The Light Bulb Axiom

Personal Site Launch

2011-04-28T09:50:00.000-07:00

I have launched a personal website about my career as a classical guitarist and teacher. Check it out here.

My Quickening Life

2010-01-13T23:59:00.000-08:00

Certain vague ideas led to the formation of this blog. Now that they are starting to become more concrete in my mind I would like to give some insight into my personal motivations.

Growing up I always felt to a certain extent that I was lazy in the eyes of the world. This never bothered me, as I considered "working" in the eyes of the world as doing something you didn't really want to do, that served no perceivable purpose. Not that I was against things that served no purpose! I was all in favor of them, provided they were things I wanted to do. What motivated my early guitar playing was simply the fact that I enjoyed being able to do things that I was previously unable to do, and the joy of the physical creation of music. Likewise I read a lot because I just liked learning new things and thinking. Finally, I spent a lot of time with friends, often outside, doing something active, because this was the just the best thing you could possibly do. I don't feel like I was a special kid or anything, in terms of my innate nature, but I was incredibly lucky. I had parents who never pushed me to "work", and I had great friends. I also had time, almost unlimited time after the drudgery of school. Furthermore, I realized at a young age that my wonderful life depended on this time, and I organized my life so as to maximize free time and minimize responsibility. Hence the "lazy" thing.

As I grew up this awareness of the value of free time has shaped many of my choices. I went to music school partly to escape the ineffectiveness of mass education. I thought public school was a waste of time, and college would be much the same. I could learn much faster on my own whatever intellectual things I wanted to learn. Music was a craft, though, and you needed a teacher, and I didn't consider it "work" to practice guitar all day, so music school was acceptable. Unfortunately, though, when my music started to serve a purpose other than my own enjoyment, it quickly became work. Practicing to win a competition, pass a jury, get into grad school, or to have a professional career, was just not the same. It was "work", and incredibly time consuming work. It crowded out my time for reading, and my own creative projects. Luckily when I got to musical school I decided that if I ever had to choice between practicing and friends, I would choose friends, because that is the best thing in life. I made great friends and love was not all toil.

When I graduated college and moved back home I lost that as well. I got a job that took a lot of my time, and my friends either lived far away, or were working and busy to. I was still trying to practice at the level I did in college, and I just didn't have time for friends if I wanted to keep up both my official job, and my practicing. Life was really drudgery. What good is life without self expression(what my guitar playing had once been), a rich inner life(what my self-education had once helped develop) and most importantly deep human connections(what my friends had once provided)? For me these are the best things in life, and all they require is time. Not the free time that we think about when we think of weekends and days off work, but real leisure time. Time to read a book the way I described in the last post. Time to write a piece of music. Time to talk to a friend for hours and hours about nothing in particular.

At the time, I understood that a certain amount of work needs to get done on the earth if people are to live, and I could accept contributing to the market society in order to earn my lively hood. What I didn't understand was why so many people work so much. When I thought about the advances in technology and agricultere that our society has undergone, it seemed to me that people should have to do much less "work" than they currently do. This led to an study of economics and economic history. I feel like I have understood my problem, the problem of society, and that I am near a solution. I will elaborate more in future posts.

The Slow Movement

2010-01-13T23:20:00.000-08:00

One of the great joys in my life is reading. Slow reading. Reading purely for my own leisure. Reading not to finish the book as fast as I can, just to return to my daily life, or another of the infinite books worth reading, but reading deliberately slow, to savor the content of the book, to contemplate this content, and to let it illuminate my daily life, and merge into my being, so that the experience of the book becomes a part of me, not a momentary diversion. Reading not as consumption, whether it is the consumption of entertainment, or of ideas, or of great art, but reading as a creative act, where my experiences illuminate the text, and the text illuminating my experiences, and they grow together and merge into one. In short, the kind of reading where the book becomes my friend.

Reading of this kind entails certain time consuming practices. It is frequently necessary, for example, to close the book and sit in inactivity, not to contemplate with philosophical vigor, but simply to let the mind wander and explore the place to which the book has brought it, emotionally and intellectually. It is also often necessary to stop reading in order to copy passages out of the book, to save for some later, unknown purpose, or merely to mark down out of infatuation.

In my reading, and by reading I mean the process of creating new experiences out of the merging of my own mind with that of the authors, a particular type of event often precedes one of these decelerating acts. I read a passage where the author has stated some mixture of my nebulous ideas, half-understood truths, and semi-conscious longings in perfect expression. They seem to state what I have understood already but could not express, and the author becomes a confidant in my most intimate thoughts, and a partner in their development.

For some reason though, when I have fully developed an idea, and then find some author or person who has stated it just as well as me before I did, I feel disappointed. I want some kind of credit for an original thought! This is the feeling I had when I discovered/invented conspicuous unconsumption. Recently, when I discovered The Slow Movement, of which slow reading is just on expression, I had some type of mixture of the two above mentioned emotions.

Slow Movements

2010-01-01T16:47:00.000-08:00

Many people who aren't really into classical music seem to like slow movements of symphonies the most. This was true for me when I first started listening to classical music. I still love slow movements, especially in Beethoven, but I wouldn't say they are my favorite. Anyway, I have a theory about why this is the case. It has to do with post-modern thinking, something I've talked about on this blog before, in connection with Borges. One of the things Borges really explored, in stories like Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, was how the perception of a literary work changes over time, as human society changes. This idea is the key to my theory of the present popularity of slow movements in the non-enthusiast listener.

A perfect symphony has a beautiful balance. It is like a perfectly executed Hollywood film. It has the fight scenes, the drama, the romance, and the comic relief, all in the right proportion, so that when you leave the concert hall you are real satisfied. Not only does it have all these elements, but they rely on each other to be effective. Likewise, in great symphony, it is very hard to pick a favorite part, because each part is great in its own way, and fits in perfectly within the overall structure of the piece. The problem occurs because of how each of the movements achieves their effects. The slow movements rely on and creating a sense of incredible calm, and a meditative peacefullness. I conjecture that this works about as well on modern audiences as it did on audiences a hundred fifty years ago. Our culture, in that time span, hasn't become desensitized to a need for meditative calmness. If anything, that need has grown with the modernization of society (The greek musician/philosopher George Hadjinikos suggests this as the cause for the growth of populatiry in the classical guitar in the 20'th century).

Faster movements, though, particularly finales, rely on creating a feeling of intense excitement. Their methods of doing this, though, worked better on audiences in the past than it does on present audiences. A lot of music has been written in the past hundred and fifty years, and has entered the popular consciousness, that is louder, more dissonant, more raucous, and pursues rhythm as means of building excitement in a much higher degree. This makes sense. Our world has become a much louder, more raucous place. We've become desensitized to this noise to such a degree that those loud classical finales just don't do the job they were meant to anymore. Thus the whole balance of the symphony gets thrown out of whack. People just want the slow pretty stuff. The music is degraded.

Fortunately, I've found that if I only listen to classical music my ear kind off reverses its historical tendencies, and I find I respond to the music in a more natural way. Also, Futurists(the Italian kind) hate slow movements. Yeah, they are silly.

Paleo-Future Update

2009-11-24T09:52:00.000-08:00

Interesting website describing some paleo-future(my definition) communities- Unsprawl

(The box in the top left, called "case studies" lets you look at the different communities)

Also some great paleo-Future(real definition) antics on The Dusty Show.

The paleo-futurism starts a bit after minute 19, and like many things on WFMU, it is hilarious, but goes on way to long.

(for the competing definitions of paleo-futurism see my first post)

Conspicuous Unconsumption Example 1

2009-11-24T09:50:00.000-08:00

(thanks to Cassandra)

An Idea for a Review of a Non-Existant Story

2009-11-07T11:33:00.000-08:00

In both of the previous posts I described how I had invented new terms, only to discover through a Google search that someone else had already coined them. This reminded me of an idea I had for a short story.

One of my favorite writers, Jorge Louis Borges, in his story "The Aleph", imagined a specific spot where one could view every single thing in the world, from every single angle, simultaneously, and comprehend it all instantly. In "The Library of Babel" he imagined a world consisting entirely of an infinite library, containing every combination of letters possible within a book. The world is populated with hopeless librarians, vainly searching for something comprehensible. Both of the stories are ways to imagine the infinite amount of information contained within the universe. They are also both horror stories. One shows the horror of infinite knowledge, the other the horror of being lost in infinite meaninglessness.

After I read these stories, both published in the 1940's, I was struck by how much they predicted certain developments in information instigated by Google. Google Earth would be The Aleph, and Google Books, the Library of Babel. Obviously the analogies are not perfect, Google Earth does not allow you to view every single thing on earth simultaneously in real time, but that does seem to be the direction things are heading. Google Books also intends to digitize every book in the entire world, so an infinite library is not that far fetched. Luckily, though, it will be search-able, so the horror of being lost in infinite meaninglessness seems averted.

What about the horror of infinite knowledge? Well, that's impossible. There is only so much you can comprehend. But instant unlimited access to all knowledge is not impossible. The internet is getting closer and closer to this, and also closer and closer to being an essential part of peoples lives. With the iphone especially, instant information can now be accessed by people at all times(provided they get service, of course.) The iphone can also do this.

So what are the consequences of unlimited access? Two things immediately came to mind for me. First, memorization will become obsolete. If you can access any information at any time, why memorize it? This is why people don't memorize phone numbers or driving directions. I see this as a trend that will continue in other areas of knowledge. Second, originality becomes very difficult. If all information is search-able, its very hard to think something that has never been thought before. Hence, my problems with Paleo-Futurism, and conspicuous unconsumption. Also this. When everything you can say has not only been said before, but can be instantly looked up, it is going to change how people express themselves.

Predictably, I was also not the first one to realize this. It is one of the major ideas of post-modernism. The author Umberto Eco beautifully expresses the post-modern aesthetic,

The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, "I love you madly," because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, "As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly."

The internet has not only made this form of expression inescapable, but also more difficult. He can no longer even say, "As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly." She could instantly search and see that it was taken from an Umberto Eco quote. How insincere!

So all this got my thinking. What would being smart mean in the future, if memorization was obsolete? What purpose would knowledge play in peoples live? How would we express ourselves? This gave me my idea for a story. Although in true Borgesian fashion, I'm to lazy to write it, so I think I'll just write a fake review of it. In the future. If it hasn't been written by someone else already.

Conspicuous Unconsumption

2009-11-02T10:20:00.000-08:00

I recently learned about Thorstein Veblen. Besides having an awesome name and enviable facial hair, he did many funny things. Supposedly he once asked a religious student the value that her church had for her in kegs of beer. He also had a lot of extra-marital affairs, which is especially surprising because of how weird looking he is. He is most famous, though, for making up the term "conspicuous consumption." It is the idea that the demand for luxury goods is driven not by the usefulness of the goods, but by the desire to appear incredibly rich. It is why this exists.

This idea is self evident in modern life. Rappers, for example, are basically poster children for conspicuous consumption.
His goblet attains no extra liquid carrying capability by being diamond clad. In fact, I bet wearing a lot of bling all the time actually makes life more difficult. You probably need a lot of neck strength, for instance. In this way conspicuous consumption is kinda like Darwin's sexual selection. This isn't to say I have anything against rappers. They are so unabashed in their desire to cover everything in diamonds, its kind of refreshing. And hilarious.

After I learned about conspicuous consumption I started seeing how this drive, to let people know you are better than others, and therefore a good mate, is being translated by the new environmental ethos. For a lot of people I know, consumption is out (unfortunately I don't know any rappers). But if you can't show others how fit you are to succeed in society by a useless expenditure of wealth, how else are you supposed to do it?

This is the paradox of what I call conspicuous unconsumption. Just like with paleo-futurism, I thought I invented this term, but some other people on the internet have already used it. At first it seems like an oxymoron. How can you conspicuously not do something?

The most obvious example I can find is in fashion. The whole indie, thrift store, hipster look I see as a result of conspicuous unconsumption. In this case you are conspicuously not buying new clothes. Whats silly is that this look, which started as people buying things from thrift stores because they were cheap, has been commercialized by clothing companies to get into the market of conspicuous unconsumption. This gives you silly things like grunge fashion, and pre-ripped jeans.

Another example I can think of is hybrid cars. If you get a hybrid car you are in essence unconsuming petroleum conspicuously. This drive for conspicuous unconsumption, which made the Toyata Prius so successful, was mocked perfectly on South Park, where the people who buy hybrid cars get so smug they like the smell of their own farts.

Personally I'm all for conspicuous unconsumption. The way I see it, people have a natural drive to impress others and attract mates. I would rather it be harnessed against consumption than for it. In fact I think the anti-consumerism and environmental movements will only really succeed where they can make conspicuous unconsumption effective. Everybody can see you driving a hybrid car, but people can't see if your buying carbon offsets. The more people are able to conspicuously not consume , the more they will do it.

A Brief History of Paleo-Futurism

2009-11-01T14:35:00.000-08:00

This blog was originally going to be called "The Paleo-Futurist." I wanted to start a blog to document and develop all the ideas I have, questions I wonder about, and weird stuff that interests me. The word futurist seemed to do a good job of summing up the general bent of my interests. But futurist, like almost any -ist word, has all sorts of preexisting associations for people, which I wanted to avoid. There is, for instance, the art movement Futurism, which I think is really, really silly. So silly its awesome. For instance, check out these musicians. Or this quote from the Futurist Manifesto(1909),

We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath—a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.

Also there are sci-fi type people who call themselves futurists. Like Isaac Asimov, or people who draw things like this. Also both cool and silly.

What I mean when I think of being a futurist, though, is someone who is thinking about new ideas and looking at how things are changing, and trying to guide that change in some direction, rather than just go along with it. In my case, I want a future that has less cars and engines and speed, and weird boxes with cones coming out of them. I don't really like driving places, pollution, city lights, or industrial noise. Not that I'm against technology. I'm just against how its often used. Anyway, to describe my stance I made up a new term, Paleo-Futurism. This term sounded cool, and had the added bonus of not making any sense. I was very proud of myself.

Unfortunately, I googled the term, and I found that it had already been invented by someone else! In fact someone already made a blog called Paleo-Future! They use the term to describe antique visions of the future. Which are generally awesome and silly(see above on Futurism, or rent Back to the Future II). Also their use of the term makes more sense than mine. So I thought of a different name for the blog.