Intellectual House o' Pancakes Webdiary

The Psychopath Test

2012-01-24T06:48:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite films of 2009 was The Men Who Stare at Goats, a movie which prompted me to immediately read (and enjoy) the book it was based on. So I was excited to finally read Jon Ronson's latest, released this past Spring.

On the surface this book appears to be about psychopaths and how to spot 'em (hint: there are a lot of them in powerful positions), but this is a Ronson endeavor, so the plot is more complicated and fractal, thrusting out into a bunch of different directions at once, coming around to the theme that while "madness" has a predictability to it, it shows up in unique and varied ways in all of us, making categorization more of an art than a science--and a clumsy and often delusional art at that.

It's impressive how people open up to Ronson, including Haitian death squad leader Toto Constant (his prison interview is priceless); Robert Spitzer, the man who self-admittedly sparked many a diagnostic epidemic as the editor of the DSM-III; and Robert Hare, the developer of the titular checklist that helps identify sociopaths.

Be forewarned that Ronson is very much a post-modern journalist--he inserts himself heavily into the story, a trait I usually find annoying except that his running commentary is hilarious and insightful.

Paul Danziger! Paul Danziger!

2012-01-11T17:10:00.000-08:00

Every time I check my blog stats (pausing briefly to reminisce about the days when I had so much downtime that I checked my stats daily....) I notice that I'm getting lots of hits, from all over the world, on the search term "Paul Danziger."

Clearly, these searchers are not looking for the little eulogy I wrote about my boyfriend's late father, so who is this other Paul Danziger that all the kids are a-Googlin'? Is it this guy from the movie Puncture? Was this heretofore unknown-to-me documentary so popular that people would be looking this fellow up on a daily basis?

Please, wayfaring web stranger, if you are here because you searched for Paul Danziger, might you leave me a comment to explain?

Ethics

2012-01-07T15:53:00.000-08:00

I started a new class this week, Ethics & Legality. I wouldn't have thought there was an entire course worth of material to cover, other than, you know, don't sleep with your clients and try not to murder 'em. But indeed, there is a lot to cover and much food for thought.

This photo has nothing to do with Ethics, but it's a recent fave.

In addition to a close reading and discussion of the ACA's Code of Ethics, we have had some lively debates over the many ethical gray areas that crop up in counseling: issues around confidentiality, diversity, gift-giving, self-disclosure, etc.

We discussed an interesting news item from last summer, in which a grad student sued her former university for kicking her out of their counseling program when she recused herself from counseling a gay student due to her Christian beliefs that homosexuality is morally wrong and harmful. (The student being counseled was not told this of course).

This case seems, at first blush, ethically open-and-shut. But it's really not. Should the grad student's religious views (as creepy as they may seem to me) overrule the university's diversity policy, or is it, in fact, something that the policy should protect? The student was well within her rights to refer the gay counselee (my favorite Ginger Rogers movie) to another counselor, but I also think the program administrators were within their rights to say, "You don't really belong in this program."

It also opens up the larger question of whether this woman would perhaps be better suited for work as a pastor or minister rather than a secular counselor. It also brings up the topic of the difference between institutionalized discrimination and personal bias/preference. Who is harmed when a counselor says, "I won't work this such-and-such population," other than the counselor herself, who is, in my opinion, depriving herself of the opportunity to serve and have compassion toward someone she doesn't understand.

But there are limits to that, too. We're all human. I may have the best intentions to work with, say, rapists, child-beaters, and slow-walkers, but become instantly burned out by constantly bumping into my internal judgments, which would not make me the best listener or helper.

Anyway, cases like this make for great pondering, but there is also a larger benefit for me in taking this class. After a few years of pursuing somewhat unorthodox methods of helping (I don't count yoga in this, because that has its own strong ethical precepts), it is reassuring to be in a profession that has a very defined code of what's legal and ethical (sure there are grey areas, but at least there's a code), with processes in place for people who stray from the center.

The hypnosis (and other alt-therapies) world is like the Wild West in comparison--no laws about supervision, training, licensing, merchandising, privacy, touch, etc. And that has always squicked me out, both as a practitioner and a client. That is not to say that these practices are harmful--indeed I am an advocate of hypnosis, EFT, EMDR, Reiki, acupuncture, and even some more way-out-there modalities in the right hands, and most practitioners I know are completely on the up-and-up, with genuine motives for helping people. It's just that the alt-therapy profession suffers on many levels from the lack of code.

Twenty Twelve!

2012-01-01T12:24:00.000-08:00

I sense I'm in the minority here but...I had a great year in 2011. Nothing spectacular happened, but I remember feeling basically contented, inspired, energized, and grateful for a large portion of it, and I start 2012 (such a satisfyingly futuristic number) with a similar amount of un-cautious optimism.

Some things in particular that gave me hope and/or joy in 2011:

Occupying Wall Street

Attending Brooklyn College

Playing some of the most fun gigs ever, with my new/old band: Dave, Andy, Nancy

Having some amazing, uplifting experiences with my hypnosis clients

Serving my first official psychotherapy client

Purchasing my first official therapist blazer (a bargain, too!)

Despite a non-rock-friendly schedule, cranking out some new songs that I think are pretty good--as well as a lot of spur-of-the-moment, just-ok songs, fun Garageband covers, collaborations with friends, political-comedy songs, etc. It was a good year for music.

It was also a good year for other people's music.

Bringing NVC to the masses (well, to the tiny groups of interested people) via OWS and a couple of workshops back in early '11.

Learning first hand how grass-roots democracy works by getting involved with the participatory budgeting project

Feeling spiritually re-invigorated by a trip to my ashram, during the most exciting weather week of the year: Earthquake-->Hurricane!

Being knocked out and inspired by Joan Jett @ Coney Island, Urge Overkill @ Rock Shop, Jeff Mangum @ Town Hall, Robyn Hitchcock @ Bell House, and Figurines @ Mercury Lounge.

Welcoming Ms. Tallulah "Tuli" Cat-fur-berg Blumenthal Allen Carino Danziger into our home. We love the hell out of her!

I wish you a wonderful 2012.

I know, you know

2011-11-10T18:16:00.001-08:00

I have gone on, at length, about how I don't believe in "guilty musical pleasures"--not because all music is inherently good (I'm not that tolerant) but because no musical preference needs to be shameful.

However!

I have finally identified a song that I'm uncomfortable liking. It irks me that it's not a great song--it sounds like the Gin Blossoms or GooGoo Dolls or some other faux-indie band from the '90s, and the lyrics are lame ("In between the lines/There's a lot of obscurity..."?) but it's so catchy.... it makes me heart beat fast with glee when I hear it... and it embarrasses me that it's a TV show theme, cuz that's got to be one of the worst subgenres of songs ever.

On the plus side, how many power pop TV show themes are there?

Campus Life

2011-11-05T11:43:00.001-07:00

Old timey Bklyn College, a photo by Velvet Cake on Flickr.

Previous to my current educational situation, I have had three college experiences: New College, Ramapo College, and Capella University.

When I went to NC, it was all of 24 years old, and featured space-age, Dr Seuss-like Floridian architecture. Ramapo, even younger, had an ugly '70s institutional design, and Capella's "campus" was my computer desktop.

I am enjoying the old-timey vibe of Brooklyn College, with its sturdy brick buildings, large old trees, and a sniper-friendly clock tower. I love that Abraham Maslow, Mark Strand, and Hannah Arendt taught here, and that Barbara Boxer, Shirley Chisholm, and my boyfriend's 84-year-old mother went to school here. I can't think of any other institution I've been associated with that has that kind of history.

For I am an engine and I'm holding on

2011-11-03T18:52:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, in the midst of a freakish October snowstorm, I saw an amazing set by Jeff Mangum at Town Hall. I wrote a review of the show here, but what I don't mention is a) how church-like and moving and right it was to hear those songs sung live again, and b) how I kept thinking about the surreality of clapping. After someone opens up a vein onstage, we clap. I have always found applause kind of a weird response that puts distance between an artist and an audience, or creates a situation of approval/rejection/judgment that seems kinda low-rent compared to the power of the transaction. When someone performs from his or her heart, it unites us, and then that racket with our hands spoils the unity.

(Interestingly, Jeff quite selflessly exhorted the crowd to sing along for much of the show, and I think that's what he was getting at, too, although I was not a big fan of the singalong part, it felt too Rod Stewart-y.)

Anyway, it was a transcendent show, and I've been in a Neutral Milk Hotel reverie all week...

Here's the lovely NMH b-side that he wisely chose to end the evening.

Rolling....

2011-10-31T07:29:00.001-07:00

Recording!, a set on Flickr.

Yesterday, the band (and Sharples as coach) went into our rehearsal studio armed with two laptops, two portable stereo recorders, several mics, a dozen bagels, and some excellent coffee, and we recorded the basics for five songs. Depending on how good they sound, these will be demos or actual album tracks.

We were able to get a surprising amount of separation using coats and blankets as baffles, and we got a lot done in just six hours. I can't wait to do overdubs. Very pleased with this latest batch o' songs, and more than pleased with my wondrous band.

You've got a nice personality

2011-10-23T08:08:00.000-07:00

I'm going to get my only criticism of Sybil Exposed out of the way: the sensationalistic title is not an appropriate reflection of the solid research and sober message behind Debbie Nathan's book. This is an important work of journalism, and it sounds like a pot-boiler.

Anyway, this is the page-turning tale of how psychiatrist Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, writer Flora Rheta Schreiber, and "Sybil" (Shirley Ann Mason) perpetrated a hoax on the world by fabricating the story of the world's most famous psychiatric patient, and in turn created an epidemic of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) cases and "recovered memory" abuse cases which persisted through the 1990s and ruined many lives.

Why? Each had her own motives, which Nathan astutely and even somewhat compassionately explains.

Shirley Mason started seeing Dr. Wilbur while she was in college. She was an intelligent and sensitive art student whose psychiatric problems (blackouts, tunnel vision, arm numbness, walking into walls, hallucinations, mood swings) can now, in retrospect, be explained most readily by pernicious anemia, which she had been diagnosed with years earlier. (Her mother also likely had it).

But Wilbur, a staunch Freudian, insisted that some awful trauma must have happened to her to explain her symptoms, and she decided that she would stop at nothing until she uncovered the traumatic source. She interrogated her client for hours under hypnosis and on heavy, addictive barbiturates, til Shirley, in an effort to please her beloved doctor, "admitted" that her mother had inflicted the most mind-blowing, gothic torture on her, and she now had many splintered selves as a result. Years into the therapy, she tried to recant, but Dr Wilbur wouldn't hear of it and chalked it up to resistance. (Freudians!)

From the time she started therapy as a college student, through the rest of her days, Shirley became financially and emotionally dependent on Dr Wilbur, who demonstrated no personal or professional boundaries and basically took over her life.

Dr. Wilbur genuinely thought she was helping Shirley, and ultimately other helpless young women, and she also had a deep need for a big scientific score. Whether consciously or unconsciously, she seemed to believe that becoming an expert in a previously obscure disorder would make her a psychiatric savior and respected member of the field.

Schreiber, a "society" journalist, also wanted to be taken seriously as a professional, and wanted this book to make her a household name. She was skeptical all along about Shirley's claim of MPD, but didn't start fact-checking her case til she was already in over her head. Between the three women, the lies just piled up.

Schreiber and Dr Wilbur benefited financially from the book, which was a huge best-seller, and Shirley benefited, too, for a time, but eventually went into hiding lest she be found out and be made accountable for all the untruths contained in the book. As long as "Sybil" remained mysterious, no one would be the wiser. This decades-long period of hermitage destroyed any personal progress that she had made, and she died broke, lonely, and unfulfilled as an artist or fully-rounded person.

This is a cautionary tale about public hysteria (fact-checking saves lives!), about how the therapeutic alliance can go awry, and about two-bit journalists who just wanna have a best-seller at the expense of telling the truth. Mostly, it is a handbook on how to manufacture a psychiatric diagnosis.

Why it's still ok to mourn the death of celebrities: Steve Jobs edition

2011-10-16T08:46:00.000-07:00

There is a Photoshopped doohickey going around (I'm not going to post it) on Facebook that posits that it's a terrible thing to mourn Steve Jobs while "millions of people die" and "no one gives a shit." I have not wanted to respond on FB because I get a little too het-up about these things, and my intention is never to make people feel defensive about what they've posted.

At the same time, I really value discourse and critical thinking. So I hope by writing this in my widely unread globbe I can discuss this without anyone feeling bad about it.

So, the photo.

This comparison doesn't make a lot of sense. No pun intended but it's apples and oranges. The logical fallacy here is that, on the one hand, there is Steve Jobs, and on the other hand, there are these unspecified "millions of people" dying that no one cares about. And that one must choose whose death(s) to take note of.

People naturally mourn the deaths of people they know, and sometimes that includes famous people, because there is a sense that they are "known." Steve Jobs was a hugely influential individual for better or worse. His death sparked not just mourning, but a wider discussion about corporate ethics (Chinese sweatshops!) and the role of technology in the social order. He was despised by some, and was an inspirational, iconoclastic role model for many.

At the same time, when a famine or drought overtakes a country, and people die, it is tragic but it is abstract. It is easy to feel terribly about it, and donate money, which most people I know do regularly. For some people, it is their life's work to find solutions, even if that sense of personal mourning may not be present. None of the above suggests that "we are a flawed society." (I mean we are, but not because of those things).

It's a rather sweeping generalization to say that "no one gives a shit" when people die of natural tragedies--the outpouring of donations and aid after the earthquake in Haiti and the Japanese earthquake/tsunami are two recent examples of epic, global "giving a shit." People have the capacity to mourn personal losses and at the same time feel a general sense of compassion for losses that they can't personally grieve--the two things are not mutually exclusive.

Reader, if you feel that the people you know aren't giving a shit, then educate them--be active about posting donation sites or proposed solutions to famine, drought, etc. Support research. Or stop being friends with those people, who needs 'em?

I totally understand how helpless people feel sometimes about the problems and social disparities in this world. It truly sucks. I submit that making logical fallacies come to life via pretty pictures seems like an unproductive solution to these problems.

Milgram at 50: Still Shocking

2011-10-16T08:05:00.000-07:00

This is the 50th anniversary of Stanley Milgram's famous/infamous experiment that suggested that, in a controlled environment, at least 2/3 of subjects would administer painful shocks to innocent fellow subjects simply because they were ordered to do so by a white-coat.

We all know this story (and if you don't, it's worth reading about in the link above or at the Wiki. Or you can listen to Peter Gabriel's '80s-damaged song about it, although that won't help you much).

But, being a fan of positive psychology, I have to wonder what made that one-third stop administering shocks?

I recall seeing the then-current official documentary film about this in college (on an actual film projector!) that framed the experiment in an interesting way. It first showed the people who refused to continue the experiment when the shocks got painful. Then it showed the people who gave the shocks, but the film is clear: they did not look happy, or comfortable. It was clearly a painful moral conflict for the ones who carried through with the shocking. I remember at the time feeling less freaked out by the experiment after seeing that people were not blithely hurting each other--the ones who did it felt awful about it (to the extent that the experiment was considered unethical and abusive.) This counts for something--the people who continued the experiment even when it went against their morals at least could see how wrong it was.

But again, I'm more interested in that one-third who refused. What were they like? Who were they? What crossed their minds when they said, "No?" It seems to me that these are the people we want to learn from.

OWS, Days 23, 26, 27

2011-10-15T12:31:00.001-07:00

Occupy Wall Street, Days 23, 26, 27, a set on Flickr.

Yesterday (Friday) was the day that Mayor Bloomberg was supposed to "evict" the protestors from the park, and when that didn't happen, the relief and joy were palpable in the crowd. Despite a steady downpour all day, the atmosphere was jubilant and circus-like.

I wasn't there for the announcement, but I came by later to staff the NVC table (which finally seems to have found a semi-stable "home.")

As has been the case before, as soon as I hung out my "Free Empathy" shingle, my table was swarmed by folks just wanting to talk, either to air their grievances, or to learn more about NVC. I was gratified by the warmth, intelligence, and passion demonstrated by everyone who stopped by, and was glad to inform people that an NVC mediation was happening as we spoke, between two factions of the protest who were not seeing eye-to-eye, facilitated by one of my colleagues.

One well-spoken man told me his tale of having served jail time for a crime he committed while experiencing a manic episode. Now, years later, under a psychiatrist's care and taking his bipolar meds, he can't get a job, and he is intensely frustrated at not being able to contribute to society and having to rely on his family's ever-dwindling cash reserves and sympathy. Other less dramatic but just as compelling stories were revealed by virtual strangers who seemed eager to get this stuff off their chests.

Other folks came by and asked me what they could do to contribute to OWS. I guess being behind a table and wearing my authoritative rain slicker made me look knowledgeable, so I said, I hope correctly, "Send food, cleaning supplies, and sleeping bags, and log onto OccupyWallStreet to find lists of needed items and mailing addresses."

People also just came up to shoot the breeze (See "Shock Doctrine boy" above), to offer free cookies ("Uh, these are just regular cookies, right? No pot?"), free bottles of water, handshakes.

At one point, I realized that I was just barely in the frame of a reggae video being shot near my table. If you see the pale right hand and two inches of forehead of an earnest-looking white lady in a reggae vid, please let me know.

By the end of my time there yesterday, I realized that this was the most connected, alive, and useful I'd felt in a long time. I feel this way often when I teach yoga and sometimes when I play shows. I'd like to shoot for feeling this full-hearted as much as I possibly can.

Occupy Wall Street Day 18

2011-10-09T08:15:00.001-07:00

Occupy Wall Street Day 18, a set on Flickr.

A week ago, although riveted by OWS, I was still expressing some ambivalence about the protest, and lamented its lack of specificity. Now, I feel like I'm more and more on board, possibly because of the lack of specificity. I like that this is truly a blend of ideologies, a protest born of morality rather than politics.

I am not political. I don't think politics is going to save the world. But I want our species to pull together and survive, and the only way we can do that is to recognize the humanity of the people around us (including the so-called 1%), and to, as the saying goes, put people before profits. I think OWS is a good start in that direction.

I also think these folks (us folks) could learn a thing or two about how to communicate anger and protest without alienating the targets of their anger, or turning this into an Us/Them thing. To that end, I'll be staffing a table this week that some New York NVC people are setting up, to help acquaint the protestors with some nonviolent communication techniques. I am excited about this. NVC + OWS = unstoppable positive force.

P.S. I wrote a li'l anthem for OWS. It's corny, as anthems are, but I'm hiding behind the Screaming Majority for this one. Stay tuned (we haven't recorded it yet).

Occupy Wall Street

2011-09-28T20:37:00.001-07:00

Occupy Wall Street, a set on Flickr.

I spent some time down at "Liberty Square" today, on Day 11 of Occupy Wall Street. I hope this demonstration is winning some hearts and minds, raising awareness, etc. I am concerned that it is not very clear in its goals. One thing I've learned on a microcosmic level is that change tends to happen when people can clarify problems and make specific requests. This small enclave of people have shown that they can come together and live somewhat peaceably without overbearing leaders, and the "occupation" format seems to be picking up in other cities, and all that is good. But what specifically needs to change, and what steps need to be taken to change things? Will Joe Average's mind change? Will "Wall Street" listen? This remains to be seen. Still--it's nice that people are trying.

On Being Sane in Insane Places

2011-09-02T13:21:00.000-07:00

This 1973 article originally published in Science magazine has been debated through the years, and has fallen in and out (and in again, and out) of favor with the mental health profession, but, significantly, it is still frequently assigned reading in psych classes. It questions the validity and usefulness of psychiatric diagnoses, and brings up some important questions about how "mental patients" are (mis)treated and stigmatized.

Whether you agree or disagree with its findings, philosophy, or methodology (and there is a lot to debate here), it remains a classic of the field--just a crackin' good tale that should be made into a movie.

To be fair, here is a very well-written rebuttal (PDF), which argues for the value of psychiatric diagnoses (however fuzzy they can be), and also questions some of the straw-man points of the original article.

My own opinion is that the author of the original 1973 piece raises important sociological issues about labeling people, and about how we perceive behavior in specific contexts. He also points out that psychiatric patients get very little actual therapy or attention paid to them aside from being doled out medications by overworked staff members, a trend that has improved a little bit since the '70s thankfully, perhaps because of articles like this.

At the same time, I agree with the rebuttal that accuses the author of practicing pseudoscience and making claims that are unsubstantiated by the research. I also agree that outpatient psychiatric patients (or former patients) are not necessarily stigmatized due to their diagnoses or labels, but because, well, their behavior is aberrant. The scary guy on the train doesn't wear a label "schizophrenic," but we immediately pick up on it, and we move to another car (even though--tip!--most schizophrenics are not violent). The constantly drama-creating friend doesn't irk because she's been diagnosed as "borderline personality disorder" (although I still think this is totally overdiagnosed) but because she was a pain in the ass long before she ever got tagged thus.

I do believe that labels/diagnoses can become self-fulfilling prophecies. Don't even get me started on how many times I've seen this in my life. This claim would be hard to prove scientifically. Someone needs to come up with a clever experimental design to make this more believable so that it can be addressed in the trenches...although most cognitive-behavioral therapies are predicated on the idea that behavior is the salient feature that needs to be monitored and changed in order for a client to heal.

My last spate of summer reading: book round-up!

2011-08-31T16:34:00.000-07:00

School has started, and it's nothin' but journal articles and textbooks til December, so I went on a little readin' spree in August. Here's what I read.

Apologies to my friends on Good Reads who already saw these....

Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music

There's no doubt that Ellen Willis was a brilliant writer, had a great mind, and I bet she was an amazing person, but every time I pick up a book like this, I remember how much of a drag it is to read Serious Rock Criticism. If that's your thing, though, you can't do better than this. (Although Willis gets points deducted for both liking Madonna and comparing Madonna favorably to Janis Joplin. I don't even like Janis Joplin all that much, but I felt irritated on her behalf.)

Do One Thing Different: And Other Uncommonly Sensible Solutions To Life's Persistent Problems

by Bill O'Hanlon

The world of psychotherapy is leaning more and more toward brief, "evidence-based," cognitive behavioral therapy, a trend that I mostly favor. O'Hanlon (a clear and concise writer) takes the concepts of positive psychology and solution-focused therapy and makes them available to the casual reader. Don't wrinkle yer nose cuz it's a self-help book, because it is not gimmicky or shallow, but the result of sound research and time-tested wisdom, with a little dash of radical iconoclasm to make it interesting.

A Guide to Trance Land

by Bill O'Hanlon

Good, constructive advice for hypnotherapists using brief therapy formats. Clear and simply written.

Everything Is Obvious: Once You Know the Answer

by Duncan J. Watts

Whenever I hear (or read) an otherwise intelligent person deriding a social psych experiment-- e.g., "I can't believe someone had to research whether the media causes poor body image in teenage girls! Everybody knows it does!"--I weep for humanity. The tools of social science are imprecise, and what "everybody knows" is often wrong, or not proven by studies, or rendered inconclusive by the data. That's why we do studies, that's why we keep the research and the conversation going when studies contradict each other, and why we need to keep recalibrating our tools*.

(*Heh.)

It is a great relief to read anything by sociologist Duncan Watts, the world's eminent expert on social networks, who makes a good case for not accepting "common sense" wisdom to explain human behavior. People, especially in groups, are far more unpredictable than authors like Malcolm Gladwell, with his tipping points and blinks, would have you believe.

Watts is a swell writer--presenting vivid examples in a voice that's one part scholarly, one part folksy (but not condescending).

Hush

By Eishes Chayil

This YA novel functions on a couple of different levels. Written by the pseudonymous Eishes Chayil (who has since revealed her real name as Judy Brown), it gives a rare insider glimpse into Borough Park's Hassidim. It also exposes the routine (and in the author's words, delusional) repression of sexual crimes within the community. It is a brave and important book, and the ending had me verklempt. The fascinating subject matter makes up for Brown's somewhat dry, matter-of-fact writing.

Fool the World: The Oral History of a Band Called Pixies

by Josh Frank

One of my favorite bands gets the Studs Terkel treatment, and it's an inspiring, absorbing read. (The first third of the book is almost a co-biography of Throwing Muses, because the two bands were integral to each other's success.)

The Secret Adversary

by Agatha Christie

"Bolshevists"--those crumb-bums!--are at the center of this goofy, fun early Agatha novel, featuring Tommy and Tuppence, her Nick & Nora-esque amateur detectives. Really not her best work, but it kept my mind occupied on the subway, and it's a free download on any of the sites linked in the title above.

'twixt the 'quake and the 'cane

2011-08-27T06:02:00.000-07:00

Just came back from a soul-restoring visit to Satchidananda Ashram (a.k.a. Yogaville), which was a necessary reminder of how I want to live, teach, eat, and organize my priorities. It is hard to capture in words what this place does to me, but after just a few minutes on its grounds it feels like a heavy, wet garment has been lifted off my shoulders. I wish I could have stayed longer, but even just a short time was enough.

One thing that always strikes me when I go there is how asana practice is integral to the whole yogic system (ashramites have the opportunity to take two hatha classes per day, plus pranayama before all three meditation sessions), but the details and refinement of the individual postures are just not a big deal. Surgically precise alignment and elaborate instructions--the stuff that seems so central when I teach or practice--are not emphasized at all in the Integral Yoga system. Love, service, openness, community, ecumenism, and meditation are all in the foreground, and the physical stuff is an expression of that, rather than a means to an end. Something to remember when I'm wracking my brain trying to come up with something "interesting" to teach my students, as if I have to entertain them.

On the way down, N. and I stopped in Harpers Ferry, WV, an amazingly quaint little quarry town with a complicated relationship to race relations. John Brown--hero or villain? The issue seems more complicated down South. Also learned that Meriwether Lewis stopped there before his big trip with Clark, and W.E.B. DuBois hosted the second Niagara Conference at the Storer School (an exhibit devoted to the school--which eventually became a college--is powerfully moving).

West Virginia should post signs: "Caution: John Denver Earworm Hazard, next 100 miles." For 24 hours, all I could hear in my head was "....somethin' somethin' ...Blue Ridge Mountains....blah blah...Shenandoah Ri-i-ver..."

On the way back from the 'shram, we had intended to visit my grandmother's childhood home town, Havre de Grace, Maryland, but we decided to drive right through in order to get home and batten down the hatches.

Whether this hurricane obliterates NYC or leaves us unscathed, or any possibility in between, preparing for it gave me a sense of calm purpose, no doubt a byproduct of my peaceful week. We cleared our back porch of things that can fly in the wind, tied the grill and propane tanks to the deck beams, and stashed many vessels of water. I discovered that N. has been hoarding pickle jars since we moved in together, so we had lots of containers. Who knows what will happen?

If you are in Irene's path, I wish you good luck and fortitude.

Bitchin'!

2011-08-20T12:17:00.000-07:00

Historically, I have had a problem with the word "bitch."

I realize it's a pretty mundane put-down, barely even a swear word (you could say it on TV as far back as the early '80s, and apparently its usage has tripled in the last decade), but nevertheless it has always been fraught for me. When I was younger, if I heard a man use it toward a woman, it bore the taint of misogyny and dominance, and when women used it toward each other, it broke my heart, cuz it's like self-hatred turned Uncle Tom-ishly towards others in the same boat.

Somewhere in the '90s, it was reappropriated by women to mean, I guess, "sassy, no-nonsense dame with shoulder pads and a law degree" but that image doesn't resonate with me either.

Now in the 21st century, it seems that everyone's calling everyone a bitch. Men can call men bitches, women can call men bitches--everyone's doin' it. Children, animals, cops. If anyone can be a bitch, or call anyone else one, then everyone can. So the word has lost a bit of its charge, replaced by an exciting new, inclusive sense of meanness and aggression. Everybody's mad at everyone else, but equally! Yay. One step at a time.

Radio Shangri-La: review

2011-08-01T07:15:00.000-07:00

Radio Shangri-La is the story of Lisa Napoli, a forty-three year old, L.A.-based radio producer who is offered a volunteer opportunity to help the Kingdom of Bhutan get its first-ever radio station up and running. As Bhutan is notoriously difficult for foreigners to gain access to, this position allows her a rare opportunity to visit what many believe to be the "happiest place on earth."

The trip also dovetails with Napoli's increased preoccupation with finding true happiness after a lifetime of false starts and stalled dreams, and she figures, what better place to explore the topic of well-being than an unspoiled country that measures its wealth in terms of Gross National Happiness?

Napoli describes, with a mixture of awe and bemusement, the rapid changes unfolding in Bhutan, as it evolves from a protected, mysterious kingdom to a multi-party democracy with ever-increasing contact with the outside world, via TV, Internet, and radio. As a travelogue, it is fascinating, and Napoli herself seems like a reliable narrator: intelligent, level-headed, kind, and, while interested in self-growth, not unhealthily self-absorbed. Her relationship as a den mother to the various colorful Bhutanese radio staffers is sweet, and echoes her perspective as a wizened witness to Bhutan's democratic adolescence.

By the end of the book (spoiler!) she comes to realize that, as valuable as her experience in the kingdom has been, her happiness has nothing to do with circumstances:

There was no better place. There were no better people. All I really needed was here inside me.

The success of a memoir, at least for me, is balanced on the writer's basic likability and the subject matter, and Radio Shangri-La wins on both counts. Napoli is a graceful, thoughtful writer, and Bhutan, even with its flaws revealed, emerges as a thoroughly charming, and deceptively complex, place.

Oh My God, it's a Movie Round-up Post!

2011-07-30T06:30:00.000-07:00

In no particular order, some wee movie reviews:

The Adjustment Bureau seems like it was written by a freshman comp student who did a little Wikipedia research about "free will." (It is supposedly based on a Philip K. Dick short story, but I can't imagine the source material is this insipid).

Tree of Life is not for everyone, especially if you don't like long scenes of lava, cell mitosis, and people hosing their feet, but I loved every weird, lyrical moment of it. The story is told so subtly--there isn't an obvious unfoldment in the entire movie, except the hokey-ish ending which managed not to mar the experience for me, and in fact inspired tears. Long story short: it's about, um, life and all its tiny movements.

Project Nim is a riveting documentary which tells the tale of the little chimp of the '70s who was taught sign language and raised like a baby, to see if he would eventually be able to use language like a human (short answer: no, but he gets emotionally attached to his people, and vice-versa.) Tons of footage of Nim and his various care-takers, plus talking-head interviews and artful reenactments, convey his dramatic, often sad, story, and bring up questions about what actually constitutes humane treatment of animals in scientific experiments, and what it means to be a "person." You will love "Bob," Nim's best human pal.

X-men First Class: I was an easy mark here. I was a fan of the comic as a teenager, have enjoyed all of the movies so far, love origin tales, and, to boot, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, and James McEvoy are three of my favorite recent film actors. It's a tad long, but I enjoyed the whole ride, and liked watching Magneto being unvillainous.

Submarine is like a Belle & Sebastian song come to life, kind of twee and horndog at the same time. The comparison I'm sure lots of people are making is Rushmore, because of the subject matter and its several obvious nods to Wes Anderson, but it's not as interesting or unpredictable, just Welsh-ily charming, warm and occasionally chuckle-worthy. Charlie Bucket's dad and Paddy Considine give lovely performances, and I like that the teenage lead actors look awkward, cute, and lumpy like real teenagers.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams is wonderful. I don't know if it's still playing anywhere, but it's worth seeing on a big screen, and in 3-D, to get the full effect of the humid, claustrophobic caves and the stunning cave paintings. Herzog's narration is soothing, and the interviews with eccentric French scientists verge on poetry.

Bridesmaids is funny and touching. (Sorry, it's been so long now, that's all I remember.)

Overcoming Trauma Through Yoga: review.

2011-07-24T09:38:00.000-07:00

This very useful book is divided into sections aimed at clinicians, yoga teachers, and PTSD sufferers, respectively, and has insightful advice for all three.

The essential wisdom imparted here is that a simple hatha yoga practice can support the treatment of trauma by a) reintroducing the PTSD client to having and making meaningful choices when it seems like all choices have been taken away; b) cultivating a sense of living in the present in a way that feels safe; c) taking effective physical action, in direct opposition to what happens in a trauma situation where great effort is made, and often unsuccessfully, toward simply getting away from the threat; and d) establishing personal and interpersonal rhythms when the client may feel out-of-step with his or her own biorhythms, emotions, other people, etc.

I liked the straightforward tone, and the material is streamlined enough that you can pretty much absorb the whole thing in one or two sittings, and start applying it immediately.

Orgasmatron

2011-07-04T05:37:00.000-07:00

The debate rages on about antidepressants and psychiatry, and even people like me who deeply mistrust the pharmaceutical industry recognize that psych meds are helpful in some cases.

But, boy, does the medical-industrial complex have egg on its face when it comes to invented diseases like "female sexual dysfunction," the topic of the amusing documentary Orgasm, Inc.

Director Liz Canner interviews several key players in the race to create a "female Viagra" marketed to perfectly healthy women who may not be happy with their sex lives, or who feel that they are not "normal" because they can't have orgasms during regular intercourse (which is actually normal). She also interviews women who seek outlandish and dangerous treatments (e.g. vaginal plastic surgery, expensive clinical treatments, and freakiest of all, the "Orgasmatron"--not to be confused with this) in an effort to fix what ain't broken.

This humble (and often funny) little video doc is pretty damning. Representatives from drug companies smile right into the camera and say, "Hey, this stuff doesn't work--but we're going to sell it anyway!" They can't wipe the sheepish grins off their faces. The two sister-doctors (featured on Oprah) who, through their books and chat show appearances, have popularized "female sexual dysfunction" as a disorder, continue to pimp "female Viagra" on TV shows and in their clinics, even though clinical trials could not prove that it worked. Why? Cuz, according to this documentary, they each get $75,000 per day to promote the drug.

In one very uncomfortable scene, a rep from a "labial reconstruction" clinic describes the procedure, and admits that she feels ambivalent about it, and should probably look for another job. (She doesn't).

Luckily, the madness is being challenged by people like Leonore Tiefer, who started the New View Campaign to counteract the medicalization of sex, and who is active in protesting things like the marketing of sex-aid pills, vaginal plastic surgery, and testosterone patches for women. Two scenes of advisory committee meetings/public hearings in which the FDA rejects female Viagra and the testosterone patch, respectively, reassure us that Big Pharma has not completely taken over our government institutions.

The lessons here, as always: knowledge is power; follow the money--if a clinical trial of a drug or procedure is funded by Proctor & Gamble, look for corroborating non-commercially sponsored studies before you decide to go ahead with it; be your own "thought leader," and try to avoid pathologizing stuff that is just a normal part of life.

A book review that will surprise exactly no one

2011-06-02T14:29:00.001-07:00

I've written in the past about the moment that Tina Fey became my celebrity BFF (you have to scroll down), and four years down the road, I am still loving 30 Rock. Very few TV shows, even the very best, can maintain quality over the course of five seasons, but they've pulled it off, IMO.

So I came to Fey's book Bossypants expecting to love it, and--hey!--I did.

It's not a straight autobio, but rather a series of reflective essays, and not only are they unfailingly funny--I laughed out loud (there's got to be a shorter way to write that) at least every few pages--but they also reveal Fey to be a humane, humble, and very sane person with non-bandwagon ideas and opinions.

She speaks respectfully and affectionately about her employers, employees, colleagues, family, even Sarah Palin and John McCain whose politics she abhors, but doesn't pull any punches when decrying sexism in the media and discussing other social issues, large and small. I also like that she completely owns her dorkiness, but her self-deprecation is mild and not scathing.

(As opposed to, say, Gilbert Gottfried's seemingly pathological self-loathing. I had to read his book for work, and it retroactively made me like Bossypants even more. Actually, it made me retroactively like every other book I've ever read more).

There is a clever and moving passage about the life lessons she's learned from doing improv which I found myself silently cheering--it's all about saying, "Yes, and..." rather than going through life harboring fear and negativity. But the most resonant line from the entire book--I got a little tearful on reading it--happens at the end of a chapter praising her friend Amy Poehler:

"Do your thing and don't care if they like it."

The Right Reverend

2011-05-27T18:38:00.000-07:00

In 2003, I got myself "ordained" (legally, but the quotation marks seem necessary somehow) by the Universal Life Church so I could perform a wedding ceremony for two friends.

I got my ordination certificate and my letter-of-good-standing, married the two in a lovely ceremony in a neighborhood theater that they converted into a den of nuptial love, signed the marriage license, and everything went off more or less without a hitch (ha--get it, "hitch"?). I even entertained the idea of doing more ceremonies, briefly entranced with the idea of rituals and rites for all the stages of our lives (marriage, divorce, child-naming, toilet-training, etc.).

Last week, I got a nice catch-up email from my friend saying, "Oh, um, by the way...we went down to the courthouse today to get a copy of our marriage license [for something insurance-related], and they said they don't have it because we were never legally married."

Wha--?

First it seemed a niggling matter of my having written, in the tiny space provided on the marriage license, "Brooklyn" instead of the full street address for the wedding venue. Easy enough to clarify.

Then it turned out that New York City is one of only two cities in the country where you have to register beforehand as a "marriage officiant" with the city clerk, or the weddings you perform are null and void. No one told me this eight years ago. Meanwhile, my friends have had two children together, blissfully unaware that they were living in Satan's playhouse.

The deadline was quickly approaching for my friend's insurance application, and the city clerk kindly said that if I just get the proper paperwork from ULC, I could register and they would retroactively consider my friends legally married.

ULC seemed cooperative and friendly about sending my necessary paperwork, but proved to be kind of incompetent, and a little dog-ate-my-homework dishonest on top of that. I was disappointed. I can't tell exactly where the ULC is coming from--some aspects of their mission seem utterly sincere, and at other times it seems like they are perpetrating a kind of JR Bob Dobbs hoax. But, whatevs. After many follow-up phone calls and exasperating conversations, it all worked out in the end. They overnighted (at my expense) the paperwork with one day to spare before my friend's insurance application was due.

Today I went to the Marriage Bureau at city hall, a weirdly free-wheelin' civil office where people in various stages of heightened emotion (jubilation to sadness to grim determination, is how I was reading it) were mingling with dour-faced clerks, camera flashes a-poppin with runway intensity. I got my official damn reverend license.

So. If you know any city folk who are looking to tie the knot, I would be honored.

Meanwhile, according to the pamphlet provided with my paperwork, here are some of the titles I can now go by:

Abbess
Angelic healer
Apostle of Humility
Arch Angel
Ascetic Gnostic
Baroness (yes!)
Colonel
Dervish
Flying Missionary
Lay Sister
Messenger
Orthodox Monk
Prebendary
Revelator
Right Reverend
Saintly Healer
Spiritual Warrior
Teller
The Very Esteemed
Universal Philospher of Absolute Reality
Wizard

Oh, the places you'll play

2011-05-24T13:32:00.000-07:00

Despite always feeling like a beginner at this music thing, I have accumulated some wisdom about playing live shows.

Youngsters, pull up a chair. Wizened old-timers, feel free to share your own advice in the comments section.

Off the top of my head, here are some nuggets:

--No matter how prepared and organized you are, some stupid little logistical or technical problem will crop up on the day of your show. E.g., the sound guy tells you that the house amp is busted and you have an hour to find a replacement amp, or the drummer's car dies and he can't haul his gear, or your bass player is accidentally double-booked, blah blah blah.

I have learned that these problems are never worth getting agitated about because they always work themselves out. Like a zit on your chin, they crop up, then they go away, and your having freaked out about them adds nothing to the process.

--Be nice to the sound guy/gal; actively engage and tell him or her exactly what you'll be needing from them. They are your ally and your intermediary between band and audience.

--There will always be one unexpectedly great thing about even the worst shows. Maybe you didn't play at the top of your form, but you will be blessed with a great monitor, or the club will be a hellhole, but will have excellent bathrooms. Maybe the band will outnumber the audience, but one key audience member will end up becoming a fan for life, or you'll befriend the other band(s) on the bill and spark a years-long collaborative relationship.

--Don't drink alkyhol before a show, especially if you are singing. You might think it relaxes you, but it also dries out and irritates the throat, and since you'll probably be less body-aware, it may cause you to unconsciously do unskillful things like hunch your shoulders or tense up your throat muscles, etc. Drink alkyhol after a show, though! That's God's plan.

--Singers would also do well to buy one of these beverage holders for the mic stand. It's $10 well spent, cuz you won't have to keep bending down to get your water.

--Speaking of drinking, a few nights ago, I saw someone (not from my band) use her free drink ticket without tipping the bartender. She clearly didn't know the rules. Always tip your bartender, even if you're drinking for free.

--When someone tells you they are "really gonna try and make it to your gig," you can be assured, just as night follows day, that you will not see hide nor hair of that person. This is the case 100% of the time. But...

--...don't worry about "taking attendance" at a show. When you're just getting started, you may have to depend on your friends/family/coworkers/coven-mates to support you at performances, and you'll find that people come through for you to varying degrees. Be glad for the ones who show up, thank them, and let go of feeling bad about who is not there. People have all kinds of reasons for not coming to see your band play. Sometimes it's because they don't like your music, or think you suck, but often it's for reasons that have nothing to do with you. Eventually, when you get a following, this will become a non-issue.

--My cardinal rule: unless you are a cloistered monk, no sandals onstage!

One more word about the Rapture, and then I'm done with the topic.

2011-05-23T02:16:00.000-07:00

A day late and a dollar short, but this piece (h/t Chris Arnade for the link) sums up eloquently almost exactly what I attempted to say the other day in a brief Facebook status update, which generated a day-long, uh, firestorm of commentary. I ended up taking down the comment thread because it just got kinda intense, and I didn't feel like hosting a holy war on my FB page.

Smugness makes me sad, and that's what I kept seeing/reading/hearing all around me last week in the media, on Facebook, in blogs, and in casual conversation. "Rational" people deriding rapturists, sometimes mildly and humorously, sometimes scathingly, and sometimes rather hatefully. And in such numbers that it was hard to escape. The mockers defended themselves with the notion that the kind of Christians who believe in Rapture are the same kind of Christians who are homophobic and racist, etc., so it's ok. (In other words, "Well, they started it.")

The problem with that attitude, of course, is that it makes the rapturists into The Other. Those people don't deserve our respect or empathy because They are not like Us. The first step in dehumanizing a group of people is assuming that everyone in that group is exactly alike, and if they are all exactly alike, we can relax our standards of empathy and just blast everything they do.

"Geez, lighten up, what's wrong with making a little joke?"

Nothing at all. At first, I laughed along, too. But when the laughter becomes a little too loud and frequent, it builds up to an ugly and mobbish din. Every little joke adds up, and makes it easier to slip into that Us/Them mindset. That's what disturbs me, not the jokes themselves, because it's born of the same belief in separation that ultimately disturbs the mind, and can cause (or justify) more serious violence and hatred down the line.

Burning Down the House

2011-05-16T12:30:00.000-07:00

This fun, interactive photo essay asks the age-old question, "If your house were burning down, what would you save?"

If you're David Byrne, of course, the answer is "My gigantic white novelty suit."

(B.t.w., this is an easy one for me: everything I have is replaceable except my journals/notebooks, so they'd get saved first. If there's time left, one guitar, and my recording masters and whatever jeans I like at the moment.)

But I also enjoy this essay cuz I love pictures of groups of objects. Not "still life" portraits per se but objects that are linked in some obsessive way.

When I was a teenager, every few months I took a picture of my favorite things. The only remaining example I have of that series is the one I made at age 17(?), featured here.

Pictured: my leather jacket (later stolen), spaghetti, the first Jonathan Richman solo album, the first Pretenders album, Franny and Zooey, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, my favorite red t-shirt, and the play Antigone.

Dancer with Bruised Knees

2011-05-08T08:03:00.000-07:00

(Some general spoilers about Black Swan contained herein, so if you are one of the five people who have still not seen it, proceed with caution)

This month, the lead article in Yoga Journal (I always feel a need to insert this disclaimer when I mention YJ: every issue is 75% yuppie lifestyle bullshit, but the other 25% is reliably useful and inspiring) is about “truth-centered leadership.” During the course of the article, the celebrated yoga teacher Seane Corn speaks about the discomfort she experienced when she met and began collaborating with another up-and-coming yoga “star.”

“…She felt a subtle wave of insecurity, as if the vibrant upstart teacher’s own success might undermine her own…But Corn is well-practiced in exploring difficult feelings and looking for opportunities to be of service, and she agreed to share her knowledge and support…”

The article goes on to describe their now-close friendship and the good work they’ve done together. I was moved by this. It acknowledges that sometimes friendships (especially between women) can be potentially fraught with competition, but with grace and conscious awareness, and an eye on the bigger picture of service and creativity, they don’t have to be.

I thought of this while watching the psycho-thrilla Black Swan. I’ve heard so much about this film, and critics seem to have grasped the “showbiz is hell” theme without commenting much about the dysfunctional relationships at the heart of the melodrama.

Nina (Natalie Portman) is raised by the controlling, insecure Erica (Barbara Hershey, whose plastic-surgery-disaster face seems written into the part, but sadly is real) whose own career ambitions were never fully realized. Of course, she pins all her hopes on her daughter, and grooms her for success, ignoring the warning signs that Nina needs serious help and support.

Meanwhile, the fatherless young woman allows herself to be seduced and controlled by the creepy Thomas Leroy (played by the creepy Vincent Cassell), who has chosen her to replace the former girlfriend/principal ballerina Beth MacIntyre (the scowling Winona Ryder). Nina is an easy mark (as Beth was, before her) because she seeks Big Daddy’s approval, even if it comes at the expense of another artist. And in the wings, the evil temptress Lily (Mila Kunis), who appears at first to be on her side, betrays her. Lily doesn’t so much seek approval from Leroy as leverage her understanding of the power dynamic to get him on her side so she can steal Nina’s role. (It must be said that Lily comes off as the sanest person in the movie, and accordingly, she eventually gets over herself and has supportive things to say to Nina after her successful performance).

All the badness hinges on the self-perceived powerlessness of the women. Had Erica achieved her own success, she may not have felt compelled to force it on her daughter, and perhaps Erica could have been both a nurturing mom and a role model of strength and independence for Nina. Had Nina and Beth been able to feel strong and creative on their own respective steam, they may not have been so vulnerable to Leroy’s sleazy control tactics, not so jealous and threatened. Perhaps they would not have been drawn to the punishing, patriarchal, competitive tradition of ballet at all. Maybe Beth could have been an ally and mentor to Nina.

Of course, if all this happened, we wouldn't have had this fascinatingly weird-ass film that will do for nail files what Psycho did for showers. But I’d like to think that in the real world, creative people at every stage of the game can support each other and celebrate each other’s strengths, and, like Seane Corn, overcome insecurity and destructive competitiveness to create something better. One person’s success elevates the whole tribe, and when artists support each other, the real beneficiary is the art itself.

Mmm, Danish (alt title: Great Danes)

2011-05-07T10:05:00.000-07:00

When I think of nonviolence, I think of Gandhi and Indian independence, MLK and the civil rights movement, and various small acts of resistance that have been employed with limited goals in mind. I never associate nonviolence with "The Big One"--World War II.

But apparently, nonviolence was used successfully in a number of incidents, the most interesting of which is how the Danes responded to German military occupation. I don't remember reading about this in history classes (although to be fair I don't remember reading anything in history classes).

Due to Recent Events

2011-05-02T17:07:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm human. And an American, and a New Yorker. My heart was pounding when I heard the news, and I felt something like elation--that emotional arousal that happens when you hear both great news and tragic news--mixed with some relief, and some pride in my president and country. Of course this death is hugely symbolic.

But then my prefrontal cortex tapped me on the shoulder and reminded me that I don't believe in the death penalty, and I don't think vengeance is truly satisfying. Whatever this death means, even if there is some elevated sensation in it, it is not a time of joy, or whooping it up in the streets--it's a time of reflection and mourning and processing.

And look, the Vatican agrees with me.

All the Time in the World

2011-04-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

The other day I was calculating how many years of "work" I still have in me, barring unexpected misfortune, and the number that seemed realistic was about 15-20. When I was younger, such a finite number might have threatened my sense of Vast Possibility, but now I find comfort in knowing that I only have a limited block of time left.

The older I get, the more that "forever" seems like a burden. I see my future carved into manageable chunks of five years, ten years, 15, 20, and I know that I can handle that. Will I be in love "forever"? The notion seems sketchy, problematic. Can I stay with someone for ten more years? Sure, I can do that. (And then when I move to the moon-colony, perhaps I'll meet some interesting space-guys.)

This newish sense of mortality gives me mooring that I never had before, and paradoxically, I feel like I can relax and enjoy whatever's next, now that I no longer have all the time in the world.

Carino Royale

2011-04-25T19:51:00.000-07:00

On 7/29/81, my mom, giddy as a Jonas Brothers fan, woke me up at an ungodly hour to watch the Charles-and-Di wedding on TV, while saner members of the family slept.

I'm no royal-watcher, but I will find it hard to resist tuning in to at least part of the Kate-and-Whats-his-face nups on Friday, if only as a shout-out to my first fangirl role model, who demonstrated that sometimes it's ok to get excited about ridiculous things (see also: Oscar telecasts).

One for you, nineteen for me

2011-04-12T16:06:00.000-07:00

This year, I filed my taxes online for the first time. It transformed the tax experience from one of sober responsibility, math angst, and gentle waves of well-being for having done my civic duty...to one of zing-y, click-y, internet-lubricated good times. I will miss my annual panicked trip to the 24-hour post office, but I can always visit to mail a post card or some such.

Some music I am loving: the new Feelies, DoDos, Ks, Overlord, and Pains of Being Pure at Heart, last fall's Richard Barone album, and the forthcoming Okkervil River album. Needless to say, the Joy Formidable and PJ Harvey records have enjoyed their time on my speakers, and I'm liking the newish Wire album more and more.

Oops, I meant for this to be a shorty post, but once I start typing in this little box, I want to tell you everything I've thought, read, listened to, experienced, and watched for the past 2 months. I miss having a job with lots of downtime....

Hari Om

2011-03-08T05:57:00.000-08:00

The other day my yoga center posted a note on FB, with an intro that read "Important change at IYI, please click."

I braced myself. Massive lay-offs? Class prices going up? Loss of non-profit status?

Nope.

"IYI will close from 12:15-12:50 Monday - Friday so that our entire staff may meditate at midday. Join us for our free open meditation by arriving no later than 12:10pm. It is our humble wish to serve as examples of the benefits of regular meditation practice. Om Shanti."

Reason # [absurdly high number] that I love this place.

Neglect

2011-02-23T08:08:00.000-08:00

My poor, neglected globbe. This may be the longest unintentional non-blogging period of my Internet-based life, and it's not for lack of things to yak about (I have five unfinished entries in the drafts folder). Just super-busy.

Meanwhile, here's a baby gorilla taking his first steps.

Hugs,

Paula

Egypt, Egypt

2011-02-12T06:44:00.001-08:00

h/t Davewalker for reminding me of this guy's existence. Ancient hiphop...

Things'n'Bits'n'Stuff

2011-02-08T12:26:00.000-08:00

I filled out an online survey a few months back and my reward was a year's subscription to Guitar Player magazine. I only understand about every fifth word of the articles, but the pictures are purty.

What I find amusing about GP is how it seems to only cover musicians who play Guitar Player magazine-type music, which seems to be a genre unto itself. Not metal, not jazz, not even classic rock, really, just this sort of amorphous blob of riffing and hair gel.

This interview with Chrissie Hynde reveals the story behind "Kid"'s sketchy lyrics. I have listened to that song a million, billion times and it never occurred to me, but it fits.

Was wondering recently if Colorforms still exist, and while I was happy to find out that they do, I was happier to discover this grown-up version of paperdolls that some of you gals out there may enjoy.

Five years ago today, I stayed out til 4:00 AM on a school night talking to a very cute boy from Queens. I remember blogging about it the next day without actually letting on that it was a date, but I was already pretty sure I liked this guy, as we did not have a moment's lull in the conversation (still haven't) and we both displayed a habit of gesticulating wildly while speaking. But I will save the whole story of our courtship for date-a-versary #10.

Old People Music

2011-01-31T08:02:00.000-08:00

We've all seen it happen. A recording artist gets to a certain stage of their lives and they run out of ideas. So instead of addressing the problem, they take one of two routes: they make a covers album (fun!) or they start making children's music (zzz...)*.

I believe that children's musicians in NYC alone now actually outnumber our nation's children.

If I ever get to this point, I want start making music for elderly folks. I don't mean pop standards, I mean, I want to go to where the old folks gather, and play songs about adult diapers, arthritis, walkers, and weird prescription hand lotions.

*(Someone's going to leave a comment about how Dan Zanes and TMBG made good kids' records. I'm sure you're right. Someone else is going to say "Maybe artists start making kids' music because they now have kids," to which I say: Lemmy has kids.)

h/t Mystical Beast Dana P. for this video:

GlobeTilting

2011-01-26T16:01:00.000-08:00

One of my infrequent freelance gigs is annotating business and self-help books for an online retailer. The self-help books are occasionally interesting, sometimes even useful, but the business books depress me. They all seem so adamant that they’ve got the next best--and the last great--innovative formula for success. And they all have these snappy, can-do portmanteau titles.

Here’s a little game so you can come up with your own business book title:

Pick a noun from column A, and match it randomly to a scintillating gerund in column B.

A: Noun	B: Exciting Gerund
Brain	Busting
Cloud	Exploding
Heart	Growing
Idea	Hacking
Mind	Making
People	Mapping
Rain	Steering

Write a proposal based on this title. Send your book to me when it’s done and I will promise to give it a good review.

Oh, Oscar.

2011-01-25T09:05:00.000-08:00

No surprises here at all, but the fact that the quietly amazing Please Give didn't get any nominations (cuz it didn't have any big, sweaty Oscar "moments" that people mistake for good drama) just shows up this whole thing for what it is. No Runaways, Rush documentary, or I Am Love, either. Good call on Winter's Bone, tho.

Two Bits on Empathy

2011-01-24T12:36:00.000-08:00

We all love the struggle between good (us) and evil (them)...Because villains like to hurt people, it’s okay to hurt them. Because they like to kill people, it’s okay to kill them. After all, they are evil and evil must be destroyed.

What is this kind of story really teaching us? That if you want to hurt someone, it is important to demonize them first—in other words, fit them into your good-versus-evil story. That is why the first casualty of all wars is truth.

David R. Loy, "The Nonduality of Good and Evil"

And then there's this summary of a not-new but recent study about empathy and violence being closely linked in the human brain. (Shout-out to Science Daily for providing compelling reading, multiple times per day!)

And just to demonstrate that it's not all dour serious business around here, I'll say this: Im about halfway through the second and final season of Dollhouse.

It's certainly the cheesiest of the Whedon enterprises, but I get a kick out if it anyway. Kick-ass girl (and geek) power mediated by morally ambiguous characters like Adelle DeWitt, and interesting things to say about identity. Throw in relentlessly appealing cast members and reliably nice soundtrack choices (of the dream-pop variety), and you've got an IHOP-approved waste of time.

Paul Danziger 1920 -2011

2011-01-18T10:47:00.000-08:00

Neil's dad passed away on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday (and was buried on the Monday we observe the holiday), a fitting coincidence given his compassionate and caring nature. I didn't know Paul very well--he'd already started slipping into dementia when I came on the scene five years ago--but I've heard story after story about what a great, funny, honest, thoughtful guy he was, and the proof is in his three kids and five grandchildren who were completely devoted to him, and who in their own ways reflect all his wonderful qualities.

Hypnosis & Cancer

2011-01-13T18:11:00.000-08:00

Nice article summing up some recent research about the use of hypnosis in treating cancer.

Population none in the desert and sun

2011-01-10T06:46:00.000-08:00

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.

  --Martin Luther King, Jr.

This has been an unsettling and miserable weekend in the U.S.; first an act of shocking violence, and then the ensuing swirl of flying debris and heated public opinion that always follow.

Many people are making the case that the actions of a Mein Kampf (and Communist Manifesto)-loving gunman who thought that he was being mind-controlled by grammar were either directly incited, indirectly inspired, or made karmically inevitable by the aggressive speechifying and imagery of the tea partiers. (And similar incidences were actually predicted by Homeland Security.)

It's an easy conclusion to make, and I think there's some poetic truth to it. And I also think in this particular case it's a stretch, more akin to the "listening to Ozzy Osbourne makes you kill yourself" line of thinking than people want to admit. This man was notoriously troubled. A college classmate had even alerted authorities at their school that she thought he was "mentally unstable."

I completely understand that some people see this tragic case as making a larger point about the volatile political climate in this country. To the extent that this perception of the event leads to dialogue and healing, maybe this is good.

It's the crucial next cognitive/emotional leap where I hope that people use caution--to really slow down, take a deep breath, and look at where this perfectly reasonable thinking can go. I keep hearing (or reading) the opinion, "This is war. This is how the right wing does things, " etc.

At this moment, if we regress to a reptilian-brain, us/them retaliatory hatred--if we chomp down on that hook--everybody loses. The kind of violent rhetoric that may have led up to this horrible act panders to people's basest instincts and fears, and it's natural to want to hate, shame, and punish the people who perpetrate it. It's tempting to see a "war" in the making, and to see ourselves on the receiving end, and to want to push back. It's tempting to see "the right wing" as a solid block of evil, an undifferentiated mass.

But I believe it is in our best interest to see others not in terms of right/left, bad/good, but to look at the social world as composed of complex, confused individuals trying desperately to meet their needs. Some disturbed individuals use, or promote from the sidelines, irresponsible strategies (and "second amendment remedies") to meet their needs, resulting in horrors like the deaths of innocents and the injuring of caring public servants. Others who would superficially align themselves politically with those people would not use or promote those strategies. People are not all the same.

If I am committed to peace and nonviolence, it doesn't hold water for me to say, "Well, I hate violence...but they started it." Nor does it do much good to just sit back and watch this drama unfold and cynically decry the lack of values in this country, or the terrible nature of human beings, or the evil intentions of a select group of people.

War and violence start internally. It doesn't make sense for me to be "anti-violence" and harbor hatred or outrage in my heart.

I think we should prosecute Jared Lee Loughner to the fullest extent of the law and make sure that some restorative justice takes place between him and the families he destroyed with his misguided act. I also hope he gets the help he needs to relieve his psychic pain or heal his neurological glitches. I think we should protect--with force if necessary--Congresspeople and other public servants when they're out in public; call out violence-inciting speech for what it is; make it harder if not impossible to purchase and own automatic weapons.

But I think we can do all this not in a spirit of punishment or hate but in the spirit of helping the people who would hurt others because they lacked the clarity to see that we are all one.

I would urge people to set their sights a little higher in the coming weeks and months, to place themselves and others in a greater context, to participate in a vision of what human beings really are: resilient, collaborative, forgiving, evolved. Not because it's the right or correct thing to do, but because when we look at the world this way, possibilities for collaboration arise that we might not have thought of if we were stuck in us/them thinking.

Top Ten 2010: Music!

2011-01-03T14:52:00.000-08:00

Every year I say “This was a great year for music,” and I am always telling the truth.

I am feeling this year’s greatness in the number of riches provided not just by my stalwarts, but also by artists I have previously felt neutral about or even grown bored by. Everybody was coming up with the goods in 2010.

(This doesn’t even cover acts who I liked in passing but didn’t get a chance to delve into--Frankie Rose, Janelle Monae, Mumford & Sons, solo Jonsi, etc etc).

The Top Ten

(first two are pretty secure in their places, the rest are completely interchangeable position-wise depending on mood)

The Joy Formidable - A Balloon Called Moaning

Pernice Brothers - Goodbye, Killer

Ra Ra Riot - The Orchard

Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 - Propellor Time

The 88 - The 88

Tracy Bonham - Masts Of Manhatta

Tame Impala - InnerSpeaker

Mavis Staples - You Are Not Alone

Anton Barbeau - Psychedelic Mynde of Moses

Various Artists - Stroke: Songs for Chris Knox (sorta may qualify as 2009, but it's for a good cause, so I'm not gonna quibble)

Excellent recordings by friends/family:

(thus unrankable)

Tyranny of Dave - The Decline of America Part One: The Bush Years

The Swales - Stranger Things (release date 2011)

Solar Punch - Surya

The Larch - Larix Americana

Robin Aigner - Bandito

Bye-Bye Blackbirds - Tour EP

Lucy Foley - Copenhagen

Onward Chariots - Fondness Makes the Heart Grow Distant

Liza & The WonderWheels - Pavlov's Garage

A very slenderized, edited Honorable mention list that could have been longer

(includes reissues, EPs, and other disqualifiers for Top Ten)

Vampire Weekend - Contra

Paul Weller - Wake Up the Nation

The Walkmen - Lisbon

The Soft Pack - The Soft Pack

The National - High Violet

The Budos Band - The Budos Band III

Sarah Harmer - Oh Little Fire

No Age - Everything In Between

Laura Veirs - July Flame

Laura Marling - I Speak Because I Can

JP, Chrissie & the Fairground Boys - Fidelity!

Jody Porter - Close To The Sun (reissue)

Joan Armatrading - This Charming Life

James Blackshaw - All Is Falling

Emma Pollock - The Law Of Large Numbers

Peter Case - Wig!

Various Artists - Twistable Turnable Man: A Tribute to Shel Silverstein

Frightened Rabbit - The Winter of Mixed Drinks

Freedy Johnston - Rain On The City

Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra - Honker

Elvis Costello - National Ransom

Belle and Sebastian - Write About Love

Arthur Nasson - Echo Garden

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Dwight Twilley - Green Blimp

Sarah Jaffe - Suburban Nature

Weezer - Hurley

Tom Petty - Damn the Torpedoes (reissue)

Swans - My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky

Juliana Hatfield - Peace & Love

John Vanderslice - Green Grow The Rushes

Self-tooting horn

2011-01-02T08:41:00.000-08:00

Lucid Culture named Open on Sunday their #1 album of the year!

Things That Help, vol. 2

2010-12-30T07:52:00.000-08:00

It has never occurred to me to buy rain boots. I figured my Land's End "chukka boots" (sadly discontinued!) were enough to get me through winter. But after stepping in a deep pothole of slush yesterday, I spontaneously braved the house-music din of Shoemania and plunked down $40 for a pair and had yet another winter-related epiphany: rain boots make living in the city so much less stressful.

No need to mince around snowpiles and take your turn traversing the tiny rut of trodden commuter foot-paths. With rain boots, you just plunge right through puddles to cross any street with bravado and fervor. And it creates this cool wet-suit feeling on your feet. I've been so excited about this development, that I'm not really paying attention to the walk/don't walk signals, so if I end up demolished by a bus, please know that I died happy.

(Note: I did not buy the pictured boots, but I liked the symmetry with the other photo in this "Things That Help" series.)

Snow Day Reading

2010-12-28T22:54:00.000-08:00

It's so rare that I get to read an entire book in one evening, but that's what stay-cations are for. I read Robert Cialdini's Influence: Science & Practice, (this is the "text book" version, and it also comes in a "consumer" version although I don't know the difference--maybe fewer APA formatted citations?)

Reading social psychology can be deflating, but Cialdini writes with intelligence, warmth, and good humor about the necessity of deflecting the "six weapons of influence" wielded by advertisers, marketers, salespeople, politicians, and other compliance artists.

He makes the important point that irrational choices and auto-pilot consciousness are common and not harmful in and of themselves, and that mindless/snap decisions are a by-product of living in an information-overloaded, sped-up world. Instead of making readers feel like idiots for being human, he prepares them to jujitsually combat those who would exploit that irrationality for their own gain.

Update: Out of curiosity, I checked out some of Cialdini's academic papers. He is not a believer in altruism, but one of those social psychologists who argues vehemently that everything we do is selfish and ego-based. I guess when he writes for a general audience, he couches things in a more flattering way, but in his research papers he's pretty blunt. This is why I included the disclaimer above that "reading social psychology can be deflating."

But there are a handful of social psych researchers/writers who do think that people are, given the right circumstances, altruistic and naturally empathic. Daniel Batson is one. I have fond memories of sending him a Christmas card when I was a college student, thanking him for his interesting and uplifting work, and getting a really nice hand-written letter back.

Snow Day

2010-12-27T11:18:00.000-08:00

It has blizzarded, and Brooklyn has completely shut down, so we have all voted on it, and this is a Snow Day!

Only the main roads have been (semi-)plowed, the snow drifts are high, and the wind is crazy. Prospect Park is lovely right now, with dogs a-rompin', kids a-sleddin', cabin-fevered adults somnambulating, and intrepid souls skiiing, snowshoeing, and even, inexplicably, jogging.

Yesterday I spent much of the day making very rough demos of some older songs that had never been recorded, and then Neil and I watched Funny People (which was better than I was expecting) and a weird film from 1979 called Over the Edge which features Matt Dillon and Vincent Spano in their first movie roles.

I urge you to rent this and watch it with friends, as it is a surreal journey, not unlike The Room, that requires witnesses. In a movie dominated by teenagers, there is one character, a skinny little dude in a rugby shirt, whose onscreen presence is unsettling and inexpressibly (and unintentionally) funny, in a way that someone like Wes Anderson would knowingly exploit for deadpan hilarity. His mute little brother dresses "new wave," and Cheap Trick, The Cars, and The Ramones are on the soundtrack.

I also was excited to realize that this film is the source of one of my favorite song titles!

Grateful

2010-12-25T06:08:00.000-08:00

"...we should be especially grateful for having to deal with annoying people and difficult situations, because without them we would have nothing to work with... It is by dealing with such challenges that we grow and develop...."

The Water is With You: My Favorite Songs of 2010

2010-12-23T17:44:00.000-08:00

Three exciting zip files!

Some varied file formats (sorry), and grouped alphabetically, cuz I figure they’ll just end up on shuffle. Had I actually sequenced these as a maximum flow-osity playlist, it would have looked/sounded something like the track list below.

Thank you, musicians, for making this world a more livable place, and for providing a great soundtrack to a challenging, weird, inspiring, loss-filled, beautiful year. And thank you, friends, for being some of the coolest humans on the planet. I love you.

Happy holidays!

Paula

=========================================

I Don't Really Mind - Tame Impala

City With No Children - Arcade Fire

The Other Side Of Love - Freedy Johnston

Cars On The Motorway - Jody Porter

Write About Love - Belle and Sebastian

Speed of Light - Dwight Twilley

Creep Along Moses - Mavis Staples

Boy - Ra Ra Riot

Inside Out - Crowded House

As Far As I Can See - The 88

Whirring - The Joy Formidable

Bloodbuzz Ohio - The National

Melancholy Astronautic Man - Allie Moss

Written In Reverse - Spoon

Angela Surf City - The Walkmen

Never Drink Again - JP, Chrissie & the Fairground Boys

Rambling Man - Laura Marling

July Flame - Laura Veirs

Know That The Water Is With You - Anton Barbeau

Zebra - Beach House

Minotaur - Clientele

The Brokenhearted - Bruce Springsteen

Elizabeth Park - The Bye Bye Blackbirds

When My Time Comes - Dawes

Nothing Like You - Frightened Rabbit

Good to Get Out - Devon Sproule

Bullets For The Newborn King - Elvis Costello

With Love From Region One - The Larch

Answer to Yourself - The Soft Pack

Glitter - No Age

Hand Me Down - Visqueen

Mirrorage - Glasser

Where Is My Robot Maid - Liza & The WonderWheels

Smart Girls - Weezer

Let's Go Home - Juliana Hatfield

Similar Sense - Mitten

Evolove - Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3

Stranger Things - The Swales

Lapse - Bill Callahan

The City - Sarah Harmer

War Hero - Onward Chariots

You Fucking People Make Me Sick - Swans

Nowhere - Tom Petty

You're My Isness - Tracy Bonham

When All the Stores Are Closed - Tyranny of Dave

California English - Vampire Weekend

Werewolf Bar Mitzvah (RAC Mix) - 30 Rock Soundtrack

This Charming Life - Joan Armatrading

Bicycle 2 - Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra

If There's Smoke In Your House - Mutant Liberation Preschool

Pony Express - John Vanderslice

Perfect Plan - Sarah Jaffe

A Mellow Mood - Floyd Morris

I Learned the Hard Way - Sharon Jones

Black Venom - The Budos Band

Glass (new version)- Gang of Four

River of Love - Susan Cowsill

Bechamel - Pernice Brothers

See You Around - Robin Aigner

Making Circles - Lucy Foley

Unravel - Arthur Nasson

Part 1 - James Blackshaw

Things That Help

2010-12-12T15:18:00.000-08:00

My antipathy toward cold weather has been lessened slightly thanks to a new ally, the American Apparel thigh-high sock.

These garments, in their unfurled state, make it possible to navigate the icy arctic chill outside, and yet when you get to your destination, you can scrunch them back down to knee-high or even calf-high length so that you don't feel all compressed and overheated inside.

Additionally, these are the only thing at the AA shop that aren't crappily made and outrageously overpriced, although $15 is probably more than anyone wants to pay for socks....

Andy

2010-12-08T13:14:00.000-08:00

Was rehearsing with Andy last night for a weird, not-public gig, and realized that my bass player and I have been playing together for an obscenely long period of time. I have more musical rapport with him than anyone I can think of, and the level of safety, fun, and exploration that I experience when we're together makes him feel more like family than some family members.

So I put together this little photo essay. If you click, make sure you sing this while looking.

Cinematical

2010-12-06T21:34:00.000-08:00

Wow, Get Him to the Greek really sucked, and I am disappointed because it's such a great idea, and the main character is from another movie I did like. Also, Russell Brand is just so naturally comedic, but the writing is terrible and Jonah Hill can't really hold a movie.

Megamind was funny, charming, with great animation, and some trenchant things to say about power, good-n-evil, and people's capacity for change.

I revisited It Might Get Loud, which I reviewed positively on release, and had less patience for it the second time around. It's pretty to look at, but Jack White seemed more annoyingly phony (all that camera-ready corn-pone humility), and Page seemed less cool than I remember, and I felt sorrier for The Edge for looking so uncomfortable throughout. I must have been ovulating the first time I saw it.
Boy, I don't watch a lot of movies anymore, or read novels. I'm living in a completely nonfictionalized bubble of facts and data.

Schmarah Schmalin

2010-12-05T07:56:00.000-08:00

I will go one better than this call for a moratorium on Palin-news.   

Not only is "...the left’s obsessive-compulsive fascination with her...both unhealthy and counterproductive," it has always struck me as a form of self-sabotage.

I'm a great believer that focusing on what you want yields better results than hating or resisting what you don't want, in most areas of life. So I was puzzled that when it seemed clear that Obama was likely to win the 2008 election, and then even after he did, people could not stop talking about, deriding, mocking Sarah Palin.   It's as if they could not tolerate or comprehend being in the winner's circle, getting what they wanted and worked for. They had to continue to focus on what they didn't want, what they loathed and feared.

It's like being in a happy relationship with someone who treats you great, but still being obsessed with your lousy ex, because some part of you can't internalize "I deserve good things." Eventually that inability to internalize the good stuff is going to drag you down and land you in trouble again.

But all the hatin' isn't just bad for one's mental health, it's bad for the world. I wonder what would have happened if people had just had their initial negative reaction to her, voted and campaigned for the candidate of their choice instead, and respectfully let her fade away, instead of focusing so much celebrity-making attention on her. We might not have had to contend with her to the degree that we have now. But she became a hot sensation.   

And the way that she became a hot sensation made me sad. "Look how dumb she is! And look how smart and superior we are!" has been the basic theme of every joke, every email forward, every smug little jab at her. I've heard educated, intelligent and otherwise compassionate people refer to her as "the whore of Babylon" and other such ad hominem niceties. Let’s not forget Letterman making crude jokes about her teenage daughter, and all the other petty unkindnesses.

I remember, in an early iteration of some Facebook “getting to know you” meme, I admitted that making fun of Sarah Palin just made me feel bad and seemed unnecessary. I said that as a folksy sort of piece of self-revelation, not as an endorsement of the former vice presidential candidate, but by the vitriolic, downright hateful (hateful toward Palin, merely contemptuous or angry at me) responses from my own friends and family, you might have thought I’d said, “I think Sarah’s the greatest, and I think we should kill pandas and koalas and kitties.” It was some kind of law, you see, that we must all actively hate Sarah Palin, and if you don’t, you’re an idiot or traitor.

I don’t talk about it anymore, because it’s pointless, and because I want to do my part in letting her fade into obscurity. But I am glad that people in more influential positions are at least starting to see things this (if not exactly “my”) way.

Man, it felt good to finally get this off my chest.

One pill makes you sane

2010-12-04T11:46:00.000-08:00

Everyone knows that depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia are caused by "chemical imbalances in the brain." Right? How do we know that? Because that is what the pharmaceutical companies, in cahoots with psychiatric professionals who are paid well to ok their clinical trials, have been telling us for years. But does the scientific research actually support this?

Robert Whitake r's groundbreaking book calls shenanigans on the over-reliance of the "medical model" to explain psychiatric disorders, the over-diagnosis of mental illnesses, and the over-use of psychotropic drugs in the psychiatric field.

He makes a clear and strong case that, while medication may be helpful in the short term for some cases of depression and schizophrenia, it can be devastating and harmful in the long term, and in many cases, not necessary even in the short term. More importantly, this is a cry for people to de-hypnotize themselves from the notion that every medication that is "clinically proven" or "scientifically proven" to work is necessarily so.

If you were skeptical about pharma before this, as I was, it may tip the scales for you. If you are a pharma fan, it may at least introduce some healthy doubt into your thinking.

And of course, Whitaker is not the only one making these claims. People are starting to catch on. Gary Greenburg, Irving Kirsch, and Peter Breggin have all written eloquently on the topic, and psychiatrist William Glasser has been saying this stuff for decades.

wounded

2010-12-03T19:48:00.001-08:00

I've always found that Osho fellow a tad creepy, but this piece attributed to him is so perfect.

"...Nobody is interested in hurting you...everybody is engaged in safeguarding his own wound..."

Prather

2010-11-26T12:41:00.000-08:00

Recently, the self-help author and minister Hugh Prather passed away at the age of 72. I was asked to write his biography for one of my online clients, and in researching his life, I remembered that I have actually read several of his books.

If you're looking for dazzling prose or great poetry, Prather's not your guy. If gentle self-help or new age writing turns you off, you can probably stop reading right about here. But if you are looking for some humble and quietly revelatory spiritual writing that draws on Unity/New Thought/Transcendentalism/Christian Science/etc., Prather has written some lovely books.

Prather at one point became a spokesperson for the Course in Miracles philosophy, but eventually floated back to his own thing, more concerned with writing about (and speaking from) the compassion that lives in all of us than with labels and schools of thought that separate us. He and his wife were ministers and counselors (they didn't take money for either of these*), and his humility and eagerness to serve comes through in his writing. By all reports, he walked his talk and lived in integrity**.

This is especially important to me, having just tasted the heart-wracking disappointment of discovering that another writer/teacher/innovator who I looked up to has turned out to be quite a horrible person in real life. Writing Prather's bio has been an important reminder that there are cool people in the world whose joy is in serving people's highest needs.

*Not that there's anything wrong with taking money for spiritual work--I'm just using this to illustrate the Prathers' generosity.

**Uh, and if anyone knows different, I think I need to be left in blissful ignorance for the time being.

Guild

2010-11-22T15:47:00.000-08:00

I've been a certified hypnotist since March, but as of today I'm also a member of the Guild, which carries some added legitimacy in some circles. I'm done with my second-level training and feeling inspired indeed.

Good Tidings

2010-11-19T14:24:00.000-08:00

I have passed this little sign 10,000,000 times at IYI, and every time I stop to read it, I get a little electric surge in my heart.

Joy Duty

2010-11-17T17:13:00.000-08:00

This week I got to see the Joy Formidable and hours later report for jury duty, and believe me when I tell you I was looking forward to both.

The JF show at Bowery Ballroom on Tuesday was flawless and ecstatic--they are such a tight unit, they make playing seem effortless and supernatural. Singer/guitarist Ritzy smiles as she plays, and never blinks. They all have such good posture. The fact that they all position themselves upstage--even drummer Matt Thomas--indicates the tripodity of their union.

And a blessing for this sleepyhead: they played ten songs*, no encore, and left on a cloud of pixiedust. I literally jumped on the last normally-running pre-midnight F train back to the BK and was home by 12.

Up early this morning to don doofus-casual "slacks" and buttoned shirt (I thought there was a dress code!) and sat around the jury room all day. Not one but two women named Cleopatra were present. I really wanted to get on a trial, but was dismissed at 4:00.

When I got home I was exhausted after having done nothing but read all day. It reminded me painfully of all the office jobs I've ever had, where the object was to get away with as much downtime as possible, and return home feeling spent and invisible, disguised in someone else's pleated pants. Oh gratitude for my current life of dining-room table office chaos.

*Cradle
The Magnifying Glass
I Don't Want To See You Like This
The Greatest Light Is The Greatest Shade
Austere
Ostrich
Greyhounds in the Slips
Anemone
The Last Drop
Whirring (extended disco mix!)

Gift ideas

2010-11-14T08:32:00.000-08:00

Oh, em gee. I want this wolf cape.

"...Get ready for the compliments when you drape yourself in drama. Doubling as a work of wildlife art, it keeps you comfortably warm without restricting your freedom of movement..."

Jobs, and Movies About Jobs

2010-11-12T04:38:00.000-08:00

I like CD Baby's Derek Sivers. He seems like good people, and his is one of the only "music professional" blogs that I can read without feeling creeped out.

This entry about his early experiences with iTunes is funny and exasperating (it does not improve Steve Jobs's image any). It also made me think, "Wait--iTunes has only been around since 2003?" It seems as if time has become distorted since the digital era began, erasing all memories of what came before.

I wanted--nay, needed--to see a "popcorn" movie this week so I hit up Morning Glory with a friend and was not disappointed in its frothy escapist charms. It's the story of a plucky young TV news producer (yes, that's right) trying to whip the proverbial ragtag band of misfits into a proper news team--sort of. Technically, she whips them into a proper schlocky morning-info-tainment crew, which seems a whole lot less admirable or inspiring, but Hollywood does not respect us.

What worked for me about the film is that I love stories about people's jobs. This is a rom-com where the "rom" is between the heroine and her life's passion, and the actual "love interest" is secondary. It makes the simple act of having a creative job and doing it well seem heroic and spiritual (in the "make everything you do an offering to Me" sense).

Because Rachel McAdams is so cute and likeable, I briefly entertained some work-wardrobe envy (she wears all these smart pantsuits), but that was mercifully fleeting.

Hmm, will the Walkmen's Lisbon album end up on my 2010 top ten?! Perhaps. I've been enjoying it, especially this song:

Ra Ra Riot and EFT: no relation

2010-11-08T09:00:00.000-08:00

I saw Ra Ra Riot play a few years back (shortly after the loss of their drummer) and enjoyed the show, but don't remember them sounding anything like how they do on this lovely album. Were they having a grief-fueled off-night, was the outdoor-show sound bad, or have they only recently gotten chamber-popish? If any RRR fans are reading, please feel free weigh in.

+++++++++++

My friend Jondi and I gave a yoga/EFT workshop this weekend that I think went really well overall. We need to tweak it. I feel like, at this point, my role is as the Ed McMahon to Jondi's Johnny Carson--I warm up the "audience" and she provides the real show. At some future point I would like to interweave the yoga postures with the EFT a little more fluidly, without creating some dorky hybrid yoga gimmick.

As I put together the next phase of my professional life, I want to be very careful how I declare my beliefs. I love EFT, but like any healing modality, EFT is not the be-all or end-all. It's been very effective for other people, especially with PTSD (Feinstein, 2010; Flint, Lammer, & Mitnick, 2006) and phobias (Wells, Polglase, Andrews, Carrington, & Baker, n.d.).

I started using EFT about four years ago, having randomly stumbled on it while searching for something else online, and I personally have found it to be very healing when it comes to emotional pain--both present and past--and behavioral problems. It helped immeasurably the last time I went through a breakup, turning a super-painful separation into a manageably unpleasant period of adjustment. I believe that EFT helped me gain clarity, calm, and insight so that I could eventually navigate peacefully into a reconciliation, rather than stomp my way into self-destruction (as has happened in the past).

During that same period I was carrying around some middle-age chubs and wanted to lose it, and EFT made that easy, too. It can reliably help me transform a bad mood into a good mood (when I remember to use it!) and if I'm feeling too flighty or unsettled to meditate, sometimes a brief tapping session will ground me enough to proceed.

It also blends well with other techniques, like affirmations, NVC, Byron Katie's The Work, etc., because it helps to integrate positive statements in a deeper way than one might achieve with any of those methods alone. It has built-in fail-safes for psychological reversal and resistance.

I have found it less effective in treating physical complaints for some reason, even though I read/hear about "one minute miracles" all the time. And initially it was very effective for insomnia, but lately has not had as much of an effect in that area. Not sure why.

I have tried to articulate why it works in a way that doesn't depend on terms like "energy" and "meridians" and "nadis." I think it helps people create new neural pathways so that old, unhelpful thought patterns don't have the same emotional charge.

Knowing what I know now about hypnosis, mostly I think it provides a soothing distraction for the conscious mind so that the unconscious can get to work on healing and brainstorming solutions. The meridian points seem to contribute to the soothing aspect. Even people who don't fully "believe" in it find it kind of fun. And I love facilitating EFT for other people--it is joyful to see someone's forehead smooth out and her jaw loosen as she realizes that her problem is nowhere near as pressing as it was five minutes ago.

Another good tool for the therapist toolbox.

References!

Feinstein, D. (2010). Rapid treatment of PTSD: Why psychological exposure with acupoint tapping may be effective. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 47(3), 385-402. doi:10.1037/a0021171.

Flint, G., Lammers, W., & Mitnick, D. (2006). Emotional Freedom Techniques: A Safe Treatment Intervention for Many Trauma Based Issues. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 12(1/2), 125-150.

Wells, S., Polglase, K., Andrews, H., Carrington, P., & Baker, A. (n.d). Evaluation of a Meridian-Based Intervention, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), for Reducing Specific Phobias of Small Animals. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 59(9), 943-966.

Wooten, H. (2005). Healing into Life After Sport: Dealing with Student-Athlete Loss, Grief, and Transition with EFT. Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, 1(3/4), 89-102.

Where I overthink that Daphne story

2010-11-05T07:11:00.000-07:00

Everyone loves this post about "my son might be gay, or not." It is a sweet and gutsy tale of tolerance and acceptance, and I totally get why everyone is charmed. I was charmed by the concept of the story before I actually read it carefully.

Here is the part that made me a little uncomfortable:

After some discussion it comes out that he is afraid people will laugh at him. I pointed out that some people will because it is a cute and clever costume. He insists their laughter would be of the ‘making fun’ kind. I blow it off. Seriously, who would make fun of a child in costume?

Her son hemmed and hawed, and then expressed fear about wearing the costume, and instead of validating his feelings and discussing them, she basically says, from her adult perspective, "Don't feel that way. Wear the costume."

This could have been a primitive "teaching moment" about the confusing roller-coaster-y nature of emotions, or about the difference between "laughing at" and "laughing with," or about how to deal with fear, or with people laughing at you, or any number of simple things that a five year old could digest.

I'm not saying she should have buckled and told him not to wear the costume--she was honoring her values and trying to instill them in him--but I am not down with the way she dismissed his doubts. I'm concerned that this kid will glean from this that he can't trust his own feelings and must always do what his mother says.

I believe this woman's heart is in the right place, and I'm not picking on her personally. Parenting is difficult--you can't do it right every minute of the day. But I think this happens to be a good example of something a lot of parents have done, and, with a little awareness, could be corrected.

To hell with the devil

2010-11-02T10:02:00.000-07:00

About a year ago, I had this grand vision of writing a long think piece/anthropological investigation of the Christian metalcore scene. I pitched the idea to a few magazines and no one bit, but then a few weeks ago, OurStage said, "OK--300 words, next Tuesday!"

That's not nearly enough space to make any kind of point, and the bands I wanted to interview didn't get back to me in time to be included, so this reads more like a very neutral (I hate that in context it seems like I'm ok with the "abortion is murder" song) Wikipedia entry. I hope, someday, to get back to the original premise, cuz it still fascinates me.

Note to self--Next Halloween, me and three friends: Stryper.

The Great Kotter-Fowley link

2010-10-30T17:03:00.000-07:00

A fascinating fact about Marcia Strassman, straight from the Wiki's mouth:

In 1967, she became a recording artist for UNI Records. Her debut single, "The Flower Children", was a top 40 hit in many West Coast U.S. markets, most notably hitting #4 in San Diego and #2 in San Francisco; the track also hit #2 in Vancouver, Canada (CKLG 730 AM or CFUN 1410 AM in July 1967). However, the single failed to break out nationally in either country, stalling at #103 (U.S.). Strassman's followup release, "The Groovy World of Jack & Jill," charted in Denver but virtually nowhere else. A third single, 1968's "Star Gazer" (produced by Kim Fowley), failed to chart anywhere and brought Strassman's brief recording career to a close.

Here's "The Flower Children" (and its b-side):

And a weird little Teutonic pounder, "Self Analysis":

Tilt!

2010-10-25T15:34:00.000-07:00

I've been obsessed with "tilt-shift" photography ever since I found out about it, and tried making a few examples in my open-source fake Photoshop program without great success.

Then, iPhone made it easy for me (and I also downloaded the free app for my laptop).

I suspect this infatuation will fade by, say, Thursday, but in the meantime, here are some of my tilt-shift explorations. Try it--it's neat.

Sweatin' to the Ancients

2010-10-19T20:05:00.000-07:00

Three things I like:

yoga (duh)
triple-digit temperatures and
sweatin'.

And yet I have a fairly low tolerance for Bikram yoga, which I've opined about at length elsewhere.

So I was excited to discover that the uptown branch of Yoga to the People teaches nothing but "hot vinyasa," regular Bryan Kest-inspired classes done in a 104-degree room. All the sweat and fun, none of the boredom or drill-sargeant yelling. In fact, the teachers at this branch are all very sweet.

"Isn't being sweet a prerequisite for the job?" you axe.

You'd think, right? But that's not necessarily the case, and this is New York after all.

I also believe that because classes are only an hour, and not 90 minutes, students don't over-exert and get to that point of euphoria/exhaustion--which seems dangerous to me--of a typical of a Bikram class.

On top of that, classes are only $10 ($5.00 if you bring your own mat, towel, and water) and it's right near the F/B/D trains.

I am enjoying my new class: Theories of Psychotherapy. The curriculum is comprehensive and cohesive--i.e., it doesn't just describe in great detail all the major schools of therapy, it finds a common thread through all of them, and has as its goal to teach therapists how to use bits of all of them, depending on the situation. And I am pleasantly surprised at how on-the-ball and participatory all my classmates are this time.

Placeholder

2010-10-12T17:29:00.000-07:00

I couldn't let that rant-y post stand as the lead entry for this blog any longer.

So here I'll just mention some things:

Tame Impala visited Daytrotter to good effect
Multi-dimensional revisions suggested for the DSM-V are a step in the right direction, I guess. I still find the whole business dehumanizing.
I want--nay, need!--this umbrella

The evening rant

2010-10-08T14:44:00.000-07:00

(Two posts in one day! I must be on a deadline!)

I haven't read Salon much since they started sucking round about the mid-00s (or earlier), but someone posted this article on FB, in a righteous snit that some TV actress on a show I don't watch has--GASP--lost some weight.

OMG, she lost weight! She must have an eating disorder! And the entire feminist infrastructure will collapse!

Geez, Louise, give the kid a break. It's obnoxious when men judge women according their body size, and guess what? It's obnoxious when women do it, too, even for so-called "feminist" reasons. Never mind that the actress seems really talented and destined for big things once this show is over--she has betrayed the sisterhood by dropping her teenage baby-fat.

The other thing I find off-putting about this article, aside from the unhealthy focus on body and the unsupported assumptions (this is journalism?) that the actor was pressured to lose weight, is that this presumably adult writer seems to rely on teenage TV-character heroes to support some image she has of herself. Naturally, if one of them betrays her in any way by going off-program, she gets upset. Dude, are you 14? Find your inner strength, lady.

Bullet Points du jour

2010-10-08T12:50:00.000-07:00

Next Green Wood Cemetery Song Consortium song challenge: must write and Garageband by 11/15 a song with the words "Queens Tornado." I have about 1/3 of the lyrics, composed while jogging.
Downfall has been sitting atop my DVD player for over three weeks now. Cuz the answer to the question, "Wanna watch the Hitler movie tonight?" tends to be "no."
Someone in an online forum called me a "clueless hipster" who "doesn't know anything about punk rock." A first!
The wedding-guest dilemma: dry-clean the nice frock, or for a few dollars more, buy the cheap but cute dress at Forever 21? Each seems to reflect a different moral structure, like a Choose Your Own Adventure written by Theodore Dreiser.
Despite this ongoing laryngitis, I interviewed Suzanne Vega. She was a gracious and intelligent conversationalist. Not sure when that's gonna run.
That photo is an art piece entitled "Pants," which I made in Camerabag. I am fascinated by baggy-ass mom jeans in catalogs, and it's difficult to explain.

Alternatives: a pop culture PSA

2010-10-05T11:11:00.000-07:00

I think that the 689(!) people who have Jonathan Franzen's novel (good writing + boring characters) on hold at the BPL would be well-served by reading Zoe Heller's The Believers (good writing + interesting characters) instead or until.

I think The Office has not been good since season 4, but people who miss the wit and whimsy can get their fill from Community. I'm late to the party, but it's a very funny ol' sitcom.

I think the people clamoring for No Age...well, I think they're right. Their latest album seems a vast improvement over their earlier stuff--warmer and more human but just as exciting.

Fall = Movietime!

2010-10-03T13:55:00.000-07:00

It is suddenly autumn, and I can't talk, so my social life this weekend revolved around seein' movies, both in and out of the theater. In chronological order:

Easy A: Totally charming high school movie that reminds you why high school sucks. Some critics have compared it to Juno for its quippiness (and pop culture-awareness/self-consciousness), but I found it less cloying and contrived, warmer and more character-driven. Emma Stone is a revelation, and Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci are the least cliche-ridden movie parents I've seen in a while.

17 Again: Ok, shut up. This was a library borrow that my friend and I watched because we wanted to hang out but didn't feel like going out. It is dopey, especially compared to the wonderful film above, but the takeaways for me are that a) Zac Efron is a better actor than he needs to be, given his prettiness, and b) Matthew Perry is still funny, and should be doing more, dammit.

Witness for the Prosecution: Agatha Christie is the only author who has inspired me to create a spreadsheet so I can keep track of which of her novels and novellas I've read. I don't do spreadsheets for just anyone! Anyway, this adaptation of her famous short story stars the blubbery charisma-tron Charles Laughton and the truly one-of-a-kind Marlene Dietrich in a courtroom drama that starts out rather light-hearted in a Nick-and-Nora sort of way (the screenplay was co-written by Billy Wilder, and you can tell) and then gets pretty twisty and tense at the very end. (Trailer here)

The Social Network: I've heard that many elements of this story are fiction, and the parts that aren't fiction are debatable. I've decided to throw out all questions of veracity and just praise this film for its strong performances and great dialogue, and insights into what it takes to be successful in the 21st century. It's true that Jesse Eisenberg tends to play the same type of character in all his films, but here he ably incorporates his usual schtick into a more complex role, embodying an awkward but willful borderline sociopath very well. When his face goes Asperger-y and blank, you can feel a chill wind blow through the theater. Justin Timberlake is pure sleazy slacker charm as Napster co-founder Sean Parker, and Andrew Garfield, who I loved in the Red Riding trilogy, provides the moral center.

Looking forward to more movie action as the skies turn grey...

In a Silent Way

2010-09-30T18:36:00.000-07:00

I have been ordered by the men in the white coats to keep my trap shut for at least a week to ten days.

I have had mysterious, pervasive laryngitis for weeks now, minus any other symptoms that would indicate a cold or other passing ailment, and it finally freaked me out enough that I relaxed my Western-medicine-sucks stance and saw someone who could at least reassure me that it wasn't a vocal node...or worse.

It has made me appreciate everything I do that depends on my voice. And while there are obvious downsides--I had to cancel an impending gig that I was quite excited about, and will not be teaching for the next 2 weeks--I appreciate this break from chit-chat, and intend to use this as a period of writing, guitar-playing, and deep and attentive listening.

Brief notes on meditation

2010-09-28T20:52:00.000-07:00

What's that French expression? "Plus ca change chose meme plah pleu pleh blah blah?"

Change! Everything you love (and hate, and are indifferent to) changes and evolves.

But one thing stays the same: meditation.

No matter what year it is, what kind of operating system you have, what your state of health is, whether you are married, single, divorced, or Siamese twinned, meditation is exactly the same: you sit and think your mantra (or attend to your thoughts, if you swing that way). There's no shortcut, no technology to make it easier.

The contents of your mind may be different from day to day, and the thoughts you think in between the empty spaces may change, but the process is the same. No progress, no regression. That is its comfort, and its challenge. It's a bit like taking a shower*--shower technology may change, but the act of showering is pretty samey, and it really only "works" if you do it regularly.

*This is the second time I've bloggingly compared something important to taking a shower. I should start a collection of shower-related essays.

Appy together

2010-09-22T09:28:00.000-07:00

One of the free apps I downloaded to my new iPhone is the Kindle.

Now, no one loves books-qua-books more than I do, and I will never stop buying, borrowing, smelling books, or feeling joy at coming across a cardboard box o'free paperbacks on someone's stoop.

But in addition to loving books, I love the words inside books, and I see no conflict between having a Kindle--which allows you to have a book instantly, search inside it (handy for textbooks and non-fiction), look up the dictionary meaning of a term you come across while reading*, etc.--and appreciating the ways of our forefathers.

(*which you can't do with a regular book! Well, not without spilling your breakfast whiskey.)

Another aspect of the Kindle that I like is that each page is an event of consciousness. There are times when I get bogged down in page numbers, feel the nagging heft of hundreds of unread pages tugging at my beleaguered attention span, mocking me, "You'll never stick this out."

With a Kindle, it's just words, in the present, being delicious.

Elvis

2010-09-20T12:53:00.000-07:00

The new Elvis album has moments of real inspiration--songs like "One Bell Ringing" and "Dr Watson I Presume" don't sound like anything he's ever done before, and really grab you by the lapels.

I wish I could release a director's cut of just tracks like this. Inconveniently, the record is weighted down by about seven or eight tracks that, while perfectly serviceable tunes, seem like exercises in country or Americana or pop standards more than the work of someone who has a burning desire to communicate from his heart.

"Cor, blimey, lemme take a crack at this genre," says Mr McManus.

As genuinely well-crafted and carefully produced as this record is--and the lyrics of course are top-notch--I doubt I'll be listening to it much. Such is the irrational way of the listener. This listener, anyhow.

Short Ends

2010-09-15T09:13:00.000-07:00

Red Riding Trilogy is haunting, artful, absorbing. So much more than a thriller--it has a social conscience (and some amazing performances).
Crossing Over is not a very good movie-qua-movie--way too heavy-handed and melodramatic--but provides some interesting multiple perspectives on the modern immigration experience.
Temple Grandin (the movie, not the person) has some cornball moments but for the most part is utterly punk rock and wonderful. I cried like eleven times, and have begun building my own Squeeze Machine.
I am writing the final paper for my addictions course (on binge eating disorder and a possible treatment intervention using hypnotherapy). I have to say, Jiffy Lube University really came through on this one. I did actually learn a lot.
I will be taking more hypnosis training at the end of September and I am thrilled. I met the instructor and she is very cool. We have a lot in common: we both favor an eclectic, whatever-gets-ya-thru-the-night approach to therapy (and everything), she is a rock musician, she also has a sister with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and we share the habit of smelling everything we pick up.
I had a humorously disastrous phone interview, beset by technical problems, with a musician I've had a crush on since high school. Even though I think it was mostly T-Mobile's fault, and not Google Voice recorder, the experience inspired me to look for a voice recorder anyway.
And other stuff, but I gotta get back to my paper.

This Day.

2010-09-11T10:09:00.000-07:00

Grieving is a natural part of life--it gives meaning and comfort to the living. But I believe two things, and need to express them especially today:

The dead don't "need" to be remembered. Cuz they're dead. And they gave up giving a shit about things like "being remembered" as soon as they took their last breath.
There is no therapeutic value in dredging up painful memories again and again and again. It doesn't help us "process" or give us closure, it just reopens a wound and keeps it active (and destructive) in our nervous systems.

If people feel the need to grieve for their friends, family, community members, for the buildings, for the cities, for their lost youth, for our lack of progress, then I support that. If they want to use this day to celebrate life and look forward and plan and try to be better people because of the horrors they saw nine years ago--mazel tov! I support that even more.

But this mass sentimental "we shall ne'er forget!" candle-lighting, vigil-keeping, sending-our-love-down-the-well, flag-waving, let-me-tell-you-what-I-was-doing-at-9:00am-9-years ago, poring over photos of the towers on fire stuff just feels sodden and regressive to me. I am so ready to forget, and to move on.

(Obviously, reader, if you are still in pain about this day, I mean no disrespect to your grieving process. I'm speaking for myself.)

One Hit to Rule Them All

2010-09-06T13:45:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine posted an interesting note on Facebook recently about bands who have only released one song that caught his ear--not necessarily universally accepted "one-hit wonders" but personal ones.

So while working on my paper this weekend, I came up with my own list (a.k.a. procrastination technique #27). He posted 5, so I stuck with that number. Feel free to add your own in the comments section!

1. Hungry Like the Wolf - Duran Duran

I heard this on WNYU radio back when Duran Duran were still semi-obscure--they weren't int'l heart-throbs...yet. I immediately liked it, taped it, listened to it a lot. I even put it on a mix tape, much to my chagrin a few months later when--BLAM--they were everywhere, and I hated them, and I couldn't listen to this song ever again. (Oh, and then Courtney Love covered this song several years later, badly, and that just hurt.) But a couple of weeks ago I heard this in a club and fell in love anew. It's so...seductive.

2. Slack Motherfucker - Superchunk

I admire the heck out of this band--their ferocious self-sufficiency pretty much defined the "indie" spirit for all time. But in all honesty, this is the only song of theirs I ever really loved.

3. Rush Hour - Jane Wiedlin

Jane was always my favorite songwriter in the Go-Gos (shut up), but I have been bored by her solo work. Except for this song, which is sublime--I count three hooks, possibly more if you play it backwards.

4. Linger - The Cranberries

Another great, swoony song with a killer hook and a sentiment we can all get behind. Like many, I bought the album this came from, thinking it might be great, but none of the other songs compare. And then that horrible "Zombie" song where the singer has a grand mal seizure on the chorus killed any remaining interest I had in this band.

5. Rock the Boat - The Hues Corp.

The Hues Corp were not technically one-hit wonders, cuz they had a couple of charting singles after this, but this is surely the song that everyone remembers. Any time I hear this in a Duane Reade or something, I am instantly transported to a blissful reverie--summertime at Brookside Park swimmin' pool, transistor radios all tuned to ABC-AM. "Our love is like a ship on the oooooocean..." (I'm curious if this was the first historical incidence of the expression "rock on with your bad self.")

Summer Playlist

2010-09-04T19:10:00.000-07:00

I am writing a summer recap to try and grab the essence of an unusual couple of months.

Meanwhile though, when I think back to Summer o' 2010, the soundtrack will consist of these two songs on infinite repeat:

Another paper, another procrastination frenzy...

2010-09-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

...and here is one result:

Rushaways

2010-08-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

The other night I watched the Rush movie and deemed it one of the best rock documentaries I'd ever seen. I was musing how a Runaways/Rush film fest would be a lot of fun, considering that both flicks create such excitement and touch on the Zeitgeist/luck/je ne se quois/hard work elements that we need in our classic rock-band myths.

But then!!

I found out that the legendary anecdote depicted in the Runaways movie where Joan pisses on the guitar of a stupid classic rock band who dissed them--the real-life incident involved Rush! Aaagh. Just when I was loving that band and thinking of them as the nicest guys on earth.

Stupid, stupid sexist Canucks with ridiculous lyrics.

Googlevoice of reason

2010-08-22T05:40:00.000-07:00

Two of my favorite Google Voice transcriptions of late:

Benjoya = "Ben butt high."

Padma (my Sanskrit name, and what the people at my yoga center call me) = "Plasma"

Yet, oddly, it spelled "robitussin" correctly.

Movin' pictures!

2010-08-20T07:50:00.000-07:00

Some recently viewed movies at IHOP HQ:

Un Prophete: a gritty (but oddly lyrical at times) portrait of a kid who learns how to be a hardened criminal in a French prison. A story of survival and social climbing, but most likely a short-lived one. Sad and beautiful, with some very unstylized close-up violence.
The Ghost Writer: I'm still mad at Roman Polanksi, but this film is a perfect political thriller, and everyone wears great sweaters.
The Runaways: already saw and loved it in its theatrical release, and then watched again for the second, third, and fourth times. It is a classic rock-n-roll movie, replete with the necessary cheesiness, but really quite good despite that.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: a rip-roarin' thriller featuring a very cool hacker/punk heroine to off-set the horrible violence toward women at the center of the story. It's a very satisfying use of old formulas, and I like how all the loose ends get tied up.
Greenberg: as is often the case, I liked this better as a video than as a big screen entertainment. It's a film about small emotions, small awkward gestures, small bitter people, and it plays best in a small, intimate format.

Accidental Favorites

2010-08-19T08:10:00.001-07:00

When I see a painting or sculpture in a museum that I love, and I'm not sure who the artist is, nine times out of ten it ends up being Odilon Redon. And when I hear a rap song in a movie that I like and I don't recognize, nine times out of ten, it ends up being Nas.

Subtle Body

2010-08-18T08:19:00.000-07:00

I recently read (in three sittings!) Stefanie Syman's The Subtle Body, an intelligently written book about the history of yoga in America.

Syman really seems to get the difference between yoga as exercise and yoga as a comprehensive philosophical system, and this understanding allows her to explore the ups and downs and evolution of the practice with some sense of respect (and perhaps light mourning) for what it's supposed to be vs. what it's turned into.

(Not that I'm complaining about what it's turned into. Even the most watered-down presentation of yoga--you know, "Yoga-lates" or "Kettle-Bell-Yoga" or what have you--is still creating an opportunity for someone to learn more and go deeper with their practice.)

I also have to hand it to her for making me understand how much Bikram actually contributed to the popularity of modern yoga--I guess on the West Coast he was much better known than he was here (until the '00s).

Minor gripes: it bugs me that Sharon Gannon and David Life are given the space to crow about how Jivamukti yoga "brought spirituality back to American yoga" and other such nonsense. Um, hello--Kripalu*? Sivananda? Himalayan Institute? Integral Yoga? Those institutions never lost the spiritual angle, and were around decades before these guys turned yoga into the sexxx-ay sport of supermodels and hip-hop moguls, thereby frightening off regular people. I appreciate what they've done to popularize yoga, but they always seem so haughty and self-aggrandizing.

(*Kripalu is surprisingly absent from much of this book)

Anyway: this book is highly recommended for yoga nerds who wanna read all about the early heroes--Vivekananda! Lilias Folan!--but will probably not be so interesting to the normal people.

Vagina Place-settings

2010-08-17T08:52:00.000-07:00

I'm a product, to a large extent, of my '80s youth: post-post-post-everything. I distrust the splashy and spectacular unless it's meant to be funny, and when it comes to art, I only want to sidle up to truth and beauty, I don't want to confront it head-on.

I've never had much use for the works of Judy Chicago, which from a distance always seemed to me to be overly earnest, too obvious. That is, until Sunday when, as an afterthought, after a full afternoon of gawking at mummies, Andy Warhol's last paintings, and Kiki Smith's creepily soothing puppet/sculptures, I took a look at Chicago's The Dinner Party for maybe the second or third time in my life.

The Dinner Party isn't subtle by any means, but there was something about it that really moved me this time. The sheer force of it--a magnitude born of deep passion, belief, and craft. The heraldic banners set the mood and intention:

And then, of course, the 39 vagina place-settings, of which these are but two:

And then after all this, a large educational display of panels about great women of history, that is less art exhibit and more historical museum exhibit, but no less interesting or inspiring for that:

So, kudos, Ms Chicago. I think I finally get you.

Other Bklyn Museum photos here.

Cupcakes

2010-08-17T08:33:00.000-07:00

My off-the-cuff gluten-free cupcakes will not have Babycakes quaking in their boots anytime soon, but I was eager to try out my new gluten-free flour.

Lesson: recipes are for following, and are why our grandmas invented the internet.

Quick tips for the frustrated procrastinator

2010-08-14T07:56:00.000-07:00

Want to procrastinate before writing your paper that's due on Sunday, but don't know how? Here are some suggestions:

Download Google Video Chat, even though you never "chat" at all, much less in video form.
Change the color settings on every browser you have. And Gmail.
Solicit opinions from friends about how to use your last 3 Emusic downloads, even though chances are you're just gonna keep downloading Visqueen album tracks (or BeeGees)
Look up Joyce Bulifant on IMDB. It's been a while. Learn more about her heretofore unknown by you movie career
Raspberry sorbet showdown: Ciao Bella vs Haagen Dazs!
Write three different versions of FB status update, decide all three are stupid, delete.
Guitar scales, never a waste of time.
No email in the inbox since the last time you checked (one minute ago)? Try Google Reader, there's always some good readin' there.
Blogspot, as a verb

Capt Kirk

2010-08-13T10:26:00.000-07:00

Why are you reading this blog when you could be reading Kirk Douglas's?

After ten-plus years of teaching yoga, I had my first chanting mini-disaster yesterday. What puzzles me is that my class included at least three regulars who knew the drill, but here's how it unfolded:

Me: And now responsively... [chant chant chant chant]

Them: [crickets]

Me: OK, I say a line, then you say a line...[chant chant chant]

Them: [still with the crickets]

Me: I get the feeling people aren't into chanting today. That's ok. I love chanting and find it very relaxing, so I'm gonna do it, and if you want to join me, go ahead.

That seemed to do the trick. I think it was a social contagion situation.

franti-c

2010-08-13T07:46:00.001-07:00

Michael Franti is an exemplary, caring human being who is doing more than his fair share of good in this world. It pains me that his music sounds like Flight of the Conchords, but without the "joking" part.

So guilty do I feel about saying this that I am posting this thought here, and not on FB, where my yoga peeps will surely unfriend me.

IHOP HOPA

2010-08-11T07:26:00.001-07:00

I was not taken in by the "HOPA Girl" meme--you have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool this hoaxed-out gal--but what I find sad about the whole thing is that people wanted it so much to be real, and it turns out that this rebellious, intelligent woman is just a character "speaking" lines written by someone else. In other words, she was hired as a HOPA spokesmodel to voice a scenario scripted by guys.

So where are the real "dry erase" women?

And why do we love revenge stories so much?

Learning to Crawl

2010-08-10T09:55:00.000-07:00

I fall in love with music on a regular basis, but the musical event that made the single biggest impact on my life was the advent of the first Pretenders album, which came out when I was 13.

I’d been reading great things about the Pretenders in my beloved Trouser Press magazine, and when the album finally came out stateside, it actually took me a while to get around to it. All I’d heard at that point was the single “Stop Your Sobbing” which I thought was kind of lame.

But soon enough I got the album, and realized that “Sobbing” (a Kinks cover) was just the tip of the iceberg. Chrissie Hynde’s own songs were so different—complex structures, catchy melodies, weird time signatures, pounding heavyosity and great, writerly lyrics. Most of all, though, I rejoiced at finally---finally!—having a female singer-songwriter that inspired me.

Cuz Chrissie Hynde was powerful and tough w/o being macho, and sexy w/o being a sex object. She was smart, talented, and in interviews she revealed herself to be very funny and cultured and music-savvy. Basically a music geek made good, and nothing like the one-dimensional women being touted as musical goddesses at the time. Pat Benatar in her cartoonish little spandex outfits? Puh-leeze!

I revered her. I read every single article and interview I could get my hands on. She embodied and crystallized a lot of my own musical and personal ideals at the time, by being both a sensitive and melodic songwriter but also a punky smart-ass. She was what I always wanted to be but didn’t have the template for yet.

At the time, this was so crucial. I had musical heroes, but very few female role models in the arts, and none in my immediate world. I was a miserable kid, suicidal and self-hating and angry and trapped by my own depression and some crazy family dynamics. Chrissie gave me a sign that all the stupid rock-n-roll dreams I had were not stupid at all, but that with perseverance and chutzpah and a red leather jacket, all was going to be well.

Fast forward a few years, and a few rock star deaths. My brother took me to see the band at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, NJ on the Learning to Crawl tour. I had great hopes for a magical evening, but ended up feeling crestfallen and alienated when I got there and saw MY BAND, my own personal favorite godlike beings, looking like tiny figurines on the stage, putting on a lackluster going-through-the motions show while being cheered on by all sorts of horrible people who, in my adolescent snobbery and arrogance, I was quite certain had no understanding of the band's genius, nor any clue that they were being pandered to by a tired, tour-weary Hynde and Chambers and two okay but not stellar replacements on guitar and bass.

It was an object lesson in the perils of fan possessiveness, but its moral for me was not the adaptive "Learn to embrace the crowd," or "Get over yourself," but the destructive opposite: "Don't go see bands you love in a big venue." And so I never saw them again live, although I kept buying the albums long past the point of their being great.

All of this is leading up to say that last night's "secret" gig at Rockwood Music Hall (or as I like to call it "Rockwood Music Hallway" cuz it's a wee club) was a moment of satisfying fan redemption and so much more. I was standing 7 feet away from my idol, and she didn't disappoint. She was brilliant, in great voice and playing form, funny, and very affable and interactive with the audience who, this time, were filtered to allow only the very motivated secret-show-finders and set-list-snatchers amongst us.

As you've probably read, Chrissie Hynde has a new act--a completely rehauled setlist inspired by, and partially co-written with, Welsh singer-songwriter JP Jones. They call the new band Chrissie, JP & The Fairground Boys (oy, terrible name).

As relaxed and fun as the show was, when they played they gave it their all. The songs are a mixed bag--many of them of the U2-stadium-rock variety, but also some country-inflected folk, some bluesy stuff, and at least one uncategorizable bit of loveliness called "Meanwhile" that sounds a bit like vintage Pretenders, but also like some new outlet for Chrissie's higher-end vocals (although it dips appealingly again in the chorus).

I'm not blown away by the JP part of the equation--his songs and voice are good, serviceable, much like what you'd see at Rockwood on any Monday night. But I am grateful to him for getting my favorite artist to start writing again, sparking a career rebirth.

The other redeeming thing about the evening is that Chrissie makes being a 59-year-old rocker seem like the most natural thing in the world. She looks happy, inspired, healthy, and still really cool and rock-star-ish. Like a Beatlemaniac, I cried a little when she took the stage, because she is the one who started it all for me. All these years later, she is still making the path ahead seem not just navigable but unavoidably joyful.

And she still swears like a sailor.

Here's the new band covering Moby Grape. The camera's a little wobbly cuz I was gettin' into the song.

Coffee Talk

2010-08-09T08:14:00.000-07:00

Me: Can you recommend a good decaf?

Porto Rico Importing Co. employee #1: Hahahahahaha. Hey, Joe, can you recommend a good decaf?

Employee #2: Hahahahahahahahahaha.

Layers

2010-08-06T08:18:00.001-07:00

I wanted to see how long I could go without getting a haircut. Turns out the answer is "16 months."

The length was starting to bug me in this heat, so I bit the bullet and went to Supercuts.

My haircutter was a really nice guy named Nathaniel, and during the course of our chat, I managed to convince him (I think) not to enroll in Bikram teacher training (which he was ambivalent about) until he'd tried a few more styles of yoga. He loves the activity of Bikram, but not the gung-ho push-past-the-pain bootcamp aspect of it.

It was a lovely conversation, during which I articulated something to him that I needed to hear myself: that asana practice can be rigorous and sweaty and active, but if there's no angle of repose, it isn't truly hatha (ha-tha/sun-moon) yoga.

(He convinced me to get layers. I hate layers--it messes with my OCD symmetricality feng shui--but he did a great job.)

So much of what is missing in my own yoga practice lately is "receiving." That yin-energy, not-doing, "allowing" feeling. It stimulates different regions of the brain than regular activity--the parts that allow you to transcend your little bubble of will and ego, and see the world with a bit more clarity and a wider perspective.

So yesterday in my class I encouraged my students to practice receiving and taking in, which is the other half of the effort involved in asana practice. And in my own practice, without giving up the strength and yang of vinyasa, I have tried to be a little less "rgrgrgrgrgr" and a little more balanced, quiet, and receptive.

The upshot is that my practice has felt lots more meditative this week, and my mind has been more even-kieled, and that is the whole point: "Yoga citta vitti nirodah."

Sundry, Brief

2010-07-28T22:46:00.000-07:00

The photo I discovered on the subway a few weeks back has made it onto the Found Mag site
I enjoyed my gig tonight at the Parkside--a round-robin songwriting circle with Rebecca Turner, Carolyn AlRoy, and Erica Smith, but man do I hate playing guitar sitting down
Diggin' the Tame Impala album

She had some raspberry sorbet, the kind you eat on a hot summer's day

2010-07-24T07:32:00.000-07:00

For years, I thought sorbet was the sad, anemic cousin of ice cream.

How very wrong I was.

Gotta build your rock on the Ray-o-Vac

2010-07-21T13:53:00.000-07:00

Apropos of nothing, I give you Royal Trux