Your Blood (Honey)

I saw Radiohead on August 1st, 2008. The stage was stunning, beautifully lit by LED’s and a huge chandelier of icicle-like fiber optics (which use less energy than normal lights). It was a fantastic set, which I feel was chosen to be quite timely with the state of the country and world at the moment. It was a poignant experience. “We’ve got a bit of a hangover, we could be dreaming all this,” Thom thought out loud. Someone from the crowd shouts, “yeah man!” Thom laughs to himself repeating the exclamation and walks back towards the drums, “No, I guess it’s not.” I saw a ton of other bands also of course: MGMT, The National, Chromeo, Foals, Okkerville River, NIN, Wilco, just to name a few.

The next day I was talking to Michael about the incredibly large gap in the interests between individuals who identify with the same lyrics that Radiohead represents. The lyrics are so ambiguous that they bring together such different people. Myself, who has recently been campaigning for deliberation and giving people the capability not do do drugs, stands next to a 23 year old college drop out who is drunkenly offering cigarettes to a 17 year old. I love Radiohead, but that situation, looking back, seems really fucked up. It’s sick man. “I’ve never smoked before,” the 17 year old explains. “Don’t start,” I said. He smoked anyway, which is fine, I have no fear of cigarette’s existing and people trying them–I just don’t like 2nd hand chain smoke for three days. Thanks to Weed and Tobacco, I had a headache most of the weekend, and I’ve got a stupid little cough now. Also, despite having a small “green street” area at Lollapalooza for learning about the latest in green consumerism, the festival was filled with overpriced unhealthy food, and shitty expensive beer. My conclusion is that massive outdoor venues are not as cool as indoor local venues for watching music, eating, breathing, or drinking.

Michael and I also talked about pop music. By nature it is powerfully ambiguous. Pretty much all of the main bands are really individualist, introverted, and subversive in rhetoric(i.e. radiohead, rage against the machine, and nine inch nails). I’m not sure many people get the point, so many people take interest that there is a vast gap between them in terms of education and lifestyle choices. The growing independent population realizes the necessity of individual niche’s. That’s why bands like Radiohead are amazing, because they both fit in indie niche’s still, and continue to increase their number of fans. If music and popular media is a place of ambiguity and emptiness, then the Internet has the potential to be a place of individual dis-ambiguity. Hence, this blog (though obviously I’ve touched on some stuff that would explain why this isn’t true–and almost certainly never will be). Again, The whole experience of the festival and seeing popular music live, was quite disillusioning. At least the music was good.

On the drive up and home good and bad things happened. On the way up, on Megabus, I met Eric–A Salter. He goes to businesses and finds labor leaders and tries to organize a union. When they get a certain percentage, they start to strike, and then the union joins other larger unions and all of the workers make more money. Generally they only do it to multi-national hotels, but I wonder if the hotels ever go bankrupt, or other problems with this method of organization. I know theres a lot of economically conflicting ideas about unions.

On the drive home I continued reading Omnivores Dilemma. A fantastic book that, even though I haven’t finished, I would recommend to anyone living in America–Especially those who live in the Midwest. Definitely lot’s of good points for observation and reference for use in conversations that my vegetarianism hopefully cases. Anyway, I passed by miles and miles and miles of hybrid corn that is patented because it’s a terminating species. In other words, the plant starts to produce less or different crops after the first generation–so the plant can be patented. This nation really depends on corn, and also on oil, apparently. I also hate fast food restaurants. I forgot how damn hard it is to be vegetarian. This country is not set up for healthy varied diets (even ones that include meat), it’s really sad. There was only 3 things on the Steak and Shake menu that were vegetarian, and they were all crappy small sides. I wish there was vegetarian fast food restaurants, seriously. I also love meat, and it’s really hard to go in a place like that, smell meat which I used to enjoy, and act like its no big deal–but hope someone else notices and cares and tells their friends. I’ve had lot’s of painful realizations like this (like being one of the vast minority of people who actually recycled at Lollapalooza) that make me have uncomfortable periods of depression (sadness, anxiety, wanting to cry, feeling defeated).

Finally, I think some of the rolls of film (the last three) are fucked up. Which means bad news, and some hard choices.