Also, this.

bell rock jingle rock bell

Happy Christmas

About this time each year, there would be huge letters outside of the World Trade Center. They were big and silvery and would spell out "Peace On Earth".

I dont know what became of those letters, but in their absence, we seem to have forgotten.

May we all have the peace we need.

Yoko Ono took out an ad in the times last week... "War is over, if we want it."

Happy Christmas.

The Quartet

The trials and tribulations of our beloved Maxwell's Demon are the basis for a short film written by Nick Miede and Zach Zangl for submission to Sundance's ProjectDirect. While Nick says a final cut is still in the works (possibly featuring an end-scene with your very own Maxwell's Demon as 4/7's of the Castro Septet) here is the film as submitted to Sundance. Nick and company, thank you so much, this was so much fun and it looks great!

Period Great.

When dear friends from Academy ask me how life goes in the city, I invariably tell them the same thing. "Great." Not exclamation-point-great, that's the great that comes with a record contract, a book deal or a gallery show, or at the very least a car that doesn't squeak from every joint (Kay knows this dude's girlfriend). But period-great is the kind of great that goes with playing multiple gigs per month, writing in one's spare time, and knowing that your car could still smoke 95% of cars on the road, noises nonwithstanding. Usually, each November, I get sunk in an "I'll never be an artist" or an "I'll never do anything that matters" stink, where the very act of thinking calls forth mental groans and huge gaps of the existential variety.
It's December, and I still have the wintertime blues a bit. Too many of my days are spent writing for way less money than is OK and watching shows on Hulu, not enough of my days are spent building things or writing for free. But by and large...
The band has been writing new songs at a surprisingl voracious pace, and they are sounding better and better by the week. I'm finally writing the songs I want to, getting to lyrics that exorcise the year's demons, and garnering the much coveted praise of my often-more-prolific bandmates. Recently, when those "you're not amounting to anything" devils raise their heads and taunt me about that novel project I still haven't written, I push them aside to start hashing out lyrics. I'm letting my creativity flow where it may with the knowledge that thats all I can ask of it. And I think that's what a lot of it is about. I hope.

Stormy Wednesday

So Kay's brother is in town this week, coming over from the opposite coast and playing a few gigs with his girlfriend Alice, in town from France (the other opposite coast). We've been spending some time with them, and they're great fun. So after practice two nights ago I went over to Williamsburg to catch their gig. They were playing folk-rock stuff with an excellent backing band, two old friends of Kay's brother's.

So a beer or two after the show ended, the musicians were walking back to their instruments and playing along quietly with the jute-box. I'd been talking shop with the guitarist, and after a while, picked up his strat while he was playing around on bass. The bartender must have liked what was happening, because he cut the jute-box, and we launched into a rendition of Stormy Monday. I have not felt that musically "on" in the longest time. The other musicians were incredible, and we just flowed into the song like we'd been meaning to do this all night. After Stormy Monday, The guitarist and I switched, and played a few tunes, eventually the events at hand coaxed Kay's bro and Alice to come back up and polish off a second set. It was awesome.

Met a bunch of wonderful people, friends of Kay's brother from Duke, including a budding screenwriter who works at an auction house to pay for his writing habit, and this wonderful cat from rural North Carolina who studies international law and moved to NYC for a woman who left him. (we had a good long talk about South Carolina girls, as well.) It was also kind of nice to hear some real drawls again.

Last night, I saw Jay's side project, Predator Raw, Bushwick's finest stoner-metal quartet to date, and then caught up with Kay and company, and spent hours drinking and coming up with band names like "Custer's Last Band," and "Fiddle Bighorn".

I finally finally finally got a new cell phone. No more dropped txts, no more "wait, really? you called me?" and most importantly, no more waiting literally 5 minutes for the phone to boot up and find a signal, only to reboot again at random.

My phone finally kicked the bucket upstate, so I ran to Oneonta to get a new phone. The woman at the wireless store asked me for my number, and i realized that its a pretty unique thing to our generation, that our phone numbers stay with us. They become part of where we're from. I'm a 201. My whole gang of friends from way back in the day is made up of 201's. I hang out with a group of 860's, who got their phones back at school, and I date a 757.

heh, just think its kind of cool.

Witness

Back on-grid but not for very long. Upstate, today, some Jehovah's Witnesses (isn't Jehovah technically spelled with a Y? Whatever, this is the sort of questioning that leads to things like the climactic scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark) came by the house to spread the meaning of life as they so understand it.

And those two people were freezing their asses off, going around rural New York engaging in what are probably, on the whole, a series of borderline-stressful interactions, in the name of something they believed in. And it got me thinking. That's rare. At the very least, those two people are trying.

Thanksgiving

Woke up this morning to Kay leaving the house to go to work, and I realized that I have a lot to be thankful for. Good friends, supportive parents, a good roommate, a roof over my head, a functioning auto, a passion for art, and a wonderful girlfriend, who is faithful, loving, brilliant and patient.

And you know what? After the way this year started out, things could have be a lot worse right now. I spent last thanksgiving in North Carolina with friends that I will probably never see again, and that will always strike me as very sad. But I have a wonderful family here in brooklyn (and Manhattan, Ruby, you count too), and I wouldn't trade them for anything.

Also, I'm grateful for the little things. Like the fact that I was virtualy unharmed by teh large glass lamp that fell and shattered on my head last night.

There's a lot to be thankful for.

Power to the People

Also this: http://www.votemalik.com/

Malik Rahim, former black panther, founder of the organization with which I served as demolition crew lead and work-site assessor post-Katrina. The organization became a shadow of its former self after Malik and a lot of the early members had to take time away, but from my experiences with this man, he would make for a hell of a representative. Also, proud to see the line between activist and politically involved diminish. That's the way it should be.

Work is getting frustrating. My editor is actually competing with me to cover stories. And since she is also the one who does most of the assigning, she wins. And she usually wins at the last minute after I've already made the necessary preparations. Instead of covering Police Commissioner Kelly's unusual press conference about security measures for lower Manhattan, I'm writing a fluff piece about the opening of a Daycare center. Add to that the fact that she routinely keeps me out of the loop, even when it has to do with additions to my own stories, and its just not working out. Frustrating all around.

So yesterday, I had an experience with an awesome thing, that I can't tell anyone about 'cause that awesome thing is going to become somebody special's Christmas present.

Also was woken up by my land-lord today because my downstairs neighbor, who knows how to get shit done, got him in to look at the heat and the very noisy pipes, and so he came up to make sure things were OK upstairs. Aside from a jarring start to the morning, it should provide me both with heat, and the chance to get to know my neighbor (who I already like) better. We're in the midst of some re-arrangements at the APT, getting the band equipment out and finally setting up the study/living room/library, so... its like getting one's car back from the shop.

At John's recommendation, I picked up a copy of The Mandarins by Simon De Beauvoir last night, and promptly stayed up until three or four in the AM tearing through its pages. Still a long long way to go, but it has that delicious writing style that I'm used to from, of course, Camus. There's something to the pacing of French literature of that time, something to the way that great events and small events are held in equivalent import, that appeals to me in every way as a writer and a human being.

Of course maybe its just a predilection of the French language peeking through via translation, in which case I should really try to learn French...

The heat is on, but its not hot. Damnit it's cold.

Anyway, had a show last night at the Charleston in Williamsburg. I liked it because the raw brick basement in which we played had no stage whatsoever, and it brought me back to the days of playing at school, loud, raw, and having a bad-ass time. Despite our technical difficulties (the amps are finally feeling all the pressure of this constant gigging) several people said the sound was even better than our Red Star show a few weeks ago (which had astounding energy and turn-out). We started out by drawing the crowd with a Song we haven't finished writing yet, one of my new ones called "Raleigh". I set up the guitar for my playing style the other night, getting the action and intonation just right (making harmonics a piece of cake) as well as raising the G-string to make my bluesy bends easier. All in all, it's paying off in spades. Our regular bassist is on hiatus while he deals with some higher-education stuff, so we have a friend sitting in in his place. He's been really good so far, surprisingly good actually, but its very disconcerting not to have the bass played by someone who I've shared the stage with for years... I find myself less able to rely on cues from the bass... I'm sure that'll improve with time.

Also of note regarding the Charleston, free pizza with your beer! Fantastic!

***

I have a meeting tonight with a few cats about starting a lit journal of some sort. If it goes well, this could keep my brain and heart satiated until Grad school, and then I'd only have to worry about my wallet (but lets not talk about that one).

***

Wow this is cold. I'm going to go bundle up.

The G-chat I come home to:

Ruby: Charlotte. we need to get some guns.

me: oh?

Ruby: and motor boats. and get in on this pirate party

me: i mean, this all sounds right up my alley

Ruby: it is a total bonanaza out there.

Fall

So it's fall in this part of the world, so I did a little fall-cleaning to the template. I'll tweak it occasionally, but... I was getting tired of all that green.

Anyway, lots of things going on with the band, lots of things afoot in my creative life. I'll blog about those soon. Sorry for the delay in posts, but lately I've become fully engrossed in reading theory again, pouring over State of Exception by Giorgio Agamben every subway ride I take. It feels so good to stretch out my brain again.

I'll write more soon.

Faith and the Absurd

Just because I've been thinking about the post-war intellectual scene... A paper I wrote in late 2006 on the Plague by Albert Camus. I have not included citations because I don't want to get into the formatting...

It is a truism to remark that, in times of disaster, the true nature of humanity is brought to the fore. Such a remark is an oversimplification and, what’s more, implies a natural state of being that underlies normal human affairs, waiting to be discovered once said affairs are interrupted. Good students are taught to be wary of such claims. Nevertheless, as is oft the case, a truth underlies the truism: disaster brings the ever-present realities of the human condition more directly to our attention. At the most basic level, we are all subjected to the absurd—the certainty of death and the uncertainty of meaning. In a situation where our ever-impending death becomes all the more pronounced, or alternately, in situations where the normal human affairs that keep us distracted from this truth are stripped away, the individual is faced with the realities of the human condition, the reality of the absurd. It is this situation that Albert Camus presents to us in his 1948 novel The Plague, a book that borrows from earlier works of existential philosophy, and lays the groundwork for Camus’ later more theoretical works. I wish to situate The Plague (qua book) and the plague (qua phenomenon) in the scope of existentialist thought. So doing serves not only to expose the novel’s philosophical aspirations, but allows an illustration of otherwise dense topics through individuals, albeit fictional, with whom we can relate. This short essay will attempt this task by discussion the two sermons1 given by Father Paneloux in The Plague. After a brief summary of the first sermon, I will analyze it according to the Sartrian notion of bad faith. As Paneloux’s second sermon is intended to amend the first, after its summary, I will present Camus’ later idea of metaphysical rebellion as a possible response to Sartrian bad faith.
Paneloux’s first sermon takes place during the onset of the plague that has befallen the French-Algerian town of Oran. It comes as the climax of a Week of Prayer, an ecclesiastical bid to do battle with the epidemic. The thesis with which Paneloux begins his oration is one of what may be called a traditional Christian moralist sort: “Calamity has come on you my brethren, and, my brethren, you deserved it2.” The priest then goes on to cite the appearances of plague in the past and the religious meanings they were taken to have. Thus we have the plague ravaging Egypt in the book of Genesis, we are told of an Italian plague understood as angelic justice, and of the Abyssinians zealously welcoming death-by-plague as a road to divine salvation. This plague, he implies, ought to be understood no differently. The people of Oran are being taught a lesson ,“the lesson that was learned by Cain and his offspring, by the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, by Job and Pharaoh…3” In short, the plague was a punishment for their sins, a collective punishment for collectively ignoring God and going against His ways. And yet, the learned Jesuit contends, this very punishment gives one access to God’s will. As His wrath is coming to the people of Oran due to their lack of faith and obedience, the Plague can be seen as a lesson in faith that should be, in some sense, welcomed by the pious:
[The Plague] gives us a glimpse of that radiant eternal light which glows…in the dark core of human suffering…[this light] reveals the will of God in action, unfailingly transforming evil into good. And once again today it is leading us through the dark valley of fears and groans towards the holy silence, the well-spring of all life. This, my friends, is the vast consolation I would hold out to you, so that when you leave this house of God you will carry away with you not only words of wrath, but a message, too, of comfort for your hearts.4
Thus, the plague is judgment manifest, a judgment that the citizens of Oran must, in a certain sense embrace. The salvation Paneloux preaches can come about only through internalization of the verdict he claims is latent in the epidemic. Innocence in the eyes of Paneloux’s God can come only through admission of guilt that the plague signifies.
A similar mechanism arises in Sartre’s elucidation of the notion of bad faith, found in his 1943 text Being and Nothingness, specifically in the bad faith of the critic. The critic, as defined by Sartre, is an individual who demands sincerity of an Other. The critic demands a confession of the person who offends her sensibilities. This confession is not the confession of an act, however, but a statement of identity—an ontological confession. The critic demands that the offending individual admit to being the offending individual as a means of reconciliation. Sartre’s example is Homosexuality. The critic demands that an individual who engages in acts deemed homosexual identify oneself as “a homosexual”. Furthermore, this so-called sincerity, this identification as the personification of the offending traits is, from the point of view of the critic, a positive and necessary step towards a renunciation of the offense. Of course, this is a contradiction, and one that serves to establish a Hegelian dynamic of power—the subversion of a slave’s freedom to a master’s will.5 Sartre illustrates:
Who cannot see how offensive to the Other and how reassuring for me is a statement such as, “He is just a paederast,” which removes a disturbing freedom from a trait and which aims at henceforth constituting all the acts of the Other as consequences following strictly from his essence.6

Just as Hegel’s Master is unable to become fully self-conscious due to his failure to recognize the agency of the slave, the critic is in a state of bad faith due to his demand that the Other nullify the threat of her freedom. An individual so classified (i.e. a self-admitted “homosexual” or a “pederast”) has made of himself a permanent Other, denying the possibility for mutual recognition, for the essence he has claimed is of a different species than the essence of the critic. By bringing this state of affairs about, the critic undoes the threat of the other at the expense of the realization of human freedom.
What Sartre’s critic does with “homosexual”, Paneloux’s sermon does with “sinner”. To Paneloux’s reasoning, the plague is to be understood as brought about by the sins of Oran. By the vehicle of his sermon, he hopes to bring this realization about in the minds of its citizens. Sartre references the saying, “A sin confessed is half pardoned,”7 and Paneloux is invoking the same. For the priest, this is an interpretation of Christian forgiveness—recognition of oneself as a sinner and subsequent trust in God’s response. Yet the mechanism is the same as that of the critic. Paneloux, faced with the absurd as manifest in the plague, demands that the citizens identify as sinners. Threatened both by the human freedom to ignore God, and (more importantly), the chaos and irrationality of the reality of the plague, Paneloux turns to bad faith. As Camus later writes, the absurd is the confrontation of the human need for order with the irrationality, and terrifying unpredictability of the conditions of the world.8 One such response to the absurd, then, is such a turn towards bad faith.
Paneloux’s Second sermon, however, represents a change in the man. Some time after the delivery of his first sermon, the scholarly Jesuit (who, distinct from a parish priest, has less day to day contact with the world outside of his studies) becomes involved in Rieux and Tarrou’s sanitation squads. In this capacity, Paneloux comes face to face with the symptoms and fatalities of the plague. This exposure sparks a change in Paneloux, a change that reaches its climax after he and Rieux witness the death of the Magistrate’s small son. In the aftermath of the small boy’s suffering, Rieux lashes out at the priest, negating the implicit demand of the first sermon, shouting, “That child, anyhow, was innocent, and you [Paneloux] know that as well as I do!”9 Rieux-as-narrator informs the reader that this event and the conversation that followed had a profound effect on the priest, who invited Rieux to his next sermon.
Right from the onset of Paneloux’s second sermon, we are informed that he has ceased referring to his listeners as “you” and instead speaks of “we”. He goes on to say that, in the months since he last spoke, they had come to know the plague better. What he claimed in his first sermon, he still holds to be true. His thoughts, however, had “lacked charity,”10 and in this second sermon his change of emphasis is be key. The task of the Christian, he explains, is to find the good in all situations, including such suffering as the plague. The good Christian ought to take what is before him and learn what it has to teach him. Indeed, a child’s suffering is reprehensible. Paneloux specifically cites a child’s innocence. And this presents a contradiction, for how can a Christian believe in a Christian God, and yet recognize the truth of innocent suffering, of needless suffering? All must be believed, or, alternately, all must be denied. The citizens of Oran “must acquire and practice the greatest of all virtues: that of the All or Nothing.”11 Indeed, if one holds that God can control the plague, then one must assume that He wants it to be. And if He wants it to be, then the believer must learn from it, must accept it, must will it, as well. This is the only consistent manner of dealing with theodicy, the only consistent way of believing in God.
Indeed, we find ourselves back at the absurd. Rather than circumventing the absurd, as in the case of Sartre’s bad faith, we have a confrontation with it. The absurd—that dissonance between our desire for order and the harsh irrational reality in which it finds itself—is acknowledged. Rather we find ourselves dealing with another mode of amelioration. Camus specifically references the “All or Nothing” six years later in The Rebel. Again hearkening back to the Hegelian struggle for recognition between master and slave, Camus focuses on the act of rebellion when the slave refuses his role and demands treatment as an equal.
Having up to now been willing to compromise, the slave suddenly adopts (“because this is how it must be…”) an attitude of All or Nothing… The rebel himself wants to be “all”—to identify himself completely with this good of which he has suddenly become aware and by which he wants to be personally recognized and acknowledged—or “nothing”; in other words, to be completely destroyed by the force that dominates him.12
The slave, aware that the previous order did not treat him as an agent, as a mutually recognized other, prefers death to its return. The moment of rebellion makes an irrevocable change. Indeed, Camus continues a year later in The Myth of Sisyphus, “A man who has become conscious of the absurd is forever bound to it.”13
Paneloux, in his second sermon, has found himself face to face with the absurd. His understanding of God—his ordering principle of the universe: the belief in the plague as justified punishment—stands in strict juxtaposition to the world as he sees it—irrationality: the death of M. Othon’s son. Forced, as he himself expresses it, to choose between all—the absurd—and nothing—nihilism. Either what he holds to be true (God and his having witnessed needless suffering) are true, or he can hold nothing to be true. In having to confront this choice, he becomes a figure of rebellion.
And so he makes his choice, and chooses to accept what he sees. He and the citizens of Oran must accept the existence of the absurd. Nihilism he rejects offhand, for who, he asks, can believe in nothing. And yet the absurd is a dissonance—the very notion of its “acceptance” is not intuitive. Nevertheless, Paneloux seeks to trust the absurd—to learn from it, and to derive from it some semblance of meaning. But Camus tells us, both subtly with the Jesuit and explicitly years later in Sisyphus, that we cannot trust in the absurd as though God; we cannot make the absurd our God. The absurd is not a thing, an object from which we can derive answers or meaning—it is the very clash between our desire to find such a thing and the world that denies us our quest for order. It is a relation that exists within the human mind vis a vis its desires and the outside. It does not exist outside of the mind. It is a struggle between the mind and its environment.
…I must admit that that struggle implies a total absence of hope (which has nothing to do with despair), a continual rejection (which must not be confused with renunciation), and a conscious dissatisfaction ( which must not be compared to immature unrest). Everything that destroys, conjures away, or exorcises these requirements…ruins the absurd and devalues the attitude that may then be proposed. The absurd has meaning only insofar as it is not agreed to.14
And yet such an exorcism is what Paneloux attempts to do. He agrees to the absurd. He looks to it for meaning. And so his rebellion leaves him unfulfilled. He, like Camus’ reading of Kierkegaard and Chestov, attempts to fashion a God out of the absurd and thus to circumvent the problem again, simply one step deeper than the relatively superficial circumvention found in bad faith.
All or Nothing: Tarrou explains, “When an innocent youth can have his eyes destroyed, a Christian should either loose his faith or consent to having his eyes destroyed. Paneloux declines to lose faith, and he will go through with it to the end.”15 And so Paneloux does not die in bad faith. He is consistent and authentic with regard to his beliefs. However he doesn’t die with a sense of meaning. Waiting for meaning from his acceptance of the absurd, he dies with none. Camus calls it philosophical suicide: thought having negated itself to transcend itself in its very negation.16 It is a leap of faith, and as such, philosophically untenable. Paneloux’s recognition and amelioration of his own bad faith was necessary, but insufficient. He still failed to create his own meaning, looking instead to the absurd as God.
It is in this way, then, that Camus’ early novel foreshadows the explicit philosophical moves he makes within the existentialist tradition. To speak in terms of bad faith is not enough, for it does not address the reality of the absurd (or, perhaps more appropriately, the absurdity of reality). Sartrian existentialism runs the risk of philosophical suicide—the acceptance of the absurd and therefore failure to create meaning for one’s self. The existentialist project must therefore look beyond the internal self-coherence embodied in bad faith, and must look to the all or nothing implicated in metaphysical rebellion against the absurd in order to properly address the issue of meaning. Though both thinkers develop such concepts over several decades, the nascent beginnings of this process start to unfold in The Plague.

So far, best November on record. But I've been reading Agamben and missing my studies and within a year it'll be time to start applying to schools again...


The sketchy top two right now are Duke or Yale.

And I hate New Haven...

Plus Side: Got to go on a 50 mile ride with George Hincapie and 50 other people on high end bikes, hung with the pack, out-climbed some folks, got invited to train with a pretty good team and redeemed the usefulness of Reynolds 531 Steel in the face of Carbon Fiber, not to mention made a lot of great contacts for branching out into bicycle-magazine writing.

Minus Side: it was ass-cold outside and at the edge of my envelope to hang with the pack. And now, the next day, I feel sick.

Discipline

The two main themes of this year for me have been discipline and strength. Right now I'm only interested in the latter as it's helped me to achieve the former. And I'm not interested in the former in terms of the discipline of others... I'm focusing here on self-discipline.

Discipline, for me, has always been a counterpoint to chaos. I don't like ordered lives, but (and? so?) I try to live a disciplined life in a vacuum of order. (I think there are a lot of people like that, and a lot of people who have the opposing mindset, people who structure their lives so that they can be wild within it.) In any event, I feel like this year I've finally taken discipline head-on as a goal.

The wildly irresponsible manner with which L left me at the beginning of the year made it impossible to even get out of bed. But I had responsibilities, an album to finish, work to do. And so the year started off with this intense struggle to bring order to the chaos my life had become. It failed more than it succeeded, but it set the tone, so to speak, let me practice focus. The I left my job for a more structured job, thinking that would lend me some of its order. It didn't, and my methods of work and motivation didn't match with the job, so, live and learn... I left. During the job, however, I started to take the idea of racing bicycles and, more generally, of getting in better shape seriously, so I started exercising, finding and testing my limits, watching what I put into my body for the first time in my life (again, successes and failures abound), but I started thinking in a more disciplined way. When I left my job, I went back to writing, but with a renewed sense of purpose and a much more disciplined attitude. When I talk to mattio, now, about training, I think about it in the same way as I do writing assignments. I hold myself to training and writing schedules. Very loosely, but, that's the point: if they're my schedules, they can be changed at my will. But they're still schedules, and they help me feel productive.

I've never understood 'mind over matter' quite so much.

First bicycle race today. In the wet.

Wish me luck.

----

supplemental:

When I started, I'd two goals: the stated goal of not coming in last, and the actual goal of finishing without injury or severe damage to the bike.

Out of a field of 24, I came in 16th.

I had a few moments on the hills where I questioned why in the name of all things holy anyone would do this to their body,
And I mismanaged my on-bike food intake so that I started getting ridiculous stomach cramps around 10 miles from the finish, but I did it. And I know I can do better.

So while I don't want to so much as *look* at the bike for the next 48 hours, I'm hooked.

Oh, and Mattio got 3rd.

When after many years, you learn to see the world through the eyes of another, you forget to see on your own when those eyes are suddenly shut, when that connection is suddenly severed.

Oftentimes I *still* feel as though I am learning to see for the first time, re-learning what it is to let my eyes wander among the stars or to feel grass under bare feet, to listen to wind. Love is a connection to more than that one person, its a connection to the world. And having found out that part of that was a lie for so long, it's still tricky to connect to the world.


Sorry for airing that publicly, it's just been on my mind.

wheels

I haven't blogged about the bike in a long time, and that's because, largely, it's been perfect. I have a secret steel racing bike project in the works, building up an early nineties steel frame to become a modern racing machine, and that's been keeping me from obsessing over my beloved Raleigh, plus I've just been *riding* the damn thing a bunch, getting my legs all fast and whatnot, learning to corner better, getting out in the nature. But in a recent fit of organization I cleaned my room and my desk and came upon the set of tubular wheel that I'd bought a few month back for virtually nothing. The wheels are gorgeous Mavic GL 330's laced to early Shiamano 600 hubs (tri-color era 7 speed, for the geeks in the audience), and they weigh even less than my self-built-for-speed clincher set. So it's been kicking around the back of my head that I should glue some damn tires on to them and go for a ride.
That's right, glue. Tubulars are what they sound like: tubular tires that get glued on to the rim. The disadvantage is that the glue sticks to everything, needs to dry, and kills braincells 'till it does. The advantage is that the tires are perfectly round. That means no sidewalls. Which means, in theory, they handle like a dream.

Well.
I did it today on mattio's stoop. And they are incredible. The bike is twitchy in an amazing way. I just think about a direction, and the little criterium frame is already mid-swoop. The wheels look so much less sleek than my hardy clinchers, blending in perfectly with the 30 year old frame. But that just makes their speed even more amazing. Did I mention they even weigh less?

* * *

Today was a wildly productive day in ventures that make me no money. In addition to the bike wheels, I finally fixed the brakes on the volvo and I started talking out a really exciting new radio project.

If only I hadn't gone grocery shopping, I'd have broken even.

incendeary comment # 1

one of my opinions on Hillary Clinton...

women who traded in their feminism to marry investment bankers felt like they had a chance to redeem themselves in a karmic sense by voting for an otherwise moderate candidate.

A piece from this weekend

When I first met Louis Palmer, a Swiss schoolteacher spending the week in New York, he was in the midst of a predicament familiar to most automotive New Yorkers -- he'd woken up to find his car wedged tightly into its parking space, a small tan sedan having parked within inches of his bumper. I watched as, with a mix of determination and consternation unique to urban drivers, he wrestled with the steering wheel for a few minutes, weaving the vehicle back and forth, trying to find an angle advantageous to his situation. Eventually, uttering the traditional expletives under his breath, Mr. Palmer stepped out of his car to assess his options. It appeared that he was, in fact, stuck, and so there was only one thing left to do: he reached back inside, pulled a lever, and then carted the rear half of his car out of the way and across the street.

Mr. Palmer's is a decidedly unique car on a straightforward, if equally unique, mission -- to prove, by means of global demonstration, the viability of solar-powered travel. Mr. Palmer and his Solar Taxi have thus far logged 27,500 miles over fourteen months in their trip around the world, powered only by the sun.

Mr. Palmer and his support team arrived in New York City on Friday, September 5, where they were made guests of the country's first green residential high-rise, Battery Park City's Solaire. "Sustainability brings a lot of good people together," said Mike Gubbins, Director of Residential Management for the Albanese Organization -- the developer behind the environmentally designed Solaire, Verdesian and Visionaire residences -- who offered Mr. Palmer's team lodging for the duration of their stay. Over the past week, Mr. Palmer and his Solar Taxi have played chauffeur to New Yorkers big and small, from Mayor Michael Bloomberg and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to Battery Park City residents and this reporter. "I call it a taxi because I always give people rides," Mr. Palmer explained, estimating that he's had about a thousand different people in his passenger seat since his trip began. The point, he emphasized, is to demonstrate to the world that solar-powered vehicles are well within reach. "We have an energy crisis and a climate crisis; I want to show that we have a solution. It is affordable, it is reliable, and it is ready."

Indeed, there are fewer ways to prove that a concept has matured beyond the drawing board better than putting it to the most rigorous test at hand. And if that concept can thus be shown the world over, all the better. And thus far, by Mr. Palmer's estimation, the Solar Taxi has excelled. "In 14 months of driving, we only lost two days to breakdowns," said Mr. Palmer, elaborating with pride, "It's a Swiss car, with Swiss technology. It still runs like a Swiss clock." And, from the passenger's seat, at least, the car is an impressive work. As alluded to earlier, the Solar Taxi is made of two components: a three-wheeled car, not too much bigger than a SMART, attached to an approximately fifteen-foot long trailer lined with solar cells. The two-part nature is intentional, Mr. Palmer said -- the car can function independently from the trailer for 150-250 miles, depending on speed, allowing it to function as a perfectly small city car, temporarily leaving the unnecessary bulk of the solar panels behind. A full recharge of the batteries, Mr. Palmer said, takes about six hours. When combined, the two units weigh approximately 1500lbs -- a little more than half the weight of a Mini Cooper. Speaking easily over the engine's low whine, Mr. Palmer also pointed out that the Solar Taxi generates power efficiently enough that, to compete, a gas-powered vehicle would have to travel about 270 miles per gallon. And though the engine can only push the car a little past 55mph, its lightweight and torquey nature made for a quick and confident bout around Battery Park City. In fact, amongst the CD player, sporty seats and dashboard-mounted calculator, gauges and dials, the only concern of note on such a sun-powered day was that the Solar taxi lacks air conditioning. But then again, so does this reporter's beat-up old Volvo.

The fourteen months spent on the road seem only to have confirmed Mr. Palmer's conviction that affordable solar-powered travel is as possible as it is necessary. "The most surprising thing," he said of his travels, "is that, everywhere, there is so much awareness that something must be done." Though this particular vehicle has been sponsored by Q.cells, a German company and the world's largest producer of solar cells, Mr. Palmer believes that a commercialized version of the vehicle would be very affordable, saying that construction of the car and trailer cost $10,000 and $6,000, respectively.

The immediate future holds yet more travel for Mr. Palmer and his team, who, by the time of this printing, will have left New York City for Boston and Montreal. Nevertheless, he intends to return. "It's New York," he responded simply, when asked what brought him here, "when people see the car, they shout, they scream, they wave -- people don't do that in any other city." Next time, though, he hopes to have more cars: Mr. Palmer is planning a solar-powered race around the world, for which there are already four more cars in the works.

Those who can do...

It's been an interesting week or so. Have begun reporting and writing again, am recalling the familiar problems of editors and deadlines, the traditional string of coffee cup after coffee cup. But nothing particularly noteworthy to write about. Rather, I've been thinking a lot lately about learning and re-learning.

I think it's a Zen concept, the notion of starting out at something and progressing past mastery until you are a beginner again, and then repeating. Wherever it comes from, I like it and believe it. There is nothing I would say I've mastered. But of the things I am quite good at, all follow this cycle. And maybe because it's an artificial kick-start to such a cycle, the act of teaching always makes me think of this notion. Kay and I went upstate this weekend and we brought the bicycles along. For the past few weeks now, we'll go out on the road, either upstate or in the city. And as I try to impart on to her what I've learned from the year or so that I've been riding seriously, it makes me answer questions that I already thought dealt with. I'm taking everything from "this is how you change a tire" and "this is how to pedal efficiently" to "why the hell would anyone want to burn away a meal to travel at 25mph?" Every opportunity for teaching is an opportunity for self examination in the task at hand. In fact, any skill differential seems to bring such questions to the fore. When I meet a novice guitarist, I recall why I play. When I meet a master guitarist, I question the direction I wish to go.

Teaching and learning are just two words for the same concept, of momentary transference across a skill differential.

I posted this a year ago.

Notebooks are interesting. We surround them with airs of privacy. We lock them up. We stash them away. Blogs, at least, are more honest: open to the world, commanding "read my thoughts".

I always entertain the fantasy of a youngish grand-daughter, or a great grand-daughter, opening a wooden box in the attic of her parent's house to find all of my notebooks. To get to know me, a forgotten ancestor, as a real person, a poet, with failed dreams, realized hopes, weaknesses and terrible handwriting. It's this hope that keeps the privacy alive: if we write as though we wish no one to read, then what we write is for once honest and flawed, truly worthy and ready to be read.


There's one notebook that stands out in this fantasy. It's red and its small and its simple and the paper is perfect--It's my journal about my experiences as a student in New York a few September elevenths ago. I wont write anything about it here. I cannot finish the journal. I wanted to get it all down. to chronicle the day and the days that followed, and the weeks that followed, and the months sliding into war. I didn't want to lose any of it.

It took four or five years to get to the morning after. As I go, the narrative slowly starts to sputter and stop. Nietzsche once wrote something about the absolute necessity of forgetfulness in human relations. And no matter how I try to save that terrible day, a greater more primitive portion of my brain pushes it under, pushes the book aside and keeps its thick pages blank.

When she opens that book, my great-great-grand-daughter, what kind of truths will she find in that flaw? What kind of history will write with ghostly ink on my empty pages? What words will she have for my inexplicable speechlessness?

Quarantine

Computer viruses are getting smarter. Used to be a time I would just jump into the registry and wrestle the sum'bitches with my bare hands. Nowadays, they're besting me. The laptop went down yesterday and is in shambles. Looks like I'll be able to save the vast majority of the data, but I'm largely off-line and knee-deep in coffee.

Goddamn assholes, the people who write these programs.

Booking

Had a long-awaited, much needed beer (or two) with John tonight, who is winding down (or cranking up?) the editing process on his second novel, largely at the behest of the "bludgeoning" the manuscript received from his agent. We talked at length about a great many things, including the notion that once a work of art is complete, it no longer belongs to the artist but rather, each interpretation belongs wholly to each interpreter.

John noted that something cosmic must be at work as he just wrote his first poem as I am beginning my first novel. (We were two beers in) I feel dubious about my first foray into what I'll call long-form-fiction, but so far I've had an absolute blast researching the book. Its all the fun of research with none of the downsides. My plan is to have the first draft of the first chapter done by the end of the month. We'll see. Maybe these here internets will keep me honest.

The nice thing about buying a trash can is that, when you come home, you've already thrown out the receipt.

I've been buying a few office supplies because, last week, I quit my job. The goal now is to find part time work with my hands (like at a bike shop or behind the controls of a radio station), and spend the remaining days of the week writing freelance. It may have made more sense to have set that up before-hand, but it just felt like the time to take the plunge. Wish me luck / say a prayer.

I've also started putting pen to paper on a novel I've had kicking around in ym head for a year. So again, luck / prayer.

* * *

A whole bunch of folks went upstate last weekend. Made some wonderful music, played games, lounged in what remained of the summer sun. Took Kay and her Batavus out on my favorite 6-mile circuit. The ride was so much fun, as was the subsequent swim we all took later in the day, then when I put on my running sneakers yet later, I had a dark and dangerous idea...

Sign up for a triathlon?


I know, I know, they're the jerks that brought us the $60 water bottle cage. But if drinking, bullshitting and food are each great on their own but an all-out blast together... you see where I'm going with this?

Dangerous stuff.

I am too tall for this city -- I just slammed my head on scaffolding.

And all I want to do is ride bikes with you And stay up late and watch cartoons

So Kay and I took a much needed break from the city this weekend and set out in the ever-dying volvo (odometer has stopped working... ?) to her parents' house in Virginia.

En route, I was examining the beany babies in the claw-game at a late-night I-95 rest stop in Delaware, when I heard "what the hell are you doing here?" Turning around, I saw Ruby who was on his way to his parents house in the great state of South Carolina. So, each suspecting that the other had been lying in wait at the Delaware House until someone they knew came along, we spent quarters on all the cheesy amusements before getting back on the road. On the road, Ruby decided it'd be a fun game to bombard the Volvo with pickles, until quickly discovering that the pickup in which he was riding shotgun had no, well, pickup. Anyway, it was great to have picked up (see what I did there? eh?) an additional traveling partner, someone to stay in cell phone contact with and spot speed traps, until we parted ways around Richmond.

Meeting Kay's parents was, for all the nervousness that surrounded it, great fun. They're smart, witty, and enjoyed showing baby pictures. They make fantastic pasta dishes. I ate better than I have all year.

And tucked away inside the garage was Kay's Batavus, a Dutch-made mid-range racing bike. Which, of course, meant that we took several trips to the near-by beach, wearing towels like capes and aviator scarves, me on the Raleigh singing "Tony's Theme" at the top of my lungs ("I am Tony, super bicycle Tony, I'm racing
Spitfire turn and pop a wheelie, burn and evil chasing ... To-ny! To-ny!") with Kay atop the Batavus looking like a flying ace in Jackie-O sunglasses.

And the Volvo made it back with both the Raleigh and the Batavus in tow, in time for next weekend's upstate adventures.

I've been tinkering with a lot of things lately and making a lot of art recently, so I haven't been making anything even rhyming with a substantive post. So maybe I'll fire up the camera and make some posts about tinkering and art.

Georgia on my mind

+ An excellent Slate piece about the Georgia situation, courtesy of Kay: (here)

+ Also good, also from Kay, the Belgravia Dispatch: (here)

I'm sorry. I'm just venting.

UNPAID INTERNSHIPS ARE THE NEPOTISM OF OUR TIME!

How are you supposed to break into creative fields when all the spots are reserved for people who can afford to live in the city / metro area uncompensated for 40 hour weeks?

Maybe marrying rich *is* the right idea.

A New York Times slide show of the Georgian conflict (here)has got me in a funk at the moment. For obvious reasons, not the least of them being that while all this suffering is going on in the world, I am buying bicycle parts and sitting behind a desk typing up reports for institutional investors. I feel useless. Sure, I could marry some rich jack-ass who would sweep me off to the peace corps (fanciful idea, right?) but even that's a sort of vacation, you know? Hang out at NGO bars and then return to normal life in the states. And the only easy way out of that, the easiest institutionalization of that life is the objectifying distance of the reporter, the foreign correspondent, held at a distance by your telephoto lens, giving up doing for the catharsis of telling.

Its so easy to see what needs to be done. It's so hard to be able to do it.

Isolationism: Gentrification's baby cousin

So, in unfortunate keeping with the classist advertisements for the SteelWorks Lofts in Williamsburg, I happened upon another disgusting apartment ad while on my way back from a (totally fucking awesome) Black Keys show at McCarren Pool. This time around, the message is even worse. The adverts for 72 Steuben, at a time when the housing market has driven the city's largely white new influx of residents to move into "new" neighborhoods (places like Bed-Stuy which New York Magazine has labeled the new Hipster Enclave and the New York Times has called a "frontier neighborhood" despite its hundred year tradition as a seat of African American culture) reads simply: "Don't Just Live in a Neighborhood, Belong."

Ad-speak for "move to Williamsburg: live with your own kind."

Roommate got mugged (is OK, if shaken), suspicious possibly (probably) armed dude walking down the street, and when I went out to move the car earlier in the night, the whole neighborhood was more still than I've ever seen.

Something, somewhere, went down tonight.

Imminent death of the net predicted

Film at 11.


Malwebolence, the New York Times Magazine piece on Trolling.

I have my own thoughts on this, but I'd be interested in hearing comments first.

Awesome Thing of the Week No. 1: Suspect Device

The BBC has this report, today, on the Antikythera Mechanism. The Antikythera Mechanism, in addition to being an awesome band name and potential X-Files episode, is the first known mechanical computer. Various sources say that a devices of similar complexity did not start appearing for another thousand years.

from Wikipedia
The mechanism is the oldest known complex scientific instrument. It has several accurate scales, and is essentially an analog computer made with gears. It is based on theories of astronomy and mathematics developed by Persian and Egyptian astronomers. Based on the shape of the Egyptian letters used in the manual of the instrument, it is estimated that it was constructed around 150 to 100 BC...Consensus among scholars is that the mechanism itself was made in Greece. All the instructions of the mechanism are written in Greek.

Per the BBC article, a sophisticated X-ray system has allowed researchers to map out the device's 29 surviving gears. High resolution imaging has aided in reading the devices inscriptions... apparently it used the Olympic (pan-Hellenic) games as a reference point.

"The Olympiad cycle was a very simple, four-year cycle and you don't need a sophisticated instrument like this to calculate it. It took us by huge surprise when we saw this.

"But the Games were of such cultural and social importance that it's not unnatural to have it in the Mechanism."

-Tony Freeth, of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project

Culture

Back in New York, tanned and relaxed, despite a few job woes. Kay and I have begun reading the Brothers Karamazov together, which has rekindled my love for Russian literature. I don't really believe in genetic dispositions, but as the descendent of many slavs, there's an extent to which the philosophical manic-depressive acceptance so pervasive in what Russian literature I have read (and its not nearly enough to be making such a generalization) just feels like home (ha!).

We went to see The Last Mistress on Sunday, as an on-the whim decision in a rainstorm, and were pleasantly surprised. Its a very beautifully-shot film based on a 19th century French novel about the tribulations of a reformed libertine. It's paced like a novel, which is a little off-putting, but the acting is superb. Rococo France usually bores me to no end. This held me in rapt attention. It's only playing through the end of the week at the IFC theater, but I'm sure there are other ways to get a glimpse of it.

We also saw Cecil B. DeMille's 1934 Cleopatra at the MoMA. Which was fantastic on so many levels. The extent to which film of that time was still very much theater was in full swing, by which I mean huge, choreographed dances, a sense of scale built around a fourth wall, orchestral grandeur... and Claudette Colbert is simply amazing as a cheeky 1930's era Egyptian queen. Add to that amusing anachronisms, like how whoever someone is supposed to represent, they're white and speaking in the Hollywood Accent, and the film represents a time when movies weren't supposed to be virtual reality, but theatrical storytelling. Also represents a time when there was a monolithic white America, but lets not call the kettle black, here.

So, add to that the fact that I'm listening to several live bootlegs of the Archers of Loaf right now, and I feel like a paragon of culture.

Hot Mess of a Debut

Coke Machine Glow reviews our album!

But getting to the goddamn music already (... phew), let’s start with some reference points: R.E.M., the Wrens, and the Replacements all come to find. I’ll get to R.E.M. more later, but if Let It Be is a classic of teenage anxiety, and Meadowlands is the same, only replace teenage years with middle age, then B-Sides and Rarities takes place in the world of noise and nakedly honest emotion that pops up during the decade where youthful optimism morphs into a very adult reckoning of the real world. (That is: the twenties.)

Also, you can now purchase our album from our myspace at myspace.com/demonofentropy

The ocean was like glass off the coast today, and as evening set in, a school of dolphin swam in close to the shore on their way along the coast. So my brother, father and I scrambled the Kayaks and pushed off from the beach, paddling out to meet them. I was the quickest and angled myself into the school, who began surfacing all around me. Very careful not to paddle too deeply, I matched their speed and kept up behind a pair of dolphins that kept surfacing regularly. As my dad and my brother caught up, the dolphins spaced out to allow us into the school, somewhat, and we traveled about a quarter mile with them when they started playing, slapping their tails on the water and leaping fully out of the water five feet off my boat, turning in mid air to show their bellies while I tried to slap the water in return in an attempt to make contact. We continued this for about another mile or so and the whole time I kept thinking, "cool! they're doing with me what I'm doing with them!"

...The quiet calm of just listening.

The best advice I ever received on a beach...

"Just listen."

Live-blogging my First Ocean Swim this Year

4:49pm(est) - so far it seems that the water has not affected the keybo__







***

Also, looks like we (Maxwell's Demon) may have another gig happening at Pianos, opening for The Darts on August 5! Take the Edge off Tuesday!

I'm twenty minutes outside of Raleigh on my way southward. I have the Raleigh (which I like far more than the city of the same name) in the back of the car. It's humid as hell. This is my first time south of Bayonne, New Jersey since January. And I'm realizing that I'm going to need to learn to love the south again.

That old plan of setting up shop in Boone is sounding better and better.

for Love of the Machine

I've been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between the work we do on things and the attachment we feel towards them.

As I've mentioned before, my bicycle's on old criterium racer (short urban race courses) from a time when water bottles were hung from the handlebars. Accordingly, there's no place to attach water bottles to my frame. After some research, I found a nifty little device designed for the dark art of cycling, triathlon. It's a double water bottle holder that hangs down from the seat. In the as-aerodynamic-as-possible world of time-trialing/triathletics, the idea is that putting the water bottles behind your ass will keep the round, already-aerodynamic objects from interrupting your slipstream. For me, it was a nice way to avoid drilling my frame without putting three pounds of water over my front wheel (and thus affecting handling). I should mention that the apparatus cost me a pretty penny (at least what I'd made that day). So my second ride out with them, I'm about to climb over the Manhattan bridge when the harsh terrain of Fulton Street (first paved street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant of the 1800s and apparently untouched ever since)knocks a pivot bolt loose and the whole apparatus swings precariously over my rear wheel until i get to the Manhattan Bridge and flag down a fellow cyclist to ask after his toolkit.

Testament to NYC's bike culture, this guy pulls over immediately and digs through his pack for the tools I need, making small talk as I work. It quickly becomes apparent that getting to this one little bolt will require taking the damn thing apart, and I give the dude an "I'm really sorry to be taking all of your time" look, and he just smiles. "This is why they call triathlon an executive sport," he says. "Guys are so rich they never need to work on their stuff. They just buy a new one."

Likewise, I was reading a book in the local Barnes & Noble, the other day while waiting for Kay, entitled "The Need for the Bike". It was by a french book publisher who has been an avid rider and follower of racing all his life, composed of little vignettes about cycling. Phenomenally well written, I recommend it. Anyway, he does a bit about the difference between racers and mechanics. To unjustly simplify, racers hate the bike, it is the source of their pain; mechanics love it deeply as a thing of beauty.

A few nights ago I was repacking the bearings on what I call the Raleigh's race wheelset -- very light, quick clincher wheels that I built a little while ago, wheels that would definitely hold their own in a cat 4 or cat 5 road race (if paired with a quicker rider than me). If you've never repacked bearings, it's not a pleasant or particularly fun job. You have to take apart the wheel hub, remove about 18-24 ball bearings caked in old, grimy, gritty grease, clean each of them, clean all traces of the old grease from the hub, repack the hub with new, very sticky, very messy grease, plop the bearings back in and reassemble the hub, all while straining your eyes to make sure not a single speck of dust gets in there with them. Then you have to adjust the hub to spin freely without any play along the axle. And as I was doing this, I started wondering how many riders in the whole Tour de France peleton had done this since their first ten-speed. I was holding a wheel that I had built, knowing that if my front end was wobbling later, it'd be my fault. Knowing each spoke and bearing that'd carry me downhill in excess of 40mph.

That's why I dig my mechanic buddy Malcom. He's a racer. Damn fast. But he has the look of a man who now cares for the machines he used to abuse. It's a balance.

Our ability to act upon the world is what makes us human... but it's the old Hegelian thing: if we just get what we want, without having to go through the motions of bringing it about, we're the same as servants who bring about only what they're told to do.

Incorrect

“Every technological advance we’ve made in the 21st century and throughout the 20th has come from the United States of America.”

-Sen. John McCain

+ The Internal Combustion Engine / Automobile (Germany)
+ The Jet Engine (Germany / Italy / Great Britain)
+ Radio Communication (Italy)
+ Sonar (Great Britain / Germany)
+ Binary computers (Germany)
+ Radar (debatable, but largely Great Britain)
+ Radiation Therapy (Britain)
+ The Maser, predecessor to the Laser (USSR)
+ The Helicopter (France)
+ The Modern Ballpoint Pen (Hungary)
+ The Three-point Seat-belt (Sweden)
+ Anti-lock brakes (France)

Young cabbie on Bowery and Delancey compliments me on (1) my bike and (2) my aggressive turn signal as I wait to turn onto the Williamsburg Bridge.

Open Source Government

Military Lawyer De-Bugs the Court


Obama's network gets bottom-up

In other news, Damien is back in town from the UAE, if only briefly. This past weekend we had a gathering of the whole clan up at his parent's house in Westchester. Like all such gatherings, the activities vacillated between the extremely civil (delicious food, delicious wine, many toasts, white linen shirts) and the bacchanalian (3am wrestling matches by torchlight, delicious whiskey, dancing until four), punctuated by moments of pure childish fun, like swimming out to cliffs and jumping into the river. D leaves for the middle east again soon, but its very good to know that they heyday of these sort of family gatherings is far from past.

The next day, Kay trained up to join me, and she and I head out solo to an old hiking spot that D and I used to do once or twice a year, called Breakneck Ridge (technically we do Mt.Taurus). It's on the
Hudson River, on the border of Duchess County, a few miles north and on the
other side of the river from West Point. Lots of fun rock obstacles (its an absolute blast to do with a set of climbing shoes) and a phenomenal view of the Hudson river. You know, grab some sandwiches, ditch the car on the side of the road and just go. Kay and I went a little off course on our way down and found the
remains of an old set of cabins in the woods, and these strange stone buildings from the 1910's. Walking along a trail that had been partially rerouted due to an avalanche a few years back, we came upon a stone wall that D and I hadn't found before. It'd been breached by one of the boulders in the avalanche, creating this great post-apocalyptic affect (We've been watching too much battlestar galactica). So naturally we go through the breach and through a field up on to an elevated mound, like the kind you'd build to put a railroad track on, except this one is overgrown and has tire ruts. So Kay and I hop up onto it and follow its curve into the forest. After a few minutes, we were face to face with an arcane stone building, bricked up and sitting in the middle of the elevated right-of-way, in the middle of this forest. We're approaching it from the rear, and suddenly the whole forest seems eerily silent. We get to the building and work our way around the side. There's a bricked-up window with bars over it, only the bricks have been blown out, by the looks of it from the inside. That's when I started thinking "this is the point in the movie where no one hears from us again." We edge around to the front of the building, where there is a metal door. Above the metal door is a coat of arms involving some beavers and windmills (*not* swastikas, as Kay would later insist)and above the coat of arms is emblazoned "ERECTED 1913". The door itself is the most interesting part--It's clearly missing several locks, and has a bar welded across it. on the bar is a small square of metal, painted bright red, on which was welded "15". It was inexplicably creepy. Definitely unspace. We continue on our way at a quickened pace, past a closed gate at an intersection in the right-of-way, where there are fresh tire-tracks. We duck off the right of way and find our way to a trail system that I am familiar with. Somehow, we still manage to stray off course a fair amount, and find ourselves on a very well-maintained trail through some dense forest, surrounded by the remains of old stone farm buildings. We finally make it back to the road, about a mile south of the car, and hike along the side of the road, tucked close against the shoulder as cars speed by us doing 65, 75 mph. All of a sudden we hear this snarling growl-bark-snort of some creature from the reeds next to us and we jump back into the road, and start running, leaving the beast behind and contending with BMWs on the open road.

I am sore and it was awesome.

It really does feel as though L is a wholly and completely different person. I was waiting for something like this -- when she left me it was like someone had thrown a switch in her brain. She won't return any calls. The scariest part about the whole thing is that I just don't know who she is. People say things like that a lot. I really mean this one.

It's not me, it's you.

L's getting married. In August.

The show was phenomenal.

Phenomenal.

The album looks fantastic, and a lot of people who are often hard to please have been offering us a fair amount of praise on a job well done. I know it's been a while, but we've all been breathing about a week-long sigh of relief. Maxwell's Demon, B-Sides and Rarities is a reality.

The release show at the National Underground was sweaty, packed and noisy, with everyone primed to go by our phenomenal friends in the band Pieces (who consistently amaze me).

Check out these vids from our awesome party (drink a beer as you watch, you'll feel like you were there):


Confidence Man into Life During Wartime. Dont miss the great band banter at 3:10


An excerpt from On the Run. Look at that crazy devil on lead guitar!


Love is a Destroyer

and the big finale by popular demand,

Four Square


If you think that rocked, come out and see us at Piano's on July 5th.

The Radiated Library

Jaylinked me to this utterly fascinating piece in the Times.

Much to my dismay I cannot find any of Otlet's works for sale in English, and can barely find them for sale (or for free, for that matter) in any other language. Interwebs? Help me out here.

Michael Buckland's Otlet Site

An interesting bibliography

Doesn't break any Dad rules

Spent Fathers' Day upstate with my folks and my grandfather, playing boccie and pinochle, cursing, and generally having a fantastic time.

While in town at a farmers market with my mother, she made a suggestion that I liked--namely that when the lease in Brooklyn runs out in a year, I spend the summer upstate. It would cost almost nothing, and would be remarkably relaxing, to get a job waiting tables in Cooperstown and spend the remainder of my time reading and writing hundreds of miles away from any big city. I just may do that.

Anyway, my father performed an emblematic act of dad-hood when, as I was getting ready to leave for the city, he looked at the bent and dented hood of my Volvo and decided to pull it back into shape using, almost exclusively, his bare hands. That's the spirit of fathers' day, right there.

---

Took the bike upstate with me, where the terrain is absolutely brutal and challenges the gearing on the little Raleigh. I rolled into the first downhill I found at about 20mph. I went into an aggressive tuck, and was very quickly catapulted to 41mph. My highest gear, about 105 gear inches, was completely useless, and all I could do was tuck and coast. I kept a pace of about 25mph on the flat roads, ducked around the neighboring village and came back up the hill from the another angle. The uphill was just as relentless, with my smallest gear (65ish gear inches) quickly becoming equally useless torture. I made it though, and that ridiculously painful loop should serve nicely as my benchmark course for a while. I hate to say it, but I'm beginning to understand why modern bikes have 7000 gears.

Question to be asked: Do you love ideas--passionately, with your life? Does this thought keep you from sleeping? Do you feel that you are risking your life on it? How many philosophers would retreat!
. . .
Sade: "People decry the passions without thinking that it is their flame that lights the flame of philosophy."

-two excerpts from the notebooks of Albert Camus

Then I must be greater than Daedalus: for whereas he only made his own inventions to move, I move those of other people as well. And the beauty of it is, that I would rather not. For I would give the wisdom of Daedalus, and the wealth of Tantalus, to be able to detain them and keep them fixed.

-Socrates, on argumentation, in Plato's Euthyphro

More album work.
Yesterday, our best friend Damien's father, a professional photographer of note, had a wonderful photoshoot with us, trucking around Bushwick and "East Williamsburg" shooting frame after frame, shouting interesting encouragements (Damien makes so much more sense now) and buying us beer. It was a wonderful experience, and great to see a man I already respect in his element.

This album work is becoming interesting, though, and not in the way I mean when I'm talking about, say, guitar amplifiers or bike wheels. There was a time, not so long ago, when this album was my final tie to the city. I was madly in love, and it was clear though not always spoken that, when the album was done and we had played it out a little, I had a pressing obligation southward. As we rapidly approach the end of the project, I find myself feeling a whole strange bunch of emotions at once, not the least of which are recapitulations of the abandonment I'm now aware of again. And I don't trust my long term plans anymore; and it's rubbing off on my relationship with Kay when I have more than every reason to trust her blindly; and I'm not sure what to do next (with my life); and I'm getting really, really tired of L's enduring legacy being one of distrust and uncertainty.

How do you afford your Rock and Roll Lifestyle

It is HOT in Brooklyn today. Manhattan's not great either. It almost makes the fact that our hot water is inexplicably inoperable a non-issue. It's probably time to bite the bullet and try to afford a small air conditioner. It's a sticky New York summer, punctuated by the rattle of decades-old fans, adorned with every imaginable smell. I'm used to spending at least a month of the summer in a more southern direction where, even if it's hotter, its so much less dense. This will be my first all-New-York summer in some years. I was dripping sweat during breakfast. And it's only June. Oy vey.

It's been busy times in the music business over here. Maxwell's Demon's first full length LP, B-Sides and Rarities, came back from the mastering engineer on Friday. It was a pretty great scene, me, Jay and mattio jumping on our bicycles and riding out to Greenpoint where we met face to face for the first time with our mad scientist of a mastering engineer. He characterized our recordings / mix as "needing a lot of work", but recognized that that's sort of "what [we] were going for". We get that a lot. (function of recording in the 3'x3' of Hangover Studios)
Anyway, the master sounds pretty phenomenal. He primarily masters for vinyl, and, accordingly, much of the digital harshness of our pro-tools recording has been magically washed away. The instruments blend in a warm way, all audible without competing for attention. That night we had a show at Goodbye Blue Monday in Bushwick, and just killed.

This album is becoming a busy proposition. Tuesday we're gathering to have photos taken for our press-kit, and kibitzing about album art. (Tangentially, did you know that firefox v2.0 spell checks Yiddish? Neither did I until right now!) And now that we're approaching the completion of this year-long project, we're all getting the itch to start writing again. One of mattio's newest songs, "Love Song for Liam" has become a favorite at live shows, and there's this wave of momentum building to start jamming and writing again, all of us working on brand new songs out of the sound we forged over the past twelve months of recording and gigging. It's very exciting.

Kay left for Berlin yesterday, leaving me a care package of increasingly hilarious envelopes to open each day (she just finished the Raw Shark Texts). She also charged me with updating my resume while she's away so that we can embark on JobHunt 2k8 together when she returns. Along those lines, I started talking with my uncle and old employer last night, about the possibility of returning to a freelance position in Lower Manhattan. We'll see if i can juggle both jobs for a little while, but it'll be really nice to start reporting again.

A Morning Person

When the day's been good by 9am, you really can't complain. Woke up this morning at 6:30 (thats 0630 for those of you in the military) ate a little bit of food, then suited up and clipped into the bike for a brief ride with mattio. After my old friend dragged me around a couple of laps worth of prospect park, I broke off and rode back home, showered, had some coffee, selected a book off the book shelf and got on the train. On said train, I began reading said book, Resistance, Rebellion and Death, a collection of speeches and essays by my favorite thinker, Albert Camus. Now, after a while, reading said book on said train, an older gentleman who had sat down next to me a few stops earlier, reading the NY times, leaned over and said, "Excuse me, may I ask what you're reading?" and so began a conversation, about Paris, where he had lived in the 80's and which I had never seen, about the post-war European intellectuals, how important they are to our current situation today, and how they've fallen out of favor with the current intellectual climate. He told me about a community theater he's been volunteering at in midtown and a book he's been working on; I told him about my desire to start writing for a living again. We exchanged e-mail addresses, I got off one stop past my stop, and thought, this has been a good day, and it was 9am.

Out of gas

New York by bicycle is unlike any New York I've ever seen. If you haven't done it yet, you just have to take my word for it. On short spurts, you're going about as fast as a car or a non-rush-hour subway, but you're out in the wide-open. If there's a radio on somewhere, if some cat's practicing trombone in a fifth floor walk-up, or whatever, you hear it. If a bakery is just opening, or if someone's car has just overheated, you smell it. And the sense of geography,of how all these disjointed pieces of city make a whole unity. It's pretty fantastic.

Went out to the Kissena velodrome at the ass-end of Queens after work yesterday to see mattio race. (As an aside, I want to bring back the -drome ending and start calling EWR the Newark Aerodrome.) Kissena was a goddamn trek, even with the assistence of the 7 train (I cheated and took the train on the way out). But I brought the Raleigh with me, and in between races, when they called a weather delay on the track, mattio had me fly his wing around the big banked, swoopy turns. The R caught 25mph with extremely little effort, and I quickly came to realize what phenomenal speeds a good rider could get a tight little track bike to on a good velodrome. And mattio did well, getting three second place finishes, looking strong and confident on his new Felt track bike. It was a fun time, and after a few post-race runs around the track on the Raleigh i was feeling dumb enough to feel up to the ride home.

At this point it had begun to rain, but it was a warm night so I hitched myself to the wheel of one of the racers who was riding back to Bushwick. On the long ride that followed, we kept a casual pace and made good conversation, getting lost here and there (it is Queens after all). At about the Brooklyn line, however, I realized that my throat was closing up from thirst. I'd ridden out without any food, water or cash. By the time my companion pulled off in Bushwick, i'd completely bonked, my body running on zero fuel. By the time I was ten blocks from home, I was barely able to hold the handlebars steady. Even today my legs feel like jelly.

It's making me question plans that I had with my good buddy A to try to ride up to the alma mater on a long weekend.
If I'm going to keep this up over the summer, I'm going to need some place to stash a water bottle on my ancient racing bike.

The Greatest Generation

Woke up this morning to the following e-mail from my father:

c-
Please forward this to all of your like-minded and like-spirited friends, if you wish. Thanks to all of you for being an integral part of making obama's nomination and likely his election happen. We, at your age, had all of the passion but not the power to make this kind of change. it's long overdue that this kind of opportunity for can occur. tonight alone is monumental, but there's more to do. we're happy to be part of it.....again....
-d

From his generation (my father was growing up in the sixties) to mine. It's truly nothing short of astounding to see a country unified in something they believe in, not just against. And to see the population actively supporting a man who is brilliant and nuanced? Why thats just too much for my hardened little heart to bear. This morning I actually feel pretty OK about being an American.

I'd also like to point y'all towards this:

Michelle Obama tells it like it is

and then suggest my dream ticket, Obama Obama '08. Say it out loud, it sounds even better.

Things that I have crashed:

+ car
+ snowmobile
+ three bikes (one twice)
+ kayak
+ sled
+ checking account
+ another car

Liability

A few nights ago, we were entertaining casual company, trading stories and drinking things. And when I got to a story about driving a snowmobile 65mph across a frozen lake I said something in Kay's direction akin to "You probably wouldn't like this, but..."

Much to her credit, she later took me aside and gave me crap about my aside. Lots of "Look" and "I'm not that kind of girlfriend", lots of "I'm never going to tell you what to do."
She was right of course, to be miffed that I just assumed her role as such, and I appreciated what she said greatly.

But I appreciated last night even more greatly.

Out on a ride around the borough (which would culminate in a wonderful roof party in Williamsburg), I was riding on my bicycle somewhat... stupidly. I was riding faster than I was paying attention, and I found myself faced with a car. So, like any fast-acting limbic system, I jammed on the brakes. On my new, more powerful brakes.
The front wheel locked up, and the whole bike kept rolling around it. that is to say, as I quickly dimished my speed from 20mph to zero, the rear of the bike bucked up and over the front, and I, still clipped into the pedals, went with it. I hit the ground, somehow, still half clipped into the now-inverted bike, and over the next few nanoseconds unclipped and summersaulted forward, ending up in a somewhat lounging position on the blacktop, the bike aside me. Testament to the borough, the car peaced out. I took a breath, stood up, brushed myself off, noting the one gash on my elbow, picked my bike off the deck, clipped in, rode off, both myself and the bike in far better condition than we'd any right to be.

So anyway, I get back home later that night and relate this to Kay. She has that look that appears on one's face when they eat horseraddish or their own previously-spoken words. Thinks for a second, and then very diplomatically just goes, "so, how many more things are you going to crash?"

Also this:

muh. Terrible few days of a fever that morphed into a throat infection that morphed into a cold. But three house-bound days with a healthy dose Battlestar Galactica and Daily Show reruns seem to have been quite the cure. Still frustratingly unable to hop on the bike, but what are you going to do?

Anyway, living in Bedford-Stuyvesant for the past month has been an adventure. In the world of New York real estate, where trendy white neighborhoods expand their boundaries, quite literally, as real estate agents start establishing "East Williamsburg" and push Clinton Hill across Classon Avenue, I've become very cognizant of the fact that, after my stop, there are usually no white people left on the train. In the very way I live, I'm living on an edge of sorts: I only go east of Bedford Avenue when biking to Bushwick.

I've been exploring my own neighborhood, the little corner of Bed-Stuy that's become home, and I like it a lot. Tons of families out every day, a School and a Library right across the street, I've a downstairs neighbor who's director of a marching band and whose two-year old son is learning the drums (with a full kit(!)).

And the apartment itself is coming together pretty wonderfully. Elias and I have two big common rooms, one of which has a couch and a big computer/movie setup and a drafting table, the other of which is turning into a study. We just finished painting it today... it's where a newfound 1940's era radio console sits, as well as my desk and as many bookshelves as we can find. Between the painting and the writing desk I built last week, its all very reminiscent of a long conversation Kay and I had while we were both sick and house-bound... when you build the things you use with your own hands, you feel so much more on top of your life and in control of situations. And as I look around my newly painted study with my newfound health, I'd say that's a pretty accurate description.

Also, I feel like the following is substantive, and not emo:

after extensive experimentation, it appears that riding not in padded bicycle shorts is far less likely to lead to, er, discomfort, than riding in padded bicycle shorts.

The more you know.

Volvo soon to be uninsured and driven upstate (not in that order) where I can work on it in peace and with money. Something Buddhist floating through my head about dealing with things as I find them. Now my range is smaller. Focus, for now, inward.
Should also allow me to do real engine work.

A friend of L's wants to visit when she's in NYC. The first test of my peace.

Spent most of Memorial Day watching Battlestar Galactica with Kay.
Ob-La Di, Ob-La-Da.

Fender bender in Memorial Day traffic en-route to the academy. Volvo needs a new hood and new headlight. Won't be able to pay to do anything but eat for a while.
Gah.

In the interim

An interesting blog from South Africa, discussing the violence happening in Johannesburg at the moment:

it is, as you can expect from the title, by a British ex-pat. But despite the title, it seems pretty balanced:

6000 miles from civilization

[update]Another blog that I haven't gotten to read enough of yet. It's written by a Zimbabwaen student in South Africa:

Sherp

Rumor About the True Things is taking some time off to re-organize and get back to substantive posting about reasonably interesting things. Down with the Emo posting, up with the having something to say.

Stay tuned.

Hectic times abound. some brief updates, whilst i have some real live substantive posts planned for the weekend...

+ Job is driving me a little bit mad. Will explain when I'm not at it. Suffice to say I'm printing out new resumes.

+ Band is doing phenomenal work. The album is mixed, and we have release parties scheduled for June 21 at the National Underground and July 5 at Piano's. Our mastering engineer in Chicago has told us he'll be unable to do the project on schedule, but pointed us towards an engineer in Brooklyn who looks to be equally talented...

+ Going up to the academy this weekend for commencement weekend. I'll be seeing dear friends, Kay will be attending a reunion, it will most likely turn into me sitting on the roof of my beloved old radio station swilling forties with whomever will tolerate me.

+ Waterpipe Theater, an old project I was involved in at the above radio station, is being reborn in New York, as most of us are now living fairly close to one another again. For the time being, at least, we've access to the studios where Kay works as a producer, and we've secured an on air slot at the old station.

A New Low

This is utterly terrifying.


But when we live in a culture that treats desired emotional response as the answer to a chemical equation, what, really can you expect? Psychiatrics and the death of agency. When we've stripped "inalienable human rights" (as detailed in the constitution) from non-citizens, and this against the backdrop of a medical culture that portrays people as chemical amalgams for the medicating... is this really surprising?

The question of freedom

This is something I will return to when I'm not slacking off at work, I'm sure. But it interests me greatly... The New York Times, for the past two days, has been running a series on Love in Saudi Arabia. As I was reading today's piece, about women and what love means for them, I found myself struck by the lack of rebellion to the situation as it stands, and further struck that it's the same shape as the lack of rebellion described in Marxist writings (and later feminist writings) commonly referred to as "false consciousness" -- the fairly straightforward notion that the dominant paradigm convinces the oppressed that they in fact have all of their needs met, and don't want for what the opponents of the paradigm term liberation.
But False Consciousness is a damn slippery slope. In the sense that it supposes that a revolutionary knows what you want and what you need, and you don't. False Consciousness reasoning has "justified" terrible massacres across the globe, is one of the theoretical foundations of maoism (of which I am not a fan), and has been a big part of second-wave feminism. It implies a universal truth about freedom that the oppressed cannot be expected to "get". And, in my not so humble opinion, that's a huge problem.
Yet clearly there's an extent to which that kind of mechanism does exist... we live in advanced capitalism. Everywhere we look we are being told what are needs *really* are (a 28 inch waist, chemically maintained happiness and a luxury sedan). In a point of fact overlooked by most of the commentators on the Times site, religious fundamentalism is the same as economic fundamentalism is the same as philosophical fundamentalism, and its a fact of daily life, everywhere, that an external source with a stake in some sort of power game is informing us of our needs. And because it's easier to live within a power structure that is not trying to get you to be different, a fair number of people take that informing as gospel, no pun intended. To say that there is no such thing as "false consciousness" is to allow a whole slew of people, both down your block and around your planet, to get pushed around in the name of structures of power and/or knowledge. (god, have I really become that Foucaultian?)

So what we get down to is what it means to be a person acting freely in the world. So given that to be free is to be an unfettered agent, and given that agency is acting as one intends, and given that intention comes in part from information at hand, and given that information at hand is necessarily a facet of the social (by which i simply mean "beyond the level of the individual") world around us,

How do we even begin to think about freedom in society?

Apartment Apartment

Wherein I list things I need for the apartment. Hit me back if you have any of these you're willing to part with:

+ Iron / Ironing board
+ Bookshelf- or floor-style speakers for a Hi-fi
+ A small couch or loveseat
+ Dining room-style chairs
+ Potted plants in need of a good, light-filled home

distance has no way

So it's been about four months since my ex-girlfriend L went off the deep end, left me for a guy she'd met a few days prior, and severed contact for such stellar reasons as "when we talk about this I feel like you're trying to make me feel guilty." (for real?) Since then, in my life, I've come across a new apartment, a new job, and started seeing someone who I instinctively trust and have come to care quite a bit for. I'm not going to say life's perfect, but it's certainly pretty grand. The band is doing really well (four shows in the next month and a half, album is done and en route to Chicago for mastering), I'm in the best shape I've ever been in in my life, I've moved to a neighborhood where I'm surrounded by my friends; and yet still, about once a week, L pops up in a dream of mine. Usually in the context of me shouting at her, or me telling her friends and boyfriend how she left me or how she lied to her now-boyfriend about our then-status. And then I wake up, really underslept. I can't quite figure it, except that maybe I'm trying to suppress everything that has to do with her in order to feel more secure about the present.
That's why I'm writing this... with the hopes that if I air it, it won't just live in my brain anymore and it'll let me get some sleep...

Day 4

As of last night, we had no water pressure in the kitchen, no internet access, no gas for the stove, no hot water and a dead breaker in the breaker box, rendering Elias' room devoid of power.

This morning I avoided the shower situation altogether, a decision which was validated when a certain someone's "I need to shower before work" quickly turned into shrill curses drowned out by ice-water, audible from the kitchen.

On my way to work today I got a text message from E. informing me that "a squad of people" had arrived, and were beginning to fix everything. If all goes according to plan we should also have internet by this afternoon as well.

I haven't heard from him in a while though.

Radical Chic

Jay sent this to me. It's an excellent little piece in Slate about elitism and the left. I don't always see elitism in the mainstream left, but maybe I'm a little elite myself. In the left-left, elitism is practically the membership card. Anyway, its a good little piece; read and ruminate.

Stealing Internet in Brooklyn

Moved in. Light in the apartment is beautiful. Set up the desk under a window looking out at the aerials of the building across the way. Elias moves in tomorrow. Spent the day cleaning because under the surface the kitchen and bath were very dirty. Spent the afternoon in Ft. Greene with Kay and the folks. We dont yet have hot water so I'm going to stay at Kay's in order to steal her shower... moving is a frustrating and ultimately very satisfying adventure.

Summer of Art

Make cheap art:


+Polaroid Transfers

+Pinhole Cameras

+Cigar box Guitars

How to Hush a Sick Transmission

In a few days, I move into Brooklyn. Yesterday I held my new keys in my hand, finally after 23 years, a New Yorker.

Tonight I sped up 440 listening to Califone as the sodium lights winked around me. The turbo howled, competing with the grunt of the cylinders as the volvo soared across the back roads of Hudson County. It's a fitting way to bring my time on the peninsula to a close. Today I looked up the phonetic specifics of the North Jersey accent. Apparently what we do is rhotic and lacks a short a split. (wikipedia it. "new jersey english.") For 23 years of my life I continued my mothers dream of getting out of Hudson County and becoming a New Yorker. Now I know simultaneously that this will always be home, and that it's sensibilities will always somewhere be a part of me.

I'm moving into a place with Elias in Bedford-Stuyvesant, part of a network of beautiful brownstoned blocks. We have a beautiful if unimpressive view from the third story, and I will be within walking distance of John.

There's a new woman in my life. We'll call her Kay. And she makes me very happy.

I have a new job, working with Jay, as an "Investigator Journalist" at a due-diligence investigative firm. I write boring reports on hedge fund managers, and have a blast trying to catch mistakes that the research team makes. It's nominally enjoyable. It pays the bills. The office and the people in it are pretty good. Writing slogans in French from May 1968 on my impromptu bulletin board is only marginally helpful. Once I'm more on my feet, I'll look for something creative again.

Oh, and also, apparently, the PATH train is on fire.

Each one of those things could be a full post. But I am very tired. I'll try to write y'all more asap, but the move may make that difficult. Many happy regards to all. Boredom is counter-revolutionary.

Passaic and Ganges One

Three issues of the Paris Review ago, there was a phenomenal interview with a poet that I knew nothing of (little surprise there; I'm a bit of a Philistine). Dude's name was August Kleinzahler, Jersey City's own, and he riffed about writing and life about as well as it seems he has written and lived. Anyway, he gets some props in the New York Times this morn. Check it out. An excerpt of note:

Ultimately Mr. Kleinzahler boiled his case against Mr. Keillor down to these three-and-a-half sentences: “Multivitamins are good for you. Exercise, fresh air, and sex are good for you. Fruit and vegetables are good for you. Poetry is not.”

---

Life's moving fast over here, by the way. New job, and it looks like I'll be moving to Brooklyn (though my heart still belongs to the crown jewel of Hudson County). I'll catch y'all up when I'm not on the clock.