Perpetuated in virtuality,
For all of eternity
‘Tis an actuality,
This image-based reality.
It happens when I’m tired, the rhyming thing. But musical or not it’s true—our (my) reality has become a virtual reality, a paradox in and of itself.
The paradoxical nature of our own nature, what seems to be evolving into human nature, is so unreal, so imperfectly constructed that I can’t help but think maybe the Mayan’s weren’t so far off with the 2012 thing. It might not go up in flames on 12/22, but who knows. Maybe our firewalls will go down and all will be lost that way.
Cheery, no?
But it's entirely possible. Our world is becoming virtual, our money hypothetical, our relationships artificial. The writing is on the wall. We may not even realise when the game is up. It seems these things still are real to us—facebook introduces you to the new girlfriend, lets you overhear a conversation, see someone at a party. But these things aren’t really happening. Our interactions are bound by the interweb, an extensive network of representations only; a black hole of real things.
Eventually our physicality will be but a hindrance, a chore to upkeep. In many ways it already is. Diet pills and lose-weight fast schemes are at least as prominent as get-rich quick schemes. People don’t want to, or are not willing to, put any work toward the things they desire. Which begs the question, what is worth? If nothing warrants any work or effort, is anything worth anything? Or is there a new understanding of worthiness?
The value of money has become completely superficial; it’s less something to work for and earn than something owed, something everyone has a right to. But a right some are more deserving of than others. It seems arbitrary in a way; devoid of any humanistic of value.
The dehumanizing qualities of money I can handle. Money is by nature of its creation and function, dehumanizing. It’s objectifying and quantifying. But it’s money, I get it. There are similar trends in self-representation as well, especially with Facebook. Image has always been a bit superficial, and while a vrai shame it has been this way for as long as I can remember and that so too, I can understand.
What I have trouble with is the way Facebook is changing relationships. The way I barely missed anyone this semester. I’m not sure if that is because I am not they type of person to really miss people or because I could see anyone whenever I liked; my dearest friends were just a click away.
Sometimes it’s nice to be so connected. It’s easy to keep in touch and stay in your friends lives when distance or lifestyle (or time zones) wouldn’t otherwise permit, but at the same time there are all these friends still in your life, still knowing everything about you. There’s something genial about friends coming in and out of your life, rather than being there constantly. And it makes those few friends who are there constantly all the more important.
There’s also just the fact of having a record of your entire life. Weird. It’s just weird.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
The Problems of Making People Happy
The biggest one of all is that I like to do it. I wouldn’t qualify myself as a pushover, but I will say that this semester I’ve missed out on doing things I wanted to because someone else wanted to do something else. When people ask me what I’d like, most of the time I honestly don’t mind. When it comes to music or food and even most activities I don’t mind which we do. It’s the fact of doing anything at all that I don’t always take to.
Sometimes I like to do nothing. Or rather things that are nothing to other people, but mean a bit of something to me. I like to read. I like to write and I like to sleep. But especially this semester I’ve been so often convinced that that is ‘nothing’ and that I ought to be doing ‘something’ while I’m in Paris, while I’ve got the chance. So when I want to read or write instead I go out, “enjoying” the city.
Except that the thing I’ve learned, the thing I’ve so exhaustively learned, is that to enjoy anything outside of yourself at all you’ve first got to enjoy yourself completely. And my self enjoys reading and writing and sleeping.
But this isn’t just a Paris thing; it’s not anything new that I do things with people when I’d rather do something (a very real something) else. I’ve been playing violin since I was four years old, but I’m not studying at the Paris Conservatory right now. I never practiced enough because back in the day practicing was ‘nothing.’ For a time, in those rebellious middle school years, I ignored my friends’ opinions and practiced when I liked instead of hanging out at the mall and going to the cinema and putting metal through unnatural holes in my body. I got really interested in jazz violin and taught enough/played enough to buy an electric 5-string violin/viola. I had the old Jamie Aebersold books and used my dad’s record player to play alongside.
At some point since then, I relapsed. I don’t know when this was, or how or why, but it must have happened as I am living evidence of it. This is a choice I seem to continually make; to please other people first. I cannot believe that it is a result of pressures, or if it is then it is a set of pressures I choose to bend to. I think.
I do like other people to be happy. That isn’t as selfless as it sounds—that just happens to be what makes me happy. I like people. It’s a weird sort of addiction, a fascination of sorts but one that I can’t stop. Are addictions bad if they aren’t destructive? Does intentionality matter?
In art, the author is removed from the meaning. The interpretation of and value given to an art object is between the object itself and the viewer. Intentionality is not a factor. And art is a likeness of life, no? It is reflects life; affects life; is an effect of life. By simple virtue of the artist being alive, art bears some relation to the living. So then does intentionality matter in life? Does it matter why I like to make people happy? I do not think I suffer from abnormally high levels of self-consciousness, or am in someway seeking approval or love. Or maybe I am; maybe that’s human nature. Maybe that’s the nature of art too. Even avant-garde art wants to be hated by a few in order that it may be loved by many others.
Perhaps giving up time towards reading and writing, and sleeping, is alright so long as it doesn’t then become a source of resentment. To make people happy by appeasing their sense of what is right while still appeasing your own sense of what you need; right or wrong. The way artists follow artistic trends while exploring their own capacities as artists; right or wrong. You can’t paint exactly what the people want; then there’s no artistry involved. But you can’t drip paint in the 17th century and call it art as it is not only inconceivable but also incomprehensible. Art it did not go from David to Duchamp from one day to the next. It’s been a continuous process of give and take; as long as there is both give and take and not wholly giving or taking, there is progress. There is art. There is a well-lived life.
Sometimes I like to do nothing. Or rather things that are nothing to other people, but mean a bit of something to me. I like to read. I like to write and I like to sleep. But especially this semester I’ve been so often convinced that that is ‘nothing’ and that I ought to be doing ‘something’ while I’m in Paris, while I’ve got the chance. So when I want to read or write instead I go out, “enjoying” the city.
Except that the thing I’ve learned, the thing I’ve so exhaustively learned, is that to enjoy anything outside of yourself at all you’ve first got to enjoy yourself completely. And my self enjoys reading and writing and sleeping.
But this isn’t just a Paris thing; it’s not anything new that I do things with people when I’d rather do something (a very real something) else. I’ve been playing violin since I was four years old, but I’m not studying at the Paris Conservatory right now. I never practiced enough because back in the day practicing was ‘nothing.’ For a time, in those rebellious middle school years, I ignored my friends’ opinions and practiced when I liked instead of hanging out at the mall and going to the cinema and putting metal through unnatural holes in my body. I got really interested in jazz violin and taught enough/played enough to buy an electric 5-string violin/viola. I had the old Jamie Aebersold books and used my dad’s record player to play alongside.
At some point since then, I relapsed. I don’t know when this was, or how or why, but it must have happened as I am living evidence of it. This is a choice I seem to continually make; to please other people first. I cannot believe that it is a result of pressures, or if it is then it is a set of pressures I choose to bend to. I think.
I do like other people to be happy. That isn’t as selfless as it sounds—that just happens to be what makes me happy. I like people. It’s a weird sort of addiction, a fascination of sorts but one that I can’t stop. Are addictions bad if they aren’t destructive? Does intentionality matter?
In art, the author is removed from the meaning. The interpretation of and value given to an art object is between the object itself and the viewer. Intentionality is not a factor. And art is a likeness of life, no? It is reflects life; affects life; is an effect of life. By simple virtue of the artist being alive, art bears some relation to the living. So then does intentionality matter in life? Does it matter why I like to make people happy? I do not think I suffer from abnormally high levels of self-consciousness, or am in someway seeking approval or love. Or maybe I am; maybe that’s human nature. Maybe that’s the nature of art too. Even avant-garde art wants to be hated by a few in order that it may be loved by many others.
Perhaps giving up time towards reading and writing, and sleeping, is alright so long as it doesn’t then become a source of resentment. To make people happy by appeasing their sense of what is right while still appeasing your own sense of what you need; right or wrong. The way artists follow artistic trends while exploring their own capacities as artists; right or wrong. You can’t paint exactly what the people want; then there’s no artistry involved. But you can’t drip paint in the 17th century and call it art as it is not only inconceivable but also incomprehensible. Art it did not go from David to Duchamp from one day to the next. It’s been a continuous process of give and take; as long as there is both give and take and not wholly giving or taking, there is progress. There is art. There is a well-lived life.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Deterioration by Supplantation Type 2
I don’t know if the second type of earbudding is better or worse. Half of me thinks worse because at least with the phone ear buds, someone is getting through to you. With music you’re completely in your own private sphere. But the other half of me wants to think it’s better because this is the one I do.
I didn’t always. I didn’t when I first came to Paris. But I am one of those people who constantly looks around at things and people, and you can’t look at people in Paris. Making eye contact gets you into trouble. So I started listening to music when I’d walk places, and I’d sort of zone out a bit. Or at least look less approachable.
But really, does the rest of the world have the same attention problems I do? It’s a bit hard to believe the rest of my generation also has the same rotten luck of making eye contact with the wrong people. (I nearly got chased by a homeless man yesterday!! I accidently made eye contact with him as I was passing, but I was passing, and so I don’t know maybe he felt slighted or something.)
Maybe my generation has a greater appreciation for music. Although the music that’s popular today makes that seem a bit implausible too.
Is it that we have a need to be constantly entertained? That’s not too far from it I think, and maybe I’m alright with that but it scares me to think where that might lead. Can we (generally, of course) not be alone with our own thoughts? Do we have enough thoughts to be alone with?
When I was in middle school, my language teacher would make us sit in silence for ten minutes at the beginning of every class. Her theory, which she voiced often, was that if you didn’t have 10 minutes worth of personal thoughts you were doomed. To what, she never said.
Maybe the life of the perfect American consumer.
I didn’t always. I didn’t when I first came to Paris. But I am one of those people who constantly looks around at things and people, and you can’t look at people in Paris. Making eye contact gets you into trouble. So I started listening to music when I’d walk places, and I’d sort of zone out a bit. Or at least look less approachable.
But really, does the rest of the world have the same attention problems I do? It’s a bit hard to believe the rest of my generation also has the same rotten luck of making eye contact with the wrong people. (I nearly got chased by a homeless man yesterday!! I accidently made eye contact with him as I was passing, but I was passing, and so I don’t know maybe he felt slighted or something.)
Maybe my generation has a greater appreciation for music. Although the music that’s popular today makes that seem a bit implausible too.
Is it that we have a need to be constantly entertained? That’s not too far from it I think, and maybe I’m alright with that but it scares me to think where that might lead. Can we (generally, of course) not be alone with our own thoughts? Do we have enough thoughts to be alone with?
When I was in middle school, my language teacher would make us sit in silence for ten minutes at the beginning of every class. Her theory, which she voiced often, was that if you didn’t have 10 minutes worth of personal thoughts you were doomed. To what, she never said.
Maybe the life of the perfect American consumer.
Deterioration by Supplantation Type 1
I was walking home from school, stopped at an intersection waiting for the cars to notice the red light, and the woman next to me began to speak. I turned round thinking behind me stood someone sharing my street-crossing woes but instead I met a rather unfriendly glare which I’m sure had she not already been in a conversation (which I so rudely peeked in on) would have been accompanied by a deep, smoker woman’s “QUOI.”
How dare I look at a private conversation on a public street? How could I be so stupid. Because. Because her phone didn’t even ring. French people keep their phone in their ears! I mean not really, but essentially. They have those iPod-looking ear buds with a microphone dangling and they just push a button and that answers their phone!
Cell phones are bad enough. You can reach anyone at any time and you don’t even have to talk to do it. But now not only can someone far away reach you, only someone far away can reach you. By having plugs in your ears you close yourself off to any actual interaction with the actual people around you. It’s like they’re waiting for someone to ring them; they’ve already got the person (whoever it turns out to be) in their ears.
But maybe that’s appropriate for our (western) culture today. We are a society that lives for the weekend, whose years revolve around holidays, breaks, vacations. I’d like to think of my family as a generally happy, sincere one but even we probably fall into this category. The Christmas letter my mom writes every year will maybe have a line or two about work, but never more.
If I grow up and find a career that gets me excited every day so that I live for the hours and days and not the weekend, I will consider myself successful. If I can write a Christmas letter entirely about daily life so that those people wanting to hear about summers spent with Club Med cannot even get through it, I will consider my life well lived.
How dare I look at a private conversation on a public street? How could I be so stupid. Because. Because her phone didn’t even ring. French people keep their phone in their ears! I mean not really, but essentially. They have those iPod-looking ear buds with a microphone dangling and they just push a button and that answers their phone!
Cell phones are bad enough. You can reach anyone at any time and you don’t even have to talk to do it. But now not only can someone far away reach you, only someone far away can reach you. By having plugs in your ears you close yourself off to any actual interaction with the actual people around you. It’s like they’re waiting for someone to ring them; they’ve already got the person (whoever it turns out to be) in their ears.
But maybe that’s appropriate for our (western) culture today. We are a society that lives for the weekend, whose years revolve around holidays, breaks, vacations. I’d like to think of my family as a generally happy, sincere one but even we probably fall into this category. The Christmas letter my mom writes every year will maybe have a line or two about work, but never more.
If I grow up and find a career that gets me excited every day so that I live for the hours and days and not the weekend, I will consider myself successful. If I can write a Christmas letter entirely about daily life so that those people wanting to hear about summers spent with Club Med cannot even get through it, I will consider my life well lived.
Monday, May 31, 2010
observing the unobservable
I tried to do a derive today. I rode the 13 to the end of the line and was all excited to discover a whole new Paris, a periphery culture.
It really wasn’t terribly interesting.
I passed a garage, a gas station, a nice-smelling Indian restaurant. There were people having a barbecue in the park (Happy Memorial Day) and what looked like a pool or gym sort of place. It actually looked a lot like Saginaw.
I haven’t had too much success with derives, honestly. I do try. I don’t know, maybe it was easier before there was so much globalization and industrialization. I would love to derive around at the end of the 19th century, when the city was new. To see how Haussmann’s changes changed the way people interact with space.
Maybe part of the problem is that we don’t really interact with space in a traditional manner anymore. Space gets you from place to place. Everyone, especially in Paris, seems always to be in a rush to get someplace else. Even when you’re not in a rush, there’s not the same interaction with people or space. We don’t stop and chat with strangers on the streets, but text on our phones. We mask the scent of a city with perfume, the sound of a town with an iPod. Modern day spectacles are not outside in physical reality but on Youtube. People don’t gather to discuss the news but read and comment online. Our world is becoming increasingly virtual, and I think it has left the real world looking rather pallor.
At any rate I’ve always thought people to be more interesting than places, so on the way back I thought I’d take a subtle personage derive and observe people on the metro. The trouble is people tend to put masks on as soon as they step onto a train. They (and I, too) plug in, zone out, do something to pass the time in a less-than-conscious state.
Maybe I’ve just had bad luck. But maybe there are fewer and fewer occasions where people come alive and let themselves shine through. Or a combination of the two. Next time I won’t take the 13.
It really wasn’t terribly interesting.
I passed a garage, a gas station, a nice-smelling Indian restaurant. There were people having a barbecue in the park (Happy Memorial Day) and what looked like a pool or gym sort of place. It actually looked a lot like Saginaw.
I haven’t had too much success with derives, honestly. I do try. I don’t know, maybe it was easier before there was so much globalization and industrialization. I would love to derive around at the end of the 19th century, when the city was new. To see how Haussmann’s changes changed the way people interact with space.
Maybe part of the problem is that we don’t really interact with space in a traditional manner anymore. Space gets you from place to place. Everyone, especially in Paris, seems always to be in a rush to get someplace else. Even when you’re not in a rush, there’s not the same interaction with people or space. We don’t stop and chat with strangers on the streets, but text on our phones. We mask the scent of a city with perfume, the sound of a town with an iPod. Modern day spectacles are not outside in physical reality but on Youtube. People don’t gather to discuss the news but read and comment online. Our world is becoming increasingly virtual, and I think it has left the real world looking rather pallor.
At any rate I’ve always thought people to be more interesting than places, so on the way back I thought I’d take a subtle personage derive and observe people on the metro. The trouble is people tend to put masks on as soon as they step onto a train. They (and I, too) plug in, zone out, do something to pass the time in a less-than-conscious state.
Maybe I’ve just had bad luck. But maybe there are fewer and fewer occasions where people come alive and let themselves shine through. Or a combination of the two. Next time I won’t take the 13.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Sometimes you've got to get out of your own way and in someone else's.
I’m already becoming a Paris snob. I have been silently, and not so silently, criticizing those Parisian-Parisians who walk round with their nose so high in the air they can’t even see all the normal-heighted people they’re knocking over along the away.
But taking my parents round the sites of Paris this weekend I’ve gotten so tired of crowds and people who stand in the middle of the walk to take a picture and loud Americans and I even tried to ask a guard if I could cut the line (which he understood!! But didn’t let me.)
It could to some damage, I think, living here permanently. I think I’d rather be an obnoxious tourist than an obnoxified Parisian. I’d rather be a traffic disruption but open to wonder and appreciate all Paris has to offer than to rush past everything like a ghost and grow dead to the beauty. I have no need for mini Eiffel towers, but I never want to find the shimmering lights annoying or disruptive. I want to be mid-way between a local and a tourist.
The middle road. Yep, that’s where it is. Right in the middle of the side walk.
But taking my parents round the sites of Paris this weekend I’ve gotten so tired of crowds and people who stand in the middle of the walk to take a picture and loud Americans and I even tried to ask a guard if I could cut the line (which he understood!! But didn’t let me.)
It could to some damage, I think, living here permanently. I think I’d rather be an obnoxious tourist than an obnoxified Parisian. I’d rather be a traffic disruption but open to wonder and appreciate all Paris has to offer than to rush past everything like a ghost and grow dead to the beauty. I have no need for mini Eiffel towers, but I never want to find the shimmering lights annoying or disruptive. I want to be mid-way between a local and a tourist.
The middle road. Yep, that’s where it is. Right in the middle of the side walk.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Please I'm terribly sorry, do forgive me I know this is a touch late, please thanks for understanding. Please.
England is the most polite country I think in existence. Maybe not the security checks, but in the actual ununiformed people surely are.
An actual conversation: (at a Starbucks, also. Not some quaint little cafe with a sweet old woman serving. An oldish businessy looking man and a rumply looking girl.)
"Yes good morning, how are you?"
"Fine thanks, what can I get you sir?"
"Ah grand. May I please have a cup of your very fine home brew, if you don’t mind."
"Yes of course, what size would you like please?"
"Oh gosh sorry, a large if you don’t mind. With some extra room for milk please if it’s not too much trouble."
"Not at all. 3 pounds 95 please. To stay or to go please?"
"To stay, thanks."
"Right here you are thanks, have a nice day then."
"Thanks so much, to you as well."
Even the traffic lights warn you before they’re going to switch to green. "Don’t want to startle you but here we go now, get ready please."
I’d always been made fun of for being overly polite, and I know why it is now. In all the times I’d been to England I hadn’t noticed it before. But when you come direct from Paris you can’t help but laugh. It is a bit ridiculous, the amount of sidestepping and extra words it takes to speak British English.
It worries me a bit that I found it so strange. I don’t want to become Parisian. I don’t want to audibly scoff and turn up my nose to last season’s Prada and cross roads illegally as though it’s my right. Though that last one I do, alright. That’s an Ann Arbor thing though I think more than a Paris thing.
I like Paris, I do, but I am very content being a foreigner in Paris. I don’t really like being mistaken for French. Especially when people talk to me in French and then are shocked when I don’t reply quickly and perfectly.
There’s something to be said for saying what you mean and getting to the point, but there’s also a little thing called tact. And courtesy. Gracefulness. I like these things. I don’t want to lose them in the rush of Paris.
Somewhere in the middle would be nice. Somewhere in the middle is generally a good place to be. Maybe by the time I get back to the states Paris will have balanced out my English and I’ll be perfectly American, in America. That’d be a good state to be in.
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