Because I have comments enabled on my blog, and because no one actually communicates with each other as real people anymore, I occasionally receive emails notifying me that a spam bot has left a comment on my blog. I don't bother to delete these comments because, who knows, perhaps they somehow drive traffic to me on their way to driving traffic to whatever it is they're selling. (I have no idea what they're selling, because I don't click the links in their comments.)
Against my better judgement, I do still read all the comments I get here, so feel free to post one any time you're moved to communicate to a real person. I'm here, I'm paying attention. It seems crazy, I know, but it's true.
I take that back. It doesn't seem crazy, it seems antiquated. Remember back at the Turn of the Century, when people wrote blog posts and others commented? Remember when communication was still relatively fun, still something people looked for opportunities to do? Remember when social media wasn't always some combination of broken and infuriating? Or do things just seem better in hindsight.
Anyway, when I receive these spam-bot comments, I sometimes click through to the old blog post upon which they appear and re-read what I wrote. It's a trip down memory lane. Sometimes I've written about something that was going on in my life; sometimes it's just a thought I had; sometimes it's a diatribe. In short, it's a collection of thoughts I really had on real days of my life that I really decided to write about. Reading it back again is actually quite nice. I seldom read a post and think to myself, "Oh God, I was such an asshole/idiot/whatever." It's encouraging to know that the things I spent some time thinking about in the past produced good thoughts that I generally still agree with.
I'd say I've never kept a journal, but I suppose this is it. I've finally discovered what generations of my forefathers had known: journalling is a worthwhile activity. Indeed, blogging is a good habit.
Over the years, I've fallen out of practice. Immersed in a daily commitment to blogging can be a little stressful, especially as it was in the early days, when people actually read my blog and responded. I felt a responsibility to write to my audience and provide them with something worth reading. But stress wasn't the only reason I stopped blogging. Like many other former bloggers, I sometimes had the sense that there wasn't any point, that I had "said it all before" and didn't want to repeat myself. And of course, all the other bloggers who actually made money doing this moved on to Medium and then to Substack and now, I can't believe it, people pay a monthly subscription to read stuff like this. And then they use AI graphics and post their stuff on X and it's this whole marketing thing for them.
When I go back and read someone else's blog, I seldom feel as good about their old blog posts as I feel about mine. That's not a criticism; there's nothing wrong with their posts. I think it speaks to their motivation and authenticity, though. David Henderson's blog never gets old. He writes authentically. But Slate Star Codex guy's posts are stale within a week of having been written. Clearly these two example bloggers are writing different kinds of posts for different reasons.
And then there's me, writing for a third reason, which is mostly that I just like it. There are other potential benefits, such as having a record of my personality for posterity, assuming this blog doesn't end up getting deleted at some point. Writing advice to my kids for when they need to read it and I'm not there to say it to them. I've written about all that before.
Well, anyway, I hope I re-develop the blogging habit. It's good. It's productive for me. I think I'll try to keep it going.
In closing, I'd like to set down a list of things that have happened to me that readers of this blog may not have been aware of, given that I've been quite out of touch for a while. Here it is:
My band released an album. Listen to it here and elsewhere.
I converted to Orthodox Christianity. Long story. Maybe I'll write about it some time.
I started learning Greek - not really related to the Orthodox thing, but kind of.
I'm still running and riding bikes like a fiend, so that's not really an update.
For some reason, I can't think of anything else right now. I'll blog about things as I go.
Anyway, here's hoping I can reestablish this great habit.
In light of the untimely death of Edward Van Halen, I felt inspired to listen to all of the band's studio work in chronological order. It was such a wonderful experience! It really was the best way to come to terms with his passing, and to enjoy what he gave to the world, to honor his memory.
I thought I would share some of my thoughts after having listened to the full catalog in this way. These are just the thoughts I have after having dived deeply into the wonderful music of Van Halen.
1 - I honestly don't think there's a weak album in the whole catalog. We can say a lot about personal preferences, and there's no accounting for taste, but in terms of the quality of the music, every album is, in my opinion, excellent.
2 - When you listen to the albums back-to-back in chronological order, you get a much better feel for the underlying cohesiveness of the whole catalog. It's tempting to say there was a change in musical direction when Hagar joined the band, but if you listen to the compositions, it's really hard to make that case. 5150 and OU812 are natural, logical progressions from 1984.
3 - In general, all of the Van Hagar albums are extremely underrated. They are consistently musically interesting throughout, and Sammy Hagar was truly an incredible singer.
4 - Anyone who listens to "A Different Kind of Truth" with their ears on can tell that Wolfgang Van Halen is an incredible musician. It's just obvious. I don't understand how anyone could say or think otherwise. He's the bee's knees.
5 - About the only real gripe I have across all their albums is the fact that they did something really strange to Gary Cherone's voice on VHIII. I think if they had produced the vocals better on that album, it would have been better-received. That said, it is a pretty "out there" album for Van Halen, in terms of compositions and the semi-acoustic, softer tones employed, so I'm not surprised that most VH fans dislike it.
6 - For me, the most pleasant surprise was "Balance." I really love the eastern influences and the mystical lyrics. I think it's not Sammy's best vocal album, but the music is really, really good.
7 - Edward Van Halen created a really unique sonic niche with his compositions. There are elements of contemporary jazz seamlessly blended with hard rock and pop rock, and that is such a quirky blend. I think the contemporary jazz elements are what really define the VH sound - sue me! You can hear it! I can even hear the Allan Holdsworth influence. EVH has that same "chord sclaes" approach to his riffs, and yes also to his solos. It's absolutely lovely.
Anyway, if you have the chance to go through all their albums like I did, I encourage you to do so. It's a great experience.
Youth is often defined by simplicity. As children, most of us have very few responsibilities compared to the lives we lead as adults. Our parents provide us with food, shelter, and clothing, and make all the important decisions for us; so, ultimately, our lives as children are really quite simple. We spend that time playing, socializing, dreaming, and forming the core perspective that will direct our thoughts and actions for the remainder of our existence. For this reason, children often think in simple and direct terms. Childish ideologies are known to be black-and-white; childish perspectives are contained in one-line platitudes; childish identities are encapsulated in categorical summaries like, "He's a jock," "She's a nerd," "He's one of those artistic types," "She's a free spirit," and so on.
But real people, in real life, are nothing like this. Reality is complex, containing multitudes. No one is exclusively a "jock" or a "free spirit;" the truth is that most people contain elements of both, and of so much more. While most of us like to think we adhere to some kind of central ideology, the truth is that most of us fall short of our ideals and rationalize those shortcomings ex post facto. There is a little bit of the hero in each human being, and a little bit of the devil, and the way those two pieces swirl and interact makes all of us adults who we are. We decidedly cannot be encapsulated in categorical summaries, none of us can, nor can our inner thoughts be accurately expressed in platitudes and slogans.
A popular artist, however, exists as a sort of exception. Artists, the people themselves, are of course just as complex and multifaceted as the rest of us. But popular artists are also in the business of selling their art, and one of the best ways of marketing that art is to present it as being more than merely a nice song or a pretty picture. A truly great artist has a way of creating a whole artistic world unto itself, and consuming their art as a member of the audience is often a matter of personally stepping into that world, imagining oneself there inside it.
After all, what great art lover has never imagined what it would be like to walk along M.C. Escher's twisted staircases, touch the liquified drops of Dali's melting clocks, or walk along the distant paths visible in the background of one of Caravaggio's masterpieces? What serious music fan has never gazed out at the passing countryside during a long drive and heard the sound of a moody favorite song? Or, overcome with grief or sadness, who has never put on a long, sad, dreary album that sets to sound the powerful agony of our inner turmoil? Or likewise played the most exciting, invigorating music during times of pure elation?
Artists who specialize, and who gain fame for their work, must to some extent present themselves as the architects of these imaginary worlds so that they might invite us in for a visit. Ozzy Osborne thus becomes the "Prince of Darkness," Michael Jackson the "King of Pop," James Brown the "Hardest Working Man in Show Business," Prince Rogers Nelson an unpronounceable and highly sexualized symbol, and so on. These titles function as more than mere nicknames, they're marketing taglines designed to help guide the consumer -- er, the listener -- through the process of stepping into that artistic world. It helps set the stage for what's to come. That is, it provides the frame.
"The most important thing in art is The Frame," Frank Zappa wrote in his autobiography, The Real Frank Zappa Book. "For painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively -- because, without this humble appliance, you can't know where The Art stops and The Real World begins. You have to put a 'box' around it because otherwise, what is that shit on the wall?"
When a public artist steps out into the world as an artist, that is, as a representative of the art he or she hopes to sell, that artist exists as a living Frame in the Zappanese sense of the word. An artist selling art is a person engaged in the act of defining for the audience where the real world ends and the art begins, so that the audience can step inside and see how they like it.
And for most artists, this is a relatively easy part of the job. The struggle of a great soprano consists of all the years of agonizing practice, slowly honing her craft and cultivating her voice until it becomes a thing of absolute beauty. Acting the part of a diva, by contrast, is no sweat. Take a bow, accept the bouquet of roses at the end of the big aria, and always decorate every media interview with beautiful, cascading laughter and wide-eyed declarations about the magic of the music you are just so fortunate to be able to sing.
All anyone knows about that diva is her voice, her love of the medium, and her gratitude for existence. The fact that this woman might also be an obedient daughter, a callous sister, a treasured friend, a close confidant, a keeper of secrets, a terrible cook, a rather mean romantic partner, a loving mother, or any mix of all of these things is always obscured by her dedication to selling her art when in public. It is her duty as an artist to be That Voice. All other aspects of her life are important, of course, but only to her. To the audience, they are mostly irrelevant; at best, an aside in her Wikipedia entry, and at worst, salacious gossip.
With all of that in mind, it becomes clear that Frank Zappa had a serious problem: his artistic work was as complex and multitudinous as most people's lives are. Fed on a steady diet of pop culture, history, music theory, and practical economics, Zappa wanted to pour all of these ingredients and more into his art, twist it all together, and see what came out. The result was always something unmistakably Zappa, but how does an artist market a portfolio that contains a little bit of pretty much everything?
Frank Zappa could not be "the diva" or "the guitar god" or "the rock icon" or "the freak," or any other thing; at least, not without sacrificing the other elements of his art. The art world was not then, and is certainly not now, capable of absorbing a marketing message that required nuances and multiple facets.
So, instead, the marketers did the best they could with the primitive tools they had. Some of his lyrics were comedic, so for some he became "comedy music." Some of his lyrics were overtly political, so for others he became a purveyor of "acerbic social commentary." Some of his music was deliberately whimsical, even noisy and abstract, so for favorable critics he became "avant-garde," while for hostile critics he became "ugly."
Where all of these descriptions -- and the many other failed descriptions of Zappa's work -- fail is in their singularity. How would we describe the Sistine Chapel using only a three-letter word? The truth is, Zappa's music fused elements of Dadaism, avant-garde, 20th Century orchestral compositional concepts, social commentary, highbrow humor, toilet humor, inside jokes, personal quirks, conceptual music theory, satire, earnestness, and above all a love for music. As he put it, "Anything Anytime Anyplace For No Reason At All."
That indelible combination created one of the largest and most varied bodies of work in the music world; not the rock music world, not the 20th Century music world, but ever. And all of it is unmistakably Zappa.
Over the course of this series, I would like to guide an unfamiliar audience through some of the depths of Frank Zappa's music. My hope is "to suggest, to the suggestible listener" that Zappa's art is best understood holistically, as a complex sum total, rather than as a mere set of marketing taglines the seldom ever really do justice to what they attempt to describe. If an audience mostly unfamiliar with his work (and that will be my assumption throughout this series) can be chaperoned through some of its most important elements, then perhaps that can help demystify and obviate the appeal of one of the Twentieth Century's most exciting musicians and composers.
Well, where better to start than with "Inca Roads," a song that served as one of Zappa's signature pieces during the mid-seventies? I've chosen it for a number of reasons. First, as the opening track on the One Size Fits All album, it fits as an apt "kickoff." More importantly, however, is the fact that it packs so many classic elements of Zappa's music into a relatively concise space.
To really understand this piece, it helps to have heard the version that most of us only got to hear in 1996, when it appeared on The Lost Episodes, released after Zappa had passed away. This "lost" version of "Inca Roads" presents all of the musical themes arranged as straightforwardly as possible, with none of the excess decorations present in the version released in '75. The dedicated Zappa fan might find this simpler version a little too boring for everyday consumption, but the student of Zappa will appreciate having the complex musical themes laid out plainly in advance.
After all, the song's Wikipedia entry suggests, "The non-serious nature of these lyrics and even the music itself seem to be mocking other progressive rock bands and their possibly forced divine depth." But interpreting Zappa's music solely through the lens of satire flattens its dimensions. Its obvious from listening to the stripped-down version of "Inca Roads" that the original album version was arranged specifically to introduce each melody, and indeed each permutation of the melody, slowly and deliberately. Once each element of the full composition has been so introduced and permutated, the band takes a break while Frank Zappa performs one of his trademark improvised guitar solos -- another classic element of Zappa's music. The guitar solo appearing on the One Size Fits All version of the song is, in fact, a particularly good one by Zappa standards, and it's easy for the listener to close his or her eyes, turn the volume up, and get lost in the moment as Zappa himself surely did when he performed it live, on stage in Helsinki, Finland.
(This Zappa technique of mixing performances from some records with those of others, which he termed xenophony, is yet another important element of Zappa's music, which I will surely explore in greater depth in a future episode.)
But when the solo climaxes, the band falls nearly silent, things get briefly quiet, and then... "Inca Roads" really begins.
When the band kicks back in, all of the previous melodies reappear in their proper sequence, gradually building from quiet to loud, from separate to cohesive, until at last the full "Inca Roads" compositional sequence appears, driven mainly by the marimba lines. These melodies are permutated the same way they were at the beginning of the song, but each time the speed gets faster and faster until the keyboard solo ends and we hear the full sequence played at hyper-speed, unaccompanied, by Ruth Underwood on her marimba.
As for the lyrics, again Wikipedia suggests that they're satire. It states, "As the song progresses, the lyrics become sillier and seem to mock the beginning of the song. An example of this is "...or did someone build a place or leave a space for Chester's thing to land (Chester's thing... on Ruth)." But whoever wrote this was unfortunately unfamiliar with the meaning of the phrase "Chester's thing." Chester, of course, refers to Chester Thompson, the band's drummer at the time; while Ruth obviously refers to marimba player Ruth Underwood. Note that both drums and marimba are percussion instruments played with sticks or mallets. So, when Zappa announces, "Chester's thing on Ruth," he's directing the band (and the listener) to play Chester's drum fill on Ruth's marimba. Lyrics of this kind can be found throughout this song, and Zappa's full catalogue.
While Zappa's lyrics ostensibly explore an idea presented in popular book at the time that the Inca Road system was built by aliens who landed in South America during ancient times. You can learn about this on the History Channel's "Ancient Aliens" TV series. But the lyrics also serve a meta-purpose in that they provide sonic placeholders for the instrumental themes of the composition. As the lyrics change, they do so in comical ways, but this isn't a form of mockery so much as a fun way to permutate the melodies themselves. And by the end of the song, it all collides in a glorious, and dare I say absurdist, mishmash that only Zappa could have pulled off.
There is, in fact, nothing "satirical" or "mocking" about the song "Inca Roads." It's one of the most earnest, cheerful, and straightforward pieces Zappa ever published. Unsurprisingly, it is also one of the most complex and physically demanding pieces in his repertoire.
We start here, and if you've followed along this far, then you're in for what I hope will be an exciting and educational series!
Last night, I rented the movie Eat That Question: Frank Zappa In His Own Words. It is a well-edited compilation of interviews with Frank Zappa over the course of his career. For the average moviegoer, the film has little to offer, but for the Frank Zappa fan, the film is a must-watch. I will not bother with a formal movie review, however, since Eat That Question mostly consists of footage available on YouTube that has been compiled nicely into a cohesive narrative, providing insight into Zappa's artistic vision. There is nothing new to say about this film footage. If you know about this film, chances are good that you already know whether you plan on seeing it. I'll let my "review" stand at that.
Just because all of this footage had been previously released, however, doesn't mean that I had personally seen it all. One particular moment in the film stood out for me the most. When asked why he thought everyone considered him a hippy rockstar and not a composer, Zappa said something to the effect of, "Probably because they haven't been conditioned for excellence."
This seems like an arrogant thing to say, but Zappa expounded on his point, and the point recurred a few times over the course of the film. He said that the American education system mostly focuses on turning American children into adults who will succeed at getting boring, low-level factory-type jobs and buy cheap merchandise. Elsewhere in the film, Zappa references a rejected article he wrote for TimeMagazine. (The article was subsequently printed in Zappa's autobiography, The REAL Frank Zappa Book.) In that article, Zappa makes the claim that Americans have a preference for "cheese," which is Frank's euphemism for cheap, low-grade, low-brow cultural artifacts like cheeseburgers and "chrome dinettes." In the film, he contrasts this American proclivity to the tendency of much older world cultures to take pride in the thousands of years of cultural history they enjoy. He points out how silly it must appear to, say, Europeans, that Americans are so fond of something like a cheeseburger, when in Europe they enjoy recipes that date back literal eons, evolving along cultural lines all the while.
So, Zappa's point was about aesthetics. Zappa believed that people ought to learn how to appreciate art, and history, and music, and pretty much everything else by taking the long view. For Zappa, it made a lot of sense to tout the likes of Beethoven as the greatest composers of music of all time. Their work represents the culmination of hundreds if not thousands of years of musical development. The great composers were worth taking pride in, because they truly represented the evolution of music as art. When we compare that to the latest top 40 thing by... oh, let's just choose a name out of a hat and say Imagine Dragons... there is not much of a comparison to be had.
To be clear, Zappa's point wasn't that it's morally wrong to enjoy Imagine Dragons. His point was that the American culture and education system such as it is leaves people completely unequipped to make informed artistic decisions about what is artistic and what isn't. Instead, the mere suggestion that Beethoven might actually be superior to Imagine Dragons elicits social media vitriol: music is subjective, and what's wrong with liking Imagine Dragons? and I'd much rather listen to pop radio than some dumb orchestra.
Suffice it to say that none of these objections defeat Zappa's point.
On a related note, somebody compiled data from Goodreads.com and provided a list of the most beloved and most hated English language classic novels of all time. To my chagrin albeit not to my surprise, Moby Dick, the single greatest novel of all time, a literary accomplishment so profound that most people will never understand the extent of its genius, ranks as one of the most-hated classics. Why?
Part of it has something to do with what I just said about it: the genius of Moby Dick is so tremendous that I don't think most people can really even understand what Melville accomplished in writing it. Even understanding the profundity of that novel is a pale reflection of the white-hot flame of ingenious creativity that was required to conceive of it; and even conceiving of it is a pale shadow compared to the actual writing of it. Moby Dick tells a thoroughly unique tale with intensely philosophic moral symbolism and a disarmingly charming prose; and that, in and of itself should be enough to make it a great novel. But then Melville found a way to literally fuse the complete works of Shakespeare with the Holy Bible -- literally, I mean he literally wrote his novel by assembling passages from both Shakespeare and the Bible to craft the language of his own story, making symbolic references to each individually, and both simultaneously, all in the service of an entirely separate story he wrote himself. And the unsuspecting reader would be none the wiser, because the novel reads wonderfully and wittily throughout. This novel isn't just Treasure Island for adults; it's a true artistic accomplishment.
But that brings me to the other reason Moby Dick is such a hated novel, and this ties to Frank Zappa's opinions as articulated above. The modern American reader does not have the mental tools required to properly evaluate Moby Dick. It kills me to think that one of America's greatest contributions to mankind's artistic canon is beyond the educational platform of the overwhelming majority of Americans.
This is precisely what Zappa wanted to warn us about: we should be remembering Moby Dick for the ages. Moby Dick is what should be leaving a lasting impression on American culture. Instead, I think more Americans probably recognize the names of politicians, pop stars, and other such flashes in the pan. This is not because Americans are too stupid to understand greatness when they see it. Rather, it's because our culture, our media, and our education system have all failed to provide us with the tools required to evaluate culture and art, and Americans left to their own devices are disinclined to pick up the slack.
By coincidence, I happened to see a video on Facebook yesterday of someone cooking boiled prawns in the Southern style. The recipe went something like this:
Put a bunch of water in a giant pot and bring it to boil
Add a large concoction of spices, primarily salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper
Boil corn on the cob and potatoes in the spice/water mixture
Remove the corn and potatoes, then add raw crawfish, prawns, shrimp, whatever, and boil until cooked
Remove some of the shrimp and put in a mixing bowl with some of the corn and some of the potatoes
Pour a half cup of butter over everything
Squeeze some lemon juice over everything
Add a bunch of lemon pepper, pepper, cayenne pepper, "cajun seasoning," smoked paprika, and a bunch of other mixed spices that are all various kinds of salt, pepper, and chili powder
Stir
Dump on a plate
Here's a shorter version of this recipe: Boil three different ingredients, then cover them in butter, salt, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper. This isn't a recipe for crawfish, it's a recipe for butter and cayenne pepper.
Amazingly, the broth that was created by boiling seafood in water for a couple of minutes -- while not as flavorful as it could have been, had someone with a sense of taste undertaken to make seafood broth -- was probably the most flavorful part of the entire recipe. What did the cooks do with the broth? Nothing. It was a wasteful byproduct of boiled potatoes and shrimp covered in butter.
As I watched this video, I heard in my head the voice of an old French colleague of mine, who once complained to me about how disgusting American food looked when they served it. He thought it was revolting to see big, messy globs of food heaped onto plates with no sense of care. He was right. It's hard to find a restaurant in America that doesn't serve big, salty globs of stuff. I ran past Cracker Barrel this weekend, and it was packed; I went to a nice Syrian restaurant, and it was not packed.
Why do Americans prefer boiled Southern potatoes to braised Syrian lamb? Why do they prefer Harry Potter to Moby Dick? Why do they prefer Imagine Dragons to Beethoven?
Because Frank Zappa was right: Americans lack the tools to evaluate culture properly, so we queso dip while other cultures get remoulade. It's baffling. Don't we want more for ourselves?
There are many reasons why guitars are more popular than pianos. One is that, unless you happen to own a temperature controlled airport hanger, it is impossible to collect pianos. Not so for guitars. You could fit two dozen guitars into a standard-sized coat closet. There are also many different kinds of guitars, each one with its own unique sound, which justifies the purchase of another guitar. "I don't have that kind of guitar, and I need it to make that kind of sound!" They're also priced low enough that one can buy several guitars for the same amount of money as a piano. And then there's all the peripheral stuff that goes with the guitar: the straps, the strings, the pedals, the plectrums, each one with its own claim to improving your tone.
We see a similar thing in bicycles. It's not enough to buy and ride a bicycle. One also has to get the right kind of helmet, riding gear, water bottles, safety lights, fitness trackers, shoes, and so on. If a person decides to make the leap into bicycling, he'll eventually find himself investing in the sport as much as riding his bicycle, just as a guitar player will find himself investing in music gear as much as playing his actual guitar.
Golf, too, is similar. Once you've made the initial investment, there is always something more; a new driver, a better pair of shoes, a ball retriever... anything that will enhance the golf experience. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of club-swinging.
There are many such hobbies and sports. I've chosen to single-out male-oriented hobbies, but I could have mentioned their female equivalents, too. Do you really think women need to buy seventeen different kinds of skin cream, or five colors of eyeliner, or a different jacket for every type of cold weather, or five differently scented candles or soaps that can't be used together without causing some sort of olfactory overload? And, of course, the coed hobbies are the worst of all, since all dollars from sexes and genders can be exploited equally.
Marketeers are quite clever, and armed to the teeth with tools to extract more of your spending money. To be sure, in many cases, there are good reasons to spend more money on your hobby. One very simple reason is that it's fun to own a new guitar, bike, golf club, hair conditioner, or yoga mat. It's fun to complete your collection, to curate a perfect room full of enticing gear, sure to motivate you to do more of what you originally started out doing, anyway.
But if we're being honest, most of us should admit that we over-spend on our hobbies. A few of us will even admit that it would be better to spend less money. So, how do we resist the urge to spend money on fancy new stuff that will surely make us happy -- especially if we're spending within our means?
Here's one solution: Make part of the experience of your hobby the source of novelty, rather than the gear used to engage your hobby. Instead of buying a new guitar, learn something new on one of your guitars. Instead of buying a new bike, go on a new kind of bike ride. Instead of buying a new driver, go to the driving range and perfect your swing with your existing driver.
When we make incremental progress a source of novelty within our hobbies then we are less inclined to buy new things. The trick here is that the increment has to be a meaningful one. You can't simply learn a new song and expect that to replace your desire for a new guitar. Instead, you have to learn something that feels awesome and makes you want to do more of it. You have to learn a new technique, or play a lick you already know at a record speed. You have to impress yourself so much that you don't think a new guitar is as impressive as what you've just done. It's a little more work, but it's ultimately much more rewarding.
This is one of the reasons that children are such a joy. They can learn new things from existing, on-hand stuff and be entertained for hours; meanwhile, the same stuff would typically hold little appeal to us adults. This past weekend, I taught my daughter how to play a new card game. She doesn't usually play with cards, so the opportunity to play a game with dad, using a somewhat novel toy, was irresistible to her. I asked my wife if she wanted to play, and she emphatically said, "No, thanks." Truth be told, if it were only my wife and I, neither one of us would have chosen to play cards together. Those cards had been collecting dust in a closet for a long time. But then again, no one has offered to teach either of us a new card game.
So, my daughter didn't need to watch a new cartoon or a new movie, and she didn't need to buy a new toy. She just needed to expand her ability to play with our existing toys, namely, a deck of cards. It works the same around dinner time, too. She could sit and bore herself to death with cartoons or coloring pictures, or I could have her help me bake biscuits, or cookies, or peel carrots, or measure ingredients to put in the bowl. Things that I find to be relatively mundane, because I do them so often, are new and fun for my daughter. Not surprisingly, I recently found myself in a bookstore, perusing the cooking aisles for a source of new recipes -- something to make my mundane daily task of cooking everyone dinner more interesting. It took me fifteen minutes to realize that I didn't need to buy a new cookbook. I just needed to use the tablet I already own to look up some new recipes!
Again, to avoid seeking novelty in new stuff, seek incremental novelty in stuff you already have. Learning how to make falafel is a nice tool to have in the kit; it's enough to make a person excited to cook again. Learning a new guitar technique, or a better way of chipping onto the green, or a new card game, can all help you find the novelty you're seeking. We seek that novelty when we shop, but we don't need to. We simply need to avail ourselves of the novelty available in our life as it is now.
This relates to another concept I may or may not have mentioned on the blog: depth versus breadth of experience. Finding novelty in a new guitar makes your guitar-playing experience broader. But finding novelty in a new playing technique will make your experience deeper. I, for one, find that to be a positive move.
I've been listening to a lot of Sublime lately. Sublime sold 6 million albums shortly after their frontman and principle songwriter, Brad Nowell, overdosed on heroin. The death prompted many people at the time to wonder what might have been, since Nowell was a gifted singer and lyricist, an excellent guitar player, and a great songwriter. Sublime was a really good band.
Listening to their albums, I have become absolutely engrossed in the artistic world created by these recordings. Sublime's use of recorded speeches and clips from movies, fused with their deft hip hop sampling techniques and punk and reggae rock served to make their albums feel more like movies than like a mere sequence of songs. Each album is a little treat, from beginning to end; we step into Sublime's world for an hour or so, we enjoy ourselves, and then we wave goodbye. It is an extremely good use of the album platform, showing us how albums can be works of art unto themselves, over and above the songs themselves.
In that context, it is interesting to note the lyrical subject matter of Sublime's work. A lot of their songs are autobiographical. "I don't cry when my dog runs away" is not just a chirpy mantra; Nowell's dog really did run away. He really did have a dalmation. He really did get high. He really did pawn all his gear. I don't know how much of Sublime's lyrics are fictitious, but I do know that a lot of it comprises stories of their lives on the southern California punk/ska scene. It's gritty, and it's real: crime, drugs, sex, poverty, addiction, and lots of music.
What strikes me about this, however, is that when someone actually lives this kind of a life, it is not nearly so glamorous or exciting as it sounds when Sublime sings about it. When you're dog runs away, it's not an adventure; it's just a lot of feeling bad and being unable to do anything about it, and maybe hanging some posters around the neighborhood. Music is awesome and performing is great fun, but there is nothing about performing music that is really worth telling stories about. You get up on stage, you perform the music, you exit. And I do not suppose I need to go into detail about how utterly boring the life of a drug addict is. The only exciting thing a drug addict experiences is the high, and by the time addiction really sinks in, the high isn't even worth much anymore. It's more like misery-avoidance, especially when it comes to heroin.
In short, Nowell lived a life that was not exciting, but he wrote songs as if it were the most exciting thing that ever happened. That is a wonderful skill, and more to the point, it is a wonderful attitude with which to approach your own life.
I once found myself drinking at a bar in Edmonton, Alberta. A large, jovial man approached me and struck up a conversation. He was an interesting character, from Norway, who had some bombastic ideas, or perhaps it was the liquor talking. Either way, we entertained each other for hours over many beers, and then parted ways.
At one point during our conversation, he naturally asked me what I did for a living. At the time, I was a bank teller. I told him this, and he asked what that meant, so I explained how bank tellers in credit processing centers in Canada in the early 2000s stamped, counted, and sorted transaction receipts. (This kind of job probably doesn't exist anymore -- thanks, technology!) It was a dumb job and not particularly interesting to explain to gregarious drunken strangers, but the man took it all in. Then, he said, "You shouldn't say it that way. You should put it like this..." He then proceeded to describe my own job back to me, using much more exciting language, and making it sound like truly interesting work.
His point was simply this: No matter what dumb, boring thing you have to do in life, make it seem amazing.
Brad Nowell and this Norwegian stranger I met had a similar approach to their own existence. Whatever it was they were doing, they wanted it to be exciting, even if it was just sorting transaction receipts or lying around in a drug-addled stupor in a shitty apartment while the dog runs away. Obviously, I don't recommend getting addicted to heroin. The lesson to take from this is that the difference between your life and a more amazing, adventurous life is often not in what you do, but how you tell the story to yourself. You might live a pretty mundane life; but you might also live a pretty exciting life and just not realize it.
I think about this a bit when I'm running. From my perspective, a 6-mile run around one of my usual loops is a pretty mundane way to pass the time. I can't hardly even get excited about it anymore. It's just part of my day, no different than pulling on a pair of pants. But what would an onlooker see? He'd see a guy in a bandana and a fancy pair of sunglasses coolly striding down a scenic river path with the Fort Worth City skyline as a backdrop. It's practically a postcard, if I could only see it from that onlooker's point of view.
This is really nothing more than finding meaning in your life. If you see your life as a bunch of boring routines, or as an unremarkable thing not worth talking about, then you will probably tend to live your life that way, too. If you instead frame your life as a series of exciting adventures, it's possible to grow more enamored with what you're doing.
Kiss your wife when she comes home. It could be just a kiss to say hello. It could also be an integral part of your epic love story. Make your usual breakfast in the morning. It could be just an almost automatic process of pouring cereal and milk into a bowl. It could also be an indelible part of your idiom:
This is especially important for children, because children haven't been alive very long and haven't yet reached the point where absolutely everything is potentially mundane and boring. Fostering in them a sense of story-telling in their daily lives could potentially help them construct a more satisfying personal narrative. But you'll never instill that in a child until you know how to instill it in yourself.
Blabbermouth.net is
an online tabloid that covers heavy metal and hard rock music, musicians, and
their attendant muckraking. It is essentially a clickbait platform that uses
out-of-context quotations and sensational headlines to drive ad revenue though clicks
and other such dirty tricks. It has a negative reputation, but despite that
fact can be entertaining thanks to the heavy metal community itself, which is
comprised of many people who like to joke around.
The typical
Blabbermouth news cycle goes something like this: First, some legitimate news
outlet reports on something happening in the music world. Second, Blabbermouth
re-blogs it on its own spammy website. Third, music fans on social media
exchange funny and/or belligerent comments with each other under Blabbermouth's
comments threads.
Recently,
Blabbermouth reported on guitarist
Nita Strauss' latest project, which is called "Body Shred."
Although the promotional video (see below) doesn't explain how to
"win" the challenge, based on what I can infer from the website, it
appears to be somewhat of a cross between DietBet, PledgeMusic, and a private
Nita Strauss social media fanclub.
I have nothing
against Nita Strauss or this projects, and I wish her all the success she
deserves.
Predictably, the
Blabbermouth commentariat focused in on Nita Strauss' physical appearance, and
not necessarily in a way that emphasized physical
fitness, if you know what I mean. Many of the ensuing comments were
vague or not-vague sexual references, approving comments on Strauss' worth as
eye candy, suggestions that the promotional video looked like the opening scene
of a pornographic sequence, and so on.
One can easily
imagine that Nita Strauss, being an attractive woman in the music
industry, has dealt with her fair share of objectification and harassment, but
if these comments are any indication, she has had to deal with even more than I
would have expected. Every time I start to gain the impression that society has
for themost part moved on from overt
sexism, something like this proves me wrong.
Thus, my first
impression of Nita Strauss' Body Shred was sympathy. I felt bad that she would
go through the work of putting together what looks like an interesting and
worthy project with her partners and sponsors, only to have to try to overcome
a dark cloud of sexist mockery. She'll need to overcome that mockery in order
for her project to be successful, because no heavy metal fan is going to sign
up for "Nita Strauss' Body Shred" if all their friends are winking
and nudging each other and making sexist jibes about the whole thing.
That was my first
impression, but then I started thinking about it a little more carefully.
As you can see from the photo gallery on Nita Strauss'
website, Ms. Strauss dresses pretty modestly compared to some women in the
world of rock. She's also an excellent guitar player and performer. The point
is, it would be incredibly wrong to suggest that Ms. Strauss has relied on her
looks to establish herself and her career.
On the other hand,
it would be downright foolish to assert that her looks have played no role in
making her famous; after all, she is a
beautiful woman in addition to being a good guitar player. Like it or not,
"great guitar player who is also beautiful"
is a much more marketable entertainment product than "just a great guitar
player" is. Furthermore, a simple web search reveals that there are plenty of promotional photos of Nita
Strauss that emphasize her physical appearance more than her guitar-playing. I
don't fault her for this, and I would certainly do the same if I were in her
position. Who knows, maybe I'd even go further. And maybe the fact that she hasn't gone further is one of the reasons
she's had as successful a career as she's had. I don't know; I'm no expert
here.
The fact remains,
however, that Strauss' looks have played an important role in her music career.
There's just no use denying it. The release of an exercise program, or fitness
challenge, or whatever Body Shred actually is, certainly plays into that aspect
of the Nita Strauss business entity. "Ugly Chick Fitness Challenge"
would not be a particularly successful business venture; but I think "Nita
Strauss' Body Shred" will be. That's an important attribute of the whole
endeavor.
So, in light of all
that, how do we grapple with this? What is the right way to conceive of
a project that ought not become an excuse to objectify someone, and yet which
relies on a certain level of objectification in order to be interesting in the
first place?
By the way, this
question is not unique to this particular fitness challenge. We can go all the
way back to the Jane Fonda Workout program, if we want to. Heck, I'm told that
my great-grandmother on my mother's side had a big crush on Jack LaLanne. Fitness
programs offer us a chance to make ourselves look, not just healthy, but sexy. Fitness videos very often cast
professional fitness models, people whose sole livelihood is working out and
looking as sexy as possible. Part of the audience they're selling to is the
kind of people who watch the jumping jacks in slow motion. If there weren't so
many of those kinds of people, the fitness industry would be a lot smaller and
less profitable than it is today.
To some extent,
fitness is always about looks. But is that good, bad, or neutral? Is it shallow
to be motivated by the prospect of looking sexy? Is it wrong to be motivated to
get fit just so that you can gain access to videos of Nita Strauss doing jumping
jacks in a sports bra? If that's your motivation, but you end up getting fit,
winning the contest, meeting Nita Strauss, and being perfectly nice and polite
to her, is what you've done still "problematic?" Is it wrong to want
to work out at the gym just because a lot of the other gym patrons are
good-looking?
All these questions should be relatively easy to answer. The
reason they're not is because whenever people like Nita Strauss release fitness
videos, people like the Blabbermouth readership post insane and hurtfully
sexist comments. I don’t think it's morally wrong to have private, racy
thoughts about famous people, and I'm not even sure that it's morally wrong to
be motivated by such thoughts (even if
it is odd). But there is a line we shouldn't cross. It's obvious when people
cross it, but it's virtually impossible to explain in advance of crossing it. And if we only ever approach the line
in our imagination, what does morality say then?
An ex-colleague of
mine once told me that, when he had his first child, he created a spreadsheet
that charted his son's first words. He listed each new word his young son
learned, and the date on which it was observed. Then, after some time, he
created a graph with time on the x-axis and the count of known words on the
y-axis. He said it was interesting to see the line. It was roughly
"exponential" in shape.
(I guess I should
say that the line was convex and increasing. I have no idea whether it truly
resembled an exponential function, and
likely neither did my coworker. Hurray for pedantry.)
When you learn
Bangla, it can be hard to learn all the different written verb conjugations
that exist, and then to learn all the different spoken
verb conjugations. Written and spoken conjugations in Bangla all line up
one-to-one, but they're different. Khaisi
is a different word than kheyechhi, even
though they mean the same thing. One you'll only ever experience in written
form, and the other you'll only ever experience in spoken form. Written and
spoken conjugations each have their own rules, but luckily they both do have
rules, and the rules can be learned and applied. The hard part is figuring out
what the rules are. Once you know the rules, though, it's no more difficult to
conjugate khawa than it is to conjugate kora or any other verb.
It took me about six
months of daily practice to get good enough at playing chords on a guitar that
I could learn and strum any old pop song I wanted to. That first six months was
excruciating. My fingers hurt, and it
wasn't any fun trying to sing and play a song because there was a large gap
between the strumming of each new chord, as my fingers fumbled for the correct
position. That, too, if I didn't have to look up how to play the chord in a
book or chart! Memorizing a chordal lexicon and then training your hands to
play each chord via muscle memory fast enough to be able to play a song
on-tempo is a difficult and slow-going process on the guitar. But it's about
six months of work. After that, the number of songs a person can learn
increases at an increasing rate.
So, I think it's
safe to say that the concepts described above generalize. The hardest part of
learning anything is learning the fundamentals. Once you know them, applying
them is a relatively straight-forward process. It takes more time to learn and
understand the fundamentals than it does to apply the fundamentals to new
concepts, so our rate of learning will tend to increase over time. When we know
nothing, the learning is slow; when we know a little more, the learning comes
much easier.
Of course, learning
to communicate, learning to speak a new language, and learning to play a new
instrument are activities that all involve much more than the fundamentals.
There are subtleties and implications. There are inferences that must be made.
There are greater levels of accomplishment to be had. Even though we learn at
an increasing rate as time goes on, there are perhaps an infinite number of
concepts leading up to mastery, if mastery is even possible. And thus, after a
time, our additional accomplishments become less noticeable to outsiders even
if we're learning more now than ever before.
This morning, my
daughter correctly guessed how to spell the word "habitat." She's
four years old, so this is somewhat impressive. She can read, and that was
impressive when it finally happened. She knows some good words, words beyond
what the average four-year-old knows, among which I count the word
"habitat;" and her having a good vocabulary is impressive to me.
Still, it doesn't elicit the same kind of emotional reaction in me the way it
did when I heard her say "Dada" for the first time. That's not
because it isn't equally as impressive, it's just because hearing a child's
first word is a leap into interpersonal communication, whereas hearing a young
child spell the word "habitat" is a fully anticipated outcome of her
having been taught the phonic principles of reading.
Ironically, her
spelling "habitat" is probably more impressive on objective terms,
even though it didn't rock my world quite the same way. She spoke her first
word at about an "age-appropriate" time. It was a developmental
milestone that she crossed at roughly the time the average parent might expect.
By contrast, she learned to read earlier than average, and I don't know any
other four-year-old who knows the word "habitat," much less knows how
to read it or spell it.
So, in fact, I am more impressed that she did this today, but
it requires some introspection on my part to fully appreciate it. That got me
thinking: How many other things will she learn today that would impress me this
much, if I but merely took the time to think about it for a second?
I'm not writing this
to brag to the world about cool stuff my daughter did. The lesson to be learned
here is that I think we should occasionally take the time to appreciate the
remarkable things our friends and loved ones do. We don't always notice what's
going on. We don't always take the time to consider how impressive it is that
they've managed to accomplish what they have. We're naturally impressed when
people learn a new set of fundamentals, but after that, we stop paying
attention. It becomes harder and harder to differentiate between a person's
being able to play The Entertainer and The Moonlight Sonata, except to people
familiar with piano-playing. But we don't have to be familiar with piano
playing if we merely take the time to follow along with our loved ones as they
work through their own sets of accomplishments.
So, the bottom line
here is to take that time. Recognize what your loved ones have done. They'll
amaze you, if you're paying attention!
In the
guitar-playing world, few players are surrounded by such mystique and reverence
as Vinnie Vincent. In the year 2019, it's difficult to understand why.
Vincent is primarily
known for doing two records and two tours with Kiss, first as "The Ankh
Warrior" character, and then later as one of the unmasked members of Kiss
during the Lick It Up period. Despite
writing nearly a dozen songs between the two Kiss albums and playing guitar
shockingly well (especially by Kiss standards), Vincent's personality put him
at odds with Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, and he was eventually kicked out of
the band.
From there, he
formed Vinnie Vincent's Invasion. Or is that merely the name of the album? It's
hard to tell. Combined with the two Kiss albums, Vinnie
Vincent's Invasion solidified his reputation as an amazing guitar
player, even though he had already been a successful songwriter for years by
that point.
Stylistically, I
would place Vinnie Vincent's Invasion in
the same basic category as Ronnie James Dio's solo albums, which is to say that
it is a heavy metal album with a decidedly East Coast writing style and ample
room for lightning-fast guitar solos. (The vocals aren't nearly on that level,
however.) For the most part, the songs are mid-tempo rock songs familiar to any
fans of early glam-metal, back before thrash metal had won over the metal crowd
and before bands like Poison Poison-ed
the well of pop metal.
Some of songs, such
as "Twisted" could plausibly have been found on a Motley Crue record,
albeit with that unmistakable East Coast twinge that I personally, could rather
do without. The album's high point, a power ballad called "No Substitute"
that evokes Cheap Trick and Journey while hinting at the power of the late 80s,
sounds far less dated than the rest of the album.
Throughout the album
Vincent shreds his guitar basically as hard as he can. In hindsight, it's hard
to understand why he's such a revered player. His solos are certainly fast, but they're also tasteless. Vincent
prefers quite a dry tone on this album, contrasting against the reverb-draped
rhythm tracks. The effect makes his guitar stand out, but not in a good way. It
doesn't sound like he's playing with the
band, it sounds as though he's playing right on
top of them. His note choice might best be described as a scramble. It's
as though he's trying his hardest to cram every available note into every
available solo. When it works, it can be nice. When he's not playing so fast
that it becomes sloppy, he has a few interesting licks to offer the listener.
Unfortunately, most of the time, he's so focused on speed that the listener
misses out on a lot of the content of the solo. It reminds me a bit of the way
Ted Nugent plays -- so fast and so constant that most people don't even realize
he's changing keys and doing interesting things.
Now, there are a few
reasons why a guitarist would be playing like that in the 80s. It very much
sounds like Vincent is high on cocaine while playing these solos. I don't know
whether or not that's true, I only know it sounds like it to me.
All that being said,
Vinnie Vincent's Invasion is not the
kind of album a music fan with a long-range vision of what music should be like
will ever care to enjoy. Even as a historical curiosity, a representative
moment of 80s heavy metal, the album fails to really captivate. As such, it's a
great example of Vinnie Vincent himself: there is plenty of talent on display,
it's just put to poor use, and ultimately unmemorable.
Having said that,
this album doesn't need my approval to be legendary. Metal fans have been
holding this album up as an example of greatness for years. Maybe they're right
and I'm wrong. Or maybe this album really is a solid C-.
This morning I
turned on the radio during the drive to work and heard one of my all-time
favorite pop songs: "Fantasy," by Mariah Carey.
By now, this old
song -- almost twenty-five years old now! -- has been talked about and analyzed
to death. There is very little left to say about it. Still, it's such a
wonderful song that I must try to say a few things that have perhaps not been
said about it before.
The song's lyrics
tell the story of a woman who fantasizes about having a relationship with a man
she barely knows in real life. That's the long and the short of it. In the
first verse, she describes seeing him "every night," so perhaps at a
neighborhood hangout or while she's at work. The entire remainder of the song
is dedicated to describing her fantasy, which mostly consists of keeping him as
a boyfriend and making love to him.
These lyrics
certainly didn't win Mariah Carey a Pulizter Prize, but the way they're put
together make them pack a heftier punch than the average pop song nowadays,
even if the basic subject matter is no different. In "Fantasy," the
narrator is in complete control of her situation. Often in similar songs, the
singers describe their predicament as hopeless or painful; but in Mariah
Carey's "Fantasy," we only experience joy. It's the joy of a daydream, written and recorded at a
time when one could simply have a sexy daydream about somebody without wading
into the politics of objectification or an analysis of what level of fantasy is
appropriate.
That joy finds
itself replicated in the song's music and instrumentation, and even in the
song's music video. The video, directed by Carey herself, shows her in various
scenes doing nothing other than singing and having fun, which is precisely
analogous to the song's subject matter. We're not pining for a lover here,
we're just having a daydream. Pure joy. The song's music is upbeat. The drums
are driving, the bass is deep and moving, and Carey's voice is vibrant and
declarative. There's not a moody note in the whole four-plus-minutes of the
song.
"Fantasy"
is such a shocking song to hear in today's world, where music is progressively
both more dramatic and more inane. This contrast made me realize something.
There is an important kind of maturity being expressed here. It's a simple, plain-faced,
heart-on-my-sleeve, unabashed fantasy being had in this song, and yet we don't
have to wade through all that in-your-face "Drrty" hyper-sexuality.
We don't have to get a description of the fantasy itself. What's important to
Carey as she sings about her fantasy isn't the collection of acts she might be
imagining, but only how she feels, emotionally
about her daydream. Again, it's a song about being happy.
That's being happy, as opposed to being turned-on, or
wanting to advance to the next stage of a relationship, or wanting to get the
guy's number, or whatever else. It's a simple description of an emotion at a
point in time. In order to express an emotion at a point in time, a person has
to be aware of that emotion and take ownership of it. So, in a sense,
"Fantasy" is a song about a woman taking ownership of her own
fun-filled emotions.
This is a far more
empowering message than anything you get in modern music today. When I heard
"Fantasy" this morning it almost made me weep for what society seems
to have lost over the last 25 years. We've lost the mature ability to take ownership
of our emotions and express them plainly and openly. And no wonder -- every
attempt to do so online is met with a Twitter mob of critics who are ready to
find fault with anything you've thought or said, ready to make you pay for not
properly genuflecting to the right sacred altars, ready to find hidden bigotry
or privilege in any simple fantasy you might express.
It's sad enough that
we as human beings can no longer explore our emotions publicly and artistically
in such a way, but think what it's managed to do to art itself. When our
emotions are so repressed, so is our art, and repressed art just isn't that
interesting.
I had an offhand
thought this morning. For a long time, I've simply assumed that "the flu
season" exists primarily because flu viruses peak at a certain time of
year, much the same way that pollen peaks at certain times of year. I can't say
why I thought so; I just sort of took it for granted.
This morning,
however, it occurred to me that one reason people get the flu in the wintertime
is because we tend to spend more time cooped-up indoors. This leaves us
essentially locked up with people who carry the viruses. Of course you're more likely to fall ill if
you're quarantined in the same airtight box as someone already infected with
the virus!
Curious, I spent a
few moments with an internet search engine before discovering an
article that more or less confirmed my suspicions:
Here are the most
popular theories about why the flu strikes in winter:
1) During the
winter, people spend more time indoors with the windows sealed, so they are
more likely to breathe the same air as someone who has the flu and thus
contract the virus.
The article didn't
stop there, however. Most of the latter half of the article actually confirms
my prior belief, that the flu simply thrives in wintertime. The author of the
article discusses research that confirms exactly that; the flu is more communicable
in cold, dry weather.
This might be a
matter of the-chicken-and-the-egg. After all, if the flu season is generally
caused by people staying indoors, then we might expect flu viruses to evolve
such that cold-and-dry-preferring viruses are naturally selected, while flu
viruses that favor warmer and more humid weather would tend to die out, at
least in regions that are further away from the equator.
***
I was thinking about
flu viruses in the first place because I fell ill last week. I don't know if
what I had was a flu or a cold, but it laid me out most of Christmas Day and
the day after. I felt generally miserable for two days on either side of Christmas,
too, and am only now starting to feel more like my old self again.
Colds and flus are very hard on diabetics. We have weaker immune
systems to begin with, and then on top of that our blood glucose levels tend to
skyrocket whenever we get sick, making our immune systems even weaker, and thus
rendering it even more difficult to kick the bug. What for most people would be
a three-day bug ends up being at least a week-long bug for diabetics. Sometimes
non-diabetics have colds or flus that are so vicious that they last a week or
two. Imagine how long it takes us diabetics to get over that kind of illness.
The sheer length of
time we spend fighting off these illnesses, combined with the increase in blood
glucose, tends to make us -- or at least tends to make me -- shed pounds like crazy. I'm about 155-160 pounds,
depending on the day. I easily drop five to ten pounds whenever I get sick, and
that's five to ten pounds of body mass,
not five to ten pounds of unwanted fat.
The flu doesn't care about what weight you want to keep or lose. It all goes.
What keeps my blood
sugar down? What keeps my body healthy and able to easily fight off infections?
Exercise. What keeps my body full of lean muscle mass and with minimal amounts
of excess body fat? Exercise. What's the last thing anyone can or wants to do
when they're laid up in bed with a bad cold or flu? Exercise.
Put it all together,
and it adds up to this: When I get sick, I lose a lot of my physical fitness.
It's a race to fight off the infection before my body wastes away to a
145-pound skeleton with no muscle to speak of.
***
Thus, in the middle
of wintertime -- generally around New Year's Day -- and despite my best
efforts, I am generally at the point where I feel weak and unfit, ready to get
back into shape, put muscle back on my frame, take on a new challenge. For most
people, "New year, new you" is the order of the day. Not for me,
though. I just want the old me back, the
fit guy who can run 15 miles without think about it and who can do a bunch of
push-ups and pull-ups.
Nor am I getting any
younger. I'll finish up my fortieth year on earth this year. Don't get me
wrong, I look and feel great for my age. Still, I remember seeing the photos of
my old classmates at the ten-year high school reunion. Even at age 28, many of them
looked middle aged for failing to take care of their bodies. They were visibly
carrying extra weight, both physically around their waists, and mentally. Take
it from a goddamn diabetic, it feels just awful
to be unhealthy. You can see it in a person's eyes.
That was twelve
years ago. Ten years of unhealthy living had already caught up to people who
should have been physiologically peaking. (The last estimates I've seen for
average physiological peak were ~28 years for men and ~32 years for women.)
And, I hasten to add, this is among a cohort of people who by and large eschew
alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. Twelve additional
years of unhealthy living has surely caught up to these folks even
further. Meanwhile, I can generally pass for someone who is at least ten years
younger than I really am.
So, I firmly believe
that when it comes to being in shape and looking younger, it's use it or lose it. Be steadfast. Stop
exercising even for a moment, and you may be leaving years on the table,
withering like a bouquet of gas station roses.
That's the urgency I
feel after having been ill: My body just lost a ton of muscle mass and I have
to cut my weekly running mileage down in order to build back up again. I've
lost some conditioning; I need to get it back.
Use it, or lose it. I can rest when I'm dead. That's the idea.
And it always
happens around New Year's Day. It always tends to be that I'm at my lowest
point around the start of the new year, having been ransacked by some virus.
This year, however,
I did a little extra. With all that P90X-ing I did, I managed to build a little
more muscle mass, make my muscles a little more flexible, bring myself up to
even greater levels of physical conditioning. I have still preserved a great deal
of that, and I'm going into the new year with a new exercise regimen and a
good, solid VO2 max in the upper fifties.
In 2019, by my
fortieth birthday, I might well be as fit as ever.
***
Wisely (for once), I
didn't spend my sick time idly staring at a computer or television screen. I
didn't spend my time in bed, trying to sleep away my feelings. I spent my time
reading.
I'm already three
books deep in the Wheel of Time series,
as readers know, and wrapping up the fourth book in the next two days or so.
Consider the scope of that, though: each one of these books is over seven hundred pages long. The one I'm reading now is
over a thousand. That's well over a thousand pages of reading per week, since I started on my vacation
earlier this month. Prior to that, I was barely reading at all. I had the
impression that I had no time to read at all, but I found time to read by
stealing it from time wasted on social media. That's a good trade-off.
I remember the last
time I read as much as I'm currently reading. That was the year I got rid of my
television. But that was 2008, ten and a half years ago, when social media was
a strong presence, but not nearly as strong as it is now. I spent lots of time
online back then, and used to joke that I had "read the entire internet.
All of it." Back then, though, reading the internet was time not
completely wasted. A person could read all kinds of ideologically neutral information about almost anything in 2008.
Nowadays, advertising has undermined a person's ability to get unbiased and
useful information from the internet. Gotta
monetize, amirite?
So, the internet has
become what television was ten years ago: A complete waste of time. Almost a complete waste, anyway. One can still
study and learn with the internet, but one has to be deliberate about it now;
just as with television.
And, anyway, books
are cheap. Because everything is online now, or in "Kindle format,"
the relative price of an actual, physical book (or an actual, physical CD, or
etc.) is so low that anyone with a thirst for knowledge or of entertainment that
doesn't constantly scream advertisements at you all the time can get it on any
budget. Best of all, it can be had used,
i.e. for even cheaper.
Market forces,
sociological forces, personal preferences, and finally a bad cold all conspired
to drive me back into the world of books, the beautiful
world of books, and I am reading again. And writing again.
There will be much
more of this, too, in 2019.
***
A strange calm came
over this past year. No, calm isn't quite the right word. Enlightenment is closer, but too grandiose…
It could have been
as simple as leaving my former workplace, a vicious, ugly place full of
vicious, ugly people; racists, back-stabbers, social climbers, sycophants… and
a few really nice people that I truly enjoyed knowing. It's easy for such an
environment to bring a person down into a bad headspace. I'm the kind of person
who desperately wants to be friends with people, albeit in my quixotic and
uncompromising way. Consequently, it's easy for such an environment to riddle
me with self-doubt, even shame.
But it wasn't really
as simple as getting out of a bad work environment. As I've grown my hair out,
I've started to become a long-haired
kind of a guy. It's difficult to explain why exactly, but I feel more like my
own true self with longer hair, even if I'm not quite sure I look better. People
certainly treat me more like myself. I even play the guitar differently,
more self-assuredly, more expressively.
The world becomes a
much clearer place when you feel self-confident.
That's another
slightly inaccurate phrase, "self-confident." It's the right phrase,
although I've never before understood what it really means. For years, I think
I've believed self-confidence to be a feeling or an emotional state. I felt self-confident when I dressed in a nice
suit. I felt self-confident when I
stepped up to the starting line of a road race. I felt
self-confident when solved a tough problem at work.
That is no longer
how I experience "self-confidence." Now, to me, self-confidence is a
plain acknowledgement of the reality of one's own being. (Hmm, I might have to
add that definition to the lexicon.) Self-confidence means knowing that when I
try to solve a statistical problem, I'll likely succeed. Self-confidence means
that I'm a guitar-playing guy with long hair who likes to wear dress slacks and
ties, not because I think people "should" dress that way, but because
I like it for me. I like the way I look.
My daughter likes the way I look. And my wife.
My gorgeous wife! I still get butterflies.
People in the office see photographs of her and they're rightly impressed. They
pat me on the back for being able to land myself a beautiful woman like that,
and that's well before they learn about her career success and her brain. She
has stop-the-world caliber beauty, truly, with rich, dark hair and eyes like
liquid obsidian; her skin is like smooth, soft caramel and her voice like
velvet. And on top of a beauty like
that, she has the ability to do seemingly anything. She speaks three languages
fluently, holds advanced degrees, she completed both Hyperfitness and P90X
with relative ease. She once learned professional-level cake decorating just to
prove a point. And in her career, she is seemingly unstoppable. (I could go on
and on, here; I seldom do, on the blog anyway, because for some reason people
get turned off when a guy spends too much time singing his own wife's praises.
But it's worth elaborating a bit here, because it is
directly relevant to my point.)
No fool could ever
take a woman like that for granted, but at the same time, I have to admit that
it fills me with self-confidence to know
that she is mine. The plain acknowledgement of who she is is likewise a comment
about me: That a woman like that took my
last name means something about me, too. I am grateful for what I have. I am
also deserving of it.
I am. I don't want
to be arrogant, but my life is what it is. It's a good life, and I'm surrounded
by good people, not the least of whom includes my beautiful wife and a daughter
who is, I'm half-convinced, literally magic.
My choices brought me to where I am today. Self-confidence means simply
acknowledging and being comfortable with that fact.
I'm comfortable with
all of it. The shirtless running in the rain. The P90X. The guitar-playing, the
prog rock. The nerdy books. The libertarianism. The fact that I mostly want to
be left alone on the weekend and not see anyone except my wife and my daughter.
The coffee consumption, the love of beer. The electric bike. The large words
that few understand, and the peculiar sense of humor that nobody understands. The oatmeal, by god! My favorite food is oatmeal!
I am what I am, and
being what I am has resulted in a fine life indeed. I'm happy about that. I'm
self-confident in it. I never expected to feel this way, and I never really did
anything to try to cultivate that feeling. But in 2018, I somehow managed to
achieve it. In 2019, I might just be able to channel it somehow.
***
Working out,
reading, playing music, being self-confident. I guess 2019 will end up being a
lot like 2018, but just marginally better. That's what I'm aiming for. That's
my New Year's resolution, to live one more year of the good life, but to live
it better than I did last year. And so I shall.
I wish the same for
all of my readers, even if the only ones still "reading" are Russian
spam-bots. May you be the best damn Russian spam-bots you can be; may you be
better spam-bots than you were the previous year. May you find ever more comfort
and self-actualization in your life as Russian spam-bots.
But seriously, to
any and all still reading after all these years -- and those of you who just
accidentally stumbled upon this post while you were searching Google to figure
out how to sync up Google Fit with Strava -- may you have a healthy, happy, and
deeply satisfying 2019. Happy New Year.
An offhand thought I
had the other day: Art is only any good in societies that have something to
say.
First of all, I
can't prove this, so don't bother arguing with me. It's simply a consideration.
Consider the most
recent artistic explosion of my lifetime: the early 1990s. Reasonable people
can argue as to the inherent worth of the things that Generation X had to say,
but it seems impossible to contest that they did, in fact, have something to say. The result was a massive
wave of artistic output that has not since been equaled. In music, there was
the so-called "grunge" or "alternative" music revolution.
For better or worse, an entirely different sound took hold of the musical
landscape and changed things basically forever. In film, there was a flood of
new styles that, in hindsight, are perfectly obvious. No one who watches even a
B-movie from the 90s can deny the stark difference in cinematography compared
to the average movie from the 80s. The book world moved away from classic
murder mysteries and toward dark new thrillers from the likes of John Grisham
and idiosyncratic takes on familiar themes, like Interview
with the Vampire.
This is not the only example, of course. Before that, there
was the great and disruptive social revolution of the 1960s, during which every
conceivable art form changed drastically; and, I would argue, beautifully.
Before that, the early 20th Century brought us atonal music, jazz, Dadaism, and
even "modern art" itself, all during a time of remarkable social
upheaval. When young people had something to say, art flourished.
There is nothing
like that happening today. The closest thing is perhaps the Netflix series
thing, where beautifully shot serial soap operas are made available all at
once, and then viewers "binge watch." It's close, I admit, but it
doesn't seem to have the same kind of staying power that Full House did. Think about it -- nobody goes
back and watches old reruns of Deadwood.
Once you've gone through it the first time, you never think about it again. It
exists only in the vague memories of "stuff you once binge-watched."
But almost everyone smiles and laughs
when they see old re-runs of Full House
or The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Even
cheap sitcoms were more artistically sound in the 90s than the cream of the
Netflix series crop. As for music and visual art, forget about it. There is no
revolution going on out there; it's a never-ending quest to achieve viral
status with increasingly more generic-sound or -looking artistic output.
And this is because
today's young people have nothing to say. There is no great message from the
up-and-coming generation. They seem cynical and socially engaged, but it
somehow never manages to go beyond social media memes and "campus
protests." Even the campus protests strike me as being quite tame; not the
least because there is no safer and less-disruptive place to stage a protest
than in the common area of a university. They sure ain't marching on city hall!
Interacting with
young people today is no more encouraging about what their message to the world
might be. In general, they seem skittish and distracted. At best, they sound
like they're leaving something important unsaid, which they will only divulge
to their friends on Snapchat or some other such direct message platform. As for
holding their heads high and saying something genuinely controversial --
leaving themselves vulnerable to widespread criticism and peer-review: forget
about it.
There are probably
good reasons for why young people no longer behave this way. It likely all
makes sense and is not at all their fault that they do so. I don't mean for
this to be a value-judgment. It's simply a plain fact: wherever young people
have nothing interesting to say, art will not flourish.
Bear in mind, too,
that I'm speaking primarily from a North American perspective. There are places
in the world where this is not true. Much has been written about the booming
heavy metal scene in Africa. Much less has been written about the thriving art
scene in India, where young people gather at open mic nights and sing, play
music, read poetry, and more. And there are surely small pockets of artistic
output scattered elsewhere throughout the world, including even right here at
home. This is great. The point is, where young people have something to say,
art will flourish.
