REAL EMOTION (aka Mo cries lots about the new Paper Route)

feelings on the new Paper Route after the first listen: the range in sonic influences and genres is striking me immediately. the four years in between albums definitely made a difference. i do think that it's the poppiest thing they've ever done - although they've also done a great job of carrying over the ambient electronic atmospherics from Absence and the haunted gospel aesthetic from The Peace of Wild Things - and that does come at the expense of thematic cohesion, at least on first listen. (to be fair it's also harder to do that across sixteen songs, compared to twelve/ten for their last two albums.)

honestly? i really don't care. every song on this has lines and hooks and bits that sink into me. JT is contorting his voice into so many characters - Sunday School preacher, prom night crooner, football stadium front-man, furious woodland ghost - sometimes within the same song. (also holy shit that falsetto.) if The Peace of Wild Things (one of my all-time favorites) felt like worship in an abandoned forest church, this feels like the band splattering bruised paint colors across a highway overpass. look at all of the shades we can throw together! look at all of the things we can do! i'm so happy about that. i feel like i grew up with this band, and i'm so proud of them for coming this far. i really hope a ton of people get to discover this album and build a relationship with it.

threw together a Youtube playlist for the entire album with all the songs in order, for anybody who's interested. the three i'd immediately go to are "Writing On The Wall" (the best Muse song they never wrote) "Untitled," and "Mona Lisa":

"self-improvement" and capitalism

troubled by this New York Times article on Zuckerberg as self-improvement lifestyle guru, in ways i can't quite put into words, but here's my best shot at it:

1. beyond the (obvious) objection that this notion of self-improvement as a project is incredibly classed - the Silicon Valley resident who has the money, leisure, and health to pursue self-improvement as a structured idea is not your average American, i'll put it that way - this article evokes a deeply-rooted insecurity in me about the type of person everybody needs to become in order to survive in a contemporary capitalist economy. there is something very, very intentional about Zuckerberg's planning and execution of his yearly projects, and many of them are things that are easy to capitalize on. wearing a tie on a daily basis (his 2009 project) builds a sense of ease around corporate culture and attire; learning to speak Mandarin (2010), as opposed to any other language, is an in-demand skill.

2. even the goals that seem to be more (for lack of a better word) spontaneous, like learning how to juggle in 20 minutes or meeting a new person every day, might fall under the professionalization of "being an interesting person," therefore being deserving of the attention, respect, or opportunities one has received/is receiving. take this quote:

“I think taking on self-improvement projects outside of work is part of the zeitgeist of Silicon Valley,” said Mr. Biewald, 34. “People expect you to have things that you care about outside of work.”

so now your coworkers get to judge you for what you do outside of work, too? awesome, thanks for letting me know, Mr. Biewald!

3. another bizarre thing about the self-improvement project is how it locates and organizes other people's humanity for the benefit of oneself. take the goal Zuckerberg set for himself in 2013: meeting a new person every day. what does it mean to categorize that as a self-improvement project? where are you finding these people, how are you interacting with them, and where are you locating the value in your interactions? is a person just a sum of the experiences they can conjure in an one-hour coffee chat, or are they something else? where does that leave the person who cleans your bathroom, or pours your coffee for minimum wage? do they get to have interiorities, too, or at least better pay? i mean, i think there is certainly value in expanding your worldview and hearing from those who are silenced, but if your idea of meeting people is sitting down and extracting as many of their values, beliefs, and experience as you can in the space of a day, i'm not sure your and my views of humanity align. (and this is not a criticism specifically of Zuckerberg, but a pattern of interaction i have noticed in a lot of different spaces.)

4. i read the self-improvement ethos as part of a broader movement towards knowledge as an optimizable source of capital, meaning that 1) one can more or less efficiently attain knowledge and that 2) knowledge is part of a larger project of building capital, be it social, economic, or intellectual. the self-improvement ethos is deeply tied to trends like life-hacking, which purports to optimize one's lifestyle (as long as you're white), or the growth of educational apps like Duolingo and online course institutions like CourseRA, which include in their ranks many students who are likely cramming these in on their morning commutes. what all three of those things have in common is that they fall largely under the purview of the already-privileged (while still being demanded of the lower classes), and that they restructure our conceptions of time and self, towards an optimized ideal in which every second and every intention serves the mission statement of one's life.

*on a related note, Alfie Bown had a great essay on capitalism and enjoyment i'm going to link for your benefit here: the idea of unproductivity as the contemporary cardinal sin is certainly connected to the overarching cultural anxiety around optimizing productivity, which is itself a big part of the self-improvement ethos.

5. and i can hear the objection in my head already, that i'm overanalyzing this, that i'm (irony of ironies) wasting my time, why does this even matter? yet the more i think about capitalism and the lives it asks us to live, the more everything makes sense: the sense i'm around people yet not quite connected, the disconnect i see in a generation of overachievers perpetually told they're not achieving enough, the double consciousness of seeing all of the world's problems and not knowing how to untangle a single one. 

but here's the thing: the world keeps asking us to be better people, improved people, and all the while corporations still get to destroy our Earth, millions of people still live in squalor, riots erupt over the immigrants responsible for taking all of your jobs, and the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter still can't take in all of the people who need warm beds. and i encourage people to continue thinking about these problems, these contradictions, these things that trouble them; but i also want people to know that the world has been troubled for a long time, and perhaps we'd be better to redirect all the anxiety, stress, and effort we put into improving ourselves and challenge those most responsible for the complacent destruction of our world instead.

we are good enough. we always have been.

"And if I'm the hero, you know who gets cast as the villain."

Unsettled feelings about Macklemore's "White Privilege II": scattered as an argument but gets across, mostly due to the anger spilling over (righteous anger, to be fair). The vocal samples are doing more for me than Macklemore, in all honesty, and there are a lot of them. Diagramming the song mostly to figure out where my feelings lie:

Part 1.1 (0:00 - 1:44) - Opens with that chilling "no justice, no peace" chorus, which bookends this entire section. Macklemore's recounting a Black Lives Matter rally, and the emotional tenor runs from guilt to anger to confusion, as ambivalent as the snippets that close out the segment. Macklemore raps, "Want to take a stance 'cause we're not free / And then I thought about it / We are not we"; the chorus, on the other hand, invokes "No rest 'till we're free." That feels like the center of the critique I've seen around Macklemore this weekend: what does it mean when a successful white hip-hop artist (very much aware of the racial fault-lines in this country) is invoking the voices of those across the line? Does that qualify as giving space or taking credit? Hell, what does it mean that I shrugged at the rap verse but shivered at the chorus? Which leads into...

Part 1.2 (1:45 - 3:07) - "You're Miley, you're Elvis, you're Iggy Azalea," that's what it means, and if you're not Iggy then you're singing along to Iggy and what's the difference? Felt a pang of identification with this entire verse, not going to lie. Halfway through, the focus turns: "Join the march, protest, scream and shout / Get on Twitter, hashtag, seem like you're down," words likely to be lobbied at limousine liberals as much as they are at, well, Macklemore, I guess. Really clever bit at the end when you get the interlude of protesters screaming "Hands up, don't shoot!" before the track literally slams the door silent because what is privilege if not the privilege to cover your ears, right?

Part 2 (3:08 - 4:32) - Not a coincidence that this section opens with "Pssst": the entire thing has the tone of a bigot whispering in the presence of civil company. Wonder how the suburban moms responsible for buying Macklemore's music are going to feel about him deconstructing their entire belief system, but it works because of the production - the way the piano creeps like a mouse whiskers shy of a trap, the dissonant delay in how Mackle-mom's voice is doubled, the way the chatter in the rooms cuts through the entire monologue before we get to the snippets of Not-Racist White People, the shouts of "Black Lives Matter!" audible beneath them (that motif of protester's voices being silenced, subdued, and otherwise pitted against white voices runs through the entire piece, and I think it's complicated to unpack but it works here).

Part 3.1 (4:33 - 6:33) - Not a lot to unpack here, just some sad piano and a White Privilege 101 verse. This is where it derails a little bit, at least for me; the voice goes back to that same "us" that the first part was willing to deviate from, and neuters what was initially sharp, pointed critique into "a lot of opinions." Ditto for "What if I actually read an article / Actually had a dialogue / Actually looked at myself / Actually got involved?" Good things in isolation; not the be-all end-all of political reform.

My gut reaction is that this verse wasn't meant for me*, the same point that this article makes with much more detail and eloquence. My more thought-out reaction is that, as a Korean American, I occupy a nebulous place in American race relations, not quite black but not quite white either. It is important to be in solidarity with other people of color, yet I still enjoy the privileges of being a native English speaker, of being in most situations secure from police brutality/violence, of having access to educational opportunities and healthcare and many things that black people do not. I reflect on just how little I do sometimes to push myself out of my comfort zone and to connect with Korean Americans (and, yes, with white people) on the need for solidarity. And in a way, aren't we who have access to those in communities outside this important, much-needed movement for black lives tasked with the most responsibility to expand its reach outwards?

On a final note, it is at least an interesting rhetorical move for Macklemore to connect his authenticity as a rapper with his willingness to advocate for political issues (and he's not wrong to note that hip-hop has always been politicized), but the entire move troubles me in a way I can't articulate yet.

Part 3.2 (6:33 - 7:20) - I can't believe that the "All Houses Matter" cartoon has transcended meme culture to take its rightful position in a Macklemore song in 2016. Bless. Otherwise, we get a good snippet on how black liberation is everybody's liberation; another voice on how the best thing white people can do is "talk" about race; a question about what those with privilege are willing to give up in exchange for a just society. Note that we never get a clear idea of whether these speakers are white.

Part 4 (7:21 - 8:42) - Last bit gets handed off to Jamila Woods, which I appreciate. I think this is where the strands of the song, the "I"s and the "we"s and the "us"es, come together:

Your silence is a luxury, hip-hop is not a luxury
What I got for me, it is for me
What we made, we made to set us free

So in the first line, we're getting the "you" as those outside the black community but also you as listener, you as Lady Macbeth unable to wash America's legacy out of her hands; second line is the reclamation of the art and the political awareness black people have held onto throughout centuries of violence and discrimination; third line is ambiguous, I think by design, where the "we" can be read both as the Black Lives Matter movement (and, by extension, the legacy of black protest it fits into historically) and as a call to solidarity. That's the read I'm getting on it, but I'm open to hearing others' interpretations and thoughts.

"His own inconsistency was one of the sources of his torment."

In the aftermath of this event, the patient exhibited not only classic post-traumatic symptoms but also evidence of pathological grief, disrupted relationships, and chronic depression: “He had, in fact, a profound reaction to violence of any kind and could not see others being injured, hurt, or threatened. . . . [However] he claimed that he felt like suddenly striking people and that he had become very pugnacious toward his family. He remarked, ‘I wish I were dead; I make everybody around me suffer.’”
The contradictory nature of this man’s relationships is common to traumatized people. Because of their difficulty in modulating intense anger, survivors oscillate between uncontrolled expressions of rage and intolerance of aggression in any form. Thus, on the one hand, this man felt compassionate and protective toward others and could not stand the thought of anyone being harmed, while on the other hand, he was explosively angry and irritable toward his family. His own inconsistency was one of the sources of his torment.

Best quote from Trauma and Recovery so far.

More:

Authoritarian, secretive, sometimes grandiose, and even paranoid, the perpetrator is nevertheless exquisitely sensitive to the realities of power and to social norms. Only rarely does he get into difficulties with the law; rather, he seeks out situations where his tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired. His demeanor provides an excellent camouflage, for few people believe that extraordinary crimes can be committed by men of such conventional appearance.

Exercising My Free Speech To Critique This YouTuber's Free Speech Video

free speech is not something i feel completely confident broaching, so these are mostly quick (and admittedly impulsive) responses. just wanted to jot 'em down for posterity!

"Don’t go because you’ve fallen in love with solvability. Go because you’ve fallen in love with complexity."

A very good look at how "save the world" rhetoric often plays out into exotification and power fantasies for the young (and usually wealthy and white) students who go for them, even as there remain pressing issues in the United States that aren't as "sexy" to solve. Best quotes below:

There is a whole “industry” set up to nurture these desires and delusions — most notably, the 1.5 million nonprofit organizations registered in the U.S., many of them focused on helping people abroad. In other words, the young American ego doesn’t appear in a vacuum. Its hubris is encouraged through job and internship opportunities, conferences galore, and cultural propaganda — encompassed so fully in the patronizing, dangerously simple phrase “save the world.”

A bit of credit for all of the people who seek complexity over prestige, intentionality over "impact":

For some, there’s less learning to do. For ten million American kids whose parents have been incarcerated at some point while they were growing up, choosing to work on this issue is more about linking policy and programmatic learning with personal experience — a hard-earned, shorter road to enlightened action.
The activists, entrepreneurs, advocates, designers, and organizers that I admire most these days are up for that kind of investment. They seem to lean in to systemic complexity with a kind of idealistic sobriety.
They seem to hold a precious paradox at the center of their work — on the one hand, newbies have to acknowledge how much they don’t know and cultivate a tremendous amount of patience and curiosity. On the other, they have to hold on to their beginner’s mind that leads them to ask the best kinds of questions and all that fresh energy for change, which veterans so desperately need. They are people working on the least “sexy” issues imaginable: ending homelessness, giving more people access to credit, making governments work better.

Central Park on a Sunday in January

Apropros of nothing, here's a purty picture of Central Park this afternoon.

I will be back in Boston tomorrow (with access to an actual computer, whoo!) and hopefully getting around to a round-up of the four or five books I've dug through in the last few weeks.

This weekend was a good trip that came together at the last minute, and I had some really great experiences (like wandering around the Upper West Side; discovering the joy of Umami Burger; and seeing an awesome exhibit at the Jewish Museum) and reconnected with an old school acquaintance thanks to it. New York always feels so damn big to me, like it's going to swallow me whole if I'm not careful, but of the four visits I've made (most of them briefer than this, to be fair), this one just may be my favorite - I finally get the hype now.