Of Communes & Drag Queens

This week's show will include two brief, unedited interviews. In the first half of the show we will hear from Kaya, a Richmond high school student who has spent two summers living and working at the Twin Oaks Community between Richmond and Charlottesville, VA. The community celebrated its 40th Anniversary in 2007 and was originally started by some psychology grad students inspired by B.F. Skinner's novel Walden Two.

Sandwiched between, we'll be hearing something new from Sidestep Complex along with my regular broad mix of music, audio collage, soundscape & live YouTube mixing.

In the second half of the show, just after midnight, I will play the first of my interviews with Richmond's famous "Dirtwoman" a.k.a. Donnie Corker according to his Wikipedia entry. Donnie has lived in Richmond for all of his 60 years and has established quite a reputation for himself, most recently he ran for Mayor in 2008. Be sure to listen in! The poster for his run for Mayor is adapted from a rare 1993 calendar shot by Alice McCabe and made in Richmond by the now defunct Hamlet Productions.

Donnie goofin' with new waitress at The Village Cafe

  

Why radio?

Radio pioneer Norman Corwin died at 101 this past October. A peer of radio journalist Edward R. Murrow, Corwin's broadcasting career spanned most of the 20th Century as well as a variety of genres. Known for his creativity and diverse writing talents, he helped compose "We Hold These Truths" a post-Pearl Harbor attack radio docudrama that featured Orson Welles, Jimmy Stewart, Edward G. Robinson, Lionel Barrymore and Walter Huston, and concluded with a live speech by FDR. 

During the brief documentary "A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin" he reminded us of the specific value of the medium of radio:

“In radio there was never a term equivalent to boob tube or couch potato. The eye is so literal, whereas the ear makes a participant of the listener. The listener becomes the set designer, the wardrobe mistress, the casting director. You can listen to ‘Carmen’ on radio. Carmen in person may weigh 350 pounds, but to the listener she’s a beautiful, steamy lady with a rose in her teeth.”

Apocalypse redux

Obviously I haven't been regular with this blog, but dammit, if that good old false prophet Harold Camping of Family Radio Ministry didn't goad me into an overdue entry when he revised his May prediction for the END OF THE WORLD to be October 21, 2011.  But maybe we shouldn't be surprised - his middle name is Egbert for godsake!

His delusional shenanigans would be amusing if not for the fact that there are plenty of other prophet-able end-times hucksters out there working overtime to connect current events with obscure bible passages. Are these folks much different than the 2012 Mayan calendar folk? Perhaps not, but at least the Mayan prophecy isn't a destructive judgement but rather a positive shift in human consciousness. In any case, it seems wise to be suspicious of all apocalyptic predictions - right Egbert?

Never underestimate the power of radio and a willing audience. 

The End of the World? (again)

A competition between dates for the end of the world?


In case you hadn't heard, the most recent prediction of the end of the world comes from Harold Camping, founder of Family Radio Worldwide, and it's going to be this Saturday May 21, 2011. So then, does that mean the apocalypse of 2012 is off?


Early Christians, and certain sects throughout history believed the end of the world to be imminent, but since the first century there have been dozens of failed predictions - maybe it's a Pavlovian thing. Eschatology certainly catches my attention. Camping's prediction has also been profitable for sign makers judging by the worldwide distribution of warning messages on billboards, posters and vehicles. 

 

Though the internet has undoubtedly helped Harold Camping disseminate his message, he has used radio to reach a worldwide audience for decades. According to Rory O'Connor in Shock Jocks, religious and other conservative radio programs have a 10-1 dominance of the airwaves over progressive or liberal radio programs and Camping was a pioneer in this growth. 

So, be sure to tune in this Sunday night to see if I'm still here - or to tell your own tale of disappearing Christians! 

OBEY

click the center of the pupil & adjust volume on right

In spite of our rhetorical litanies claiming to value free exchange, often our reality falls far short of this lofty and necessary democratic goal.  

"Be creative," "think out of the box," "we encourage free expression," "freedom of speech is important," in America we have a "free marketplace of ideas, "transparency of leadership," blah, blah, Blah, Blah, BLAH, BLAH! 

Too often we are subtly (and not so subtly) discouraged from thinking outside the confines of commercial programming, unregulated greed, plutocratic reverence, competition, prohibition, corporate personhood, academic values, departments,  rubrics, outlines, plans, hierarchies, trying to always control....but why?

"Control is controlled by the need to control."

Are a free exchange of ideas, promotion of creativity and leadership transparency really our daily experience? Sure, we don't (always) get clubbed, tear-gassed or shot with rubber bullets and hauled away to jail like people do in those "other" countries - but is that really the standard we want to measure ourselves by? 

Why smugly trumpet the values of creative free expression only to abandon them when we are bullied to do so? Sure, for survival, it can pay in the short run, but what about the bigger picture? Does history celebrate or even remember the timid and the tame? 

The heroes of history tend to be the heretics and the rebels, those who stand up to bullies, whose narrative  challenges the status-quo and who have the courage and support to relate that narrative freely (and who, we must admit,  often get burned in some way in the process).

...and if you think about it, human evolution happens because of mutation, deviance, difference, divergence - not just endless repetition of successful traits or formulas, no matter how tasty or fashionable!

could there be a connection?

mechanical metaphors

One of the thematic contrasts that recur in my show and in my thinking is that of the organic and the mechanical. The material wonders of industrial technology and mass production are ubiquitous and obvious, as is the praise for these pervasive systems but - our species seems to be losing touch with the natural and the organic and "nature deficit disorder" is on the rise. Outdoors, in the green woods we are confronted with the "chaos" of unsystematic Nature and must rely upon our own creativity and spontaneous action - there is no script. 


We regularly use machine metaphors to refer to the ideal in human performance and the digital world lures us into disdain for our bodies because they are never as "perfect" as our avatar - our bodies age and smell and this reminds us uncomfortably of our animality. Like D-503 in Zamyatin's We, our lives are increasingly lived within the comfortable confines of a "Green Wall" that keeps us safe from the chaos of Nature and encourages increasing reliance on the regimens of modern life. Though written in 1920, Zamyatin seems to capture our modern mania for hyper-scheduling and mechanical action. 

"But our Table of Hours! Why, it transforms each one of us into a figure of steel, a six-wheeled hero of a mighty epic poem. Every morning, with six-wheeled precision, at the same hour and the same moment, we—millions of us—get up as one. At the same hour, in millionheaded unison, we start work; and in million-headed unison we end it And, fused into a single million-handed body, at the same second, designated by the Table, we lift our spoons to our mouths. At the same second, we come out for our walk, go to the auditorium, go to the hall for Taylor exercises, fall asleep...."

We may not move as one for every task, but as humorously represented in the intro credits for Weeds, Americans do have recognizable robotic patterns.  As Malvina Reynolds' "Little Boxes" suggests, in some circles, the path of life is singular and prescribed - if they choose to follow the recipe given them.

"Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds (1962)

Little boxes on the hillside,

Little boxes made of ticky tacky

Little boxes on the hillside,

Little boxes all the same,

There's a green one and a pink one

And a blue one and a yellow one

And they're all made out of ticky tacky

And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses

All went to the university

Where they were put in boxes

And they came out all the same

And there's doctors and lawyers

And business executives

And they're all made out of ticky tacky

And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course

And drink their martinis dry

And they all have pretty children

And the children go to school,

And the children go to summer camp

And then to the university

Where they are put in boxes

And they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business

And marry and raise a family

In boxes made of ticky tacky

And they all look just the same,

There's a green one and a pink one

And a blue one and a yellow one

And they're all made out of ticky tacky

And they all look just the same.

Technology, Taylorism & Human Evolution

Considerations of the impact of industrial technologies are easy to find, but most of these are laudatory and generally focus on decreases in cost and increases in quantity, often overlooking the human impact and the significant problems that arise from uncritical overproduction - one of the specific critiques made in 1888 by Edward Bellamy in Looking Backward.

Early films like Fritz Lang's 1927 silent classic Metropolis demonstrate an early concern for the mechanizing impact of technology on human bodies as well as the efforts of owners to control workers via technological means. The contemporary relevance of Metropolis is suggested by its 2010 digital restoration.

Chaplin's semi-silent 1936 film Modern Times provides a more amusing reflection on the simultaneous mechanization of industry and man, as directed by owners and managers. Thought the film dialog could have been completely featured in sound, Chaplin choses to give only certain characters a voice - note who and reflect on the significance of this.



We've all enjoyed the bountiful (if often excessive) benefits of industrial production, but it's significant drawbacks have become normalized and its toll on us, invisible. As French philosopher Jacques Ellul notes in The Technological Society, the goal of technology is the precise, efficient result and the unpredictable embodied human must be subdued for this: "To the degree that technique must attain its result with mathematical precision, it has for its object the elimination of all human variability and elasticity." 


The connection to radio may be obvious, celebrating the variable and elastic nature of freeform radio, but a larger insight might be gained from brief reflection, at a greater distance, upon the history of our species. Technology has made our lives easier and more comfortable while simultaneously making us softer and less adaptable - and more rigid.

While forms, frameworks and systems are convenient technologies for organization and specific applications like mass production, they can become stifling bonds limiting creative exploration and problem-solving - like Blake's "mind-forged manacles" in his poem "Jerusalem."

While technologies have helped us to evolve, there may be a point at which our interaction with them is devolutionary, making us soft & unadaptable. Contemporary technological society requires increasing standardization and conformity on a variety of levels, but randomness, chance and mutation have been the drivers of human evolution - not predictable uniformity.