#142) "Old Hippie (The Sequel)" by The Bellamy Brothers - The middle installment of what's become - over thirty years - a story in three acts, Old Hippie (The Sequel) is the most cathartic of the trilogy. The first part, released in the mid 1980s, finds the 'Old Hippie' in his mid-thirties, feeling his age for the first time, lamenting how things have changed since his youth, not sure how he should respond exactly, but still young enough to give the world the finger the way he did when he was 18, to determinedly keep it real (as his grandkids might one day say...).
In ...Sequel, released ten years later, the Old Hippie is now in his mid-40s, and feeling even more marginalized from the direction 1990s America has taken. It's clear his lament has turned to sorrow, and generated a certain anxiety. With 'yuppies in the White House', and a world 'selling sex in youth...', the Old Hippie has been left wondering 'what to pay attention to, and what should he ignore...'
Which, nearly twenty years on from that point (is that possible...?!), has more or less become SOP for all of us, in any generation.
The third installment, released in 2007, reveals that the Old Hippie, perhaps not surprisingly, has found Jesus, and is now biding his time, awaiting salvation. That's all good, but it's The Sequel that I will be taking along, and pondering, on 1/48/50. In as far as it could be, or was even meant to be, it's the most trenchant of what might be considered a generation's swan song.
"And his eyes are on the future, but it's looking pretty sad / And with every day that passes, he becomes more like his dad..."
#143) "The Sweetest Thing (I've Ever Known)" by Juice Newton - I have some sun-drenched memories of this song playing through at least two summers' worth of picnics and cookouts when I was nine and ten years old. And I remember feeling pretty sophisticated listening to it, felt it provided me my first glimpse into the 'adult' world.
What can I say? I was a weird kid, I guess. But 30-plus years on, The Sweetest Thing holds up in a way country ballads don't always. There's an urgency generated here, as the lyrics rock climb their way to the top of the melody, an urgency that gets you believing what the woman is saying in the song, gets you feeling her vulnerability.
If nothing else, it will always remind me of pop cans in a bucket of ice, hot dogs on paper plates, fruit salad in Tupperware, and being ashamed of my fish belly. ;-)
Speaking of the lyrics, I was recently proven wrong about them. What a wondrous age we live in, huh? This 'age of information', which simply doesn't allow anyone to argue on blindly, even if they think they might be wrong.
Maybe that's a good thing. Years ago, I got into a heated discussion with someone about a single line in The Sweetest Thing..., and wouldn't, or couldn't, let it go.
I was hearing, You're my sunshine, you're my babe...
Someone corrected me, said the line was actually, You're my sunshine, you're my rain....
Even at the time, I admitted '...rain' made it a better line, but I was sure I was hearing the hard 'b' sound that could only make the word, 'babe'. It didn't matter that it was awkward and unlikely, and didn't even rhyme to boot, I was never too keen on admitting I was wrong in those days. I kept pushing and pushing and arguing and arguing.
Now it would seem, according to all the lyrics websites crowding the very first page of this particular Google search, that I was wrong. Embarrassingly so, looking back on how I allowed (or forced) the discussion to escalate.
"And as we lie here, just two shadows, in the light before the dawn..."
#144) "Seven Year Ache" by Rosanne Cash - This song too evokes very specific memories from a very specific time in my childhood, a time when lunch with Kool-Aid was a big deal, bikes were rocket ships, trees were mountains, swimming pools oceans, summertime a lifetime, and AM radio was always playing in the background.
On the surface, it could readily be dismissed as a synth-country throwaway like Sylvia's Nobody, but there are some interesting things going on in Seven Year Ache, musically, and lyrically.
Mind you, I don't know what the lyrical stuff is, exactly. I don't know what Cash is talking about...a guy going through a mid-life crisis? A husband she's about to divorce?
Is she the wife in the story?
Is she one of the girls in the bar?
His friend? His lover?
But the music has always compelled me to keep listening. There's something about the synthesized arrangement that gets into my blood. When I was a kid, it was playing while I was sick with a fever, and to this day, it still makes me think of melting, which, when you listen to it, makes perfect sense, I think.
"You act like you were just born tonight, face down in a memory but feeling all right / So who does your past belong to today? Baby you don't say nothing when you're feeling this way..."
#145) "Seven Nation Army" by The White Stripes - A notable punctuation to Jack White's notable contribution to music as a whole, Seven Nation Army has the dubious distinction of being the song that ushered me into middle age.
Several years of feeling crazy cool jamming out to The White Stripes, regarding them as my tether to new, innovative, cutting edge, 'alternative' music, all came crashing down about two years ago:
The song played on my phone at work, and a kid working for me, all of eighteen, smiled brightly and said, Hey! We played this song in pep band!
"And that ain't what you want to hear, but that's what I'll do..."
Friday, February 27, 2015
Friday, February 20, 2015
14,000 miles worth of late winter thoughts...
Recently, I've become interested in people's sailing videos on YouTube. The last couple of years I've had a burgeoning interest in the ocean overall, its vastness and depth and the creatures inhabiting it. Where before I was always kind of repelled by it, or bored at the very least (always the least interesting of nature shows), now I'm held fast by many of the vlogs people post of their adventures in the Keys or crossing the Pacific or Indian oceans. Sailing's not something I'd have the patience for; I don't want to work that hard to have a good time. But it's fascinating to watch nevertheless, and it occurred to me that these videos, some of them quite well produced, wouldn't be available were it not for the technology, and attendant mindset driving it, I complain about. Since last week's post, I've taken a long, hard look at all that noise, and admittedly, a legitimate question has come to the fore: for all my indignation over what I see as the completely fabricated need to treat our lives like a reality show, the need to believe that all eyes are on us and something monumental hangs in the balance of what we say or do next and that it must be captured on camera for posterity, to what degree might I nevertheless get thinking that way on 1/48/50, and employ the very technology I find so objectionable?
The answer (still): not at all.
Er, okay, maybe: it's complicated.
Unless I make the decision to 'disconnect' during the trip (a separate discussion), yes, I will likely blog about my travels on a semi-daily basis, and a camera will almost certainly come out now and then. But I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that I will never, ever walk around with a recording device installed on my person. It will never be pinned to my hat, or clinging to my glasses. I will hold my camera at arm's length (like any good annoying tourist) and never videotape anyone without their knowledge, nor fail to hide their identity should they happen to breeze through a shot.
So to be clear: it's WEARABLE technology, hidden in plain sight, that I find objectionable, its overly vigilant application to the most uninteresting moments of our lives that I find depressing, and a little absurd, and frankly, the beginning of a slippery slope into a dystopian future once found only in the pages of pulp science fiction.
But ultimately, I think I can say in good faith there won't be a lot of videotaping on 1/48/50, for a couple of reasons. Fact is, nobody wants to see what are essentially my vacation videos any more than they may have wanted to see their grandparents' vacation slides back in the day. Yes, if I come across something interesting, I will start taking pictures, and maybe some video, and if any of it turns out worth a smidge, I might post it on this page. I'm only human, certainly not 'above' anything (including wanting to regard my life as a reality show...;-). And in last week's post, I conceded that there's nothing wrong with 'logging' your life if you're doing something worth logging. I cited crossing the equator on your way to the Marquesas as worthy. The Grand Canyon too. And yes, a few personal moments perhaps, the odd marriage proposal, or birth, or graduation. These are the things that punctuate our lives.
But philosophically speaking, discovering a new restaurant or lying in a hammock (as presented by the Lifelogger corporate video) and other like banalities no more deserve to be 'logged' than 99% of what goes on in our daily lives deserves to be 'posted'. And therefore, it just doesn't warrant so potentially sketchy a practice as wearing one's camera.
Driving 14,000 miles across the country is worth 'logging', I'd say. And I would hope to encounter moments that prompt me to start videotaping. But I'm a writer; that's what I do. I'm not a movie maker wannabe or makeshift cinematographer; I have a face for radio and a voice for newsprint. If I do anything in the way of sharing the trip, especially once its over, it will be largely by writing about it. Truth be told, I want it that way. Posting photos and video is too easy. Anybody can do that. Everybody is.
Of course, on another of my blogs, Northbound Thoughts, I've frequently said I might consider a 'hat-cam' while I fish. But fish don't mind. They like to be filmed.
Er, maybe they don't...but I know for a fact people don't. Unless they are the ones holding the camera.
------------------------
------------------------
There are many others, but I found this film posted on YouTube. Before GPS, before GoPro, before any means by which to share it with anyone (least not like is done today), this British couple, Erin and Susan Hiscock, filmed their three-year sailing trip around the world in the mid-1950s.
Erin was a noted sailor in his day, and this film is truly extraordinary. Narrating with bone dry wit, a sharp knowledge of what he's talking about, and keen appreciation for the lush color that certain details add (though perhaps not as much cultural sensitivity as might - and should - be employed today), he makes the trip (this 'vlog') interesting - fascinating - from beginning to end.
Now, of course, I'd say it's historically significant as well.
It's got nothing to do with my road trip, or anyone's road trip, but it makes me want to go, just the same....go anywhere.
The answer (still): not at all.
Er, okay, maybe: it's complicated.
Unless I make the decision to 'disconnect' during the trip (a separate discussion), yes, I will likely blog about my travels on a semi-daily basis, and a camera will almost certainly come out now and then. But I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that I will never, ever walk around with a recording device installed on my person. It will never be pinned to my hat, or clinging to my glasses. I will hold my camera at arm's length (like any good annoying tourist) and never videotape anyone without their knowledge, nor fail to hide their identity should they happen to breeze through a shot.
So to be clear: it's WEARABLE technology, hidden in plain sight, that I find objectionable, its overly vigilant application to the most uninteresting moments of our lives that I find depressing, and a little absurd, and frankly, the beginning of a slippery slope into a dystopian future once found only in the pages of pulp science fiction.
But ultimately, I think I can say in good faith there won't be a lot of videotaping on 1/48/50, for a couple of reasons. Fact is, nobody wants to see what are essentially my vacation videos any more than they may have wanted to see their grandparents' vacation slides back in the day. Yes, if I come across something interesting, I will start taking pictures, and maybe some video, and if any of it turns out worth a smidge, I might post it on this page. I'm only human, certainly not 'above' anything (including wanting to regard my life as a reality show...;-). And in last week's post, I conceded that there's nothing wrong with 'logging' your life if you're doing something worth logging. I cited crossing the equator on your way to the Marquesas as worthy. The Grand Canyon too. And yes, a few personal moments perhaps, the odd marriage proposal, or birth, or graduation. These are the things that punctuate our lives.
But philosophically speaking, discovering a new restaurant or lying in a hammock (as presented by the Lifelogger corporate video) and other like banalities no more deserve to be 'logged' than 99% of what goes on in our daily lives deserves to be 'posted'. And therefore, it just doesn't warrant so potentially sketchy a practice as wearing one's camera.
Driving 14,000 miles across the country is worth 'logging', I'd say. And I would hope to encounter moments that prompt me to start videotaping. But I'm a writer; that's what I do. I'm not a movie maker wannabe or makeshift cinematographer; I have a face for radio and a voice for newsprint. If I do anything in the way of sharing the trip, especially once its over, it will be largely by writing about it. Truth be told, I want it that way. Posting photos and video is too easy. Anybody can do that. Everybody is.
Of course, on another of my blogs, Northbound Thoughts, I've frequently said I might consider a 'hat-cam' while I fish. But fish don't mind. They like to be filmed.
Er, maybe they don't...but I know for a fact people don't. Unless they are the ones holding the camera.
------------------------
Celebrating my 100th nebulous post! Time for ice cream!
------------------------
There are many others, but I found this film posted on YouTube. Before GPS, before GoPro, before any means by which to share it with anyone (least not like is done today), this British couple, Erin and Susan Hiscock, filmed their three-year sailing trip around the world in the mid-1950s.
Erin was a noted sailor in his day, and this film is truly extraordinary. Narrating with bone dry wit, a sharp knowledge of what he's talking about, and keen appreciation for the lush color that certain details add (though perhaps not as much cultural sensitivity as might - and should - be employed today), he makes the trip (this 'vlog') interesting - fascinating - from beginning to end.
Now, of course, I'd say it's historically significant as well.
It's got nothing to do with my road trip, or anyone's road trip, but it makes me want to go, just the same....go anywhere.
Friday, February 13, 2015
Do we really need to 'log' our entire life? When did forgetting (certain) things fall so out of favor?
So some readers tried to call me out over last week's post, Reason #30 to Live Nebulously, questioning whether the product that I provided a link to deserved such a negative distinction. A few felt the need to defend Lifelogger, one of them in a point-by-point evaluation, as though I were writing (or he was) for Consumer Reports.
Frankly, I don't give a shit about the product one way or another. It might be the niftiest thing since sliced bread, might blow all similar products on the market out of the water. My point was not to single out Lifelogger, as such, but rather to assert that the 'wearable technology' phenomenon, set to ramp up this year, is also set to become much more than a string of latest gadget fads. We are no longer talking about useless items we pick out of the Sharper Image catalog so we can one-up friends and family, be ahead of the curve in our never-ending quest to add to our collections of shit we can't take with us. No sir, this is something else; this is nothing less than an evolutionary step for our species, one that is not going to lead anywhere good.
My complaint comes in two parts:
1) Wearable technology can and will be used to invade people's privacy, there's no way around it. Yes, laws are being enacted in certain areas, intended to guard against sketchy behavior, to prevent creepers from peering through windows or up skirts. But ordinary people - the victims - really have no way of telling when and where something like that is happening, so these 'laws' are essentially ineffective. Having them in place might fast-track a legal response, but they take no preventative measure, or even posture, whatsoever.
Privacy, in this society, has been taking a beating for quite a while, and it doesn't have to be something skeevy going on to be wrong, or at least very annoying. Even I'm guilty of this. When I was fifteen, I was annoying as all hell, visiting my older brother in New York City for the first time, innocently going around snapping pictures of people with my disc camera. I fancied myself a photographer-at-large...er, something like that...was not content with just landmarks and skylines in my photos; I wanted people, 'New Yorkers', and went out of my way to get the shot.
More than a few people did not take kindly to this, including a cabbie who actually climbed out of his ride to confront me. At the time, I had the temerity to be indignant, even (ignorantly) invoked my 'rights'...but I get it now. Those people didn't want their pictures taken, nor should they have had to endure it. I didn't have the right to do what I was doing.
I'd be the same way now, were I aware of it going on. You'd be pretty damn pathetic, traveling to my town and considering me worth taking a picture of, but in theory, I'd protest strenuously if you did. And furthermore, I don't want to be an 'extra' in someone's lame movie, don't want to be captured strolling unawares through the periphery of their GoPro moment. Chances are, I already have. Chances are, most of us have.
I shudder to think of a world, already becoming reality, where everyone is a paparazzo. If I were a celebrity, or an attractive woman going about her day, minding her business, I would be concerned; I would be watchful, especially as these wearable devices become harder to spot. When Google Glass (Reason #1 to Live Nebulously, actually...) was introduced a couple years back, it was big, clunky and ugly, hanging off the user's face like a tumor. Now, as I predicted, its successors are sleeker and less conspicuous. You might not even notice that the individual across from you in a restaurant has pushed record, and is now sitting stock still, filming you as you eat, and as he eats. :-/
2) Just my opinion, I know, but there simply is no reason whatsoever to video/photo document every living, breathing moment of our waking hours. Yes, if you're doing something magnificent - if you're base jumping in a wingsuit off a high rise in Sao Paulo, or crossing the equator on your way to the Marquesas, or even if you drove all the way to the Grand Canyon and want to try to quantify the depth of its beauty with imagery (though everyone pretty much knows that never seems to work out so well...), then by all means, Go Pro it up, dude (or dudette).
But as it's said that the modern Valentine's Day is really a fake holiday concocted (or perpetuated) by greeting card companies, it might be said with equal confidence that the desire to document our lives, or notion that we should, or must, has been manufactured (and perpetuated) by companies who make products like Lifelogger, and GoPro, and Google Glass. These companies are preying on, rather than servicing, that potent desire - gripping each and every once of us - to feel as though our lives matter, that they will be remembered, and cherished, first by ourselves and then others after we're gone. In the Lifelogger 'corporate video' I provided a link to, we are led, with schmaltzy dialogue and sickly sentimental nursery rhyme music, to picture ourselves in some static tableau of the future, an elderly individual sitting in a comfy chair in a comfy living room, reflecting on a life well-lived with an approving smile and misty eyes.
"Imagine recording eight hours of footage without holding up a camera..." the narrator intones.
Why would anybody do that?
"...live streaming your memories with friends and family, or capturing all the simple ones you might forget."
What's wrong with forgetting? Having everything - everything - in a virtual continuum of photos and videos to look back on when you're 80...concocting your own Truman Show...I don't know, it gives me the creeps. Yes, there are certain things, truly special moments, signposts on the road of life, that deserve to be captured in picture or video; but most things don't really need more than a totemic symbol (the classic 'leaf pressed in a book', if you will), they actually keep better stored solely in the mind; and some things, a lot of things I hate to say, just don't deserve to be remembered, or immortalized, at all.
If we 'capture' and remember everything, that is, if we engage the largely clinical practice of 'logging' our life as though it's the reality TV show we feel it's worthy of being, nothing stands out. Life becomes just a sick obsession with the past, an opiate addiction for days gone by, which is not healthy.
According to Dictionary.com, 'cyborg' is defined as: "person whose physiological functioning is aided by or dependent upon a mechanical or electronic device."
We are witnessing the beginning of this. It's still in its infancy stage, but a couple of our key senses - sight and sound - are already being 'aided' by technology that we can now wear, place as part of our person, and I truly believe the ramifications of doing so have yet to be revealed, or even imagined.
Ahhh...makes me really long for the highway, the open road, out beyond the reach of cameras...
Oh wait, the sad truth is 'the highway' is no longer beyond the reach of cameras either.
Frankly, I don't give a shit about the product one way or another. It might be the niftiest thing since sliced bread, might blow all similar products on the market out of the water. My point was not to single out Lifelogger, as such, but rather to assert that the 'wearable technology' phenomenon, set to ramp up this year, is also set to become much more than a string of latest gadget fads. We are no longer talking about useless items we pick out of the Sharper Image catalog so we can one-up friends and family, be ahead of the curve in our never-ending quest to add to our collections of shit we can't take with us. No sir, this is something else; this is nothing less than an evolutionary step for our species, one that is not going to lead anywhere good.
My complaint comes in two parts:
1) Wearable technology can and will be used to invade people's privacy, there's no way around it. Yes, laws are being enacted in certain areas, intended to guard against sketchy behavior, to prevent creepers from peering through windows or up skirts. But ordinary people - the victims - really have no way of telling when and where something like that is happening, so these 'laws' are essentially ineffective. Having them in place might fast-track a legal response, but they take no preventative measure, or even posture, whatsoever.
Privacy, in this society, has been taking a beating for quite a while, and it doesn't have to be something skeevy going on to be wrong, or at least very annoying. Even I'm guilty of this. When I was fifteen, I was annoying as all hell, visiting my older brother in New York City for the first time, innocently going around snapping pictures of people with my disc camera. I fancied myself a photographer-at-large...er, something like that...was not content with just landmarks and skylines in my photos; I wanted people, 'New Yorkers', and went out of my way to get the shot.
More than a few people did not take kindly to this, including a cabbie who actually climbed out of his ride to confront me. At the time, I had the temerity to be indignant, even (ignorantly) invoked my 'rights'...but I get it now. Those people didn't want their pictures taken, nor should they have had to endure it. I didn't have the right to do what I was doing.
I'd be the same way now, were I aware of it going on. You'd be pretty damn pathetic, traveling to my town and considering me worth taking a picture of, but in theory, I'd protest strenuously if you did. And furthermore, I don't want to be an 'extra' in someone's lame movie, don't want to be captured strolling unawares through the periphery of their GoPro moment. Chances are, I already have. Chances are, most of us have.
I shudder to think of a world, already becoming reality, where everyone is a paparazzo. If I were a celebrity, or an attractive woman going about her day, minding her business, I would be concerned; I would be watchful, especially as these wearable devices become harder to spot. When Google Glass (Reason #1 to Live Nebulously, actually...) was introduced a couple years back, it was big, clunky and ugly, hanging off the user's face like a tumor. Now, as I predicted, its successors are sleeker and less conspicuous. You might not even notice that the individual across from you in a restaurant has pushed record, and is now sitting stock still, filming you as you eat, and as he eats. :-/
2) Just my opinion, I know, but there simply is no reason whatsoever to video/photo document every living, breathing moment of our waking hours. Yes, if you're doing something magnificent - if you're base jumping in a wingsuit off a high rise in Sao Paulo, or crossing the equator on your way to the Marquesas, or even if you drove all the way to the Grand Canyon and want to try to quantify the depth of its beauty with imagery (though everyone pretty much knows that never seems to work out so well...), then by all means, Go Pro it up, dude (or dudette).
But as it's said that the modern Valentine's Day is really a fake holiday concocted (or perpetuated) by greeting card companies, it might be said with equal confidence that the desire to document our lives, or notion that we should, or must, has been manufactured (and perpetuated) by companies who make products like Lifelogger, and GoPro, and Google Glass. These companies are preying on, rather than servicing, that potent desire - gripping each and every once of us - to feel as though our lives matter, that they will be remembered, and cherished, first by ourselves and then others after we're gone. In the Lifelogger 'corporate video' I provided a link to, we are led, with schmaltzy dialogue and sickly sentimental nursery rhyme music, to picture ourselves in some static tableau of the future, an elderly individual sitting in a comfy chair in a comfy living room, reflecting on a life well-lived with an approving smile and misty eyes.
"Imagine recording eight hours of footage without holding up a camera..." the narrator intones.
Why would anybody do that?
"...live streaming your memories with friends and family, or capturing all the simple ones you might forget."
What's wrong with forgetting? Having everything - everything - in a virtual continuum of photos and videos to look back on when you're 80...concocting your own Truman Show...I don't know, it gives me the creeps. Yes, there are certain things, truly special moments, signposts on the road of life, that deserve to be captured in picture or video; but most things don't really need more than a totemic symbol (the classic 'leaf pressed in a book', if you will), they actually keep better stored solely in the mind; and some things, a lot of things I hate to say, just don't deserve to be remembered, or immortalized, at all.
If we 'capture' and remember everything, that is, if we engage the largely clinical practice of 'logging' our life as though it's the reality TV show we feel it's worthy of being, nothing stands out. Life becomes just a sick obsession with the past, an opiate addiction for days gone by, which is not healthy.
According to Dictionary.com, 'cyborg' is defined as: "person whose physiological functioning is aided by or dependent upon a mechanical or electronic device."
We are witnessing the beginning of this. It's still in its infancy stage, but a couple of our key senses - sight and sound - are already being 'aided' by technology that we can now wear, place as part of our person, and I truly believe the ramifications of doing so have yet to be revealed, or even imagined.
Ahhh...makes me really long for the highway, the open road, out beyond the reach of cameras...
Oh wait, the sad truth is 'the highway' is no longer beyond the reach of cameras either.
Friday, February 6, 2015
Reason #30 to Live Nebulously
Uhhh, I think the 'corporate video' for this product is supposed to get me a little damp in my undies, but, yeah, this might be the most compelling argument yet for nebulous living.
Actually, the video is the opposite of moving (bowel, urinary or otherwise...); it's really quiet cold and cynical, and predatory.
Lifelogger
Actually, the video is the opposite of moving (bowel, urinary or otherwise...); it's really quiet cold and cynical, and predatory.
Lifelogger
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