Monday, September 14, 2009

Brief Banalities; and Withdrawal Makes The Fix Even Sweeter

Dubuque, IA--Before reading this post, do yourself and my ego favors and check to see if you've read the one below, which I just put up a few minutes ago (Ed.: you're such an asshole. You think they can't figure it out on their own?). Or don't. Whatever. I don't care.

Back to camping, which feels surprisingly good--the fact that I'll be sleeping in a real bed semi-permanently in a couple of nights lends a melancholy comfort to these last two sleeping pad and bag experiences (Ed.: lends these last two experiences a melancholy... oh whatever you'll never learn). Today Eve is biking from Guttenberg IA to Dubuque or so (the “or so” referring to her discretion in terms of mileage) while I wait patiently in cafe(s) in Dubuque instead of setting up camp like I said I would (in my defense, it's like 20 miles to the campsite and I did at least look up if camping there is allowed and it is, and plus it takes us like 20 minutes to set up and what's the point of driving down and back because she'll definitely want to use the Internet), and tomorrow I will either bike or kayak down towards the Quad Cities (Davenport IA, Rock Island IL, Moline IL, and Bettendorf IA, although B-Dorf's inclusion has its opponents, among which I'd have to count myself for the sole reason that “Quad Cities” is just kind of an ugly name and something along the lines of “Tri Cities” would be much nicer).

Also: Iowa is pretty. Like really pretty. Especially here (I'm not sure how I'd feel about the flat parts), where there are hills and bluffs and I actually saw a sign with an arrow and the words “Ski Area”. It's all farmland, and it's beautiful.

I guess I don't really have much to say right now. Which is too bad because I'm not sure I'll be able to post anything more before I go home, and though I plan on continuing to write (because honestly, how much of this blog was directly related to the particular places I was or what I was doing?) it'll be interesting how the subject and tone change when I'm back in familiar territory. And here again: how much of the subject matter and tone of the blog so far have been driven by fear and uncertainty? It's tough to say. And now I have to sign off quickly because I've only got like five minutes to get to the parking meter so maybe I'll put up something again later but then again maybe I won't OK bye!

A Return To Form

Ferryville, WI (but probably posting in either Prairie du Chien, WI, or Guttenberg, IA (UPDATE: Actually am currently in Dubuque IA))--Sorry for the lapse in posting frequency, it's been a very busy and Internet-and-cell-phone-free couple of days: nice every now and then, but eventually it's an itch you gotta scratch. Nick and family hosted us like long-lost relatives (it makes strong bonds, this River) and were able (sans one who had I believe a football game or something of the sort) to come out paddling with us yesterday, and we formed a small and slow-moving flotilla (seriously guys ever since I learned that word I've been aching to use it so cut me some slack re: its “proper” meaning (UPDATE TO THIS POST: I just discovered that Apple's TextEdit uses the same algorithm for determining the direction of quotation marks (I've also been dying to do a third parenthetical at some point so here it is: is there a specific word or term for the direction of quotation marks? Quotation Vector? Sub-Question: If one person somewhere made up such a word and used it exactly once, would it be a word? Super-Question: ..............? Super question! (Ed.: I'm going to kill you, and I already know exactly how and when I'm going to do it: with a knife. Sometime soon.)) as does Google's Blogger. Is this, like, the best we can do? Aren't these guys the giants of the algorithm-innovation-and-development fields? Hasn't MS Word had like a perfectly good algorithm for precisely this problem for, like, twenty years? Am I the only one who cares? (I know, I know, but Sub-Question: Is there a dedicated Quotation Marks Algorithm Developer on the Programming Staff of any of the three aforementioned companies, and if so, how does he feel about his title? Is he out for the Senior Punctuation Manager's job (and its accompanying colloquial title of “Pun(c/k) Guru?”), and if so, does the SPM know, and is there pushback (I'm sure there would be really nerdy, passive-aggressive pushback, although is there pushback that isn't passive-aggressive (excluding sexual harassment)?)?)); it's such a cool word, especially when “armada” is just out of the question) moving through the backwaters of the UM (Upper Mississippi for all you landlubbers (shore-shovers? concrete coolies? leg-lemmings? walkie-talkies (we neither walk nor talk on the UM)?)) (Ed.: oh my god get a life!).

T.O.: If you've made it this far, and read each parenthetical the way you should (read pretty much straight through until a close-parens, then go back two open-parens and start again, skipping the complete thought you already read and finishing the interrupted thought), congratulations. I felt that after a couple days of rather lax posting, my return shouldn't be a whimper (Ed.: Christ, you show this guy one fucking poem and suddenly he's... well, well, well I can't really think of any writer who is best-known for his allusions, I mean Joyce is kinda close but they're not so much allusions as archetypes; I'm sorry, you all know I'm a figment of his imagination and thus it's really him who's at fault for this shortcoming; but wait again, if I start blaming him for my flaws then do I lose free will? I've never been one of those people who can stand a paradox e.g. “God gave me free will.”). But it's also a result of paddling 20 miles in the hot sun on Friday then getting up and paddling a canoe a whole bunch yesterday (OK OK a whole bunch is, like, seven or eight miles but still it was also in the hot sun) and currently facing the prospect of another 20 miles in the hot sun today. So enjoy it while it lasts, buckos, cause nothing lasts forever.

T.I.: So all of this just kind of goes to show that it's been a pretty exciting few days, and exciting is all well and good (witness, e.g., how good this post is!) but it doesn't leave a whole lot of time or energy for writing, or really I guess producing anything at all. It's a sort of condensed absorption phase, and I was thinking about that again yesterday (Question: can writing or thinking about the creation and production of art and even artistic impulses, and I mean all that in about the broadest sense possible, possibly be considered art? And I really really don't mean that in a sort of freshman-in-college (-or-if-you're-me-junior-in-college-cause-I-didn't-get-a-whole-lot-of-those-questions-in-high-school (“get” meaning either receive or understand)), and I suppose I should modify the question to read “possibly result in art” rather than “be considered art”. And I guess first of all it's sort of a meaningless question, as is every question about what might constitute or prevent from constituting a work of art. So anyway.) and I was particularly considering this point, again, that the question of what this trip does for me (I still think it's too soon to say “has done for me”, not to mention that that formulation makes me a little sad), i.e. how does it change the way I see and hear and respond to things, is far more important the question of what I produce in direct response to it, which in the long run might not be anything beyond this blog. But then I started re-thinking: I've been dreaming a lot recently (which is, as a few of you might know, not something I do regularly), and they've been not especially vivid or memorable but one thing they have been is odd and, well, original and creative. I remember the night before last having a dream with a very cool soundtrack that I have never heard before (oh to have remembered it!), which has only happened to me a very few times and is both a fun experience and a sign that I have some, well, stuff that I want to get out. So I wouldn't say absorption is complete because obviously it never is. But I've spent a month and a half in places I've never been, doing things--highly mythologized things or at least a highly mythologized thing--that I've never done before. That's gotta do something.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Geometrics Really Just Isn't A Word, No Matter What Anyone Says; And This Isn't Covered In The Post But Stanley Fish Is Still An Idiot

De Soto, WI--A couple miles north of De Soto, anyway, at Black Hawk Park, looking out into Battle Slough and across it at Battle Island (there's a definite theme here). There's no cafe in De Soto (I had hoped that it would continue the pattern of there being no real correlation between size (in terms of both geography and population) and economic/hipness-possessing prosperity, but even on a non-correlative graph there exist outliers. Anyway. We spent the night in luxurious comfort at the home of Nick Lichter, who wrote this book that we've been referring to pretty frequently and who lives in La Crosse with his wife Margaret and kids, and I slept in a bed for only the second time in a month and a half. Today Eve kayaks from Brownsville, MN, where I finished yesterday, 18 miles to Black Hawk Park and a few miles north of here will cross the state line from Minnesota into Iowa, which means that (A) we've entered our third state and (B) Minnesota, which had started to feel like a perpetual companion and looming comfort over on the right shore, is no longer there, replaced by Iowa, a state about which my feelings are shall we say somewhat mixed (even though there's no real geographic/geologic distinction between Winona and Dubuque and the state line is a more-or-less arbitrary distinction based on the reasonable if arcane and artificial (i.e. prescriptive rather than descriptive, no?) system of latitude/longitude which also formed the U.S./Canada border and the Mason-Dixon line, and though I'm perfectly aware that this part of Iowa bears no resemblance to the industrial-corn-farm Iowa of the central and western part of the state, it's always seemed to me on the map to be adequately evoked by its shape, a square-that-they-made-not-quite-a-square-cause-hey-it's-gotta-have-something-to-distinguish-it-by). And it remains to be seen if we will experience the same transformations of Wisconsin and Iowa through which we experienced Minnesota, from the wild North Country to the Iron Range to the (especially) lakey region to the bluffs of the Southeast, and my guess is that we won't.

I'd continue these fascinating thoughts but it's hot today, probably not much over 80 but the kind of heat that makes you want to just lie down and turn off your brain. But maybe I'm just dehydrated or something. But either way I should stop.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

On Provinciality (But Not the Kind You Think)

La Crosse, WI--Once again, the unrelenting sun has melted my brain to a low-viscosity pink froth, like strawberry ice cream abandoned too long, and though I feel an odd compulsion to write (not an obligation exactly, and honestly if Eve wasn't hogging the computer--mine's AirPort card is dead, don'tcha know--it's pretty likely I wouldn't be at it at all), about what I haven't the slightest. When you kayak all day (Ed.: shut up, it was five hours), you generally don't have much to say at the end of it; it's the days off that are the most productive.

I went through Lock #7 today, and a guy watching me (I couldn't tell if he was involved in the operation of the lock or if he was just spectating), after being told of our (Eve's) plans, said, “I don't think you'll make it.” I was so shocked to hear him say it (for three reasons: first, that as he was well aware, we'd already gone a month and a week, including a week of really heavy traffic, which I find adequate evidence of commitment and determination; second, that I don't think I look like a clumsy fool out there--I clearly knew how to lock through efficiently and safely; and third, that it's just kind of an asshole thing to say, even, maybe especially, if you follow it with “Good luck!”) that I didn't ask what in retrospect is the most important, and obvious, question: why? Is it just a matter of statistics (I'm sure that a significantly greater number of people being such a trip than complete it)? If not, was it some kind of mistake I had made in the lock? I don't think so, if only because the person operating the lock (regardless of the conversant's affiliations, he definitely wasn't controlling the mechanism) let the water out wicked quickly, which seems like something you do for a guy who clearly knows what he's doing, not something that's prudent when you have a novice in the lock. Or was it because the river is just unimaginably difficult and scary below, say, Cairo? How did he know we hadn't done it before (I'll admit I was tempted to tell him this was my third time kayaking the length of the Mississippi, just to knock him down a couple levels)? I understand that giving this much thought to the words of a man who seemed to me to be the kind of guy who acts seasoned about the tiny bland corner of the world that he knows at all because it's all anyone ever asks him to talk about is completely ridiculous and neurotic etc., and I'm not worried about it in the long-term (really, I'm not, he was an idiot); it was just so strange to hear someone be so rude. Bah! Anyway. I'm done.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

On Caffeine (Coffee Shop Hip-Bop Be-Hop Short-Stop Art-Pop)

Winona, MN--Feeding a growing caffeine addiction--having never really been addicted to anything (Question: does Addiction exist as infinitesimally-spaced points along a continuum or as an on/off switch and does the distinction matter?), I now live in a deep-seated fear of anything-too-much--in yet another coffee shop. Last night we stayed, for the first time, at a campsite inaccessible by car (we parked about a half-mile away), at the end of a slough (pronounced like "flue" with an S; and one of these days I need to learn pronunciation symbols like that upside down "e", although there are many ways to explain how to pronounce words without such symbols and after all even the pronunciation shorthand itself requires explanations drawn from actual words--see e.g. the beginning of any dictionary--and so couldn't it be said that the symbols are so unnecessary to the whole procedure of explaining pronunciation as to serve as yet another example of the leisure classes' cultural exclusivity?) that sees no traffic but is foggy and silent and beautiful in the morning. The campsite was revealed to us, a la the bequeathing of a secret passageway by father to son (Ed.: where do you get these awful metaphors?), by David Echelard, a singer and accordionist and hurdy-gurdyist who specializes in early French music, particularly that of trouvers and troubadours (Ed.: and where do you get off italicizing the former but not the latter? Although I guess trouver is still pretty much an exclusively French word, while troubadour has made the jump, e.g. "sans", to common SWE usage) which if you'll permit me to rhapsodize for a moment (Ed.: and what if we don't? Writing is the aggressive act, reading submissive, and a writer asking his audience's permission is like a dictator asking for that of his subjects) is music that I always love but I don't know nearly enough about, especially as it fits into my whole pop-vs-art-transitions-over-time thing (i.e. the history of European, essentially popular, music from 200 or 500 years ago was required for my college degree; popular music from even 50 years ago was not).

Eve and I were just talking about grammar and its decline in the American curricula and if said decline matters and I started thinking about DFW's (I know I bring him up a lot, but show me a better American essayist in the last 20 years and I'll declare you stark raving mad) essay on approx. the same: "Authority and American Usage," which sounds like the dryest read ever--the type of Essay Stanley Fucking Fish would write, not inthe NYT but rather in some academic journal and in the first paragraph of which he'd only half-jokingly refer to "finally writing something for an educated audience" or some shit, at whichthe two or three young, still passably self-aware English professors would roll their eyes but the rest would nod knowingly--but if you know DFW or even me (hopefully) you'll realize is not that at all. The essay is a review of a book by Bryan Garner (I didn't even have to look that up) on, well, Authority and American Usage (of Standard Written English (i.e. Standard White English), if that wasn't yet clear), and DFW is essentially saying that Garner's brilliant contribution to the debate over descriptivism vs. prescriptivism (i.e., and here I'm really summarizing Wallace's also-brilliant summary of this timeless linguistic conflict, the "Dictionary Wars", whether the role of the dictionary should be to describe or prescribe grammatical and linguistic patterns and changes, such as whether a dictionary should continue to insist that "ain't" ain't a word or whether it should cave to overwhelming popular usage and include it in the dictionary; a more fundamental approach to the debate could even question whether dictionaries matter, because communication gave rise to dictionaries and not vice versa, and whether the basis of language is speech or writing) is that it doesn't really matter what position you take in these debates so long as you acknowledge that there are and will forever be multiple ways of using the language that are equally valid in their respective contexts--hence "Standard White English"--and that what really matters is not "correct" usage but the ability to possess several different dialects and to use them in the correct context.

And I started to think about this in respect to music. (First of all: kudos if you've made it through the above paragraph, let alone understand it, and you should all really just read the article because it's much clearer and more fun there.) Because for all the talk of provinciality in the music world, and despite the fact that the intimacies and details of each musical sphere are much more intricate than those of language (regardless, I think, of whether or not you're a musician, though it might be more difficult for musicians), one of the crucial skills for anyone interested in music as a performer or critic or composer or audience member or whatever is to be able to move between different musical contexts fluidly, to understand that the important musical elements of a work are entirely different from one kind of music to the next, and to understand and adapt our understandings as we go. In one context, "ain't" is perfectly acceptable but "hermeneutics" might as well be a four-letter word, while in another the reverse is true. I think this is all fairly clear, and as DFW points out, most of us go our whole lives not needing to really sit down and think about it because it comes fairly naturally to most of us (to paraphrase, "the kid who doesn't understand that the language you use with adults is different from the language you use with other kids is the kid who gets beaten up by the other kids," and obviously I don't mean "naturally" to mean "by instinct rather than acculturation" necessarily), but it bears repeating and maybe even contemplation if only because debates over quality can so easily leave out the question of context.

Monday, September 7, 2009

This Post Is Not Worth Reading

Winona, MN--I'm not sure how I manage to keep all these coffee shops associated with the correct city, but I do: if you held up pictures of all of them, I could tell you where they're located (I could even distinguish between the Caribou Coffee in Monticello and the Caribou Coffee in Elk River). Now, maybe you could say I have a prodigious memory. And you would not be far wrong. But the frequently transparent efforts of coffee shop managers to make their businesses distinctive are surprisingly effective regardless of how aware the viewer is of such efforts (the same can be said for a lot of modern advertising, actually--despite the fact that we're all aware of advertising's efforts, it still works, and often its own willingness to play on our assumptions and the way non-advertisers think advertising work is one of its most effective mechanisms), and so I have no trouble remembering that the coffee shop in Grand Rapids (“Brewed Awakenings”) had blackandwhite tile floors and lots of yellow elsewhere while the one in Hastings (“Second Street Coffee Shop”, and that's another interesting story out here; a town's First Street is the first street parallel to the river, and so on from there, except that because of the threat and history of flooding a lot of First Streets are basically empty or abandoned to the point where there frequently isn't a First Street at all, and Second Street is the one with shops and cafes) is the one with the slightly overbearing proprietor.

But enough of such banalities. There is important business to which to attend. Was it about kayaking? Where's my damn editor? (Ed.: it's Labor Day. Shut up so I can go back to sleep.) Ah. Well, in that case I suppose we all deserve a break.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

On the Summary of a Life, Particularly a Life of Kayaking

Wabasha, MN--Well, this article came out in the NYT today, and while I can pretend to be nonchalant all I want, the fact is that one's first mention (and photo credit) in the “Journal of Record” is, if not a Big Deal, especially considering that the effort and agency actually required of me in order to achieve such a mention (and photo credit) was not exceptional, kind of really exciting... even if the term “musicologist” makes me squirm a bit (besides the obvious questions--what the fuck musicology have I actually done, and isn't that kind of professional title usually reserved for people with, you know, professional degrees?--it makes me wonder how other people react to their titles; the conflict between the most efficient way of summing up what a person is or “does”--and of course writers have to be efficient--and the full sum of a person, and don't be put off by the phrase, you know what I mean, the myriad things they are and do and so on, and I don't mean just the inane eulogistic phrases e.g. “father, husband, brother, son, yada-fuckin-yada” (Ed.: wow, you're a bit surly this morning), but let's use my example, because it's my blog and as you're all well aware I'm a raging egotist (also, no kidding, I use the word “narcissist” and its synonyms so frequently here that I actually just googled “narcissism thesaurus” because I momentarily couldn't think of a fresh way of putting it): I am, according to the Journal of Record, a “trombonist and musicologist”... well you all know what I'm going to say, that I do other things besides, and maybe my embarrassment at the description owes more to the phonetic ugliness of the word “trombonist” than to any problems of substance. The fact remains that, while I have yet to see my name in print (hint hint to anyone with access to hard copies, and it's on page AR15 of the Sept. 6 paper), I'm still pretty excited.

So. I realized earlier that for all my verbiage I have yet to provide a detailed account of what it's actually like to kayak 20 miles in our 17 ft., 62 lb. (when empty; loaded with food, water, and safety equipment--spare paddle, whistle, etc.-- it's probably approaching 80) “bright red” Prijon Marlin. And aware as my generation is of the limits of writing's ability (and, honestly, pretty much any other medium's ability) to convey experience, I might give it a try over the next few days. For now, because it's fresh in my mind, I'll concentrate on two things: locking through a lock and the efficient application of sunblock (we don't dock, we fight the clock, and we tell knock-knocks about pickpocks) (Ed.: leave the rhymes to the rhymers).

Yesterday we were explaining to Mary Kay the procedure and experience of locking through, and I insisted that the dam I had gone through that day (Lock and Dam #4, which has its very own Wikipedia page; they all do) was a good deal smaller in terms of length and width than #3, which I had gone through a few days before. But later I was reading about the dams and discovered that in fact they are all the same size: 600 ft. long and 110 ft. wide, which leaves just two and a half feet on each side when barges lock through (which is why the barges take so damn long to lock through). They do, however, vary quite wildly by depth--the Upper St. Anthony Falls dam in downtown Minneapolis, the first lock on the river and the source of these pictures, falls probably 25-30 ft., while #4 descended at most 10 ft. It's not too frightening, actually--the people running the locks seem to be, if not happy about it, at the very least resigned to canoes and kayaks locking through, and honestly we're probably kind of a relief from the recreational powerboaters who occupy most of the lock operators' energy and attention--we're too small and slow to be dangerous to other boats, and too vulnerable and sober to be risk-takers, and the powerboaters are generally less brash and jackassish around us, if only because we are a novelty and a tiny minority even this far down the river (I haven't seen a single other canoe or kayak since Minneapolis; I'm not sure if Eve or Mary Kay have).

These days we're heading mostly southeast, never varying past east or south-southwest (I'd use degrees but I'd rather come off as knowingly ignorant than unwittingly ignorant), and so the sun never sees our backs. What it does see, besides the obvious face, neck, and arms, is a triangle of flesh above our left knees. The knees themselves are tucked up against the top of the kayak so that we're locked in place for balance, but the “Kayaker's Triangle” (Ed.: not gonna catch on) is immobile and exposed to the sun all day, occasionally drifting from side to side as the river changes course a few degrees and the sun moves from east to southwest (we start early and finish by early afternoon, which is why it's only on the left leg), and though at this point I barely notice it, it must be quite striking when I wear shorts around town.

So that's about all I have time or energy for now, but over the next few days I intend to publish a more complete description of the practice of Kayaking Down The Mississippi.

Friday, September 4, 2009

On the Relationship between Population and Hipness, Among Other Things

Wabasha, MN--So we really and truly have no idea how big or hip or together these towns are going to be until we explore them.

Logic Puzzle: Red Wing, Lake City, and Wabasha are towns along US Hwy 61 (“out on Highway 61” as Dylan sings, and the name “Wabasha” occurs in another, slightly crappier song of his, though there it describes a street rather than a city). By population, Red Wing is the largest with ~15000, then Lake City w/ 6000, with Wabasha in a solid last at 2600. In the DeLorme Gazetteer, they all look approximately the same size, with Red Wing appearing maybe just a little smaller than the others (though this might be an optical illusion created by the river--not the Mrs.--that splits it in two). In the Midwest, I'm finding, the distribution of cafes and libraries and bike shops and other indicators of my version of cool/hip is not even per capita. For every cafe in Red Wing, there are 5000 people; in Lake City, 3000 (but a full 6000 if you count only the cool one, and as the sole arbiter of “cool” on this blog I'll be using that standard; subjectivity be damned, I'll be prescriptive); in Wabasha, 1300, which is a much more reasonable number of potential patrons per cafe. To make a thoroughly useless comparison (Damariscotta-Newcastle is a different pop., not to mention economic climate, in the summer months), D-N, serving a year-round population of <4000, style="font-style: italic;">particularly non-academic conservatives, who are by far the most irritating in this respect because they don't possess the rhetorical skills necessary to argue the points in the same intellectual plane in which they--the points, not the conservatives--originated), tend to overreact and not think enough; and to find a median between these stridencies is very trying indeed; and that the most frequently-overlooked disciplines--e.g., I think, musicology--tend to attract those who don't find either extreme too attractive; and that too frequently these factions have a way of isolating and alienating and exiling (ha!) students and even faculty who could otherwise be really productive; and that this last point must be why academic research in the arts and humanities so frequently seems practically dead-in-the-water despite the fact that there's so much interesting stuff in the world that remains inadequately examined and explained; and, lastly (Ed.: I hope), that those academics who are able to resist the poles (not the Poles, obvs) are so frequently the ones that rightfully attract the most quiet respect (e.g. Shuck)).

So the point is that I have a lot of strong positive feelings toward Wabasha, not least because it hasn't turned its back on the River at all, which is a tendency I find gratingly ungrateful, if rational given the Mississippi's well-documented propensity for overwhelming its banks pretty much regardless of human intervention, and as a resident of a river town which very clearly hasn't turned its back on the geographical feature that gave it cause to begin, I feel a gravitation toward towns that do the same.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

In Which Our Hero Gets Flustered

Red Wing, MN--I really am just too dumb to live. I know I don't like getting hot drinks with food. I always prefer cold drinks when I'm thirsty, and food (and kayaking) makes me thirsty. So I'm sitting in the Blue Moon, like Cafe or something (real original name there, guys) in Red Wing (which is an awesome name--take a cue, Blue Moon Cafe-or-Something, and not just algorithmically--Color, Object--but creatively), and I just kayaked 20 painful miles w/ no current and wind in my face (i.e. wind in my face but no current) and thus, understandably, I'm pretty tired, thirsty, and hungry (UPDATE: Just ate, now not so hungry). SO I decide to get food. So I'm looking at the menu, having decided to get a Coke to drink, but I take so long to find “Bagel and Cream Cheese” that when I finally spot it I forget what kinds of bagel I like so I order a plain bagel with plain cream cheese and to top it off (well, the cream cheese is technically what tops off the bagel, but I mean the metaphorical topping-off) I order a latte instead of a Coke! And though I realize my mistake immediately, I pause and completely forget to rectify it before the girl behind the counter has entered it into the register and then of course I can't possibly recant or even express skepticism because I've used that kind of cash register and in my experience, cancelling stuff is a total bitch, well probably not for most people but I always had trouble with it, and so in Mac's Reality once the buttons are pressed the decision is final. And in the long run, once the latte cools down it'll be at least as good as a Coke, but for now its heat and the lingering resentment I feel toward it are keeping me from enjoying and appreciating it.

I locked through my first dam today. I can't express how awesome it was. But I can express how cool it was. (Ed.: don't be cute.)

In Which Irony Is Avoided Altogether

Hastings, MN--Again, right outside of Hastings (the name is reminiscent of Hibbing, if the town isn't) at the St. Croix Bluffs Regional Park. “Regional” isn't a political definition, so I'm not sure how that gets handled, although evidence (i.e. a park survey) would indicate that administration is at the county level. “Regional” my ass. Sorry, I've spent a good deal of the evening listening to complaints about bureaucracy and nepotism and drinking beer (the complaints did not extend to the latter, which was from an excellent WI micro, New Glarus Brewing Co.), and these experiences seem to be revealing themselves in what again appears to be a pretty straight stream-of-consciousness post, the obvious problem being that my consciousness is nowhere near as interesting or realistic or fucking archetypal as that of a Daedalus or Darroway or Compson (my drink-addled brain tends toward what Hemingway might have written had he even once in his drink-addled existence written a stream-of-consciousness but perhaps he knew what I do not, that drink makes for an extremely tedious read, whatever flashes it may show, no matter how lucid the writer).

And here again I show little respect for my audience. My parents, bless them, most certainly do not want to read a transcription of their beloved son's mildly intoxicated thoughts (Ed.: should I even bother editing tonight, or will His Majesty exercise restraint for once in his goddamn life and not post this at all?). I think you know the answer, and His Majesty might just remove his right to decapitate his Editor if you know what I mean.

Sorry about that, he gets out of line sometimes. And now my drinking companions (both of whom are more or less respectable, though one or maybe even both might object to such a description for various reasons) have retired, leaving me with about half a delicious, delicious beer to finish. And I already brushed my teeth! But it really is quite excellent beer...

I think mostly I'm excited to be back on the River, back in our odd little routine-that-isn't-routine (my Performance Studies professors might have had something to say about that little formulation, but there are of course advantages and freedoms that come with attainment of a degree, even if money doesn't). As nice as certain qualities of city existence are, I think I wasn't letting myself enjoy them because I knew that it would be back to camp life sooner or later and now that we're back, I'm happy. It's difficult to express, or to understand, just how I feel about camping so consistently. On the one hand, I don't think my underlying attitudes about camping, which some of you will know from personal experience to be “resist at all costs”, have changed much, if at all; on the other hand, there's something about this trip specifically--being with people I don't know well but that I've grown to like, doing something every day, treating it as a means of traveling rather than as an end in itself, etc.--that has rendered temporarily insignificant my prejudices against the practice (the practice being camping). And that's all I have to say about that.

Pre-Post Scriptum: As regards my previous two posts, the underlying point, if it wasn't clear, was that I really don't know what to make of all those problems and I just need to think about them some more.

P.S.: I finished the beer. Spotted Cow, indeed (Ed.: what the hell is wrong with you?).

P.P.S.: Today was Sept. 1. We started Aug. 1. Yeah. And we reached our second state today. It was not planned, but we spent exactly one month in MN alone (if we ignore the fact that the Gregorian month is not an exact measurement etc etc etc).

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

In Which Someone Expounds

Hastings, MN--At least I think we're still in Hastings. We basically are. At the very least we're in a very small sub-suburb of Hastings. We're camping for the first night in a few and I keep thinking about the Battle of Hastings. 1066. Poor Harold. I realized just now that when I read my post from last night earlier today I was kind of unhappy with its brevity, a concern I had also expressed in the post itself (in fact, said concern might have had a not-insignificant effect on my perception of the post's quality), and I'd like to write more about it now. Basically I can feel a weird tension between three groups: artists, popular artists (you know that I don't mean that members of the first group can't be popular), and non-artists. Being 23 and not particularly perceptive of shifts in cultural tectonic plates, and painfully aware of the bias about current events always seeming more significant than they end up being in history's eyes, I'm not sure how long this particular kind of tension (I'll explain in a minute) has existed or how it is currently changing, but my hunch is actually that it seems to be calming, and I also tend to attribute this result to precisely the kind of arts funding that has developed in the past, say, 20-30 years. Freeing artists from creating commercial art has spurred innovation not only among those artists who are free from such requirements, but even among those who do make commercial art because of the increasing artistic awareness and critical skills among non-artists (Ed.: this is precisely the kind of over-generalized, underthought nonsense that spews from the mouths of academicians and Republicans, as from God and Lucifer).

General Problem (General Problem): What is the economic role of the artist in society? An artist must necessarily be supported in his basic human needs by providers of those needs: farmers, carpenters, plumbers, &c., and obviously those providers benefit from the artist's work. But what if the farmers and carpenters and plumbers and the cetera were to become artists as well? This is the dilemma of the Professional, Full-Time Artist, who simultaneously recognizes the artistic urge in those for whose pleasure and fulfillment (there are cetera there but that issue is beyond the scope of this post) he creates his work and the talent for creating such works that he possesses (the talent, not the works) and that his audience does not. Until at least the 20th C and maybe not even until halfway through it, this wasn't a dilemma at all for European/American Professional Full-Time Artists--even when they weren't creating their art they were critiquing their fellow Professional Full-Time Artists' (Ed.: time for an acronym). But the broadening of general education (General Education) around the beginning of the 20th C created a more nebulous barrier between the artist and the general public (Ed.: you serious? The “general public” prefers Brahms to Schoenberg) and in doing so created opportunities for non-artists to create art that demanded critical attention (obviously that's a racially charged statement since most non-white artists find it difficult to attract critical attention as artists even today, just look at the way hip-hop is still treated by conservatives or even Midtowners--it's a fucking travesty, but that's a story for a different night, kids). Did Charles Ives sell insurance door-to-door when he wasn't reinventing American band music, or did he reinvent American band music when he wasn't selling insurance door-to-door (Ed.: oh, right, the nice rhetorical flourish eliminates all logical and historical problems with your argument. Good luck applying to grad school, asshole.)?

Another General Problem (Ed.: don't say it): Hypothesis #1: All humans react to art. Hypothesis #2: Art is not created in a vacuum; a common history or understanding of the world or at least some knowledge of the history of an artistic tradition is necessary in order to critique a work of art, because all art, and I know those of you who like to believe in “artistic revolutions” might find this difficult to swallow but although it might be a wonderful romantic notion they don't exist, is influenced by something, and to really understand the work it is pretty much necessary to be able to connect it to some other work of art in some artistic vocabulary. So. Hypothesis #3: If we combine Hypotheses 1-2, we see pretty clearly that people can get very frustrated by artwork they don't understand. I get frustrated with Indian paintings because I have next to no idea what's going on; lots of people find John Cage insufferable, even today; &c, because there are many different artistic traditions and contexts, and consequently artwork that some people make sense of in one context will be made sense of by other people through traditions that they understand. Senior year of college, I was complaining (Ed.: whining, ranting, sermonizing, don't use the least connotative word, say what you mean!) about the choice of Third Eye Blind to play Spring Fling, because Third Eye Blind sucks. Like, really sucks. Like, a powerful vacuum cleaner in a ceiling fan in a black hole sucks. (N.B. If there's one thing not to take away from this post, it's de gustibus non est disputandum; some art is better than other art, although it would reek of mediocritizing to flatter Third Eye Blind with the name “artist”.) And Mack said something like, “They're fine, even though there are no underlying mathematical progressions etc.” Because he thought I was complaining about their lack of pretensions to “serious artist” status. I wasn't, of course. They just suck on every level. But the point is that it can be difficult to understand other people's adoration for or objections to works of art if our education and experience don't extend in that direction. Which is a really obvious point but it needed to be said.