I think I could never love another girl

Some things that I never commented on when they happened:

- Go USA! Normally I don't get too patriotic for international sports competitions but that all changes when it comes to soccer. Partly it's because the US isn't particularly good, and partly it's because I've become pretty attached to some of the players from following them struggling to make it internationally for their club teams.

I was particularly glad to see Clint Dempsey (who hasn't been super-impressive in World Cup qualifying) bring back the spark in the Confederations Cup, scoring a couple nice goals, and working hard every minute.

It was pretty amazing to see the US beat Spain, the best team in the world right now, hands down. Spain, remember, had been unbeaten since 2006 - a string of 35 straight games - and had won 15 straight. And it wasn't even a fluke. The US simply played extremely well, had a plan, executed it, and left it all out on the pitch. Which isn't to say the US is a world power or anything now. On any given day, you'd still expect us to get beat by any of the major nations. But it shows that when everything clicks, we can hold our own.

- Go Federer! Nadal is great, and the rivalry is really entertaining, but I'm definitely a Federer guy. It was awesome to see him complete a career Grand Slam by finally winning the French Open, and I'd love to see him win another Wimbledon. It would also be great to see him against Murray in the final, too.

- I keep changing my mind about this Don't Ask Don't Tell stuff. Or, rather, I keep shifting from nuance to nuance. I've always thought that it was a bit much to ask for him to work on it immediately. And I've always thought that he absolutely HAD to make this happen within the first year or two. But I've changed my mind a lot about how important it is to emphasize it. I'm trending back toward thinking that health care is going to be a massive fight in the next few months and being unsure that anything else should be allowed to interfere. But maybe I'll feel different tomorrow.

- It's always annoyed me when people insisted on referring to TARP as Obama 'spending $700 billion dollars.' That's true in one sense, but not really very accurate given that a huge portion of it was likely to be made back once the loans and investments were repaid. The latest CBO estimates seem to confirm that idea. They say that in the end the total losses will be $159 billion rather than $700 billion. It's still an enormous amount, of course, but less than a quarter of what people sometimes think.

- I've made clear my feeligns about Iron and Wine in the past (decent music, but I don't get how far superior bands never got nearly as much love), but I have to admit I've really been loving this track:

Belated Promise Ring - Iron and Wine

It's from Around the Well, a collection of B-sides and other non-album tracks from the past few years. Strangely, I like this record more than I do any of his other stuff. Go figure.

Man cannot produce the idea; he can only be stationed before it

March 4, 1831 - Balmorhea

If you liked their last one, you’re absolutely going to love the new record from Austin-instrumentalists Balmorhea.

All is Wild, All is Silent has all of dulcet beauty of their previous work, but also offers quite a bit more emotional (and musical) heft. The arrangements are intricate, but never forced. They reveal themselves gently, soothing the soul and caressing the heart, which is not to say this is all soft touches and whispery notes. They bring the noise on occasion, if only in a relative sense, and some of the finest moments are when the songs are set free amidst a round of handclaps.

It’s always hard for me to ‘rank’ instrumental music because so much of why I enjoy music is wrapped up in the lyrics and the meaning they carry. So there’s a LOT of stuff I enjoy and listen to, but relatively little which really sticks out as something I want to come back to over and over. This album falls into the latter category. In a year that’s had a ton of good albums but not a lot of great ones, I keep asking myself whether this effort from Balmorhea might be one of my favorites of the year. There's something to love in literally every track.

We all will be received in Graceland

Graceland - Paul Simon

So I was wandering in New York a couple days ago and was noting how great it is that you can just get flowers 24 hours a day. Someone we were visiting mentioned that the little corner shops that sell them are called 'bodegas' which is a word I've probably heard thousands of times before but never really processed. It's weird how that can happen.

Anyways, thinking about that meant that I was humming this line from Paul Simon's absolutely wonderful "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" for days:

She makes the sign of a teaspoon, he makes the sign of a wave
The poor boy changes clothes and puts on aftershave
To compensate for his ordinary shoes
And she said honey take me dancing but they ended up by sleeping in a doorway
By the bodegas and the lights on Upper Broadway
Wearing diamonds on the soles of their shoes

There's always been something about that bit that struck me deeply. The image of the guy who wants to be everything for this rich girl, but the best he can do is put on a new set of clothes and some aftershave. He can't take her out on the town, maybe doesn't even have a home. It's sad and discouraging, but also beautiful. Because it's the moment in the song when suddenly it's not just diamonds on the soles of HER shoes. It's diamonds on the soles of THEIR shoes.

It's one of the amazing things about music - how evocative it can be in such a short period of time. But I've always had a big crush on the woman in this song. There's something effortless in the dualism of it. You could think of her as careless (a Gatsby character), so rich that she has diamonds even on the soles of her shoes. But you can also think of her as rich in spirit, not ashamed of who she is and where she's from, but feeling no need to flaunt it. She wears the diamonds because...why not. But she wears them on her soles, where no one will ever see them, where they are trodden on every day. "She's a rich girl, she don't try to hide it, diamonds on the soles of her shoes." But later, "She said you've taken me for granted because I please you, wearing these diamonds." And you wonder...was she cast out or did she leave? And is it possible that she's far happier than she could ever have been in high society now that she's out on the streets with the poor boy? There's no way to no for sure, but that's what makes it such a great song.

So, once I had that song on my mind, I couldn't help but listen to the whole record. If you've never heard Graceland I strongly recommend you go buy it immediately. And if you haven't listened in a while, make the effort. It's every bit as good as the hype. Paul Simon has always been a magnificent wordsmith--and written a lot of great tunes to boot--and it's hard to argue for anything else (even mid-Simon and Garfunkel stuff) as his best work.

It manages to simultaneously work on several different levels. In one sense, it's a relatively straightforward record about broken hearts and failing relationships. In another, it's about the existential meaning of love, and what it means to live your life FOR something as opposed to simply existing. And mixed in with all of that is the thoughts of fading empires and the politics of identity which manifest themselves both in the sense of fading memories (in an almost nostalgic way) and in a direct and present way with the difficulties Simon went through because of apartheid and the associated sanctions.

All in all, it's really nothing more or less than the sound of hope which shines through in the darkest of times - not always (or even often) successfully. But trying nonetheless.

Another track that I always liked but only relatively recently came to truly feel is "Graceland." It's got some of my all-time favorites lyrics, including the opening line: "The Mississippi Delta was shining like a national guitar / I am following the river down the highway through the cradle of the civil war." That is pure poetry, evocative and beautiful. And it establishes the multi-layered themes. Traveling with the one who loves your most truly (your son) on a pilgrimage to the roots of rock and roll, seeing the country that tore itself apart and slowly (very slowly) began to heal itself over the centuries, and thinking about your own world being blown apart.

So it's no surprise when you hear the next verse:

She comes back to tell me she's gone
As if I didn't know that
As if I didn't know my own bed
As if I'd never noticed the way she brushed her hair from her forehead
And she said losing love is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you're blown apart
Everybody sees the wind blow

Which, for my money, captures a feeling about as perfectly as you could ever dream it. The deep, intense sadness. The slight sense of bemusement and disbelief. The realization that you knew all along but just couldn't quite admit it. And the falling down of the walls that you normally are able to sustain between your interior and the world outside.

There aren't answers here, but there really couldn't be. The important thing is the searching, not what you will find. So it's no surprise when you get a concluding thought like:

And I may be obliged to defend
Every love, every ending
Or maybe there's no obligations now
Maybe I've got a reason to believe
We all will be received in Graceland

There is almost no end to the little bit and pieces like this that make me shiver with joy. And I could try to talk about the fusion of South African beats with Simon's more traditional folk and rock elements and how it produces something magical. Despite a lot of imitators who have tried to turn 'world music' into pop, Graceland towers above all followers. It's a true testament to the strength of the album that it doesn't feel even remotely dated or kitschy despite the parade of others occupying the genre who are so hard to take seriously.

I think the thing that's so impressive about Graceland is how utterly it escapes the charge of musical colonialism. This record does not sound like Simon tacking on some 'world' sounds in order to spice things up. It sounds like him getting caught up in the tempest of sounds and feelings and doing his best to find himself within it. It's distinctly a Paul Simon album, but there is simply no way that anything remotely like "The Boy in the Bubble" could have been produced out of a different milieu. It's what makes his voice sound so perfect on the line "these are the days of miracle and wonder" - because you can tell how genuinely he feels it.

I'm a guy who hates pastiche as a musical art form. But the corollary to that is that I absolutely adore the true artifact of engagement - when things aren't merely sampled, but instead are given a life of their own. When the artist takes a leap of faith and lets the music go where it may. When the artist is changed by the sounds he or she encounters, and embraces the change. That's what Simon does on Graceland, and it's what makes it such a masterpiece.

Seriously, go buy a copy right now.

I’ll let go if you just tell me

Long time no posting. Even more than I was intending when I warned that I would be a bit incommunicado for the early part of June. To the extent that it's now the end of June and I haven't posted in two weeks. Yikes.

But after packing all my stuff into storage, flying across the country, helping my girlfriend pack all HER stuff, attending her graduation and all the related events and parties and things, heading to New York for a few days (if you get a chance, check out the Frogs exhibit at the Museum of Natural History, BTW), and playing some board games...I'm finally in Hanover for the summer.

Thus, blogging resumes. And what better way to get back into things than talking about Nina Persson? The front-woman for the Cardigans (who are a much better band than you probably think they are) had one of my favorite songs of 2007, but I haven't heard mu`ch else from her lately. So it was nice to see she had a solo album coming out, called Colonia, and released under the moniker A Camp.

It's about what you'd expect. Some very pretty tunes, a little less pace than a typical Cardigans release, and a little more freedom to play around with the sounds. On the whole, I have to say that I think I prefer her work in the band over the solo stuff, but it's hard to complain too much. There are certainly more than enough lovely songs here to make it worth picking up.

Love Has Left The Room - Nina Persson

Out on the streets I can hear somebody singing

Out on the Streets - Dirt Road Logic

The best Lucero song I've heard this year turns out to come from Dirt Road Logic, out of Michigan and probably playing soon (and loudly) in a Midwest bar near you.

This is roots-rock the way it's meant to be done. No nonsense, with guitars that roll over you like a bulldozer. It's the joyous carousing that comes before the long, dark night. You know what's around the corner, but for now - in this moment - it just doesn't seem to matter.

The record is the Rock-n-Roll EP.

He came dancing across the water

"If eternal return is a circle, then Difference is at the centre and the Same is only on the periphery: it is a constantly decentred, continually tortuous circle which revolves only around the unequal."
--Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p. 55

Which is a complicated way of saying that I'm busy working on finals and moving out for the summer and I've been listening to Built to Spill's cover of "Cortez the Killer" on repeat for quite a while now.

I'd upload the track but it's like 30 MB. And I've got philosophizing and cabinet-moving to pay attention to.

But soon all this will be done, I'll be off to Hanover for a few months, and presumably will have some more time to catch up on things (including the blag).

Oh, and Federer finally won himself a French Open. Cheers for that.

Sideways racism

Racism - Chris Rock (from the Bigger and Blacker HBO Special)

I was going to let it go. I was going to take Kevin Drum's advice, and adopt the following approach the whole Sotomayor thing:

After a few weeks of this, all the Democrats and maybe a dozen or so Republicans will vote to confirm her and she'll join the court in time for the fall term.

It's all so tedious. So instead of going though with it, why don't we just pretend we did all this, confirm her tomorrow, and then get back to something important, like fighting a couple of wars, trying to rescue the world economy, creating a national healthcare plan, and stopping global warming?

That's totally fair. It's stupid to get riled up about this. There's virtually zero chance she won't get confirmed, and if she does it's going to be because of something big, not because of anything that's come out so far. So I resolved to just ignore all the arguments, to not get irritated by the dumb stuff that people say, and to not get worked up into a fervor about the need to respond.

But I kept encountering the following argument (expressed most exasperatingly here):

If a white male nominee had been discovered to have said something similar -- that he was better situated to judge due to his background and life experiences than a Latina woman -- he would be cashiered so fast as to induce whiplash. Those are the unwritten rules that Limbaugh and Gingrich are attempting, one suspects, to expose for their one-sidedness.

People keep saying this as if it was some kind of brilliant insight. It utterly baffles me.

You know why a white man would be excoriated for saying that? Because it would be deeply troubling. And you know WHY it would be deeply troubling? Because racism exists within a social context of existing norms and attitudes.

What these people can't seem to wrap their mind around is that being white IS an identity. That being male IS an identity. It's an identity which is posited as normal in our contemporary political debates, which is precisely what makes it so dangerous.

It's not just that the way people talk about race is tremendously influenced by social position and power. Meaning that racism means something very different when the person involved is in a dominant social position as opposed to a subjugated one. See, for example, the Chris Rock clip linked above:

Man, the white man thinks he's losing the country. You watch the news: "We're losing everything. We're fucking losing. Affirmative action, and illegal aliens...and we're fucking losing the country." Losing? Shut the fuck up. White people ain't losing shit. If y'all losing, who's winning? It ain't us.

That's true and an important point. But there's more. It's that someone whose identity is presumed to be non-existent will be less attuned to the way that identity DOES play a role in how decisions are made. Meaning that it's not just less harmful in a material sense when Sotomayor makes her comment than the mirror-image would be. It's also that her comment is true, while the opposite would be false.

Not because she has a better grasp on the 'objective' reality of the law, but because the experience of life outside the norm gives one perspective on the fact that there is no pure and objective reality of the law.

Which is why I wish folks talking about this quote were far more forceful in their defenses of Sotomayor. Most people start from the premise that it was a stupid comment, or say up front that it was phrased inartfully and sounds bad 'out of context.' Their defense is that the context makes it less troubling because she's talking about issues directly related to race and grappling with precisely these questions, etc.

But that's not it. Sure, the context helps. But her statement is correct. It's not inartfully phrased, except in the sense that telling the truth may make people uncomfortable. All other things equal, someone who has not been allowed to ignore the way identity has shaped her experiences and understanding of the world WILL make better decisions than someone who has never had to experience their own identity as a lack.

Things like that Real Clear Politics piece are so aggravating not because they pose a risk to Sotomayor - who is going to be confirmed regardless, as I said - but because they contribute to the incredibly stupid way that American popular culture thinks about race. In the minds of the elite, the absolute worst thing that can happen is to be accused of racism.

Which, in a perfect form/content moment, helps to clarify PRECISELY the reason why Sotomayor's comment is true. Because in real life, it's far worse to experience the effects of racism than it is for someone to call you a racist. And folks who have had no choice but to encounter that reality in their daily lives will have a better understanding of the way the law influences the lives of those who live under it.

What people seem utterly incapable of wrapping their minds around is that it's perfectly legitimate to oppose a candidate who is Hispanic. Democrats would have opposed Alberto Gonzales had he been appointed. But the reason they would have opposed him would have been...wait for it...disagreement about his political approach to the law.

No on begrudges the right of Republicans to vote against Sotomayor, or talk about how they don't want a liberal on the Court. What people don't like is the way that some (not all, or even most) on the Right have decided to make their opposition to her be ABOUT race.

I knew that you had a flame in your heart

I really ought to like Bat for Lashes more. I'm a fan of Cat Power and the Cocteau Twins, and I tend to think that she stands somewhere amidst them. Of course, there's a lot of Bjork and Annie Lennox, which isn't necessarily a strike against her, but does tend to push things in the direction of "I can see why other people like this."

Daniel - Bat for Lashes

This song, however, has started to make me believe in the hype, at least a little bit. Two Suns has been out for a while now, but I didn't make much effort to check it out based on past disappointments. But after hearing this track, I think I'll have to give it a serious listen. Turns out that the crucial missing factor in the pastiche of influences I mentioned above was...Fleetwood Mac. Which is a bit of a surprise but what are you going to do, eh?

"Daniel" is everything you'd hope for in this kind of song. Ethereal, gentle, with the beauty of a fog rolling in over the hills in the steely light of dusk. It's the sort of song that settles over you like a diaphanous veil, almost ghostly in its weightlessness.

I'm wishing you all of my best

Hello Birmingham - Ani DiFranco

William Saletan writes a column today with the title: Is it wrong to murder an abortionist?

Yes. Yes it is.

This has been another installment of simple answers to not-remotely-complicated questions.

I guess I should be happy that Saletan is, for once, tossing his "why can't we all get along and adopt precisely the moral position that appeals to me personally" accusations at the right instead of the left.

You'd think it wouldn't take a horrific murder for him to do so, given that his position already IS the pro-choice position.

And while we're feeling sad about humanity, how about this response to the Tiller murder:

I am saddened to hear of the killing of George Tiller this morning. At this point, we do not know the motives of this act, or who is behind it, whether an angry post-abortive man or woman, or a misguided activist, or an enemy within the abortion industry, or a political enemy frustrated with the way Tiller has escaped prosecution. We should not jump to conclusions or rush to judgment.

Sometimes I just don't know...

Tonight I'll be on that hill cause I can't stop

Darkness on the Edge of Town - Bruce Springsteen

This is so last week, but I finally got around to reading the recent piece by Matthew Crawford from the New York Times Magazine "The Case for Working With Your Hands" which apparently generated a pretty substantial buzz.

To be honest, I'm more than a little appalled at that fact. While there are certainly plenty of interesting things to be said about the relationships between knowledge production, labor, and the alienation of work, I don't think Crawford said any of them. Instead, he offered a piece of - to my eyes - pure kitsch.

Despite one sentence at the beginning of the piece cautioning against portrayals of manual laborers which "idealize them as the salt of the earth and emphasize the sacrifice for others their work may entail" Crawford then proceeds to do precisely that. What's more, he does it all from a perverse perspective that attempts to be both intensely subjective ('here's my awesome story of how I got to be so awesome') and subtly totalizing ('my story doesn't just have meaning for me, it turns out to actually say something Significant about life in the Modern World').

After reading it, I was left asking a simple question. What exactly did Crawford tell us that has not already been said a thousand times before? Take, for example, Office Space - which communicated all the useful insights of this piece, AND managed to do it with sufficient humor to prevent it from immediately defaulting to a mawkish sentimentality. Crawford's story, in contrast, treats work done on 'real' objects in the 'real' world as unfailingly redemptive, soul-enriching, ennobling.

It's a world where even the bad things turn out to be ennobling:

Often as not, however, such crises do not end in redemption. Moments of elation are counterbalanced with failures, and these, too, are vivid, taking place right before your eyes. With stakes that are often high and immediate, the manual trades elicit heedful absorption in work. They are punctuated by moments of pleasure that take place against a darker backdrop: a keen awareness of catastrophe as an always-present possibility. The core experience is one of individual responsibility, supported by face-to-face interactions between tradesman and customer.

By virtue of its 'realness' this sort of work wipes away all the confusion created by the knowledge economy and lets us authentically be our 'selves.' What's more, it's the way that everyone can partake in this sort of thing that allows us to build a community. There's no dissembling here. People speak in plain words and with honesty. In short, this sort of work wipes away the unacceptability of life - it returns us to the 'real' America.

But of course, that authentic world is just as much myth as is the world of economies built on knowledge rearrangements and the monotony of cubicles. The question is not which is more true. Rather, the question is what is at stake in telling this kind of story.

I'm reminded of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

How did the senator know that children meant happiness? Could he see into their souls? What if, the moment they were out of sight, three of them jumped the fourth and began beating him up?
The senator had only one argument in his favor: his feeling. When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme.
The feeling induced by kitsch must be a kind the multitude can share. Kitsch may not, therefore, depend on an unusual situation; it must derive from the basic images people have engraved in their memories: the ungrateful daughter, the neglected father, children running on grass, the motherland betrayed, first love.
Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass!
The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!
It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.
The brotherhood of man on earth will be possible only on a base of kitsch.

Crawford is writing about the second tear. His story is not merely a personal narrative. It is written with the injunction of all those who read: see how this makes my life more authentic! recognize the drudgery of your own life, of the society which we have built!

In short, it's what you'd get if you took only the optimism from Springsteen and didn't pair it with the faded loves and broken dreams. A world of 'happily ever after,' where there's no darkness on the edge of town. It's the caricature without any of the heft. It's a story which purports to offer meaningfulness to life, but instead untethers it from all weight and burdens.

And that is what makes it kitsch. Not the idea that office work is alienating, but the sleight-of-hand used to tell one particular story and translate it into universality. It is in that translation that life loses all of its weight. To read this piece, and take it seriously, is to become lost in a morass of nihilism. Against a drudgery that exists out in the open - in cubicles and endless meetings about nothing and co-worker like Dwight Schrute - is counterposed a mythical escape. One where all of the pain and denial of life is negated.

It's that negation that I have a problem with. It has nothing to do with the value of particular kinds of work or the way that we decide what constitutes meaning. It has everything to do with this sort of modern mythology, which is little more than an excuse for cultivating a dream of authenticity that cannot help but be dashed upon the rocks. As a piece of social commentary or political idea-making, Crawford's point might well be useful. But as a matter of aesthetics, telling the story the way he does makes it nothing more than muzak - an evisceration of everything powerful to be found in such a project.