Civics

How should people behave? 
As we go through daily life, out and about in the world, there are certain standards we must adhere to.  We wear clothes, and eat with our mouths closed.  We shake each others' hands and park within the lines.  When we act normally and "civilly", the world is a better place and we avoid unnecessary conflict and awkward situations. 
But when do we cross the line on civics?  When do the standards of human decency and basic social propriety become petty and silly? 
Well, think back to Victorian England.  They had ridiculous customs.  If you were at some sort of social gathering, and wished to address a stranger of a higher class, you could not do so without permission or someone to introduce the two of you.  Men had all sorts of rules about bowing and hat-tipping and chaperoning.  It was all about etiquette and adhering to specific rules about speech and behavior.  Children couldn't speak without being spoken to. 
Well, obviously from a modern standpoint, Victorian civics were over the top and frivolous.  Nowadays, interactions are not defined by social restrictions like they were two hundred years ago.  But, we have also lost the expectation for many basic behaviors.  Simple things really, talking in movie theatres.  Behind rude on the phone.  Wearing casual clothes to a fancy restaurant.  What is the price we pay for losing civics?  And is it worth it if we get to go about living individualistically and wearing our hawks jerseys to fogo de chão? 

Is Poverty a Choice?

It is too simple to say that poverty is a choice.  But also too simple to say that poverty is a status inflicted upon people.
I don't know what it is to live in poverty.  To speak honestly, I don't think most of the people at Whitney know poverty.  I'm sure it's there in some of the faces I see every day.  People don't like talking about it.  You see it sometimes when people get free lunches in the lunch line.  You see it when seniors wait for need-based financial packages.  But for the most part, many of the people who knew about and wanted to attend a magnet high school weren't the ones at the bottom of the socio-economic totem pole. 
So who are the ones at the bottom?  And why aren't they the ones trying to clamor out of their situation?  Well, I believe it is a mixture of many things.
Expectations, environment, and ability.   Those who are born into poverty aren't the ones surrounded by people who expect them to achieve academically.  They aren't expected to get a college education, or a white collar job, let alone a high school diploma.  Though these things serve to deter children born into this society from achieving monetary success, they aren't actual obstacles. 
This is one of the most unnerving things about the tendency of the poor to stay in poverty.  Case by case, many people have circumstances in which they can rise out of their situation.  Heck, the American dream is built on the idea that those who want to, can.  Public schools, government aid, capitalist economy.  Everything is made for socio-economic mobility.  But for the most part, it doesn't happen.
Before high school I would have attributed it to some overall lack of motivation and purpose.  Coming from my community, anyone who wishes to get an education and find a high paying job can.  Most people do.  But I started meeting people who didn't live in these communities.  A boy from the back of the yards who came from a family of seven and growing, with an untreated learning disability and no way to get his timid voice heard in a class of 40 and a school of 3,000.  He showed me that sometimes poverty isn't a choice.  But I know that one case doesn't show the truth of the whole matter.  It is too simple to say either way. 

Integration

For the past fifty years or so, one of the major goals of the U.S. has been integration.  Equality between the races, mixing of the cultures, diversity.  Shared opportunities, representation and ideas equals one big happy species.  Right?
Well, it's a little more complicated than that.  There is preexisting racial inequality, a condition that we are the unlucky inheritors of.   We cannot change it, but I believe there are ways we can atone for it.

Malcolm X Summary

I remember one of the first few days we discussed Malcolm X, we were asked which part of the book drew our attention.  I picked out a quote from page 15.  It was of Ms. Adcock, an old white tenant he lived with as a young boy.  She said, "there's one thing I like about you.  you're no good, but you don't try to hide it.  You are not a hypocrite".
This quote struck me because as I progressed through the book, I began to seriously question this statement.  Is Malcolm X a hypocrite?  Many of his greatest critics would clamor to agree that he most certainly is.  How can a great civil rights activist and religious leader have started his days on the streets and not be a hypocrite?  He was a drug dealer, hustler, draft-dodger.  He put lye in his hair to get the white conk, he went out with white girls, and he bent to the will of the white man.
But, he left that life behind when he was caught.  His day of redemption came behind bars.  He meets a man who introduces him to Islam and he follows the path of Allah.  Soon he himself is preaching the word of Black nationalism and Elijah Muhammad.  He teaches himself to read and write, and begins publicly debating.  So much changes in those years and the years to follow.   Looking back he is aware of all this.  Hindsight is 20/20.  He was no longer young and foolish.  He had now found his true path.
My initial response to a majority of the points he brings up is immediate rejection.  This man lived his whole life "deaf, dumb and blind" and then suddenly he decides white people are devil because some crackpot religious zealot began spreading the word of a supposed prophet.  The hypocrite alarm was blaring.  But I have to reassess my views.
Though his lifestyle before prison was unorthodox, he doesn't deny it.  Though I disagree with his viewpoints on civil activism and the need for racial separation, he doesn't go back on his arguments and he doesn't hide what he has done.

Music Review

The Slip - Eisenhower
Eisenhower was released November of 2006 and was The Slip's fourth studio album.  Though considered a fairly obscure indie rock band, The Slip had a few songs off this album that gained popularity.   The most well-known track, "Even Rats" was featured on Guitar Hero for the PS2. "  "Life in Disguise" played on Grey's Anatomy.
The Slip's music has an indie rock feel, with simple melody lines and a guitar-vocal focus.  It appeals to my personal taste because unlike some experimental, hard-edged indie rock bands, the Slip's music is neither hypnotically simple, nor too busy; most of it is locked into that perfect balance of melodic interweave and mellow instrumental backing.
Though I think all of the music on the album does a superb job of balancing each musical element (melody, guitar riffs, instrumental, and occasional percussion), there are a few tracks that I cannot stop hitting the replay button on.  I would love to talk about them all, but here's my favorite:

Airplane/Primitive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zidnKcGc6A

The track starts with echoing guitar strums, reminding me of just about every Explosions in the Sky song.  Then enters this wonderful experimental drum beat at 0:18.  About thirty seconds of guitar-percussion interplay and then the vocalist enters.  "It's the day before the rest of my life".  The melody line is simple, with hints of background singer singing low harmonies later on.  Each time the singer leaves, the instrumental grows.  At 1:20, explosive guitar chords.  At 2:10, an electronic riff dances up and down an exploding percussion-guitar backing.  Perfect build up for the chorus at 2:30 in which each element culminates like a driving force.  It gets cut off short by the bridge at 3:00, where the song resets itself with a small guitar solo lead up.  Now there's a mellower feel, instrumental takes over, a folky wind instrument soars over the new beat.  Our good friend on the lead guitar returns at 4:30.  Vocal comes back shortly thereafter and the tempo speeds up.  Then the band's characteristic four beat drum intro leads us back into the chorus at 5:10.
After I got over how much I loved the musical interweaving, I listened again for the lyrics: 

"Airplane primitive
Saw it and thought it was some kind of bird
It landed, he made up his mind
Can't live knowing that there's some other world

Where men fly up in the sky
Strapped himself to the wing for a one way ride
And in the air, above the clouds
There his soul stayed when his body fell down"

Have you ever thought that maybe there's something out there that would draw you so strongly that you wouldn't be able to live without it?  Take Alex Supertramp.  He couldn't "live knowing that there was some other world" outside of his middle-class, college-bound life.  He had to find himself.  You could say he "strapped himself to the wing for a one way ride" and eventually found himself in nature, where "his soul stayed" even when his body died. 

Alone

People sometimes ask, "What is your biggest fear?".  And, there was a time when I would answer "being alone". 
Human connection is so essential.  We're all hardwired to need and even crave others' attention.  We need acceptance. 
This need started to take over back in middle school.  I wanted to be liked.  I would do all sorts of things to achieve this.  I started by conforming: eating Apple Jacks in the morning instead of raisin bran, because raisin bran is not cool.  Cussing loudly in public.  Sitting on the wall during recess because only the little kids played four square.  All these things went against my natural tendencies and yet I continued doing them because I feared being alienated for not following the group.  I wanted everyone to like me, so much so that eventually I lost myself. 
I can't pretend that these weren't happy days of my life.  Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if I still ate apple jacks and sat on the wall and was friends with everyone.  I liked to be liked and I still do.
But much of my adolescence has been spent battling that side of me.  The one that is ashamed of expressing my true thoughts because I'm scared of how that will affect other people's opinions.  I still find myself doing it and to some extent we all do.  No man is an island.  No one truly means it when they say "I don't care what others think of me".  
Yet losing yourself is not the answer.  If we are truly to search for the truth, in ourselves and in life, we must accept that sometimes we will not make human connection, sometimes there will be silence. Sometimes, we will be alone. 

I know this means something

Making music is easily one of the most meaningful things in my life.  I began making music seemingly by chance, though I'd like to think it was fated. 
I had a friend back in third grade who took piano lessons at this small music school.  She invited me to sit in a few lessons with her.  I started pestering my parents to let me take lessons.  Mostly because I wanted to be like my friend and do the things she was doing.  So we bought a small 44-key electric and signed me up for weekly lessons.  Now it's eight years later and I'm playing in the school musical. 
I started singing in a similarly spontaneous way.  It was the summer before freshman year and I was programming with my new counselor.  For some reason, she told me I had to take seven classes (I didn't know any better).  I had no idea what I was going to pick, I hadn't planned it out beforehand.  Instead of awkwardly wasting my counselor's time picking my final class, I looked for the first thing on the list.  What was it?  Beginning mixed chorus.  Now it's four years later and I'm singing in chamber choir.  
It's hard to imagine what I would do without music.  It evokes feelings and expressions in me that aren't strictly intellectual.  I'm sure at the root of it, there is some biological explanation for the way the pitches and frequencies vibrating in my ear drums are processed in the primal sensory cortexes of my brain.  But on a conscious level, I believe music has a meaning and power beyond its literal definition.  It is a way of communicating beyond words.  A language that all people can understand.  One can recognize the mood difference between the Entertainer and Mozart's Requiem just by understanding the language of booming minor chords versus allegro majors.  Yet both fine crafts can be appreciated in their own rights. 
I believe music has the power to bring people together, and at least for myself, it is something I must be a part of.  When the waking day is spent just with thoughts of language and speech bouncing from person to person, sometimes it's nice to settle back on an ancient language of feeling.  It touches those primordial parts of our beings that did not used to need words.