Respect or Sexism?

Okay, so I feel like maybe I should call him out on this but don’t want to go in rage-a-blazin with only my self-righteous entitled impulse where he has a long thought out and heavily favored by his fanbase idea-stream.
The other night, I was at a house show and an artist for whom I have a mad amount of respect for (as an artist) and a decent amount of respect for (as a person, don’t really know him that well), prefaced one of his songs by saying the following:
“After years of making mistakes, I finally realized a tough lesson, that all girls—all girls—want to be treated like a princess.”

Those were his words, and as I heard them, I couldn’t help but think about all the many feminist blogs I’ve been reading these past couple months. I’m still new at this whole thinking-outside-my-male-dominated-inequal-culture mindset, but I knew something felt off. Looking around the room, I saw the mostly conservative Christian male members of the audience nodding vigorously in that “oh you know it brother, amen” kinda way you get used to if you grow up around that sorta thing. I also saw, though, a large amount of the females in the crowd looking down or away or really sad as he went on.

Now, I know enough about this singer to grasp at his best intentions, but if what he meant was to show these women respect than I’m pretty sure he missed it. “All girls” is troubling both as a generalization and how it’s usually not a good idea to use to the word with the more young connotation in an effort to sound wise and learned in how to respect said group.

The whole conversation sounded more like he was talking to the guys about having finally figured out the real secret to those mysterious females, as if once you know this one trick then it’s all easy street from here on out. But that’s not how real people work, is it?

And here’s why: people are never that simple. The idea that all females want to be treated like a some unspecific fairy tale ideal of an outdated patriarchal(remember he didn’t say queens but princesses), monarchical (you didn’t earn respect, you were born into it), and at very least vague (are we talking Princess Peach or Princess Mononoke or Princess Diana here) construct just was not in any way settling for me.

He proceeded to break into a very catchy, grooving, well-performed, obviously talent-laden rendition of a song about wanting to express affection for a female he liked (and referred to as baby, but maybe that’s just a pet-peeve of mine). However, he wasn’t sure if he should maybe just keep it to himself out of fear of “respecting her”. How it came across was more like out of fear of tainting her pure and delicate sensibilities. This honestly sounds more like the fundamentalist bearing that all males are sex-crazed maniacs and all females are pure and clean-minded prudes.

Does he actually think all the things that he conveyed with his speech and song? I doubt it, but perhaps that’s just another reason we need to think more about what we’re really saying about gender-identity, sexual identity, sex, love, relationships, and humanity in general with our songs, poems, and speeches.

After all, I don’t think all guys or all girls ALL necessarily want to be treated a certain way, but I’d bet that treating every single human being like a human being is a great place to start. That’s respect.

Wannabesandhasbeens

Hello Internauts,

Lately, I've been thinking a whole lot about what the point is in pursuing this dream of mine.

Any artist, if they really care about it, will probably tell you that what they want is to be able to make a living doing what they love- creating and sharing that creation with those that can appreciate it and get something honest from it.

We all want to spend our time doing something worthwhile. We want our lives to be significant, to mean something more than simply doing what we must to survive day to day. Or maybe that's just me (though in a rare case, I doubt that).

I've met so many people with such similar goals in my life, but especially since moving down to Nashville. Everyone wants to "make it big" to "break" into "the scene". Everyone wants something tangible to say that their life and their art is worthwhile, and unlike folks pursuing certain other goals, artists have a history of driving themselves mad and even to death in this pursuit.

Thus why I now live in a town of wanna-be's and has-beens. It's never good enough and it's never going to be good enough. It's the thrill of the chase, the desperate hunger for not the perfect step so much as always the next step.

We delude ourselves, though, with the very tangible idea of numbers. If we're making enough money or if we're playing enough shows or if we're selling enough records, then we're successful. Then we've made it. Then our art is finally as worthwhile as we always believed it could be.

Sure, there are formulas for this, how to write the perfectly catchy, marketable song that will be a hit just long enough to make bank before fading into obscurity. But that's how you get "Call Me Maybe" not "Like a Rolling Stone".

Honest art--that can last and grow and affect change and make people really think--comes not from a place of shallow satisfaction but from a place of deeply constant dissatisfaction.

For instance, throughout most of human history, singing a song wasn't a way to become rich or a celebrity, it was a way to express oneself.

As much as I really want to be able to leave my job and spend all my time working on creating and expressing honest art, even if that never happens, money doesn't make you more of an artist.

Comfort doesn't make you more of an artist.

Health doesn't make you more of an artist.

A label doesn't make you more of an artist.

Pretty lights, a fancy sound system, and a huge crew don't change who you are on the inside, and that's where the fire really burns. That's where the real truth happens.

Then again, you gotta hone your craft. Honesty can take a good song and make it great, but there are also a lot of really terrible yet honest songs. 

What about today?

His name is Chuck. He's a roofer.

I was standing in back of the venue after an amazing Kylie Campion show. He'd been hanging around, talking to some folks as they passed but not really bothering anyone. He was just there, part of the scenery I guess. You might move away if he got too close, I probably would've done the same on any other night.

After most of the folks hanging out had left, he came over and said hey. He asked if I could get him some food. I had a dollar in cash on me and didn't know the area too well, but looking over my shoulder there was a Mexican Restaurant.

"Yknow what I really don't get?" he began almost as soon as we had sat down. "I had to shut off all the TV and the news and all that crap because I just can't take it." His voice stumbled out more like a rolling grumble of syllables than words. The whole time I was straining to decipher meaning amongst the low gravel.

"What's that?" I asked, nervously staring down at the menu. I'd already eaten, so when the server came, I just got a coke.
"Order anything for me," He said, "I don't speak Espanol so you order for me."

"What would you like to drink?" She repeated, once again in non-accented American English.

He turned to me, looking me up and down. "Ask what kinda liquor they got."

"I'm not buying you alcohol," I said. "You want a soda?"

"Okay," he sighed, "Fine. Dr. Pepper."

A minute of silence led back to, "...yeah, what bothers me just...what pisses me off so much is this--You hear all this stuff from like two thousand years ago, from like 2000 B.C., but it's 2013, yknow what I'm saying? Do you know what I'm saying to you, man? It's all this preaching about two thousand years back and tell me what...what does any of that stuff have to do with right here and now."

I leaned and nodded, not knowing what to say, but thankfully he quickly filled up the silence.

"I just wonder, after everything I've seen. All the things that are going on in the world, I wonder where he is...where God is yknow. Moses parting waters (though I'm not too sure about that) and with Jonah, you hear about all that...and Jesus died and came back after three days but then what's the point 'cause...and you seem like a true believer but yknow I'm not sure but yknow I am a real true believer but I gotta say where'd he go? What about today? Where did God fuck off to when they bomb us and we bomb them?"

I noticed something wet making a small trail down his cheek. There was a glimmer to the red on the edges of his eyes and he was silent for a few moments just looking at me, pleading with me.

Not sure why I said it, but I asked him, "What would you say to him if you could talk to him?"

"Say to who?"

"To God. What would you ask him?"

"Hmm, well, you know what? I'd ask that sonofabitch where the fuck he's been for this whole time? Y'hear all this two thousand year ol' preaching and y'hear all these miracles and stuff from back but this is today. Now, I've been a roofer, and a crackhead, and a drunk, and a, uh...and everything and so I know what I mean yknow...Where's he been? He sleepin' or...or..."

I watched the tide overcome the walls and he unwrapped his napkin from around the silverware. When he set it down, it was marked by two dark circles.

"Grew up in an orphanage way back when, yknow," he said after the Waitress had brought him two big plates of food. I'd told him I got something with lots of choices, so if he didn't like something he could have something else. He'd thanked me and dove right in. "'Ts'really good."

"Grew up in an orphanage with my brother and I and..." The food made it even harder to pick through his mumbling, but he kept on. I sipped my coke and tried not to stare at the tears as they fell while still looking respectfully in his tired eyes.

Just keep nodding and smiling, I thought, as I struggled to listen. What was I supposed to say? Why am I even here? Okay, Luke, pay attention.

"...and he was younger. He liked guys, yknow, but I like girls, and he got AIDS and died. Maybe 20, 25 years or longer, ago...I don't...when we were growing up there'd be 40 guys and 40 girls in the orphanage and I had to stick up for him when the older guys would all go after him. You mess with my brother, you mess with me. Yknow what I mean? You fuck with him, you fuck with me? 'Cause I'm his older brother. I was his older brother."

He raised his napkin to his eyes again. He gave me his phone number and told me about being a roofer. "One roof, let me do it, and you'll see how great I am. Just, Luke, you gotta supply the ladder, okay?"

Walking back to my car, I passed a church's night service getting out, folks talking, laughing, arguing.

Went back to the house and ready for work, but I stopped by my friend's birthday party before my shift. One or two of them had seen me leave the parking lot with Chuck, had stopped by to say they were going to the party, to check on me.

"That was really cool, man."

Nah, it wasn't, I thought, All I could think the whole time was how I'm gonna blog about it later.
 

The Utopia Problem

A society that needs an enemy to bring it together can never be a society of peace.

…but then, ask yourself, do you even really want peace. As a society do you want the chaos and honesty that must come for peace to be achieved?

In this age of vast amounts of dystopian fiction, I’ve been thinking a bit about why that’s so apparent to envision (not easy to flesh out in a decent literary way, to be sure, but certainly fitting very nicely with current sensibilities toward the future). I’ve also been wondering about what it would be like to build a Utopia, one where the plot didn’t include finding out how it was secretly so corrupt but one where the struggle was based in how it’s actually hard to keep a good, honest, healthy society working. We’ve seen writers speculate about “Utopia” wherein all is serene and problem-free. It’s all feasts and fun and dare I say divine. It’s a half-cocked day-dream with old ideas of what’s good, I think. I also think it’s a false Utopia because it denies the humanity of the citizens. 

I want a damn good Human Utopia. I want discussion and problem-solving through intellectual struggle and debate. I want growth and change and mystery and confusion. I don’t want easy answers.

A Utopia shouldn’t be the death of the big questions, but the garden in which those seeds we call big questions grow into mighty mountains of trees with roots and branch all intertwined and reaching out in every burdensome and inconvenient direction. 

I want a Utopia not built upon the pax romana of intimidation or the drunken complacency of cake and circus. I want a Utopia where peace means the utter and constant tension of recognizing the complexity of the other. 

I want a human Utopia. 

But then perhaps Utopia would be the wrong word. 

Perhaps there’s not a right word for it. 

I want a place where there doesn’t need to be a right word for everything. 

I want a place where there actually can be. 

Dirty Lenses

Sometimes, whilst cleaning my glasses, I think about how when I put them on I’ll be a white guy, aged 22 years, with glasses. It’s like they’ll never know I dropped out of college. It’s like they’ll never know that although I do love to read long works of historical and/or classical fiction, I also enjoy comic books and children’s cartoons. It’s like they’ll never know that I’ve been rhyming since middle school and have in fact gotten half-decent at spitting a verse or two. It’s like they’ll never know I spent two months sleeping in my car last fall. It’s like they’ll never know I’m more than some white guy, aged 22 years, with glasses, but I could go on.

I could go on assuming that other people make as shallow assumptions about me as I do about them even though I know my backstory in and out and yet with others I’m only window shopping. Maybe I’m the one who’s too cheap to even try their shoes on, much less walk a mile behind a stranger’s dirty lenses.

The Shadow of a Shadow

This part of the week, I work the night shift, so I really didn't know about any of this till I was hurrying to work late with NPR low in the background.

It hurts when it happens anywhere but it's weird how it resounds when it happens somewhere you know.

I grew up in Quincy, MA. Spent my childhood there. Went to college there. With friends or often by my self, I'd take a short T ride north and wander round the brick buildings and cemeteries and shops and people watch on the streets of that big old city. My first big city.

I've been to THE big city once or twice, the one in which all the movies and comic books are set. But this, on the bay, with the seagulls and a wicked strong disregard for R's, was my big city.

I always liked how old it felt.

We're such a young nation, still making so many young mistakes. Still learning when there's much time to learn, but those streets always felt grounded.

And cold is different there. And parades are different there. And the flag is different there. I can't explain it, because as hard as it is for me to call anywhere home, I guess there were times I felt kinda home there. Heck, I've never felt more patriotic than when hanging out, singing songs by the occupy tents near the bank buildings. Never felt more American than when watching breakdancers busk to the gaze of a sea of multi-colored faces.

I don't really know what I'm saying, but as I rushed to work, tired and disoriented from trying and failing to wake up on time for the night shift, I heard the news on the radio.

But right before that, they were replaying an interview with Tom Waits from 2009.

"The shadow of a shadow is light," he said.

Yeah, something like that.

Bread and Dreams

Fighting back isn’t the same as equality, and you don’t make a better world by playing by the same rules of the broken world.

If life’s a game, it’s fixed and we’re all gonna lose, so why not play the game you want to play and laugh at the world with its silly rules.

For your immigrant great-grandparents who worked so hard to make a better life for you just so you could ruin it by dropping out of college and pursuing art, raise the middle finger of love. Ghosts can go fuck themselves, and the past can die, for there has been no one in the history of humanity who has not at some point been unsatisfied with simply surviving.

Maybe when you’re running from a tiger or ducking in a bunker or slaving in the fields or watching the clock behind a desk you forget to let yourself get angrily existential, but there will be lonely nights.

There will be nights when the weight of all your years have added up to will come rushing up and form a lump in your throat. There will be nights when you want so bad to quit your job but the rumbling in your stomach, the leak in your roof, or the crying infant down the hall just won’t let you.

You will be told that it is a brave sacrifice to be a cog in the machine.

You will be told that this is life and we must make the best of it.

You will be sold to, lied to, advertised to.

You will be a number on a spreadsheet, a statistic of the times, and if anyone notices you at all, it will usually be for some way you inconvenienced them.

I urge you, however, when the tide of this human waste pile comes rolling over you, do not charge at it in anger. Turn to your left or to your right, look up, look down, and just go some other way.

For the wave of history will always wash over you, crashing and filling up your nostrils with its suffocating, salty weight. Whether it be going along for now or leaving altogether or simply taking each moment as it comes, whether in quiet rebellion of secret wild thoughts or in open defiance of all that civilization has built, I urge you not to underestimate “the way things are”.

Instead, I would dare you to let things be as they may be and know you are not slave to them even so. For when you die, and you will die as all things do, you can laugh at those who will matter the suit you wear at your own funeral.

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more music coming soon. i know it's been over a month and the whole once a month thing isn't gonna be what it's gonna be, but should art really ever come on a schedule? i am getting together with my engineer soon as our lives coincide, okay? okay.