Tag: contemporary life

Test Driving Our Instinct for Connections

faceOne of the cool things about being a writer is, aside from the occasional drink-‘til-ya-drop tequila binge, you generally go to sleep smarter than when you woke up.  You’re constantly finding and filing away facts, like an information squirrel worried about winter.  For example, I know that Birmingham, England has a larger canal system than Venice, Italy, there are actually five different versions of David’s painting, Bonaparte Crossing the Alps and China is scheduled to take over the world sometime in 2028.  This kinda stuff doesn’t come up all that often in casual conversation, but it definitely keeps most conversations casual.  After all, when you’re the Wyatt Earp of useless information, you don’t get a lot of people calling you out on it.  That’s the other reason why writing is such a lonely profession.  People tend to think you’re a pompous ass.  But I digress.  The cool part of having tons of off-the-top-of-your-head trivia at your disposal is that you get a leg up on analysis that most people don’t have.  You can see the connections between ideas before other folks even get their Google warmed up.  Let me show you how it works.

Remember when you were a kid and, face up to the sky, you actually spent some time looking at the clouds?  You didn’t see nimbus or cumulus (unless you were terminally nerdy) you saw sheep and surfers and an old guy with a pipe.  This is because our minds are hardwired into detecting images (especially faces) long before our conscious brains have accumulated enough information to make a judgement call.  Essentially, we see things before we actually see them by instantly reducing any image to it basic components.  This phenomenon comes from a time before time when humans were not even close to the top of the food chain.  As a species, we needed to recognize the things that were going to eat us — with enough time left over to run like hell for the trees.  In evolutionary terms, our ancestors who were good at this became our ancestors; everybody else ended up digested on the savannah floor.

Move the calendar forward half a million years, we still see faces in inanimate objects, but the only time we actually use this instinctual skill is to face2generate religious revivals from tortillas or buy into paranormal swindles.  After all, it’s been a lot of years since our species was threatened by hairy beasts.  However, in the 21st century, the predator of choice is information.  In order to thrive, if not survive, we need to recognize essential information out of the info-flood we’re soaking up every minute of every day.  Since no one has the waking hours to analyze every piece of data that arrives, hat in hand, to our conscious mind, we do this by connecting new information to the knowledge we already have.  A very simple example is when we see a truck drive up and park in front of our house, we immediately determine what kind of a truck it is (fire, garbage, FedEx) and take appropriate action.  If we don’t recognize it, we file it and get on.  Thus, the more information we have, the greater our ability to test drive the new stuff when it arrives.

As a writer, I get to test drive tons more information that most people — it comes with the territory.  And the thing that’s really cool is, like cloud watching, it’s a never ending process.  One shape morphs into another and another and another.  Think of it this way: what started off as an Internet search for “pareidolia” (you need to Google this, BTW) ended up, somewhere after midnight, at a YouTube video on how to fold t-shirts.  Now, how cool is that?

Life Is Too Short…Not!

yolo2I’m going to tell you a secret that’s going to shake up your world if not actually change your life.  It’s one of those things that nobody thinks about until it’s too late, but because I’m a good guy, I’m going to give you the heads up.  Make of it what you will; but first, a little background.

Ever since the Stoned Age, all kinds of normally sensible people have been yipping about how short life is.  Used as an all-purpose excuse for juvenile behaviour, in the ensuing decades, “Carpe diem” was repeated so often it became the mantra of the second half of the 20th century — and beyond.  Here in 2013, it’s considered an irrefutable truth, bestriding our culture like the Colossus of Rhodes.

Crap!  The real truth is life is the longest thing you’re ever going to do.

I’m not going to argue the metaphysics of eternal consciousness.  That’s for sophomore philosophers with time on their hands.  My point is much simpler than that.  The reality is here you are, and until your bodily functions cease to function, here is where you’re going to stay.  Even though the length of your life is a tremor in the earthquake we call history, it’s all you’ve got, and you should treat it with some respect.

The problem is most contemporary people are so obsessed with their lack of time that they completely forget about the quality of life.  They’ve turned what should be a series of wonderful adventures into a putt and bounce game of off-handed actions and unintended consequences.  Metaphorically speaking, the result is we spend most of our lives trying to pay for the meal we never planned to have in the first place — because some idiot told us life’s too short to do otherwise.

For example, losing your virginity is one of the biggies.  It’s a magical moment that is literally a once-in-a-lifetime experience.yolo   One would think there would be some pomp and circumstance to it; at the very least, a drum roll.  However, for most of us, it was a fumble/stumble extended cuddle that got out of hand.  We definitely remember where and when and think fondly of our partner, from time to time, but most of us can’t accurately conjure up a face.  In general, people have more details about their 40th birthday party (and not just because they have photos) — they probably spent more time planning it.

It’s the same with the jobs we do.  I’m constantly struck by how many people spend their lives hating their careers or the lack there of.  The coulda/woulda/shoulda of gainful employment has almost become a cliché in contemporary society.  I understand that not every accountant can be a lion tamer.  However, just because you can’t tame the lion, that doesn’t mean you have to spend your life doing something completely different.  Join the circus, for God’s sake; at least you’ll get close.  After all, unless your dad’s name is Bill Gates, a job is going occupy a third of your life.  “Close” counts!   The formula for misery is the Monty Python approach to career management.

It’s the same with our homes, our friends, our families, the junk we eat for breakfast and on and on.  For the most part, we live off the top of our heads because we’re convinced “life is too short” to pause its relentless path for five seconds to think about what we’re doing.

Nobody goes to a travel agent, tosses a credit card on the desk and says, “Send me somewhere!”  We think about it, ask around, do some planning; not because life is too short to miss that fantastic destination but because our two week vacation is too precious to screw up.  Yet, for the other fifty weeks of the year, we mostly settle for mediocre when a modicum of planning would give marvelous results.

Life is not too short.  Actually, if we’d quit wasting time chasing, catching and suffering the consequences of instant gratification and spent more time dealing with the stuff that really matters, we’d all think it was just the right size.

Confessions of a Hipster

Young Adult Woman SilhouetteMake no mistake: the following is a work of fiction.  In the 21st Century, truth wears many faces — and one of them is false

Last weekend (although, these days, I have no fear of assassination) I was sitting with my back to the wall in a Tiki Lounge, sipping a Singapore Sling.  The room was crowded and oddly dim for Polynesia, so I didn’t see the 30-something somebody approach — until he spoke.

“Are you being ironic?”

Even though I hadn’t been ironic since Thursday afternoon, I said yes and volunteered that I was surprised that anyone noticed.  He hovered for a few seconds in a crooked smile.  I identified myself as a journalist from Indiana (which wasn’t strictly a lie) and said, “I’d like to tell your story.”

“What is it?” he answered

“A completely authentic pickup line?” I asked.

“I like your style,” he said and sat down.

“I like yours, too.  Are you a hipster?”

My new friend Mason (not his real name) said labels were for the media and the weak, and swept his arm religiously across the room.  “Those are hipsters,” he said, and leaned in close, “but most of them aren’t real.”

“How can you tell?”

“You can smell the Urban Outfitter from here,” he said, coming out of the lean.

“See that piece?” he pointed limply to a group half turned away from us, twitching their thumbs, “It’s a Galaxy.”

Satisfied with himself, he drank his beer – a Miller High Life – from the bottle.

My new friend might not have been a hipster but he could obviously tell a smartphone brand from facial glow alone.  This was definitely a man of high property.

“Most of what you see wasn’t here in oh-eight,” he said.  “SoMo was fresh then.  The music…” he straightened his limp hand and made a definite high line in the air, “… was tall.”

His tone told me I didn’t understand.  I didn’t.

He pointed in several directions with both hands.

“There were thrifts and ground floors and Molly Rag Scratch played the Biltmore.  See that?” He vaguely pointed again.  “He drives a car.  It’s Modo but really.  He probably works for his father.”

Across the room, I didn’t notice a sweater-tight tee shirt, pointing with his nose, or the three other sweaters who followed him.

“Come on,”  Mason said.

We walked, head nodding through the bar and out the back door into a night-bright alley where the sweaters stood in the roadway looking at me.

“He’s from Indie,”  Mason said.

They were satisfied with that and lit long yellow cigarettes without speaking, then crumbled black hashish into a retro Hefnerhipster6 pipe.

“It’s Ketama.”

I declined the pipe on the pass around, making a mental note to google “Ketama.”  A journalist’s best weapon is a clear mind.

“He’s looking for hipsters.”

“He found one,” said a sweater, pointing a direct finger at Mason.  No one laughed.

“The hipsters are gone.” said another one, his words covered in smoke, “Urban genocide.”

“Too many taxpayers.”

“Three chord gnarlome.”

“Exhilarating news.”

“Molotov!” they all said, simultaneously.

The sweaters were clearly warming to the event.

For the next twenty minutes, they spoke around me.  They explain to themselves that once there might have been hipsters here, but that was only a name.  This was sometime in the recent past when the neighbourhood had been … somebody said “deck” and the others laughed at him.  Whoever they were, these people were social Jules Vernes.  They anticipated the trends, saw the tempos, and lived ahead of the mainstream tsunami.  Unwilling to accept cultural hand-me-downs from a corporate society, they made their own bold new culture out of leftover fashions and underground movies.  However, it was music which set the rhythm; music that varied the direction; travelling through rap, techno, hip hop, dub step and strange indie metal.  They settled on music as both the Shiva and Kali of the neighbourhood; first bringing it life but then bringing it people who, drawn by mere musical cool, were neither authentic nor sincere.  Like white people going to Harlem, they were tourists and not committed to the circumstantial experience.  They became slaves to the scene — no longer creating it.

“But what did you mean when you called them taxpayers?” I questioned, gesturing back to the bar.

Everyone stopped.  I had betrayed myself, and now I have broken the mood.

“Ask them,” said a sweater, making an elevated chin.  “We have to go.”

“Stul.”

“Stul.”

We all stulled each other and the sweaters walked down the alley.  Mason and I returned to the Tiki room, where our drinks were gone and my table reoccupied.  I reached around a young shaggy to retrieve my jacket off the chair.  Mason stared sullenly into the corner.  He had been dissed in front of the heathen by mere children, and he didn’t like it.  We found a place at the end of the bar.

“May I ask you some questions?”

“Something personal, I hope,” he said menacingly.

Wednesday: Interview with a Hipster.