| Am I too white to listen to gansta rap? I feel a lot like the guy from "Office Space" when I start listening to Westside Connection, somehow made all the more striking by the fact that I'm blasting it in mp3 form on a reasonably new computer. "Bow Down to some niggas that's greater than you," coming from a Soundblaster 5.1 surround system is like "gin and juice" as applied to a nursing home. Ah well, there's always my albino bretheren Eminem.
I've noticed a strange alteration coming about in my life since that relationship thing ended, namely that I've become much more detached from the potential consequences of my actions. As anyone familiar with my recent drinking spate may have been clued in on, I have trouble maintaining context in absence of a person to ground me. This has led to some interesting, albeit unforseen, effects in my life. For example, asking the girl at Starbucks for her number for no real reason other than because it seemed like the thing to do after talking to her for a while. It felt strange to go through the motions again, these stupid little rituals which nobody really wants to participate in, but which they do becuase it's expected. It's like a combination lock - each person puts in their sequence, and things either click or not. I've started acting in many cases capriciously, though without identifying any degree of real spontenaity in what I do at the actual time of performance. It's only in retrospect, or when pointed out to me by others, that I really start understanding that things I've done could be considered abnormal. The other striking thing which I've become more and more aware of without school, relationships, etc... to give me something to focus on and a framework within which to define my transient values, is how utterly absurd most of the things people do are and the degree to which people really take themselves far, far too seriously. My life has been referred to as everything from sham to joke and all degrees of levity in between, yet for the life of me I can't see this as a bad thing, nor can I really understand why anything I do is really any less important than what others seem to be preoccupying themselves with. In the end, someone who spends their entire life forsaking social interaction and fun to devote themselves to 12th century European linguistic evolution is considered a success with a meaningful academic life, while someone who gives the proverbial finger to most of established civilization and goes to panhandle in a Parisian subway and work on a single painting they never finish is called a failure. Yet in the end, how many of these academicians really change anything? Our system of success and failure seems strangely defined in a sense - a living death is the closest to really succeeding as the normal person can get. I was recently talking about a sort of dichotomy between the US and European mindsets with a acquaintance of mine (someone who has been to Europe - I have been spared the torture of such a visit as of yet), and she remarked that there's a sort of optimistic fatalism which people in those countries tend to embody which is lacking in the track-home world of the US. I invite anyone who still reads this wasteland of text to comment on why you might think that is, becuase I haven't really begun to fabricate a compelling lie as to why it may be true. The closest I might conject is simply the existance of a cultural tradition and the belief that there are things more important than monitary success. It's the viewpoint of money being a means rather than, as many in this country seem to be certain, an end, which seems to breed a worldview more favorable to accepting what we might consider "failure." On a less rambling note, however, I may soon be going to NYC (Really it's just a matter of when, at this point.) My catastrophic failure in finding a steady part time job in the DC area has rendered my excuse for being here rather tenuous. I just need to pay one of my housemates back for utilities and set my affairs in order before I leave. Anyone who might want to get in touch with me is welcome to call or e-mail or whatever. Again, I'm fairly sure from the page hit counter that nobody reads this page, so mostly this is posterity to which I speak - it allows me to have credibility when I tell everyone that I gave them notice. People take poorly to abrupt disruptions in their life, even one so minor as an acquaintance going away for a while. I don't understand that, really. That's all for now I suppose. cranked out at 5:46 AM | |
|
| template © elementopia 2003 |
 |