Radio, Books, and Movies

A lady on Iowa Public Radio's Talk of Iowa today stated her opinion that people today are making films where people in times past would have sat down and wrote a book. She believes that this is the way things are moving currently.

I don't think I agree. Largely, I still believe in the importance of random scrubs (such as myself) sitting down and spending the time to relate thoughts and experiences to others through written word--fiction or non-fiction. Also, I don't think I have the financial ability to go make a movie. While I do occasionally make attempts to write screen and stage plays, and plan to hopefully complete a few in my life, it seems that it would be much more difficult to produce a film from them rather than a short story or novel.

I do, however, accept that, despite how important I believe it is, a lifestyle made from written literature is probably at a point where it will never allow financial success. In accepting this, I am forced to accept that I will probably never make a large amount of money from doing the things that I want to do in life. This is okay, I don't know what I would do with money anyway. Thinking about the near future and the potential of having a salary that is roughly 5-10 times what I make now is hard to comprehend. I'm getting by now on a couple of bucks a month. I'll just have to see how obligations change when I finish college.

In related news, I have really been trying to write more lately. I started a remake of a past short story I wrote and I have also been writing a story through letters to my parents from the point-of-view of me as if I did drop out of college to go explore the continent and settle in a coast city. My roommates and friends are a good inspiration, because they seem to be pursuing the same general lifestyle that I am, and seem to understand the consequences as I do.

I gnabbed an Adolescent Psychology book from the psych building on campus here. It was written in the early 90s, but still seems relevant in many ways today. I found this paragraph interesting:

What are the values of today's adolescents? Are they consistent with the common negative stereotypes of adolescents? According to one view, moral values favoring self-fulfillment have increasingly strengthened , whereas values favoring the welfare of others have increasingly weakened. In particular, there is evidence that the values of college students have become more oriented around personal financial gain and less around meaningful philosophy of life. Thus, current college students may judge selfish actions, especially actions producing financial gain, less severely than college students of prior generations.

This is pretty clear today in the way that the question "What are you going to do with that?" is consistently asked of English, Philosophy, and various Arts majors and rarely, if ever, asked of Engineering or Business-related majors. Even Agriculture kids get more credit than we do, which kind of sucks.

Iowa is the color white

Trista and I had a show in Fairfield on Sunday. It was the third day of shows celebrating Dominic's birthday. The show went insanely well. I almost feel like a sham at times because most of the music that we play live is improvised and all the practicing I do (which is mostly sitting in front of a computer screen, editing samples) is done for music that I don't play live, but then after we get done playing I don't feel as bad because we keep playing better and better together. Trista's echoey vocals, piano, and organ just add so much, what I call, cloud-cover to the noise that I make. It's great.



The whole night of shows was opened up by this band Caution Comma Lemmy, which was just two guys and the singer wore a gas mask with a microphone built in. At one point, through delayed out vocals, he said he was going to play his favorite Animal Collective song, and proceeded into a really creepy and cool cover of Banshee Beat. He was the first person I've ever seen cover an Animal Collective song.



We also drank really bad coffee at this small coffee place around the center square in Fairfield and I had the distinct impression that all the meditative locals were watching us and taking notes on our behavior. I glanced over the shoulder at a tiny notebook of one of the locals and he was taking notes in as many as 3 different languages including what looked like Korean. At one point, one lady even burst out laughing at something we said that seemed entirely ordinary conversation to us, and then apologized for her outburst.



After the show, we stayed up late and talked about music at Phil and Dom's house in Fairfield. Dominic also showed me this list of unexplained radio broadcasts that really freaked me out, and then I feel asleep on a bed made of chair cushions.

Here is the link to the list of those broadcasts:

http://www.cracked.com/article_18381_the-5-creepiest-unexplained-broadcasts.html

On Monday, we drove to Iowa City so Trista could have a saxophone practice with the director from the University of Iowa. Porter and I talked about the future of pop culture and went record shopping. I found Holland by the Beach Boys, but it didn't include the weird 7" or Brian Wilson's 2-part fairy tale song, which is kind of why I wanted it.



That is all about that.



I heard a radio commercial today filled with quotes from teenagers who were happy with their decision to go back to high school to "get an education" and it kind of got me thinking. The idea (and largely, the wording) of "getting an education" is weird to me. It separates everyday learning from the kind we get in school. As I often quote from a friend of mine, "schools teach us what to think, not how to think," and when you are being taught what to think in the form of "an education" (which is the same thing as a major or field of study in college), it suggests that you can actually "get" an education which means there is a logical end point in which you have your education and can go do something else. This seems entirely opposite from the concept of lifelong learning which everyone actually goes through, and in fact gives your "education" higher value than the learning we do on our own. I hope this isn't actually the case for anyone.

Galaxie 500 is great. They were making what current bands call "glo-fi" as early as the late 80's, and their albums were finally released on vinyl by someone who has the power to make decisions like that.

I'm back from Colorado. Made a whole list of things we did while we were there but I'll just put up some pictures instead.

Col-oh-RAD-oh

Chilling in Colorado with D&D. Eating guacamole. We are going to go to Denver tomorrow and I am probably going to buy more records than I need. We will take pictures tomorrow and I will post them and you can see them and they will be nice.

UP is the saddest movie I have ever seen.

I finally got my internship figured out for this coming semester. Ideally, I will be paid for it, which is a huge scam because I can only be on the payroll for it if I am an Iowa State University student, which I barely am anymore. In fact, the only reason I will even be an Iowa State University student anymore is because I am doing this internship. It's kind of like one big circle as far as getting paid goes.

3006 Wood Street and specific others within a 3 block radius will be producing a wicked zine for the Iowa State University campus this semester. It will be compromised of a bunch of random stuff including comics, writings, poems, and drawings. Probably more too. I think it can be my medium for my ridiculous Iowa State University conspiracy theories. I wish I had another word to describe it besides "zine" because someone, at some point, just thought it was a cool word for a short magazine.

They were wrong.

I'll give more information when it is closer to completion.

College

It seems like only certain majors in college really allow creative freedom. Being a journalism major has been fun simply for the fact that I was able to mess around with school-purchased cameras and audio equipment, but I didn't make anything that I truly wanted to make. Every assignment I turned in was something I found to fit a requirement.

It seems like college should be a huge experience that allows greater freedom from the high school classroom walls, and it should teach you how to think or create instead of what to think or what to create.

The fact that I am now thinking, "Good, college is done. Now I can make something I care about," seems backwards to me. Rightly, the best work of these 4 (or in my case, 5) years should be what you were encouraged to create in the classroom rather than the things you worked on between class obligations.

I hope that colleges out there do exist that encourage true creation rather than guideline-based repetition.

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I am getting back into writing letters. I couldn't sleep this morning while my brain was forming the outline of a serious letter to an ailing friend, so I got out of bed and wrote it. A few pages later, it was finished, and after some friendly advice, I'm unsure as to whether or not to send it. My general outlook on serious letter writing, the kind that is done to allow the writer real expression he or she is otherwise deprived of, should always be encouraged, because what true harm can come from expressing your beliefs to someone. The only real worst case scenario I can imagine is that they simply disregard the letter and don't reply. We'll see.

The other letter is an unfinished letter I started writing to my parents at the beginning of the semester when I was on a huge letter writing kick. It touches on a few of the things I am excited and worried about this semester and mentions new, budding feelings for a girl who has since become a large part of my life. I was thinking about it last week, and decided it would be cool to finish it now with my current thoughts on the same topics and double-date the letter and send it. That one is happening.

Watched Almost Famous today. That movie is still great, though the raw movie quality actually seemed a bit worse than I remembered.

I'm hopefully going to go finish Philip K. Dick's "Dr. Bloodmoney" after I finish writing this post. It is interesting. It focuses on a bunch of telekinetic civilians living in a post-apocalyptic US west coast, living under a physically degenerating god-like disc jockey revolving around Earth in a satellite. Kind of reminds me of my multitude of 2012-based dreams I had last night.

I am a sucker for anything post-apocalyptic.

San Diego

I went to San Diego over Thanksgiving break. Having someone to stay with saves hundreds of dollars. I highly recommend it when possible.

I just got my camera back and uploaded some photos.







There are a lot more. We showed up at the airport with 2 digital cameras, Denise's film camera, 2 disposable cameras, and an old polaroid camera.

The end of college

The end of college is so close now. I have about 2 weeks of classes left, and then this spring I have to complete an internship and then I will be done.

I couldn't be more excited.

I decied that college is not nearly as necessary as everyone makes it seem. I told my mom this and she agreed with me and expressed the same feelings about it as I had, which was nice to hear.

I'm glad that, in a couple of weeks, I can finally have the time to devote my brain to creating things that are important to me. I've always wanted to be a more productive writer, but I never write. I'm not sure if this is actually because I don't have enough time (like I tell myself) or because I just don't have it in me to be a writer. We'll see what happens when I don't have college holding me down.

I talked to a friend from the University of Northern Iowa, and he also has no plans come next August, so we are going to move to Portland and work bad jobs and live in a bad apartment and make bad music and write bad literature. I hope that the combination of all that will churn out something which is good.

Everything is experience. Experience involves feeling. Feeling is good.