Issue Re-Oriented: I've Got a Chronic Defect In My Head.

This is a new feature for a new year. I wrote a couple things for a fantastic website called Issue Oriented and I don't think it would hurt to reprint them here. This, the first of three, so far, is about identity politics, but in layman's terms: being a dude in the crowd and looking down the shirt of a female performer.

I may think too much. Or maybe not, but I don't know if that's for me to decide.




There's no dignified way to say this: I was looking down Sandra Malak's corset.

A bit of background, you say? Here we go. I was watching the World/Inferno Friendship Society (Check episode 20) perform in the Pittsburgh area earlier in 2009. Jack Terricloth and Co. were very clearly having a lot of fun, as the venue (Mr. Smalls) afforded them a rather sizable stage. About a third of the way through, I noticed, that the bassist (Mrs? Ms? Etc? Malak) of the nattily dressed band (guitarist Lucky Strano, excepted, who is contractually obligated to have a Disfear shirt on) was wearing a corset.

This is the World/Inferno Friendship Society, a raucously anachronistic band. Not a surprise, given that the men were wearing suits and ties. (And I mean real suits and ties, not a "punked out" skinny black tie.) I noticed it when she leaning down to yell the words back at the audience and my eyes slipped.

I looked down her corset.

My first reaction, aside from the neurological wiring, was "hey, that's a rather nice view".

My second reaction was "I shouldn't be doing this".

Here, now is the issue of identity politics.

(If now, you're thinking, James, this is a World/Inferno show, you're probably thinking too hard about this. Additionally, if you're thinking too hard at an Inferno show, you're dangerously close to missing the point. And you're probably right. But, on off chance I'm not thinking too hard, I continue.)

Of course, I wasn't thinking in those terms at the time. I was thinking about it in words a little more down to earth, like respect.

The voices in my head went like this:



My first question was: Am I respecting her as a member of World/Inferno and as a performer? She's playing, right now, music I like, in a band I'm pretty fond of. Choosing and I use that word carefully, since I had control of my body and my mind, does the performer a disservice. My gut check was swift and decisive. Really? A disservice? This is a grown-ass woman in a band who'se major themes tend to revolve around debauchery, alcoholism, drug abuse, dancing and chasing girls. I mean, the band is not Escape The Fate, by any means, but let's be honest: Ambiguity, allure and intrigue are three of the cards World/Inferno has been playing for a long time.

Okay, okay, but what the hell does drug use and alcoholism have to do with the possible objectification you may have engaged yourself in, I thought. Also, what about the themes of solidarity, status quo subversion and dissent generally? Those don't fit as easily into your casting of World/Inferno as a quote unquote crazy rock band.

The counter argument came pretty naturally. Point taken. That said, objectification? You peeked down her corset maybe five times over the course of an hour and a half, which she wore onstage, in a public place, where she knew she was going to be viewed. (This is distinct from the "she was asking for it" argument.) She's older than you, so odds are pretty good this is something she's thought about before, so saying she wouldn't know theoretically insults her intelligence. Also, you tended to avoid looking at her as soon as you realized what was up. Saying that you objectified her is hard to sustain on that basis. More to the point, do "serious" performers have to be without attractive hooks? Must performers be viewed without sexual appeal? That's a pretty white/protestant view of musicians and performers, isn't it?

Touche. Jack was making a big show out of the slit that broke his pants, terribly close to his crotch. And I acknowledge that viewing a performer as a person outside of gender or sexuality contributes to the current status quo. But, consider your epistemic position. You're a young white person watching a female onstage for pleasure. You, of all people, need to pay attention to those boundaries.

How was I looking at her, I thought? I was looking at her as the bass player in World/Inferno Friendship Society (a band who'se four studio full lengths I own, 3 on CD, 1 on vinyl) who made a choice in her wardrobe which possibly affords audience members a view of her cleavage, which may be more or less important to particular people in the crowd. Male gaze aside, this is a band that pays very close attention to how they look. It's reasonable for me to look, they want that attention and that's how they choose, gig in and gig out, to get it. It's likely part of an exaggerated, but calculated onstage persona, which, odds are, loosely match their offstage personalities. How they look is a huge part of their presentation. She's also a woman in a rock band, who wants have fun making music and make money. I'm a male fan. Do the math. That entire band plays up how they dress as part of their act, which, *gasp*, can be usefully monetized.

That said, I'm not sure I can prove any of that.

If you mean find a quote on the internet where she or someone from the band says, yeah we dress up because it's fun for us, it's a neat little shtick and it makes money, I haven't looked, so let's say no. But, I don't think the point can be usefully avoided. I'm at a concert, situated as a white male, watching a group of performers who are like me and it's reasonable to ask, I think, to what extent physical attractiveness plays a role in that performance. Dan Yemin takes off his shirt at Paint it Black shows, Trent Reznor has a fondness for tight black tshirts and (much love and respect for both bands) while I'm not quite the target audience, if I don't mind it there, why should I mind it here?

That said, I'm not sure those are equivocal. There's a power imbalance that you're not taking into account.

Bullshit and yeah, there's a power imbalance, it's not just that she appears to be female and I appear to be male, but that I'm a fan and she's a part of the band. Not everything can be reduced simply to white male dominance and a gaze from the relative safety of the crowd. It goes with the territory. It's more complicated and more nuanced than that, I think. Are we being used?

No, we're not being used, in that she's probably not thinking or vocalizing, "you know, I want the fans to pay attention to my breasts so they'll buy more tshirts." That doesn't make it okay and really, dude, you're impugning her integrity.

Okay. But more than that, am I over thinking this? Could I just be looking at an attractive woman onstage, that being the end of it and making the preceding pages an exercise in pretense and intellectual masturbation, like the guy in Propaghandi's Ladies Nite In Loserville?

Look over there! There's a cute girl 20 feet to our left. They're playing Brother Of the Mayor Of Bridgewater. We ought to dance with her.

Yes, we should.




And really, I got to feel uncomfortable around a different girl and that settled that argument for that night. But looking back on it, that doesn't end this questioning in my head. I don't have any answers, but maybe a couple provisional suggestions. (I find it kind of silly to be attempting to offer answers to the question it took me a couple pages to even get to and is still consuming me.)

1) Don't gawk.
2) Don't be a dick.
3) Really. That's all I've got.


Don't gawk is pretty obvious. That part really is about respect. Don't be a dick is a related point, which is don't take advantage of the exposure during the concert. My thoughts really come down to respect and being contrite. If I’m right, or at least looking in the right direction, then the “answer” is thinking of other people and looking beyond yourself, which is one of the big important lessons I should have internalized from punk years ago.

I guess there’s still more learning to do.

Moar Because...

I wrote about returning and I can't do that. It's officially my first real week back from college, which is scary, off-putting and exciting. After working until 11 p.m. (long into the night at least in Chicago time), last night, I finally stopped hitting snooze on my cell phone at 8:30 a.m. to finish up the grade checking I was doing. I didn't like it, but it got me up. More to the point, it introduced, politely, the idea that I can't just do what I want anymore and plan my work or studying around it, like I used to at Allegheny. I miss the people, not the institution. After four years of being in Meadville, there are little rituals that feel strange not to be continuing.

It's those little things that make the big difference. Not wearing my keys around my neck, not bringing a card whenever I leave the house, not going to a centralized place for lunch, not putting on a backpack to leave the house (I've been doing that for 12+ years), not walking the 45 seconds to the post office, not chilling in GFC for two or three hours after class are all the things that are interesting, different experiences, that I never would have had if I didn't push myself a lot.

I'm in danger of not pushing myself now. It's very easy for me to sit back and just sit at the computer, refreshing my email every so often and keeping current on whatever subject I'm looking at from afar (economic meltdown, suicide terrorism, future plans of the Wu-Tang Clan). Every fifteen minutes I spend looking at things to stay current is another fifteen minutes I could spend looking at grad schools or filling out job applications or finding driving schools in Chicago.

Scott Kurtz (of PvP) recently announced he was trying to change his habits now that he was working from home so that he actually got work done, getting up earlier to get that "quiet home in the dark" time, better to get up at 5 a.m. and get to it. Getting to it, then.

On the right side of this tab, there are four tabs that all have something to do with driving schools in Chicago. On the left, six others. Two of them CDs. One of them a well-reviewed, but not much purchased PS2 game, one Twitter, one Blogger and another one for Windy's one or two shot campaign. I originally wrote time to choose, but I don't think it's quite that simple. I have to focus and remember, I'm not planning my work around my free time anymore. I'm planning my free time around my work.

Sometimes, the work will be fun. I need to call up my friend anyway and talk to her for a while about how much money she's going to want designing my webpage and what I want out of it, including twitter integration and whatever else I feel like ought to be done with it. If I am going to set something up seriously to be a writer/blogger (for which a personal webpage is needed) about music/videogames/politics/whatever, than that means maybe buying a PS3 makes sense from an economic standpoint. I need to cover these things, right?

Most of the other time, it's not going to be fun. It's going to be depressing, bleak and tedious. But it's a down payment on getting to a place where I can keep growing and have fun while I earn money. But before I can get to the point where it's fun, or I enjoy what I do, I need a plan. That plan involves a lot of honest thinking and questioning what I want to do with my life in the future. I never seriously entertained the idea that I was going to be alive through college when I was in junior or high school.

Now that the future I never expected has come to pass, it means my habits are changing and now...to figure out what, exactly, I want. Once that figures out, the details can be chewed on.

And, because it's me, probably here. More than that, it's tough to stay positive when you don't do that much or few exciting things happen, or as I learned this semester, if I don't go out. And by go out I don't mean party so much as just leave the house and do something. Run or walk or just get out of whatever comfortable space I'm in.

Therefore, while I'm not committed to somewhere, I'm committing myself to these ideas: Get out of that comfort zone. Just keep moving. Keep doing different things, not just to keep busy, but to keep pushing myself. Keep growing.

So then, what do I do with the two boxes of videogames in my home? I'm hopefully not going to do what I did last year, which was park in front of my TV after searching for jobs for a couple months and playing Persona 3 until three in the morning, going to bed and doing it all over again.

A schedule that I can keep. It just needs to be coherent. Even if it goes something along the lines of:

Immediate Future: 9-2.
Future Future: 2-5
Chilling Out That Happens Before Dinner: 5-7
Videogames: 8-10
Daily Show Then Bed: 10-10:45

It's not anything...detailed, but it's something that will give substance to my day, around which I can plan whatever my next big move is on the chessboard of my lifetime. There are two questions left, then, can I get to a point where I see the board, and once there, how do I analyze the information?

I don't have the answer currently, but I think I'm on the right track now and whatever happens along the way, well, you'll see it here, first, as close to firsthand as these instruments on the end of my arms will allow me.

SCIENCE TIME: Feet for the Modern World

This may come to a surprise to some of you, but I am in some respects a filthy hippie. A filthy technophile carnivorous hippie who likes fisticuffs and swordplay, but a filthy hippie nontheless.

As such, these just about made my day. (Warning: Feet.)

Yeah, that's right: science feet to wear over my regular feet! Shoes with toes, that will let me feel the pebbles without being cut or stabbed by sharp objects underfoot! All they need is variable electromechanical properties, and they're perfect superhero wall-climbing gear.

Now, in light of what I've already said, this may not surprise you, but: I hate shoes. Hate them with a burning passion. Specifically, their design. Men's shoes that are designed to be practical, like sneakers and hiking boots, are designed by the same kind of minds that brought us the great websites of ten years ago, and more than half of them cause my feet to sweat uncontrollably. I've already abandoned the majority of shoe design for dead. I own maybe two pairs of shoes, and wear the same ones every day: they are a web mesh of straps and laces, light and flexible, and they still annoy me just by existing. What I want on my feet is an impermeable second skin, a layer of dermal armor that doesn't restrict my movement. These seem to fit the bill.

I don't know if they're actual comfortable, and the designs are nothing to write home about, but I want future-feet, dammit. I will use them to leap about from table to table in the smokeless bars, making deadly slashes with my neon katana and tracking my opponents' positions through my contact-lens HUD. And then I will climb a tree, or maybe go splash around in a stream, and check my text messages.

These shoes are grade-A cyborg-ninja awesome, and I want some. Even (maybe especially) if they get me funny looks.

(Thanks, Boing Boing!)

Admittedly, we got nothing.

I would say this is a little something to stop the bleeding, but writing this feels heavier than anything I've written in months.

Rest assured readers, that Tom, Cate and I are well aware that there hasn't been posted anything here for a week. For some of us, it has been a rough week or so, I can only speak for myself having exclaimed, "lover, my muse has left us" and "muse, my lover has left us" at different times, so our ability to write about responsibility (or anything else) has been impaired.

But. To continue the theme of responsibility, to pick up that broken flag, I write. I held a crying woman (twice) in my arms, and was held by a different one attempting to explain that I really didn't know if I was doing "Okay" or not. I can watch as my friends, for one reason or another, tear themselves away from the group and school, counting and crossing off the emotional pillars I have come to count on fall away.

(I'm writing this listening to Thrice's MySpace page, or specifically, Come All You Weary and Broken Lungs. It's very Christian, but hell. It's Thrice. Give the songs a shot. Broken Lungs makes me wish I had a guitar and could sing "are we fools and cowards all" half as well as Mr. Kensrue.)

My responsibilities, to those women I have held is to hope and ease their burdens, for a moment, by telling another human being. I have no answers to their problems. I hold no solutions, and can find or imagine none in my mind. I could offer advice, in one case, "consolidate what you've got, then use that to figure out what you want". In the other, of which I dare not speak, my two responsibilities (show up and don't ask important questions) seemed easier to do in retrospect.

I held one of my friends as he asked why a promise made was broken, between portraits of young artists. He knew why. It had to be vocalized. Just to know someone is there. Something, somehow. He asked if anyone would care. I outlined how, where and when it'd hurt me in the deepest detail I could offer.

I cannot take the pain away. I cannot wipe the tears from the young woman's face in the airport terminal, and it would take hours before it appeared she truly brightened up. I told the young man to press on, not to give up hope. I cannot wrap my arms so wide as to stop the cascading waves of culture and fear from those I hold.

I can't. I can only offer my shoulders and arms. I'm sick and tired of seeing how brave we can be. I've watched it eat up my friends. I'm watching it eat up me. But so long as there is still a banner, tattered, broken and dropped, it's my responsibility to pick it up.

My back is strong, my shoulders are wide, and we must press on, through the sadness, through the despair to whatever's greeting us on the other side of tonight. Let's talk on the way.

Theme Week: Responsibility

Having responsibility come next in line of topics after hedonism week made me smile when I first heard about it, too. By now, it's pretty clear that we're not keeping up a post a weekday, for reasons alternately comprehensible and incomprehensible to me.

 

To keep this from getting hopelessly abstract: Let me elucidate the theme into my life right now. I will deconstruct my tenuous responsibilities during a week that I have off of school.

To my classes: To do the readings and work that I have neglected to do during the semester that I have gotten away with not doing.

To my friends from that same institution: To say what's up every so often, and hope things go well. Basically, keep lines of communication open in case something important happens, so I can be available in case of an emergency to offer support or something similar.

To my friends from home: Do try to keep in touch and possibly set something up for meetings, but they're all back in college as well. Fantastic.

To my family whom I love dearly: Spend quality time with them. Talk about important things on my mind, whether it is about my psychological profile or the current election cycle. Say the right sentences that will make my parents proud of me. Word those sentences carefully with the pauses before the Big Ideas, use the right words to show I'm learning more, expanding my vocabulary and otherwise learning and growing up. Keep my schedule open. Write something every so often.

Keep my schedule open enough, and keep it in the back of my mind that I can get a brutal phone call at any time for the next couple of months from reality that says "Drop everything. You're coming with me for a week."

To this very website: to write something for Friday today.

To myself: Find a way to be happy for an extended period of time that does not involve dating a girl. Also, to have fun and relax above all before Sunday. Laugh a lot. Get some distance. See Crime In Stereo. Actually enjoy myself. Smile and mean it when I say I had fun over break.

My responsibilities are pretty easy and pretty clear. Less so is when they come into conflict. Speaking to someone with the power to prescribe me mind-altering medication is when the responsibilities of having fun and relaxing (No, really, I'll take you around for a day, and by the end of it, you'll understand that relaxing and having fun are a responsibility, and not something that just comes easily. Were it not for my deep, abiding love of ska music, I would be the polar opposite of Big D and the Kids Table video for Noise Complaint, though that could also be expanded to say, their two other videos for their disc, Strictly Rude, which, coincidentally, you should buy. But I digress.) come into conflict with enjoying myself.

These kind of things, I trust you understand, require you to go over the worst portions of your life for the purpose of (among others) getting prescribed medicine for your head (leading me to the inevitable "Am I not good enough as is?", which is quickly pushed out by "Yes, you are, and you should know better than to ask. You're admitting you need help."), without also mentioning the good moments in between them. It is a bitter, bitter responsibility to drag out the words to recall the feelings of pain, betrayal and even more memories I don't deign to shred my throat expanding on here, and continue. 

Repeating hurt just seems to lodge it deeper in me, but to explain just how, where and how I bleed and from which arteries and how profusely, so I can help an authority decide whether my depression is deep and abiding enough to warrant medicine to alter my behavior patterns does not make my life much happier.

I am responsible enough to concede I need help, responsible enough to walk in the door, responsible enough to sit down and go through all this again, and it leaves me with no small amount of chagrin that I might not be responsible enough to enjoy myself.

Lest you think my world is all doom and gloom, there are also good things, little projects in my mind and disseminated in the world that make me smile, that I get updated on every so often, which in fact, are some of my other responsibilities, which I hope to be able to speak about soon. 

It's a hell of a break.

Qrazy Quotes for Hedonism Week! Enjoy too much information!

Hello, gentle readers!
I present before you a special event, a near transcript of the meeting between everyone but Jack, with all the boring parts cut out. The topic? Hedonism theme week. OooOOoOOooh. The boring parts have all been cut out, so it's only about one tenth as painful as the real thing was. Enjoy!


James: Anyway, what's up?
Thomas: Not much. Hating. Patrolling. Trying to catch people riding dirty.
James: It's good to know you haven't forgotten the streets.
Thomas: I hate them so.

Thomas: ...okay, Cathleen's going to go have sex.
Thomas: So she's probably not coming to the meeting of our blog.
James: ...
Zachary: Good for Cathleen.
Thomas: I know, right?

Zachary: Eleven Names is about being interesting and writing things.
Thomas: In the least intellectually dishonest way.
Thomas: With a rake.
Zachary: Maybe.

Zachary: And it is hard to have a group identity when we don't post enough. But, I don't like low volume of posts as a justification for making decisions we'll have to live with for a long period of time.
James: THEN POST MORE.
Thomas: ...said the kettle.

Beth: We had standards?
Beth: ...why?

Zachary: Yeah, I hate that.
Thomas: You hate my voice inflection boots?

Thomas: Anyone have a post in the pipe?
Zachary: Yup!
Zachary: By which I mean no.
Thomas: Ah good.

Thomas: It is hard to feel the hedonism in February.
Thomas: OH LOOK I'M SICK AND IT'S FUCKING COLD OUT THERE *UNF UNF UNF*

Zachary: So, Cathleen is back.
Thomas: How long was that?
Zachary: 40 minutes?

Thomas: Someone with a rigid and potent chat invite, please use it on Cathleen.
Zachary: Apparently there is no chat invite rigid or potent enough.

James: That's why I'm grumpy, I didn't have my happy lamp on.
Zachary: ...
Zachary: SO SAD
Thomas: *UNF UNF UNF UNF*

Cathleen: hedonism
James: Yes.
James: We are for it

James: That pointless homosexual teasing.
Thomas: We are more than friends, but less than lovers! OUR LOVE HAS NO NAME!
Cathleen: You could call it Jake!
Cathleen: Jake is a nice name.

Cathleen: I am stressed now!
Cathleen: I will fucking end you all!

Cathleen: and what happened to James?
Thomas: Dead.
Zachary: Buried.
Thomas: Happy lamp overloaded, burnt the flesh from his bones.
Zachary: It's true.
Zachary: I heard the sizzle.
Cathleen: I love my happy lamp.
James: Sigh.
Cathleen: There he is!
Thomas: FUCKING ZOMBIEA AGHAGHAGHH
Thomas: ...
Thomas: *UNFBRAIN UNFBRAIN UNFBRAIN*

Thomas: College sucks! Everything sucks!
Thomas: *runs upstairs, shuts door, plays loud fall out boy*
James: Sigh.
James: I think I know that song, too.

Cathleen: YES!
Cathleen: no . . .
Thomas: STOP MESSING WITH ME WOMAN

Beth: .....
Beth: I've fucked for seven straight hours.
Beth: While (edited - Zach: TAKE THAT OUT Thomas: D:<)
Thomas: Notes for next time: Have someone feeding you grapes.

Thomas: Old people can have sexytime too!
Zachary: ...yeah, they can.
Thomas: But that does not mean I want to watch that, Internet.

Zachary: Philosphy of Athens (seize the new) versus Sparta (appreciate what you have).
Thomas: Spoiler: Athens wins.

Cathleen: so are there anymore "staff" related issues we need to work out?
Zachary: No. I don't think there really were originally.
Zachary: But I'm glad we talked about things.
Thomas: Blamed: James.
Zachary: Indeed!
Cathleen: Seconded.
Cathleen: Now.
Zachary: Now?
James: ?
Beth: Yes!
Thomas: GET HIM!
Zachary: RAAAA