culture | unobtrusive lucidity

Memoirs of Power Tools

Last year, a new neighbor bought the house across the street.

The previous owner had a…colorful personality that led to some interesting stories to tell. So, we were wondering what the new owner would bring. They’ve done a lot of renovation to the house, which has been interesting to watch. This guy is always building, sawing, hammering, putting something together, or, alternatively, bringing in a lot of supplies and re-doing the landscaping of the property.

When I think of that kind of work, I think of a couple of things. First is my father…it’s perhaps apropos that I’m writing this on Father’s Day. He kept a workshop in a detached building and was always outside in the evenings after dinner. The saws could always be heard, and he was always building. My dad made his living in electronics, but he loved woodworking, and the shop was his man cave. He sculpted with wood, as much an artist as a craftsman.

The other thing that I think of is my college career, because I spent most of it as a theatre major. My focus was largely on the technical side of theatre, and as such I spent a good amount of time in the scene shop. Even though I grew up observing my father’s use of power tools, I didn’t really learn to use them until college. While I’m far from being a pro, I do know my way around a drill, a rip saw, and various other tools, but to use them today would surface just how incredibly out of practice I am, because I don’t use them every day.

Or every month.

Or most of the year.

In recent years, for various reasons, I think about my dad often. Part of this is harboring some guilt for not calling him nearly as often as I should. Part of it is that things like seeing this new neighbor working outside all the time reminds me of what my dad did when I was growing up, and I wish sometimes that l was less academic and more hands-on with life.

A few years ago, before we moved to our current house, I was driving home from…somewhere… and I passed a house with a work van parked in the driveway. I forget what sort of work it advertised on its side…electrician, perhaps? Roofing? Given that it was the weekend, the van was not in use, and I remembered my father coming home from work, being with his family, engaging his hobbies, living a simpler life. There wasn’t email then, but if there had been, he wouldn’t have been checking it, because he wouldn’t have had a smartphone in his pocket. He left in the morning, worked his day as a specialist in his field, and returned home to live life, much as I imagine the owner of that van did. Then, after a significant number of years, he retired, which he was able to do because he was rewarded for his longevity with a pension.

While I don’t really want to change who I am in this regard, I often think that life would be simpler if I worked in a field…or in a time…that brought with it a similar lifestyle. Leave for work, do your trade, come home to the family. Work outside on the weekends, watch the game in the evening. There’s an enviable simplicity to that rhythm. That simplicity pre-supposes a security that doesn’t exist in our world any longer (who among my generation can realistically ever expect to retire?). Even without this, though, I feel that there must be ways to re-introduce a simplicity into our lives. Some are obvious…refuse to let work have a foothold in our after-hours lives (I deleted work communications from my phone some time ago), pare back on social media’s poisonous influence. Some are less obvious, or at least they are to me as I haven’t figured them out as of yet.

My techno-optimism has died in its old age, and I’ve started looking for ways to bring back this sort of simplicity. I want work to have its appropriate place, to mean something, and for life to be free from tech billionaires making decisions for me.

As foreign as this sounds to a generation that has grown up in this landscape, I can’t feel that this is what it was meant to be. Our lives have fallen out of balance, and we need to get that back. I’m not sure how exactly that happens. I just know instinctively that it involves less complexity than our current state.

A Thought Experiment

Indulge me a hypothetical scenario.

Let’s say someone was born in an area that he grew up to only want out of. There was a lack of culture there, a vacuum, and a lack of understanding as to who he was…not from his family, but from the world around him. He went to college nearby, and the vacuum left its mark. This was sort of like a fundamental incompatibility. He just didn’t fit. One of the results of this was that he couldn’t decide what he wanted to be when he grew up.

Of course, he grew up. That happens whether one wants to or not, and so he cycled through three majors in college before achieving a degree. He didn’t have the connections in that area to do what he really wanted, so he ended up in a field that was largely unrelated to his degree. He liked it, though, so he threw himself into it, identified with it, became good at it. He learned about people in that profession. Until, one day, he realized that maybe there was something else out there.

You see, he had held God largely at the periphery for a lot of his adult life, and now was impressed with the realization of how unsustainable that was. Through a series of events that were based largely around his discontent with still living in that area, he got his arms around his faith for likely the first time in his life. He walked away from one particular experience feeling that he actually knew God for the first time, and that changed everything, as it must. And so he pursued that into ministry, into graduate studies, and into a new profession. That profession turned out to be short-lived, but the studies involved altered everything even further. The problem was that, as he learned so many new things, he didn’t realize that he didn’t know what he thought he knew, and so he left behind his experiences so far, because he felt they were incompatible. He was beginning a new life without a foundation, as a sort of misguided concept of repentance.

Except that a foundation, once laid, tends to stay put. As he grew and finished his graduate studies, he realized one day by hanging some theatre masks on his wall that he was who he was in large part because of his experiences, and that those experiences were not only not bad in and of themselves, but informed his newfound relationship with God. And so, he had to re-think some things.

Growing up has a way of continuing to happen, though. So, as he was trying to figure all of this out, he fell in love and got married, and, because bills continue to arrive whether one is trying to figure out life or not, he returned to that original vocation to pay them. Then their first child, and then and then and then…many dreams, and much difficulty in making them a reality, difficulty borne primarily of indecisiveness and discontent.

And then, one day, because of those bill that kept arriving, they decided another career change was in order, and so he returned to school to enter a very technical field. He had learned about people, he had become (he hoped) close with God, his creative spark was always working…but he entered a technical field. Pay the bills it did, certainly, earning back the cost of the new schooling in short order, but it took so much and gave back little else. And then a second child. And, somehow, 15 years vanished in a blur of frenetic activity that accomplished only unimportant things and left him missing what was overwhelmingly important.

And that, you see, brings us to now, and this person…this subject of our hypothetical thought experiment…is once again rejecting something through a fundamental incompatibility, feeling an exasperation with both this third career as well as the fact that the world trusts technology more than people, science more than art. And he dreams, and the dreams continue to not come true, because the data keeps interfering.

What is there to do? What should this person do? What would be the next step to make it right?

Asking for a friend.

“Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true? Or is it something worse?” – Bruce Springsteen

Where Have All The Good Guys Gone?

Last week, I finished watching Ironheart, the latest installment of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. My disappointment is difficult to overstate, but this isn’t intended to be a review of the series. Rather, I observed it solidify a theme that’s become increasingly obvious to me since I recently heard the death of post-modernism proclaimed.

If we rewind into comic book history a bit, Marvel’s take on the heroic narrative has always been different from DC’s. DC came first, with Marvel appearing soon after, and they each have distinctly different perspectives on their characters, but what has remained consistent is that Marvel injects a gritty realism into their characters while DC tends to hold theirs above the fray, as it were.

Each of these mainstream comics lines, as they developed from nascent pulp into a new literary genre, encapsulated a cohesive mythology in their stories, what in today’s pop culture terminology we would refer to as a “universe.” While its noteworthy that antiheroes have always been present in both (DC has always had Catwoman, Marvel has always had Namor the Sub-Mariner), the focus was on the fight of good vs. evil, and that’s what’s compelling about these stories. We are all instinctively aware that there is an evil that we can’t fight, and we desire someone to help, to fight that battle for us and win. The difference, over-simplified, is that DC has historically held these heroes who fight our battles up as larger than life, more than human, an over-arching theology from above approach. Marvel has historically taken more of a theology from below stance, focusing our attention through the eyes of those with the same flaws as ourselves.

While this has morphed over time to adapt to the current moment (something at which this art form is particularly adept), the foundations have proven to be persistent in the DNA of the different universes. I think that’s why, as deconstructionism has been the watchword for a generation, we’ve seen the suspicion that all good must inevitably turn out to be disappointing play out more in Marvel’s narrative than in DC’s.

Let’s think back to what we now know as Marvel’s Phase 1. This was the first legitimate attempt to reproduce the cohesive mythology of comics on film, and it was successful. As such, it began with normal people taking on extraordinary challenges…Tony Stark builds his iron suit, Steve Rogers takes the super-soldier serum…and are rooted in the greatest generation and the purity for which it stood. We’re then introduced to Thor, who holds good above all else, and even Bruce Banner is willing to sacrifice all of his dreams to prevent the monster raging within him from wreaking havoc. As this universe has expanded and unfolded, though, we’ve seen it adapt to the modern age. All heroism has become suspect. The Scarlet Witch became the villain, driven mad by grief. Tony Stark loses sight of morality and creates Ultron. Loki, a villain, saves the day through his self-interest. Steve Rogers gives up his shield to live a life he feels he deserves. Dr. Strange chooses to meddle with dark forces to defeat a threat to humanity, believing that the ends justify the means. The list goes on, culminating in the Thunderbolts, a team of antiheroes held together by a “why not” mentality, replacing the Avengers in a world that needs heroes, but is seen as incapable of producing them. Of the past 3 years’ worth of the deluge of Marvel offerings, only Spider-Man truly embodies the nature of a hero, and he ultimately must suffer from that decision.

In Ironheart, we thought we would see a hero, but instead are presented with a troubled character who occasionally does good, but ultimately holds a similar tragic flaw as Stark. It’s difficult to define Riri Williams, who writers forced into Wakanda Forever. While certainly not a hero, I have difficulty defining her as an antihero, either. Rather, a character who could be intricately and compellingly written becomes a symbol of the collateral damage of what could barely be called an age of heroes, someone who ends her series making a Faustian bargain to resolve her grief.

Having never been an adherent to postmodernism, I’m exhausted, and think many others are, as well. The ultimate end of deconstruction is a void, in which there is nothing to believe, no faith to hold, a cycle of cynicism that destroys from within. In my reading of comics, I think that’s why I’ve gravitated more toward DC in recent years, because in print they have often avoided the emotional morbidity of their films.

What has always drawn me to superhero mythology is good vs. evil, the hope that the good guys win over the bad guys. This collapses in on itself, however, when good and evil are not defined. There has always been space for antihero narratives (the Watchmen being the ultimate example of this), but even in these lie a recognition of good and evil that is lacking in most of these recent films and series.

Comics as an art form have always held a mirror to the current moment. Postmodernism is troubling in its belief that all is relative, that good is often evil and evil is often good. I’m interested in the new Superman film, even with all of the flaws I see in its trailers, because it appears, at least visually, that this could mark a return to true heroism. As we look up in the sky, I’m in hopes that we’ll be reminded of what a hero looks like. If our cultural interest in deconstruction truly is waning, then the art form would be holding its mirror to that, showing that we’re ready for good again, ready for a hero.

How refreshing would that be?

To Dream a Dystopian Dream

In the before times, and certainly when I was a grad student, I wrote in this space weekly, if not more often. Contrast that with the present, when I never cease to surprise myself with the gap of time between one post and the next whenever I return here. The intention is there…my traveler’s notebook is packed with things to write out…but the time seldom is, although that’s a work in progress. Part of the problem, though, is that when I think of writing…here or anywhere else…I struggle to be positive. I want to write about the cool things I’m reading and watching, the spiritual insights that being a parent gives me, the random thoughts that drift through my head. Certainly, all of those things are still there. They’re tempered, though, with this spectre of dread in our current age.

Don’t get me wrong, I have little about which to complain. I would never presume to say that we are not blessed as a family. I have never been in a position to wonder where my next meal is going to come from. I woke up this morning to a wonderful family, and will go to bed thinking about the job I return to tomorrow and considering retirement and vacation plans. I’m living the suburban dream, in all of its tragic grace.

Regardless, though, we seem to live in an age (whether by true degree, or just because I’ve started noticing more) in which the darkness comes knocking.

Early in our marriage, my wife lovingly pointed out how much time I spent reading the news. I’ve gotten better about this, and one of the ways that I have is that I do my best to avoid news on weekends. I take a sabbath. This morning in church, though, as I was chatting with a friend, he mentioned a major international event that could spiral into a war. I, of course, had to pull out the curse that is having the Internet in my pocket and check the details. I tried to avoid it, but it found me.

At some point in my adult life, my dreams of creative and academic pursuits dissolved in favor of doing my best to provide our children with the loving stability that I had as I grew up. That was more a decision of instinct than anything else, and at times I question it, especially as I’ve come to realize that we live in a system that is designed to be able to yank the table-cloth of stability from beneath you at any moment and for no reason…a system almost sentient in its malevolence at times, and growing more so as we dare to create the AI that science-fiction authors have spent decades warning us about. Also, a quest for stability brings with it, by necessity, a certain degree of striving for financial success. And yet, I am reminded that we are to cease striving, to know that He is God.

Tying these threads together, I have difficulty writing anything positive because I’m scared. Despite our blessed state and relative freedom from worry, I am scared of the world that we leave our children, that they have to grow up in this mess. The excitement and optimism that I experienced at their age is potentially not even possible now as a faceless, opaque algorithm makes critical decisions for us without accountability, when money and science are worshipped as the gods of our age, when corruption is obscured by an inability to think critically, and when objectification of human beings is normalized. At least, when I grew up, we had a sense that we would learn and gain wisdom from our experiences, and be able to pass that down to our children in predictable environs. For the last decade, though, I’ve watched that vanish, progressively crumbling as we do things simply because we can, without ever questioning whether or not we should. Work and good intentions stand for nothing. We’re just waiting for floor to fall out.

So, I suppose I don’t write as much because my head is always full of…that.

Perhaps I’ve gotten it out, now.

Perhaps there’s something positive to hope for.

Perhaps…

Hello? Is This Mic On?

Where have all the blogs gone?

I was thinking this this morning as I was perusing my RSS reader. Being a sucker for fond remembrances of days gone by, I’ve gone through many iterations of RSS readers through the years. Each time, I port over all of the feeds that were in my previous reader. As a result, I have…well, a lot…of feeds in NetNewsWire at the moment, only a fraction of which are ever currently updated. As I scroll down the sidebar list of blogs that I have subscribed to through the decades, I remember so many fondly. I’ve met some really cool people and made friends through blogs, back when blogs were at their prime. Most of these, however, have been dormant for some time. The feeds that update on a weekly basis belong to certain prolific and popular bloggers, or larger publications. Those like this one? People who were passionately contributing their thoughts to the public sphere? I suspect that only a few of us remain.

As a rule, I’m not a trendy person. This shouldn’t be a surprise, given that I use an RSS reader to collect my feeds, as I’m guessing there are some out there who are even questioning what that is. As social media was introduced and eventually evolved to do irreparable harm to our social fabric, most readers outsourced their reading preferences to the Algorithm and stopped (perceiving themselves as) having the time to look for good writing. If something isn’t being thrust in front of our faces, we forget that it exists. My friend, that’s not a byproduct of the technological evolution. It’s by design.

So, I suppose that writers such as myself are, if not a casualty of the Internet’s impossibly fast and unhealthy evolution, then certainly relegated to a niche. In the before times, I posted two or three times weekly, and now struggle to post monthly, so this is in part a self-fulfilling prophecy. I miss those days, though, don’t you? Back before the web was weaponized?

I think that part of the phenomenon, though (and I’m being intentional to not call it a “problem”) is less engagement. I actually have little insight into who reads this as I don’t invade your privacy with analytics, so there could be hundreds of readers on each post who simply don’t comment. That would actually make sense, because I think that commenting died before engagement did in the blogosphere (and yes, I’m aware at how much I just dated myself by using that term).

I suspect that things may change though, and that this will be reflective of a cultural change. I say that because I hear…feel?…rumblings of discontent at being a culture comprised of those who consume rather than those who engage.

The first time I heard the phrase “consume media,” I had a visceral reaction. This should not be the case and has become a sad state of affairs. To consume is passive, to sit back and allow one’s brain to be flooded with entertainment without that entertainment having any substantive impact on them…the equivalent of elevator music. And, while there is a conversation to be had about minimizing the vision of the artist by refusing to look longer than 10 (metaphorical) seconds at their work, the point I’m making here is that engaging media, and, by extension, art, is an entirely different experience than simply consuming. Engagement involves thinking, unpacking, permitting oneself to be impacted by the story.

When I was in theatre, the experience of seeing a play was twofold. There was the experience of going to the show, of course, which is magic in itself. Beyond that, however, was the experience of going for coffee with your friends after and discussing what you had just watched. What did you see in the show? What did it make you think? How did it make you feel? Layers of substance are revealed in these conversations that begin to get us closer to what the playwright was trying to convey.

To some degree, that happens today in discussion forums, but not in the same way. After all, it would be impossible to meaningfully watch or listen to the amount of media that various platforms prefer us to consume in an endless stream, which maximizes the profits of them and their advertisers. One would think that, with all of this volume, smaller and more independent voices would be able to have a better chance of getting their work to you, but you see, their work doesn’t rank in the Algorithm, and we long ago ceded those RSS feeds because we didn’t want to think for ourselves.

Were blogs a solution to this? Hardly. In the days when we aggregated our own reading, though…when we went looking for things that interested us…new work had a better chance of making its way to the top.

So, I think the winds are changing, because readers and viewers and listeners are willing to pay for what they like, and are pushing back on the so-called attention economy. As they do so, and culture hopefully begins to go back to a better way of doing things, I think that blogs will regain some popularity. I’m hopeful, not because its better for the bloggers, but because its better for everyone.

Please engage. Don’t consume.