:: The Blurst of Times ::

:: 2.25.2003 ::

C'mon blog, don't fail me now...

Last night I tried to blog, and the thing was down during my peak blogging hours (curse you pacific standard time zone), so you got nothing out of me. So tonights edition is going to be a little extra long, commencing with things that I have learned in the last few days and ending with an email I sent to my aunt regarding my reaction to certain liturature and culture.

I feel like this was a big weekend for me learning things: I learned that while it can take $5 and five minutes to fix a tail light, it is going to take three weeks, $75, and possibly two people to ifx that mirro I busted off. I learned that while Omaha thinks that Omaha is where Malcom X was born, Spike Lee doesn't agree. Moreover, Spike Lee does a good job of opening my eyes. And on the topic of movies: If it were possible for American Psycho to not make much sense for 2.5 hours, it makes even less sense if you try to just watch the last hour and a half adn think that is the whole movie. I learned that there are few things as depressing as war and growing into elderly, and I am afraid that I will not be albe to hide from wither forever. I learned that I know none of the words from REM's "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" despite the fact that I have owned the album for about a decade. And I've learned that a weekend spent reading is still not a weekend wasted.

An interesting theme that I picked up on in Electric KoolAid Acid Test was that it was only for a split second that any idea was in a pure state before it became corrupted by pragmatic concequences. To begin: the idea of acid tests, both by Kesey and Leary, was to experiment and study the results. But when everyone else started doing it, there appeared flaws that were inherent in the whole process. Or: The idea of filming a bus ride across the nation in a pure state, versus the results of that bus ride and the technical requirments necessary to actually make a bus ride (of any kind) have any sort of success. And finally: the whole idea of acid tests as group events was a natural extension of Keseys own plans to experiment. But the implications of exposing thousands of people to mind-altering substances obviously had detrimental effects, even before the question of legality was brought into the picture.

I started to see this pattern in lots of different things. One of the first was the pseudo-punk culture in which I immersed myself in high school (I only say pseudo-punk [or post-punk] in order not to offend any of those who still claim the "only" punk was PIL, the Sex Pistols, or the New York Dolls). I got into bands like Rancid, NoFX, the Exploited, etc, bands that didn't get radio play, that no one had heard of, that still released stuff on split vinyls. To me, this was pure, unadulterated, IDEAL. Then, as the punk movement grew, more adn more bands kept cropping up, it got easier and easier to reproduce similar sounds, and the whole scene, everything that I had once taken pride in, got watered down. Like Kesey, the further time progressed in the movement I surrounded myself in, the less able I was to control that movement, and the less I enjoyed the movement.

I have seen things since then: the progression of Landscape Architecture from an extention of architecture a century ago to the experimentation adn ecologic conscience of the 60's (suprise, suprise) to now where it seems like we are being churned through to be little more than CAD jockeys and draftsman and the principles, the IDEAS that once defined a trade are beign lost. I have seen "Steal this Movie" based on the life of Abbie Hoffman, adn the IDEALS that they once stood on, crumble over time and even as the movement gained popularity, it was falling apart. It's like silly-putty: in a glob it's stable, has strength, has form; when you pull it, it becomes finite, stretching to cover area, but getting thinner and thus weaker. (A trite analogy, but sufficient).

I read these things and think about the essence of ideas and, beign 22, wonder how this all impacts me. Everywhere around me I see things like they are all watered down, like global warming has already risen the seas and its all been dilluted by the ocean water. I want to be someone who has IDEALS that they live by, someone who creates something for people to believe in, the glob of silly-putty. But it will never work to model myself after someone, because if I could do that, then I am simply taking what they have already done, and am no better than the bands riding the punk rock coattails to fame. So I have to come up with something totally new. As Kesey said, everyone has to graduate, to move on from doing the same things over and over again and create soemthing different, continue to experiment and grow.

"My friend drove off the other day, now he's gone and all they say is you gotta live 'cause life goes on..."
:: Freddy F. at 2:53 AM [+] ::