it's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it

So I've kind of been following the 'Occupy Wall Street' thing and then the 'Occupy Cleveland' thing, and of course the whole 'Arab Spring' along with my preferred mix of geopolitical ephemerals and the local machinations.

Given that we haven't darkthroned through the city in a little while and the weather was favorable, we decided to amble down to the Free Stamp (which is an ugly piece of public art by the way) and observe the protestations against the Man in the park with the Free Stamp across from the federal building.

I saw protests every other week when I lived in Kent during the Bush years and this was more or less the same thing. Abstract slogans directed against big abstract entities, acoustic guitars, bongos, signs, people just kind of hanging around, people that I know but not really well. Slogans about coming together and changing things and people cheering and instead of feeling thrilled about the possibility of a better world, I realize once again that I just can't believe in it, much in the way I'm sure that my friends are bemused by my embrace of so-called "organized religion."

Having been immersed in reading history among other things recently, I really don't feel like anyone has solutions. Every revolution begins idealistically with flowers and hugs and celebrations, but there are the inevitable power struggles that follow, the old guard and structures of corruption find ways to assimilate within a new framework, and things get ugly and violent because ultimately the same structures that cause suffering will continue to exist. We say we won't get fooled again, but meet the new boss same as the old boss.

I feel old too, and I feel like I look like an undercover cop or something because I'm in my work clothes and so is Randal, even if we're not corporatistas. I wonder if I'm defanged because of my working-stiff-ness but I was just as cynical about this stuff as an equally naive college kid even then, before I really had to deal with unions and overlords and feel like a pawn in the class wars of the boomers.

It's hard for me to take people with an anticapitalist/anticorporate stance seriously when they're texting on their iPhones made with metals from war-torn countries by a big corporation and posting updates to Facebook. Adbusters had some degree of subcultural cool when I was 16 before I realized that they're just marketing a whole other meaningless brand, not to mention that they make their non-brand shoes in China too. I don't want Kalle Lasn running my country any more than I want Barack Obama or Random Republican or whoever. There's a lust for power and control over minds I see there that I find disturbing as well, the kind of thing that draws in disaffected youth and makes them feel enlightened and part of something.

Last time I checked, the drug war was still going on, a whole lot of countries are getting predator droned and we're still in Afghanistan and shady CIA business is still going on. But money talks and those without the scratch are ultimately voiceless until the lives of those in power are threatened. I fear the angry mob just as much as the powers that be. People who think too much are screwed either way.


And I'm looking at the Key Tower, at the Cleveland School District Headquarters, the Municipal Courthouse to the north, and thinking about how if we were really going to raise hell about something, it shouldn't be this abstract raging against the corporate machine, but against the bureaucracy and the unofficial power structure that have screwed over this city with blatant chutzpah for the last forty years. Start local and work your way out. There's plenty of bad to go around in this city within the party machine alone.

Raise some hell about the RTA or the corporate welfare to sports team owners or the Cleveland Clinic not treating the people who live across the street or the slum landlords or the corrupt bureaucracy that keeps anything from getting done or the schools that disenfranchise generations of kids or the gouging by the Water Department.

But wait, that would involve actually having to do something instead of caring a lot.

swallow my pride

In the space of four days, from art-making, to art show for most excellent viewing and people-watching with the partner in crime, from slacker softball, to real baseball with my dad, watching the Indians win but skipping out on the 70's rock with synchronized fireworks, hanging out with one of my near and dear former roomies who's getting married in a few weeks, making epic plans for Ashtabula County absurdity, plotting road trips to Buffalo, uprooting fragrant mint roots from the back yard, planting basil and oregano in its place.

I'm numb about Bin Laden, a bit cynical, feeling like it's 9/11 all over again with all the jingoism and self-righteousness going down. We're still at war, Gitmo is still doing its thing, all sorts of shadiness is still going on, but oh look we can be distracted and it seems like they got rid of the body awfully fast but who cares and oh by the way security is heightened downtown which means more DHS and TSA on the RTA because oh man maybe someone will bomb Cleveland but who the hell would want to?

I keep on living and trying to figure out this whole loving God and doing the right thing thing and I find it amazing how we try to justify our motivations like they're oh so pure and I understand more and more why people seek oblivion in drink and drugs and Desperate Housewives, because the world is a nasty icky place that upon further inquiry is even more nasty and icky than previously thought.

So I go back to putting my hands in clay, in paint, in dirt, on metal strings and steering wheel, finding ways to laugh and trying to process all this through.

hormones and sound

I was working on some projects at the art center when a song came on the radio that reminded me of someone because he once said it reminded him of me. I understand that being sappy is part of human nature for some of us, but I remember being kind of pissed as you can only be when you're 18 and skeptical about most things especially ooshy-gooshy things and it's a terrible vanilla song about some chick that the guy loves who goes off and has adventures and drinks soy lattes and he's still pining for her but she's kind of off doing her own thing. Or something. I don't know.

There were a lot of reasons why things didn't work out with us and this was the least of them, but it was kind of what happened, except that I drink my tea and coffee black and don't do tae-bo while listening to Mozart. For a pair of goofy young kids who both had subcultural leanings and closets full of black clothing, he should've known that something else would have tugged at my heartstrings way more than Train.

Yet I don't take the Tastebuds.fm philosophy that finding one's soulmate is possible through common love of the same bands. It must be some weird hipster thing maybe or a way to break the ice, where taste is cultural currency and conspicuous consumption is paramount. But heck, what do I know anyway? I know that there were way too many relationships in my life where me and whoever connected with the same sounds but never connected with each other.

Those times we drove around all night listening to our favorite songs and talking til 3 in the morning about everything and nothing, listening to soul music in your old Crown Vic by the lake when I was so stressed out and sore from a car crash and you wanted me to feel better, that time we huddled under a track jacket watching Sonic Youth in the rain getting goosebumps from the gorgeous noise of Thurston Moore's guitar and being really wet and cold? A shared love of tuneage and an enjoyment of each other's company was all it was and nothing more and at least I see it for what it is instead of trying to read anything into it further. Life isn't Garden State, people.

I'm also not sure if I trust a site that suggests due to some terrible survey that Nirvana and Metallica fans are more likely to copulate on the first date than people who like Coldplay, in part because the sampling of genre was so limited. And by the way, oh White and Mostly British People, the Blur/Oasis rivalry is so 1990-what?

m to the a to the s to the k...

The Holy Ghost Party was a super success and we probably had a good 300+ kids come through the doors for pizza, candy, games. We ran out of candy by the end of the night but it was chaos in the best way seeing the parents chilling out and laughing and the kids running around popping balloons and getting sugared up. I was helping out with the foosball table and the darts but eventually ended up being the roving photographer as more people showed up to volunteer.



I also did face-painting for the first time. Attempting to portray the likenesses of Cinderella and Dora the Explorer was a challenge, but soon the girls were requesting flowers and stars and that was way easier.



We also had a zombie for Obama



Speaking of Obama, I got to hear, if not see, the man himself speak yesterday. Decided at the last minute to join my roommate and her brother and his fiancee and a friend of mine from the station, with whom I spent most of Bruce Springsteen's set making jokes about how every Springsteen song is about the same thing more or less.

I think I'm going to be voting third party this year because I really can't get behind either of the candidates running for policy reasons, but I thought his speech was really good and he had a lot of good things to say about personal responsibility and the state of the world and so on.



So we're all getting these warm fuzzy feelings and such and we get on the Rapid, which is all Obama supporters and then this older white lady asks my roommate to give up her seat. Not me, but my roommate. Being charitable types with respect for elders, we move and stand in the aisle, and suddenly the irony of what just happened sinks in as I look around at the people who are sitting down and they are all white except my roommate, her brother, and a lady sitting behind him.

Dear Cleveland, just so you know, it's not Alabama in the 1950s. Lady, you with the Obama pin, fresh from the rally, are really lucky that you ran across two girls who wouldn't cuss you out for being so oblivious. I don't even know if you were being unintentionally racist, just selfish. I don't think you even meant to evoke an iconic era, but the irony of it was just so absurd that we just started laughing at the situation because what else can you really do at that point?

We hear all these things about a new chapter in history and we get a juxtaposition of the old that exists in much more subtle ways all over this land.

My beloved city, we have so much further that we need to go.