God, That Big Apple

[ink_ling]

Listening to local alt-country group Lucero before work today:

I'm just another Southern boy/ who dreams of nights in NYC. / Still I sing along ... sing along.

My tears don't matter much, / Don't matter much.Maybe it's the spare punk drive under this, along with the rasp-twisted vocals, and the rootsiness, but I linger over this line

Comments

[sunsmogseahorse]

But why do you have to mythologize the goal of having a functional, just society? Why not just develop the idea and work toward it? I don't personify having a lesson plan written, or deify it. I just write the damned thing.

[ink_ling]

I think on bigger projects than a lesson plan, such as working towards a just society, you must have hope. And some are in positions to have their hope more severely damaged than others. So if there is a practice that involves communal imagination of something better possible, that also buttresses their hope, then I am all for it.

I, like you, very rarely -- if ever -- need this in a religious context, but as long as the worldview is never pushed on me, then I don't care and don't find it at all dangerous as long as there is a self-consciousness to the myth-building.

It sounds very similar to the neo-pagan approaches I've read about.

[ink_ling]

I want to stress, though, that I believe that -- though I may be wrong -- West thinks of the Christian scripture as illustrative literature, not factual story, and thinks of God as a concept, not a personage.

Religion/spirituality, for me, then, becomes interesting as a process of outlining, building, and sustaining hope and inspiration. I think we all take part in this process but don't all call it religion or spirituality. Still, I think the processes -- whatever their origins -- are good for us to become familiar with now so that we can break into constructive rather than cynical and reactive politics.

[sunsmogseahorse]

I am going to respectfully call that a reach. I think that we're so conditioned to believe in *something* that we call anything that could be remotely thought of as faith, faith. When it ain't.

[ink_ling]

Yeah: It's economically very difficult to get out, I think, but then I'm not sure what other factors there might be -- family responsibilities. This worries me a little as I've started looking for my own way out of the South for a bit, but I am sure I want to give it a real whirl.

Well, I would imagine it would be the job of NY reviewers to be harder on everyone and I wasn't surprised to find the crowds liked them right good.

Just made me wonder; What kind of music do ,i>you listen to?

[ink_ling]

OK: I am quite positive I could sit in a room with you and swivel-chair an afternoon of music away. When I was just starting to listen to music (around 12, I think), my fundamentalist aunt went into a record store in Montgomery, AL, and asked the clerk to recommend something for her nephew for Xmas.

I'm not sure whether he was being mischievous or not, but what I got that year was a double tape -- Talking Heads '77 and More Songs about Buildings and Food.

Personally get into the proto-punk, grrl punk, new wave, country, big band, and bluegrass ... well, let's say I've returned to developing these truncated tastes.

Don't know the Magnetic Fields at all, though I do remember your writing about them before.

Now: You should likely guide me to some good hiphop. An ex of mine used to listen to Talib Kweli and Mos Def a lot, but only mixed into this bunch of house music I could barely tolerate. I am needing more hiphop in my space.

Cash singing "Your Own Personal Jesus" will send you rolling from your seat!

[knockabout]

There are cities within and without our minds, and I have to say that if one goes to the city, one should know the difference. Also, one should know what the city really has to offer, as opposed to what is imagined. I find that New York is the greatest collision imaginable, eight million intersections every second; a rainforest of imaginings that mutate with every conversation, every train ride, with every face that passes by each store-front. The city has greater opportunity for everything, including failure. There is a relationship between the macrocosmic and microcosmic metropolises that depends on one's mental state. If one is hopeful, open and feels their own potential, New York seems like a city of infinite possibility. Conversely, if one is too aware of one's limitations, one sees nothing but despair.

[ink_ling]

I am sure you are absolutely right, N; I'll take your word for it, assuredly, on NYC. Although I've always wondered if I'm not a lake guy as opposed to a pond or sea fella. Only experience, though, and an open disposition -- as you point out -- can really tell.

And I hope this didn't come off as a slight of the actual city in any way. What I have been fascinated with lately, though, is "republics" of the mind and how they are fine-tuned with experience. You know me well enough, I think; while I have infinite respect for the actual, I am also intensely curious about how the imagined intersects on raw tree and concrete.

And -- shucks -- despair don't sound like my empty teacup anyway. :)

[knockabout]

I'm also interested in Utopia; but more how we interact with it on an everyday level. For instance, when I first got to NYC, all I could see were windows, doors, bridges, pavements in all their variety. Each thing was different and interesting and "not like where I was from". I was aware of a city of walls and surfaces, the peculiarities of the partitions and boxes. But once I've come to live here for months, and slowly the walls and windows fade. I'm mostly aware of routes, directions, the pleasantries or unpleasantries that await me if we take 14th Street instead of 13th. The light at 5 pm in November, the way to get to the great Sikh deli and the memory of a gorgeous boy who rode across from me on the A with bruises on his arms, writing in his journal and checking a thesaurus all but replace my interest in the mosaics, cobblestones, the minarets and spires.

[ink_ling]

It's the minarets and the bruised boy, together -- to me.

That sounds absolutely beautiful!

i made it out

[fuchsiafalling]

i'm in chicago. and i dream about lucero. funny.

Re: i made it out

[ink_ling]

I didn't think I'd like their music as much as I do. Still, I'd like to see it strain its boundaries just a little more. I might need to listen to more than just the one song, though.

Congrats on getting to Chi-Town! Sorry I didn't see you before you went! Beth and I have a goal of riding the Amtrak up there, though, sometime between winter and spring; maybe I can track you down then and take you out to eat some foods! You like it so far?

Re: i made it out

[fuchsiafalling]

i love it here!

Re: i made it out

[ink_ling]

Can't wait to see it myself!