Who Are You?

There’s a thought experiment that goes something like this;

Kassandra and Susannah are involved in a medical experiment in which the contents of their respective brains will be transferred to the other persons body. Kassandra’s thoughts, memories, characteristics, everything, will be transferred into Susannah’s brain (which has been wiped of Susannah’s memories/dispositions/etc) and vice versa. The experimenter then tells Kassandra that after the procedure one person will be given 1000000 dollars and one will be tortured to make sure the pain/pleasure centers of the brain still work. Kassandra gets to choose who gets the money and who gets tortured. Assuming Kassandra doesn’t want to be tortured and likes money,

who should Kassandra choose to get tortured?*

 

 

 

 

 

*This thought experiment is pretty well known, but the details for the one I described are from a book titled, Is Your Neighbor a Zombie? Compelling Philosophical Puzzles That Challenge Your Beliefs by Jeremy Stangroom.

 

Curating the Irrelevant: The End of Another Year

I’m nothing if not a curator. Most of the time I’m curating ideas, collecting thoughts from minds much greater than mine and logic much stronger than my own. I accumulate all this knowledge and information into this person I am.

Then, occasionally, I do this sort of dumb stuff. I’d like to pretend I only do these things once a year, but that’s probably not true. Anyway, without any further qualifying and apologizing for my actions. (Not because I worry what the reader will think but because I shake my head when I see this sort of thing, but I’m nothing if not hypocritical. Multitudes or some much nonsense.)

I’d like to take this time to collect all the music I’ve listened to this year. I enjoy the process even if I can’t fully explain why. Maybe I simply like to put all my experiences on display, to marginally impress the impressible with my vast consumption of obscure or irrelevant music. But I tell myself I do it to remind myself of what I may have forgotten. The albums I loved and left behind, or the albums I haven’t given a real chance to, yet.

Whatever the actual reason, here is the list of all the albums I listened to for the first time this year* (along with a few I revisited after years of neglect). At the end of the long list, I’ll bunch it into a few categories that make the list a little easier to digest, assuming anyone wants to digest it.

 

1. Brand New – The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me
2. Foxing – Dealer
3. Hop Along – Get Disowned
4. Jets to Brazil – Four Cornered Night
5. Prawn – Kingfisher
6. Barbecue Bob – Reborn and Remastered
7. Buddy Rich – Birdland
8. Circa Survive – Juturna
9. Circa Survive – On Letting Go
10. Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) – Split
11. Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) – Middle Discography
12. Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) – Home After Three Months Away
13. Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) – On Time Spent Waiting or Placing the Weight of the World on the Shoulders of Those You Love the Most
14. Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) – Split
15. Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) – What it Takes to Move Forward
16. Glacier Eater – Glacier Eater
17. Joanna Newsom – Divers
18. Laura Stevenson – Cocksure
19. Saosin – Translating the Name EP
20. Eagles of Death Metal – Zipper Down
21. Annabel – Having it All
22. Buddy Holly – Collected
23. The Dead Weather – Dodge and Burn
24. Desaparecidos – Payloa
25. Diamond Youth – Nothing Matters
26. Garfunkel and Oates – Secretions
27. The Good Life – Everybody’s Coming Down
28. La Luz – It’s Alive
29. Mewithoutyou – Pale Horses
30. Muse – Drones
31. The Mynabirds – Lovers Know
32. Nada Surf – Live at the Neptune Theatre
33. Refused – Freedom
34. Sorority Noise – Joy, Departed
35. Sundials – Always Whatever
36. Tiny Moving Parts – Pleasant Living
37. toe. – The Future is Now EP
38. toe. – Hear You
39. What’s Eating Gilbert – That New Sound You’re Looking For
40. The World is a Beautiful Place and I am no Longer Afraid to Die – Harmlessness
41. Twinsmith – Alligator Years
42. The Velvet Teen – All is Illusory
43. Sorority Noise – Forgettable
44. Jessica Hernandez and the Deltas – Secret Evil
45. Alabama Shakes – Sound and Color
46. And So I Watch You From Afar – Heirs
47. Angel Olsen – Burn Your Fire for no Witness
48. Chon – Grow
49. The City on Film – La Vella
50. Death Cab for Cutie – Kintsugi
51. Doomtree – All Hands
52. Hop Along – Painted Shut
53. Icky Blossoms – Mask
54. Laura Marling – Short Movie
55. Marriages – Salome
56. Murder By Death – Big Dark Love
57. Nai Harvest – Hairball
58. Rocky Votolato – Hospital Handshakes
59. San Fermin – Jackrabbit
60. Screaming Females – Rose Mountain
61. Screaming Females – Ugly
62. Don’t Stop or We’ll Die – Gorgeous

 

Sixty-two albums in one year. That’s not too bad considering my tastes are more discriminating than they were when I was 15. I spend a lot less time with music than I used to as well. When I was a kid I was driving around all the time, but now I drive significantly less and read significantly more, and listen to more podcasts. Podcasts didn’t exist when I was a kid. Anyway, I think I’ll break the music into lists tomorrow or friday.

In unrelated news, my car is broken. Damn.

Also, like last year, a lot of women on this list. It shouldn’t matter, but it makes me happy to see. When I was a teenager in the music scene there was a lack of women playing music. I thought it was strange since there were plenty of girls in at the shows, just very few with an instrument. Again, it’s each individuals decision and I shouldn’t care but it’s cool when more people get into the stuff you’re into. I know some elitists don’t agree with that sentiment (which is why I don’t count myself among them even though I probably have elistist tendencies), but I wish there were more people who supported the dumb shit I like. I have little stake in it, besides the continuation of the band when it’s a sustainable income for the artists, but I dig it when the artists I like can make some damn money. So the more people involved with rock and roll and indie rock, the better. Women are a huge population that has been neglected for a long time, even in the liberal world of indie rock.

I’m going to end it here. I’ll follow this up with a few shorter lists of my favorites, links to songs, and short blurbs about the albums that no one will care about. The bold and italicized albums are ones that I will probably add to some list in case you want a jump on me.

Please share your favorite music of the year in the comments below.

Here’s a hint of my favorite of the year:

 

* I am using iTunes “dated added” tab to figure out which albums I first heard this year. Sometimes I move music to new folders and that messes the date up. I tried to account for that but I may have accidentally added albums that I heard last year. Apologies.

Who Isn’t Busy?

I’ve been trying to write a post all weekend but I’ve been too busy. That sentence isn’t exactly accurate. I wasn’t too buy, I simply didn’t have the energy to follow through on any idea. I did a few things over the weekend, but nothing so time consuming I had absolutely no chance to sit down and write for a while. Or break it into segments and write 20 minutes here and 30 minutes there. There is always enough time, we just don’t typically use it all.

Over the weekend I stumbled upon this article. The One Word That Can Kill a Friendship. Headlines like that annoy me, but it worked, and I was curious enough to click. Turns out the word is “busy.” The author breaks it down into three reasons why it’s a bad word.

1. Everyone is Busy.
   Her claim here is that everyone uses the word busy so often, under so many different circumstances, that the word doesn’t mean much of anything anymore. One can be busy working, but can also be busy hanging out with friends or busy going out to dinner. One can even be busy relaxing. Essentially, it doesn’t convey any actual information.
2. It’s Open to (Negative) Interpretation
   She follows with an issue that’s related to the first. The word is so vague that there’s room for the person you’re talking to to fill in the blanks. “I’m busy” can just be an excuse if it becomes a habit. Your friend will eventually start wondering how you are so busy and if the real reason is you just don’t like him anymore.
3. It’s a “Not Right Now.”
   Don’t like the title, but the point is that saying you’re busy doesn’t communicate much of anything and can make it seem as though the other person simply isn’t important to you. Without a legitimate reason, being busy sounds a lot like not caring and rejection.

All three reasons above are more-or-less the same thing. Busy is a vague word so we fill in the blanks.

I think my point would be that if it becomes a trend then it gets annoying. I bet most of us have been in a situation in which we had a friend repeatedly cancel or reject plans to the point where we question if this person likes us at all. Sometimes we might even be the person doing the cancelling. Because it’s true, sometimes we get too busy. We have a thesis to write and though we definitely don’t spend every moment of every day working on it, knowing that it’s there does make us feel too busy to go out. More accurately, sometimes we get overwhelmed and lose our energy. And sometimes the idea of going out isn’t appealing and there isn’t much of a reason. And so we come up with a poor excuse, maybe say we’re busy and leave it at that. When that happens occasionally, it’s not a big deal at all. But when you talk to someone and they just hammer home how busy they are every single time you talk, then it becomes an issue. it becomes an issue because it feels dishonest. Sure, you have to write a thesis, but you can’t take an hour break at any point this week? You are seriously so busy you can’t eat lunch or drink a cup of coffee?

And just another note: There is a difference between being busy and filling your day with bullshit and saying you’re busy. If you worked a 12 hour shift, you were pretty busy. If you went grocery shopping, hit the mall, stopped off for some coffee, read a magazine, then went to the gym, you may have filled out your day pretty well, but that, intuitively, doesn’t look busy, to me.

 

 

 

 

*Psychology Today is a strange website. I’m undecided. Half the time it looks and reads a lot like Cosmo, but there are PhDs writing for it and a lot of insight at the same time. Headlines like the one I linked to are a bit of a joke. It’s clearly click bait and I find that annoying but the content isn’t bad even if there isn’t much material to support any of the claims she makes. This particular idea is more general and intuitive than psychological in any rigorous sense, but I guess that doesn’t make it any less plausible.

Meaning

I still talk about moments but they don’t mean more than what I’ve forgotten. Sadly, what I’ve forgotten is the majority. What seems to be insignificant, simply because it’s typical. But that’s what life is built on. My friendships and the love I have for the people around me stems from the nothingness we mutually filled our lives with. The conversations and dinners I don’t remember. The coffee and arguments. The sing-alongs. The late nights sitting in circles on floors. The drives to and from each others houses. The local shows with bands we never heard of and never heard again. All the band practices in 100 degree garages. The sounds and silences. Every day life.
But I remember the road trips. Most of the beaches and hotels. New Year’s Eve. Fourth of July. The shitty parties. The midnight swims in community pools. The record release shows. Recording in bathrooms. Exploring the state. I’ll talk about all these moments and forget the moments that made them mean everything they do. The reason we laughed so hard isn’t unknown. These events didn’t happen in isolation. The fun of our experiences came from hours and hours of nothing special. Sitting in buffets all day talking about (now obviously meaningless and forgotten) life events, or making as many stupid jokes as we could. I remember a vanishingly small amount of what we’ve said to each other over the years and that’s like a little tragedy. Why I love you as much as I do today is because of all those things I can’t remember. I have highlights but that’s not the good stuff. It’s not the meaning. The weight. Remove the road trips and you’re still my best friend, but remove the innocuous and I’d barely know you.
I still tell stories, but I think we’re doing it wrong.

Best Friend

My best friend asked me to be his best man… surprise? It should have been expected, but I have a hard time allowing myself to expect anything. Rather I prepare for everything and expect nothing. One of the responsibilities I have as best man is throwing the bachelor party. Unfortunately, I am one of the least experienced partiers in the western world. I don’t drink alcohol. I’ve never tried any recreational drugs. (Translate to: I’m incredibly boring.) I don’t have a problem with being surrounded by flowing drinks, but organizing something I’ve never been a part of is a daunting task. Oh, well. That’s not the part I’m worried about.

The “serious” issue. The speech. Besides public speaking issues (oh, boy), I have to write the damn thing. Now, the wedding doesn’t have a date, so, essentially, my time table is infinite right now. That’s somewhat relieving, but not much.

Looking online at the structure of these speeches, they tend to follow a simple format. Intro with who you are. Relate a humorous story of your meeting and budding friendship. Reveal a few funny and slightly embarrassing secrets, but nothing serious. (Stay away from serious previous relationships, but his perceived inadequacies are fair play. I’ll probably stay away from this.) The stories can be a little risque but not crude (aka make them boring and harmless). Follow with a serious moment of how close you are and the kind of person he is. Sprinkle light humor in the compliments. (No opportunity can escape! Don’t be vulnerable up there!) End with something “serious” about how good of a person he is. Preferably something cliche that can be used at any other wedding with only needing to change the name of the groom. Oh, and reference how lucky he is to have found his now wife somewhere in there.

All of that is a problem for people with a dry and dark sense of humor. As you could tell from my analysis of the structure, I’m a cynical prick. But I’m also hopelessly sentimental. My instinct would be to make fun of weddings and best man speeches, call myself an idiot, tell my friends I love them, hug them and cry. Obviously, I’m going to have to flesh that out a bit.

Life Events

This is a pretty huge life step, isn’t it? When you run through the classic structure of a human life, marriage is one of those major stops. Even if every other aspect of you life isn’t so typical, marriage is one that seems to pop up in most.

It is. I don’t know. I did always want this. I always thought about falling in love and getting married. There isn’t much else I’m sure of. My job, money, kids, I don’t know. I may not get many of those other things. I probably won’t go back to school, so I’ll never have a graduation. I may never have a proper career. Hopefully I’ll buy a house some day, but that’s not entirely clear at the moment. So this one is pretty massive. I want to savor every moment of it. Really appreciate what I have. I don’t care about traditions, but I’m really excited about all of this.

I suppose that’s how we should treat all of them. We never know how many other milestones we’ll hit, or get a chance to hit.

Most days have miniature equivalents. There is something special about things like this, though. Engagements. Marriage. Children. A house. They are synonymous with larger goals. Contentedness. Happiness. Security. The excitement in the typical seem to fall away as we get older and more cynical.

A dinner with friends is nice, but doesn’t offer that sense of continued safety.

It doesn’t feel like you’re moving forward. Becoming an adult or whatever you want to call it. Maybe not feeling as scared as we were that we’d end up homeless and alone. Marriage is putting that fear to bed for good… hopefully. One less thing to be uncertain about.

Yeah. We get tired of growing and changing. I can barely imagine being a teenager again and everything that comes with it is charged with manic energy. It’s exciting but it’s a recipe for mental illness. It’s so unstable. I imagine my thirties and it’s plodding along, somewhere in the middle of the road. Then we get a random kick like you are now.

Then why don’t you want to get married?

We don’t feel the need. I don’t want to go on about my views of marriage when you are about to get engaged.

She hasn’t said yes, yet.

But she will. And it’s awesome.

I get the difference between your opinions and mine. Your decisions won’t diminish how I feel about mine.

And how I feel about yours, as well. I couldn’t be happier for you.

Alright, so there are no worries about that. Why don’t you want to get married?

I agree with you about everything. Those steps feel like growing up, but I don’t think they are necessary. I think they are more representative, metaphorical. They are easier to track. Graduation feels important but it was the hours upon hours of work that led to it that holds the real meaning. Marriage is the same way. It’s a demarcation, but the work that goes into the relationship every day is what makes it worthwhile. What gives it meaning, for me. The marriage is yelling to everyone else and I’m pretty quiet. You will love your soon to be fiance whether she has a ring or not. Symbols serve a purpose, though. It represents commitment to some people.

So you can get out if you want.

It’s not an exit strategy thing. But if I did want to get out, I wouldn’t want to the difficulty of going through the steps of a divorce to be the reason I stay. I never get why people saw that part as romantic.

Me neither.

Marriage is saying, “This is how I will feel for the rest of my, or your, life.” I can’t say that about anything with any certainty, so I won’t pretend.

But I think I will feel this way about her for the rest of my life.

I believe you. Which is why I’m so excited about your marriage. I can assure you I haven’t been this happy when other people told me about their proposals.

Why do you believe me when you don’t believe in that certainty in yourself?

I believe what you say you feel. I can’t say it myself, so I can’t believe it. But I trust you. You’re my best friend for a reason.

Because I remind you so much of yourself.

Pretty much. But with more hope.

You pretend to be cynical, but you’re all love inside.

I hide my fears in feigned realism.

And sarcasm. You’d never get married?

I don’t feel the need. But maybe someday a woman I love and I will want to throw a big party.

 

 

Friendship

Every year around this time I get a spider friend.
They, naturally, terrify me. Much like Alvy in Annie Hall, I need an unreasonably huge weapon to battle a spider in most cases.
This little gal/fella is a daddy longleg looking spider. The least threatening spider in existence. We have an unspoken understanding that is actually frequently spoken on my end. I realize there is no understanding occurring but I figure it doesn’t hurt to talk the little spider’s (leg) ear (like structures) off.
I can appreciate what spiders do, but mostly I’m too concerned for my safety to worry about the beautiful webs and life strategies of these incredibly diverse creatures.
At this particular moment, my spider friend is enjoying a meal, or rather, preparing one. Its previous exoskeleton has been shed and is hanging off to the side on its web as it wraps its prey in an almost magical threadlike substance. Imagine having an equivalently useful body expulsion. Good thing we don’t or my relative safety of my second floor apartment would be greatly diminished with burglars climbing the sides of the building.
If this little spider had theory of mind, it might thank me and understand our relationship. I allow it to exist in the intersection of my ceiling and wall, to eat the tiny bugs flying around, bothering me while I read or eat or drink coffee or dance. It gets my space (that was formally theirs, I admit) and the benefit of an insect magnet known as a light bulb. I get some of the tiny annoying things flying into my face taken care of.
We are essentially best friends, though this little spider has no idea.

 

Darling, I’ve been killing spiders since I was 30, okay?