Seasonal Differences in Music Listening Behavior

With the chilling air, I've noticed recently that there's been a change in the songs that I've felt motivated to bring up on my iPod. After doing some recollecting (and checking of the playlists that I put together a few months ago during the advent of the summer), it seems like there's actually a distinct genre-shift that goes on as the temperature changes throughout the year. I'm not sure if this is really the case with everyone, but it certainly is for me.

Statistically, I listen about about 78% LESS hip-hop, classic rock, and ridiculous pop music during the winter months. During that same period, my consumption of indie and classic music tends to increase in a tremendous way.

Interestingly, my RANGE of music also tends to decrease as the temperarture falls. I think my tendency to listen to one album over and over is somehow strengthened by the climatic changes wrought by the Massachusetts winter. I often find myself more willing to sit down and listen to overwrought pieces by GodSpeed You Black Emperor and M83.

In addition to this, it is often paired with some kind of unhealthy listening habits towards brands of avant-garde music. Last year was the advent of loving Nurse With Wound. Which, was really random and distasteful in the summer, but is now sounding really fun to get into again.

I suppose the case is here that I suffer from some kind of seasonal disaffective disoder, which is reflecting itself in my musicial choice. However, I guess I'd really need more data to make a definitive determinination of all this. This is a new project for the gathering darkness this winter.

Maybe its like what John Cusack expresses in High Fidelity. Not only is there a different soundtrack for every girl, there's a different soundtrack for every season.

If we pair this with the "Ipod Shuffle as Oracle" thesis of the universe, it seems like there's something very intersting to talk about. But I'm out to meet Brodie, so till next time.

Party Train

Often in the modern discourse, one hears alot of twaddle about the chaos theory and the so-called butterfly model of reality, in which small tiny things (like the flapping of a Butterfly's wings in Hong Kong) will result in huge aggregate systemic effects. (a tornado in the Midwest). However, when asked to point to a direct, real-life, identifiable example of this that was not intentional (that is, not a product or something intentionally put out there to snowball into a huge effect), most people can't give you a solid, immediate example.

To resolve the problem, I recently encountered a situation that might be handy to referencing when spuriously presenting the Chaos Theory in other aguments(and is a mildly interesting ancedote in terms of personal history)

So I started this summer with no real intention of running into anyone really new. In fact, I had started the summer almost completely bummed, since many people I knew would be out of the country for awhile, out in other places, and alot of my friends from college were all staying in Cambridge. (I had originally applied to join up with the Boston Lawyers group plan). Quite improbably, Tracy invited me to her graduation party. (This is the butterfly flapping)

Even even MORE improbably, these continuing encounters resulted in running into a coincidential confluence of events that had Megan staying with Clancy during the exact timeframe that Clancy and I hung out. This led to the ultimate invitation to go on a semi-ridiculous roadtrip deep into the suburbs of CT and then to RI to go thrift shopping.

Which brings me to the odd history of the song "Party Train" in getting to me. Originally popularized by Sam Berlin, this song had made its way into the iPod of Clancy Flynn, which, if you know is pretty all over the place in terms of having complete catalogs of anything. I mean, she doesn't even really know what's on there half of the time. Though that's great, the point here is that a completely separate and unique storyline had brought this song into Clancy's car on the trip. It was eventually given to me by Sam, and put on my laptop, where it was sporadically played and then forgotten for a few weeks while I moved back to school.

Now, on the complete other side of my existence, in the land of long-standing relationships, is the Epstein family. E and I dated for sometime, and as a result was that I'm pretty friendly with her siblings. Ellie, if you know her, is a real spirited go getter: she's the president of the student council. Now it just so happened that on that day she was trying to find a clean, dance-able song that would be good to pep people up for all the school spirit events happening throughout Spirit Week. And she just happened to talk to me for suggestions -- just then, iTunes shuffled cued Party Train, and I suggested it. She loved it, and now it's the song that's going to be basically the theme for the week.

And so, now "Party Train" will be played to hundreds and hundreds of NA students throughout Spirit Week. (this is the hurricane destroying San Francisco).

And so there -- three complete separate storylines had to converge. Most notably, three completely unrelated events to the song itself had to occur -- I had to have decided to visit Clancy on that day (to be on the car to be exposed to Party Train), I had to have dated E starting a number of years ago (to know Ellie), and Clancy had to have loaded the song onto her iPod. No intentionality. Just completely emergent behavior.

That's pretty crazy.

Socioeconomics and the Core System

A few days ago, Brandon and I got to talking about the socioeconomics of culture and precisely what factors allow for the aggregations of people that seem to allow for culturally vibrant areas to form. Lots of points were brought up (that I'll have to remember to take a couple blogs to go through and address individually), but an interesting question that's been festering with me ever since is: do different socioeconomic classes create uniquely specific types of cool? And, if so, do they fit into the existing Flynn/Hwang conceptual superstructure for cool?

The deliniation line, I feel, falls in the nature of the performer to the art itself. "High-brow"/"wealthy" art creates the constant distinction between the artist and the art that is being created. "High-brow" art, even when it is appropriated from originally low-brow sources finds itself into this construct. (e.g. Jazz, which is now performed in formal wear on a stage in static stadiums)

Much "low brow," traditionally synomymous with "low class" art, always blends this distinction. Consider the folk dances and peasant art of medieval Europe, or the current state of rap and hip-hop as active, dance-able genres.

This actually fits pretty nicely into the Flynn/Hwang superstructure. If you remember, the four categories are:

Hardcore: Emphasizing honesty of expression, passion, true expression of values, externalized performance, and the possibility of shared experience. (e.g. John Lennon, Jimmy Page)

Dylancore: Emphasizing the same values as hardcore, but internalized towards the individual as the true path towards authenticity. (e.g. Bob Dylan, Linda Perhacs)

Fab-Core: Emphasizing fakeness, outlandishness, kitsch, artificiality, and reveling it ironically. (e.g. RuPaul, Britney Spears)

Warhol-Core: Emphasizing the values of Fab-Core, but internalizing it as a type of authenticity and integrity in of itself. (e.g. Andy Warhol, The Decemberists -- what I've argued elsewhere is the "Generation Y" aesthetic)

Using the critereon above, the high-brow consumes the latter two categories, while the low-brow takes the former. In the hardcore and Dylancore scenarios, the artist is always considered part and parcel of the work being created, while Fab and Dylan core set the stage for the artistic flexibility of irony and distance from a work that allows for the break between artist and art. (Obviously, these categories are not strict, as many artistic styles can be considered 'transitional' in their outlook)

Employing the historical cycle that we posited earlier actually creates a neat little system that reflects the actual movement of artistic styles throughout history. Perhaps nowhere quite as immediately as the broad category of indie music. But this will have to be discussed further later, now I sleep.

Wallet Trading

\One odd little bit of phenomena that popped up this summer was the practice of getting together with people and trading all the odd little ephemera that collected in their wallets and purses against stuff that you yourself had collected in your wallet.

There's a real intimacy inherent in this kind of exchange, since what makes something an attractive thing to trade for isn't anything intrinsic to the object itself, but the emotional history that precedes the object. In turn, you have to ante up with the other little momentos of the bits-and-pieces of your life.

In a way, I guess one of the great joys of it was the inherent voyeurism of hearing all the odd stories that surround the little things. In Washington D.C., I traded with Cat (and this is already a kind of meta-exchange, since she's the friend of a friend) to get the business card of a hairdresser that she used once in Chicago and of a bookstore that she went to with her friends early in the year. She has something of mine now, but I forget what it is.

The interesting thing is, as these pieces pass along further and further from the original interaction in purely spatial terms, they also carry the little (or huge) experience associated with it. I'll keep telling everyone about that weekend we were in D.C., and Cat might show whatever I traded to her, and explain the story behind that too.

I've always thought it would be nice if people traded their old love letters to each other, and then if they passed from person to person.

I'm currently working on a project to do a huge international game of wallet trading, with Sam over in England, and Clancy over in New York. If you're interested, let me know.

...And We're Back

Hey kids, I'm finally all moved into my bodacious new room and the new year all begun in earnest. Classes don't start for another few days, but everything's already starting to pile in. At any rate, I've decided that I'll be posting on a regular basis every other day during the weekdays -- that is Tuesday, Thursday, and with an occasional special feature on Saturday, if something strikes me.

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I've been thinking alot recently about the mental "landscape" of experiencing music has shifted in an iPod/mp3 player era. Specifically, in an enviroment with the mass portability of large quantities of music, it seems to me that we should see two major phenomena. (Especially with the recent release of the new iPod Shuffle, which is, well, really freakin small

First, the practice of listening to whole albums through is, in a large part of the population, dead. Having music infinitely shuffalable and the power of OurTunes constantly broadening the range of music that we can access and switch between lends itself to a sporadic and "jumping-around" style of listening.

Second, though somewhat less uniquely, the everyday experience of music is now very much in tandem with other everyday activities. That is to say, we now are constantly accompanied by music. It always appears with other phenomena.

In some ways, this is good. I believe that larger access to music and a constant connection to it is going to develop a generation of kids with whom genre has no real bearing. Essentially, I feel that genre-tribalism is going to go down. Slowly, we should see a general bleeding as artists raised in this generation accept the remix of a broader level of music. (I think I'm going to develop this one at some point -- I'm also still waiting for Classical-Punk)

In other ways, this is bad. The "album as complete experience" concept has largely been lost. While we might purchase a CD and listen it all the way through the first time around, the flexibility of iTunes has allowed us to quickly pick, mix, and reshuffle any particular listing of tracks with others according to our taste. While obviously expands enjoyment and increases the ability for the listener to control his or her musical enviroment, it deprives the "concept album" of its original strength to control a mass audience. In short, it lends itself to a reconstruction of the album as merely a "mix tape" of good songs from a band. No more, no less. Musicians are known for their songs, not their albums.

I mean, I think it's a pretty interesting question to ask whether or not a band like Pink Floyd would be able to reach such ridiculous heights as it did a few decades ago.

Against this, I'd present a conceptual event to hold music screenings. Essentially a movie screening, but simply with an entire album. You would sit in an auditorium, the lights would dim, and you would just experience the recording. If anything it would remind us of a begone era, if not actually preserve the idea of the long-length album.

Apologies and Twlight Zone

Been running around in recent days finagling how the move-in back to the happy land of Cambridge is going to go and I've been unable to post. Most of you who are members of the Umbrella list have received an initial document and hopefully that'll get the ball rolling on the entire project. At any rate, I intend to return to regular posting as soon as I hit ground again at Harvard in a week or so.

But, after an extensive trip with Mike into the city to see "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" (of which I have to blog about eventually) and consignment store shopping, we and Justin got to talking about long-winded philosophical dilemmas, which is often our habit. In particular, we were dealing with the ethical dilemmas posed by the medical anesthetic "Twilight."

http://www.justbreastimplants.com/surgery/twilight_anesthesia.htm

What's interesting about Twilight is that it induces a mid-level state between unconsciousness and wakefulness in the patient. However, it does not itself create sufficient relief from surgical pain, rather the interesting thing about the chemical is that it removes all memory of the surgery. That is to say, without being combined with a local anesthetic (which it usually is), Twilight could theoretically allow you to feel all the pain of an event, but eliminate all memory of that event later on.

Question: Would it be ethical to hit a prisoner with Twilight and then physically torture him for information? (in a way in which the prisoner was never able to discover)

It's an interesting consideration, because it asks if the removal of persistent consequences eliminates the moral imperatives of a particular action. The gut instinct reaction, at least in my case, is "yes." Arguably, the guy you tortured never suffers any adverse effects (beyond the pain of the original torture) and you get the information that you need. No harm, no foul, right?

Though, unfortunately, you could equally reconstitute the system to say that this reasoning justified date rape, assuming that the rapee never discovers the situation. Or, alternatively, that stealing money from someone who never finds out is not really stealing in any sense. Insofar as we hinge the entirity of moral culpability on the cognizable consequences of our actions, we can hold that a entire number of acts are not morally wrong.

Gedanken Experiment: We live in a world where we all suffer from the memory loss in "Momento." Are there ethics? Does right and wrong exist without memory?

Interesting, I'm going to have to think about this one some more.

Political Notes

(Taking a break from the problem while Matt readies what I'm sure will be a counter-counter response to face another pressing problem)

Question: Politically, how should we organize the Umbrella to most effectively build connections and influence in our first few years?

Some thoughts...

1) Since long range planning is necessarily difficult, I feel that the central goal of the Umbrella at this formative stage should be merely one of generating the political capital (in knowledge and connections) and cooperation between our members. While this may seem a bit like putting the cart before the horse, I believe that this will allow us the greatest flexibility and most growth, since we have no explicit agenda or politicized aim that might turn off potential recruitees. This will also create a personalized network which will give us the most aggregate leverage when the Umbrella as a whole makes an official appearance.

2) To that end, our recruiting process should avoid presenting ourselves explicitly as "The Umbrella." Instead, we should describe our plans as the personal desire to create a think tank or lobbying group to foward aims that are shared between recruiter and recruitee. Otherwise, we may be considered dangerous, if not outright ludicrous. In addition, this strategy has the advantage of creating specific policy movements within our organization that we will be able to tap later on to turn into an official series of aims for the network we have created.

3) It also strikes me that we should organize ourselves geographically, since this will allow local Umbrella members to meet up and coordinate themselves in a way where local resources can be immediately be turned to providing mutual favors. As a result, we should choose a Manager for particular parts of the country. These Managers will manage the growth of the network in those areas and coordinate local policy and meetings. They, in turn, will meet digitally with other Managers to decide on general policy. I believe this two-tier system will prove most effective.