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celticmage11
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Name: Joseph
Country: United States
State: New York
Metro: Rochester
Gender: Male
Interests: Academia, music, politics, debate, activism, literary fiction, poetry, haiku, film, Medieval literature, World literature, history and culture of Ireland, Japan, Scotland and Wales, languages (Middle English and Irish Gaelic), buying DVDs and then only watching select scenes from them, people watching, bass, fiction, being Informed and Dangerous, guitar, drums, vocals, wearing interesting hats, not following the directions on art projects but still making interesting creations anyway, movie quoting, technology.
Expertise: taking classes (2 courses and a thesis away from my first MS degree...now what shall I do about the second ?), checking Google News every 5 minutes, Tweeting about Tweeting, playing various instruments, co-authoring a webcomic, offering political strategy to candidates who aren't there to actually hear it, and creating painting / poetry hybrids.
Occupation: Artist
Industry: Art
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  celticmage11
Yahoo:  joseph_camann
Member Since:
6/29/2004
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| I read a lot of books. Some are terrible; most are marginally satisfying but instantly forgettable. By the time you watch the film adaptation, you don't even remember reading the novel. That sort of thing. But a handful are beyond great. There are some that remind a person why they want to create anything in the first place. And it's going to be a fortunate year for me: In the next 6 months, new books by Lorrie Moore, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Anne Lamott will be published. Three out of my six favorite authors. Couldn't ask for much more. Or maybe 50 % more.
One day last week, I was running late. This is not necessarily a good beginning to any story, because it's true almost every single morning. And afternoon. And evening. But on this particular day, I was in Wegmans and I happened to pass by the Books clearance rack. I was clearly supposed to check it out, because even though the 60-second perusal made me even later, I discovered that they had Anne Lamott's Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith. Me and religious books ? Yes, you can imagine how well that'd normally go. I was skeptical. If this had been any other author, I wouldn't have bought the book. But it was her, and it was cheap, and it gave me something to read during my lunch break, so it went into my bright blue basket.
It's been a while since I've been blown away....the last thing I read in that category was a screenplay that Bobbi and J9 wrote called Slide, read aloud during the winter by (what I enjoying referring to as) the G-Infinity Summit. The time before that had to be this.
The book is very accessible; you don't have to be religious in any way to have it mean something. God is Lamott's metier, but it's really more of a series of spiritual journeys written from the perspective of a humanist. Sharing her own stories, her failures, her struggles. And it's awesome.
I quickly made the same two observations I'd previously made about Gilbert's book. Initially, you're taken aback by the incredibly personal things she's telling you, and you keep thinking: "I cannot believe you're sharing that with all these strangers...." But at the same time, it's the most real thing you've ever read. You're not reading a description of joy, of insight, of sorrow, of frustration and imagining how it must be. You're feeling every last drop of it. And that leads to the second observation: I couldn't read much more than a chapter at any given time. It was too much.
I hesitate to make this love letter any more gushing than it already is, but there's an inexplicable feeling when you finish something that matters....
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| "She says she wants to live in a movie
I say I want someone else to stand behind me
And write it all down
'cause I can't be bothered doing it myself.
And I don't want the responsibility of
proving its importance." - "This Is Where It Ends," Barenaked Ladies
"I will write this down
I will write. this. down." - "Miss America," Something Corporate
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Slightly past noon, Saturday. I had my keys. I had the iPod. Astonishingly, I had remembered to turn the iPod *off* the night before, so as to not be subjected to Jimmy Harmen's "Where Are You Now ?" yet again. So I'm walking toward the car, dodging raindrops (which is a pretty substantial two-step for someone of my stature), and as I'm about to embark, I realize that I've done it again: there's no cell phone. So, of course, I scurry in, free it from the cradle, and am back to the driveway. But this is not a slow, birds-in-the-park scurry. This is a DASH. Scurry. This is a get-out-your-ACME-anvils dash-scurry.
But why ? I'd planned to be gone for no longer than an hour. I wasn't expecting any calls and hadn't planned to initiate any. And yet, I *could not leave* without my phone. Ciculatory system ? Yeah, that's moderately important. I guess. If you're into that sort of thing. But a PHONE. How else could I possibly check my email while pretending to drive ? Or update my Facebook status ? Or check to see who sent me a cow in Farmville! today. This is vastly important.
Stop that look. YOU KNOW IT IS.
Now, some explanation here: as you know, I tend to be an early adopter. My brother and I were on BBS systems and mucking around in MSDOS before we were 10. I'm very comfortable with technology. I get excited about it. I write posts about incredibly nerdy things like this. So perhaps a portion of this program is to be expected. And surely some of my history dictates it. As a teenager, AIM was new, and we were on it every minute of the day. And some minutes of the previous day. And then we got sued by some militant folk across the way from the deafness that occurred as a result of our perfunctory, cacophonous tapping.
"But Joseph, that was a lifetime ago," you say. "And you sought help ? Things got better ? You dropped that like it was a Coldplay single ?"
Well...no. Sort of. The IMing faded, but everything else got worse. Much worse. Biblical proportions. Proportions that were so biblical, we needed another sound stage.
If you haven't gotten texts from me while I'm at work, you've gotten emails. Or read status updates. Or all 3. You've seen updates from my cell at 8:20 or 4:45, meaning I've got to be in the car. It's ALL DAY. Because so much happens. I feel an obligation to myself to play the scribe. How am I going to understand it if I don't write it all down and try to figure it out ? But the social networks have cast a net so wide, so obtrusive, so alluring...
Ask me on most days, and I'll tell you connection is both essential and fascinating. From my phone, I send a message of 140 characters or less. The message is transmitted TO SPACE, then to Twitter. Twitter ensures that everyone in my network is updated with this message, then transmits to Facebook, where everyone in THAT network is updated. This takes approximately 2 seconds.
This morning, I linked to a Facebook article that focuses on families, but sums up most of my own mornings. Not to say that I don't eat breakfast, get dressed, etc. Of course I do. But you gotta prioritize. In those 6 hours or so that I was asleep, something might have *happened*. And this is often how I justify it: by saying that I'm keeping myself informed about the world and its workings. Which I am. But is having virtual any knowledge you want readily available dangerous in some way ? Or, to swing back for a moment, is this interconnectivity an addiction that CAN be broken ?
The geek in me--and the part that craves connection--sees this as essential. The artist in me warns. The artist in me doesn't want to stop time....just to lose any mechanical device that might infer what time is IS. The part of me that longs to create wants no technology, nothing to tie me to systems, a very strong sense of place but no sense of half-hour increments. It wants to wander and create its own context.
And so, to perpetual war we tread, as Mariah Carey and Eminem have shown us in many a TMZ article. The battles rage on. The tweeps tweet on, most likely.
And I wonder what C-SPAN's got in store for me now.
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| "… and they sang, and it pierced me. I can’t imagine anything else but music that could have brought about this alchemy. How is it that you have a chord here, and then another chord there, and then your heart breaks open? I don’t know the answer. Maybe it’s that music is about as physical as it gets. Your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound a breath. We’re walking temples of noise. And when you add the human heart to this mix, it somehow lets us meet on a bridge we couldn’t get to any other way."
--Anne Lamott, This American Life, December 2008 | | |
| Last weekend saw the return of the debate club, otherwise known as the G-infinity summit. The wealth of experiences and the intelligence of this collective is such a cool thing. And I just like having my friends in a room, enjoying everyone's company and diagnosing the universe. I'm so glad to be part of it.
A couple days later, on Tuesday, I went with Bobbi, J9, and William to see the Dave Matthews Band in Syracuse. I'd only seen them once before, years and years ago, and was looking quite forward to it. The show and the experience was fantastic. They did "Jimi Thing" from one of my favorite albums ever, as well as All Along the Watchtower / Stairway to Heaven.
This weekend: Wii tournament with Dave, Megumi, and Fei, Rebecca and Bob's send off, Iz's birthday on Sunday....
I have a lot of things to be thankful for.
Edit: Immi got me thinking about this earlier--why do we do what we do ? | | |
| To borrow a Tolkienian phrase, I have "joined the throng !"
A magical box that permits me to control characters simply by moving my arm, in addition to being able to obtain weather reports and check up on news. Salem has never quaked so furiously.
Mario Kart is on its way...then, Guitar Hero. Never was there a man in more need of practice than I. But in time, the darkness shall pass; I *will* learn the soulful sounds of Pat Benatar.
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