So.

I haven’t updated in awhile. Just like everyone else I suppose I’m settling back into life after break, getting immediately stressed by my colloquium and internship and life in general, etc etc. I had a horrendous week but that just means I’ll have to take that much time this week to relax and recuperate.

Right now I’m reading Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer.” I think I was compelled mostly because the book was banned and has a reputation for being dirty and obscene before, but despite the fact that I’ve never seen the word cunt written so many times before I'm far more struck my his metaphors (although naturally the levels of shock value have drastically changed since the 1930s…). I believe I read somewhere that his writing was an influence for the Beats, sort of a steam-of-consciousness prototype, so while all of this epic prose is coming straight from his observations it’s sometimes easy to forget that he’s there, that the words are filtered through him, so intimate and poignant are his descriptions of the depraved people he takes company with.

In other words, I’m loving it, although in reading it I’m realizing that for some reason I’ve never felt a pull towards Paris. I’m not sure why not, with its reputation for brooding artists and poetic atmosphere, but I’m starting to think that it’s better this way, since I’d rather have it cemented in time as a bohemian and destitute world for Miller and George Orwell to have inhabited.  

I’m also not sure why I love reading about depraved people so much, but I’ve found myself kind of in a funk as of late and what made me feel better, nonsensically, was some Bukowski poetry. What is it about that man- he’s a misogynist, for starters, and a raging, angry alcoholic, but he can write some mean poetry. Case in point:

Alone With Everybody

the flesh covers the bone

and they put a mind

in there and

sometimes a soul,

and the women break

vases against the walls

and the men drink too

much

and nobody finds the

one

but keep

looking

crawling in and out

of beds.

flesh covers

the bone and the

flesh searches

for more than

flesh.

there's no chance

at all:

we are all trapped

by a singular

fate.

nobody ever finds

the one.

the city dumps fill

the junkyards fill

the madhouses fill

the hospitals fill

the graveyards fill

nothing else

fills.

I have the feeling my worldview is a bit melancholic. Also, if you haven’t seen the documentary “Born Into This,” you should.

Also:

Tom Selleck, a waterfall, and a sandwich. The internet is a weird place.

UPDATE

The NY Times already had my last post covered.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/weekinreview/10stone.html?hpw

proof that I should be getting paid for this shit, or just that I'm always late.

THE FUTURE

I've been thinking about posting on technology for awhile now, especially since at Christmas I was given an iPhone that I was terrified of. It has now changed my life, just as I had been told/greatly feared. I can't keep my hands off of the thing, and I can definitely say this- while it has made everyday things more convienent, it's a kind of convience I never knew I needed.

While talking to friends about technology (which seems to happen often), we talked about how it all must be leading somewhere...is life improving? It's certainly progressing, but is that always necessary, or even wise?

I also realized that I was born in the wrong generation, most likely. I certainly was born in a great time, having seen the internet from inception to what it has become now, and I am still able to relish the idea of CDs (which I still buy), records (before my time, but I still enjoy/buy them), and books (which I've been warned will be obsolete- once again, I still buy them). But the rate at which technology improves has easily doubled since I saw the transition from walkman to portable CD player to iPod, and kids today are far more prepared to cope with such rapid advances. I already feel behind in my understanding of the internet, and I had a 26 year old friend say he had already reached his limit in what he knew (although I don't really believe him). Jezebel has an awesome dissection of that feeling here.

 What's also amazing is how impossible it has already become to keep up. One must make due with their own version of the iPhone while watching other improvements pass them by; the same can be said for computers, mp3 players, etc. It will be interesting to see which things become indespensible and which others people find they can live without.

Here is proof of the younger generations advantage on us "outdated" 20-somethings: A Valleywag post on Six Child Media Prodigies who are already using the internet to their advantage, not to mention blogger sensation Tavi, the 13-year old responsible for Style Rookie, whose large number of followers have garnered her a Harper's Bazaar column and a seat at Fashion Week, not to mention thousands of interviews and articles about her in newspapers and magaznies all over the world. I feel old, dated, and unscuccessful. Damn.


For more speculation on how technology is effecting our culture, here are some Gawker-affiliated posts on the matter:
-Modern Technology- Destroying the Family As We Know It
-These Teens Are Our Sorry Future
-Childhood is Dead

To be fair, every major change has sparked a similar controversy (think the invention of TV and TV in color, teenagers and the telephone, video games, etc). But even just in the last decade is had become readily apparent that the way we live has changed in terms of how we communicate, how our businesses are run (I don't have a Twitter but I assume one day I'll need one- for work.), how we take in our information. Will it calm down, or will we just have to get used to rapid change?

We Had a Promise Made

(http://www.thecouchsessions.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/theknife2.jpg) 

So I haven't listened to the Knife in awhile, but today I discovered that this ridiculous Swedish duo wrote an opera inspired by Darwin. Excuse me? I'll let this guy explain:

Description

The world seen through the eyes of Charles Darwin forms the basis for the performance Tomorrow, in a year. Theatre production company Hotel Pro Forma’s striking visuals blend with pop-duo The Knife’s ground-breaking music to create a new species of electro-opera.

An opera singer, a pop singer and an actor perform The Knife’s music and represent Darwin, time and nature on stage. Six dancers form the raw material of life. Together with the newest technology in light and sound, our image of the world as a place of incredible variation, similarity and unity is re-discovered.

Concept
The opera-genre provides the DNA, the framework of the performance. It calls for large scale, and it forms a space where form and expression dominate. The Swedish music group The Knife creates completely new compositions that challenge the conventional conception of opera music. The musical form is experimental and exploratory, and much of the sound heard was recorded while in the Amazon Jungle and in Iceland.

It is written for three singers of different backgrounds: popular music, classical opera and the performing arts. They are the narrators and the main characters in the performance. The singers tell about Darwin and they observe time and nature as Darwin.

Directed by Ralf Richardt Strøbech and Kirsten Dehlholm, the visual and conceptual universe is formed by Darwin’s thoughts, experiences and letters. The performance is divided into two parts – analogous to the development and publications of The Origin of Species.

The first part of the performance is exploratory. It concentrates on observing the underlying sequences and relationships between image, narrative, movement and music used in the performance. The second part is a synthesis of the material. A completed image and totality emerge, before the performance again mutates and passes into new forms, as happens over time with all things.

The opera presents an image of Darwin that above all reminds us that the world is a place of remarkable similarities and amazing diversity. That over time - tomorrow, in a year, or tomorrow, in a million years - change is inevitable.

Time forms our lives, gives our existence meaning and populates the globe. Generations, eons and millions of years create the new and eradicate existences. Nature selects, invites and dares everything without limitation
– Ralf Richardt Strøbech, co-director, Tomorrow, in a year

(Taken from this site: http://www.hotelproforma.dk/side.asp?side=2&id=438&ver=uk)

Kind of makes me want to go back to Copenhagen....
If you don't know them, here's an introduction:

I can't coerce you into this one

I just started reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals, and since I’m only 50 pages in I can’t exactly say anything qualitative about the book itself. Still, I’m already feeling a bit enraged. I realized that this is now at least the seventh time in my life that I’m receiving information about the horrors of our factory farm system.

Including this book, I have read Food Matters by Mark Bittman (who I saw on the Colbert Report, more exposure there) and Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. I have seen the fictional narrative based on Fast Food Nation and the documentaries Supersize Me and Food, Inc. A number of my friends have read the Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan. But STILL, I am not entirely a vegetarian.

In reading all of these things, I can only get more upset that things are still the way they are. And yet, none of this exposure has made me change my habits. I still eat meat and fast food on occasion, and enjoy it, too, despite having some vegetarian and vegan friends.

Of course, it’s difficult to change something so institutionalized as our food manufacturers are. I just learned from Eating Animals that they have their own system of laws in which, if something is considered a reasonable practice within the industry, it is exempt from being considered illegal. So if everyone within the farming industry decides it’s ok to tie animals down in unsanitary conditions, it’s allowed. These things are written in print, the unjust nature of the system is being spelled out for everyone to see, and STILL- things haven’t changed.

Except that isn’t entirely true. I often forget how skewed my perspective is by living in New York, as a person with my interests. I live in a place where vegans and vegetarians are catered to and make up a fairly large population, especially amongst the college students and East Village/Brooklynites I hang around with. Here we have co-ops and farmers markets, here we have completely organic restaurants and grocery stores (the closest grocery store to my house is organic). Plus, it was my particular environment which exposed me to these things: I like Richard Linklater so I saw Fast Food Nation, then I wanted to read the book before I saw it, and I enjoyed Bittman on Colbert so I bought and read the book, etc. etc.

So how is exposed is the rest of the country, really?
And why has none of this mattered? I say that I’m sort of vegetarian, that I try to eat less meat. And I guess that’s better than nothing. But that’s after learning so much about the system- why would anyone else, with little to no exposure at all to the in-depth accounts that I’ve been reading, even think about becoming vegetarian?

I have also heard this statement several times over:
“Animal agriculture makes a 40% greater contribution to global warming than all transportation in the world combined; it is the number one cause of climate change”
-Eating Animals, pg. 43.

But I don’t think I’ve ever heard that fact outside of the context of food industry criticism. If this is the case, if we know that there is something making that large of an impact, that is so fundamentally unjust, why does it stay the same? (Side note: I do understand this is a bunch of idealistic bullshit. There is a lot of money and power and politics and systems that I don’t understand getting in the way of the solution- there is apparently a demand that these farmers aka corporations are fulfilling, etc, but god damnit, you know?)

I think most people are afraid of the kind of people who take these things seriously. I know that I at one point was, and still I’m unable to commit to vegetarianism despite the fact that the system enrages me. (Although there is that one, undeniable fact: meat is fucking delicious). Still, it scares me how easily such matters can be ignored.


Although to really really roughly paraphrase David Cross from ATP: It doesn’t matter how many recycled brown paper bags you use. We’re fucked.


UPDATE

Something to consider: We obviously have much more people on this earth than we've ever had before. In many countries, overpopulation is becoming a serious concern. When you think of it this way, is there a viable alternative to our current system of mass-production, food wise?