Pillaging the past II: Some things you think you’ll never forget

Today’s xkcd deals with the ephemerality of dreams with the usual deftness the comic bestows on other subject matter. I intend to make “pillaging the past” a recurring entry, though I don’t know how long I can keep it up. The person I was seven years ago wrote things that are hard to digest as the person I am now. I’m not sure I can delve into the few writings I have before then without laughing, scoffing or being entirely uninterested. I was looking for an old entry in my LiveJournal and stumbled upon this, an entry from 2003 and most likely my first week at college. An excerpt:

memories fade as quickly as dreams. the only dreams that linger are the extreme ones, the ones where you murder someone, the world collapses, you’re in a field naked. the only memories that linger are the ones that are just as extreme, in a real, sensual way. the memories that ever so slightly reach into who you are.

After that opening, I list a number of things that had happened that week. Among them, going to the beach with a couple acquaintances on a beautiful day, a crush at first sight, seeing the college production of Twelfth Night, and seeing Ben Folds in concert. I close with a quote from Donnie Darko, probably my second favorite quote from the movie after the line “I guess some people are just born with tragedy in their blood.”

I can remember these things clearly after reading the entry in full. I remember that night on the beach, trying to light a candle while the wind blew, then trying to read by flashlight and ultimately giving up. I remember that first frightening week of geology class and how I was dealing with being surrounded by new people and having no idea what to do with myself or how to interact with them. I remember going alone to the production of Twelfth Night and not really having anyone with whom I could share my thoughts about it. I remember the Ben folds concert and his request for the audience to participate, being nervous that I couldn’t sing, and finally realizing that my mediocre voice would be assimilated into the whole to make something beautiful.

“images. brief moments,” I write. Now, they are only images–images of those brief moments I was reflecting upon in the entry. The glimpses of that time that I can remember now had to be jogged by my writing, leading me to wonder about the memories I’ve lost entirely. Those events were at the center of my life at that time, a time of intense flux. Those events were my life. They made me the person I was at the very beginning of my college years, and have no doubt influenced who I became thereafter, yet I wouldn’t be able to recall them today if I hadn’t read those recollections.

My grandfather is currently in the late stages of Alzheimer’s, and from my mother’s accounts, he’s someone else. Losing the ability to remember things day to day has changed him, made him less trusting, less secure. What parts of ourselves have we lost via the unconscious act of forgetting?

Some things you think you’ll never forget. But you do. «»

Organizational

I don’t remember when I started organizing things. I remember the Little Golden Books on my book shelf being in some sort of order as a small child, but I don’t know if that applies to the sort of organizational desire I’m describing here.

I started collecting basketball cards in the summer between fifth and sixth grade. The usual response here is “Basketball cards–not baseball?” I don’t know how most people start collecting something like basketball cards–probably an actual affinity for the sport that translates into some desire for something tangible regarding it. The impetus for my collection–which, now, is pretty sizable after having collected for a few years, though probably not terribly valuable–was social. Other kids at the youth center I went to during a few summers collected basketball cards, so I picked it up. In this, my pre-internet era, all the knowledge about the hobby came from other kids and the magazine they used (Beckett) which became a sort of road map to my collecting endeavors. Trading was minimal, because I think everyone was afraid of getting ripped off as they tried to rip off other kids. I had a purple three-ring binder filled with all my cards which were of any value, and I organized them by year, set and number. Eventually, this expanded to a second black notebook, and those two notebooks as well as a ton of plastic holders–a couple with screws, housing my most valued cards–comprised my collection. I spent a lot of time as a preteen watching TV while going through basketball cards with an issue of Beckett, trying to find which cards were worth putting in the collection and which were “CCs,” or common cards.

The next thing I compulsively organized was CDs. I kept them in their jewel cases, and stacked them in alphabetical, then chronological order, putting all of them in a bookcase. I only converted to CD-book a couple years ago, and that made the compusion for organization even more necessary, filling two books full of CDs which then needed transferring to one behemoth book of all my CDs. It’s so unwieldy, I have to take CDs out and put them in a travel case if I want to travel with CDs. The old CD books went, of course, to housing my DVD collection.

Apparently the disc format wasn’t enough to sate my organizing appetite, so now I put that impulse to use on the computer, organizing my MP3 collection. Folder structure, ID3 tags, looking up years, debating whether to put less-desirable things in the collection or leave them out. It’s sick, never-ending, and it’s oddly fulfilling. I know that this organizational desire is somewhat futile in that, at best, it will be only semi-permanent. I wonder if the same thought crossed the mind of someone methodically organizing their eight-track tapes a couple decades ago. I’ve read that this sort of behavior has a calming effect, giving the brain something ordered and menial to do, occupying mental processes. It’s certainly been a constant in my life–one of the few. «»

Europe endless

Everything is colored by perspective. That basic knowledge is probably the most valuable bit of understanding I came away from college knowing–what you see depends on where you stand, as one of my favorite professors put it.

Traveling makes this all the more clear. When in a new place, one can’t help but develop opinions and impressions about the place based on those experiences. The more experiences, (ideally) the more accurate those impressions become. The U.S. is in a strange position of being a massive country that spans an entire continent, with a fairly cohesive national identity. The basic geography and culture established in the U.S. lends itself to seeing the rest of the world as a mass, outside of the largest countries. Europe is conflated into one mass, as is Africa and the Middle East. So when someone visits one of these places, one forms an opinion of that enormous concept at the same time, nevermind the subtleties of different countries and regions within those bodies.

A cursory example of this phenomenon can be seen with the British Isles. They are called the British Isles, but the breakdown of the different nations within the U.K. and Ireland makes it much more nuanced. Just glance at Scottish politics and you get a taste for how diverse the national identities within the two islands are, nevermind the conceptual differences between a country and a nation, or the layers of political status with respect to the U.K., Ireland and the E.U.

So when I first came to continental Europe two years ago, the opinions I formed were stretched over the entire continent. I’ve had to travel trip after trip to modify my initial opinions and thoughts, talk to people from different areas to discover the differences between Germany versus the rest of Europe, and the particular region I live in versus the rest of Germany versus the rest of Europe. For the rest of my life, I’ll have to add parenthetical statements about my time spent in Europe, and how it’s colored by this particular perspective.

Traveling has a way of making the world a lot bigger, the self a lot smaller, and one’s perspective a lot more complicated. What you see depends on where you stand–from the places I’ve stood, I’m not sure I could accurately describe what I see. «»

Writing about

This is something I’ve needed to reconcile for a long time.

Lots of people want to write, think of themselves as writers, dream of becoming writers, and so on. I’m guilty of all of the above at different times–even simultaneously. Thinking about writing, I’ve realized that all of my writing has been writing about. Elaboration:

When one bears witness to, reads or hears about an event, written reflections regarding that event are “writing about” the event. When one airs thoughts via words, as I have done on this blog, one is “writing about” those thoughts and ideas. A discussion of culture, a newspaper article, a memoir: “writing about.”

Writing, as I see it, bridges the void between “writing about” and living in that moment. This is probably a matter of tone, of somehow adequately capturing a segment of existence so as to make the writing invisible. “Writing about” meanders, is self-referential, is humorous for its own sake. I have done very little writing in my life, and too much writing about, even when it comes to recollection of events. My perspective as a writer gets in the way of letting the event speak for itself, in its own way–in its own words. I fear the sort of writing that does not keep some distance from its subject.

This distinction may be complete garbage to others more versed in the art of writing, but realizing this distinction has been pretty important to me. I just don’t know what to do with it. «»

To what I am listening, vol. 2

Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs

I ran across the lyrics to “Photobooth” online in 2002 and got The Photo Album shortly thereafter. That record is arguably Death Cab for Cutie’s best, a point of production maturity that can’t be heard before that album, though I’m biased in that it was the record that drew me to the band initially. I became a fan at an interesting time, since I wasn’t there at the beginning, yet I liked the band before their breakout album Transatlanticism and the subsequent use of their songs on TV series.

Narrow Stairs is the second major-label release from Death Cab, and after a few listens, it’s more enjoyable than Transatlanticism and Plans. This album demonstrates a willingness to stray from the comfortable sound of the past two records, heard in the lead single, “I Will Possess Your Heart.” While still a Death Cab record, from the instrumentation to the songwriting, the band has enlivened the songs. “No Sunlight” and “Cath…” are downright vibrant, and “You Can Do Better Than Me” and “Your New Twin Sized Bed” seem intimate without having to go completely acoustic or piano-heavy (as was the case with “I Will Follow You into the Dark” and “Brothers on a Hotel Bed” from Plans). Narrow Stairs has made me a fan again.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Show Your Bones

I bought the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ first album, Fever to Tell, on reputation alone. I hadn’t heard “Maps” until I listened to the record for the first time, though the single had been out for a while. I was blown away by the entire record, but “Maps” and “Y Control” sealed the deal. No one else I knew liked the band as much as I did. I was attracted to how raw it was, but no one else was feeling it.

Even though Show Your Bones is softer, it received the same reception from friends. Unfortunately, that means that when I listened to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs meant I was alone, so it’s taken me much longer to realize how excellent Show Your Bones is. While Fever to Tell serves as the sonic equivalent of a punch in the face, this album finds its strength in playing the softer moments against the louder, as in “Warrior,” which has a distinct climax. “Way Out” is practically acoustic, with an electric chorus best listened to at full volume. Far and away the most powerful song on the album, “Turn Into” plays like a folk song that segues into a piano-driven bridge with lyrics that read like a personal letter. I can’t get enough of this record lately, and it’s unfortunate that it’s taken me this long to enjoy the album as a whole. «»

Pillaging the past I: Sunrise in the South

I took a Greyhound bus trip across the country last July with a friend. Upon reflection, both of our fondest/most surreal/most beautiful moments were sunrises, but at different times. My friend was awake for a sunrise somewhere in Wisconsin. I was awake for a sunrise earlier in the trip, in Tennessee.

After a very late-night transfer in what I think was Knoxville, I was wide awake.* I stayed that way for the next few hours, drifting in and out of half of a nap. My companion and I had yet to figure out the best sleeping arrangement, and this would be perfected over the next two days, involving him taking the aisle so as to stretch his legs out, with me sleeping against the window.** Dawn appeared slowly in my own hazy state. The landscape and weather matched the mood of my perception–foggy, hilly, dark, and monochrome. I had taken notice of a twenty-something girl at the front of the bus, who had developed a rapport with the driver in the middle of the night. The driver was extraordinarily nice to her, yet it was clear they didn’t know each other. I would figure out later that she worked for Greyhound and received free trips, as well as priority seating at the front, as an employee. She was easily the most comfortable person on the bus, the driver taking pains to assure that. I barely remember him offering his jacket to her, but that event might have just been a metaphor my mind created for how accommodating he was.

She was laying down in the seat, asleep and comfortable. I sat there in my muddled state, envious of how serene she seemed. Watching a stranger sleep is bizarre. Sleeping is usually a private act, so it seems somewhat invasive to look at someone while they rest. I had no qualms about staring with my brain as cloudy as it was, and the image of this girl curled up in the seat at the front of the bus is merged with my memory of the surrounding landscape and sunrise, the fog on both sides of the bus growing steadily lighter as hues of orange made their way over the horizon.

It was the beginning of our second day on the road, and I hoped this sunrise set the tone for the rest of the journey. «»

* Not that I had slept that much at this early stage in the trip. This was the end of day one, and I would sleep in the daytime for the better part of day two.
** That frigid, frigid window–so comforting in the July heat, until you’re stuck to it, your eyes are dried shut, and you have cottonmouth. The window and I had a love/hate relationship.

Beyond gender

The feminist movement has its roots sprawling through American history in varying degrees. The abolition, prohibition, suffrage and civil rights movements all have links to the feminist movement, though when people usually mention feminism, an image of the 1970s is conjured along with the word “liberated.”

Whenever I’m surrounded by people in their forties, differences between men and women subtly bubble into the conversation. No one makes any scientific pronouncement about how women and men differ, but whenever a group of people twenty years my senior get together, they begin commisserating about how men do one thing and women do another. It infuriates me, for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that these individuals were most likely directly affected by the feminist movement, having grown up while it was at its perceived apogee.

1. I am a feminist. I believe that any differences between the genders outside of physiology are societal constructions. Sex is determinded by biology, gender is determined by society.

2. These conversations are utterly boring. There is no value to generalizing habits to one half of humanity outside of a sense of comfort that maybe these misguided generalizations have some bearing objective reality, which they do not.

3. If I were to interject a statement about the equality of the sexes and how these perceived fundamental differences have been created by society and acculturated into their thoughts and habits, I would be dismissed as young, idealistic, both, or misguided in my beliefs–beliefs which, at their core, are feminist.

Maybe when I’m married (many years from now), I’ll change my tone when it comes to these sentiments. Hopefully my partner and I will be enlightened enough to move beyond the shackles of gender.

Hopefully we’ll be interesting enough to avoid talking about housework at a party. «»

Wednesday wiki gem #1

“William Shatner, playing himself on a guest appearance on Saturday Night Live, made a reference to this episode. In the sketch, Shatner had just finished delivering a rant imploring an audience of Star Trek fans at a convention to ‘get a life,’ then explained the rant was a ‘recreation of the evil Captain Kirk from episode 37, the title… “The Enemy Within.”‘ In fact, the 37th TOS episode produced was ‘The Changeling’ and the 37th aired was ‘I, Mudd.’” –Memory Alpha wiki, “The Enemy Within (episode)”

Never before has something so ironic been written with such a complete lack of irony. Perhaps the geekiest thing anyone can do in an argument is point out a minor flaw in what another, less geeky person has said. A hypothetical example:

Non-Geek: Listen, I like Star Trek a lot, I just don’t care about the minor things, like how the engines run on lithium crystals or that Data has a processor for a brain.
Geek: See! You don’t even know that the engines run on dilithium crystals, except for the TOS episode “Mudd’s Women” where they ran on lithium crystals, but that was changed later in the series. And Data has a positronic brain! You don’t know anything, haha!
Non-Geek: Nevermind, I hate Star Trek.

In this instance, the geek commits the major flaw of geekdom: emphasizing small, seemingly insignificant minutiae within the fantasy universe of his liking, a quirk that infuriates non-geeks. The non-geek interprets this magnification of the trivial as an apparent necessity for being a fan of that fantasy universe, and it turns him off the entire idea of taking part in the fiction at all.

This is a gulf between geeks and non-geeks–the delight of the details versus the rejection of the inconsequential. It is that gulf which is so fitfully yet unknowingly captured in the above quote. «»

The train siren

I live in a small German village called Hauptstuhl. It has just about one of everything–a bar, restaurant, firehouse, hotel, bus stop, and train station. It’s nestled against a hill to the south, and surrounded by farmer’s fields in the other directions. The main street through town is Kaiserstrasse, which runs all the way into Kaiserslautern, the area’s major city. The autobahn runs parallel to the train tracks, slightly off in the distance. When you’re waiting for a train, you can hear the hum of the traffic.

You can also hear what is possibly the loudest, sharpest sound ever made by humanity.

The train tracks through Hauptstuhl have been under construction for at least half a year. A massive sign has been erected beside the platform here in the village, boasting the involvement of the EU and local government to fund the updating of the tracks to accommodate newer trains. It has been slow but steady work as a long section of track has been updated, part of the problem being that trains go by so frequently and one of the tracks must be left operating as regional commuter trains, freight trains, and high-speed passenger trains make their way through this small village. Whenever one of these trains go by, the workers must be alerted. This is done by a series of lights and sirens placed along the swath of track that has been under construction.

“Siren” isn’t close to the correct term. That word evokes the image of an emergency vehicle making its way down a street, high-pitched wailing moving its way through traffic. This is not a high-pitched, ordered sound. The best description I can summon involves a garbage truck being forced by pressurized air through the largest trumpet one can imagine. When a train is about to go by, that noise is duplicated thirty-fold along the track, and blared without warning. Every time I’ve gone to the station to catch a train, I expect this hideous noise, yet find myself completely unprepared for it. When it goes off, I can feel my internal organs scramble and reposition themselves, and glances along the platform indicate the same happens to everyone else.

What is unfortunate is that this wretched device serves a useful purpose. The local trains are near-silent, as they are short, lighter than freight trains, and electric. One only hears them when one sees them, and people along the tracks have been struck and killed before by not paying enough attention. That said, this sound has been heard in Hauptstuhl for months. At night, when a train goes by, you can hear the alarm echo off the hillside. The familiar noise has punctuated my time here, and I’ve been able to perceive the sound more and more frequently after initially realizing what it and its function was.

It’s made me think about how a number of people spend their entire lives here, and this alarm has existed for only a brief portion of that time. My time here, however, will be colored by the sound, remembering it when I’m startled by an unexpected, irrationally loud noise in the future. When I look back on my time here, I will undoubtedly recall the train siren, echoing off the hills behind my house in the usually silent nighttime. «»

To what I am listening, vol. 1

I like sharing music. I like to get other people into what I’m into, but I haven’t figured out the best way to make that happen. This is an extension of that.

I’ve found that YouTube is an excellent resource for taking a song or artist for a test-drive. I’ve bolded the tracks I want to highlight for each entry; each of these is a link to the video for the song on YouTube.

Goldfrapp, Seventh Tree

A friend introduced me to Goldfrapp a couple weeks ago, speaking of Black Cherry as an erotic record. This year saw the release of Seventh Tree, the group’s fourth album and, after extensive listening to the group’s discography, my favorite. I usually digest albums in sections rather than all at once. I’ll speak of a record’s first half being good, admitting unfamiliarity with the second half–this is the case here, as the first three tracks of Seventh Tree–”Clowns,” “Little Bird,” and “Happiness”–have become my favorite songs recently. Sultry, half-whispered singing combined with dancy, mechanical rhythms makes me a fan of the group. Plus, I’m sort of into dance music lately,…

Kylie Minogue, “In My Arms”

…as evidenced by this track. The day-glo video and kitschy spoken-word intro are the facade to an insanely catchy pop song. The music is somewhat formulaic, but Kylie has an ability to turn an otherwise mediocre song into something else. “Come into My World” was the first of her songs to do that for me, but it didn’t hurt that it was coupled with an excellent video directed by Michel Gondry.

The Raveonettes, “Here Comes Mary”

I’ve slowly come around on being a fan of the Raveonettes. I remember “Love in a Trashcan” being on the radio constantly a couple years ago on the local station in Charleston, and I bought that album on the merits of the single. It got shelved until I heard more from the group–specifically, the songs “That Great Love Sound” from 2003’s Chain Gang of Love and “Dead Sound” from their latest album. The noise-rock dimension of the band’s music is what kept me from becoming a fan of theirs for so long, because I’m completely into the 1950s surf sound the Raveonettes bring to their songs. “Here Comes Mary” is more of the surf and less of the noise, a smooth Buddy Holly-esque ballad about a girl’s suicide. Reverb-heavy and deceptively sweet in its lyrics, the track is the aural equivalent of a tragic dessert. Put this in the “beautiful songs with sad subject matter” column.

The Bird and the Bee, The Bird and the Bee

Another group whose hit single I heard, only to ignore the rest of the band’s work. “Again & Again” attracted my attention, but since hearing it a couple years ago, I’ve only just recently listened to the album in its entirety. “La La La” and “I’m a Broken Heart” caught my ear this time. Arguably similar to Goldfrapp in style (female singing combined with electronic music), the Bird and the Bee reverse the equation by having more organic music combined with an asexual singing asthetic. The soundscape is lush, especially in “La La La” such that sultry singing would be lost in the background. A proper balance is struck, to pleasing effect. «»