The Antisocial Socialist

Is there a term for nostalgia for things you haven't actually experienced?

Nope, I disagree. Amanda's analysis nails why. I had a similar experience (I think we're around the same age) of being into decidedly non-mainstream music and only being exposed to it through painstaking amounts of zine-based research. It's much better now when, with two clicks or so, I can find the name of every band that everyone I like in any band has been in, and also what their favourite bands are.

For one thing, I doubt musical taste was ever quite as homogenous as this guy is suggesting. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been a disco to hate. As much as you can go on about Kids These Days and Their Terrible Taste In Music, it is entirely false that mainstream music was somehow better or more meaningful when I was growing up. I remember just as many manufactured boy bands that I couldn't stand. Even within the limited scope he's talking about (white and black people living in North America and the UK), there wasn't consensus that certain songs were classic until much later. Most music of any era is crap, and we only conceive of Musical Moments in hindsight.

He's also wrong that it doesn't happen now. You might be sick of K'Naan's "Wavin' Flag" but you probably all have it stuck in your head now that I've mentioned it. As does my mom if she's reading, and my kids if I mention it in class tomorrow.

Nor am I convinced that there's anything wrong with a diversity of musical tastes and genres and subgenres. My musical taste didn't freeze at 19 like some people's seem to. I think that there is a higher volume of interesting music coming out now than there was when I was a kid and we only knew about what MuchMusic (or MTV, if you were American) played. The lower barriers to production and distribution might mean that no one makes incredibly huge amounts of money making music, but it also means that there are more people making more music, and different kinds, and while 99% of everything is crap, that 1% that isn't gets drawn from a bigger pool. It's not a perfect model, but it's a more democratic model than that of the music studio, and I think it's resulting in better music.

When I was growing up, there were the goths and the hip hop kids and the rockers and the folkie throwback types, and the kids who listened to music based on how hot or popular the artists seemed to be. You could, if you were a goth, confess a shameful love for one or two country songs, but if half of your CD collection was rap, your cred would certainly be called into question.* I am continually blown away at the tastes of my kids who are into music. Certainly, they mostly listen to music that I think is awful, but they will be interested in very different sorts of awful music and will not, for example, avoid listening to dubstep because that's music for stoners. Or classical, because that music is for old people. I know black kids with baggy pants who are bigger fans of classic rock than my Nice White Lady self. Yes, there are a million subgenres now, but people who are into music don't define their tastes based on them.

I fail to see how this development is a bad thing, or how one could be nostalgic for watching the same video on MTV every hour.

Besides, NyanCat is totally our Musical Moment and you all know it. You also all now have it in your head.

* This, despite the famous Sisters of Mercy/Public Enemy concert at Canada's Wonderland. Yes, really.

It's a guilty pleasure but I'm really enjoying the 80s D00d Music thread on Pandagon.

(I disagree, by the way. About hair metal. I actually think it's kind of subversive and interesting. I don't like it in the way that I like, say New Wave and post-punk, but I don't think it's entirely without merit.)

I always feel like I shouldn't comment on music threads, because while I have some grounding in music theory, appreciation of contemporary music is so subjective that it's almost impossible to be a snob about it. But I have Rather Strong Opinions. And no one else can academically justify their taste either, so there.

Discuss!

The telephone was an aberation in human development. It was a 70 year or so period where for some reason humans decided it was socially acceptable to ring a loud bell in someone else’s life and they were expected to come running, like dogs. This was the equivalent of thinking it was okay to walk into someone’s living room and start shouting. it was never okay. It’s less okay now. Telephone calls are rude. They are interruptive. Technology has solved this brief aberration in human behavior. We have a thing now called THE TEXT MESSAGE. It is magical, non-intrusive, optional, and, just like human speech originally was meant to be, is turn based and two way. You talk. I talk next. Then you talk. And we do it when it’s convenient for both of us.

This is true and in a few years when there are no more loud noises followed by disembodied voices, you'll know just how true it is.

In other news, if you haven't tried the Geocities-izer site (make any website look like it was made in 1996 by a 13-year-old), you are missing a good half-hour of fun. Minimum.

When I was seven, they made me take a test. They wouldn't tell me what the test was for, only that it didn't count for grades and that there was no way I could study for it. It consisted primarily of puzzles. I was pretty convinced that I bombed it, as I've never been that good at puzzles.

Anyway, what it meant was that I was "gifted." I'm not talking about this to brag or anything—anyone who's gone through the experience of being labelled as such knows that it's nothing to brag about ("More of a curse," we used to say.), and further, that it's not any sort of precursor to success later in life. I bring it up because I'm studying Special Education now, and one of the things that happens when you study syndromes and disorders and exceptionalities is that you're convinced that you suffer from each and every one.

So anyway, I was gifted. And apparently very much so—top of my class, got A+s all the way through, blah blah blah. But here's the theory I developed. I was convinced—utterly convinced—that rather than being near the distal end of the bell curve, I was closer to the proximal end. I was pretty sure that I was, if not severely developmentally delayed, at least mildly intellectually disabled. My theory went that either my mother, who had a great deal invested in the idea of having a really smart kid, or, more likely, some egghead scientist, had decided to place me in gifted classes and constantly tell me that I was smart to test whether or not this would actually improve my intelligence.

Some of this stemmed from witnessing something similar (a child in my Montessori class with some manner of intellectual disability was, upon entering the public school system, placed into a regular class where he functioned quite well on account of having been encouraged in his early years). Some of it stemmed from my conviction that I'd failed the puzzle test in third grade. But most of it was because I have just always felt vaguely out-of-step with the world around me.

I was just thinking of this as I diagnosed myself tonight with ODD (oh, like you're surprised), auditory processing impairment, and poor math fluency. I should probably get my head out of that textbook, y/y?

Were there any events in your life that inspired and interest politics and activism? What were they?

I was pretty much raised that way (see icon; Hiroshima Day vigil when I was six). My parents were both left-leaning hippies (never mind what became of my bio-father's politics later); my mother used to carry around Mao's Little Red Book. Embarrassingly, I went door-to-door for the NDP when I was still in grade school (even worse, it was for that asshole Bob Rae).

My childhood was such that as an adult, I don't really understand it when people say they're not interested in politics, or they don't know about world events at all. We only got a few TV stations, so when the TV was on, we were generally watching the news. Or CBC was blasting in the kitchen. My mother was involved with a peace group, and I went to meetings and marches and vigils with them.

In 1987, the Conservative government passed the Free Trade Accord (the precursor to NAFTA). My mother took me and her friend's daughter to the big anti-FTA demo downtown. I was eight years old and the squirrels in Queen's Park seemed about as interesting as the march itself. But then the mounted OPP came on their horses and surrounded the Legislature. "If you try to cross the street, we'll arrest you," they boomed.

Now, I couldn't have explained the complexities of international trade agreements when I was eight. But I did know that they were important. I knew that they meant a lessening of environmental and labour regulations (I would have said: "The Americans will take our water and trees and workers won't get paid as much or be allowed to join unions."). I knew that our government was bad, and working with the Reagan government that killed innocent people in Nicaragua.

My mother must had known that she, with two small children in tow, probably wasn't a big target for arrest (this is pre-911, and we were white after all) but she took the threat somewhat seriously. "Do you want to risk it?" she asked.

We two kiddies, eight and ten years old respectively, felt it an important enough cause that if we got arrested, we'd be like all those anti-war protesters and Civil Rights activists we'd heard about. We knew that if the police grabbed us, we were supposed to go limp and make it hard for them to drag us off (not like it would have been) or charge us with assault. She handed my friend a quarter. "If I get arrested, call [her friend]." And off we went. None of us got arrested that day, but I suppose deciding to cross that road was a symbolic crossing for me. The government and the police could not be trusted, not even if you were a child. The interests of the capitalist state were diametrically opposed to those of the people and the planet. And your only recourse was to kick up a fuss about it.

The movie version of Watchmen

I'm a bad comic book geek, and I've actually never read Watchmen. Yes, I know I should, and I will eventually. I think the movie will probably be awful and Alan Moore will want his name stricken from the credits, because that always happens when they try to adapt his novels. (Though I liked the adaptation of From Hell.)

This said, I'm still going to see it. The promo shots are pretty. I'll read the book first so I know what I'm missing.

Titty-fucking

Maybe it's because I'm a chick, but I just don't get the appeal. Sorry! It's one of those acts that isn't inherently fun, but it's not actually unpleasant, so getting your partner off can be entertaining. I must add, though, it's a bad visual angle from the girl's point of view.

Anything else I have to say on the subject is way TMI for a public post.

Which of these questions are you least excited to answer? Give a top 3!

Hmm, I'm generally happy to answer any of these. You guys give good meme. I'm going to say The Watchmen, because I had to admit that I hadn't read it, titty-fucking, because the more entertaining the response would be, the less I'm willing to give it over the internets (hence, my response is kind of boring), and the ones about sports, because I don't know anything about sports.

esizzle

Most of you know that esizzle is awesome. If you don't, please make note of it. She is awesome online and even more awesome in real life. It's true that the galaxy does revolve around her (Hah! You thought it revolved around a rich white man, didn't you?) because she doesn't abuse the power by, say, making it revolve in the opposite direction to make us dizzy every so often. Which is what I would do.

Anyway, I think I have blogged about esizzle before by plugging her web comics, but I have some new LJ friends, so another plug can't hurt. esizzle makes the best stick-figure comics on the internets. Yes, better than mine. You can find them here. They are little sparkling gems of ennui and despair.

Also, she is going to help me shoot my movie. Yays!

(Okay, seriously, that thing with reversing the rotation of the galaxy? Please don't try it. Even though it would be wicked fun.)

That's all for this meme. I've now blogged about everything.

Some of the topics that you folks suggest probably shouldn't be in a public post. Here are some that can happily be public.

Theme park rides

They're death traps, but I love 'em. Granted, the last time I had the pleasure to ride a rollercoaster was approximately a decade ago, when I took a group of children from the abused and homeless women's shelter where I worked to Canada's Wonderland. The only thing more awesome than going on the rides myself was watching the kids, most of whom had never been to a theme park before, go on the rides.

Anyway, I like rides that go upside-down very quickly (i.e., rollercoasters) but not the ones that slowly bring you higher and higher until you loop around. Those freak me out. I'm very big on ferris wheels and swing-type rides. Log rides are also swell. I'm pretty entertaining to go with as I scream like a girly-girl and get ridiculously excited about the whole thing.

The World Cup, the Canadian Alpine Ski Team, lacrosse, and rugby

I'm grouping these all together, as I know fuck-all about most sports. Out of those, the only one I've blogged about is the World Cup, which I tend to get a bit obsessed about when it's actually happening (I recall that there might have been several entries about Zidane during the last World Cup). I'm into rooting for underdog teams, particularly if they're Asian, and especially if the entire team went out the night before the first game and got mohawks. Then when they get eliminated, I root for Brazil. I'm cliché that way. I also know a few Brazilian and Argentinian footie chants that can't be repeated in polite company.


Because I'm 8.

Okay, that's the World Cup out of the way. Skiing I don't get at all. I'm not afraid of heights or anything (see previous section about rollercoasters) but I am scared of falling off of a mountain and shattering my leg so badly that it needs to be amputated. Also, I have an objection to winter sports in general. Tobogganing is cool but beyond that I'd rather be inside.

Lacrosse I know a bit about because I had to write a chapter on it for a certain Phys. Ed. textbook. It's a pretty cool sport but why do most of the guys who play it have to be such assholes? (Cue defenders of the Duke Lacrosse team—I agree with Amanda Marcotte. Troll me if you dare.)

I dated the captain of another school's rugby team when I was 16. That's, alas, where my knowledge of the sport begins and ends. If you need to know more about rugby, you should ask chickenfeet2003.

Night Watch and Day Watch

My friend annaotto is really into those, and told me about them when we were in Russia. As it turns out, the entire population of Russia is really into those. Seriously, there are these massive billboards for them everywhere. The cover art was so lovely that I decided that I needed to read them, but of course, it was impossible to find English translations in Russia.

I did see the first movie, though. I liked it—it's one of those movies where I felt like I was almost exactly the target audience, which is a weird feeling for me—but from what I hear, the books are far better.

What I was like as a kid

That depends on what period of childhood you're talking about. I was presumably a fairly normal infant and quickly progressed into a less than normal young child. My overactive fantasy life—which would get one identified as "otherkin" now—led my concerned parents to consult the family doctor to determine if I really believed the shit that I babbled about. He assured them that there were plenty of children who preferred their own company to that of other children and liked to pretend they were dragons or whatever and this didn't mean I suffered from any sort of mental illness.

Like most children, I wanted to be a marine biologist or possibly an astronaut. I loved animals and kept quite the menagerie of pets—turtles, snakes, lizards, eels, salamanders, mice, and so on—in addition to the family dog. Some of my happiest memories involve wading through a swamp near our house and catching frogs and tadpoles. This concern for the animal kingdom did occasionally get weird, though. At one point, I started catching leeches at the swamp and brought these home as well, keeping them in my childhood bassinet. I referred to this as my "leech farm," and, uh, fed them.

As I might have mentioned in other contexts, I went to a Montessori school until third grade. How terribly bourgeois! It was great, because this was a school where I could actually spend every day reading, writing, drawing pictures, drumming, writing plays with my friends and performing them, and no one actually got on my case about it.

Harsh reality hit when I was around 8. I was put into a public school, where I had huge problems adjusting to large classes where no one knew how to read and they forced you to sit in desks! And be quiet! And if you were bored, you couldn't just pop out a book or start drawing! And they made you pray to a God I didn't believe in. Here you can see the beginnings of my anti-authoritarianism and critiques of the public education system. Around the same time, my parents' marriage officially started to implode, which no doubt contributed to me becoming a deeply unhappy, withdrawn emo kid. I barely spoke until I was around 13; after that, you couldn't shut me up.

The turning point there was public speeches. I don't know if they still do those, but I found them absolutely terrifying. I was always a good writer but I had a very quiet voice and I hated speaking in front of a class—especially a class that largely held me in disdain. Every year we had to give a speech, and every year that would bring my otherwise stellar English grades down because I didn't "project" and didn't make eye contact. Finally, though, in 8th grade, I started to get a bit more confident. Also, I had a speech topic that I thought was interesting and that I knew no one else would choose. I decided that I had to do really well, because the winner of the in-class speech contest would get to give it in the gymnasium, in front of the whole school and the principal (a woman whom I deeply loathed).

Well, I won. And I got to go to the gym and give my speech on ANARCHY to the whole school. And I got to look my horrible principal straight in the eye and chirp, in my 13-year-old voice: "I am the Antichrist! I am an anarchist!"

If you want to know more about my weird childhood, just ask. I'll continue the rest of the topics in the next post.

Addendum

Regarding the description of my childhood, I'd like to share a poem. Because depending on the context, my answer to the question: "What were you like as a child?" is going to be different. Much of what I think made me interesting was a rich inner life. My mother, at least, did her best to expose me to culture and politics and knowledge, and what I remember most vividly about my childhood is running through shoulder-high yellow grass with my Montessori friends shortly before we all went to different schools, or crying on a fishing trip because my father bashed in the fish's head with his canoe paddle.

( This is by Judith Wolinsky Steinbergh )

Speaking of k.d. lang, read this then this. (I particularly like the sad montage in the first link. Hee.) For the record, I'm 28 and her version of "Hallelujah" is my favourite. I wish I could say that Leonard Cohen's version is, especially since some of the verses that Buckley and everyone else leave out are some of my favourites, but there's that whole synth pop element that he just didn't do well at all. I want to hear covers of all of the songs that he wrote in the 80s and 90s by other artists. The Future has great songwriting ruined by bad instrumentation. It's just Wrong.

What's the tradition of younger generations mining music from the past, anyway? I can't imagine teenagers of my parents' generation obsessing over Frank Sinatra, but half of the kids I teach are obsessed with Led Zeppelin. Is it just that the Boomers dominate our cultural landscape even now?

On that note, the latest Neil Young album is just embarrassing. I finally heard it. It makes me cringe.

( cut for shameless nostalgia )

I am so glad that I was shielded from the worst of the 80s by virtue of my family not having a hell of a lot of money. Now I get to be indie and superior.

© John Bonner.

Happy Bonfire Night, everyone! I really miss throwing parties like the one I threw three years ago. Next year, next year.