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November 3, 2003 Conformity
[asfo_del]
When I was a kid, it seems like most of the books I read and movies I saw - even Disney movies! - had as their central message the joy of marching to one's own drum and refusing to follow convention. This strikes me as odd, since not conforming is anathema to so much of what society expects of kids. Maybe they thought no one would actually listen, and in the meantime they could sell a feel-good message that would make them a lot of money.
I myself had that very message reinforced by my real-life surroundings. I lived in Brazil and Italy, went to an American [international, in practice] school, and had Italian [also, in many ways, international] parents. My teachers were the kind of people who had had the imagination to uproot their lives and go teach kids in a foreign and somewhat distant country. It would not have occurred to me that some people might need to be inspired by Disney movies to break out of conventional lives. And, of course, I didn't think my own life was unconventional, since it was the only life I knew. [And in many respects I still don't think it was.]
If I were in a position to influence a young person, I would want to help her become inspired by the broadness of life's possibilities, including the ones that often go unexplored. But I'm not sure if that would be the right thing. The truth is that, most of the time, refusing to conform, for both a child and an adult, is one of the most maladjusted choices one can make. I couldn't bring myself to laud or urge conformity, which seems so narrow and suffocating, but how much of a favor would I be doing someone [or myself] by encouraging her [me] to become a misfit?
The real challenge, at least for me, is to be accepting and tolerant of people and situations that are mean, dispiriting, or petty. One of the most useful survival skill is grin-and-bear-it endurance, along with placid forbearance in the face of callousness or stupidity. [And I'm using "stupidity" as a way of defining a behavior, not an innate quality. I don't believe that anyone is inherently stupid, only that people of all descriptions can and will do stupid things, including myself, of course.] I don't have that skill. I find it easy to be unconventional. I find it hard to be pliant and easygoing.
Which brings me to the topic that I originally set out to write about. How can anyone convince all the hundreds of millions in the developed world, who are simply living normal lives, that what they do every day is destroying the planet? They are the well-adjusted people, the ones who conform, who do what is normal. Doing the same things that you see most others doing is generally a not unreasonable strategy for living life. All of us employ it to some extent. We cannot possibly be experts on everything, so we have to trust that many of the things we do are okay because they're generally accepted. I don't know exactly how a plane flies, but I know it's okay to ride in one because millions do it every day.
Driving a car for as many as 20,000 miles a year is a perfectly normal thing to do in the U.S. If you were to tell someone that by doing so he is irreparably damaging the environment, you would be the one who is being obtuse. It doesn't matter that you would be right; it's rude to criticize people's personal choices and unseemly to criticize accepted conventions. If you were to suggest to someone that she is digging a bottomless financial hole for herself by accumulating needless things on credit, you would again be obtuse, by speaking on behalf of non-conformity, and rude, by sticking your nose in someone else's business. And I don't think it's good to be rude; I don't practice it [uhm, most of the time...] and don't advocate it. But somehow it isn't considered rude for huge corporations to constantly harangue us with crass entreaties to enrich them while, in the process, sinking ourselves into debt, contributing to world inequality and injustice, and defiling the natural world.
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November 2, 2003
   Black Tape for a Blue Girl
[Richard]
Sometimes I wonder about the relevance of my posts in our journal. I know that a blog is supposed to make room for all sorts of random thoughts, but here we do have a certain focus, and a sort of purpose, that I feel we should stick to as much as possible, at least in a broad sense. Thus, at times, when I post about things such as my favorite bands, I wonder if this material really fits. But then again, sometimes the music turns out to be surprisingly pertinent, either because of the overt lyrical content or because of the thoughts and desires that apparently inspire the members of the band.
In the case of Black Tape for a Blue Girl, the latter is true. Apparently, the band's founder, Sam Rosenthal, has thoughts about consumerism and capitalism that would fit quite well here at Living on Less. That sort of came as a surprise to me, because this is not what you would call a political band. In fact, this whole genre of music, commonly known as ethereal Goth, has a reputation for being anything but political. The music seems to lend itself much more to surreal musings, spiritual visions, and, at least occasionally, lyrics about sex. In Black Tape's case, there are interesting references to artists such as Duchamp and writers such as Kafka, whose work certainly has inspired revolutionaries and dissidents. But, once again, any revolutionary implications are indirect; there is little overt political content in these lyrics, and it would be hard even to picture political lyrics fitting into this dreamy stuff. Thus, I was delightfully surprised to find Sam Rosenthal writing the following musings on an e-mail message stored in a Projectk Records list archive that was linked to the Black Tape for a Blue Girl Web site:
"America is all about the desire to be what we see in commercials during our favorite TV shows.... I think that this western plague of products and inferiority based on one's inability to purchase those products is a real curse on our country....
"I think about what Karl Marx wrote about the working class basically giving their lives to be animals for the moving of things for the rich.... I am forced to be an advertisement for my band. for my 'product' -- because consumerism and capitalism is what keeps me eating, right?
"Here in the west, we have to shit on everyone below us, to keep our spot on the ladder. And that's certainly not what life should be all about....
"We only get about 70 years on the earth. Do we really need to spend it as slaves to the capitalist masters, working a few more hours so we can afford to buy more glittery products? There's got to be a better way!"
Looking at all these comments, I feel now as though there couldn't be a band more appropriate for Living on Less!
But maybe I should add a little more about the music, which, as I said, is dreamy stuff. I discovered this band quite by accident in the late '90s, during the tail end of my rock critic years, when I was still occasionally writing reviews for small-to-medium-sized music magazines such as Option and Alternative Press. I had been sent an invitation to go to a Goth music festival at Irving Plaza in New York City, near Union Square, and I decided to go at the last minute, not really knowing what to expect. I remember being only slightly impressed by the earlier part of the lineup, but when Black Tape for a Blue Girl started playing, I felt as though I had ventured to a different world, getting lost in a unique and beautiful sonic terrain somewhere between Eno and Dead Can Dance.
I have to admit that on disc, Black Tape is occasionally a little difficult to listen to. Sometimes the lyrics and vocals, especially, overreach to the point where they might seem a bit pretentious. But such stumbles can be easily shrugged off with the knowledge that any band that is willing to take so many chances will make a few small mistakes. Plus, I must confess, I am especially willing to overlook the errors and focus on the beautiful moments now that I know that the founder of the band has good politics.
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