The World According to Water

I've recently gotten back from a wonderful trip to Finland and Russia, a new semester has started in the middle of a workers' strike at the U which has lead to all sorts of strife as well as political enthusiasm, I'm delving into some interesting readings about early media studies . . . all this could provide plenty of material for my first post in over a month.

Instead, I'll start with a much more modest piece of reportage: the writing on the bathroom wall (water pipe, actually) at Cahoots:

Humans were invented by water as a means to transport itself from place to place.

Reading this bathroom poet's inversion of human and inanimate nature seemed quite inspiring to me. Yet as I followed the arrow toward a penciled in reply to this statement, a respondent's comment diffused some of my awe:

Yeah, because clouds do this so poorly . . .

More on short stories

I still haven't found any short stories that have really moved me, tho mostly I've been looking in the same places, reading more from the America's Best New Voices. I need to switch it up. But now what I've noticed is lots of detached description that seems intended to be slightly satiric. Little windows into rural life, the lives or retired suburbanites or other semi-exoticized lives that I sense are written in tones intended to be respectful but also attempting to highlight common absurdities of these places. Lots of humor that's not really funny, though the kind of lines I could imagine getting a somewhat forced laugh during a writing workshop.

Though just about every story I've read has been first-person, I've come across very few instances of narrating thoughts or feelings rather than events. One major exception was 'Winter Never Quites' by T. Geronima Johnson, which I enjoyed most out of what I've read from this collection or the Granta stories so far.

Update on Kinsella Interview

Though I had some technical glitches, my interview with Tim Kinsella with an introduction and a few edits has now appeared on the TC Daily Planet. I'm very glad I was able to get this out before his show tonight!

Tim Kinsella Interview

Well, I'm in a little bit of a pinch here. A few days ago, I had the opportunity to interview Tim Kinsella before his upcoming show with Make Believe here this Saturday. I thought I'd be able to post the interview on the TC Daily Planet since I'm a registered user and I thought they offer open uploading. But apparently that's not how the Daily Planet works, or at least I haven't been able to figure out how to get my interview uploaded. So while I try to find a way to publish it, I thought I might as well at least post the interview here. I sure enjoyed this conversation. . .

Tony: First, I just heard that you were leaving Make Believe. Do you know if the band is going to continue to record and perform without you?

Tim: That’s the plan, yeah.

Tony: Do you know if they will have vocals at all?

Tim: I don’t know if they know what they know exactly what they are going to do yet. I mean they’re at practice right now, and I’m at home, so . . . .I don’t know what the plan is. Now is a good time for me to quite because we have the new record mostly written, too much to throw away. But the songs still aren’t developed enough, so [Make Believe] can figure out a way, if they want them to be instrumental or bring in someone new or something.

Tony: And will your vocals appear on the new album?

Tim: No, no. That’s what I’m saying that they have time to re-write, minus that aspect.

Tony: Are you going to be coming to the show in Minneapolis?

Tim: Yeah, I’m going to play these last two shows.

Tony: You just finished producing a film?

Tim: Yeah, I wrote it and directed it, and my wife and I produced it. She edited it. Our friend Chris Strong shot it. W have a premier August 15^th at this theater here [Chicago’s Chopin Theatre]. We’ve just been working on it all the time this last year. We shot it last August. So we’re very close now. We’re about 98% there now.

Tony: This is your first filmmaking experience?

Tim: Yeah, I’ve made a couple shorts before. And my wife works as an editor and has made a few documentaries and I’ve helped her with stuff. But this is the first feature.

Tony: Have you felt there is any similarity between filmmaking and musicmaking?

Tim: Oh, very much, yeah. I mean, the few people who have seen it are kinda shocked how much it has reminded them of a Joan of Arc record. I took that as a good sign. I’m not trying to make Joan of Arc records in a certain way, and I’m not trying to make this film in a certain way. I took it as a sign, I must have been able to express something true to myself clearly, if that same quality comes across.

Tony: Are there any particular filmmakers who have been influential to you in terms of filmmaking or general perception?

Tim: Yes, sure. I had a film minor in college. Not with Make Believe, but with other records I’ve been involved with in the last few years, I’ve felt like a lot of film theory was influencing the dynamics and pacing of how records were coming together, sorta the whole approach, having a lot of collaborators. . . . That’s been true a couple times in records.

I’ve really enjoyed that I’ve been totally immersed in this film for the last year except for when we go on tour. Other than that it’s all day, every day. It’s been a few years since making a record has felt like that for me. So it’s very exciting for me.

Tony: You are still planning on making music with Joan of Arc? According to a press release Joan of Arc has two albums in the works, is that correct?

Tim: Once, twice a week, I’ll be playing and something will sound good to me, and I’ll go in my little room and hit record. Then I forget about it, and I just have this pile of songs sitting around without any sort of ambition for when the record will get made. It’s just sort of a natural thing. This is how Joan of Arc records have come together for a while, I just get to point where I’m like – wow, there’s 60 songs here, let’s check them out. Without keeping count or anything, I just move some into a folder, some good, some throw away. And then there’s 25 songs that sound okay to me, and within that folder, it’s just weeding out.

Tony: Do you conceive of songs first more abstractly or mentally then move to a point where you can make it into something that’s made out of actual sound?

Tim: I think it’s more of a matter of trying to stay out of my own way. And trying to dig deep without any sort of editing or self-censorship, without – how should I say this? - any sort of logic. I don’t want my rational mind involved in it. My rational mind has enough preoccuptions, with going to work, and trying to make rent, and remembering to pay car insurance bills and stuff like that. Ideally music will be this liberating force. I think the greatest potential for those moments is actually in performing when you can sorta tap into a shared mind, with the performers and the audience.

Tony: I know that Make Believe played for a while on an all Christian venue tour. I was wondering whose idea was that, what were the motivations behind that, how did you feel about it?

Tim: You know how Christian culture sorta appropriates things that they think might corrupt the youth, then defangs it , and makes a Christian version. We were vaguely aware of there being a Christian indie rock scene but didn’t really have any interaction with it. Then this band, Me Without You, asked us to go on tour with them. At first we were like - no way, we’re not going do some Christian tour. But then we talked about it for a couple days and we realized it would be an incredible opportunity to have access. . . I mean that’s sorta like the whole idea of punk rock, to be able to go into different contexts and drop some kind of bomb. In general at Make Believe shows, people show up knowing what they’re getting into and just having their expectations satisfied. We decided that we could do the tour and go out there sort of being confrontation towards people’s assumptions.

Tony: Yeah, I really wish I had been able to attend one of those shows, not impurify the rest of the audience. But it definitely reminded me, hearing about that, of the Sex Pistol’s tour of the South.

Tim: Yeah

Tony: That sort of clash being the performer and the audience.

Tim: Yeah. There was definitely a small group of people there for us every night who seemed more excited than more because of the strange context and the confrontational aspects of it. I should say Me Without You are some of the coolest guys ever, and they’re our friends now. There were certain days we hung out. I think they are frustrated with Christian culture and how it operates. They were frustrated enough with Christian culture to ask us to do the tour.

Tony: Right now, do you think the indie rock scene is part of countercultural movement? Do you think rock music is part of any sort of subversion or break with more commercial culture?

Tim: I think there will always be a countercultural scene. But I don’t think it’s very related to “indie rock” as a style. I think indie rock as an infrastructure or like a business model, might the way that bands like that exist. Like I said before, music is just a means of communication and it could be anything. There’s definitely a lot of bands that I’m very excited about, that seem very vital and engaged in the present, finding new connection between neurons. But I don’t think of indie rock is a social force, I think it’s more lifestyle music.

Tony: You’ve been involved in indie rock infrastructure for a long time. Have you felt many changes in the indie rock infrustructure since the early 90’s?

Tim: Many. There were incredible changes since the early nineties. There’s sorta like two camps. There’s the indie rock bands who are there because the ideas they are trying to express aren’t represented anywhere within the dominant culture and this is an infrastructure that will allow these more subversive ideas to be shared. And then there’s sort of the indie rock camp that are just like the farm league to the major labels. I mean potentially millions of teenagers could love it, and it would satisfy the same sort of nostalgia, or whatever popular music satisfies in someone. They could potentially satisfy the same requirement in anyone who hears it; it’s just people haven’t heard it yet. Like a band like Postal Service, I’ve never heard them, but I have a sense that they are not very subversive. That’s indie rock, right?

Tony: Yeah, I certainly think that’s what would go under what a lot of people would conceive of indie rock or what comes to mind first often with that phrase.

Tim: Yeah, I don’t feel a connection to that.

Tony: Do you read reviews or other sorts of music journalism about your own stuff or other stuff you listen to?

Tim: Yes. When Joan of Arc first started, in the early days of Internet music journalism, I was really totally stunned by the response. The totally vitriolic response. It had never really even occurred to me to read the reviews, it wasn’t something I thought about. But then I remember getting a press kit from Jade Tree (a Joan of Arc label), opening it, and just reading something on the front page about what a horrible person I was, all this stuff. I read the whole packet. It was like all this hateful stuff that seemed to have little to do with the music. I was really shocked. So I had to purposefully not read stuff for a while. But I occasionally read stuff now. I think I’m over letting it affect me. The me that I’m most in the habit of being every day feels very little connection to guy that I read about in most of the reviews. So it doesn’t really phase me.

Tony : I don’t know if you’ve thought much about this or if you really want to answer this. But I’m wondering if you’ve thought about what about some of your work did produce such a vitriolic response in certain parts of the indie rock community?

Tim: Well. When Joan of Arc started, there was a real self-consciousness about it, a self-conscious confrontational aspect. We didn’t we know what we really wanted to sound like. But we were away there were these sort of micro-scenes that I felt a part of, and detached, from all over Chicago. There were all these no-wave bands, free jazz bands, and all these emo bands, all these hardcore bands. I was really engaged in all of them, and I could see these communities that were specific to certain genre expectations. I think really our only goal as a band when we set out was to be sure we couldn’t really be embraced to any one of these little micro-scenes that we all sorta felt a connection to. Like, I feel a real connect to no-wave bands, but I don’t want to just be ghettoized to only being part of this or that. So I think we sorta frustrated people in that way, I guess. I don’t know.

In defense of the journalists, I was probable a bit cocky at 23. I’m not super hung up on it or regret it or anything. I don’t remember specific stories of - Oh god, was I an idiot! But I imagine that if I now met myself as a 23 year old, I would maybe be annoyed by that guy. I thought I had things figured out a lot more than I think I do now.

Tony: Do you feel your disposition as performer has changed that much, or is this more of outside of the stage that you’re talking about these changes happening?

Tim: I don’t know. I try not to think of my disposition as a performer. There was maybe more of a self-conscious confrontational aspect back then than there is now. And I think that confrontational aspect faded, then was rekindled at the first immediate thrust of Make Believe. At that point, this was before the 2004 election and before even John Kerry represented some sort of alternate voice. I was just really overwhelmed by this fascistic, single monotone voice of power everywhere. There was no voice of dissent anywhere in popular culture. I was very aware of wanting to be confrontational and trying to shake people out of some comfort zone. Whereas, now I don’t feel that being confrontational in public toward an ambiguous mass of people is the most effective means of protest for me these days.

Tony: I saw some of those early Make Believe shows, and I thought that sense of confrontation was what made it so memorable

Tim: Thanks. It’s also something you’re bound to get tired of. And it’s not something I would want to fake. I’m kinda tired of it. I like the idea of being in a band and playing a lot. But it would need to be a band with wider parameters of what it could be. I couldn’t do it as just a singer, I’d need to play guitar too. (Unlike many of his other bands, in Make Believe shows, Kinsella would sing without playing an instrument).

Tony: One last question. You’ve been such a prolific songwriter for so long now. I’m wondering if you ever go through any sort of songwriter’s block, or if you go through any periods where you just don’t have anything you can materialize into sound? Or does it just keep on coming?

Tim: I don’t know. Like I said about how Joan of Arc records come together, I don’t really put any effort in to it. Not to say it’s an effortless thing that just comes to me, I just mean I don’t worry about it.

Tony: So you don’t really set aside certain times of the day and say, this is my song writing time - or anything like that?

Tim: I used to be far more disciplined in that way. I definitely feel that to-whom-much- is-given, much-is-expected kind of responsibility. I feel like I am really luck. I mean, I work, I’m a bartender. I’m not really getting away of anything. But on a global scale, in a global context, I feel so lucky. I’ve been able to travel and do what I love. But I definitely feel a responsibility to work harder at it. But I don’t care if I’m not ever able to write another song. I don’t care, it doesn’t really matter. I guess that’s why I don’t get writers’ bloc, because I don’t care if I do.

Short Stories

I have had ambitious goals for summer reading, thinking I would make a whole syllabus for myself. But I’ve been jumping around different projects and ideas too much to really attain this goal.

Besides for finishing Marylin Robinson’s Housekeeping, the only fiction I’ve been reading has been short stories. There’s a lot I like about this form, particularly the time it takes to complete a work. Whereas novels can do a lot with change over time and different sorts of development, short stories can provide very interesting perspectives on particular moments and states. Yet it’s been hard for me to find the kind of short stories I most enjoy. Basically, I’m looking for short stories offer some sort of radical perspective or perspectives on some aspect of life. My favorite examples are just about anything David Foster Wallace has written. He’s able to do all sorts of things to cut into a scene from different angles to make it fresh and provocative. Yet, I also like more traditional narratives that usually rely on the thinking of thoughtful and original character’s to complexify and turn over their realities into something interesting. A good example of this that I picked up recently was the neurotic minds in Richard Ford’s Women With Men, a collection of three long short stories (an awkward phrase, I know, but I think that’s the language of the trade these days).

But I’ve been trying to get away from the old standbys and seek out some new writers. Since I don’t have many fiction-reading friends now (except you, Dave, who I should turn to), I’ve just been searching for new writers that literary magazines or other authors have named as good ones. I checked out a couple of short story collections based on Granta’s list of Best of Young American Novelists. I read a smattering of stories from writers on this list, and so far didn’t find anything close to what I was looking for.

Another tactic I’ve tried is reading stories from the collection Best New American Voices 2007 guest edited by Sue Miller. This is an anthology that every year selects stories solicited only from writing programs, from summer programs to M.F.A. programs to more community-based classes like Boston’s Grub Street or The Loft in Minneapolis. This year, and perhaps every year for all I know, both the series editors forward and the guest editors introduction begins with a defense of M.F.A. writing programs. One interesting observation made in both pieces is how writing workshops and small literary journals (often associated with academic institutions) have come to exert a much larger influences on the short story scene as general interest magazines publishing fiction have declined. Sue Miller makes the argument that with the new diversity found among students in these programs, American short stories have become more “multifarious, stranger, richer . . . less responsive to any particularly aesthetic.”

I’m not so sure. I think many of these stories do have a “workshoppy” quality, though I don’t know if this says as much about the students in writers workshops or the editorial regimes. More than anything, in these sorts of collections, I feel like I read a lot of good writing without insight. Certainly, I recognize that kind of insight I’m looking for only represents one way of making a good story (I also really like many stories without this quality), I just don’t know why this kind of writing is so hard to find. It seems to me that there’s a real fascination with what I might call, very cautiously, simple-minded characters in short stories. These characters might be portrayed as having complex lives, ambivalent feelings, etc. Some represent sophistication in an urbane sort of way. But rarely do writers tap into the struggling minds of the characters to flesh out original or jolting ways of perceiving the world.

If anyone has some suggestions for contemporary books that might fit what I’m looking for, drop me some recommendations.

Another Threat to Net Neutrality: Copyright Cops

It sounds like AT&T is cooking up a new plan to get Internet users, media activist and media scholars all hot and bothered. It’s a new front against Net Neutrality both on an ideological and technical level. The plan is that AT&T will somehow create a technology to monitor their mammoth network, searching out copyrighted material uploaded to the Internet. According to a good article by Geoff Duncan at Digital Trends, this is the first time a large Internet provider has assumed the role of “copyright cop.” Because such a move will mean AT&T will creep into and discriminate against the content of Internet users’ traffic, this plan raises all sorts of ethical concerns as well as questions about what the unintended technological effects could be (Duncan suggests a new round of technology wars between providers and uploaders and problems uploading copyrighted material even when its legal) . Net Neutrality, Digital IP Rights, Surveillance . . . if AT&T continues to pursue this plan I suspect all these hot themes might help awaken some media theorists from their activist slumber.

AT&T and other big telecommunication companies clearly seem to be losing the battle of minds in their fight against net neutrality. Every segment of the public, once aware of the issue, seems to strongly favor an Internet in which all users can access any startup webpage creator’s site just about as easily as big corporate sites. The arguments offered by the telecommunication companies in their astroturf faux-populist campaign against Net Neutrality (Hands Off the Internet) have been glaringly pathetic: the smokescreen claim that Net Neutrality laws would be a layer of bureaucracy, the spurious claim that telecoms need to charge content providers for a new sources of revenue to build network infrastructure up and out, and, my personal favorite, the if-there-ain’t-a-problem-yet-why-fix-it argument. But now they’re trying to tap into an issue that the public seems more genuinely conflicted about – intellectual property rights and piracy.

In addition to Duncan’s article, you can find out more about AT&T’s plan on a Huffington Post entry by Josh Silver. It looks like this idea first surfaced to the public at large through an interview with AT&T Vice President James Ciccino printed in the L.A. Times. More general info on Net Neutrality and the campaign to keep can be found on the Save the Internet homepage.

Make Believe

I still enjoy going to music shows much of the time, but there are only a few bands that really I count on to give me a visceral sense of engagement, especially: Faggot (http://www.myspace.com/aidsfaggot), the Knotwells (http://myspace.com/theknotwells), and Har Mar Superstar (www.harmarsuperstar.com). More than anyone, I remain admittedly obsession with the otherworldly performances of Tim Kinsella. My anticipation will begin to swell weeks before a show, and it will usually leave me with unshakable visions and fantasies for weeks afterwards. That’s why I’m overjoyed to hear that one of his bands, Make Believe, will be performing at the Cedar Cultural Center on June 30^th. Get tickets right away!

Tim’s performance often have the feel of something important, of some kind of transformational experience. A contortion of body, facial expressions and, on a more abstract level, emotion itself. My reaction, of course, may be a bit idiosyncratic. I’m not claiming any sort of transcendental sublime to Make Believe, tho the only reason I feel the need to make such a qualification is because I know my enthusiasm for him will make me sound like an adolescent extolling a pop messiah. Tim’s music is one of those rare glimmers of inspiration that unleashes a hyperbolic response in me.

Save Small Magazines!

In the midst of hundreds of cable channels, a full dial of radio stations, and maybe billions of webpages, investigative journalism and thoughtful cultural and political analysis still thrives more in small magazines and newspapers more than in any other medium. I'm thinking of magazines ranging from Mother Jones to The Nation to Bitch to the International Socialist Review . Yes, blogs too can be good spots for analysis but not much yet in the way of investigative journalism and blog posts (like this one) are usually whipped out with much less care than a well-written magazine article (not that speed is always bad, but it has its disadvantages for sure).

Whether such magazines, or newspapers, are in danger of becoming obsolete in an Internet age, I really don't know. Certainly, such a dodo bird fate does not seem imminent just because of the net. But there's a new threat on the horizon for small magazines in the U.S. - a proposal for post rate hikes that will hit small publishers especially hard. The postal service initially proposed a plan for an across-the-board rate hike of 11.5% for all magazines, which most magazines had been prepared to accept. But then instead of accepting this plan proposed by the postal service itself, the Postal Regulatory Commission (a separate entity in charge of determining rates) decided to accept a modified version of a proposal put forward by media giant Time Warner. Time-Warner, of course, happens to own Time and People, two of the highest circulating magazines in the U.S.

The Time-Warner plan is very complicated and has all the smacks of neoliberal paternalism, rewarding publishers for good behavior, like bundling mail to be sent in particular areas, generating their own special labels, etc. But what these rewards end up doing is none other than providing further advantage to corporatization and large-scale operations. The complexity of the calculations makes it hard to know exactly what the hike will be for each magazine, but a study by McGraw-Hill estimated that many small magazines would see a 20-30% hike instead of the 10-12% that that they expected (see a press release from Sen. Sanders: http://www.commondreams.org/news2007/0501-03.htm). Presumably, Time and People would do rather well under the new plan. Small magazines had very little time to comment on this plan before it was accepted; it is set to go in effect July 15th. Now, magazines across the political spectrum from the National Review to The Nation are banning together to fight this hike. Many magazines are saying these rate hikes will force them to fold. The best site for information about this issue and ways to get involved is the Free Press's page: http://action.freepress.net/freepress/postal_explanation.html.

As media activist and historian Robert McChesney reminds us, it's important to remember than from the beginning of the U.S. postal system, postal rates for small magazines and newspapers have always been subsidized. The need for this is to foster a public sphere and the circulation of diverse views and information. Let’s not give up on print culture just yet!

I've cross-posting this entry on Matt May's Socialism for Gunslinger:
http://democraticgunslinger.blogspot.com/.

Hopefully, I'll soon figure out how to get my links back up!

Lutsen

No, a new blogging hiatus is not already on the horizon. I just spent a good part of this last week up at Alice's parent's cabin in Lutsen, right on the shore of Lake Superior. It was still a bit brisk up there (though I guess its the proximity to the lake rather than the latitude that makes it so much cooler); lilacs were just beginning to bloom there, about a month later than in Minneapolis. The Lepperts have a lovely, truly cabin-feeling cabin with a little gazebo perched right near a small cliff of the lake shore. We played lots of badminton. I learned to play spades, and most curiously, I learned that the supposed divide between wild and domestic animal may not be so great. Alice's dad has feed a chipmunk, who lives in a hole near their garage, for several years. Sunflower seeds and walnuts. Now he is so grateful that he lets us pet him while he eats or stuff his cheeks with seeds for later.

I got into a couple of discussions with Alice and some of our friends about popular culture and art. Now, I'm not happy with these categories (right now, resisting a temptation to throw them in some quote marks), but none of us could find more convenient terms. I was basically arguing that I don't think that because one cultural product is more commercially successful than another product, this doesn't mean that the greater selling product (or some might say more popular) says something more about the cultural moment than the other. I certainly agree that for a movie, a song, or a dance (the macarena as defining expression of the mid-90s?) to become a hit, there must be a certain degree of cultural resonance. But I think that this resonance is only one factor in a much more complex equation that involves a lot of market-based variables. This argument got me in some trouble because some of my interlocutors took it as a way to deny that what is most typically considered to be pop culture says more about the desires of most people in our society than what might be considered art or an expression more of a subculture. Does anyone know of any writers who really tackle this question of what a cultural theorist can extract from the popularity of a work in a market context? I'm especially interested in someone who would take seriously the numerous difficulties of this problem.

Hiatus . . . OVER!

So April did not bring any showers of Bedford St Gazelle postings. I've spent much of the last month and a half finishing three term papers (and revising a fourth), bringing me to a total of over 100 new pages of paper writing this semester. As in the past, I greatly regretted saving so much writing until the end. I had told myself this would never happen again. So why? Have I simply not learned my lesson? Is it just laziness or a more complex reoccurring pattern that makes me save so much paper writing for the end of the semester? This is a major question I'm trying to answer for myself this summer; it's part of a general question I'm asking myself about whether and in what ways is grad school inspiring me to write and to think. One hypothesis is that I don't write until the end of the semester because I keep waiting for a feeling that I really have something to say, and when an inspirational feeling doesn't strike me, it's up to deadlines to do the motivating.

Product Place This

One reason I decided to go to communication studies program instead of another home for cultural studies is because I thought more comm academics would be in touch with conversations about media and culture going on outside of academic journals. I thought there'd be a lot of people with backgrounds in journalism, filmmaking, may even TV writers in comm programs. I'm not sure if that was a correct assumption in general or not, but one of my classmates is just the kind of student I had in mind. Pam Nettleton has really enriched our program through bring knowledge from her many years in journalism.

Pam just wielded her writerly skills in an op-ed piece to portray commericial saturation of TV shows through product placements. She evisions what Dickens would sound like as a TV writer: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Luckily, I could easily tell time because I was wearing my Citizen 200 Meter Chronograph watch with titanium case and bracelet, only $400 online"
Pam' op-ed is funny and incisive: http://www.startribune.com/562/story/1073509.html

Bad Blog Changes

Hopefully only temporary, but I just lot all the links as I tried to "upgrade" the template for this blog.

As expected . . .

Yep, the new Star Trib owners have been making rampant cutbacks in news staff. A City Pages article details the cutbacks: http://citypages.com/databank/28/1372/article15245.asp

When the City Pages run an article talking about their new ownership regime?

Another Writer's Block

I'm devoting most of my spring break to writing a paper analyzing how sixties rock critics helped to imbue rock with a sense of political importance. I had been really looking forward to writing this paper, but alas, it's eeking out all too slowly and uncomfortably. Alice has poked fun at me for my tendency to have more breakthroughs in terms of reflecting on general writing principles while I'm trying to write than actually getting anything on the screen (probably a more apt metonymy these days).

Lots of my reflection dwells on one of the most mysterious and fickle qualities of writing - flow. Flow is just as relevant to good academic writing as it can be to more literary genres, especially when you want academic writing to share at least some of the qualities of literary prose. I think the major factors that determine whether academic writing will seem just academic or move closer to a literary work has to do with "evocation." I take this ideas from Michael Hyde, tho perhaps I've distorted it a bit. But by evocation, I mean whether the writing calls forth something vivid - an image, a feeling, a tone. A perfectly logical argument or one that is backed by "good" (as in difficult to refute) evidence is not necessarily evocative in itself.

At first I was thinking that evocative writing is much more difficult than just writing good arguments, but I've come to think that assumption is flawed. One of the situations in which I write with the most ease is when I get to a section in my paper where I can write a narrative. Perhaps there is something deeply ingrained in the structure of human consciousness that makes narratives feel more natural. Narrative writing tends to be evocative and relatively easier to write than other modes that require careful planning to lay out a synthetic exposition of interlocking ideas. The hard part in writing academic papers can be finding narratives that actually fit in well with what you're trying to say. One reason I tend to like to read cultural history more than other forms of cultural studies is because historians rely more heavily on narrative. But it ain't easy to find the right narratives for good cultural history, as I'm finding out now trying to write about sixties rock critics.

Radio KAOS

I had thought I was on a blogging momentum that wasn't going to let up, obviously not. It's not so much been a matter of having too much to do, just failure to really integrate blogging into my day-to-day routines.

A couple days ago, Radioactive Gavin from Evergreen College interviewed me for his Digital Crossroads program on Radio KAOS out of Olympia, Washington. I met him at the National Media Reform Conference in January, and I was surprised that he was interested in a paper I presented on applying anti-trust measurements to media markets for FCC regulation. It was a rather technical piece I wrote this summer while serving as a research fellow at the Free Press.

But I thought I'd be able to talk about the basic idea and give some descriptions of problems with ownership regulations at the FCC to an audience who might not be too enthralled about the details of adapting the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index to media markets. It was tougher than I thought, however, to be able to speak well for a recorded interview. Being "on the record" made me realize how much I typically allow myself room to skirt around details I don't know. But aside from calling Michael Powell Colin's brother (instead of son), I think I got by well enough for Gavin to be able to make something coherent and accurate through chopping up the interview tape. The interview should air around noon pacific (2pm Central) time today on Radio KAOS (http://kaos.evergreen.edu/).

The Inevitability of Billboards

Let me admit right away to feeling ambivilence about sweeping categorizations of "the cultural logic" of our times. Making big claims about cultural trends on the level of postmodernism, neoliberalism, empire, etc is of course lifeblood of many academic critics, especially those of the 'theory' bent. Even trends such as fragmentation or "suspecion of grand narratives" often appear more interesting to critics as pangea-like formations rather than in their fragmented particularities. It can be a bit too tempting to reduce what's going on in the world at any one time to a set of understood principles. Maybe there's not other ways of writing effectively about such trends without a good dose of overgeneralization.

With that half-hearted qualification, let me attempt to squeeze some culture into some overgeneralized boxes myself. The box is a big one, a very popular one these days among cultural theory folks - neoliberalism. The cultural fragment I'd like to place in the box is a story by America Public Radio's Future Tense (http://www.publicradio.org/columns/futuretense/2007/02/05.shtml#009646).

The story's lead: ClearChannel Outdoor is suing the muncipality of Minnetonka for cutting off power to two digit billboards. Minnetonka is one many communities around the country who have passed laws prohibiting moving billboards due to the risk of distracting drivers. So how do you think this story would be structured - maybe some opposing views on whether billboards with moving images distract drivers? Maybe some interviews of people's opinions of moving billboards? No, while about a 10 seconds is given to a county attorney explaining the way Minnetonka defines "flashing billboards" in their ordinance, the arc of the story follows the inevitibility of this technology.

First, comes testimony that "the new technology [digital billboards] is the way world we're living in." According a ClearChannel Outdoor VP, "advertisers are demaning a proper forum to display their messages . . . it is an evolution of media. . . it is somewhat inevitable."

I guess there's no messing with advertizers' demands. Future Tense certainly doesn't suggest that option. After the ClearChannel interview, the story shifts over to Carnegie Mellon "Professor of Design" Ben Fry. He starts by describing another kind of evolution, that of the human's natural response of a attentiveness towards motion. The inexonerable evolution of marketing sophistication has caught up with human evolution. Whereas our "long-ago ancestors who would be eaten or killed" without an instinctual response to motion, today the utility of this instinct might go to waste if it wasn't for modern innovators, like advertisers.

Reflections on National Media Reform Conference

As my friend Bill pointed out to me, I really drop the ball on what makes live blogging interesting -- a sense of continuity and something approximating real-time excitement. One posting doesn't cut it.

With that admission, I want to go back and angle in on the NMR Conference from a different angle. Overall, I felt very encouraged. Much of my positive impression is owed to the fact that I had the chance to work with some very great people - Free Press staff and volunteers. Despite all the stress of pulling off such a huge event like this, everyone I worked with exceptionally friendly, positive and cooperative. I don't just throw out these compliments ceremonially. This is a truly exceptional bunch of people. From having worked with many organizations, the only times I've seen teamwork equal to what I saw in Memphis were during my best moments with NCCC teams. I think there are many reasons the Free Press is thriving to the extent that it is, from picking the right issue at the right time to some very smart organizing strategies. But my summer at the Free Press's DC office and now this opportunity to meet most of the staff from both offices proved to me that the wonderful people who work for Free Press and their spirit of cooperation are certainly a big key to their success. If nothing else, it just felt good for me to feel part of a team again.

Aside from the enclosure, the NMR conference felt much different from the only major academic conference I've attended - the National Communications Association. As McChesney said, they only have one academic session per conference to prevent it from being any sort of vitae-padder. But the SSRC's Media Policy Research Pre-conference might have served that purpose. Most presenters were advocates or media folks. I can’t generalize much about the attendees who were not presenters, seemed to be a mix of age, some different styles, many occupations and passions. It was mostly white, though not as disproportionately so as NCA. During the sessions I saw, there were always some vocal and sometimes challenging audience members. A couple of ranters. The 9/11 truth forces were there, of course, tho I did not see them being disruptive. A disability-rights groups staged a protest in the middle of the conference center. It didn’t seem like this protest was directed against the conference organizers, just a good opportunity for media publicity. No one stopped them.

Here and there I picked up on an undercurrent of discontent among some of the participants. The issue was whether the Free Press was getting too comfortable with, let’s just call it, “the liberal establishment.” Had the constituents of the conference basically just become upper-middle class whites who don’t like corporations? The attendence might have reflected that, tho at least a significant chunk of the panels explicitly had to do with race and immigration issues, and many of the main speakers had come from marginalized communities. Another complaint had to do with lack of transnational perspective. Interestingly, Robert McChesney seemed to acknowledge this fault during his introduction at the SSRC pre-conference, telling us all that we wouldn’t see much from an international perspective this NMR Conference but that would be a priority for the next one.

I heard some criticism of the race angle voiced in a constructive way, and some not so constructively. I want to explore this a bit, acknowledging my own perspect comes from a particular place. One group, privileged in their own way, mocked the Free Press as “the White Man’s Free Press” even while Free Pressers had gone out of their way to set up some studio space for them. From my perspective, this was hard to not see as a form of snotty arrogance because this group seemed to see themselves as particularly sophisticated. That said, this media movement needs make sure it does not only respond to the white middle class. To say that the movement is only “white progressives” now is inaccurate and only marginalizes the contributions of those who do not fit that category. Still white progressives, as I said, do have a disproportionate amount of influence on the media reform movement right now. Unless that change, the media justice goals are bound to be shortchanged. I know the Free Press is trying to build greater connections with groups whose primary constituencies are not white or middle class, but this is certainly a crucial area where more work needs to be done. As Deepa Fernandez said into her microphone in the big ballroom, “Disenfranchised communities don’t just want to be invited in, and we don’t just want a mic put in our hands. We want to own the mic and own the station.” The challenge is not only “reaching out” to the most oppressed communities, but either really breaking down divisions or working in solidarity with leaders and groups putting the concerns of the most oppressed communities at the forefront.

Letter from the FCC

I'm not sure what petition this must be responding to, but today I received an email from the FCC. I had thought they were a government agency, but apparently they are a big-box retailer:

Dear Consumer,


Thank you for contacting the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). We are reviewing your correspondence to determine how we can best serve you.

The FCC regulates interstate (between states) and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable in all of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. possessions. The FCC is charged with ensuring that communications service providers promote the public interest. Further information is available on the Commissions web site at http://www.fcc.gov.

Again, thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. Your views and comments are important to us.


The Federal Communications Commission

National Media Reform Conference

My first live blogging experiment.

I'm at the National Media Reform Conference in Memphis, more on this generally later. Right now at I'm at a session on new media and citizen journalism with Chris Nolan, Chris Rabb, Jay Rosen and Dan Gilmore. The most interesting presentation was Chris Rabb of Afro-Netizen who discussed his accidental rise in the blogosphere that brought him to be one of the few bloggers of color at the DNC in 2004. One of his main points was that if we think of blogging as revolutionizing who's creating the news we've got to make sure that it's not the same sorts of elite who gain attention in the blogging world as in the MSM world. What made his speech particularly powerful was that he acknowledged his position as a black person speaking to a primarly white audience, yet he also discussed his own privileges (such as his ability to call up "a buddy" on Capital Hill, access to the latest computer, etc) that had made it possible for him to become a prominent blogger. His point was not blogging is too mired in privilege to ever have a value, only that enthusiasts needed to be conscious of the ongoing segregation, classism, racism, etc that carries over from land to the cyberspace. He urged us to not to have faith in blogging solving all these problems. The meaning I took from him was that bloggers shouldn't simple swagger forward against Big Media waving the name-tag of the underdog, but must attempt expand their social networks and strive for greater inclusion outside of their own privileged circles.