nowhitebelts

It's finals time. I am now rapidly approaching the end of my college career and experiencing both excitement and crippling self doubt. I am hoping that I will be able to work for a couple publications after I graduate and be able to support a life in either the city or Oakland. We shall see. in other news, I am starting to do some preliminary work on a comic book that I will hopefully get to do with the man who drew the sketch of me that is currently my "avatard." you should check out his lovely work at www.drawingpostcards.com. In yet other news, I am writing a paper on philosophy and science, which is currently teaming up with my Virginia Woolf paper in an effort to shatter my balls. However, I did find a rather delicious quote from geneticist and evolutionary biologist JBS Haldane. When asked what he could say about the nature of the Creator from studying his creation he said "an inordinate fondness for beetles." I think we've lost some things, little things, mundane things, lost a sense of place and connectedness and replaced it with specialization and irony. The dearth of leadership in this nation, the complacency of the people who live in it. The youth being sold parts and relics from the corpse of rock and roll. The phony camp of the eighties dressed up as something more than fashion and coif, social consciousness or -god forbid- actual movement. whatever remains of rock, art, and youth culture spirals its own belly button, staring ever inward, content to create art that is only masturbatorial at best and the prime generator of negative social capital at its worst. And yet, I don't think it is the case that nobody cares, especially young people, but rather, that we have all become one of three things: either we are whitewashed tombs, meaning that we have carefully maintained exteriors but are in fact dead on the the inside, we are farmers who plant nothing yet expect a crop (meaning that we expect things to happen for us and we expect things to get better but we dont think we need do or can do anything ourselves to create change i.e: I am going to college therefore all I have to do with my life right now is get a degree, or technology will solve humanities problems), or we are just too fat to actually move for something (we have too much media, too much access, too much comfort to revolt or even react). I suppose that the first case applies to those who are in power: the businessman and the businessman/politician. The second and third cases apply to the upper and upper middle classes, we need a fucking wake up call, and it must, by necessity, be cultural and grassroots (the changes need to be made in ourselves as well as in the government, protest alone cannot fix America). If such a wake up call doesnt happen, well just have to wait until oil costs six dollars a gallon and we find ourselves with an unpayable national debt, fewer freedoms in exchange for a politics based on gay marriage and abortion instead of actual governing, no international respect or diplomatic currency, and our dicks in our hands as we are replaced by new world superpower(s). Where do we start? How do we get up? We sure as hell cant look at the whole thing or expect to be the one thats going to carry going to the banner of change for our generation because the problems we are facing now are myriad and far more ambiguous than say, jim crow laws or something more singular and clearly villainous. Also, the mechanisms behind the problems we face are better disguised, funded, defended, and crafted than they have ever been. I know I can stare it in the face, because I get lost and tend to resort to just bitching about it or checking to be sure that no one has commented on my myspace or some shit. With that in mind I think it is important for me and if you agree with some of this rant here, us, to do three things.
1. DO something small every day, a small project that challenges you and also helps you explore and realize what you can do. I find that I read a lot of books and laugh at keith olberman a lot, but I dont do go out and do things enough. In doing small projects, doodling, writing an article for a local paper, taking a sandwich to some dude in the park, you are not only making your community better (yeah think globally act locally, sounds cheesy but I think theres some value in it), you also begin to realize how much power you have to change things (one of the things I think we lost, faith in ourselves).
2. Discuss these issues seriously and passionately in a forum. As I mentioned in the preface to this deal, I have the tendency to talk about my misguided and misinformed ideas about the world when I am drunk, this usually alienates them, and even worse, it usually results in a possibly interesting conversation distorted and lost for ever. Also, if we can all talk about these things together and record our discussions we can use our various strengths and weaknesses to create a better picture and understanding of how we can achieve our common goals and avoid the future that we all, to some extent, fear. We need dreamers and accountants and marketers and pessimists if we want to really work this thing out.
3. We need a place, and a time, where those who are interested can get together and talk, collaborate and most of all, belong to a community that is meaningful and empowering and based on something other than booze, scenes, or even friend groups themselves. This group should be inclusive and meet regularly, preferably somewhere with good snacks.