Thoughts on life, love and faith by Plasticmind.

I listened to a song the other day that I’ll probably never hear again. I listened with four people I’d never met before in a place I’d never been and will probably never return to.

There I was in the sweltering heat of a Brooklyn summer evening, drinking hot tea and eating chocolate chip cookies along with two aspiring creatives, a dentist and an Irish opera singer. We’d all gathered to listen to a song by Sufjan Stevens.

You see, a few years back, Sufjan Stevens held a song exchange contest. He invited all of his fans to submit a Christmas-themed song and promised to give the winner exclusive rights to a Christmas-themed song that he had written but never released. An artistic director named Alec Duffy won that contest with his song Christmas Everyday; instead of selling the newly-acquired song to anyone or even distributing it freely over the internet, though, Alec had something else in mind. If Sufjan’s goal with the contest was to stir up a sense of community among his listeners, Alec certainly carried on with that M.O. If you want to hear the song, you have to request a listening session at his Brooklyn apartment.

I first read about Alec’s novel idea in a Wall Street Journal article. He argues that these listening sessions aren’t about exclusivity or arrogance; they’re about rekindling the thrill of discovery and bringing back some of the transience of the musical experience. Some Sufjan fans absolutely loathe him for this, but I love the idea. Music is so ubiquitous today that it’s lost some of it’s magic. When you know this is the only time you’re ever going to listen to a song, you listen to it differently.

So I sent Alec an email several months ago, maybe even last year, requesting to join a listening session at his apartment. After a few months, he responded with a date and I soon found myself wandering around Brooklyn, sweating profusely and looking for Dean Street. Finally, I found his small, nondescript apartment building.

I punched in the code Alec sent in the email and he buzzed me in.

The setting was ironic, for sure. The air conditioning was out of commission and there we were, fanning ourselves in the sweltering summer heat, about to listen to The Lonely Man of Winter.

Alec passed around a letter that Sufjan had sent to him upon winning the contest. True to form, it was full of self-deprecation and wry humor. In the letter, Sufjan said the song probably carried too much melancholy, so I expected it to be more gloomy than it actually was. There was also a Christmas card; Sufjan had drawn beams radiating from the Christmas tree on the front and labeled them: “Christmas Energy”.

After introductions, some crumbly cookies and a bit of confab, we all slipped on headphones and, after a quick volume check, waited for the synchronized play-button pressing. (Forty-eight on the playcount, I noticed.) Then came the distinct upright piano, slightly detuned.

The Lonely Man of Winter contains all the best elements of both Sufjan’s Michigan and Illinois albums. I can safely say the song is up there as one of my favorite. It has a similar cadence and the overall feel of Casimir Pulaski Day; but instead of his signature banjo driving the song, Lonely Man has a warm, Holland-esque piano that gives the song great emotional weight. When the song came around to the chorus, I thought immediately of the line: “Oh the glories that the Lord has made”. The harmonies are signature Sufjan, and yes… there are jingle bells.

Have you ever driven down a road with snowbanks so high that you can’t see over them? White, winter canyons that muffle all sound and make you feel isolated. That is the distinct emotional picture the song left me with: cold, towering snowbanks on either side of you with bright, bright sunshine warming the top of your head.

I tried my best to remember all of the lyrics, but I’m left only with fragments: “Hoppington’s hat”, “a world with unicorns and buffalo packs”, “everything that’s happened to us was someone else’s carpenter kiss.” But one stanza in particular was especially meaningful and stayed with me:

I would rate the future
If I could put my finger on it
But I’m not sure that what I want
Is better than what I would get.

The song ends as it began, with the meandering piano providing a short reprise. The final chord is held for a moment and then, Sufjan’s foot comes off the sustain pedal a moment too soon and the song ends abruptly.

“I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”

I’ve only been to court a few times. This was the first: I was in a small town courthouse in New Jersey, here to face the music for driving 47 MPH in a 30 MPH zone. My transgression was unintentional; I was driving around on a dark, Saturday night, flustered at I-don’t-remember-what and hadn’t seen the sign. Because this was my first offense, the prosecutor said I could plead guilty to a lesser charge. I guess I didn’t quite understand what that meant at first, because I suddenly found myself at a loss for words when the judge asked me, under oath, if I was guilty of driving much slower than I really had been. No—I had been going 47 MPH!

“Uh… Yes.”

It felt very wrong at the time, and I’m even now ashamed recounting the story. But I was assured by the prosecutor that this was how the system worked: for a judge to lessen the punishment in this case, he had to record a lesser crime.

I see it all around, every day: flawed systems that lend themselves to dishonesty. It happens at work. Because I’m a salaried employee, our company time recording solution requires me to type in 8 hours a day even though I may have actually worked 6 or 12 hours. It happens on the road. Traveling the posted speed limit on most interstates on the East coast often puts you in greater danger than keeping up with the flow of traffic.

I’ve fought very hard to be an honest person. That’s not at all to say I’m a paragon of virtue; I just mean to say that dishonesty is a strong temptation for me and I have to fight tooth and nail to let truth prevail in my life; so when I’m forced into dishonesty by the nature of a given system, it angers me.

So what’s the consensus? Should we protest flawed systems by being inconveniently honest or is that simply pedantic?

Related reading: “The New Civil Disobedience: Obeying The Speed Limit” — A group of college students backed up I-285 in Atlanta for miles by going the speed limit. Also, watch the video.

Our family visited a theme park this Saturday. I captured the trip on film, but shortly afterwards lost said pictures when the trolls living in my computer managed to run off with the precious data. I am resigned now to capturing it with words because I was struck with two powerful realizations that I don’t want to lose.

It was the first time visiting a theme park as a parent. Walking into the park, anticipation was building for all the rides we (adults) wanted to experience. But as the day wore on, it became readily apparent that those experiences were not to be, not with children in tow. So the first realization was that parental sacrifice could be sweet. I’ve experienced it before; but it was never quite as palpable as now, as I gave up what I wanted so my son could have joy.

The second realization was that my son is an independent being. I’m not sure I can capture this concept fully in words, but those who have been parents will understand it well. When I put him on the kids-only ride, belted him in and walked away, the metaphor just about knocked me down. He smiled and laughed during the ride and cried when it was over. The joy and laughter on his face was something of his own, something that I had very little part in other than as bystander.

Bittersweetness… giving up personal pleasure for the greater joy of my son; losing control for the greater independence of my son.

Freewrite #11

Funny how difficult it is to consistently write every day, especially when stricken with different moods and temperaments. Being busy isn’t so much the issue, because it only takes fifteen minutes of my time; but the mental fatigue is what makes it difficult to push out interesting content on a regular schedule. Which brings up another problem which I’ve always had with journal writing: pretense. I have countless journal entries where I’m scolding myself for being so caught up with presenting something meaningful instead of just pushing myself to write everyday, developing the habit of writing.

I’m a content creator. I consume my fair share as well, but I have a hard time relaxing, sitting back and not creating anything. Even when I was a child, my days had creative purpose. The fun was in the making. I was a woodland explorer, exerting my dominance over nature: creating giant pools of water by damming streams, constructing giant playgrounds for the orange-red newts we found on the forest floor, building cities out of snowbanks that disappeared with the first sign of spring.

I’m sure there’s a slight bit of psychoanalysis here, but I wonder how much of that was a love of the creative process and how much was about impressing people with what I’d done? It seems that the initial incentive was creation for the sake of creation, followed by an excitement and a desire to share my personal creations with people I knew.

Sharing in someone else’s creation takes time and effort, I think. Part of loving people is learning to understand their creative processes. For instance, I doubt my parents cared very much about a dammed stream or a complex snow fort, but they loved them as much as they were an expression of my own personality.

That’s why it’s often difficult to share your creations with the world. As an artist and a musician, I know this fear well. As soon as you share your creation with others, you make yourself vulnerable by proxy. All of that self-expression is laid bare, and someone who either doesn’t understand the mode of expression or simply doesn’t think it’s a valid or meaningful message can wound you deeply.

Freewrite #10

There seems to be some correlation between freedom and maturity. It’s irresponsible to give children the same type of freedom that adults have. I wouldn’t give a six-year-old the keys to my car and if he suddenly disappeared from the house, I’d immediately start looking for him. I wouldn’t do the same with a forty-year-old man. He’s an adult, I’d say, and if he wants to go, let him go.

In that scenario, the fear is that when someone is young and immature, they either don’t fully understand the choices that they’re making or they’re not fully prepared to deal with the consequences. A forty-year-old is much more likely to have a driver’s license and much more likely to be able to deal with being out on his own.

I’m also reminded of the differences between the Northeast and the West. I grew up climbing mountains and beating my way through the Adirondack woods; but most places where nature posed a threat were cordoned off, fenced up and littered with warning signs. One of my first impressions of the Grand Canyon was how easy it would be to fall off the edge. This was probably done for practical reasons—four hundred miles of edge is nearly impossible to fence. But I was amazed at how much freedom visitors were given; if you wanted to dive headlong two thousand feet to the canyon floor, you were welcome to.

Not only is freedom dangerous; it’s difficult, too. Freedom to choose means living with the consequences of your choices. You can choose to eat only greasy food, but you run the risk of a heart attack. You can choose not to get a cell phone, but you run the risk of not being able to reach someone in the case of an emergency. You can choose to fly to Europe in your private jet, but you run the risk of a volcano bringing your plane down. You can choose to become a button maker, but you run the risk of Velcro making a comeback.

It’s dangerous, it’s difficult, but in all, freedom is what it means to be an individual. If freedom is granted you by an institution or another individual, that same institution or individual can presumably take it from you. That’s why our Founding Fathers said that these truth of equality was self-evident. Our rights were not bequeathed by some piece of paper; the Constitution was simply recognizing that our rights were inalienable, given to us by our Creator—pushing those rights out beyond the reach of any man.

All of the trains out of Penn Station today were delayed an hour. I knew something was wrong when the amount of people on the street and around the station was nearly triple an average day. It was actually quite humorous, watching the teeming masses of people, all visibly annoyed and some let it escape verbally, like the pop and whistle of wet log on a fire. “Good thing they’re raising the rates next month!” “Why did you just hit me?” “Dude, watch where you’re going.” “Seriously?” Expletives, ad nauseum.

But I’d rather not write about that. I’ve been thinking about another kind of mob.

Earlier today, I wrote briefly about Gawker Media’s new comment approach they’ve implemented across all of their web sites. The psychology of it all fascinates me.

In a nutshell, Gawker decided to display by default only comments from people designated as trusted community leaders. Untrusted commenters can still post to the various sites, but their comments are hidden by default and need to be clicked to be read. The community leaders are given the ability to moderate comments and to “trust” commenters.

Comments tailed off initially, but came racing back and have grown exponentially since the change.

I find this so fascinating: everyone wants a voice, but not everyone wants to hear everyone else’s voice. When a community is overrun by anarchy, it loses its focus and more importantly, it loses its value.

As annoyed as everyone was crammed into Penn Station and as much as people wanted to shout out their frustration, most people really just wanted someone to stand up, tell us what was going on and when the next train was pulling out.

I passed a very large electric plant and the stories high scaffolding triggered a childhood memory.

When I was younger, early teenage years, I had difficulty getting to sleep at night. (No wonder I became a web designer.) I’d lie awake in bed and try as hard as I could to fall asleep. Of course, that never works.

Someone once told me that counting sheep helps you fall asleep because the repetition bores your mind to sleep. (The same principle applies to college classes.) It sounded believable to me, so I thought I’d give it a try. Sheep seemed like too docile a choice for me though, so I tried to come up with something else repetitive to stupor my active imagination.

I imagined myself on the run from some unnamed authority. I’d escape down a manhole cover, climb down a ladder then through a tunnel then down another ladder and through another tunnel, ad infinitum until I hopefully fell asleep.

What’s particularly odd is that what I envisioned was actually from one of the Space Quest games, I can’t recall which. Two, I think. The one where you crash land on an alien planet and try to avoid being captured by the Sariens or being eaten by the various Labion jungle creatures. Halfway through the game there was a part where you had to navigate a series of tunnels and ladders without running into the evil that exists in the darkness. (Oh the days of save, try, reload, retry, etc.)

It was that exact scene I’d picture, 16-color EGA graphics and all. Down, across, down, across, c’mon sleep, down, across, down…

Now I spend all day back and forth across railroad tracks, up and down elevators, staring at pixels trying not to fall asleep.

Freewrite #8