Povert

I seem to be following up on previous posts a lot lately. Meh.

Anyway, I mentioned that I picked up American Idiot from iTunes.

First, I should say that I generally don’t like overtly political albums. Never have. Ask Chris. I’ve never much liked Rage Against the Machine, for example. The music itself is fine, but… I dunno. I’ve just never much liked hearing excessively political music. A political song here or there is fine; I just think Zack de la Rocha should have written a few love songs or something. Mix it up a little.

I do like Audioslave, though. Hmm… I wonder why?

However, I do like American Idiot. It is quite political, I think. I don’t pick up on lyrics too quickly, but this is the general impression I get. They don’t seem to dwell on it too much, though.

“Whatsername” and “Wake Me Up When September Ends” are particularly good, I think. They give me goosebumps. Actually, I like all the tracks. Those two just kind of stand out for me, though.

This has got me thinking about other people’s reactions to politically-themed music. Specifically, conservative-type people. They tend to hate the Dixie Chicks, Pearl Jam, whatever, because they’ve expressed their beliefs in public. These people often say that they don’t want their entertainers to express political beliefs, because it somehow ruins the experience. However, they don’t seem to mind when a country singer does a pro-war song.

I, on the other hand, would prefer no political commentary at all, of any persuasion, whether I agree with it or not. I just accept that there is some. Doesn’t bother me much, it’s just a preference. If the music is good, it ultimately doesn’t matter. American Idiot is very good, so I don’t much mind the political commentary. At least they’re not doing a RATM thing like screaming “FUCK YOU I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!” 20 times in a row.

One of these days I’ll post something about the political madness in my mind… I’m really quite sick of it from both ends of the spectrum. I’ve had a liberal call me a xenophobe and a conservative accuse me of sympathizing with pedophiles… Blah. Screw them all.

Ok, I got some responses to Notes on Happiness. I should clarify.

Erin made the Pollyanna comment. I don’t think that’s accurate, though it’s probably a fair reaction to what I wrote.

I didn’t mean to imply that some level of ridiculous optimism was good. I do think, though, that pessimism is not in line with reality. Neither is excessive optimism. I just think that general optimism is more productive. I’m being utilitarian here, people. I think a healthy perspective on reality is basically optimistic.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve rolled my eyes when someone has claimed to be pessimistic because it means they won’t get let down. The problem is, even when you’re not let down, positive outcomes are still viewed in a pessimistic and probably coincidental light. My less polite response is that people who are pessimistic for these reasons need to grow a pair. How much sense does it make to begin a chess game with the expectation to lose? If nothing else, you should suspend judgement and assume you have a chance. Assuming you have a chance is optimistic.

Bertrand Russell did a break-down of the kinds of unhappiness that afflict people. Here they are, in a nutshell:

• Byronic Unhappiness: “It is common in our day … to suppose that those among us who are wise have seen through all the enthusiasms of earlier times and have become aware that there is nothing left to live for. The men who hold this view are genuinely unhappy, but they are proud of their unhappiness, which they attribute to the nature of the universe and consider to be the only rational attitude for an enlightened man.”
• Competition: “What people fear when they engage in the struggle is not that they will fail to get their breakfast next morning, but that they will fail to outshine their neighbors.”
• Boredom and Excitement: “Boredom is essentially a thwarted desire for events, not necessarily pleasant ones, but just occurrences such as will enable the victim of ennui to know one day from another. The opposite of boredom, in a word, is not pleasure, but excitement. *** We have come to … believe … that boredom can be avoided by a sufficiently vigorous pursuit of excitement.”
• Fatigue: “… when sound success comes, a man is already a nervous wreck, so accustomed to anxiety that he cannot shake off the habit of it when the need for it is past.”
• Envy: “Next to worry probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy. Envy is, I should say, one of the most universal and deep-seated of human passions.”
• The Sense of Sin: “The word ‘conscience’ covers as a matter of fact several different feelings; the simplest of these is the fear of being found out.”
• Persecution Mania: “We are all familiar with the type of person … who, according to his own account, is perpetually the victim of ingratitude, unkindness, and treachery…. What in the end rouses the hearer’s suspicions is the multiplicity of villains whom it has been the sufferer’s ill fortune to meet with.”
• Fear of Public Opinion: “Fear of public opinion, like every other form of fear, is oppressive and stunts growth….. it is essential to happiness that our way of living should spring from our own deep impulses and not from the accidental tastes and desires of those who happen to be our neighbours, or even our relations.”

Please excuse the possibly sexist (sheesh, people) language here — he wrote it in 1958. Russell was, by most accounts, an ardent feminist.

Russell goes on to attack the foundation of these sources of unhappiness. My summary would be that we’re narcissistic and need to relax. If you want a more concise explanation, pick up “The Conquest of Happiness” by Bertrand Russell. I promise that it’s a philosophical work written for us regular folk, and not some new-age self-help BS.

I should also say that a large part of my point of view (and this should further clear up the “Pollyanna” claim) is shaped by existentialism. I don’t mean the kind of existentialism that seems to exist in the popular imagination. That conception is that life is dreary and that we’re all worthless, pointless and doomed. That’s not the point at all. It’s actually quite optimistic in that it places the onus of achieving happiness on the individual. It posits that we all determine our own experience, that we don’t need to depend on others to make us truly happy. Being able to count on people is fine, of course, but it’s neither necessary nor sufficient.

There. I did it. I bought Green Day’s “American Idiot”.

I said I would back in my post about American Edit. Not that stupid record companies will make the connection.

Now I’m wondering if I should have just “acquired” it instead of buying it. I mean, I basically gave the a record company money (though I bought it through iTunes), and I doubt they’ll stop going after artists who do mash-ups. So I’m basically giving money to them to do things that I think are unethical and flat wrong.

Bah.

Update: Good album. First Green Day album I’ve bought since Dookie, and it’s good.

I’ve been thinking a lot about happiness lately. One reason is because Jason and I plan on doing a Wrestle that Shark about happiness. The other reason is, well, I’ve been strangely happy. There are a few reasons why I’ve been pretty happy, and a few reasons why one might think I shouldn’t be, but still am.

I think this can kind of serve as a year-end retrospective, like I did last year.

First the obvious. I haven’t mentioned this here yet, for an obvious reason. I’ve accepted a new job at Internet Broadcasting. I’ll be starting in a couple weeks. I don’t dislike my current job in any way, but the new one will help a lot with basic financial stuff. I gave my notice last week, so I can mention it now.

Other things: I haven’t had any serious problems, relationship-type or otherwise. I did recently go through a break-up, but I think it will be okay as time goes on. For a long time, I made the common mistake of pinning my happiness to relationships. Relationships are important, of course, but there’s a lot of confusing and rocky territory there too.

While money has been tight, it has proven to me that money has very little to do with happiness. Yeah, basic necessities, blah blah blah. But beyond that, buying crap really just screws a person up more — you think that getting a nice TV, computer, car, whatever will somehow provide you with a source of happiness. This is seriously the hardest thing to understand and accept — we all think we know that that’s true, but few of us really do. I still struggle with that, and probably will continue to.

Also, I’ve had some great creative outlets. I think this is probably the biggest factor. I’ve got Flapping Crane and Wrestle that Shark. There may be something else in the works too (stay tuned). There’s nothing better than doing something rather than thinking about doing something. Has every skit been a success? Depending on how you look at it, no. Could my editing or acting have been better in some of them? Of course. But that’s not the point at all. The point is I’m working with some talented, funny and good people and I’m having a blast doing it. I joked about all the work I do in Viewer Email, but the truth is, I completely love it, and I insist on doing as much as I’m able (and sometimes more — I’ve got a backlog) with most skits. It gives me something challenging to fill my time with. And Pete and I argue like an old married couple about how to shoot skits, but I enjoy even that.

If there’s one thing I tell anyone who feels directionless, listless, whatever, it is to do something. It doesn’t have to be a big production. It doesn’t have to be important. It doesn’t matter if no one pays any attention to what you’re doing. It really doesn’t matter, and it’s hard to understand that until you’ve been there. Ok, having people enjoy it is nice too, but that’s really just icing. I know advice is pretty much shit and just a commentary on one’s self, but still.

Ok, reasons why I shouldn’t be happy. I’ve already touched on these a little. I’ve basically been broke. I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck. My current job is fine, but I’d never excel at it. Not my bag (the new job may be a different matter, though). I dated a girl for a while, and I broke it off (and anyone who says that the “dumper” has it easy is full of crap — I’ve been on both ends enough to know that such comparisons are useless). Actually, I went through two breakups this year. Hmm… let’s see. I have almost no social life, though work on Flapping Crane might contribute to that. Truth be told, though, that’s kind of an excuse — I’d be no less socially retarded if I didn’t spend as much time editing videos and podcasts. My grandma has been very sick, and I dread the day that she passes away.

I’ve known a lot of very unhappy people. I don’t know if some of them still are unhappy. I’ll tell you what, though, the most unhappy people are almost incurably pessimistic. Even when I was most unhappy, I was somehow optimistic. I might, at a given point, be hopelessly depressed (and ask some good friends of mine — in my early 20’s I was a wreck), but somehow I don’t expect bad things to happen. I had one girlfriend who was even irritated with my optimism. It (my optimism) only surfaced occasionally back then, but it was always there. She was always pretty pessimistic — I hope she’s found her way out of that.

The brain is so fucking weird. If you act happy, you’ll find yourself being happy. It’s like anything else. Garbage in/garbage out. If you slouch, if you sit around mulling over your problems, if you don’t smile for no reason, if you listen to only miserable music, if you worry about shit you have no control over (that includes politics) — guess what? You’ll be miserable. You might not even realize it until you’re wallowing in your own shit (metaphorically, I hope).

You know what else goes along with that? Being a fucking snob. If you’re a snob, stop it. If there’s one thing that Flapping Crane has taught me, it’s that making good art is hard. Very, very hard. But the work is its own reward. When anonymous internet teenage assholes say rotten things about our work, it doesn’t bother me, because I love doing it. Consequently, I have a deep appreciation for anyone who tries to put their work out there. Even if I don’t much like it, I appreciate it. There are very few, if any, artists out there who really are crappy sellouts. They’re just doing what they enjoy and what they hope others enjoy. That even goes for the poor guy who edits something like COPS. If he or she does a little thing here or there that only a few (if any) people will appreciate (a clever edit or effect, I don’t know), they can still be happy with what they do.

Like Faulkner said — the hardest part of writing is sitting your ass in front of the typewriter. And I don’t take too seriously criticism from someone who hasn’t sat their ass in front of that typewriter. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad if they actually enjoy the work I’ve been a part of. But my enjoyment in doing it really has nothing to do with that.

The second hardest part of writing is showing other people what your ass-sitting has produced. But it’s a distant second. Even when people roll their eyes and say how fucking weird they think I am or my friends are, I’m happy.

So if I have any advice to give anyone, don’t wait around to do things. Don’t wait until you get inspired to write the perfect novel (Erin, I was going to link to that bit of writing you did and said that you “need to…..arrgh…no! must…not…delete….”, but you deleted it — you should put it back up). Don’t wait until you somehow come into high-end video equipment. Don’t wait until you have something to talk about before starting a podcast or blog. Don’t wait until you’re ready to make your fucking masterpiece album, and for god’s sake, don’t wait for anyone to notice what a fucking genius you think you are. Just do it. You’ll be a lot happier. Don’t even worry about impressing yourself. Each project you do will be better than the last, and you’ll realize that the tools you use (or want to use) are really just arbitrary.

And for christ’s sake, pat yourself on the back when you complete a project or whatever, no matter how much more you wanted to do with it. Enjoy that you did what you did with what you had.

Ok, I’m done trying to prove how fucking smart I am.