Blab's Erring Storm

Katie: Why can't pollution smell like a flower?

Posted via email from not just my opinion

I admit, I haven't given hip hop/rap a fair shake. I don't even really understand the terminology. I prefer the phrase "hip hop" only because I have some vague notion, received from I don't know where, that the term "hip hop" is cooler than the term rap, and somehow more about black culture than the term "rap." But in truth, I know next to nothing about black culture. I'm prepared to admit: having seen most of Spike Lee's films, and liking many of them, doesn't qualify as a cultural education.

So okay, I kid, a bit. Because if you're giving exposure to art any weight at all, I'm also probably quite a bit more knowledgeable and interested than your average person, musically speaking, anyway. I'm pretty knowledgeable about blues and jazz, going all the way back through their history, and to a lesser degree R&B, rock steady, soul, funk, and gospel. Even, for that matter, African music. I've listened to quite a lot of African music.

Literature...not so much. Let's see, is it possible that I could name every book I've ever read by a black writer? That seems sad. I've read James Baldwin's short story, "Sonny's Blues," and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. I've read some scattered poetry by Langston Hughes. I've read Lorraine Hansberry's play "A Raisin in the Sun." I've read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I've read a couple of books by Toni Morrison--Beloved and The Bluest Eye. More recently, I read Zadie Smith's On Beauty, and a romance novel, As We Lay, written by a friend of mine, Darlene Johnson.

What I lack almost entirely is any significant interaction with a black person. I don't think I've ever really given this much thought, but now that I am, I find it pretty weird. I've had maybe two total hours of conversation with anyone who is black during my adult life, and most of those two hours were chatting with Darlene in a coffee shop.

Returning from the "wow am I culturally insulated" diversion, however, back to the topic at hand: hip hop/rap. Here is the extent of my exposure to the form, which, like my reading, can be summed up very quickly: I was into one album by Us3, an intellectually oriented hip hop tribute to the Blue Note catalog. I listened to some Digable Planets, at Minette's urging (thanks Minette). I really liked the Fugees and the brief solo career of Lauryn Hill. I've listened, a little bit, to some Public Enemy, and mostly liked it. I listened to and appreciated Kanye West's Late Registration and Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. I listened to and most definitely did not care for some album I downloaded by 50 Cent. Nor did I care for my limited exposure to Eminem (yes I realize he's white, but this is a discussion about black culture and hip hop music, two topics that only mostly overlap) To whatever extent Michael Franti, with or without Spearhead, counts, I'm also a fan of his work. The end.

I'm thinking about all this because from time to time I read the blog of Ta-Nehisi Coates, who I really like as a writer. He occasionally mentions hip hop in passing, making me extra aware of my lack of background in the form. Part of me says, who cares? We all like what we like, and I think it's fair to say I have eclectic music tastes (though it's a personal pet peeve of mine that everyone claims to have eclectic musical tastes but most people know only a very narrow range of music to begin with). It feels like a mistake, though, just from the standpoint of cultural awareness, not to have at least heard more of the form, especially since it has held such a large place in popular consciousness during my lifetime.

Oh great, yet another thing to put on my ever-expanding to-do list.

Posted via email from not just my opinion

 

 

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

K.'s teacher, Mrs. Z., was showing them how they should line up at the beginning of the day. I wrote about her in a couple of earlier posts. She has an odd fascination (odd for a Kindergarten teacher) with dismemberment, decapitation, and death. True to form, as she lined them up today, she showed them the line in the concrete that's between them in the picture, and explained to them that they need to queue up behind that line. Why would we need to do that? she asked. Then she had a girl stand close to the door, went inside, and opened the door, demonstrating the potential harm. Then, true to form, she explained: "Because if you stand too close, I could open the door and knock your head off, and you wouldn't be able to learn very well without a head, would you?"

Doesn't she look sweet? (She's the older woman in the red shirt.) Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of Kindergarten teachers.

 

Posted via email from not just my opinion

No, I don't believe that people can be divided into two categories. Like most people, though, I do see tendencies that fall on a continuum which can be used to gauge (predict) the views and behavior of people, especially when used in matrix combinations. One classic example is the Kinsey scale of sexuality, wherein people fall somewhere on a sliding continuum between heterosexuality and homosexuality. You're not straight or gay—you fall somewhere on a sliding scale.

Similarly, I think that there's a sliding scale for "wants (needs?) to believe the world is a complex place vs. wants (needs?) to believe the world is a simple place." Something along those lines anyway, which for the sake of conversation I'll call C for complexity and S for simplicity (the ends of the continuum). This particular scale doesn't line up nicely with other scales, though I do think that in general, with many exceptions, liberals tend C-ward while conservatives tend S-ward. I think the so-called "culture wars," and, to a lesser degree, the red state/blue state divide, correlate to some degree with C and S tendencies.
I am, of course, way on the C side of the scale. Probably to a degree that's downright unhelpful. In theory, I consider myself a pragmatist. In the absence of sure knowledge of universal truths, what's best is what works (along with the presumption of carefully considered goals). In practice, though, I think of knowledge as being fractal-esque in nature, with infinite levels of detail available if you care to examine things ever more closely.

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I was listening to NPR briefly today, this particular program hosted by Cokie Roberts, who drives me a little crazy with her "if people disagree, the truth must be the point exactly between them" method of analyzing all problems. There was an interesting writer discussing the town halls and de Tocqueville, pointing out that populist anti-intellectualism is not a new phenomenon in the U.S. Someone called in with this comment (and I'm doing my best to reconstruct this argument from memory):

We had a president named Franklin Delano Roosevelt who served for two terms, and while he was president, people were definitely not living high on the hog, because he expanded government, and we all know how it turns out when that happens. The country didn't recover from his bad policies until the industrial revolution got things moving again.

So okay, it's kind of a cheap shot. Any random person calling in to a talk radio show, even when it's NPR, could easily be ill-informed, and it doesn't necessarily tell you anything about the national discourse. But it does seem like the crazy and ignorant and getting more than their fair share of air time lately.

Which should not be construed to mean that I think that the national discourse is degrading over time. Only that this particular debate has certainly teetered towards madness, as have many before in our illustrious history.

Posted via email from qzed's posterous

Posted via email from qzed's posterous

My son swallowed a quarter. Three-hour wait at the emergency room. At least he's breathing fine now.

Posted via email from qzed's posterous

Not a big fan of the blog memes, but I like this one:

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me!

My choice. For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

* I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
* What I create will be with you in mind.
* It'll be done sometime this year (2009).
* You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be something written, some physical thing made, could be anything at all, but I will make it myself. It's entirely my choice what it is. No quibbles, no refunds.
* I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.
The catch?

Oh, the catch is that you put this in your journal as well. If you don't, you don't get anything.

 

 

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

 

Posted via email from qzed's posterous