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Here’s a chart that shows my coffee bias over the years.
For good measure I have added my bagel preferences over the same period. (1) Drip coffee, (2) Starbucks, (3) blueberry bagels, (4) sesame bagels, (5) poppy-seed bagels, (6) everything bagels
Please don’t hold my brief affair with blueberry bagels against me. I cured myself of this aberration.
Once, after a grueling all-day design conference at a university, I was invited to dinner on campus. To go with the various delicious pastas, salads and quiches, coffee was served.
When you are craving a beer, coffee is the most disgusting drink in the universe.
Like most people, I seek out news updates from various mediums and at different times of the day depending on what kind of reporting I’m craving: I check in with the New York Times website daily for a brief overview of the day’s headlines; political and cultural blogs keep me saturated with more than enough entertaining but mediated commentary on the day’s top headlines; when I have time and access, podcasts and radio shows provide for middle ground between salient, eclectic stories, reports, and anecdotes.
It’s only when I visit my parents’ house that I turn to the television to satiate my news fix, and even then, I feel that watching to Food Network is way more beneficial to me than most news programs out there.
But I may have to change my approach to this whole information thing. Earlier this year, I was roped into the television set when Rachel Maddow, one of “progressive” and curious Americans’ sharpest, most trusted and radio voices, earned herself a swivel chair, gleaming desk, and camera-ready wardrobe, thereby becoming one of our sharpest, most trusted faces on television. Once I discovered that this woman, whose Air America radio show I listened to religiously in college and who I must credit in large part to whatever analytical news eye that I have, made the jump from a left-wing talk radio station to the affectatious tube, I couldn’t resist.
Maddow’s shows are available for free through podcasts, but it made me reassess my prejudice against the inanity of television news, especially now that another one of our most reputable news pundits, Christiane Amanpour, will apparently be hosting her own television show on CNN International.
I’m expecting CNN to make her show available online or through podcasts as well, but regardless of how I personally view their programs, it remains the case that these women are actively redefining what it takes to be a television personality, and are challenging any preconceived notion of what type of tone, guest list, or approach a television news show must incorporate in order to be successful. The reports don’t have to be buzz-worthy, flashy, or always absolutely critical to our well-being. And Maddow has proven time and time again that giving attention to the day’s under-reported news items is actually more interesting and valuable than trying to stay on top of what most mediums are herding into the spotlight. It’s as if Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have been offering a slapstick, goofy, and fearlessly intelligent criticism of current events and the media that proclaims to report about them for all these years. And now, finally, Maddow is (and I project Amanpour will be) offering a response to these men’s call for good, honest reporting: smart, factual, entertaining journalism that isn’t afraid to have its own voice.
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About three weeks ago, I wrote a post declaring my ambition and insanity in signing up for National Novel Writing Month, a project that over 100,000 individuals partake in every November to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I published this partly for all the standard reasons people publish blogs generally: to add their voice to the largely inept and inaccurate cacophony of the online world about any topic for which they give a blogospheric hoot, and to entertain the notion that perhaps they are saying something original and worthwhile.
The other more pressing reason, which was encouraged by NaNoWriMo administrators, was to make my goal public so that I had a greater motivation and obligation to follow through with it. The more people who knew that I set this goal for myself, the more likely I was to feel like I had no choice but to carry on. My work would be transparent – or at least my effort would be – and I figured that would be good enough motivation for my prideful self to get through the month.
I said in that post that I would write updates as I made progress in my novel, but since that day, instead of chronicling my endeavor, I instead: moved out of my apartment in Koreatown; hunted down and then moved into a new apartment in Los Feliz; started searching for furniture to make the space into a home (sigh…); celebrated a birthday; celebrated HOPE; quit my job at Trader Joe’s; started a job at a wicked cool education nonprofit downtown; and more or less changed my lifestyle accordingly. So what? We’re all busy, and we all have to carve out time in our days to pursue our hobbies and passions. That, too, is another important aspect of NaNoWriMo–to challenge participants to make writing a priority. ANd I did this. Or at least I have attempted to do this. Over the past three weeks, I have also written about 26,000 words of – and this has nothing to do with modesty – shit. The worst, most bland plot line ever to make its way onto a Word document, and an insult to the term “literary fiction” in general.
I started out okay with a set of interesting, quirky, peculiar characters and a vague idea of where they would be going, what they would be doing, and what delicately profound and poetic themes they would uncover along the way. Then day four rolled around and things have been going downhill ever since. It was exactly what NaNoWriMo veterans told me to expect, but it was frustrating and unsettling nonetheless.
This morning I pulled myself out of bed at 5:40am to try to make a dent in my 32,000-words-by-Thursday goal before heading to work, but only got about 800 in before I closed my computer and decided to give up. This is silly. What with all the transitions I’m working through (again), I don’t need the added self-inflicted stress of writing what will still be, no matter how the next ten days unfold, a novel no man, woman, or child worldwide would want to spend time with.
But alas, six and a-half hours, a quarter of a cup of spilled coffee, and a laborious experience note-taking for an LAUSD meeting later, I had changed my mind. I don’t know how I convinced myself to continue on with this project, and I sure as hell don’t know why. From the first time I learned about it, I thought NaNoWriMo was kind of goofy, and a good deal annoying as well, not just to those who take on the challenge, but also to their peers who must then deal to their writer-friends’ complaints, exhaustion, and tirades that somehow border both self-deprecation and self-righteousness. (I’m sorry.)
Nevertheless, this whole post is just an extracurricular exercise (aka procrastination) for me to get my fingers warmed up so that I can churn out a couple more dangling dialogues and stagnant, clichéd plot devices.
Well, first I’m going to sneak in an episode of The Wire. But then I’ll start writing for realsies. Promise…?
A couple of years ago, Jon Stewart teased one of his guests on The Daily Show about the guest’s centrist viewpoints, saying (not verbatim) “What do you think is going to happen? All the moderates of the country will rally together, stand on their soap box, and yell at the top of their lungs, ‘Be reasonable!?’”
It doesn’t sound as ironic or biting as it did coming straight from Stewart’s mouth, or as apropos as it rings in my memory. But Stewart is right — you don’t hear much about people in the middle of the political spectrum (or of any spectrum, for that matter). They’re the quiet, pragmatic, and grounded players who form the ballast of the game, translating the radicalism steaming from both sides into coherent, effectual actions. In other words, they’re the meat of the sandwich.
Politically speaking, it seems that for years, most of us have sat uncomfortably on the feeling that we are settling for the lesser of two evils in politics. Few of my peers can confidently identify as a “Democrat” or “Republican.” In response to questions about where they fall ideologically, most of them instead respond equivocally and noncommittally. John P. Avlon from the Wall Street Journal has found this to be true as well, giving a (foretelling?) account of the emergence of this body, one primarily made up of the youth and Gen Xers who “tend to be fiscally conservative, socially progressive and strong on national security. They believe in putting patriotism over partisanship and the national interest over special interests.”
Perhaps in addition to exposing all the other overarching trends, demographics, prejudices, and other seminal and hidden facts of our culture, this election will shine light on a new faction in political ideology. It may not turn out that Independents are forming a party of their own, not yet anyway. But rather they are coming together as an undefined, amorphous entity that thinks and listens rather than just speaks, and that seems to be one of the few factions of our government that gets shit done. And that’s a politic I can get behind.
It is official. As of 12:22 this morning, I made a vow to the void of the Internet, and to a few thousand brave souls (read: massochistic, artistic whackos) to participate in NaNoWriMo. (Go ahead, say it out loud. It’ll make you smile.)
For all those unfamiliar with this acronym, which personally always brings about an image of a unicorned-computer screen and causes my voice to pinch off in a nasal thrust, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It’s a creative writing project that ambitious, motivated writers participate in for the month of November. The goal? To write 50,000 words by midnight on November 30 that add up — in either a fluid and eloquent or scrappy and desperate way — to a novel. A piece of art.
“Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly. Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.
“As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and—when the thing is done—the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.”
You sign up on the NaNoWriMo website along with your writing cohorts and throughout the month, continually log how many words you’ve written, seek out adviceand encouragement to persevere when you’ve had just about enough of this nonsense, and come November 30, submit your work for word-count verification. If you’ve succeeded at hitting that 50K mark, you get goofy electronic badge. But more importantly, you get to get some ideas onto the page as thousands of others do the same throughout the world (despite the name of this event, it has become so popular in its 9-year history that it has spread internationall). You get to play with literary techniques, to explore your own voice, to get inside a character’s head, and you get to call yourself a NOVELIST. Is that elitist? I don’t think so (although, despite what people are saying out there, being a little elitist about certain things isn’t so terrible.)
Is it crazy to put yourself through this challenge only to end up with 175 pages of what may very well turn out to be buckets of hogwash? To wake up early, stay up late, type away at your laptop during your lunch break at work, and show up to Thanksgiving dinner already with a pesky case of indigestion from worrying about how many words you have yet to write once you sober up and carry yourself home that evening?
Perhaps. But I’m gonna attempt it nonetheless, despite the fact that I have very little in the way of a direction or outline for what to write. I’m not doing this because I want to be a novelist — I’m more of a literary nonficiton lady myself. But because I want to make a little noise, or rather get a little noise out on paper. To create. That’s reason enough, yes?
More updates to come…
Is what makes for a good set list at a concert different from what makes for a good track list on an album? And how does that compare to a good track list on a mixed CD you make for your friend?
On Monday night, dirty-pop anti-diva Liz Phair performed her seminal 1995 debut album Exile in Guyville from beginning to end at the Troubadour to a sold-out crowd of fans in honor of the records’ recent reissue. Not to a group of LA-cool kids who wanted to hear “Why Can’t I,” but rather a group of devoted fans, mostly in their Saturn years, who got to transport back to the day when they first fell in love with Liz Phair.
Since she released this album, Phair has taken a dramatic turn in musical style, ditching the raw, reverbing power chords and her borderline off key, bedroom intimate warble for cleaner sounding, pristine pop. When artists try something different in their careers, they either manage to reinvent themselves ingeniously, taking the opportunity to forge new ground within their personal style; or they fall ingloriously into the standard sounds emerging at the time, leaving their fans with a sense of betrayal and isolation.
For most Phair fans, the lady succumbed to the latter pathway, which made Monday night’s performance all the more precious. It allowed fans a chance to rekindle with Phair the way one would with an old flame—forgetting all the shit that happened when the relationship ended, and taking this chance to move with each other the way they remember, not worrying about the past or the future infractions, and instead simply enjoying and respecting what they loved about one another to begin with.
A lot of artists are beginning to hold events like this one, performing one album in its entirety and nurturing the increasingly threatened presence of “the album” in the recording industry. In doing so, they then change the experience and function of going to a concert overall. The focus is no longer about hooking the audience with popular singles, interspersed with overlooked tracks from the album or old favorites; it’s not about crafting a new and dynamic set list each night; and it’s not about experimenting with a particular tune by tinkering with the solos or the tempo or the instrumentation. I love when artists take advantage of the opportunities in performing live to take a song somewhere completely different than how it ended up being recorded in the studio.
But that’s not what Phair’s performance was about. Instead, it was about brining to life a creation, and in doing so, bringing from anachronism to topicality the idea of an album functioning as a work of art overall.
My friend and I recently contemplated the best way to introduce our favorite musicians to others. Phair is one of those figures for her. Should she make a mixed CD of Phair’s best work from over a decade of tunes, culling from all the styles and levels of sonic and thematic maturity that Phair has explored? Or should she drop the notion of creating a holistic account of Phair’s career and simply burn one album and trust that the listener will judge it as only one installment in the lady’s career?
I often struggle with this decision when introducing fans to one of my favorite musicians Erin McKeown (who is a longtime Phair fan as well). The folk-pop-indie artist has explored so many styles over the years, ventured into an array of genres, and pushed the limits of almost every instrument she’s touched that to burn a CD which did not address her breadth of style would feel downright offensive to her career.
But at the same time, even burned CDs from friends need to have some degree of continuity of sound. And as singles continually replace albums in the music industry, it grows increasingly important to respect records such as Phair’s Exile in Guyville and McKeown’s We Will Become Like Birds which function not as a collection of 11-15 individual tunes, but rather as comprehensive, conceptual albums. They even function off the structure of vinyl records, with definitive first and second sides that evolve sonically and thematically within the course of one side of the album, and over the entirety of the record as well, a quality that Phair proved lends itself perfectly to performing the tunes live, giving structure and fluidity to the show.
Phair’s performance of Exile to Guyville on Monday night also underscored the impact she had on pop music generally, and as a female musician in the music industry specifically, when she first emerged on the scene back in the 90s. She’s a beautiful, smart blonde with a dirty mind and a type of facetious sexiness, and is none the less ladylike because of it. Instead, she redefined the expectations undergirding what being a “lady” or being “sexy” meant in pop music, especially in the independent music scene Chicago in the 90s. Or what being a woman in that culture and in ours today means overall.
There is something exciting about being in an audience and receiving a show with a unique set list put together the day of by the artist based on his/her mood and intention, a gift for this one crowd on this one night assembled from the musician’s entire career and perhaps ornamented with a special cover tune or unreleased track.
But brining an album to the stage—a whole album, especially one as powerful and raw as Guyville—has its own, unique appeal. And it doesn’t keep the performer from throwing in, say, a rocking, bluesy new single that’s as rough and catchy as her earlier work. Is the lady coming full circle in her career, returning to the type of flair that attracted us to begin with? I can’t wait to find out.
There are few barriers in this era beyond the ones we set up for ourselves. A nudist reminded me of this last night.
I was at a friend’s birthday party, strategically positioned in the path of a hot, summer’s breeze coming through the window on this last evening of September; and close to the door leading outside to the stagnant, muggy air blanketing the buildings around us.
The friends, strangers, and in-betweens surrounding me passed around beers and hummus and, ahem, other things, while discussing in a buzzed and extraordinarily trite fashion the Internet’s influence on how people share their art with others. The nudist of course celebrated the possibilities of online marketing and the freedom the Internet offers our culture, a freedom of expression she felt was severely lacking in other parts of our lifestyles (she personally has to tredge all the way to Malibu to go topless without having to stave off dirty looks, for instance.) But sometimes I find this affability to be more of an annoyance than a gift, leading to an oversaturation of the same styles, themes, and directions in people’s work.
But other times, like in the case of Rose Polenzani, I couldn’t be more thankful. Rose is one of those artists that could be famous if she wanted to be, but seems to enjoy the simple, Wetern-Mass, farmhouse lifestyle just fine. She strums her guitar simply, but with the touch of a virtuoso; she puts words on the page like a storyteller moonlighting as a poet; and the haunt in her voice alone could make anyone’s chest hallow for one measure, and then swell with warmth the next.
Beyond the more specific qualities of Rose’s music is how she delivers it to her fans. Since she seldom performs at venues much beyond New England, it’s tough for someone like me who feels tied down to the West coast to see her perform live. Because the expansiveness of the Internet can quickly lead to impersonal, unimaginative art, musicians face a greater responsibility than ever to bring their music to the road and connect with fans personally at live shows. Rose doesn’t give us this opportunity; but she gives us paper cut-outs of little black ships, dangling apples, and goofy choreographed dances in homemade music videos with fellow musicians and friends that are quirky, artistic, and absolutely darling. The videos allow Rose to present herself at eye level to her fans, offering but a stimulating glance into the friendly, impassioned mystery of her demeanor.
Some of you may think Rose’s videos are only one cut above the millions of amateur music videos flying around youtube and similar media-sharing sites. And maybe they are to you. But to fans of her music, they solidify the chanteuse’s place in listeners’ hearts as the type artist you swear is creating these songs right down the hall from you; the type of soul you can feel a little in every good late night conversation with your friends; the type of creativity that instills hope into barriers, and potential in the lack thereof.
Rose released her fifth full-length album, When the River Meets the Sea, on Tuesday. I’m still waiting for an album that can break me the way her ‘04 release, August, does. But the tunes on her latest work function just as how she purports them to: organically, intrinsically, intimately.
It’s folk at its finest — not breaking many barriers except for those you set against your self, your heart, your ears. Or is that just what folk music does for me? And isn’t that the point to begin with?
“Cornfields” is one of my favorite new videos from the lady. The song isn’t on River, which makes me excited for what the Rose has in store for us in the future. She recorded it with a bunch of friends at her birthday party earlier this year. What a fine way to celebrate.
One of my newest coworkers is fresh from the world of financial planning, a job at which he claims even a high school drop out could excel so long as the kid devoted the time he should have been forging through Brave New World honing his lunch-money-hustling skills. My coworker has redirected his career toward a slightly more dignified, albeit slightly less profitable, direction: management.
Yesterday, he explained his perspective on the financial crisis in this country using a creative, impassioned analogy between loans and real estate, and carrots and broccoli, confirming to me once again that frustratingly mindless retail jobs can be a breeding ground for some of the most creative, unjaded, ambitious individuals in town. (Or in this town at least.)
I will be the first to admit that I don’t fully understand the financial situation our country currently faces despite the fact that I read the newspaper nearly everyday and have my radio almost permanently stuck on KCRW/NPR. And that’s a frustrating thing for, whether we like it our not, finances fuel nearly every part of our daily lives. It’s that murky, egregious complexity of this whole debacle that, at least for me, makes the situation as disconcerting as it is.
I’m piecing it all together, though, one article and conversation at a time. Yesterday was through carrots and broccoli; today it is through a broad rundown published by the New York Times. Here’s the link, just in case any of you feel similar to how I do about this whole thing.
One of my coworkers – someone who has juggled in the circus, answered telephones for a dance studio, and spends his lunch breaks listening to Russian language tapes, Russian being the fourth language he plans to learn to fluency—loves to give me advice. “Find the one thing that you’re willing to give up everything else in life for, and just do it.” He waits through a pregnant pause, “You know, like Nike says, just do it,” he inserts with a chest-bouncing, low-sounding chuckle. “Be bold.”
He tells me this most often when he’s advising me on artistry, because to him, that commitment and devotion more than anything else, even talent, are what best defines a bona fide artist—an individual who is passionately self-involved, myopic yet endlessly curious, intuitive, who is solitary even when among others, who is both tormented and unapologetic, and who despite and because all of this maintains an omniscient aperture on the world.
My friend C and I walked up Selma Avenue on a particularly warm Sunday morning recently —“perambulating,” as she put it—grabbing samples of fresh peaches, measuring out our lives with coffee spoons, and discussing a similar thought in regards to the Olympics, a period of 2-3 weeks involving fervent passion and lifelong dreams climaxing, unraveling, or hiccupping just below their apex. It’s also a period brimming with clichés in newspapers, blogs, and lunch-time conversations about effort and aspirations and ambition and strength and fortitude that are not clichés at all except when people like me try in vain to assign them words and language beyond their inherent, bodily dialect. These athletes chose their sport early in their lives and jetted forth, training for hours on end in a variety of ways to arraive here, at the ultimate stage whereupon they could display their skills. Where they could perform, they hope, as they’ve practiced — to perfection. Not unlike a musician or actor, I’ve often thought. No matter how good you have proven yourself to be in the years leading up to this moment, no matter on how many other occassions you’ve demonstrated your particular talent and skill in this one activity, all that matters is your performance on this one day, in this one moment. Execution.
My friend and I arrived at a similar creed as the one my coworker echoes almost daily to me: find something to devote yourself to completely, wholly, unexceptionally. Become a martyr for yourself, and of yourself. That is the key to stardom and success.
This is a conversation I’ve had repeatedly over the past couple months as I work through career choices, with friends, mentors, supervisors, and even random customers at Trader Joe’s. Not long ago, an established chef in the LA area came in and told me the exact same thing. He has two failed marriages and permanent stress-heavy lines on his forehead. But his eclectic, harmonious purchases confirm it: he’s learned how to whip up a mighty fine meal. He was a success at this one venture, at least.
David Brooks wrote a piece in the New York Times about the differences between individualistic and collective cultures. Multitudes of studies have been done throughout the years on how countries like the U.S and Britain compare to others like China and Japan. The former are, to put it simply, selfish and self-involved, confident, and at least historically, more successful economically (and more prone, I’d imagine, to gauge success overall by economic means rather than something else—say, emotional wealth.) The latter countries view the world through a more self-effacing, team-oriented eye.
And yet students from these countries still excel tremendously in school, their jobs, art (LACMA is currently hosting a beautiful display of Japanese prints), and of course sports as well, as we’re seeing due to the games.
I’ll leave the conclusion to my similarly-perambulating musings to Mr. Brooks:
If Asia’s success reopens the debate between individualism and collectivism (which seemed closed after the cold war), then it’s unlikely that the forces of individualism will sweep the field or even gain an edge.
For one thing, there are relatively few individualistic societies on earth. For another, the essence of a lot of the latest scientific research is that the Western idea of individual choice is an illusion and the Chinese are right to put first emphasis on social contexts.
[…] Relationships are the key to happiness. People who live in the densest social networks tend to flourish, while people who live with few social bonds are much more prone to depression and suicide.
The rise of China isn’t only an economic event. It’s a cultural one. The ideal of a harmonious collective may turn out to be as attractive as the ideal of the American Dream.
