Endangered Eclecticism

There is some opposition to the digitization of media. People talk about the tactile experience that they will sorely miss – the texture, the feel, the folding quality, the experience of turning the page, even the dog-earing, the highlighting, the underlining, the notes in the margin – all this I can understand and will miss, like others, if we come to live in a world where there are no newspapers and no magazines. However, despite our reluctance to let go of the tactile experience in reading, the demise of print media is imminent. Maybe not today, not tomorrow and not even in the next several months but I wouldn’t be surprised if our printing plants stop humming after five years or so.

So what happens next? Some folks believe that customized content, delivered electronically, is the wave of the future. I signed on to be a part of just such an experiment being conducted by my former employer, Time Inc. – an experimental magazine called Mine. Mine is going to select articles for me from five other magazines of interest to me. They had me fill out a form where they requested my answers to a few “seemingly random” questions ostensibly for them and for their sole advertiser - Lexus (makers of a car that will have 22 customizable features) to be able to help serve me better.

The questions chosen were almost as incomprehensible to me as a Rorschach inkblot is to the person being tested. They wanted to know whether I’d like to learn juggling or celebrity impersonation, whether I’d like to have dinner with Leonardo da Vinci or Socrates, whether I like pizza or sushi and whether I like singing in the car or not! What would my choices tell them about me? And how come I wasn’t given the option to choose neither?

I am certainly intrigued by this proposition and can’t wait to see my first issue of Mine. I am very eager to see what they selected for me because I would prefer pizza to sushi, even if I don’t really care for pizza. I would never in a million years consider learning how to juggle but I wouldn’t want to take classes in celebrity impersonation either. I showed a preference for the latter since I can do a good Elvis – “Thank you, thank you very much”. So which article would they choose for my perusal? Socrates and Leonardo…I wouldn’t mind being seated at a dinner flanked by them both but what would showing a preference for Leonardo get me? And as far as singing in the car is concerned, of course! I can’t even dream of not singing in the car! So what will they divine about my preferences?

Ironically this idea which is an “out of the box” approach for traditional print media is an approach that strives to shove us all into different boxes. Wonder why the old Malvina Reynolds song comes to mind:

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

Somehow, someway we are all going to end up in little self contained boxes. No more wide horizons, no range of choices. If I go to the iTunes store and select “Little Boxes” by Malvina Reynolds its “Genius” feature will try to sell me ten different songs from the same artist or from that genre. It would be unfathomable for the folks at iTunes to believe that perhaps that was her only song that I ever liked. Amazon.com – my favorite online bookstore keeps trying to feed me more of the same stuff as well.

I don’t know what to make of this approach. I certainly don’t want my eclecticism endangered. I like confusing the heck out of them by selecting Portuguese Fado music, Indian classical music, western classical music, Scandinavian Nyckelharpa tunes and Appalachian fiddle music. Sometimes I purchase a classic rock song and at other times something from the Heartless Bastards or Fleet Foxes. I even bought something of Celine Dion’s! So what do they make of my musical tastes. Which marketable box are they going to put me in?

Do others feel their eclecticism as endangered as I do? It does seem as though we are turning our backs on the smorgasbord that life can be as we sleepwalk through our lives doing the same things every day, reading the same authors, the same genres, the same magazines, listening to the same type of music and drawing ourselves into am ever tightening circle of individuality. And the more such behaviors we exhibit the more they try to box us in.

I don’t think I want to continue to be the person I have always been. I want to sample everything, explore, experiment and evolve. I think their "little boxes" approach is equivalent to some sort of cultural/social inbreeding. I don’t think this apprehension is unique to me. I think we all get tired of limitations and familiarity does tend to breed some contempt. So why is it that they think they can sell us more of the same?

If Mine is successful, I am sure other publishing companies will jump on that bandwagon and soon we’ll all have our tailor-made content, happily reading only what we want to read and blind to all other ideas, opinions, possibilities.

Is this what we really want?

I am sick of the news!

I am sick of everyone, everywhere splitting hairs all the time. Yes, like every main streeter out there I feel a sense of outrage at the AIG bonuses and I am angry at the top executives whose bad decisions have incrementally added up to the crisis in which we now find ourselves. I am also very sick of the top executives never really having to pay for their incompetence, of their always finding a way to shed workers in order to send Wall Street the message that they are capable of making "forceful" decisions. It is all very sickening and nauseating in the extreme but at some point in time the nausea has to end in dry heaves!

At this point I am sure I am not alone in being sick of feeling sickened. I want our government to tax away the bonuses from the AIG executives who haven't considered returning it willingly. I applaud the people who are considering returning every penny of it. That is all that needs to happen. I don't want senators crying out for these people to commit suicide. I don't want people lashing out at their kids, their families, I don't want their neighbors spitting at them, threatening them, I don't think they need to stop living like free citizens because the media provokes escalating degrees of animus against them. The money either gets willingly returned or it gets taxed away, that's all. The associated drama is quite unbearable. I don't want to hear about the reasons why Chris Dodd felt he needed to introduce a loophole in original bailout bill that allowed these bonuses to happen. The blame game is irrelevant.

Why do we spend so much time assigning blame and reliving mistakes when we never have any intentions of learning from our mistakes? Has history ever shown that a post mortem of past mistakes stops their recurrence? If it did then why would history repeat?

I wish we could just move forward with the decisions that we collectively believe will take us out of the deep well in which we now find ourselves without peanut gallery comments from the press and the party that isn't currently in a position of power (unless of course they have something other than criticism and naysaying to contribute).

Obama has been in office for a couple of months. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) has passed and it will help achieve some gains. How beneficial it will ultimately prove to be remains to be seen. The crisis didn't take shape overnight. It was years in the making. It is highly unreasonable for people to expect it to turn things around immediately, that is, within a couple of months of the new president taking office.

The pretax dollars that I can now divert to my transit expense is certainly helping me out quite a bit. I am also thrilled to learn that the federal government will pick up sixty percent of the medical expenses of people who lose their jobs and therefore their medical coverage. These things are not necessarily as obvious but they will go a long way toward restoring confidence in the groups of people worst affected.

It is too early to criticize every effort, it feeds the downward spiral, fosters negativity. The talking heads and the pundits need to retreat and stop the hair splitting analysis for sometime. They are simply feeding a frenzy.

These times...

I think these times are not conducive to writing. I don't want to show blind optimism and summon up the old standby of "hope"...not because I am not hopeful that things will improve but because I am tired of repeating the cliché that once things hit rock bottom the only way out is up. We are hardwired to believe in hope. But it certainly doesn't inspire writing. Perhaps it would if hope came with a timeline, or if we had a crystal ball. Then I could write about my dreams for the year 20xx, I could make plans, come up with a Plan B and see it come to fruition.

I can't write about doom and gloom and end of days either. It clashes with the "hope" that lurks and teases in an annoying, yet endearing manner - with its puppy dog face - and I can't really give it a good clout and blow it to smithereens.

Perhaps it's better to just ride it out without opinions, without planning reactions and counter-reactions to things that are yet to happen. The more we act out, blindly, through fear, through conjecture, the more we'll influence the outcome through our warped reactions. No one knows where things are headed. One can only observe, let the dust settle around us.

I thought of "dust" because of Steven Millhauser's short story in the latest issue of The New Yorker: The Invasion from Outer Space made quite an impression on me. I haven't stopped thinking about it or playing what if scenarios in my head in idle moments.

The story is simple yet profound and, at least for me, what is said, so effectively presents that which is left unsaid in all its starkness. Millhauser's invasion from outer space is anticlimactic in the extreme as it turns out to be nothing but yellow dust falling from the sky and settling in and around every person, every object. No slimy aliens, no monsters, robots, other forms of alien invaders, just yellow dust. Fear and trepidation get lost in disappointment as people go about their business, cleaning it off surfaces, brushing it away and moving on with their lives. The dust turns out to be a fast multiplying, photosynthetic organism, but harmless enough, since all it does is replicate and accumulate.

The lines that impressed me the most were:

We have been invaded by nothing, by emptiness, by animate dust. The invader
appears to have no characteristic other than the ability to reproduce rapidly.
It doesn’t hate us. It doesn’t seek our annihilation, our subjection and
humiliation. Nor does it desire to protect us from danger, to save us, to teach
us the secret of immortal life. What it wishes to do is replicate.

An invader that simply wishes to replicate! Invaded by nothingness. What if...?

The other line that chilled me to the core was:

Through our windows we can see the yellow dust covering everything, forming
gentle undulations. We can almost see it rising slowly, like bread.

It is so easy for us get used to a new reality, to take it in our stride and find ways to cope; brushing things off where possible, scrubbing or hosing things down. Always coping, rationalizing, adapting to a new reality, never letting go of the raft we call hope.

In this story, learning to live with a photosynthetic, replicating organism, accumulating in our lives in tiny increments. In our own lives waiting and watching as as old premises vanish and old behaviors are rendered instantly anachronistic.

I still wake up in the morning, get dressed, get to work, spend time with my family, eat, sleep and watch TV as I always have even as I silently register each change.

I observe more people yelling at the top of their lungs on sidewalks and subway tunnels, talking about Christ being our Savior and threatening dire consequences come Judgment Day if the call isn't heeded.

I walk by even as I know that the next day will bring another evangelist to the subway station.

I see good looking, well dressed families singing in informal train station choirs, collecting the dollars and quarters people throw at them.

I see stores getting boarded up, I take in the 80-90% discount signs.

I see local restaurants and delis losing their lunch hour crowds as people start brown bagging their lunches.

The newspapers, the ones that are still around, report on the unprecedented job losses, on established businesses failing, of the stock exchange plumbing new depths.

I am sometimes alarmed at the reports of governments cutting back on policing and education budgets because in my mind these should be the last things to go in times like this, when anomie is the general norm.

And yet, life goes on, as we continue to do the things we do. Maybe tomorrow I'll brown bag my lunch as well. I'll take fewer vacations this year, eat less, spend less, make all the necessary and incremental adjustments that will help me continue to cope with the slow accretion of this new "dust" in my life...until one day I wake up to find a landscape that I don't recognize at all...or will it transform me in a manner where recognition of a former landscape isn't an issue at all because I've changed as much as the things around me...evolution?

And so these times are not conducive to the act of writing, especially for a blogger that claims to be introspective in the extreme but finds introspection pointless these days. She prefers riding the waves and seeing where it takes her if she survives the choppiness.