Forgive the crowing

First, to briefly follow up on my previous post:

Joshua Holland, who writes for the very left-leaning AlterNet.org, has published a brutal takedown of Naomi Wolf's Guardian piece on Congress's "conspiracy" against OWS. In fact, if you haven't read my own post on the subject, then you should just skip it and read Holland's instead. He put in more time, did more homework, and produced a way better writeup. But at least I've proven that I know bullshit when I see it!

Second, a bit of self-congratulatory crowing.

My band's debut album was just written up in Decibel Magazine, America's best and most popular metal publication. We scored an 8/10 and a very flattering review:

"Quick history lesson: Pyrrhon of Elis was a Greek philosopher acknowledged as the father of Skepticism (the school of thought, not the Finnish funeral doom band). Many of the downstream effects of Pyrrhon's philosophies will be familiar to metalheads—doubt of inherited values, rational inquiry into the nature of things, disregard for that which cannot be empirically proven, etc.


What does all this have to do with Pyrrhon the death metal band? In many ways, these Brooklynites' debut LP, An Excellent Servant but a Terrible Master, embodies the ideas of the band's namesake. Doug Moore's lyrics deal a lot with the impossibility of making meaning in a society that doesn't value it. "All the debased logic/The spent, weathered values/And the ashes of intentions/Bear their witness against me," he growls on the godly "Idiot Circles," incontinence-preventing riffs flopping around underneath him.

OWS, again

To return to the circus that is politics in my country:

A lot of my friends and acquaintances have been circulating Naomi Wolf's recent editorial in the Guardian about Occupy Wall Street. The editorial is entitled "The shocking truth about Occupy," and it purports to expose a Congressional conspiracy to defeat OWS through brutal police crackdowns. As you might expect, most of the people who've been reposting the article are OWS supporters.

My reaction to the piece is split evenly between hope and frustration. Let's deal with the frustration first.

Wolf has a tendency to exaggerate and obfuscate by turns in defense of her point. Most people who feel strongly about a divisive issue do so, but it's still annoying. For instance, she calls the recent crackdowns "unparalleled police brutality." Some 50s-era civil rights activists may disagree. The NYPD and other police forces have horribly botched their responses to these protests, but perspective still matters.

She attributes this botched response to directives from the Department of Homeland Security:

"The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping."

Stamping on the passive voice, forever

I spend a lot of time writing. I also spend a lot of time thinking about writing. Of all the things I learned from my fancy-pants education, I use the ability to evaluate and craft prose most frequently.

Like any skill, your writing chops needs constant maintenance. A lot of my teachers used athletic metaphors—your writing muscles will atrophy and grow flabby if you don't work out. "Working them out" involves practice (which you're looking at) and reflection (which you're about to look at).

Like workouts of any sort, writing practice isn't especially glamorous. Sometimes I need some encouragement. And who better to provide that encouragement than that titan of taking things really seriously, George Orwell?

If you want a picture of a future where George Orwell catches you writing like an asshole...

The link above takes you to "Politics and the English Langauge," Orwell's immortal diatribe against sloppy, mealy-mouthed prose. Right off the bat, Orwell sets up writing well as a life-or-death sociopolitical struggle:

"Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers."

 Hell yeah! I'm feeling fired up already. Why wasn't I snidely quoting this essay at my classmates back in high school?

Bateman would be proud, apparently

American psychos!

Wow, I have really been dropping the ball around these parts! It's been tough for me to find the time and energy to write here as of late. Perhaps that's because, as Christopher Ketcham of Orion Magazine suggests, it's really hard for foppish artsy-fartsy types like me to get by here in New York:

"High rent lays low the creator, as there is no longer time to create. Working three jobs sixty hours a week at steadily declining wages, as a sizable number of Americans know, is a recipe for spiritual suicide. For the creative individual the challenge is existential: finding a psychological space where money—the need for it, the lack of it—won’t be heard howling hysterically day and night."

Art is hard, as Tim Kasher once said. And Ketcham's right—it's especially hard here.

The article in question, entitled "The Reign of the One Percenters: Income inequality and the death of culture in New York City," has been floating around in my psyche since a friend posted it on Facebook last week. The piece is a lengthy jeremiad about how finance and related industries have gradually been crowding out arts and culture in the Big Apple. Like most people who say bad things about New York, Ketcham gets me nodding in agreement quite a lot. And like most jeremiads, "The Reign of the One Percenters" gets way off-base at times.