Could #occupy Revolutionize the Music Industry?

For independent artists, getting your name out there is a huge challenge. Social media and viral sharing have helped independent put themselves on the digital map. Yet capitalizing on #occupy may prove to be a profitable, though controversial, may be a major opportunity for movement building.

The Occupy Movement (#occupy), occupytogether.org, has created a brand-identified notion of the voices of #the99percent. For artists who share the same intentions and impetus as the #occupy movement, creating for the movement (and also for themselves) economically may conjure up images of a hybrid economy. Artists who use the #occupy brand name to make money are increasing their revenue. That means that the message of #occupy is fueling an economy of independent musicians

However, it's also being co-opted. Music and the #occupy movement are being used by the rich and famous artists, like Russel Simmons, to increase their celebrity or profitability. The recent criticism of JZ's clothing line was that he co-opted the #occupy message to make a profit. The problem is that JZ was not willing to share any of his profits with the #occupy movement. Further, #occupy doesn't want to be "spoken for" (or associated with) an international rock star. As a rap legend, JZ has made tons of money with his blend of hip hop. It's natural that he would want to help the community that brought him to prominence, but he should thank the occupiers and #the99percent financially rather than just pay lipservice to the idea.

If artists' can benefit the #occupy movement, the #occupy movement can benefit artists. How do you find socially conscious artists whose music you love? 1) Go to the Occupy Music facebook page 2) listen to music 3) download it and support the artists 4) artist supports the community. (You don't need a facebook account to visit the page.)

The #occupy movement should be an opportunity for artists to create and have their work recognized and celebrated. Getting bogged down in intellectual culture isn't going to help anyone. A grassroots media approach to documenting and supplementing the #occupy movement is essential to creating the kind of free culture the #occupy movement aims to create in physical space.

Here are some examples:

Site Listening

Love the concept!

Instead of sight-seeing, try site listening. This website provides listening guides for different localities in Australia:

http://sitelistening.com/

Here is an example from Brisbane:

Lawrence English - Site-Listening: Brisbane (edit) by ROOM40

Something I read today from @ActivistTips on Twitter:

"Capitalism succeeds in privatizing every aspect of life by keeping people immersed in their own private space. Learn to enjoy public space."

What better way to do that than through sound?

Slow down, listen, and enjoy the ride.

Byproducts

What are my daily behaviors? What would I like my daily behaviors to be? What are the byproducts of my daily behaviors? What would I like the byproducts of my daily behaviors to be?

Grad School As Consumption

In my first three weeks of grad school, I have been asked to consume a huge amount of information without producing much. What I have produced as wiki-posts and short projects lacks an intensive commitment to quality. Like this blog, most of the ideas I have encountered and produced/re-produced haven't been fully formed. I find myself skimming articles, taking interesting points, coming up with a few "Ah-Hah!" moments for each, then leaving the overarching idea (if I got any sense of it at all - mostly I just get a surface represenation, an uncomplicated binary perspective) to rattle around in my head.

There is no time to digest!

That was my complaint as an undergrad, and it remains true for grad school, too. When will mental metabolism come into the equation? Sure, I will produce final projects that are intended to be refined products, but this leaves me considerably little time to think and make connections along the way.

I came to grad school because I didn't want my life to stagnate, but now I wish I could embrace the slow life movement, move to a farm in Idaho and milk cows.

Real life is Montessori education. Grad school is a grinding machine.

Cultural Hybridity: Week 2 Notes

Taylor

3 - "What distinguishes the moment of complexity is not change as such but rather the acceleration of the rate of change."
4 - development has a direction - "things tend to move from lesser to greater complexity." Challenge is to learn to live with complexity "creatively."
5 - tipping point [of complexity] where "more is different."
- network culture
6 - spiritual aspect of political and economic change and turmoil in the '60's and now
-Two truths from Hegel and Kiergaard:
- 1) "There is a religious dimension to all culture."
-2) "Second, religion is inseparable from philosophy, literature, literary criticism, art, and architecture, as well as science, technology, capitalism, and consumerism."
6-7 - Derrida as theological thinker. Connection between deconstruction and religion, between religion and post-structuralism.
7 - artists as "religious prophets" constructing 'kingdom of God' through avant-garde, utopian work
*avant-garde translates to "advanced guard" or "vanguard," meaning the frontline of an advancing military unit
8 - "Just as God dies when natural and historical processes are deemed sacred, so art effectively ends when it becomes indistinguishable from other forms of cultural production and reproduction." ???
- Warhol's art as an eschatological critique of consumerism that brings art into the streets, blurring lines between high and low culture --> 'business [as] art'
9 - In a visual culture increasingly governed by electronic media, the currency of exchange is image."
- Taylor's book: About Religion: Economies of Faith in Virtual Culture
10 - Next book: Imagologies: Media Philosophy. Attempt to integrate theory and practice through tele-seminar
13-14 - ???? complexity theory distinguished from catastrophe theory and chaos theory ????
14 - "According to complexity theorists, all significant change takes place between too much and too little order. When there is too much order, systems are frozen and cannot change, and when there is too little order, systems disintegrate and can no longer function."

Po-Mo, Post-PoMo, Complexity, Networking, Globalization


-Loss of "master narratives" of cultural and national origins that justify or give meaning to present-day identities, destinies, or inevitable or predetermined futures.
-->vis. a viz Taylor: Is Taylor trying to (re)construct a master narrative or philosophy of culture?


-How have networks of all kinds become the infrastructure of the present post-postmodern era, facilitating and accelerating hybridity?

* Digital Networks
* Media Networks
* Transportation Networks
* Financial Networks
* Market distribution networks
* Social networks

--> note shifts in music industry/entertainment industry as shifts in market distribution networks... these now combine with the other types of networks to create hybrid networks that disempower the traditional business models of the entertainment industries. ***How are these industries responding and adapting?***

Toward a Concept of Postmodernism (Ihab Hassan)
-Hassan was an electrical engineer before studying English literature
- 4) postmodernism not as discrete tradition, but a natural evolution of modernism, albeit fast-paced and facilitated through globalization and attendant technologies
- so what? outside of academics, do working people talk about postmodernism? how do they define the era in which they live? more importantly, is there any value for them/us to undertake such a venture? how can defining postmodernism lead to resolving conditions of hunger, poverty, lack of personal freedom and mobility? can postmodernism even offer us anything meaningful in terms of happiness or overcoming the basic problems inherent in the human condition? art and literary theory are nice, but at the end of the day I still live subject to the constraints of empire and have to ask the question, how am I gonna get a job??? (relates to point 9)
- 7) "fourfold vision of complementarities": continuity, discontinuity, diachrony and synchrony. Does this work with a modernism/post-modernism X humanist/technologist mind map? Are humanism and technologism worthy or necessary categories for consideration in the contemporary context? What would be more relevant categories?
- 8) change is happening all the time, but what kind of change is it? change we can believe in? progressive change? social change?
- can we see some examples of Dadaism, situationalism or other artistic movements mentioned by Hassan?
-"party for peace" and "gaming for change" as post-postmodern - paradoxical joining of the antithetical categories suggested by Hassan.
- don't get the conflation of "inderterminancy" and "immanence" as conflation of "decunstruction" and "language". Don't get it at all.

Stanford Encyclopedia

"Neither side, however, suggests that postmodernism is an attack upon modernity or a complete departure from it. Rather, its differences lie within modernity itself, and postmodernism is a continuation of modern thinking in another mode."

Precursors:

Kant - Copernican revolution

Kierkegaard and Hegel
*The worker romanticized in the modern era. --> example of hyperreal. Kierkegaard and Hegel on the modern "public" as constructed through media.

"In Marx, on the other hand, we have an analysis of the fetishism of commodities (Marx 1983, 444-461) where objects lose the solidity of their use value and become spectral figures under the aspect of exchange value. "

"...Nietzsche, who speaks of being as “the last breath of a vaporizing reality” and remarks upon the dissolution of the distinction between the “real” and the “apparent” world."

"Nietzsche believes only a return of the Dionysian art impulse can save modern society from sterility and nihilism. This interpretation presages postmodern concepts of art and representation, and also anticipates postmodernists' fascination with the prospect of a revolutionary moment auguring a new, anarchic sense of community."

"On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" (Nietzsche 1979, 77-97) "In this text, Nietzsche puts forward the hypothesis that scientific concepts are chains of metaphors hardened into accepted truths. On this account, metaphor begins when a nerve stimulus is copied as an image, which is then imitated in sound, giving rise, when repeated, to the word, which becomes a concept when the word is used to designate multiple instances of singular events. Conceptual metaphors are thus lies because they equate unequal things, just as the chain of metaphors moves from one level to another."

*Can Neurology back Nietzsche up on this? Is this really how language works? Do sounds sometimes precede images? Can the stimulus be tactile or multimodal? ***Do all thoughts occur as response to stimulus?***

-Nietzsche on history and memory/forgetfulness.

Heidegger: “precisely nowhere does man today any longer encounter himself, i.e., his essence” (Heidegger 1993, 332). Criticism of functionalism of modern era: "The essence of technology, which he names “the enframing,” reduces the being of entities to a calculative order (Heidegger 1993, 311-341). Hence, the mountain is not a mountain but a standing supply of coal, the Rhine is not the Rhine but an engine for hydro-electric energy, and humans are not humans but reserves of manpower. The experience of the modern world, then, is the experience of being's withdrawal in face of the enframing and its sway over beings. However, humans are affected by this withdrawal in moments of anxiety or boredom, and therein lies the way to a possible return of being, which would be tantamount to a repetition of the experience of being opened up by Parmenides and Heraclitus."

-Western "Other" as "the Jew."
*What about the Orient?


2. The Postmodern Condition

Jean-François Lyotard's La Condition Postmoderne in 1979 (English: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, 1984)
-"On Lyotard's account, the computer age has transformed knowledge into information, that is, coded messages within a system of transmission and communication."
"he insists, “there is a strict interlinkage between the kind of language called science and the kind called ethics and politics” (Lyotard 1984, 8), and this interlinkage constitutes the cultural perspective of the West. Science is therefore tightly interwoven with government and administration, especially in the information age, where enormous amounts of capital and large installations are needed for research."
-*Science as religion? Science as meta-narrative? Science as language game. Science as (unified) narrative. Lyotard is incredulous toward meta-narratives that don't interact with others (e.g. science toward philosophy, morality, etc.)
-"“I define postmodern as incredulity toward meta-narratives,” says Lyotard (Lyotard 1984, xxiv)."
-***"...the dissolution of narrative leaves the field of legitimation to a new unifying criterion: the performativity of the knowledge-producing system whose form of capital is information."
-"the paralogical inventiveness of science raises the possibility of a new sense of justice, as well as knowledge, as we move among the language games now entangling us. / Lyotard takes up the question of justice in Just Gaming (see Lyotard 1985) and The Differend: Phrases in Dispute (see Lyotard 1988), where he combines the model of language games with Kant's division of the faculties (understanding, imagination, reason) and types of judgment (theoretical, practical, aesthetic) in order to explore the problem of justice set out in The Postmodern Condition."
-"Kant's division of the faculties (understanding, imagination, reason) and types of judgment (theoretical, practical, aesthetic)" in postmodern context
-***"The postmodern, then, is a repetition of the modern as the “new,” and this means the ever-new demand for another repetition."

*Should I read Kant? Foucault?

3. Genealogy and Subjectivity

Foucault
-"In the 1971 essay “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” Foucault spells out his adaptation of the genealogical method in his historical studies. First and foremost, he says, genealogy “opposes itself to the search for ‘origins’” (Foucault 1977, 141)."
-"modernity,” as a fiction modern discourses invent after the fact."
-Madness and Civilization (1965)
-confluence of knowledge and power
-reason vs. non-reason (madness). Reason dictates the terms of madness.
-****The Use of Pleasure (Foucault 1985), Foucault employs historical research to open possibilities for experimenting with subjectivity, by showing that subjectivation is a formative power of the self, surpassing the structures of knowledge and power from out of which it emerges. This is a power of thought, which Foucault says is the ability of human beings to problematize the conditions under which they live. For philosophy, this means “the endeavor to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already known” (Foucault 1985, 9)
-Foucault as hybrid between philosophy and historical research, Lyotard as hybrid between language games of expert and philosopher. "This mixing of philosophy with concepts and methods from other disciplines is characteristic of postmodernism in its broadest sense.

4. Productive Difference

Gilles Deleuze
-"the purpose of his critique of reason “is not justification but a different way of feeling: another sensibility” (Deleuze 1983b, 94). "
-"Philosophical critique" as "thought and that which forces it into action."
-“difference is the only principle of genesis or production” (Deleuze 1983b, 157).
-"His major focus is a thoroughgoing critique of representational thinking, including identity, opposition, analogy, and resemblance (Deleuze 1994, 132)."
-Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Deleuze, 1972)
-"...the Oedipus concept in psychoanalysis, they say, institutes a theater of desire in which the psyche is embedded in a family drama closed off from the extra-familial and extra-psychic forces at work in society. They characterize these forces as “desiring machines” whose function is to connect, disconnect, and reconnect with one another without meaning or intention."
-body and "desiring machines"
-"territorializations" from primitive sacred, to divine emperor, to capitalism, i.e. monetary flow
-capitalism in the Oedipal triangle framework; linkage of desire and indebtedness
-***"a revolutionary potential in modern art and science, where, in bringing about the “new,” they circulate de-coded and de-territorialized flows within society without automatically re-coding them into money (Deleuze 1983a, 379)"

*Can networks create the contours of philosophy, a mental image that resembles an accurate representation of thought? Beyond the modern/postmodern dialectic to a global consciousness of interconnected ideas (linkage of philosophy, linguistics, literature, art, politics, economics, etc., etc.). These ideas can be linked in innumerable ways, the question is how they are linked. Why are they linked in certain ways, and not others? Links may be created by "reason" and reasonableness, or perhaps by distortions of group thought (re: Lyotard's view of media/medium, or Foucault's view of institutions that outlive their time). Why does a newscaster or a pundit link a trade deal in Colombia with America's inability to create green jobs? (hypothetical) Or why does a researcher/philosopher/academic combine disciplines in a certain way, other than as an accident of personal and professional development?

*Is media the joining of art and science? Is revolutionary potential unleashed through [social] networks the revolution imagined by Deleuze and Guattari?

5. Deconstruction
Jaques Derrida
-don't get difference and differance AT ALL
-spoken vs. written language, both are texts... ok... speaking is writing (cf. jazz - improv is composition)... ok... don't understand anything else
-"A deconstructive reading, then, does not assert or impose meaning, but marks out places where the function of the text works against its apparent meaning, or against the history of its interpretation."

*Contemplation/contemplative traditions/wisdom/mysticism as deconstruction. Non-violence as deconstruction. Institutionalization as violent construction of power and control, undermining/co-opting mystical truth.

6. Hyperreality
Jean Baudrillard
-linked to the concept of the simulacrum (likeness)
-simulations as signs without any referent
-**"In postmodernism, hyperreality is the result of the technological mediation of experience, where what passes for reality is a network of images and signs without an external referent, such that what is represented is representation itself."
-signs producing other signs, no original sources, no correlation to the referent (meaning reality?)
-"The hyperreal is a system of simulation simulating itself." (The Matrix?)
-"graffiti artists who experiment with symbolic markings and codes in order to suggest communication while blocking it, and who sign their inscriptions with pseudonyms instead of recognizable names. “They are seeking not to escape the combinatory in order to regain an identity,” says Baudrillard, “but to turn indeterminacy against the system, to turn indeterminacy into extermination” (Baudrillard 1993, 78)."

*RANT: I think all courses on post-modern thought should be taught based on The Matrix. We all saw it when we were like ten, we can relate. I'd rather study how they made the scene with bullets rippling through the air than read about what Baudrillard would say about the red pill or blue. Maybe not - i suppose my worldview presupposes me to want to be happy, beyond all else, and I am conditioned to believe that this is only possible through gainful employment (probably resulting in the practical application of technical skill). So I would like to pursue my own happiness, but I am dubious of philosophical meanderings as a means to that end.

7. Postmodern Hermeneutics
Gianni Vattimo
-"Hermeneutics, the science of textual interpretation, also plays a role in postmodern philosophy."
-"On Vattimo's account, Nietzsche and Heidegger can be brought together under the common theme of overcoming. Where Nietzsche announces the overcoming of nihilism through the active nihilism of the eternal return, Heidegger proposes to overcome metaphysics through a non-metaphysical experience of being."
-"The de-historicization of experience has been accelerated by technology, especially television, says Vattimo, so that “everything tends to flatten out at the level of contemporaneity and simultaneity” (Vattimo 1988, 10). As a result, we no longer experience a strong sense of teleology in worldly events, but, instead, we are confronted with a manifold of differences and partial teleologies that can only be judged aesthetically. The truth of postmodern experience is therefore best realized in art and rhetoric."
-being as a text?

8. Postmodern Rhetoric and Aesthetics
Mario Perniola
-"Perniola insists that postmodern philosophy must not break with the legacies of modernity in science and politics."
-Egyptianism and the "baroque effect"
-"philosophical reading and writing are not activities of an identical subject, but processes of mediation and indeterminacy between self and other, and philosophical narrative is an overcoming of their differences."
-ritual without myth

*Why didn't I embrace a Montessori view of education that is life?

9) Habermas's Critique
Jurgen Habermas (sic, no umlaut over u)
-"he claims that Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida and Foucault commit a performative contradiction in their critiques of modernism by employing concepts and methods that only modern reason can provide. He criticizes Nietzsche's Dionysianism as a compensatory gesture toward the loss of unity in Western culture that, in pre-modern times, was provided by religion."
-postmodernists base their arguments on modern assumptions/presuppositions

Jameson
14 - post-modern as against modernism
*What is the new economic order (15 - multinational capitalism? media and spectacle) in postmodernism? Answer: neocolonialism, the Green Revolution (environmental movement?) and computerization and electronic information
What about the new economic order in post-postmodernism? Do either of these pose a real threat to the old order, a true revolutionary force? Or are they simply reworkings of the current systems? Do we continue to repeat the modern (and ancient) models of imperialism with new victors and rising powers, or is there an alternative to these power structures that have seemed to evolve cyclically over history?
*Postmodernism as a cultural response to economic conditions of late capitalism. Is there anything to suggest that this response is at all adequate? How does this response have bearings on the economic systems at hand?
*tecno brega as an example of parody
16-17 - death of the subject - the idea that the discrete individual (subject) is no longer the cultural norm, or that the individual (subject) was a myth to begin with an never actually existed.
*I'm ready to embrace the idea that individualism, to the extent it has manifested itself in American, and now global, capitalism is a cultural myth, produced and reproduced by society. But I take myth in Joseph Campbell's terms: myth is a true story. A myth holds currency because some element of it is believed to be true. Perhaps now the transparency of the myth of the individual comes into question, but certainly the individual (as a category for identity construction) and individualism (as an ideology associated with free market capitalism and American notions of freedom) are alive and well, practiced and repracticed by capitalists and their progenitors. Though one might submit that the myth of the individual was purely Western construct, absent in Eastern cultures, (according to some social psychologists or cultural theorists of the modern era), I suggest that such an argument is a gross oversimplification of the Oriental "other" and individualism in some form exists across most cultures. We construct sci-fi images of the Borg or the Machines, but these "mythological" creatures are alien to us in their absolute adherence to communal philosophy. That is, they may express the defects (and virtues) of total self-obliteration in the form of mythological characters. Invididualism and communalism, though, are probably at play throughout most societies in history, and each culture negotiates a balance between the two. In modern capitalism, the tension was posed as the battle between communism and democracy (read capitalism). How, then, is the tension expressed in the postmodern and post-postmodern eras? The individual is certainly seen as a more complex unit, allowed to move freely between various subcultures and construct a hybrid/complex identity. (See Naomi Klein's No Logo on the branding of subcultures in the 1990s.) Yet I wonder whether these subcultures, transnational or transgendered identities are causing substantial changes to the lat capitalistic economic order. On the one hand, they may pose a threat; on the other, they may create the illusion of individualism that allows people to believe they are not full participants in the late capitalist system.
*Lady Gaga as a copy of Madonna, but most would agree she's worked hard to develop a unique personal/artistic style.
*Copying others is cheaper than creating from scratch. Re: Hollywood's ubiquitous remake and sequel culture (see everything is a remix). Rather than develop an original style, tropes that have already been profitable are reused (actors, storylines, camera angles, etc.).
*Why isn't anyone talking about archetypes?
18 - nostalgia film
*Genres facilitate pastiche.
19 - "...for whatever peculiar reasons, we seem condemned to seek the historical past through our own pop images and stereotypes about the past, which itself remains forever out of reach."
*Is the Bonaventure handicap accessible???
23 - elevators and escalators as signs/symbols of movement
24 - L.A. itself as referent
25 - postmodern warfare
*What are the postmodern features of the Bonaventure Hotel? Constant motion, nothing being still, people moving machine. Is this analogous to the information moving machine that is the Internet?
26 - "What is new about all this? Do we really need the concept postmodern? Answer: This break is necessary when certain features that were before subordinate become dominant, when there is a substantial shift in the traits latent in a given period. When something marginal becomes central.
***27 - "For one thing, commodity production and in particular our clothing furniture, buildings and other artifacts are now intimately tied in with styling changes which drive from artistic experimentation; our advertising, for example, is fed by postmodernism in all the arts and inconceivable without it. For another, the classics of high modernism are now part of the so-called canon and taught in schools in universities - which at once empties them of their subversive power." Subversion crippled by institutionalization --> the need for constant redefinitions, rearticulations of art and thought. Every era is always post-the-era-before-it (duh), and moves on not because the era before was fundamentally flawed, but the way it articulated the truth no longer resonates (because it is not new and fresh.)
28 - "One is tempted to say that the very function of the news media is to relegate such recent historical experiences as rapidly as possible into the pat. The informational function of the media would thus be to help us forget [and remember?], to serve as the very agents and mechanisms for our historical amnesia." Yeah, our memories aren't so good any more, but the pace of life and the kind of information that is relevant is what is really changing. We can still make memories just as well - our brains have [not yet] fundamentally changed. But we have devices that hold memories for us with increasing presence (the flash drive, the digital camera, Wikipedia). Thus, we only hang on to those memories that are truly impactful, and even these we only hold on to their feeling, rarely to their form.

Homi Bhabha

Introduction

- "What is theoretically innovative, and politically crucial, is the need to think beyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities and to focus on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences. These 'in-between' spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood - singular or communal - that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself."
*Mystical nature of truth as something that lies in the gaps or interstices of difference, not effable statements or articulations.
*Musicians pay attention to the space between the notes.
-liminal space
-the unknowable, the unrepresentable
*Truth in paradox.

Commitment to Theory

-reversing of Orient and Occident as European meta-theorizing and Third-World creativity
-"Forms of popular rebellion and mobilization are often most subversive and transgressive when they are created through oppositional cultural practices."
**Furthering discourse by consuming, producing, reflecting; repeat!?
***"Is the language of theory merely another power ploy of the culturally privileged Western elite to produce a discourse of the Other that reinforces its own power-knowledge equation?"
-"the problem of finding a form of public rhetoric able to represent different and opposing political 'contents' not as a priori preconstituted principles but as a dialogical discursive exchange" (i.e. using established rhetoric to foment change; using institutions themselves in discursive debate to illuminate truth)
-Mills: "only by effectively assuming the mental position of the antagonist and working through the displacing and decentring force of that discursive difficulty that the politicized 'portion of truth' is produced."
*If Truth is something 'between the lines,' then what is the place of academic or political discourse? By engaging in dialectic discourse, how is it that a productive political or theoretical is created?
****-"The language of critique is effective not because it keeps forever separate the terms of the master and the slave, the mercantilist and the Marxist, but to the extent to which it overcomes the given grounds of opposition and opens up a space of translation: a place of hybridity, figuratively speaking, where the construction of a political object that is new, neither the one nor the other, properly alienates our political expectations, and changes, as it must, the very forms of our recognition of the moment of politics."
-"My illustration attempts to display the importance of the hybrid moment of political change. Here the transformational value of change lies in the rearticulation, or translation, of elements that are neither the One (unitary working class) nor the Other (the politics of gender) but something else besides, which contests the terms and territories of both."
*In theory, the dialectic negotiation of political or polemic (discursive/theoretical?) poles has the ability to illuminate, to created a hybrid of ideas that leads to something new. What we see, however, in the context of current social and political struggles, is the willingness of one side to engage in debate and negotiation (the left), while the other side (the right) engages only in negation. The willingness to engage in productive political conversation, or even committed theoretical critique, is thus entirely one-sided. The left becomes fractured while the right solidifies its base. Obama's presidency is a perfect example of this. After this tendency is amplified through the news media megaphone machine (also predominantly conservative), we end up with a society moved much further to the right than the majority of its citizens. So I ask again, how can theoretical critique address the concerns not only of those in the minority/on the margins, but those in the majority/center who are pulled ceaselessly toward the tyranny of power?

MMODJ Revisited - Revoluntionary Music Platform Proposal Outline

Problems Encountered and Addressed By the MMODJ
-copyright wars: MMODJ assumes everyone samples
-hybrid culture: beyond dualistic mixing practices to networked mixing; beyond 2d mixing; multidimensionality (physical, geographical space [club, home, illicit venue]; traveling users; networked cloud;
-be a part of something while you're in your bedroom...or go out; redefine the locus of cultural participation.
-no records, cds; new model of distribution is the digital mix; record a mix or listen live.
-choice: choose your music, make your community, program your sequence.
-sorry bands and DJs, your brand just got crushed. THE MUSIC'S NOT ABOUT YOU. you become about the music.
-democratic - sequences chosen through democratic process --> organic rhythms? digital chaos?
-dance like hell - it's good exercise. put the mix on in your zumba class.

Networked Cloud and Lack of Original Sources as Inherently Altermodern
-The system keeps playing. The loops are animated by machines, stored on multiple servers, and constantly changed through human interactions with the interface. One can choose to connect or disconnect freely. The system is contained only by the sites of sonic production, i.e. the headphone, the speaker. These limitations are subsiding through vibration technology that allows you to turn any surface into a speaker (amplifying small vibrations through resonance. I believe this is the same technology that makes all speakers work, just "taken out of the black box." Fuck consumer electronics that make us ignorant.)
-Repurposed sound equipment as a potential "original" source of sound. Bended and hacked circuits from toys to synths, cell phone ringtones reprogrammed and chopped, reel-to-reel looping re-enlisted, make your own microphone, DIY.

The Modern and Postmodern Still Largely at Play
-struggles for control in the process
-business (the recording industry) will want to capitalize
-there's no free lunch, but what about soup kitchens and communal gardens? can our music be nutritious?

Models for Monetization Based on Hybrid Economics
-THE SYSTEM DOES NOT NEED TO BE MONETIZED. MUSIC IS A GIFT.
-But that is impossible if computer storage costs money.
-Consider networked alternatives to storage - no need for central server?

Revolutionizing Public Media
-media is public because you make it, not because your tax dollars fund 6% of it and the rest is donations and corporate sponsorship
-grassroots media
-funding and donation systems
-democratic control and consensus decision making systems

The Tech side: Programmers needed! - Open Source?
-Puredata
-P2P network as an alternative to servers? Think SETI@Home; World Community Grid; bit torrent technology.
-lightweight

Irony vs. Meaning, a Conflict?
-Is there any purpose to the MMODJ? Inherently, no. Yet we live steeped in a moment of deep cultural anxiety because postmodernism, for all it's cultural production, has done little to solve our most pressing problems of economic oppression; corporate control and corruption in politics; hegemonic dominance of the public/cultural sphere; habits of consumption contrary to sustaining human life and happiness; tensions based on identity manifesting in real-world problems (bullying, Islamaphobia and the War on Terror Crusades, incarcerated people, human trafficking and slave labor, women and children in poverty, spread of disease, second class citizens and closed borders).
-A new order suggests a paradoxical convergence of irony and meaning, a flow between the two. Google employees play at work; artists play essential roles in movements for political organizing; hipsters [who claim to have no morals] ride bikes. I advocate an approach to social change that capitalizes on current habits - i.e. systems of pleasure and reward - (re)centered on conscience rather than profit.

Can the system change?
-Empire and its constitutive dominant/hegemonic systems of thought, technology, biology, militarization and divide and conquer strategies remain wholly intact. Cycles of oppression fester at every site of cultural production

Existing Models

Makings

This summer, I've been more focused on producing media and I've put mindfulness (and this blog) on the back burner. Here is a collection of the media I've produced this summer during the months of May, June and July. Enjoy!

This Light: Sounds for Social Change - Episode 1a by Ben King

This Light: Sounds for Social Change - Episode 1b by Ben King

This Light: Sounds for Social Change - Episode 2a by THIS LIGHT


Big ups to B.Steady for putting this together.







Came in 5th place for the 2011 Living Lutheran Video Contest.

Groucho Marx?

Justice is Not Vengence

I was deeply upset by Obama's speech about Bin Laden's murder, especially his invocation of "God Bless America" in the same breath as "America can do whatever it wants as long as we put our minds to it." As if we have a divine mandate to violate international law and act unilaterally, killing people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Honduras, El Salvador, Ecuador, Viet Nam, Okinawa, Guam, or our own country. Obama's state, Illinois, worked hard to overturn the death penalty. Yet we maintain a policy of killing international criminals like Bin Laden without even seeking a trial in international court. We go for violence to illustrate our might rather than exhausting the options of peace, reason and justice.

The hordes of people gathering at the Whitehouse tonight illustrated this hypocricy.




Can't you see how dejected I am in the picture above?

I walked to the Whitehouse, made a paper crane and carried out a silent vigil for peace for a little while. Then I broke my silence and spoke with a friend and some student journalists. I realized after a silent walk to the Whitehouse and sitting by the woman who maintains an anti-nuclear vigil for a while that I'm really not so effective as a silent voice in a crowd of misplaced patriotism. Talking to media, facebooking and tweeting, as well as engaging with a few other crowd members, is a much better way to deal with a highly symbolic political event. Tonight was about political theater and public catharsis, not justice.

Here's a picture of the crowd, a lot of drunk GW students.



I have nothing against drunk people, but can you imagine if this were an anti-war or pro health-care rally? Labor unions? Environmentalists? Without a permit? With open containers? Smoking weed, keeping Sacha and Malia up at 2:00 am? Again, I have nothing against boistrous public protest, but there is a blatant double standard here. In fact, the police really weren't doing their job.

The sign in this picture says "Osama Bin Gotten." This was really sad to me because it was written on a box for a Numark DJ console. The U.S. is not a Christian nation, but a sadly troubled consumerist society bought by corporations and media moguls.

DJs of the world, unite for Peace and True Justice! Dedicate your next set to relief efforts in Japan, wind power, or Human Rights Watch. Stand with the poor and hungry in the world and help drunk college students and President Obama understand that vengeance is not justice.

Two Crazy Ideas

1) Multi-DJ online mixing software - instead of mixing two tracks with two turn tables, imagine a network of listeners/DJs tuned to an interactive online/digital radio station where they can simultaneously mix tracks and listen to others mixing. As you listen to Daft Punk another user mixes in Black Eyed Peas while another mixes in Simon and Garfunkel and another mixes in Parliament. Instead of being organized by genres, "stations" will be organized by tempo. With a vast number of users, the sound would undoubtedly be cluttered to say the least, if not cacophonous. So there would have to be a selection process to curate what mixes were mixed into the main output. Philosophically, I'd have to advocate for a randomized software that switches between the sounds produced by different users at random. Of course, random is programmed by humans. So you could have one station that switches users every 20-30 seconds, whereas another station would switch every milisecond (to make an extra special kind of grindcore) and another station would be all over the place, maybe only changing users once every couple of days or every six minutes.


It's a multi-platform (video game, app, website, etc.), multi-player DJing software that allows for not just one DJ, but hundreds or thousands. Using this interface, you can connect music fans on every continent so that even the penguins in Ant-Arctica can enjoy your club event.

Imagine you are on the subway. On your train, there might be 5-20 other users, and a few of them might be logged in at the same tempo. You get off the train and keep listening to the mix as you walk to the event (it's SoulDub night at your local bar). And when you get there, the same mix is playing, but on a BOOMing sound system. No DJ - YOU are the DJ! You can mix or chat with friends as you have a drink, and when your Spearhead track fades into the mix you get an enthusiastic reaction from your friends. When you go home, maybe you switch to the 60 bpm station for some "lullabies" before bed.

I'm excited about this idea. This idea is cool. I have a feeling the technology is emerging, so it will happen soon.

2) [WARNING: This idea sucks.] Reading a book through tweets - instead of sitting down and reading, have a paragraph tweeted to you on a regular basis, say once every five minutes. I don't like the idea of reading and multitasking (it's pretty much the opposite of mindful media usage), but that is the direction our media environment is heading.

Inner Space - The Final Frontier

"Space: the Final Frontier" - I grew up watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and this message echoes in my ears. But as I explore the role of the blogosphere, social media and web 2.0 in general, I find that virtual space is the new frontier. Just as the American West was a frontier fraught with conflict and conquest, so too is the virtual world. So outer space is not the final frontier. Here are some other frontiers we are just beginning to explore:

1) The earth's deep oceans and caves.
2) The brain.
3) The quantum world and potential "multiverses."
4) Inner space.

I think of inner space as mind, the place where our thoughts dwell, which is implicitly related to our brain, heart, body and spiritual self or "soul." Exploration of our thoughts through deep contemplation is a frontier most have little time or energy to encounter in their daily lives. Recently, I've been finding it difficult to budget time for mindfulness exercises or contemplative reflection. The absence of this time manifests itself as boredom or mild depression. Finding new and creative ways to engage thoughts gives life a lot of meaning, so I hope to use a few of the tools below to explore transcendence:

1) yoga
2) sitting meditation/mindfulness exercises
3) DC Shambhala Center
4) All Souls Unitarian Church
5) walking mindfully

Finally, this blog often becomes a repository for politicized media. But I want mindful media to be more than that. Peace and justice are a natural extension of mindfulness, for as we build mindfulness of ourselves, we are disposed to build mindfulness of others (i.e. compassion). However, balancing (and ultimately transcending) the self/other divide is key to practicing mindfulness. So my desire to explore inner space is a selfish desire, but one which may help rebalance my life and this blog in favor of compassion.

Anti-Nuclear Movement Galvanizes Japanese Youth

April 10, 2011 - Koenji, Tokyo
Anti-Nuclear Demonstration

Republicans Ruin Cherry Blossom Parade?

"Let's hope Republicans don't ruin the Cherry Blossom parade, destroy DC's tourism industry, and distract from relief efforts to Japan."

Republicans blocking the passage of the federal budget could cause a government shutdown this week. Washington, D.C. would be disproportionately affected by this shutdown. That's because DC is a federal district, meaning its budget must be approved by Congress, despite the fact that the District has no representation in Congress. Actually, DC does have a Rep., but she can't vote... she's awesome. Today she told the Congress to "Go straight to hell":

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton Upset Over Treatment of DC During Shutdown Resolution Talks: MyFoxDC.com

How will the shutdown affect DC? Basic services such as trash collection will be lost. The DMV will be shut down. The Smithsonian museums, typically free to the public, will be closed. And the national monuments administered by the National Park Service will be closed, too. That means a HUGE blow to DC's tourism industry. The National Cherry Blossom festival is supposed to culminate Saturday with a parade, but the parade might be canceled because it crosses National Park services land. Luckily, the Japan America Society of Washington, D.C. plans to continue with its event, the annual sakura matsuri on Saturday, despite threats from Republicans and Rain. Proceeds will go to disaster relief in Tohoku.

The cherry blossoms reached their peak in D.C. last week. Here are some pics from the District.







Let's hope Republicans don't ruin the parade, destroy DC's tourism industry and distract from relief efforts to Japan. I hope everyone will enjoy the cherry blossoms this weekend anyway.

SOA Watch April Days of Action

Today marks the beginning of the School Of the Americas Watch April Days of Action. Let's take this opportunity to educate ourselves about the School Of the Americas (now called Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC). Throughout the week, I hope to produce media which amplifies the voice of the protesters and activists calling for an end to the abusive curriculum taught at WHINSEC. Though the Institute claims it has made reforms to its education to include human rights education, groups like Human Rights Watch argue that these reforms are not substantive enough. From Wikipedia's article on WHINSEC:

Defenders argue that today the curriculum includes human rights,^[9] but according to Human Rights Watch, "training alone, even when it includes human rights instruction, does not prevent human rights abuses."^[11] U.S. Army Maj. Joe Blair, a former director of instruction at the school, said, "there are no substantive changes besides the name. [...] They teach the identical courses that I taught, and changed the course names and use the same manuals."^[10]

Indeed, how can training soldiers how to kill or police suppress non-violent resistance through violent means is a direct violation of the most basic principles of human rights.

In solidarity with Father Roy Bourgeois and the other activists fasting to demonstrate their hunger for justice, I will take the small step of skipping lunch each day this week. Instead, I will play freerice.com for one hour a day. With the intention of supporting the closure and reform of the School Of the Americas, I also intend to work against world hunger. The money raised from freerice.com will go to earthquake relief efforts in Haiti through the world food bank. And the more support there is for relief efforts in Haiti, the more I hope resources will be available for relief efforts in Japan. All struggles for peace and justice are interconnected.



This post reminds me that sometimes the forces that bring human suffering are natural phenomenon beyond human control. Though the commanders who taught abusive practices at WHINSEC should be brought to justice, the tsunami that hit Japan was beyond anyone's control or imagination. Though TEPCO should be held responsible for its negligent preparation and ill-managed response to the disaster, it did not create the earthquake and tsunami. Much like a tsunami, America's military-industrial complex has become like a force of nature. Our collective action as a nation, government and global citizens is responsible for the havoc and suffering created by war. In some small way, each of us must find how we can hold each other and ourselves accountable, say NO! to war, and strive for peace and justice in the face of incalculable odds.

SOA Watch Days of Action Kick-Off Event

April 1, 2011 - Washington, D.C. - SOA Watch and the Washington Peace Center teamed up to launch the April Days of Action, a week of grassroots events to close the School Of the Americas (SOA, a.k.a. WHINSEC). Musicians performed at Ras to raise funds for the Washington Peace Center and spread awareness about the School Of the Americas. This three-man band represents "a blend of musical traditions such as cumbia, salsa, and traditional Andean music. From three different countries in Latin America, the three make their music with instruments such as the homemade cajónes, the charango, and Andean pan pipes. Theirs is a hand-crafted, lively sound that will make your feet move." Ras is a relatively new venue, and every Friday they host fundraisers for social justice causes.

poster near Meridian Hill Park

buttons for sale!

SOA Watch representative making a speech

crowd

band

DJ setting up to play after the band

Institutions like Guantanamo Bay, Abu Grahib, and the School Of the Americas are an embarrassment to U.S. policies and values. By sanctioning torture, summary execution and other human rights violations, these military bases have subverted the principles of democracy which the American government and military purportedly defend. Until these institutions are radically reformed to promote peace and justice, they should be closed and defunded. U.S. tax dollars spent on militarizing Latin America only threaten our national security. Rather than spending millions on failing wars, let's create educational programs aimed at tackling the most pressing global challenges, such as hunger, poverty, wellness and sustainability.

Take action here!

iPhone vs. Android: Technology, Identity and Mindfulness

As if there were any other choice. "I don't need a cell phone," is a notion likely to be met with skeptical stares implying insanity. And who wants an old-fashioned "cell phone" anyway? A slider, razor, flip phone, Blackberry, Palm? No - those aren't for me. I want an intelligent, high-tech, trendy, all-mighty digital device. I need a SMARTPHONE.

After returning to America last week, I was plagued with indecision about which phone to buy. A naturally indecisive person, the "bundle" of decisions about which carrier, contract, device, data plan, etc. to use to connect with friends, family and the omnipresent cloud has overwhelmed me to no end. As a wannabe techy and purported "mindful media" user, the choice was doubly complicated. Making a blunder on this technical frontier would be an embarrassing mishap for a savvy young urbanite like me (read yuppie).

As I pondered the delicate matter, I consulted a variety of resources. A plethora of smartphone comparisons and consumer buying guides are available online. It's gotta be the holy grail of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to get one's blog on the top page of Google's search results for "iPhone vs. Android." Handy flash applications, such as this mobile phone configurator, aim to simplify the decision-making process. Through a series of questions about a user's priorities, this survey recommends a phone based on reviews. This is software to help us decide about hardware, media to help us decide about media.

Burdened by the excitement and innumerable factors to consider, I put off getting my phone for well over a week. I sought advice. My partner suggested I get a refurbished phone. This appealed to the environmentalist in me - I would be "upcycling," reusing a product that another user had discarded. A potential employer told me she was leaning toward Android because of its tethering feature. My sister told me she was unhappy with the speed of her iPhone 3G. In the spirit of mindful media, I decided to take this as an opportunity to learn about the wireless telecommunications industry in America and did my own research (although I wish I had done much more.) I narrowed the choice down to a decision between a refurbished iPhone and one of two Droids with a dual-core processor that makes it more like a new computer than a simple phone.

In the end, I bought a Motorola Atrix through AT&T, the latest and greatest in Droid phones. The decision was based less on a comprehensive understanding of the technology involved, more an identity statement driven by emotion and intuition. (I would argue that most consumer decisions are made using this framework, a type of decision-making cultivated by advertising, marketing and PR.)

So what does buying and android say about me? Here's my perception:

1) Android = anti-Apple (which is the new Microsoft...omg, I would never even consider the Windows phone) I felt the need to offset my loyalty to Apple. As a consumer, I feel I increase my influence by varying the brands I buy.

2) Android is open source. If you learn a little about programming, you can do a lot more with this phone.

3) The device is powerful. The high speed processor and the 4G standard put the Motorola Atrix on the cutting edge of wireless technology (for now.) I want a device that is going to maximize my power in the information age.

4) The phone is sleek, and it looks like an iPhone. The iPhone caused the smartphone paradigm shift, and I maintain some sort of allegiance to the original elegant design. Apple is great at that.

5) I'm a geek. Spending so much time and money on my cell phone makes me seem smarter.

I think point 3 is particularly important. Technology is about power.

---

Despite the self-deprecating tone of this post, I'm happy with my choice. I have a new toy! And I hope to cultivate the knowledge and wisdom to use it well.

Media Experience 2

Listening to Lupe Fiasco on my laptop in one room while blasting WPFW from the good old FM radio in the other.

*A "Media Experience" refers to a unique use or mix of media that creates a new and different experience.

Media Experience 1

Listening to drum and bass (DJ Marky's podcast) while playing freerice.com on my laptop at the Toronto airport.

*A "Media Experience" refers to a unique use or mix of media that creates a new and different experience.

Facebook Info Box

I've been getting a lot of information in the aftermath of Friday's earthquake from friends on Facebook. This morning, I noticed Facebook had posted this official information box at the top of my newsfeed:

Japan Earthquake Information - Updated Mar 14, 8:05AM

Scheduled Blackout
There will be a scheduled blackout (power outage) starting the morning of 3/14 in Tokyo, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Gunma, Chiba, Kanagawa, Saitama, Yamanashi, and Shizuoka.
Areas will be divided into 5 groups and each group will experience about 3 hours of power outage.

Please refer to the TEPCO Homepage (as of now, the list is only provided in Japanese) to find out which group you are in and what time the power outage will occur in your group.

Train companies have announced that there will be irregular operation, including out of service hours. Summary here.

JR | Tokyo Metro | Toei Subway/Bus | Tokyu | Odakyu | Keio | Tobu | Keikyu | Keisei

Major out of services are: Tokaido Line (all day), Yokosuka Line (all day), Yokohama Line (all day), Odakyu will only operate between Kyodo to Shinjyuku (all day), Keio will only operate between Chofu and Shinjyuku (during morning and evening rush hours).

The Facebook website will not be affected by this blackout.

About this box: Facebook uses this box to provide information to foreigners and visitors in Japan for the duration of the current crisis.

Though I usually don't like Facebook's sporadic updates, this one is helpful in an emergency situation. I'm quite thankful for it.

More info to come on media in the aftermath of the Tohoku Earthquake. (When my electricity is working again!) :)

Of course, I am safe. Have the day off because trains and buses I need to get to school are not running. Hoping the blackouts will be a minor inconvenience.

Earthquake!

DISCLAIMER: I am OK! Thanks to friends and family for their concern. This post isn't intended to give a factual account of what's going on here, but more of a reflection on my internal experience during the last 48 hours. There is lots of (relatively) up to date info in English on the BBC or NHK World websites. Look me up on Facebook or email me for personal updates.

---

I was waiting for the train when it happened. An older gentleman was sitting on the bench next to me, maybe 75, balding. Next to him stood a young woman with a child, maybe 2 or 3 years old, in a stroller. They had been waving goodbye to the child's mother, or maybe grandmother, whom they could see from afar. "Bye-bye!"

Then bam! The rumbling was mild at first. I turned to the old man and said, "Earthquake?" He didn't hear me, so I repeated, "Earthquake!?" "Yes," he nodded. People in Tokyo are used to earthquakes, so he didn't seem phased. But the shaking intensified. "What should we do?" I asked. "Hmm, what should we do, huh?" As he thought for a second, an express train passed through the opposite platform. Now the platform was really starting to shake. He got up and stood by a steel beam supporting the tin roof. People started reacting, moving to safe spots, crouching down by benches. I got down by the bench where I had been sitting and covered my head with my backpack. Down the platform, a high schooler had managed to squeeze himself under one of the benches. I looked over at the woman with her kid. She had moved in close to the bench, and she covered him in the stroller with her whole body, his head buried under her head, arms and torso. Above me, signs were shaking hard, rocking back and forth, creaking. And the tin roof fluttered as if caught in a hurricane wind. The lights flickered and electricity went out. I was scared. This whole thing could come down at any time, I thought. Someplace in my mind, conscious or unconscious, I was praying, "Please, God, don't let anything happen to this child next to me."

Was it 30 seconds? Maybe a minute? Time stood still. For those brief moments, I could really feel that I am a tiny creature floating around on the surface of this earth, rotating, hurtling through space. It wasn't just shaking, it was fluid, as if I was being rocked through time and space in a giant cradle. "I just had a brush with death," I thought.

The rumbling died down. "Yabai su ne~!" The high schoolers reconvened. Any damage? The old man inspected. On the opposite side of the platform, the glass screen of a clock had cracked, fallen and shattered into pieces on the asphalt. Did I see watch the clock crack? Did I see the glass fall? Did I hear it? It's hard to remember. The old man noted some water coming up from the ground, but I think it had been there in puddles all along. The high school student behind me muttered to himself, "So desune. Daijoubu. That's right, I'm OK, yes, yes." Over and over again, like he was crazy.

People got up and started checking their phones. Then station attendants and engineers appeared on the platform. Shortly thereafter came an announcement, "Due to the earthquake, train service will be suspended until we can do a safety check. The next train will run from Inagi station at 4:00 PM." Everyone uttered their surprise and dismay. An hour delay? This wasn't normal. What an inconvenience!

Here's some video I shot with my cell phone of the station attendants cleaning up the glass. (Sorry for the poor quality):





I was surprised by their haphazard cleanup. As they made their way down the platform, they checked (like good conductors), pointing with their white-gloved fingers to confirm their lines of vision, to survey the damage. Once they found the broken glass from the clock, they marked it with a big orange cone, then started poking at the remaining glass with sticks! Shouldn't they have warned people to stand clear of the glass? Shouldn't they be wearing safety goggles? The glass shattered as it hit the ground in large swathes, and they cleared most of it from the clock.

What should I do? I was going to have to wait for at least an hour before the next train. I had been on kind of an exercise kick that day: took a walk before school, played dodge ball during break time, and a killer game of tag during recess (I'm SO out of shape!). So after mulling it over for a couple minutes, I decided I'd try to walk to the next station. I didn't know exactly where it was, and there was no map outside the station. But I figured I'd just follow the tracks. It would be an adventure! Somehow, I felt like the earth had been telling me I needed to move.

I decided not to use my cell phone right away. I figured lines would be jammed as everyone in the station was calling their friends and loved ones to make sure they were OK. It was still the middle of the night in America, so I decided I'd wait for a while before I got in touch with anyone.

I set out on my walk, and found that lots of people had taken to the street. I imagine most of them were train customers like me, who were waiting for the train then decided to walk or something. Similarly, I was following some other people who appeared to be walking in the same direction. "They must have decided not to wait for the train, too." I thought. Then, "Not everyone is walking where you're going, Ben."

A fork in the road. It looked like there was construction, so it would be impossible to follow the tracks. I thought I saw a sign for Tama center, so I veered away from the tracks and followed a young guy in a green coat with a cigarette. He had stopped to look at a construction area map ahead of me. "Surely he's going the same way as I am."

Up, up, up - it was a steep hill. When I got to the top, I could see that I was just going back in the direction of the school I had come from, back in the direction of the station. No good. I reversed and turned back along the tracks, avoiding the construction by going through a suburban residential neighborhood.

The tracks were going under a tunnel, so I had to go over and around, risking losing them again. I ambled across a quiet road into a park area. "Getting back to nature," I thought. It's odd how disasters make you get out of your comfort zone and return to a simpler way of life. "So this is what it was like before trains."

I got out of the park, disoriented, unable to pick up the tracks. But the guy I had been following was walking down the street as I emerged! And there was another guy who looked like he had come from the station, so I decided to follow them. I thought about asking them where they were going, but I didn't want to be an awkward gaijin inconveniencing them and disrupting their personal bubble. The sun was getting low in the sky, and the mountains were shrouded in clouds in the distance.

I picked up pace and soon came to a road sign indicating a turn in the direction of the station I was looking for. "Yes!" To my surprise, the other guys I had been following didn't take the turn and went somewhere else. But I was basically home free. Signage in Japan is good, and I had relied on my sense of direction well this far. I was proud!

Happily, I found a map that showed the station down the road. I walked confidently along my path, taking note of the neighborhood signs and bus stops to confirm that I was going the right way. All signs were good.

With a few more blocks to go before the station, I came to a grove of ume (plum) trees along the road! These are my favorite trees in Japan. They are blossoming now, and their fragrance is really just about my favorite smell in the whole world. I've been trying to make time to enjoy the ume blossoms before I go. Somehow, by chance, I had been given this opportunity to "stop and smell the ume" one more time. I veered onto a park path and there the ume smell was strong. "This is my reward," I thought, "for embracing this adventure." It was a happy moment.

I got to the station, and people were still waiting for the trains to resume. Crowds had gathered outside the station gates, and it didn't seem like service would start any time soon. Having taken note of the bus, I hopped on one headed in the right direction. Then got to the next station, then got on another bus that took me home!

If the story ended there, it would make a great Hollywood narrative. Initiating incident, journey, beautiful climactic moment of inner peace, and denaument (i.e. I get home). In reality, I did get home, but only to find my house without power and co-workers in a frenzy, and was inundated for the next 24 hours with distressing news. For myself, I thought the above journey made a quaint metaphor for my life. For the rest of Japan, the picture is more complex.

To be continued...

Express Yourself vs. Born This Way

(Re)mix of Express Yourself by Madonna and Born This Way by Lady Gaga.

When I tried to upload this mix on Soundcloud, it wouldn't let me do it. I was redirected to a page with an error message reading "This track contains protected material that is owned or licensed by Warner Bros., Inc." Then there is an option for feedback, so I wrote a little rant about how I think this should fall under the category of fair use. Since the remix is not an exact copy of the original work, and in fact creates new value and meaning as a remix, it should not fall under such stringent copyright law. Moreover, I am simply sharing the mix with friends and not making any money off of it. (I declined to monetize this track on Soundcloud by linking it to Beatport or iTunes.) To me, this is a clear example of work that should be protected by fair use.

Connecting, Disconnecting and Reconnecting

Last week was big for me: I got on Twitter; joined and filmed a protest against the construction of U.S. military helipads in Takae, Okinawa; spent most of my week outside of work editing my footage of the protest;



met with two U.S. Congresswomen at a Democrats Abroad in Japan event; and spent the weekend in Hokkaido.

Connecting

After getting on Twitter (follow me @bking47), it became clear to me how this type of connectivity alters the flow of information, i.e. it's constant! One could pretty much stayed glued to their Twitter feed 24/7 after they start following just a few interesting people and organizations, and be getting new information every couple of seconds that is meaningful, relevant and up-to-the-moment. After the events in Egypt and Tunisia, I justified joining the Twittersphere by vowing to use it as a tool for activism. I've enjoyed the experience of engaging people on Twitter, and have found it to be a valuable platform. But it's like email on crack! As experts have noted about email, you can almost get addicted to it do to the principle of "intermittent reinforcement." That is the psychological principle that you never know when you will get a reward (when we get an interesting email, that triggers a "dopamine squirt" in the brain), so you end up checking for it all the time. This effect is even more intense with Twitter.

Disconnecting

Overwhelmed by such a busy week, I decided I wanted to maximize my mental health and relaxation during my weekend vacation in Hokkaido. I did just that with decadent meals (crab, sushi, hokkaido ramen, Ghengis Kahn) and plenty of onsen (natural hot spring baths.) I decided at the start of the weekend I would try to enjoy my time away from my computer at home and try to "disconnect" from the world of screens a little bit. I still had my cell phone, so I continued texting and emailing a little during the weekend. But I enjoyed the down time and did a little reading. Luckily, a co-worker had given me a book on yoga meditation, so I had something to read with a focus on mindfulness.

We also visited some museums on the trip, including the Abashiri Museum of Northern [Indigenous] Peoples. At this exhibit, I found myself drawn to the interactive touch screen displays, paying less attention to the actual artifacts of clothing, tools and other aspects of material culture. I wanted to learn as much about the Ainu (native people of Hokkaido) as I could during the visit, so I went for the touch screens with information about their environmental history, languages, religion, etc. As a trained computer user, my feeling is that I can access the most relevant information most quickly through a computer. The section of the exhibit on shamanism and traditional instruments also featured TV loops with footage of ceremonies. Finally, I was equipped with my digital camera to capture pictures and information for this blog post.

Though I was pretty successful at disconnecting for the weekend, I was still connected through my cell, digital camera and screens in the museums. I found myself drawn to other pleasurable activities, such as sight-seeing, reading, bathing, eating and drinking. I tried to stay in the moment and enjoy the experience as much as possible. And we saw some cool stuff! An icebreaker boat cruise; cranes, bears, hawks and dear; and a former prison that had been converted into a museum. Great trip!

Reconnecting

A recent episode of WNYC's On the Media was devoted to the [trite] question, "Is the internet helping or hurting us?" Though I found the theme ironic and uninspired, I appreciated the comments by Ethan Zuckerman, long time internet and society critic. He talked about the role of social media in the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, and the role of social networking in repressive societies. I was struck by his comment that the diverse use of social networks (to keep in touch with friends, find entertainment, share information, etc.) makes it harder for dictators to shut them down. Wouldn't you be pissed off if you couldn't watch a cat in a hat or buffalo in a house because your government was hunting down political dissidents? Controlling or shutting down social networking sites is really hard when they have no inherent political message, said Zuckerman.

This made me rethink my own use of Twitter. When I joined the other week, I thought I would use Twitter as an activist tool only, returning my facebook wall to a more benign, less politicized online space. Though I've stayed true to using Twitter for social causes, my facebook hasn't really gotten any less political or light-hearted. But given Zuckerman's advice, should I be less cut and dry about my approach to social media? Should I use each platform in a comparatively whimsical way without regard for the role I'm playing as a user? I can see Zuckerman's point, and I imagine my friends will start to ignore my posts of they are obsessively hammering away on political issues. In this regard, I think it makes sense to diversify the uses of each medium. Rather than relying solely on different accounts or social networking tools for different purposes (although I think this is a valid approach), I will work on being mindful of my role and my audience. Is this for work, is this for play, is this for social change, or all of the above? Who's going to look at my post and what will they think? Keeping these questions in mind, I hope to become a more compelling internet user.