When I thought about it, I was sort of sad that blogs died. Wasn't that fun? Writing and sharing interesting things, before half the shit you saw on the internet was just shares from your stupid uncle, something about mooslims?
And it is kind of sad. The blogs I read are all either gone or frozen in 2013. And before that, the Livejournals I read, all frozen in 2004. Livejournal was what Facebook should have become: part expression and part commentary. But then I realized that it might actually be perfect that the world has moved on from the traditional blog, the one with no ads and no real names. I think that means that I can skitter back in like a mouse to live richly in the ruins. I can get back to trying to write for fun without the bother of colleagues and family. Or without worrying that what I'm posting is crap, because no one is looking.
I've been diving into old stuff a lot lately. Every five years or so I have some kind of mini crisis as I remember another part of my life and try to decide if it was better. When I was younger, I always thought the past was better, but as I've aged, I find I've become almost savagely pragmatic. Things were fucking dumb back then and if I remember it fondly, I'm probably just wrong.
Then I broke into an old laptop that I had forgotten the password to. I began to browse, increasingly shocked as I opened folder after folder of old pics, some of friends and family (appalling young, all of us), some of things I had saved as inspiration (dumb or trite mostly), and then my iTunes folders. So much old music, a strange and senseless mix of saccharine 1950s radio tunes, cheesy European synthpop, 90s hip hop, 80s goth, and Type O Negative. So much Type O Negative.
I listened to the Jarvis album, Jarvis, from 2006 and remembered copying the cd for my friends. I loved to make little presents then, so I bought cds that looked like records, and printed out the album cover and reverse and stuck them in the jewel boxes to give to friends. Basically pirating shit they should have bought for Jarvis' sake, but I always gave music away then. I made three volumes of mix cds over a couple of years, all of which Michael gloriously still has, and bless him, still listens to in his little Dodge Charger, the most unexpected car in Portland. All self important cool kid music that is still so indulgently good, The Crystals and Serge Gainsbourg and Pulp and Liberace, Harry Nilsson and Goldfrapp and Joan Baez. Music to be young to.
Now, as I balance on my gnarled cane of agedness, I see that my more recent, highly unromantic take on the past is probably wrongheaded. I've always had a weird thing about the past, either hating it (my own, bad friends, problematic boyfriends) or obsessing about how much better it was, which was what I did for my whole life about the generations before mine. No middle ground here, either it SUCKED or was better than anything can ever be going forward.
All I want to know is, now that Michael Jackson is cancelled, can I still love the Jackson 5? Because this is my favorite song.
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
Friday, December 29, 2017
Austin, year three
I was reading back in this blog to remember my life as it was and saw a lot of flailing and spittle about Austin vs. Phoenix, and Austin in general. I figured I'd weigh in, in year three, basically a native now, with some observations about the capital of Texas.
1. Locals are low-level obsessed with letting you know they were born here if they were.
Probably for good reason, they resent the extremely dramatic changes the city has incurred in the last 20 years. The younger they are, the less they care, but the old ones are ready to go at any time or place with the comparisons. This is the same everywhere, but not many cities have experienced the drastic changes that Austin has. Now that I am an old-timey resident, I feel for them where I used to just roll my eyes. It does suck, mon. Unless you owned property before the deluge, and then it fucking RULE$$$ and you're hoodrich, where you were dustbowl poor before. I kind of hate those people, because they think they are Richard Branson-style wealth geniuses, when in reality, they're just bumpkinasses who didn't leave the place they were born and eventually struck oil on their land, due to other people. Yeah, I'm looking at you, former landord.
2. Hyperlocalization.
When I got here, I was sort of enraged by how hyperlocal people are, and by that I mean they won't travel outside of the 2 mile radius of where they live. Coming from a city that's legit 500 square miles, I thought that was some kind of full bullshit self-absorbed need to never travel for anything. Everyone I knew in Phoenix lived 50 miles away and we just dealt with it, finding central spaces to meet upon. But, just this afternoon, I was reading the review of a new restaurant that opened about 5 miles away and said to myself, "Sounds cool but I'm not going that far." Turns out there's a valid reason - traffic is truly satanic at all hours of the day, and traffic in that particular direction (central city to south Lamar) is basically totally fucked up at all times. Unless you have to go (to Target or to a special movie showing) you ain't gonna bother.
3. No food to eat
So this isn't entirely true, but Austin's food selection is often just a lot of the same thing. Like upscale versions of garbage comfort food? You got it, dude. Tex-Mex? It's aplenty. Want barbecue, preferably with low quality sides? GET HERE WITH A QUICKNESS. Chinese, Italian, Greek? Forget about it. Yeah, it's here, but it's either a chain, or not good, or real far. I don't know, man. We're no Houston.
4. History 50/50
The large quantity of sentimental boomers still in Austin (see #1) means that there's kinda? some appreciation of older architecture, but the vastly more powerful developers, who are dominating everywhere and everything are prevailing. Austin has a big sense of self and a sense of its history, but it's a very localized, white thing. The people of gentrified neighborhoods are trying to preserve what they can where they can, but it's a tough fight and they don't have the power or money to really get anywhere. So, if you want one vein of history, again, get here, but be warned that it's only fancy white history. You'll never learn about the legacies of black or latino peoples unless you dig real deep, and care a lot.
5. Parties and Events
Yes this city still loves a party. I finally moved away from the Zilker area, home of SXSW, ACL and other massive-ass events I'll never take part in, and yet I can still hear and feel the deep thrumming of bass drifting over the river and trees to my bedroom. Although I've moved miles from the center of destruction, and I'm now in a fully silk-stocking old timey beautiful rich neighborhood, it still touches us. I'm not mad, because it mostly doesn't disrupt my drive or life, but it's there, and I can't go south during the Christmas season because of the completely underwhelming yet popular Trail of Lights.
and that brings us to
6. Local Pride
Yes, the locals be loving their city and state in a way that anyone outside of Texas, who was never a Texan, will never understand. I appreciate the sense of place, but it's still foreign to me to be that defensive of a geographic area. I personally think they should calm down, but they don't care what I think because I'm a dirty foreigner forever. Even someone who moved here at 6 mos old is a foreigner by some estimations. Many believe that you must have been born on the soil, whether it be the deserts of west or south, or in the bayous of the east, or in the distinctly Oklahomaish handle, to have absorbed the *magic* of Texasness. Perhaps it's true. Perhaps I could feel the same way about Arizona, if I was possessed by a supernatural sense of pride or MDMA.
You can tell a local by their accent, which is an admittedly pleasant mix of twang and drawl, and which is utterly rare, leading me to believe that they were raised by real Southerners, or that they are exaggerating. Nevertheless, I enjoy it. You can also tell a local by their familiarity and/or love of Ann Richards, which pervades even the conservative-est of local Republicans.
1. Locals are low-level obsessed with letting you know they were born here if they were.
Probably for good reason, they resent the extremely dramatic changes the city has incurred in the last 20 years. The younger they are, the less they care, but the old ones are ready to go at any time or place with the comparisons. This is the same everywhere, but not many cities have experienced the drastic changes that Austin has. Now that I am an old-timey resident, I feel for them where I used to just roll my eyes. It does suck, mon. Unless you owned property before the deluge, and then it fucking RULE$$$ and you're hoodrich, where you were dustbowl poor before. I kind of hate those people, because they think they are Richard Branson-style wealth geniuses, when in reality, they're just bumpkinasses who didn't leave the place they were born and eventually struck oil on their land, due to other people. Yeah, I'm looking at you, former landord.
2. Hyperlocalization.
When I got here, I was sort of enraged by how hyperlocal people are, and by that I mean they won't travel outside of the 2 mile radius of where they live. Coming from a city that's legit 500 square miles, I thought that was some kind of full bullshit self-absorbed need to never travel for anything. Everyone I knew in Phoenix lived 50 miles away and we just dealt with it, finding central spaces to meet upon. But, just this afternoon, I was reading the review of a new restaurant that opened about 5 miles away and said to myself, "Sounds cool but I'm not going that far." Turns out there's a valid reason - traffic is truly satanic at all hours of the day, and traffic in that particular direction (central city to south Lamar) is basically totally fucked up at all times. Unless you have to go (to Target or to a special movie showing) you ain't gonna bother.
3. No food to eat
So this isn't entirely true, but Austin's food selection is often just a lot of the same thing. Like upscale versions of garbage comfort food? You got it, dude. Tex-Mex? It's aplenty. Want barbecue, preferably with low quality sides? GET HERE WITH A QUICKNESS. Chinese, Italian, Greek? Forget about it. Yeah, it's here, but it's either a chain, or not good, or real far. I don't know, man. We're no Houston.
4. History 50/50
The large quantity of sentimental boomers still in Austin (see #1) means that there's kinda? some appreciation of older architecture, but the vastly more powerful developers, who are dominating everywhere and everything are prevailing. Austin has a big sense of self and a sense of its history, but it's a very localized, white thing. The people of gentrified neighborhoods are trying to preserve what they can where they can, but it's a tough fight and they don't have the power or money to really get anywhere. So, if you want one vein of history, again, get here, but be warned that it's only fancy white history. You'll never learn about the legacies of black or latino peoples unless you dig real deep, and care a lot.
5. Parties and Events
Yes this city still loves a party. I finally moved away from the Zilker area, home of SXSW, ACL and other massive-ass events I'll never take part in, and yet I can still hear and feel the deep thrumming of bass drifting over the river and trees to my bedroom. Although I've moved miles from the center of destruction, and I'm now in a fully silk-stocking old timey beautiful rich neighborhood, it still touches us. I'm not mad, because it mostly doesn't disrupt my drive or life, but it's there, and I can't go south during the Christmas season because of the completely underwhelming yet popular Trail of Lights.
and that brings us to
6. Local Pride
Yes, the locals be loving their city and state in a way that anyone outside of Texas, who was never a Texan, will never understand. I appreciate the sense of place, but it's still foreign to me to be that defensive of a geographic area. I personally think they should calm down, but they don't care what I think because I'm a dirty foreigner forever. Even someone who moved here at 6 mos old is a foreigner by some estimations. Many believe that you must have been born on the soil, whether it be the deserts of west or south, or in the bayous of the east, or in the distinctly Oklahomaish handle, to have absorbed the *magic* of Texasness. Perhaps it's true. Perhaps I could feel the same way about Arizona, if I was possessed by a supernatural sense of pride or MDMA.
You can tell a local by their accent, which is an admittedly pleasant mix of twang and drawl, and which is utterly rare, leading me to believe that they were raised by real Southerners, or that they are exaggerating. Nevertheless, I enjoy it. You can also tell a local by their familiarity and/or love of Ann Richards, which pervades even the conservative-est of local Republicans.
Friday, June 17, 2016
Heritage Church
While walking around in my new hood of Zilker, I came across a stark block building in the middle of a huge lot. It's an odd sight in a part of town where every square inch of land is at a premium and new mcmansions occupy entire footprints of land, interspersed among the modest 1940s bungalows that came before.
This desirable and expensive zipcode (04) was once "nothing," according to a middle aged native Austinite I flew home from Phoenix next to recently. "We liked it, but it was a poor area."
It's beautiful, though. The neighborhood abuts Zilker Park, the Central Park of Austin, and is filled with old, old oak trees and big shading magnolias. Vines and weeds and flowering plants tangle all over each other here, in the Austinian style. All of the old, gracious parts of the city are full of overgrowth - plants spill onto the sidewalks and streets and grow big and wild. Pastel paint peels from old houses and fences lean on properties that, as values have skyrocketed, you'd never imagine are worth high six figures. You cannot tell a home value by its appearance around here. This is nothing like Phoenix, where properties are pathologically groomed and clipped and repainted and edged, and leafblowers rage at all hours of the day.
But the church. This is what the sign said:
I have some comments about the sign. 1. Is it that noteworthy that some of the people buried here beginning in 1866 were born before 1840? 26 was that notable an age? Or is 1840 a reference to Austin's early days that I didn't catch? Does it simply mean to point out that they were born in the antebellum slavery period? 2. "In the 1940s, the wooden church burned." Because this was Dixie once, I feel suspicious at the assumedly intentional ambiguity. Why did it burn? It's wet here.
Sealed tightly forever. Why? Why not a museum to early black culture and churches of this era? Why not a space to share this completely ignored aspect of early Austin? This city's interpretation of its own history is so whitewashed. This building is not only significant because it's still here and the land is still safe, but it's a touchstone for a huge group of people who don't get their story told here almost ever.
Big, beautiful treeish lot.
But as the sign says, it's a church and cemetery. Underneath the weeds in the green lot are headstones. Incomplete headstones. Stumps and chunks, leaning shards, mounds of local lime melding, very slowly, into the grass and networks of vines.
Someone mows it sometimes. It's rained so much lately that it's impossible to keep the greenery down, and it shoots up in uneven patches. I stepped gingerly in the grass, deep into the shady back area to look at the stones, praying against snakes and cursing that the foliage was so dense and moist that the big black Texas mosquitos, who normally pass on me, lighted on my bare skin with glee. I don't know how to hike or walk in backcountry, and although this is in the middle of a dense city, it feels distinctly lonely and untrodden. I watched the ground for those snakes.
I searched for clues about the church and cemetery and came up with little more than what's contained on that historical marker sign. There's an inventory of the remaining stones, or what remained of them ten years ago. I couldn't find as many as the website had. It takes a jaded, weird fucking person, weird beyond any measure I can imagine, to steal a fucking headstone. When I was a kid, I thought to linger too long by any old grave would tempt the spirit belonging to it to follow me home, and I worried in the car that an illicit tour of the Pioneer's Cemetery in Prescott, Arizona (it was pre-renovation and closed to the public in the 90s) might have caused some old ghost to follow us home and scare me in my bed at night. Needless to say, even this morbid ass would not remove a memento like that from a cemetery, not to mention the fact that it's vandalism and ruins historic spaces for the rest of us. I did take ball moss home from the Texas National Cemetery once (yep, Texas still thinks it's a country), but it died.
I mean, seriously. Where the fuck do headstone thieves put their prizes? In their herb gardens? WTAF
I'll continue my researches, but this might require IRL reading in an archive. I must say it was easier to find the dirt I wanted in Phoenix, even about the most obscure of historic properties.
I will say that Austin in this early steamy summer is pretty and charming south of the river. The big tangle of green paired with two years of inordinate rainfall has the lightning bugs out in force, and they're at their densest in unmanaged green spaces. Apparently the eggs lay in the earth for about a year before hatching upon us, and in heavy rainfall, they germinate wildly. They float and twinkle in the dusk all over this area, they flow into my house when I open the door sometimes, they're so thick. Ugly bugs in the light, but neverendingly charming outside.
Saturday, March 12, 2016
Goth Chronicles part 5 of 500
I always thought it was kind of funny that my grandmother still listened to the music of her youth while she hung out at home in her 70s. It can't have been that good, I thought. Not tired of it yet?
One, it was that good, as I later found. I love Glenn Miller just as much as she did.
And two, you never do get tired of it.
I found an old Sisters of Mercy cd in my car, scratched and beaten and practically trash. Within moments I was playing Marian at a dangerous volume in afternoon traffic and wondering what Andrew Eldritch was doing right now.
I guess the Sisters of Mercy are the greatest goth band of all time. Other greats are, as Eldritch often incorrectly claimed about himself, not truly goth. The Cure, Siouxsie, only peripherally goth. Siouxsie's baroque theatricality was much too big for such a label, and Cure are their own genre.
I love to get super deep about this shit because I know absolutely no one cares anymore. Except for Anita, but we have to be careful because we'll fight if we tread onto a topic where we disagree, such as Are persimmons good? or What is the greatest goth band of all time? She'd say Christian Death. And, as with many ancient friends who, in their ancientness, take on a sibling-like status, I can't back down. Like two dogs seized on the same toy, we will shake and pull for hours, and it's best to just avoid it.
My goth playlists are my most popular playlists on 8tracks.com. I feel the reason for this is because, unlike the old dance club djs from "BITD" (as Cher says), I know that people just want to hear the hits. Don't throw in some experimental crap or a bad b-side just to show how advanced your taste is. No one wants it! They want an 80s drum machine, an angry Welsh man singing, deep bass, some synth, and that's it.
https://youtu.be/DJNUk-O2RlY
This. This is the song.
When I was trying to write about Bowie's death, I ended up writing about the Nile. It got too tangential, so I deleted it, but it was fun to remember.
I might have been 15 the first time I went to the Nile. Seems so crazy young, but I had already put in lots of time on usenet's alt.gothic, and after reading so much about goth clubs all over the world (mostly in the sentimental memoirs of 80s goths), I had to go to my own.
I went on New Year's Eve and arrived to a big empty room, as most people had chosen parties instead. It was a cavernous black space, occasionally cut through by revolving blue and white lights, and Bauhaus' She's in Parties played ghostly and tall in the dark. This, I thought. It was everything.
The walls, floors and ceiling were painted flat black, and the space outside the dance floor was pitch black. Flickering prayer candles occasionally disrupted the darkness along the walls. It was a venue for bands on other nights of the week, mostly punk and metal, and sometimes denizens of those scenes intermixed, bemusedly, with the goths, mocking and looking for girls.
Odd to think of being a teenager in this environment, out all night with this motley cast of characters, and odder still that I feel I was entirely undamaged by it. There were addicts and runaways, creepy older men who I disgustedly avoided. Basic guys who thought they'd blend in by putting on their only black Hanes t-shirt. You didn't venture into side rooms lest you saw something you didn't want to, like kids shooting heroin, or people having sex while their spurned lovers cried in the corners. That this happened an area overrun by Mormons was funny. Everything was funny, because I was a kid, and unbothered by everything.
I didn't recognize the danger that was probably around, and I was unfazed by the people. Many things converge in a goth scene, and pieces of other subcultural groups accumulate, having nowhere else to go. Sexual fluidity, trans kids, nudity on the dancefloor, bdsm, genital piercings, occultism on behalf of people who actually believe in shit like enochian magic, these things were everyday. Being gay certainly wasn't the source of tension that it could be elsewhere in life and otherwise straight people occasionally dated or experimented amongst their sex without notice from anyone else.
And nothing bad ever happened to me. My friends were nice people, the people I dated were nice people, and I never fell into the traps that I realize now were opening and shutting around me at all times like venus flytraps. I don't think I was as vulnerable as I seemed based on age, in part because of my total naivete to what people were actually doing, and to my disinterest. I just wanted to be cool and dance.
It feels a little silly to even point this out as a thing because it just was, but all of this happened easily 20 years (and many more before me) before the rest of America began its slow tread to acceptance. That was the best part about the scene. Everyone just belonged, without comment, as long as they were there for the music or the aesthetic or, at least, were affiliated with someone who was. It wasn't very complicated. I saw a lot of lifestyles that aren't for me, but no more than I would see on the average trip to a mall.
It's also why I'm so disgusted by people who insist on being shocked by regular-ass deviance from social mores. The dichotomy of being an adult, yet operating with the mind of a flappable, naive child is sort of repulsive to see in action. I can't stand people who shrink from or are shocked by a past or a garden variety weirdness.
One, it was that good, as I later found. I love Glenn Miller just as much as she did.
And two, you never do get tired of it.
I found an old Sisters of Mercy cd in my car, scratched and beaten and practically trash. Within moments I was playing Marian at a dangerous volume in afternoon traffic and wondering what Andrew Eldritch was doing right now.
I guess the Sisters of Mercy are the greatest goth band of all time. Other greats are, as Eldritch often incorrectly claimed about himself, not truly goth. The Cure, Siouxsie, only peripherally goth. Siouxsie's baroque theatricality was much too big for such a label, and Cure are their own genre.
I love to get super deep about this shit because I know absolutely no one cares anymore. Except for Anita, but we have to be careful because we'll fight if we tread onto a topic where we disagree, such as Are persimmons good? or What is the greatest goth band of all time? She'd say Christian Death. And, as with many ancient friends who, in their ancientness, take on a sibling-like status, I can't back down. Like two dogs seized on the same toy, we will shake and pull for hours, and it's best to just avoid it.
My goth playlists are my most popular playlists on 8tracks.com. I feel the reason for this is because, unlike the old dance club djs from "BITD" (as Cher says), I know that people just want to hear the hits. Don't throw in some experimental crap or a bad b-side just to show how advanced your taste is. No one wants it! They want an 80s drum machine, an angry Welsh man singing, deep bass, some synth, and that's it.
https://youtu.be/DJNUk-O2RlY
This. This is the song.
When I was trying to write about Bowie's death, I ended up writing about the Nile. It got too tangential, so I deleted it, but it was fun to remember.
I might have been 15 the first time I went to the Nile. Seems so crazy young, but I had already put in lots of time on usenet's alt.gothic, and after reading so much about goth clubs all over the world (mostly in the sentimental memoirs of 80s goths), I had to go to my own.
I went on New Year's Eve and arrived to a big empty room, as most people had chosen parties instead. It was a cavernous black space, occasionally cut through by revolving blue and white lights, and Bauhaus' She's in Parties played ghostly and tall in the dark. This, I thought. It was everything.
The walls, floors and ceiling were painted flat black, and the space outside the dance floor was pitch black. Flickering prayer candles occasionally disrupted the darkness along the walls. It was a venue for bands on other nights of the week, mostly punk and metal, and sometimes denizens of those scenes intermixed, bemusedly, with the goths, mocking and looking for girls.
Odd to think of being a teenager in this environment, out all night with this motley cast of characters, and odder still that I feel I was entirely undamaged by it. There were addicts and runaways, creepy older men who I disgustedly avoided. Basic guys who thought they'd blend in by putting on their only black Hanes t-shirt. You didn't venture into side rooms lest you saw something you didn't want to, like kids shooting heroin, or people having sex while their spurned lovers cried in the corners. That this happened an area overrun by Mormons was funny. Everything was funny, because I was a kid, and unbothered by everything.
I didn't recognize the danger that was probably around, and I was unfazed by the people. Many things converge in a goth scene, and pieces of other subcultural groups accumulate, having nowhere else to go. Sexual fluidity, trans kids, nudity on the dancefloor, bdsm, genital piercings, occultism on behalf of people who actually believe in shit like enochian magic, these things were everyday. Being gay certainly wasn't the source of tension that it could be elsewhere in life and otherwise straight people occasionally dated or experimented amongst their sex without notice from anyone else.
And nothing bad ever happened to me. My friends were nice people, the people I dated were nice people, and I never fell into the traps that I realize now were opening and shutting around me at all times like venus flytraps. I don't think I was as vulnerable as I seemed based on age, in part because of my total naivete to what people were actually doing, and to my disinterest. I just wanted to be cool and dance.
It feels a little silly to even point this out as a thing because it just was, but all of this happened easily 20 years (and many more before me) before the rest of America began its slow tread to acceptance. That was the best part about the scene. Everyone just belonged, without comment, as long as they were there for the music or the aesthetic or, at least, were affiliated with someone who was. It wasn't very complicated. I saw a lot of lifestyles that aren't for me, but no more than I would see on the average trip to a mall.
It's also why I'm so disgusted by people who insist on being shocked by regular-ass deviance from social mores. The dichotomy of being an adult, yet operating with the mind of a flappable, naive child is sort of repulsive to see in action. I can't stand people who shrink from or are shocked by a past or a garden variety weirdness.
Friday, December 25, 2015
Thanks, Gram(s).
I recently read that the reverberations of life experiences can be passed from generation to generation. That the effects of traumas suffered by recent ancestors can rear up in your own life, can explain subtle lingering tendencies, anxieties, fears and problems. The abuse or sufferings of the great-grandparent can apparently manifest in the 21st century descendant, but how? In what ways.
It seems so fascinating, shocking, yet obvious. It's a scientific confirmation of something we've always sensed - that nothing is ever really forgotten, as much as we wish it to be, and that each experience lives on in a new form.
I hate that. A deeply self-conscious person for most of my life, the only comfort that I could ever accept was that no one would remember the interactions or experiences I regretted. And maybe they won't. But those childhood pangs and young adult anguish could live in the strands of my being for the rest of my life, and in the psyche of a child.
But that's a terrible example. Consider the shadow that may live on behind the eyes of the grandchildren of holocaust survivors, of any victim of a cruel and unimaginable violation or torture. Imagine the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of slaves. How are their lives affected by the pain and struggles of the people who came before them? How are their experiences unintuitively informed by the experiences of their greats and their great-greats?
I scanned back through the last few sets of my ancestors and could think of nothing so extreme. Most of my great-great grandparents dealt with the stress and upheaval of a transatlantic voyage, of leaving their homeland and their native language for a land of commercial brutality. But everything worked out in the end and they all experienced some prosperity and safety within their lifetimes as a reward for their courage. Bad marriages, dead children, economic strife, it could all be in there in the cords of my DNA, but how does that compare to what they carried themselves, from their own ancestors? Starvation and true poverty, uncountable generations spent in subsistence in the mud of some crevice of Europe, now known by another name. Poor Irish, Italian peasants, German laborers. Uneducated people linked by twining strands of bad experiences bound together through generation after generation like held hands.
If the experiences do carry through, how long do they last? Long enough for you to create one for your own descendants? Do the stains of the far flung past fade or remain, diluted but carrying potential, waiting for their activation?
Conversely, the positives do carry forward as well. Perhaps these are easier to see. The tender upbringing, the positive home environment, the lack of desperation can all make for more stable grandchildren. In my family, going back to a time when it wasn't so easily attained, there was an inclination to formal or autodidactic education. When my great-aunt led me on a tour of the farmhouse my grandma was born in, she took us down the stairs to a dank basement and clapped her hand on an old chalkboard. She said my great-grandfather brought this home when the local schoolhouse upgraded to a bigger one. On it, he taught his children, boys and girls, basic arithmetic to reinforce what they learned in the classic one room schoolhouse of Percival. It was long enough ago that it was uncommon to educate daughters, because there was no point - she didn't need to know the rivers of the world to raise a baby adequately.
I know those things matter. And I know they carry forward from generation to generation. I'll spare the tender examples, but my grandmother spent her entire life in the casual pursuit of knowledge and so has my dad. And their examples and teachings have led me to do the same. I think much of this is an innate desire, but is it really? If an example isn't made, do you know the option is there? I've known many naturally sharp people who lack completely the intellectual spirit of the pursuit of knowledge for pleasure. They have the raw material, but it's never quite realized into something coherent or refined enough to do much with. Is that a shitty qualification of the various types of intelligence? Probably. Call the police.
Although the beginning of this thought seems fucking depressing - that we are possibly saddled with the residue of our ancestors' experiences, isn't that somewhat of a comfort? It either explains heretofore inexplicable tendencies, or it lends some gravity to the things prior generations experienced. Because isn't it kind of disgusting that generations of your predecessors had to spend their lives fumbling in the dirt so that you could drop pizza on yourself on the couch while proclaiming that today is the worst day in history because the Seahawks lost?
You know? (I tried to use an example outside of myself for fun. Did it work? My example would be "because Matthew died on Downton Abbey" or something. SPOILER, but as I always say: if you found out after me, you're on your own)
Isn't it terrifying that we don't really know what even happened 50 years ago, not to mention 350 years ago? The hardscrabble lives and lack of choices? If we can't remember cognizantly, then we can remember subconsciously, celluarly. Because I think it's diminishing and unfair to forget that lifestyles that we would consider worse than death were entirely normal once, and that you are made of the victory against nature that was survival, once.
So anyway, everyone's fucked because everyone suffered a while back. Kind of takes the pressure off, though, does it?
It seems so fascinating, shocking, yet obvious. It's a scientific confirmation of something we've always sensed - that nothing is ever really forgotten, as much as we wish it to be, and that each experience lives on in a new form.
I hate that. A deeply self-conscious person for most of my life, the only comfort that I could ever accept was that no one would remember the interactions or experiences I regretted. And maybe they won't. But those childhood pangs and young adult anguish could live in the strands of my being for the rest of my life, and in the psyche of a child.
But that's a terrible example. Consider the shadow that may live on behind the eyes of the grandchildren of holocaust survivors, of any victim of a cruel and unimaginable violation or torture. Imagine the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of slaves. How are their lives affected by the pain and struggles of the people who came before them? How are their experiences unintuitively informed by the experiences of their greats and their great-greats?
I scanned back through the last few sets of my ancestors and could think of nothing so extreme. Most of my great-great grandparents dealt with the stress and upheaval of a transatlantic voyage, of leaving their homeland and their native language for a land of commercial brutality. But everything worked out in the end and they all experienced some prosperity and safety within their lifetimes as a reward for their courage. Bad marriages, dead children, economic strife, it could all be in there in the cords of my DNA, but how does that compare to what they carried themselves, from their own ancestors? Starvation and true poverty, uncountable generations spent in subsistence in the mud of some crevice of Europe, now known by another name. Poor Irish, Italian peasants, German laborers. Uneducated people linked by twining strands of bad experiences bound together through generation after generation like held hands.
If the experiences do carry through, how long do they last? Long enough for you to create one for your own descendants? Do the stains of the far flung past fade or remain, diluted but carrying potential, waiting for their activation?
Conversely, the positives do carry forward as well. Perhaps these are easier to see. The tender upbringing, the positive home environment, the lack of desperation can all make for more stable grandchildren. In my family, going back to a time when it wasn't so easily attained, there was an inclination to formal or autodidactic education. When my great-aunt led me on a tour of the farmhouse my grandma was born in, she took us down the stairs to a dank basement and clapped her hand on an old chalkboard. She said my great-grandfather brought this home when the local schoolhouse upgraded to a bigger one. On it, he taught his children, boys and girls, basic arithmetic to reinforce what they learned in the classic one room schoolhouse of Percival. It was long enough ago that it was uncommon to educate daughters, because there was no point - she didn't need to know the rivers of the world to raise a baby adequately.
I know those things matter. And I know they carry forward from generation to generation. I'll spare the tender examples, but my grandmother spent her entire life in the casual pursuit of knowledge and so has my dad. And their examples and teachings have led me to do the same. I think much of this is an innate desire, but is it really? If an example isn't made, do you know the option is there? I've known many naturally sharp people who lack completely the intellectual spirit of the pursuit of knowledge for pleasure. They have the raw material, but it's never quite realized into something coherent or refined enough to do much with. Is that a shitty qualification of the various types of intelligence? Probably. Call the police.
Although the beginning of this thought seems fucking depressing - that we are possibly saddled with the residue of our ancestors' experiences, isn't that somewhat of a comfort? It either explains heretofore inexplicable tendencies, or it lends some gravity to the things prior generations experienced. Because isn't it kind of disgusting that generations of your predecessors had to spend their lives fumbling in the dirt so that you could drop pizza on yourself on the couch while proclaiming that today is the worst day in history because the Seahawks lost?
You know? (I tried to use an example outside of myself for fun. Did it work? My example would be "because Matthew died on Downton Abbey" or something. SPOILER, but as I always say: if you found out after me, you're on your own)
Isn't it terrifying that we don't really know what even happened 50 years ago, not to mention 350 years ago? The hardscrabble lives and lack of choices? If we can't remember cognizantly, then we can remember subconsciously, celluarly. Because I think it's diminishing and unfair to forget that lifestyles that we would consider worse than death were entirely normal once, and that you are made of the victory against nature that was survival, once.
So anyway, everyone's fucked because everyone suffered a while back. Kind of takes the pressure off, though, does it?
Saturday, December 12, 2015
Hexmas
I made a satanic tree skirt. Actually, I made two, but the first one turned out kind of gentle, far more pagan than satanic.
The first one was for me. White fur with a glittery pentacle, fringed in red pom poms. I stand behind it. All of my new friends in Austin are pretty establishment, so when they see my house or the way I dress on my own time, and certainly the crafts I engage in, I feel distinctly reminded of my mother's gentle disapproval. I still love you, but I don't like this.
So they didn't really get the tree skirt.
But I love it. I smile every time I see it. Although my taste is that of a spinster aunt in 1967, I feel very happy to know what I like. I will never struggle to decorate a house. I will never be unsure what image I wish to project. I will never be unsure of what I want to surround myself with for the rest of my life.
The only thing that inhibits me is lack of space, and my student loans.
I've struggled with Christmas in my adult life. It's hard to preserve the childhood magic of a holiday when you scorn the way other people celebrate it, and when you hate religion. But winter has always been a welcome, happy time for me, and I like to observe the way the year turns. I like to see different things in the house, and in my familiar landscape. I like a sense of occasion and ritual. I love to buy presents for other people, and I'm very good at it. So what to do?
Just do it. I was too cool and noncompliant to celebrate anything from holidays to birthdays in my mid 20s, I was like an atheist Jehovah's Witness, but now I just don't give a fuck. I go there. I have a pink tree decorated with antique German glass ornaments. Don't you know holidays are just another way to amass interesting shit?
After I made my tacky pagan tree skirt, I received a request for the gag gift of an unapologetically satanic tree skirt. Christmas is hard for atheists, I think they feel guilty celebrating something so heavily knitted together with Christianity. But when you throw in a tree skirt emblazoned with a baphomet, it feels a little bit easier.
I don't want to show it completely yet because I'm not finished, but I'm very happy with it.
A baphomet made of sequins. There will be pom poms. It may be the greatest thing I've ever created.
I hesitated when the girl at the fabric store eyed my armload of black felt and blood red pom poms. "Whatcha...makin?" she asked. Oh, nothing...
I think this theme combines well with my interest in the overblown tackiness of Hollywood Regency and late 60s ultra lush absurdity. Although Anton LaVey was a silly fool, he cultivated a finely articulated aesthetic that still appeals today. A mix of the medieval and the swinging 60s, with lush velvets, skulls, knives, altars, black candles, topless "witches" with big hair, fake blood, ancient books, bejeweled goblets, I could go on.
I never really bought into his philosophy, because it's for men - ridiculous men. It's all plagiarized from Ragnar Redbeard's 1890 publication "Might is Right," which basically espouses a hedonistic "fuck all y'all" attitude, but which does ring true on some topics, such as how it's ok to reject the contemporary flow of society when you know it to be wrong, even when it means ostracization, because you must be strong enough to withstand the slings of smaller people and smart enough to know they will come, etc., etc. Subtler souls prefer Nietzsche.
LaVey does make unique recommendations for women, which you can read in his book, "The Satanic Witch," and which are pathetic and condescending and all about fashioning sexual snares. His ideas about female beauty really show his age and plebian tastes, too. He may have made his bones in the late 60s, but he was already a bit old then, and his tastes seem so stodgy. He's all about garters and brown pantyhose, bad blonde dye jobs and blue eyeshadow. The ideal woman he described seemed to belong in a bingo hall to me. Truly, only idiots idolize LaVey, but he is a fun character, and I do like that he organized all of these ideas into a formal "religion", recognized as tax exempt by the US government. It's all a fun joke that may bring the attention of young people to ideas they should think about.
And therefore, satanic Christmas tree skirt.
The first one was for me. White fur with a glittery pentacle, fringed in red pom poms. I stand behind it. All of my new friends in Austin are pretty establishment, so when they see my house or the way I dress on my own time, and certainly the crafts I engage in, I feel distinctly reminded of my mother's gentle disapproval. I still love you, but I don't like this.
So they didn't really get the tree skirt.
But I love it. I smile every time I see it. Although my taste is that of a spinster aunt in 1967, I feel very happy to know what I like. I will never struggle to decorate a house. I will never be unsure what image I wish to project. I will never be unsure of what I want to surround myself with for the rest of my life.
The only thing that inhibits me is lack of space, and my student loans.
I've struggled with Christmas in my adult life. It's hard to preserve the childhood magic of a holiday when you scorn the way other people celebrate it, and when you hate religion. But winter has always been a welcome, happy time for me, and I like to observe the way the year turns. I like to see different things in the house, and in my familiar landscape. I like a sense of occasion and ritual. I love to buy presents for other people, and I'm very good at it. So what to do?
Just do it. I was too cool and noncompliant to celebrate anything from holidays to birthdays in my mid 20s, I was like an atheist Jehovah's Witness, but now I just don't give a fuck. I go there. I have a pink tree decorated with antique German glass ornaments. Don't you know holidays are just another way to amass interesting shit?
After I made my tacky pagan tree skirt, I received a request for the gag gift of an unapologetically satanic tree skirt. Christmas is hard for atheists, I think they feel guilty celebrating something so heavily knitted together with Christianity. But when you throw in a tree skirt emblazoned with a baphomet, it feels a little bit easier.
I don't want to show it completely yet because I'm not finished, but I'm very happy with it.
A baphomet made of sequins. There will be pom poms. It may be the greatest thing I've ever created.
I hesitated when the girl at the fabric store eyed my armload of black felt and blood red pom poms. "Whatcha...makin?" she asked. Oh, nothing...
I think this theme combines well with my interest in the overblown tackiness of Hollywood Regency and late 60s ultra lush absurdity. Although Anton LaVey was a silly fool, he cultivated a finely articulated aesthetic that still appeals today. A mix of the medieval and the swinging 60s, with lush velvets, skulls, knives, altars, black candles, topless "witches" with big hair, fake blood, ancient books, bejeweled goblets, I could go on.
I never really bought into his philosophy, because it's for men - ridiculous men. It's all plagiarized from Ragnar Redbeard's 1890 publication "Might is Right," which basically espouses a hedonistic "fuck all y'all" attitude, but which does ring true on some topics, such as how it's ok to reject the contemporary flow of society when you know it to be wrong, even when it means ostracization, because you must be strong enough to withstand the slings of smaller people and smart enough to know they will come, etc., etc. Subtler souls prefer Nietzsche.
LaVey does make unique recommendations for women, which you can read in his book, "The Satanic Witch," and which are pathetic and condescending and all about fashioning sexual snares. His ideas about female beauty really show his age and plebian tastes, too. He may have made his bones in the late 60s, but he was already a bit old then, and his tastes seem so stodgy. He's all about garters and brown pantyhose, bad blonde dye jobs and blue eyeshadow. The ideal woman he described seemed to belong in a bingo hall to me. Truly, only idiots idolize LaVey, but he is a fun character, and I do like that he organized all of these ideas into a formal "religion", recognized as tax exempt by the US government. It's all a fun joke that may bring the attention of young people to ideas they should think about.
And therefore, satanic Christmas tree skirt.
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
I told you no
And you did it anyway.
Sometimes I feel self-conscious talking about my cat in the same way people at work talk about their small children, but now I DGAF.
Monday, November 9, 2015
Strange Magic
I've been in a Virgin Suicides kind of mood lately. A sort of ELO, Carpenters, gold microphone, bad hair mood. A dreamy middle child in a 1970s suburban development mood.
This is basically the last of the walls to fall when it comes to my ideas about things I will and will not do. Not sure if I can adequately convey how much I HATED this class of dorky 70s music when I was younger. In the 90s, I thought everything about the 70s was full disgusting. But I like it now. I don't care! About anything!
A few years ago, a friend and I decided to start a band. I told her we should start a Chad & Jeremy and/or Peter & Gordon cover band called Brittany & Anita. She was game - she had a maraca - and we eagerly planned to really annoyingly explore this development during a long winter weekend at her place in New Mexico.
So on a beautifully cold November weekend at the feet of the Sandias, I queued a playlist and told her, Here's the shit you gotta learn to play, bro.
I played "I Go to Pieces" or something, and she froze. Then screamed, "Oldies? I HATE OLDIES!"
WHAT, I screamed back, hands flying around my face in horror. "That's what Chad & Jeremy is!" "I didn't know!" she screamed. We just stared at each other in silent remonstrance, both disappointed.
And as amused as I am by her wild hatred of "oldies" and all sentimental music, I dissolved the band.
So I'm not going to send this playlist to her, because somehow I feel this is so much worse in her book than the Everlys or Peter & Gordon could ever be.
This Todd Rundgren song is one of my mom's favorite songs of all time, and ELO is probably her actual favorite band of all time.
I finally kind of get it.
This is basically the last of the walls to fall when it comes to my ideas about things I will and will not do. Not sure if I can adequately convey how much I HATED this class of dorky 70s music when I was younger. In the 90s, I thought everything about the 70s was full disgusting. But I like it now. I don't care! About anything!
A few years ago, a friend and I decided to start a band. I told her we should start a Chad & Jeremy and/or Peter & Gordon cover band called Brittany & Anita. She was game - she had a maraca - and we eagerly planned to really annoyingly explore this development during a long winter weekend at her place in New Mexico.
So on a beautifully cold November weekend at the feet of the Sandias, I queued a playlist and told her, Here's the shit you gotta learn to play, bro.
I played "I Go to Pieces" or something, and she froze. Then screamed, "Oldies? I HATE OLDIES!"
WHAT, I screamed back, hands flying around my face in horror. "That's what Chad & Jeremy is!" "I didn't know!" she screamed. We just stared at each other in silent remonstrance, both disappointed.
And as amused as I am by her wild hatred of "oldies" and all sentimental music, I dissolved the band.
So I'm not going to send this playlist to her, because somehow I feel this is so much worse in her book than the Everlys or Peter & Gordon could ever be.
This Todd Rundgren song is one of my mom's favorite songs of all time, and ELO is probably her actual favorite band of all time.
 |
| A nice young woman who never asked for a jerk child |
I finally kind of get it.
Sunday, November 1, 2015
I'm pretty immune to typical Texas stuff because I hate Christianity and conservatives, but I went to an event in Houston the other week that took me right back to my childhood, a time full of horses and dirt and country music, and I loved it.
Everyone talks about how shitty country got after 1981 or whatever, but I actually secretly really love 90s country. I don't care, some of it is excellent!
Austin isn't very country. I know everyone's experience is different and that Phoenix is about as city as it gets with miles of concrete and malls, but in the 90s, my family spent our weekends in Cave Creek or Casa Grande to visit our horses and go to rodeos. I was the only kid in this group, so it was a little lonely for me, but I was surrounded by old cowboys and country women with work-gnarled hands and dogs and frogs and the smell of horse shit, which isn't so bad.
I felt like I was so in love with George Strait then. It made me want to cry.
One year, I would guess 1992, we spent the fourth of July at our extended family's little ranch in Casa Grande. Again, the only child around on a drinking holiday, I wandered out to the horse stalls by myself and took my horse out. I wanted to ride her, but she was a wild card and I knew I was inexperienced, so I put her in the round pen, where she couldn't get away. My greatest fear was losing the damn horse. I put a bridle on her and walked her out without a saddle, pulled her up next to the fence and used it to climb on her bare back. We walked around the pen aimlessly for a while until the fireworks started. I stopped trying to move her around and she just stood for what seemed like forever while I held a handful of her mane with the reins and watched the sky. I felt that it was a very American thing, to be a child sitting on a horse alone watching fireworks on the fourth of July while my parents laughed indoors, just like a commercial. I put her away and thought about how no one would know that that moment had ever happened but me.
So anyway, I went to a fancy event out in Houston held at a polo club. Even though the place is meant for elites, it still smelled like horse shit and the faint dirt kicked up by hooves still floated in the breeze and still smelled the same. The horsey musk emanating from the clean, white paddocks paired with an endless playlist of 90s country hits took me all of the way back home. My experience in Arizona was more country & western than life in Texas is now, no matter what a Texan will tell you, particularly in Houston.
Everyone talks about how shitty country got after 1981 or whatever, but I actually secretly really love 90s country. I don't care, some of it is excellent!
Austin isn't very country. I know everyone's experience is different and that Phoenix is about as city as it gets with miles of concrete and malls, but in the 90s, my family spent our weekends in Cave Creek or Casa Grande to visit our horses and go to rodeos. I was the only kid in this group, so it was a little lonely for me, but I was surrounded by old cowboys and country women with work-gnarled hands and dogs and frogs and the smell of horse shit, which isn't so bad.
I felt like I was so in love with George Strait then. It made me want to cry.
One year, I would guess 1992, we spent the fourth of July at our extended family's little ranch in Casa Grande. Again, the only child around on a drinking holiday, I wandered out to the horse stalls by myself and took my horse out. I wanted to ride her, but she was a wild card and I knew I was inexperienced, so I put her in the round pen, where she couldn't get away. My greatest fear was losing the damn horse. I put a bridle on her and walked her out without a saddle, pulled her up next to the fence and used it to climb on her bare back. We walked around the pen aimlessly for a while until the fireworks started. I stopped trying to move her around and she just stood for what seemed like forever while I held a handful of her mane with the reins and watched the sky. I felt that it was a very American thing, to be a child sitting on a horse alone watching fireworks on the fourth of July while my parents laughed indoors, just like a commercial. I put her away and thought about how no one would know that that moment had ever happened but me.
So anyway, I went to a fancy event out in Houston held at a polo club. Even though the place is meant for elites, it still smelled like horse shit and the faint dirt kicked up by hooves still floated in the breeze and still smelled the same. The horsey musk emanating from the clean, white paddocks paired with an endless playlist of 90s country hits took me all of the way back home. My experience in Arizona was more country & western than life in Texas is now, no matter what a Texan will tell you, particularly in Houston.
Saturday, October 24, 2015
1933 Party
It's raining all over Texas, filling the creeks and roads with flood waters. After this storm passes, the broken rains of Patricia will follow.
It's inadvisable to be out in Austin at times like this. Road deaths are constant and flash floods really are flash floods. Several people still haven't been found after 40 feet of water came crashing down the Comal River last May, pulling vacation houses into the water and snapping 500 year old Cypresses in half.
Better to open the house to the wet, Bay area style fog, bake, embroider, and listen to hits of the 20s and 30s.
It's inadvisable to be out in Austin at times like this. Road deaths are constant and flash floods really are flash floods. Several people still haven't been found after 40 feet of water came crashing down the Comal River last May, pulling vacation houses into the water and snapping 500 year old Cypresses in half.
Better to open the house to the wet, Bay area style fog, bake, embroider, and listen to hits of the 20s and 30s.
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