listen to naivete.org music station

15.10.00

hole

it is sort of ironical that i am working on a project analyzing the media coverage for the book, "Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam. of course, the irony is lost if you have never read my writings on this site. the more i read the media coverage, the more i think journalists/academicians are not representative of the "real americans", grudgingly borrowing a term from George W. Bush. as the book says, we are watching "Friends" rather than making them, a fact so bitingly on the mark than it is almost painful to read the sentence. you don't want to dwell on it, hurriedly looking for other facts in the book you can claim don't represent you. a victory, for once, is defined by exclusion. hah!
ra. [14:37]|link
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13.10.00

the real, real world

ever heard a line that just jolts you out of the intellectual atrophy? well, just listen to bob dylan's "Not Dark Yet", from his "Time Out of Mind" CD. after a while, the song grows on you, slowly grating down, as most of dylan songs do, tweaking that undefinable pain a little everytime you hear it. dylan's playing on campus in a month from now...gotta get in line early tommorow.
ra. [01:19]|link
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silence

just defined a paradox...the reason why....ever had the feeling that people are so comfortable with you, you are transparent to them? you don't exist after a while. an after thought to come back to, when they're done being on the high. "it's not me, but the wind that blows through me".
ra. [00:49]|link
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30.9.00

smugness

There's that look again.
The smug one.
The glassiness of it all.
But the monkey is naked behind it.
So what? Ignorance is stark.
Or is it?
ra. [22:54]|link
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27.9.00

still crazy

i am not a big user of Napster - never really wanted to bother with the slow downloads. but once in a while, i do download a song hard to find otherwise. for instance, yesterday i downloaded Willie Nelson's version of "Still crazy after all these years", which he performed on the leno show. that single performance made me a "king-of-the-road" convert. if there is a song which scores on sheer visceral quality, it is this one. his version sounds ironical, almost mocking, achingly real. do try it out, if you care.
ra. [19:45]|link
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night rider

it takes time to get used to sleeping in complete stillness: no noise, no distubance, no whirring, no power outage. no excitement, if you look at it. a perfect recipe for sleeplessness.
ra. [19:34]|link
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26.9.00

the way we think

finally, after months in preparation, my labor of love has been launched, to put it floridly. thesynapse.org is a webzine of contemporary thought which a few of my friends conceived and i designed it. most of the stories are opinions or personal essays, and we want them that way. i wrote a rather depressing story (is anybody surprised?), The Art of Solitude, about life in a computer lab on a weekend night. if you think it is good enough, consider writing for it and send an e-mail to editor@thesynapse.org.
ra. [11:55]|link
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the way we think

finally, after months in preparation, my labor of love has been launched, to put it floridly. thesynapse.org is a webzine of contemporary thought which a few of my friends conceived and i designed it. most of the stories are opinions or personal essays, and we want them that way. i wrote a rather depressing story (is anybody surprised?), editor@thesynapse.org.
ra. [11:54]|link
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25.9.00

juxtaposition

running
"You stop a horse that is bolting. You do not stop a jogger who is jogging. Foaming at the mouth, his mind riveted on the inner countdown to the moment when he will achieve a higher plane of consciousness, he is not to be stopped...What the third-century Stylite sought in self-privation and proud stillness, he is seeking though the muscular exhaustion of his body...this entire society, including its active, productive part -everyone- is running straight ahead, because they have lost the formula for stopping."

"are you 21?"
"i am 25. why?"
"don't you go out and have fun?"
"you mean bars etc.?"
"yeah."
"well, i don't drink, don't smoke, can’t dance and hate partying, and i have too many theories about everything that is wrong with this world. that excludes me from about 99.9% of the populace."
"but what do you do for fun?"
"nothing really, except reading books."
“books?!! don’t you have friends?”
“not in the strictest sense of the word. they are too busy with their own friends.”
“do you listen to music?”
“yes, of course.”
“what kind?”
“van morrison.”
“i liked him on and off.”
“yeah, he’s like that.”
“what’s your favorite song?”
“wasted years.”
“figures…”
ra. [08:36]|link
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contentment