AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Bunch of Ideas

I was earnestly hoping not to blog much today, in the interest of accomplishing non-digital tasks. But a variety of morning events and discussions have provoked me, so I’ll try to tackle them concisely, seriatim.

⊕ Re David Weinberger on copyright: As I was singing along with my computer this morning, I was reminded how deeply copyright has impoverished our culture. No, I don’t mean anything specifically to do with my own vocal artistry; but I do mean that the recorded-music industry has affected the sphere of homemade music just as the film and television have affected homemade theater (probably more so, though I don’t want to get into an argument on the point). But the notion that a single performance constitutes a definitive instance of a song (think of David Bowie singing “Changes,” I guess) throws our sense of culture all catty-wumpus. My habit of playing recorded music through every moment of the day that my surroundings permit (and that quantity just leaped with the purchase of a portable recorded-music reservoir) — a habit reflected perhaps less hyperbolically in the Typical American Family’s TV-viewing habits and some other folks’ radio and recorded-music habits — stifle the plausibility of indigenous performance. Regular folks now are much less likely to sing or play piano or guitar, now that they can easily choose to listen to Bowie or Britney Spears or Yanni or whatever. This, I know, is old hat, but it still riles me, and I want to highlight the connection to copyright, which ostensibly exists to enrich the cultural landscape.

⊕ I also have had occasion to see close-up the deleterious consequences of ressentiment, the malicious hostility of the weak and incompetent against the competent, and it’s stunning how effective the power of stunted weakness can be. Almost tempts one to turn Nietzschean — but I dare not do that, for my brother would chastise me, to keep me honest.

Really, though, the current of anti-competence that sometimes rears its head around us just beggars my imagination. That ressentiment can not only persist, but flaunt itself without fear of unmasking as the puerile envious malice that it is, turns my stomach. Maybe that’s what happened to Jenna and Naomi, in which case I hope they stay sensitive to this vile, destructive nonsense.

⊕ I still want to finish off what I was thinking about the Nashville gig, so I can take down the blog-in-prog sign.

⊕ I also owe the Tutor and his coterie of interlocutors some response about postmodernism, truth, Derrida, de Man, Swift, and the gospels. They’ve gone so deep, though, that it’ll take some concentrated thinking time to join argument. So I’ll pay bills instead, for now.

DRMA: "Finish Line" by Lou Reed;"The Train Kept A Rolling" by the Yardbirds; "A Room At The Heartbreak Hotel" by U2; "Tangled" by Folk You Harder (hi, Shannon!); "Wetback" by Los Mocosos; "Inconsolable" by Jonatha Brooke & The Story; "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" by the White Stripes; "Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday; "Nkosi Sikelele Africa" by Paul Simon, Miriam Makeba, et al.; "The Truth" by Steve Earle; "At The Cross" by the Word; "Another Satellite" by XTC; "Chiaroscuro" by Paula Cole; "Happy" by the Rolling Stones; "Taxman" by the Beatles; "They'll Need a Crane" by They Might Be Giants;