of correspond. We're reaching each other through those dimensions. I think an exciting way to look at things is to consider that the ultimate power, the ultimate particle, the ultimate meaning is thought itself."<br />
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I love this idea. Like we're never knowing exactly what someone feels or what it's like to be them exactly -- the best we can do is try to communicate from the personal islands we all live on, since all of our minds are contained in different containers -- but the fact that consciousness even exists is sort of the ultimate amazing thing (the irony being, of course consciousness thinks it's the most amazing thing in the world; look what's telling itself that -- which is pretty much the joke Emo Phillips told: "I used to think the brain was the most amazing part of the body. Then I thought, <i>well, look what's telling me that.</i>")<br />
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Also at this store I bought some random book I found that is clearly a self-published thing of some sort called <i>Navis Caelum</i>, which is about the physics of UFOs.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhmPipZ4491BkiXK4vVbwqjho9mnNYLZH00ivBBgshdxNa5OQHyUgqNNBlVBH0z5SJ1N0wuMdFDfS7qGPEXNOdHi7Hw_eBnehiwBSL9_0VdhfGk-B2OJYqPswsstjMxI_5pMAqszlvWg/s1600/Photo+on+2016-01-11+at+15.18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhmPipZ4491BkiXK4vVbwqjho9mnNYLZH00ivBBgshdxNa5OQHyUgqNNBlVBH0z5SJ1N0wuMdFDfS7qGPEXNOdHi7Hw_eBnehiwBSL9_0VdhfGk-B2OJYqPswsstjMxI_5pMAqszlvWg/s320/Photo+on+2016-01-11+at+15.18.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Appropriately and hilariously, there is no info about the author other than a listing for the copyright belonging to someone going under the name (as printed in the inside of the title page) "Grey_0011223455677789." (And yes, when this name is Googled, leaves you with the note "Your search - Grey_0011223455677789 - did not match any documents," which is ridiculously <i>X-Files</i>-ian.) There are, of course, web sites listed on this same page: <a href="http://www.naviscaelum.com/">www.naviscaelum.com</a> and <a href="http://www.theshipfromthesky.com/">www.theshipfromthesky.com</a>, which both forward to an Amazon page for a Kindle e-book (no other formats listed!) called <i>The Physics of UFOs</i>, with a different graphic than the one I held up in the picture above. I'm assuming that's the same book. The author is listed with a shorter name as "Grey_00112234." And when I click on that author's name that's the only book they have and that's the only info about them, that they have this one book. And there are no reviews for the book. But the description of the book is pretty much what this book was about: "In the future space-time bending technology will become the means for travel, how will we use this technology to build spacecraft capable of traveling to distant destinations? If you ever wanted a look into how a UFO might work and how deep space travel will one day be possible, this is a definite read. A highly illustrated non mathematical book, that starts with the work of Galileo and moves through modern physics. Includes a bonus section: The Shape of space."<br />
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Another hilarious thing about this book is that the inside of the cover there's some crazy crushed bug skeleton or something, like a butterfly-moth thing:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK1rhs6cC-KYp7SsChpp1oC0dDKoNFEtQiXGO3HGO4W9kn3TLiZmujsvEnl9UzEZkq7PgHhYCCQebzq1XDmItFcjbaVKU7oq6q-8GW5mMEd8PaKJH-XnJRCnvrxSMpPWZCCoMhsLMOtQ/s1600/Photo+on+2016-01-11+at+15.18+%25232.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK1rhs6cC-KYp7SsChpp1oC0dDKoNFEtQiXGO3HGO4W9kn3TLiZmujsvEnl9UzEZkq7PgHhYCCQebzq1XDmItFcjbaVKU7oq6q-8GW5mMEd8PaKJH-XnJRCnvrxSMpPWZCCoMhsLMOtQ/s320/Photo+on+2016-01-11+at+15.18+%25232.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You can kind of see its wings in the picture.</td></tr>
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I'm sure somebody just used the book to capture a bug and slammed it shut and then donated the book to goodwill and it eventually made its way to this bookstore, BUT STILL. Of course I couldn't help but think about the butterfly flapping its wings and chaos theory and all that, because how could you not think of that in the context of the ridiculously mysterious book and this bookstore? It's sort of perfect.<br />
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(Also, I should mention I looked up what "Navis Caelum" meant, and the main info that came up is steampunky stuff and constellations.)<br />
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The best quote in this book is this one (pg 3):<br />
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"I have been asked where I got this knowledge from? Does it matter? If I said I worked in a top secret government lab, that I was given the information by an advanced society, or perhaps it was leaked to me by an unknown source, the credit of the knowledge would only be as good as your belief in that knowledge. In the end, you must be the judge."<br />
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WHAT? <i>"Does it matter?" </i>Um, YES IT FUCKING MATTERS. Is this info from a top secret government lab? <i>Was</i> it leaked by a source? Would somebody who worked for some secret MIB-ish source really going to distribute their info by written word, let alone resort to shitty print-on-demand publishing with shitty pixelated graphics to break the news to the world about alien technology? Might I have have approached this book differently if I actually believed this was from someone who was a primary source of space/time travel technology? Like if I thought a Timelord wrote this I'd get some fucking graph paper and a calculator out and make a trip to Menard's, if you know what I'm saying.<br />
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The book starts with explanation of relativity and pertinant science, but the second half is where things really get into the business of different types of UFOs and how they fly. Specifically, this type of travel needs to rely on "shakers," which are devices that move energy between "emitters," which make dark energy. Emitters create a dense beam of R-Gamma radiation which is important in some way that I don't totally understand. Also involved, jot this shit down: stainless steel casing, calabi-yau spheres, and loops that move out without interacting with matter.<br />
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The ship I would be most in favor of using for a journey would be a "moving star cruiser," which is the Lincoln Towncars of galactic travel. A rotating ship with acceleration and warp, it also has the ability to glide in such a way that passengers feel no movement. Some gravity up front, less in back, like a reverse space mullet. That's my kind of ride. All in favor of pimping your star cruisers with stickers raise your hands in the ayer. I love that I bought this book at this dusty weird store, that when I research the title and the author later, I find them to be a big mystery (with a yahoo e-mail address!). P.S.: The internet was made for research like this.<br />
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Also at this bookstore I got Carl Sagan's <i>Dragons of Eden</i> and 2 awesome pulpy old magazines:<br />
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I can't get enough of the graphics in them:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaVJVzqOprqiMyysAYwcIF2sEwf1YuQ4AK_5zIfpFh_sV_dfzkTv-sx_BVTH_nFqNzog9FMxUr3boSKtsgWJ_n63u_8ftCmbHIz5a6tZfbaiPjPrMy8b99Df8-HD-_F50uvW3_NLzV5w/s1600/Photo+on+2016-01-11+at+16.17.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaVJVzqOprqiMyysAYwcIF2sEwf1YuQ4AK_5zIfpFh_sV_dfzkTv-sx_BVTH_nFqNzog9FMxUr3boSKtsgWJ_n63u_8ftCmbHIz5a6tZfbaiPjPrMy8b99Df8-HD-_F50uvW3_NLzV5w/s320/Photo+on+2016-01-11+at+16.17.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOYSgn2nZyGiG9PxAQVTGmi04w-ksncI9M2ZqA2bZ2Qjmn00mNbtOy3_jmeVOmmV2TZGg0o29TmHYwEoT6J2fBZQzqBCcucT70hb8UG-3e3tb1RKlwadEM0jce3Y1j3_SpBTPd9Axtew/s1600/Photo+on+2016-01-11+at+16.22.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOYSgn2nZyGiG9PxAQVTGmi04w-ksncI9M2ZqA2bZ2Qjmn00mNbtOy3_jmeVOmmV2TZGg0o29TmHYwEoT6J2fBZQzqBCcucT70hb8UG-3e3tb1RKlwadEM0jce3Y1j3_SpBTPd9Axtew/s320/Photo+on+2016-01-11+at+16.22.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Of course the bookstore where I got all of this stuff was in the middle of rural Illinois where, appropriately, our Maps function on our smart phones stopped working when we tried to leave. Just to find our way out of Kempton we had to drive forever, to escape from the town's electromagnetic-psychoytropic force field over our GPS signal.Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-70650525949939243632016-01-04T03:04:00.001-06:002016-01-11T13:52:00.852-06:00"Putting on Their Baphomets and Going to the Nearest Denny's": On Arthur Lyon's Satan Wants You: The Cult of Devil Worship in America<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVtYueZbtKFMisnew1rKB-4QSvF3g2ngsuS1AckF6GVCBzES3jQ5IR9ioAICkL0nF9qviXMcRgQMAukEmR54Kgcxnd_6rW1EzE0ovVlGLpD5-kfQhNO2NtqhvdT_Xx1O64sVodvtsF_g/s1600/satanwantsyoucvrjpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVtYueZbtKFMisnew1rKB-4QSvF3g2ngsuS1AckF6GVCBzES3jQ5IR9ioAICkL0nF9qviXMcRgQMAukEmR54Kgcxnd_6rW1EzE0ovVlGLpD5-kfQhNO2NtqhvdT_Xx1O64sVodvtsF_g/s1600/satanwantsyoucvrjpg.jpg" /></a></div>
The main thing that struck me about Arthur Lyon's book <a href="http://quimbysbookstore.mybooksandmore.com/web1/actions/searchHandler.do?key=9780892962174&nextPage=booksDetails&parentNum=12680" target="_blank"><i>Satan Wants You: The Cult of Devil Worship in America</i></a> (Mysterious Press, 1988) is the recurrent discussion of legitimacy of the satan-yness of the people he studied in writing the book, which I could sort of appreciate. It kind of took me by surprise.<br />
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I thought this would be like watching a mental hygiene film about the dangers of cults, and parts of it were a little, well, nerdily square in exactly the way I wanted them to be; after all, I purchased and read this book purely out of kitsch value. How could I not get it? It has a preposterous cover. And I grew up in the 80s, amused by the media's obsession with tying rock, punk and metal to the evils of Satan, so it was a shoo in for my collection of mayhem books. Also, the guy who sold it to me at the spiritual goods bookstore in Pilsen, he went upstairs and pulled it for me from his own collection (he lives above the store). I don't remember how we got on the topic, but somehow it led to me needing to have this book.<br />
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Also, I should add that the guy charged or energized or charmed up (I don't even know what verb to use here) a stone I bought at the store, which is supposed to amplify the effects of my meditation (I'm supposed to have near or on me when I do it). He shifted it from hand to hand while we were talking and told me that when the energy in it got low I could bring it back and he would recharge it. How would I know it needed recharging, you ask? Your guess is as good as mine. Also, I don't even remember what kind of rock it is or why he suggested that particular one, other than the fact that he said it was being really loud when he was selecting a rock for me, which means I guess that he speaks rock, if it was being that loud and all. Since I don't speak rock I can't ask it. Maybe you know? Here is a picture:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHP4tqoqFfPjRgxvoqWh27bMMKBBvj854COZo-Ygy3oIg4vITwC5lQ1VuyeUmjgjKnh7THxt-wg7COShw02CHeanclNGapbophXuf_1vSI9ynh3mGULbgVn3Gv2vFMBzZviS6hBVcgBA/s1600/my+pet+rock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHP4tqoqFfPjRgxvoqWh27bMMKBBvj854COZo-Ygy3oIg4vITwC5lQ1VuyeUmjgjKnh7THxt-wg7COShw02CHeanclNGapbophXuf_1vSI9ynh3mGULbgVn3Gv2vFMBzZviS6hBVcgBA/s640/my+pet+rock.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nevermind the CHIRP radio post-its, thank you very much</td></tr>
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Does the rock work? I don't know. Maybe? I have no clue. I should mention I regularly meditate but I a irregular about remembering to get the damn rock when I'm doing it. And no, I don't take it with me when I go places. There's no way in hell I'm carrying a pet fucking rock around. It's heavy and pointy.<br />
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Sidenote which amuses me about the guy at the store: He sold me these items: a) the aforementioned rock that he energized or charged or whatever with chi or good mojo juju or something, b) the also aforementioned book about satanism, and c) three delicious smelling oils I wear ("Healing," ""Woodland Mist" and "Coffee Italy"). He asked me how I got into transcendental meditation, and I said, "I read David Lynch's book about it." He responded with, "That's OK. I have a friend who became a Mormon because she had a crush on Donny Osmond." I found this to be both upliftingly tolerant and utterly ridiculous at the same time.<br />
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Anyway, the book. Indeed, there was some hilarious over the top stuff, like pictures of Mötley Crüe album covers and kids devil horning at a Slayer concert. There was even some mention of Black Sabbath (but the truth is that by the time this book came out Sabbath descended out of their prime, having toured with Van Halen opening for them and showing them up every night, but that's another story, as entertainingly outlined in <i>Van Halen Rising: How a Southern California Backyard Party Band Saved Heavy Metal</i>). All of these things aside, I was sort of pleasantly surprised by the sociological slant of <i>Satan Wants You</i>.<br />
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I was amused by how if I took parts of the book out of context, they could almost be talking about any subversive subculture, where the people have been into it for a long time, the <i>legit old schoolers</i>, are always annoyed by the <i>inauthentic newbie poseurs.</i> On page 119, founder of Church of Satan Anton LaVey sounds like senior punk royalty complaining about the freshman punk newbies:<br />
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Right down to the thing about going to Denny's: "They put on their Baphomets and go to the nearest Denny's," this is so perfect. This has some personal relevance for anybody in my town because when I was in my teens Denny's was exactly the place where the punks in my high school prided on hanging out, and legitimacy in subculture is something all adolescent punks concern themselves with; this quote hits maybe a little too close to home for many, I am sure. I wish I could draw comics because this would be perfect.<br />
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Then there's the bits about people just wanting to be accepted by a subculture that makes them feel important, like on page 133:<br />
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Sure, this quote is about the Man keeping the individual down making satanism an outlet for aggression. But what I enjoyed was the use of quotes for "magic" and "adept" levels, which, when taken out of context, makes this quote almost seem like it could be talking about a gathering of D&D players, or even some stereotypical nerds getting together and feeling superior because they get picked on but are smarter than everyone else with their nerd skills. It sure makes the folks into satanism Lyons study seem pretty dorky. And that's exactly what I think he's getting at here, on page 134:<br />
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I can get behind the logic of an inferiority complex turned into a superiority complex in the belief that the rest of the world are chumps, which then leads to someone thinking they have some kind of special gift or omnipotence. I can totally see how that would be a thing. The idea of how someone with insecurities would find other people with insecurities makes sense; they could be insecure together, creating a way to make themselves feel better than the people that make <i>them</i> feel ostracized. That gives them feel they have a sense of control.<br />
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Anti-socialism has been a thing since the beginning of time. People who want to fit in but can't are ostracized, and occasionally they embrace it. Sometimes it leads to beauty (nerds grow up and invent cool things, for example) and sometimes it leads to ugly (to continue the metaphor, nerds grow up and become super villains). In the days of the Puritans, those outside of the mainstream may have embraced it in a way that made them construed as witch-y, and we all know what the Puritans did to witches. The outcasty nerd support-group meet-up in that era was construed as revolt (pg 72):<br />
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I love the "Rebellion is like witchcraft" business, which I just Googled that quote, and as it turns out, there's a sort of-(ish) quote from the bible that gets pulled up too: "For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft." I prefer Cotton Mather's version of the quote better.<br />
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I know the quote is about what people <i>thought</i> of rebellion, that it is punishable and wrong the way that witchcraft is wrong. But what would be really cool is if rebellion really was a type of witchcraft, like for real. It reminds me of one of Doctor Who Christmas specials, the one where the tenth doctor says he could take down Prime Minister Harriet Jones with six words. He says to one of the people on her staff as if to plant a seed, "Don't you think she looks tired?" This of course, because the world feels her to be an unfit leader, leads to her downfall. It feels so witchcrafty to me:<br />
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After all, Harriet Jones had, only minutes earlier in the episode gone on TV and requested The Doctor come, and to people who don't know about <i><b>The</b></i> Doctor, they think she's just asking for <i><b>a</b></i> <i>doctor</i>. (Props to my husband Joe for offering that ingenious additional point, which totally blew my mind.) Anyway, the idea of planting a small seed that grows into something big feels just well, you know like, summoning with intention and all that magick-y Grant Morrison-ish stuff, like what LaVey meant when he said (pg 114, but actually taken from his book <i>The Satanic Rituals</i>, pg 25):<br />
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The idea of not knowing the actual science of what it means to put a hex on someone sounds a little like the "you have to believe in it to work" business you hear a lot from people who believe in that sort of thing. I want to believe in that stuff but I need some proof more than just making the proverbial fairy come back proverbially brighter if you say "I believe in fairies" over and over, you know like when the guy in <i>Practical Magic</i> goes, "Curses only have power when you believe them" (not to get too chick-flicky on a point here). But still, I like the quote anyway.<br />
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I love the idea of myths evolving as civilization changes. The myth continues to be what it needs to be, ways of explaining the world (or defending aspects of it) but the meaning can change or something else can take on the original meaning. What once symbolized one thing can mean something else later. But there will always be ways of explaining why outcasts form their subcultures, and there will always be the leaders of the subculture hazing the newbies, who will then feel ostracized and go form their subculture to the subculture.<br />
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And there will always be the poseurs putting on their Baphomets and going to the nearest Denny's.Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-48184926745729095352015-12-16T00:23:00.000-06:002015-12-16T00:27:25.327-06:00On Anger Is An Energy: My Life Uncensored by John Lydon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I enjoyed P.I.L./Sex Pistols front man John Lydon's second memoir <i>Anger Is An Energy: My Life Uncensored, </i>but boy, does he need an editor. There's this hilarious statement in the front of the book from the publisher that pretty much gave a warning that <i>John refused to let us edit him, and yeah yeah yeah, we know sometimes it sounds janky but he refused to budge </i>and so on. Sure, this book isn't going to win a Pulitzer, but it is definitely entertaining. I will say it sounds kind of weird when he talks about himself in the third person, like he's saying what other people saying about him "Johnny this, Johnny that" and it sounds a little bit like Bob Dole or Rickey Henderson. But anyway, in spite of the fact that he needed some more eyes on this, I still found it very interesting. Three particular quotes stand out:</div>
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page 213: "Education is not necessarily what the schools teach you. It's about acquiring the way of having an insight, and being able to gather information correctly."<br />
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Amen! It's about learning how to think. I'd add in learning how to think you're learning how to problem solve.<br />
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page 297: "I'm a nurse by nature, and I'm nursing you into the future."<br />
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Amen also! That's what really good artists do. And I suppose, good magazines, lit journals, blogs, anthologies, music sites or or any sort of THING that presents new things that we haven't encountered.<br />
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And finally, on page 427, he talks about the arguments he gets into with his wife, and this one struck me as preposterous, but I sort of loved it. He's referring to his relationship with her and how when you love someone but argue you can do it with love...or something.: "When you really love someone, you can practice hate in an enjoyable kind of a way!"<br />
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Is this what lots of celebrity memoirs sound like when they don't collab with a ghost writer? Occasional gems but mostly rambling? ...Because see how long it takes to get to the nub of the quotes I put above when they're put in the context of the actual full paragraphs they're from. They're entertaining but they read like a first draft:</div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">page 213, the quote about education:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">page 297, the quote about nursing into the future:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">page 427, the quote about arguing with his wife:</span><br />
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OK, so maybe the quote about his wife actually makes more context of the full paragraph is sort of nice. </div>
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But! He still needs an editor.</div>
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Or to do another draft.</div>
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A solid B effort with occasional polished gems of A moments.</div>
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Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-84367577999405779652015-12-04T00:42:00.004-06:002015-12-04T08:59:12.621-06:00On Be Here Now As Opposed to Being There Then<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Recently I went back and reread <i>Be Here Now </i>(the book by Ram Dass, not the cocaine-fueled Oasis third album).<i> </i>Many years ago one of my brothers gave me his copy, and who the hell knows if I really got anything from it when I read it then. At the time I was young and dumb and probably thought <i>Be Here Now</i> was groovy in some sort of inexplicable way that jived with my amorphous, slightly new age-y, slightly agnostic, totally undefined flakey spiritual beliefs that changed depending on what book I was reading at the moment. P.S. Those "beliefs" have not changed much. That is to say, I don't really know what I believe exactly but whenever I read something convincing I'll pursue learning about that until I either a) lose interest of b) encounter something else that's phrased even more articulately and convincingly. Then that new thing will provide me guidance. This cycle goes on and on ad infinitum while simultaneously in the back of my mind I'm in a constant state of foreclosure on the whole spirituality bag at all. This is where the doubt sets in. Some of it depends on my mood, some of it depends on how much the music is swelling, and some of it depends on how shitty things are.<br />
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Anyway, even though there's a lot of "Hey-man-far-ouuuuut"ness to <i>Be Here Now</i> that feels cheesy, there are still some really insightful moments in it that speak to me in a way that didn't speak to me when I read this book when I was younger.<br />
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One thing that really stood out for me is the part where he talked about how when someone engages in a practice that of losing one's ego (by meditating or whatever), they get a certain energy from it because they're inspired by it. But where they go wrong is when they use that energy for accomplishing things that are still rooted in the world of ego, and then any progress one has made in losing their ego is lost. What would those things be? I have no idea. Bragging about how enlightened one is? Staying up all night on a caffeine bender and writing on their blog about how great they thought this book about meditating is? I don't know. But on an intuitive level I feel like I know what he means when he talks about using that energy keeps one on a "grosser plane" (pg 40):<br />
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Something else that really stuck with me was about how, no matter what your goals look like to others (or to yourself) everything that we do can be traced back to just wanting to get to some good. Maybe it's a perverse way of getting there, like doing bad to other people so that one can feel better, but the idea is to feel better (page 41):<br />
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<span style="color: #783f04;"><b>And every desire, no matter how perverse it may seem, is an attempt to get to the light. (The Devil knows not for whom he works.)</b></span><br />
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Yessssssss. I try to keep this in mind when I'm mad at somebody. I try to get to a point where I can remember that whatever it is that this person is doing, even if it's unreasonable, annoying, inconsiderate, condescending, shitty, stupid or downright evil, they're just trying to get to a place of comfort and light. And really, that's all anybody really wants; people just want to be comfortable. It's like a tired dad on a vacation yelling, "Shut up everybody! Can't I just sit here in this lawn chair for one god damn day and enjoy myself and be comfortable and relaxed?!" That's what our hearts want, just to be comfortable -- whatever comfortable is for us. Sure, comfortable can be relaxed, but it can also be stimulated, engaged or blissed out, or just sated or satisfied. What I'm not saying is that deep down people are good. What I'm saying is deep down people are just trying to move to a place of comfort and light. It's a subtle difference.<br />
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I also love this passage where he talks about having strong will is really just "your desire to get on with it" (pg 42):<br />
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Hell yeah, will power = one's desire just to "get on with it." That's kind of how I feel when I'm cleaning the cat box. It's like, I just want to have the thing done, and I just want to get started on it so I can be done with it, and that makes me want to do it. To just get on with the fucking thing. I guess that's what will power is.<br />
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But the other thing I like about this quote is the part about how if you don't have will power, just stay away from temptation. In other words, paraphrasing Weight Watchers, <i>Don't bring the junk food in the house. Then you don't have to say no to it more than once.</i><br />
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And then finally, I love this poetic piece about love (pg 73):<br />
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<span style="color: #783f04;"><b>Though the "vehicles differ from role to role, the essence -- the love -- is the same stuff. In each instance what one is loving in the object of one's love is love itself ... the inner light in everyone and everything.</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #783f04;"><b>When we speak of falling in love, we might find that a slight restatement of the experience would help clarify our direction. For when you say "I fell in love" with him or her you are saying that he or she was the key that unlocked your heart -- the place within yourself where you are love. When the experience is mutual, you can see that the psychic chemistry of the situation allows both partners to "fall in love" or to "awake into love" or to "come into the Spirit." Since love is a state of being -- and the Divine state at that -- the state to which we all yearn to return, we wish to possess love. At best we can try to possess the key to our hearts -- our beloved -- but sooner or later we find that even that is impossible. To possess the key is to lose it.</b></span><br />
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I love the part about falling in love is unlocking the place in your heart where we <i>are</i> love, though the "vehicles differ" of what you love, which I took to mean any person or cat or book or thing you love. The more I thought about love being a "divine state" as he calls it, the more I understand what he means. The feeling of the affection I feel for certain people in my life or my cat, really is exquisite, that there really is nothing like it. I wish I could carry it around with me all the time, say the way I feel when the cat is laying its head on me. It really is a feeling of love that is unlocked that I wish I could feel that way all the time, but it is easier said than done. I suppose that's probably what he meant by being here now. <br />
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<br />Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-70958405772344207132015-10-29T01:05:00.000-05:002015-10-29T01:14:48.846-05:00Dance Dance Party Party Workout Mix Tape #13 Download Halloween Edition Now Available<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWxrtNiXchDqsRa4KSaEILiCsKkH1PEX3nU7JrXbfvOZe1SxvPyjb3YSkIubZJ52AoR_VMT6y6FsfibuRpSZ6WQwYRM2-_GnCLttFqXrCJgZRTek7T1N0JAWau9QLV6ZvlNoNFsrkg3w/s1600/promoting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWxrtNiXchDqsRa4KSaEILiCsKkH1PEX3nU7JrXbfvOZe1SxvPyjb3YSkIubZJ52AoR_VMT6y6FsfibuRpSZ6WQwYRM2-_GnCLttFqXrCJgZRTek7T1N0JAWau9QLV6ZvlNoNFsrkg3w/s1600/promoting.jpg" /></a></div>
THE MIX TAPE IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!<br />
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<a href="http://www.lizmasonisawesome.com/http___lizmasonisawesome.com/Sounds/Entries/2015/10/28_Dance_Dance_Party_Party_Workout_Mix_Tape_13_Download.html" target="_blank">My 13th mix tape now available for download from my website <b>here.</b></a> It's the Halloween edition! These are some jams I've been enjoying during workouts, and they are also the songs I used for tonight's Dance Dance Party Party session. Somehow I fit 21 songs in one hour. Part of the way I was able to fit that many songs in such a short span of time is because I edit out the boring parts of songs, especially if I'm trying to keep my heart rate up.<br />
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Sidenote: I got bluetooth headphones, and they have revolutionized my workouts. For one, no cords! For second, they sound so much better than the crappy earbuds you get free when you buy a device. Why did I wait so long to make the change? Well, money, honestly. They cost a sum that's a bit outside of my budget, but whatever keeps me working out, well, that's worth the money. So if you're listening to this mix on less than stellar headphones, sure, it'll be fine, but if you're running with music, it really helps to have some non-shitty headphones, if you're battling outdoor sounds. For me, the trick in considering new headphones is thinking about the fact that I'd be sweating on them, so I had to buy ones that were water resistant, or at least, ones that would be OK with a little bit of sweat. I got the Plantronics BackBeat Fit model, and they're totally worth the price. Also, I can't believe with all the sound editing stuff I do that I didn't get nicer headphones until now, and these totally do the trick.<br />
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OK, I've done my Consumer Reporting good deed for the day.Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-59290070607273512752015-10-22T01:20:00.000-05:002015-10-25T00:11:26.657-05:00Who's With Me?: I Totally Want to Go To a Haunted House Engineered by a Sociologist Who Studies Fear<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Goddammit why am I up so early reading books about fear in my Hello Kitty pajamas?</td></tr>
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'Tis the season for Halloween-esque reads, so I finished reading <a href="http://quimbysbookstore.mybooksandmore.com/web1/actions/searchHandler.do?key=9781610394826&nextPage=booksDetails&parentNum=12680"><i>Scream: Chilling Adventures In the Science of Fear</i></a> (PublicAffairs) by Margie Kerr. She's a sociologist prof but also works for ScareHouse, a haunted house in Pittsburgh. She also co-runs academic studies of fear. She went around the world researching fear in different contexts: roller coasters, places rumored to be haunted (like abandoned prisons), countries known for their high crime, a Japanese forest with a reputation for high suicide rates, etc. It's a fascinating read but also, it's a bit like the charmingly chatty and fun science writing of Mary Roach (who wrote books like <i>Spook, Gulp</i>, and so on). But it also has that personal journey feel to it to. So it's more than a sociological or scientific study. It's sort of memoir-y and sometimes kind of natural history-ish too.<br />
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Kerr gathered some very interesting cultural information about they way we process fear. For one, people who live in places that already have a high crime rate (like the city she went to in Columbia) have to deal with fear of existing in their everyday life which is already terrifying, so the country's artistic output doesn't include a lot of horror. Generally speaking, countries that are scary to live in don't have a lot of horror movies or horror film fests; they don't need it. But places that are safer to live in have much better horror movies. That is to say, the fear we associate with horror-inducing entertainment (haunted houses, horror movies etc.) is encouraged in places where generally speaking, we feel it is safer. That may be why America has so many haunted houses, horror film fests and "spooky" culture. You only "enjoy" roller coasters if you know it's safe to lie back and know in the back of your mind that you are not going to die (although your nervous system might disagree). It's as if you can only enjoy an experience you've paid to scare you if you know in the back of your head that it's safe.<br />
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Also, she learns that people enjoy terrifying experiences like horror movies, haunted houses, roller coasters or rappelling down from high places if they have someone to share it with, which is why you feel jazzed when you come out of the haunted house with your friends; you feel energized even though you were sort of terrified, and you're laughing but also sort of crying. It's that emotional release where all you want to do is talk to your friends about what you went through together. This was something the author put into practice at <a href="http://www.scarehouse.com/haunts/the-basement">ScareHouse (specifically in the Basement,</a> which is pretty much her haunted house lab where people sign waivers to let them be part of the study, and where Kerr puts into play what she learned about how we process fear). For example, one of the things they do is tie you up with your friend, but you're both holding hands, which biologically releases some kind of bonding endorphin, where you bond more with the person you're going through the terrifying experience with.<br />
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I thought it was kind of awesome in the book that she explained all the fear-inducing experiences she went through, and then took what she learned and put it into play to make the most terrifying haunted house ever, which unsurprisingly makes me totally want to go there and experience it. If I know that the haunted house I was about to go into was engineered by someone who does scientific and sociological (read: academic) studies for a living to make the place as terrifying as possible, I would be there in two seconds. Road trip anyone? How many hours drive is it from Chicago to Philly?(Sidenote: also, I see ScareHouse has a <a href="http://www.scarehouse.com/haunts/krampus-come-all-ye-fearful">Krampus thing too!</a>)<br />
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Without having seen it I can't say for sure but I have to imagine that the ScareHouse is probably better than a lot of the haunted houses I've experienced, and although I love them all, I prefer a well thought out story line as compared to dinky ones at places like the Wisconsin Dells. (Additional sidenote: when I was a kid I feel like haunted houses didn't have story lines -- they were just like, <i>boooooo scarrrry a haunted houssssssse.</i> Now it's like there's a whole plotline when you go into haunted houses. I can totally get behind this. Like I have heard said, we enjoy stories because we are hard-wired for a narrative.) The haunted houses at the Dells are, like, run by one person, usually a high school kid working for minimum wage, who has to run around shaking shit at you. (A final sidenote: The past couple years the haunted house I went to around Halloween here in Chicago is the Fear City haunted house which is pretty awesome. It's a whole story line about Chicago after the apocalypse, and there's even a CTA train that looks and feels pretty real. It's off the hook.) This weekend I'm going to Elgin where they do up parts of the downtown as some kind of apocalyptic showcase showdown with overturned cop cars and zombies and whatever else. True, I find zombie stuff kind of boring (they move slow! they're stupid! etc. -- I know, I'm in the minority with the being-bored-by-zombies thing, but it really is sort of poetically, the sluggish cultural entertainment industry phenomenon<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px;"> </span></span>that well, <i>won't die.</i>). But I do like the idea of a transformed city. Getting the outdoors involved in a haunted house is sort of awesome. It reminds me of the time I was at a haunted house in DeKalb, IL, and somehow I ended up at the front of the line where I accidentally led us outside (or so I thought it was accidental) and everybody was like, "What the hell, you just led us outside." But then a man with a chainsaw came running after us, and the whole thing was so disorienting that it was genius. My friend who was behind me said that the burly guy was so scared that he was cowering behind her. And she's like 5'2".<br />
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At the end of the book I enjoyed how Dr. Kerr hooks up to a machine that measures her brain waves and gives her some very enlightening information about how she herself processes fear. I totally want to do that. If I had a machine that studies my brain waves I would use it every second of the day during everything I do. I should add that to my Amazon Wish List. People! Want to buy me a gift? <a href="http://www.choosemuse.com/what-does-it-measure/">Get me an EEG machine for home use!</a> Apparently they have them now. The "MUSE" they're called. I did read in like Vice or something where someone used one and when put on some setting where it's supposed to give you some kind of feedback on helping you relax (I don't know what the hell I'm talking about) that whenever they'd be about to relax that it would start beeping or something and going, "YOU'RE NOT RELAXING" or something ridiculous like that. So anybody who plans on buying me one of those, make sure to get me one that doesn't do that. Ok thanks!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/K827IQXXJALT/ref=wl_bm-view-list&altAction=1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="419" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG2kXx8ygHaS59H6Jsu_TMbQ3lywsS3CSOMZIkadlqNCzkIyT3AzWxHSugyXMDJd0IftWdZecCK2tgWFQW4EzGYQKh2nMHPNMIpZ_Dw2IeX48QTq9bmYjCi7jZWHLjgN43SgDWLumEXA/s640/Screen+shot+2015-10-21+at+8.53.07+AM.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Also accepted: key lime striped socks from Sock Dreams and Savor the Scenery Container Set from ModCloth</td></tr>
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Addendum: The reason I started writing about books on my blog is because I said that I would post quotes I like from books in sixteenth century Commonplace Book style, so here is the quote I underlined in the book from a passage I particularly enjoyed:<br />
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"[A study documented in] <i>The Handbook of Emotion Elicitation and Assessment...</i>offers an explanation...basically when we do evolutionarily salient activities (things that activate fight or flight or that influence our survival) by ourselves we find them less rewarding. We have evolved to be together, especially in times of stress."<br />
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I can totally understand this. It reminds me of how when you perform with a group as an ensemble, you share in the sometimes nerve-racking experience that can be more rewarding when it goes well. It also makes sense that when you bomb in a group performance, it's easier to get over when you all share the blame. Ha!Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-26681273550800645902015-10-07T00:32:00.001-05:002015-10-07T00:32:35.042-05:00I Collaborated with Britney Spears & Iron Maiden But They Didn't Know it<iframe frameborder="no" height="450" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/227280653&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%"></iframe><br />
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I made a mashup of Britney Spears and Iron Maiden you can listen to on my <a href="https://soundcloud.com/caboose-zine/criminal-number-number-of-the-beast-running-to-the-hills-britney-spears-vs-iron-maiden" target="_blank">Soundcloud site</a>. I'm calling it <i>Criminal Number Beast Running To the Hills (Britney Spears vs Iron Maiden)</i>. It's totally preposterous and kind of janky but I chuckled the whole time I was working on it. You can stream it or download it and you know, have nightmares to it.<br />
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Hilariously, I <i>thought</i> about adding <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq5PNFhkPWk" target="_blank">Bruce Dickinson's rant where he mentions "Britney fucking Spears" in a live performance in Rio</a> but then decided not to, because I thought maybe it would come across as angrier than I wanted it to sound, so you know, I ditched that idea.<br />
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Also, the graphic is from a t-shirt on <a href="http://313merch.com/313_shirt_order/britney+bitch.html">313merch.com</a>.</div>
Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-30081155794338347792015-10-01T22:50:00.002-05:002015-10-01T22:50:25.581-05:00New Episode of Found *NSYNC Fan Fiction <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://rayofblight.podbean.com/e/the-found-nsync-fan-fiction-radio-hour-episode-9-lost-found/" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCKp451jTBmcHs47DtILSwMC5XpgUq6FpobRaF3e_of0Js0BRAUZlaWYnOnOw-d2QPCwGaRsJ8EsK0rmUKxZS11_mayYORruRZMowAL1InVIjFEgASC1pnJspBKnbYKo3ozPzMF6iPhQ/s320/nsync9.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br /><br />A new episode is up of the podcast I do with my friend <a href="http://sachamullin.bandcamp.com/">Sacha</a> called <i><b>Found *NSYNC Fan Fiction, </b></i>where we chronologically read aloud pages of one author's *NSYNC fan fiction, from a binder found at a thrift store in Chicago. We have not read ahead, so you're experiencing each page with us IN REAL TIME.<br /><br />You can listen to it <a href="http://rayofblight.podbean.com/e/the-found-nsync-fan-fiction-radio-hour-episode-9-lost-found/">here on our podbean site,</a> or <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ray-of-blight-with-liz-sacha/id525605387?mt=2">here on i-Tunes.</a><br /><br />In this episode, we learn shocking news that threatens to change the lives of Joey, the narrator, and the narrator's family at home during the*NSYNC tour, which brings the tension between them to a head. Alyson Hannigan makes a cameo (as in Willow from Buffy), as do Joey's parents. We drink ten year old Limoncello while Sacha accompanies the reading on a Casio keyboard, which somehow magically evolves the podcast into a radio soap opera. As usual, there's plenty of weird accents, snickering and snarky asides, while we try to just, really, hold it together without losing our shit entirely. I suggest listening to this episode on headphones so you can hear the piano better. And hey! It's free!<br /><br />We ask: WHO KNOWS? THE JOEY FATONE KNOWS!<br /><br />Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-61393494434390916762015-09-25T00:17:00.001-05:002015-09-25T00:17:11.711-05:00Loving to Make Fun of Things We Love<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A few years a go I turned 40. When it came time for me to decide what I wanted to do for my birthday, I thought about what my favorite activity is, what I really I enjoy doing that I could share with other people, was that I really enjoy sitting around with like-minded friends who have a similar sense of humor and experiencing media that we can make fun of. It could be movies, it could be music, or it could be TV. So that's what I did. My husband said, "I see you looking wistfully at those quinceanera dresses in the windows of those shops on Western Avenue. I will buy you a beautiful princessy cake-layered quinceanera dress for your birthday, and you can have a party." This, of course, because I have the fashion sensibility of a sixteen year old girl. Once we saw that those dresses are thousands of dollars, I told him not to buy me a dress. Instead, I said I would just wear my wedding dress, because it was pretty princess-y. I told everybody to come over and watch ridiculous found footage curated by a friend who collects this sort of thing while we ate snacks and I wore my wedding dress. So I turned 40 and all I did was sit around and eat snacks and make snarky comments with my friends because I think that may be one of my favorite activities.<br />
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It is also true that I like making fun of things I like. Jerry Seinfeld (or maybe it was Jeff Garlin) said in an interview with Judd Apatow in his book <i>Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy</i> (don't ask me what page, when I finish reading it maybe I'll write about it), something to the effect that good comedians make fun of things that they like. I can understand this. I may love something but can also see the preposterousness in it, which is why I understand when people make fun of music I like. I definitely feel like we are capable of seeing multiple sides of something, both loving things and why somebody would make fun of it. One of my friends was recently wearing a Whitesnake t-shirt, and asked her "Are you wearing that shirt because you like them or you're being serious?" She answered the perfect answer (which is probably why we're friends): "Both. I am a fan, and I stole this t-shirt from my brother, but I mean, <i>come on.</i>" Clearly this is someone who can both enjoy something but see it for it's preposterousness, which I can totally understand (especially in reference to Whitesnake; I have done <i>Here I Go Again</i> at karaoke multiple times).<br />
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I remember making a mix tape for a friend in college and she sent me a letter back itemizing hilarious comments about each of the songs. I loved each song on the tape (which is why I selected those songs) but her commentary making fun of each song was so hilarious -- I could simultaneously understand why she said those comments and enjoy the music at the same time. It also proved to me that she actually listened to the tape, so that made me appreciate her comments all the more.<br />
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I wrote the zine <i><a href="http://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/zines/2515" target="_blank">The Bad Lyrics Project</a></i> that listing some of my favorite bad lyrics, but I will be the first to say that a lot of the lyrics I mentioned in the zine come from songs that I do actually like. In fact, the reason I stumbled on many of the lyrics was because of my familiarity with the songs because I listened to many of them with some amount of frequency.<br />
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This is all why I loved <i>The Worst Rock n' Roll Records of All Time: A Fan's Guide to the Stuff You Love to Hate</i> by Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell (Citadel Press). This book appeals to the same part of my brain that generated the <i><a href="http://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/zines/2515" target="_blank">Bad Lyrics Project</a></i>. And I feel like it would be an awesome college class to teach: Music to Make Fun of 101, and companion volumes for required reading in the class would include <i>Kill Your Idols: A New Generation of Rock Writers Reconsiders the Classics</i> or maybe <i>Chunklet</i> magazine issues #18 and #19, The Overrated Issues Parts I and II.<br />
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I chuckled aloud at parts of this book and marveled at how they articulated things that I always intuitively felt but never had words for. When my husband suggested I read this book, he said,"This book reaffirms how you feel about particular songs," which gave me a nice feeling of recognition and a kind of vindication. There were moments reading this book that I was like, "Holy shit. I could have written that. Not as articulately or as hilariously, but that sentiment, that is totally how I feel about that song and is EXACTLY my style of humor." It's kind of weird when I run into writing that strikes me that way, which doesn't happen very often but when it does it feels really special. When I read this book I thought <i>There's a version of me out there as manifested by these two other music writers who are like, my energy or something, but with way better writing skills. Or something. Like me. But better.</i><br />
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Without getting into the specifics of what artists and songs they talk about in the book, suffice it say that I love that devote some space to some of the music I grew up with when MTV first went on the air when I was a kid (although the book isn't limited to that).<br />
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But I will however, list my favorite quote, on pg 116. It's actually in reference to a particular album, but it totally stands on its own point, in reference to performers in many different fields:<br />
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<i>Why does nearly every rock and roller we trust let us down sooner or later?...Is it that we hold impossibly high expectations for performers to maintain over the long run, or is rock and roll truly the domain of the young and hungry? At the very least, there is a propensity for performers to start choking on their own fumes once the become rich and famous.</i><br />
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I particularly like that bit about propensity for performers to start choking on their own fumes. It's like a version of believing your own press, or becoming so successful in terms of making money that you are then unable to recognize when your music sounds good anymore because your idea of success has changed. I think intuitively we all know that the "fume choking" happens around the time you go from doing work about the universal struggles in life to struggles with fame. When the switch happens, nobody takes you seriously anymore -- the moment you start with the "why can't you people just leave me alone?" business the public is done with you.<br />
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Is rock and roll the domain of the young and hungry? Maybe. I'll have to think about it some more while I sit here eating Funyons in my wedding dress.Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-71871819580873604942015-09-18T23:46:00.001-05:002015-09-18T23:49:03.261-05:00Dance Party Workout Mix Tape #12 Download Link<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.lizmasonisawesome.com/http___lizmasonisawesome.com/Sounds/Entries/2015/9/16_Dance_Dance_Party_Party_Workout_Mix_Tape_12_Download.html" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibyE1y32xQjvyQ0q6sa1HlgzIIQ2bVBE0Z1BqVxFWDNOuoBZKJyoq2HEwkpWyC7nU-Jha5FaHKJ2VyhGW7nqIyQPyUrJyPxEmsx4t8J373LXIGTeWPwNwjzZlaosFf0UguIAA3_qAwBw/s320/i+love+to+dance+in+spanish.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ye me encanta bailar: I love to dance</td></tr>
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<span style="color: purple;"><b><a href="http://www.lizmasonisawesome.com/http___lizmasonisawesome.com/Sounds/Entries/2015/9/16_Dance_Dance_Party_Party_Workout_Mix_Tape_12_Download.html" target="_blank">I made another dance mix tape for you to download as one track. Here it is on my website.</a></b></span> It starts and ends with warm up and slow down songs. The last fast song is started with an airhorn to signal it is the last fast song. I find these mixes to be not just good for dancing but also for cleaning, running and commuting. <a href="https://ddppchicago.wordpress.com/2015/09/19/gettin-jiggy-with-music-that-all-sounds-like-it-should-be-on-knight-rider-a-one-paragraph-expose-on-my-playlist-on-wednesday/" target="_blank">And here's a blog post I wrote about it for Dance Dance Party Party on the DDPP blog.</a> I DJ under the name MC Escher.</div>
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Enjoy!</div>
Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-84065846551154259372015-08-20T00:36:00.003-05:002015-08-20T09:13:38.692-05:00Class Authenticity, The Rain In Spain & Sooonshiiiiiiine: On Alex Niven's Oasis' Definitely Maybe 33 1/3 Book<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUuTIiBuJc21S6Y4zBVgZNEOi0Ux0MFs9N-k_uQ4Rg-VhQytzizfy1B7W3t7kV38igIIjjEw5s9sFSbZBxFQxCWt2izbIaNlCWtznoTEP7OnZ2ZO7x5dK7bATpdkI9XfMYuTt72b79fg/s1600/Photo+on+2015-08-03+at+23.52+%25236.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUuTIiBuJc21S6Y4zBVgZNEOi0Ux0MFs9N-k_uQ4Rg-VhQytzizfy1B7W3t7kV38igIIjjEw5s9sFSbZBxFQxCWt2izbIaNlCWtznoTEP7OnZ2ZO7x5dK7bATpdkI9XfMYuTt72b79fg/s640/Photo+on+2015-08-03+at+23.52+%25236.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My cat hates it when I read because I'm not paying attention to him.</td></tr>
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I feel bashful when I share with people that I like Oasis. One time at work I requested a desk copy from a book distributor of the original Oasis drummer's memoir (<i>Oasis: The Truth: My Life as Oasis's Drummer</i> by Tony McCarroll), and when it arrived, one of my co-workers opened the package and pulled it out and pinching it like it was contaminated underwear, he said, "Should I grab bag this?" I said, "Actually, I requested that book." I had to come clean; I thought I would have intercepted the package but he got to it before I did.<br />
<br />
I've on the sly been reading books about Oasis and special Oasis-centered editions of Mojo and Uncut for years, and the only person that knows this is my husband, who makes fun of me. If Oasis ever comes up in conversation, he starts singing the refrain from My Fair Lady "The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain," which I agree, does actually does sound like a line that would be in an Oasis song.<br />
<br />
Has anybody done a mashup of Oasis and <i>My Fair Lady</i>? Because I can't possibly be the first person to make the connection of the working class Brit elevating their status by way of some sort of performance (a lower class Eliza Doolittle learning/performing the mannerisms of the upper class, the Gallagher brothers elevating their status from working class to British nouveau riche by creating/performing music etc etc etc bla bla bla).<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiObiSSADzWPXfK0NbxsS91hfOlYlPnwNltYopevRYxGD96BHMN0dnKkUykGNLCDrfpe7MVJQR9VdouGuSk_rD3mLVKzxZ_ZqXSY5EUGPY5oqExXlWEUVG7-lx05J7Mkn1VMDQoqTiyAA/s1600/rain+in+spain+oasis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="332" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiObiSSADzWPXfK0NbxsS91hfOlYlPnwNltYopevRYxGD96BHMN0dnKkUykGNLCDrfpe7MVJQR9VdouGuSk_rD3mLVKzxZ_ZqXSY5EUGPY5oqExXlWEUVG7-lx05J7Mkn1VMDQoqTiyAA/s640/rain+in+spain+oasis.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">when there's no <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PZwamn3CPQ" target="_blank">sooonshiiiiiiine</a></td></tr>
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And that's where Alex Niven's 33 1/3 book about Oasis' first album <i>Definitely Maybe </i>comes in. But I'll get to that in a minute.<br />
<br />
My relationship with Oasis is a carryover from a previous boyfriend of many years ago who got me into them. Previous to him, I had always kind of found them boring. However, when someone can act as a tour guide for a band and expose you to the right songs with the right introductory explanation, that's where the appreciation can come in. You would think after the relationship ended I would not want to have listened to a band that my ex was into, but amazingly, the amount of time I had to lay off Oasis was relatively short, and then Oasis was reintegrated into my heavy rotation. And in fact, even though at that point I'd only had the first two Oasis albums and a variety of other B sides, it was actually the boyfriend after him (now my husband), who gifted me the third Oasis album, Be Here Now. That third album is the one that Noel Gallagher told Chuck Klosterman in a 2011 interview on grantland.com that during the recording "We were taking all the cocaine we could possibly find," which explains its less than stellar success.<br />
<br />
Oasis' first two albums (<i>Definitely Maybe</i> and<i> (What's the Story) Morning Glory?</i>) are solid. Although there are a fair number of songs from later Oasis albums that I do like quite a bit, somehow there weren't any Oasis albums that captured the anthemic energy of those two albums. The more recent work made by the Gallagher brothers, independent of each other after the breakup of Oasis, lacks the synergistic awesomeness that happens when they were in a band together.<br />
<br />
Sidetone: I saw some hilarious press conference with Noel Gallagher (the elder brother and primary song writer for Oasis) when Oasis broke up. I could have sworn that he described this one event that preceded the breakup of the band. Liam (the younger brother and the one with the iconic Oasis snarly whine that people tend to equate with the band) asked Noel if the Oasis tourbook for the next tour could feature his clothing line Pretty Green. Noel said no, which made Liam so angry he smashed a guitar. His own guitar. This is, of course, hilarious to me.<br />
<br />
Independent of each other, the Gallagher brothers pursued their own bands. Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds have a few good songs and Liam Gallagher's now defunct band Beady Eye had a few good songs, but both projects were missing the ingredients that the other brother puts in it. Noel's band is missing Liam's Mancunian drawly sneering sass, and Liam's band is missing Noel's songwriting input. At this very moment I'm listening to the High Flying Birds album "Chasing Yesterday" on Spotify and maybe it's because it's 12:42am on a Wednesday, but I'm hardly feeling moved to do air guitar moves. Is that a saxophone? Is that why Liam Tweeted on May 7th of this year, "Just coz you have a SAXAPHONE on your new record and you think your all Pink Floyd LG x"? Because that's about when this album dropped. I should also add that Liam then Tweeted "Everybody knows your just another PRICK in the wall LG x" which in spite of the spelling error, is actually pretty funny.<br />
<br />
So, both brothers are aging, estranged from each other beyond just their notorious constant bickering, making music that isn't quite as awesome as they once did when they were together in the 90s, ruling British music with anthemic rock. Something about it is sad to me.<br />
<br />
Oasis very much appeals to the part of me that loves anthemic guitar-driven rock music, which I refer to as the Guitar Center part of my personality. I do love me a good anthemic rock song.<br />
<br />
Now would be a good time to mention that the ex-boyfriend who got me into Oasis also gave me a bunch of the guitar tablature for Oasis songs that I liked. After much practice I could fake my way through a few of them, but never in a way that wasn't ridiculously embarrassing, accompanied by a lot pausing and me going, "Wait! Wait!" while switching cords. Mostly what I remember though is that <i>Wonder Wall</i> requires a capo (this, because the Oasis Tour Guide boyfriend showed me), that Noel Gallagher writes a lot of music with alternating D and D sus chords, and that <i>Cast No Shadow</i> was sort of easy to play.<br />
<br />
After reading <a href="http://quimbysbookstore.mybooksandmore.com/web1/actions/searchHandler.do?key=9781623564230&nextPage=booksDetails&parentNum=12680" target="_blank">Alex Niven's book: <i>Oasis' Definitely Maybe</i> book, from the 33 1/3 series </a>(Bloomsbury), I had half a mind to pull the guitar back out and give some Oasis songs another go (although the aforementioned songs are actually on <i>Morning Glory</i>), but come on. Honestly, NoWaysis. The most that I'm willing to do is listen to Oasis in the car. P.S. <i>Wonder Wall</i> is actually one of the more boring Oasis songs. No wonder everybody thinks Oasis is boring. They're better when they're doing arena rock. Also, NOBODY wants to hear me snarl whine my way through Oasis at karaoke. "But we really want to watch a short Jewess from northshore Chicago perform <i>Rock'n'Roll Star</i> at the American Legion Hall" said <b>ABSOLUTELY NO ONE.</b><br />
<br />
That is, except for my husband. He did tell me that he thought my <i>Cigarettes and Alcohol</i> rendition was pretty rocking. So I guess that's a thing. I did get a karaoke disc with a bunch of Oasis songs but it's shitty and low quality, and the lyric graphics are all janky and get jumbled on the screen. Boooooo.<br />
<br />
So as a semi-closeted Oasis fan, I enjoyed Niven's book. For one, he defends accusations of Oasis making simple and derivative music, and the difference between pastiche and plagiarism (and how depending on the musician's class, the same act can unfairly be considered one or the other), and how class plays into the Oasis narrative. I found the book to be thoughtful and worded so articulately that if there was anybody sitting next to me I would have read them the passages I was putting stars next to.<br />
<br />
In the foreward Niven writes, "It was also important to me to try to show that even the most simplest-seeming pop music can contain multitudes of meaning." I couldn't agree more. We all know that as an audience member, the meaning we derive from a song may not actually be in the songwriter's intent. Sometimes meaning can be derived from considering the song through a lens unintended by the writer and performer. We might use a historical lens, a sociological lens, or a critical lens used by those who consider pop an artform worthy of intellectual digestion. I've always thought that no matter what the topic, there is always something intelligent to be said about it. It may require some processing, or if it's about some work of art what you come up with may not be compatible with what the creator intended, or it may even be cynical and snarky, but the potential is there for thoughtfulness on any topic. Hence, any pop song "can contain multitudes of meaning," as Niven writes.<br />
<br />
I also loved Niven's point defending Oasis' musical output as being a creatively successful work that is more than just simplistic stealing on page 25:<br />
<br />
"When middle-class musicians resort to appropriation and collage it is often applauded as 'allusion' or 'pastiche', when working-class musicians do it they are dismissed as plagiarists, or prosecuted as outright thieves. The notion - still popular in some quarters - that Oasis were chancers who rose above their station by stealing other bands' creative property is patronizing and ultimately untenable. Whatever can be said about their musical conservatism in later years, on Definitely Maybe, Oasis's appropriation of the past was just as valid, and just as creatively successful, as the sample tapestries on Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions."<br />
<br />
Amen.<br />
<br />
At the beginning of the book, Niven included a lengthy Dostoevsky quote from <i>The Brothers Karamazov</i>, about being rejected by the unforgiving world, but then watering the earth with one's tears that then bring forth fruit. It's making art from one's grief. It's a fitting quote for the story of a band confined by the limits of their membership to dead end working class, but making art inspired by dreams of escaping their station, which Niven posits is a large part of the Oasis narrative.<br />
<br />
I love the image of the Gallagher brothers (and the rest of the band) against the world that looks down on them (even though everyone knows they never really got along). So the idea of the band being years past the prime of their success of the first two albums (not to mention broken up) creates a weirdly poetic wistfulness in me, especially considering I wasn't even all that into them until after their first two albums had already peaked. And before you jump in and go "Well maybe you're being wistful for the relationship with the Oasis tour guide boyfriend" I feel it important to say that I was really unhappy in that relationship because it was a really unhappy time in my life.<br />
<br />
What I <i>want</i> to say is that the wistfulness comes from the part of my personality that gets really caught up in other people's narratives, especially performers' story arcs, like for example Britney's rise and fall and rise again (but as her current Zombney the Undead state where she's been replaced by an automaton, managed by other people).<br />
<br />
But the truth is that I think the wistfulness comes from the part of my psyche that fears the decay of getting old, past one's prime, sick, or even worse, what happens when all your dreams come true and then you're not left with anything to look forward to (which is why I think some celebrities turn to religion in their "YES BUT WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!!" moments). The Gallagher brothers and their fellow Oasisians are hardly decaying and I'm happier as I get older, but it's probably true that there's my fear of death in there somewhere. Queue up the Andrew Lloyd Webber music to accompany the one-time glamour feline singing about her days in the sun, unsuccessfully copying dance moves of the younger cats, but alone and frail, unable to capture the magic of the Ball. And so on.<br />
<br />
Niven writes about Oasis that they were confined as "losers in a failing city" then escaped their economic and social status by becoming rock stars. He describes it excellently on page 18:<br />
<br />
"In 'Rock'n'Roll Star', Noel Gallagher's alternative plan was to get a car and drive it as far as he could away from Manchester, a plan that was ambitious given that he had no money and had never learned to drive."<br />
<br />
Ah yes, even part of the class you might not even have the background to exist within it once your there. How very Eliza Doolittle.<br />
<br />
A band is on top of the world, then they get bloated and it all falls apart. I will always be pulled into the rock and roll narrative. After all, the rise and fall is the greatest story ever told. Of course it's better if the narrative denouements out with a rise again, but the climb back to the top is often pretty artificial. We all age, we all die, or at least we all have to live in the real world where it isn't always the high of being on top again: grocery shopping, daily living, paying bills, trimming your toenails -- life is not just one big montage of being on top all the time. Sometimes it's boring.<br />
<br />
All this is to say that the real problem with the rock and roll narrative is that often it's a rise and fall that may or may not have a rise again, but if it does have a rise again, the rise never recaptures the magic and vitality of the first initial rise. This makes sense to me. For one, everyone loves an origin story and sequels are never as good as the origin stories, the Oasis origin story being one of a working class band becoming extremely successful such that for Brits, being a soccer hooligan became cool, (as opposed to the art school snobbiness of a band like Blur, the sort of anti-Oasis). But more to the point, the narrative does not account for people getting older or ending the band. Nobody wants to watch rock stars age.<br />
<br />
Niven sums it up best on page 20:<br />
<br />
"After Oasis really became famous, after they finally, decisively escaped from Manchester, the strength of their idea that pop music can allow anybody to achieve empowerment in a moment of liberation would be undermined by the boring reality of their status as lofty celebrities. When you are actually a rock star, singing about the fact to crowds of thousands every night is not a statement of idealism. It's a description of a daily work routine."<br />
<br />
Ah, the bloating. It's as if to say their narrative went from underdog to the overweight dog of the status quo. In the documentary <i>Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Brit Pop</i>, Louise Wener, former lead singer of the Britpop band Sleeper, talks about Noel getting invited to Downing Street to see Tony Blair. She said of Noel's visit how "Everything he was about, he used to not "belong" to anybody, and then suddenly he did, he was right in their pocket, and in that very instant, he was neutered, like someone had just come in with a knife and cut his bullocks off."<br />
<br />
If there was the Oasis biopic (there seemed to be some discussion around 2011, but it seemed like it never really panned out), that visit would be the moment where it's clear the band went from being the band that united the classes, their music played ubiquitously in bars, discos, weddings, just, everywhere in Britain with anthemic "We're in this togetherness," to a sort of resented and resentful cynical parody of themselves. "Cynicism is the patois of the status quo," Niven writes on the first page of his book, as if to remind us that the rock and roll rise and fall ends in the band leaving youthful earnest rebellion behind and turning to jaded cynicism.<br />
<br />
I loved Niven's discussion of Britpop. In this quote, he's referring the the song <i>Shakermaker</i>, which ripped off part of the <i>I'd Like to Buy a World a Coke</i> jingle, which well, Coke is pretty much a symbol of consumerism. Oasis was considered to be the more sort of authentic, less middle class alterna contemporaries Blur, Suede and Elastica. I enjoy the overview laid out so articulately here, with a little help from critic Jon Savage as well, on page 27:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUKsqSDpI-5HPx7IYchlS0UMHCi5c8GGsAcqd1mMrEFugkqStGaW4J2eb2Yr59KxKbgT5-1ONLBdGAZwBzgpjiezwtUar9g_iMwyvpiUhj0MjgnNFyxyaFREK00IAn98Zb6tl3oaNRCQ/s1600/Def+May+pg+27.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUKsqSDpI-5HPx7IYchlS0UMHCi5c8GGsAcqd1mMrEFugkqStGaW4J2eb2Yr59KxKbgT5-1ONLBdGAZwBzgpjiezwtUar9g_iMwyvpiUhj0MjgnNFyxyaFREK00IAn98Zb6tl3oaNRCQ/s1600/Def+May+pg+27.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">page 27. Thanks, Google Books!</td></tr>
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The sentiment about Britpop being composed of ill-informed bougie bands singing about working class is the classic "You're a suburban poseur, why are you complaining about gentrification in your city block?!" argument. I don't know if it's really warranted because I'm sure it's more complicated than that. And to be fair, I do like Blur, Suede and Elastica. But I do like the quote's overview of the different bands within Britpop and what they each tended to symbolize, the implication being that Oasis represented an authentic honest working class while wanting to <i>be</i> the upper class, while many other bands in Britpop merely wanted to <i>criticize</i> the middle and upper class, attempting to <i>identify</i> with the lower class.<br />
<br />
I never thought I would say this but I think I just wrote a piece on how the career trajectory of Oasis symbolizes death. This wasn't quite what I envisioned in discussing a band that appeals to my interest in anthemic rock which is usually celebratory, but I suppose any story with a linear arc only goes in a single direction, forwards, and nothing lasts forever. Well, as long as you don't have to listen to me play any of these songs on the guitar it'll be fine.Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-60503170953581521032015-08-15T00:19:00.000-05:002015-08-15T00:36:18.822-05:00Thoughtful & Hilarious, Which Is What I Always Wanted School To Be Like: Thoughts on Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuw8ObK9lVc1r2yRgARom6pr0SNf1Yd_eoUPxirAtnrxZChdW0maWNOsB8_huH6gkvVSHSLEXrpQ7iPWessuZD5EsoujT2ndNHbc2NHNmDKhECeGPYq31bw5YHg-9YG5U2ym4ep0C9PA/s1600/20150722_223408.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuw8ObK9lVc1r2yRgARom6pr0SNf1Yd_eoUPxirAtnrxZChdW0maWNOsB8_huH6gkvVSHSLEXrpQ7iPWessuZD5EsoujT2ndNHbc2NHNmDKhECeGPYq31bw5YHg-9YG5U2ym4ep0C9PA/s320/20150722_223408.jpg" width="240" /></a>I guess Aziz Ansari is mostly known for his work in the entertainment industry, but for his book <i><a href="http://quimbysbookstore.mybooksandmore.com/web1/actions/searchHandler.do?key=9781594206276&nextPage=booksDetails&parentNum=12680" target="_blank">Modern Romance</a></i> he took his comedy skills and used them to comment on dissertation level research he did with the help of a sociologist. They collected mass amounts of field data from different countries about dating, in a time where texting and social networking
technology is so prolifically intertwined in our lives. It's thoughtful and hilarious, which is what I always wanted school to be like.<br />
<br />
He draws some conclusions about modern dating based on his data, so there's some good advice about dating. And even though I'm married and am not looking into dating, nor would I consider an open marriage, I can still appreciate this book; you don't have to be the representative sample of the research to enjoy its results. Also, it made me think about the fact that I didn't grow up or date in an age where much of my own communication was done via texts (I got married in 2002), so it was pretty eye-opening to see how that type of technology configures into dating now.<br />
<br />
There are two really good quotes I enjoyed in this book.<br />
<br />
This first one is in regards to the shift away from "companionate" marriage (such as arranged marriages where you might learn to love the person, or perhaps just finding a decent person to start a family with) to the soul mate marriage (marrying someone <i>because</i> you love them and they're what you consider to be your "soul mate"), (page 24):<br />
<br />
"We want something that's very passionate, or boiling, from the get-go. In the past, people weren't looking for something boiling; they just needed some water. Once they found it and committed to a life together, they did their best to heat things up. Now, if things aren't boiling, committing to marriage seems premature."<br />
<br />
It's pretty <i>Fiddler On the Roof</i>-y, all like, you know, <i>the first time I met you was on our wedding day, for twenty-five years I've cooked your meals, milked the cow, given you children, I suppose I love you -- </i>you sort of learn to love the spouse you end up with.<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Sidenote: Has anyone made a drug called "Fiddler on the Roofie" and what would it do?</span><br />
<br /></div>
<div>
But honestly, I think if you meet someone and the water <i>is</i> boiling right away, even if you're extremely compatible, there are moments where the water is not boiling, or if it is, sometimes it's boiling with anger. After all, people are people, and even if they're "soul mates," arguments are still going to happen. It reminds me of something John Lydon wrote in <i>Anger Is an Energy,</i> about his wife, who is the love of his life. They have a deep intimacy and intense love, but they also have some crazy arguments. Lydon wrote about their relationship, "When you really love someone, you can practice hate in an enjoyable kind of a way," as if to say that when your bond is strong enough, you can power on through the arguments in a constructive or even enjoyable kind of a way.<br />
<div>
<br />
Along the same lines of cultivating a deeper relationship, I also enjoyed another quote in <i>Modern Romance</i> (pg 247). It's advice about getting to know someone by properly investing in a person, giving a potential mate a fair chance before moving on to someone else, as is particularly common in on-line dating:<br />
<br />
"Think about it in terms of the music of Flo Rida. When you hear his latest song, at first you think, <i>Goddamn it, Flo Rida. You're just doing the same thing again, song after song. This song is nothing special at all.</i> And by the tenth time you hear it, you're like FLO!!! YOU'VE DONE IT AGAIN! THIS IS A HIT, BABY!!!<br />
<br />
In a sense we are all like that Flo Rida song: The more time you spend with us, the more you see how special we are. Social scientists refer to this as the Flo Rida Theory of Acquired Likability Through Repitition."<br />
<br />
I can appreciate this. There are certainly songs, movies and albums that have taken a while to grow on me. I think music is a good way of talking about acquired likability. Sometimes I need to hear a something a few times just to make sense of it, especially if it has really complex or jarring harmonies. I think the acquired likability in terms of people is not that far removed from the "devil you know" theory; even the jerk you know is better than the person you don't know. That's why on <i>Angel </i>Wesley Wyndam-Pryce hired Harmony Kendall to be Angel's personal secretary, even though Harmony is clearly the enemy. Even the vampire you know is better than the unknown job applicant for a supernatural detective agency that you don't know. Why is that the example I came up with? I have no good answer for this.<br />
<br />
Why is it that my two favorite quotes in the book have to do with heating up things over time? Good question! Well, one of the points Ansari makes based on his research is that a good way to develop a relationship is investing time in a person before writing them off, which seems like wise advice to me. However, I must admit that there is the smart ass voice in my head that says "Get to know someone so you can have adequate confidence that you've made the right decision in writing them off." Perhaps it's worse when someone dumps you after they get to know you because they have a fully informed opinion of your loserness. It's almost like that voice in my head is saying this:<br />
<br />
If someone spends 5 <i>minutes</i> with you and writes you off, you can say <i>they're</i> the asshole. If someone spends 5 <i>years</i> with you and writes you off, you can say <i>you're</i> the asshole. They have their evidence to build the case of your assholery. They have legitmately gotten to know the real you and are able to fully judge you. That smarts!<br />
<br />
I'm a little embarrassed that this is rapidly turning into what sounds like an entry in <i>Bridget Jones Diary.</i><br />
<br />
Now, rationally I understand relationships are two way streets, and sometimes they don't work out, and it's not all one person's fault. I used to go to a therapist who did a lot of couples counseling, and she said that she thought the three things that cause stress in marriages tend to be time, money and sex. So those things can obviously figure in to relationships as well, and they're complicated topics. One thing I took away from that was that it's a good idea, when people get married, to have one joint account for things they share, like rent, groceries, utilities, dining out with each other. Each partner though, should have their own bank account for personal expenses, like clothes, gifts, music, luxury items, etc. That way there's no arguing about finances. To this day my husband and I do this and it has always worked out for us. I advise everybody to do this as well.<br />
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Aren't you glad you read this? Because I'm sure you were really tuning in to hear about how my husband and I organize our finances. My credit history! One for the ages.</div>
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Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-28230253985833366522015-08-12T00:15:00.001-05:002015-08-12T00:26:56.368-05:00The Elegance of Nothingness and A Slice of Reality Loaf<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://quimbysbookstore.mybooksandmore.com/web1/actions/searchHandler.do?key=9780307278128&nextPage=booksDetails&parentNum=12680" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5XmFwV4Fv2F2NMhZMnBTUuUg8mK2_HgOgry59oDMWj7X_ekTFJm975i-UffSGPRaYVc0pNlQ-LNFk0PyB2ZVi0_4yYLGQKZjc-T6VBplnsF_9m5QwLd_arXp_3IPgUhmsyEqZ6HgscA/s320/Photo+on+2015-08-01+at+22.40+%25232.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
I enjoyed considering what types of parallel universes could be theoretically possible as per Brian Greens's <i><a href="http://quimbysbookstore.mybooksandmore.com/web1/actions/searchHandler.do?key=9780307278128&nextPage=booksDetails&parentNum=12680" target="_blank">The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos</a></i>. Some suggestions included a universe that's really multiple universes (a multiverse) each separated by different "bubbles," a universe where we're really just a computer program (sort of like <i>The Matrix</i> does <i>Tron</i> does the ol' metaphyscial <i>how-can-we-disprove-we're-not-just-a-brain-in-a-vat</i> situation), or my favorite: reality is a big loaf that we're really just seeing is one slice of it. It gives the term "homeslice" a whole new meaning. Also, the idea of thinking of reality as one big loaf made everything so adorable I just couldn't handle it, especially because I think of my cat as a loaf, so of course, a cat loaf reality IS CLEARLY THE MOST EXCELLENT THING EVER.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNRGWnyJg5chwb2dQQqwKGo_OAzez3RJ4iOqFge0lIntviFgZm18PZL1XJfjruDhW0iGcNm4lg3AX_wo60vjWzvM8gRwkEJH-bdXxJxgwSmuyEO_gIoOxwwhe4U75T1s6claMX8Px3zQ/s1600/Screen+shot+2015-08-11+at+10.52.24+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNRGWnyJg5chwb2dQQqwKGo_OAzez3RJ4iOqFge0lIntviFgZm18PZL1XJfjruDhW0iGcNm4lg3AX_wo60vjWzvM8gRwkEJH-bdXxJxgwSmuyEO_gIoOxwwhe4U75T1s6claMX8Px3zQ/s400/Screen+shot+2015-08-11+at+10.52.24+PM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">cat loaf multiverse</td></tr>
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I enjoyed reading this book right before bed in the hopes that I'd have some real awesome dreams. However, I have to take pills that help me sleep, and they kick in quicker when I lay in bed and read, which means that I often don't get much read before bed. I should add that falling asleep getting loosey-goosey on medication is probably not the most optimal situation conducive to consuming a book about physics. That being said, I can only blame the sleeping pills for so much. This book wasn't exactly all easy to get through for me. It took me a long time to get through <i>The Hidden Reality. </i>Even if I was totally awake, there were parts I had to re-read over and over to understand them. I didn't let that stop me, especially considering there were many parts that were conversational that I very much enjoyed, but I'll be honest, there were parts that I don't know how much of it I can truly say I fully understood.<br />
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I always have a few books going at once, which is helpful in a situation like this, where the book is a bit more challenging. It helps me from getting too frustrated. Sometimes I'll go read other stuff for weeks and then come back to a book. For the most part, the only books I tend to be monogamous to and only read without some other book action on the side, are fiction books. I can read fiction faster without interrupting them with other books (I guess I get sucked into the narrative, the last two books of fiction that I enjoyed very much being Catie Disabato's <i>The Ghost Network</i> and also Gareth P. Jones' <i>No True Echo</i>), but science books, unless they're super awesome (like books by Mary Roach or Diane Ackerman), those take me longer. Sometimes though, a book of any genre will pull ahead in front of the pack and demand all my time, ones where I'm like, <i>No, I don't want to go out, I want to stay home and read this book,</i> as I get further in, and it will take the lead because after the initial beginning investment of a hundred pages or so, I'll get pulled in more, and that will take the lead until I finish it, while all the other books get put on the back burner. (Recently the book that pulled ahead was John Lydon's <i>Anger Is An Energy</i>:<i> My Life Uncensored,</i> which is miles ahead of his last book <i>Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs. </i>Perhaps this is because he is also significantly older and wiser. I was sad when the book was over. My mom used to say that she was sad when she finished a good book because it was like losing a friend, and I know exactly what she meant.)<br />
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There are some really good quotes in <i>The Hidden Reality</i>. One that I enjoyed was about the unified theory (the idea that there's some theory or equation that can explain, like, <i>everything</i>). The author had a conversation with a philosophy professor in college who told him (pg 337):<br />
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"Let's say you find the unified theory. Would that really provide the answers you're looking for? Wouldn't you still be left asking why that particular theory, and not another, was the correct theory of the universe?"<br />
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I know I'm not covering any new ground here when I say that we can all pretty much agree that science doesn't really explain everything we want it to; it only disproves things that are not true, and an explanation is only a theory until it is proven false. And then the disproven theory isn't even a theory, it's just an explanation dead in the water.<br />
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Does this mean we can't have confidence that our explanations we accept as being the current up-to-date answers are correct? This makes me sad, that we can't ever really be 100% sure that we're right about something, and that probably we'll never know all the answers. I'm always afraid I'm going to die before I ever get any real satisfactory answers about things. Specifically, I'm afraid something tragic will happen to me, like a bridge will collapse when I'm on it or something, and that not only will I not live long enough to get some real explanations to big questions but also that I won't live long enough to find out what happened to Agent Cooper in the Black Lodge, which will supposedly be answered when <i>Twin Peaks</i> reemerges in 2017.<br />
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Accepted theories getting proven wrong over time is only a few degrees removed from the theory suggested by Mac on <i>It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia</i> when he says, "Science is a liar sometimes." He labels a series of past scientists who have a bunch of right answers but get some parts wrong, as a "Bitch!"<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_7JP9jjAUBCeB1t8hE96hDYAorNbOtK01rq_bNnVD9aKtRdovyJzmISXCAfHQHyLtPyyPq92j_5wJpgSn34o0yeutXEh3fgtQbS6300YrvgACpDK_NJiSYuWIcBci_8iEc19O77BUzA/s1600/philadelphia+science.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_7JP9jjAUBCeB1t8hE96hDYAorNbOtK01rq_bNnVD9aKtRdovyJzmISXCAfHQHyLtPyyPq92j_5wJpgSn34o0yeutXEh3fgtQbS6300YrvgACpDK_NJiSYuWIcBci_8iEc19O77BUzA/s1600/philadelphia+science.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">How are we ever supposed to get to the bottom of anything?</span></span></td></tr>
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No matter how on the money some theories are, inevitably parts of them end up on the cutting room floor because newer developments illuminate more answers, which means I don't have 100% confidence that I will ever get some solid answers.<br />
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Another interesting point <i>The Hidden Reality</i> makes, is about how bizarre it is that the universe exists at all, considering how much energy/time/space is required for that to happen. On page 339 he<i> </i>had a very poetic angle on somethingness and nothingness (pardon the liberties I took shortening the quote):<br />
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"But because nothing also seems so vastly simpler than something -- no laws at work, no matter to play, no space to inhibit, no time to unfurl...<i>Why isn't there nothingness?</i> Nothingness would have been decidedly elegant."<br />
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It's kind of fascinating that there is anything at all really. But I can totally understand this. I'm continually shocked when shit gets done, just shocked that somebody accomplished something. When a building gets built, an event gets planned, a road gets paved, an operation happens, or any kind of project really, I kind of marvel that somebody followed through on something. I feel like getting anything done takes so much work and it's such a struggle, especially considering how easy it is to lose momentum when something is taking longer than you expect. I'm in a perpetual state that's a cross between laziness and low-grade helplessness, so I can appreciate it all the more when somebody makes something happen. That's why it makes sense to me that we should find it shocking that the universe exists at all, because honestly, that'd be so much easier for the universe, to just not exist at all. It would be considerably less effort. It's kind of amazing that the universe continues to expand, considering how hard I know it is to just, well, keep going. Indeed, nothingness would have been "decidedly elegant," because being a slacker is so much easier.<br />
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Another point I'd like to add in talking about this book, and I'll just say it: one might argue that I'm intellectually lazy. I want explanations for things, but I don't want any actual equations. How many people get into astronomy and then lose interest in it because they have to learn physics? I'm sure I'm not the first asshole to fall in love with stars exploding and the rings of Saturn, only to realize that to really study that stuff you have to do things with numbers and equal signs, which makes me go, "Nah, fuck it." Sure, I'll watch <i>Cosmos</i> and love it, but if you want me to do anything beyond marveling at the universe, like actually do some math, I'm out. I bet lots of people secretly think <i>I want answers! But I don't want to do the work to fully understand them! </i><br />
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That being said, even though I don't have any particular fascination with numbers, there are a couple really good quotes about the <i>subject</i> of math in <i>The Hidden Reality</i>. On page 341, Greene writes:<br />
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"A couple years ago, in a public debate...I said that I could imagine an alien encounter during which, in response to learning of our scientific theories, the aliens remark, 'Oh math. We tried that for a while. At first it seemed promising, but ultimately it was a dead end. Here, let us show you how it really works.' But, to continue with my own vacillation, I don't know how the aliens would actually finish the sentence, and with a broad enough definition of mathematics (e.g., the logical deductions following from a set of assumptions), I'm not even sure what kind of answers <i>wouldn't</i> amount to math."<br />
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I love this, it's to say that math is just explaining the experience of the world, which is why I loved when he wrote a few pages later (pg 344), "Reality is how math feels."<br />
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Is there an equation that would explain how I feel like getting things done is so often lugubrious and time-consuming? Is there a reality in which I'm in a different slice of the reality loaf and I get satisfactory answers to things? How <i>do</i> they get the cat to pose for the camera with the bread on it's head?Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-8501168463254014922015-08-01T21:12:00.004-05:002015-08-01T21:12:48.657-05:00Mix Tape #11 Download<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.lizmasonisawesome.com/http___lizmasonisawesome.com/Sounds/Entries/2015/7/29_Dance_Dance_Party_Party_Workout_Mix_Tape_11_Download.html" target="_blank"><img alt="http://www.lizmasonisawesome.com/http___lizmasonisawesome.com/Sounds/Entries/2015/7/29_Dance_Dance_Party_Party_Workout_Mix_Tape_11_Download.html" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaR35sq9V2dI8ybP3BvdyMIaqgxsUOWLlREwycEEc8C0b9rsoRADsF-Yr7crUi5jcNk9tefIQSQGzG1eka56twEkIhGwawt4g5f7YwGLqSh0nr2OR-7l3z5R5zjGp2gCAVAIuf09Ixug/s1600/Escher-Butterflies-279x300.png" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.lizmasonisawesome.com/http___lizmasonisawesome.com/Sounds/Entries/2015/7/29_Dance_Dance_Party_Party_Workout_Mix_Tape_11_Download.html" target="_blank">Here's a link to stream or download my most recent mix.</a> Technically it's a dance mix for working out, but I also find it good for running or just sort of well, partying, whatever party means to you.<br />
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This particular mix is 21 songs in one hour. Totally not intentional. Some songs are pretty short but with others, well, it's just that when I stream stuff together I cross fade, so the beginning and ends of songs are a lot less drawn out. And if a song is awesome but has parts that are a bit of a drag to dance to, well out those parts go. It's like just taking the money shots of songs I like. What a nice image to plant. You're welcome! <br />
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I DJ under the mixmaster moniker MC Escher for <a href="http://dancedancepartyparty.com/home.html" style="line-height: 19.855px;" title="http://dancedancepartyparty.com/home.html">Dance Dance Party Party</a>
(DDPP), where I am also a “den mother” for the Wednesday night sessions
here in Chicago. It's a one hour dance party for the ladies. This was my most recent mix for the session on 7/29/15.Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-19200639561173595402015-07-28T06:25:00.002-05:002015-07-28T06:25:41.331-05:00Performances Coming Up<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1621305244814731/" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjynoSA-1IFg3JwI4wrWiVG6xeS6sEP8mwk4_BZdVeHdc9o14jSEICI8YSKPIVslC45KpngVpMrnytQR9nUFwJhcqowqRrOKPLRHjRMepItM4gwB2c91xvKBO2JtqZIFiC8vrzTtg-j5w/s640/BRGC+Aug+2015+Residency+Flyer.jpg" width="494" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1621305244814731/" target="_blank">I</a> made this flyer! I do love clip art! Champagne and sardines. Breakfast of champions!</td></tr>
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Two shows I'm performing in this week:</div>
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1. Blue Ribbon Glee Club, Chicago's punk rock a capella choir: Thursday, July 30th at Martyrs, with Spears & Gears (Britney Spears steampunk cabaret cover band), Eli August at the Abandoned Buildings. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/856432931108281/" target="_blank">Facebook invite here.</a> I'll be performing in both BRGC and Spears & Gears.</div>
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2. Blue Ribbon Glee Club with The Siderunners and Warsaw Vices, Monday, August 3rd, Cafe Mustache. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1621305244814731/" target="_blank">Facebook invite here.</a> I'll be performing in both BRGC.</div>
Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-39437314259580453962015-07-16T00:07:00.001-05:002015-07-16T00:10:41.169-05:00Populist But Also Idiosyncratic: Onto The Next, Next Level<div class="feature" data-feature-name="booksTitle" id="booksTitle">
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<a href="http://quimbysbookstore.mybooksandmore.com/web1/actions/searchHandler.do?key=9781612194462&nextPage=booksDetails&parentNum=12680" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM7BKu5HEjDZzxnTBDWoiUHgZoRMWDo9FrUdKTIGBD_PfVl8Y065tFdVE1jPvce56R3mU4bNfBPaRFOWH37xJ1ZDP0IJHK3vko97Mort0rPZAJpYbo5aAWU5msWbuM5vCYOoeqFHVREw/s640/20150710_123837.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
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Although most things other than printed matter don't sell well at <a href="http://www.quimbys.com/" target="_blank">Quimby's</a>, occasionally people consign CDs and records. We do sell a CD and a record by <a href="http://juiceboxxx.com/blog/" target="_blank">Milwaukee rapper Juiceboxxx</a> that must have been consigned with us around 2006 or so. I don't remember the exact date; I'd have to go back to work at sit down in front of the computer and take a look. Around that time a couple of my co-workers were folks that did a lot of DJing, and so it does not surprise me that we had more to sell at the time that might have been music-related. It tends to be that whoever is employed at the time puts their stamp on the store by reaching out to artists who are in their sphere of interests and acquaintance. Because the store sells a lot of items on a no-risk pay-as-it-sells consignment method, the store sometimes ends up reflecting the interests of the folks working there (at least to some degree).<br />
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Quimby's also sells a lot of art comics, some of which are by Providence, RI-based collective Fort Thunder and their brethren/sistren Paper Rad that garnered acclaim with hip comics enthusiasts and was included Whitney Biennal. At some point Juiceboxxx had some involvement with Fort Thunder; I think he may have dated somebody involved in that art scene and sort of incorporated the art and spirit of it as part of his own artistic expression. He uses Thunder in a lot of song titles and on his blog writes about how he's in the Thunder Zone, etc. It makes sense that Quimby's sells these types of comics as well as music by an artist that in some way has some artistic links to the comics.<br />
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The reason I bring the link up is because of the book I read recently, which was Leon Neyfakh's <span class="a-size-large" id="productTitle"><a href="http://quimbysbookstore.mybooksandmore.com/web1/actions/searchHandler.do?key=9781612194462&nextPage=booksDetails&parentNum=12680" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">The Next Next Level: A Story of Rap, Friendship, and Almost Giving Up</a><i>, </i>which incidentally yes, we do sell it at Quimby's. I read it because I was sent a sample copy by the publisher (</span>Melville House). They contacted the store to tell us one of their authors was going to be passing through town, and would it be OK if he stopped into the store to introduce himself. It's a thing publishers do.<br />
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I'm not sure I would necessarily have moved the book up to the front of my reading queue unless Melville House hadn't sent the author to visit me as well as a sample copy of the book, but I guess that's what publishers want, right? It stands to reason that a publisher would send a sample copy of a book to the person in the bookstore who does the ordering. I'll be honest though: I get sent a lot of sample copies of things from lots of publishers and distributors, and I don't necessarily read them all. If it does catch my fancy, I'll read the book and then sometimes get jazzed about it. Maybe I might even even blog about it. Then if I think it's a good fit for the store, I'll order it to sell because I think the customers might like it too. I might even pimp the book in some way to customers if I'm really into it, which might help sell the book (but not always). This is all exactly what publishers want to happen, and the entire time I am acutely aware of this. Well, guess what? If the book is actually good, then I don't mind this manipulative courting of me as a book orderer and seller. All of this being said, the sample copies of books all the publishers send aren't necessarily always good, and sometimes even if they are, and I order a title for the store, it might not necessarily sell. Sometimes we return books if they don't sell, and it might break my heart because it's a great book. I should also add that often great books sell well in the beginning but eventually the sales taper off because it's not new anymore, and all the people who are going to buy it from us have bought it. What can I do? The public speaks with their pocket books.<br />
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So anyway, Melville House sent me a sample copy of Leon's book, which at the time wasn't out yet (but is now) and then a few days later the author stopped in, who, among other things, is a reporter for Slate. (This particular publisher has sent authors to introduce themselves in the past, and they tend to be fun, arty people who write books that for the most part I like. I feel obligated to add that one time we did an event with a Melville House author who was French and who wrote a kind of steampunky book, and when he did the event he didn't know that the event was one where people were expecting him to read from the book. I guess the French tradition is only to sign books, n'est-ce pas? So I guess he was sort of taken off guard. Mon dieu!)<br />
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The <a href="http://quimbysbookstore.mybooksandmore.com/web1/actions/searchHandler.do?key=9781612194462&nextPage=booksDetails&parentNum=12680" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">The Next Next Level</a> started out as an <a href="https://nplusonemag.com/issue-21/essays/the-next-next-level/" target="_blank">essay in the literary journal <i>N+1</i></a>, the very issue I have in my bathroom. I hadn't made it to that essay yet. In fact, that copy of N+1 has what in the magazine distribution industry call a "faced" cover, meaning that when a newer issue comes out, the covers of the previous issues are sent back to the distributor to prove they didn't sell, the price of which, is credited to the bookstore's account to use against future due invoices. That means the bookseller can take home the old issue with the missing cover. This also means I am perpetually an issue behind in all my magazine reading. If I have a faced mag or lit journal, I consume it with a much more sort of laissez-faire approach; I might get miso soup all over it at the kitchen table while reading it, or I might read it only when I'm in the bath, maybe getting water all over it. Sometimes it gets mildewy before I even get to finishing it. <i>If </i>I get to finishing it. That issue of <i>N+1</i>? Still haven't finished it. But I have gotten to that article since then.<br />
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When I met the author, I was charmed by the author's description of the book. He stopped by before the store opened, and we had a really nice talk. It was one of those discussions that I came away from it intellectually stimulated and totally inspired. Like, you know, Radiolab got mentioned. You know, one of <i>those</i> discussions. The perfect mix of highbrow and lowbrow, where the book was really just a jumping off point for a juicy pop-culture-and-this-is-how-it-relates-to-life sort of things, some of which I wish I'd written down after he left. Why don't I write down this shit right after it happens? And then later I remember so little of it. After I have a good discussion with somebody, I need to go write it all down before it falls away. But life does not unfold that way. I was at work, for one thing. (But! Also! Another point! Why do I always feel the need to document stuff? I've always been this way. I remember once as a kid deciding that it was important that I write down all the animals I could think of. And then I had anxiety about how overwhelming of a task it was. What was I going to do with the list anyway? Submit it for review to <i>The Atlantic</i>?)<br />
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BUT ANYWAY (again), ("anyway" should be tattooed on my body somewhere; it is my anchor for pulling me back into the main point of my articles, essays and conversations), the author told me about the book, which comes out of his personal experiences with Juiceboxxx, who he knew growing up as a teenager in the music scene in the Midwest. Leon goes on to have a very adult-y adult life and Juiceboxx continues onto an arty artist life. There's stuff about what happens when their paths cross and then don't cross and then cross again and so on. And it's kind of a coming of age book too. Later, after I read the book, I realized the book is kind of a meditation on living a life of art versus leading the life of one who <i>consumes</i> the art.<br />
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By the end of the discussion I had with the author, I was like, <i>Maybe I better go spend some time with this music and with this book, </i>and Leon said he would send me some links to get the real flavor of the music (I guess Juiceboxxx's amazing live performances are what really pulls people in initially), one of which was a Juiceboxxx performance on Chicago community access TV show <i>Chic-a-go-go</i> (one of the many projects of zinester/writer/auteur Jake Austen). This performance made me laugh, because one of the many awesome things about <i><a href="http://www.roctober.com/chicagogo/" target="_blank">Chic-a-go-go</a></i> is the fact that it's a kids show with performances that are kid-friendly but not necessarily directed <i>at</i> kids, the upshot being that punk bands will play but there will be little kids roaming around all over the place during the performance, often not necessarily even paying attention to the performers, which makes for hilarious and surreal viewing.<br />
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So then of course I looked/watched/listened to Leon's links and <a href="http://open.spotify.com/user/quimbys/playlist/3KLmb3jler70LU6doAWCMs" target="_blank">made a Spotify playlist</a>, listened to the Juiceboxxx stuff we had at work (OK, maybe not the record; I'd have to lug that home where the turntable is, and I never think of it when I'm at work). It reminded me of a more sort of right-brained MC Lars, and there were some excellent jams that are definitely going on some future mixes. But even if I didn't like the music I probably still would have liked the book, because like really good writing, even if the topic isn't something that jazzes you, if the writing is compelling it doesn't matter. That Nick Hornby book <i>Songbook</i>? Great writing about music. Great writing, period. But the actual songs when you listen to them? Meh. But I'm alright with that.<br />
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<span class="a-size-large" id="productTitle">There are many hilarious and pithy things in this book: the description of the difference between "genius" and "critic," how the author's wife leaves the room whenever he start talking about Juiceboxx, and the discussion of what name to exactly call Juiceboxxx (Juice? Mr. Juice?) (In an e-mail to Leon I suggested Olivia Newton-Juiceboxxx. I should add that Sir Juice-a-lot would also be awesome.)</span><br />
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<span class="a-size-large">When I told Leon that I found parts of the book really funny, he thanked me and said that it does not come naturally to him, which I found endearing. He also, in his book, talks about something else he doesn't feel natural doing, and that is dancing, which although I am a dance maniac, I still enjoyed his writing about it. On page 85 he writes</span>:</div>
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<i>Part of the problem might be that it strikes me as deranged and unethical to be moving around in ways that basically force the people in my immediate vicinity to imagine me having sex. The rest is that it's not in me, just like loving "Raw Power" isn't in me, as if I'm missing the receptors necessary to truly connect with music and with other people using nothing but my "body."</i><br />
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<i>As you can see, I can't even use that word without putting scare quotes around it. It just feels gross to me, and reminds me, in an ironically visceral way, of how left out I have always felt in situations in which I was invited to undergo some physically transcendent collective experience.</i><br />
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Yessssss!! While it is true that I LOVE dancing <a href="https://ddppchicago.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">(and even help run an all-lady dance party on Wednesday nights),</a> it is also true that I am never comfortable where dance parties turn into everyone running in a circle during one of those new-folk-clap-along-jamborees, because it makes me super self-conscious that I'm supposed to look like I'm feeling ecstatically joyous; the self-consciousness I feel during it is more potent then the joy I'd supposedly be getting out of it; I can't seem to get out of my head on those type of scenarios. And I totally understand how for some people, it's really uncomfortable being commanded to dance, especially if you don't do it regularly or don't have a lot of moves in your arsenal.<br />
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I will also add that I'm not into being imperatively commanded to clap along/hoot/holler when a performer demands it from the stage. (I will only clap and hoot and holler of my own accord, thank you.) I will never respond when a performer asks for <i>the ladies in the house to scream</i> or when they shout, "I CAN'T HEAR YOU." I don't <i>do</i> call and response. Call me entitled, but I paid to see <i>them</i>, not to <i>interact</i> with them. That is, interact with them in any way other than enjoying their performance.<br />
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On page 87 I love this discussion of "dance punk" bands like LCD Sound System and how they're popularity was interesting because it suddenly became cool for indie rock fans to really "have fun" in a way that was about dancing, as opposed to just enjoying the music (although yes, I do like LCD Sound System). This made Leon feel guilty because he didn't enjoy dancing, which somehow made him feel like he wasn't enlightened. He felt a little betrayed by alternative culture. Here's the part I <i>really</i> like:<br />
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<i>...The day I realized that the imperative to only ever follow your gut and never think about anything amounted to a kind of bullying -- was the day I finally became a well-adjusted, happy adult.</i><br />
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THANK GOD, somebody had to say it. "Follow your gut" in the context of "just let it go and dance" is not that easy for everybody. And I'm saying this as someone who who both leads weekly dance parties and meditates for 20 minutes twice a day. I'm not denying the existence of intuition, I'm denying the effectiveness of commanding people to "just don't think about anything."<br />
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On pages 104 and 105 Leon writes about Juiceboxxx's blog (where Juiceboxxx talks about the type of music he's really into, and how detail-oriented that interest manifests: ecstatic descriptions of mixes, recorded ephemera, etc.) He uses Juice's interests as they manifest on his blog as an example to illustrate the difference between "taste" and "preferences," Juice being the rare breed of someone who has the former though most people have the latter:<br />
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<i>As far as I'm concerned, this is pretty much the definition of having taste. And to be clear, when I say "taste" I'm not talking about refinement but sensibility: an idiosyncratic but consistent mechanism that draws you to certain things in the world and motivates you to seek them out. Most of us don't have such a mechanism: instead, we have preferences, meaning we stick our heads out of our holes every once in a while, inhale whatever books, movies, music and TV shows are in the air as they fly past us in the form of Twitter links and magazine articles, and then decide what of it we like and what we like less. This is why, ultimately even those of us who self-identify as being well-informed and engaged in culture end up being into more or less the same stuff as all our friends and acquaintances.</i><br />
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This is probably true for me. I think most of the time, my "preferences" rule over my "taste" (do I even have any taste? I have begun to really question that). I guess sometimes taste will win the fight when I get really obsessed with something, but for the most part I'm so inundated with different types of media offerings (books, music, movies, etc.) that just sifting through it doesn't lend me time to get obsessed with something in particular, as of late anyway. Maybe I'm just obsessed with the sifting process.<br />
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On page 129, Leon talks about Juiceboxxx DJing:<br />
<i><br />Someone on Twitter, he remembers, said recently that a great DJ "keeps the girls dancing and the nerds Shazam-ing...the point being that the perfect DJ mix is populist but also idiosyncratic.</i><br />
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The perfect DJ mix is "populist but also idiosyncratic." YESSSSSS. So true. On Wednesday dance mixes I've noticed that successful dance mixes are ones that have both songs or artists people might sort of recognize but make sure to not have tracks that pander -- it's a fine line. When I DJ if I'm going for a populist angle, I might pick well known artists but lesser known songs by them. If it's a song that's been played before (yes, there's a database of everybody's songs played), I try to pick a remix or mashup of it -- just some version of it that is different. People want recognizability but they also want novelty. "Populist but also idiosyncratic."<i> </i>I've been using this quote a lot lately. It comes up in discussion of mixes, what songs to select for performing at karaoke or with the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/blueribbongleeclub" target="_blank">Blue Ribbon Glee Club</a>, just, like <i>everything.</i><br />
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In a lot of books I read the topics in the book end up being just sort of case studies about whatever the overarching theme the book is really about. I assume it isn't like the author is like "I have this point to make! And this music/movie/TV show I'm writing about illustrates my point perfectly!" Most likely, they're really into something, and when they're writing the book or essay about it, whatever that overarching "point" comes to be is usually the last thing that crystalizes -- the "SO WHAT" of the piece, as one of my teachers once said, the SO WHAT being the part of the piece that says why the point they're making is important (such as "this novel subverts the role of bla, bla, bla, which is important because culturally, we tend to" and so on). I think that may be one of the reasons I enjoyed this book so much was that Juiceboxxx was in some ways, almost incidental to some of the observations the author was making about life, media consumption, personal growth, and so on.<br />
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I think <i>Next, Next Level</i> is being promoted as being the sort of book that's in line with Chuck Klosterman or Carl Wilson's <i>Let's Talk About Love</i>, which I can totally see. It is true that I enjoy both, so I guess it would stand to reason that I'd like this one too.Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-74276440063839560612015-06-16T21:08:00.002-05:002015-06-16T21:09:07.402-05:003 Songs, 3 Writers, June Edition!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.quimbys.com/blog/store-events/offsite-quimbys-night-at-livewire-lounge-3-songs-3-writers-reading-about-those-songs-628/" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGM7G7sXkWTyFf1GmgNBAPWHCbyz2bk40NQ-uw-jICP47Ze7F0E1QibIHvFTXLUOpDtAuOo8N90npH_fD8O5O1Syi3ap2dTNG2fcT01Ja8AQDizJZp3Ksn5GusNItoHlm5uykFTjRVrg/s640/3+songs+flyer+June+2015.jpg" width="492" /></a></div>
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The most recent flyer I made for the next <i>3 Songs</i> event at LiveWire Lounge, sponsored by Quimby's Bookstore. The last <i>3 Songs</i> went so well, here's another one! I'll be MCing and also performing with <a href="http://www.quimbys.com/blog/tag/blue-ribbon-glee-club/" target="_blank">the Blue Ribbon Glee Club.</a> Sunday, June 28th. An early show at 6pm! When it's over you'll have your whole night ahead of you!</div>
<br />Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-18198770746713558402015-06-08T13:35:00.003-05:002015-06-08T16:17:19.181-05:00Unlimited Possibility, Collective Effervescence & Me Asking Andrew WK About The Party Bible<br />
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<a href="http://quimbysbookstore.mybooksandmore.com/web1/actions/searchHandler.do?key=9781623567149&nextPage=booksDetails&parentNum=12680" target="_blank"><img alt="http://quimbysbookstore.mybooksandmore.com/web1/actions/searchHandler.do?key=9781623567149&nextPage=booksDetails&parentNum=12680" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCupcagMsitxIFgPtZiPnyDmUtJA5i2fpWhPON5zXZ1_Q26pU9lv4KwXdDPA5ZcMFkMrjX4K1p2WZ__1oSnMJt6iubO7u9biQ8Werh3sbB0VRpDK1sB0NUzNHVY_MWA7ia5ZbFu3NMBg/s320/igetwet.jpg" width="233" /></a></div>
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I need to stop waiting so long before posting stuff I liked from books I read and the time I finish the book, because by the time I get to posting, so much time has elapsed that it's almost like I didn't read the book at all. On the other hand, when I see what I marked in the book that I liked, because so much time has elapsed and I've forgotten what it was that I liked, that I am delighted by what I marked because clearly, those things being marked by me, were pre-screened for the present me by past me, and I know my own taste. What a convenient way of pre-screening books for myself!<br />
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So in preparation for meeting Andrew WK when he was in town last, not only did I spend some quality time with his oeuvre, I also read <a href="http://quimbysbookstore.mybooksandmore.com/web1/actions/searchHandler.do?key=9781623567149&nextPage=booksDetails&parentNum=12680" target="_blank">Phillip Crandall's <i>Andrew WK's I Get Wet</i> from the 33 1/3 series</a>. I liked how funny it was, and how he talked to a bunch of people from AWK's life. There's some good oral history stuff too.<br />
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One quote I liked in particular was from Spencer Sweeney, artist and early supporter (credited for "Technical assistance" on the <i>I Get Wet 10th Anniversary Special Deluxe Edition</i>), this on page 105):<br />
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"We were trying to come up with the definition of magic one time. What I was able to come up with at that point is, it's possibility. So the gray area is the area of unlimited possibility. And possibility is the true magic. A part of Andrew's philosophical standpoint of maintaining this space--occupying this gray area--is the area of questioning. Even though that may be something that many people may find frustrating, because then you have to apply energy to look for answers or truths of explanations, it also maintains the space of absolute possibility. And that is where you can find the magic."<br />
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This quote is basically about keeping an open, curious mind in collaborative atmospheres, when the right type of exploratory thinking is encouraged. Happy accidents, serendipitous connections, unanticipated contributions -- these things are the type of things that can occur in this magical "gray area" of possibility. Now if only I could find a way to make every interaction I have with people feel this way. You know what the problem is? We are not playful enough with each other. Just throwing that out there. We need more play. Or more partying, I suppose, since we are talking about the king of partying.<br />
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This seems like as good a moment as any to share the snippet of video where I asked him about his book, <a href="http://pitchfork.com/news/52446-andrew-wk-to-publish-a-book-the-party-bible/" target="_blank"><i>The Party Bible</i>,</a> <a href="http://pitchfork.com/news/52446-andrew-wk-to-publish-a-book-the-party-bible/" target="_blank">which was announced back in 2013-ish</a>. The book is not out yet, so I asked him about it. When he answered, I regretted asking him the question the way I did, but he was super nice.<br />
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I felt like a goofball and I cringe a little when I watch myself in this:<br />
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But so enough of that. I can't say much about the rest of the interview because it's for something else that is for a different website that hasn't launched yet, but I will say that he was very kind, and so was everybody in his crew.<br />
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Another quote I like is on page 121. Crandell was talking about a friend's love for AWK after hearing his music only once:<br />
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"...whoever made <i>that thing </i>that stirred<i> this feeling</i> has to be a friend. Music fosters the environment where thrills and emotions thrive, and to deny a kinship along the way is defeating music's purpose and ignoring its potential."<br />
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Yesssssssss.<br />
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I feel like it's one degree past that feeling you get when you read someone's book or zine or comic or see their stand-up or listen to their podcast and you love it, and you're like "This person and I totally click. We would be awesome friends"? It's like that. But with music.<br />
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But it's not totally just that; it's feeling a kinship with someone, which isn't quite being friends with them, it's <i>feeling an affinity with</i>.<br />
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Whatever, you know what I mean.<br />
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And finally, my favorite part is this thoughtful moment on pages 144-145. Courtesy of Barbara Ehrenreich's 2006 <i>Dancing In the Streets</i>, Crandall talks about dancing, and how it may have evolved out of people tricking predators by making many people look like one huge scary beast. These synchronized movements create a communal feeling, which explains dancing and its communal party-like atmosphere that it creates. Also courtesy of Ehrenreich, Crandall writes about Emile Durkheim's term "collective effervescence" and Victor Turner's idea of <i>communitas:</i><br />
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"Collective effervescence, 'the ritually induced passion or ecstasy that cements social bonds,' forms what the sociologist said is the basis for religion. Turner, the book notes, recognized collective ecstasy as something more universal and an expression of what he called <i>communitas</i>, 'the spontaneous love and solidarity that can arise within a community of equals.' Ehrenreich says both concepts reach toward a group-uniting concept of love, but that the 'love that binds people to the collective has no name at all to speak.'<br />
We submit: PARTY!"<br />
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So, so, so good. At my next shindig I'm totally quoting French sociology while playing <i>Party Til You Puke</i>, because that's how I party. That's how I liked my books, and that's how I like my parties. Oh! Oh! And!At my next party I'm totally shovelling peanut butter Combos in my mouth and quoting snippets from the note on AWK's computer desktop between roughly the years 2001 to 2008: "DON'T BE A FUCKING WIMP. BE STRONG," "COMPASSION AND UNDERSTANDING" and my favorite: "BE INVINCIBLE AND LIFT WEIGHTS."<br />
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You'll be thrilled to know that was on pg 155. Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-72685925604281190712015-06-03T23:25:00.001-05:002015-06-03T23:26:20.513-05:00Potent Magic Is Mine!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm7nfgvphNycfMmqreWRL9DdtMAkzU_YjLQdukcD2kphnvUubRyOvUKAZyRDVk0UlzWcx0b6_9sAgWf9mSqc8unAnYM9ZLeIOhjmBHJUHZFQLy3ynm_XBbfB8vW_cP4nck6UdKm30CyA/s1600/Ecst+Witch+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm7nfgvphNycfMmqreWRL9DdtMAkzU_YjLQdukcD2kphnvUubRyOvUKAZyRDVk0UlzWcx0b6_9sAgWf9mSqc8unAnYM9ZLeIOhjmBHJUHZFQLy3ynm_XBbfB8vW_cP4nck6UdKm30CyA/s320/Ecst+Witch+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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So I belong to this group where we get together and every month a different member of the group presents something, usually of a mystical nature or at least something kind of "forbidden knowledge"-y. Sometimes we have guest speakers come in. One month we had Australian witch/pagan/mystic/writer/teacher Gede Parma talk. I bought one of his books from him and had him sign it. It was <i>Ecstatic Witchcraft: Magick, Philosophy & Trance in the Shamanic Craft</i> (Llewellyn, 2012).<br />
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Lately I've kind of had to kind of,<i> get over myself</i>, because there are all these folks significantly younger than I, you know, like, <i>teaching me stuff</i>. It's humbling, but I have to put myself in the mode of "Whatever, we're all just everybody sharing what we've all learned, it's cool." Plus, if someone <i>has</i> spent more time studying or doing something, one might say that actually, they <i>are</i> older than another person is in that field, in a manner of speaking. Like if I've spent sixteen hundred hours studying yo-yo tricks and you have not, I am older than you in the field of yo-yo-ing. P.S. I have spent <i>no</i> time in the field of yo-yo-ing. P.P.S. Strictly speaking that is not 100% true. Allow me sometime to tell you about the phase I went through in high school where I carried around a yo-yo everywhere to unroll at any given moment because I thought it made me look quirky but really I just looked like an asshole. P.P.P.S. I could no tricks on a yo-yo other than make it go up and down, the same way I learned no tricks on a skateboard other than stopping, starting and going down the street.<br />
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But so anyway. I listened to Mr. Parma talk and was taken with a couple things. 1) He does not pepper his speech with lots of likes/ands/ums/totallys the way that lots of flakey Victorian Trading Company pagan-y types do. To be fair though, I too also pepper my speech with lots of likes/ums and totallys and I have been known to order things from the Victorian Trading Company. 2) Mr. Parma is extremely articulate. His word choice was so poetic that many times I thought <i>Maybe I should be writing this down but I'm having a nice head buzz taking this all in</i>, which is how I feel when I'm really in the moment enjoying a stimulating performance that I don't want to end. He kept saying things (none of which I can remember now, the talk being eight months ago) that seemed like really good little singular quotes that belong on a post-it somewhere in my life (on the fridge? on the computer? on a bumper sticker? on a social networking platform?). So all I am left with now of the talk was the memory that it was awesome and poetic but with no lasting lessons learned. If you asked me to tell you what the talk was about, in trying to describe it, I'd just sound like I was caught in a <i>the game is up!</i> kind of a way being pretentious, trying to show off, all like <i>I go to talks! </i>but am caught revealing my inability to understand what the talk was about.<br />
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Let the record reflect though, that I <i>did</i> understand what the talk was about, I was just too much in the moment to be taking notes and pictures. (This is how I know it was a really good event; there were no pictures of it. The mark of any good event is that there are no pictures. At a good party for example, people are too busy enjoying themselves rather than whipping out a device to document the experience, devices at parties being the crutches of emotionally lazy people unwilling to even try to make a connection with other humans. The mark of a good party? No pictures.<br />
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I want to be one of those people who has spiritual experiences and participates in mystical stuff, but my laziness gets the better of me in terms of my participation level in my own home. Sure, I can make an alter, but then that means I have to do something in front of it. Or occasionally clean it. The most spiritual work I think I'm willing to do is read about mystical stuff and meditate twice a day. At this point, the meditating is hardly spiritual; I'm just sitting still doing nothing for 20 minutes at a time; I'm hardly, you know, <i>drawing down the gods</i> when I do it. At best, in my beginner meditation level that I'm still at, I'm reconnecting the circuits in my frontal lobe. But it would be nice to get to some kind of "unified field cosmic consciousness" they always talk about in transcendental meditation (TM). One day maybe.<br />
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And so that brings me to some of my favorite quotes in <i>Ecstatic Witchcraft.</i><br />
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I don't profess to belong to any religious/spiritual affiliation. My spiritual sensibilities are patchworky, and even sometimes fluctuates based on my mood. I take a little of "this" from "that school," a little of "that" from "that philosophy," a little "sprinkle" from that "psychological phenomenon" and so on. (Why I had to use quotation marks on all that is not clear to me.) Sometimes all of it gets tossed out the window, sometimes it changes up based on new evidence (or lack of it), and sometimes I don't know what to think. I'm foreclosed on the topic of things beyond the veil of common consensus reality. But it helps to have a definition of what religion is, and I liked this one Mr. Parma offers on page 81:<br />
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<span style="color: purple;">"Currently I define religion as an externalized expression of spiritual impulse felt and contextualized in community. With this comes agreed-upon terms, ways of conduct, rites and ceremonies, and common cosmologies."</span><br />
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There it is. This is a much better definition than the bland definition of religion like "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods" or "a particular system of faith and worship." I like the looseness of spiritual impulse contextualized by a community, and the working of cosmology into it. Contact OED!<br />
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On the same page, I enjoyed the permission to let go of evaluative process during an attempt to achieve an altered states of consciousness:<br />
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<span style="color: purple;">"...The idea is to let go of any need or impulse to analyze, judge, or evaluate during the process. After grounding and disengaging from energetic conduct (the process itself-both internal and ceremonial), then it is, of course, appropriate and absolutely encouraged that we seek to interpret the experience, and the analytical mind is welcomed back in."</span><br />
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What I like about this is what I remember learning when I learned TM. (To be clear, <i>Ecstatic Witchcraft</i> isn't about TM. This quote is about being in a trance. But I couldn't help but think of applying that quote in reference to my experience as a meditator. And pretty much throughout the book, whenever the author talks about trance in the book, I thought about it as meditating, even though strictly speaking, I don't think that's exactly what he had in mind.) My TM teacher told me to not evaluate the process of meditation while actually meditating, to refrain from telling myself "this isn't working" or "I'm not achieving the state I should be in." Instead, evaluate afterward the meditation. Or better yet, evaluate how the meditation is working by the quality of my time in-between meditation sessions. That should be how one evaluates ones progress in my practice. And that's why I like Mr. Parma's advice to refrain from evaluating the experience while it's still going on.<br />
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I've been told over and over by TM teachers that you don't actually have to "believe" in the good things meditating does for you for it for it to be working, which is one of a few reasons why it is important not to judge the meditation experience while one is doing it. I joked to one of the teachers, "So it's not like I have to say <i>'I believe in fairies! I believe in fairies! </i>to make it work?," and she said that no, I don't have to convince myself. It was frustrating in the beginning; I wanted extreme results right away so I felt like I was supposed to visualize that it was doing something. Now I'm realizing that a) I was probably trying to hard but also b) I'm not sure that the effectiveness of meditation works that way. It's more subtle. But I'm still new at this, so we shall see.<br />
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I also love this quote from page 82 about the function of ego. I know there's a lot of focus on shedding your ego in some types of meditations and religions etc., but I like this thought about the focus of what it does for us:<br />
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"The ability to truly release, surrender, let go let God (or gods) in is vital to successful trance possession. The ego is to be honoured only insofar as it is able to discern, on the mundane level, individuality from one another. Without groundedness we might never be able to recognise personal communion, experience, expression, etc., and this contrast of Self from Self is the essential differentiation that induces ecstatic epiphanies of consciousness becoming at one with universal awareness."</span><br />
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Yeah! This quote reminded me that one doesn't understand how special it is to have an epiphany of <i>universal</i> consciousness unless one actually has an <i>individual</i> consciousness. (Now it would just be nice for me to actually have a quantifiable experience of universal consciousness they always talk about in TM, but whatever, maybe that will happen in my future.)<br />
<br />
And to that end, Mr. Parma writes on the same page (this is in the middle of a description of a ritual, but what I really like is the description of how to talk about a person's individuality):<br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">"In essence, this step concerns itself with the sense of "I am" and individuality held and nourished within a unitive ocean. The "you-light" is the carved and vibrating vessel that your entire self has become at the point in the process."</span><br />
<br />
This reminds me of this really great thing I once heard a rabbi say, something to the effect that a really good family is one that is a complete unit but that which allows each person their moment to be the focus. Each member of the family gets the spotlight sometime, but there is a unified whole. I feel like the best groups of people I've ever been in, whether it's a group in a college class or a one night group at a party, or a band that works cohesively, there's always this shared sense that everybody in the group is integral to the group but knows just the right moment to let each particular person shine, everyone enjoying being both spectators and performers at just the right moments. There are so few situations that I've felt this way in, where the dynamics are just that perfect, and it is truly magical. I am sad when the night has to end, the performance has to end, that people have to go home and go to bed. The fact that these perfect groups that successfully recognize and celebrate the "you-light" of each member while appreciating the whole are so rare in my life means that they're all the more special when they do happen.<br />
<br />
One of the things Mr. Parma writes about was in reference to a quote (pg 121) from another witch, Ravyn Stanfield, who said, in reference to trance possession: "Our bodies are made for this." He writes: <span style="color: purple;">"We are incarnate; body is spirit-all is spiritual; we are designed for the capacity of magickal undertaking. Trance is part and parcel of a well-trained human being. Again-if you can breathe, you can trance."</span><br />
<br />
I like this but replacing "trance" with "meditation." I wouldn't say I go into a trance when I meditate; it's more like a really relaxed state. But particularly what strikes me about this quote is the business about it being a natural thing. The TM world teaches something to the effect that our minds naturally want to go into a state of bliss, that the bliss state is its true state, and that bliss is what we are meant to do. I find this both comforting and maddening at the same time. Comforting, because well, if we're meant to do this, it is natural and means that there actually is a blissful state that exists. And we're hardwired to do it! How delightful! Does that mean there's some sort of blissful intent in the universe?! How delightful! On the other hand, this is maddening to me because I am not always able to access whatever this "bliss" is. Does this mean I am incapable? Am I fucked up beyond that "bliss preprogramming" that I'm supposedly hardwired for? Is my wiring all fucked up and that's why I can't access bliss? And am I fucked up beyond repair? Did I do this to myself? Am I the one person who is incapable etc etc etc? You know, as a "baby meditator" sometimes I think these things. And then sometimes I don't think these things because I might be having a TM session that is closer to the stereotype of what I think a TM session should feel like, and it's great, but I can't always replicate it. And furthermore, I'm not even 100% sure that's the state the same bliss state they talk about in TM practice.<br />
<br />
Also on page 121, I found a nice description on the veil separating us from the otherworld, and that veil is the subconscious. That's nice and satisfyingly science-fictiony, that the subconscious is that curtain: <span style="color: purple;">"Therefore, the shadow forms the edges of the periphery-it is as the subconscious. The veil is the glimmer, or what I like to call the "ripple," that we all feel when we are close to the otherworld."</span><br />
<br />
This quote reminds me very much of the business I hear TM teachers talk about when they're paraphrasing Maharishi (the guy who brought TM to the west, the Beatles bla, bla, bla), in reference to feeling like you're on the edge of going into that TM-y state of consciousness; and the example they always give is "I see the outline of the tree, I can see it's a tree, I know it's not NOT a tree" type of thing, like you can recognize that there's something kind of cosmic or transcendental that's there but you're not quite able to grasp it clearly with your awareness. It's like, the veil is glimmering or rippling but it's not totally apparent how to really experience it. Sometimes when I feel like I might be experiencing something kind of cool when I'm meditating, like when I start to feel really relaxed, there's a moment where I feel like I have to open my eyes and look at the clock to make sure I have enough time to relax into the really good part of it, like to know how much time I have to exist in that space so that I'm not late to work. At some point I realized that if I feel the need to look at the clock and it's early on in the session, that's shorthand for my body telling me I'm getting relaxed. It's kind of like when I was in the dorms in college, before anybody took any kind of recreational drug, they called their parents first, to get that out of the way so they could relax into their drug experience not worried that their parents might call when they were you know, "experiencing a different reality." Me wanting to look at the clock when I'm starting to relax into my meditation is my body telling myself that I'm nervous that I'm going to get so relaxed that I'll lose track of the time I've allotted for the session and then I'll be late for work, but since I'm starting to feel relaxed I just want to take a look at the clock so I know how much time I'll have for feeling relaxed. I know you're asking, <i>Why the hell don't you just use an alarm clock?</i> The reason I don't use an alarm clock is because TM teachers have told me not to for meditating because it shocks your nervous system.<br />
<br />
Another quote in <i>Ecstatic Witchcraft</i> that I liked was about how so many of the problems we make for ourselves are about the feeling we're each incomplete. I like this idea very much, and it's a little like "You had the power in yourself the whole time!"-style of advice but enlarged to encompass a description of one's self (page 178):<br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">"To emphasize the art of healing as the restoration of wholeness...is to give credence to our deepest natures. We are always whole, all of the time; however, we often forget and therefore need to re-member. In other circumstances we become so off-center, off-balance, that the wholeness blurs, and we lose our foundation and footing (the prime cause of so much dis-ease)."</span><br />
<br />
I read that above quote aloud to my smart-ass husband and his response was:<br />
<br />
"I had my tonsils taken out when I was five."<br />
<br />
--which I conquered with the next paragraph, which was:<br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">"We fall and we begin to fear; this erodes our self-esteem, self-honour, and power from within, and we begin to become deceived by the illusion that all is lost. Nothing can be truly lost that is truly yours."</span><br />
<br />
I marveled at the "Nothing can be truly lost that is truly yours" line, at how elegant it sounded.<br />
<br />
Then my husband let loose, "But if you lose your key if it falls in the sewer."<br />
<br />
So there's that. Apparently if your key falls in the sewer it wasn't yours to begin with. Or something.<br />
<i><br /></i>
On page 92 there's this prayer to chant that's part of a technique for restoring the aforementioned wholeness:<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><span style="color: purple;">Call Wild to Wild</span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: purple;">Call Self to Self</span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: purple;">In the circle that lies</span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: purple;">Between the worlds</span></i><br />
<br />
But really I just like it because it reminded me of the line from the poem in <i>Twin Peaks </i>where they go "<i>One chants out between two worlds."</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Although Parma writes poetically, on page 204 there's a really good bit on not feeling like you have to sound like you're speaking in tongues when you're describing a numinous experience:<br />
<br />
<span style="color: purple;">"In having taught channeling to many people now, it seems the first and foremost problem arises when actually speaking or conveying the information received - which is a confidence issue. No one ever has trouble receiving a vision or feeling an intuition; however, many people stumble when they feel forced to express this is a way that will sound cohesive and coherent to their partners. The best way to ensure freedom of flow here is to not judge yourself as you convey. Simply go with the flow of whatever is received and understand that you do not have to sound like some archaic prophetess or Renaissance magician to be an effective vessel or channel thereof."</span><br />
<br />
I like the idea of using this advice for anybody communicating their authentic feelings in any sort of context. Sometimes words don't exist (or we don't have a command of them) for what we're trying to communicate but feelings do, and we should trust them. I'd like to say that we don't have to talk in zen koan riddles to communicate experience as long as we're being honest. I know, I know, easier said than done. I would like to add, however, that at the times that we don't have a grasp on the words to communicate the true message of what we're trying to say, it is the responsibility of the listener to pay attention to the tone of the speaker. They may need to intuit what the speaker is communicating courtesy of the tone, mood and other cues.<br />
<br />
This quote about not feeling like you have to sound like some archaic prophetess makes me think about that sketch in the fourth season of <i>Mr. Show</i> where the metalhead teenager becomes the Dali Lama, and in writing to his metalhead friend back home in response to Van Halen winning a video award reformed-metalhead Dali Lama writes, "And it is good news about Van Halen. Like the lotus, they bloom for you again and again."<br />
<div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqiJ6yDXac0uShMqBx4tbrVFSpUVSYW26rFgT8O1Rq0FMD4eUKDHkAaqPKINwTXEvrb9VpBofQfB4NAeg3yUE2I14GnJZKrg55KLx0wM3DPmR0LyZ7ql7s3bKZECQ5EcPOQRukxQZ4Zw/s1600/Van+Halen+Blossoms.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqiJ6yDXac0uShMqBx4tbrVFSpUVSYW26rFgT8O1Rq0FMD4eUKDHkAaqPKINwTXEvrb9VpBofQfB4NAeg3yUE2I14GnJZKrg55KLx0wM3DPmR0LyZ7ql7s3bKZECQ5EcPOQRukxQZ4Zw/s320/Van+Halen+Blossoms.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And finally, on pg 219, Mr. Parma writes: <span style="color: purple;">"The art of altering consciousness is just as much about shifting paradigms as it is about inducing psychic trance."</span></div>
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I know I'm not the first person to say this of course, but I really do believe that the first step in inducing change in the world is changing ourselves individually. And we do this with personal work, whatever that means for each person. And each person's "personal work" is different. For some folks it's about going into a trance. For others, it's meditating, or maybe even talking stuff out, writing, mulling shit over, blogging, stitching and bitching, podcasting, complaining incessantly to the right people -- whatever it takes, we need to each be doing that for ourselves first.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgG4rcV-0mtcsubfWKdhxcjrNCMZh1n69A9VL9aAuDAoHCUY4uRCo1bKn19UiIlOo3c-K8S_IzdMe_d8XT2ROgFisbe48pWT1jRLRD_mcEYiVsWv-G3mLzuODTSV4u1pyAqdjTEh1KyA/s1600/Ecst+Witch+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgG4rcV-0mtcsubfWKdhxcjrNCMZh1n69A9VL9aAuDAoHCUY4uRCo1bKn19UiIlOo3c-K8S_IzdMe_d8XT2ROgFisbe48pWT1jRLRD_mcEYiVsWv-G3mLzuODTSV4u1pyAqdjTEh1KyA/s320/Ecst+Witch+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="color: purple;">Potent magic be yours! Love, truth and wisdom.</span></i><br />
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Thank you, Australian shaman, for signing my book!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div>
Now tell me, would you more or less likely to have read this blog post if I'd called this blog post "Like the Lotus, Van Halen Blooms For You Again and Again"?</div>
Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-21553702719508080012015-05-29T12:01:00.006-05:002015-05-29T12:02:22.486-05:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1622921587921772/" target="_blank"><img alt="https://www.facebook.com/events/1622921587921772/" border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4GlY1prS7xvr3cJSX2atmCD3O6tD0SGFhRb1MTV_BQROoxbsrNejR5fKT0UhLewe0G3-WMzgGxvNOVgw1zHPnl_qsuaZozxk3Jzg14Fxh_WIHhxHnWits7a6eBgJb7Zf3TIAPSLNmGg/s640/Blue+Monday+flyer+060115.jpg" width="494" /></a></div>
Another flyer I made for our <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1622921587921772/" target="_blank">Blue Ribbon Glee Club residency at Cafe Mustache</a>. This Monday! 6/1/15. Don't miss us!<br />
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The theme of the flyer? Outdated technology. Let's hear it for mashed up silhouette<i> </i><span class="st"><i></i></span>clip art!Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-20592874889804984112015-05-18T01:22:00.000-05:002015-05-18T02:01:48.726-05:00Compatibility, Reality Distortion & Reading the Spine of the Book Over & Over While Sitting On the Toilet<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsoT1AFf6brdrpK_ODZZs2cJ3J7s_mRnGJQpbG_PgmEHZmoePGS1vRFyO9io9qOL_d_-3etveKW8EdlvRIZICBjjFPEhhK0nPZVko5EaIGKJ6fSTYqd5aNVT2ZejrwO09FvxQA0e2pqA/s1600/20150517_233638.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsoT1AFf6brdrpK_ODZZs2cJ3J7s_mRnGJQpbG_PgmEHZmoePGS1vRFyO9io9qOL_d_-3etveKW8EdlvRIZICBjjFPEhhK0nPZVko5EaIGKJ6fSTYqd5aNVT2ZejrwO09FvxQA0e2pqA/s640/20150517_233638.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
<br />
So I read the Steve Jobs biography by <a href="http://quimbysbookstore.mybooksandmore.com/web1/actions/searchHandler.do?key=9781451648546&nextPage=booksDetails&parentNum=12680" target="_blank">Walter Isaacson called just <i>Steve Jobs</i></a>. Why, if I work in a crazy ass bookstore with weirdo art and comics, would I read such a book? It's not something I would normally seek to own except that my husband has a much more corporate job, and he received it as an anniversary gift after being there for a million years. His team signed a card that is still in the book, which I enjoyed using as a bookmark. And I kid you not, the company actually has the prefix "OMNI" in their name, which sounds like something you would put in the name of your major corporation in a movie, almost like a parody. Also, I thought it ironic that he works with a PC computer all day, not a Mac, so it seemed funny to me that they would give him a book about one of the founders of Apple, especially about a man known for his mercurial temperment, but what do I know? This is why I don't work in an office job (though I do spend a lot of my day in front of a computer, which <i>is</i> a Mac).<br />
<br />
Actually though, there is another reason this book made it's way into my hands. When I sit on the toilet the placement of the book is at eye level on the bookshelf, so every time I was on the toilet, I would see the spine of the book over and over every day, <i>Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs</i>. So it eventually made its way into my brain that I had to read it.<br />
<br />
Most of my life I've been an Apple person, though I have had some experiences with owning at least one PC, so I do feel like I can kind of exist in the mid brain between the Apple and PC, which is interesting, because whenever I do those tests to find out if you're right-brained or left brained, I always end up right in the middle. I'm not quite fully logical, not quite fully creative. I'm not fully spatial, not fully verbal, not fully mathematical.<br />
<br />
I spend a lot of my day on a computer at the bookstore or doing stuff on my computer at home which is all Mac-based stuff, though I don't have an iphone. I have an Android, though I do have an iTouch ipod dying a slow painful death. Even my personal device existence is in the corpus callosum between the right brain/left brain Mac vs PC experience.<br />
<br />
If I've just spent all day with technology, much of that time frustrated with how annoying it is, what with our old computers at work and my old computer at home, if I've spent my day being so frustrated in a permanent state of Mercury-in-retrograde technology superfuck, why would I want to come home and immerse myself in a book about Mac computer culture and the founder of it? I have no good answer for this, other than the fact that apparently, maybe the best way to get me to read a book is have it eye level for me when I am on the toilet. (Also, once I started it I couldn't stop, mostly because it was illuminating my experience as a Mac user. <i>Yes, I agree, Steve Jobs! MobileMe did suck!!!!</i>)<br />
<br />
And also, why do I feel like when I talk about a book I have to spend tons of time explaining how the book came into my life?<br />
<br />
Anyway anyway anyway, so, <i>Steve Jobs</i> book at eye level while I'm on the toilet.<br />
<br />
What I really realized, when I finished the book and started rambling on about it to whoever would listen which was nobody because I'm sure it's ponderous to listen to me talk about Steve Jobs, was that the book was really about was the debate between the open system vs closed system. And what I mean by that is that in terms of building your own franken-computers, rebelliously hacking and using different brands of pieces to modify hardware and software, that's called "open system," as in like, <i>open to you to use whatever you want to plug into those open slots and open ports! </i>Then there's the other side of things, the "closed system" which is the designer-customized experience of user friendliness for the consumer. Only things that belong in that "system" are compatible, so you can't go outside that system to hack it with other parts. Macs belong (mostly but not 100% any more) to a closed system, making it difficult to hack. In fact, many Macs you have to have special tools to even open the case, which was not so true of open system old computers where you could open them with something like a screwdriver.<br />
<br />
Before Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple, they came from a goofy prankster background where they'd hack into phone lines with their Blue Boxes and call phone lines across the world for free. And they'd get together with other nerdy computer types and build shit. Woz was the open source, free code type but Jobs was the marketer. So eventually this became an issue.<br />
<br />
I know I'm not the first person to say that the "open system" hacker sensibility seems more rebellious than the "closed system." I'm also not the first person to point out that the Apple campaign of "Think different" is well, flaunting a rebelliousness that is less believable coming from a proprietary "Closed system" type of company, where only Apple things are compatible with Apple things. It seems pretty well, not hacker-ish, not rebellious, totally corporate, total "brand loyalty"-ish to me (though things have become more fluid as of the past handful of years -- I have things that are compatible with both).<br />
<br />
On the other hand, you're not a sheep midlessly following the herd just because you have brand loyalty. What's wrong with good design? A closed system can be a good thing if that system is designed well. Isaacson cites a quote from Woz in regards to this very discussion (pg 497): "Apple gets you into their playpen and keeps you there, but there are some advantages to that. I like open systems, but I'm a hacker. But most people want things that are easy to use. Steve's genius is that he knows how to make things simple, and that sometimes requires controlling everything." Control isn't necessarily a bad thing. Isaacson wrote that part of Jobs' legacy was founding a proprietary system that didn't modify hardware and software or share code: "The hacker ethos would be sacrificed in order to create a seamless and simpler user experience" (pg 562). Well it is true. I do think Macs are easier to use than PCs in terms of where to find stuff and so forth, but then, is that only because that's what I regularly use? My husband, a devoted PC user, probably disagrees.<br />
<br />
The crux of the book (well, one of them anyway. Can there be more than one crux in a book? No. Whatever.) was this concept of "compatibility" both in the computer world but also as a concept. Like our intersections with other people, you know, like communicating, because Steve Jobs, from what it sounds like, was difficult to be with unless you got on his good side or if he liked you. It sounds like he could be a real jerk, hiring and firing at whim, lacking tact, etc. It seems poetic to me that someone who was clearly incompatible with so many people, would create a "closed system" that is incompatible with other third party technologies.<br />
<br />
Many people in Jobs' life that Isaacson interviewed agreed that Jobs had this amazing ability to create a reality distortion field. He'd say something like, "This technology will be available in six months." Everybody would freak out because there'd be no way they'd be able to have the chip ready in six weeks, but because he demanded it, somehow people would figure out a way to come through. Every time I read "reality distortion field" I couldn't help but think of Robert Anton Wilson's concept of the "reality tunnel," which was his theory that everybody viewed things from their own version of reality which shaped how they understood the world; it "tunneled" information in such a way that it was compatible with the way their own already-biased view of the world and themselves. What I want to know is, what if you had a "reality distortion field tunnel" what would it do? Warp the reality around you to actually fit in your view? That would take a powerful person.<br />
<br />
But enough of that. Interestingly, I was at the Apple store for a computer issue, and I got to talking with an employee there, and he said that there is a different biography about Steve Jobs, some newer book, that paints a more sympathetic portrait of Steve Jobs that he suggested I read, citing in particularly, a scene where Jobs sits in his car crying. Shall I read that book too or let this book have the final say? (Jobs did tell Isaacson, to write the book with warts and all, giving him full reign to talk to people from his past and present, no matter what terms Jobs was on with them.) This book however, has a passage I found particularly well, I don't know, petty but hilarious and probably enough to allow me to let this book have the final say, and it's this particular detail: Joan Baez dated Jobs for a while. She said that he announced they should go to a particular store because they sold a red dress he said would look great on her, and then when they got there, not only did he <i>not</i> buy the dress for her but then came out with two shirts for himself. And this was after he was super rich, so it wasn't like he couldn't afford it. Did I also mention that there was some suggestion in the book that the reason he dated her was because she dated Bob Dylon and Jobs loved Bob Dylon? Why didn't Steve Jobs just date Bob Dylan? Would another book on this topic allow me to have these thoughts? No? Well then, I'll stick with this one.<br />
<br />
I enjoyed hearing about Jobs' many weirdo juice cleanses and fasts. He also did hippie-ish things like nomadically traveling, dabbling in cult-like commune-like living situations and creating an alcove in the attic to do acid. It seemed like he was always on the hunt for some type of enlightenment, ecstatic/numinous experience or sublime appreciation. I enjoyed one particular quote (page 49), where Jobs said "I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don't. It's the great mystery." YES and YES. Two points that sprung to mind when I read that were: 1) I recalled David Lynch saying something in some interview or video to the effect that what he feels transcendental meditation does is get one to the place that many religions try to get one to, but that they all have different ways to get there, which is that place of cosmic consciousness that we all have access to and 2) I like that someone can be searching for the "house," wanting and hoping it is there, but understanding that it may not be there at all. And that it is OK to be of two minds about it. Sometimes I believe in religion-y stuff and sometimes I don't.<br />
<br />
Another quote that I really liked was on page 49 where Isaacson quotes Jobs, in reference to his experiences with Eastern spirituality, Hinduism, Zen Buddhism etc. He said something that resonated with me about my experiences with transcendental meditation. Although Jobs may not have been talking about the type of mediation that I do, I have found elements of this to be true in my experience doing it:<br />
<br />
"If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things—that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practice it."<br />
<br />
This is so true. When I first started mediating some months ago, for weeks and weeks I felt frustrated because it seemed like whenever I tried to meditate, it was just making whatever was on my mind bugging me worse. Sometimes it seemed like I was just stewing in whatever was bugging me, marinating. And I would actually feel myself literally warming up, like heat was rising off me. But then over time, after meditating for a few months, I stopped feeling heat rising off me and everything slowing down, in terms of my body temperature. Maybe my pulse and heart rate would slow down (I don't know; I've never measured it when I do it). I have actually started to feel more relaxed when I meditate, but it usually takes the first half of the time of the session for me to get there (I do it twice a day, twenty minutes at a stretch). Sometimes when I meditate it takes fifteen minutes for me just to get my nervous system in order, and it isn't until the last few minutes are where I actually feel good. It's not a cosmic experience for me (yet, will it ever be?) but it is relaxing, gets me feeling recharged, and on occasion, more emotionally clear-headed.<br />
<br />
The fact that it can take more than half of the time of an individual session to get to a helpful place mentally reminds me of an experience I have a lot with physical exercise. That is, I'm not excited to start it but I force myself to, inwardly grumbling. And for much of the workout, I feel like I'm really just warming up. Often I don't start to sort of enjoy it until the last few minutes, and then it's done. And that's not ideal. Ideally, I'd be enjoying it the whole time but we know that's just not how things are.<br />
<br />
The trick is just forcing myself to go do it. With exercising, it's like,<i> just get those shoes on and do it. </i>Or with meditating, <i>just quit what you're doing and put your ass in the chair -- turn off the computer for two seconds and just put your ass in the god damn chair and do it, </i>which seems pretty antithetical to the idea of relaxing with meditation, but that self-talk is really just what happens before I sit in the chair. The part of sitting in the chair is the part about letting go.<br />
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A final quote I'll pull, is suprisingly uplifting considering it is in regards to death. Jobs, knowing how sick he was, how he was going to die sooner rather then later, actually made him more likely to follow his heart and live in less fear of making a fool of himself (pg 457):<br />
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"Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."<br />
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If only we could be in the place of following our heart's authentic propensities without fear even when there is no threat of immanent death.<br />
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It also seems fitting that I have an appointment at the Apple store tomorrow to fix the jack on the back of the Mac Mini that we plug into speakers. Sometimes the sound doesn't feed through it into the speakers unless we take the cord out and plug it back in. And I know it's the computer and not the speakers because I did some trouble-shooting with plugging and unplugging other devices and speakers etc. If that same guy is working there as last time, I can tell him I finished the book and have no plans to read the other one. That is, unless it ends up in the bathroom so I have to continually read the spine over it over while I sit on the toilet.Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-41172249382023951842015-05-14T01:02:00.001-05:002015-05-14T01:05:08.316-05:00On Quotes That Communicate "I Want to Be The Super Awesome Rock Star That You Want to Be Like and That Which Whose Band You Want to Be In"<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-size: medium; text-align: start;">Glasses, Glasses, Glasses, Hair, Hair, Hair, Cute Things, Cute Things, Cute Things</i></td></tr>
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Last night I finished reading <a href="http://quimbysbookstore.mybooksandmore.com/web1/actions/searchHandler.do?key=9781250065995&nextPage=booksDetails&parentNum=12680" target="_blank"><i>Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys.: A Memoir</i> by Viv Albertine</a>, the guitarist from the Slits. I like to read in bed because it helps me get tired, but I was so engrossed in this book that I felt bad about keeping the light on while reading a hundred pages at a stretch deep into the night, because I share the bed with my husband who has to get up early. He says it doesn't keep him up, but I know it would keep <i>me</i> up if someone was sitting in bed reading with the light on, so hopefully not everybody is like me.<br />
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A particularly interesting thing about this book is that after reading it I have a new respect for Sid Vicious. I've noticed that in the past, many of Sid's punk peers have painted him as a doofus (and, based on things bandmates had written about him, I've always gotten the impression he was the type of guy that if he wasn't Sid Vicious, he would be that guy buys Sid Vicious postcards at Spencer's Gifts at the mall). But Viv paints a more sympathetic portrait of him, (although, to be fair, she does paint him as a doofus at a variety of moments, and he seems he'd be an annoying weirdo to be with at times). But here's what sticks out in my mind: for one, he could play a number of instruments and play them not too shabbily, and if need be, he'd stay up all night and learn basslines and have them ready to go in the morning (granted, with the help of speed, and also, granted, very basic basslines for things like Ramones songs, but still...). Secondly, he kind of underplayed his intelligence socially at times, almost like he intentionally dumbed himself down for people at times.<br />
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Also, he has very nice handwriting.<br />
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Ha.<br />
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Here's one of my favorite quotes from the book from page 156:<br />
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(The way I'm quoting it, it cuts off in mid-sentence, because I did a screenshot of the quote that I could actually find it on Google Books without having to type the quote out which was nice, and also, the part I really like of that quote is really this part of the sentence anyway.)<br />
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This quote reminds me of this feeling I have that many guys watch women in bands and instead of being inspired by a female performer and/or wanting to be her, the men think, "I want to possess them" in some way, as oppossed to be that person. And of course, we all rationally know that it's socially acceptable for a woman to want to be like a man but there's a stigma against a man wanting to be like a woman.</div>
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I can't help but think of <a href="https://youtu.be/CTHpfZhfQbk" target="_blank">Sleater-Kinney song <i>I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone</i></a>, which has occupies a similiar space in my head. Some of the lyrics are <a href="http://www.avclub.com/article/sleater-kinneys-i-wanna-be-your-joey-ramone-sound--203498" target="_blank">Sean O'Neal said on avclub about the song (the quote starts with lyrics from the song:</a></div>
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“I wanna be your Joey Ramone / Pictures of me on your bedroom door / Invite you back after the show / I’m the queen of rock ‘n’ roll.” Those lyrics, delivered in Tucker’s tremulous yelp of a voice, are hardly political. Flip the gender, and it’s the sort of stereotypical, dick-swinging boast that could have been made by any dude with a guitar—and that’s exactly what made it political.</blockquote>
I think that quote articulates really well how the desire behind what a performer wants from an audience can load the performance with political meaning.<br />
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It seems appropriate to also mention in this discussion the quote from <i>The Cement Garden</i> where Charlotte Gainsbourg says "Girls can wear jeans/And cut their hair short/Wear shirts and boots/'Cause it's OK to be a boy/But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading/'Cause you think that being a girl is degrading." (Yeah, yeah, that quote was sampled at the beginning of that Madonna song <i>What It Feels Like for a Girl</i>, I know, I know).<br />
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A final note on the second half of the book: Interestingly, the material about what Viv did after the Slits broke up was more compelling to me: getting married, becoming a housewife, trying to conceive a child, going back to school, working in film, battling cervical cancer, coping with divorce and getting back into music and performing. I am interested in what folks do when they have some kind of peak in their lives and then what they go on to do afterwards. I think there's this social expectation that if you get some fame for something and then you leave that field for a different career that somehow you're a failure. It's almost like if you're <i>not</i> famous and you switch careers it's OK, but because the world puts such value on fame, if you <i>are</i> famous and you change your career it's <i>not</i> OK, especially if it's to something outside the spotlight. I guess I liked the second half of the book even more than the first half, more than the <i>we-were-just-punk-kids</i> stuff early in the book. I think this is because people are more interesting as they get older, because they become more complex and have more understanding of the subtleties of things. I guess that makes sense why I am actually happier as I get older.Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53720233830243471.post-53680863855738666442015-05-07T23:31:00.000-05:002015-05-14T01:06:44.334-05:00Download & Reflections On My Most Recent 'Work It Out On the Dance Fla' Mix<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This past Wednesday (5/6/15) I was the DJ for Chicago's <a href="http://ddppchicago.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Dance Dance Party Party (aka DDPP, or when I'm extremely lazy, which is often, I call DDP).</a> I made my mix one long mp3 <b><span style="color: #134f5c; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.lizmasonisawesome.com/http___lizmasonisawesome.com/Sounds/Entries/2015/5/6_Dance_Dance_Party_Party_Workout_Mix_Tape_10_Download.html" target="_blank">which you can stream or download here</a> </span></b>so you can groove on it at your leisure. I find that not only are my mixes composed of songs I want to dance to, I also enjoy running to my mixes as well -- as much as I can say I enjoy running, which is, not a lot, but good music makes a task I don't like doing (running) infinitely better.<br />
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What I am finding is that there are some songs that are good dance songs that are also good running songs, but this is not always true that <i>every</i> song that is good for one is good for the other. By and large I have found that I enjoy strutting down the street to Johnny Marr's solo albums but dancing to them is difficult. This is not surprising to me; I read an interview with him where he said something to the effect that he writes songs that people will feel cool when they're strutting down the street listening to them, which I can totally see. I tried to put his amazing song <i>Generate! Generate!</i> on a trial DDPP playlist. It got high marks for when I was listening to it out running down the street (feeling cool, of course), but in the privacy of my own bedroom, it didn't pass the dance test (so it didn't end up in the dance mix). That is, it was a challenge figuring out how one dances to it. However, one can jump up and down on the bed to it, so it passed the Jump Up and Down On the Bed test with flying colors. I should mention though, that a diploma from that particular university (Jump Up and Down On the Bed U) is pretty useless in the rest of the world.<br />
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A good way to figure out the potential success of a song in a dance environment is if I can easily figure out how to dance to it. If I can't dance to it, it doesn't go on the playlist. I will admit that often I am heartbroken because a particular tune will be a great song, but it doesn't pass the dance test. It breaks my heart when I realize that it will have to go on some other non-dancing mix for a later time. Maybe it will have to be for running only. Killing my darlings! And by <i>darlings</i> I mean, <i>songs I can in no way assume any ownership over writing whatsoever but hope that I, in sharing that I like them with the rest of the world in a personalized and curated context, will communicate my superior taste and skill, </i>which, now that I think about it, is pretty teenager-y of me.<br />
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One final note: I constructed a sound collage that made me chuckle for my first song (the warm up song where you stretch out, not quite moving and grooving just yet), inspired by a particular trend I noticed in contemporary music. It's a montage of parts from songs where they tell you to raise your hands in the air. Sometimes they command you <i>wave</i> them around (like you just don't care), sometimes they demand that you merely <i>raise</i> your hands up, sometimes they want you to <i>throw</i> them in the air. Listening to this collage I made later, I thought, hmmmm, this sounds like something the guy from the <a href="http://evolution-control.com/index.php" target="_blank">Evolution Control Committee</a> would do, which I thought was pretty awesome. That montage? Three fucking minutes long. You're welcome.<br />
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Liz Masonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04074318426973328507noreply@blogger.com0