Hey David Plouffe, Stop Stressing Me Out

I have always been a relatively low-stress individual. This might come as a shock to people who have seen me rant, because rant I do. The fact of the matter is though, that I don’t really get deeply riled up about much of anything. I like to tell myself that it is because I think life is too short, that I have some sort of insight into the brevity and beauty of our existence that most people lack. The fact that I think that this is what I believe almost certainly means that it is false. I also entertain the idea, probably much closer to reality, that I am too stupid to be stressed out. I just don’t know what I should be stressed out about. It follows from this second idea, then, that my main source of stress is the fact that other people are stressed out and I am not stressed out, leading me to believe that I am missing out on something. This stresses me out. This, though, is how a culture of stress works, people who are stressed out stress other people out and so it goes; on and on until we all give up and die of hypochondria. Take graduate school for example. Walk into any graduate school lounge and I guarantee you will hear several people bemoaning the stressed-out fate of being graduate students. “I read for 10 hours today.” “I read for 11 and I didn’t eat anything but top ramen. I am a graduate student. I am so poor. Injustice.” I always walk into these lounges and wonder what in the hell everyone is whining about. Last time I checked, I get paid to teach a relatively easy class and sit in bed and read books. Every once in a while I write a paper and have to figure out how to format something on Word. Other than that I consider my life to be pretty ballin. Does this mean that I am somehow just better at Grad School, that I am some sort of animal that is evolved especially for a graduate school lifestyle? Probably not. This is probably because these people aren’t naturally stressed either–they just get in the habit of saying that they are stressed. It is either work hard, or talk about being stressed so that people will think that you are working hard. Some cultures shake hands. People in our culture now greet one another by wailing about the size of the stack of papers in their inbox, or the climate achangin. How did this whole thing happen? We don’t want to be stressed. Isn’t stress something that we have literally tens of Men’s Health articles telling us how to get rid of?
I clearly don’t have to point out that the political right has been on the stress train for a while. Those people speak a language of indignation that is completely obscure to the uninitiated. The best thing is they speak the language of embattlement even when they are clearly winning. Commies are coming to get your guns and make your son a tranny! Run! Also: this Taylor Swift song! This is masterfully done.
It is not just the ranty indignation of FOX, though. A liberal arts education in our country consists, to a large extent, of telling you what to be stressed out about. You didn’t know that you were a racist? Well you are. Start being stressed out. Holy shit, you didn’t know that Bolivian people are being shit on by global capitalism? Write me a properly indignant paper. If you take enough humanities classes, the whole process takes on a life of its own and you start going home and stressing your family out about their heteronormativity and their support of factory farming. They respond by watching Glenn Beck. I get about 9000 emails a week from David Plouffe telling me about all kinds of things that I should be stressed out about.

But, you say, those are really real things/problems! Yeah, but how does my being stressed out help? In fact, how has this model of education–the list of things to be stressed/indignant about–helped the world for the better? Not at all. Because stress does not equal action. We have confused the cause and the effect. If I was Nelson Mandela, I would be stressed out, but that would be because I was fighting for some goddamn rights. Stress as effect of action. But now we think that somehow if we are stressed (indignant) enough, action will result. This is the opposite of the truth. What will result is stress eating, bad skin and general, paralyzing stupidity.

Here is what I am saying: the world has some really real problems, decide what you want to do about them and do it. Don’t talk about it, don’t write a paper for your undergraduate sociology class about it. Just do something about it and then go dancing.

Make a Baby with Lucky Dragons

Lucky Dragons are currently the most awesome thing in my world and almost singlehandedly making me want to move back to LA. Them and Korean BBQ.

Tracy Morgan is a Comedic Genius, Maybe Normal Genius

What I See

The world according to Nietzsche in 3 sentences: humanity is hindered by the fact that the weak and cowardly will always fear and hate the strong and the great. The weak, who always outnumber the strong, will try to find ways to overpower the strong through connivance, making their strength appear as wrong or evil. This is called ressentiment. He wrote most of this in the late 1800s and by 1889 he was hugging a horse in the streets of Turin and dreaming of being Jesus

At least musically, Nietzsche’s assessment of the state of things could apply very well to our present day. Walking through the venues of SXSW last March, I could not help but feel that ressentiment had won the day. One word (two words): Vivian Girls. The Vivian Girls are the posterpeoples for the current indie rock lay of the land. For those of you who are not Pitchfork or Fader readers, let me quote their FUCKING WIKIPEDIA PAGE , “an all-girl American indie rock band from Brooklyn, New York.” You can go ahead and click on one of those links to figure what in the world this indie rock music is. One fun fact that the Wikipedia fails to mention is that these chicks cannot play their instruments. Like at all. I saw them 4 of the 9000 times they played in Austin and I swear to jesus every time the guitarist chick tried to crap her way through a guitar solo I was worried the poor dear was going to drop the guitar or break out into tears. It is sort of like an entire band of Meg Whites. Sound great? It isn’t. “But they have spirit,” you say. “They are punk rock,” you say. “They allow me to both be an emo post-dude and cultivate a vague misogyny because they affirm my prejudice that girls can’t play guitar,” you say. The point is, this is what the culture of ressentiment loves: bands that are essentially indistinguishable from the audience. Pick any beardo from the audience of a Vivian Girls concert and I would lay money that he can play as well if not better than the band.  And this is exactly the fantasy that these beardos nurse: “Man, I could be in a blog-famous band if I wanted to. As soon as I get my shifts covered at Subway and get my screen printing business off the ground and finish my associates degree in Critical Film Studies, then…” We have lost the desire to witness greatness. We no longer want to go to a show and be blown away by the fact that another human being can do these things, make this noise, that we can’t even imagine. No. The Vivian Girls, besides making the same faux-faux samey sounding pap that has been commissioned by Urban Outfitters for half a decade, doesn’t even personally threaten us. Their ineptitude comforts us, because we know that we don’t have to fear being called out for our shittiness anymore, because we have abolished the criteria by which we would be found wanting. The weak exalting their weakness as a virtue.

It is no mistake that the interior cover art of the Dirty Projectors album features a very moustachioed Nietzsche staring into the eyes of a very bemused Dave Longstreth. The Dirty Projectors are a great band. They are not concerned with trying to pass shittiness off as authenticity or dumb it down for the masses.

The press’ approach to the greatness of the Dirty Projectors has been typical.  Rob Harvilla’s article in the Village Voice bemoans the fact that the lyrics to “Stillness is the Move” were written using a compositional technique involving an Excel spreadsheet and a random sampling of pop-clichés, rather than in an “honest, authentic way”: “Ah, cripes. For such a fantastic song to have been crafted in such a contrived, arms-length, almost satirical way is a real drag. Let’s not get to feeling all superior to those pop clichés, everybody. The song’s strength lies in its directness, its unfettered joy—an Excel spreadsheet? Really?” Harvilla, assumes, I suppose, that the correct way to compose lyrics is to go into the woods and convene with one’s soul? Somehow, the idea that the band is not “just like us” takes away from the greatness of the song? This line of thought just goes to show that what we want out of music is not great music, but the reassurance that their lives and thoughts somehow are comparable to ours.

The New York Times article is entitled “The Experimental, Led by the Obsessive” and portrays Dave as a pretentious dick, as Ben Sisario plaints: “All that cleverness, though, can veer toward pretension. The artwork of “Bitte Orca” features Mr. Longstreth gazing into the eyes of Friedrich Nietzsche, and in a few minutes of conversation he drops calculated references to Monteverdi and James Joyce.” OMG. Who the fuck is James Joyce? What a weird loser this Dave Longstreth character is. The article also includes what appears to be an attempt to get Dave arrested for white slavery:  “’I remember being in the basement of this house in Bed-Stuy with Dave and a metronome for hours and hours,’ [Amber Coffman] groaned of one session. But when asked if Mr. Longstreth was ever too demanding, her tone quickly picked up.” “When asked if Mr. Longstreth was ever too demanding”? What the crap is this? Ace investigative reporter Sisario is attempting to find some way in which we can impugn Longstreth’s character, either by being pretentious (a powerful charge coming from the New York Times, voice of the proletariat) or being “obsessive” (hard working, imprisoning women in basements).

Basically we have here the response to intellectual greatness in this day and age–we attempt to belittle them for being different (better). Here’s a crazy thought: Dave Longstreth is nothing like us. Nothing. We have nothing in common. I have it on good authority that dude used to get up and play the same 5 second loop of R. Kelly for 3 hours until he could sing it exactly like Kells. Here is another though. In order to be great, you have to be willing to do crazy shit. You have to work hard and you have to be different, you have to either be born better or make yourself better. Have you heard “Remade Horizon”? It is very difficult. You must be willing to spend some time in the basement if you want to be great. It is not just about growing a beard and going to a lot of shows.  You know who knew that? Nietzsche. Who know who else knew that? Black Flag. The opening to “Rise Above” was written about the LAPD, but sung by Dave Longstreth in his trademark warble, it could be interpreted a little differently: “Jealous cowards try to control/They distort what we say/Try to stop what we do/When they can’t do it themselves.“

I Love tehn

Here is the thing about computer music: it is very easy to get caught up in doing weirdo, off the wall crap–making a MIDI controller out of paper, food, etc.–and forget that making good-sounding music still takes time+energy. That is part of why I am so partial to the monome. It seems to strike the perfect balance of simplicity and infinite possibilities. Witness the jams of one of the creators of monome, tehn. Totally listenable, which is too often a shock these days. This set is taken from the Monomeet, a get-together of monome enthusiasts from around the country and the world.

Come to AMODA Tonight!

Check out what the h0mie Eric Archer has been up to:
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=6345584&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

four tiny drum machines from ALH84001 on Vimeo.

OMG! Real living drum machines!

ZOMBIELAND? JULES FROM SUPERBAD?

I am not sure how I feel about zombies as monsters (I will always be partial to vampires, even though someone informed me that that might make me gay) but I feel like I owe it to Woodie Harrelson to see this movie.