Hopefully you've heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. If not, ctrl-t Google and look it up now.
Penn State University's own Atheist-Agnostic Association was recognized on their website for the Bible-A-Thon we held a month or so ago to raise money for Doctors Without Borders. Another one is being planned and I'll post when it will occur, but until then, check out this great feature news story they gave us with a link to the Daily Collegian article.
So I've been trying to figure out where I'm going to be in 5 years.
As I'm hoping <hoping, hoping!> to go to grad school, there's always the possibility of the ivory towers, although I'm growing a little scared of that result. Not because of the daunting educational challenges required to climb the ivy to the windows, but in fear of climbing back out and down safely. If I do end up in this position, I'd like to be in a progressive liberal arts college. But this is a digression.
I'm trying to figure out how to carve out a niche artistically. I've developed a unique style of composition recently, involving creative use of electronics and applications of ideas and aesthetics that belong on an ethical playground. The two questions I always return to are 1. Who cares? and 2. Why?
1. I've had a horrible problem of finding performers for my music in PSU, and I'm afraid of this carrying on past my undergrad years. Additionally, the concert music climate in America seems to be growing more and more conservative. Leading to...
2. If there's so much stacked against me, am I not simply wasting my life away?
Unfortunately, I can't kick the composing habit, and I don't know why. I really, truly cannot work a 9 to 5, nor could I devote myself to research or even education. And as much as I may be interested in that, I already feel downright sick if I don't compose within five or six hours. It's really like an addiction.
And although this is probably a highly romanticized approach, I feel that there are a lot of problems in the world that, in this time and age, shouldn't exist. I see them, and I can communicate them, and if I don't, who will?
So I need to figure out how to carve out a niche of listeners. With the rise of the 'new music business,' there's a lot of open doors. I guess I have to find the right one...
Just a quick addition to my post a few days ago...
On the international collaboration project "1 Giant Leap" is a rapper named Maxi Jazz. I finally decided to hunt down some of his work, specifically with the British electronica group Faithless, and found a song that summed up what I was trying to say, but a whole lot better. You can view the music video here.
Specifically, the lyrics I'm especially interested in are from the second verse, which I've reprinted below:
"Just how many centuries have we been
waiting for someone else to make us free?
And we refuse to see
that people overseas suffer just like we:
Bad leadership and ego's unfettered and free
Who feed on the people they're supposed to lead
I don't need good people to pray and wait
For the lord to make it all straight.
There's only now, do it right."
Another fairly quick post. A very talented artist who unfortunately doesn't have the attention she deserves in the US (go figure), Bjork released a single last year that caused a bit of controversy. The song was called "Declare Independence," and was written to influence Tibet to declare independence against China. There was actually quite an uproar at her concert in China because of it.
It's ironic to see what kind of political unrest can unearth in and around music. Oddly, the biggest row I've seen from US music recently came when the Dixie Chicks announced they didn't support the war, or the whole "Super Bowl Slip" incident, but nothing quite as compelling. Sure, artists like Rufus Wainwright, Incubus, Duncan Sheik, and Nine Inch Nails have all criticized our current government for various reasons, but little has actually been effected culturally from it, and I'm not sure if that's good or bad. We seem like such a docile people.
And then if you look elsewhere in the world, people in Iraq are burning puppets of Bush and Rice to contest our military presence, and Greece has recently had some pretty violent demonstrations against the way their government is approaching capitalism. And the last fight I've seen in the streets was over whether the Steelers or Eagles were better.
By the way, I haven't heard much of Incubus since "Megalomaniac," and I'm sure it's because of more than just their slight hiatus. And I've yet to here Rufus Wainwright's "Going to a Town," Duncan Sheik's "White Limosine," or Nine Inch Nails' "Survivalism" on the radio.
Maybe our passions are just a little ill-placed...
Here's the video to Bjork's "Declare Independence."
And here is the link to Rufus Wainwright's "Going to a Town."
Both are incredible videos, and I hope you enjoy them...
A few weeks ago, I replied to a friend's Facebook post to dispel the presented notion that humans are inherently evil. Yesterday, somebody picketing in front of Willard spoke these words: "Jesus Christ didn't come here to change the world; He came to bring another world."
Why am I retorting this fundamentalism? I feel that recently, more and more people have been taking an apocalyptic stance on human existence. This is beyond fundamentalism: this is madness. I'm not attacking religion, but the very idea that humans are evil and self-centeredness is inherently wrong, and they can never fix either entity.
I think that at its core, this is a problem of personal philosophy. I blame the education system for not introducing children to critical thought and analysis, and religious fanaticism for taking advantage of that lack of adequate self-definition. (Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind" offers some good fodder for this argument)
My fear is that people will revert to, at best, a sleepy, uneventful existence and at worst, a malevolent existence that treats life as ultimately worthless from a materialistic standpoint. What if this is the only world? And if it isn't, why can't it be an enjoyable existence? Doesn't the mere fact of utter existence dictate some sort of significance?
Either way, I move to lobby for mandatory Philosophy courses in middle school and high school. Ayn Rand has made a great statement about how important philosophy is for human existence in general in "Philosophy: Who Needs It." There is a wealth of knowledge yet to be tapped into by the majority of the American public. And I don't just mean philosopher's like Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger; thinkers like Carl Sagan and C.S. Lewis should be taken into account, too.
I'm just worried that too many people are under the false impressions that humans are bad because of their "primordial animalistic motives" and "mortal existence." The world around us shows that much more exists, and whether one is religious or not, he or she should learn to judge and adapt to the world around them for themselves. And Philosophy will make that happen.
This Friday, tickets for the Ladysmith Black Mambazo concert will go on sale! (see here: http://www.thestatetheatre.org/Events/fullevent.php?id=394) I remember first listening to Ladysmith as a child through Paul Simon's "Graceland," and I'm amazed to see them coming to campus.
Actually, we've had quite a few international performers visit Penn State this, including Okyerema Asante a couple of weeks ago and Amani Utupe today. It's incredible to seem this much culturally diverse music in State College, and I'm not missing a minute of it. Ronnie Burrage, as a new professor here at PSU, has been bringing in many artists from around the world, and I highly recommend following his performance schedule to find out who's coming next.
This is the video to the song "My Culture" by 1 Giant Leap. A couple of producers from England got together around 2001 to create an album that would define the world climate at the very beginning of the 21st century. The CD is actually great, but I feel the song and video depict an abstract, although powerful, representation of what's going on internally and externally in our society. I may elaborate later, but until then, I hope you can pull something from this too.
About a month ago, I was browsing Penn State's upcoming events my eyes fell on Bill Nye speaking about sustainable resources for the future. This made me very excited.
This past summer, I saw/rode Disney's "Ellen's Energy Adventure," which featured Ellen DeGeneres and, of course, Bill Nye. Much like the talk he gave us last night, the ride was about where energy comes from, and how we as humans can better use it in the future.
So I arrived at Rec Hall at about 7pm expecting only a few people to be squandering about. Instead, I waited in a line that wrapped around the whole building, which was spectacular to see a 'spokesperson for science' still receiving this much attention!
The crowd was a typical Penn State crowd. To begin the show, they had seven student groups make presentations on the need for more sustainable energy resources and conservation, which I personally found pretty cool. Few people realize that much of what we have now, the recycled food for mulch and the recycled 'mess' from Paternoville, is mostly, if not all, the result of student initiatives. Penn State really is at the forefront of major cultural change. However, the majority of the crowd was only there to see the Bill Nye they remembered, so these poor student groups got quite a few boos and jeers and the people in the mixing booth kept cutting into their presentations with fight songs and Bill Nye's old theme song. Not one of Penn State's better nights as a collective society.
And for the most part, Bill Nye received the respect he deserved (minus a few dumb instances throughout the rest of the night). Trust me, the guy is a tome, and while he isn't on top of everything, he offered evidence that was easily approached and dove straight down into the science. I approached his speech skeptical of global warming and dwindling resources. I certainly didn't leave that way.
Overall, a great night, and a very imformative lecture. Penn State has been known to bring in some amazing speakers, and Bill Nye certainly lived up to the hype, pushing his agenda of environmental protection and discovering new energy resources in a way that we, as college students, could relate to. And his viewpoints were actually quite realistic. I'm a bigger fan of him now than I ever was as a kid, and I'm highly anticipating whoever PSU will bring in next.
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