Sunday, November 9, 2008

What I'm Listening To Now

Word of Warning: A cursory glance of the videos featured here suggests a repressed sexuality that escapes in the form of serial killings. I am not aware of this being the case.

I would very much like to write a story that depends solely on "The Queen is Dead" for pop culture reference. It is rich. And it gets that "The king died... the queen died..." nod for all the CreatWritrs.
"The Queen is Dead" is not easy to come by. It was recently reissued on CD, which is just groovy, but "Rank" has a most excellent live copy that I, and maybe you'll, prefer.


Do you hear tympani in this song? I see no tympani in the video and yet it's like listening to thunder. Thunder and Agony. "Jack the Ripper" was a B-Sides and Rarities find for me. Someday I'll find a copy of "Henry's Dream," because the electric version is way better.


Totally thought "Get Your Rocks Off" was a new but good Rolling Stones song when I heard it. Thought the time-space continuum had split and maybe I'd have some closure on my "Beast of Burden" hang-ups. I love how shiny this video is. Makes everything look wet, or "sweaty" if you prefer.


I can't believe that I didn't notice "Police on My Back" was in "Knocked Up" until the third "screening." I guess these things happen. Lethal Bizzle has sampled it in a new song by the same name. It is "Okay". These things happen.


The really great video that goes along with the sweater song can't be embedded from youtube.com. I am cunning enough in my use of html to provide the picture you see below, but to watch it you'll have to use what I'm assuming is the Swedish version of internet tv. (The second one.)
Remember when Weezer was good and didn't just rap about drugs over ridiculous bass guitar? Remember when you could listen to a CD and have this strange experience that resembled vicarious emotional telepathy? I went to Kroeger yesterday. "Undone" was on the radio. I ended up smiling for a while.




My friend Brian thinks telepathy is the next step in human evolution.
"I mean, she wishes I shared my feelings right?" he said, "My honesty would be tacit, inevitable, and complete."
I could have said a lot of things. Since we've had this conversation, I've ruminated over what the "cost" of telepathy would be. It's occurred to me that certain animals, perhaps all of them, may have "beaten us to it" and the only proof we have that this is not the case is science. 2 It occurred to me that the evolution of vocalization parts may have been necessitated by some chimp/human co-ancestor not being able to share its feelings. It also occurred to me that language, as a part of tool culture, is pretty screwed in the telepathic human species. We imagine talking into the brains of others. I reckon we'd send feelings (warm waves of joy coming at you) and the occasional image (pineapple, my belly, sensation of hunger... you get the idea) but how do you communicate the complexities of spear-building via image-flashing? I'm sure there are a couple of people who would get really good at teaching others how to make spears. Maybe they'd even remember the whole experience of figuring out how to make a spear for the purpose of teaching others to do the same. So maybe language is a necessary invention independent of communication, but I can also see how it was easy for non-telepaths to kill telepaths with their superior weaponry and inability to feel brain-death.
I asked Brian how he felt about his girlfriend having an all-access pass to his brain. He suggested that telepathy would be a universal "deal-breaker."
"It's not like we're dishonest with eachother, but there's got to be stuff in here she doesn't like," he said, pointing to his temple, "Whats a non-issue and whats a lie of omission, I dunno, but there's definitely a reflexive property to consider. I'm still trying to resolve the fact that her poop smells like something other that jasmine and butterflies. We'd have the 'other-shoe' fight and either we pluck eachother's eyes out or we say 'well I guess that's everything."
I can't imagine that happening, right away, with every person of the opposite sex I meet. I can't hypothetically shame myself into no longer imagining what everyone looks like naked. I will probably inaugurate the dawn of humanity's collective oneness with a personally administered lobotomy. People might ask what tortured me so much about communion with the overmind, so I will have to leave a note:

this looked like it would be a lot of work.
hearts and stars,

-E


My only hope is that, sometime before telepathy is forced upon us, the floating house is an option. (It occurs to me that I (a) watch too much science fiction or (b) have always had a secret desire to own a house boat.) A space station would be nice, but I expect some degree of societal collapse. I'm an optimist.
Seriously:
I hope people like telepathy so much they can't think of anything else but people-watching and buttsex. I expect the rate of idea-development to increase. It'll be like computers x 10. I just hope people don't like it too much. It'd be a drag if people stopped keeping track of stuff. (like they said would happen with computers/the internet.1) I'm willing to assume that if one telepath knows something then the next fifty telepaths, say within five blocks, know that same thing. I suppose memory, then is dependent on associations. And as excited as I am about the repercussions that has on identity and infectious thought, all I really want to know is "can anyone really forget anything if everyone around them knows it?"
I think plane rides would be exciting.
I just don't know what else we'll do re: work. I often tell people that if x gets us closer to a culture of artists and philosophers it is inherently good, even if we're putting our brains into needle-filled jars.
And if that's what happens when humans grow that organ, brain wrinkle, or gland, I promise I will be glad. If it means that we have to reorganize the mechanics of communication, then I'll probably be happier with my lobotomy.

--------
1Incidentally, this is how a portion of computers were sold, and probably still are sold. To people who have kept track of their sales/taxes/random business concerns with rooms full of green paper notebooks, computers were the exciting accountant-in-a-box. And yet, my dad often complains about how much more paper he has now. Mostly because he has an accountant-in-a-box and feels encouraged to use it.
2 Which is just words anyway.
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