Nostalgia

This entry is in response to a book reading I went to (it has been a long while now) at City Lights, for Erik Davis' Nomad Codes.

It's strange being old enough to consider yourself a peer of 40-something writers and professors, and young enough to have participated in a wholly different version of Western culture in my youth. Davis' reading was witty and charming. He has huge amounts of exuberance and thoughtfulness that endeared him to me (and likely the whole audience) very quickly. He read from three sections of his book, focusing on his drugged-out experience as a 14-year-old (and the idea that the use of LSD, etc., was a lifelong reference for him as to the importance of the imagination), a very funny encounter with an in-car emergency response system (and the subsequent moment of the uncanny when he realized the radio was talking to him--a very brief time, he said, when you are aware of how technology is changing our lives without our knowing, when you haven't yet absorbed that technology as a normal part of life and it is still shocking and strange), and his experience following a developing-country-loving band around the Middle East.

All great until the question period, when a few sycophantic individuals asked things like, "You're going to Rice. And you're so creative, so intelligent. What would you say about [dramatic pause, clearing of throat] 'attention span'." (it was not posed as a question) What? A few people got up to leave, demonstrating what the author could not about the modern attention span, if that was, in fact, the question this woman was asking. But the real downward spiral came when a few older men (some of them shockingly young to be thinking this way, quite frankly) started asking questions (following long, rambling intros) about music today. Davis had written about rock bands for 10 years, had been very hip-to-the-moment, as he described it, but didn't really follow it anymore. Someone's question focused on the amazement they experienced as a child, when a new Beatles album came out--this is it!! the only one that will ever be like this! the best album ever!--and the disappointment they feel now--oh, well, just another one. i'm sure there will be something just like it next year. And Davis' response just enforced this way of thinking: Yeah, I always listen to music today and think, man, that sounds just like Band X. But, he noted, this isn't a good thing for him--in fact, it probably meant he was getting old. The last question I sat through was the City Lights host describing, in detail, his experience of listening to a record as a youth. "You know how it is. You buy the record. You carefully peel the plastic off. You put it on the player. You adjust the arm, swivel it over the record. And then there's that crackling noise. When anything is possible. You know? That crackling. When you don't know what's coming. How good it's going to be, how bad...." (yes, it went on.) Sitting there, a modern consumer of both MP3s and LPs, I was amazed by his overwhelming nostalgia for this thing of the past. And not just nostalgia (which can be great), but value-laden nostalgia: this thing of the past, with its cracking and plastic cover, this was the thing, the moment of possibility; this MP3 of today, it is less good, less meaningful. And Davis again affirmed (sort of, though I sensed his discomfort with the value judgment): Yeah, there's an attachment to a physical thing, the record player. A nostalgia attached to that material thing. And that's ok. But today, music feels like data. You listen to notes of music from an MP3 player like data, not like 'that's a bass note'.

When I left, soon after/in the middle of this conversation, it was with a sense that these 40-somethings, 50-somethings, 60-somethings, left their sense of perspective in their 30s. Music is still music today. People still hear the notes the same way. It is not data anymore than the notes embedded on an LP are data--it's just more easily transferable. The "coolness" strata have broken down along different lines. No longer do listeners have to rely on people like Davis to haunt record stores to ferret out the incredibly cool music before writing about it. Today, we can all access bands' websites, YouTube, MySpace, music blogs, and decide for ourselves. And the "crackling when anything was possible" is a complete re-construction of the experience. There is a nostalgia-based value in that crackling. But to say that there is any more of a possibility in that moment than in the moment before you hit Play on your MP3 player is to falsely remember the past. I have no doubt I will do this someday, too, but I left feeling frustrated with this nostalgia--it seemed to have alienated this group of the 40+s from the rest of us. It seemed to mean that they did not value the culture in which we were participating, even though they were participating in it, too. Because they had participated in this earlier, "better" culture, they seemed to think of themselves as somehow outside of the current culture. We all ascribe value to different things in varying ways, but it seems important to reconsider every now and then--to think of what mattered and what matters, and perhaps, the distinction between your appreciation through the lens of nostalgia and through your still-unsettled, undistilled present.

All that said, interesting talk and interesting guy. I appreciated the perspective, but mostly because mine isn't already rooted in the 1960s.

Always Asking, "What is Possible?"

At least, that's what the 60-some-year-old teacher of my instructed life drawing class said tonight. "Always ask yourself, 'what's possible?'. Drawing is an extension of consciousness. Don't scribble. Don't be too constrained, too thoughtful. Just feel it. Feel what draws you to this pose. And always think, 'where am I going with this?'"

Biking the 35 minutes over there after running out of the office at 5 so I could make it home to get my bike, pencils and paper and then make it over the the far end of the Mission neighborhood by 6:15, I thought that my attendance was the limit of possibility. The fact that I, as someone with no artistic abilities, no drawing experience, was rolling up to this incredible studio filled with people who have been drawing for decades, seemed to be a far reach in the realm of possible. This was me, stretching.

So I stretched my way in, awkwardly situated myself behind a drawing board with 40 sheets of newsprint and charcoal stubs and wondered what I was doing there. The class started--and it is 20 weeks in to an instructional course--with a 15 minute session of poses. The model poses, you draw; she warns you: "Ten seconds"; you turn over to a new sheet; she adjusts; you draw. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Before the class started, I had asked the woman next to me, "umm, so how do you do this?" And she said, "Just feel it. If you can, try not to even look at the page. Just let it flow." It turns out, she was very talented, but strangely unsure of herself. She confessed when we discussed our work, her feelings of anxiety over the possibility of being a bad "drawer" (and then "I don't think that's a thing. Unless you're a piece of furniture." She laughed.) And the thing I learned first was that no one was sure of herself; all of us were awkward and uncertain. The thing I learned next: beginning with the premise that I suck at something is actually great for me. It works well in yoga, too: I think I'm terrible, so I just let it go. And at the end of the three hour class, I was happy with what I had done. There is no doubt that it isn't art. No doubt that it is the creation of a talentless hack, but it is a creation of a three hour stretch beyond my expectations of myself. It was a manifestation of what was possible, for me. And this: having 30 sheets of charcoaled passably human bodies rolled up in my bag while I bike home at night through abandoned city streets, feels like where I might be going. There is no definition to it, no certainty, and no comfort. Just bliss and energy and an edge of fear.

Working and Avoidance

Saturday. Sunny and beautiful, after a morning of indecisive fog. I woke up early, planning to be industrious--I would do laundry, get a coffee, call my bro for his birthday, and then Work! Yes, I am working weekends. Or, rather, I am supposed to be working weekends. I have enough work to occupy the entirety of my weekend... and, if I were really to learn the statutes and regulations that I should know to feel competent in this case, I would be pretty busy for the next couple years. It is a struggle getting the small things together, in keeping life organized when you refuse to give up anything you love to do. So, for my weekend, and for life, this is what matters: refusing to give up the things you love because you have work. There will always be work. Work will always be overwhelming. And it will always feel important. It is important; but, it's not all that matters.

This week, I worked a lot. I learned a lot. I wrote a memo that earned a "Nice work!" and I felt, momentarily, very proud of myself. So, Friday, I decided there was no way I was staying in the office until 8pm again. I gathered up treatises and papers and cases and took them all home. Immediately, I felt better. Immediately, I stopped doing work. I spent my night having fondue and wine with a friend and then coming home to paint a terrible painting while listening to Tom Petty and singing along, loudly. (Apologies, Neighbor.) And today, I managed to avoid my work just as happily. A long phone conversation with my brother, laundry, and putting together my photo wall! This afternoon, I'm going into the Mission to organize an art show with a bunch of random creatives--could be either amazing or a total flop. In any case, I think this is a beautiful way to avoid my work, to maintain my sanity. Monday will come, and I will be held accountable for the things I need to do--and, somehow, will manage to get done today, tomorrow (after a half-marathon over GG Bridge!). But for now, I have remembered some of the other things that matter: the faces of the friends and family plastered all over my picture wall are good reminders of everything else outside of the statutes, case law, and bumbling attempts at being a lawyer.

Community & Isolation

The weekend before I began work, I went camping for two nights, hiking for two days, with a group of strangers. I slept in my own tent, alone, for the first time in my life. While my sleeping bag was sliding down the hillside on which I had pitched my tent and I was cursing myself for spending my last weekend of unlimited sleep time on the rock-and-branch-peppered ground, and later, when I woke up thinking that I would be eaten by a mountain lion all alone in my tent, I realized that I was actually perfectly happy to be there. I was perfectly happy, albeit physically uncomfortable, to be completely alone. I realized simultaneously that the community of other campers and hikers, almost-strangers now, made it safer to be so comfortable alone. It was only with this community surrounding me, peripheral, that I felt so secure in my place, so free to feel happy alone.

Since I have also moved into my own apartment in San Francisco, I have been alone for much of my time. After a year of living in a graduate student dorm, this is a little bit of a culture shock. I am used to friends running down the hallways to see me, to spending hours lazing around on friends' beds and floors just talking and spending time together. We were drenched in socialization, and I loved it. Of course, those who know me best also know that I spent many nights alone, not answering my phone, trying not to answer the door, just reading and writing and listening to music and pretending it was cool to not go out on a Saturday night. This unique place, filled with so many interesting and fun and funny people, is no longer my home. I miss it, but I miss more than the constant socializing--in fact, I'm not sure I miss that at all. I miss the community we built, the comfort that we spread among ourselves--the comfort to be yourself. With individuals from all over the world, studying every possible thing in graduate school, loving all sorts of different books and music and people and places, we were irreconcilably unique. And yet, we were all drawn into this same web of life, this same community. We drank at the bars together; we lounged in the grass together; we walked everywhere together; we rode night buses and biked terrifying London streets together; and we talked, we talked, we talked. Community: the place you lose your inhibitions enough to feel content to be alone. And this was it--each of us, so undeniably alone, out of place in this foreign country with customs and places we did not know, thrived because we built an intangible thing and inhabited it together. In my tent two weeks ago, I realized that I was no more alone now than I was then---my community still exists, spread all over the world, in the minds and hearts of people I have met and loved. And my community was there, around that campfire, other individuals alone in their tents. Each of us drawn to the conversation and the idea that we could someday be friends, that we could draw lines of complementarity among ourselves and find commonality, despite huge age, cultural and lifestyle differences.

I have been thinking that once we are content to be alone, community exists all around us, and we are always welcomed into it. So this is what matters: Be unafraid to be alone. Everyone you meet is part of your community.

Counting down...

I'm going to leave out the historical details, for now, and say only this: I have three weeks (exactly, from today) before I begin my job, working full-time as an associate at a large corporate law firm in San Francisco. It's a great job, but I fear losing my sense of the things that matter to me now (with a year of freedom, flag-high, trailing behind me) and have mattered to me always. Everyone tells me that I will be the one to stay the course; I will be the one to remember who I am, despite the hours and the repetitive work; I will be one of the few to disregard the allure of a high salary and maintain my sense of smallness. But everyone also tells me this: working in a this type of law firm is a soul-sucking, life-altering experience that saps you of your energy and your time. I do not have the ego to believe myself invulnerable to the forces that have changed so many idealistic young people before me. And, besides, if I were truly untouched by the allure of big-firm career possibilities, I wouldn't be standing here, on the precipice, weeks away from jumping in, would I?

So why am I here? The standard answers. The practical answers. The training. The experience. To say I have held a real job (harder to find than you might imagine, at this time, in this country, in this state).

Why, then, would I choose not to be here? Why would I already be plotting my escape from this career? For all the reasons I went into law in the first place. For the idea that law makes a difference in the world. For the idea that individuals without rights deserve those rights, wherever they live, whatever their socioeconomic status, whatever their gender, whatever their race, whatever their sexual orientation, whatever their age or (dis)ability. For the idea that the environment and the creatures in it deserve protection from our mining and building and oil-sucking, pollutant-spewing operations. For the idea that making money is not an object in itself, and that we have allowed it too dominant a position in our world.

I am not walking into it blindly, but neither am I sure of the consequences of this path. Certainly, each of our choices has repercussions, and my choices (for better or worse) have led me here, but I worry over the smaller choices I will make in the next few years. I worry that I will not lead myself back out of this place--perhaps I will forget those things that have mattered; perhaps I will decide that new things matter more than the old things. I have been told that I agonize over this too much; that decisions come and go, and this is a good one, a solid one. I have a life with this decision. I have an apartment in a great city, and I will work in a respected firm. But that's not all there is. Free time, which I have cherished and fully inhabited for the past year, is incredibly valuable. No salary can compensate for its loss. This weekend, my first in my new home, was blissful and completely free. I ran along the beaches to Golden Gate Bridge in September sun; I walked for miles and miles around the city; I went to the SF MOMA to see their 75-yr retrospective installment and a pop art exhibit; I walked through North Beach's Art Walks celebration; I finished three books and started two others; I went to a farmers' market; I had dinner with a good friend; I slept well and woke up early; I drew; I wrote; I breathed with the exultant but fearful ease of someone who knows their days of completely open time are limited. These moments, though I spend most of them alone, have been beautiful and important. I want never to lose that sense of the importance of free time. Along with my values, it matters most in making me who I am. People are more human, more interesting, when they have free time and know how to spend it. I hope that I never lose my competence in spending these golden moments freely and happily.