I start the year with nothing to say. It isn't a beginning as much as an end. I'm standing looking off a precipice with very little bargaining power in terms of content. I thought that writing was a suitcase or ace in the hole I always carried. My obsessions dominate my style and make it difficult to write anything with an emotional storyline. I'm not prepared to give up the hope that there is something to express rather than an empty mouth. Words will eventually fill if I walk around aimlessly enough. More like I'm desperately assembling the impressions I've had of vacations and events this past year. Teenagers called me egocentric randomly on the street. And it's true that I have little concrete to offer than a tornado of self obsessed insecurity. The worker artisans who dig with smiles on their faces are liked and respected for good reason. I'm not sure what interesting I'm bringing ton anyone or anything this year, walking empty handed without charms, easy blandishments, or intelligent discussion, walking around at night like I do, demanding that the rest of the world be interesting. Ho hum.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Monday, December 24, 2012
Amazing (Is a Word We Overused in 2006)
I start the year with nothing to say. After all this time of holding something in my pocket, that maybe there was one thing I could excel at and call my calling, I say the same thing. So no ace in the hole because nothing significant is said. Repeatedly, that I'm shocked at the changes, that I'm trying to stay abreast of them, that I want to define and codify them so that we knew exactly what was happening right now. That I'm not stereotyping. That I want to satirize and encapsulate the emerging DIY spirit, emerging from lame artistic grifterism, that is now commercialized and remarketed by desperate corporate sources in the same way the Manic Pixie Dream Girl was codified by commercial interests in 500 Days of Summer as an unreachable, perfectly quirky jacking post. The new Mobile start up boom is powered by the refusal to compromise one's dreams with the savvy niche marketing and "big ideas lure" of the entrepreneur, as well as the specific creative output of the artisan. Parodied by the Google Chrome ad of the man who created a book of schmaltzy Basquiat/Adventure Time/Daniel Johnston scrawled drawings with a vague, entrepreneurial message of dreaming BIG (which has renewed the lease on life of 40 year old porkpie wearing Baby Bjorn dads... seriously, "Now I can get my mbira band started!!"), the internet Stilton enthusiast friendly word AWESOME, and the social media branding roustabout acclaim of randomly being picked up by a German blog. The TED Talk graduate metaphor couldn't be more perfect. On a diet of TED Talks, working class salumi courses, Times Magazine, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and 3rd Ward classes, who could have produced something better? It's a better highly specific legacy than being famous for temper tantrums and catch phrases on a reality tv show, or avoiding selling out by choosing a vague artistic Caption of Drew Bertram, Artist, Lacey Butler, Photographer, or being photographed splayed out on the floor in a fashionable pool of PBR, American Spirits, and a headdress listlessly mumbling to Steve Aoki on the phone. I'm happy those days are over...Ms. Kennedy.
The Dream of the 1890s is Alive in New York as Portlandia perfectly summarized. Your roustabout 30 year old trust fund artist is a farm to table charcuterie handler, your freelance photographer is NPR's most attractive rooftop kale farmer. Dyna Moe's hipster animals define the niches creative loafers have fought to find for themselves to experience their dream, a fulfilling work life, and business acumen with a grassroots sticker and no fear of selling out. The wave of independent business is sweeping in anyone who can articulate their dream with a selling point and sun filled kickstarter pitch. Want to be a food writer? Start a bed and breakfast for penguin enthusiasts in the Baleares. My stoner high school acquaintance who took up yoga created a line of Eastern Religion friendly confectioneries. (I'm being vague on purpose.) Could he have built his own website with serene, Toms-like assurance if he was merely a yoga teacher? Could the girls who created a one stop shop for haute costume jewelry for gay men and their muses ever been in Forbes AND the Daily Candy if they stayed Financial Analysts and continued to wear a subdued gray palette? No. Their amount of fulfillment would only have correlated with buying the most bioluminescent sneakers and most stylish leggings with reflecting tape for NY Marathon training.
As mainstream regurgitations of "The Small, Quirky Problems of a Dysfunctional/Mismatched Twosome/family in a Flyover State" replayed the docile, twee, sexless indie spirit of 2006 with full laptop dj indietronic apathy. Garden State degenerating into the high paid stars slummin it for a heartfelt "Middle Aged Loser Befriending Pregnant Teenager and Buying New Lease on Life" indie dram..edy. The already attenuated, anodyne idols that my friends pumped in through ipods even on the toilet, even eating, even doinking such as Okkervil River, Animal Collective, The Books, Iron and Wine, the popped up but well written songs of Rilo Kiley, Magnetic Fields, Of Montreal, The New Pornographers, and the insipid, bubble gum rehash of terrible 70s and 80s music that is Girl Talk, Ratatat, and Annie. The playfully weak and childishly whispered anti folk of Coco Rosie, The Moldy Peaches as the least worthy offender (your 6 year old sister asking "Who-oo-oo's got the crack"), Devendra Banhart, Cat Power's voice crawling sensually on its last legs as millions of girls with bangs prostrate themselves in front of it, and the Joanna Newsom and Regina Spektor that wormed its way into my ear that I actually liked. Ultimately the winkingly weak, twee, and self consciously catchy nature of this music was parodied, like 500 Days of Summer, by the commercial sounding Peter Bjorn and John "Young Folks." Smiling "dance" hooks like Phoenix's attempts lending themselves perfectly to car commercials. Degenerating into bands with playfully weak names, The Fiery Furnaces, Bat for Lashes, The Fleet Foxes.
What is the snooty, independent magazine and movie's obsession with the small, quiet problems of the possibly religious people in a Flyover state or otherwise unremarkable city? I'm looking at you, sparsely written New Yorker articles about observant, unfaithful men in tipi motel rooms with a haunting twist, stories written from the point of view of a middle child adolescent escaping from religious band camp, and the recent story of a shy gay-looking guy doing fake weddings for Iraq soldiers with a Jennay Hollywood aspirant in Michigan that he's in love with. People swishing their Riesling or Pinot Grigio in Scarsdale over a roast chicken or educated older people in Madison, Wisconsin have little to do with preteens, Iraq war veterans, flyover religious bible camp extremism, or, on another topic, profiles of underrated behind the scenes geniuses you just haveta know about like Tomas Maier or Ester Dean. New Yorker profiles shine a, granted, more earnestly written, light on the underrated geniuses of the underrated movement you never heard of that snakes its spidery influence through the large cities of America, the uneasy marriage of nations in the UN, connecting its web all the way to your raised ranch in Scarsdale. Ultimately, the message is that you must pay attention to this previously obscured person because their tiny light of genius or influence shines onto all the cities and continents of the current moment, and thus is obscurely pertinent to your previously uninformed light. The finesse and delicacy of the non famous string puller like Ester Dean is outlined in compound sentences and adjectives that prickle against each other, piled into a complex result. I don't understand why the New Yorker stories don't throw their readership's problems back on the page left open and planned to be read near or on the toilet, just like Stephen Sondheim did with Company. Why beguile the reader with enigmatic, somewhat pointless fiction, of the specific problems of a tiny Cooper salesman, his more distant disease stricken wife, or combative, beautiful and runaway logical teenage daughter? Why not write a story about the small problems of a systems engineer in Westport worried about his heart health, his spiralling, boring wife, the autistic son of his old age, and needled vaguely by hints of promiscuity from his pre-teen daughter? Without him traveling to Nebraska by Greyhound. Why not write a profile that unashamedly shines the light of insight on a big ass big wig and not his right wing napkin tester? Mike Bloomberg and not Mike Bloomberg's aide's child wrangler whose hand that rocks the cradle rules his tie choices and the infrastructure of New York? Because the New Yorker dances awkwardly between the political articles of Newsweek/the Economist, the purely literary reviews and personalities of the Atlantic, your poetry teacher's crappy chapbook, and the Sunday Funnies. The thin veneer of snobbery unites all the pieces as "I swear this is high culture" and "Did you hear Bruce McCall's high class parody of toddlers drinking Riesling with crushed Paxil to ease their anxiety of mobile phone apps and April 15th? Roz Chast wrote about neurosis as if New Yorkers were still distinctive, agoraphobic Jewish people with accents!" Indeed, they are your podiatrist in a comically loose fitting suit. They are the chilled aluminum ice phallus in the plastic wine bottle when you should be getting a freakin Brita filter and switching to water with oranges in it. As TED Talks' 20 minutes of specialized learning "I swear we're innovative and big ideas entrepreneurial... Now I know about the ecobiology of bee pollen courtship," the New Yorker's tidbits scream, "take this in in memory of high culture!" Even the right triangle poem that says snow from all sides? The fifth grade sonnet I sent was much better than that offering. I challenge you to create immersive articles that either teach completely or create art earnestly. These tidbits provide the satisfaction of a Pitchfork review, turning noses higher up (Dinosaur Jr.'s pre-first album unreleased cassette mixtape was better!) and educating no one.
I know what you're doing. I hate when you're cloying. I love when you follow your dreams. I love when you create incisive, compelling content. I hate when you use the same formula. I love that you're trying to be serious about your calling. I hate/love that you're secretly an unemployed freelancer with a big idea. I hate when you're snobby, anodyne, and loving of snobby cheeses like Humboldt Fog and space distillers like Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I love when you rage with intensity, when you tear and then create art. I wonder where we're going to go and how we'll continue to make business dreams from penury. I don't fit in, Let me watch. Let's punk out without fully breaking or developing hifalutin non-business ideals.
The Dream of the 1890s is Alive in New York as Portlandia perfectly summarized. Your roustabout 30 year old trust fund artist is a farm to table charcuterie handler, your freelance photographer is NPR's most attractive rooftop kale farmer. Dyna Moe's hipster animals define the niches creative loafers have fought to find for themselves to experience their dream, a fulfilling work life, and business acumen with a grassroots sticker and no fear of selling out. The wave of independent business is sweeping in anyone who can articulate their dream with a selling point and sun filled kickstarter pitch. Want to be a food writer? Start a bed and breakfast for penguin enthusiasts in the Baleares. My stoner high school acquaintance who took up yoga created a line of Eastern Religion friendly confectioneries. (I'm being vague on purpose.) Could he have built his own website with serene, Toms-like assurance if he was merely a yoga teacher? Could the girls who created a one stop shop for haute costume jewelry for gay men and their muses ever been in Forbes AND the Daily Candy if they stayed Financial Analysts and continued to wear a subdued gray palette? No. Their amount of fulfillment would only have correlated with buying the most bioluminescent sneakers and most stylish leggings with reflecting tape for NY Marathon training.
As mainstream regurgitations of "The Small, Quirky Problems of a Dysfunctional/Mismatched Twosome/family in a Flyover State" replayed the docile, twee, sexless indie spirit of 2006 with full laptop dj indietronic apathy. Garden State degenerating into the high paid stars slummin it for a heartfelt "Middle Aged Loser Befriending Pregnant Teenager and Buying New Lease on Life" indie dram..edy. The already attenuated, anodyne idols that my friends pumped in through ipods even on the toilet, even eating, even doinking such as Okkervil River, Animal Collective, The Books, Iron and Wine, the popped up but well written songs of Rilo Kiley, Magnetic Fields, Of Montreal, The New Pornographers, and the insipid, bubble gum rehash of terrible 70s and 80s music that is Girl Talk, Ratatat, and Annie. The playfully weak and childishly whispered anti folk of Coco Rosie, The Moldy Peaches as the least worthy offender (your 6 year old sister asking "Who-oo-oo's got the crack"), Devendra Banhart, Cat Power's voice crawling sensually on its last legs as millions of girls with bangs prostrate themselves in front of it, and the Joanna Newsom and Regina Spektor that wormed its way into my ear that I actually liked. Ultimately the winkingly weak, twee, and self consciously catchy nature of this music was parodied, like 500 Days of Summer, by the commercial sounding Peter Bjorn and John "Young Folks." Smiling "dance" hooks like Phoenix's attempts lending themselves perfectly to car commercials. Degenerating into bands with playfully weak names, The Fiery Furnaces, Bat for Lashes, The Fleet Foxes.
What is the snooty, independent magazine and movie's obsession with the small, quiet problems of the possibly religious people in a Flyover state or otherwise unremarkable city? I'm looking at you, sparsely written New Yorker articles about observant, unfaithful men in tipi motel rooms with a haunting twist, stories written from the point of view of a middle child adolescent escaping from religious band camp, and the recent story of a shy gay-looking guy doing fake weddings for Iraq soldiers with a Jennay Hollywood aspirant in Michigan that he's in love with. People swishing their Riesling or Pinot Grigio in Scarsdale over a roast chicken or educated older people in Madison, Wisconsin have little to do with preteens, Iraq war veterans, flyover religious bible camp extremism, or, on another topic, profiles of underrated behind the scenes geniuses you just haveta know about like Tomas Maier or Ester Dean. New Yorker profiles shine a, granted, more earnestly written, light on the underrated geniuses of the underrated movement you never heard of that snakes its spidery influence through the large cities of America, the uneasy marriage of nations in the UN, connecting its web all the way to your raised ranch in Scarsdale. Ultimately, the message is that you must pay attention to this previously obscured person because their tiny light of genius or influence shines onto all the cities and continents of the current moment, and thus is obscurely pertinent to your previously uninformed light. The finesse and delicacy of the non famous string puller like Ester Dean is outlined in compound sentences and adjectives that prickle against each other, piled into a complex result. I don't understand why the New Yorker stories don't throw their readership's problems back on the page left open and planned to be read near or on the toilet, just like Stephen Sondheim did with Company. Why beguile the reader with enigmatic, somewhat pointless fiction, of the specific problems of a tiny Cooper salesman, his more distant disease stricken wife, or combative, beautiful and runaway logical teenage daughter? Why not write a story about the small problems of a systems engineer in Westport worried about his heart health, his spiralling, boring wife, the autistic son of his old age, and needled vaguely by hints of promiscuity from his pre-teen daughter? Without him traveling to Nebraska by Greyhound. Why not write a profile that unashamedly shines the light of insight on a big ass big wig and not his right wing napkin tester? Mike Bloomberg and not Mike Bloomberg's aide's child wrangler whose hand that rocks the cradle rules his tie choices and the infrastructure of New York? Because the New Yorker dances awkwardly between the political articles of Newsweek/the Economist, the purely literary reviews and personalities of the Atlantic, your poetry teacher's crappy chapbook, and the Sunday Funnies. The thin veneer of snobbery unites all the pieces as "I swear this is high culture" and "Did you hear Bruce McCall's high class parody of toddlers drinking Riesling with crushed Paxil to ease their anxiety of mobile phone apps and April 15th? Roz Chast wrote about neurosis as if New Yorkers were still distinctive, agoraphobic Jewish people with accents!" Indeed, they are your podiatrist in a comically loose fitting suit. They are the chilled aluminum ice phallus in the plastic wine bottle when you should be getting a freakin Brita filter and switching to water with oranges in it. As TED Talks' 20 minutes of specialized learning "I swear we're innovative and big ideas entrepreneurial... Now I know about the ecobiology of bee pollen courtship," the New Yorker's tidbits scream, "take this in in memory of high culture!" Even the right triangle poem that says snow from all sides? The fifth grade sonnet I sent was much better than that offering. I challenge you to create immersive articles that either teach completely or create art earnestly. These tidbits provide the satisfaction of a Pitchfork review, turning noses higher up (Dinosaur Jr.'s pre-first album unreleased cassette mixtape was better!) and educating no one.
I know what you're doing. I hate when you're cloying. I love when you follow your dreams. I love when you create incisive, compelling content. I hate when you use the same formula. I love that you're trying to be serious about your calling. I hate/love that you're secretly an unemployed freelancer with a big idea. I hate when you're snobby, anodyne, and loving of snobby cheeses like Humboldt Fog and space distillers like Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I love when you rage with intensity, when you tear and then create art. I wonder where we're going to go and how we'll continue to make business dreams from penury. I don't fit in, Let me watch. Let's punk out without fully breaking or developing hifalutin non-business ideals.
I have the same thing, the same thing to say. Last night some yelling teenage strangers told me "You're egocentric. Not everything in the world revolves around you." Because they were yelling the n word and showing their stomach and I turned around and said "Are you calling me that?" And the guy was like, "I didn't even notice you. Not everything in the world revolves around you." And I was like "Yup." And then a couple streets later I cried. I'm here with nothing to say.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Whistling
I'm still uncomfortable with the differences between men and women. I think it's important to be truthful, truthful of our differences and our emotional reaction to our differences even if it is one of anger. I don't know how to work through it, but I don't want to ignore it because that would be lying.
Fear and insecurity separates humans from each other and underscores an individuated, separated experience that allows us to distrust one another. Adding faith and lack of fear as well as self acceptance causes one's path, thoughts, and ideas to become clear without a distortion of another choice. Faith indicates seeing the way one is going and the terrain around and accepting it, continuing on without being nervous or resentful of what will happen. Faith is something that makes me resent other people less or set up curtseys and bird dances to get to know them less. Social interactions require a certain amount of necessary prologue, but this isn't something I should resent. My bitterness and resentment comes from comparison with other people, which is ridiculous in the achievement of my individual goals, though less so with my progress in goals related to other people. I do not fit with the devil may care risk taking of the entrepreneur who arranges all to fulfill their impossible dream by monetizing it with a niche market, with the doing what you love and such. There is a great bouquet of people founding specific and gimmicky vegan chocolate bars, pop up yoghurt kitchens, books and toys that our parents made inaccessible to us due to the gender divide, other gleeful TED-baiting ideas meant to quickly expand our consciousness in the space of a Google Chrome commercial. I am too much of a follower, scribe, and detailist to focus on the huge array of syrup bars and girls' spatial reasoning toys I could be making. I don't fit into the second dot com boom as an entrepreneur or evangelist. Nor in the niche DIY rooftop kale farmer, butcher, single batch distiller, or other niche hipster animal that found a specific language to articulate and live their dream and get featured on NYT Magazine or NPR. The dream of the 1890s is alive in hipsterdom today of being an artisan of one's specific wares, whatever they may be, but before joyfully humming away at work, one must carve out one's artisanal specialty, whether a Ukrainian-Korean fruit pickling brand or a raw aperitif bar. Academia only brands itself with the specificity of one's subject. The allure of staking out a new piece of terrain as being an expert of both an arcane and popular new subject. One can take a new lens, but either the author or the focus must be narrowly arcane. God forbid we have another Dickens or Tolstoy guy. Yet, the delivery of the language, the product is not diversified, it is similar critical rhetoric, we don't use dioramas, lists, infographics, or the gimmicks Pitchfork used to keep its reviews sneering and engaging. This perceived stodginess in the medium of academic criticism and essays is probably getting a due revision in the form of the infographics and technological flourishes of the day, but isn't the point not the form, but rather the insight and the enhancement of truth in the discipline and in understanding the past and current time with it.
Fear and insecurity separates humans from each other and underscores an individuated, separated experience that allows us to distrust one another. Adding faith and lack of fear as well as self acceptance causes one's path, thoughts, and ideas to become clear without a distortion of another choice. Faith indicates seeing the way one is going and the terrain around and accepting it, continuing on without being nervous or resentful of what will happen. Faith is something that makes me resent other people less or set up curtseys and bird dances to get to know them less. Social interactions require a certain amount of necessary prologue, but this isn't something I should resent. My bitterness and resentment comes from comparison with other people, which is ridiculous in the achievement of my individual goals, though less so with my progress in goals related to other people. I do not fit with the devil may care risk taking of the entrepreneur who arranges all to fulfill their impossible dream by monetizing it with a niche market, with the doing what you love and such. There is a great bouquet of people founding specific and gimmicky vegan chocolate bars, pop up yoghurt kitchens, books and toys that our parents made inaccessible to us due to the gender divide, other gleeful TED-baiting ideas meant to quickly expand our consciousness in the space of a Google Chrome commercial. I am too much of a follower, scribe, and detailist to focus on the huge array of syrup bars and girls' spatial reasoning toys I could be making. I don't fit into the second dot com boom as an entrepreneur or evangelist. Nor in the niche DIY rooftop kale farmer, butcher, single batch distiller, or other niche hipster animal that found a specific language to articulate and live their dream and get featured on NYT Magazine or NPR. The dream of the 1890s is alive in hipsterdom today of being an artisan of one's specific wares, whatever they may be, but before joyfully humming away at work, one must carve out one's artisanal specialty, whether a Ukrainian-Korean fruit pickling brand or a raw aperitif bar. Academia only brands itself with the specificity of one's subject. The allure of staking out a new piece of terrain as being an expert of both an arcane and popular new subject. One can take a new lens, but either the author or the focus must be narrowly arcane. God forbid we have another Dickens or Tolstoy guy. Yet, the delivery of the language, the product is not diversified, it is similar critical rhetoric, we don't use dioramas, lists, infographics, or the gimmicks Pitchfork used to keep its reviews sneering and engaging. This perceived stodginess in the medium of academic criticism and essays is probably getting a due revision in the form of the infographics and technological flourishes of the day, but isn't the point not the form, but rather the insight and the enhancement of truth in the discipline and in understanding the past and current time with it.
Annoying
I am surprised and ever panting at the rate that my generation devolved from inertia, consumerism, and empty hallmarks of culture to living in interesting times. The result of the baby boom was enough time to raise two generations whose faith in progress made them think they would never go poor or hungry again. The freedom and future centric focus of baby boomers who broke through the ties of both the large family community where younger members have a specific place/owe a debt of gratitude to their elders and the quaint mores of the nuclear family cemented during the Victorian age brought forth in us materialism, individualism, and resultant alienation. Our x-boxes, technological luxuries, independence and isolation as a country are being wrested from us at a non-idealistic level, our purse strings. Americans have bought the freedom to not depend or communicate through distant relatives and community structures through avoiding the landline, moving far away, and building the kind of nuclear family whose reward is perhaps a mother in law not living in the next room and breathing down her son's neck or not living in communal apartments like my family has in the past. Yet, when not distracted by tv, activities, or even a job, the discomfort of our alienation, our roomy suburban houses with two acre zoning or our tendency only call our friends to hang out is being felt. The hurricane forced us to recognize that being trapped in the basement of our house without power for five days or much worse is less painful with the society and support of our neighbors. Even if it means some unpleasant and outmoded social overtures. I don't know if I want the interwoven social niceties of large communal societies or places where filial piety is more important than the freedom to realize one's wishes. If America becomes a less individualistic society, I'm hoping that it will have a modern take on community. I'm hoping that women will still retain some of the freedoms of, say, marrying someone you love rather than being married off as a political and economic decision or being able to take the career of your choice. Better yet, I'm hoping for a re-definition of how the sexes relate to each other that will alleviate the anxiety of the fact that women are slowly breaking the barrier of a society in which they've struggled to have the same opportunities as men.
Men seem to be processing this as "women trying to become men." This is not true, as far as vague social definitions of gender, this means not being barred from doing things because they are only to be defined by weakness and childishness. Mostly this is only to benefit from the same legal and life niceties as men. This means to not to receive lower pay based on sex, to be able to be admitted to the sports of their choice, to not be judged disapprovingly or differently for their choices or bodies, to seek the careers, lives, and relationships they want without barriers because of gender. And to not be defined in relation to other people in the same way men are not. This doesn't mean that some women don't want the door opened for them or to be paid for on the first and second date, or that they don't seek a committed loving relationship because they don't keep the box locked. My idea is that feminism is based on lack of impediment, rather than even equality. Meaning, I don't necessarily want to be punched because a man got punched and we're equal and I can take it, but I don't want to be cheated of a home loan, discriminated against in the workplace or school, or at the doctor's office, not to mention deal with danger at night. While our tendency to be seen as people "acting masculine" or "trying to be a man" is flawed and silly, the fact is that many women do want fulfilling relationships, and the sexual revolution has stacked cards in such a way that women are displaying their plumes to men and the plain grey men take their pick. This is where the problem is. A misinterpreted, simplified version of the feminism that I see as a historical, theoretical, and practical movement with many theories and great complexity is what makes a relationship where each person fulfills a different role or "energy" difficult. As I understand it, in a relationship, each element maintains commonality, but fulfills a different function in working together. This means that both members of the relationship are not going to be able to do the same things. Taking care of one another is important, but each takes care of the other in a different way. What I'm saying is that one thing I've learned from my mother is that the woman, due to being able to register emotional complexities, has to be the "cunning" one in the relationship in order to maintain it. Avoid arguments and such. Or at least one person has to. I know that I want certain things, like to be protected and supported in a concrete, thoughtful, nonverbal way (such things in the past have been coming with me to places, bringing me something or acknowledging when I don't feel well, occasionally just paying for meals rather than the looking at the check like it's on fire song and dance, small things). But, I am also controlling and domineering (when it comes to picking restaurants, music, and other trivial things),verbally overpowering, insecure, negative, and many other things that make it difficult to get the bottom line support that my father gives my mother. This behavior attracts calm, quiet men who really want someone to fill the silence and talk and at the beginning don't care about trivial things like me choosing music or restaurants or foisting internet articles on them until I overshare or overstay or over everything. In other words, there is a strong, rigid element and a flexible element. This does not have to be gendered, but one element complements or supports the other. I just want to be supported and the flexible element bends, but does not break, and therefore is the strongest. There is not much use for a domineering, unsubtle woman, who just really wants to babble about her insecurities and be "completely open" just like a "straightshooting honest" man who delivers unpleasant comments in a random, unasked for way to women will not find a listener that he finds pleasant. My mother changed and I have to change. She became less sarcastic, more pliable and realized that she had to both play a game and pick her battles. Mystery and challenge keeps both genders engaged, so, usually when I am on the chase, the man is challenging and withholding and I hold the losing hand. There are certain feminine hallmarks distasteful to feminists who don't realize that a relationship has to do with complementary roles that I will have to adopt if I want a strong, supportive partner. Like, I have to learn to cook and "keep the hearth" which is legitimate to me, because I want a hearth and either my apartment or my mom has kept it in the past. These are skills and tricks that I took for granted before I learned what being a woman is. Or being more positive and pleasant, which is a natural offshoot of going after my own goals. As someone who loves to remark on things and generalize, I am negative and I imagine that it makes me more truthful. Lemon is beautiful and relatable because she is flawed, vulnerable, and intractable in ways a woman can understand and has personal traits that make us automatically view her as the protagonist whose world we see through. Most of the men I've met in a dating context have asked at some point if I cook (probably because I talk about food so much), if I love my job, like sports, if I want children "at some point," and such things related to being a woman who is both feminine, pleasant, and positive, or someone a man enjoys being around and coming home to. I appreciate the value of home and hearth myself. Good food, a beautiful apartment, and a nice place to live. Who is going to create it if not me? Eh, the man could screw it up anyway. I loved the apartments I had, but they were lacking in furniture and certainly in timely meals. I think I love to go to restaurants and coffee shops because they have a pre-created ambiance with homelike, discriminating taste without me having to do any of the thinking and decorating. This makes them sound like an airplane food version of the home environment, but they are just trendier and I find home decoration really difficult. Most people would find me really annoying and negative, but I'm lucky that my friends can stand me for any length of time. Unfortunately, this requires little effort on my part to become a more engaging person, maybe one who talks less and asks more leading questions, so I can't say that I'm "good" at my friends. I'm just lucky to have the friendship. I've been frustrated that with little reveals or indiscretions, with staying too long, talking too much, showing too much interest, someone who you are trying to form a symbiotic relationship with can write you off. Maybe I don't have the physical attributes that excuse my not winning at life enough (I'm sure sure super attractive unemployed girls get at least a couple of months before they are written off) or talking too much, as a result, the other person is testing me or interviewing me tribunally and I don't have the advantage. At the same time, I've found the reasons for rejection to be painfully simple when people do tell me and painfully indicative of my core flaws, it isn't that they themselves suck, they do see me lucidly and why I'm not good enough for them. The freedom of having a home, job, and life whose course you steer is markedly different and provides a different set of challenges than those of living with and accomodating oneself to another person. In the corporate work environment, one is an instrument toward a purpose and one's daily work must as much as possible be in service of that purpose as well as one's behavior as a "leader." Going home, I have respite from needing to (and not making) calculated movements toward being seen as instrumental and surviving as well as the corporate rhetoric which is really of being a tool toward the bottom line or company goal. I have the freedom to be vulnerable, to party, to eat, and to wander with dreams. I imagine that home with another person again requires scrupulously framing your image as an instrument of preserving companionship, not seeming negative or crestfallen from the work day, re-applying makeup and brushing teeth on waking up. And the worst part, not going to the bathroom because apparently women don't do that freely. Omitting various things that make you shrill or slothful looking in order to have companionship, sex, and such things. For a date, I feel like it's necessary to prepare most of the day before and get into the mode of having to possibly make the omissions, confidence, and concise phrasing that I only use on telephone interviews. On telephone interviews, you are barred from saying anything unconfident or not positive about yourself so the content is incredibly rigid. As a result, when men ask me what I have going for the rest of the day, I know it's over and I'm also livid because a date is something you schedule around much like an interview. Maybe if I'm seeing a friend I have something going for the rest of the day, but no I'm not going to a benefit concert. Loneliness and lack of companionship vs. some constraint and lack of comfort and vulnerability, which is tonic after the working day. The strange thing is that romance fades as constraint, hiding, and playing games fades.
A feminist may take offense to the idea that, depending on the type of partner you want, you may have to exhibit characteristics that are not unpleasant or that complement their personality. Or that you may have to take charge with the "picking battles" and not being shrill portion of the relationship. This is something that I may have to do. I don't see many women, particularly those in relationships, that behave like me so I don't have a good frame of reference, I am at a high scale of vulnerability and unattractive habits. I carry rocks and peppermints in my pockets, I have a problem with my skin, I am bad at wearing make up, and bad at outfits among other things, I am quirky in a way that can be taken to an extreme, but not in my clothing or personal image. I bore myself with my stories and soliloquys, yet have the insatiable urge to talk. I idealize my talking companions ability to satisfy my need for intelligent novelty and entertainment, as well as a quickening of the spirit, which most men can't provide. I take a long time to do things like get up, cook simple things, etc. This is partly because I'm unused to taking care of a partner and I'm not sure if the Ally Sheedy parka is endemic to me. Yet, I don't like Liz Lemon for her finicky and particular habits like shrill insistence on rules:
Cashier: No $100s, Small bills.
Liz: Oh, I knew this was gonna happen.
Cashier: Store policy.
Liz: Yeah, Well, That's an illegal policy. You have to take this.
Cashier: No, I don't
Gray: Yeah sir you do, it says "legal tender for all debts, public and private."
Cashier: Does it say anything about $100 for a bottle of water?
Gray: You can't decide what money you'll accept. That's illegal.
Liz: It's an illegal policy.
Cashier: You're holding up the line!
Liz: (Along with Gray) No, You're holding up the line!
I am surprised by the new habits I might have to learn to adopt because I haven't thought of them before. Of course, attractiveness comes with realizing personal goals and the resultant contentment and busy sheen the body takes on in response to achieving personal goals. Yet, what creative person can dedicate themselves to whatever unfinished, torn art they choose when they are working at every point to bring their persona into fruition? What creative person does not allow themselves to be torn, uncomfortable, slightly broken rather than some sort of burpee-doing vegetarian going after their start up idea? I'm almost worried about working on my intractable habits and sloth because of this. Because I think motivational people who hold their lives up as an example are typically overly self focused and broken, because imperfection and the distance of a dream make it easy to calm oneself by imagining something better. I don't think people who have simply realized their dreams, particularly material ones, are happy, I think they are people who know what is around the bend of a road and no longer excited to find out. The only way I can find to not become a soft feminine cat like Ms Alba is to treat externals independently of what is internally inside me and work on internal goals irrespective of how they might enhance my femininity. Because ultimately doing something will make me more pleasant and less miserable to be around, and doing something that realizes my dreams, moreso. Even though realizing one's dreams brings the possibility of monomania, as one becomes a vessel for the message of healthy eating, or sculpture, art, or worse, a motivational speaker. I think seeking improvement through one's own body rather than creating something external is toxic and makes a life perfectly lived into one's art. When you make your life your art, that's just messed up, man. Although, when you sacrifice an imperfect life with someone you love to the perfection of a goal or art, it can prove just as damaging. Finishing A Hat, but giving up the idea of a perfectly or well lived life is the only avenue toward that type of happiness..
I've never really found my habits intractable before. I didn't even see anything wrong with them. And I think it's that I'm used to myself inexpertly holding up the hearth. Or getting some ethnic food when I can't. Maybe it's that men require things of us that we don't require of ourselves, things we have to learn later in this culture that protects us from learning about relationships, facilitating interdependence, or even the emotional dimensions of sex. These are things we maybe think we don't need to learn. I think the old adage is that in a primal sense, men and women are different and require different things of each other, things we can't automatically imagine. These are shocking because they do not follow the "require of others what you require of yourself" rule. The odd marriage of "companionship" or friendship with a side of sex that men seem to view relationships as, along with the strong emphasis on loyalty, is somewhat puzzling to me. Though the various requirements of women to be supportive, but not excessively, to engage, provide a core of affection, entertain, and mystify are odd to men.
We learn the shallow gloss of nonessentials like the time and place of the Tea Party, but not how to write cover letters, create solutions to problems as they come up, take calculated risks, bring an idea to fruition, and teach ourselves. The baseline critical thinking, problem solving, and analysis required to learn and assimilate new tasks is something we learn when we are forced to make do with the insufficient teaching and lackluster instruction of weeks' training. On the job we frequently digest insufficient information and are not led by the hand in any way. There must be some benefit in not teaching us to exercise the mental tools we have equipped to deal with new information and amorphous problems because no teacher ever taught that to us.
Men seem to be processing this as "women trying to become men." This is not true, as far as vague social definitions of gender, this means not being barred from doing things because they are only to be defined by weakness and childishness. Mostly this is only to benefit from the same legal and life niceties as men. This means to not to receive lower pay based on sex, to be able to be admitted to the sports of their choice, to not be judged disapprovingly or differently for their choices or bodies, to seek the careers, lives, and relationships they want without barriers because of gender. And to not be defined in relation to other people in the same way men are not. This doesn't mean that some women don't want the door opened for them or to be paid for on the first and second date, or that they don't seek a committed loving relationship because they don't keep the box locked. My idea is that feminism is based on lack of impediment, rather than even equality. Meaning, I don't necessarily want to be punched because a man got punched and we're equal and I can take it, but I don't want to be cheated of a home loan, discriminated against in the workplace or school, or at the doctor's office, not to mention deal with danger at night. While our tendency to be seen as people "acting masculine" or "trying to be a man" is flawed and silly, the fact is that many women do want fulfilling relationships, and the sexual revolution has stacked cards in such a way that women are displaying their plumes to men and the plain grey men take their pick. This is where the problem is. A misinterpreted, simplified version of the feminism that I see as a historical, theoretical, and practical movement with many theories and great complexity is what makes a relationship where each person fulfills a different role or "energy" difficult. As I understand it, in a relationship, each element maintains commonality, but fulfills a different function in working together. This means that both members of the relationship are not going to be able to do the same things. Taking care of one another is important, but each takes care of the other in a different way. What I'm saying is that one thing I've learned from my mother is that the woman, due to being able to register emotional complexities, has to be the "cunning" one in the relationship in order to maintain it. Avoid arguments and such. Or at least one person has to. I know that I want certain things, like to be protected and supported in a concrete, thoughtful, nonverbal way (such things in the past have been coming with me to places, bringing me something or acknowledging when I don't feel well, occasionally just paying for meals rather than the looking at the check like it's on fire song and dance, small things). But, I am also controlling and domineering (when it comes to picking restaurants, music, and other trivial things),verbally overpowering, insecure, negative, and many other things that make it difficult to get the bottom line support that my father gives my mother. This behavior attracts calm, quiet men who really want someone to fill the silence and talk and at the beginning don't care about trivial things like me choosing music or restaurants or foisting internet articles on them until I overshare or overstay or over everything. In other words, there is a strong, rigid element and a flexible element. This does not have to be gendered, but one element complements or supports the other. I just want to be supported and the flexible element bends, but does not break, and therefore is the strongest. There is not much use for a domineering, unsubtle woman, who just really wants to babble about her insecurities and be "completely open" just like a "straightshooting honest" man who delivers unpleasant comments in a random, unasked for way to women will not find a listener that he finds pleasant. My mother changed and I have to change. She became less sarcastic, more pliable and realized that she had to both play a game and pick her battles. Mystery and challenge keeps both genders engaged, so, usually when I am on the chase, the man is challenging and withholding and I hold the losing hand. There are certain feminine hallmarks distasteful to feminists who don't realize that a relationship has to do with complementary roles that I will have to adopt if I want a strong, supportive partner. Like, I have to learn to cook and "keep the hearth" which is legitimate to me, because I want a hearth and either my apartment or my mom has kept it in the past. These are skills and tricks that I took for granted before I learned what being a woman is. Or being more positive and pleasant, which is a natural offshoot of going after my own goals. As someone who loves to remark on things and generalize, I am negative and I imagine that it makes me more truthful. Lemon is beautiful and relatable because she is flawed, vulnerable, and intractable in ways a woman can understand and has personal traits that make us automatically view her as the protagonist whose world we see through. Most of the men I've met in a dating context have asked at some point if I cook (probably because I talk about food so much), if I love my job, like sports, if I want children "at some point," and such things related to being a woman who is both feminine, pleasant, and positive, or someone a man enjoys being around and coming home to. I appreciate the value of home and hearth myself. Good food, a beautiful apartment, and a nice place to live. Who is going to create it if not me? Eh, the man could screw it up anyway. I loved the apartments I had, but they were lacking in furniture and certainly in timely meals. I think I love to go to restaurants and coffee shops because they have a pre-created ambiance with homelike, discriminating taste without me having to do any of the thinking and decorating. This makes them sound like an airplane food version of the home environment, but they are just trendier and I find home decoration really difficult. Most people would find me really annoying and negative, but I'm lucky that my friends can stand me for any length of time. Unfortunately, this requires little effort on my part to become a more engaging person, maybe one who talks less and asks more leading questions, so I can't say that I'm "good" at my friends. I'm just lucky to have the friendship. I've been frustrated that with little reveals or indiscretions, with staying too long, talking too much, showing too much interest, someone who you are trying to form a symbiotic relationship with can write you off. Maybe I don't have the physical attributes that excuse my not winning at life enough (I'm sure sure super attractive unemployed girls get at least a couple of months before they are written off) or talking too much, as a result, the other person is testing me or interviewing me tribunally and I don't have the advantage. At the same time, I've found the reasons for rejection to be painfully simple when people do tell me and painfully indicative of my core flaws, it isn't that they themselves suck, they do see me lucidly and why I'm not good enough for them. The freedom of having a home, job, and life whose course you steer is markedly different and provides a different set of challenges than those of living with and accomodating oneself to another person. In the corporate work environment, one is an instrument toward a purpose and one's daily work must as much as possible be in service of that purpose as well as one's behavior as a "leader." Going home, I have respite from needing to (and not making) calculated movements toward being seen as instrumental and surviving as well as the corporate rhetoric which is really of being a tool toward the bottom line or company goal. I have the freedom to be vulnerable, to party, to eat, and to wander with dreams. I imagine that home with another person again requires scrupulously framing your image as an instrument of preserving companionship, not seeming negative or crestfallen from the work day, re-applying makeup and brushing teeth on waking up. And the worst part, not going to the bathroom because apparently women don't do that freely. Omitting various things that make you shrill or slothful looking in order to have companionship, sex, and such things. For a date, I feel like it's necessary to prepare most of the day before and get into the mode of having to possibly make the omissions, confidence, and concise phrasing that I only use on telephone interviews. On telephone interviews, you are barred from saying anything unconfident or not positive about yourself so the content is incredibly rigid. As a result, when men ask me what I have going for the rest of the day, I know it's over and I'm also livid because a date is something you schedule around much like an interview. Maybe if I'm seeing a friend I have something going for the rest of the day, but no I'm not going to a benefit concert. Loneliness and lack of companionship vs. some constraint and lack of comfort and vulnerability, which is tonic after the working day. The strange thing is that romance fades as constraint, hiding, and playing games fades.
A feminist may take offense to the idea that, depending on the type of partner you want, you may have to exhibit characteristics that are not unpleasant or that complement their personality. Or that you may have to take charge with the "picking battles" and not being shrill portion of the relationship. This is something that I may have to do. I don't see many women, particularly those in relationships, that behave like me so I don't have a good frame of reference, I am at a high scale of vulnerability and unattractive habits. I carry rocks and peppermints in my pockets, I have a problem with my skin, I am bad at wearing make up, and bad at outfits among other things, I am quirky in a way that can be taken to an extreme, but not in my clothing or personal image. I bore myself with my stories and soliloquys, yet have the insatiable urge to talk. I idealize my talking companions ability to satisfy my need for intelligent novelty and entertainment, as well as a quickening of the spirit, which most men can't provide. I take a long time to do things like get up, cook simple things, etc. This is partly because I'm unused to taking care of a partner and I'm not sure if the Ally Sheedy parka is endemic to me. Yet, I don't like Liz Lemon for her finicky and particular habits like shrill insistence on rules:
Cashier: No $100s, Small bills.
Liz: Oh, I knew this was gonna happen.
Cashier: Store policy.
Liz: Yeah, Well, That's an illegal policy. You have to take this.
Cashier: No, I don't
Gray: Yeah sir you do, it says "legal tender for all debts, public and private."
Cashier: Does it say anything about $100 for a bottle of water?
Gray: You can't decide what money you'll accept. That's illegal.
Liz: It's an illegal policy.
Cashier: You're holding up the line!
Liz: (Along with Gray) No, You're holding up the line!
I am surprised by the new habits I might have to learn to adopt because I haven't thought of them before. Of course, attractiveness comes with realizing personal goals and the resultant contentment and busy sheen the body takes on in response to achieving personal goals. Yet, what creative person can dedicate themselves to whatever unfinished, torn art they choose when they are working at every point to bring their persona into fruition? What creative person does not allow themselves to be torn, uncomfortable, slightly broken rather than some sort of burpee-doing vegetarian going after their start up idea? I'm almost worried about working on my intractable habits and sloth because of this. Because I think motivational people who hold their lives up as an example are typically overly self focused and broken, because imperfection and the distance of a dream make it easy to calm oneself by imagining something better. I don't think people who have simply realized their dreams, particularly material ones, are happy, I think they are people who know what is around the bend of a road and no longer excited to find out. The only way I can find to not become a soft feminine cat like Ms Alba is to treat externals independently of what is internally inside me and work on internal goals irrespective of how they might enhance my femininity. Because ultimately doing something will make me more pleasant and less miserable to be around, and doing something that realizes my dreams, moreso. Even though realizing one's dreams brings the possibility of monomania, as one becomes a vessel for the message of healthy eating, or sculpture, art, or worse, a motivational speaker. I think seeking improvement through one's own body rather than creating something external is toxic and makes a life perfectly lived into one's art. When you make your life your art, that's just messed up, man. Although, when you sacrifice an imperfect life with someone you love to the perfection of a goal or art, it can prove just as damaging. Finishing A Hat, but giving up the idea of a perfectly or well lived life is the only avenue toward that type of happiness..
I've never really found my habits intractable before. I didn't even see anything wrong with them. And I think it's that I'm used to myself inexpertly holding up the hearth. Or getting some ethnic food when I can't. Maybe it's that men require things of us that we don't require of ourselves, things we have to learn later in this culture that protects us from learning about relationships, facilitating interdependence, or even the emotional dimensions of sex. These are things we maybe think we don't need to learn. I think the old adage is that in a primal sense, men and women are different and require different things of each other, things we can't automatically imagine. These are shocking because they do not follow the "require of others what you require of yourself" rule. The odd marriage of "companionship" or friendship with a side of sex that men seem to view relationships as, along with the strong emphasis on loyalty, is somewhat puzzling to me. Though the various requirements of women to be supportive, but not excessively, to engage, provide a core of affection, entertain, and mystify are odd to men.
We learn the shallow gloss of nonessentials like the time and place of the Tea Party, but not how to write cover letters, create solutions to problems as they come up, take calculated risks, bring an idea to fruition, and teach ourselves. The baseline critical thinking, problem solving, and analysis required to learn and assimilate new tasks is something we learn when we are forced to make do with the insufficient teaching and lackluster instruction of weeks' training. On the job we frequently digest insufficient information and are not led by the hand in any way. There must be some benefit in not teaching us to exercise the mental tools we have equipped to deal with new information and amorphous problems because no teacher ever taught that to us.
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