where "the little fish are big fish": more on UT politics
Music: The New No. 2: The Fear of Missing Out (2012)
In a well-conceived opinion piece in the local paper today, Arnold Garcia Jr. reports on this past week's power struggle at the state capital over my employer, the University of Texas at Austin (thanks to Rick Cherwitz for pointing me to this piece). This week the Lt. Governor, a Republican, held a press conference in which he marshaled a bi-partisan political slap to the Board of Regents for meddling with the administration of the university. Apparently, Dewhurst suggested with bleary eyes, there were some attempts at assassinating the character of our beleaguered and outspoken university president, Bill Powers, by one of the regents (dirty laundry emails, I gather). He has announced there will be "hearings" to assess the quality of the oversight of the regency, which made it known last summer they wanted to oust him. Rather than back down at the threats and challenges issued, largely through backchannels, by certain regents, Powers has been speaking out publically---with a national microphone---about the need to balance commercial interests (touted almost always as a need for "accountability") with our educational mission. He has spoken carefully and, in my view, admirably, which has earned him some respect in higher education circles (check out this piece in The Nation).
What I really appreciate about Garcia's piece today is that he knows his university history. While much of the tension has to do with the Land Grant act after the Civil War (and the original idea to have the university serve the cause and memory of the Confederacy), Garcia points out squabbles between the university, the regency, and politicians at the capital have always been. I've discussed these issues on RoseChron before: the most (in)famous case involves Homer P. Rainey, who was eventually ousted for refusing to fire "communist" professors. Politics at the university between politicians, the regency, and the university administration seem to be built into the higher education structure here. What's at stake here is money, of course, and all this ballyhooing over the Massive Open Online Course is the fantasy structure running cover for what's more nakedly on display in this latest public feud.
What few are talking about is the larger, nation-wide political context of this local squabble (which The Nation piece cited above is about). My friend Dan Grano is visiting from out of town, and yesterday at lunch he was telling me about his governor in North Carolina, Patrick McCrory, who stated on a national radio program that he was going after the "liberal arts" and directing the state legislature to retool public universities toward vocational ends. He took a swipe at gender studies as a mostly valueless pursuit (how phallic!) and joked about philosophy Ph.Ds. Such sentiments represent the larger, nation-wide challenge educators are facing: the culture war. The reason why Texas is watched so closely is because they are the staging ground of the latest battle and the final theatre so-called conservatives have identified: first it was your womb, then it was your bedroom, and now it is your education.
As I've been saying for years, this battle is not going away. The reason has everything to do with the politics built-into public universities as a consequence of the Land Grant ideology of the late nineteenth century. Public universities were established primarily as a way to administer, in a pastoral sort of way, to the "industrial classes"---as a way to improve the lot of the poor and working classes. The calls for "reform" and "accountability" are often made in the service of this ideology---or at least, that is what the figureheads of the new movement, like our governor Rick Perry---claim: isn't a $10,000 degree going to serve the interests of the working classes better? Won't online courses make college possible for the disadvantaged? It's this fundamental value that underwrites the humanities that is being used to dismantle the humanities.
it's synth-pop friday!
education without education
Music: Lilac Time: Paradise Circus (1989)
Last night in his State of the Union Address Obama echoed the clarions of those who demand reform in higher education. Obama said:
But today, skyrocketing costs price too many young people out of a higher education or saddle them with unsustainable debt. Through tax credits, grants, and better loans, we've made college more affordable for millions of students and families over the last few years. But taxpayers can't keep on subsidizing higher and higher and higher costs for higher education. Colleges must do their part to keep costs down, and it's our job to make sure that they do.
(APPLAUSE)
So, tonight, I ask Congress to change the Higher Education Act so that affordability and value are included in determining which colleges receive certain types of federal aid. (APPLAUSE)
And -- and tomorrow, my Administration will release a new college scorecard that parents and students can use to compare schools based on a simple criteria: where you can get the most bang for your educational buck.
That I will be paying for my own education until my demise certainly gives such a lament the weight of truth, however, in almost the same breath the President gives voice to a misperception and intones a threat: (1) That taxpayers "subsidize" higher education; and (2) the Feds will determine who gets aid and who does not based on the "scorecard" it develops to determine educational outcomes in relationship to cost. The former mistruth, presumably, is based on the number of federal dollars that is used to buoy the federal school loans program, however, such a statement is something of an equivocation, riding atop a popular misperception that the public university is kept afloat by taxpayer dollars (a state enterprise, by the way). Better minds have weighed in on the issues, but the fact remains the school loan program has eroded toward privatization; the call here is to continue that trend, not reverse it.
The threat, of course, is to equivocate the quality of education with the quantitude of its cost, a trick of abstraction Marx observed about capitalism over a century ago (there has to be a short-change in quality via quantified abstraction for profit to happen; we've gotten so used to this mis-matching as "common sense" that anyone who does not succumb---the old public education model---is deemed inefficient and thus evil). It's an approach we are familiar with in Texas, as governor Rick Perry continues to ram educational reform into higher education by calling for $10,000 degrees and valuing a professor on the basis of his or her "return" on the state's ("taxpayers") investment (measured in terms of tuition dollars and grant getting). In response here in Texas and in other parts of the country, too, higher educators have been working on developing measures for "accountability" that actually take into account the hidden labor and invisible resources needed to teach and research well, but let's not pretend these efforts will work: however much we insist on sitting at the Table of Educational Measures, "outcomes" will always be measured by market forces that charge those who actually labor with slacking on the job. Accountability measures are almost always designed to show how those measured come-up short; this is the means by which "reform" is made to happen. And this is why academics oblivious to how power works will celebrate reform as an "opportunity."
My pessimism is only encouraged by the Republican response to the president's address, which tread past Obama's better angels:
And because tuition costs have grown so fast, we need to change the way we pay for higher education. I believe in federal financial aid. I couldn't have gone to college without it. But it's not just about spending more money on these programs; it's also about strengthening and modernizing them. A 21st century workforce should not be forced to accept 20th century education solutions. Today's students aren't only 18 year olds. They're returning veterans. They're single parents who decide to get the education they need to earn a decent wage. And they're workers who have lost jobs that are never coming back and need to be retrained. We need student aid that does not discriminate against programs that non-traditional students rely on – like online courses, or degree programs that give you credit for work experience.
It's the last line that is the signature of the argument that education is credentialing: what you need is a degree, not the education. While the president stopped short of ballyhooing the ways in which "online education" can solve our education "crisis," Rubio parrots the party-line of those for-profit companies that proclaim online education will "revolutionize" higher ed.
Although it is no longer startling, it is still nevertheless troubling that the national rhetoric crafted by our policy makers about higher education is always forged upon a means-ends anvil hoisted on a precipice by the Wile Capitalist: education is a means to the end of a job, and the professor is dumb bird who continues to elude capture . . . for now. What's really important is the degree (so "you [should] get credit for work experience"), not what presumably ends up sticking in your head (or body). In what world is "education without education" a legitimate cry for educational reform? It is Orwell's world. And that world is soon ours, if it is not so already.
Read this for a sober account, not a bird-brain.
it's synth-pop friday!
on the hysteria of anti-affirmative actions
Music: M83: Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts (2003)
Recently I was at a happy hour with two neighbors, a good friend and her friend, an acquaintance. After a flight of "infused vodkas" we discussed our recent travels, which is when I lamented one of the disappointments of visiting my parents was the racist attitudes of their suburban community (their community voted some years ago to block mass transit extending out to their area because it would "bring in more crime," which is to say, more diversity). The acquaintance then explained she did not know what racism was until moving to Austin.
The statement surprised me because I often think of Austin as a progressive city, although I should not have been surprised. Working at the university, I know I am often insulated from the harsher realities of discrimination (even though we have those problems, too) and often blind to the benefits that my white maleness affords me here. I'm also thankful to my colleagues for gently pointing out when the benefit is afforded me.
Nevertheless, the acquaintance continued by relating a story: she had just moved to Austin and was at a service station on the east side, which was staffed by folks of color. She explained her shock when she waited for what seemed like an eternity while other non-white patrons were served. She was deliberately ignored, she said, and got offended. This story bled into others about her mistreatment because she was white.
While enduring these stories I thought about the history of Austin: its formation is unusual because of its uncharacteristically large African American population after emancipation; the whites segregated the city into "east" and "west"; the eastside developed into a thriving community until the 80s and 90s; now white people are moving into the east side with condos and developments and displacing the centuries old community that has lived there. The "real estate" racism is pretty pronounced and largely ignored . . . But I dare not mention this to my new acquaintance.
"It's not personal," I said aloud. "Can you expect a community who has been mistreated by whites to embrace a white person? Maybe it's not fair to expect a warm welcome? It's not about you, it's about those who came before us." The acquaintance looked incredulous and I apparently offended her. Again. She stared at me for what seemed like five minutes without saying a word.
"There is no excuse to be rude because of my skin color," she finally said, in a defiant tone.
The irony was not lost to me, but in conversations like these, one is always better served by pointing to structure. "Uh, the institution of slavery?" I said.
"Slavery ended! I am not responsible for slavery," she retorted angrily.
But she is. I am. We are. Not personally, of course, but as a people and a community. Clearly this conversation was not going to end in a meeting of minds (certainly not values). She noted she has become "more conservative" in her aging, which I often interpret as voting Republican and watching Antiques Roadshow and taking no issue with "chow mart" type eateries like Luby's and Golden Corral. How is such an interpretation of "more conservative" different from the "more conservative" views on race? I can think of a dozen answers, many self-serving.
Still, I thought to shift our conversation from her personal experiences to the argument in favor of affirmative action in higher education. Whatever one's experience, I said, there is a larger social inequality among racially identified groups that needs to be addressed. Only education and a widespread embrace of diversity, I noted, will end the kind of discrimination she finds objectionable (I thought to mention the common account of the birth of democracy as a consequence of international travel, then I thought about how women and foreigners were treated in ancient Athens, and then thought against it). I'm not sure I remember this point of the conversation well, as I was "excited." I implied her logic indexed the common denominator of "the same," whereas I would prefer an acceptance of difference, even though this is pretty hard to do. Still, I only implied the distinction, I did not say it: one rarely achieves anything other than Othering with new people by pointing out fundamental differences in values. Build on common ground, I thought. Build on common ground.
While my impulse to not push things too much with my new acquaintance probably kept the evening from turning ugly, I realize the rage writ large: my "mundane" conversation about race condenses, I think, a national issue currently dressed as "immigration reform." And it was not coincidental that I had this conversation about race just shortly before the Supremes heard arguments from the firm hired by my employer, the University of Texas at Austin, defending affirmative action. In 2008 Abigail Fisher was denied admission to the University of Texas. She sued, claiming that lesser qualified students of color were admitted instead of her. She lost her case and the appeal, however, the Supremes agreed to hear the case and this week it went.
My university has a rather long history of race relations, with the legal challenges to its admission policies beginning over thirty years ago. A thoroughly racist institution (look up the history of its most powerful regent, George Littlefield), the university has struggled to get its morality right. Currently a variation of the "10%" rule is in effect, which holds that if you graduate in the top of your high school class in Texas you can be admitted. This policy was adopted to increase diversity in the student population. Yet, the university also noted this policy did not encourage enough diversity, and so it currently considers race as a factor during the admissions process. While there are no doubt problems, I support this approach to admissions. So do most of my colleagues.
That said, in higher education we are usually taught to distinguish between the logic of the rule of law and the dictates (or conscience) of morality. One is not the other, although the two are inextricably linked in the foundation of value. Reading over the discussion of the court from Wednesday, I see Justice Roberts is keen to insist on the distinction. The moral justifications for affirmative action are many, among the most common: (1) the need for reparation and redress; (2) the prevalence systemic inequality; and (3) the value of diversity. The arguments against affirmative action are also familiar: (1) reverse racism; (2) no one should bear the responsibility of history; (3) it promotes of mediocrity; and so on.
These are important arguments to continuously engage; while the Roberts court would insist on a strict separation of legal precedent and moral consideration, we should not buy for a minute that his "flank" of the Supremes is not legislating morality with their decision. There is no post-ideological world, and arguments to this effect---legal or otherwise---are running cover for whiteness. Make no mistake.
I cannot shake the hysterical character of the conversation I had with the new acquaintance, nor the suspicion that it undergirds the "conservative" disposition of those Supremes who seek to end affirmative action in higher education. Joan Copjec brilliantly explains this character by referencing the fantasy of U.S. democracy:
America's sense of its own 'radical innocence' has its most profound origins in this belief that there is a basic humanity unaltered by the diversity of its citizens who share it. Democracy is the universal quantifier by which America---the "melting pot," the "nation of immigrants"---constitutes itself as a nation. If all our citizens can be said to be Americans, this is not because we share any positive characteristics but rather because we have been given the right to shed these characteristics, to present ourselves as disembodied before the law. I divest myself of positive identity, therefore I am a citizen.
The democratic fantasy of divestiture is ensconced in the figure of a blindfolded justice, or the presumed anonymity of the voting booth, or as Copjec observes, in the paradox of universal suffrage. And in a sense this ideal underscores the paradoxes of Fisher's case: she demands a blind equality but attention to her unique credentials. What has race got to do with the fact she has a higher GPA than others admitted?
Copjec notes that such fantasy also creates a demand for a "master" (in analytic terms), but paradoxically one "without means"---an impotent Other. Why? Because "if all the Other's responses prove inadequate, then our difference is saved, it survives intact . . . ." A curious affective logic, to be certain. Still, I'm not quite certain how Copjec's psychoanalytic argument works out in reference to affirmative action and the problems our country---"our country, our sevles"---has with race. I recognize how the retreat from the systemic responsibility into individual uniqueness by self-proclaimed "conservatives" resembles her diagnosis: we have a "black President." Perhaps the conditions for ending affirmative action in higher education have never been more favorable? I hope not. I hope not.
I have faith in Sonia Sotomayor's ability to persuade. We must.
it's synth-pop friday!
it's synth-pop friday!
an almost-elegy for the acerbic: jim aune (1953-2013)
[LATER EDIT: I revised this for posting on The Blogora, so what follows is a copy of that revision.] Like the numbers, the words have come, but not in the way I would wish them. I have learned through a failure measured against the pens of more gifted friends that I cannot write poetry. I wish that I could, because poetically is how I would like to mourn for Jim, who loved poetry. I may not be a poet, but I recognize the feelings that those gifted wordsmiths help deliver to language, especially in the not-quite-but-just-still-somehow-right asymmetries. There is no right way about this or any death.
When I think of Auden I think of Aune.
I write an almost-elegy, then, in the mode of eulogy, perhaps better said as a prayer. I want to remember Jim as a petition to help each other and for us to let others help us.
Stated simply: I hurt for Jim and I hurt for losing him.
These two hurtings seem impossible to reconcile with the event of Jim's death: there is the concern for his suffering and then the hole left in the self from his characteristically awkward exit. For the unknowing reader, our dear James Arnt Aune, a major voice in the field of rhetorical studies, the blogger most associated with the Blogora, a friend to dozens upon dozens, and a teacher of hundreds, took his own life almost two weeks ago, dramatically---if not, in his own way, poetically. That he left is pain enough; how he left is impossible, if only because we have thought of our leaving in a similar way too. That much is human.
But we stay, and Jim went.
We wonder what unfathomable suffering would make for such an exit without warning. Perhaps it is best not to wonder, for this kind of suffering, silent then and now silent again, cannot be reckoned. Getting to this point has been the hardest for me, but having arrived here and accepted the unanswerable "why?" the crying finally stopped.
Why do the tears come so fiercely for Jim? I mentioned the uncomfortable, individual fantasy of the self-controlled death because Jim's suicide asks us to reckon with this self-same part of mourning him, this second half of the irreconcilable, this "I hurt for losing him" half. Mourning Jim is not only about that biological being who existed and moved and thought outside of our worlds, independent of our minds---which is one of the many reasons why we loved him, for often reminding us of this brute fact ---but it is also about the Jim we internalized and took into our persons as our companion, a voice of conscience, and for many of us, as a role model. The reason why some of us experience self-pity with Jim's loss (which I know we're not supposed to admit) is because Jim had become a part of who we are, at the very least a part of who we wish to be as comrades of the life of the mind. Incorporating others as a part of the self, whether their mannerisms (mimesis) or idealism (values) or comportment or standards or whatever the quality is, this is what makes for up for the fundamental lack of some essential identity. "We are each other," they sing in the beautiful south, not merely or only another's keeper, but as coordinates on a shared map of self-recognition.
It is tempting to make recourse to Freud and Abraham on mourning and melancholia, but instead I'll go where Jim would probably prefer me to: the Greeks! Jim was no stranger to virtue ethics, a philosophical perspective on the good life introduced by Aristotle but more recently advanced in our time by Alasdair MacIntyre in his classic treatise, After Virtue, a book Jim sometimes cited here on The Blogora. The gist of the ethics is simple and, I think, true of what we actually do: to become good at what we do (our "practices"), we cultivate "virtues" or dispositions of character that we see role modeled by others whom we admire. And by "good at what we do," I mean to refer to more than scholarship and teaching. I mean a way of being, since in our line of work separating one's "personal life" from one's "professional life" is often a pointless kind of boundary drawing. To be "good people" we simply copy, or try to copy, those characteristics and behaviors and habits of others whom we admire---we take on the virtues these people appear to model in the hopes of cultivating a similar disposition. Jim was someone many of us admired in this way: brilliant but generous, extremely well read, passionate, not afraid to express feeling in public, smart, devoted, acerbic but kind in equal measure . . . I could go on and on. And certainly there were his more fiery qualities that we had rather not adopt, but this is the elegance of virtue ethics: we needn't hold up our role models to impossible standards of perfection, but rather, simply see them as people who, more are less, strike a middle path worth following. My point is that it hurts to lose Jim because so many of us had modeled our own approach to the academic life on his many virtues, or at least recognized his way of practicing the life of the mind in the way we practiced or wanted to practice this life ourselves. Losing Jim in this sense is to lose a piece of ourselves. Although we may feel guilt for our own grief, we should also take heart: we feel sad for ourselves because of the Jim-in-us.
That said, the Jim-not-in-us, the one who would bluntly announce his serious differences and then laugh maniacally, is mourned too. Jim leaves behind a wife and two sons, and we mourn with them. I will not rehearse all the details of his distinctive and storied life, as they have been so adequately done elsewhere with humor and respect. Like many of you, what I have to share are stories of time spent together with Jim, snippets of who he was with me. Jim was a mentor, and in time he became a trusted colleague and friend. We would have been coauthors too, however, I now know the piece we were going to write together on Adorno and magic will be written alone (dammit, Jim!).
I first met Jim Aune as a graduate student at a Rhetoric Society of America conference, just shortly after he delivered one of the most astonishing keynote speeches I had heard in an academic setting. True to his style, what got my attention was a joke he made about "frictionless capitalism" that involved "getting screwed without knowing it." I laughed aloud---as did a large ballroom full of dessert-eating academics. The meeting was in a lobby and was (predictably if you know Jim) awkward; I told him I loved his speech. He was gracious but uncomfortable with compliments. After that moment in the late 90s, I would come to know Jim as a respondent to panels I was on at conferences because of our mutual interest in the scholarship of the Frankfurt School. Later we would share drinks at conferences. When I moved to Texas, Jim became more of a mentoring figure for me as I looked to him for advice about professional life. We also became frequent "arguers" here on the Blogora---often on the topic of psychoanalysis, of which he was critical (but, then, he would admit to having a soft spot for Jung). Jim also regularly posted on my personal blog, The Rosewater Chronicles, back when blogs were a thing before online discussions were limited to 144 characters or drifted over to Facebook.
Most of my most memorable, personal stories about Jim should remain private; they are colorful, often filled with equal parts laughter and kvetching (the latter more often than not for the humor), and some involve---ahem---very adult humor. Some of my fondest memories of our time together are talking, often on a sidewalk as he (or later we) smoked, at meetings and conferences. My most recent memory of Jim is doing just this at the "Violence and Rhetoric" conference he and Jen Mercieca organized at Texas A&M; I cannot recall seeing him so happy, as he was at the Last Supper on the final evening, because the conference went very, very well. Along with David Beard, I had a years-long conversation with Jim on Facebook about everything under the sun, from professional issues involving colleagues, or decisions about job offers or considering other jobs, or the increasingly frightening developments in higher education here in Texas. Jim was passionate about education and the land-grant mission of attending to the needs and aspirations of the working class. Many have remarked this passion was evident in his teaching and commitment to argument and debate, but it is also evident in his caring for others, especially the students whom he advised and are now in successful careers of their own.
When I met his life partner and wife Miriam for the first time the week of Jim's death, exchanging a long overdue bear hug, she reminded me "Jim loved you so." "I know," I said, "and he let me know that." Jim let just about everyone he cared about know that he did so, although I wager rarely directly. He might not look you in the eye, but you knew of his caring because he spent time with you, worked with you, recommended speaking to someone or reading something, answering queries at 2:00 a.m. ("Aune, what the hell are you doing up at 2:00 a.m. answering emails on a Tuesday?" He would answer, "reading," and explain the complexities of caring for the boys.) Jim toiled tirelessly writing letters for the commendation of others, reviewing books for the field, reviewing articles (rarely blindly, you know, as his voice in writing and speech was unmistakable). He wrote for my tenure case and, I bet, for dozens and dozens of them over the past decades. His compassion for the teaching and mission of rhetoric, and the field of communication studies, was well known.
One could not separate Jim the person from his vocation: he lived what he studied and taught.
Many mutual friends have said their chosen way to honor Jim's memory is to return to his scholarship. To this end John Murphy has penned a marvelous appreciation of Jim's work, and I recommend it to you.
For the moment, I want to honor Jim's memory by recognizing the time he shared with me as a mentor and colleague and friend, the hours of discussions we held online and, since moving to Texas, in person, and the respect he often showed to me and others by simply being there. Hell: in many of our lives it is not an overstatement to say Jim was ever-present! To honor the time Jim gifted to me is daunting when I recognize just how many others feel the same way. So many of us share an intimacy with Jim that we do not feel with others in our profession; that he could forge this kind of connection with so many people speaks to what a remarkable person he was, and how much of himself he truly gave.
With the gift of his time and mind Jim loved and led with his heart, and fiercely. And we love him back with the same loyal ferocity befitting, as he jokingly referred to himself, a patriarch.
We hope that the Jim-not-in-us has found an end to his suffering, which most of us did not know. As transparent and giving and earnest as he was, Jim also had a private life, and we owe him that too. The Jim-in-us we carry forward as a disposition, however unsteady and hard to maintain, should aim toward championing those who feel pushed to the margins or to the outside. Many of us drawn to the life of the mind often feel we are outsiders, which is why knowing Jim and earning his respect meant that you were part of something central or fundamental, that the outside was actually "in." "In loving memory" is a good phrase to reckon with both Jims, because they are united in Jim's love for us. We realize, unfortunately now in his absence more than ever, just how much we loved him back.
Respectfully submitted, Josh Gunn
it's synth-pop friday!
top in pops 2012
The days of priding myself for punctuality have long passed me. In part, I blame this on the seven years of punishing humility I have suffered as a consequence of Interstate 35. I learned a year into moving to Aus-Vegas that I would be late, or either uncomfortably early, forever anon as am Austinite.
Of course, I cannot blame the lateness of my annual best-of-pop list on the traffic. There is nothing to blame but my own sense of distraction and what has moved up in importance as I try to reduce my so-called screened life. Still, I'm taking the opportunity of "watching" Lance Armstrong admit to his core assholism as I really bang out, as best I can, what has "juiced" me over the past year for my five RoseChron readers (haaaayyyyyyyyy!).
Now, one of the albums I have played the most this year is Blood Orange's Coastal Grooves, a Prince-tinged, 80s-drenched throwback of pop funk deliciousity. To my chagrin, however, I learned this album debuted in 2011, which I wished I had discovered that year. So, it didn't make the list (but I still figured out a way to sneak it in, 'cause it's a good jam).
Unlike in the years past (look here and here for more good albums), this year I thought I would try something a bit different: instead of featuring album covers I would try to find YouTube videos that provided a song from the album. There's always a risk the video will be pulled, but you know, I tried my best. Here we go!
1. Chairlift,Something: While none of the albums that follow are ordered on this year's list, Chairlift's sophomore effort is my favorite album of 2012. Aside from the undeniable fact I would have singer Caroline Polachek's children, I adore her cryptic (often funny) lyrics and yodel-prone voice. The album embraces (surprise!) 80s-era songcraft, especially the bass-lines. It's quirky, you can dance to some of it, and at least one song will be used in a commercial for Volkswagen or a romantic comedy (but don't let the latter distract you; it's only one song, and it's sweet). Delicious ear-candy and I've played it over and over and over. Check it:
2. The Invisible: Rispah: These Brits describe their sound as "space pop," but I think it's more subdued than that, verging on ambient. I would describe the sound as something like TV on the Radio meets post-Kid A Radiohead; Rispah sustains a gentle, soulful mood throughout with (another surprise!) a continuously rumbling bass-line. Thankfully, people still make albums designed to be listened to as albums:
3. Meshell Ndegeocello: Pour une ame souveraine: I've loved Ndegeocello since her debut (thanks to Madonna's praise) and followed her ever since. Her sophomore effort (a rumination on religion) will always be my favorite because of its smooth, thoughtful funk groove; subsequent albums were hit or miss---from the stoner album Comfort Woman to the "mix tape"---are deliberately unpredictable and all of them are different. But then she decided to do an album dedicated to Nina Simone (one of my favorite soul singers, and I will admit I love her way more than Aretha) . . . another politically outspoken and passionate woman who did not do what she was told. Admittedly, I cannot sometimes hear past the idea of this album, which had me giddy. Barring one or two arrangements, however, it holds up fantastically:
4. Wild Nothing, Nocturne: Always the sucker for the shoe-gaze sound, the one-man bedroom band "Wild Nothing" strikes a perfect note for me (filling in the void left by Frausdots, for those of you who remember the one-album gazing-wonder). Woozy, trippy (in the Cure sort of way), somber, a touch goth, and ambling along. This is my late-night joy:
5. Crystal Castles,III: I praised their sophomore album as delightfully strange electronica a couple of years ago, and this album follows down a similar trajectory: it's different from the last in unpredictable ways. Now part witch-house, part dance, part glitch, C.C. change it up with enough different and unpredictable choices that the first-time listen-through was a delight. Melodic and spooky in spots, the album strikes a perfect curve, ending out with a sweet, melodic ambientness:
6. Gypsy and the Cat, The Late Blue: The Australians have apparently taken over the well-crafted synch-pop song. I loved the debut, but this one is even better. There's no sense in describing it (harmonies, addictive riffs, etc.). If you like what you hear below---the unapologetic late-Yes style noodling and overproduction---the album is fantastic (currently not available in the U.S. in hard copy, but you can get the MP3 from iTunes):
7. Ray Wylie Hubbard, Grifter's Hymnal: I've always liked some forms of country and some forms of blues, but it wasn't until I moved to Austin that I learned to appreciate the Texas country blues tradition, and this dude does it best. It's the closet Texas gets to gothic music, and while Hubbard's Snake Farm will probably remain my favorite (I think I pass the actual inspiration for his biggest hit when I drive to San Antonio), this is the most "rockin'" and personal album I think Hubbard has made: it's gritty, it's mean, it's repentant. And if you like the bend string sort of groove (good for drankin'), check this out:
8. Swans: Seer: Most of you will not like the Swans. This album is probably not for the uninitiated, as it seems to rely on the listener knowing a bit of their back catalog. I've been following Gira since high school and this band's various incarnations. His least favorite album of their catalog, The Burning World, is my favorite (I am a huge fan of Hal Wilner's productions), but it's also their most "radio friendly" and poppy. Last year's Seer marks Gira's return to melody and hooks after what seems almost like a decade of ambient noise experiments. I saw the almost three-hour show of this album (they played a total of four songs), and it was painfully loud even with earplugs. Even so: here is a tribal, psychedelic, drone-ish double-album full of dramatic turns and chant-like choruses. I think it's among the Swans finest, frankly (listen to it on a road trip, you can concentrate more on what Gira's doing with the/his unconscious). Here's the Floyd-esque title track (warning: it's over a half-hour long):
9. Various Artists: Spirit of Talk Talk: Talk Talk was---well, is---one of my favorite bands. Most folks think of their early synth-pop hits ("It's My Life," for example) and their touring with Duran Duran, however, after they secured an EMI deal Hollis and company started making the albums they wanted to, increasingly subtle, often sad, jazz-infused and experimental and modal and all those anticipatory and hypnotic jams that encourage relaxing. In general, I am no fan of covers or tribute albums, but this double-album got my attention: while most of the arrangements go unaltered, most of the interpretations are pretty good, bringing out parts of the songs I didn't realize were there and enriching my experience of the originals. This past year, like the Chairlift album, I've almost played this one out:
10. Indian Wells: Wimbleton 1980: A digital only release, Indian Wells debut is built around the found sounds of tennis (as well as other sounds), skirting the edges of Burial-style dub-step and rhythmic ambient music. The album sneaks-up on you and grows; I've found myself listening to it at night while writing (um, like while writing this). Fans of ambient and down-tempo electronica will like this. So, too, will fans of Marconi Union (whose release this year was, um, just ok). You can get this on the cheap at Bad Panda records.
heading to college station today . . .
. . . because it's the only thing we know to do.
I landed in Austin on a flight Tuesday night. We were early and had no gate and waiting for like what seemed many hours on the tarmac. I turned on my phone and discovered five voice mail message notifications and a text to call a friend about "bad news about a colleague." I phoned Dana and she told me our dear friend took his own life. This is the sort of moment, not of disbelief but simply not having any practice or pattern for digestion.
I cried, making complete strangers uncomfortable and sad.
I had collected myself enough to make it to baggage claim and then the shuttle to the parking lot. Mirko called to ask if I was ok with the news, whereupon I tearfully told him no. And then, holding a card that I had written my parking location on (B6 39) I proceded to try to find my car as it rained.
I realized I lost the ability to count. I lit a cigar. Tried to think more clearly, and after twenty minutes eventually found my car.
Losing the ability to count is, thankfully, a rare event. But losing Jim---who was part of the fabric of my professional and personal life, a trusted mentor and friend---is disorienting and it will take me a little more time to find my (and our) place. His loss is a giant and heavy mess for so many of us because we loved him so much.
Rest in Peace friend. I still don't know what to say, but the words---like the numbers---will eventually come.
it's synth-pop friday!
Thanks to Mirko for this choice find:
it's synth-pop friday!
stainless steel providers
Music: Charlatans: Who We Touch (2010)
Sleigh bells can ring all they want, but after watching all this extra television over the past two days---all my 'rents favorites, from Star Trek films I've never seen to a humongous heap of Ancient Aliens bullshittery, I'd just like to shove a string of them up into the obviously vacuous cavities of the HGTV "stars." Even watching the nauseatingly cute kittens play on one of my mother's favorite shows, So Cute, could not quell the seething resentment I developed today while enduring HGTV programming. Perhaps tomorrow one of Ted Turner's cable stations will be playing Christmas Story over and over and over so that we might drown out the Syfy channel (why is it spelled that way?) and that pedagogy of envy that is dubbed "Home and Gardens Television."
Now, because I ate too many collard greens yesterday, I found myself making like royalty as the television droned on in the neighboring room. Reaching for something to help pass the time and whatever else needed to pass, I grabbed the first rag on the rack. Mothereffer! it was HGTV Magazine. I marveled at its tantalizing cover titles: "75 GREAT GIFTS: Super easy shopping"; "fun & festive! 128 cute, clever, colorful holiday ideas"; "3 AMAZING FAMILY KITCHENS: Everyone wants to hang out here!" "Love your bed; 22 instant style tricks"---I know one: make it!---"The most popular house color?" and "Very merry ideas from the stars." I note HGTV calls its own hand-picked show hosts "stars," although I daresay none of us knows these folks names. (I make some up; "Canadian Eyebrows" is a guy who helps people turn their extra space into income property; "SuperQueen" is some guy who does color, but really, I'm not sure what that guy really does; and then there is Egypt---ok, I guess I do know her name).
The enticer title on the rag that effectively cooks-down HGTV's appeal is the one about the kitchen: "Everyone wants to hang out here!" I flipped through to find the article, which I never located, but I did note the magazine is basically a catalog of things to buy; lots of pictures and prices, but very little to actually read. The logic here is buy shit, get recognition from friends, lovers, and envious others (you know, because envy is love). [Insert Fight Club's introductory monologue about Ikea here]. Stainless steel is not stainless steel, but the signature of a higher class-bracket too.
As I've noted in past years, this time of year is difficult for many of us because of falling short of the idealized "family" featured on television or roving through big box stores together, foisting their undisciplined fertility on everyone else. A number of my friends are back in Austin, "orphans" as they affectionately term themselves, hobbling together. Some are alone tonight, or will be tomorrow. I know just as many people celebrating Christmas in ways that are not represented in the national imaginary as those who are. "3 AMAZING FAMILY KITCHENS." Because the only kitchen that is amazing has a bloodline.
As an only child, my family holidays are very small affairs . . . not a lot happens. Television happens. And cooking---some of which I do; tonight I made Brussels sprouts that did not come from a freezer bag. As I stood in the kitchen prepping the sprouts my mom mused about having our traditional, extended family gathering away from her house again at my aunt's. The extended family used to alternate the festivities between my grandmother's, my aunt's, my cousin's, and then our house. But my mom's sister has two children, who in turn produced more children, and then those children are now producing their own children. And so my aunt has a bigger house and so many folks are already staying there.
And she has a larger, more socially and centrally located kitchen.
You see the personal subtext here, so I won't trouble you by making it plain (and no thanks, you can keep your kids, I'm sure they're great, really). I would only observe a similar ideology is afoot with HGTVs solutions for getting and receiving love and actually practiced holiday traditions: accumulation. More is always merrier.
And when that ideology underwrites the holiday, those who have fewer---whatever is---are forced into guilt. I've always thought Halloween was so joyful compared to Christmas (with the exception of those 12 and under): Halloween, a holiday about death, celebrates life; Christmas, a holiday about fertility, mourns who is missing or who failed to do X (albeit usually secretly).
We also all know that, whatever the spirit of the holiday is said to be, it's probably better realized with a real human connection, with laughter, with the genuinely given and received hug than how expertly the flowers on the dining room table are arranged. Which is why my friends' meetings as "orphans" in Aus-Vegas may have it more genuinely than the majority of families forging a tradition pre-packaged by the "stars" on HGTV.
it's electronic body music friday!
the rhythm of tragedy
Music: Ester Drang: Rocinate (2009)
Blissfully distracted with a visiting friend, I really haven’t had the time to digest the news over the past few days. My paper didn't come today, so I turned on CNN and caught the closing segment of Candy Crowley's program, which she described as "the rhythm of tragedy." The segment was a montage of presidential addresses concerning shootings and mass murders over the past decade. It was powerful and disturbing because Crowley offered no framing other than the idea that president's remarks on Friday participate in a "rhythm of tragedy"---and the montage rolled out the pattern starkly. I was struck by the phrase because of its accuracy in capturing the public performances of mourning that we have become all too familiar with: a strong, affective pattern that strikes or beats the body, a public dance of astonished helplessness followed by a refrain of nationalism.
My reaction to the rhythm over the past many years has usually been astonishment followed by irritation at the drumbeats of the mainstream media, pounding the narrative of "tragedy" into a Hollywood melodrama (usually with audio leads featuring somber French horns). I've been terming the MSM packaging "the maudlin machines" and it looks like I've been complaining and critiquing the "rhythm of tragedy" for over seven years (e.g., there's this post about Katrina coverage, and this post about the Virginia Tech massacre . . . and a lot more). So, let me not repeat the melody, because even I have tired of my own song (you know the lyrics, the ones about gun control and mental illness). This well-wrought essay penned by the parent of a child with mental illness conveys my impulse to "action" much better and more starkly than I ever could, and I encourage folks to read it.
The fact that 20 first graders were the targets and that, apparently, each of them were shot multiple times, however, adds another layer of astonishment to this rhythm that is asynchronous. In the president's speech on Friday, he "lost it" when describing the victims and their possible futures, tapping into an ideology of innocence and the hope of potential that most of us accept as a core tenant of adultness ("The Greatest Love of All," you know). Not all ideologies are bad, and while the notion of "innocence" is problematic, I cling to the projection of a better life for future generations. The pain of projection here has do to with what parts of our own imaginings of the future are extinguished with the death of children. And for me, reading my friends with kids struggling over how to talk to their children about this makes . . . I don't know, I can only grasp the cliche: it's heart breaking.
A friend described the horror of this massacre as "unspeakable," and I think that about hits the mark: what the fuck?" would be my most accurate sentiment as I digest the news today, slack-jawed and stupid. Unspeakable in the sense of, "what the hell can I say?" I want to say something---so I have---but that something too easily succumbs to the rhythm of tragedy, this wordy perseveration---to be critical of the media, to pound yet again on the necessity of taking mental health seriously, to do something about the easy access to weaponry (even though that would not apparently have helped in this case). The rhythm and the ampersand cover it over and up.
Peering into the rent, just for the moment, just for now, the best response just seems like I should reach out and hold someone's hand and shut-up.