The Turntable, B-Side

     Normally when I choose to write something, I can see an entire outline unfold in front of my mind's eye almost as soon as I come up with the main idea. As I start to flesh out the text, the words simply pour out in a euphoric rush, and before I realize it I have a cohesive piece that I can be proud of. It's as close to an out of body experience as I ever have, like some benevolent higher being pushes my psyche aside for a few hours with a "don't worry, I got this" smirk, and usually when it has relinquished my body back to me I have no other recourse but to feel contentment. After all, most people get probed under bright lights in these kinds of situations; I get a few decent essays out of them.

     Unfortunately, it seems that my muse is on break, and instead of words and ideas flowing gently through my mind, there is instead a maelstrom of typeface more akin to alphabet soup. I suppose this is because of the subject matter I am trying to approach, which is the life and death of my dad, Howard Myers. Today (5/19/12) is the one year anniversary of the day that his life tragically and suddenly ended, violently altering my family's lives forever.

     Somewhere in that day, that week, this past year, is a great story that is waiting to be written. About the first true tragedy a typical middle-class family has ever really faced and how it sheds light on repressed issues and reprioritizes storge in their lives. About a sweet, innocent middle-aged woman who is forced to bravely start her life anew, discovering hidden strengths and friendships. About a beautiful, bright young woman in the midst of a massive transition and a transcontinental romance. About the effects of a power-vacuum on a family struggling to steady itself.

     About a naive college kid struggling with self-identity and his true calling. About the irony of having his birthday party 20 hours before his father's memorial service. About redemption at an idyllic lakeside camp. About reconnecting with old friends, and realizing the deep compassion of new ones. About odd jobs, strange cities, depression, mania, serenity, chaos; about the human condition. I can't write that story yet, though. The wounds are still too fresh, and all of these threads continue winding themselves beyond the visible horizon, awaiting a resolution.  And besides, why would I post that in a blog? I'm getting a freaking Pulitzer for that.

     So this is not that story. Maybe one day I'll share it with you all; it really is quite a tale.

     Instead, I simply want to remember and honor my dad, though it will be only a trifle of what is deserved, and the best way that I can think of to do this is by finishing the story of my (his) turntable (reference: http://thetroublewithmetaphors.blogspot.com/2011/10/brokenness-turntable.html).

     It has been over a year since my turntable lost half of its audio signal, and over half a year since I completely broke it while haphazardly trying to fix the wiring in pursuit of (stereophonic) happiness. As the month of May approached and I walked past my turntable every day, now reduced to nothing more than a monument to my failure, I thought about how all I would want to do is listen to my dad's favorite records during the week commemorating his death and, ironically, my birth. I scoured the Internet for spare parts that would help, managed to find a guy selling stripped bits, bought the necessary one (full tonearm with wiring), and impatiently waited until it finally arrived.

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     I would like to reiterate a point I made when I wrote about this analog relic months ago; this turntable is the last and best tangible connection I have with my dad. A gift from him, yes, but also a reminder of some of my only vivid memories of him.

     My dad wasn't the type of person that you could talk to about girls or games or movies or popular culture; sports talks sometimes sufficed, while deeper subject matter like fears and hopes would rarely arise (this wasn't the case with my sister; she could pour her heart out to him like I only wish I could have). The one subject we could talk for days on, though, was music. Topics like the golden era of gods like Young and Waters, the experience of being at a live show, and newer artists that I would delicately introduce to him (with mixed results) yielded the longest and most involved conversations we ever had as father-son.

     It's odd, because it took me years to find this connection with my dad. I don't remember ever associating anything musical with him when I was young; hell, in church I distinctly remember that he rarely sang the hymns. At some point, coinciding with my increased obsession with music whether by design or by providence, I discovered the multitude of concerts he had been to, that he performed in the school band up through college, that he was opening up his own musical instruments company, and even, as if to tie it all together, that he used to have long hippie-hair (imagine that, the same man that I had bought a gag-gift of "bald head polish" for!). Then, one glorious day, he brought out his old hi-fi and turntable, opened up his office closet, and, like manna from heaven, there sat some of the greatest records of all time just waiting to be consumed. I take those albums for granted now, but on that afternoon, spinning record after record, I could scarcely believe I was even allowed to share the same roof as them.

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     The repair was, after a year of frustration and failure, burns and wreckage, astoundingly smooth. Well, OK, I did break the needle after repairing everything else, so I had to wait two extra agonizing days before a replacement was available, two days that I had a finished product with no way of confirming success or failure. The feeling is akin to baking a pie, then sitting and staring at it. Salivating. Incessantly.

     Dammit, pies are meant to be eaten!

     After receiving a delivery alert (technology, baby) and subsequently skipping out on work early, I ripped open the package containing the needle... and let it sit there for two hours.

     I was nervous about finding out if my repairs were sufficient, sure; I had invested a lot of time and money into this relic after all, and this latest attempt was my last, best hope. I'm sure I was also nervous about posthumously letting down my father; I know all sons fear disappointing their parents, but I think it's an especially debilitating fear for me. I think more than all of that, though, I was nervous about inviting memories of my dad back, like the turntable deck was a Ouija board and the needle was the planchette.

     After all, it seems easiest to lessen the sting of grief by ignoring it outright.

     Well, I'm proud to provide this story with a happy ending. The turntable, once I found the courage to reinstate it, ended up sounding better than ever. The rest of the afternoon was devoted to blazing through some of my dad's favorite records, reminiscing all the time.

     First, Young's Harvest, remembering how he had told me just weeks before his death that its B-Side was possibly his favorite single side of a record he'd ever encountered, and of course listening to Heart of Gold on the A-Side and remembering the song playing at his memorial.

     Next, The Best of Arlo Guthrie, listening to the bizarre mixture of anti-war proclamations and slapstick comedy ballads, thinking how well that stark contrast of almost bipolar seriousness and shameless silliness summed dad up pretty well. I remembered singing the nonsensical “Motorcycle (Significance of the Pickle)” song on long car trips. I remembered the night I took him to see a greyer Guthrie live and listening with bated breath to dad's stories of shows past, including how, in the handful of times he'd seen Guthrie live, he had only managed to go to one show where Arlo played the famous and elusive “Alice's Restaurant Massacree,” only to walk into the auditorium during the song's final chord because of car trouble, and simply having to laugh about the irony of it all. I especially remembered the wide smile on his face long after Guthrie had treated us to a brand new rendition of the “Motorcycle” song, and his whooping and hollering like he was 20 again.

     The rest of the day was a blur of Darkside of the Moon, Yes Songs, Abbey Road, Introducing... the Beatles, Rumors, some deep-cuts, some old favorites, much-too-loud sing-a-longs, and a surplus of nostalgia: memories of singing in the car, relaxing in the family room, chatting on the phone 600 miles apart, all with dear old dad.

     None of these things really made me miss him, though. Don't get me wrong, it's great to experience all of these memories and emotions just by spinning some innocuous circle at 33 1/3 rpm, but I experienced those memories as if he was still here, like nothing had changed, which is a great thing I suppose. Magical, really, to be able to turn back the clock by turning a flimsy piece of vinyl.

     Look, Pa, I made a time machine.

     There was, however, one moment in all of this that I truly missed my dad. When that needle first struck down, and the scratches were overtaken by the first notes of “Old Man,” and I was filled with palpable feelings of relief and accomplishment, I just wanted to tell someone about all of the endless mistakes and pratfalls, the frustration of soldering a new piece only to watch another one break, the pride of making something work with your own hands, and a myriad of other thoughts and feelings swelling up inside me, but I knew that no one else would appreciate, understand, or find these things interesting. No one, that is, except the one that taught me how to problem solve, the one that patiently showed me to solder before I even knew what a circuit was, the one that I could trade tales of accidental electrocutions and burns with. In that moment, the only person I wanted to talk to was the only person I couldn't.

     In that moment, I truly missed my dad.

The Lightning Round

     I found an old book on idioms in my house a while back (my guess is my mom bought it because she mixes up sayings like she was the Irish bartender in The Boondock Saints) and decided to use it for a post.

      It's fast. It's absurd. It's completely devoid of substance. It is... the lightning round.

      "A wolf in sheep's clothing." Sheep don't wear clothing, they are made into clothing. And if a wolf were wearing that, people would just think man, that is a really warm wolf.

      "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." Notice the use of gender rather than the neutral object pronoun. This was clearly conspiratorially created by a woman as a subtle jab at the obstinance of the male gender. Feminists.

      "Where there's smoke, there's fire." Not necessarily. Have you been to L.A.?

      "It's raining cats and dogs." This would be more horrifying than any of the 10 plagues. Rain comes from clouds, and that is a long, messy way for a flightless, domestic creature to fall. I don't care if a cat always falls on its feet; cat goes splat.

      "On top of the world." I watched a Discovery documentary on the top of the world. It is not a place you want to be. Even the polar bears are getting the hell out.

      "The handwriting on the wall." There may have been a time when God was the one that wrote messages on walls (in an unknowable language to a largely illiterate people… See Daniel 5, the Bible, for clarification) but now the only people who do this are drunks, teen punks, "enlightened" college students during an election year, and prostitutes offering "a good time." So you can read the writing on the wall if you want, but please at least wash your hands when you leave the bathroom stall.

      "If the shoe fits, wear it." Unless that shoe belongs to an insanely jealous sociopath. Or someone who just stepped in dog poop.

      "Like two peas in a pod." Way to leave out the other peas in your pod. Also, when you put humans in a "pod," like in new age offices, arsonists are created.

      "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth." This actually goes against the phrase "Straight from the horse's mouth," because looking at the mouth is the only certain way to tell a horse's age. Besides, who would want a horse with a bad case of halitosis? Check it.

      "Dead as a doornail." Technically something that was never alive can't be dead, so I guess this means you're fine.

      "Down to brass tacks." I had no idea what this meant when I thought it was 'tax' not 'tacks.' Now I'm hopelessly lost.

      "The birds and the bees." Are we really teaching our children about sex by drawing upon creatures that either choose their mates based entirely on appearances and a massive, matriarchal, polygamous orgy devoid of thought or free will? Why not "the elephants and the bonobos?" Alliteration?

      "Fits like a glove." Thank for ruining this one, O.J. Simpson.

      "Tickle my funny bone." Least funny sensation ever.

     "In the belly of the beast." This is meant to convey the worst part of a situation, but if you are in the belly of a beast, the worst is over; you're just dead. All 497 masticated pieces of you.

The Silver Spoon

     Despite my early indoctrination into one of the finest schools of sarcasm (under the expert tutelage of my dad, sister, and aunt), I have always had the awful tendency to take things too literally. Nowadays, I practically see sarcasm and hyperbole coalesce from mouths in a string of italics ("No, really, we love your blog…"), but there was a time when I would take snide remarks and idioms as the gospel truth and create a remarkably vivid mental picture- at least for a kid whose honor roll status was constantly under the sole threat of Mrs. K, the hippie art teacher.

     For instance, I almost started this piece with the phrase, "when I was knee-high to a grasshopper…" but that phrase always makes me think of myself as a fetus or as that TV-loving kid on meth from Willy Wonka (post microwave debacle). And, hand to God, for the first 12 years of my life, I thought the ending to the phrase "People in glass houses..." was "… shouldn't walk around naked." Because if I lived in a glass house, that would be my first thought. And let's be real; that makes more sense anyway.

     I had one of these long-term misunderstandings with the phrase "born with a silver spoon in your mouth." To be honest with you, I have only in the last year or so come to realize what is meant by the phrase that my blog's banner has drawn inspiration from (yeah, that random picture it has a purpose). Yet again, I took the phrase too literally and formed an all too realistic mental image. What bothered me the most was how a kid ends up with a spoon while in utero to begin with, and how the birth happens with the utensil protruding from the kid's mouth. You can fill in the rest of the mental images, but as someone who has already had such images let me recommend against it. Vehemently.

     I knew the phrase meant to be born more fortunate than others with exceptional affluence and opportunities because of your family, but I never understood how having a spoon in your mouth when you were born could be a reflection of this. To me, it just seemed like a choking hazard.

     I always failed to make the connection that "born" wasn't literally "at the moment of birth," but rather alludes to "being reared from a young age." The kid wasn't a gestational marvel, but was simply being fed his Gerber's (or whatever the rich-person equivalent of Gerber's is... Gerbèr's?) with a silver spoon.  I know for most of you this is all "well, duh" territory, but you have to understand that when I hear a phrase I immediately create a mental image, and that mental image becomes as real to me as what I see with my eyes, so this reality that I create is not easily upended, no matter how absurd I know it to be.

    But this saying is still absurd, isn't it? I mean, I only know a couple of people with any pure-silver utensils, and they sure as hell aren't breaking them out for use on the pre-masticated mush of baby food. The kid doesn't care that it's eating from something of monetary and ornamental significance; the kid is just thinking "I wonder if I can vomit and poop at the same time!"

     I suppose that's the point though, to highlight the perceived absurdity of the wealthy. The phrase is clearly gilded with malice towards the well-to-do because the middle and lower classes often hold the wealthy in contempt- especially the children of the wealthy who will grow up to be affluent for no reason other than who their mommy and daddy are. This is especially true right now, as the world is still teetering on the edge of this economic crisis and the U.S. enters election season. People are frustrated with CEOs' "golden parachutes," another phrase of absurd decadence that makes no sense to me (if you have a sheet of gold strapped  to you, you're going to hit the ground even harder than barebacked I'd imagine). People are sick of politicians who are "disconnected" from their constituents because of their wealth- Romney's two biggest fires to put out right now involve his infamous vacation where he strapped his dog to his roof (people are making this out to be proof-positive that Romney is disconnected from us due to wealth) and his shockingly meager tax bracket due to the legislative loophole that he's an investor, not a worker.

     The wealthy have plenty to say back, usually with the themes of jealousy, stupidity, socialism, free-loading, Reaganomics, and hippies peppered in remarks to their detractors. So now we find ourselves in a fierce class warfare, marked by OWS and the "99%," and so much derision that you would think we were living in feudal Europe, not one of the most prosperous and socially mobile societies in global history.

     Maybe this metaphor isn't about the rich kid 's exorbitant lifestyle. Maybe this metaphor is about us, our society as a whole. The generations before us built up a great and prosperous society, founded on noble and auspicious principles, and defended this society through two noble world wars, and because of all of their achievements and sacrifices we now have a sense of entitlement. Entitlement to a high-paying job, entitlement to a suburban 4-bedroom house with 1.86 kids and an SUV, entitlement to whatever new gadget is out this quarter. We think we are entitled to all of these things because for so long they have simply been given to us. So now that they are being taken away, we are having a temper-tantrum because our spoon is no longer silver.

     Our entitlement was fed even more by our addiction to credit. My grandpa never had anything he didn't earn first (including his freedom). His generation never had a home equity crisis, or a credit crisis, because they took what they earned and nothing more. By contrast, when we weren't given what we were "entitled" to, we took it on credit- plastic for silver. That's called alchemy, and it isn't real.

     Our world isn't in a financial crisis because of lazy workers or greedy heads of corporations; in one form or another those things have been around for centuries in far worse proportions. Our world is in a crisis because we are spoiled children that never grew up. We're in this because we're all vain, selfish, and whiny, and we had better turn our backs from the decadence of silver and the temptation of plastic if we are ever going to be prosperous or happy ever again.

Love in the Time of Piracy; or, Wash Your Mouth Out with SOPA

            I stay away from divisive subjects such as politics, sports fanaticism, and “Teen Mom” like a 1^st century aristocrat stayed away from commoners; I’ll deal with them as I have to but shoo them away and steer clear whenever possible. I am way too argumentative and self-righteous to get into a discussion on such subjects and not offend someone or simply paint myself as a conceited prick, so I have found that, in the best interest of everyone, I should not weigh in on such issues. I’ve become less informed in many areas as a result. I don’t honestly know how I feel about OWS or tax brackets or whether or not Kim Kardashian’s butt is real. What I do know about, however, is music. More specifically, the piracy of music. I am a card-carrying member of what.cd and Demonoid and have exchanged more GBs of mp3s than I care to admit. So, naturally, I have some interest in the SOPA and PIPA developments that have dominated headlines recently.

I am choosing to ignore the two most obvious reasons to oppose SOPA and PIPA- 1) the revocation of due process with totalitarian censors superseding the proper channels and 2) the stifling of information and creativity- because I feel like those points are so self-evident that they don’t need to be argued; plus, people who are far smarter and more well-informed than me have made better arguments anyway (for instance, in a :::TED talk:::). If you want to hear about how SOPA seems better suited for China or North Korea, I am sorry friend, but I cannot oblige.

Rather, I want to focus on the benefits of piracy for everyone, and what has prompted me to weigh in on these divisive subjects is a metaphor I recently read that combines my two passions: basketball and music. Matthew Yglesias from Slate said “Online piracy is like fouling in basketball. You want to penalize it to prevent it from getting out of control, but any effort to actually eliminate it would be a cure much worse than the disease.” Let me break down the basketball part of that metaphor for you all. There are three main parties in a basketball game- the referees, the players, and the fans. Referees want to be more lax on some calls and stricter at other times to control the tone of the game and keep things fair, safe, and competitive. When tensions get too high on the court, refs will call the game closer to prevent fights and injuries from occurring. Fans want the games called in the same fashion because if the entire game was called with strict enforcement, everyone would pussyfoot up and down the court and there would be no competition or spectacle, while if the game were called too leniently, the game would become sloppy and fans would become enraged at the constant physical punishment their team was taking. Players want the game called this way for similar reasons, because it offers them some freedom to play harder on defense and draw fouls on offense, and with a 5-6 “strike” system, they are only harshly punished if they fail to operate within this realm of flexibility.

(On a personal note, in all of my 10+ years of playing league basketball, I always prided myself on ending a game with only 1-2 fouls called against me. I thought that this meant I had played quality defense. It wasn’t until recently that I realized that the best defenders have at least 3 fouls called against them each game, typically 4-5 in the NBA. Having any less means you aren’t taking the necessary risks to play aggressively; anymore and you are playing recklessly.)

So what does this say about online piracy? The refs are the lawmakers and law enforcement agents. To pass SOPA will strain their departments, increase the demand for tax money, and cause massive public outrage including from some of the biggest names in the world like Google and Wikipedia. I can almost guarantee that this outrage will lead to some congressmen failing to be reelected; it is in their best interest to keep the people that vote for them happy, even if they seem not to realize it at times. When you are a ref it is your job to call fouls, certainly, but you have to do it in such a way that it keeps the game balanced and keeps the players and fans happy.

The fans are obviously the millions of Americans that watch YouTube or read the Oatmeal or download music. They are the ones that want entertainment, fair entertainment, the kind that keeps the players playing at their best and the excitement at the optimum level. There’s a misconception that the typical Internet user maniacally sits at their computer finding every way possible to undermine copy written material. Really, we just want to get a taste of everything so that we can make an informed decision on how to spend our money and time. Just as no fan would respect a game with a bunch of brawlers in it (see: The Brawl at the Palace of Auburn Hills), no fan will go to see a game with every derivation in the rules called. You wouldn’t be able to have a single possession where traveling, carrying, or illegal contact wasn’t called; there would be no point. Nobody wants an Internet where the most heinous violators go unpunished, but we certainly don’t want an Internet where we can’t watch a video of a panda sneezing because there happens to be a Coke can in the frame. And when we see something that we like, we want to support it, such as media from a particular artist, director, or writer. We realize that, if we want to continue enjoying such content then we must pay what the creator deserves to receive.

The players are the content providers and industry professionals: writers, producers, directors, musicians, marketing directors, actors- anyone who stands to lose a buck through piracy. But are they really losing a buck when their content is “stolen”? In a narrow view, yes. Record sales have been way down since 2000 and the movement to digital media began. Services like iTunes, Pandora, and Rhapsody helped to reduce the hemorrhaging, but record companies’ profits have continued to fall and jobs have been lost. And as a lover of music and of people devoting their lives to working in a great industry that they love, that does make me sad. But the truth is that, while it has hurt the music industry by the numbers, file sharing is the greatest thing to happen to the music medium since the phonograph (which also underwent a similar battle since some thought it would detract from the sale of live performances; I don’t think anybody today would argue it was actually bad for the music industry). Musical creativity is at its zenith, and artists that had no chance to thrive before music hit the Internet are reaching unimaginable audiences. Record sales are way down, this is true, but live music has been revitalized. The record industry has failed to adapt to this paradigm shift, so now they are attempting a Hail Mary through congress. And when I say “record industry,” I mean the big labels, not the independent ones that are doing fairly well by contrast.

The film and video game industries are good examples of creative mediums finding love in the time of piracy. Both have put up record-setting numbers recently (film through Avatar, video games through MW3), and continue to post big numbers by putting out quality content, converting films to 3D to increase profit margins, clever marketing, keeping tighter control over their digital in the fledgling stages when most sales occur, and, yes, bringing the worst piracy offenders to prosecution.

I download music. A lot of music. I feel guilty at times, but I know that I am pouring a ton of money into the music industry because of my approach to piracy. If I have downloaded music that I like, I always make the effort to see the artist when they come around on tour and to buy their next album. For example, as I type this I am listening to a song by The National that I downloaded, illegally, while looking at three ticket stubs from the concerts I’ve seen them at, legally, and wearing a shirt that I bought from them, legally. O, and there’s a record of theirs somewhere around here; it’s legal too. I had no idea who they were prior to a friend telling me to download their album; now, I’ve poured somewhere around $150 into them, $150 that I never would have spent before, $150 now oiling the cogs of the music industry.

There is a reason why the largest record labels and artists are the ones hurt in all of this mess: they put out a terrible product. Independent labels are putting out special collector’s editions and merchandise bundles with artfully crafted CD and LP cases with music by artists who have thoroughly vetted their material and take pride in producing good music; the big labels are putting together CDs and songs that have been produced not by artists but by focus groups and selling them with a business model created in the 1990s.

I’m not trying to argue that pirating media is ethically OK; it’s not. What I am trying to say is that to drop a nuclear bomb on the Internet is not the answer to the problem. It wouldn’t solve the problem anyway- there is no way to get rid of media piracy completely, short of dissolving the Internet in its entirety. More than that, though, what I am trying to say is that the problem is gravely misunderstood. The problem isn’t the existence of media piracy; the problem is that we haven’t settled into a mutually beneficial middle-ground. I truly believe that there is a point where piracy produces increased revenue and artistic growth, not one or the other, and that piracy can be enforced without infringing on our basic rights. We’ve all seen glimpses of it; we’re getting closer every day. We just need to keep playing the game. Because when the fans lose their bloodlust, when the refs figure out how to control the ebb and flow of the action, when the players learn to play in the system and thrive off of the fans, then we are going to have one hell of a game- for everyone involved.

UPDATE: SOPA was pulled less than 24 hours after I posted this, which either means that I am a day late and a dollar short OR I have single-handedly saved this country from falling into tyranny. Your call.

"Om"

     I was recently approached by photographer and artist J.T. Liss of NYC, a mutual acquaintance, with the idea of collaborating on a photo essay based on his photo "Om." You can read his personal blog post on the piece here- http://www.jtlissphotography.com/blog/every-picture-tells-a-story-om/ - including the motivation behind the title. Check out the rest of his stuff, too, while you're there. I think it's great that he is taking what he loves, photography and art, and using it to bring about social change.

     He got me into contact with the band Atomic Bride (whose poster is featured prominently in the photograph) who agreed to a brief interview for the piece. The brief interview turned into a 50 minute conversation with the band's front-woman, Astra. Astra was a joy to speak with and the band really reflects all of the qualities that I love in artists, especially when it comes to refusing to compromise their style and building strong bonds with their fans.

     After a while, I whittled down the conversation into sound bites and wrote this piece. It was a great joy and honor to work with J.T. and Atomic Bride. And I figure that since I use Muhammad Ali as a metaphor in this piece, it fits within the framework of the blog and justifies my shameless promotion of it here. Enjoy.

http://www.jtlissphotography.com/blog/a-commentary-on-om-2011-photo-of-the-year/