Clapton is God

Last night, I went to see Eric Clapton in his first, and possibly his last (as this was his final official tour), appearance in mainland China. What made the night even better than it would have been was that I was a VIP of sorts. In no official setting, outside of my own head, do I exist as a VIP; I am reminded of this often, most recently when an old lady spit on my foot (though I blame myself for this, as I should have reacted in time to the sound of her gearing up to spit). Last night, however, I had the VIP treatment because I was lucky enough to be born into the same family as my brother, who promoted and organized the show, a bangup job on his part.

From this perspective I had the opportunity to wait backstage with my brother and follow Eric Clapton and his band onto the stage. We stood in the back hallway when the band came out of their dressing rooms. I scanned the group, about a dozen in number. At first, I guess assuming that Clapton would stand out in some way (either walking regally behind his band or surrounded by some sort of Golden (God) Glow), I didn't recognize him. Then as he walked not a few feet from me, I caught his eye in the latter stages of my double-take. He smiled at me and nodded. While this look was meant merely to convey an acknowledgement of my presence, in my buzzed state, I sensed that it transmitted a mutual appreciation and respect -- not for my VIP status, but because I like to think this was the case.

After he passed, we followed him through the backstage area, along the path set by taped arrows, and watched him play his first song from the wings of the stage. My apologies for the blur of the photo above, but it was dark and I was excited.

Question: If you shake hands with Eric Clapton, do you shake Slow Hand or do you shake hands slowly?

...It's More of a Manifesto

It was February of 1497, when a monomaniacal, Dominican monk, named Savonarola, called for the citizens of Florence to gather those possessions deemed artifacts of human sin and congregate in the Piazza della Signoria. And in this L-shaped piazza, on its large and puddled slabs of stone, a stock pile of vanity -- mirrors, cosmetics, dresses, musical instruments, books, pictures, and even masterpieces of Renaissance art – were set aflame. This event, known since as “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” stands as a violent reminder of the destructive nature of a society that allows its religion to infiltrate its politics and manipulates its citizenry with fear-mongering and deeply instilled paranoia.

And holding fast to the memory of this historic lesson, we ignite a flame of our own, not to the vanities but to the inanities of our culture – to the drivel, the hypocrisy, and the ineptitudes of those short sighted, long winded few in charge of and responsible for far too many. Savonarola’s was blinding, anarchistic; ours will be illuminating and electric. His darkened the world around it by contrast; ours will be lit by a 4^th of July sparkler and its rejuvenating glow will warm the tired bones of a country growing old before its time. The flames of our conflagration will strip off the subterfuge of partisan ideologies and layers of enmity and apathy, so that we can once again glimpse the lessons of our past and the wisdom of our elders. And from these ashes will rise a new Renaissance, for just as with every upcoming generation, we carry a banner and on it reads, “Hope.” No matter what calamitous and self-propelling evils have been set in place, we carry a banner; despite bleak outlooks and “Ask Again Laters” from our Magic 8 balls, we carry a banner to signal a new era in which all things point towards novelty and originality. From out of the teachings of history the future will be ushered in, glowing with the embers of our bonfire.

Bob Dylan said, “An artist must always be in a state of becoming,” and so, as we steady our aim and crystallize our might we stand as the artists of our country’s future, one born anew in our minds as a rich tapestry of multifarious and strange forms. Dylan’s generation, the generation of the 1960’s sought their revolution under a limiting blanket of anti-establishment sentiments, their rhetoric marked by a swirling psychedelia of vagaries and indignation. Theirs was a movement of unparalleled optimism but overwhelming futility. Their legacy is more a cautionary tale than a template on which to base ours, for we do not seek to oppose the establishment, but remold it in our image. We are a generation forged from a capitalist mold – our pragmatism will succeed where their flower power could not; our education and ambition will guide us to where their musicians and aging beatniks and psychedelic shamans could not. There will be no turning on, tuning in, and/or dropping out for us. There will be no rest for the weary, because we are hungry; there will be no Zack Morris “time outs,” because we do not need a mid-episode recap; there will be no half-time to our quarter-life crisis, because we have crammed for the tests that life brings and are ready for them. And those of us who believe themselves unprepared for the task at hand will know no discouragement nor hindrance. We must begin now, but none will be left behind.

We are young… and we are teeming with hope and idealism, full and fearsome, with reckless curiosity and open minds. We are only too aware that no one creed or demographic holds the answers for us all, that not from a single slice will we define our American Apple Pie, but only from the confluence and synthesis of clashing and antithetical opinions will the solutions take shape. Never before have we seen our world so filled with injustice, corruption, and artistic scarcity, yet never before has the world seen such a unique period of hope and possible redemption. With the promethean flame of the internet we are closer than ever – to each other, to the means and information with which can realize the fulfillment of our potential.

We are young… and we will not stand pat, arms dragging idly by our sides, soaking up the endlessly radiating signals, calling to us like sirens of lethargy from our televisions, while the next wave of ideologues and careerists flood our nation and our world with their closed mindedness deeply rooted, their ears (and eventually their hearts) too clogged to hear the voice of our nation gasping for change and new direction. We will cut them off at the pass. Ours will not be to confront those of our generation whose beliefs and opinions differ; no, ours will be to welcome them with a fabric-softened embrace into our ever burgeoning numbers. “You are one of us. We are some of many,” we will say, though we know that in the now dim, soon blazing light of our future there will be no “us and them” -- no opposing sides locked in continuous stalemate, but one vast and interconnected, enmeshed and borderless blob of Humanity, pulsating to the tempo of our passion.

We are young… and we are strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Though we may not yet be able to glimpse the ends of our means, progress needs action, change needs motion, and the embers of our bonfire need the winds of all our exhaled opinions to stoke its flame. Together, let us sing of the body eclectic, the body politic, and the body electric (boogie woogie woogie). Together we will edify, electrify, spark and proliferate, congregate and commiserate, so that our beautiful polyphonic rants and unflinching awareness will spread throughout the land, like purple horseshoes, red balloons, blue moons, and magic rainbows, giving life and taste to the bland and indigestible toasted oats of the current culture. As we begin our quest, our voices will not be silenced or misheard for we will speak directly to power, casting aside the mediating mechanisms that hear with selective ears and speak with personal agendas. We will settle for nothing less than full frontal democracy, stark and naked, beautiful and new.

On Umbrella Etiquette

Currently and for the next few days I am living in Shanghai, China. It's easy living with my brother and sister-in-law, and I don't pretend to be roughing it in any form. Tonight, however, I saw in all its naked horror, the true danger of Shanghai. First, let me set the stage a little...

Shanghai is an odd place for a westerner to take in, though I'm aware that it is probably the most western of Asian cities. Out of my window right now there are abandoned buildings, overgrown parks, futuristic skyscrapers, and by the looks of the many cranes on the horizon there are more to come. Shanghai is what I think of when I picture Gotham -- sprawling and intimidating in its grandeur. But I'm getting away from myself here. The point that I wanted to make was about umbrellas. Did I mention umbrellas yet?

So, it rained tonight and I was out doing some work for my brother -- hitting the pavement. Now I'm not an exceptionally tall man, but living in Asia these past months has shown me what a relative statement that is. In a city this crowded, with drivers this nuts, being a pedestrian with a language barrier is tough enough, but throw in tens of thousands of short, umbrella totting Asians during rush hour and you got a stew going, baby. And now to the etiquette...

If, hypothetically, you had a head that was 4-5 ft. in diameter, with sharp poles sticking out around the perimeter, you would probably be pretty careful on a crowded sidewalk -- especially if your head was prone to erradic movements caused by even the slightest of wind gusts. I'm right, right? Not in Shanghai, they don't. I was out there tonight, bobbing and weaving, burst of running to avoid a stab to the eye or neck; basically, I looked like Apollo Creed out there but without the trash talking and fake punching.

I came to a realization, however, when I saw an old woman get bonked in the head hard and both parties, the umbrella weilder and the woman, just kept on walking without a flinch. What I came to understand at that moment was that if everybody doesn't care then nobody has to be careful. All the people can't be all right all of the time -- maybe so -- but all the people can be all wrong all of the time when it comes to umbrella etiquette. Just please watch out for the relatively tall American kid whose jumping and jiving evokes the memory of a heavyweight champ.

Note: Looked up "Umbrella Etiquette" and while I found no formal set of rules, there is another blog posting. Take a look.

A Defensive of Idealism

Alright, so I like to think of myself as an idealist. And while I would prefer this description to let's say the hard-bitten realist or the world-weary cynic or the flatulent pessimist, I've noticed over the years that I and my kind get a few more eye rolls than those other guys. So on behalf of my fellow idealists, I thought I just write up a short defense of our shared outlook.

To some, idealism is for the dreamers, the silly-hearts and merrymakers -- we are young, shamefully innocent, leaking naivete on all fronts. To a degree, this is a fair assessment. I'll admit that I tend to get carried away by my ideals; I like to think in Kennedy quotes, seeing things how they could be and asking why not; but (and maybe this is a symptom of my idealism) I like to think and feel this way and I like people who think and feel similarly. It's inspiring and we're in good company. Think of some of the idealists who have come before: JFK, MLK, Kramer with all his business ventures, and those kids from the old Chicken and Stove Top ads (because most kids would eat their one portion of that delicious breaded chicken and ask why, but those boys weasled their way into two chicken dinners shouting "Why not?" all night long between bites of drumsticks).

For those who will still find our ideals useless and our sentiments saccharine, I just want you to know that our passion is not born of inanity and that most of us have a grasp of the objective realities. Philosophically, Idealism relies on the notion that reality exists through our perception of it. The skeptics, those that promote common sense philosophy, find fault with idealism, claiming that it relies too heavily on a reality that cannot be proven. But that's the point; what separates the idealist from the rest is the ability to tirelessly take leaps of faith no matter how many times reality falls short of the ideal. On a side note: I don't have to tell you that you don't want to be stuck on a long plane ride with a common sense philosopher.

Okay, maybe I didn't do the best job defending idealism, and most likely I just offered another example of typical idealist rhetoric -- lofty yet empty -- but I just want to let other idealists out there to know that you got one more of you out there asking, "Why not?".

A Self-Reflexive First Post

It's been a bit overwhelming these past few days -- hours reading blogs, blogging tips, blogging how to's, and watching an unending marathon of "24" (unrelated to blogging). It was enough to get me to set up one of these guys myself. I sense that I have actually taken it all in, digested the thick stew of the blogosphere, and if I have (most likely not the case) then it sits more like a 2 AM hotdog after a night out at the bars -- I awake to a distinct aftertaste, but no memory of the actual ingestion.

Prior to my blogtism, I viewed the whole enterprise from a safe and admittedly condescending perch, seeing the whole blogosphere as some geeky cousin to reality television, an exercise in self-explotation whose members acted out their personal demons as they hurled venom at one another from behind their keyboards, in their stained undershirts. It seemed a pseudo-reality, populated by pseudonymns -- something to be experienced by a Don DeLillo character, not by me.

Much of this perspective most likely stemmed from my early days on the internet, goofing around on AOL chat rooms with my 8th grade buddies, baiting the members of "fatvampires3" or posturing as a gerbal fanatic on "rodentpetlvrs." The other members of these chat rooms formed together in my mind as a massive cultural underbelly, fetid and festering for years until the world wide web allowed it to surface in all its inglory. Clearly this last description was not cooked by my 8th grade mind, so a closer approximation of how I once envisioned this subculture (though still a bit too metaphorical for a 14 year old) would be the figure of the gimp in "Pulp Fiction," shackled in some gun store basement, only to be let out by the internet, who I guess we'll call Zed in this metaphore. To be honest though, my parents wouldn't let me see Pulp Fiction until high school, so that probably wasn't accurate either.

But just as I was to find out years later, over the course of many hilarious nights of reminescing, that the chatrooms of my youth were most likely populated by a bunch of 8th grade kids, I have now discovered that this whole blogging deal isn't as subversive and alien to me as I had assumed. In fact, I'm hoping to fit right in.

So, come one, come all, sit back, pull up an ergonomic mouse and keyboard, and let's see if we can't think of some new, strange, and inspiring ways to make sense of this world that we're growing older with.