For years, young men were the ones who picked up a guitar, learned three or four chords, and played bad, whiny music, preferably at parties or on the campus lawn, and preferably to get attention from females. The accepted term for these gentlemen is “douchebags with guitars”. But the more I look around at the local music scene (at least here in Boston) the more it feels like these amateur amateurs are women, not men. And they don’t always play guitars. Sometimes they play the piano. But they always sound the same, and we’re all supposed to pretend we care and think they’re all talented and pretty and shit, when in fact, they suck.

Women cannot be douchebags, however. That’s a term just for certain types of insecure men. To my knowledge, there is no equivalent term for young women brandishing their instrument (badly) and crooning (barely tolerably) in hopes of capturing attention.

We can, of course, feminize “douchebag” into “douchebaguette”, but it’s a slightly cumbersome word, and too long, and simply would never catch on as a real insult. “Douchebaguettes with pianos” just won’t cut it.

So my proposal is to call these young ladies “snatchbags with guitars” or alternatively, “snatchbags with keyboards”.

I do realize that this goes against my feminist ethic to deliberately slander women specifically. But there is also a musical ethic in there somewhere. And so many of these snatchbags, just like their douchebag brothers, need to put the guitar DOWN and find something else to do.

And now here they are, finally operating, in an attempt to recreate conditions right after the big bang. According to this article, they’re shooting particles at nano-FRACTIONS short of the speed of light. The point is to answer questions about the universe, about matter, etc. And they will answer questions, lots of them. But then, the whole thing will only create a new set of questions. And the first thing those physicists are going to start thinking is “we need a bigger one”.

Baudrillard would have something to say about this.

He might ask (as do I), at what point is the simulation large enough? You’re trying to simulate the Big Bang, but in order to do so accurately, you must ACTUALLY RECREATE THE BIG BANG. To truly KNOW everything, you must DESTROY it.

And this demonstrates my fundamental problem with modern science of late. As a former dyed-in-the-wool empiricist myself, I still love geeking out on new information. But hasn’t it become clear to everyone by now that there are no hard limits on how BIG the research can be, and how TINY the increments of measurement can get? When does common sense kick in and show us that going bigger, or measuring tinier, is simply no longer efficient or cost-effective?

Because no matter how close to the “truth” these physicists claim to be, there will always be a gap between what we KNOW and what we FEEL WE SHOULD KNOW, unless we are willing to destroy ourselves. And that gap will continue to be filled with art, music, religion and spirituality, because that is how we create meaning for ourselves.

So fuck CERN. Even if they “find” dark matter, what does that really mean for the rest of us? Take all the billions you want to spend on the next collider and use it to teach kids to paint or something. To me that puts humanity on a much better course toward the real meaning of life than just uncovering more science questions.

It seems that two weeks ago, in rehearsing my new song “Blow” I banged up my vocal chords pretty good over the course of days.  Then I had three performances in a week, and never stopped to let them rest. Then I started writing a new song (tentatively titled “Spiders”) which I could not stop working on. So more days spent singing and working for hours without rest. I finally managed to stop for two days, and on the third day I picked up my guitar, thinking I could manage to just sing softly for a short time, like an alcoholic who believes he can just drink a little bit. Four hours later I was sore again.

So now, my guitar is safely with a friend to prevent me from hurting myself again until I am healed.

I’m a creataholic. But I’m telling you, this song is GOOD.

A strategy I often deploy is, “keep your feet moving.” My theory is that every low point is temporary, unless you happen to die in the middle of one. And perhaps our minds are too overwhelmed with grief, sadness, confusion, or even terror, to do much of anything. You can’t make your mind move, maybe, but you can surely make your feet move. This can be all you need — to go for a walk, to get some exercise, to run an errand, to clean your apartment — anything besides sitting there moping.

I came up with this idea in response to a different problem while in college. Socially maladjusted to the point that I was clueless at parties and dating, but desperate, I began simply asking out the most attractive girls on campus, none of whom even knew me. It was a juvenile and desperate strategy, and the only way to pull it off was to move my feet, because my mind withered at the thought of doing anything so bold. I could force myself, however, to walk in the girl’s direction, and at some point I would be standing right in front of them, and then I would have to say something or look like a fool. The strategy worked, to a point. I did get a few dates this way, to the envy of my friends, but then I still had to deal with my complete fear and awkwardness, so suffice to say there were no second dates.

Maybe it’s a shit strategy. It certainly doesn’t make me feel any better. But at least I wake up and my bedroom is tidy and there’s food in the fridge.  That’s something.

Then off ourselves…

This was something I was wondering last night as I went to bed.

I have always considered myself fundamentally good and kind, albeit entirely human — occasionally given to nefarious thoughts and behavior. But my behavior and thoughts of late have caused me to reconsider this. What if, in fact, I have a core of hostility and cynicism, that is densely overlaid with a sort of gentle humanity acquired late?

The answer is probably somewhere in the middle, as it so often is. Perhaps there is no core ethic. Perhaps there are in fact competing ethics that battle moment to moment to rise out of the subconscious into our conscious motivations and behaviors.  This would easily complement my “spiritual dialectic” theory of mind:

The concept of the rational actor is a fiction; human beings are instead products of a dense tapestry of traumas and triumphs that create a mind laden with contradictions endlessly vying for action and attention – a psychological and spiritual dialectic.

We are neither good nor bad (forget for a moment that these are perhaps human inventions anyway) but are instead loaded with a multitude of experiences, the most powerful of which took place in infancy before we even had memories, that lead us to react on the fly based on some arcane pattern recognition. Monkey see, monkey do (or here, monkey see, monkey act like a dick). It’s only through maturation and emotional-spiritual growth that we’re able to gradually take control of these devices and choose a path of goodness or nefariousness. Here’s the rest of that self-quote:

In a world with no god and no meaning, we are living on a blank white canvas and so have the opportunity to create the meaning we choose for humanity. This is perhaps the greatest gift we as humans have, and simultaneously our greatest vulnerability.

What’s really scary is when you start to consider the possibility that you are, in fact, a totally selfish dick, but that maybe this doesn’t actually bother you, at all.  At that point I think you transcend dickishness into sociopathy, or at least double-dickishness.

Or is this not at all a question of ethics but the final showdown with my own humanness? Isn’t some dickishness completely necessary, to maintain a sense of honesty? If we are always good and nice, never considering negativity or actions that may harm others, we aren’t human, we are robots.

I want to be a human. I don’t want to be a robot.