Reasons for being depressed

It's actually all pretty simple... life, even...

1. Life is actually pretty beautiful, and it really hurts to know that it will not last forever, and that each day, spent appeasing so many others, may be a day wasted. There is a lake, on top of the mountain, which has taken hours to climb, that is refreshing. God becomes necessary to explain the profound privilege of the soothing water.

2. The profound beauty is something that so many are willing to deny to so many others! What bullshit! The differences between political parties can be explained by who wants to deny this privilege to whom, and for what reason. That's it! That's pathetic! To be a Leftist, for all of the critique, for all of the vituperation, for all of the anger, for all of the frustration, is to actually believe, at the end of the day, that everyone should be able to climb the mountain and take their swim in the cool waters. The political mainstream is just a bunch of people arguing about who should be denied this possibility. Can you really pick a side?

It is true, I have had a few beers. But I don't get obnoxious when I am drunk, just inarticulate. There is more!

Love.

I truly am glad you still care

I am still getting page views here even though I haven't posted in a while. The transition has taken a lot of time, and my computer is broken, compelling me to log in sporadically. Thank you for your patience.

Providence is weird. It has been years since I have felt as valued as I do now. Even after only a month of part-time work at my current job, the level of appreciation of my effort is incredibly high. I get paid more now to do things I enjoy doing with people I enjoy working with than I did to do things I didn't like doing with and for people I mostly disliked.

Yet I still feel the pull... It's a small town... I already know half the people in my neighborhood... the dance music scene is small, if it exists at all...

I can't seem to help dreaming big... all the expanse... the space... the intensity... that was promised to me... by techno... by grand-view social theory and critique... by late-night foreign films... I dunno... I will be here another year... and then either I stay or... London... Berlin... Fuck... This sucks or doesn't... The tyranny of wanting everything versus the tyranny of wanting nothing... and the bars close damn early here...

It's Official

Back behind the stick...

Thoughts, feelings, ambiguities, joys, regrets... forthcoming.

Just a friendly reminder...

... to everyone in general (not you - I know you know!)

Please don't use the word "caves" in reference to the Obama administration. As evidenced quite clearly by   an obvious source such as the Frontline specials on both health care "reform" and the financial "crisis", the Obama administration doesn't see itself as having an adversarial relationship to big and/or corrupt businesses and industries (choice paraphrase of a statement by Obama to the leaders of the big banks documented by the latter program: "what we have here is a public relations crisis"). Compromise is the goal, not the end result of agreeing to gain some desire at the expense of another. Usually Obama seeks and gets nothing in in terms of actual policy save  the appearance of having tried to do so.

These New Blogger Features Are Overwhelming

Anyone else feeling it?

Anyhow, while over half of my views come from the USA, and another quarter from the UK, a surprising percentage of views come from Denmark. So... hello to you beautiful Danes out there. Thanks for putting up so many American jazz musicians in the 1950s...

A Bunch of Shizzle in:re "EDM"

mnml ssgs
typically unbearable RA thread
NYT follows tha ca$h

Which do you prefer? Mindless hedonism or the tedious connoisseurship of a rapidly-ossifying "underground"? I don't think there is an ethical answer to this question, just a preference for a certain self-image. I'm starting to think the former, if only because the girls are cuter, though, really, I guess I can't be a mindless hedonist if I continue to think "they look a bit young, don't they?". You think Guetta cares? Ugh. Let me hop back on Discogs and see if the new Convextion remix has shipped from the Netherlands yet. Only three hundred copies pressed. Grey marbled vinyl. I know one percent of the people worldwide who own it. Sadness, again.

Seriously though, I think the "underground" has always had two relationships with the "mainstream". At best, the underground is way ahead, at worst, though, in many cases, necessarily, the underground is purely reactive, defining itself negatively, by what it doesn't do in comparison. The most pernicious effect of the popularity of Guetta, et al, may be, as mnml writes, the de-legitimizing of the more underground strains of the music in the eyes of those disinterested folks on whom the scene's continued existence depends, but my greatest concern is that, in reacting to the overground success of certain artists, will retreat further into the polite, non-transcendent and non-transgressive, but still anti-intellectual, well-behaved hedonism that was the hallmark of virtually every event I went to in New York, a retreat now seemingly justified not only by "taste" but also by the negation of "newer" popular forms.

(also funny that one of the promoters interviewed in the Times article is worried about co-option by corporate money - as if he hadn't already done that himself - underground is really a nice mantle to claim for oneself - now that it doesn't stand for something oppositional, or anything at all really, anyone can claim themselves as being part of it - after all, there is always someone with more money! which brings me to "we are the 99%" - very nice of the middle class to express solidarity with the working class only when all of the strenuous and sycophantic effort they have expended to ensure they are never mistaken for anything else isn't paying off...)

OK and All That

Moved from BKNY to PVD. Still unpacking, getting organized, etc. Heading back to NYC to see Pulp, then it's time to find a job... and then, more records, more bitching about politics, the usual, etc. But relaxed. I think.

Love...