tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83932725646621645492024-03-05T00:03:19.781-08:00Your city is a wonder townArmin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.comBlogger43125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-12247501303051929462014-04-21T16:05:00.000-07:002014-04-21T16:25:19.610-07:00The Sinai<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Maybe your mind started wandering in synagogue this weekend and you flipped to the back of your Etz Chayim <i>chumash</i> to find several colorized maps of the biblical Near East--the division of the land between the tribes of Israel, the realms of the various Canaanite peoples, as well as those of the Assyrians, Edomites, Philistines, etc. It's Passover, so the one that seized my attention was a map depicting the "traditional" and "alternative" routes of the Exodus. It offers some familiar features--Raphia (modern-day Rafah) and Gaza were inhabited 3,000 years ago, as was the Pharaonic capital of Memphis, which isn't far from the present-day Egyptian capital of Cairo. The cities of Ramses and Pithom are no longer with us, and neither is the Great Bitter Sea, an inland salt lake that once stretched across the thin neck of land separating the Mediterranean from the Red Sea. But for me, the map had an almost eerie contemporary resonance because of the <a href="https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&biw=1272&bih=821&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=routes+of+the+exodus&oq=routes+of+the+exodus&gs_l=img.3...6631.7380.0.7604.2.2.0.0.0.0.96.189.2.2.0....0...1c.1.41.img..2.0.0.I2cEBw0sO2k#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=jQsXRhj_zqdNFM%253A%3BsuL-wKBn1So4bM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fjtf.org%252Fisrael%252Fooo.exodus.map.large.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fjtf.org%252Fisrael%252Fooo.exodus.map.htm%3B856%3B750" style="color: #006aa0; text-decoration: none;">two speculated routes of the Exodus</a>, which happen to <a href="https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1145&bih=739&q=sinai+road+map&oq=sinai+road+map&gs_l=img.3...1543.3653.0.3855.14.8.0.5.0.0.146.800.4j4.8.0....0...1ac.1.41.img..9.5.409.PEDXixPCKKk#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=RyATKIPta229iM%253A%3BN0O6bYBj5yHrbM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.allsinai.info%252Fbilder%252Fmaps%252Fsinai03-b.gif%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.allsinai.info%252Fsites%252Fmap.htm%3B421%3B631" style="color: #006aa0; text-decoration: none;">vaguely mirror</a> the Sinai's modern-day highway system.</div>
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To get from Cairo to the Israeli port city of Eilat, you could drive straight east, through the mountains of the northern Sinai before descending to Taba--roughly following the wanderings of the Israelites if they had taken the map's "alternate" route. In the "traditional" route, the Israelites hugged the peninsula's shadeless western coast and then began cutting eastward, into a monotonous and utterly barren labyrinth of wadis and box canyons. They received the law at present-day Jebel Musa, and then wandered in the (in this case literal) wilderness for forty years. A modern-day traveler might follow a nearly-identical route, at least up to St. Katherine's Monastery, which has sat at the base of Jebel Musa for over 1600 years.</div>
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According to one of my college professors, the Ancient Egyptians didn't consider the Sinai to be part of their or anyone else's domain. The Egyptians ruled over Nilotic Egypt and campaigned in ancient Palestine, but Sinai belonged to the gods--or possibly to no one. It's possible that to them, Sinai wasn't just a no-man's land, but actual negative space, a place that violently rejected anything with hubris enough to claim it. In the Hebrew Bible, the Sinai is the venue for history's single clearest and most intense point of contact between God and humanity, but the power of the Revelation at Mount Sinai, and the narrative and theolgoical force of the Israelites' subsequent wanderings, depends on this Ancient Egyptian sense of the Sinai's complete otherness in comparison with the rest of the known world. It's a place where God appears and where magical sources of food and water can sprout from the ground, but it's also the embodiment of a nightmare, a place where it's possible to get lost for decades at a time and revolt against the same God that sustains you. Above all, the Sinai is a metaphorical and literal obstacle separating the elation of freedom (happy Passover, readers!) from the true fulfillment of the promises of freedom. Beyond it lies peoplehood, enfranchisement, and eventually redemption, but there is no "beyond it" when you're in it. Or so it can seem.</div>
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During my couple of visits to the Sinai, I understood instinctively how it's possible to get lost there for forty years, or at least why such a thing must have seemed plausible to the early inheritors of Israelite mythology. I would look around the empty roadways, threading through dizzy hours of identical, jagged mountain ranges, and think yes, this makes sense now. Similarly: Whatever route the Israelites followed--whether there was even an Exodus at all, historically speaking--the map in the back of Etz Chayim suggests a kind of jarring continuity across nearly the entire span of recorded civilization: to the Sinai's disparate yet strangely congruent meanings, its existence beyond the outer frontiers of temporal politics and even the human spirit, in a space that maybe only God or nothingness can truly claim.</div>
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It goes without saying that the Sinai isn't empty, and it <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_David_Accords" style="color: #006aa0; text-decoration: none;">isn't immune from the politics of the region</a>, as it might have been in ancient times. Hundreds of thousands of people currently live there, although most of them are clustered along the peninsula's northern coast. And it isn't all madness and spiritual angst. Sharm El Sheikh is lovely, if overdeveloped and sadly deserted at the moment. In Sinai, the waters of the Red Sea are mirror-clear, and one often gets the disorienting illusion of swimming in nothing at all. An hour to the north, Dahab feels gloriously forgotten about; a self-balancing ecosystem of divers--many of them long-term expats--and the locals who attend to their needs. Hashish wafts down the corniche during warm and languid nights; there are no large resorts and few foreigners who are there for anything other than the diving life. Taba isn't terrible either, even if a traveler's sole reason for going there is to cross the border into Israel, which is not a quick or a fun process. Saint Katherine's does a brisk business in package tours, although most visitors come from Sharm or Eilat or even Hurghada, view the sunrise from the top of Mt Sinai, and then retreat to their respective beach resorts by the early afternoon, thus turning the Bedouin village of St Katherine's into a depressed litter of empty, husk-like hotels and guest houses.</div>
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The Sinai is a real place, and should be treated as one. Of course, it's a real place whose power--for me, at least--is rooted in myth and belief and an attendant and very specific inventory of culturally-informed experiences and perceptions. But I'll try to keep things as grounded and descriptive as possible from here on out. </div>
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A STOP AT A CHECKPOINT: Leaving Cairo in the summer of 2013 would have been a surreal experience even if there hadn't been tanks stationed along the highway connecting the capital to the Sinai--Egypt's eastern desert is a carpet of gray dullness under an even duller sky, with grids of uninhabited apartment complexes hulking just off of the highway. Twice I've driven this route; both times, the strangeness of seeing so many unfinished and uninhabited buildings in such a difficult environment kept me glued to the bus window, straining my eyes towards the empty balconies and half-paved streets of distant, high-rise ghost towns. Who was supposed to live there? Who even built them, and why did they stop? Is it some kind of tax scam? Eventually the bus reaches the Sinai, those ruined targets of fascination disappear, the day drags on, all traffic vanishes, and it becomes impossible to stay awake. </div>
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But sleep wasn't an option this past summer, because there were army checkpoints set up before, after, and indeed in between every town in Sinai. I'd fall asleep for 20 or 30 minutes, wake up with an 18-year old conscript asking for my passport, and then fall back asleep as soon as he was satisfied that I wasn't a terrorist, or a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, or whatever they were looking for, exactly--if they were looking for anything. Have terrorists really ever been found on an East Delta Transport bus? Were the checkpoints performative, or were they a way to keep the soldiery occupied and alert amidst the violence and uncertainty of late August 2013, a mere two weeks after the massacres at Rabah at Nahda?</div>
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At about the dozenth checkpoint I was asked to get off the bus, and told to fetch my baggage from the cargo hold. The Sinai's is a dry, clean heat with none of Cairo's weighty smog, or the Nile's suffocating mugginess. But because the sky and air are so clear and empty, the sun is like the blinding lamp of an old dentist's chair, except channeled into a single, all-pervading bolt of pure heat. After hours on a dimly-lit bus, the eyes ache even under an intense squint, and it's hard to keep them pried open.</div>
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So I stared out of a foggy slit at the three people in front of me: two conscripts, both in fatigues and both several years younger than I, and a crew-cut, muscular, and slightly older man in a pink polo shirt and aviators. The conscripts began chuckling, and could barely suppress their laughter through the entirety of our interaction. This was the best entertainment they'd had all day.</div>
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What are you doing in Egypt?, the man in the polo shirt asked me, in English, arms folded, like a man who finally, after days, maybe weeks of this shit, finally had the chance to play a plainclothes checkpoint goon, like <i>really</i> play one. Tourist, I said. Seeing some sights. Had you met anyone in Cairo? No one of any particular note, I said. Did you talk about politics in Cairo? Of course not.</div>
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At this point I realized I wasn't in any particular danger: if they arrested me, they would have to figure out what to do with me. To arrest me would have diminished the entire point of hauling me off of the bus, i.e., if you were bored and in the middle of nowhere and fortune threw a US citizen across your path during one of those spikes in anti-Americanism that have occasionally seized post-revolutionary Egypt, actually arresting him would complicate or even totally spoil the fun of just messing with him. Why not. What else is there to do. I mean, just look around.</div>
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What did I think of the Egyptian military? Well, the Israelis nearly wiped out your entire armed forces on multiple occasions and your only real military victory of the last century involved gassing Yemeni villagers, and a US military source once told me that he believed Iraq's army to be more battle-ready and in some respects more competent than yours--just kidding, I didn't really say that. Of course your country has a fine and heroic military, I said.</div>
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Then he got to the question he had really been building towards--Hell, maybe he had spent the past week scouring every East Delta Transport bus for an American citizen he could hammer with this one, his practiced and even lawyerly coup de grace: ah, he said. But don't we kill innocent civilians, like at Rabah and Nahda?</div>
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No, I countered with utter certainty and conviction, summoning every ounce of solemnity and respect, savoring, on some very conscious level, the chance to buy into an attractive falsehood, to project a confident actors' fiction in such an arrestingly strange place, to luxuriate in an absurd yet nevertheless quite nerve-racking set of circumstances--those people were terrorists.</div>
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Very well, the polo shirt and aviators said, handing me back my passport and beckoning towards the waiting bus. You are permitted to continue on your journey.</div>
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THE RESORT IN TABA: The Sol y Mar Resort in Taba has over 300 rooms, configured in two interlocking crescents surrounding a pair of lagoon-style swimming pools, each with its own swim-up bar and volleyball net. It has three restaurants and a night club and one of those fake bazaars that every beach resort in Egypt seems to have. Most of these things are closed now. In late August, 2013, I spent a single and indescribably relaxing night in a ground-floor poolside suite with a patio, BBC News, three free meals, and all the Stella and low-grade, Windex-disguised-as-Vodka I could drink, all for a measly $52. There were fewer than 60 other guests at the resort; I was told that by the next week, there would be fewer than 30. There had been some Polish and German guests the week before, but their government had advised them to leave.</div>
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If you're a working-class Brit in search of a cheap vacation, you could do worse than Taba, a beautiful and comparatively exotic destination that comes in at a fraction of the price of the Portuguese Riviera. Every remaining guest was British. They would wait expectantly by the poolside bar until 10 AM rolled around, then blow through cigarettes and awful Egyptian beer until lunch, then nap through the afternoon. They said they couldn't imagine what the place must be like when it isn't virtually empty--like they would feel cheated if they came back, and people were actually there.</div>
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But at least the Sol y Mar actually <i>had</i> people in it. See most of the hotels along the coast between Dahab and the Israeli border are abandoned. The shoreline is like a conceptual artist's madcap deconstruction of the very possibility of fun: it's crowded with bungalow villages, grass-hut backpacker dives with names like the Blue Wave or Paradise Bay, and without exception, they are empty and in varying and variously-scenic states of ruin. Some of them have Hebrew-language signage out front; all of them are strewn with rotting palm-fronds or littered with fraying roof thatch. The coast is a like a cemetery of fun--fun was had here, but now look: fun will never be had here again. Look, here, at the collapsed rooftops of Blue Lagoon Beach, or the immaculately-stucco'd exteriors of at the utterly deserted Red Sea Resort: this is what's left of fun once time and heat and reality have their way with it.</div>
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SHARM ARCHITECTURE: The road connecting Shark's Bay and Na'ama Bay is a museum of kitsch. This might be a turnoff for the unenviably joyless among us, but one can see classical amphitheaters and medieval frescoes in literally dozens of countries. Where else does one see Olympic-sized Roman baths in a perfect state of repair, with equestrians and legionnaires bursting from terraced balconies of radiating reinforced concrete? What about sphinxes and ziggurats lined with dancing electric lights, or fiberglass dinosaurs, necks shadowing the lustrous green of a nearby mosque dome? Las Vegas I guess, but Sharm is even more isolated and its kitsch is more contrived; Las Vegas's tastelessness is of a uniquely American and organic variety, whereas Sharm's is totally imported--and imported to a corner of the planet that beguiling enough to begin with.</div>
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The walk from my hotel to the beach passed under the approach to Ophira Airport, a bolt of noisy wasteland where no self-respecting developer would attempt to build anything. It had turned into an informal landfill--sun-beaten piles of old concrete and drywall, trenches filled with old plastic and glass, mounds of packed-together garbage. At the end of the road is the fake castle to end them all, with turrets and crenelations, a fat donjon made out of coral desert stone, cast against still mountains and a placid sea.</div>
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THE HOTEL-MANAGER: One day I woke up in Sharm, and checked twitter to discover that in north Sinai, terrorists had killed over 30 policeman, execution-style. They were on a bus together, traveling back to their homes in the Delta. It was a fearful and heartless act, this waylaying of a vehicle and the slaughter of everyone onboard, and it happened just under three hours from the empty, $30-a-night, 3-star resort where I was staying. I went to the beach, because what else was there really to do.</div>
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The man who ran the Longina Hotel in Shark's Bay wore jeans and faux-vintage shirts, ones with the covers of comic books or old movie posters on them. He spoke slow, loud and friendly English, and he seemed both baffled and delighted at my presence--at his hotel of all the hundreds along the coast, and just a few days after the killings at Raba and Nahada, too. He never asked me what I was doing in Sharm, never wondered why a single American had dropped by his otherwise-empty resort. His staff spent much of the day napping in the atrium of the deserted clubhouse, for lack of anything else to do.</div>
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The resort's restaurant hadn't been open for awhile, but he took me aside one morning and asked me to share a plate of fuul with him. Why had the army thrown away his vote? he wanted to know. I didn't support the Brotherhood. I didn't vote for them. But the army didn't care who I, who any of us had wanted in charge. </div>
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Eleven-hundred people were gassed in Damascus, he said. Hundreds of children. Defenseless children. Babies. Why? I sipped my tea; I shrugged off the question. Then I went to the beach.</div>
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MOUNT SINAI: In 2011, I climbed Mount Sinai with two Frenchmen and a local guide. I was carrying a small library with me--piles of books and magazines and notebooks that I'd accumulated over three weeks of reporting in Egypt. In the hot darkness the weight of my backpack was wringing my body dry, and I kept asking to stop. There was no rush to get to the top, and the Frenchmen didn't seem to mind the slow climb.</div>
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Let's sit here for a moment, one of them recommended about halfway up the mountain. Let's just sit here and listen to the silence.</div>
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There were no cars, no rustling vegetation or birdsong, no wind, no lights in the distance, no planes overhead. It was absolute and deafening; a mortal, transporting silence, disembodying and severe. It was a self-obliterating silence in which my perspective seemed to drift outside of itself and into the voidlike near distance, then sink into the invisible and ancient mountain, then return all at once, in a conscious realization of how tired I was, how tight my back felt, how much further we still had to climb. But for a moment, we heard the faint whisper of prophetic silence, the still-detectable residue of what had happened there.</div>
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Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-51476479803455116882013-11-20T13:57:00.002-08:002013-11-27T21:44:10.005-08:00Juba, March, 2012<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga2iXhN_Rx0tAK2_XJWICywaMieHtDvzguKGdp6kE_BwtDSpmCKaO5W6pfqOG1YC2Iu3fcrQwZQxS-C7prs6XvZs6LWSK3xycQJzDpfA6QPbKBZLvNtksfOXoPLYt8ZdrVMB8M9z-PZgI/s1600/DSCN0013.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga2iXhN_Rx0tAK2_XJWICywaMieHtDvzguKGdp6kE_BwtDSpmCKaO5W6pfqOG1YC2Iu3fcrQwZQxS-C7prs6XvZs6LWSK3xycQJzDpfA6QPbKBZLvNtksfOXoPLYt8ZdrVMB8M9z-PZgI/s320/DSCN0013.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;">Some
background as to what this is. Before leaving for South Sudan, Tunisia and
Egypt in March of 2012, I sent an email to an editor at a well-known New York
literary magazine explaining my travel itinerary and admiration for the
magazine's work, and wondering in kind of a general sense if they'd be
interested in something from me. I received a response a few days after returning to
New York--sure, the editor said, apologizing for the six-week delay. Come to
our offices and we can talk about a possible project. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">South Sudan
had been a shattering experience; not transformative or negative, exactly, but
profound in ways that I was still working through in my own mind. So I found myself pitching a travelogue about
cosmopolitanism in war zones and former war zones, something about how conflict
brings together people from all over the world who would otherwise have nothing
to do with one another--aid workers, profiteers, mercenaries, contractors,
politicians, ect--thus creating a kind of a generic, stateless space, something
deceptively open and hopeful, but carved out of the gangrenous flesh of the
societies surrounding them. Or maybe I pitched a travelogue about
normalcy--about what a place like Juba revealed about normalcy as a concept,
and about how places establish and maintain some version of normalcy even under
abnormal circumstances, and whether that normalcy is a coping mechanism and a lie, or whether it reflects a deeper strength that isn't visible from thousands of miles away. The editor said that she'd be unable to pay me, but
gave me a piece of advice that would provide the inspiration
that really brought this essay into being: we like to tell our contributors to write something you can't get
paid for, she said. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;">(By the way, it may be difficult for people who aren't professional writers to grasp how profound this is. Money and writing are synonymous for members of our tribe; simply giving your writing away wastes your own time and devalues the work of your professional colleagues. Which poses the question: what kind of writing would one do for free if one were in principal opposed to it? In order for it to be worth it write for free, what kind of personal or even spiritual need would the process have to fulfill? And it invites an experiment: What would the results be if one accepted the constraint that the resulting piece was to have no commercial value?)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">For my first
couple months at The Atlantic, an email back from the editor felt more
validating than the actual publication of an article. It didn't matter that
those emails were in response to messages that I had sent her first--any word back on
my submission? etc. The fact that someone at a literary magazine was looking at
it meant that I was capable of producing something with potential literary
merit--that seas would rise, servers would melt, humans would die off, and
maybe, just maybe there would still be physical proof lodged in the ruins of some college library
or magazine archive that I had created something worth preserving. It almost didn't
matter when the magazine eventually rejected the piece--it was heartening to
have been strung along for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i> long,
I told myself.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;">When a second magazine turned it down, I decided not to console
myself at all and just put the thing down for awhile and move on. I declared the project over. It was a fast
transition, and one that I don't even really understand in retrospect--it's
like it almost didn't register as a failure. Maybe I just didn't want to face the reality that the thing was literally unpublishable. A journalist friend offered to post it on his blog; I
politely declined. I thought of posting it here, and then kept finding excuses
not to. Over time, the essay's existence began to inspire the kind of anxiety
and fear that every past accomplishment inspires for me. Over even more
time, it ceased to inspire any feeling within me at all, other than curiosity
as to whether it was really as good as I remembered it being. I'm far enough away
from it that I'm unsure how much of it is true to Juba as I experienced it, and
how much if it is tainted by sentiment or idealism--I'm not sure how <i>good</i> it is anymore.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">One thing is
certain: the South Sudan I perceived in March of 2012 isn't the South Sudan
that actually exists. And while it's true that there was somewhat less
triumphalism and militancy evident on the streets of Juba than I had expected,
I was naive in the sense that I assumed the SPLM to be rational,
western-leaning and even proto-democratic, when of course they are as
ideological, insular and opportunistic as any other guerrilla movement (although they are, it must be said, infinitely better than the pre-treaty, pre-independnece status quo).
This isn't something I necessarily fault them for--I am still convinced that the sense of South
Sudan's "failure" is founded on a position of external privilege. It's a talking point largely spouted by people who have little sense of the
country's actual challenges, which are steeper than those faced by any other country
on earth. But there is, of course, no contradiction between the fact that
conditions within South Sudan are more dire and more complicated than many people realize--and the fact that I was obviously looking at the place through
far too optimistic a lens. This is the perspective of someone who had never been to sub-Saharan Africa before, and it shows.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;">There are other ridiculous things about this essay, too. It's way too world-weary and self-serious. There are places where I should have eased up. There are some bits that confuse external speech and internal monologue in a way that sorta bogs the whole thing down. There are some worthwhile thoughts that I brush past, and some dumb thoughts that I explore. It definitely doesn't deserve this long of a preamble, but hey, here we are. Anyway. Enjoy. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Special
thanks for Michael Totten, Dov Friedman and Samir Paul, who looked at early
versions of this piece.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">=====================</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Juba, March, 2012</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For most foreigners, a trip to Juba, which lies amidst
oceanic stretches of apparent nothing, dry plains that from the air resemble
sand left damp from a receding tide--must necessarily begin at the city’s
airport. Let’s start there. Or let’s start in the rough grasses surrounding the
airport’s single runway, where a fatigue-colored fighter jet is slowly being
reclaimed by nature. Wrecked planes are a feature of every airport in South
Sudan. In Wau, a graveyard of rusting fighters sits just inside the airport
perimeter; in Rumbek, a ruined fuselage rots in a busy street. As for the
un-wrecked planes—in Juba, three distinct categories of aircraft are
immediately observable. The largest in number, which sit at the far end of the
runway, furthest from the single-storey passenger terminal, are white UN
aircraft—helicopters, some of them heavy troop transports with rotors folded
over the side; commercial jets with the World Food Service’s logo on the tail
wing, hulking cargo planes. Closer in are neat rows of evenly-spaced Cessnas
belonging to Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross, along with other, more
obscure groups. Closest to the terminal are a small collection of planes from
off-brand airlines; Marsland Aviation, Feeder Air, Kush, and Nasair are
represented. All commercial passenger flights to Juba originate somewhere in
the African continent, and half of them seem to originate in Khartoum.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The airport was the last thing the North Sudanese handed
over to the newly-independent South when they left in July of 2011, and one
pilot complained bitterly to me about the sheer incompetence of Southern
air-traffic controllers, who were nervy and poorly-trained, at least compared
to their Kenyan and Ugandan counterparts, and would ask for altitude and distance
like every fucking thirty seconds. They would do it on a single radio
frequency—there were no separate channels for approach and takeoff and landing,
just a hopeless tangle of voices talking on top of one another, in different
accents and at different volumes. Compounding the dangers in this already busy
airspace was the air traffic control tower’s alarming lack of radar. Everything
is done procedurally, based on the location of approaching and departing planes
and the present takeoff and landing queue, which is first-come-first-serve. Not
even the UN gets priority. But the anarchy ends as soon as you land, at which
point the fledgling and cash-strapped South Sudanese government presents you
with a bill for all sorts of services that are virtually free everywhere else.
In Entebbe, Uganda, the government-imposed landing fee is $25. In Juba, it’s
$116. Overnight parking in Juba is $70. It’s $6 in Entebbe.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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An aviation connoisseur, or someone who spent a lot of time
at the Air and Space Museum as a young boy, will be immediately intrigued by
the veritable air show that awaits him. There are the Antonovs, glass-nosed
Russian monsters with 32 wheels and red-lipped jet engines that taper
menacingly in front. Less forbidding are the tube-shaped Hawkers built in the
1960s, or the boxy DC-3s that rolled off the assembly line towards the end of
World War II, but are still airworthy, and can take off and land on as little
as 900 feet of dirt runway. They carry medicine and generators and sometimes even
vehicles to place-names of ambiguous linguistic and historical origin—Perriyang
and Aweil and Malakal, dirt strips and dried lakebeds and places that appear on
no map.</div>
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<br /></div>
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A serviceable Hawker jet, with room for a dozen passengers
and several thousand pounds of cargo will only set you back $2 million or so,
one pilot explained to me. But this piece of shit brakes down all the time.
There’s a reason you see planes like this out here, gutted commercial jets,
busted Russian helicopters. They’re obsolete anywhere else. </div>
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<br /></div>
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+++</div>
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<br /></div>
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In Juba itself, you expect to see graves. A friend who
visited Sarajevo once told me that the city offered little evidence that a war
had been fought there less than two decades earlier—only cemeteries that
blanketed the surrounding hills, visible from virtually any sector of the city,
serve as testimony to some horror or another, though they are silent as to
which horror. And while you expect to see the residue of war, ruined buildings
and charred vehicles and craters, you’ll in fact see none of these things in
Sarajevo. But death, or at least the fact of some recent mass death,
nevertheless beams from grey reservations of the newly and prematurely dead, a
ubiquity that makes grim demands on the imagination, inflicting the image of a
hecatomb upon the same physical space as a city that suddenly appears
unnervingly normal.</div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div>
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But in Juba there aren’t even graves, or at least there weren’t
any that I saw. The war dead are somewhere; disturbingly, that somewhere isn’t
obvious or apparently visible. Neither did I see ruined buildings, nor all that
many charred vehicles (that wrecked fighter notwithstanding), and I certainly
didn’t see any craters. I didn’t see any formal war memorials, no ostentatious
public displays of triumphalism or regret, no murals or statues, no eternal
flames surrounded by wreaths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At
the roundabouts there are already-fading posters from the previous July’s
Martyr’s Day—exhortations to remember “the 2.5 million whose sacrifice formed
our national foundation”—along with very occasional propagandistic reminders
that “the SPLA stands on guard for the nation.” These reminders are weather
worn and admirably discreet, considering that the country’s origins lie in
violent revolutionary struggle, and that its government ministers and even its
president began their careers as guerilla fighters rather than politicians, per
se. A traveler arrives in a city already at odds with an unfathomable and
bloody recent past, a past that commands no subjective, physical presence, at
least not immediately, not in those first confused hours of choking humidity
and flickering cell-phone signals. But already emerging is the sense of a city
half-finished, a place whose atrocities remain guiltily archived in the darker
regions of the visitor’s mind, even as they’re given few tangible reference
points in the external world, where exhortations to proper health and hygiene far
outnumber state-sanctioned reminders of the war. “New country, new beginning,”
read several large billboards. “Have an HIV test today.”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yet the war endures in subterranean form: figuratively, in
mind and memory; and literally, in the tens of thousands of landmines that ring
the city. Bombs of either variety lie buried under the dominating facts of the
city’s physical existence: the smattering of high rises encased in scaffolding,
white Land Cruisers (NGO and UN, mostly) clogging smooth and newly-paved
streets, pop-up shanty-neighborhoods of freshly-arrived migrants, palm-shaded
riverside hotel bars where Dutch consultants and Ugandan businessmen gather to
waste their evenings—all of it evidence of a place exploding into a novel and
unfamiliar normality.</div>
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<br /></div>
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+++</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 275.25pt;">
The oldest building in Juba is
its Mother Church, which was built by Anglican missionaries in the 1920s and
sits at a confluence of shaded dirt roads, behind an expensive hotel that
opened less than a year ago. It’s a red brick, open-air building with a roof
made out of tin siding; the pews are also brick, and the floor is a lustrous
concrete. It is cool and breezy, and on a boiling day—which is most days—the
winds whipping through its partly-open ceiling evoke a sense of spiritual
expansiveness, of being in a place quite a bit larger than mere physicality
would suggest.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When we were here during the war, the pastor told me, all
the South Sudanese that lived here were not allowed to go outside more than 15
kilometers. And if you want to go out you need to get a permit. For you just to
get to your farm, you must get a permit to travel, and you must get no
objection from internal security, public security or military intelligence.
When you get no objections on your documents, you can go out. Sometimes you’re
given a no objection document, but all of a sudden you find yourself kept in.
You were treated as a foreigner in your own home.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 275.25pt;">
And then the war itself—those
years when the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, the country’s eventual liberators,
laid siege to the last major city it had been unable to capture, a northern
garrison where the only cars were military vehicles, and the only permanent
structures were government offices and mosques that hardly anyone uses anymore,
even though they’re the largest and really most impressive buildings in the
city—everything is centered on the war, he continued. Everything is actually
portraying the image of war. If you see the kids making toys, they will be
manufacturing military aircraft for war, building tanks for war. Everything is
war. No living being could avoid it. If you bang a drum, everyone will lie down
immediately, even the chickens, even the goats who were living in the city,
everyone will lie down until the sounds is passed. That is the culture of war.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 275.25pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 275.25pt;">
The city now inhabited a
different universe. Life had been organized through the facile authoritarianism
of landmines, soldiers and travel permits. Now there was chaos: language riots
at the University, ethnic violence at the edge of town. But the chaos was
cosmopolitan, at least. Unlike during the war years, there is evidence of a
larger world that Juba is a part of, abundant evidence, even. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 275.25pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 275.25pt;">
The hotel was not there before,
he said. The only vehicles were from the church and then the army and maybe
some few people in the government here or there. But there are actually traffic
jams today. You can see there’s a cultural shock. Even someone who cannot dream
to have a car, finds himself driving.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 275.25pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is a dignity to this chaos, and the image of a life
without fear—a life that the South Sudanese could own—has smoothed away decades
of frustration and death. Or perhaps it hasn’t. There were times when the
invisibility of the war was evidence of some grand, humanistic triumph in which
every endlessly forgiving citizen of the country could share. At other times,
this seemed like a self-concocted fiction.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
During the war, the pastor told me, the Dinka died by the
hundreds of thousands. Some of them are Anglicans. A Dinka once came to me and
said: forgiveness, don’t talk about forgiveness. And I said no. Revenge is His.
Revenge belongs to God.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
+++</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The city is a bewilderment. There is no coherence to it.
Where is the downtown? Is the downtown the dusty central souk, where pacing
young men furtively shuffle rolls of pink and blue South Sudanese pounds, and
Kenyans sell stacks of dress clothes and light bulbs? Maybe the downtown is
near the Juba Bridge, the city’s sole means of reaching the lightly-inhabited
eastern bank of the White Nile, and within walking distance of the
recently-incinerated Konya-Konya Marketplace—there are dark whispers that the
owner of the land the market occupied found the place inconvenient to his
long-term real estate development plans—as well as some of the finer riverside
hotels. Is the downtown in fact near the ministries complex, the walled-off,
1970s-era seat of the new country’s government, a place of crumbling brutalist
architecture and spit-shined black SUVs? I don’t know. Juba certainly has a
center, radial streets that are home to the Norwegian Veterinarians
International and the Eight-Government Joint Donation Committee and the
Nonviolent Conflict Responders and a thousand other organizations of ambiguous
but seemingly well-meaning purpose. All the time I was there I never saw a map
of Juba, so I’m not sure where this center is. On how to drive from the souk to
the Nile, or from the airport to the bridge, my directions would be worse than
ignorance. There is no promenade along the White Nile, few landmarks, natural
or otherwise, to suggest your location. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Juba, muddled geography is a tyranny in the sense that
any basic, seemingly insurmountable fact is a tyranny. One morning at a
nearly-empty hotel bar I met a South Sudanese man who had fled to Kenya during
the civil war and then moved on to Australia, where he became a successful
computer engineer. When the war ended he had no desire and no conceivable reason
to return to a homeland that was still in a state of violent transition, but
when independence came, he felt pinched by obligation, and his conscience could
not allow him to simply enjoy a comfortable life in a borrowed corner of the
earth. So for the last few months he had been on a consultancy with the
Ministry of Tourism. In the deep south, down near the Kenyan border, are
grasslands that rival the Serengeti in diversity—there are elephant herds and
even lions, and each spring, antelopes migrate there, thousands of them, fur
and hunched spines stretched to the horizon. It was the largest land migration
in the world before the war scared them away—nature, it seems, has an instinct
for human troubles. But it’s been seven years, and they’re beginning to come
back. Had there been many tourists in South Sudan since independence? No, he
said, chuckling and shaking his head.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another thing about the deep south, he added: pineapples
grow in the wild there. You don’t even have to try to cultivate them. Just dig them
out of the ground. The land in our country is the most fertile in Africa. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Later in the day I found myself at yet another hotel bar
(for a western visitor, Juba is a city of hotel bars). Remembering what the man
had told me, I ordered a pineapple juice. I was given a can of Rani brand
pineapple juice, from Yemen. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In all likelihood, the can had been taken by container ship
from Yemen—thirsty, suffering Yemen—through the piratical waters of the Gulf of
Aden, then to Kenya, then trucked through Uganda along miles of maraudering
clay roads. It was a paragon of wasted effort and wasted local capacity, and in
this respect, the humble can of pineapple juice was not alone: There is a
national airline, but its planes are supposedly registered in Kenya. There is a
national beer (White Bull—a Toast to a New Nation), but there are whispers that
it’s owned by a Kenyan company as well. There’s an excellent weekly newspaper
called The New Nation—but it’s a project of a European NGO, and its editor in
chief is Belgian (even though most of its writers and columnists are locals).
The woman who sold me phone cards at a roadside stall was Kenyan. The bartender
at the Bedouin is Ugandan. What about the man scanning a fully-uniformed
Bangladeshi UN peacekeeper’s groceries at the JIT Mart? It’s well known that
the JIT Mart—the only “western” style grocery store in town, and as fine a
place as any to spend $9 on a box of Frosted Flakes—is owned by Kenyans (or
possibly South Africans), and the man looks as if he could be from India or
Pakistan, which in this part of the world means he’s probably from Kenya, which
means that he, like virtually every other laborer and businessman and piece of
commercial produce in Juba, is not from anywhere that’s even particularly near
Juba. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are hotels called the Shalom and the Beijing and the
Da Vinci, and one optimistically named the New Sudan. Everywhere is somewhere
else. Peer into one of the prefab, shipping container houses on the grounds of
the Afex Village—the sort of place where consultants and World Bank bureaucrats
might live for months at a time—and you might see a heavyset older gentleman in
khaki shorts hunched over a desktop computer, surrounded by African kitsch and
plywood attempts at designer furniture, as unbothered here as he would be in
Geneva or Soho. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Everywhere is somewhere else and indeed, everyone is from
somewhere else. If you walked 300 yards from the waterfront pre-fabs, past a
gravel parking lot crowded with white Land Cruisers, you’d find a neat
encampment with outdoor shower stalls and its own little family of goats, flush
against the Afex’s perimeter, which abuts slums where I’m told that homebrewing
and prostitution are the only means of income and where Dinka and Nuer
occasionally shoot at each other over cows. At night, stereos blast Congolese
rumba and propulsive Ugandan pop—schizoid sounds, the music of other places and
other lives. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It took about a day for me to realize that almost none of
the city’s drivers, waiters, construction workers, bartenders, hotel clerks or
dishwashers are actually South Sudanese. For reasons that I still don’t
understand, the locals are all but totally locked out of the labor market. I
heard polite (if loaded) socio-historical explanations for this, something
along the lines that imperialism in the Sudan was based around Ottoman-style
feudalism, while Uganda and Kenya reaped the benefits of western European
Protestantism, which elevates work and self-betterment and individual dignity
to the level of religious obligation. The most common answer to the labor
question, however, was cultural. There’s just no culture of work, I was told.
People wanted jobs, but they weren’t used to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">having</i> jobs. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I assumed this was some sort of coded racism bandied about
by condescending westerners (as well as by condescending Ugandans and Kenyans),
this idea that South Sudanese would rather starve than work. But I heard a
similar story from a group of South Sudanese economics professors at Juba
University during a public lecture that touched on the country’s labor crisis—a
panel discussion held in a sweltering, badly decaying lecture hall with
malfunctioning lights and microphones. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This country is a goldmine for painters and electricians,
one economist said. What are our people doing? We cannot say that there are no
jobs, because the Kenyans and Ugandans are mining gold in South Sudan. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To develop entrepreneurship, you need a system that develops
skill, another speaker said. In a militarized and traumatized society, this is
hard. But what do we do? We could not de-traumatize our youth. They are still
militant in their thinking.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What did he mean militant thinking had endured? And what did
he even mean by “militant thinking?” He did not necessarily mean a predilection
towards violence. Take, for example this bottle of Rwenzori brand water from
Uganda, one speaker explained. Now here is a bottle of the local brand—of a
locally-owned brand, even. In fact, this bottle of water represents one of the
few truly domestic products you can buy here. The locally-produced bottle
contains 0.65 liters of water for the same price as half a liter of Rwenzori.
But the difference isn’t obvious to the naked eye, and most of our population
is illiterate. The local brand now produces half-liter bottles. Their product’s
advantage is gone. Our people can’t understand the competitive edge.
Consumerism, work, a rational economic environment—these cannot function here.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you spend money in the Juba market, one speaker said, the
money goes to Kampala. It goes out.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The boda-boda is the only industry in Juba that South
Sudanese dominate. The barriers to entry are minimal: simply obtain a
motorcycle or the right to drive one for a few hours a day, and you can begin
ferrying people from place to place, five pounds for short distances, 10 or 15,
perhaps, for a ride to the airport or the Jebel Market or one of the nicer
riverside hotels. The boda drivers are sharply-dressed young men—they wear
aviators and striped collared shirts, and they evince an unflinching stoicism
that, by my 10<sup>th</sup> or so boda ride, amounted to a collective
philosophical statement. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The roads in Juba are dangerous—there is only an emerging
sense of how to behave in a traffic jam, where imperious Land Cruisers and
clouds of buzzing two-wheelers jostle each other for position, sometimes losing
their footing amidst the dust and noise. In this environment, simply to ride a
boda as a passenger is exhausting. The sun, the blacktop, the clutter of
wheezing exhaust pipes and the hot motor underneath wring the human body like a
wet rag, and by the time even a short journey ends, you feel the dizziness of
an oncoming stupor, of a body sucked of whatever moisture and whatever vital energy
it had held.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But the boda drivers are unfazed. They began to represent
some ideal beauty, fearless and young. They will dart between 18-wheel trucks
on a busy street, even when you tell them not to. They will pretend to slow
down if their passenger is concerned with the current speed, only to quickly
speed up again. In the dark early morning, when wild dogs own the empty and
unilluminated streets, they will gun their bikes down lonesome straight-aways,
screeching to a halt only when a limping and quite possibly rabid animal
crosses their path.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 193.5pt;">
Much to my regret, I didn’t
interview any boda drivers, although I did take a picture of one. He’s bald,
maybe in his early 20s, with a grid-patterned button-up shirt and a black pair
of sunglasses. His shoulders are hunched, and his arms dangle at his side—there
is nothing bothered or anxious about him, no grease marks or sweat stains. I’m
not sure that his job even existed during the war years, when Juba was a much
smaller and far more isolated place—he is newly enabled to drive on paved
streets that actually lead somewhere, that are clogged with people on important
and purposeful journeys, even though this sudden eruption of importance and
purposefulness means that the ever-vulnerable boda driver might be side-swiped
or spun out or killed at any given moment. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 193.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 193.5pt;">
There is something I’ve read into
his cool and vaguely sneering gaze that speaks of the mundane audacity of surviving
here, but also of the crushing burdens attached to even the most minimal form
of unthinking physical continuity. He strikes an effortlessly badass pose, a
cowboy pose; there is a happy and novel independence inherent in this vocation
of his, though it’s possible, looking at the picture, that this confidence
inhabits a dead or decaying spirit. Is there some secret desiccation hidden in
his careless hunch of the shoulders? He doesn’t have a helmet. His might be an
attitude of superiority towards the thickening chaos that surrounds him, or an
attitude of total acceptance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
+++</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In a building abutting the Da Vinci’s parking lot, a few
hundred yards from the bulrushes and mango trees lining the White Nile, is the
recording studio for Iconic Productions. I didn’t expect to be invited in—I was
simply examining the posters lining the studio’s windows when a tall young man
with long, braided hair all but insisted I come inside.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m an artist of dance hall, the man said. Sudanese-style.
He played me an excerpt from the song he was working on, and it had a
simultaneously heavier and more melodic character than Jamaican dance hall. The
track had obviously been made with nothing more than a synthesizer, a computer
program and a single human voice.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That song you just heard, he explained, is about the
uprising in our country because of the economic crisis. This is a growing
society, so any song we do must be about directly educating people. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Konya-Konya market had burned down just days earlier,
and already a song had been written about it: the market is destroyed, the
artist repeated during the track’s pulsating chorus, now everything is
expensive: sugar, salt, transportation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The studio’s manager was also there, a 19-year old from the
nearby city of Yei. He spoke Swahili, English, Arabic and Dinka, which was
advantageous, since not all of the artists who used the studio were South
Sudanese: there were also Congolese and Ugandans who paid 300 pounds for an
hour of studio time, enough time to record a song that could be played on local
radio (without any royalty to the artist, of course), and then maybe catch the
attention of a concert promoter, or, more lucratively, a politician.
Politicians in South Sudan never traveled—and certainly never campaigned—without
a musician or two in tow. Even so, the manager explained that music was not
exactly political here, or at least it wasn’t political in a divisive or
partisan sense: in the studio, and in music in general, people meet as South
Sudanese—as friends. They do not ask each other where they are from, or what
ethnic group they belong to.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They had songs about AIDS prevention, hip-hop tracks in
Dinka, story-songs meant to revive tales that were already being forgotten,
past tales, the producer called them. There are South Sudanese spread all over
the world, he told me, and most of our people forget their culture easily. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The war had killed up to 2.5 million people and displaced
several million more. It depopulated vast tracts of the country, and any
ambitious person either fought for the SPLA or fled to Kenya or Ethiopia or
Khartoum or Egypt in search of a high school education or simply a life with a
more manageable baseline of existential danger. Music could form an identity, a
common language for a broken land. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or perhaps not: the South Sudanese music market is just not
making money right now, the artist told me. You can be very famous and still
make nothing, and even if you are paid, they don’t pay you the way they’re
supposed to pay you. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
+++</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the recommendation of a colleague, I met a Canadian
fellow who had lived in Central Africa for the past 15 years, and was now a
consultant or NGO hack of some sort of another. We met at an Ethiopian restaurant
by the airport road. Ethiopian restaurants in Juba occupy a diner’s middle
ground. They aren’t posh by any means, although the overwhelming probability is
that a foreigner won’t get sick eating at one. Yet foreigners tend not to eat
at them—not out of any latent racism, mind you, but because most of them have
NGO or government expense accounts that obviate any need for budget dining
options, almost all of which happen to be Ethiopian here. Why struggle with
overcooked goat meat at the Paradiso, which sits across the street from the Red
Cross compound’s decidedly un-scenic war-era concrete barrier, when spare ribs
and ostrich steaks await you at the Da Vinci’s stunning waterfront? Luckily, the Ethiopian places offer a comforting lack of pretention. There’s an
Ethiopian restaurant in downtown Juba called Lula’s, and if you walk up to a
seemingly-purposeless wooden table in the establishment’s deepest, most
fly-ridden reaches and display a flawless $100 bill from 2009 or later, you
will get a mind-boggling exchange rate of 3.6 South Sudanese pounds to the
dollar, which is nearly a half-pounder higher than the allegedly official rate
of 3.2 pounds, which is basically like getting $10 for free (one of the city’s
more ominous idiosyncrasies—at least from the perspective of South Sudanese
economic planners—was that no one knew quite how much the money was worth).
Lunch, accompanied by meandering 70s Ethio-jazz gasping from a beat-up cassette
player behind the bar, is practically on them. And despite the flies and the
heat, the place is such an upgrade over being outdoors that you want to sit
there for hours, drinking Kenyan-imported coke, or perhaps Ethiopian-imported
coffee, which takes ten minutes to make and is served in a kind of gourd-shaped
jug, and tastes a bit like Turkish coffee would if the sediment were evenly
distributed throughout the body of the liquid, rather than clustered in a
single muddy glob.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We met in an Ethiopian restaurant. He had the beaten look of
the frontiersman—sturdy, well-worn clothes clinging to leather flesh, a face
made wise by decades of accumulated weariness. His countenance was consistent
with the news he brought, which he conveyed with a hint of boredom, as if the
country’s problems were so intractable as to be banal: Khartoum was mobilizing
thousands of militants for service in Southern Kordofan; villagers in Nuba were
getting pounded by long-range artillery and rockets; the price of basic
foodstuffs had exploded on the southern side of the border. Yes, people were
optimistic now. Juba was once a small place surrounded by SPLA, with only
military pickup cars and so on. Now they were seeing things they had never seen
in their lives. They had never seen a Prado. They had never seen a car that
wasn’t a cattle car. They had never seen buildings sprout up beyond the
mountains, or buildings more than a couple of stories tall. But the needs here
are the same as needs everywhere, and the people were smarter than the French
in the sense that they wouldn’t wait 1000 years to start their revolution. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For lunch, the Canadian recommended I go to a place called
the Logali House, which he described as the fanciest restaurant in town. But I
do not like it, he said. I did not move to Africa to be around westerners.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The South African-owned Logali House is indeed the most
expensive hotel in Juba. With its barred windows and pale concrete exterior,
the building it most resembles is the Bin Laden compound, even down to its
inconvenient (and therefore discreet) location at the end of a dirt side street.
One night there will set you back $400, which buys you access to a place that’s
aesthetically calibrated to evoke a comfortable and familiar western existence.
There is an epic breakfast buffet. The interior spaces are spotless and
mercilessly air-conditioned, and the restaurant’s bathrooms have framed art
photos of African cattle. On a large flat-screen TV in the restaurant’s outdoor
patio, the blinding green of a distant cricket oval, manicured, so orderly and
logical as to seem fictitious, an occidental fantasia—reassures you that you
are actually someplace other than where you are.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At brunch on a Sunday, the Logali House is a fascinating
place to dine alone. There’s lunchroom chatter about the torture of UN flights
and difficulties getting up north. At the table next to mine, a woman from an
NGO I’d never heard of clutched a motorcycle helmet. I’ve decided I don’t want
to die on a boda-boda, she told her brunch mates, who were French, Dutch and
American—young and attractive in a generically urbane, vaguely collegiate
sense. A few days ago, she said, there was a fuckup at the airport, and my
driver claimed he could get me to Bentiu in 12 hours. I was tempted let me tell
you.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The conversation abruptly turned to vomit. When did you
vomit? Did the retrofitted Russian military helicopters that UN uses (maybe not
retrofitted—they look like they’re 30 years old as soon as they get off the
assembly line, a pilot told me)—make you vomit? What about those long Land
Rover journeys along potholed clay roads? What about you, had you ever vomited?
No, replied a sunglassed Frenchman. I have never vomited. Not even when you
were a kid? No. Never. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At brunch I had a bacon cheese burger—an actual, not fucking
around burger, thick and topped with fresh avocado and an English-style bacon
sheet, rather than the thin, anemic strips we Americans are used to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
+++</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I grew bored one afternoon, and a short walk from my
hotel—the cheap and Ugandan-owned and sometimes-electrified (and, therefore, ephemerally
air-conditioned!) Bros—brought me to the Konya-Konya market, which was quite
busy despite having burned down just a few days before. I could see the
burned-out husk of the former marketplace, blackened plywood beams and piles of
ash, crumbling walls and debris whose removal in either the short or long-term
felt somehow unlikely. The rumors had already escalated: why had it taken the
fire department (encouragingly, Juba seems to have one of these) such a long
time to show up? Could it be that the government also wanted to clear the
Konya-Konya of its troublesome tenants? If this had been the plan, it obviously
hadn’t worked. Already there was fresh plywood going up, merchants staking
their claims to an area that—out of inertia or stubbornness on the part of a
population that had been through an awful lot worse than <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this—</i>would likely function as a marketplace again someday soon.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And on the other side of the road was a glimpse of what the
Konya-Konya had looked like just a few days before: live chickens stuffed in
wooden cages and clothing racks offering nothing but Boy Scout outfits and Texan
police uniforms. The Konya-Konya is a place of constant movement: of bicycles
and motorcycles crammed between narrow rows of ramshackle stalls, of belching
minibuses and voices—pleading, laughing, the hushed tones of negotiation, loud
inviting voices, squawking and whinnying animal voices. Anything seems possible
here. You can pay to have your cell phone charged or your business cards made
using a computer and printer resourcefully hooked up to a small external
generator; you can also catch a bus to Kenya or Uganda, or sit in the back of a
coffee stall and watch Eritrean satellite TV. This is where the city lives, not
in the hotel bars, not behind a dragnet of caltrops and concrete walls. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Back at the hotel, there were flyers around the bar
notifying customers that an “Afrobeat” band performed at the hotel every
Saturday night. This seemed plausible: the Bros’ waterfront, which is ringed by
a rusty barbed-wire fence that obliterates an otherwise pleasant view of the
Nile, accommodated scores of outdoor tables, far more tables than were needed
for everyone staying at the hotel, as well as a large concrete stage with a new-looking
drum kit. I got back to the hotel that night to learn that the band really
didn’t play there anymore, if it had ever played there at all. I decided to
begin a movie I’d brought with me, Bela Tarr’s Satantango, a seven-hour film
about the last days of a Hungarian collective farm.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The movie begins with an eleven-minute fixed shot of cows
pouring out of a dilapidated agricultural warehouse, just an endless torrent of
cows, moaning and mooing and attempting to mount one another, and it seemed to
me that the cows had triumphed over something—that they’d overwhelmed their human
masters and earned their freedom, or a sort of conditional freedom, simply by
virtue of a long, slow decay, the inertia and eventual self-destruction of the
systems that held them in bondage. The land was theirs now, and the land would
eventually reclaim and destroy everything that was external to it, first of all
the warehouse, an island in a bovine mob, already swallowed by copulating dumb
beasts; next the drunken, backstabbing townsfolk, who lived repetitious and
spiritually desiccated lives whose meaning and value they weren’t even wholly
convinced of. To me the scene conveyed a kind of eternality to the cow,
something that mocked the constant dissatisfaction and changeability that every
human community and every individual human being is subject to.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
South Sudan is a land of cows. Cows appear on both the 5 and
10-pound bills. Wars are still fought over them. During the civil war, the
northern military and their proxies would steal or even massacre cows. There
are parts of South Sudan where cows represent wealth, status, food, milk and
marriage; one NGO worker told me somewhat crassly that in Jonglei, where
various tribes were busy massacring each other over cattle, local leaders only
cared about three things: their tribe, their women and their cows. In the
southern part of the north Sudan, the socio-historical rift between cow-herders
and camel-herders is an ancient and bitter one. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In those blurred moments before the final onset of a hot,
uncomfortable sleep, the film was a mirror of places I’d already been, and I
was looking at the flatlands of Northern Bar El-Gazal, where the cows stood
sturdy and fresh, and the humans were wasted and traumatized by decades of
vicious genocidal war—and at the skeleton trees and dead grass of Yida, where
refugees chased from their homes by the Sudanese military lived in crooked
wooden hovels, and the cows’ horns grow up to two feet in length.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
+++</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
SPLA founder Dr. John Garang is the county’s hero, even
though his vision of a “New Sudan” once stood in opposition to South
Sudan’s current independence. He believed in a single Sudan for all of its
citizens, a worthy dream that died when the Khartoum regime rigged nation-wide
elections, and when Garang—who became Vice President of Sudan in 2005—was
killed in a highly-suspicious helicopter crash just days after taking office.
On the posters for Martyrs’ Day, which is observed on the anniversary of
Garang’s death, he appears in western dress, with a rainbow arching halo-like
overhead. His face is on every South Sudanese pound, wearing the calm yet
resigned expression of a man whose tragedy is finally over. In the reception
area of the Bros, there is a photo of the great leader, with the caption: Dr.
John Garang. He was an icon, a fighter and a hero. You are a burning spear
within us forever.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Garang’s SPLA didn’t capture Juba during the war, but he is
nevertheless buried there. His tomb lies just down the road from the ministries
complex, and he is buried along a stretch of roadway marked by a long row of
international flags, including the flag of the north Sudan. On the other side
of the road is a presidential reviewing stand for celebrations or parades, and
the complex—the flags, the tomb, and the grandstand—is guarded by surly army
officers who might arrest you if they catch you taking pictures.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Garang is buried beneath a slightly larger than life-sized
statue of himself, built of a plastered-over bronze that is already peeling. He
holds a book under one arm, and a walking cane in the other; with the cane, he
motions towards the road and the row of flags, perhaps towards a future of
promise and responsibility, towards freedom, and equal membership in the same
community of nations as their former enemies. Garang is wearing a suit, and
there is no suggestion that he had been a man of war, no sign that you were
standing next to the body of one of the most successful, sophisticated and
brilliant guerilla leaders in modern history. You were standing before Garang
the agriculture PhD—Garang the statesman.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The statue sits in the middle of a vast, walled-off tract
cluttered with piles of asphalt and dirt. Maybe it will become a park one day.
Something is being built there, but it is not clear what.</div>
</div>
Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-14444838916537775492013-11-13T12:55:00.002-08:002013-11-15T12:48:37.818-08:00"It Will Be Recalled By Countless Human Beings Not Yet Born:" Vargas Llosa's The War of the End of the World, pp 1-750<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: small;">Mario Vargas Llosa's <i>The War of the End of the World</i> brings to mind the Cigarette Smoking Man's immortal verdict on the value of literature relative to more generic time-killing pursuits: I would rather read the worst book ever written, he says in "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" (season 4, episode 7), than watch the greatest movie ever made. And it also brings to mind the anxiety I used to feel when discovering a band like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4sVv3s_gMg">Evangelicals</a> or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2zRSkVPZ4w">A Sunny Day in Glasgow</a>, or even non-obscurities like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfEkegI3ySI">Bill Callahan</a>. We have only so much time in our lives; every second reading something unworthy of it represents the denial of an opportunity to read something good. I could easily have gone my entire life without coming across Evangelicals' The Evening Descends, which I found through the internal and probably now defunct (and totally legal, for the record) file sharing network of a music magazine I wrote for back in college. And I could have brushed past Llosa's 750 page account of a largely forgotten civil disturbance in late 19th century Brazil without having the slightest inkling of the mistake I'd made. Discoveries like this should be cause for disquiet: coincidences don't have to happen, and you could sail past any number of life-changing experiences, artistic and otherwise, without feeling any real sense of loss. But the loss is immense, almost immeasurable seeing as almost by definition you can't perceive it, at least not moment to moment--this accumulation of countless books unread, music unlistened to, places unvisited, thoughts unexpressed.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">I'm beginning the post like this because the story of my possession of this book actually sort of ties in to some broader points I'm going to make about it. I bought The War of the End of the World at the Diwan Bookstore in Cairo, on the far end of the 26th of July corridor in Zamalek. I'd just finished Ismail Kadare's The File On H--which is a fine read about the collision between art, nationalism and cosmopolitanism in pre-war Albania, even if it's more breezy than that heavy description would suggest, and frankly the themes feel a little forced at times--a book I had bought at that same store like four days earlier. I was in a city with a 9 PM curfew and needed something long and I vaguely remember a book editor friend of mine recommending TWOTEOTW, and a bit of Wikipedia'ing revealed that Roberto Bolano considered it to be Llosa's greatest work. I'll get back to that later.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Anyway, it turns out that the first half of TWOTEOTW is about a three-way conflict between religious fundamentalists, radical Jacobins, and pro-monarchy conservatives--or, to cast it in Egyptian terms, between the Muslim Brotherhood, the military and the felool. The ingenious thing about (SPOILERS AHEAD) TWOTEOTW is that it takes a virtually-unknown episode that occurred deep in the desert wilderness of a largely unfamiliar country and endows it with a kind of trans-historical urgency, such that I could see it clearly reflected in my immediate environment. Of course the tension between religion and the state isn't exactly a new topic for literature (see: The Bible), but Llosa happened on something slightly different and even deeper, something I might not have realized had I not read this on the heels of a reporting trip to Egypt.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">See any vision of progress must obviously come at the expense of radically different alternatives--we aren't going to have five-year plans in America (nice try, Obama); China isn't simply going to fire its two million web censors, etc. etc. TWOTEOTW is an account of a moment when one society was staring into the abyss of a fundamental choice about its own nature, not unlike Egypt has over the course of this violent and very confusing year. TWOTEOTW is about how these moments are negotiated by societies that aren't ready to deal with them (y'know, as if <i>any</i> society is ready to deal with them). More importnatly, they're about how they're buried--how their non-existence is incorporated into the mythology of the side that eventually wins. It's a historical novel in the truest sense: it's about how things could have gone, what was sacrificed or gained when they went in a particular direction--and what is sacrificed and gained over the even longer process of <i>forgetting</i> history. This, too, is relevant to my Egypt experience over the summer, when I saw no physical inkling of violence or massacres at Nahda Square, a typical and wheezing Cairene traffic circle, rather than a place that had been a battleground only ten days earlier. Inevitably, TWOTEOTW is about how a country of 200 million people can pull this off.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">And folks, it ain't pretty. This is the most violent book I've ever read (Blood Meridian included, incidentally), and the violence isn't portrayed in procedural or clinical fashion like in Bolano's 2666. It is lush and descriptive and psychologically punishing, yet also unsentimental and unidealized. There are lurid and unreadably detailed accounts of the ravages of warfare--insects burrowing under the skin, survival off of rainwater and grass, dead bodies mutilated, executions, starvation, rape--that possess a jarring, blunt honesty. It's this violent because war itself is this violent, and more than once, I found myself thinking of Syria, of the way in which distance obscures and even abets the horrors of war, and the way that a book like this one unapologetically collapses this distance. I can't imagine writing something like it. It must be the product of a tormented imagination, of an author warped and consumed by his subject matter--of an artist swallowed whole.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">+++</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">So here's what it's actually about, and I realize I'm embarking on a serious mishmash of Llosa, Wikipedia, and the decidedly non-expert ruminations of someone who doesn't actually know that much about Brazil. Anyway the last 30 years of the 19th century were a time of upheaval and crisis in Brazil. The country's slave-based economy was both immoral and impractical; as in the US, it entrenched a system in which landed elites ruled vast swaths of the country--and its diverse and perhaps ungovernable population--as a kind of personal fiefdom. Unlike in the US, that system was connected to an honest-to-God monarchy that was at the core of the entire country's social structure and national self image, along with a titled aristocracy for whom the endurance of the slave economy was literally a matter of survival. When the monarchy finally abolished slavery, it was only a matter of time before the existing political system was swept away as well, replaced by a kind of republican-nationalist government headed by the military.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">TWOTEOTW takes place in the years following the establishment of the Republic, but during a time when the monarchial power structure was still firmly in place in parts of the country--such as Brazil's arid northeast, the setting of the novel and a desperately poor area in which something like half of the rural population had been killed off in a drought in the early 1870s. The drought is a crucial early event in the book, and gives the novel its apocalyptic context: The pilgrims of Canudos could believe that the world was about to end, because many of them had seen it end within their own lifetimes.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Anyway by the mid 1890s, it wasn't exactly a given that republicanism would survive in Brazil. The monarchy represented a historical and even religious connection to Portugal, Europe, Catholocism etc; the roots of the old system remained strong, and in a polyglot and largely ungoverned country that had experienced a series of civil uprisings and disturbances in the wake of the monarchy's abolition, the merits of the new system remained unproven. And there was the matter of the freed slaves, the shock of a massive, impoverished and racially different population attempting to enter a society that likely wasn't ready to accommodate them. Most of the country was incredibly poor and backward. It was, to borrow a phrase from Durkheim, a period of normlessness. Normlessness can create the opportunity for newer and better norms--think South Africa in the years after apartheid. Or it can result in a kind of chronic social rot that grows deeper and less manageable over time--think about the US's treatment of racial issues in the nearly 100 years between the end of the Civil War and the Civil Rights Act.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">In Brazil, normlessness resulted in a bizarre guirilla war sparked by a messianic and egalitarian religious movement. That movement was itself started in Bahia's rapidly desertifying backlands by a mysterious wandering self-appointed Christ figure named The Counselor. In the HBO miniseries that I've been casting and indeed producing and acting out in my mind while jogging, bathing, etc., Brian Cranston plays The Counselor. Cranston/The Counselor was a kind of back-country mystic who blamed all of society's problems on the new republic's insistence on the separation of church and state, since taxation, civil marriage, the metric system, the census etc were symbols of man's usurpation of God's dominion on earth, thus making the Republic the antichrist, thus making resistance against it nothing less than an all-or-nothing apocalyptic struggle.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">But The Counselor's movement isn't impractical or backward-looking. In Canudos, the
town that his followers create in an impossibly-remote desert (<a href="https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Canudos+-+Bahia,+Brazil&hl=en&sll=38.804821,-77.236967&sspn=1.89204,4.350586&oq=canudos&t=h&hnear=Canudos+-+Bahia,+Brazil&z=14">see here</a>), racial and social barriers fall away; former slaves, murderers,
prostitutes and bandits are transformed and redeemed by God's love as channeled through The Counselor,
who preaches a doctrine of mutual responsibility and acceptance. They don't want to overthrow the state so much as just be left alone by it. There is no
money in Canudos; all resources are shared and its inhabitants want for nothing. All of their physical and spiritual needs are fulfilled, which is an astounding accomplishment within the bleak moral and physical/geographic environment the novel describes. Pilgrims arrive--tens of thousands of them. The politics of itmight be wacky, but it's clear from the beginning that there's something real underneath them, something that Brazil's new secular republic and arguably no secular republic can provide: a sense of meaning and worth for the marginalized and vulnerable; a separation between the harsh and unfair realities of a society in utter chaos, and a higher and purer truth that supersedes this degraded earthly realm.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Bahia is controlled by an aristocratic political party, under the leadership of the Baron de Canabrava, whose main purpose is to keep the republican government in Rio out of the local landowners' hair. So naturally an ambitious local republican politician named Goncalves engineers a situation--with the help of a plaint media, because this book is all kinds of topical even 30 years after its publication--in which the federal military is called in to suppress Canudos, which has declared the republic to be the antichrist and represents an open challenge to the legitimacy of the new order. In a way that Goncalves himself clearly doesn't intend, this becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy--Canudos turns from a semi-peaceful yet deeply weird religious commune to a full-blown apocalyptic militant movement and national crisis as the <i>jaguncos</i> manage to defend themselves against waves of republican attacks.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">The most gripping parts of TWOTEOTW involve a monomaniacal army officer named Moreira Ceasar, who has been sent to crush Canudos, and who is the closest thing that this amazingly even-handed novel has to a villain--but even he isn't irredeemable. Of the three principles at the center of the novel--The Counselor and the Baron de Carnabrava, played in my mind by Christopher Waltz, are the other two--he is the one that most closely resembles <i>us</i>. The most ruthless character in the novel, who murders journalists in the streets and openly pines for a secular military dictatorship, is arguably the most modern and forward-thinking; meanwhile, the most compassionate and humanitarian character is the leader of what morphs into a millenarian death cult as the war drags on. The Baron is at pains to explain that he released his own slaves a full five years before emancipation, and since everyone seems to misunderstand exactly what Canudos is and why it's mushroomed into a potentially nation-wrecking problem, he seems to have the keenest sense of what's actually going on. But he behaves in ways that are truly monstrous, and represents an old order that's struggling to accept its own rapid obsolescence. He isn't a truly sympathetic character. No one is.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">And they're unsympathetic because what they represent is unsympathetic. Goncalves is a bottom-dwelling politician of the worst sort. Cesar is a fascist. The Baron is an old-timey aristocrat. The Counselor embodies a politics based on equality and spiritual transcendence, but also the dangers of such a politics. The collision between these men and ideas kills around 30,000 people; as I mentioned before, it kills them in incredibly painful and unpleasant ways. And over 750 pages, we're introduced to its victims: to conscripts bogged down in the <i>sertao</i>, and to peasants refusing to flee Canudos as the city burns, secure in the belief that their souls will soon ascend to heaven. In the midst of it is the sense of a country working out a sublimated conflict between a kind of crass modernity and superstitions--religious, communal, even nationalist--that are more organic and perhaps more substantive and individually satisfying than anything that such a modernity could offer. This is still a hot conflict, even in our own, far more enlightened world. There is no attractive or easy way out of it. The normlessness of TWOTEOTW is the normlessness of contemporary Egypt, and of any other place where no one seems to be able to grasp the depth and the severity of the choices that confront them. And the people who can grasp them--history's Sisis, Ceasars or Counselors--are often products of that normlessness, the results of a sickly and unsettled national existence, rather than people capable of transforming it for the better.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">+++</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Except there is an easy way out of it, and it gets at the truly ingenious thing about WOTETOW, which is as much about the process in which history is forgotten about, as it is about the process through which it is formed. The novel is flush with writers and storytellers--Goncalvez helps spawn a lie that brings the nation to the brink of collapse; the exiled Scottish revolutionary Galileo Gall, the buffoonish antihero of the novel's opening third, writes a series of articles about Canudos, which he mistakes for a second Paris Commune; the Near-Sighted Journalist becomes the only witness--of sorts--to the massacre at Canudos; the Dwarf is a traveling minstrel by trade; The Counselor earns followers through his storytelling and rhetoric, which is dutifully recorded by the Lion of Natuba. Even Cesar, who built his reputation for ruthlessness by murdering a journalist critic of his in the streets of Rio, betrays some awareness of his role in perpetuating an unctrollable cycle of falsehood and myth, as revealed in his dying words: "you mean we lied to the country for nothing?"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">This emphasis on storytelling, and on the malleability and impermanence of narrative (also reflected in the fact that we never learn the real names of many of the book's major characters, including Gall, the Dwarf, the Journalist and even the Counselor himself), makes perfect sense if you Google the words "Canudos War." Aside from this <a href="http://repository.unm.edu/handle/1928/10254">amazing database at the University of New Mexico</a>, you're not gonna find much. It apparently gets some kind of mention in Peter Robb's A Death in Brazil, and there is of course Euclides da Cunha's firsthand account of the war, which is apparently considered to be one of the greatest works ever written in Portugese. But it is the only firsthand account of the war, and in that respect the event is as obscure to us as the Jewish Wars, another conflict that lives on through a single and in many cases unfalsifiable first-hand record.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">The power of TWOTEOTW comes from the lack of preconceptions we bring to the event itself--I knew so little about the Canudos War that I was shocked to learn that The Counselor actually existed, and that there is even a single, arresting <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Antonio_Conselheiro.jpg">photograph</a> of his exhumed corpse. This shit actually happened. Yet it's difficult to find photos of the war; there's a contemporary <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Canudos.jpg">sketch</a> of what Canudos looked like when it was still standing, but the only actual photographs of the place depict it in ruins. As for the ruins--they're now <a href="http://clas.berkeley.edu/research/tracking-silence-backland-search-non-euclidean-criticism-massacre-canudos">under a reservoir</a> created by the damming of the Vaza-Barris River. This is an erasure more complete and more even more horrifying than the coverup of the massacre of the banana workers in One Hundred Years of Solitude. This erasure actually happened--it is not fictional, and everyone is implicated in it. It's not as if the bodies of the people killed at Canudos were trucked away in the middle of the night. The burning of Canudos had to be consciously forgotten about, relegated to obscurity not just as a matter of policy (which policy is dealt with explicitly in the novel's dynamite final third) but as an act of popular willpower spanning over a century.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">It's a reality that clashes with the purpose of Canudos, which was to create something for eternity--a merging of the heavenly and earthly kingdoms that could serve as a beacon to the rest of an unfair and benighted world. So one of the most heartbreaking moments of novel comes during the closing moments of the siege that destroys the city, as one of the Counselor's deputies contemplates his leader's dying words:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: small;">'It is the Counselor's testament,' the Little Blessed One thinks. He is perfectly aware of what a solemn, transcendent moment this is. What he is seeing and hearing will be recalled through the years, the centuries, among thousands and thousands of men of every tongue, of every race, in every corner of the globe; it will be recalled by countless human beings not yet born.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;">Even then, it is obvious that no one will recall it. The words are ephemeral; they'll die along with nearly everyone else in Canudos, and the cost of losing them will be immeasurable by virtue of being unknowable. Which is not to say that Llosa refrains from commenting on the more tangible consequences of mangling or wishing away the inconvenient bits of history. Take, for instance, this paragraph just a few pages shy of the novel's conclusion, in which Colonel Macedo--who is introduced in the book's final chapter but fleetingly mentioned about 600 pages earlier--explains why he is so intent on locating the corpse of Abbot Joao, the bandit-turned-leader of Canudos's guerrilla fighters:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: small;">'It's a story that goes back a long way,' the colonel growls...'a story that I began, apparently. That's what people say, anyway. Because I killed Abbot Joao's father, some thirty years ago, at least. He was a <i>coiteiro</i> of Anthony Silvino's, in Custodia...'</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;">Of course Abbot Joao's father had nothing to do with Silvino, or with any other backcountry criminal. Several hundred pages earlier, we learn that he was summarily executed when his fellow villagers--in view of both personal jealousy and Macedo's reputation for burning entire towns on the mere suspicion that bandits were present--offered him up as a way to get Macedo to leave their community alone. That doesn't matter. The lie gains the status of official truth--it lives on through Macedo, who has outlived Abbot Joao, and through the lieutenant that the aging bandit-chaser is telling his story to, who will likely outlive him as well. A war that begins partly because of Goncalves and Cesars's lise ends with a lie that is itself connected to the war's even more distant origins ('a story that I began, apparently...'). In the novel's closing pages, Llosa reminds his readers that the real War of the End of the World takes place on the level of memory and forgetfulness; of truth, and falsehood. And he reminds us that even in an enlightened and connected age, it's a war that is more literal than figurative, one that memory and truth don't automatically get to win.</span></div>
Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-85561141675426580082013-10-17T08:56:00.001-07:002013-10-22T12:25:43.157-07:00The Meaning of Qat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
An anecdote. One day in the summer of 2011, I was in a mostly-stationary taxicab with Michael Totten, marooned on the permanently congested 6th of October Bridge, busy enduring one of those unavoidable stretches of tedium endemic to the reporting profession. I'm not sure why, but I started sketching out a theoretical journalistic trip to Yemen--anywhere but Cairo traffic, amiright--and the otherwise-silent taxi driver, a lanky and unusually clean-shaven and unusually young man by Cairene taxi-driver standards, began speaking in jarringly clear English. Because when he wasn't driving a taxi in Cairo, he was a professional soccer player in Yemen, and he had some strong opinions about the place.<br />
<br />
"They are the laziest people in the world," he said. He repeated this phrase three or four times, punctuating each word as if he understood he was delivering a stern moral pronouncement over an entire society of several tens of millions of people. The laziest people in the world--let him leave no doubt. "They sit on a rock, and go like this," he said, propping his chin on a closed fist, "and chew qat. This is all they do. They are the laziest people in the world."<br />
<br />
The cabbie did more than reinforce my own, possibly but probably not mistaken notion of Egyptians' condescending attitude towards their Peninsula brethren (America is not without its own regional chauvinisms, either. Obviously.). The real reason I'm beginning a long blog post about qat chewing with this guy is that through defining his entire perception of Yemenis and Yemen in general through qat, he was getting at the idea that certain kinds of widespread and socially-acceptable drug abuse can serve as windows into the societies that tolerate and condone said abuse. I'm about to commit some pretty heinous acts of cultural essentialism here--nothing so crude as "Yemeinis chew lots of qat and are therefore the laziest people on earth," God willing--so my old college English professors are encouraged to stop reading here, right now. As for the rest of you--can drug abuse be read as text (welcome back, English professors!)? Let's try it out.<br />
<br />
In Egypt, everyone smokes shisha. It's their national drug. To me, shisa represents anxiety without an outlet. It is the dissonance of having to relax and sit still for long periods of time--which are spent engaging in an activity that inspires little more than discomfort and unease. After a couple hours of shisha-smoking--and coffee drinking, shisha's trusty sidekick--it feels as if the chest cavity is struggling under an immovable leaden weight; breaths are more stilted and labored, the palette is ashen and choked, and the head swims and reels if it isn't calmed with gulps of cold water. Seriously, fuck shisha. It is a pleasure that gradually morphs into agitation, and, for the health conscious, mild regret (of course, I smoked a lot of it over the summer).<br />
<br />
I don't know what this says about Egypt--I'm really not qualified to speculate, although I think I'm on to something with that "anxiety without an outlet" thing from earlier--but I have some theories about what America's national drug might suggest about Us. Our national drug is weed, which rubs out anxiety and ambition alike for short periods of time. Put differently, it is <i>anxiety's outlet</i>, a closet it can be stuffed into for an hour or two. There's a dark side to weed--it dulls pleasure along with pain, and I could never understand the appeal of watching a sporting event or a movie or even a concert while on the stuff, which slows the mind and in so doing distances the user from sensory and psychic stimuli regardless of their positive or negative nature. It's great stuff for ESPNews; less appropriate if you're about to watch "Scenes From A Marriage" for the first time. From this, I can conclude that we Americans are stressed the fuck out, that we believe that the elimination of anxiety is worth the elimination of pleasure as well; that modern life and our own desires and expectations are only manageable with an escape hatch at the ready, even if the escape, though temporary and very easy to accomplish, is still more total than many would like to admit. (Israel's national drug is hashish. I don't know what to make of this, but if the urban legends about Hezbollahis flinging hash-laden porcupines over the Israeli-Lebanese border fence using special hash-porcupine slingshots is even a little true, then there's a certain Jewish historical resonance to the idea of buying stupefying drugs from people who want to kill the majority of us).<br />
<br />
Qat is the national drug of Ethiopia, Somalia and Yemen, which are more different from each other than I think most people appreciate (Somalia and Ethiopia are about as similar to each other as Ethiopia and the United States are. Other than differences in religion, language, food, music, material culture, historical development and modes of economic and social organization, they're exactly alike!). It is grown in Ethiopia, in the country's polyglot and historically restive east, where the Amhara, Afar, Oromo and Somali regions bleed into one another, and along the approximate frontier between pastoralism and settled agriculture, as well as between orthodox Christianity and Islam. Ethiopia has always lived and died on its periphery--in his excellent popular overview of the country, Harold Marcus posits that Ethiopian history can be understood as a veritable sine-wave of centralization and decay, with the country going through always-temporary periods of deterioration and reconstitution based mostly on developments along its fringes. The east is home to the Oromo, now the country's largest ethnic group and holder of a nearly millenia-old swing vote wrt: whether the Ethiopian national project was or even is all that practicable, and to the Somali, who have been fighting the Ethiopians in some form another for nearly 600 years; not continuously of course, but this is still over twice as long as the United States of America has existed. Ahmed the Left-Handed, one of the more reviled figures in Ethiopian history and the man who burned down the original, gold-clad Church of St. Mary in Axum, invaded from the east--from qat country.<br />
<br />
But today, you are not likely to find a more harmonious boundary between Christendom and the Umma than the Medieval walled city of Harar, a multiconfessional warren of mud-brick mosques and polyp-dome tombs, and a profoundly qat-addled town, where plastic bags of the stuff begin to materialize by mid-morning, and where seemingly every square-inch of downtown curbside is cluttered with chewers by mid-afternoon. Harar is particularlistic as opposed to generically Orthodox or Muslim; it has its own forceful and intoxicating character that the ubiquity of qat undoubtedly contributes to. If qat is indeed a National Drug--if it says something about the place that grows and abuses the fuck out of it--then we've already reached a point of complication. A historically violent and tumultuous liminal space--Ethiopia's powder keg, sort of--is the origin of a drug that makes its users docile and zoned out, in turn contributing, however obliquely, to the modern-day sense of equanimity and moderation (I counted zero hijabs in Harar) and tolerance that helps make that place unique. It is as if chewing it brings you to a zone beyond or outside of history--as if the drug is pure immediacy, a psychic extension of those tombs and mosques and box canyon alleyways, of the women wearing jangling metal necklaces and crouching over fulcrum-shaped wicker tables in the marketplaces, of hidden craft shops and muraled horseshoe-shaped mud houses that don't seem to belong to the Middle East or to the Horn or to anywhere you're familiar with really, of marketplaces acraded with pointed Arab archways and streets stalked after dark by yapping hyenas and the feeling of a heady and indescribably vast distance from anything familiar--including anything familiar, even after three weeks of travel, within Ethiopia itself--of everything seeming new and wonderful and giddy and strange.<br />
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This feeling is a tourist's luxury and a lie. The realities are less benign and certainly shouldn't be exoticized (should anything, really?). Qat is everywhere in Harar. Men in clean clothes carry mutliple bags of the stuff; men in tatters scour the streets for discarded leaves, competing with the goats and sheep. The alleys are encrusted in dried and decaying stems; in traffic circles and median strips and curbs, men stuff one leaf after another into their mouths for hours at a time, virtually unmoving, with no other apparent demands on their time or ambition. It is epidemic.<br />
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What desires does it suppress? What subtle control does it exert? What urges does it domesticate? What pains does it cancel? What joys and ambitions does it kill? A dip into a bag of qat is essential in Harar. Because if you answer these questions for yourself, you might be able to answer them for a significant number of people in town.<br />
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I first tried qat near the tomb of Hamid Nur, a tall and narrow mud-brick dome layered in pickle-colored greenwash. People in Ethiopia tend to overestimate the age of things by a century or five, but the attendant will square with you: the tomb is a little over 400 years old, and within it lies the emir responsible for building the walls of Harar, to defend against newly-arrived Oromo migrants from modern-day Kenya. Hamid Nur presided over a kind of Harari golden age, a period during which the city--or rather, the independent city-state, a status the place maintains under Ethiopia's ethnicity-based federal system--turned into east Africa's Timbuktu, a cosmopolitan trading hub ideally positioned between geographical zones and empires, as well as a center of Islamic scholarship. Harar was the point where trading routes from the Arabian Penninsula, Solomonic-period Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa and even and especially India converged, and Hamid Nur helped guide the city to prominence. But he's buried in a modest structure, now hemmed in by muddy alleyways strewn with rotting qat leaves--although there's a wooden roof over the corner of the romantically out-of-control garden surrounding the tomb, and the entire halfcourt-sized compound is green and shady and remarkably quiet. The Taj Mahal, the greatest of Islamic tombs, captures humanity's impotent frustration at the permanenance and enormity of death, and the beauty made possible by our inevitably futile attempts to gain an upper hand over the thing. The tomb of Hamid Nur, made out of wood beams and painted mud, is just a nice place to sit down for awhile, and you can stare at it, while lounging under the aforementioned wooden roof in the corner of the compound, without being burdened by any deep metaphysical concerns, or even any deep non-metaphysical concerns for that matter. Make yourself at home--this place was practically <i>designed</i> for chewing qat, which, as it turns out, is best enjoyed over long periods of time and in a shady, quiet and above all comfortable place.<br />
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My entry into the stuff was a young man named Abdulaziz, who looked about my age and had a freshly-trimmed beard and a smartphone even fancier than mine. He was studying to be a irrigation engineer and had cousins in Washington, DC. He lived in the walled city with his wife and six month old daughter, and chewed qat at around this time, and in roughly this place, every single day.<br />
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This stuff is what the goats chew, he said after 30 minutes of munching on plastic-green leaves, incense wafting through the compound, Qaranic chanting playing on someone's cellphone, the latest call to prayer ignored, sweet coffee brought by a young girl and then slowly gulped out of handmade clay mugs, the sun held pleasantly in abeyance, wind brushing the weeds. Give me 30 birr, he said, and I will get you the good stuff. The real stuff. And I will show you how to chew it.<br />
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As noon approached, as I looked around at the small handful of strung-out young men lounging in the tomb's garden, a strong and largely although not entirely anthropological desire emerged to see what it was like to be seriously wasted on the stuff. When Abdulaziz returned with a fresh bag, he explained that you only chew the small leaves, the brownish-green ones ones at the top of the stem, preferably the ones so small that they've curled into themselves, although the medium and larger-sized leaves surrounding them are potent as well. The apple-green ones, large and thick and lower down on the stem, are a waste of energy and taste especially terrible. Don't bother.<br />
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And now, an abrupt transition from freeform social, historical and experiential-type observations to a more clinical sorta question and answer thing clearly ripped off from the Ithaca episode of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Ulysses</span>.<br />
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WHAT DOES QAT TASTE LIKE?: Qat is vegetative and bitter. It has a sickly sour quality, although if you've been eating backcountry injira for three weeks straight then sickly-sourness has been a constant and unshakable companion for you. It is hard to masticate to a complete pulp; it is less tough or resistant than, for instance, an overcooked piece of meat, but it is so simultaneously plastic and granular--even the softer, smaller, rolled-up leaves--that chewing it eventually requires a heavy, sustained motion that makes the jaw ache for days afterwards. When fully broken down, the qat leaf becomes a heavy, viscous paste that gently swells the inside of the mouth, and the paste always seems to migrate to the inside fold of the upper lip, requiring a chewer to periodically circulate his tongue around the borders of his cheeks and mouth. This is actually hard; qat doesn't just swell the inner mouth, but numbs and mildly paralyzes it. Qat isn't eaten exactly--you don't swallow until the last possible moment, when the paste become so thick and unpleasant that you're left with no other choice. But this takes awhile, and gets at one of the most appealing aspects of qat chewing--it's time consuming. It's real work. It's not something to eat--it's something to do, as the old tagline goes. It's like eating sunflower seeds, if sunflower seeds had a stimulant effect somewhere between caffeine and cocaine. Ooops! Getting ahead of myself here.<br />
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IS IT ADDICTIVE?: Hell yes! When you're chewing qat, you feel an urge to continue chewing the shit that's so powerful it isn't even consciously noticed or recognized as an urge. You just kind of mechanically keep feeding yourself leaves; whether you want to continue chewing or not is inconsequential. You just keep plucking leaves and shoving them into your mouth and it could be hours before it occurs to you to do anything other than this or to stop.<br />
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IS QAT A SOCIAL LUBRICANT?: I can't say the conversation I had with the 3 or 4 chewers at the Tomb was all that stimulating, but there were certain language and cultural barriers that kept things on a rudimentary level, aside from the occasional inquiries about my religion or place of birth or the spelling of my name. I don't think qat makes you talkative, exactly--I had fun imagining a living room full of American high school kids silently munching qat with their eyes pasted over (how about a qat lounge in the center field loft at Nats Park? Probably wouldn't fly, because of the appetite suppressant thing. Maybe we could replace the East Village's shisha bars with qat houses? I know which I'd rather go to.)--but the fact that it takes an incredibly long time to chew the stuff, combined with its near-ubiquity, makes it a social drug almost by default.<br />
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A snippet of conversation: in Islam, we believe in one God. Not four, not two, one. I agree, I said.<br />
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WHAT ARE THE PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF QAT?: Qat has a stimulant effect somewhere between caffeine and cocaine. Your heart rate increases slightly, your skin seems to radiate and crawl. The mouth dries out--have a large bottle of water at the ready is my advice--although you don't feel any agitation because any excess energy is channeled into the labor-intensive chewing process itself. So you feel simultaneously stimulated and listless (qat isn't the only drug that has this effect I've heard), as if the drug has focused you on this one task to the exclusion of all others. Everything else becomes laborious: shifting position, reaching for your camera, raising a clay coffee mug to your lips, retrieving a water bottle from your backpack, swallowing the coffee and/or water, maintaining conversation with people whose language you don't speak, etc. The body is lulled into a deep inertia, but not to the point where you want to nod off--which is impossible anyway, what with the uptick in the heart rate and the clean but slightly tingling body high. The most powerful effect is related to the appetite: hunger physically dissipates; eating just sort of vanishes as a physical need altogether. Which brings me to<br />
<br />
WHAT ARE THE PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF QAT?: the dark side of the drug, and with it the core observation of this blog post. Qat destroys all appetites--like, all of them. Trust me on this. Qat destroys all appetites and I think this has a lot to do with why it is both widely abused and socially tolerated. It is not unlike marijuana in this respect, although pot leaves one particular appetite (the Double-Stuff Oreo appetite) disastrously intact. Qat doesn't discriminate. Hungry? Chew some qat, because you soon won't be. Qat is a powerful appetite suppressant, disturbingly handy in places where food is scarce, or where the source and nature of any given meal is uncertain. Qat inflicts a kind of synthetic appetitive discipline, and it banishes all thought of food, or really any other need. <br />
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Including another fundamental human need, and this might be why qat use in Ethiopia, Somalia and Yemen is more public and socially acceptable than say, marijuana use in the US. Qat is a magic drug that keeps people umm, away from one another. Useful for the women--hormonal young men are off chewing and gazing into the near-distance instead of chasing them or harassing them or worse. Useful for the men--in Ethiopia, in the US, hell, anywhere, chewing and staring into the near distance is sometimes--usually?--more individually/socially responsible than obeying one's sexual appetites. I don't want to read any deeper neuroses into societies in which seemingly the majority of the male population publicly abuses libido suppressants for hours at a time, every single day. But there's a grim kind of social utility at work here, especially in more conservative societies--albeit a utility functioning on the premise that a stupefied and disinterested population is preferable to one that's constantly making decisions for itself. You can't fornicate on qat--and I imagine that criminal conspiracies, political manifestos and revolutions are equally tough to pull off on the stuff. Maybe tougher. Dictatorships should subsidize the stuff (although interestingly, qat is banned in Eritrea).<br />
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There's a certain blunt quality to the highly transparent and shameless nature of qat abuse. In Harar, you're surrounded by desiccated-looking young men, chewing their ambitions or desires, the sense of a present or future, the possibility of anything better or even anything different, the potential for meaningful individual choice, even the aknowledgement of fundamental physical and psychological needs, into a sweet and mind-numbing vegetable paste. They do this every day, for hours, in public.<br />
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WHAT IS THE COMEDOWN LIKE?: You feel empty and sort of tired, but not tired exactly--this is where the agitation sets in, even if the source of one's botheration and unease is impossible to pin down. Eating is a chore, walking is a chore, but again, you aren't really tired. You just want to sit down, and stare, and do nothing else more complicated or interesting or meaningful than that.<br />
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+++<br />
<br />
Qat controls and pacifies through an activity that people seem to enjoy, and that is, actually, sort of objectively enjoyable under the right circumstances. So let's close on the positives: see it's the definitional nature of experiments that their results must be reproducible, and drug experimentation is, in my view, no exception to this rule. The next day I had a long bus ride or rather series of minibus rides from Harar to really as close to Addis Ababa as I could make it between 1 PM and darkness. The 500 kilometer road to the capital through the highlands of Oromia is paved and well-maintained, rising into cloud forests and straddling high ridges, climbing into and out of rain storms, around deep vallies and waterfalls and rivers and into a kind of north-Pacific dampness and fog. Ethiopia is a land of dizzying topo- and geographic change; one night you could be in an ancient desert trading post where wild hyenas, whose jaws are powerful enough to bust a human skull in a single bite, are an accepted and even beloved neighbor; the next, you could be sleeping in a mountain town you'd never heard of, waiting for the roof to begin leaking under deafening torrents of rain.<br />
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It is the in-between that can be challenging in Ethiopia. Buses don't leave until they are full--completely full. Ethiopian "full" means people on the floor and in the space between rows of seats; 17 in a 12-seat van is barely acceptable and 20 is the norm; superstar minibus conductors don't quit until their vehicle is a 23-25 person cattlecar, with the contrast between the vast openness of the mountain wilderness and the claustrophobia of the vehicle made more obvious and excruciating with every stop-off, and every new arrival. There is never a shortage of customers; empty space is wasted birr. The minibus will get you where you're going, though, so long as patience is in rude supply. And even if it isn't, what choice do you really have? And if you did have another choice--qat is basically patience you can eat! Qat, as I wrote a few paragraphs ago, "inflicts a kind of synthetic appetitive discipline;" in Ethiopia, the appetite to just like, ditch the bus and walk for a while is one that often needs to be kept in line.<br />
<br />
After an hour of chewing, you don't really care where you're going, or how long it will take you to get there. You don't care that you can barely move, that darkness is falling, that the clouds are thick, that it's becoming gradually colder, that you're about to be dumped in a town that doesn't appear in your guidebook, that you don't have a raincoat or even a sweater, that you're totally alone. The mind is clean and unbothered, and the body is contented to be at rest, even in the crawlspace of the backseat of a crowded minibus; the swirl of people entering and leaving, the churn of clouds bursting over the mountains, the darting of a neon bird or the scimitar horns of a passing cattle train--it emerges out of a dream-haze that seems as physically tangible as the clouds scattering over the minibus's windshield. Everything is pleasantly unreal. Perhaps the trip will just keep continuing, and this is all there is.<br />
<br />
Qat is very bad, a man two seats over from me said at one point in the trip. You must never chew it. We must stop chewing it. He placed another leaf in his mouth.</div>
Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-52562920626432012402013-08-18T15:17:00.001-07:002013-08-23T13:14:02.977-07:00Nine Airports<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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BEN GURION INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, LOD, ISRAEL<br />
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The cabbie responded to a phone call in Arabic—a woman, his
wife maybe, perhaps digging into him for working yet another
Saturday, even if the business benefits or even the necessity of driving a taxi on the one day of the week when public transit is <i>banned by law</i> should be <i>fairly obvious by now</i>—then insisted on speaking to me in Hebrew the entirety of the ride to
the airport. This is odd, because I can barely, and I mean barely, sustain a
conversation in Hebrew (ani tus l'Yarden achshav! Horrible). I still can’t figure this one out. A shabbos-breaking
Iraqi who speaks Arabic at home? A Hebrophilic non-Jewish Arab hard up for language
practice? Unlikelier people exist here. </div>
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Even setting foot in this airport feels wrong. The night
before, a friend was telling me about how Menachem Begin defended El
Al’s ban on Saturday travel when the issue was brought before his cabinet, even though he himself was not a shabbos observer.
What message did it send to the world, he asked his mostly shabbos-violating ministers, if airplanes with
the Magen David on their tailwing were seen violating one of Judaism’s
fundamental precepts? What message did it send to them, and to ourselves for that matter, about our own
faith in the national spirit and mission? Jews can fly on shabbos, but the
official airline of the Jewish republic cannot. One was an individual choice; the other a national imperative. </div>
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The logic seemed millstone-like
as I scanned a departure terminal eerily absent of its usual broods of
black-hatters, Chabadnik tifilin-pushers and synagogue groups and daveners and birthright kids.
I noticed that the airport’s two kosher McDonalds were now Kosher Burgerranches,
one of which was open, oddly enough—a step down in quality, though the plastic
fried onions on my Ranch Burger seemed a pean to Israeli autochthony and the sort of thing that Bagen and his ilk might have really appreciated on some level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fuck your help, we can make our own
terrible hamburgers and top them as well, these onions seemed to say.</div>
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QUEEN ALIA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, MADABA (MORE OR LESS),
JORDAN</div>
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There is that moment during the approach when the earth
returns to you, and buildings and cars and maybe even people regain their individual character as the ground loses the eerie fake stillness of a theatrical
backdrop and bursts into reality and life. At exactly that moment, when the clustered
domes of the arrival terminal seemed almost at safe leaping distance, close enough to imagine yourself inside of, the plane
abruptly jerked skyward again, pitching into a straight climb and what felt for
one almost bowel-unplugging moment like a stall—apparently an aborted landing dispatches the mind to the darkest place it can possibly reach. But there was nothing wrong with
the aircraft. We had hit a wind shear, though I have no way of knowing whether
the order to abort was out of residual fear or actual mortal danger—I could see little
funnels of dust scurrying across the flat surface of the tan and unvegetated wastes, and ours
was a tiny plane with as many passengers as crew, easily tussled and tossed on
the harsh breath of the Western Desert, wind blasts roaring from the barren center of Arabia. The plane swung around the airport a second
time, and I occupied my nerves with a repeat view of a rock quarry, the snaking King’s
Highway, precarious and often vain attempts at desert agriculture. I would take any spot on the ground--anything over this. I developed an uneasy familiarity with one particular grid of empty tree trunks marooned stubbornly in an ocean-like expanse of gray dust, and in my mind I placed myself inside that vast aborted orchard where nothing seemed likely to ever grow again, and
where the few trees that survived stood as the mocking residue of a general
failure. I was the only person (out of like, 8 passengers) who clapped then the nose angled towards
absolute safety, and the forward wheels kissed tarmac.</div>
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We were rewarded for our ordeal, because wow, Queen Alia airport. Now this is the airport a
nation builds when it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">going places</i>. Right?
The ruins of the old terminal cower beneath palm-frond vaulting and tasteful
gray sandstone, glass curtain-walls and gaping, uncluttered atria. It is as if
the king himself ordered the squat, windowless old terminal to remain there
forever, as a reminder of what the nation used to be before it was capable of
constructing glorious Queen Alia, with its coffee lounges and Lebanese falafel
bar (highly fucking recommended) and oriental sweet shops (also very much recommended) and Popeye’s Fried Chicken. I paid for an espresso
in dollars and received Saudi rials as change--Queen Alia is generic in a way
that reflects some noble national aspiration. It is cosmopolitan and logical
and clean. And for the transit passenger, there is no way to test Queen Alia’s
ethos against the angry and crowded nation that it serves. Because your next view of
Jordan will be the gray, dust-devil wastes, which the hastening distance between
earth and sky will render unreal once again.</div>
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CAIRO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, CAIRO, EGYPT</div>
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I have touched continents with the balls of my toes, grazed the skin of nations without ever entering them, known them only as lines and polygons
on the earth, or as marbled hallways and stale hamburgers and glowering ticket
agents and then lines and polygons once more. A five-airport itinerary sends a
traveler pinballing through some parallel spatial plane where they never
actually are anywhere, officially—or they are somewhere in the sense that we’re
all <i>some</i>where, and even an airport isn’t some impermeable magical
realm, like there is no anti-reality forcefield yet in operation, no spatial
plane parallel to the only one we know to exist. The airport is a separate
place, an island as well as a gateway. But only to a point.</div>
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Had the confusion of the previous weeks seeped through the
walls of terminal 3? People clogged its endless corridors and escalators and moving sidwalks,
and there was no relief from them, even at 1 or 2 in the morning. My flight went through an hour-long security
check, was moved to a gate on the opposite side of the airport—miles away, and
that’s only barely an exaggeration—at which point we were subject to a second
hour-long security check, followed by a roughly hour-long delay, followed by
some lame and obviously fake excuse about having to wait on a few straggling
transit passengers, as opposed to the delay resulting from the general and quite obvious disorder in whose grip the airport/country lay prone—all of it made worse by the Cairo airport’s near total lack
of seating. People have to just sort of lean or sit against empty patches of
wall, which creates the illusion of clutter and chaos even when things are
perfectly under control, which means that when, for instance, 300 Nairobi-bound
passengers must hike from gate A3 to C5 (and it's a hike, let me tell you--terminal 3 is designed like a series of quarter-mile long (or longer) piers, but there are no underground tunnels connecting them; you have to walk the length of each pier if you want to get from one side of this monster to the other) they must overcome a British
Bulldog-like gamut of stony Japanese tourists and portly Ugandan priests
and mindless little kids and beer-swilling backpackers, and men in military
dress who have no obvious occupation or purpose, or knowledge of exactly why
anything is happening. I might have killed an Italian child; I honestly don’t
know. My only instinct was to leave this messy and horrible place; for hours, that instinct was frustrated
and offended, until all instinct wore away for good, and I was tired and empty and passive
and drifting.</div>
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JOMO KENYATTA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, NAIROBI, KENYA</div>
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But then: another one of those airports, like Newark, where you can’t let
your guard down or trust anything that anyone tells you. A place where you have to snap out of it. Nothing will be easy here. East African Safari?
Right over there in the waiting tent, sir; a representative will come and
collect you and the other passengers. A representative? No, you have to go
through immigration. Transit? Twenty dollars please. East African Safari is in
the Cargo Terminal, reachable via shuttle bus—<i>that</i> shuttle bus. No, it’s in the
domestic terminal, which is now the international terminal because the airport
burned down on Wednesday. Or possibly it’s the cargo terminal that’s now the
domestic terminal, which means the international terminal would be—</div>
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It isn’t an exaggeration to say that it took several hours
to disentangle all of this, although this is to be expected, since the
airport—the third busiest in Africa by passenger volume. Like, imagine JFK burning down and you'll get an idea of how major this is—had in fact been
reduced to a charred hunk of ‘60s brutalist concrete the previous Wednesday. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And what a field day the conspiracy
theorists are having! "I DIDN'T BURN AIRPORT, SAYS PARETTI," trumpeted possibly the greatest newspaper headline I've ever seen; "BLAZE CATASTROPHE," read another, elegantly. The airport was obviously burned down in order to hasten
or facilitate the building of a long-rumored new terminal, or to clear the way
for international loans that would allow said terminal to be built, or to
secure construction contracts for the terminal. Valid or not, a conspiracy is probably less
embarrassing to the national image than something more mundane—there are perfidious
and self-interested and arson-inclined personalities everywhere, but what kind
of country loses its premiere piece of infrastructure <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">by accident? </i></div>
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I won't judge, because the airport soldiered on bravely, in cramped spare terminals
and tents so numerous that it was hard to believe they had only had four
days to construct them all. The tents had been contracted to a party supply and/or rapid tent deployment company called Wandergood, based in Nairobi. Wandergood: The entire world seemed stuffed into their closed quarters; every accent and passport and language and style of national dress, people flying to London and N'Djamena and Moroni and Dubai; no specific sense of where you are, except at the heaving and anxious
center of everything, the naval of the whole of the earth.</div>
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ADEN ADDE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, MOGADISHU, SOMALIA</div>
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Arriving in Mogadishu is not like arriving in Cleveland. The
plane (a Fokker Fellowship, the last of which rolled off the assembly line in 1989 as it turns out) lands, the hatches open, you approach a single-level building with an arched portico ornamented with powder-blue Somali stars, and you suddenly aren’t in an airport that’s generic and
calm and partitioned from its surroundings—it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> its surroundings, only more so. There is no liminal or intermediate space here; you're immediately in what's probably the most dangerous place in
the entire city. Every step of the process is laden with mortal urgency, or at
least seems to be. Your visas are issued without discussion, and with the
strictest alacrity. Your vehicle is already waiting for you, although it probably
hasn’t been waiting for long. The key to the Mogadishu airport is just to keep
fucking moving. You want to scan your fellow passengers—which are the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>kingpin returnees, the newly-minted
bankers and hoteliers? Which are the Turkish development experts, and which are
the South African mercenaries? Do they even have those anymore? Both here and
in general, I mean? But the passengers scatter before you can give them even quick study. Experienced Mogadishu travelers have more sense than the
wait around for trouble, however improbable “trouble” might be on a second-to-second basis.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The airport’s single runway streaks along the seashore, and
represents one of the outer limits of a thin, rectangular green zone stretching
south of the city, a ridiculously fortified enclave that includes the seaport, the airport,
the headquarters of the national UN assistance mission, the headquarters of the
African Union peacekeeping mission, several foreign embassies, and the site of
proposed resort and conference center currently being developed by an American
private security contractor. The road from the terminal to the city is a 200-meter canyon of cube-shaped sandbags
with occasional turrets rising out of the walls; it’s a very narrow two-way road, and
Ugandan peacekeepers ensure that traffic moves at a nervous crawl, as fast as
it can possibly go, which, under such cramped circumstances, isn’t very fast at
all, or at least not as fast as you and probably the Ugandans wish it could be. And then the airport
roundabout, actually the most dangerous intersection in town, entrance to both the road to downtown Mogadishu as well as a
parallel span of roadway connecting the airport’s gate to the so-called “Medina
Gate,” which controls traffic in and out of the Green Zone—this road is guarded
with just as much care and paranoia as the one leading to the main airport
terminal, with Burundian soldiers standing in sandbag bunkers in the middle of
the street, in constant battle position. Armored troop carriers trace an anxious
circuit around the airport and the airport/Medina Gate/Mogadishu road roundabout, and although this isn’t 2008, when jihadists controlled most of the Somali capital and the airport was Civilization and Order's final remaining foothold in the city, the Shabaab are still everywhere. I’m sure I saw some, even
if I have no idea who they were. The airport is your introduction to this warped environment, this dissonance between potential and reality and the attendant questioning of your own creeping complacency.
Nothing will happen to you at the airport--<i>in all likelihood</i>, since one can never be too sure, and after having destroyed the UN compound, the Supreme Court, the Turkish Embassy and many of the town's nicer restaurants the airport would be an obvious next target for Shabaab, right? So everyone acts is if something might happen, or
will. You start to act as if something might happen, or will. From then on, every stop in traffic, ever barreling minibus and
jaywalker, seems imbued with deadly potential, even if that potential is only what you project upon the city out of ignorance or fear. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Considering there is no fiber optic cable network in
Mogadishu, the departure terminal has amazingly fast wifi.<br />
<br />
<br />
BERBERA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, BERBERA, SOMALILAND </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Before my flight out, a young Somalilander studying finance in Kuala Lumpur complained to me with a certain ironic detachment and scorn that this airport was was "fully manual." And while it is true that there's no electronic ticketing or digital scales at the check-in counter, there are in fact metal detectors and x-ray machines and flat-screen TVs and even a few functioning air conditioning units--although none of them are stamped with "COURTESY OF IOM" or "A GIFT OF THE JAPANESE PEOPLE," like the ones in Mogadishu. The Berbera airport is a bare-bones operation that receives little or no help from the outside--the Somaliland recognition thing, you know--but it works. The police drive around in beat up 30 year old compacts spray-painted a vaguely martial shade of blue; the civil air authorities and even the immigration officers dress in flimsy white uniforms bearing cheap clip art-insignia, and I'm not sure there's even an air traffic control tower (speaking of the immigration officers, a message to the two-dozen nations that the holder of an Israeli visa may not enter: no nation on earth recognizes Somaliland, yet its passport stamp bans me from none of them). No matter--it still works, and the environment bears out the small miracle of it all: abutting the runway are a series of military-style berms, berths where fighter planes could be hidden from an outside ground attack. The airport is also far, far away from the center of town, and curiously far from the port--in short, this airport probably wasn't built for civilians, and is likely a holdover from the old and incredibly brutal military regime, the same one that bombed the Somaliland capital of Hargiesa to its foundations in 1988. Today, the berms are all that remain, and they shelter rotting propeller planes, fuselages barely supported by rusting landing gear, and it is difficult to tell whether they are still airworthy, or whether they're waiting for the salt air to reduce them to brittle amber. <br />
<br />
There is a mosque near the airport's single terminal, and it is designed in the unique and I think quite remarkable style of a Somaliland village mosque, domeless and with a unadorned and purely ceremonial minaret, with the eastern (the minbar/mihrab) side projecting outward such that the building is rhombus-shaped, and resembles depictions of the Kaaba sometimes found on antique prayer rugs.<br />
<br />
<br />
DJIBOUTI-AMBOULI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, DJIBOUTI, DJIBOUTI<br />
<br />
From the air, I wonder if this is what Berbera would look like if Somaliland had the resources and the political recognition needed to develop it. Perhaps it too would have dozens of jetties and cranes, and a four-lane paved highway running along the coast; maybe it would gobble up every available acre of shorefront, and have its share of expensive hotels and foreign restaurants. But maybe not, because the most prominent feature of the Djibouti Airport is actually the American airport, that reminder that the former French Somaliland possesses a natural resource that no other country can boast of: coastline at the exact spot where the Red Sea begins, which is itself a 45 minute commercial flight (less by drone, maybe?) from the exact spot where Yemen begins. Location, location, etc. Camp Lemmonier has its own runway, and a visible fleet of Ospreys with their wings at rest, as well as hulking transport jets and humvees guarding any entryways from the main airport. A single American flags flies overhead. And at the main airport, there's the largest plane I've ever seen, an Antonov, a five-storey beast so massive that it has its own name, battleship-style: it's called the Volga-Dniepr, and it has 20 aft wheels (from what I could count) and enough clearance to stack two battle tanks on top of each other. There's also an EU base at the airport, on the opposite side of the runways from Camp Lemmonier--something having to do with piracy, I'm guessing--and I saw German soldiers milling about the arrival hall, and a gang of American grunts debarking from a charter flight.<br />
<br />
Aurally, the airport is a novelty, an interpolation of melodic French into what has been a very guttural previous week (really a very guttural previous month, counting Israel), music made all the more remarkable by its passing quality, moments of glorious difference before the it was time to return to the air.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<br />
SANA'A INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, SANA'A, YEMEN<br />
<br />
Sit on the right side of the plane, take a window seat, and stay awake for the approach: a few moments before landing, you'll see just an epic vehicle dump, with fighter jets and helicopters and humvees wasting away. And not just a couple of them--like, dozens, beaten by the rain and wind into the same rich, wooden shade as the earth.<br />
<br />
There is nothing to do at this airport, a single terminal surrounded by a high wall. Restaurants, departure/arrival displays, functioning WiFi and toilet paper are but four of the things it lacks. Do not be stuck there for five hours, if you can help it.<br />
<br />
And another thing: It's not like some percentage of the Yemeni women are in full hijab--they all are, including the one with a child swaddled in a Spongebob Squarepants blanket, and the one with a red Angry Birds rolling duffel bag. The hijabs are identical bolts of black--some of the women wear black socks and shoes as well; any hemwork is black as well, and the edges of the hijabs shine like glittering black prisms if the light hits them just so. One woman comforted a crying infant who was unable to see his mother's face. There was an African woman in the waiting room in normal western dress, and I almost felt sorry for her, given the judgement that she likely read into every male in the room. She was the only woman whose hair I saw for the entirety of my layover, during which I read a book and humored the local merchants: You might not be able to go on the internet at this airport, but you can buy a Jambiya, the ceremonial daggers that most Yemeni men wear. An amazing thing, the jambiya: a trained eye can apparently tell clan and social class and occupation and even religious or political affiliation just from the ornamentation of the hilt, or the bend of the blade, or by observing whether the leather jambiya belt is worn tightly or loosely. Jews were renowned Jambiya makers; even today, a fine Jambiya blade is complimented as "Jewish work," even though Yemen's Jewish silversmiths fled the country decades ago. More things I learned about Yemen during this layover: holy shit, does it look like an amazing country. I picked up a coffee table book for tourists, and found myself rushing through it even with hours left in my layover--had I lingered on every page, on every mosque and castle and village, on every azure-blue port reflecting rows of ancient skyscrapers, the sense of disappointment at likely never being able to see these things in person would have become too burdensome to fully process. The airport is probably all I would ever see of this place; over the span of my brief and perhaps futile moment on the earth this terminal would be the only Yemen that would ever exist for me, and whatever lay beyond it would only mock my shortage of money or energy or courage or time.<br />
<br />
Yemenis believe that a week in a remote mountaintop village--one of hundreds of lonely desert settlements where ancient ten-storey towers jut straight out of the rock--can cure any psychological ill. Go to one, and balance is restored; life is practically made new.<br />
<br />
<br />
CAIRO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, AGAIN<br />
<br />
The Yemenia flight landed at terminal 1. Back in 2007, my father and I spent a week in Egypt together, and our El Al flight landed at this terminal--the Phaoronic-style arrival hall, with a collosal Egyptian freeze adorning the back wall, was the first place I ever went in Egypt, the first stop on a wonderful and intense trip where my dad and I slept in an unimaginably skuzzy hostel on Sharif Street, climbed every minaret at the Al Azhar mosque and ate potato chips as we waited for worshippers to leave the Ibn Qaitbay mosque, in the heart of the City of the Dead. We shared our sense of unreality at the Pyramids and at Saqqara and Karnak--how could we convey the scale of it all? My dad had lived out a lifelong dream, and any sense of wonder or enchantment I had towards Egypt had been fully spent. When I returned in 2011, I regret that my strongest emotional response to the place was resentment at the traffic--although tonight, it was difficult to spot even a single vehicle on the airport road, or along the tree-lined boulevards of Heliopolis. The curfew was being scrupulously obeyed.<br />
<br />
There had been a massacre in Cairo just a few days before. But the massacre didn't like, happen at the airport, and Terminal 3 was creepily indistinguishable from the past half-dozen times I had been there. I went to the Burger King. I had a full Whopper, as they had run out of the smaller, Juinor variety. My flight left on time.<br />
<br />
<br />
OPHIRA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, SHARM EL SHEIKH, EGYPT<br />
<br />
This was the terminal point--a row of jagged mountains poking through the hot red earth. It was 35 degrees Celsius at 5:20 in the morning. The cab driver wanted me to pay him 25 pounds more than the official, legal price--"for waiting," he said, operating off of the paradoxical and rather mindblowing (and also mistaken) assumption I had entered into a transaction with him before we had even met. I don't care that you want to rip me off, I told him. Take me to my hotel. Take me a place where I won't have to look at another airplane, or eat another cheeseburger, or panic in front of another customs official. Set me down on earth again.</div>
</div>
Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-69637025739463278642012-10-17T21:16:00.000-07:002012-10-17T21:32:33.792-07:00Meditiation on Formal Perfection<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
*kramer walks through a wall without flinching* jerry i,m home *jerry's
knife-wound filled corpse sits on the couch* jerry tell me a joke;</blockquote>
If this stopped at the first line or independent clause or whatever it would still be a kind of hilarious that I could never hope to duplicate. It cracks me up still; it is cracking me up right now. Do we enter mid-PCP binge? What sport if this is the case! Kramer stalks the streets, bugs out, refuses to put on an AIDS ribbon, has business ideas such as beach-scented cologne or maybe a sort of coffee table book about coffee table books, slides, disappears, subsists in New York City without a job or any apparent purpose in life and then CRASH, without flinching even, drywall and paint chips littering Jerry's once-orderly apartment, he has walked <i>through</i> a wall, the greatest of his vaunted entrances. Through a wall, jittering though unfazed, oblivious as always (indeed, none of this makes sense--never mind comedic sense--if one is unappreciative of Kramer's just sort of like, Zen-like, mystical obliviousness), bleeding but unflinching even though there's something very obviously wrong. What is it? He isn't greeted with a stinging bon mot or a friendly groan. It is dark, the apartment is a deep shadow tempered only by the suggestion of a soft and distant streetlight, casting its stale glow from another world. A gaseous, fetid quality pinches the air, but Kramer is on PCP so he smells and notices nothing. God, he is on so much PCP. He sees nothing but the back of a hanging head and hunched neck and everything appears as normal, except that Jerry's corpse is positively <i>filled</i> with <i>knife-wounds</i> (although if Kramer knows that, of course, the humor of the situation is sort of totally lost, unless you find humor in someone expecting to hear a joke from a wound-riddled corpse. Which I sort of do, now that I think about it!). Jerry tell me a joke;--this isn't even the punchline of this situation. That I believe is off somewhere else, perhaps far off, occupying some indeterminant point deep in a vast unwritten Beyond. And this is funny only insomuch as tragedy at its cheapest and cruelest and most flippant or most reducible is funny. Take the Twitter handle Weed Hitler, for instance. See that's exactly what I'm talking about. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://favstar.fm/users/weedhitler/status/131801536874557440">This</a> might be the greatest tweet of all time.</div>
Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-49426727992368199082012-07-06T14:30:00.003-07:002012-07-06T14:37:33.872-07:00Occupy Gaddis, pp 175-205: Coitus Splint<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Thank the Great Cosmic Owl that tomorrow is my last day as a New Yorker. We've been through a lot together, this city and I. I've eaten veal heart in Queens and been inside the original CBGB's back when it was still actually CBGB's. I've stood on the southern tip of the Rockaways; I've been run out of a beach co-op on the southern tip of the Rockaways. I've been harassed by bored, off-duty cops. I've been in the attic of St. John the Divine. I've seen the Pupin Cyclotron, which is now scrap metal. I have wistful, nostalgic memories of about a half-dozen music venues that no longer exist--I can drift into "back-in-my-day"-like reminiscences without a shred of irony or pretentiousness, and with a real, unimpeachable longing for the old Market Hotel, the old Knitting Factory, the old McCarren Pool. Not to mention the restaurants that have closed since I got here--P&W Sandwich Shop on 110th, the kosher felafel stand in front of Borough Hall, El Toro Partido on 138th. Dreams have a very short lifecycle in this town, because this is a mean, status-obsessed, law-and-order oriented sort of town. It's a town of rules and obstacles, a town where the police are creepily ubiquitous in the rich parts of the city and a fucking occupation army in the poor parts. It's a city where you can't drink or ride a bicycle or smoke without exposing yourself to nattering yet potentially serious legal consequences. It's a city where it's impossible to have fun at a rock show, because for most people rock shows are actually a kind of work, more about the joyless slog of status-driven self-making than cultural or individual enrichment. It's a city where you're expected to overpay for everything, just for the supposed privilege of physically inhabiting said city. It's a city that pretends to care about art and creativity, when what it's <i>really</i> obsessed with are patterns of consumption. It's a city where designer-attired men in Babybjorns flag down taxis at 3 in the afternoon on a Tuesday. Six years of this shit is enough. I'm happy to leave this city and its myriad annoyances and anxieties to people with stronger nerves and thicker bankbooks than myself. I'm over it, which is part of the reason why I'll be starting a new job in Washington, DC on Monday.<br />
<br />
An unglamorous and socio-economically striated New York is the setting of J R, and my God do I recognize the place. It's an unglamorous New York, but it isn't cinematically unglamorous in the tradition "Taxi Driver" or Don DiLillo's <i>Underworld</i>. The obsession with status is coded into the city's DNA, threaded through the novel with almost overpowering subtlety. The city's darkness operates on a microbial level--the novel has very few impressionistic touches when it comes to evoking the city-as-postmodern-hellscape, and it's possible to blink past Gaddis's almost-cubistic illustrations of the city's soullessness. New York is a city of tweed-jacketed men plotting scams and takeovers and foreign invasions from penthouse offices lined with stuffed zebra heads. But more than that, it's a city whose tiniest, most throwaway details are consistent with a tweed-jacketed, top-down world of normalized unfairness and criminality.<br />
<br />
The long paragraph on pages 193-4 is a case in point. The paragraph brings together two of Gaddis's recurring motifs--time (as expressed in the upward progress of the elevator) and sound (the Light Cavalry Overture, the Spanish rhythm). I have read no other book that goes so out of it way to evoke the artificiality and oppressiveness of the contemporary soundscape. The inane conversations of the novel's characters, disconnected bits of radio chatter, the music playing at the bank on Burgoyne Street 30 pages into the novel--it's as if Gaddis is narrativizing the constant junk noise that most of us just tune out or accept. In a weird way, this is a novel of ambience. So the long paragraph in the elevator is like a tidal wave of inane detail. There's little punctuation to guide you; the aural and visual and sensory noise just sort of sweeps you along, until you reach the literal Hell (and Hell it indeed is--check out the references to Virgil, Dante etc.) of the Diamond Cable offices. <br />
<br />
Before then, you're given an almost chillingly casual snippet of untoward sexual pursuit, a scene made normal by the headrush of ambient details the reader is bombarded with:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"...an idly scratching hand thrust down the front of the denims burnished where it moved hidden as the other, empty, rose behind her gasped against the waist high rail there for -- You like to give head? posed in a tone as vacant as a face..."</blockquote>
I'm willing to bet that no adjective appears in this book as often as "vacant." This is actually kind of a funny scene, from one angle: Mrs Joubert(?) is propositioned for oral sex on an elevator; this being the sleepwalking, static-choked world of J R, vacancy ensues. And it's also a very disturbing scene: Mrs. Joubert is subjected to perversion and creepiness that is are normal, so coded into the chemistry of everyday life, that it warrants nothing other than vacancy--which is another way of say that <i>everything</i> warrants vacancy. The world of J R is one of darkly comic passivity. Everyone and everything is completely paralyzed, reified, for you Marxists out there--a condition that enables and even justifies the systems of control that the novel satirizes.<br />
<br />
I made a similar point a few posts back, that it remains to be seen if the titular J R will be the avenging angel in all of this. Of course, he might also be a horrible demon child, a monster built by these systems of control, rather than the one figure who can challenge or even dismantle them. The two adult protagonists who could inhabit this role have been hilariously inadequate to it thus far--Gibbs and Bast's complete impotence is played for laughs in these 30 pages, and the "Zebra music" scene and Gibbs's train adventure are two of the funnier episodes in the novel thus far. Perhaps significantly, J R hasn't been held up as an object of ridicule in the book's first 200 pages. </div>Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-26834430983423683652012-07-05T18:01:00.002-07:002012-07-05T18:01:38.852-07:00Occupy Gaddis, pp 150-175: Nobody Has to See Anybody<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Whilst procrastinating en route to today's <i>J R</i> reading, I finally willed myself through the pilot of "The Newsroom" and holy fuck is this show fucking awful. And it's awful in a way that actually ties in nicely with today's reading! See what really grated me about "The Newsroom" wasn't its haughty, even paternalistic construction of the relationship between the Fourth Estate and the viewing public (OK, that grated me), or the fart-sniffing self-righteousness of nearly every single character (that also really grated me) or "The Newsroom's" seemingly-magical and totally unctuous ability to piece together one of the most complex stories in recent years--a story that the New Yorker's Raffi Katchedourain only wrote about like, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/03/14/110314fa_fact_khatchadourian"><i>a year after the fact</i></a>--in like what, 15 minutes (THIS REALLY GRATED ME!). What outraged me the most about The Newsroom was the fact that it <i>depicts people who are good at and who actually really like their jobs.</i><br />
<br />
Is this how life typically works? Do things actually function so smoothly, so seamlessly? Is morale always this high? Are most people constantly possessed with an unquenchable sense of purpose, which sense is expressed in eight hour or ten hour increments five days a week? There is something uncanny, even something disturbing, about such a sleek depiction of such motivated and unwrinkled professional existences. I prefer "The Office," or "Larry Sanders," or even "Louie"--I prefer struggle. The elusiveness of fulfillment, the inner battles with one's limited competencies, and, by extension, one's limited capabilities (i.e. one's inadequacies) as both a professional and a human being--these conflicts are seemingly absent from "The Newsroom." There's struggle, but its stupid, politically-located struggle--struggle against the vacuousness of the newsmedia and the idiocy of the American public, mostly. These conflicts are bullshit, and the characters are more bullshit still. They love their jobs too much, and they love themselves too much.<br />
<br />
Which brings me to the the first ten pages of today's reading, where days--perhaps weeks--pass within the confines of an office in Queens. In a novel of changing leaves and ticking clocks, the scenes in the General Roll offices are notably disconnected from any temporal signifiers. And yet time is constantly being mentioned: take a late lunch, because it will make the afternoon seem shorter. Get a plant to liven up the office, because that's where you spend half your life (not half your time--<i>half your life</i>). A weekend goes by. Angel leaves for a business trip; Angel comes back from a business trip. People come and go. A female employee is on her period.<br />
<br />
Both the reader and the office hacks are acutely aware of how time is passing, but they're unaware of just how much time is passing. And it's passing quite quickly, by the novel's standards: the book's first day takes what, 80 pages? Here, we go through a week in the space of a few thousand words. And it's a week in which very little happens. Much of this novel is dedicated to scenes in which nothing really seems to happen: it's dedicated to obscure, bureaucratic discussions, to technical jargon or legalese, to deep conversations on complex matters that have been foregrounded with little and in many cases no previous exposition. The office scene is a poignantly low-stakes version of that. Time is hastened by virtue of the banality of the conversation filling it. There's frustration and sadness as the bottom of this--Time passes, nothing happens. It's a common and all too human frustration, and Gaddis evokes it brilliantly.<br />
<br />
He evokes it for sound, thematic reasons as well. On page 172, Our Hero explains what I'll simplistically describe as the disembodiment of capital. Money flies around without debtors or creditors understanding who's sending it or who's receiving it or where it's going or why. The paths that it travels are not random, but there's no way of conclusively pinpointing its behavior. Shakespeare makes a similar argument in Act 4 of Timon of Athens, when the title character reflects upon the seemingly mystical quality of gold, a substance that can cancel the predicted course of nature, and that even the gods are enslaved to:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>[To the gold]</i>
<span class="playlinenum">2085</span><br />
O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce
<br />
'Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler
<br />
Of Hymen's purest bed! thou valiant Mars!
<br />
Thou ever young, fresh, loved and delicate wooer,
<br />
Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow
<br />
That lies on Dian's lap! thou visible god,
<br />
That solder'st close impossibilities,
<br />
And makest them kiss! that speak'st with
<br />
every tongue,
<br />
To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts!
<br />
Think, thy slave man rebels, and by thy virtue
<br />
Set them into confounding odds, that beasts
<br />
May have the world in empire! </blockquote>
<br />
Of course, the mysticism of capital is different from the mysticism of specie--capital implies an intricate system of debits and credits; gold is simply money, a more straightforward signifier and enabler of wealth. Gold is a noble and valuable thing; capital, in contrast, can be the absence of value, or the promise of future value. Which is why the office scene is so vital: the office is where value is created; it's where things are made and produced, the tangible side of the crypto-black box economy that J R unwittingly describes. In these 25 pages, we get something of a full look at Gaddis's notion of contemporary capitalism, in all its quiet frustrations and absurdities, in all its mystical banality. It is something less noble, less worthy of high poetry than the notion of capitalism that Timon rails against. This is no bright defiler of Hymen's purest blood, and maybe in the next 500 pages, we'll find that it's something altogether darker--and altogether more familiar to us.</div>Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-34405367881638907502012-06-19T23:13:00.000-07:002012-06-19T23:23:59.161-07:00Occupy Gaddis: A Mongolian Detour<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Didn't read any of J R today. A terror-inducing line outside the Shedd aquarium doomed us to an afternoon at the Field Museum, which has a temporary exhibit about Gengis Khan, the most fascinating historical figure of all time. The exhibit had plenty of interesting shit about the "how" of the rapid and violent expansion of the Mongolian empire (short answer: technological advantages, which included superior longbows, stirrups and badass siege machinery, including a version of the giant crossbow on wheels from Warcraft II, which the exhibit had a delightful scale model of; a carefully-oragized military, a total lack of moral scruples and, you know, just <i>wanting it more). </i>But what about the "why?" Why does a band of illiterate nomads decide that forcibly incorporating the entire known world into a well-organized crypto-cosmopolitan, semi-bureacratic state is like, worth the effort? How does the idea occur to them? Like where does this kind of ambition even come from? I mean this in the literal (as well as philosophical) sense--with modern colonial powers the expansionist impulse is fairly straightforward to understand: there's a drive for resources, political clout and foreign markets, not to mention ideologies of racial and cultural supremacism. But the Mongols didn't care about resources--hell, they even introduced an early version of fiat money. They had no civilizing drive; the reason the empire got so enormous so quickly is that they didn't fuck around with imposing their values on the conquered. In a weird way, the Mongols were open-minded and semi-tolerant <i>because</i> they were motivated purely by tribalism, which is emotional and inward-facing, rather than ideology or religion, which is systematic, expansionist and inherently arrogant. The Mongols weren't involved in any generational political struggles when they kicked this thing off either. They weren't locked into a mutually-destructive long game with the Russians or the Arabs or the Chinese (all of whom they would eventually conquer). They were just kinda roaming the steppes, tending their horses, minding their own business. Then something changed. But what? Why go through the headache? Thoughts?<br />
<br />
So I didn't read today, but these people probably did: Infinite Zombies <a href="http://infinitezombies.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/occupygaddis-a-fanfare-for-money-16/">writes about the money-art nexus</a>, with a nifty take on the bust-drowning on page 1. Chazz Formichella <a href="http://chazpf.tumblr.com/post/25347461675/the-decedent-dies-intestate">on humor in the novel.</a></div>Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-64303047572389732382012-06-19T00:04:00.000-07:002012-06-19T06:58:19.404-07:00Occupy Gaddis pp 51-60: Brooklyn Telephone Directory<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Stray thoughts regarding a journey from Chicago to the Schaumberg Ikea and back:<br />
<br />
-We board the Metra. It is 10:30. The train passes a baroque church, domes like the lid of an antique candy jar. We get to Des Plaines, which we mistakenly believe is pronounced D-ee Play-ne. It is not. The place name, though Francophonic, reverts to more familiar, phonetic pronunciation. Forty-five minutes from Ogilvie, Chicago is a theory, a previous point on an unfamiliar railway line that leads to...<br />
<br />
-Des Plaines. When I heard the words "train to a bus to an Ikea," I immediately pictured some weed-eaten parking lot adjacent to a whooshing highway underpass. This is not the case. Des Plaines has a theater. It has a library newer and nicer than that of my former college. It has a Thai restaurant. Inexplicably--for our own individual benefit almost--it has excellent public transportation. It has Civilization. It has...<br />
<br />
-The bus. It swoops around worrying and unexpected curves, it stops to change drivers for some fucking reason, it huffs its way down Golf Road, which, perhaps coincidentally, abuts a golf course of sorts, or at least it abuts a driving range. It is a straight road, an arrow of a road, fucking a flat frontier of green and corn and two-level houses and cyclists and inflatable swimming pools. Speaking of cyclists, I spot a woman hauling one of those child carriages--and a child--behind her bike on a perilous four-lane road, a road without a bike lane, I should add. Is this person a fucking moron, or is this mode of transportation imposed by economic necessity, rather than idiocy, per se? The bus approaches an office park. This is our stop. For...<br />
<br />
-The flag of St. Gustavus flutters proudly in the breeze. Ikea is a foreign outpost of another nation's nationalism. This nation is Sweden, so who gives a fuck. At lunch, I am served a platter of 15 meatballs, with a Swedish flag impaling the central ball. Said impalement was committed by a wasted-looking female employee in her late 20s, a woman whose ancestry might not have been particularly Swedish. Is this an example of Swedish Soft Power, or is it a more sinister indicator of the postmodern erosion of the Nation State as a morally and practically viable idea, even within our emblematically-American heartland? Or maybe this doesn't demean us Americans so much as it demeans the Swedish nation, which was once something of a regional and even imperial power, a conqueror of men, rather than furniture stores and meatball platters. My brother (whose apartment we are furnishing) and father go tie up some loose ends, which mostly involve paying for our furniture--our Bjorns and Halaks and Anders Behring Breviks--and arranging its safe delivery to downtown Chicago. I read ten pages of J R, a novel I will not be writing about in this blog post. Although earlier...<br />
<br />
-Our helpful Co-Worker was Jeffery. No, not Jeffrey--Jeffery. Much joking will later be made on his account. Were his parents drunk in the delivery room? Or, more tantalizingly, more romantically--were his great great grandparents drunk on corn liquor in the delivery room/wagon/tent; was their clerical error lovingly reproduced throughout the generations, was it enshrined even a century later, carried forward by their Ikea-employed progeny? Jeffery was an English major at some earlier and perhaps more hopeful station in life. He knows every fold-out couch by name. He says that he hasn't sold any of his college books. For a moment, I imagine that J R is one of them.<br />
<br />
-We finally leave. We encounter a Greek, or maybe an Armenian. For money he drives on a highway, in a direction that we're unsure of, towards the city, maybe away from it. We stand at a prairie railway station, staring at the backside of the Arlington Park grandstand. I mention how flat everything is here, how straight. There are no hills, no distinguishing buildings even, it's one sprawling expanse of flat, checkerboarded by straight-ahead roads converging at the occasional 90-degree wedge. The wind picks up, and I'm reminded that tornadoes are a common occurrence around here. Don't worry, my brother tells me. Clouds gather before a tornado hits. It it is clear. I have no idea which way the city lies. In matters directional, only God can help you--the sun is already setting in the west.</div>Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-9901991928456335912012-06-17T22:52:00.002-07:002012-06-18T07:18:07.417-07:00Occupy Gaddis, pp 29-51: What Democracy in the Arts is All About<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I was in Book Court today when the proprietor, a shaggy and appropriately well, bookish-looking middle-aged guy noticed my Nationals cap, and offered consolation as regards the 14-inning heartbreak of the previous afternoon, during which the Nats were one blown call away from beating the universally-hated (even in Brooklyn!) New York Yankees. In the 8th inning, Tyler Moore scored what should have been--what was, as replay would immediately reveal--the go-ahead run in a close play at the plate. He was called out. Fuck everything.<br />
<br />
Philosophical question: how often does it (sports, life, whatever) come down to Just One Thing? The game did not come down to One Thing--The Nats stranded Ryan Zimmerman at 3rd in the bottom of the 13th, and Craig Stammen pitched three perfect innings in extras, just to be pulled in favor of the recently-injured and all-of-a-sudden washed-up Brad Lidge. But the game did come down to Just One Thing--it is not as if the home plate umpire observed the collision at home plate, peered through the temporal mists, considered, for a moment, the Nats' upcoming failures to manufacture runs and manage their pitching staff, and decided to preemptively punish them by deliberately fucking up the game's deciding call. No. This did not happen. What happened was the temporary breakdown of some fairly basic assumptions. Baseball is played with an expectation of a pristine, overriding order. The balls are balls, the strikes are strikes, etc. You cannot manage anything--sports, life, whatever--if chaos governs your assumptions. Things have to work the way you expect them to. The calls have to be <i>right</i>.<br />
<br />
The One Thing that screwed my Nationals was the suspension of this higher order. But fuck it, what is this higher order? Isn't it nothing more--or less--than the arbitrary tyranny of rules, and the people and institutions that uphold and impose them? It's late, and I spent almost my entire post-Book Court day traveling to Chicago, so I'm not gonna wade too deep into the actual reading today (a shame cuz it's an important section: little JR, dressed in an ugly sweater and ditching his Tim and Eric-esque glam rock Wagnerian community theatre interpretive dance routine in order to go commit RICO-level wire fraud using a government-owned phone, the devious bastard, makes his first appearance). But order and the imposition of order is a crucial aspect of the book so far, and most of our characters are adults sitting in a room somewhere, using television screens to remotely control invisible groups of mindless, impressionable children. It's sort of creepy! These are petty, mediocre people that demand loyalty oaths and believe in punchcard-based social engineering schemes--in their hands, even high art becomes a kind of dysentery. They are almost fascists, although not really--although, come to think of it, whether they are or not, and whether Gaddis is trying to evoke a sort of Cold War-bred, distinctly American brand of authoritarianism would be a ripe topic for a future post. <span style="background-color: white;">My little baseball example proves that this arrogant positivism ("arrogant positivists" strikes me as a more accurate description here than "fascists," but hey, where do you draw the line?) can only hide its facile and constructed nature for so long, and I hope that one of the pleasures of this book will be seeing a sixth-grader upend and destroy the systems and assumptions that envelop him. </span></div>Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-1224549124770872542012-06-16T11:54:00.002-07:002012-06-16T12:06:32.116-07:00Occupy Gaddis, pp 16-29: What America is All About<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Mr. Coen (Cohen) eventually shuts up and leaves, and the bottom of page 17 through the top of page 18 represent the longest dialogue-free chunk of novel so far. It describes a world that's immediately familiar to me: "open acres flowing in funereal abundance" give way to a "suburban labyrinth," which sounds like just a fuckin' horrible place: the local World War II memorial is already a "crumbling eyesore," the fire department's (literally funereal) crepe-paper is packed away like an old soda advertisement--if I read the top paragraph of 18 correctly, there's a single, wasting farmhouse marooned in a gingerbread-flat expanse of fresh-paved parking lot. I grew up in the Washington, DC suburbs, near the intersection of New Hampshire Avenue and Randolph Road. At that intersection there are shopping complexes on either side of Randolph, but until about two years ago there were also a pair of crumbling and decidedly agricultural-looking three-level homes with gables and wood siding and even a small veranda, squished between the nail salons and fast-fooderies, homes made poignantly homeless by the urbanizing onslaught, begging, just like fucking begging to be torn down. One of them was replaced with a Wendy's; the other simply rotted away until its ragged wooden bones were quietly disposed of.<br />
<br />
So until recently, there was evidence that my old neighborhood--if it could even be called that--was once something much different. It was agricultural; the road once demarcated property boundaries, and Washington DC felt, and was, very far away. There was no beltway, no ICC, no Metro, no El Salvadorians, no dignified yet mass-produced starter homes, no RideOn buses or belching SUVs. This wasn't like, 100 years ago or anything. This was like, 50 or 60 years ago. And it wasn't necessarily better back then. In fact, life was horribly unfair: in those days, did anyone living in that corner of the DC metro area (if they even called it that back then...) ever dream that Ethiopians and Koreans and Jews would be living in enormous yet affordable houses and sending their kids to the best public schools in the country and taking advantage of a vast public transit system, and that the daily toil and existential uncertainty of farming would be systematized and finally outsourced to places where it actually like, made sense to set aside enormous tracts of land for the sole purpose of agricultural production? I'm thinking probably not! A world as logical and egalitarian and non-racist as ours seemed Utopian or even absurd back then, and the destruction of my neighborhood's agrarian past--indeed its total effacement from the physical landscape--is actually a sign of <i>progress</i>.<br />
<br />
But here (in the novel I mean) we have the dark side of this revolutionary and positive transformation. Yes, there's the replacement of bucolic uselessness (the replacement of some bullshit agrarian myth) with something more equitable, progress-oriented and democratic. But progress is a monster, and this particular section is jam-packed with moments of comic monsterousness: a cartoon Cold War military man wants to integrate his town's cultural initiative with the local school's duck and cover drills. Show the kids a real bomb shelter, he says--show them what America's all about. The kids, meanwhile, are being taught using televisions, and are so incapable of original or critical thought that Mr. Gibbs's speech at the bottom of page 20 ("Order is simply a thin, perilous condition...") is meant to be like, funny. And it is! Speaking of funny, there's this great exchange on page 25:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
--And there's this twelve thousand dollars item for books.<br />
<br />
--That's supposed to be twelve hundred, the twelve thousand should be paper towels.</blockquote>
<br />
Progress is a monster, but maybe it doesn't have to be. In the novel's first 30 pages, we've sat in on two very jargon heavy, very procedural, and actually very boring meetings that have to do with financial and legal minutia that aren't really explained to us. We are waiting on some humanity to appear, someone we can cling to, a character or a voice (there are only voices at this point in the novel--no characters) that will tame or control or even redeem the pulverizing monster of post-war American progress. Maybe it's Edward, who's appeared in this novel (around page 16, I think) without (curiously enough) actually saying anything. Maybe it's the titular JR. Maybe there's no redemption to be had, and we're in for 720 more pages of pure po-mo apocalpyticism. We'll see.<br />
<br />
A couple stray observations: Ms. Flesch (great name) keeps talking about "her Ring," referring to a local performance of music from Wagner's Ring cycle. In Elizabethan English, "ring" is slang for virginity. My ring! a sexually pent up (Ms!) schoolteacher keeps exclaiming during a budgetary meeting in the mid-50s. Heh.<br />
<br />
And finally: some of the descriptions are already tending towards the unintelligible. There are points where the language seems like it's on the brink of total breakdown. Page 22:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"...loomed worsted with a bluish tinge in arbitrary sway over the pastel arrangement behind the desk, cordially drawing Mister diCephalis half out of a sleeve of knife edge pressed nondescript."</blockquote>
<br />
This prose is practically cubist. The physical descriptions in this book are just impossible sometimes.</div>Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-41304797646427018882012-06-15T18:08:00.001-07:002012-06-15T18:08:16.395-07:00Occupy Gaddis, pp 1-15: Money, In a Voice That Rustled<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As best I can tell, William Gaddis's JR is a single uninterrupted block of text, with no chapter breaks or divisions of any type. You know what else is a similarly unified, formally coherent, uninterrupted block? Life itself. Hah.<br />
<br />
Anyway, my first exposure to Gaddis was <i>Agape Agape</i>, which I purchased on a Saturday night during my restless and sexless highschool years. I bought it from Kramerbooks and Afterword, a pretentious and overpriced book shop near Dupont Circle. I had spent a disappointing evening visiting with a friend of mine from my previous summer's trip to Israel. He was in town for a model UN conference, which was being held at the same hotel where Ronald Reagan had nearly been assassinated in 1981. We couldn't stray far from the hotel; nuclear war could break out at any moment, yes even on a Saturday night; lives and college applications were on the line, and over-earnest 10th graders in dress shirts had no choice, just no choice other than staying within a five minute walk of the place. So we reminisced, watched some Olympic ski jumping--a physical absurdity whose repetitiousness hardly detracts and probably even adds to its undeniably hypnotic quality--and went to a Fuddruckers.<br />
<br />
I want to say that my night was salvaged by the chance purchase of a book that somehow changed or at least slightly enlarged my world, or that has stuck with me in some way or another, but this is not the case. Gaddis was an unfamiliar name to me, and the book was short and struck me as at least vaguely potentially intriguing, for reasons I can't really recall. Perhaps the cover blurb or the opening pages indulged or vindicated whatever disaffectedness I was feeling at the time--maybe they explained or more likely deepened the psychic displacement of being cold and alone and like, an hour and half from home, and acutely aware of just how futile and unsatisfying the performance of basic social obligations could be, even the ones that you consider to be real, self-imposed, meaningful obligations. Even those could leave you milling around an expensive bookstore for reasons you're not quite sure of, looking for something or possibly anything, even an incomprehensible 100-page rant about player pianos, just anything that will deepen this awareness of the meaningless and the random that's suddenly and seemingly inexplicably descended upon you. The English seminar po-mo symbolism of the player piano was totally lost on the purer, gloriously unfertilized, just <i>blazingly</i> original mind I carried around back then (the last time in my life that I blogged on a consistent, even bi or tri-weekly basis), and while I can remember the formative books of my high school years (Dos Passos, Faulkner, Whitman, Abdelrahman Munif and Hunter S. Thompson all figure prominently) I wouldn't include Agape Agape among them. My ownership of that book is a physical tribute to a brief and still bizarrely vivid moment of deep juvenile frustration and dread, nothing more or less.<br />
<br />
Is there inherent coherency and meaning to something that's presented in a single, intimidating block of text, or is any coherency and meaning necessarily imposed upon it by expectation? This is a question that immediately presents itself in JR. Two details from the first page: "We never saw paper money till we came east." East from where? Coincidentally, the very friend I was meeting at the Reagan assasination hotel the night I first discovered William Gaddis was the descendent of Russian Jews who fled to China and then immigrated to the west coast of the United States before settling in Cleveland (they spent several months in Shanghai, which once had a surprisingly not-inconsiderable Jewish population). This is to say that the historical experince of "coming east" is not a common one in this country of ours. Typically you go west--you only "come east" if you've gone west and either you or fortune changed its mind at some point or another--or if east is the direction you're moving in the first place, as per my friend's family's novel experience.<br />
<br />
Then a few lines later: "There was never a bust of father, Anne. And I don't recall his ever being in Australia." This is connected to some anecdote related earlier in the conversation, but it's not one that You the Reader are privy to. Or maybe it's related to "moving east?" Who knows. My point in this is that actual, real life is made real by the lack of external, objective signifiers or signposts--no one is telling you what's happening, YOU are tell you what's happening, all the time, right now, while reading this even. In that sense your life is consistent, coherent. In the end, you're alone in there. Depressing! Empowering! Does JR have a similar unity of perspective? It would seem so. <br />
<br />
Yet: the first fifteen pages of this book are geographically diffuse: summers in Cairo, awards recieved in Europe, busts drowned in Vancouver bay, mysterious stints in Australia, permenant moves east. Indiana, which isn't local. And yet the action is totally trapped. It is claustrophobic, with physical, environmental details deliberately withheld: "Sunlight, pocketted in a cloud..." is the only desciprtoin we get on the first page. The action inhabits a world beyond physicality: these are voices from nowhere. The action is happening far, far away, as if on the other end of a telephone conversation (I think a lot of the novel actually is a telephone conversation? Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself). This talk of bastardy and dividends and business interests doesn't seem to apply to anything or anyone, just a series of dissociated names, spoken by three very odd people. Because there are no chapter breaks, there's no hint of when or if these people will be transitioned out of the story. It's all a bit like the Circe chapter in Ulysses, isn't it?<br />
<br />
This dissociation is deliberate. One of the first things that jumped out at me was that Thomas's company makes piano rolls, or cylinders(?) that are inserted in player pianos. James is a composer, a "real" musician, in other words. You'd think that there's sort of a symbiotic relationship between the two brothers' pursuits: James writes piano pieces, Thomas repackages them as piano rolls; James can share his music with masses while Thomas can profit off of his piano rolls. Why it's the dawn of popular music, or art as a mass product. But this is not the case: very quickly, we learn that Thomas and James are not particularly close, which is to say that the creation of music and the mass-production of music are not particularly close, at least not now. They embody personality types that can't really get along, in other words, even if they <i>should</i> get along. I don't know if Gaddis is trying to set up a kind of polar opposition between two clashing artistic or aesthetic value systems--doubtful; I'm only 15 pages into this, and I'm guessing the player pianos are left behind before too long, and the kind of disembodiment and dislocation of Art (did you know you can watch Metropolitan Opera performances in movie theaters now?!?) will seem like a quaint and obscure little matter by the time the American Dream is turned inside out or whatever the heck this book is famous for doing. For now: we have voices chattering about something we can't place, in a location we can't really envision, in what's probably a midwestern but nevertheless comparatively "eastern" part of the country. Matters of money--the ultimate totem of arbitrary assigned value, the emblematic collective fiction of this and really every age--is the sole topic of discussion, although other things (family, a broken button, a broken chair) keep getting in the way. Now, and for however long I stick with this (I'm planning on blogging every day, or as close to it as possible--hold me to it!) we're adrift in a massive block of text, adrift in something approximating life.</div>Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-91553719998387066302012-02-07T18:15:00.000-08:002012-02-08T14:40:46.620-08:00Star Trek-Related Service Journalism Mental Health Break<style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0in; }ul { margin-bottom: 0in; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal">Why am I even writing this? This blog used to be a place where I would try to push my skills as far as they could go, a place for narrative and experimentation and writing I'm conceited enough to think of as art. It was an aspirational sort of place, and maybe it still can be, at least when I achieve the level of caffeination necessary to pull off a non-bullshit 4,000 word post. But until that day, and because this is a post I'll quite enjoy writing and have actually been thinking about for awhile now (pathetically enough...)--it's my top 15 Deep Space 9 episodes!<br /><br />Recall that a few months ago, I wrote rather a long meditation on the first two seasons of DS9. Since then, I've finished watching every arc episode, Klingon and Ferengi-centered episode, and interesting-sounding standalone--in total, I think I've watched a little over half of the series, which Ronald D. Moore accurately described as the most "human" of the Star Treks. I agree with him, but before sharing my best-of it's worth looking at what exactly this might mean, at what "humanity" meant in the context of a show practically dedicated to fictional alien cultures. After all, the show's four principal races—the Klingons, Ferengi, Bajorans and Cardassians—are given something more than a schematic treatment, and their affairs upstage most of the human goings-on, I think. DS9 went for nearly-anthropological thoroughness as far the Big 4 were concerned; you learn not just how their political and religious systems are organized, but also what they value, and how their basic attitudes towards life, the universe, everything etc. differ amongst each other, and from ours as well.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">It's easy to say that humanism in DS9 really refers to the use of alien cultures as a kind of reflection upon human values and human society, but I'm not sure this is true. In <i>The Original Series</i>, Kirk and Company were constantly encountering alien races whose sole existence in the universe seemed to be to teach humanity (which in this case meant racism/Cold War-addled late-60s America) a lesson. It's more accurate to say that the humanism of DS9 is rooted in both a celebration of and ambivalence towards multiculturalism that was very 1990s, but somehow still resonates. For instance, in the final episode (spoiler ahead), the Klingon Chancellor Martok disgusts Sisko by celebrating the destruction of Cardassia--one only needs to look at the debate over what to do about the ongoing slaughter in Syria, along with Russia and China's happy abetting of said ongoing slaughter, to see the difficulty of co-existing with people whose values disgust us. And one only needs to look at an American society still hopelessly—yet rightfully—hung up on issues of race and class difference to see the importance of understanding what multiculturalism and co-existence can and cannot do. DS9 is partly about the discontents (and, if you're being uncharitable, the hollowness) of the Federation's brand of liberal utopianism, a situation that's not without its parallels in the contemporary democratic west.<br /><br />But that's not the only "human" thing that this orgy of brilliantly-realized alien races seemed to hit on. DS9 was about other perennial issues too. I think O'Brien was the only major character without an identity-related hangup or ten. Meanwhile, the Cardassian occupation of Bajor left the Bajorans coping with the aftermath of a century of victimization, and the Cardassians dealing with the failure of their entire political and moral order, for most of the show's first five seasons, and possibly even longer. The show was about how and why the scars of war can never heal, as well as how and why they eventually must heal. Indeed, I cannot think of another show that took a more nuanced view towards the legacy of genocide, xenophobia and war--in fact, I can't think of very many shows that are even interested in these sorts of questions or issues.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">BSG, I supposed. But DS9 lacks BSG's didactic quality, which even the battle scenes and slickly-produced explosions couldn't distract from. I would sometimes got the sense DS9's producers were lecturing me (they certainly don't seem like free market types), but I <i>always</i> got the sense that BSG's producers were lecturing me. And I never really liked what they were telling me either--as I mentioned earlier, BSG tried to pull the neat trick of drawing constant, belabored equivalencies between the human race and their Cylon tormentors, as if victim-blaming and relativism were a substitute for moral nuance. DS9, which has the deepest and most interesting stable of villains of just about any sci-fi show ever, never needed to use cheap equivalencies and parallelisms as a crutch. Because why should it, or any creative endeavor worth its salt, approach evil with laziness? Evil, after all, is extremely fascinating, perhaps the most fascinating phenomenon in this or any universe.<br /><br />Anyway, here are what I believe to be the fifteen best episodes of the series, along with a brief explanation as to why:<br /><br />15. “Defiant” (Season 3): Thomas Riker hijacks the Defiant for the Maquis, and takes the quadrant’s most powerful warship deep into Cardassian space. Riker’s sense of heroism wavers as it becomes clearer that the mission will be a failure—and as Kira convinces him that he’s throwing his life away for reasons that even he doesn’t seem entirely certain of. This episode achieves something resembling high tragedy, insomuch as this is possible within the formal limits of a 40-minute first-run syndicated sci-fi show.<br /><br />14. “Rocks and Shoals” (6): A Trek take on the classic set-piece of two enemy ships marooned on the same island, or planet, in this case. Except that one of the enemy ships is full of Jem Hadar, whose Vorta overlord would rather get himself off the planet alive than save his increasingly unstable charges. A Jem Hadar soldier explaining to Sisko why he has no choice but to die in a wasteful, suicidal attack in order to maintain “the order of things” is arguably the climax of the show’s long and highly fraught engagement with the nature-nurture debate.<br /><br />13. Visionary (3): In one of the most conceptually brilliant episodes of the series, O’Brien finds himself traveling slightly forward in time. At first the future seems banal—he chats up Quark, watches Klingons and Romulans brawl on the Promenade, nothing unusual in other words. Then sees his own dead body in sick bay and eventually witnesses the impending destruction of the station. Odd as this sounds, I actually like this one for its humor. Who couldn’t gaffaw at past O’Brien and present O’Brien lamenting the hopeless convolutions of Trekkian temporal mechanics?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br />12. Body Parts (4): Liquidator Brunt offers Quark something of a Hobbson’s Choice: kill himself in order to fulfill an earlier contract, or violate the contract and end up on the Ferengi Commerce Authority’s dreaded blacklist. Lots of identity angst ensues—as does buddy comedy, when Quark contracts Garak to kill him as quietly and as cleanly as possible.<br /><br />11. Tribunal (2): O’Brien becomes the unwitting victim of Cardassia’s Kafkaesque legal system. You share his panic at the cards being so horrifyingly stacked against him—as well as his righteous indignation when refusing to beg for his life at the end of the episode. “Tribunal” offers a fascinating glimpse at the self-image of the series’ major villains—the episode’s almost humorously over-the-top depiction of Cardassian pathology vis a vis the inherent rightness of their social and political system, marks one of popular culture’s better treatments of totalitarianism.<br /><br />10. Waltz (6): Such a simple episode. Sisko and Dukat are trapped in a cave together; nothing more than that going on here really. Except that EVERYTHING is going on here, because we learn about the dark, psychic forces underpinning the leading villain of the series, a man who, among other things, desperately needs others to validate and flatter his own injured sense of greatness. Also notable: Dukat hallucinates and converses with the sort of “internal” characters that Baltar would have to deal with in BSG. Additionally notable: this is the last time in the series that Dukat would do anything even vaguely interesting, in my mind. This episode is a sort of last-hurrah for the greatest villain in all of Star Trek.<br /><br />9. Blood Oath (2): Dax fulfils an oath from a previous host and joins three aging Klingon warriors on a bloody and inevitably empty quest for revenge. At least the first 3/4ths of the episode involves Dax talking herself into the necessity of joining such a quest, and coping with her own sudden sense of bloodlust. Contains probably the saddest (and most cinematic) final few minutes of any DS9 episode.<br /><br />8. In Purgatory's Shadow/By Inferno's Light (5): This one involves a Dominion planet asteroid, gladiatorial combat, and Garak—basically it’s the most thrilling hour and a half of the entire series. The big reveal about Garak and Enabren Tain midway through par two feels like it explains everything, while explaining nothing at all.<br /><br />7. Civil Defense (3): The Sisko kid trips the universe’s wackiest self-destruct sequence, and what begins as a minor crisis quickly escalates into a life-or-death showdown between Dukat, Kira and Garak. I’m still not quite sure why the station doesn’t blow up in the end, but if Star Trek-style deux ex machina really bothered me that much I’m not sure I would have spent such an in-retrospect appalling amount of my life watching it…</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br />6. For the Uniform (5): Sisko finally captures his white whale (or his Jean Valjean or whatever), but he needs to commit an appalling act of planeticide in order to do it. Sisko sinks to such astounding moral lows in this one that it’s unclear whether you’re meant to sympathize with him—or with Eddington, the most charismatic and idealistic villain (or anti-hero) in the entire series.<br /><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">5. It’s Only a Paper Moon (7): Nog’s PTSD (this show was all kinds of prophetic…) sinks him to a Timon-like retreat from reality—and pushes him into the safety and security of Vic Fontaine’s holosuite program. But It’s Only a Paper Moon, after all, and in a uniquely Trekkian scenario, a hologram has to convince a humanoid of the value and meaning of real, non-simulated life. You could read this as a metaphor for obsessive fandom, but the drama in this episode is so carefully plotted that it seems almost insulting to do so.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br />4. Hard Time (4): O’Brien emerges from a simulated 30-year prison sentence as a different, broken man. But it’s not the “hard time” that’s gotten to him, so much as his senseless murder of his cell-mate, a murder that he actually quite enjoyed from the looks of it. Of course, his cell-mate never really existed—it’s a stand in for his own humanity, for his moral center, for his sense of compassion. In the series’ most cerebral and most disturbing episode, O’Brien tries to come to grips with the apparent ease with which he extinguished that part of himself. This is the kind of episode that the less character-driven Treks (every one other than DS9, I mean) could not have pulled off.<br /><br />3. The Visitor (4): What to say that hasn’t already been said already. I think TV Guide once named this the greatest Star Trek episode, period. It is not. But it is one of the franchise’s chief examples of using Trekkian dramatic structure (i.e. shit that involves time travel, wacky pseudo-science, aliens, bizarre astronomic phenomena, omnipotence, faster-than-light travel, surprise M-class planets, etc.) to tell stories that are both universal and piercingly human.<br /><br />2. Far Beyond the Stars (6): The most po-mo episode of the entire Trek franchise, “Stars” actively draws attention to the artificiality of Star Trek. In fact, the episode is sort of entirely about the artificiality of Star Trek, and about the bleed-over between the real and the imagined that the most convincing of art can create. But this episode is so much more than a cheap po-mo mindfuck. It’s brilliant because it uses that bleed-over to isolate the true villains of the Star Trek, the timeless, seemingly-metaphysical (but only seemingly…) enemy of Kirk, Spock and every Trek character to come after them: xenophobia, groundless hatred, violence, and war. Benny Russell and Benjamin Sisko are effectively fighting against the same thing, and “Stars” subtly points to the possibility that Trek is really a big, elaborate sublimation of latent cultural and social anxieties. In that sense, “Stars” is a kind of companion piece to the TNG finale “All Good Things…,” an episode that has a much rosier (but not necessarily contradictory) thesis as to what this whole Star Trek thing is really all about.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">1. The Wire (2): Garak has a headache! Dr. Bashir discovers that it’s due to an implant in Garak’s brain, left over from his Obsidian Order days, that allows him to release endorphins into his brain such that the most brutal of tortures will feel like an afternoon at Spa Castle. Banishment from Cardassia and life on DS9 is such hell that turning the implant on at all times and flooding his system with artificial endorphins is the only way for him to cope with the misery and disappointment of daily life. But he becomes dependent on the endorphins, even as the implant begins to eat away at his cerebral cortex—so the cure to Garak’s depressive madness actually <i style="">becomes</i> the disease, and the only way to figure out how to safely remove the implant is to get Garak to talk about his past, a fate literally worse than death, as it turns out. The episode is framed around three conflicting (and probably mostly fabricated) explanations that Garak gives for his banishment from Cardassia, explanations that in some way implicate a man named Elim in the events leading up to Garak’s exile. As we learn at the end of the episode, Elim is actually Garak’s first name, and the Elim in Garak’s stories is either a calculated lie or a coping mechanism, or both.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">What makes this the finest 42 minutes of the series? Perhaps it’s Alex Siddiq and especially Andrew Robinson’s virtuosic acting; Robinson in particular would never top his performance here. Or perhaps it’s the episode’s elaboration on Garak and Bashir’s friendship, always a microcosm for the multicultural angst that pervaded the first two seasons of the show. But a large part of its allure has to do with the introduction of a mystery that is never actually solved. A lesser show would have told its viewers why Garak was actually kicked out of Cardassia, and would have taken away much of the drama and mystery, much of the slipperiness surrounding a character that many consider to be the most interesting in the series, simply for the sake of satisfying the perfectly human urge to know. But this episode frustrates that urge, and even five seasons later the viewer still has scant idea why Garak was exiled from his home world.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">This is the last time I will ever write about DS9 on this blog.</p>Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-29002084814372007382012-01-29T09:48:00.000-08:002012-01-29T13:22:25.569-08:00Hitchens and Religion--In Case You Haven't Read Enough About This Particular Topic AlreadyI was reading over the girlfriend's shoulder on the subway yesterday when I came across this sentence (or rather sentence fragment) on page 173 of Christopher <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Hitchens's</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">god is Not Great</span>. They're the opening words of a chapter entitled "Does Religion Make People Behave Better?" and they're as succinct and as damning an indictment of the late polemicist and literary critic as anything I can think of:<br /><blockquote>A little more than a century after Joseph Smith fell victim to the violence and mania he had helped to unleash...</blockquote><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Hitchens</span> goes on to contrast the dishonest and mercenary founder of Mormonism with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">MLK</span>, whose use of religious language and themes to combat the evils of racism and oppression has, at times, been capable of producing "profound emotion of the sort that can sometimes bring genuine tears." I assume <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Hitchens</span>, ever the unwavering opponent of bigotry and injustice, is talking about himself here. But I have to call bullshit--I question whether it's even possible for someone so heartless to weep "genuine tears," or to even understand what it means to do so.<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jospeh_Smith#Death">My knowledge of this is <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Wikipedian</span> at best</a>, but at least according to Mormons, Joseph Smith was a victim of religious persecution, martyred in the process of affecting God's will on earth. Now in this case--and again, I'm really just working off of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Wikipedia</span> here--"God's will on earth" included things like suppressing a burgeoning dissenting element within his movement, which in turn included things like closing down the offices of a newspaper accusing Smith of harboring bigamist and theocratic ambitions. Polygamy, theocracy, suppression of the press--we moderns can agree that these are terrible things. Maybe we can even agree that historical hindsight entitles us to view the Mormons of 1844 as the brainwashed self-righteous outsiders that they most likely were; as people whose belief in a religious fraudster pushed them further and further into the American periphery. It is unsurprising that Christopher <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Hitchens</span> would fail to sympathize with the leader of the less progressive wing of a religious movement so wholly untethered from and so totally unconcerned with modernity, tolerance, empirical truth, etc. When you put it that way, I'm not sure I even sympathize with them.<br /><br />But--and again, I'm no expert on this--it appears that Joseph and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Hyrum</span> Smith were in fact <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Joseph_Smith">lynched and mutilated by an angry mob after being accused of "treason" against the state of Illinois</a> (this after the pair went to the provocative lengths of declaring martial law in the Mormon hamlet of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Nauvoo</span> after shutting down the aforementioned anti-Smith newspaper). The mob consisted partly and maybe even largely of local anti-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Mormonists</span> who, in addition to being your run-of-the-mill religious bigots, saw Smith's imprisonment as an opportunity to expunge a group of local rabble-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">rousers</span>--kill the suddenly-imprisoned and soon-to-be-executed Smith, they must have reasoned, and this whole polygamist vs. anti-polygamist, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">theocrat</span> vs. anti-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">theocrat</span> nonsense could be foisted on strangers living deeper in the frontier. Regardless of his <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">illiberalism</span>, it is not accurate to say that Smith "fell victim to the violence and mania he had helped unleash." Instead, he was a victim of religious persecution. It was persecution that attained a certain, inevitably murderous legitimacy as a result of Smith's own failings as a leader (all five of the people charged with Smith's killing, including the editor of a local anti-Mormon newspaper, were eventually acquitted). But so what? We don't agree with most of what the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Rebbe</span> of New <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Skvare</span> believes, but if he were imprisoned on trumped-up charges of treason and then lynched by non-Jewish <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Rockland</span> County locals on the basis of his religious leadership alone, I'm guessing even the most progressive among us would be so appalled as to start questioning the very nature of the country and society we're living in.<br /><br />This half-sentence, throwaway dismissal of an <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">individual's</span> religious liberty--which is, by extension, a throwaway denial of basic human dignity, up to and including the right not to be lynched by an angry mob--contains just about everything that makes me uneasy about <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Hitchens's</span> work. And it's not just that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Hitchens</span> could speak and write passionately about one group's persecution while callously shrugging off <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">another's</span> (<a href="http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2011/12/16/main-feature/1/the-trouble-with-hitchens">my friend Benjamin <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Kerstein</span> once noted</a> that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Hitchens</span> was so appalled by Nazi symbolism on the streets of Beirut that he put his life in danger to vandalize a Syrian Social Nationalist Party monument--but he still believed that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Antiochus's</span> failure to eradicate Judaism was one of history's great tragedies). Rather, it's his criteria for who does and doesn't deserve some rudimentary human dignity: <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Hitchens</span> isn't bothered by the facts of Smith's death, because Smith spread ignorant, poisonous piffle that is simply below all contempt. Never mind that it's piffle that millions of people believe. And never mind that religious association might have to do with things over than mere belief; that even in 1844, Mormonism provided its followers with an outsize, even Utopian sense of purpose that my modernity and Judaism don't prevent me from admiring on some level. Never mind all that--if a belief structure doesn't pass <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Hitchens's</span> ontological sniff test, then those who promulgate it don't deserve his sympathy or even that most basic of freedoms, i.e. the freedom not to be killed as result of one's deepest convictions.<br /><br />I think that fifty years from now, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">Hitchens</span>' lack of intellectual curiosity, and lack of even basic empathy in terms of understanding what religion means to people--joined with his abundant willingness to drone on about religion for literally hundreds of pages at a time--will go down as his greatest critical failing. I'm guessing his work on religion will be politely ignored; chalked up to the sort of unfortunate eccentricities that the most brilliant minds are often prone to. After all, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">Hitchens</span> was an eloquent defender of western liberalism, someone whose refreshingly shameless (and antiquated) fervency for the philosophy and rhetoric of the Enlightenment powered his writings on topics as diffuse as Cyprus, radical Islam and Bill Clinton. Who wants to remember that he flippantly suspended his own principles as far as religion was concerned?<br /><br />His admirers can hope that future generations forget about this. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">Hitchens</span> used to insist that "religion poisons everything." He did so with total sincerity, a sincerity that seemed slightly delusional when I saw him debate Rabbi David <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">Wolpe</span> a few years ago. It was <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">Wolpe</span> who came off as decent and genuinely open and tolerant; <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">Hitchens</span> who came off as petty and unctuous. Religion apparently doesn't poison-everything after all! It is, however, hard to read this half-a-sentence and not wonder whether <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">Hitchensian</span> anti-religion, and the hostile, anti-intellectual and even morally degrading stance towards one's fellow man that it entails, isn't a little poisonous itself...<br /><br />...<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/opinion/sunday/kristof-whats-he-got-to-hide.html?_r=3&hp">Elsewhere in silliness, it's Nick <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">Kristof</span></a>! <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">Meles</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">Zenawi</span> has been dictator of Ethiopia for two decades now. He's presided over famines, stolen elections, and pointless and needlessly destructive wars with Eritrea. His county is somewhere in the 170s of the Human <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">Devleopment</span> Index, which surely has something to do with his government's long-standing hostility towards <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37">NGOs</span>, civil society groups, democracy--you know, the things that allow people to question why their country is such a fucked up and woefully mismanaged place. He's a bad dude! He's been a bad dude for a really, really long time!<br /><br />But <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38">Meles</span> has really crossed the line this time.<br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_39">DAVOS</span>, Switzerland<br /><br /><p itemprop="articleBody"> IN a filthy Ethiopian prison that is overridden with lice, fleas and huge rats, two Swedes are serving an 11-year prison sentence for committing journalism. </p><p itemprop="articleBody"> Martin <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_40">Schibbye</span>, 31, and Johan <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_41">Persson</span>, 29, share a narrow bed, one man’s head beside the other’s feet. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_42">Schibbye</span> once woke up to find a rat mussing his hair. </p><p itemprop="articleBody"> The prison is a violent, disease-ridden place, with inmates fighting and coughing blood, according to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_43">Schibbye</span>’s wife, Linnea <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_44">Schibbye</span> Steiner, who last met with her husband in December. It is hot in the daytime and freezing cold at night, and the two Swedes are allowed no mail or phone calls, she said. Fortunately, she added, the 250 or so Ethiopian prisoners jammed in the cell protect the two journalists, pray for them and jokingly call their bed “the Swedish embassy.” </p><p itemprop="articleBody"> What was the two men’s crime? Their offense was courage. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/27/ethiopia-jails-swedish-journalists-terrorism">They sneaked</a> into the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_45">Ogaden</span> region to investigate reports of human rights abuses. </p></blockquote><p itemprop="articleBody"><br /></p><p itemprop="articleBody">That's right, readers. He's imprisoned Swedish people.<br /></p><p itemprop="articleBody">Now I agree that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_46">Zenawi's</span> imprisonment of two Swedish journalists is alarming. But at this late stage in the game, I can't help but think back to Jeffrey Sachs' risible claim that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_47">Zenawi</span> was a member of "<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=PNI9tqKVicIC&q=Zenawi#v=snippet&q=Zenawi&f=false">Africa's new generation of democratic leaders who are pointing the way</a>" in <span style="font-style: italic;">The End of Poverty</span>. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_48">Zenawi</span> was considered a trailblazer and a democrat back when he parroted Jeffrey Sachs' beliefs about the Western obligation to sustainably develop Africa. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_49">Zenawi's</span> true colors have been obvious for decades now, but it's only when he turns on western journalists that he earns himself the dubious honor of a Nick <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_50">Kristof</span> column.I gather that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_51">Zenawi</span> has fallen in and out of popular favor based solely on the perception of sustainable developers and soap-boxing New York Times columnists--self-appointed apostles of progress and change whose individual agendas apparently have little to do with the millions of Ethiopians, Eritreans and Somalis who have suffered under 20 years of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_52">Zenawi's</span> rule.<br /></p>Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-5007196663166257302012-01-18T06:49:00.001-08:002012-01-18T14:23:43.619-08:00Notes on the SOPAcalaypseWhat a bizarre political moment <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">SOPA</span></span> has produced. I cannot remember a more loathed piece of legislation. George W. Bush's social security privatization push was cause for widespread anguish, but it never had much of a chance of getting passed, and didn't make it nearly as far through the legislative process as <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">SOPA</span></span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">PIPA</span></span> have. The PATRIOT act is so hated in some quarters that's it's seen as a harbinger of our declining democratic values--but it also has scores of willing defenders, and at least serves the abstractly altruistic purpose of preventing us from getting blown up by terrorists. The fight over <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Obamacare</span></span> dragged out for over a year, but with a solid majority of Americans in support of overhauling this country's dysfunctional <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">healthcare</span></span> system, it's hard to group it with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">SOPA</span></span>, which seemingly nobody supports.<br /><br />Like really, have you read any op/eds, essays, tweets--like, individual tweets even--in favor of this thing? Even the usual channels of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">dipshittery</span></span>--your <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">O'Riellys</span></span>, your George Wills, your New York Times editorial pages--are silent on this one, with actual intelligent people who know a little something about the Internet--your Julian Sanchez, your <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Reddit</span></span>, your Electronic Frontier Foundation-- dominating the public discourse. Admittedly I'm somewhat of a casual observer here, but it seems like the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">SOPA</span></span> debate is pretty much down to "every smart person who writes about tech policy for a living, along with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">randos</span></span> from across the political spectrum (<a href="http://www.redstate.com/erick/2011/12/22/stopping-sopa/">Eric Erickson</a>?!?!)" vs. Lamar Hunt. And God bless the good Texas congressman, because without him, and his trusty sidekick, the reptilian (and ethically-challenged!) Chris <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Dodd</span></span>, there would be no debate of which to speak. Hunt and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Dodd</span></span> are <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">seemingly</span> the only two people in existence who are willing to offer a quote or a public statement in support of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">SOPA</span></span>, and in a weird sense, they deserve our gratitude. If the lead villains were any less transparent, any less flippant or contemptuous, the anti-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">SOPA</span></span> movement would be a somehow less satisfying to witness.<br /><br />On the other hand: <a href="http://projects.propublica.org/sopa/">take a look at the list of lawmakers who support this thing</a>. More instructively, look at the Democrats who support it. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">SOPA</span></span> has won the support of both conservative democrats (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Gillibrand</span></span>, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Wasserman</span></span>) and very liberal ones (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Conyers</span></span>, Reid). In fact, it's even supported by Rachel <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Maddow's</span></span> former lead-in on Air America, a man whose mere presence in the U.S. senate was once offered as proof that shameless, fearless progressives still had a constituency in this country. For reasons I can't even begin to fathom, Al <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Franken</span></span>, a man who like, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lies-Lying-Liars-Tell-Them/dp/0525947647">wrote a bestselling book about the culture of dishonesty and hypocrisy in American political discourse,</a> is a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">SOPA</span></span> supporter, and a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">PIPA</span></span> co-sponsor. But just to begin to fathom them: let's recall that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Franken</span></span> is the Senate's most outspoken supporter of net neutrality, so he already believes that the government should adopt an aggressively interventionist policy towards both the uses and overall architecture of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">internet</span></span>. Likely the net neutrality debate convinced him that he has both an expertise and a level of clout on web policy that he obviously doesn't possess--but this reasoning only explains why <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Franken</span></span> trusts himself and people like him to determine what the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">internet</span></span> should look like and do. It doesn't explain the underlying principles that would actually convince him to support <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">SOPA</span></span>, since backing the regulation of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">internet</span></span> service providers doesn't necessarily require you to back the regulation of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">internet's</span></span> content.<br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">SOPA</span></span> has produced one of those depressingly familiar (but also quite bizarre!) political moments in which our valiant leadership is acting contrary to the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">public's</span></span> actual wishes and interests, and in accordance with an occluded and probably corrupt jumble of motivations known only to themselves, to the extent that they are even known at all. Last night, I had the awe-inspiring experience of seeing Kevin Spacey play Richard III at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">BAM</span></span>; possibly the most chilling moment of his performance (which was an embarrassment of chilling moments) was the Act I soliloquy in which Richard tells the audience or himself or whoever that he's realized what a corrupted and hateful person he is, that he has no friends, no family, no one who trusts him, no one who he can trust or depend on; that he's alone with his <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34"><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">ambitions</span></span>, succored only by a toxic insecurity and an insatiable desire for control. "I am crept in favor with myself," he says, in one of Shakespeare's more profound reflections on political psychology. It's like he's saying that power is a lonely and dangerous prospect, and those who seek it drift blindly towards a kind of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">Glochesterian</span></span> event horizon where ambition shapes the self even as the self shapes <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">ambition</span>; where your motives become cluttered and hidden even from yourself, and where the self is overwhelmed by a mad, self-justifying lust. How many <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">SOPA</span></span> supporters are "with themselves?" How many have no understanding of what they're doing or why they're doing it? How many have become unmoored within the deadly, tumbling seas of their own disordered minds?<br /><br />But I digress. My point in all this is that it is bad for democracy when laws this reviled are supported for reasons that no one can really explain or justify. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">SOPA</span></span> deserves to die on its merits. But it deserves to die because I don't want to be the subject of a political system that can blacken even Al <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_39"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37">Franken's</span></span> heart. A system that passes <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_40"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38">SOPA</span></span> in light of this loud of a public outcry is a system that cynicism has finally conquered. Along with the now-totally inexplicable continuation of the drug war, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_41"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_39">SOPA's</span></span> success would be yet another depressing indicator that our leaders are crept in favor with themselves alone...<br /><br />...And what of our most powerful leader? For me, the most fascinating aspect of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_42"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_40">SOPA</span></span> debate is President <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_43"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_41">Obama's</span></span> relative absence from it. Obama could have single-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_44"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_42">handedly</span></span> stopped <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_45"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_43">SOPA</span></span> weeks ago simply by promising to veto the bill if it's passed--I doubt that there are that many Democratic legislators who want to kick off an election year by both defying a sitting president and voting for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_46"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_44">SOPA</span></span> <span style="font-style: italic;">twice</span>; moreover, I doubt that these legislators and their Republican allies would<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span> constitute the 2/3<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_47"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_45">rds</span></span> majority needed to override a presidential veto.<br /><br />Such a promise would have been politically savvy, and perhaps even politically essential. Not sure if you've noticed this, but the cool kids in the Republican conference are pretty much lined up against this thing: <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_48"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_46">Bachmann</span></span>, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_49"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_47">Issa</span></span>, Scott Brown, Marco <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_50"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_48">Rubio</span></span>, as of this morning. Ron Paul. All opposed. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_51"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_49">SOPA</span></span> opposition is one of those rare libertarian causes that isn't offensive to some large percentage of the Republican base, <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> that isn't <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_52"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_50">offenseive</span></span> to some even larger percentage of the general electorate. Surely some Republican strategist is going to figure out how to marry the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_53"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_51">Paulite</span></span> civil-libertarian surge to the apparently quite-popular idea that the government should keep its fucking hands off of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_54"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_52">internet</span></span>. My guess is that this strategist will also figure out how to turn the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_55"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_53">SOPA</span></span> narrative against the Democrats, what with the president being a Democrat and a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_56"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_54">PIPA</span></span> co-sponsor basically being the lefty version of Jim <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_57"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_55">DeMint</span></span>.<br /><br />More importantly: Obama carried the youth vote the last time around. It's part of why he won swing states like Pennsylvania, Virginia and Ohio. He convinced young people that the 2008 election was a historic moment, and that his was a historic campaign. He built a movement on the hopes and on the backs of 18-30 year <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_58"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_56">olds</span></span> who truly believed in him. How many are gonna believe in him if he actually signs <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_59"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_57">SOPA</span></span>? How many will even vote for him? I know I won't. Just by letting <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_60"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_58">SOPA</span></span> fester for this long, Obama is signaling that the entertainment industry's support might actually be more vital to his reelection chances than the kind of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_61"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_59">movementarian</span></span>, grassroots youth mobilization that propelled him to the presidency. This alone is kind of a "fuck you."<br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_62"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_60">Mashable</span></span> <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/01/16/obama-sopa-position/">has a pretty interesting primer on <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_63"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_61">Obama's</span></span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_64"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_62">SOPA</span></span> position</a>. On the one hand, Obama believes that the Justice Department should have the ability to go after websites that pirate American intellectual property. On the other hand, he's against a bill that would threaten freedom of expression online. Whatever; <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_65"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_63">Franken</span></span> and company probably don't think that the current incarnation of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_66"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_64">SOPA</span></span> threatens freedom of expression online, and Lamar Hunt is greedily <span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span><a href="http://judiciary.house.gov/news/01172012.html">welcoming any opportunity to keep <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_67"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_65">SOPA</span></span> on the legislative agenda</a>. Obama could put an end to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_68"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_66">SOPA</span></span> in a single press release, given the unpopularity of the bill. He could send a clear message to Congress that they badly fucked up and should now be forced to start this process over again. So why hasn't he?Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-70967605968541133662012-01-04T08:15:00.000-08:002012-01-04T10:45:28.377-08:00And Now For Something Comparatively TrivialSo it looks like my very own Washington Nationals are on the verge of signing Prince Fielder. Oh my God. The Washington Nationals are on the verge of signing Prince Fielder. Fuck! What do we do with ourselves, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Nats</span> fans? For years, we've been shackled to a franchise that was hesitant to spend money on anyone, regardless of whether that "anyone" was a first-round draft pick or a hall-of-fame manager. The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Nats</span> front office has been characterized by a series of high-profile failures and flare-ups, such as the failure to either trade or re-sign Alfonso <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Soriano</span>, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Esmalyan</span> Gonzales fiasco, or Jim <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Bowden's</span> entire tenure. Even seemingly-good ideas, like dedicating unimaginable amounts of money to stealing a borderline-star player from a bitter divisional rival, have dramatically backfired, at least thus far.<br /><br />If this happens--if the Nationals land an actual, no bullshit top-flight free agent at the peak of his productivity, and at a position of the utmost need--it would be the franchise's defining moment since moving to DC, reflecting a dramatic change in attitude and priorities. A Fielder singing would serve as an <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">acknowledgement</span> that the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Nats</span> can't win by playing small ball; that while they might be able to bunt, sac-fly and suicide squeeze their way to an 80-81 record, it'll take a bit more than that to beat the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Phillys</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Floridas</span> of the world. And it would be an <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">acknowledgement</span> that the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Nats</span> can't win just by sitting on their hands and hoping that their prospects pan out two or three years down the line--it would cop to the reality that management actually has to make bold, expensive decisions every once in awhile if they want to field a contender. More so than the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Werth</span> signing, the record contract for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Strasburg</span> and the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Gio</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Gonzelez</span> trade, giving Prince Fielder a 9-year, $200 million-type deal would signal a complete reorientation for the club.<br /><br />Now we Washington sports fans are used to moves like these actually wrecking the franchises they were meant to save. The Caps traded so little for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Jaromir</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Jagr</span> that his acquisition was tantamount to a free agent-signing, and after landing <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Jagr</span>, the Caps promptly signed him to the most valuable contract in NHL history. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Jagr's</span> tenure resulted in his two worst seasons, zero playoff series wins, whining, infighting, firings, and by far the most painful fire sale in DC sports history, a culling that left a doddering Olaf <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Kolzig</span> as virtually the only recognizable player on the roster. The Redskins' signing of a disinterested Deon Sanders hogged cap space and symbolized an entire era of mismanagement and excess. The Bullets gave up two first-round picks for the right to sign <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Juwon</span> Howard to one of the largest contracts in NBA history; in return, Les <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Boullets</span> got one measly playoff appearance and the worst nickname, jersey and logo in the history of sports. Surely the names <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Haynesworth</span>, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Stubblefield</span>, Jeff George and Albert Belle are familiar to some of you.<br /><br />By now, DC fans harbor an ingrained suspicion of expensive potential saviors. But it's worth setting aside here, because signing Fielder makes more actual, organizational sense than any of those other, inevitably <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">nightmaric</span> moves. As Nate Silver explained in a seminal essay about baseball free agency, the value of an additional win <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=5852">increases exponentially when a team is within the playoff contention "sweet spot" between 80 and 90 wins</a>. By value, Silver actually means long-term financial value for the franchise--because pennant races produce buzz and the ticket sales and TV views that come with it, and because even a single playoff appearance can increase a team's revenues for up to a decade, games in which a playoff berth is potentially at stake have a potentially-outsize effect on a franchise's long-term and of course short-term cash flow. According to the chart, win #90 (which is usually a playoff-clinching win, since teams miss the playoffs at 90 wins like, 1-3% of the time, if I remember correctly) is worth an additional $4.5 million of revenue, whereas win #79 is worth only about $750,000.<br /><br />Cumulatively, wins 80 through 90 produce somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 million in extra revenue. The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Nats</span> won 80 games last year. According to baseball reference, <a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/f/fieldpr01.shtml">Fielder performed at 5.2 wins above replacement, and 5.9 offensive wins above replacement last season</a>. The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">Nats</span> are currently in the process of negotiating a new TV deal with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">MASN</span> and have yet to sell the naming rights for Nationals Park, so the "sweet spot" multiplier might even be understated in this case (Fielder is one of those players whose adds value to a franchise beyond his performance on the field, I think it's safe to say). Twenty mil a year for Fielder could be a bargain from an organizational perspective, at least for the first 3 to 5 years of the deal. The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">Nats</span> wouldn't just be throwing money at a sexy free agent, the way the Caps and Redskins used to.<br /><br />Another reason not to worry about a potential Fielder signing: even if the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">Nats</span> end up overpaying Fielder over the second half of an 8 or 9 year contract, they're already overpaying Adam <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">LaRoche</span>. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">LaRoche</span> produced <a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/l/larocad01.shtml">a piddling 4 runs above replacement over 600 plate appearances during a contract year in Arizona in 2010</a>. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">LaRoche's</span> season was cut short by a shoulder injury last year, but there's no use in pretending that the guy is actually like, all that good. The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">Nats</span> brought him in--and paid him an astonishing $7 million for his replacement-level services--simply because their infield defense had been pitiful the season before, and because an aggressively mediocre journeyman who had the proven ability to hold up over an entire season seemed better than the currently-available alternatives (Morse's breakout season made <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">LaRoche's</span> acquisition seem a bit superfluous. But Morse was a 27-year old career minor <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">leaguer</span> when the season began.). There's something to be said for consistency and a baseline of competence, even when that baseline is fairly low. But does it really make more sense to overpay a 32-year old replacement-level 1st basemen in 2012, when the team appears to be on the cusp of something special, than it does to overpay a 32-year old probably well-above replacement-level 1st basemen in 2017, after five years of actual, honest-to-God contention? If the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">Nats</span> are going to overpay a 1st baseman, I'd rather it be Prince Fielder 5 years from now than the current incarnation of Adam <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37">LaRoche</span> (by the way, apparently Florida, Milwaukee and a number of other teams disqualified themselves by refusing to sign Fielder to more than a five-to-six year deal. If five years of overpaying for .700 OPS is the price of five years of arguably underpaying for 1.1 OPS, then fuck it, just sign him. We'll figure out whether and how often he plays <span style="font-style: italic;">after</span> we win the 2015 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38">NL</span> pennant...).<br /><br />Obviously there are concerns. Fielder is a below-average defensive player, and unless he does a ton of steroids his power statistics will likely plummet during the second half of his deal. But let's worry about that shit later. If the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_39">Nats</span> land Fielder, they add a player who finished top-3 in the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_40">NL</span> in walks, homers, runs created and win probability added in 2011 to a power-deficient lineup that could very well improve next year. If Jason <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_41">Werth</span> performs just slightly below his career average, if Ian Desmond continues his tear from late last season, and if Danny <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_42">Espinosa</span> and Michael Morse can stay within the 20-25 home run range, this is a mildly formidable lineup, even without Prince Fielder batting 4<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_43">th</span>. And with him batting 4<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_44">th</span>, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_45">Nats</span> would turn their franchise around and acquire a player who might as well be a robot constructed by a team of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_46">cyberneticists</span> who also happen to be <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_47">sabermetricians</span> in their spare time.<br /><br />Most importantly, now that I've hacked out a fairly lengthy blog post on the matter, this deal had better like, actually happen.Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-51659077881038287382012-01-03T09:32:00.000-08:002012-01-03T16:00:48.564-08:00Least Shocking Thing Ever: Former American Conservative Blogger and Professional Jew-Baiter Philip Weiss Apologizes for Ron PaulThis isn't the kind of thing I like writing about on this blog, but when you can't let something go you just can't let something go. I was scanning <a href="http://mondoweiss.net/">the worst website in existence</a> when I came across Phil Weiss <a href="http://mondoweiss.net/2012/01/pauls-challenge-to-progressives.html">fulminating about the mainstream media's collective poo-pooing of Ron Paul's presidential campaign</a>. The Post and the Times don't want an honest discussion of American militarism in the Middle East!, Weiss claims without citing any evidence whatsoever. Worse than its ad hominem nature is the post's inclusion of what might be two of the more ignorant paragraphs I've ever read about the Egyptian uprising of roughly a year ago:<br /><br /><p></p><blockquote><p>If you care about the antiwar issue, joining with Ron Paul is like seculars joining with the Muslim Brothers to get rid of Mubarak. You needed a broad coalition to push Hosni out. And in the end, that coalition did the impossible; it moved Obama. Obama wouldn't have jumped in if not for Tahrir. He needed political cover. A broad coalition gave it to him.</p> <p>But what if leftwing secular social-media types had stood around Tahrir Square asking the smart question, <em>Hey what do these folks-- Muslim Brothers and Salafis-- want to do with the role of women in politics?</em> They would never have gotten rid of Mubarak.</p></blockquote><p></p><br />Ignoring, for a moment, how abhorrent it is to attribute Mubarak's ouster to some mythical liberal-Salfi-Ikhwan-social media alliance, rather than the years' worth of potentially life-threatening political organizing and civil society-building undertaken by traditionally lefty outfits like the April 6th movement--ignoring that: it's unsurprising, but nevertheless distasteful, to see someone like Weiss weeping over someone like Paul. Weiss once blogged for and frequently contributed to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_Conservative">The American Conservative</a>, a publication that Pat Buchanan founded in 2002 and edited until 2007. The sentence preceding this one would itself be an ad hominem, had TAC not published the following paragraphs, which were authored by none other than Phil Weiss, and which were selected more or less at random after a brief skim of <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/article/2007/jun/04/00014/">this article</a>:<br /><br /><span class="webtext"><p class="body"><span class="body"></span></p><blockquote><p class="body"><span class="body">Yes, but what about my hard-earned views? Israel and the Mideast were crucial pieces in American foreign policy. Jewish giving was the largest factor in Democratic campaign financing. Peter had never squelched my views, but how free would I be as a writer, knowing what I knew about the bosses’ feelings?</span></p> <p class="body"><span class="body">As the meeting went on with Peter praising my talents in his Ziegfeldian way, I became upset. “Peter, don’t you see what’s happening in this country? Ron [Rosenbaum] just went to Slate. He is pro-Israel. Slate also lately hired Shmuel Rosner, an Israeli who loves the neocons, to write from Washington.” I grabbed a galley of Jeffrey Goldberg’s book from one of the piles in Peter’s office. “Goldberg works for <em>The New Yorker i</em>n Washington and because he thought America was dangerous for Jews, he moved to Israel and served in their army, then he moved back here and pushed America to go to war in Iraq. Well, I’m different. I don’t think America is dangerous for Jews, and I’m critical of Israel. And there’s no room for me here. There’s no room.”</span></p></blockquote><p class="body"><span class="body"></span></p></span>Weiss is a proud, card-carrying conspiracy theorist who has published articles in America's leading paleoconservative journal, which was itself founded by one of America's leading card-carrying conspiracy theorists. Of course this guy would be a Ron Paul supporter.<br /><br />Ron Paul believes all sorts of asinine things about Jewish influence; beliefs which happen to justify a left-wing, anti-war view of America's role in the world. And as I mentioned in my last post, Paul's ability to stake a heroically reasonable position on certain issues rests on a bedrock of pure crazy. The difference between say, Ron Paul and Gary Johnson is that Paul understands that his ideas will stagnate if he's unable to build up a base of support. Depressingly enough, in America in 2012, barely-telegraphed conspiracist tripe about Jewish influence and Jewish money is one way of building up a base of support.<br /><br />The parallelisms between Mondoweiss and the Ron Paul campaign explain why Weiss's enthusiasm for the Texas congressman has produced such a fit of pique for me. Weiss, like Paul, is a race-baiter masquerading as a fearless truth-teller. Weiss's blog might be successful (well, relatively successful) because it follows the spirit of the Paulite movement in staking a heroically reasonable position on the Middle East--but it's also successful because it follows the spirit of the Paulite movement in offering an unabashed appeal to the American psyche's basest, most paranoid, and most racist instincts. Ron Paul and Phil Weiss are kindred spirits in the worst possible sense.Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-79060494855776243792011-12-27T12:36:00.000-08:002011-12-27T23:55:20.957-08:00Ron Paul is the Cause of and Solution to Everything That Ails UsOver at Reason, Brian <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Doherty</span> <a href="http://reason.com/blog/2011/12/26/why-i-dont-think-the-ron-paul-newsletter">makes a strong but inevitably unpersuasive argument for simply ignoring Ron Paul's endorsement and possible authorship of decades' worth of racist, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">conspiracist</span> newsletters</a>--an argument which is, by extension, an argument for just sort of resigning ourselves to the sinister nuttiness of the entire Ron Paul phenomenon. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Doherty's</span> argument goes a little something like this: yes, racism is bad. But you know what's worse? The drug war:<br /><br /><blockquote>And, more importantly, I believe it's less important to beat up on and condemn a certain set of powerless and marginalized people who think and believe some nasty things everyone agrees are wrong than it is to beat up on and condemn the set of incredibly powerful people who <em>actually act</em> to commit crimes and rights-violation and damage to life across the globe who everyone thinks are perfectly right to do so. And Ron Paul is the only candidate with any public traction and fans who condemns and would fight to stop such crimes, from the drug war to non-defensive overseas wars to armed assaults on people because they sell raw milk to rampant violations of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">American's</span> civil liberties and privacy to an organization in charge of our money supply that uses that power to scuttle the entire world economy and bailout its buddies.</blockquote>And right he is, sort of (not down with that bit about the Fed at the end....). The drug war is the single most appalling perversity in American politics. It turns millions of productive citizens into criminals, and virtually every politician into a shameless hypocrite. At least in theory, American liberalism is about fighting against militaristic, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">neo</span>-imperialist policies that trample civil liberties, buoy the prison-industrial complex, provide a tacit endorsement of widespread tax evasion, and exert a grossly disproportionate effect on minorities and the poor. At least in theory, American conservatism is about fighting policies that waste tens of billions in taxpayer dollars, mock the very concept of states' rights, and vastly expand the power of every level of government. And while the beauty of American democracy is that it forces liberals and conservatives to compromise their own deeply-held principles in the name of some greater social good, what's disgusting about American drug policy is that it depends upon every major politician of either ideological stripe constantly violating these principals in the name of <a href="http://www.nyclu.org/issues/racial-justice/stop-and-frisk-practices">allowing the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">NYPD</span> to harass black and Hispanic New Yorkers to its heart's content</a>, enabling<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Fast_and_Furious"> the Justice Department to funnel assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States">imprisoning hundreds of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders</a>. There's a widely-circulated picture of <a href="http://images.google.com/imgres?q=obama+smoking+weed&hl=en&biw=1152&bih=486&gbv=2&tbm=isch&tbnid=RIVV4iOodilF5M:&imgrefurl=http://www.420magazine.com/forums/general-420-talk/84939-barack-obama-smoking-weed.html&docid=MplDCi3V3d-AmM&imgurl=http://www.420magazine.com/gallery/data/500/obama_smoking-weed.jpg&w=611&h=404&ei=JET6TsaqDKni0gGS4dRN&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=81&vpy=183&dur=1186&hovh=182&hovw=276&tx=158&ty=79&sig=118224359075345321555&page=1&tbnh=118&tbnw=157&start=0&ndsp=14&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0">our current president puffing on what's probably a spliff</a>, but <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Obama's</span> former enjoyment of a relatively mild controlled substance <a href="http://reason.com/blog/2011/10/06/doj-launches-coordinated-crack">hasn't stopped his government from raiding medical marijuana dispensaries</a>. Michael <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Bloomberg</span> famously admitted to liking pot--but once he made it to Gracie Mansion, he found no contradiction in presiding over a racist, despicable and probably unconstitutional stop-and-frisk campaign.<br /><br />Nothing makes me more cynical about politics than the near-universal hypocrisy over illegal drugs. No one is willing to stand on principle, even when ideology and plain human decency (and, more often than not, science) demand it. Ron Paul is the leading--and possibly only-- exception. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Doherty</span> is right that this is an incredible, and even historic moment in American politics--hell, America's highest-profile civil libertarian and drug war opponent is about to win a presidential primary in one of the most conservative states in the country! And with our congress on the brink of more or less criminalizing the entire Internet, this is an encouraging development, maybe even the kind of encouraging development whose provenance I can convince myself to ignore.<br /><br />But I can't ignore it. Once known, things cannot be <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">un</span>-known, as Christopher <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Hitchens</span> was fond of saying.<br /><br />Here's what I can't <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">un</span>-know. I can't <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">un</span>-know a long, torturous, conversation (or political dispute or whatever) I had with a Paul supporter in DC a little over a year ago. He was an articulate enough chap, but when I brought up the newsletter controversy his argument was something along the lines of an elaborate "so what?" What kind of person, I wondered, could possibly remain indifferent to the fact that their favorite politician gave his imprimatur to every sort of virulent racist filth for like, 15 solid years? <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Doherty</span> is intellectually honest enough not to be indifferent, but I wonder if the same can be said of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Paulite</span> rank-and-file.<br /><br />I can't <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">un</span>-know an even more torturous run-in with a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Paulite</span> at an oyster bar in New Orleans. He was sitting alone at the end of this long, communal table, and it turned out he was an army officer who had once been sent to look for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">POWs</span> in Vietnam back in the mid-90s. It also turned out this person was sort of insane. I let him rant for awhile about how Social Security was unconstitutional before politely altering him to the possibility that President Ron Paul would strip him of the social safety net he earned through his military service. He said he didn't care, that the country was on a fiscal and moral knife's edge and that the difference between Paul supporters and the rest of humanity is that they're willing to make the kind of steep individual and collective sacrifices that us latte-drinkers would never even dream of making ourselves. This is an odd and perhaps incoherent philosophy, this idea of negating American greatness in order to salvage it. The girlfriend delicately pointed this out to him. "You're not engaging with me," he said with a vaguely violent lilt in his voice, and a less-vaguely craven look in his eye. "You're not respecting me." A few moments later, I thanked him for his service and faked a stomach ache. Unfortunately, before we learned this person was nuts we'd told him we were off to hear Walter <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Wolfman</span> Washington at the nearby Maple Leaf Lounge, and I spent the rest of the night nursing a tangible fear that the guy would come looking for us.<br /><br />I can't <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">un</span>-know the Paul supporters I met in the wild, western fringes of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Zucotti</span> Park, people who, unfortunately for libertarianism in America, were among the sanest <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Paulites</span> I've ever met. Most of all, <a href="http://rightwingnews.com/election-2012/statement-from-fmr-ron-paul-staffer-on-newsletters-anti-semitism/">I can't <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">un</span>-know this</a>, which is one of the most bizarre documents of this entire presidential campaign (a campaign that's produced its fair share of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/This-Herman-Cain-Journey-White/dp/1451666136">bizarre documents</a>, mind you), the gist of which is this: forget Paul's racist newsletters. Those were <span style="font-style: italic;">politics</span>. What you should <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> worry about is what Paul actually believes, namely that the Jews pushed the U.S. into World War II and shouldn't have a country of their own, that the invasion of Afghanistan was a mistake, and that the CIA coordinated the attacks on the World Trade Center.<br /><br />Paul's craziness, and the craziness of many of both his chief (Andrew Sullivan, Lew Rockwell, <a href="http://mondoweiss.net/2011/12/klein-ron-paul-gains-ground-because-he-opposes-another-neocon-war-for-israel.html"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Mondoweiss</span>, for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">fuck's</span> sake</a>) and supernumerary supporters, is just ridiculously well-established at this point. I'm abstractly sympathetic to the narrowly utilitarian view that small pockets of crazy are insignificant so long as they stand a chance of unsettling an entire system of crazy. On the other hand, so what if the drug war just happens to be more racist than Ron Paul? Isn't it curious--or rather, disturbing--that this sort of question even needs to be posed in the first place? The question that Ron Paul's racism poses for me isn't "so what?" so much as "what does it say about our political system and society--what kinds of horrifying, horrifying things does it say--that one of our most reasonable mainstream political figures is also by far our craziest?"<br /><br />If I could speculate on that for a moment. A couple of weeks ago, popular former two-term New Mexico governor Gary Johnson left the Republican party to seek the libertarian nomination for president. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever accused Johnson of being a racist, and had he prevailed in the Republican primary, he would have been the first major party presidential nominee to have successfully climbed Mount Everest. Now, Johnson never had any realistic shot of getting the Republican nomination, and he was fairly clueless about how to organize a campaign and present himself to a voting public that still has basically no idea who he is (if he had a clue, Johnson would have run for Senate in New Mexico as a Republican, won, patiently built a large and well-organized national organization the way that Ron Paul has, switched parties, and then run as a Libertarian in 2020 and 2024). But he was and is a kind of Ron Paul without all the moral hazard, a man whose libertarianism is a genuine function of his cosmopolitanism, rather than the product of a poisonous <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">paleoconservative</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">milieu</span>. Paul has succeeded partly because of a shrewd refusal to distance himself from what <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">Doherty</span> euphemistically calls the "sociological overlap between the radical politics of libertarianism and certain other radical beliefs." But Johnson's political career is basically over because he naively believed that he could turn himself into a national figure by force of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">argument</span>, or by force of ideas. Alas, people are the willing conduit of ideas, and ideas die when no one volunteers to carry them forward.<br /><br />And in the long run, they also tend to die when the people carrying them forward are, for the most part, crazy. See the truly depressing thing about <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">Paulism</span> is that it entrusts the most essential and eminently reasonable ideas--ideas that need to be discussed and even acted upon, for the greater good of both this country and the world at large--to some of the most loathsome figures in American public life. Ron Paul's apologists want us to believe that a little craziness is the price we have to pay for eventual political and fiscal sanity. But this is a false choice, and until it's recognized as such, I suspect that the drug war, authoritarian policing of the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">Internet</span>, mass incarceration, anti-immigrant hysteria and the other evils that Paul supposedly stands against will be with us for a long time to come.<br /><br />This week's song isn't a song so much as one very important (libertarian) thought:<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1-FI6D8ZXpc" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe>Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-35447362235990277772011-12-14T14:31:00.000-08:002011-12-15T09:39:12.248-08:00Things That Have Either Pissed Me Off or Troubled Me Over the Course Of TodayLightening round. Let's start at the beginning. Fuck it, let's start with some batting practice.<br /><br />-The first website I visited today was Pitchfork Media, where I read possibly one of the most bloodboiling sentences in the history of music criticism. Whilst <a href="http://pitchfork.com/features/staff-lists/8730-albums-of-the-year-honorable-mention/">lauding Ellie Friedberger's <span style="font-style: italic;">Last Summer</span> as one of the best albums of 2011</a>, someone by the name of Bob Mittchum secreted this flabbergasting bit of counter-factual, recent music history:<br /><br /><blockquote>Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger aren't twins, but in the context of the Fiery Furnaces, it's not always easy to tell their sensibilities apart. This year offered a litmus test of which sibling is responsible for what, as Matthew released a series of hard-to-bear solo-instrument experiments while Eleanor released this pop gem-- a reminder of the Furnaces' broad appeal before their <a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/3274-rehearsing-my-choir/" target="_blank">grandma</a> scared almost everyone off. </blockquote><br />Yeah, 2005's <span style="font-style: italic;">Rehearsing My Choir</span> really "scared almost everyone off." Is this guy kidding? Pitchfork scored the next three Fiery Furnaces albums in the mid-to-upper 7s; I've seen Fiery Furnaces play at DC's spacious 9:30 club and at the same stage at Bonnaroo where MGMT and Vampire Weekend performed. Both shows were, shockingly, post-2005! No one was "scared off" by a little-heard experimental dalliance that represents a whopping 1/9th of the Furnace's official discography. Yes, it's true that the <span style="font-style: italic;">Blueberry Boa</span>t is the only Furnaces album to score over a 9 on Pitchfork--but it's also true that <span style="font-style: italic;">Blueberry Boat</span> is, in most people's minds an order of magnitude better than every other Fiery Furnaces album. And it's also true that the Furnaces are something of a cult item, and that<span style="font-style: italic;"> Rehearsing My Choir</span> didn't really change any of their fans' perceptions of them.<br /><br />So what could possess this guy to conclude that the Furnaces' career was derailed by <span style="font-style: italic;">Rehearsing My Choir</span>? I don't think Mittchum is being lazy here. Neither do I think that he actually believes what he's writing. I think he's a music critic, and that music critics and critics in general feel it's their privalage and their duty to impose a sort of over-arching theory of everything upon the public consciousness (example: Nirvana killed hair metal)--and I also think that some and in some respect all of these theories are total bullshit (example: Nirvana killed hair metal!). I also believe that writers who believe it's their duty shoehorn huge volumes of tangentially-related information into a coherent, believable narrative are also prone to shoehorning small volumes of tangentially-related information into a coherent, believable narrative. The story of a single band is just as vulnerable to a critic's errant mythologizing as the story of entire genres or entire historical periods.<br /><br />That's what's happening here. A writer at the most influential music outfit on earth just decided that the Fiery Furnaces were a plucky indie pop outfit who threw it all away on a career-scarring experimental misstep of <span style="font-style: italic;">Metal Machine Music</span>-like significance (see what I did there?). And Lo, his word became flesh. This is why people hate Pitchfork, and why I recently got into a Twitter spat with a grown adult (who writes movie review for The Washington Times, I should add) who actually, unironically believed that Pitchfork is responsible for the proliferation of Dubstep. Pitchfork views itself as the kind of publication that's entitled to narrativize the whole of musical culture in real time, and we are too timid or brainwashed or uninformed to question them. The result: terrible, counter-factual music criticism cropping up in the most widely-read Pitchfork feature of the year.<br /><br /><br />-Has anyone noticed that HBO Go is the worst-designed and glitchiest media player possibly ever? It crashes, it pauses mysteriously, it flashes a "Press ESC to exit full-screen mode" notice whenever you're in full-screen mode that no human mortal can remove, at least on my girlfriend's computer. There's no "play next episode" feature. Sometimes the color gradient changes, such that a richly chromatic flash-back to late-60 Newark in the "The Sopranos" looks like the fly-worn print of a mid-70s B-movie. Sometimes the audio is out of sync. Sometimes I feel vaguely cheated, like HBO knew that people would pay like anything for the right to watch every hour of every original program ever aired on HBO (other than "The Larry Sanders Show") and that they held the exclusive right to offer such a service, and therefore decided that they could afford to cut back on the quality of their product without incurring any fiduciary consequences. And then I'm like wait a second, I don't even <span style="font-style: italic;">pay</span> for HBO Go. Why does it's shittiness rankle me so much? Why?<br /><br />-<a href="http://www.russianmachineneverbreaks.com/2011/12/13/warm-tidings-to-the-honourable-gentleman-jaromir-jagr/">This</a>. I remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard that Jaromir Jagr had been traded to the Capitals. I was in like 8th grade at the time, and I was listening to Sportstalk 980 on the Bose in my house's living room, and Al Kokin or someone was like "we have breaking news, and get ready cuz you're not gonna believe this. The Washington Capitals have traded for <span style="font-style: italic;">Jaromir Fucking Jagr. </span>You know, the guy who barbecues us in the playoffs every year? Oh, and guess who we traded for him THAT'S RIGHT CHRIS BEECH, WHO YOU HAVE NEVER EVEN HEARD OF. The Pens are moving to Nashville next year after all! Stanley Cup, baby. Might as well tell the engraver to start practicing his Konawalchuks."<br /><br />OK so that's not what Al Kokin really said. The point is that the Jagr trade was supposed to usher in a hockey renaissance in DC. Instead, it commenced a five-year nightmare, much of which I witnessed in person, since by like 2004 the cost of an upper-level ticket at the MCI Center was like, $15. I have a Jagr jersey in my closet at home, and I'm not sure why I haven't burned it yet. I think it I wore it to a Caps game I'd get gently ribbed, if not outright jeered at by my section-mates.<br /><br />-A few minutes ago, a Talent Acquisition Opportunities Manager or whatever the hell the big investment banks call their human resource drones called my girlfriend to set up an interview. Thanks to the world being on the brink of financial catastrophe, she recently lost her job at another, different big investment bank and is now seeking further employment. Did Friday work for her? Or better still, could she meet a Talent Acquisition Opportunities Director with regards to this exciting and lucrative career opportunity?<br /><br />She could not. At least not on Monday--the girlfriend's grandmother is very ill, and only has about a week left to live. The girlfriend will be in Norfolk, Virginia on Monday. Monday will not work because of, as she put it, "a death in the family."<br /><br />I could almost hear the TAOM's lips bunch into a sympathetic furrow, not because lip-bunching has a distinct or even detectable aural signature, but because, for the sake of my own faith in humanity, I just <span style="font-style: italic;">have</span> to believe that every human being is subject to some sort of completely visceral, completely <span style="font-style: italic;">human</span> reaction upon the first-hand news that another human being has departed this earth. What I didn't hear (and you can hear like every word of every conversation held on a Blackberry so long as you're within like 10 feet of the thing) was an "I'm sorry to hear that." For this TAOM, death is no different from traffic or a delayed flight or any other uncontrollable circumstance that could prevent a potential target from attending a face-to-face. I just have to believe that this guy had some reaction to the news of "a death in the family"--but all I can do is believe, since the fellow offered no evidence of any reaction whatsoever.<br /><br />Investment banks are like cathedrals. Their headquarters are spires of hope and progress that reach skywards, towards the heavens, and when I look up at the soft granite pediment of Credit Suisse's clocktower or at the glacial, sloping peak of Bank of America's midtown offices, I'm reminded that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kingdom_of_God_Is_Within_You">the Kingdom of God really is within m</a>e, and that prosperity and comfort and the salvation it offers are attainable so long as I can find it within myself to achieve them. But cathedrals are dehumanizing. They make you feel small and powerless, which is why I prefer the cramped and unadorned quarters of the <a href="http://images.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1152&bih=510&q=joseph+caro+synagogue&gbv=2&oq=joseph+caro+sy&aq=0S&aqi=g-S1&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=2795l6665l0l7341l19l14l1l2l2l0l180l1188l6.5l11l0">Joseph Caro Synagogue in Tzfat</a> to the loftiest and most spectacular Gothic masterpiece. That phone call, and that lack of an "I'm sorry," that lack of any discernible reaction to the news of a potential employee's family member's death--it's a reminder that the higher the spires loom, the smaller we all are in comparison.<br /><br />Today's song: a fairly normal-sounding Fiery Furnaces song from 2007.<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/OjDewuBdVl4" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe>Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-66237865757008489692011-12-11T00:06:00.000-08:002011-12-12T15:45:06.968-08:00The Orgy Continues: My Year in Music, Part IIALBUMS<span style="display: block;" id="formatbar_Buttons"><span class=" on down" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_Italic" title="Italic"><img src="http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" alt="Italic" class="gl_italic" border="0" /></span></span><br />HONORABLE MENTIONS, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER:<br /><br />-Atlas Sound, <span style="font-style: italic;">Parallax</span>: Review after review lauded <span style="font-style: italic;">Parallax</span> for eschewing the weirdness of Bradford Cox's first two Atlas Sound albums, which had more in common with droning Deerhunter breakthrough <span style="font-style: italic;">Cryptograms</span> than with any of the band's more recent and more consonant work. I'm not sure if I buy the idea that non-weirdness automatically equates with progress in Atlas Sound's case. But Atlas Sound and Deerhunter have evolved in tandem, and the third AS full-length has much in common with last year's monumental <span style="font-style: italic;">Halcyon Digest</span>: the songwriting is tighter and the missteps less glaring than in the past, while Cox's voice continues to find a range and degree of vocal nuance that simply didn't seem possible for him a couple albums ago. This album lacks the experimental exuberance of <span style="font-style: italic;">Let the Blind Lead the Blind</span>, and it doesn't have a best-of-the-decade worthy track like <span style="font-style: italic;">Logos's</span> "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C79Q7MV4Fgo">Quick Canal</a>." But as a cult follower of Bradford Cox--who is, in my view, a potentially generation-defining artist--I couldn't just like, exclude this from a massive, 6,000-word year-in-review recap.<br /><br />-Bill Callahan, <span style="font-style: italic;">Apocalypse</span>: This year brought the death of Bert Jansch, a British singer-songwriter best known for his work with the groundbreaking 70s folk (and jazz flute!) outfit Pentangle. So it's appropriate that one of the best albums of the year is so reminiscent of post-Pentangle Jansch, who released a series of brooding, meandering folk records that the likes of Bonny Prince Billy and Justin Vernon obviously gave a careful listen to. But I think I like <span style="font-style: italic;">Apocalypse </span>better than most of either artist's work. The songs are knotty and bleak, with every wandering flute and fiddle, every quiety screetching guitar (the mix on this album is astonishing--it's hard to get guitars to quietly screech), gesturing towards some distant yet rapidly-approaching catastrophe. Callahan's voice is a kind of smoker's barratone, laden with the folk singer-fatalism that a project like this all but requires.<br /><br />-Clams Casino,<span style="font-style: italic;"> Instrumental Mixtape</span>: Who thought the guy who does Lil B's beats would distinguish himself in what's been a bumper year for loud and weird shit? I certainly didn't, although it all makes total sense to me now: Tim Hecker, Onehtrix Point Never and Nicholas Jaar made noise albums that were highly accomplished but sorta brutal to like, actually listen to. <span style="font-style: italic;">Replica</span> produced a few inquisitive "hmmms" for me, but <span style="font-style: italic;">Instrumental Mixtape</span> works on so many levels. At times, Clams' beats are satisfyingly ambient, even Eno-like; at others, they're tightly-layered and highly abstract tone poems that would almost be profaned by the inclusion of a human voice. There aren't many bangers on this one, although Clams is certainly capable of banging when he wants to--t<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddwo_kcT-WQ">he beat for Main Attrakionz's "Illest Alive"</a> has to be one of the sickest things I've heard this year; unlike with Hecker or Jaar, there isn't a track on this that isn't thoroughly enjoyable to listen to. In fact, this mixtape is so good that it's made me reassess my overall ambivalence towards the entire blog rap phenomenon.<br /><br />-Tombs, <span style="font-style: italic;">Path of Totality</span>: There are individual tracks on this one where Tombs rushes through 30 years of metal history in the course of about 3 minutes--at times this sounds like industrial-period Swans, at others, it sludgier and druggier than the Melvins. But this album deserves mention because it's an ass-kicker that transcends music nerdery. As soon as I heard "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy6n4V0Wntw">Bloodletters</a>" (which has about 8 distinct movements, despite being only like 4 minutes long), I knew I was listening to the most epic rock album of the year.<br /><br />-DJ Quick, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Book of David</span>: My friend Dov Friedman lamented that this album probably wouldn't show up in that many end-of-year lists, and he's pretty much been right so far. Nineties nostalgia earns you critical plaudits if you're making a sequel to <span style="font-style: italic;">Cuban Linx</span>; weirdly enough, its an apparent detriment if you're one of the few bona fide survivors of the 90s rap scene (i.e. someone who isn't dead or a sellout) who doesn't also happen to be a member of the Wu Tang Clan. Even more disgustingly, I suspect <span style="font-style: italic;">The Book of David </span>was totally forgotten about in the midst of the hipsterization of rap that occurred this year--the kids who should have been listening to a true master like Quik were listening to Shabaaz Palaces and A$AP Rockey instead, which is fucked up, to say the least. This album, is lyrically dexterous, masterfully produced, and full of totally non-ironic gunshot sound effects, making it exhibit A for How It's Done, as far as making an artistically-accomplished yet readily listenable rap album is concerned.<br /><br />-TV On the Radio, <span style="font-style: italic;">Nine Types of Light</span>: I can't write about this album without also writing about how much I liked its predecessor, <span style="font-style: italic;">Dear Science</span>, an album the kids will be grooving to 50 years from now if there's any justice in this world, and also one of the few non-sanctimonious and non-terrible protest albums of the past decade. TVOTR released the platonic ideal of a follow-up album this year. <span style="font-style: italic;">Nine Types</span> is less ambitious and more subdued than its precedessor, but it's hardly a drop-off or a letdown. It's more restrained and more introspective than past efforts--more adult, as one reviewer put it. What makes TVOTR a band of such generational importance is that they can move in this sort of a direction without squandering even an ounce of hard-earned good will.<br /><br /><br />AND NOW:<br /><br />THE TOP 10<br /><br /><br />10.) Radiohead, <span style="font-style: italic;">The King of Limbs</span><br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/cfOa1a8hYP8" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />There was a time in my life when I wanted every Radiohead album to sound like <span style="font-style: italic;">Amnesiac</span>, but I'm past it now. Today, I understand that Radiohead serves one purpose and one purpose only within the context of this enormous and highly atomized pop culture of ours, and that's to take other people's brilliant ideas--usually whatever's on the weirdest outer fringes of contemporary electronic music--and repackage them as only Radiohead can. <span style="font-style: italic;">Kid A</span> was a glorious repackaging of Aphex Twin and Squarepusher; Radiohead's originality, such as it is, comes from their ability to link strange, electronic sounds to tangible human feelings and experiences, and to do so within the context of mindblowingly strange and awesome pop music. Similarly: Flying Lotus's <span style="font-style: italic;">Cosmogramma</span>, which included a Thom Yorke guest spot, is a more original but less effective version of what Radiohead is trying to accomplish in <span style="font-style: italic;">The King of Limbs</span>. Dubstep--or at least the artistically-ambitious, jazz-tinged dubstep that Flying Lotus practices--percolates this album, and when it came out I joked that Yorke had <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJf59JJnHnQ">probably finished recording his track with Flying Lotus</a> and said "yes, this is what the entire next Radiohead album should sound like!" And sound like it it does, except with Radiohead-level songwriting, and a Radiohead-like sense of total alienation from everything and everyone, and an eerie, Radiohead-like beauty that comes out in tracks like "Codex" and "Give Up the Ghost," and which no band has ever come close to duplicating. So <span style="font-style: italic;">Limbs</span> isn't <span style="font-style: italic;">Amnesiac</span> or even <span style="font-style: italic;">In Rainbows</span>. But it's still Radiohead doing what it does best, and for that alone it deserves a spot on this list.<br /><br /><br />9.) Wild Flag, <span style="font-style: italic;">Wild Flag</span><br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/8J8n9R8rnB8" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />The one Sleater-Kinney record that Wild Flag's debut is constantly compared to is <span style="font-style: italic;">The</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Woods</span>, which rocks at near Zeppelin-like levels and is widely considered one of the greatest albums of the 2000s. I guess I like the Sleater-Kinney-anchored supergroup Wild Flag's debut because, as the Zeppelin comparison and as the above music video both suggest, it channels a certain purity that's been lost over the past decade of hype-cycles and firsties and genres that can't push past the six-month mark. Just think, for a second, about how few truly great albums by traditional rock four-pieces have been released over the past 10 years or so. <span style="font-style: italic;">This Is It</span> and The Wrens' <span style="font-style: italic;">The Meadowlands</span> come to mind, as does The Hold Steady's <span style="font-style: italic;">Boys and Girls in America</span>. But the entire notion of purity and traditionalism in rock has been under attack for awhile now, whether through the popist vs. rockist debates that critics often find themselves mired in, or through the unspoken sense that there's something fundametally reactionary about straightforward rock music. Wild Flag's debut is a straightforward rock album; there's nothing that's experiemental or ground-breaking about it. It's just four immensely talented musicians ripping through one awesome song after another, which wouldn't seem so refreshing to me if this album were anything less than flawless. It's tight and raw and in just the right amounts, and the down-tempo tracks are just as memorable as the up-tempo ones. Most importantly, it's impossible for me not to air-guitar while listening to it.<br /><br /><br />8.) Frank Ocean, <span style="font-style: italic;">Nostalgia, Ultra.</span><br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/TMfPJT4XjAI" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />Tyler, The Creator was lauded for his bracing self-analysis on <span style="font-style: italic;">Bastard</span>--in fact, I lauded him for his bracing self-analysis on <span style="font-style: italic;">Bastard</span> just one post ago. But it's Odd Future bandmate (or collective-mate, or whatever) Frank Ocean who released this year's most arresting confessional pop record. Ocean is just as paranoid and emotionally numb as Tyler, but his pyshic tumult comes across via actual poetry rather than via a series of increasingly sociopathic tangents. "Novacane," a love song about an encounter in which neither person wants to feel anything, or is even capable of feeling anything,<span style="font-style: italic;"></span> subverts usual R&B themes using some of the best R&B songwriting of this or any year. "Songs for Women" is a slow jam about how Ocean uses slow jams as a weapon of emotional manipulation; "Swim Good," as I mentioned the other day, is a radio-friendly banger about suicide. But <span style="font-style: italic;">Nostalgia, Ultra.</span> isn't maudlin or self-pitying; unlike <span style="font-style: italic;">Bastard</span>, it doesn't draw gratuitious attention to its creator's problems. How does it pull this off? By being, first and foremost, a brilliant pop album. Hell, "Novacane" even got some radio play.<br /><br /><br />7.) Liturgy, <span style="font-style: italic;">Aesthetica</span><br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/qciRxrlTFGc" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe><br /><br />I understand that Liturgy is too hipster-friendly for the metal community, and that Columbia alum Hunter Hendrix's theory of transcendent humanism has turned some people off, not because of its substance, mind you, but because it's an apparent violation of fragile metal sensibilities even to <span style="font-style: italic;">have</span> a theory in the first place. Which is a roundabout way of saying that Liturgy's been smeared as pretentious Williamsburgian garbage, a claim richly deserving of my Bullshit Music-Related Smear of the Year award. See, <span style="font-style: italic;">Aesthetica</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">would</span> be pretentious if it didn't all but confirm Hendrix's assertion that metal offers a possible entry-way to transcendent experience. Parts of this album, like the primal chanting on the vocal track "Glass Earth," point to primative religion as a possible inspiration for the band's sound, as well as its overall ambitions: Liturgy wants you to experience something very specific when you're listening to them, and this is music you're meant to get lost in, music you're supposed to be completely blown away by and sucked into. This album aims to duplicate the sense of ineffable mystery you might feel when staring up at the sky on a clear night in the middle of the desert, and amazingly, it delivers: Tracks like "Glory Bronze" reach the frantic, blissed out-heights that every loud rock band strives towards, while "True Will" juxtaposes Gregorian chant with a whirlwind of guitar, drums and vocals. Hendrix's point here is that Gregorian chant and death metal are both reaching towards the same notion of aesthetic and spiritual transcendence--listening to the utterly mindblowing <span style="font-style: italic;">Aesthetica</span>, this claim doesn't seem pretentious so much as empirically true.<br /><br /><br /><br />6.) P.J. Harvey, <span style="font-style: italic;">Let England Shake</span><br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KhaEt2Hdod8" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />If this had been released in say, 2006, P.J. Harvey's exploration of the relationship between war and English national identity would have gone down as the greatest protest album of the era, by far. Even now, very little from this or any other historical period competes with it as a popular musical examination of the cost and overall meaning of war. Parts of this album are just incredibly difficult--that bit about "soldiers falling like lumps of meat" is the most disturbing piece of imagery to appear in a pop song this year, Tyler, The Creator's ouvre included. Interestingly, <span style="font-style: italic;">Let England Shake</span> isn't about war in general so much as a specific war, and references to "the ANZAC trench" and bloodbaths concerning strategically-pointless stretches of beach make this album a sustained meditation on World War I, the most traumatic conflict in English history. This specific historical focus has the paradoxical effect of upping its present-day urgency. A war that occurred nearly 100 years ago was so scarring that it can serve as a stand-in for the horrors and pointlessness of war in general. <span style="font-style: italic;">Let England Shake</span> gives us an idea of what kind of scars our current conflicts might be inflicting upon us.<br /><br /><br /><br />5.) Iceage, <span style="font-style: italic;">New Brigade</span><br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ESaeX71--B4" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />I'll honestly be shocked if Iceage can match this the next time out. <span style="font-style: italic;">New Brigade </span>channels pure, unadulterated youth; raw, rattling, and over in under 25 minutes, it's an album that could only be made by a trio of 16-year-olds who don't know any better. But what happens when they do know better--when the production is half-competent, when their work is clogged with No Age-style ambient filler tracks, when they try to stretch song lengths out to over two minutes? What will happen when they can no longer access the youthful energy and angst that power this album? I don't want to think that far ahead, especially since I'm not through listening to Iceage's first effort. A perfectly-paced bombardment of expertly-crafted punk songs, even the album's sub-2 minute tracks (there are four of them) are multi-part jewels of rock songwriting. The band's youthfulness is what makes <span style="font-style: italic;">New Brigades</span> exhilerating, but it's Iceage's uncannily mature craftsmanship that makes this album one of the five best of the year.<br /><br /><br />4.) Elzhi, <span style="font-style: italic;">Elmatic</span><br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6ipJOul6_sw" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe><br /><br />I'm of the belief that you're gonna remake <span style="font-style: italic;">Illmatic</span>, you'd better have a damn good reason, as well as about 40 minutes worth of something interesting to say. One of the surprises of the year--hell, maybe even THE surprise of the year--is that a former member of Slum Village who I hadn't even heard of six months ago is equal to the challenge. Elzhi cops some of the beats and some of the pacing and themes from Nas's genre-defining classic, but he does justice to his source material by infusing <span style="font-style: italic;">Illmatic</span> with a new sense of relevance: "Detroit State of Mind" recounts the dangers and difficulties of living in America's most depressed city (where "pimps turn into pastors" and where "even the shorties are pulling glocks from their boxin' shorts") and the entire album is a picaresque about the struggles of life in a devastated corner of urban America. What makes this album really special is that it's not the act of blasphemy that it arguably should have been. <span style="font-style: italic;">Elmatic</span> is a far-reaching survey of the social and psychic ills of its day--just like <span style="font-style: italic;">Illmatic</span> was. Elzhi raps about "Roaches in the ashtray toss and gettin' fast cash/The ski mask way for those who never passed class" in his version of "It Ain't Hard to Tell," one of countless lines in which Elzhi replicates Nas's tightly-wound and at-times impenetrably dense (and internally-rhyming!) lyrical style in the course of evoking his own individual experiences. As lines like this suggest, <span style="font-style: italic;">Elmatic </span>is part tribute, part exercise in intertextuality--and in the end, it's more wholly original than just about anything else released this year.<br /><br /><br />3.) Wye Oak, <span style="font-style: italic;">Civilian</span><br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/rmjMFPSLXI4" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />I usually hate albums that are just too heavy to enjoy, regardless of how musically accomplished they may be--like I couldn't make it past the first few tracks of Antony and the Johnson's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Crying Light</span>, which is quite good I hear. Wye Oak's third full length flirts with the kind of over-the-top downer-dom that's doomed other artists in the past. But it never makes the full leap into Will Oldham or Antony and the Johnsons territory for one very simple reason: this album is just a devastating listen. The vocal arrangements are reminiscent of the Cocteau Twins, and Wye Oak's deft balancing of abrasive noise and whispered, even prayer-like lyrical content reminded me a lot of late-period Radiohead. But it does this album a disservice to compare it to anything else, because <span style="font-style: italic;">Civilian</span> sounds so little like anything else. I know of no other album that's simultaneously so icy and so heartfelt--fuzz and guitar feedback intervene in some of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Civilian's </span>tenderest moments, while Jenn Wasner's voice can go from soothing to frigid to totally otherworldly in the space of a single track. This album's sonic and emotional range is downright exhausting: some tracks have a quiet, funereal quality to them, others thunder and soar. Even so, its sublimity is never compromised. <span style="font-style: italic;">Civilian</span> speaks with an intensity that's all its own.<br /><br /><br /><br />2.) E.M.A., <span style="font-style: italic;">Past Life Martyred Saints</span><br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/dUg6BKipfCc" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />Speaking of albums that are literally unlike anything I've ever heard: E.M.A's solo debut continues a recent trend of bands from the middle of nowhere producing music that's weirder and fresher than anything produced on the coasts (Oklahoma natives Evangelicals' magesterial <span style="font-style: italic;">The Evening Descends </span>is the signal example of this). Erika M. Anderson is originally from South Dakota, I think, and her first effort is virtually impossible to categorize. Is it folk? Noise rock? Noise-folk? Post-modern country gospel? Is this a singer-songwriter confessional, perhaps? You could attach these labels and about a half-dozen others to this album (album highlight "Milkmen" has clear industrial overtones) without adequately describing what it actually sounds like or does. I'm comfortable saying that this is a very personal album about <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span>love and dissappointment and, as she sings in "California," "what it's like to be small town and gay" (assuming E.M.A. is gay, which is far from obvious). And I guess I'm comfortable calling this "indie folk," although so much of this album is impossible to categorize. Even the record's themes are hard to pin down exactly; I'm about ten listens in, and I'm still discovering new corners of Ms. Anderson's psyche to explore. This is powerful, soul-baring stuff, and considering what a listener goes through over the course of this album, the slow-building, even apocalyptic set-closer "Red Star" far and away the most cathartic song of the year.<br /><br /><br /><br />1.) The War on Drugs, <span style="font-style: italic;">Slave Ambient</span><br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/BFeKielS-CM" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />Back in the 90s, there was a silly trend of singer-songwriters being hailed as the "new Dylan," as if every generation needed, just fucking <span style="font-style: italic;">needed</span> someone to singer-songwrite all their anxieties and hopes and dreams and shit. The real "new Dylans," I think, are artists who can do that in new and counter-intuitive ways--who convey anxieties and hopes and dreams through noise or obfuscation or even straight-up sarcasm (Black Flag's <span style="font-style: italic;">Damaged</span> is fairly Dylinian in spirit, no?). <span style="font-style: italic;">Slave Ambient</span> is proof that TWOD is a true New Dylan. Their second full-length is a droning and often disturbing jaunt through the wasteland we all find ourselves living in, and it it surveys the psychic and physical ruination that's characterized the past few years using a folk-singer's unique position of detachment and spirit of socio-political critique. But that's not why this is the best album of the year. This is the best album of the year because it's absolutely fucking gorgeous, regardless of whether it's droning or rocking or wandering through a six minute road song. Parts of <span style="font-style: italic;">Slave Ambient</span> are country blues, other parts are arena rock, others are shoegaze. But it remains a work of unnerving aesthetic perfection, regardless of what genre it happens to be working within. No other album released this year has married epicism with urgency more beautifully or more searingly than <span style="font-style: italic;">Slave Ambient</span>, the best album of 2011.<br /><br /><br />MISCELLANY!<br /><br />TOP FIVE ALBUMS OF 2010, IN RETROSPECT<br /><br />5.) Agalloch, <span style="font-style: italic;">Marrow of the Spirit</span> (was Four Tet, <span style="font-style: italic;">There Is Love In You</span>). I command you to drop whatever you're doing and listen to all 17 minutes of "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVOONyMkgKk">Black Lake Nidstang</a>. "<br /><br />4.) Woods, <span style="font-style: italic;">At Echo Lake</span> (was Big Boi, <span style="font-style: italic;">Sir Lucious Left Foot, the Son of Chico Dusty</span>) Remind me why people are so far up Fleet Fox's ass when Woods is a band that exists?<br /><br />3.) Kanye West, <span style="font-style: italic;">My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy</span> (was Deerhunter, <span style="font-style: italic;">Halcyon Digest</span>) I've decided it's not cool to hate this album anymore, especially since it's got like, 8 bangers on it. BANGERS.<br /><br />2.) Flying Lotus, <span style="font-style: italic;">Cosmogramma</span> (was Flying Lotus, <span style="font-style: italic;">Cosmogramma</span>) The album that made me hate most dubstep, while simultaneously causing me to appreciate dubstep as a genre.<br /><br />1.) Deerhunter, <span style="font-style: italic;">Halcyon Digest</span> (was Jenelle Monae, <span style="font-style: italic;">The ArchAndroid</span>) I still like <span style="font-style: italic;">Microcastle</span> better, but this is objectively the best album ever released by maybe the best band working today. If there's a God out there, my kids will be jealous that I got to see them in concert like four times, rather than wondering who the fuck Deerhunter was when I force them to listen to this.<br /><br /><br />MOST DISAPPOINTING ALBUM<br /><br />Panda Bear, <span style="font-style: italic;">Tomboy</span>: This album was so bad that it actually made me reconsider not only the rest of Panda Bear's work, but the rest of Animal Collective's work as well. Well it wasn't bad, per se. It's just that it's the end result of the kind of music that An Col has experimented with for the past decade, and that Panda Bear perfected on <span style="font-style: italic;">Person Pitch</span>. For someone who believes that these experiments were worthwhile and actually historically significant, it was a bit of a wake-up call to hear them culminate in a hazy, uninteresting Chillwav-ian blur.<br /><br /><br />MOST OVERRATED ALBUM<br /><br />Shabazz Palaces, <span style="font-style: italic;">Black Up</span>: M83 can't win this, because contrary to what getting a 9.2 on Pitchfork would suggest, most outlets gave <span style="font-style: italic;">Hurry Up, We're Dreaming</span> decidedly mixed reviews. In contrast, everyone seemed to love a generic and fairly inoffensive dupstep-infused rap album put out by a former member of Digible Planets--which, for extra hipster points, was released by Sub Pop! Sub Pop releasing a rap album sure is interesting, isn't it? No, it isn't. At least not in this case.<br /><br /><br />BEST REISSUE<br /><br />Jurgen Muller, <span style="font-style: italic;">Science of the Sea</span><br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/5FGl5XJg6Zc" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />In 1979, a German Oceanographer went out on a houseboat and recorded an album about his life's passion--namely the sea and, more specifically, the process of observing the sea. The results were limited to 100 LPs or so until Digitalis re-released the album this year. You have to wonder where this would rank in the annals of contemporary music if we'd had 30 years to process it; chances are it would a repertory favorite for the Bang on a Cans of the world. Once "Black Lake Nidstang" is done, do yourself a favor and listen to the entire thing.<br /><br /><br />BEST TOTALLY IGNORED ALBUM OF THE YEAR<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/j8ZiL6IvyvY" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />Imelda May, <span style="font-style: italic;">Mayhem</span>: I'll admit this Welch rockabilly album is sort of breezy. But just look at the albums on my top 10 list. A lot of them are pretty depressing, no? <span style="font-style: italic;">Mayhem</span> is not. In fact, it's kind of a blast. Though it's mainstream and predictable enough to not be on like, any end-of-year lists, this record just oozes charisma and fun, more so than any other release this year.<br /><br /><br />MEKONS SONG FROM THE LATE 80S THAT'S BETTER THAN VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING RELEASED THIS YEAR<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1DMlxrGIi8U" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe><br /><br /><br />EARLY 80S MAINSTREAM COUNTRY SONG THAT'S BETTER THAN VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING RELEASED THIS YEAR<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/JjI5wotM_ZU" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe><br /><br /><br />EARLY 90S POP-GRUNGE SONG THAT'S BETTER THAN VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING RELEASED THIS YEAR<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/daa9pZDxfIY" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe><br /><br /><br /><br />70S ETHIOPIAN JAZZ INSTRUMENTAL THAT'S BETTER THAN VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING RELEASED THIS YEAR<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/r-mEvdTo0G4" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe><br /><br /><br />MOST DEVASTATING BAND BREAKUP OF THE YEAR<br /><br />But obviously:<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/xD8UaWDqvUI" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe>Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-34568050342980866712011-12-08T15:14:00.000-08:002011-12-10T09:37:53.068-08:00My Year in Music, Or: A Soon-to-be-Annual One-Man Orgy of Self-RegardNineteen-ninety one was one of the greatest years in music history--<a href="http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/pjres91.php">just look at the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Pazz</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Jop</span> results and weep at the past two decades of apparently unabated cultural decline</a>.<br /><br />Now I was only three years old at the time and remember exactly nothing prior to like 1997, but '91 isn't mythologized as a period of any pivotal or historical creative foment on par with say, the folk revival of the early 60s, or the emergence of punk in the mid-70s. But 1991 was nevertheless a year in which something pivotal and historic did take place. I'd argue that 1991 was the year in which the sounds of the 80s underground finally took full control of the pop-cultural landscape. Grunge and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">shoegaze</span> weren't like, invented in 1991, but the high-water marks of both genres (<span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Nevermind</span></span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Loveless</span>, no duh) were released that year, and they're arguably the two most important and influential albums of the decade. Similarly: <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Metallica</span> rode just an unreal hot streak through the entire 1980s, but it was their 1991 self-titled <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">megahit</span> that earned the band the mainstream spotlight and popular adulation that a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">sociopathic</span> thrash-metal act simply wouldn't have gotten, had they been anything less than geniuses as far as streamlining and domesticating their sound (or "selling out," if you prefer) was concerned. R.E.M. found themselves in a not dissimilar position--I've seen 1991's Out of Time listed as their best album, and I've seen it listed as one of their worst. It sounds nothing like Murmur or even their later work for IRS, and it's probably fated (unfairly, in my opinion) to be the most polarizing record in their catalog:<span style="font-style: italic;"> Out of Time</span> was the kind of popular blockbuster that pushed R.E.M.'s sound in more of a radio-friendly direction, but it's also the darkest and most personal album the band ever recorded, a jarring contrast to (although not necessarily an improvement upon) the jittery, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">reverb</span>-heavy and less visceral (and therefore less accessible) college rock sound the band had pioneered.<br /><br />And fuck, I haven't even mentioned my two favorite albums of 1991: The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Mekons</span>' <span style="font-style: italic;">Curse of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Mekons</span></span>, which has been unjustly forgotten about and is now out of print, and Talk <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Talk's</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Laughing Stock</span>, which isn't the best album of 1991 (or is it? I could argue...), but is certainly the one I've listened to the most over the years, and far and away the one I'd most like to listen to right this very second. In fact, I'm listening to it right now. <span style="font-style: italic;">Laughing Stock</span> completed Talk <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Talk's</span> transformation from schlocky new-wave pop act to I don't even know what. Late-period Talk Talk--and <span style="font-style: italic;">Laughing Stock</span> in particular--sounds like <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Radiohead</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Sigur</span> Ros and Arcade Fire and pretty much every subsequent art rock band of any importance and ambition, and it also sounds like nothing else I've ever heard before. Captain <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Beefheart</span> and Can both have that quality, I think, which is exclusive and suitably bizarre company for them.<br /><br />Meanwhile, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Mekons</span> had been around for over 15 years when <span style="font-style: italic;">Curse</span> was released; their creative and in some ways philosophical turning point came during the British coal miners' strike of 1984. So 1991 was a year in which several well-established acts were either making their best music or their most interesting music, or the music that would earn them a well-deserved (although not widely-admired) measure of mainstream success. It was a year in which the developments of the previous decade came satisfyingly to a head, and the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">mainstreamification</span> of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">shoegaze</span>, post-punk, post-rock, grunge, gangsta rap (I haven't even mentioned <span style="font-style: italic;">The Low End Theory</span>...), and progressive speed metal that occurred in 1991 had consequences that are still being felt today. Nineteen-ninety one was a year that changed music. Two-thousand nine, the year of the so-called Brooklyn Sonic Boom, could turn out to be another such year. Was 2011? And does it even matter if it was or not?<br /><br />To digress for a moment: I'm beginning to realize that my journalism career, or at least this current version of my journalism career, is emotionally and financially unsustainable and therefore drawing to a rapid close. So during jogs and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">bikerides</span> and long walks around the neighborhood I often turn the past few years over in my mind, going over the highlights and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">lowlights</span> and wondering what this period in my life will mean to me like five years from now. One of the true highlights was my time as a frequent contributor to Impose Magazine back in college--a good friend of mine was the girlfriend (or at that point ex-girlfriend; I don't remember) of the magazine's editor, who had just graduated from Columbia with a degree in Comparative Literature and Society. He spoke German and French (or maybe French and Spanish; again, don't remember) and was a freakishly talented writer and electronic musician who had earned a degree from the most <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">prestigious</span> and exclusive humanities department of one of the most prestigious and exclusive universities on earth.<br /><br />So naturally this wunderkind ended up editing a no-name Brooklyn-specific music website for virtually no pay. I say "of course," because when you write for a no-name Brooklyn-specific music website for virtually no pay (as I did for like two years back in college), you understand that underground music or <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">DIY</span> music or whatever you want to call it is actually the most important thing in the entire world, and that toiling in obscurity, overseeing a small staff of unpaid contributors, spending every night getting your hearing obliterated in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">beerstained</span> lofts in the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Greenpoint</span> industrial flats and nearly asphyxiating at a Black Lips concert at Market Hotel in the middle of July (OK, that one happened to me...) are <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">privileges</span> to be cherished.<br /><br />Today <a href="http://www.imposemagazine.com/">Impose is probably the best music website out there</a>; what my friend Jamie Peck aptly called one of the few primary sources for people interested in what's going on in the American <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">DIY</span> scene (Pitchfork, by comparison, is a secondary source at best). When I contributed to Impose, it was something of ramshackle operation with only 3 or 4 regular writers and much less content and very little in the way of a national focus, at least compared to now. One could even say that Impose had the same <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">DIY</span> ethos as the bands, promoters and venues it was covering; energetic and raw, it was <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">certainly</span> like, <span style="font-style: italic;">of</span> the scene in an unusually organic and non-bullshit sense. It was ascetic and selfless and classically Bohemian--i.e., the people who wrote for it cared single-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">mindedly</span> about inhabiting their astonishingly rich cultural <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">environment</span>, at the expense of the more mundane and more practically-important aspects of life.<br /><br />Or maybe I'm only speaking for myself. Maybe I was the only one naive enough to care single-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">mindedly</span>, or to see the Brooklyn underground as a kind of one massive artists co-op. See during the two years in which I was fairly deeply embedded in the Brooklyn music scene, I was astonished to learn that there was really no such thing as a "bad year" in music. I came to New York promising myself that if there was another Velvet Underground playing shows for a couple dozen people in a basement club, I'd find them. Instead, I found countless Velvet Undergrounds--Oneida, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">Deerhunter</span>, No Age, Dan Deacon, Fuck Buttons, Cold Cave, Evangelicals, These Are Powers, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">Knyfe</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">Hyts</span>, Fucked Up, A Sunny Day in Glasgow, Titus <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">Adronicus</span>, Talk Normal, bands that were doing new and interesting and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">mindblowing</span> shit, shit that broadened my sense of what was possible in music, and that made the world seem like a more expansive and interesting and mysterious place as a result. The years that we call "good" in music--and, in sense, the albums that we call "good" --are years in which that feeling is felt by everyone, instead of by college students dumb enough to write for a no-name music magazine for free.<br /><br />Now, a true underground in which ideas and personalities rub up against one another at close quarter with minimal fear of failure or embarrassment is constantly churning out bands that are capable of producing that feeling. So while there are no <span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">Lovelesses</span></span> this year, there is Atlas Sound's <span style="font-style: italic;">Parallax</span> and Tim <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37">Hecker's</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38">Ravedeath</span> 1972</span>, experiments in noisy sublimity that have a bit of Kevin Shields in them. There were no <span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_39">Neverminds</span></span>, but we got Ice Age's <span style="font-style: italic;">New Brigades</span>, which is brooding, defiant and relentless in a way that Nirvana once was. There is no <span style="font-style: italic;">Out of Time</span>, but there was <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_40">EMA's</span> equally-harrowing <span style="font-style: italic;">Past Life Martyred Saints</span>, which joins <span style="font-style: italic;">Out of Time</span> in that small pantheon of truly great albums whose songs are predominantly <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style>down-tempo. And of course there are dozens of albums released this year that would scarcely have been imaginable twenty years ago.<br /><br />This year produced few (well, no) obvious future classics. But contrary to my opening paragraph, that's not the best way to think about things. A lot of weird, fascinating and fucked up music came out this year, and when you cleave away the bullshit (bullshit=Pitchfork, twitter, blogs, the bizarre "lets find a new genre to freak the fuck out about every two weeks" fixation of much of the music press...), what you're left with is, thank God, a year like any other. And nothing less.<br /><br /><br />Now to my top 10 tracks. Next post, which I'll probably finish by Monday: Top 10 albums, plus <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_41">miscellany</span><br /><br />10.) The Field, "Burned Out" (from <span style="font-style: italic;">Looping State of Mind</span>)<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/27Tx7m_lUzg" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe><br /><br />Brian <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_42">Eno</span> said that My Bloody Valentine's "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LseSx_hPJyQ">Soon</a>" (the closing track on the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_43">aforementioned</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Loveless</span>) was "the vaguest music ever to have been a hit," a statement which hews to the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_44">Enovian</span> conviction that vague, washed out sounds can coalesce into pop, even if the results sound nothing like pop as people normally experience it. "Burned Out" wins this year's Soon/Brian <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_45">Eno</span> Award for Vaguest Music That Can Possibly Be Considered Pop--the lyrics are <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_46">unintelligible</span>, while the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_47">rhythm</span> is propulsive but repetitive, milking a certain disquiet out of its failure to meaningfully progress. No matter. Like "Soon," this song achieves a musical and emotional expansiveness that deliberately clashes with its meandering and monotonous quality. This song is the apogee of the Cologne sound, which <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJOIpqJ2VqA">enshrines monotony as a sort of high artistic value</a>. The Field emerged from a musical <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_48">milieu</span> obsessed with how looping and repetition can be used to add psychic and emotional depth to electronic music, and this is one of the scene's most successful experiments to date, with the slow-building toy piano only intensifying what's already a transcendent <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_49">avant</span>-pop performance.<br /><br /><br />9.) The War on Drugs, "Come to the City" (from <span style="font-style: italic;">Slave Ambient</span>)<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/FMqWSFNC1jU" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />What's nifty about this song is that it's basically a Woody Guthrie song. Imagine this one totally stripped of drum machines and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_50">synth</span>, and excise the clattering, Joy Division-like guitar work in it's second half, and it sounds a lot like "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBso-UG8R_E">Going Down the Road Feeling Ba</a>d," or any number of other Depression-era folk songs about drifting or rambling through a bleak American frontier. Like a mesa on the distant horizon, the song seems emerges majestically from a wilderness of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_51">Finnesz</span>-style drone--marking probably the only time I'll ever use Woody Guthrie and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_52">Finnesz</span> as a point for comparison for the same individual song. This--like the #1 song on this list (no peeking!)--also succeeds because it could arguably qualify as a protest song, considering the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_53">socio</span>-economic moment we find ourselves in. In folk music, "rambling" and "drifting" have a political dimension, and serve roughly the same purpose as, say mentions of boredom in a Black Flag song--they're the byproduct of a society that offers nothing but <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_54">anomie</span>, or a feeling of wandering <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_55">normlessness</span>. Lead singer Adam <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_56">Granduciel</span> has been rambling, and so have we all.<br /><br /><br />8.) Girls, "Alex" (From <span style="font-style: italic;">Father, Son, Holy Ghost</span>)<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/xE6kD2ke2nY" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe><br /><br />Music shit its collective britches over Girls' second full-length, although there was little on the album that actually hooked me--their music is accomplished without being terribly ambitious, and maudlin without being all that psychologically deep. But Girls also produces songs that are meticulously crafted without being boring, a skill that similarly-lauded acts like Robyn or Vampire Weekend or even Saint Vincent simply haven't acquired yet. This song is a case in point. Everything about "Alex" just works. The whispered vocals, the anxious snare lines, that crisp, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_57">angsty</span> guitar phrase that repeats and intensifies--together, they perfectly evoke that sense of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_58">tragically</span> wasted adolescent longing that Girls is so obsessed with. Delivered in this perfect a package, a line like "Alex has blues eyes/Well who cares/No I don't" contains multitudes, and almost single-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_59">handedly</span> refutes that bit about "psychological depth" from earlier in this paragraph.<br /><br /><br />7.) <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_60">Tenariwen</span>, "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_61">Tenere</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_62">Taqqim</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_63">Tossam</span>" (from <span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_64">Tassili</span></span>)<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/uMUuuW13Fp8" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_65">Tenariwn</span> has been a sort of critical darling in the United States for nearly a decade now, and unlike <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_66">Amadou</span> and Miriam or The Very Best, they're largely uninterested in repackaging their sound for a western audience. <span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_67">Tassili</span></span> is loaded with guest spots, but very little of the album is in English, and it doesn't stray far from the instrumentals and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_68">Taureg</span> folk sounds of their previous work. There's something simultaneously refreshing and disappointing about this--<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_69">Tenariwen</span> clearly has the appeal and the ability to record an album specifically aimed at western listeners, but they don't seem to have the desire to. Even if their sound has evolved (the jams are shorter and their sound is softer and generally more <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_70">acoustic</span> on this one), it hasn't evolved in an identifiably western direction. The farthest they'll go is recording a collaboration with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_71">Kyp</span> Malone and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_72">Tunde</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_73">Adepimbe</span> of TV on the Radio--and even then, hearing English on a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_74">Tenariwen</span> album was slightly jarring, even if this track sounds nothing like <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_75">TVOTR</span>. It's like <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_76">Tenariwen</span> just sort of gave <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_77">Tunde</span> a couple lines to sing and played the song they had intended to play anyway. The result is overwhelming. "Oh <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_78">Tennere</span>/Oh jealous desert!" <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_79">Tunde</span> sings, while <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_80">Tenariwen</span> seems to paint the bleak, unforgiving beauty of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tassili"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_81">Tassili</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_82">n'Ajjer</span></a> with every rattling guitar stroke. I know that's the most Orientalist sentence I've ever written, but fuck it.<br /><br /><br />6.) Fucked Up, "Queen of Hearts" (From <span style="font-style: italic;">David Comes to Life</span>)<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/syg6XGbdUkM" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">David Comes to Life</span> was almost doomed to fail, and when I first read that Fucked Up was making a rock opera about a man living in a depressed part of England during the Thatcher years, my response was a very natural "what the fuck is the most kick-ass rock band on earth <span style="font-style: italic;">doing</span>?!?!?!" Of course The <span style="font-style: italic;">Chemistry of Common Life</span> was a rock opera in its own right, a thunderous song cycle about the ineffable mystery of it all. But <span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_85">DCtL</span></span> aspired to social and historical ambitions that were ill-matched to Fucked <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_86">Up's</span> particular set of talents--for some reason I'll trust Pink Eye if he's singing to me about the universe and the cosmos, but not when he's singing to me about Thatcherite social policy. Upon further reflection though, what better theme could there be for a rock album released in 2011 than the psychic effects of economic stagnation? <span style="font-style: italic;" class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_87">DCtL</span> was all about striving (and, for the most part) failing to keep your head above water in a society whose priorities and values are hopelessly fucked, and even if its length and general inconsistency kept it off my top-10 list, "Queen of Hearts" sums up <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_89">FU's</span> project in six jam-packed minutes. There's hope and frustration aplenty in this one, and the idea of Pink Eye sharing a duet with a children's choir is almost too brilliant for me to contemplate at the moment.<br /><br /><br />5.) Cut Copy, "Need You Now" (<span style="font-style: italic;">From <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_90">Zonoscope</span></span>)<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/r2xovJyBo-0" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />Just how <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_91">intellectually</span> dishonest would I have to be to exclude this from the top five? Like, very, right? This song is just too fucking awesome, an "Umbrella"-like musical orgasm that just makes you question how much better a pop song could possibly, possibly get. I think part of this has to do with the fact that it sounds like a lost <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_92">Depeche</span> Mode track. Except fuck that, no it doesn't--the soaring vocals and tightly-laced <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_93">synth</span> lines give this one an energy that's all its own.<br /><br /><br />4.) Eleanor <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_94">Friedberger</span>, "I Won't Fall Apart on You Tonight" (From <span style="font-style: italic;">Last Summer</span>)<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/p-zZWWxc1w8" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe><br /><br />This year finally settled the question of which <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_95">Friedberger</span> is the weird one (it's Matt, by the way). <span style="font-style: italic;">Last Summer</span> was a noxiously <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_96">Brooklynian</span> set about brunch, indie bookstores, The Park, and other shit that's just not terribly interesting to me at this point in my life. I guess she just wanted to make normal music about normal things after a ten-album run as half of the most <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_97">ecstatically</span> weird duo in rock, but <span style="font-style: italic;">Last Summer</span> was a bit of a hit-or-miss affair, a sign that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_98">conventionality</span> just doesn't suit Ms. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_99">Friedberger</span>. Or does it? While most Fiery Furnaces songs are about Egyptian Grammar and the Borneo Telephone System and other shit I'll probably never encounter, "I Won't Fall Apart on You Tonight" decidedly falls into the category of "we've all been there before," or at least into the category of "<span style="font-style: italic;">I've</span> been there before." The chorus has a defiant quality about it: Eleanor will fall apart on you tonight in all likelihood, and normalcy and psychic harmony are sort of a vain hope for this one, as they are for Kirsten <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_100">Dunst</span> at the beginning of "Melancholia," for instance. But more to the point, this song is more generally about the anxiety of knowing you're about to disappoint someone, and I feel like Ellie is talking herself through an instantly-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_101">relatable</span> crisis of nerves over the course of the song. Amazingly, she does it without the song becoming emotionally cumbersome--"IWFAOYT" is candid, but it's not heavy. In fact, this track is something of a banger, with a jangling piano line that's groovier than just about anything the often-danceable Arcade Fire's ever written.<br /><br /><br />3.) Tyler, The Creator, "Yonkers" (From <span style="font-style: italic;">Bastard</span>)<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XSbZidsgMfw" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />The big complaint about Tyler, The Creator is that he wastes his just mindbloggling lyrical skills on songs about rape and killing homosexuals or raping homosexuals or whatever. It's not that his songs aren't substantive--it's just that their substance consists of over-the-top hate, paranoia and violence, and that he's shown little evidence of turning the corner and sort of like, reassessing what he's doing with his obviously-prodigious talents. This song vindicates that complaint and also turns it on its head. It's a statement song, a here-I-am-and-this-is-what-I'm-about track in the mold of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or "Lose Yourself" or "(Theme From) The Monkees." It's a bit of self-mythologizing or self-narrativizing, in other words, and the picture he paints of himself is fuck-you bleak. He's a motherfucking paradox, except no, he's not--when he says he wants to "stab Bruno Mars in his goddam asophogus," he's being 100% sincere. Maybe! This grows tiresome over the course of two albums, a half-dozen mixtapes, guest spots, concerts and 10,000-word New Yorker articles. But distilled to three-and-a-half minutes, it's the most assaulting lyrical performance of the year, a full portrait of Tyler in all his demented, undeniable brilliance.<br /><br /><br />2.) Frank Ocean, "Swim Good" (From <span style="font-style: italic;">Nostalgia, Ultra</span>)<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/PmN9rZW0HGo" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />Why yes, two of my top 3 songs of the year are Odd Future songs. What of it? And while I'm asking rhetorical questions, has there ever been a song about suicide that's both as disturbing and as pleasurable as "Swim Good"? The chorus is increasingly ominous--five more miles til the road runs out, then one, then none, assumedly. He's got his black suit on, like he's ready for his own funeral--Frank has, in the parlance of a high school heath teacher, "made a plan," a plan that involves barreling off of Highway 1 in a Lincoln town car while wearing a fresh and expensive set of threads. If this plan has a certain poetry to it, so does the song, which is so pregnant with inevitability that the piercing and not-at-all reassuring keyboards that kick in during the chorus produce a feeling of catharsis. The song hangs the listener off of one psychological precipice after another, mixing darkness and catchiness in a way that's nearly impossible to shake.<br /><br /><br />1.) Woods, "Pushing Onlys" (From Sun and Shade)<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/j2q_JbW6TXU" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe><br /><br />I don't want to get too personal with this one, but fuck it.<br /><br />The first time I heard this song was the same afternoon I learned that I hadn't gotten a journalism fellowship that I was foolishly counting on getting, and that I felt, at the time, at least, that I really deserved. I don't think I'd ever been more devastated, which says something about what a comfortable and relatively disaster-free life I'd had up till now, if it says anything at all. I was numbly going through the Forkast, barely paying attention to what I was doing, fast-forwarding in my mind to a week or so in the future, when the numbness would have subsided and I'd have the newfound ability to dispassionately take stock of where my life and career were actually heading--when this song came on.<br /><br />Like #9 on this list, "Pushing Onlys" is about anomie, about the kind of existential aimlessness that arises when a society has failed to give its youngest and most promising participants a sense of meaning and purpose. One of the scariest things about the Occupy Wall Street movement--and a thing that accounts for much of the movement's success, I think--is that it's fueled by anomie, and by the sense that there are simply no options out there other than to reject the current system, full stop, even if that means taking yourself out of the game, condemning yourself to sleeping in a park and basically doing nothing that's conventionally productive. "Pushing Onlys" is the most honest and most harrowing evocation of Great Recession-period anomie I've ever heard, and it deserves to be a generational anthem, even if it won't be (Woods is definitely one of the top 10-15 bands working today, but how often are they discussed as such?). "I'm looking only to start another day," Jeremy Earl sings. "It feels right, it feels so right/But the time just slips away." The tragedy of anomie--and the tragedy of someone trying to find a sense of direction and a sense of purpose in 2011--is the tragedy of wasted time and false hopes. It feels so right to invest yourself in something, to start another day. But maybe this investment is a waste. Maybe the only option left is rejection.<br /><br />Or there's the other option, an option that many of us have been forced to resort to at one point or another, i.e. working a shitty job for shitty pay and experiencing that non-Zuccottian sort of asceticism, by which I mean the uninvited kind: "I'm pushing onlys to waste the years away/These tattered clothes these same tattered clothes that pushed on past yesterday." Earl mentions the worst of fates--wasting the years away--as a kind of callous aside. Of course I'm wasting my years away. But what the fuck are <span style="font-style: italic;">you</span> doing? Are you any better off?<br /><br />I ask myself this question every time I listen to this song, and I'm not embarrassed to admit that it has succeeded in moving me to tears. Of course this song just sort of found me at the right moment, and I'll always associate "Pushing Onlys" with my own, sustained period of normlessness. But a lot of people are in a sustained period of normlessness, I think. No song released this year has so effectively summed up the desperation of the moment, or the desperation of every moment.<br /><br /><br />COMING MONDAY: The top 10 albums of 2011, the top 5 albums of 2010 (revised), the biggest disappointments of the year, and the best Ethio Jazz instrumentals of 1974.Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-33042149705507347222011-12-02T12:46:00.000-08:002011-12-02T15:45:34.290-08:00How Much Does/Should Lars Von Trier's Sexism Matter?I'm at the coffee shop, supposedly working on a job application. Fuck that; something's bothering me, and has been bothering me for awhile now, at least since that fateful evening back in high school when I decided it would be a bright idea to take a girl I had a crush on to see "Breaking the Waves" during a Lars Von Trier retrospective at the AFI. And it started bothering me again after seeing "Melancholia," which could be the greatest work of cerebral sci-fi since "Primer," a movie I blogged about a couple of posts ago.<br /><br />That something is this: the sexual politics of Lars Von Trier's films are fucked. This is not a controversial statement, I don't think--after all, <a href="https://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&source=hp&q=lars+von+trier+is+a+sexist&pbx=1&oq=lars+von+trier+is+a+sexist&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=2502l2829l3l3308l5l3l0l0l0l1l270l519l1.1.1l3l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=c73ed3a0c312173e&biw=1600&bih=709">"Lars Von Trier is a sexist" returns 270,000 hits on Google</a>. In "Breaking the Waves," poor Emily Watson (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Watson">a far more accomplished actress than Emma Watson, I'll note</a>) is raped (probably; it's been awhile since I've seen it) and exploited and abused, and sent ping-ponging from overweening male figure to overweening male figure as her humanity and personal agency are gradually sapped. "Dogville" was proof enough for me that "BTW" wasn't a commentary on phallocentrism so much as Von Trier working out his sexual neuroses on screen. In that movie, Nicole Kidman's character uses mass murder as a means of internalizing and coping with her own victimization--not exactly a model of empowered womanhood, I don't think. Finally, "Melancholia" can be read as a crude metaphor about feminine inability to deal with shit, with the destruction of the entire world serving as the manifestation of Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourgh's failure to overcome their paralysis and psychic torment--a failure as inevitable as the cataclysm witnessed in the film's opening sequence. Remember that scene towards the end, when C. Gainsbourgh tries leaving the grounds of her estate with her kid, and it starts hailing and you get like 3 minutes of her getting pelted with golf-ball sized chunks of ice, looking totally helpless and anguished and defeated? <span style="font-style: italic;">Ah</span>, I thought to myself. <span style="font-style: italic;">There's the LVT I know</span>.<br /><br />I'm of two minds about this. The first is that Emily Watson and Kirsten Dunst are consenting adults, and if they believed that LVT's sexism mattered, and if they believed that LVT was sexist, they wouldn't have agreed to work with him. They know him better than I do. And who's to say that LVT's sexism is really what it appears to be? You could even make the argument that LVT's woman issues are one of the more intriguing things about his work--that LVT realizes that he has an oftentimes-ugly sort of ambivalence towards the opposite sex, and that the powerlessness and exploitation of his female protagonists is part of a jarringly-personal exploration of the darker regions of his own psyche. LVT doesn't hide his sexism--he exposes it, and then examines and deconstructs it in front of the entire world. Maybe his work is actually self-lacerating, and maybe that's why Dunst, Bjork, et al agreed to work with him. Maybe sexism is just part of his art.<br /><br />And even if he is a sexist, it's an unfortunate reality (and a reality that I'm hesitant to put in print, but here goes...) that bigotry is just one of those things you sometimes sorta need to look past. Wagner and Shakespeare, the Gods of their respective arts, were both anti-Semites, but this renders their work problematic rather than totally worthless. I've been rooting for the Washington Redskins my entire life. Not only do they have a racist name, <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/nov/10/racist-redskins/?pagination=false">but they were founded by a white supremacist;</a> neither of these facts will make me stop rooting for them. The mature view on bigotry is that it exists and it's out there and you have be capable of recognizing it. But Shakespeare's anti-Semitism isn't central to his work, the Redskins have been integrated for almost 50 years and are the only team to win the Super Bowl with a black starting quarterback, and LVT is responsible for a few of the most intense and psychologically scarring (which is to say, effective) films ever made. A responsible viewer understands that there's a sexist element to Von Trier's work, while also understanding that his sexism hardly invalidates it. Maybe Dunst, Bjork et. al decided that LVT was a monster, but a monster who also happened to be one of the greatest artists of his time, in any medium--a monster worth working with, in other words.<br /><br />On the other hand: what if Emily Watson decided that acting in an LVT film was worthwhile tradeoff--that the chance at a lead role in a prestige film by a prestige director wasn't something she could reasonably pass up, regardless of who that director was or what sort of situations he'd be putting her in? Similarly, what if Kirsten Dunst decided that an LVT film was her surest means of being taken seriously as an actress? I don't know if either actress had to wrestle with any personal misgivings about starring in films that feature the at-times pornographic subjugation of their characters. But if they had to overcome or even silence these misgivings in the name of their own careers ("BTW" was Watson's film debut, I'll note...)--well then isn't that a sort of exploitation?<br /><br />I honestly don't know where I stand on this. LVT has a made a career out of degrading women on screen--out of using talented actresses to provide psychologically multi-faceted portrayals of women who seem to be prisoners of their own insurmountable feminine weakness (as well as prisoners of society, their husbands, small-town America, sexual naiveite, etc.). But he's also made a career out of making films with an uncanny ability to move and disturb. "BTW" or "Dogville" or "Melancholia" would be artistically worthless if they were pure exploitation porn. Instead, they're riveting and deeply personal investigations into what happens to people when society or depression or a killer near-earth object pushes them to the hitherto-unexplored outer limits of sanity and reason. I remain uneasy about liking his films as much as I do. But this is LVT we're talking about. So maybe that's the entire point.<br /><br />Today's song has been stuck in my head for about 3 weeks:<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZnoUlZnwYy4" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe>Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-30319246970394549892011-11-28T14:07:00.000-08:002011-11-30T09:35:15.694-08:00"Law and Order" Is So Conservative It Makes Michael Savage Look Like John RawlsWhy am I even blogging about this. I'll admit this latest "Law and Order" rant originates with a pretty tense and potentially-explosive moment in the shower the other day (why do these moments always seem to happen in the shower?), when the girlfriend admitted that she had watched a couple episodes of "L&O" with a friend of hers, to which I replied, "Ugh I can't stand that show, for reasons I've probably shared with you like a hundred times by now," to which she replied, "well, what are they," to which I replied....well, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. It's just that it occurred to me, while simultaneously disputing and washing myself, that the case against "L&O" is about much more than television or artistic tastes, that "L&O"'s malignancy is rooted in things that matter like, a lot, and that its sustained popularity over the course of two decades and about a half-dozen spinoffs and iterations reveals something actually quite dark and terrifying about the state of American society. I didn't convince her that this was the case, but I was able to convince <span style="font-style: italic;">myself</span> that this was the case, which is really all that matters for the purposes of this introductory paragraph. I became so convinced of my own rightness on this issue--so convinced that "L&O" is reactionary and authoritarian at its core, and that it both appeals to and exposes a reactionary and authoritarian strain in American culture and politics--that I now find myself writing a blog post as a result of it.<br /><br />I want to say, first of all, that I haven't actually watched an episode of "L&O" for several years now, and few specific episode synopses or plot points are coming to mind right now. My anti-"L&O" brief won't be based on any specific, anecdotal evidence, but this hardly seems to matter: "L&O" is marked by its extremely repetitive and formulaic nature, and the structure of an "L&O" episode is so rigid, so codified, that the episodes are virtually identical.<br /><br />In my own experience, as well as in my own cultural and individual vocabulary, repetition and sanctification are inextricably linked. Holidays and liturgies are repeated; the Torah is repeated once a year according to a reading calendar from which no Jewish sect, no matter how liberal, would ever dream of deviating. With prayer, repetition sanctifies: if you've ever witnessed a Hardei Jew driven to near-madness with <span style="font-style: italic;">kavanah </span>during a Tuesday night <span style="font-style: italic;">Shemona Esrei</span>, then you understand what I mean. Someone who only reads through <span style="font-style: italic;">Shemona Esrei </span>a handful of times of year--someone like me, that is--is incapable of transcending the stilted and often quite-difficult reading of the words in front of him, and is therefore incapable of being driven to near-madness with <span style="font-style: italic;">kavanah</span> while reading <span style="font-style: italic;">Shemona Esrei</span> on a Tuesday night. In religion, the deepest regions of spirituality and mystical truth are often accessed through repetition, and "L&O" is quite possibly the most repetitive show ever made.<br /><br />What exactly is "L&O" sanctifying? What is this nightly or, in some cases, hourly (my dad once remarked that it seemed like "L&O" was on TV virtually every second of the day) ritual of crime/investigation/red herring/arrest/trial/trial nearly bungled as a result of clever lawyering and/or technicalities/trial saved at the last minute/punishment meant to consecrate? The answer is fairly obvious, at least when you contrast "L&O" to a show that I'm guessing most people have completely forgotten about.<br /><br />"Juvies" ran on MTV for what, like a season? Maybe it's still on? I don't know. It was probably one of the bravest things the channel has ever broadcast, and a reminder that MTV was once capable of displaying a surprising sense of responsibility towards the same youth culture it does so much to encourage and create, as well as degrade and destroy. Basically, "Juvies" was a jarring look at the criminal justice system, as told from the perspective of people who were roughly the same age as most MTV viewers (much in the same way that "16 and Pregnant/Teen Mom" is a jarring look at the pressures of motherhood and family life, as well as at what an unforgiving and difficult place the real world can be, as told through the perspective of people are roughly the same age as most MTV viewers).<br /><br />"Juvies" allowed MTV viewers to witness simulacra of themselves--attractive, suburban, mostly upper middle-class teenagers with families and schools and aspirations in life--navigating the Byzantine corridors of American Justice and having a pretty rough time of it. They'd be arrested for extremely dumb shit, have all of their clothes confiscated, be forced to chill out for a couple days in a featureless, soulless building in which they're treated like human turds, and then go before a judge (and because "Juvies" was filmed at a single correctional facility, <span style="font-style: italic;">it was the same judge every single time</span>) who wielded a highly arbitrary power-of-life-and-death over befuddled and often terrified high school kids whom she had never met before. I don't know if this was the producers' intent, but "Juvies" invited its audience to imagine themselves in a similarly Kafakaesque situation. It was, in its own way, a powerful example of dissident journalism, a reminder of how massive and fucked up and insurmountable The System can be, and is:<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/k1PgsWpZeiU" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe><br /><br />In contrast, "L&O" is all about how The System is always just and right and working in our very best interests. Every episode is a canned, fairy-tale rendering of authority in action; every conviction a semi-ritualized confirmation of the inherent rightness of the prevailing moral and social order. Hell, the word "order" even appears in the title. Law and Order, in this context, represent the triumph of the liberal, technocratic state over society's most intractable problems. The show invents monsters--rapists, mobsters, serial killers, psychopaths, child murderers, sex traffickers, terrorists, loners, losers, wife-beaters--and a small group of extremely intelligent and often-attractive people employed by the government slay them, every single time, one after another. My professor Ross Posnock (in the course of discussing <span style="font-style: italic;">The Sun Also Rises</span>) once explained bullfighting as imperialism in miniature, as the ritualized assertion of the Spanish national will over not just nature, but over some monstrous and easily-victimized Other. "L&O" is the American version of bullfighting (or at least the American version of Ross Posnock's version of bullfighting). It's a vindication of The System, repeated again, and again, and again, with only cosmetic variation, with Sam Waterson as matador, and Jerry Orbach, Richard Belzer et al. as picadors.<br /><br />My theory for why this spectacle had endured for two decades, 456 episodes and about a half-dozen spinoffs actually contradicts the title of this post. "L&O" is appealing partly because it appeals to the very worst aspects of liberalism and conservativsm both: for the right, it proves that the system is working and that everything is A-OK; for the left, it validates a positivist, utopian notion of liberalism, wherein power is inordinately capable of remedying society's deepest and scariest ills. The idea of empowering a privilaged and in many ways extra-legal interest group to arrest, beat and even kill any minority (or, in many cases, non-minority) they please while prohibiting the rest of us from smoking a harmless herb or drinking wine in parks, is an outrgorwth of the positivist, utopian, power-can-solve-our-problems-if-we-could-just-be-subjected-t0-enough-of-it school of liberalism. Ruddy Guilliani or hell, Barack Obama are both exemplars of this strain of liberalism, to which the Foucaldian idea that Order results not from power, but from a network of socially and historically-informed (and therefore non-consensual) power relationships, is fundamentally opposed. "L&O" occupies a weird political middle ground. "L&O" is reactionary because it kashers and justifies The System, but oddly forward-thinking, since The System--which is portrayed as being freakishly highly-functioning--is itself the logical endpoint of liberal social management.<br /><br />We, as a society, want badly to believe that the liberal-conservative compromise that "L&O" has drilled into millions of heads hundreds of millions of times is a good and worthwhile one. While "The X-Files" is all about one man's seemingly-delusional insistence that The System is one huge, monstrous lie, "L&O" is about assuaging everyone's--yours, mine, everyone's--discomfort with it. And as Mulder demonstrated, it's much easier to just passively accept things than to consider how profoundly fucked up they may be. To consider that the American justice system is based more on perverse institutional incentives rather than serving the public interest (see <span style="font-style: italic;">Wire, The</span>), that drugs maybe shouldn't be like, illegal (see <span style="font-style: italic;">Wire, The</span>), that The System in its current form is fairly racist (see <span style="font-style: italic;">Wire, The</span>, and <a href="http://www.tnr.com/blog/80669/getting-darnell-the-corners-why-america-should-ride-the-anti-drug-war-wave">this</a>), that America has a massive prison population and that, according to no less an authority than the U.S. Supreme Court, many of the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/23/supreme-court-orders-cali_n_865503.html">members of said population are horribly mistreated</a>--bro, that's some heavy shit. I mean, who wants to think about all that shit? Thinking about shit isn't like, entertaining. Why go to bed troubled, when you can watch Waterson and Co. in full, beast-slaying mode?<br /><br />What really bothers me about "L&O" is that it ingrains (and even ritualizes!) the popular avoidance of unpleasant truths. It's a slickly-produced, highly entertaining palliative that's also meant to distract from the systemic problems in the American justice system, while also subtly arguing that these problems aren't important and maybe don't even exist. In a fairer, more humane America, such a show will, like minstrelry or <span style="font-style: italic;">Birth of a Nation </span>or Toby Keith's "Boot in Your Ass," be considered a embarrassing relic of a misguided era and its under-evolved cultural values, rather than an enduring source of entertainment.<br /><br />+++<br /><br />Last night I caught a few snippets of the Caps-Blues game, and fuck was it strange to see someone other than Bruce Boudreau standing behind the Washington bench. Boudreau was an institution in Washington, that rare sports figure whose out-sized persona was suited to his actual coaching/playing ability. Is there anyone in the past decade of DC sports who matches him in this respect? Gil arguably does, although his tenure in the Nation's Capital ended on far worse terms than Boudreau's--bad enough, I'd say, to taint his entire legacy in this town (well, <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span> town. I'm writing this in New York). LaVar Arrington's current media career distracts from the fact that he wasn't even the most flamboyant or outspoken player on his own team (Fred Smoot wins that distinction). Steve Spurrier--folksy, idiomatic, and like, painfully obviously out of his depth during his brief tenure with the Redskins--was like a walking cartoon character, but could only coach the team to two mediocre seasons. Jim Riggleman, meanwhile, is arguably the most mediocre manager in the history of baseball, although his spectacular kiss-off of an exit (after a win!) ensures he'll be remembered much longer than Manny Acta.<br /><br />I guess what I'm trying to say is that a legend has passed from the scene. The Falstaffian Mr. Boudreau, the youngest (and undoubtedly most profane) hairless blob ever to reach 200 NHL victories, married skill and temperament in a way DC hasn't seen for awhile, and might not see for awhile yet--at least until he shows up behind the Hurricanes' bench the next time they visit the Verizon Center.<br /><br />+++<br /><br />My next post will probably be in about two weeks, and will definitely be a end-of-year music blowout, including top 10 lists and superlatives and other such nonsense.<br /><br />This song won't be on my top 10 tracks list, since it came out like two years ago:<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/V4wfdUv1zGA" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe>Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393272564662164549.post-4999676926801171072011-11-07T06:35:00.000-08:002011-11-07T12:23:33.602-08:00There is Nothing About the New York Islanders That Isn't a TravestyA few months ago, a couple of druggies shot up a pharmacy on Long Island, killing four, including a young teenager. Days after the story broke, I was not in the least bit surprised to learn that the druggies became engaged to be married at a New York Islanders game. Deadspin wasn't surprised either--in their immortal words, "<a href="http://deadspin.com/5814720/of-course-the-pill+popping-couple-charged-with-four-pharmacy-murders-got-engaged-at-an-islanders-game?tag=new-york-islanders">Of course the pill-popping couple charged with four pharmacy murders got engaged at an Islanders game</a>." Of course for decades, the most obvious Islanders word-assocs. weren't "druggies," "losers from Long Island" and "quadruple homicide," but "Trottier," "Nystrom," "four consecutive Stanley Cups" and "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_dynasty#NHL">one of only two American-based NHL-recognized dynasties in hockey history</a>." Now, 23 years after the last banner was hoisted to the already-crowded rafters at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum (for the 1987-88 Patrick Division title. The Patrick Division doesn't even exist anymore, by the way), the Coen Brothers' humor of a couple of psychopathic, murderous druggies getting engaged at an Islanders game is so self-evident that it barely requires explanation. In fact, why <span style="font-style: italic;">haven't</span> the Coens directed a sort of dark suburban, po-mo apocalyptic Bonnie and Clyde-type yarn that begins with a deeply-in-love Hempstead meth head proposing to his mate via NVMC jumbotron?<br /><br />Again, not the sort of question that the once-glorious Islanders once begged. Going to a game in Uniondale is sort of like visiting the Agora in Athens, or the Forum in Rome--or, more accurately, the Colossi of Rameses in Thebes, about which Shelly wrote these familiar and actually-immortal lines:<br /><br />"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:<br />Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"<br />Nothing beside remains. Round the decay<br />Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare<br />The lone and level sands stretch far away.<br /><br />The Nassau Coliseum is the cradle of a fallen empire; theirs was a vast imperium that few can remember, but that casts a decrepit and ever-receding shadow on our present day. Look on my works, ye Mighty! Seven Stanley Cups or Regular Season Titles (the pre-President's Cup award for most points in a season) in just a five-year span! Nine Hall of Famers (the Caps, who have been around as long as the Islanders have, boast only Gartner and Langway)! A ceiling crowded with banners! Unquestioned home-ice supremacy! A rivalry with the Rangers as embittered as any in sports!<br /><br />And despair: when the girlfriend, the younger brother and I arrived at the NVMC for Saturday night's Capitals-Islanders game, we were told our cheap, upper-deck seats had turned into expensive (yet complimentary!), lower-bowl seats on account of a ceiling leak pissing all over section 305. NVMC is in a pretty advanced state of dilapidation, but then again so is RFK, a building that, <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/10/10/339999/why-not-build-a-city/">against all logic-based argument to the contrary</a>, I believe should stand as a permanent memorial to the Redskins' 20-year golden era. Decrepitude can add character to a sports venue is what I'm saying, but emptiness can only detract. And what was sad about the leaky ceiling snafu is that, on a Saturday night, in a game against the best team in the NHL (and a former Patrick Division rival, at that), a game in which Alex Ovechkin, Brian Rolston, Niklas Bakstrom and a host of past and present stars and almost-stars would be competing--<span style="font-style: italic;">was that they actually had lower-bowl seats they could move us to</span>. The official attendance, according to ESPN.com, was 14,812, but there were far more than 1,500 empty seats on Saturday night. And about a third of the 10-12,000 seats that <span style="font-style: italic;">did</span> have people in them were occupied by those who, like myself, were wearing Capitals gear. Which means there were somewhere between 6 and 9,000 actual Islanders fans at a Saturday night game against a former division rival with a two-time MVP on its roster. I bought my tickets on StubHub for $13 each--$10 <span style="font-style: italic;">below</span> face value.<br /><br />Forget that the Islanders are now so easily mocked, that they've sucked for 20 years, that the Long Island white trash nature of their fan base is an implied punchline on a nationally-read sports website, or that they play in a decaying building in the middle of a parking lot off the frickin' Long Island expressway, for fuck's sake. A formerly proud franchise can hit rock-bottom and still retain some essence of its former mystique, as anyone who's been to a Mets or Redskins game over the past few years can attest. But that essence has totally dissipated in Uniondale. It's sad to have to say this, but one of the NHL's all-time great, historic franchises should no longer exist. For a few reasons.<br /><br />Firstly, that existence is predicated upon a once-fashionable, once-plausible social theory that time and history and demographics has gradually debunked. In the early 60s and 70s, the triumph of the suburbs over the city--and the automobile over every other form of transportation--seemed all but assured. Even visionaries like Frank Lloyd Wright were convinced that the ideal American society <span style="text-decoration: underline;">s</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadacre_City">hould be arranged around peace, quiet and living space rather than proximity, convenience and social cohesion.</a> The Islanders were founded in 1972, at the tail end of Robert Moses's auto-centric building spree, and at a time in which The American City wasn't thought of as the country's social and intellectual engine, but as a decaying national disgrace. Some of the worst urban riots in American history took place a mere 4 years before the first drop of the puck at NVMC; "Taxi Driver" came out in 1976; the famous "Ford to City: Drop Dead" headline graced a 1975 issue of the New York Daily News; the Son of Sam stalked the streets in '76 and '77. In the mid-70s, New York City (and Cleveland, and Detroit, and Washington DC...) was violent, black, menacing and broke; if Wikipedia is to be believed, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_City">New York City lost over 10% of its population between 1960 and 1980</a>. If it weren't for a combination of a sort of auto-centric teleology in American urban thinking and good ol' fashioned white flight, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassau_County,_New_York">Nassau County's population wouldn't have doubled between 1950 and 1970</a>, and the New York Islanders likely wouldn't exist.<br /><br />Now, thanks to the housing crisis, expensive gas, Jane Jacobs, ebbing racism and all sorts of other shit that the Islanders ownership group and the NHL simply could not have anticipated back in 1972, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/03/the-next-slum/6653/">the suburbs are over</a>. Hell, according to the Wall Street Journal, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121642866373567057.html">white flight is over</a>. The Nets' relocation from a parking lot in the middle of the Jersey peat bogs to Flatbush and Atlantic in Brooklyn encapsulates a kind of positive, macro-level shift in American society. And it's a shift that the Islanders are incapable of adapting to, so long as they keep playing in Uniondale.<br /><br />A fan said as much to me at the game the other night. In the first period, P.A. Parentau meekly shoved a typically-clueless Roman Hamerlik into the boards, leaving him prone on the ice for about 20 terrifying seconds, during which I half-wondered if I'd just seen a guy get paralyzed in front of between 10 and 12,000 screaming, bloodthirsty hockey fans. Hamerlik was fine enough to play the rest of them game (albeit poorly), and because the play was off the puck and a good 5 or 6 feet off the boards, Parentau was whistled for a weak but arguably-justified 5 minute boarding major. "He was six feet off the boards! That couldn't have been a penalty. He should get five minutes for diving!" some dipshit behind me opined. For some reason, I felt obliged to explain to him that a player's distance from the boards is actually part of the justification for a boarding penalty--that you can only shove the guy into the boards if you're like, next to the boards and going for the puck, rather than six feet from either of them. I got an argumentative and totally-expected "have you ever played hockey before?" (I haven't, not that it matters here...)...but the guys behind me ended up being pretty sold by Islanders-fan standards, since we spent the first intermission talking about the Redskins, Ovechkin, DC sports, and, finally, the fate of Uniondale's seemingly-doomed NHL franchise.<br /><br />The Islander's lease on NVMC is up in a couple years, and the team has failed to secure public financing for a new arena in Uniondale. Where's this team going? I asked them. "They'll figure something out. They'll keep them here," said an older gentlemen with the kind of bullshit gravitas that crusty looking older dudes can lend to mildly insane statements, such as "the Islanders have a future in Long Island."<br /><br />"See, the problem is that the arena isn't close to any public transit," a younger, more intelligent fellow added. "You think this place is empty now, come here on a weeknight. I want them to play out by where the Mets play." Then again, if this guy thinks that New York City is going to throw down $400 million for a new arena for the New York Islanders, maybe he was as delusional as his older seatmate. No one mentioned a third possiblity: that the Islanders could play at the soon-to-be-compelted Barclays Centre in Downtown Brooklyn. It's obvious why this never came up: Barclays is on top of a dozen subway lines and the LIRR, but it's also much further from the Long Island suburbs than Flushing is. A Flushing arena would allow Islanders fans to conveniently see their favorite hockey team (probably by driving, I should add. Flushing is more easily accessible by car from the Long Island suburbs than it is by LIRR...), but their convenience isn't worth the high public-sector cost of a new building.<br /><br />Long story short, even Islanders fans are sorta in denial here. They admit that no one wants to drive to games, and that the team needs to move to the city. But in the process, they invalidate the Islanders original reason for being.<br /><br />Second reason this team isn't viable, and this is gonna sound sorta tautological but fuck it: they're just not viable. According to Forbes, t<a href="http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/31/hockey-valuations-10_New-York-Islanders_312071.html">he Islanders are the NHL's fifth most worthless team</a> (or 26th most valuable team, if you prefer). In this day and age (at least according to an epic Nate Silver essay in <span style="font-style: italic;">Baseball Between the Numbers</span>. It's the one about whether or not A-Rod is overpaid), a sports team makes a lot of its money off of the sort of things that really offend sports purists: stadium naming deals, luxury suites, expensive tickets, overpriced stadium concessions and television rights. NVMC <a href="http://www.nassaucoliseum.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=24410&ATCLID=204936447">has only 15 permanent concession stands</a> (15! For the whole arena!) and only 32 luxury suites; by comparison, MSG has 88 luxury suites, and probably 15 concession stands on the club level alone. Islanders games are broadcast on something called MSG+, and according to Forbes, they rank 22nd out of 24th in television viewership among American NHL teams. NVMC's naming rights are currently unsold, probably because the team is going to leave in 2015 when their lease on the arena expires.<br /><br />As Forbes points out, the team's current financial model is unsustainable. And hockey, unlike Baseball and arguably unlike Football and Basketball, has a number of markets it can successfully expand to. An NHL team in Hamilton, Quebec City or even Hartford (which is building a new arena for the UConn basketball team, I believe) would probably sell out every game. Gary Bettman is understandably worried about the NHL turning into a regional, small-cap sort of league, which explains why the Coyotes are still playing in front of 6,000 people a night in Phoenix rather than in front of 17,000 a night in, say, Saskatoon. But as the NBA's experience with the New Orleans Hornets demonstrates, it's better for a league to maximize its profits elsewhere than subsidize an open, festering wound in a market it badly wants to penetrate. The NHL should go where the hockey fans are, to places where a team's success won't depend solely on socio-economic factors that are outside of the league's control. Demand for hockey is elastic in Uniondale, but it sure isn't elastic in Canada (so far this season, the Ottawa Senators have the lowest attendance among the Canadian clubs, at least in terms of per-game percentage capacity. <a href="http://espn.go.com/nhl/attendance">They only sell 98.8% of their seats</a>).<br /><br />Finally, and this is the real reason the Islanders should move: the human mind believe that certain things--nations, cities, sports franchises--are as immovable as a mountain range, and as permanent a feature as the Agora or the Forum of the Colossi of Ramses. How often this belief in immutability is revealed as the arrogance that it is. The Agora and the Forum aren't functioning urban spaces but tourist attractions; even mountain ranges are slowly eroding into the ground. Nothing in this world has the inherent right to continue existing, least of all you or I, whose obsolescence could be closer than we realize--and least of all a hockey team in Long Island, whose point of obsolescence has long since passed.<br /><br />Saturday night's game was one of the most exciting I've ever been to. There were lead changes and lots of scoring, but also plenty of the little things that hockey fans thrill to: clean open-ice hits, diving blocked shots (most of them by the Islanders, unfortunately), and a couple of glaring, game-changing strategic fuckups (by the Capitals, also unfortunately). There was the excitement of seeing Alex Ovechkin draw a bullshit interference penalty as only a player of Ovechkin's stature can, as well as the weirdness, peculiar to hockey, of seeing a player get a major penalty, two assists and a game-winner in a single, schizoid 60-minute span (Parentau is a beast, as it turns out). And then there was Rick DiPietro, who had to hear an arena of gutless fans chant Al Montoya's name after letting in a couple of blazing wrist-shots in the first period. He demonstrated astounding mental toughness in the process of ignoring the crowd and stonewalling the Caps during the last two frames--in a final "fuck you" to the NVMC faithful, he even recorded an assist on the Islanders' game-icing, open-net goal. The Islanders fans underwent this wareworlf-like metamorphosis from garden-variety hockey fan dipshits to uber hockey fan dipshits when the horn sounded on their team's 5-3 victory. But I felt genuinely happy for them for a couple seconds there, with the NVMC rocking like a high school gym and the 9,000 or so Islanders supporters relishing a gutsy, hard-won victory over arguably the best team in the league. The optimism, that delusional feeling that the good old days weren't quite as far off as the dates on those wrinkled, dusty banners cluttering the (leaky) NVMC ceiling would suggest, was briefly infectious, even for me, and I hate the Islanders, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Epic">who beat the Capitals in an infamous, quadruple overtime playoff game back in 1987</a>.<br /><br />The bonds between fan and team are strong in hockey, and the few Islanders fans who came out on Saturday don't deserve to have a part of themselves skip town for Quebec. But then again, only sentimentality can justify the Islanders' presence in Uniondale. Time and necessity have a near-perfect head-to-head record against sentimentality, I think. They'll triumph in this case, as they always seem to--and sooner rather than later, I hope.<br /><br />A things-being-over themed song:<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/YUcnNfjku6U" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe>Armin Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02061165347752089727noreply@blogger.com0