My new blog is up. It's called City on a Hill, which is what Montpellier is, literally. As for figuratively, well, we'll see.
It's going to get tweaked a lot when I get back from Texas at the beginning of April, but in response to the many inquiries I've gotten, it's a start.
Thanks for your cards and letters. See you in France.
Showing posts with label blog announcements. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog announcements. Show all posts
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Monday, October 20, 2008
Long-Awaited Announcement
This morning at 11:30 I signed a lease agreement with a landlord for a 55-square-meter apartment in Montpellier.
The agreement goes into effect on November 1, although since my 60th birthday is Nov. 2 and I've celebrated 40 and 50 in Berlin, and want to say au revoir to my friends, I won't move in on that date.
What this will mean is that over the next few weeks, this blog will be winding down, and a new one will rise. Just think of it: a whole new country to complain about from scratch! Why, I've already ploughed through the catalog of offers Orange (France Telecom) has ready for me and am utterly and totally confused. Isn't there some way for me to get a landline, a mobile, and Internet service without cable TV? I don't watch television at all, and never have!
For the last five years, I've felt like I was treading water in Berlin. Virtually nothing I do can't be done elsewhere (except complain about Germany and Berlin), so why not do it from a much nicer place?
That's what I'm about to do.
I'll miss the real-life friends I've made in Berlin a lot, but I also have a sneaking feeling I'll be getting a lot of e-mails with the word "couch" in them. And yes, it looks like the nice couch will be going with me.
As for the cyber-friends, I'll try to get the new blog up quickly, and put a pointer here so y'all can join in the fun.
Anybody want to take over my lease? Anybody know what it'll cost to move? I sure don't...
More news as it happens.
The agreement goes into effect on November 1, although since my 60th birthday is Nov. 2 and I've celebrated 40 and 50 in Berlin, and want to say au revoir to my friends, I won't move in on that date.
What this will mean is that over the next few weeks, this blog will be winding down, and a new one will rise. Just think of it: a whole new country to complain about from scratch! Why, I've already ploughed through the catalog of offers Orange (France Telecom) has ready for me and am utterly and totally confused. Isn't there some way for me to get a landline, a mobile, and Internet service without cable TV? I don't watch television at all, and never have!
For the last five years, I've felt like I was treading water in Berlin. Virtually nothing I do can't be done elsewhere (except complain about Germany and Berlin), so why not do it from a much nicer place?
That's what I'm about to do.
I'll miss the real-life friends I've made in Berlin a lot, but I also have a sneaking feeling I'll be getting a lot of e-mails with the word "couch" in them. And yes, it looks like the nice couch will be going with me.
As for the cyber-friends, I'll try to get the new blog up quickly, and put a pointer here so y'all can join in the fun.
Anybody want to take over my lease? Anybody know what it'll cost to move? I sure don't...
More news as it happens.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
New Old Blog
In September, 2001, I took a three-week vacation in Japan and kept a journal. I also took a bunch of photos, and when I got back, I sent the results to my friend, the late Bob Watts, who was art director of Salon, and he fashioned the whole thing into a website with an astonishing border made up of odd Japanese art.
It occurred to me not long ago that this was, in its primitive way, a blog, and so I decided, at some point, to turn it into one. As of this moment, the text is up, and a very few photos, but I'll be building it up a bit more in the days to come.
It is, for reasons I'll explain when I get around to writing a 2008 introduction, a bit of an odd document, but if you're interested, it's over here, at least in the early stages.
I'll post again when it's finished. There may also be another announcement this week. Or not. It's too early to tell.
It occurred to me not long ago that this was, in its primitive way, a blog, and so I decided, at some point, to turn it into one. As of this moment, the text is up, and a very few photos, but I'll be building it up a bit more in the days to come.
It is, for reasons I'll explain when I get around to writing a 2008 introduction, a bit of an odd document, but if you're interested, it's over here, at least in the early stages.
I'll post again when it's finished. There may also be another announcement this week. Or not. It's too early to tell.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
It Must Be Spring
More in the nature of a collection of crumbs, but...
First, there's the matter of the arboreal genocide on my street. The aftermath has been interesting: on the stub (it's not tall enough to call it a stump) where one of the trees was someone has taken a Christmas tree outline, made of stout bronze wire, and screwed it to the former living tree. On the end of each of its "branches," this decoration has a candle-holder, and various residents have stuck candles in there and lit them. There's nothing in them as of a few minutes ago, but this may change. In the meanwhile, it's been festooned with strings of tinsel and ribbon.
A few more trees on other streets have gone, too, and apparently there are plans for even more. One, I noticed, only got severely trimmed, perhaps in deference to a very large bird's nest near its top. Species-ism, if you ask me.
The comments on that item were interesting, too, as were backchannel e-mails like the one from Gary detailing a homicidal Californian tree. I suppose that kind of thing can happen anywhere, but maybe a tree living in a place where people retain a vestigal communion with tree-spirits makes it happen far less frequently. Makes me wonder if it happens at all in Latvia. I was also sent a tree-hugging joke by Friedperson, but if you know her, you know it's not the kind of thing one can post on a family-oriented blog like this one (stop laughing). Mature adults can apply via e-mail. The easily offended need not bother.
Across the street from the former trees, a local child is attempting a social experiment: hanging from one of the building's balconies by a stout rope is a small felt basket. If you look in it, you'll discover candies and a note asking you to take one and leave another behind. This has been going on for several days now, and I'm amazed to see that there's been a steady change in the basket's contents. Yesterday, someone left a banana instead of candy, thereby teaching the kid that there are health-food nuts everywhere. My guess is that the basket gets hauled up every now and again and the really good stuff is impounded.
It's not just the sap oozing from the tree-stubs that reminds me it's spring, though. The windows can be open most of the day now, and there is actually sunshine outdoors. Plus, of course, last night was Walpurgisnacht, which then segues neatly into May Day rioting, that old Berliner tradition. The park near my house was, for some reason, closed off and police stationed to check people coming and going, and there were helicopters late into the night. Now, I know there was also a Howard Carpendale concert last night, but somehow I don't think the security was about him. Today, broken empty bottles of horrific sorts of alcohol I didn't even know existed are all over the street, and, for the first time since I've been in this neighborhood, there've been police sirens at regular intervals.
All of which makes me nostalgic, because it now looks very much like I'll be leaving here come July. Details -- many, many details, you can be sure -- will follow as things fall into place, and no, I don't have the money yet, and yet it's more likely than ever that I will when the proverbial push comes to shove. The first item on the agenda is an apartment search, which will follow closely after a week in Morocco. After that, it'll be back here to pack.
And, of course, this scares me to death. I don't know many people in Montpellier, and two of the folks I do know are leaving for the summer; I don't have a job there (other than the writing I do which can be done from anywhere), and I'll be moving somewhere that's a bit more expensive than Berlin and where I'll be paying more rent than I am here. Plus the usual unknowns on this end. If experience is anything to go by, I'll both fall in love with someone who can't move and be offered a totally fantastic job here about three days before I roll out of town.
I also won't be living in a town with loads of brilliant artists who do events involving head-lice.
Not that, at this point, I'm going to let that stop me.
First, there's the matter of the arboreal genocide on my street. The aftermath has been interesting: on the stub (it's not tall enough to call it a stump) where one of the trees was someone has taken a Christmas tree outline, made of stout bronze wire, and screwed it to the former living tree. On the end of each of its "branches," this decoration has a candle-holder, and various residents have stuck candles in there and lit them. There's nothing in them as of a few minutes ago, but this may change. In the meanwhile, it's been festooned with strings of tinsel and ribbon.
A few more trees on other streets have gone, too, and apparently there are plans for even more. One, I noticed, only got severely trimmed, perhaps in deference to a very large bird's nest near its top. Species-ism, if you ask me.
The comments on that item were interesting, too, as were backchannel e-mails like the one from Gary detailing a homicidal Californian tree. I suppose that kind of thing can happen anywhere, but maybe a tree living in a place where people retain a vestigal communion with tree-spirits makes it happen far less frequently. Makes me wonder if it happens at all in Latvia. I was also sent a tree-hugging joke by Friedperson, but if you know her, you know it's not the kind of thing one can post on a family-oriented blog like this one (stop laughing). Mature adults can apply via e-mail. The easily offended need not bother.
Across the street from the former trees, a local child is attempting a social experiment: hanging from one of the building's balconies by a stout rope is a small felt basket. If you look in it, you'll discover candies and a note asking you to take one and leave another behind. This has been going on for several days now, and I'm amazed to see that there's been a steady change in the basket's contents. Yesterday, someone left a banana instead of candy, thereby teaching the kid that there are health-food nuts everywhere. My guess is that the basket gets hauled up every now and again and the really good stuff is impounded.
It's not just the sap oozing from the tree-stubs that reminds me it's spring, though. The windows can be open most of the day now, and there is actually sunshine outdoors. Plus, of course, last night was Walpurgisnacht, which then segues neatly into May Day rioting, that old Berliner tradition. The park near my house was, for some reason, closed off and police stationed to check people coming and going, and there were helicopters late into the night. Now, I know there was also a Howard Carpendale concert last night, but somehow I don't think the security was about him. Today, broken empty bottles of horrific sorts of alcohol I didn't even know existed are all over the street, and, for the first time since I've been in this neighborhood, there've been police sirens at regular intervals.
All of which makes me nostalgic, because it now looks very much like I'll be leaving here come July. Details -- many, many details, you can be sure -- will follow as things fall into place, and no, I don't have the money yet, and yet it's more likely than ever that I will when the proverbial push comes to shove. The first item on the agenda is an apartment search, which will follow closely after a week in Morocco. After that, it'll be back here to pack.
And, of course, this scares me to death. I don't know many people in Montpellier, and two of the folks I do know are leaving for the summer; I don't have a job there (other than the writing I do which can be done from anywhere), and I'll be moving somewhere that's a bit more expensive than Berlin and where I'll be paying more rent than I am here. Plus the usual unknowns on this end. If experience is anything to go by, I'll both fall in love with someone who can't move and be offered a totally fantastic job here about three days before I roll out of town.
I also won't be living in a town with loads of brilliant artists who do events involving head-lice.
Not that, at this point, I'm going to let that stop me.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Neophilia And Its Discontents
The end of No Depression is one thing, but this is getting ridiculous. Grant over there sent me an article yesterday about the Atlantic's new "web brand," The Current, which will crunch articles into 250-to-300-word little thingies.
If you have ADD, be warned: this post will be longer than that.
Now the Atlantic is one of America's leading magazines. According to the Wikipedia article, it was founded in 1858 by a bunch of famous writers and intellectuals and has been publishing ever since. Just what they expect to accomplish with this new venture I can't say, although they think they'll be able to attract more eyeballs and, presumably, sell more advertising. What they won't be able to do, needless to say, is explore anything they write about in any depth. And exploring things in depth has always been what they've been about.
This rush to the Web, and the parallel abandoning of print by both publishers and advertisers is a prime example of something I've chosen to call neophilia. Neophilia is probably defined as "love of the new," but I, well, I want to explore it in more depth.
Okay, look, I'm a guy, and, like a lot of guys, I like gadgets. I like new gadgets, too: I was grumpy about computers until I moved to Europe, when someone pointed me to Compuserve, whereby I could send e-mail. This meant I could also send articles to magazines and get them there in the time it took to send them, which, on dial-up with a 256k modem, was about two minutes. This revolutionized my life: I got an Apple Powerbook, and boy, was it cool. Not only did it do e-mail and word-processing, but it did a whole lot of other things, too. If Compuserve had let its customers do it back then, I could have accessed this newfangled Internet thing, and I burned to do so, but unfortunately it would be a couple of years until I could. I was, however, able to access bulletin boards, and almost found an apartment in Berlin using one. I actually did find one during that search because of the computer, though: my brother-in-law sent me an e-mail saying a guy he knew was moving out of one here, and I called the number he sent me and got the place. Just like that.
Once I finally could access the Internet, life got really interesting. There was all kinds of stuff out there, and I zipped around (as fast as one could zip with a 256k modem with Deutsche Telekom's heinous tariffs breathing down my neck the whole time) and found a lot of it. I joined the Well, and "met" a lot of interesting folks. In fact, I also met them in person (excuse me: IRL), and that was fun.
I got more gadgets, too: I fell in love with Palm Pilots, and am on my third one now. It's a great machine that has applications that allow you to figure out public transport (a great app called MetrO, which has the routes of hundreds of cities' bus, tram, and light rail lines), keep various kinds of lists, and store all your phone numbers -- and coordinate it with your computer.
There were gadgets I wanted to like, but didn't. Cell phones: I never saw the point. I now own one, and it's great for travelling, or when you're trying to coordinate things on the fly, but I keep leaving the house without it. Then there was the iPod. I'm a confirmed Apple-head, but I really don't need to convert all my records to MP3 files and carry them with me everywhere all the time. I just don't. Although now it appears that the iPod Touch may be encroaching on Palm territory (and Palm's done a terrible job of maintaining their OS), so maybe I'll use one when they figure that out -- just not for music.
Okay, so: I like gadgets. That's been established.
But, as the cases of the cell phone and iPod prove, not unless they improve some area of my life. Because it's new doesn't mean it's better. Or even that it's important. But there are those who figure that any new gadget has to be better because it's new.
Case in point: some months ago, Amazon introduced a gadget on which you could read books you'd downloaded from them. I'm not sure how it works because I took one look at it and recoiled in horror, but over on the Well, there are sufficient neophiliacs that a big fuss ensued. One guy actually said "I'm never buying a physical book again. This is it," or some such balderdash. Finally, someone who spoke neophiliac pointed out that the platform hadn't been established, and that just maybe this guy would download a bunch of books he couldn't read in ten years. Or maybe five years. Or maybe by the end of 2008. One wise old sage noted that he had to keep old computers around just to read documents he'd created in now-vanished software programs or now-vanished platforms. No means of converting them had ever appeared. (And I know what he means: all my e-mail correspondence prior to a given date is stored in Compuserve's proprietary format on a Mac OS which is no longer supported, and I have it all stored on...a ZIP disc!)
Someone who would seriously consider abandoning books for this new gadget of Amazon's -- or similar ones Sony and others are pushing -- is a neophiliac in need of intervention.
So, in my opinion, is someone who'd abandon nearly a century's worth of work on figuring out how to mechanically reproduce music so it sounded as close as humanly possible to live performance for MP3s, portablility or not. (I mean, do you really need to be entertained every moment of your waking life? Apparently some people are so shallow that they do.) Yet the neophilic rush to this new format is such that it has practically ruined the market for physical product, allowed free exchange of music files to the point where musicians are no longer able to make a living off of recordings (and don't say "make your money on the road" until you've clocked the prices at the gas station this morning), and sent the music business into a tail-spin. I'd be the last to argue that the record biz didn't deserve a shake-up, but when the little guys are falling as fast as the big guys, then something's clearly wrong.
And so is someone who'd abandon print for the Web. Sorry, but this makes absolutely no sense to me. First there are the issues of readability. I have to walk away from the computer a lot or risk my eyeballs feeling like they've been sandpapered. Some web design is absolutely awful: one of the web's best music magazines is a design horror, so bad that I rarely read it, which I feel bad about, because the guy who puts it together is really smart and has impeccable taste. I wish...well, I wish he'd edit a magazine instead. Or, better, in addition. There's the portability and durability: you can read a paper or a magazine or a book in places where you can't read the Web. On trains, for instance. We ride a lot of trains here in Europe. Or on planes. You simply don't have to worry about battery life with print. And the platform: I can, given other variables like the language it's printed in, read books printed hundreds of years ago, and so will people hundreds of years from now. Moreover, I can be sure no one's hacked the content -- at least once the thing's been published.
Then, as I mentioned last time, there's the issue of length. Some things are so complex they take a lot of time to explain, explore, or expose. You want to be able to check back, whether to verify who a given character is, go back to the beginning of an argument, check a fact or date, or whatever. That's just harder with a virtual document. And these complex arguments or expositions just don't crunch down into 250-to-300-word bites. Moreover, they're often very important, vital to understanding our world, our society, and the ideas that drive them.
This, I think, is something that's in danger of becoming, if not lost, at least far more scarce. And that's bad.
The paranoiac in me is forced to ask a question: who benefits from neophilia? And the answer comes ringing back: the gadget-mongers. And then I have to ask, why do they get to tell us what to do? Because they've made huge fortunes selling these gadgets? Does the future of music have to be dependent on iTunes? Does the future of our political discourse have to be dependent on the Web? Does the future of literature have to be dependent on what you can read on a screen? Do Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon get to set the boundaries of our intellectual life?
Does everything have to be simplified into a compressed MP3 file, a sound-bite, a 250-to-300-word idea-bite?
Because if it does, we're in a heap of trouble.
I think there will be what the economists call a "correction," but I don't see it because the horizon is obscured by neophilia. I have to rely on gut feeling, and that's always scary when so many other guts are busy digesting what's new. I worry that it won't come quickly enough to save what I do for a living, what I've done for a living for over 40 years. Is my whole career, my whole body of expertise and skill, going to be sacrificed so that someone can sell silicon? We've already seen the damage lying memes can do: John Kerry's a traitor; Barack Obama is a Muslim (and, hence, a terrorist, as everyone "knows" all Muslims are). Without rational explanation, this sort of thing can run amok, and I believe that print plays a vital role in keeping rationality alive in a way that no other medium can.
Maybe I'm a grumpy old man, resentful at the coming new age, but somehow, I don't think it's that simple. There are those who benefit from keeping people stupid, just like there are those who benefit from compressing music into MP3 files. Both are dangerous, in wildly different ways, of course.
Naturally, I have a large stake in keeping print media alive. But I'd like to gently suggest that you do, too.
* * *
It's that time of year again, and I'm off to Texas Friday morning for SXSW. I'll try to blog some of that, just as I did last year, and I'll also certainly be blogging about the food. After SXSW, I'll fly to Paris and take the train to Montpellier. If all goes as I hope, I'll be looking for apartments that graduating students will be moving out of this summer, with an eye towards moving into one of them when they leave. With luck, I'll find one, and I'll also find enough new work to pay for it. Wish me luck. I'm more in need of it now than ever.
If you have ADD, be warned: this post will be longer than that.
Now the Atlantic is one of America's leading magazines. According to the Wikipedia article, it was founded in 1858 by a bunch of famous writers and intellectuals and has been publishing ever since. Just what they expect to accomplish with this new venture I can't say, although they think they'll be able to attract more eyeballs and, presumably, sell more advertising. What they won't be able to do, needless to say, is explore anything they write about in any depth. And exploring things in depth has always been what they've been about.
This rush to the Web, and the parallel abandoning of print by both publishers and advertisers is a prime example of something I've chosen to call neophilia. Neophilia is probably defined as "love of the new," but I, well, I want to explore it in more depth.
Okay, look, I'm a guy, and, like a lot of guys, I like gadgets. I like new gadgets, too: I was grumpy about computers until I moved to Europe, when someone pointed me to Compuserve, whereby I could send e-mail. This meant I could also send articles to magazines and get them there in the time it took to send them, which, on dial-up with a 256k modem, was about two minutes. This revolutionized my life: I got an Apple Powerbook, and boy, was it cool. Not only did it do e-mail and word-processing, but it did a whole lot of other things, too. If Compuserve had let its customers do it back then, I could have accessed this newfangled Internet thing, and I burned to do so, but unfortunately it would be a couple of years until I could. I was, however, able to access bulletin boards, and almost found an apartment in Berlin using one. I actually did find one during that search because of the computer, though: my brother-in-law sent me an e-mail saying a guy he knew was moving out of one here, and I called the number he sent me and got the place. Just like that.
Once I finally could access the Internet, life got really interesting. There was all kinds of stuff out there, and I zipped around (as fast as one could zip with a 256k modem with Deutsche Telekom's heinous tariffs breathing down my neck the whole time) and found a lot of it. I joined the Well, and "met" a lot of interesting folks. In fact, I also met them in person (excuse me: IRL), and that was fun.
I got more gadgets, too: I fell in love with Palm Pilots, and am on my third one now. It's a great machine that has applications that allow you to figure out public transport (a great app called MetrO, which has the routes of hundreds of cities' bus, tram, and light rail lines), keep various kinds of lists, and store all your phone numbers -- and coordinate it with your computer.
There were gadgets I wanted to like, but didn't. Cell phones: I never saw the point. I now own one, and it's great for travelling, or when you're trying to coordinate things on the fly, but I keep leaving the house without it. Then there was the iPod. I'm a confirmed Apple-head, but I really don't need to convert all my records to MP3 files and carry them with me everywhere all the time. I just don't. Although now it appears that the iPod Touch may be encroaching on Palm territory (and Palm's done a terrible job of maintaining their OS), so maybe I'll use one when they figure that out -- just not for music.
Okay, so: I like gadgets. That's been established.
But, as the cases of the cell phone and iPod prove, not unless they improve some area of my life. Because it's new doesn't mean it's better. Or even that it's important. But there are those who figure that any new gadget has to be better because it's new.
Case in point: some months ago, Amazon introduced a gadget on which you could read books you'd downloaded from them. I'm not sure how it works because I took one look at it and recoiled in horror, but over on the Well, there are sufficient neophiliacs that a big fuss ensued. One guy actually said "I'm never buying a physical book again. This is it," or some such balderdash. Finally, someone who spoke neophiliac pointed out that the platform hadn't been established, and that just maybe this guy would download a bunch of books he couldn't read in ten years. Or maybe five years. Or maybe by the end of 2008. One wise old sage noted that he had to keep old computers around just to read documents he'd created in now-vanished software programs or now-vanished platforms. No means of converting them had ever appeared. (And I know what he means: all my e-mail correspondence prior to a given date is stored in Compuserve's proprietary format on a Mac OS which is no longer supported, and I have it all stored on...a ZIP disc!)
Someone who would seriously consider abandoning books for this new gadget of Amazon's -- or similar ones Sony and others are pushing -- is a neophiliac in need of intervention.
So, in my opinion, is someone who'd abandon nearly a century's worth of work on figuring out how to mechanically reproduce music so it sounded as close as humanly possible to live performance for MP3s, portablility or not. (I mean, do you really need to be entertained every moment of your waking life? Apparently some people are so shallow that they do.) Yet the neophilic rush to this new format is such that it has practically ruined the market for physical product, allowed free exchange of music files to the point where musicians are no longer able to make a living off of recordings (and don't say "make your money on the road" until you've clocked the prices at the gas station this morning), and sent the music business into a tail-spin. I'd be the last to argue that the record biz didn't deserve a shake-up, but when the little guys are falling as fast as the big guys, then something's clearly wrong.
And so is someone who'd abandon print for the Web. Sorry, but this makes absolutely no sense to me. First there are the issues of readability. I have to walk away from the computer a lot or risk my eyeballs feeling like they've been sandpapered. Some web design is absolutely awful: one of the web's best music magazines is a design horror, so bad that I rarely read it, which I feel bad about, because the guy who puts it together is really smart and has impeccable taste. I wish...well, I wish he'd edit a magazine instead. Or, better, in addition. There's the portability and durability: you can read a paper or a magazine or a book in places where you can't read the Web. On trains, for instance. We ride a lot of trains here in Europe. Or on planes. You simply don't have to worry about battery life with print. And the platform: I can, given other variables like the language it's printed in, read books printed hundreds of years ago, and so will people hundreds of years from now. Moreover, I can be sure no one's hacked the content -- at least once the thing's been published.
Then, as I mentioned last time, there's the issue of length. Some things are so complex they take a lot of time to explain, explore, or expose. You want to be able to check back, whether to verify who a given character is, go back to the beginning of an argument, check a fact or date, or whatever. That's just harder with a virtual document. And these complex arguments or expositions just don't crunch down into 250-to-300-word bites. Moreover, they're often very important, vital to understanding our world, our society, and the ideas that drive them.
This, I think, is something that's in danger of becoming, if not lost, at least far more scarce. And that's bad.
The paranoiac in me is forced to ask a question: who benefits from neophilia? And the answer comes ringing back: the gadget-mongers. And then I have to ask, why do they get to tell us what to do? Because they've made huge fortunes selling these gadgets? Does the future of music have to be dependent on iTunes? Does the future of our political discourse have to be dependent on the Web? Does the future of literature have to be dependent on what you can read on a screen? Do Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon get to set the boundaries of our intellectual life?
Does everything have to be simplified into a compressed MP3 file, a sound-bite, a 250-to-300-word idea-bite?
Because if it does, we're in a heap of trouble.
I think there will be what the economists call a "correction," but I don't see it because the horizon is obscured by neophilia. I have to rely on gut feeling, and that's always scary when so many other guts are busy digesting what's new. I worry that it won't come quickly enough to save what I do for a living, what I've done for a living for over 40 years. Is my whole career, my whole body of expertise and skill, going to be sacrificed so that someone can sell silicon? We've already seen the damage lying memes can do: John Kerry's a traitor; Barack Obama is a Muslim (and, hence, a terrorist, as everyone "knows" all Muslims are). Without rational explanation, this sort of thing can run amok, and I believe that print plays a vital role in keeping rationality alive in a way that no other medium can.
Maybe I'm a grumpy old man, resentful at the coming new age, but somehow, I don't think it's that simple. There are those who benefit from keeping people stupid, just like there are those who benefit from compressing music into MP3 files. Both are dangerous, in wildly different ways, of course.
Naturally, I have a large stake in keeping print media alive. But I'd like to gently suggest that you do, too.
* * *
It's that time of year again, and I'm off to Texas Friday morning for SXSW. I'll try to blog some of that, just as I did last year, and I'll also certainly be blogging about the food. After SXSW, I'll fly to Paris and take the train to Montpellier. If all goes as I hope, I'll be looking for apartments that graduating students will be moving out of this summer, with an eye towards moving into one of them when they leave. With luck, I'll find one, and I'll also find enough new work to pay for it. Wish me luck. I'm more in need of it now than ever.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Yet Another Decent Interval
So tomorrow morning I'm off to SXSW again. Last year I said I'd be reporting from the scene, but got so weirded out by culture shock that I never got around to it, so this time I'm not making any promises. I'll probably be uploading some food reports to Dishola, and I'll undoubtedly expand on them here, especially if I find some great new places, but usually the nights of music leave me so exhausted and depressed with the sheer volume of mediocre stuff that I lack any enthusiasm for writing about it afterwards. Or that's what happened last year.
Actually, one of the more interesting SXSW-related activities is happening before the event, in the form of a blog discussing the impact of technology on the record biz. Even if you don't follow some of the more intricate details, you'll be able to pick up on how dire things are even for those heroic little guys who're supposed to be profiting from the dinosaurs' malaise. And this year I'm actually on a panel, or, rather, I'm conducting one of the live interviews with an old hero of mine, Joe Boyd, who's probably produced at least one of your all-time favorite records, even if you haven't heard it yet.
I'll also be headed off to Marin County (got a super-cheap ticket) to pay my respects to the about-to-vanish Village Music, but unless I win the lottery in Texas offering my respects is about all I'm going to be able to do. But I'll be seeing some folks from the Well, as well as some old friends from when I lived there. Then it'll be back to Texas for a couple of days, and back here at the end of March.
And a couple of days after that, you just know I'll be pissed off at Berlin again.
Actually, one of the more interesting SXSW-related activities is happening before the event, in the form of a blog discussing the impact of technology on the record biz. Even if you don't follow some of the more intricate details, you'll be able to pick up on how dire things are even for those heroic little guys who're supposed to be profiting from the dinosaurs' malaise. And this year I'm actually on a panel, or, rather, I'm conducting one of the live interviews with an old hero of mine, Joe Boyd, who's probably produced at least one of your all-time favorite records, even if you haven't heard it yet.
I'll also be headed off to Marin County (got a super-cheap ticket) to pay my respects to the about-to-vanish Village Music, but unless I win the lottery in Texas offering my respects is about all I'm going to be able to do. But I'll be seeing some folks from the Well, as well as some old friends from when I lived there. Then it'll be back to Texas for a couple of days, and back here at the end of March.
And a couple of days after that, you just know I'll be pissed off at Berlin again.
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