Status: comes and goes.
Me, My Prussian Blues (and That Guy With the Horns)
The Thoreau Challenge
After reading the article in the Washington Post, I am profoundly disappointed in my fellows. When I first heard of Thoreau's Longest Day, I thought; they underestimate us. Maybe I represent that divergent 3%, but I've always been aware of our dependence on technology. I go days without my cellphone. Who needs it? I go weeks without an ipod. I don't get home in time for television to be an option, and video games are strictly for weekends. Now that I work weekends, there aren't any. Web surfing tonight? Heck no, I'm too tired. And I'm not all that bothered by this. I never have been. Ask me to go a day without sleep, or something. I mean, sleep is the best.
Maybe going without a car would be better (although I would refuse in the interest of rationality). If I could piece together all the transition time I spend alone in my car going to various places of work, it would be my favorite day of the week. But, because I rather think Thoreau would wholly support that particular vice, I didn't and won't try. But hell, I can go days without fluorescent lighting, if you asked. So, for my Longest Day, I rid my routine of all electronically generated sound for 24 hours.
I realize that over my boasts of not needing ipods or cellphones, I do have one sort of crutch. I like music. I like to watch the news over my cereal in the morning so I know what's up. Driving to school without the radio on is just...weird. It's silent. I don't care so much for the music as for a right-brained ideal called symphony. Symphony is the mind's search for pattern, and the little endorphins you get from recognizing rhythm. Sound also has a more malicious purpose. When there is sound, I don't have to think. That's why this project might've been difficult for some; not many people are used to being utterly alone with themselves.
But since I don't usually have a problem with thinking, most of the reliance comes from my search for symphony, I believe. Music puts words to emotions we never had, and it tricks us into thinking that its creator experienced the same as us; a smug but effective outlet. Or, as my friend once said: music's a wood you walk through. If the right words existed, the music wouldn't need to.
I'm not...a music freak, or something. I think pop is a soulless money-making tactic. I think indie bands are pretentious in their boringness. I think rap used to be good before the real African Americans forgot their heritage, back when it was R&B. The blues make me long for a past I never had, which makes me bitter. I think metal is a one-trick prize pony. I think acoustic is nine times out of 10 the most disgusting stuff I've ever heard. I listen to it, and it helps me function like a human. I can be negative about every bleeding genre there is, but it doesn't change the fact that I get a bleeding desire for Rage Against the Machine and Opeth and Led Zeppelin and even Regina Spektor once in awhile. My symphonic mind welcomes the convergent sounds like a Trojan Horse; a suspicious gift from warring outsiders that we accept again and again even thought it tears us apart because we'd much rather believe the best. The music is feeling, and sometimes I think I don't get enough of that stuff, as pansy as that sounds. I need Bon Iver's flaccid tones as much as the Cowboy Junkies' dusty downbeats. There is a bass guitarist in my head. His feet are in my lungs and his amp is in my chest. When he slaps a beat it rings through my eyes and thankfully blocks out the incoming sound from my ears, then gods forbid a thought get past the lacerated concrete walls of my consciousness without a thorough swaddling in divine double bass.
How did I feel without this?
I felt sick. Voltaire's shirty heating system growled at me for about 55 minutes of accumulated driving time that day, and there's this crunchy oak leaf that's caught in my sun roof that made a horrifying keening sound like the stertor of a centuries old crocodile every time I accelerated. I tried to talk to myself, but jeez, what poor company in the morning. I gained nothing. In the interest of simplicity, I will continue to utilize the radio system in my car. Otherwise, I might just go nuts on the road. It's not even materialistic or whatever you call dependency on technology; honestly, I'm just being practical. I'm taking it into my own hands to maintain symphonic mental health, and so am protecting my fellow classmates from something potentially verbally abrasive on a daily basis.
Maybe going without a car would be better (although I would refuse in the interest of rationality). If I could piece together all the transition time I spend alone in my car going to various places of work, it would be my favorite day of the week. But, because I rather think Thoreau would wholly support that particular vice, I didn't and won't try. But hell, I can go days without fluorescent lighting, if you asked. So, for my Longest Day, I rid my routine of all electronically generated sound for 24 hours.
I realize that over my boasts of not needing ipods or cellphones, I do have one sort of crutch. I like music. I like to watch the news over my cereal in the morning so I know what's up. Driving to school without the radio on is just...weird. It's silent. I don't care so much for the music as for a right-brained ideal called symphony. Symphony is the mind's search for pattern, and the little endorphins you get from recognizing rhythm. Sound also has a more malicious purpose. When there is sound, I don't have to think. That's why this project might've been difficult for some; not many people are used to being utterly alone with themselves.
But since I don't usually have a problem with thinking, most of the reliance comes from my search for symphony, I believe. Music puts words to emotions we never had, and it tricks us into thinking that its creator experienced the same as us; a smug but effective outlet. Or, as my friend once said: music's a wood you walk through. If the right words existed, the music wouldn't need to.
I'm not...a music freak, or something. I think pop is a soulless money-making tactic. I think indie bands are pretentious in their boringness. I think rap used to be good before the real African Americans forgot their heritage, back when it was R&B. The blues make me long for a past I never had, which makes me bitter. I think metal is a one-trick prize pony. I think acoustic is nine times out of 10 the most disgusting stuff I've ever heard. I listen to it, and it helps me function like a human. I can be negative about every bleeding genre there is, but it doesn't change the fact that I get a bleeding desire for Rage Against the Machine and Opeth and Led Zeppelin and even Regina Spektor once in awhile. My symphonic mind welcomes the convergent sounds like a Trojan Horse; a suspicious gift from warring outsiders that we accept again and again even thought it tears us apart because we'd much rather believe the best. The music is feeling, and sometimes I think I don't get enough of that stuff, as pansy as that sounds. I need Bon Iver's flaccid tones as much as the Cowboy Junkies' dusty downbeats. There is a bass guitarist in my head. His feet are in my lungs and his amp is in my chest. When he slaps a beat it rings through my eyes and thankfully blocks out the incoming sound from my ears, then gods forbid a thought get past the lacerated concrete walls of my consciousness without a thorough swaddling in divine double bass.
How did I feel without this?
I felt sick. Voltaire's shirty heating system growled at me for about 55 minutes of accumulated driving time that day, and there's this crunchy oak leaf that's caught in my sun roof that made a horrifying keening sound like the stertor of a centuries old crocodile every time I accelerated. I tried to talk to myself, but jeez, what poor company in the morning. I gained nothing. In the interest of simplicity, I will continue to utilize the radio system in my car. Otherwise, I might just go nuts on the road. It's not even materialistic or whatever you call dependency on technology; honestly, I'm just being practical. I'm taking it into my own hands to maintain symphonic mental health, and so am protecting my fellow classmates from something potentially verbally abrasive on a daily basis.