on how i am jean seberg

I apologize for the double post, but I cut my hair today.

Me:
And this is Jean Seberg circa 1960 in Jean-Luc Godard's À Bout de Souffle.
Whaddayathink?

on why grooveshark and npr are good.

I recently got into a conversation with a friend about the respective merits of Grooveshark and Pandora. After some pretty heated debate, we came to this compromise: that Pandora is good for discovering new music, while Grooveshark is good for building playlists of stuff you already like.

But then I realized that Grooveshark is actually great for discovering new music. Case in point, my new love for Ben Sollee. Here's one of my favorite songs, Copper and Malachite. Found on Grooveshark. Though Grooveshark won't spoonfeed you new music the way Pandora does, a bit of quick and painless searching can bring you lots of joy.

But back to Copper and Malachite. Speaks to my soul:

"And I want to show you
This loose board in the floor
This is where I keep my heart
Yes, this is where I keep my heart
Not on my sleeve"

Croon it to me, Ben.

As long as we're on music, let's have a moment for the new Sufjan Stevens album, Age of Adz, slated to come out Wednesday. But lucky us, NPR music did a First Listen special on the album, you can listen to the entire thing online. Isn't NPR hip? And isn't Sufi great?


LATER / UPDATE

on adulthood

today, i had an epiphany, but not one of "a manifestation of a divine being." quite the opposite really.

today, i realized that i am not a grown-up.

this is something i have known cognitively for a long time. i often explain that mentally and emotionally speaking, i'm about 12. in spite of the fact that my body says, "i'm 20!" and my transcript says, "i'm a senior in college!" these exclamations means very little for my ability to function in adult society.

i am a legal adult. for me, that means a few things:
(1) i can vote [which i've done only once, and yes it was for Obama in 2008]
(2) i pay taxes [or rather, i give a piece of paper to the government explaining that my total earnings for the year was a measly three figures, and so uncle sam lets me keep it all]
(3) i don't live at home [though yes, mommy and daddy still pay the rent]
(4) i do my own grocery shopping [lots of milk and yummy chocolate chex]

however, there are lots more reasons why i'm NOT an adult. to name a few:
(1) i want to eat vegetables, i even crave them, but i can't get my act together to keep my fridge stocked with them
(2) i don't make my bed, ever
(3) i forget to pay rent [remember, this is my parents' money. i just can't remember to give that money to my management company]
(4) i've had the oil changed ONCE in my car since i left home three years ago
(5) i find that the state of my bedroom nicely illustrates the law of entropy and chaos theory: tending toward disorder [until half an hour ago, i couldn't see the floor in my room]
(6) orbit peppermint gum and jamba juice are the two largest food groups in my diet, followed closely by chocolate covered cinnamon bears and diet coke
(7) my brain is constantly screaming, "ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME"
(8) everything in [brackets] under "i am a legal adult," except voting for Obama. i know lots of real adults who did that in '08 and who would do it again in a heartbeat, and besides...
(9) i don't understand practical politics, much less care about them

put simply: i'm irresponsible.

if i could have my way, i would spend the rest of my life drifting between good books, good films, good food, good ideas, good conversation and good friends.

no more errands.

no more bills to pay.

no more sheets to change.

no more laundry.

no more paperwork.

i hate when reality hits. all that "no more" stuff? yeah, that's just part of life. but i want my way! humph! if you don't give it to me, i'm going to throw a fit.

[note of caution: these confessions? all true. hope that really turned you off, boys]

to the man i'm pretty sure i just saw take a hot dog out of the trash can

dear stranger,

i caught you. i saw you furtively glance around before fishing that hot dog out of the trash. i watched as you stalked off practically inhaling your prize.

you must be hungry. we're all poor college students, but i'd be happy to buy you a frozen burrito or a lunchable or even a jamba juice - i'm feeling particularly generous today.

i don't know, maybe you're a freegan and eating out of the garbage is a lifestyle choice rather than poverty-induced suffering. in that case, in the words of my dear sassy gay friend, "what, what, what are you doing? ... look at your life, look at your choices." i get that you're trying to make a political statement about capitalism and consumerism... but look, dumpster diving is just plain gross. why not picket at walmart instead? probably a lot more sanitary.

whatever the case, you've been spotted. and the frozen burrito offer still stands.

sincerely,
a concerned onlooker

the new title

So I've changed the title of my blog once again. Go ahead and groan.

The title le passage comes from one of Michel de Montaigne's Essais, "On repentance." Montaigne's project in writing the essays was to paint of picture of himself, and in turn all of mankind, honestly and openly. The essays are wandering and often contradictory and refuse to make final, clear-cut judgments about humans and the world they inhabit.
In "On repentance," Montaigne explains, "Je ne peins pas l'être, je peins le passage" - "I don't paint the being, I paint the path." Rather than talking explicitly about himself ("I'm 6'3, have blue eyes, am witty and charming...") he paints a picture of his thinking - the passage, the movement, the evolution, the route...

And isn't that what we do when we humans write about ourselves? In this blog, I haven't told you very much about myself, my education, my family; the hard facts are pretty absent. But how much is that really worth? The concrete details are far easier to enumerate, but far lest interesting and informative than my thoughts. If you want to know a person, get to know her ideas, passions, feelings... When we give only the facts (age, personality traits, nationality, profession) we miss the path, fallaciously thinking we humans are stable, fixed creatures. Hardly so! Life is a passage, a journey, and to truly know a person, you've got to get into her head, see her thoughts in all their clutter and inconstancy.

If you're disinterested in my thoughts, as you well might (and probably should) be, know that the project is for me more than for you, as I said in my last post.

Adieu, donc.

So I go on blogging spurts

Forgive my inconsistency. But I'm running across all these really interesting ideas that I need to get down somewhere. Honestly, I blog more for myself than for you, dear reader (assuming you exist).

For my critical theory class we're reading extracts from Bihu Parekh's Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory. Last night I attended my first meeting of "Group," which is just that: a couple of my friends belong to a group that discusses religious and philosophical questions every other Sunday evening. Someone brought up a really provoking idea that's given me a lot of pause to think:

As a Mormon, I'm taught that I have, as nasty as this sounds, access to all the Truth and Happiness available in this world through the gospel, where other people lack that - they are shut out from some ultimate Meaning. But that's an uncomfortable idea - why should I think that I have a monopoly on those things - Meaning, Truth, Happiness. Can't someone who has never heard of Joseph Smith live a full life, even in the eternal sense? Why do I get to have it all?

Then as I was reading this article today, I came across a couple of really pertinent quotes. Parekh is critical of the writings of the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico because although "[h]e appreciated that different ages threw up different kinds of good life" - that people from the ancient Japanese to the contemporary Native Americans to the Africans of medieval times were happy and productive and good - he also insisted that "in any given age only one way of life was truly human, that all others could be graded in terms of it, and that those who had realized or approximated it had a right and a duty to guide and even govern others," treating his own "religion, age and society" as "universal norms" (55).

That last idea is a little complicated, but also, I believe, totally invalid. Let's break it down. Parekh's bone with Vico is that the latter believes:
(1) There is one culture that's 'got it right.'
(2) That culture has a responsibility to teach the 'poor savages' who haven't figured things out what they're missing.


How much does that sound like Mormon doctrine?
(1) We believe we have the "fullness of the restored gospel" and the priesthood to perform "saving ordinances" - if this kind of language isn't familiar to you, you could check this out for a bit of linguistic background.
(2) We send missionaries out to share this message.

Maybe I'm comparing apples to oranges - that culture and religion aren't really the same thing. This is a tricky issue. On one hand, I don't believe that there is any ultimately "true" culture - the culture of Zoroastrians in India isn't more or less "true" than that of suburbanites in White America or mestizos in the Philippines. On the other, I do believe in a loving Heavenly Father who sent his son Jesus Christ to atone for the sins of the world - and that's an "ultimate reality," as much as I don't like to phrase it that way.

Further, Parekh also examines Montesquieu's ideas on pluralism in his Persian Letters. Here, Parekh's criticism is that "[h]is thought has ample space for social but not cultural and moral diversity, for a wide variety of customs and practices but not for the view that human existence can be conceptualized and the good life lived in several different and worthy ways" (67).

It is the last part of this quote that I think is the most pertinent to the idea I'm trying to explore. I do believe there are many ways to be happy. I'm not going to fling the door wide open and say that any path can lead to happiness - committing murder, for example, or getting strung out on coke, aren't going to bring you joy. On the other hand, I don't want to treat happiness as a "closed canon" and think that there is one prescribed way to be happy - and I especially don't want to think that I've got the 'insider's guide'! Mormonism brings me happiness, but aren't there plenty of happy agnostics and Jews and Buddhists and Muslims and Catholics in the world?

I'm still working on this question.

Ah, the passion!

This semester, I'm taking a course on cultural and artistic exchanges between the U.S. and France. For this week's seminar we're reading a story called Atala, or the love of two savages in the wilderness by François-René de Chateaubriand, published in 1801. You could check out the Wikipedia page for a summary of the story if you care enough, but the purpose of this post is to share some really great quotes.

Chateaubriand is considered a key figure in French Romanticism and his writing is accordingly passionate. Reading this story made my heart ache and burn and flutter tour à tour. I often claim poor emotive powers, but I guess it just takes the right provocation, like these:

"Qu'ils sont incompréhensibles les mortels agités par les passions!" ("Ah, how incomprehensible are mortals driven by passion!")

"Connaissez-vous le coeur de l'homme, et pourriez-vous compter les inconstances de son désir? Vous calculeriez plutôt le nombre des vagues que la mer roule dans une temptête." ("Do you know the heart of man, and could you count the inconstancies of his desire? It would be easier to count the waves of the sea in a storm.")

This is an idea I've gotten a bit fixated on lately. (1) We do crazy things when driven by our emotions and passions [and look, I don't mean passions in a moralizing way - there is a place for passion in this world. I mean the way MADD are passionate about drunk driving laws, or how a thinker will go into a passionate frenzy of words over a new idea]. (2) Those emotions are always changing [at least mine are!].

I'm also pretty sure these things aren't just symptoms of youth - why else would the cultural phenomenon of Mid-life Crisis exist, or my dear Rosemarie, age 85, still sing with such emotion? Maybe as we get older we learn to better deal with [read: control or maybe even repress] with the emotions "qui nous balancent" - that swing and sway us. I don't want to think passion is something dictated by hormones and that fades with time. I hope I'm just as passionate about Chateaubriand when I'm old and gray.

As a consolation to the germanophones, I'll include that song Rosemarie sings in this very francophilic post:

"Rose-Marie, Rose-Marie
Sieben Jahre mein Herz nach Dir schrie
Rose-Marie, Rose-Marie
Aber du hörtest es nie.

Jedwede Nacht, jedwede Nacht
Hat mir im Traume dein Bild zugelacht
Kam dann der Tag, kam dann der Tag
Wieder alleine ich lag.

Jetzt bin ich alt, jetzt bin ich alt
Aber mein Herz ist noch immer nicht kalt
Schläft's uns schon bald
Schläft's uns schon bald
Doch bis zuletzt es noch hallt.

Rose-Marie, Rose-Marie
Sieben Jahre mein Herz nach Dir schrie
Rose-Marie Rose-Marie
Aber du hörtest es nie."

Ah, my heart!

LATER:

More from Chateaubriand. Wow, this stuff really gets to me - my poor little heart is palpitating.

"Croyez-moi, mon fils, les douleurs ne sont point éternelles; il faut tôt ou tard qu'elles finissent, parce que le coeur de l'homme est fini; c'est une de nos grandes misères: nous ne sommes pas même capables d'être longtemps malheureux." ("Believe me, my son, suffering is in no way eternal; it must end sooner or later, because the heart of man is finite. It is one of our great miseries: we are not even capable of being unhappy for a long time.")

Thank goodness.