TJB/POV: The American Dream

"Remember, remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists." -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

THIRTYTHINGSILOVERIGHTNOW

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TJB/POV: Television

"I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision, we shall discover a new and unbearable disturbance of the modern peace, or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television -- of that I am quite sure." -- E.B. White

Slideshow: Uh.Mare.Kuh!

"America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair." -- Arnold Toynbee

TJB/POV: Fencepost

“As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Nonverbal Blogger

[Had a whole blog post here about how I aint got nothing to say. Rather take a picture. Play a jew harp. Drink a cup of tea. Drive to Saginaw. Anything. But then it was getting really long and it sort of was A) whiney and B) ludicrously meta (a big long blog post about how I've got nothing to say). Hence, instead, here is an avant garde field of dots. Enjoy!
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TJB/POV: Cows

"I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them." -- Sherwood Anderson

Quote of the Day: Robert Strange McNamara (1916-2009)

Former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, a principal architect of the Vietnam War and later a staunch opponent of nuclear proliferation, who died today:

"I'm not so naive or simplistic to believe we can eliminate war. We're not going to change human nature any time soon. It isn't that we aren't rational. We are rational. But reason has limits. There's a quote from T.S. Eliot that I just love: 'We shall not cease from exploring, and at the end of our exploration, we will return to where we started, and know the place for the first time.' Now that's in a sense where I'm beginning to be."

Quote of the Day: Barracuda

Lyrics to the (oddly prescient) 1977 hit single "Barracuda" by the American rock band Heart:

"You lying so low in the weeds / I bet you gonna ambush me / You'd have me down down down down on my knees / Now wouldn't you, barracuda?"

Uh.Mare.Kuh!

Maybe you’ve been paying attention for the last two and a half years. (In which case you won't be surprised by the upcoming revelation.) Maybe you haven’t. (In which case maybe you will be.) Either way. Know this once and for all: the idea/problem/promise of America is something that occupies a great deal of my—what—creative(?) energies. So the Birthday of America is a very special day for one such as me. Very special. Therefore. What does such a one as me do on such a very special day? Celebrate. Good times. Come on! And really celebrate. Like, own it, all of it, everything that makes a body American. Hence. On Independence Day 2009, here’s what so proudly I hailed (or something; you know what I mean): went to a hardware store; bought dangerous lawn equipment; cut my grass and trimmed various trimmable vegetation, only semi-competently wielding three separate pieces of equipment that could’ve at the very least lopped off a small appendage; listened to my new favorite Irish band (wait, that’s not American!); drank a beer; ate a Big Mac and Freedom Fries (U-S-A! U-S-A!) with ketchup; washed it down with a Co-cola; ate an ice cream cone; watched fireworks; took pictures of it; blogged! Because America invented blogs, dammit, and that’s the truth. We the People!

Quote of the Day: What So Proudly We Hail

Abraham Lincoln, the American president, in an address to Congress justifying the declaration of war against the seceding southern states, July 4, 1861:

"Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it, our people have already settled -- the successful establishing, and the successful administering of it. One still remains -- its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world, that those who can fairly carry an election, can also suppress a rebellion -- that ballots are the rightful, and peaceful, successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace; teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by a war -- teaching all, the folly of being the beginners of a war."

Full-Scale Emerald Isle Infatuation

Godammit. Okay. Just indulge me. What is a blog but a place to slap up all things digital that you are discovering that you love? Jesus. The Frames. I need to move to Dublin. Right. Now. No wonder they have James Joyce. It all makes sense. It's like a giant country of Seattle where people say quaint things you can't understand, even though they're speaking English. Of a sort. And they got this sad/happy thing fuggin down pat. Pat, I tell you. Pat. Or maybe paddy. Does this mean I need to reconsider Sinead O'Connor? (Hey. Wait a minute. It just occurs to me: Ireland is the UK's American South. Totally and completely. No wonder it's cool.)

What Writers, Barbers, and the New Media Have to Say to Each Other

So I’m in the Old Timey Barbershop the other day and, as always, I encountered the tipping-point moment when you have to decide if you’re going to talk to the guy cutting your hair. This can be a dicey proposition in the Old Timey Barbershop, depending on which of the three guys you get, but on that particular day I was in good shape. I had the undisputed dean of the barbering trio. He’s been there for twenty-eight years and he’s everybody’s favorite. Not only is he deft with the clippers, he’s got this pitch-perfect sense of when somebody wants to talk and when somebody wants to just keep his head down and listen to the snips and whirrs. Plus he has an astounding memory. He remembers where you work and how you want your hair cut, even if -- by virtue of the Russian roulette of days off and an unbending first-come, first-served policy -- he hasn’t cut your hair in over a year. It’s the Platonic ideal of the barbershop experience. Dude is just really good at what he does.

This does relate to writing. It all ties in, I swear.

Across the street from the barbershop is a book store. After my haircut, I went looking for marketing and social media guru Seth Godin’s book, Dip, which is all about pushing through the final barriers to success -- or knowing when to quit trying.

When it comes to writing anything -- a poem, a story, or a full-length book manuscript -- it would seem there are at least two sets of dips. There are the ones that come in the writing process itself -- in my experience, these can truly shake you to the core all on their own. And then there are the equally difficult ones that come in the process of getting your work published. (When it comes to publishing a book, those dips then presumably give way to sales and marketing dips once you’ve made it that far, but I can’t yet say that from personal experience.)

That’s a lot of dips to push through. Dips today. Dips tomorrow. Dips all the way into the foreseeable future. Facing that, I’ll listen to anybody who might shed some light on the whole quixotic enterprise.

Alas, I couldn’t find the book, but I did find a well-known glossy magazine where I’d love to someday see my own work, so I leafed through it, reflexively checking the contributors section. There I found no fewer than four people I know, two of whom I know well -- and like. (One of whom I’ve kissed. On the lips.) All of these people are good writers. (At least one of them is also a good kisser.) I can’t begrudge them the feather in their publishing cap. But when you go looking for a book about pushing through dips -- or knowing when to quit -- and instead you find people you’ve known and loved experiencing at least a taste of the success you’ve been looking for…well, it forces an important question upon you. Will you choose to be discouraged or inspired by the fact that there are a great many worthy, talented people out there who want the same thing you want, some of whom seem to be closer to getting it?

Though I confess to a moment or two of self-doubt on the afternoon in question, I choose to be inspired. Godin recently wrote about the changing landscape of publishing on his blog:

“In a world of free, everyone can play. This is huge. When there are thousands of people writing about something, many will be willing to do it for free (like poets) and some of them might even be really good (like some poets). There is no poetry shortage. The reason that we needed paid contributors before was that there was only economic room for a few magazines, a few TV channels, a few pottery stores, a few of everything. In a world where there is room for anyone to present their work, anyone will present their work.”

More creativity is always inspiring. The alternative interpretation yields a world I don’t want to live in. But I do want my own work to get noticed, and in the current context of publishing -- way more good work than places that will pay to publish it -- the question is how to push through the dip and get noticed.

Lest ye think I forgot about my favorite barber, this is the part where he comes back on stage to deliver the moral of the story. To wit: our dean of barbers is nothing less than living proof that if you practice long enough and you fully attend to all the aspects of your vocation -- not just cutting hair (or making sentences) but knowing people and putting that knowledge to good use -- you can’t help being exceptional at what you do. And, sooner or later, people always notice exceptional.

TJB/POV: Bricks and Moon

Bricks and Moon, originally uploaded by Beitelblogger.

Quote of the Day: Cry for Help

"The very idea that he would be that candid, that frank, that brutally honest about his feelings for the woman in Argentina versus his wife versus the other girlfriends, I just find that incredible. Rational people don't do that....He doesn't need to be talking to reporters. He needs to go find him some professional help. That's just the facts." -- SC state Sen. Larry A. Martin (R) on Gov. Mark Sanford's mysterious inability to let sleeping dogs lie.

Notes on a Series of Revelations: Parallel Universes, Rabbit Holes, and the Idea of Making it Big

"Sometimes I need a revelation." -- Glen Hansard, The Frames

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I've spent the evening in a parallel universe. Which is to say: Ireland. Which is to say: YouTube. Which is to say: There's a whole world full of stuff that I don't even know I love. Admit it: this is how it is for you too.

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Not long ago I fell in love with a movie that most people fall in love with when they see it. Because there is such a thing as the Interwebs, you fall in love with something these days and you Google it. And you live for a while in the rabbit hole of That Thing and only That Thing.

The movie, a modern-day musical love story called Once, was written and directed by Irish filmmaker John Carney and features fellow Irishman Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova of the Czech Republic, both of whom are musicians by trade. It's a simple movie carried largely by the poignancy of the music -- which the actors themselves wrote -- and the fact that Hansard and Irglova, individually and together, are so charming.

So charming they won an Academy Award. And made it on The Simpsons. And Letterman. In short, they and their music are so charming, they were able to hit the big time with a teeny, tiny, perfect little movie, and now they tour the world as The Swell Season. (They even Tweet!)

But that's not the revelation. Or it's not just that. There are other revelations hidden deeper in the rabbit hole.

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The real revelation is that there's a rabbit hole at all. And that it's loud down there. And that it's so big. Plenty of room for a mosh pit. As the YouTube vid above will attest, The Frames -- the band Hansard's fronted since 1990 -- are fuggin' huge in Ireland. Huge and loud and beloved. It's nearly impossible to find video of a live Frames performance in Ireland that doesn't feature a crowd of thousands belting out the lyrics right along with Hansard. Words he wrote and they all know by heart. Like an anthem.

Of course there's huge in Ireland and then there's just plain huge. There's The Frames and then there's U2.

But still. The revelation is that all of this was happening somewhere on Planet Earth and until last week I had no idea I cared.

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A telling anecdote from the band's website:

With no money left after the recording of the album [Fitzcarraldo, 1996], the group was stuck on how to make a clip for their favorite track "Revelate." "We had a friend whose mum worked in the Postal Office," says Dave Odlum [a former band member]. "So we decided to wait until she was on a lunch break, and we went in an put a video tape in the security camera, we did our video during the break, and put her original tape back when she came back." The video which cost four dollars to make, became a cult-hit in Ireland. Says Hansard: "A friend of ours put it on a local video show there and people loved it. Then we got it on an even bigger show, and it got even more requests." Eventually, this homemade security clip was nominated for an MTV Europe award. [Watch the original video here.]

Embedded in that story is why Glen Hansard seems like such a revelation to me -- and also why I'd never heard of him before. In fact, let's narrow it down to one word: Fitzcarraldo. The Frames have an entire album named after a Werner Herzog movie. Heady obscurity, amped-up and unabashed. If Ireland is a place that can love a band like that, then it's entirely possible I'm in the wrong country. To wit: MTV hated the $4 security camera video of "Revelate" but was forced to keep playing it in Ireland because they loved it so.

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Maybe the revelation is that Glen Hansard is not afraid to be small. Whether it's signing on to make a movie for $160k or a video for $4. Even -- especially -- if it means starting your musical career busking on a street in Dublin, sans microphone. Or the revelation is all that -- all of the above -- plus this: you have to be willing to be small in order to get big. Here's what Hansard said during the promotional tour for Once, about his vocational arc as an artist:

"You come across a lot of people who are really talented and really hungry. My whole thing was I'm either going to be a tramp sitting under a bridge in Dublin, begging with a bottle of whiskey in my hand. Or I'm going to be a success in music. There's no in-between. I'm still waiting to see which one is going to happen."

Looks like it's the latter. His musical partnership with Irglova -- itself a kind of downsizing from the great big rock-and-roll shows he was doing with The Frames -- has taken off. They haven't stopped touring since the film was released, and they've now made two records together. Even The Frames are getting into the act as featured guests at The Swell Season's shows. So, all in all, small has paid off big for Glen Hansard. Here he is from the same interview, talking about his life as a busker in the very early days of his career:

"It's not just about making money and surviving. Not at all. It's the opposite. If you intend to make money, generally you won't make much money and won't meet anyone. But if your intention is to go out and sing a few songs and enjoy yourself, the world opens up. Which is a lesson for life."

In a parallel universe, I might say: Aye. Fair play to ya, lad. Fair play.

Quote of the Day: Free is Free and Free is Good?

"In a world of free, everyone can play. This is huge. When there are thousands of people writing about something, many will be willing to do it for free (like poets) and some of them might even be really good (like some poets). There is no poetry shortage. The reason that we needed paid contributors before was that there was only economic room for a few magazines, a few TV channels, a few pottery stores, a few of everything. In world where there is room for anyone to present their work, anyone will present their work." -- American author, marketeer, and guy-who-gets-paid-to-be-smart, Seth Godin

TJB/POV: Tracks

Tracks #2, originally uploaded by Beitelblogger.

Quote of the Day: Note to Self

"The title Once refers to the male condition -- not particular to Ireland, but it’s certainly prevalent in Ireland -- which is a lot of guys that I know who are very talented and have a lot to say about the world and are witty and urbane and funny but kind of sit behind the pint of Guinness and are very creative people but they just don’t have the get-up-and-go. And you hear that line a lot with these people. Once I get enough money. Once I get out of my parents’ house. Or once I get this little business set up or once I get my great script written, you know, I’ll be brilliant. And they’re not actually doing it. I guess it’s the guy hiding behind the pint of Guinness who could be great but just keeps putting it off...There’s a lot of men that I know who have that problem. So that’s kind of where the title ties in for me, it’s kind of, once I do this, once I do that, suddenly the world will make sense." -- Irish filmmaker John Carney, writer and director of Once

1989: Where Does That Highway Lead to?

"Well, how did I get here?" -- David Byrne

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Phew. We've been submerged in the deep, dark waters of nostalgia -- revisiting the month of June 1989. (Click here for a streamlined review of the thirty days, plus the bookend essays, all on one page!) Now that we've resurfaced, crawled back onto the solid shore of the so-called Here-and-Now, let's towel off, catch our breath, and take stock of what we've learned.

(Oh, but first, let me say I didn't plan the Do the Right Thing bookends. It just happened, as awesome things [however minor] so often do. Started out back on June 1 referencing Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" -- which, of course, features prominently in the film -- just because the opening lyrics ("1989 the number / Another summer...") seemed appropos. Serendipity served when I discovered, as late as last week, that Do the Right Thing opened in theaters on June 30, 1989. That's what public TV cult hero Bob Ross used to call a "happy accident" on his paint-by-numbers show back in the day. Cha-ching.)

Okay. So.

Ten Very Deep and Important Things We've Learned From/Since 1989

1. Folks is folks. They get married. They get divorced. They lie, they cheat, they burn flags. They propogate violence in big ways and small ways. Revolutions are the rule, not the exception.

2. It's easy to confuse revolution with fundamental change. The former is common. The latter is, for all intents and purposes, impossible. As the hoary truism goes: the more things change, the more they stay the same. That's the driving paradox of the human experience. It's why we so crazy.

3. We like us a Batman movie.

4. Twenty years from now, most of the people in power will not only be out of power, they'll be dead.

5. Pop stardom has a shelf-life not unlike that of a spicy tuna roll.

6. In the rare cases when pop stardom does last, it becomes grotesquely plastic. Without fail.

7. All major sports are, for the most part, unbalanced and corrupt. Drugs. Gambling. Violence, in between and outside the lines. That's the way it's always been. That's the way it will always be. Our taste for sports reflects our propensity for extremes and our tolerance for the lowest common denominator.

8. So, for the most part, does our taste in movies.

9. So, for the most part, does our taste in music.

10. Is any of that bad? Or good? Ah, you know. That's probably not the right question. The right question isn't even a question at all. Mainly what cracking open a twenty-year time capsule can tell you is that the details of our personal and public mythologies can seem really crucial in a certain context. You know, but they're not crucial at all, really. Don Johnson becomes Nick Lachey. Pete Rose becomes Barry Bonds. China turns into Iran. 1989 yields, before you know it, to 2009. Yeah, there's the internet and a black president. But the beat goes on. In short, it's pretty much like David Byrne said it would be:

Letting the days go by. Same as it ever was.

Time isn't holding us. Time isn't after us.

Sally forth...

June 30, 1989

We come full circle: Do the Right Thing opens in theaters.

1989. The number. Another summer indeed.

Quote of the Day: It Kindly Stopped for Me

“He’s 50 years old and 50-year-old people die every day.” -- Dr. Bruce Wilkoff, an expert in cardiac arrhythmia at the Cleveland Clinic, as quoted in this MSNBC.com article about the possibility that Neverland couldn't promise eternal youth after all.

June 29, 1989

Susan Lucci fails to win a daytime Emmy after her tenth consecutive nomination, ushering in All My Children's infamous surrealist period (see the vid above) as the producers of the show pulled out all the stops to "get Suzie her damn trinket." Alas. It would be nine more years of horseshoes and hand grenades for the lovely and talented Ms. Lucci.

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(Click here for the 411 on 1989.)

TJB/POV: Asphalt Ascension

The Indecent Proposal of Marriage?

In media terms, the news of Michael Jackson's death was a brilliant stroke of luck for Mark Sanford, the cheating "luv guv" of South Carolina. It calls off the hounds at least a little bit as he circles the wagons to try to save his job and his marriage. He's been public and emphatic with his desires to salvage both, in both cases getting big-time biblical, even comparing himself and his transgressions to the sordid story of David and Bathsheba. The focus of his rhetoric is always the primacy of the institutions involved, not least the institution of marriage.

In short, for an unfaithful husband who wants to stay married (for personal and/or political reasons), the "exalted institution of marriage" angle is pretty much all he's got going for him. And, of course, it rings hollow.

But what about an unfaithful spouse who doesn't want to stay married? Well, in that case, the institution pretty much gets thrown under the bus. Perhaps surprisingly, that ends up sounding pretty bogus too.

Consider the e-paper trail of The Atlantic's Sandra Tsing Loh:

Two years ago, she penned this article on the divergent libidos of married men and women. Women, so the article goes, would often rather just eat a pizza or read a book. The overriding message being, hey, why not just accept it and move on?

And then here's her recent essay documenting the failure of her twenty-year marriage, a failure catalyzed by her own extramarital affair. In this one, women munch Dove bars to stave off the madness brought on by their passive-aggressive husbands' sexual stinginess.

Two years is a long time, I know. And I'm no model of consistency when it comes to matters of the heart. I know, too, that sometimes what we write -- even (especially?) in The Atlantic -- isn't always in sync with what we feel. That's mostly because writing is about arranging our tangled mess of thoughts into something that makes a modicum of sense. But so much of being human has very little to do with making sense of anything. "Feelings" least of all.

That's why I'll take a pass on assigning Loh any particular credibility when it comes to making sense of the institution of marriage in the 21st Century. Not really because she has a vested personal interest in placing the blame for her failed marriage on the contemporary obsolescence of the institution (with an assist from her husband's extensive work travel) as opposed to the time-honored and well-documented vagaries of human hearts (see David and Bathsheba above). And it's not even because I'm 100% unsympathetic to her arguments.

No, mainly I'll take the pass on Loh's love punditry because both of her articles and the underlying logic behind them represent a fundamental misunderstanding about love as we know it. It's not now -- and never was -- rational. The best way for it to work -- mind you, this is an untested hypothesis on my part -- is if you don't think too much. And everybody thinks too much.

Unless you're Mark Sanford. In which case, yeah: a little more cogitating would've probably gone a long way.