Artistic Intelligence & the Lack Thereof

I finally received the Springsteen box set re-release of 'Darkness on the Edge of Town' for Christmas. It is a truly magical thing: 3 CD's, 3 DVD's, a color lyric sheet/photo set, and a reproduction of the notebook that Bruce used throughout the period. Awesome. If you're into Bruce, it is an absolutely essential item - but you probably knew that already. If you don't get Springsteen, don't worry about it - it won't change your mind.

But if you're interested in songwriting at all, it is chock full of cool quotes from one of the best in the business. This one hit me pretty directly:

I go back to most of my writings before 'Greetings (From Asbury Park)', and, you know, it all appears simply terrible to me. You know, you're still writing a lot of...bad words, you know? You're writing a lot of bad verses. So you're trying to learn how to write well, but your artistic instinct is what you're going on - your artistic intelligence hasn't been developed yet. Hopefully, it increases and develops over a long period of time. That gives you an ace to play, down the road, as you get older.

At the time, I was going on artistic instinct...and that's a wide-open game. You know, I'm following all kinds of paths, and all kinds of roads, and all I'm going is, 'That doesn't feel right'. 'That doesn't feel right'. 'That doesn't feel right' - that's how I'm judging.

That pretty succinctly says something that I've felt but have not been able to articulate for some time (something that Bruce does for me all the time). It's refreshing to hear a songwriter as great as him speak of struggling with 'artistic intelligence'. I kinda assumed he always had it. But there is a very real difference between having 'artistic instinct' (having an ear, having style, being able to recognize quality) and having 'artistic intelligence' (knowing when to hold back, what to hold back, being tasteful).

And once again, He Who Can Do No Wrong in My Eyes (well, except for Human Touch - that album suuuuucked) shows that there is still hope for me yet.

Water, Water Everywhere, and all the Music Sucks

It occurred to me this morning on my drive into work that there are two albums that I have possession of that have been released in the past couple of months by two of my favorite artists: Richard Thompson and Ryan Adams, that I have not yet listened to all of the way through. These are two decent albums that are quite listenable (at least the parts that I've listened to) and that have gotten very good reviews. I really don't have any excuse for not having listened to them.

Truth be told, I've been busy and I haven't been keeping up with either musician - both releases surprised me as I didn't know they were coming out. So it's not like I was itching with anticipation for either one, but still, I'm surprised that I haven't really delved into either album yet.

This never would have happened when I was 16. I can remember waiting, and waiting, and reading, and waiting some more for Eric Clapton to release 'Pilgrim' in or '98, rushing out to Blockbuster of all places to spend $16.99 to get it, and then listening to it all the way through at least 3 or 4 times even though it was an incredibly terrible album (and I knew it then, too). Same thing for the Rolling Stones' 'No Security' (also a terrible album), and Dave Matthews Band's 'Before These Crowded Streets' (not a terrible album). Back then, an album was a tangible thing, something worth waiting for and planning your trip out to Sam Goodie to buy it, bringing it home, reading all the liner notes, and playing it until you're sick of it.

Part of that whole equation was the fact that all of the other albums that were in your collection you were already sick of for the same reason - you had truly consumed them and taken them all in. All of which brings me to my theory on why I haven't listened to my Ryan Adams and Richard Thompson albums all the way through, and why I wasn't even excited to purchase them: Media Overload.

We are completely overwhelmed with media these days. Not only is it possible to listen to your music at home, at work, in your car, on the street, in the shower, wherever you want, it is entirely possible to listen to practically any music on the market at any time, as long as you have an Internet connection. Let me take a moment and list all of the potential sources of music I have at my disposal on a given day:

1. My CD library

2. My vinyl library

3. My iTunes library, which can be played on my computer, my iPhone, my iPod, or my home entertainment system through my PS3

4. Pandora

5. My MOG account, which for $9.99/mon allows me to either stream or download 90% of the music that is available on the market

You could make the argument that anytime I'm within range of a 3G or WiFi signal, I have basically 95% of the music that has been made in the last 60 years at my immediate access.

That's a lot of choices.

That also doesn't take into account other forms of media, like YouTube, RSS feeds, Facebook posts, DVD's, etc. I think the reason I haven't delved into those albums I mentioned is simply because there's so much more out there for me to delve into. It's not all great - in fact, the more I see the more I'm reminded of why I like the artists I do - but there's just such a wealth of stuff out there that it's frankly overwhelming to take it all in.

Should I be complaining? Am I complaining? I'm not sure. I certainly don't think it's a bad idea to have access to whatever you want, whenever you want. But increased supply means decreased demand, and that equals me being a little bit disappointed when I'm not directing all of my listening energy to devouring two new releases by two of my favorite artists. There was a certain responsibility you had to yourself after you spent $17 of your hard-earned lawnmowing money to really make your investment worth it. The two albums that I downloaded only cost me a fraction of the $9.99 that I pay each month for the MOG service, and I'm just not sure that that kind of ease and cheapness create the same type of commitment, if you will, to a piece of work.

I think that the record industry is going to need to come up with a way to recreate that link between the album buyer and the album - I mean, I care deeply about music and the music industry and I feel this way. How much devotion do you think a 16 year old girl downloading an album for free off of BitTorrent feels towards her Taylor Swift album? If the physical or emotional link to an album isn't there, nowadays it just ends up being a mislabeled .mp3 file shoved in the back of an external hard drive. And that is sad.

Going Back Down South, Part 1: Monday

So, as promised, here is the beginning of the multi-day journal I'm going to be keeping over the next week chronicling my trip to South Carolina to install a new theater system at the Congaree National Forest Visitor Center:

Today started brusquely; the Ravens - Steelers Sunday Night Football matchup from the night before proved to be just interesting enough to keep me up until past 11:30 PM. Typically I'm in bed by 10:30 at the latest to be up at 6 AM - today I had to be out of bed by 3:30 AM. I knew I wasn't going to be the happiest of campers going into the whole ordeal. However, the whole situation was made worse by the fact that the game was a battle down to about the last :30 seconds, when Joe Flacco couldn't complete on 4th and 2 and the game went to the Steelers. I had to go to bed with my heart pounding and my nerves, well, all a-flutter.

Needless to say, with the combination of the game, my nervousness over the impending trip, and our fat cat Layla who insisted on laying in between my legs at the most uncomfortable position possible (as usual), I believe I got about 45 minutes of quality sleep.

Not the best scenario before embarking on a 9-hour drive.

Nonetheless, I got up at the right time, put in my contacts without too much pain or effort, and thanks to my work the previous evening packing and preparing, was able to push off from home base on time and in a decent mental state.

One of the most difficult things I've found when dealing with a long travel day is the timing of your food and drink intake. All of us have standard schedules for eating and drinking when we are at home and operating in 'standard' life mode. However, things tend to get altered a bit when you wake up three and a half hours earlier than usual, expend a ton of effort getting your vehicle loaded, and then proceed to sit on your ass for the next 9 hours. My diet today has been thus:

4:00 AM - a glass of water

4:30 AM - a 'lungo' espresso from the work espresso machine

5:30 AM - a FiberOne chocolate chip bar

8:00 AM - a McDonald's sausage burrito & small orange juice

10:50 AM - a Burger King Whopper value meal, small, with a Diet Coke

11:30 AM - a 20oz bottle of water

1:00 PM - an orange 5-hour energy drink

4:30 PM - a 16oz bottle of water from the hotel

5:30 PM - a Bombay Sapphire martini, dry, with two olives and a batch of homemade chips

Okay, so perhaps not the most healthy travel day of my life, but what are my options? Even if I get rid of the martini and the 5-hour energy, my options for food on the run are not spectacular. Subway, I suppose - but Subway always leaves my stomach gurgling in a 'deli meats shouldn't be quite that cheap' kind of way. Why doesn't America have healthier fast food options?

ANYway...

Today we unloaded all of our gear at the site and locked away the trailer behind the maintenance yard. Tomorrow we'll get started removing all of the theater's old gear and running our new lines throughout the building. I'll take some pictures tomorrow so you can get a feel for it, if you're so inclined.

As far as pictures of the area go......well, let's just say this section of South Carolina isn't exactly coffee table book material. As far as I can tell, this area is primarily churches, fire halls, extremely well-placed cops in Dodge Chargers, flat plains, cotton, and not much else. I'll try to grab the essence tomorrow, but you know how it goes trying to catch lightning in a bottle.....

Strikeoutsh Base Hitsh Double Playsh

You know, I have to endue a lot of crap thanks to being a lifelong Orioles fan, but I have to say I am forever thankful that I can't count Scott Stapp as one of the Baltimore faithful. I can't imagine how awful it must be to be a Marlins fan, but having the former Creed frontman write an inspirational song for you (that you know they play at Pro Player Stadium every time they take the field) has to be a gigantic kick in the nuts:

My favorite parts: everything, but especially when he just takes random baseball terms, mush-mouths them in his own magnificent way, and then decides, 'yeah, that's a pretty good verse'.

That Poor Man

I seriously think that in about 25 years there will be a documentary made about Jeremy Guthrie, the hardest-luck of all the fantastically hard-luck Orioles pitchers of the last 4 - 5 years. I suppose he's had some good moments to look back on, but he just strikes me as the kind of guy that in the future will get a 20 minute spot on some news show where they show the cardboard box that he's now living in and him rambling and babbling about how good his FIP was over the years and how much he hated how much of a free-swinger Ty Wigginton was.

As I'm writing this, it's the top of the 8th inning in a 4-1 game against the yankees wherein he has pitched exceptionally well against an extremely strong lineup, only to get one run of support on three hits and four yankee runs thanks to two terrible plays by Mr. Wigglypuff himself. After the last game against the yankees where he hit Jorge Posada he basically broke down and cried about what a terrible pitcher he was and how much he felt sorry for Orioles fans.

I'm thinking that if this continues, the tears and apologies will eventually get replaced with sniper rifles and book depositories, but that's just speculation at this point.

Vintage J-Neb, Part I

Holy crap I just checked out my Myspace page. When was the last time you were on Myspace? Anyway, I took a second to find some old blog posts that I made there and I thought a couple were particularly interesting...to wit:

The Eternal Optimist in Me
Current mood: optimistic

Ah, late winter/early spring. Hope swells in the heart of the eternal Orioles fan. Why such optimism? Ask any true O's fan - this is the only time of the year that we can actually be optimistic and hopeful that our team will not be playing like a bunch of Jerry's Kids by mid-August.

The crazy part is, I'm actually genuinely hopeful about our chances. Not this year, mind you, I'm talking about 2010, dumbass. True, I was hopeful in 2005, and 2006, and 2007, but it was the the kind of hopeful like a guy with driving a 1987 Ford Escort hopes his car won't break down on the way to work - you know you're being an idiot.

We've finally committed to rebuilding by getting rid of Tejada (just in time) and Bedard (for a big haul). What tells me that I'm really excited about the future here is that I'm ready - nay, can't f*ing wait - for them to deal Brian Roberts. Anyone who knows me knows that Brian Roberts isn't just my favorite Oriole, he's also the center of the majority of my gay-baseball-related fantasies.

whoa tmi

What I'm trying to say is that I, once again, in the face of a terrible organization in the toughest division in baseball and a likely last-place finish, am actually excited about the Orioles' 2008 season.

They've put people away for far less than this.

Yeah, no shit.

My American Life

Here's a brief run-down of where I'm at right now.

I'm in Lovell, Wyoming, but just for the night. Tomorrow I'll be back in Billings, Montana, ready to get up at 4 AM to catch a flight back to Baltimore. My hotel is pretty trashy, but not altogether bad. The refrigerator is broken, which wouldn't be as big of a deal if I would have been able to eat dinner tonight. The only food in town, a Blimpie and Taco John's smashed into one gorgeous/awful conglomeration, closed at 8, exactly two minutes before I arrived.

I was late because I was at work. My work consists of me trying to get new audiovisual systems to work with outdated and possibly broken old lighting and sound systems that the National Park Service is trying to make live past their prime. In some cases, well past their prime. Many parks still use LaserDiscs as their main form of show playback. LaserDiscs.

Everything went well today. This morning at Yellowtail Dam went great - cleaned up and buttoned up well. The drive to Wyoming wasn't bad. I had a good lunch. Even stuff in Wyoming went well - the audio system now works perfectly, we were able to diagnose and fix a problem with a start button, and all of the equipment was in. Everything went well except for one thing. One small, and yet monstrously big, thing.

Their lighting system won't interface with our audiovisual system.

The idea is that when the movie starts playing, our video player sends a signal to their lighting system to turn the house lights down gradually, and when the movie is over, it tells it to come back up. Easy, right?

Well, it's not...but I won't bore you with the details, because, truth be told, you really shouldn't care. It's my problem. But my point for writing this whole thing is that for the next day, my entire life, reputation, and peace of mind will revolve around trying to make two electrical systems talk to each other - something that 95% of the population would happily shake their heads at and say, 'glad that's not me'.

But I don't have a choice - I'm responsible for the completion of the project and I'm the only one that has a stake in the outcome. I cannot leave Wyoming without the lights in the theater dimming when our movie plays. And yet, I have to leave two days from now because my ticket is non-refundable.

Did I make the right choice in letting such a trivial thing shape my happiness and schedule? Should I care less or more than I do about this? Would anyone else worry enough to write a blog post about it at 10 PM in a lonely hotel room? I have no idea. I do know that I take enough pride in what I do and the work that I do to work my ass off to get the thing to work, but really everything that I can try right now will be a leap of faith and a hope for some luck.

In some ways, I really wouldn't wish this situation on my worst enemies.......and yet, this is my life and I'm proud to live it. I'll let you know how things turn out.

Blogging for the Man

So I've been told that I'm not blogging enough. That I should get out there and blog. That I should blog it 110%. That my blogging to this point has been underwhelming. Well, I say to you, Mr. McBlogNaySayerSmith, that blogging ain't easy. I mean, I have to sit down, open up my computer, think thoughts with my mind, and type them into the computer. And don't get me started on the whole logging in thing. Sometimes it actually makes me type in my username.

So just to show everyone that I'm still alive and blogging, here's my list of interesting things about today, Friday, April 16, 2010 (AD).

1. I ate two Thin Mints for breakfast today.

2. I also ate a fiber bar later on.

3. I will eat the Chicken Tikka Masala we made last night for lunch.

4. And possibly another Thin Mint.

5. I wanted to ride my scooter to work today, but the Weather Channel said it was going to storm and that a 'serious potential for wildfires' exists in the area today. No scooter for me, thank you.

6. I'm going to play golf tomorrow morning, and will probably have to contend with ground that is soaked from the storms today, and 30-35mph winds. And probably wildfires.

7. In Orioles news, they lost last night to the Oakland Athletics, 6-2. Felix Pie, astonishingly enough our most productive hitter these days, left the game in the 7th inning with a sore shoulder. Also, Nick Markakis' head fell off and Peter Angelos sold the team to the Yankees. Plans to demolish Camden Yards are already underway. And Cal Ripken came out and said he never liked playing for Baltimore anyway. And Sidney Ponson is still alive.

8. I mean seriously, I haven't experienced a start to a baseball season that has ever been quite this depressing. And especially after all the talk this offseason about how good we were going to be - I actually had started drinking some of the Kool-Aid myself. These guys look like they absolutely don't care and don't want to be faced with the arduous task of playing baseball for a living. Right now, in April, they already look the way we are accustomed to seeing them play in August-September. It's going to be a long year.

Alright, that's enough. You know I'm still alive and kicking. I'm heading back out to Montana and Wyoming on Sunday, so you can probably expect some interesting stuff to happen out there that is worth blogging about. Plus, I am writing a travelogue of sorts about our recent trip to England and Scotland, and I suppose I'll put that up here in the coming weeks. Unless I have to remember my username and password.

Fridee...

No new post for this most beautiful of Fridays, just a picture of my father, John Guise Rossman III at Little Bighorn, more than 25 years before me:

The World as I Know It

I am a staunch believer in relativity, that is to say, that all things are relative and that there are no absolute truths. You may find my writing style to be offensive or beautiful; I'm not the one to say. I happen to enjoy writing the way I do, and it makes sense to me. Enough people have told me that they like the way I write that I no longer particularly care whether or not I'm following particular standards of style or form.

I'm the same way about music - I care equally deeply for the music of King Crimson and Yanni, of Springsteen and the Dismemberment Plan, of the Rolling Stones and the Baseboard Heaters. If music moves me and makes me feel something, it is good. I simply cannot believe that there is a single, universal truth as to what makes good music or bad music, or what makes good art or bad art. I'm also not confident or selfish enough in my tastes to pretend to espouse that I know what is good or bad - I've been wrong more than enough times in my life to realize that taking such a hard-line stance on any art is a foolish proposition.

Truth be told, I once naively thought that everyone innately knew this fact to be true - no one could be so blind to actually think that there was a right art or a wrong art. But in my second year of college, I played in a band and lived with a person who literally thought exactly that, and told me so. I point-blank asked him if he thought there was such a thing as good music, and such a thing as bad music. And he looked me straight in the eye, and said yes.

Although this happened close to 10 years ago, it has been something that has stuck with me for a long time. How could someone whom I actually regarded as an aware and intelligent individual actually believe that there was no relativity in art - that art was objective, rather than subjective - and above that, that he actually knew what was good and what wasn't? It seemed more than pompous, more than arrogant. It was wrong.

Recently I read a short essay by Chuck Klosterman that put the whole situation into perspective. He, as he is so often wont to do, explained the situation in a way that I had been attempting to do for nearly a decade in a short, concise paragraph that was so precise and perfect it was scary. He was explaining why he hates the term 'Guilty Pleasures' because he feels as though there is no such thing - if something gives you pleasure, you shouldn't necessarily feel guilty about it:

'What the authors of 'The Encyclopedia of Guilty Pleasures' (and everyone else who uses this term) fail to realize is that the only people who believe in some kind of "universal taste" - in other words, a consensual demarcation between what's artistically good and what's artistically bad - are insecure, uncreative elitists who need to use somebody else's art to validate their own limited worldview. It never matters what you like; what matters is why you like it.'

And there you have it. Thanks, Chuck. Your art is hereby deemed 'GOOD'.

Hey, Remember L.O.R.D.? No? Damn.

I’m sitting in the lobby of a Super 8 in Hardin, Montana. Go ahead, look it up…it’s out there a ways. I’m sitting and I’m writing and I’m finding myself upset that the wireless internet connection here keeps disconnecting me so that I can’t finish watching my Netflix-streamed episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. I’m really actually quite upset – all week I’ve been fighting this damn connection to, well, stay connected.

But think about the situation for a second – what I’m actually attempting to do:

- Sit in a hotel lobby, with my laptop computer.

- This laptop computer will be connected, wirelessly, to a super-network of computers across the globe.

- This wireless data connection will be high-speed. In fact, when operating properly, it will be capable of transmitting up to 159 Megabytes per second directly to my laptop.

- This wireless data connection will be available for free.

- Once connected, I will go to a website that allows me to watch any of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations episodes immediately by streaming them, in high-definition, to my laptop for playback on a media player that was included with my laptop.

- In fact, if I find Mr. Bourdain a bit fake and annoying, I can watch nearly ANY episode of ANY show that I have EVER wanted (or not wanted) to see, along with any number of classic and not-so-classic movies at ANY time.

- For less than $10/mon.

- It actually works 95% of the time.

I submit to you that not much more than 10 years ago all of the above-mentioned items would have been absolutely impossible to achieve. 15 years ago, I would submit that all of the above-mentioned items, except for the first, would have been impossible to even imagine.

And yet, 15 years later, I am truly, seriously pissed that I can’t immediately stream, without interruption, the show of my choosing in the middle of nowhere for free.

Think about that for a second and what that actually means…will we ever be truly satisfied with what technology can deliver to us? We have made such monumental, gigantic leaps and bounds with network technology in the past decade, but I don’t really appreciate any of that but in two instances:

- - The first time that it works flawlessly

- - The time that you really want it to work badly and it just won’t

Obviously, I’m experiencing the latter instance right now, but the point remains: if the Super 8’s wireless coverage hadn’t have been so spotty, would I have appreciated how cool what I was trying to do actually was? Would I have written anything about what I was able to do? Of course not – as soon as any new technology works reliably two or three times in a row, we take it to be the new standard and check off that little scientific advancement in our mind. High-definition video and surround audio, delivered anywhere in the world, wirelessly, for free? Check! As long as I can watch ‘The Hangover’ with my girlfriend without the Netflix player buffering more than once, we can consider ourselves firmly in the grasp of the FUTURE!

So where am I going with all of this – no idea. I guess I’m telling myself to occasionally look back and remember how shitty it was to have to wait until my sister was off the phone to dial into the local BBS service to play ASCII role-playing games with two of my friends from down the street and one weird old man. It seems as ancient as vacuum tubes in TV’s – except for the fact that I had a dial-up modem until I went to college in 2000.

I’m just sayin’ – technology won’t always be moving this fast. It took them like 30 years from the invention of the radio to the invention of the TV – and another 30 years after that for color. Enjoy what we have while we have it.

The Band for Veep

"In general, the powerful and the influential in our society shape the laws and have a great deal of influence upon the legislature and the Congress. And this creates a reluctance to change, because the powerful and the influential have carved out for themselves or have inherited a privileged position in this society…

[One] source of my understanding about what’s right and wrong in this society is from a friend of mine, a poet named Bob Dylan…I grew up a landowner’s son. But I don’t think I ever realized the proper interrelationship between the landowner and those who worked on a farm until I heard Dylan’s record, “Maggie’s Farm”. "

- President Jimmy Carter

bloat

Another day in another town in another area of the country that you’ve never heard of. Another day spent trying to find a kindred spirit in a town full of lost souls and drunks, of empty heads and washed-out road signs. Another stop in a pit of gas stations, casinos and pizza shops, eached closed on account of Sunday mass or another superficial attempt at injecting piousness righteousness or some sort of gorgeousness on this awful bloat of a community.

Now that there’s no mill and no mine and no factory and no railroad station and no anything anymore to dream of or dream to or become or be, all that I have seen is the hollow shells and remains of people and places and ideals that couldn’t come true. Sure, there’s a school with a mascot and a tennis court and even this gentleman carrying a trombone away from Maggie’s Sunday recital. But where does Maggie goe when she wants to play her trombone? The casinos aren’t interested – they have their own C-E-G melodies that are far more attractive to the residents than Maggie’s Porgie and Bess could ever be.

I’m out here on my own. I don’t understand it or them or anything. I want to. I want to believe that I am part of this fabric and they part as well with me and everyone else. But it is a different tapestry that they belong to. I’m going to stay out of the way.