Listening: Year Zero, NIN

These days it seems I can't bring myself to sit down and write anything long and worthwhile. Little updates on my weekend or my accessories or some such.... But I think I'll blame the weather. Who's going to think about stuff when the temperatures are pushing out all chance for rational thought?

Which is to say this morning I woke up a little chilly under my thin blanket with two windows open and two fans blowing. And that was good thing.


I've been pondering the wonder of tools. I think that between tools and art (including the leading edge of any scientific study - the very point where we're just finding out stuff before we've figured out what's the point of knowing said stuff) there is the essence of what humanity is, what it can do, the proof of it's different-ness from what is natural. Over the ages we've thought of human beings as different from nature (with the concession that once upon a time our antecedents were part of it) because of all that we've done to create and manipulate our environments. So much so that when we go out camping or something we talk about it as "getting back to nature." Clearly we left the natural behind in some kind of social construct that became our civilization. Now, that's just how we think about. I'm not disputing the natural occurrence of humans; I'm talking about that...thing...that happened that made us think what we do is different from all that is "naturally occurring" in the world.

If I were more skeptical of religion I would say that's where the waters got muddied because if everyone around you thinks you and everyone is in God's image and that's what everyone has thought for as long as one can measure thought then there's no other way to isolate the steps toward civilization and humanity. And, in any case, this gets away from what I was trying to dig at: what else do humans do besides learn their world and find methods/tools to manipulate it? Is there an alternative to making tools? Can we stop making art? Can we figure out where the curiosity about our world comes from?

As a potential alternative I was thinking that in the performing arts as well as in athletics practitioners create something that is only real in the moment. We can measure it, take pictures of it, keep records, but it's just a copy of the ideal, the truth. We can have recordings of fantastic singers but nothing compares to being in the same room while a genius opera singer holds forth. We can read of an athlete's excellent performance and unbroken records but that's just not the same thing as the power that goes into setting that record. Both athletes and performers talk about "being in the zone" which is more or less when one equals one's action. When there is no thought, no direction, no structure holding the person to a certain set of actions but that person performs flawlessly, and often without a sense of self.

All of this was with some thought to speculative fiction. Not because I want to write a story for it - not when I don't even know where I'm going with the idea - but just because I like to disappear into my head every now and then and ask myself a lot of "what if" questions. It's kind of a large but simple question: What else can we do?

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Pondering a little less heavily...mainly because I don't think there's much in the way of a useful conclusion...on the matter of the female form and the very, very fine line between what is in praise(?) of the beauty therein and what is the fascination with sexual potential. Never mind how men have portrayed women to deliberately blur the line - think Boticelli's Venus, or well most Venus's when they're nearly entirely undressed but regularly considered fine art of great importance. Of course, it has to be allowed that sexual attraction clouds everything so what can happen when a hopelessly muddy subject like natural beauty - the kind that artists always want to paint, photograph, sculpt and/or write odes to - meets such confusion?

I know that the pull to dress all feminine-like for me leads me to wear things that reveal my female shape. If I stop to think about it I get very uncomfortable. Besides the effort it takes to maintain the current ideals of attractive and how I don't like wearing revealing clothing on a daily basis, it's hard to let go of the fact that trying to achieve some kind prettiness for me means showing off my sexual maturity. But then vice versa... I was thinking about this regarding women who are always in the lime light, whether actors or singers or what have you. They're expected to take care of their looks and often enough part of their job is keeping attention on them (as it is for any celebrity). So their publicity photos have to show off some female-ness. I don't truly mean femininity - I mean evidence of two X chromosomes. What that means to the individual woman is up to her interpretation with whatever help(?) the machinery her celebrity created can supply. There aren't many women who would want to act against their beauty (there are a few but I can't think of many who've made the deliberate effort) and, again, that seems to go hand in hand with sexual attraction. Where is the line between the flattery of being found pretty and being wanted sexually?

It's hard to think about this without adding some measure of "this is good, that's not good." I'm trying to keep my head clear of such thoughts but I guess in the end I'm digging for that line. When is it ok to put a woman on a pedestal for her beauty and when is it bad to exploit a woman for her sexual attractiveness? It's a personal aesthetic, I suppose, as with anything that starts relating to the elusive truths of beauty and art. I was speaking recently with a burlesque dancer trying to find the difference between dancing burlesque and a modern strip tease. Well, like the music and like the moves... it's pretty much the aesthetic. The feminine mystique and how much of it is preserved and how much of it ends up ignored.

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I don't know I can jump into this subject when I don't have much time and not make a hash of it, but I'll give it a go:

Today is my niece's first day of kindergarten. She didn't go to pre-school or even day care and I was worried about her. I know she's been eager to go, but I was nervous for her, with the idea of suddenly being surrounded by strangers, moreover that such strangers won't have the reserve adults have.... But I'm also kind of sad for her. It's the kind of sad that only comes from thinking about things too much. Both of my parents were teachers and education is kind of the family trade. But I'm still thinking about this as the end to the pipsqueak getting to think her own thoughts and develop her own responses to the world around her. That's not really true of course, her family has been around trying to teach other things that will be important to know (don't wander too far away, say "thank you" for gifts, don't shout in people's ears). But learning the three R's means getting inculcated into a way of thinking that can end up almost impossible to shake. So much so it can almost be impossible to think why a person would want to do such a thing.

So today A. is starting her lessons on what to think and how to think it. That there is the end of innocence. And it makes me a little sad.


Ok, I don't have time for more now. I think there was more... eh, I could go on about any of the above for ages.