"Issue No.4
on stands now"

I FIND MYSELF LONGING FOR THE DAYS OF DIVERSITY IN HIP HOP, when a dude could rap “damn I wish I wasn’t a wimp.” and not be laughed at. A time when a label could release black power jams, like Def Jef’s Black to the Future, street jams like Masta Ace Incorporated’s Jeep Ass Niguh , while at the same time blasting party funk or cheeky sex jams ala Young MC and Tone Loc. This diversity is well displayed in going over the 20th anniversary collection from Delicious Vinyl.

1987 was a different time in hip hop when lines were not as defined as they are now and before Major labels found out how much a gangsta image sells. It was also a time when two west coast DJ’s Matt Dike and Michael Ross united through a love of the funk sounds of The Ohio Players. They got together to produce and release some records with former Crip, Anthony Smith (Tone-Loc), and college student Marvin Young (Young MC). These first albums were aided by the legendary production team The Dust Brothers who went on to produce such classic albums as The Beastie Boy’s Paul’s Boutique and Beck’s Odelay. In fact it was Matt Dike who introduced The Dust Brothers to the Beasties.

Delicious Vinyl started on a very solid foundation, after Tone-Loc’s initial single “Cheeba Cheeba” met moderate success in LA and scored Delicious Vinyl a major distribution deal with Island Records. In 1988 “Wild Thing” would go on to top the charts and bring hip hop to commercial radio in a way that had never been seen before. In 1989 it was followed up by “Funky Cold Medina,” which reached the number three spot on the charts. Young MC penned both of these singles and after Tone-Loc’s full length Loc-ed After Dark went on to go Platinum, it was Young MC’s turn at a platinum record. Stone Cold Rhymin’ fueled by the hit single “Bust a Move,” displayed Young MC’s lyricism and fast delivery. “Know How” made use of a sample from Isaac Hays’ Theme From Shaft. Young MC’s lyrics tended to be fun, positive, and uplifting.

By 1989 the label had already seen the heights of its commercial and pop chart success, yet the labels’ contribution to hip hop artistry and culture was thriving. Def Jef’s Just a Poet With Soul contained Afro centric lyrics and intelligent social criticism. Tracks like “Black To The Future” are laced with Malcolm X samples and stress the importance of learning history and looking to positive black role models like W.E.B. Du Bois to form a new vision for the future.

At a time when creativity in hip hop was thriving Delicious Vinyl added their most mad capped act to their line up. In 1991 after seeing The Pharcyde do a live performance of “Ya Mama,” it was on. Delicious Vinyl released “Ya Mama” as a single which was followed in 1992 by the full length Bizarre Ride II the Phardcyde, introducing a west coast hip hop act that added elements of humor and lyrical whit to their rhyme styles. Bizzarre Ride is a timeless classic which rendered a gold record for the label. The album contained the single “Passin’ Me By,” a school boys lament for his unrequited love that hit #1 on the Rap singles chart.

1992 also saw the release of The Brand New Heavies, Heavy Rhyme Experience Vol.1. The Brand New Heavies are a London based acid jazz and funk band who’s grooves blended serendipitously with the sounds of early 90’s hip hop. This album was a bold experiment that combined a live band with some of New York’s most legendary MCs; Kool G Rap, Grand Puba, Guru from Gang Starr. The track “It’s Gettin’ Hectic,” elevated Guru to the top of his game.

By 1993 gangsta rap was becoming more and more prevalent in the industry. Not to rag on gangsta rap, but come on, that shit went overboard. Gangsta rap was supposed to be hard and informative, not a pop format to sell millions of records to white kids in the suburbs, with no context for the message. Delicious Vinyl has always been very far from gangsta. During that era Delicious Vinyl tapped Masta Ace of the legendary Queens based Juice Crew. Masta Ace’s record “SlaughtaHouse” was a loosely based concept track where wack gangsta emcees would be slaughtered in a place where “freestying skills are sharp like axes.” The single SlaughtaHouse parodies two MC’s “MC Nigro” and “Ignant MC.” In it they spout ridiculous violent lyrics and breaks halfway through with Masta Ace bringing them to the SlaughtaHouse. These records are street records with out being gangsta and they also exposed the crackdown on black culture, the track “Jeep Ass Niguh” contains the brilliant line challenging noise violation tickets:

“I wonder if I blasted a little Elvis Presley would they pull me over and attempt to arrest me? I doubt, doubt it they’ll probably start dancin, Jumpin on my dick and pissin’ in they pants and wiggle and then jiggle and grab on they pelvis but you know my name, so you never hear no Elvis”

The mid-nineties saw releases from Reggae act Born Jamaicans, which reached moderate chart success and gives props to Jamaican influence on hip hop. 1995 saw a second Pharcyde album Labcabincalifornia, Pharcyde worked with legendary Detroit producer J-Dilla. The singles “Runnin’” and “Drop” met moderate success and gave Pharcyde more cred with the backpacker crowd.

When one looks back at the history of the label, you see a label that is run by music lovers. You see diversity with a steadfast will to embrace music from different cities and from beyond the border. Rarely is so much talent pooled together for an end result that is greater than the multiple strengths of the individuals which comprise the whole. Delicious Vinyl is about the flava not the dolla bill y’all.

“The Earth is rotating, and the Sun, not the Earth, is at the center of the universe.” Psychologist Allen Wheelis tells us that the Copernican discovery was two-fold: it lessened humanity’s sense of cosmic significance by diminishing the centrality of Earth but it simultaneously congratulated human ingenuity for having been able to make that discovery. All said, it forcefully advanced the prerogative for continued debunking and unmasking of received traditions.

But make no mistake; no one has adequate resources and context to remove all the mysteries that comprise our lives. The world is mysterious and so are we, and both profoundly so, and yet, we so often act as if all the mystery is gone. Not only have the greatest magic tricks been revealed, but the grand cosmic mysteries of our being and origins seem increasingly passé and misguided. For example, if we were to ask your average atheists on the street if they could forgive “God,” most would likely tell you that this is misguided. “There is no God to forgive; You’re obviously confused; ‘God is Dead,’” would be the likely response. Point well taken, but I’m often left with the thought: How many people decide to call themselves “atheists” basically because they first were seduced into overdrawn expectations? Or, how many of those who call themselves “atheist” simply are fed up with fundamentalist religious-types? Admittedly, many Neo-Conservative Evangelical types do seem to be pretty deluded and worth distancing oneself from.

Consider this too: if we were to ask your average Christians on the street if they could forgive God, many would likely say, “Forgive God? You don’t forgive God! God is all good and all loving and all perfect. If anything, God forgives you!” But, for the sake of argument, what if there is no afterlife? Perhaps God could not give people an afterlife any more than He could create a rock that is so heavy that even He cannot lift it. How many people could forgive (or would still believe in) God if it were the case that there is neither an afterlife nor ultimate justice? How many people would rather be atheists than believe in a Divinity who is so impotent that He’d be unable to issue cosmic justice and grant eternal life? How many people’s religious beliefs basically hinge upon the afterlife question? Is this world really not enough?

And just what if the Divine Mystery that resides in the depths of our being does need deep and profound forgiveness for all the eternally unresolved injustice and terror of existence? The trouble with being born is that no one asks for it. Seriously, I never asked to be born. Were you consulted? Forgiveness in this light would not be given to some guy in the sky (here atheism may be spot on) but to our deepest sense of life’s mysteries. All animals on this planet die, but only humans seem to build theories about immortal souls. Might we, on the contrary, see that evolution evolved beings who came to know of their own death, and we, those very beings, need to forgive the mysterious origins for such possibilities. If we do, we learn to accept death and thereby to open to other people in new ways.

If it is not yet obvious, my own guess is that there is no afterlife; our only persistence post-mortem is in the memories, words, and deeds of the still living. But none of that means that life itself is bereft of Divine Mystery; none of it implies that life, Nature in its grandest sense, is without spiritual import. Perhaps people have confused mystery, which is the very condition of our lives, with momentary acts of dispelling uncertainty. Perhaps there is something else too. The world admittedly has countless injustices, cruelties and senseless suffering, but it also has babbling babies, wide varieties of tasty fruits, countless genres of music, soap bubbles, butterflies, orgasms, and rainbows. Can’t we say: “Despite all that is painful, tragic and limiting, I am still thankful.”

In open forgiveness and a growing sense of gratitude, without any sense of resentment regarding the fact of knowing about our ultimate demise, we accept death and hardship as the price of admission. We feel thrilled, genuinely grateful, that we received an invitation to the mysterious feast. And, just for the sake of argument, if there is no life after this one, I hope that we can learn to forgive the mystery of evolution for evolving beings who may be able to imagine more than they ever will experience. Such imaginations, fantasies about eternity, might well be one of the most mysterious fruits on this planet. And, who knows? Just maybe there is an afterlife, a wonderful one too, but for the time being I’m pretty confident that no one can know for sure. It is probably best to just celebrate the mystery of life and to be suspicious of anyone who thinks that all the world’s mysteries have been revealed.

A sure sign of spiritual maturity is the ability to forgive the mystery as well as give thanks to it. Our sense of gratitude grows, in fact, only where we are able to forgive. If more people could understand this, they might be able to properly address the vast and ancient mystery all around them, the very mystery that they are.

Why is it that almost nobody commented when, in one of the last democratic primary debates, Clinton kept referring to Obama as “Barack” while Obama consistently called Clinton “Senator Clinton” throughout the exchange? Was that sexist of her? Was that overly officious of him? And if the reverse had been the case—if Clinton had called Obama “Senator Obama” and Obama had called Clinton “Hillary”—would people have been more inclined to notice and be critical? This is just one example of an instance where sexism may have been identified but wasn’t. It suggests that the question “Is that sexist treatment?” is less important than “When do accusations of sexism arise and why?”

Here is another thing to consider: why have so few people commented on Hillary Clinton’s tolerance of her husband’s infidelities (which did not, by the way, start with the Monica Lewinsky dalliance)? Why didn’t she get rid of him the first time he cheated? And for that matter, why do so many political wives put up with their husbands’ infidelities? Unlike so many wives, these women have the financial and legal wherewithal to break off their relationships and still retain a decent standard of living for themselves and their children. Don’t those press conferences with the cheating politician husbands and their lame apologies and their stoical wives with the tight lips and blank stares bother anyone else besides me? Are these couples simply patching things over “for the sake of the children”? I doubt it. In conventional relationships, parents may be able to shield children from some of the fallout from extramarital affairs, but the activities of public couples quickly become the hot joke on multiple playgrounds for weeks and years to come. Let’s examine further why this is relevant to the voting public.

Americans have an awkward relationship to “libido.” Many love or admire the “bad boy” and the virile “stud,” but have a harder time reconciling the female “madonna” (who is worth marrying) with her counterpart the “whore.” Many people are not as forgiving of the “loose woman” as they are of her male equivalent (take Marion Barry, the prostitute-visiting coke-using re-elected major of Washington, DC, as just one example). In certain selfish circumstances, it may be ok for a woman to be a slut: as when a man will benefit from it after a Friday night drinking binge. But then it’s often not so ok the day after. Or, it’s not ok for a woman to be a “whore” before marriage, but then the pure princess is expected to easily shift into the part of sexy uninhibited bedroom vixen (when appropriate) once she’s been secured.

And what of the libido issue as it relates to women in politics? Can voters in the U.S., like some in European countries, find libidinous women leaders appealing? Can we forgive and even celebrate the libidinous woman the way we often forgive and celebrate the libidinous man? That is, could we support a female politician with a history of sexual “infractions” or a sexual wanderlust? Could our strict gender norms handle such a thing — or are women politicians in the U.S. only left with the sexless portion of virility and competitive masculinity as we have defined it — the “scrappy” “I’m a fighter” persona? Or, are we barking up the wrong tree here completely? That is, could we as a culture envision a form of strength that is not based on libido, virility and machismo, but on something else entirely?

Our love-hate relationship with libido inclines the public to look for ways to “wipe the slate clean” when considering political candidates. It helps explain the appeal of politicians who are also born-again Christians — people like George Bush who have renounced their former sinful selves and who have pledged to reform their behavior. And we might ask, while we’re on the subject of forgiveness, why it is that sometimes the need to forgive arises, even for fairly small transgressions, and that at other times there seems to be no need to forgive, even when serious transgressions are at issue. Again the issue isn’t “is that a transgression?” but “when do accusations of transgression arise, when don’t they, and how do they compare? Ask yourself honestly, which is worse, having a racist friend or having a serious cocaine and/or prostitute-using habit? Which is worse: getting sexual favors in the oval office or promising the giver of those favors a cushy taxpayer-supported government job so that she’ll keep quiet? Which is worse, deciding to forgive/tolerate a philandering husband or acting like there is nothing wrong with having a philandering husband (in front of your own daughter and publicly in front of all daughters)? Which is worse: signing away the American worker for the sake of corporate profits in NAFTA or setting out on a war with little concern for human fallout resulting from profound ignorance of culture, region, and history?

In the case of Hillary Clinton, putting up with a cheating husband may have acted both as a demerit for her as a female politician, and as an invisible sympathy card. I don’t think it would be sexist to suggest that supporters of Hillary Clinton in this primary were largely members of the “Gloria Steinem” generation of feminists — feminists who were more than likely middle-class, white, liberal, and dissatisfied with women’s lot, but who often failed to consider how class, ethnic, racial, and global matters complicated their concerns. I don’t think it would be sexist to suggest that some women may have wanted to see Hillary Clinton in charge so that finally a woman would be in control and have the ultimate say-so in the governmental “family.” And so, I don’t think it would be sexist to suggest that a smidge of the politics of “hurt feelings” (an expression Vivian Gornick uses in her introduction to Erving Goffman’s book, Gender Advertisements) may have been at work here. It is as if some people saw the presidency as potentially “making up for” the lack of power experienced by many women in their own households and relational contexts.

Some of the feminists just mentioned, and many other people, might like to think that electing a woman president would give the country a more “feminine” style of leadership and better address “women’s” issues. Unfortunately, the tight association of “feminine” qualities and concerns with female bodies (and the denigration of these qualities) is a big mistake—one of the biggest that our culture has made. Having breasts does make it possible to feed a baby (thankfully!), but it does not ensure a more broadly nurturing or humane spirit. And “being a man” should not require killing the “feminine” qualities in male children, though many parents seem to think it does. Nurturing the sick and weak is not a “female quality” any more than wit and reason are “owned” by the male sex. If it were the case that so called “feminine” qualities were exclusive to women, many of the good ideas our country has embraced and enjoyed would not exist.

When you peek under the covers of what we know of as gender stereotyped behavior (e.g., the care giving and gentleness of women, the rationality and initiative of men) you often find a difference of social situation or social expectation, and not a difference in innate capacity or essence. But even when you do find material differences, as in the case of hormone types and amounts, or body parts or average height or strength, you still find the fear of death. In the face of inevitable mortality, both men and women try to find ways to deal — through having and raising children, through meaningful work, through art, through service to a cause or idea or a nation or an ideology, etc. These ways of dealing can be both constructive and destructive. No one sex has a monopoly on better reactions to the fact of death, though women may seem to. The reality is, women have held fewer positions of public, political power throughout history and so their means of coping with the inevitability of death, when negative, have had less widespread of an impact (a woman who “tortures” her children by forcing them to fulfill her own unfulfilled desires has less scope of impact than a man who sanctions the military of his country to torture an entire class of political prisoners).

As much as we’d like to think so, no one sex is innately better able to resist the attractions of power than the other, no one sex is innately better designed to get past the fear of death (menstrual blood or no menstrual blood), and no one sex is innately better able to transcend their own interpersonal or cultural preferences. Any statistical differences we measure now in the way the sexes deal with problems have much less to do with chromosomes and genes, and much more to do with how we parcel out our social duties. These statistics and the stereotypes they support would tell us little about the potential behavior of one woman who might rise to a position of high leadership. In these instances, we need to examine a person’s individual character — and it may just be that Hillary Clinton’s character was found lacking.

These are just a few things to consider in the post-primary analysis of Hillary Clinton’s loss in the primaries, when accusations of “sexism” and discussions of sex and gender inevitably arise.

Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman had a plan to bring America a sound of angst and nihilism, from the land of lumberjacks, clouds, and the Space Needle. The face of rock would never be the same.

I CAN’T SEEM TO FIGURE OUT WHY THE 80’s WERE so pathetic. Interest rates rose to 18%, the stock market crashed, Reagan was always on TV trying to keep the coke out of people’s noses, while defending his death squads that were keeping the Commies at bay. It was the glory days for the religious right. Jim and Tammy Bakker with the help of Jerry Falwell opened Heritage USA Theme Park, solidifying their warped morality driven base, while at the same time exposing their contradictoraay message. During that period Reagan opened the flood gates of media consolidation making huge record labels and radio enterprises much more powerful—it was the beginning of the end for pluralism in popular culture. Meanwhile in LA, hair bands were over staying their welcome. Our collective popular culture was in need of an enema. How could one’s intestines hold so many plastic chunks of mediocrity?

In 1988 Pavitt and Poneman quit their day jobs to take on Sub Pop full time. Pavitt came from the Alt Press. Back in ‘79 he started a fanzine called Subterranean Pop while studying at Evergreen College in Olympia, WA. The fanzine focused on independent American rock records. The name stuck and it followed Pavitt to his gig at the Seattle music magazine The Rocket, where he wrote the column “Sub Pop U.S.A.” In ‘86 Pavitt released his first vinyl compilation Sup Pop 100 (SP10), featuring Steve Albini’s Scratch Acid, Sonic Youth, Japan’s Shonen Knife, and Northwest punk bands the Wipers and U-Men. Designer Dale Yarder created the logo which would come to be known across the universe.

Meanwhile, Poneman at the time was airing his radio show Audioasis on KCMU-FM in Seattle which continues to this day on KEXP. The local promoter made an alliance with Pavitt by offering to finance Soundegarden’s Screaming Life EP. Sub Pop was born. On April 1, 1988 Pavitt and Poneman moved into a soapbox office in Seattle’s Terminal Sales Building. Later that year they would give birth to the record that would launch the grunge revolution.

Taking over the world would prove to be a serious challenge for Bruce and Jonathan. In the late 1980s Seattle was a town that was barely being held up by Boeing and the lumberjacks. Starbucks had yet to be firebombed for its behemoth corporate stranglehold of coffee, and Microsoft was in its infancy. Nintendo had yet to buy the Mariners, but it was evident that the team needed some overseas help. It was just another American city living in a shadow of Reagan’s trickle-down economic policies. So Pavitt and Poneman put their hope in dreams in an identity. A brand — the trademark; Sub Pop. The early records were easily distinguishable with continuity in the look of each release. A black bar across the top which held the bands name in all caps, followed by the name of the release in a stark sans-serif font. A good majority of those early records featured the provocative live rock photography of Charles Peterson.

In the fall of 1988 Sub Pop would release two milestone records. In October they released Mudhoney’s Superfuzz Bigmuff EP. This record birthed the grunge sound; loud, dirty and fuckin’ rock and roll glory. Mark Arm arm coined the term in an open letter to the Desperate Times fanzine back in 1981. His description for Mudhoney— “pure grunge, pure shit…” In November Sup Pop launched it’s subscription 7-inch record series with Nirvana’s “Love Buzz” b/w “Big Cheese.” That fall they also began selling the anti-fashion T-shirt with “Loser” on the front and the Sub Pop logo on the back. “We learned early on that the best way we could spend promotional money was to make a profit having other people wear our logo” said Pavitt.

The 7-inch records generated a lot of buzz for the label. They were hand numbered in red ink in sets of 1000. At first they were available in limited supply in independent record stores, but the demand grew and a new distribution system was developed. The subscription service worked two angles, Sub Pop got paid in advance, and more kids got to rock the records. It was ingenious.

In December of 1988 and January 1989, Nirvana tracked the Bleach sessions. They were recorded at Reciprocal Recording Studios in Seattle, WA with Jack Endino manning the desk. The record cost $600. Nine of the tracks on the album were recorded during these sessions. The remaining songs on the album; “Floyd the Barber,” “Paper Cuts,” and “Downer” were recorded in an earlier session on January 23rd, 1988 with Jack Endino producing. In this earlier session, ten songs were cut in six hours (although Jack only charged them for five) for a total of $152. On Jack Endino’s blog you’ll find that some of these songs were mixed with only six minutes of studio time per track, and they made the cut for both Bleach and the latter b-side record Incesticide. Bleach originally sold upwards of 30,000 copies, a nominal amount considering its revisited boom following the release of Nevermind. When all the smoke had cleared some sources claim that Bleach had sold 4 million-plus copies. Sub Pop keeps it humble, at an even 1.6 million, Sub Pop’s best-selling release.

In a pre-Internet world, marketing a record label was extremely costly. The volume of hard copy promotional material paired with shipping cost made it difficult for indie labels to keep their heads above water. In order to generate some buzz overseas the label decided in the spring of 1989 to pay for the UK music mag Melody Maker’s Everett True to fly to Seattle to get the skinny on the scene. He reported back with the story “Seattle: Rock City.” The trans-Atlantic buzz was on and soon NME and others were talking about the happening in the newly ordained punk/metal capital of the world.

By summer the shit hit the fan. Bleach was released on June 9th, the same day as “Lamefest” which featured Mudhoney, Tad, and Nirvana. The scene had gone from 100 person hipster HJ parties, to a full-blown sold out Moore Theatre. Between June of 1989 and August of 1992, Sub Pop would grow to be the most recognized independent record label of Generation X. Mudhoney, L7, and Nirvana would go on to play the UK’s most revered Reading Festival. Back in the states, Seattle would never be the same.

TO BE CONTINUED…

so I was looking to explore some new booms. I checked out Led Zepplin II, Electric Ladyland, The White Album — I was attempting to culture myself. My dad was playing in a cover band at the time and it was my way of relating to his experience, him being a child of the ‘60s. Prior to exploring what at the time I thought was ancient rock, I was jockin’ tapes for a penny from BMG. The records from the library were a whole other world than my collection of Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, Descendents, and Dead Milkmen. I was an eclectic ten year old, but I didn’t know shit about the ground that was laid in my pappy’s generation. That year around Christmas time we visited my grandparents in the old brick house he grew up in back in Detroit. We found his old Forever Changes record. Life would never be the same.

For the average lover of glorious expressions of American rock ‘n’ roll, you either: had to be a teenager in the ‘60s with a keen knowledge of under-the-radar; had a parent that lived then; or you need be a rock and roll history nerd to be exposed to Los Angeles’ most beloved band ever. Love was the band in L.A. from 1966-1969. Love’s architects, Arthur Lee (frontman/vocals) and Johnny Echols (lead guitar), grew up on the west side and had been playing music together since childhood. Through various configurations with other musicians and band names, their sound was born in their debut self-titled release Love in 1966 with core members Bryan MacLean (guitar/vocals) and Ken Forssi (bass).

Love was the first interracial rock band of Los Angeles. They were the first rock band to sign to folk label Elektra. They were lady killers — it “just made sense,” according to label founder Jac Holzman. Love made Bert Bacharach’s “Little Red Book” RAWK. Although disputed by Arthur Lee, their classic cut “7 & 7” is hailed by many to be the first punk song ever recorded. The dichotomy of their arrangements is summed up in their third record, 1967’s Forever Changes. “When I did that album,” commented Arthur Lee, “I thought I was going to die at that particular time, so those were my last words.” Forever Changes’ style was contradictory for the era. They embraced the baroque pop genre, giving birth to psychedelic nuances with acoustic guitars, trumpets and string arrangements, while at the same time riddled with darkness and cynicism.

“Sitting on a hillside

Watching all the people die

I’ll feel much better on the other side.” —From the track “Red Telephone”

Love lived in the context of the “Flower Generation” but weren’t afraid to call its bluff. Lyrically, Lee and MacLean unknowingly positioned themselves as the poetic voices of a generation gone schizophrenic. The duality of hope versus a world gone mad painted the canvas of their lyrical canon.

Bands from the Doors to Buffalo Springfield to Janis Joplin opened for Love, yet their glory is just now being mediated to the masses thanks to the makers of Love Story the documentary.

Love Story the documentary is a thorough narrative of L.A.’s most revered band. It was self-financed by first-time British filmmakers Chris Hall and Mike Kerry. The film cleverly dissects the cursory, ambivalent nature of their creative genius. Hall and Kerry came to the decision in 2002 after a pub conversation about music documentaries they thought should be made. To their fortune they were able to interview Arthur Lee before he passed away from cancer in 2006.

Love Story features exclusive interviews with Arthur Lee as well as surviving original band members John Echols, John Fleckenstein, Alban “Snoopy” Pfisterer, Michael Stuart, Elektra boss Jac Holzman, producer Bruce Botnick, The Doors’ John Densmore, as well as archive interview footage of the late Bryan MacLean. It’s a story of glorious rock, and the notion of what could have been. Rock critiques from Rolling Stone, to the UK’s NME rank Forever Changes as one of the top albums of all time.

Arthur Lee would be the man to introduce The Doors to Electra Records. In May of 1966 Jac Holzman went to the Whiskey-A-Go-Go to watch The Doors open for Love. He had to be persuaded more than once by Lee after not being impressed by Jim Morrison and company. After several shows and convincing, Holzman decided to sign The Doors. Unbeknownst to Lee, this would seal Love’s fate.

Decades later Arthur Lee and Love have been embraced as a cult phenomenon. Syd Barrett cites Love as being a major influence on Pink Floyd and one of the main reasons the group formed in the first place. In 1987 punk rock aodfathers The Damned covered the opening cut from Forever Changes on their first CD single release. The cover of “Alone Again Or” peaked at #27 on the UK, charts making it their final Top Forty hit to date. Ben Harper claims to have used the Forever Changes album as one of his main inspirations for his 2003 release, Diamonds On the Inside.

While their friends The Doors were touring all over the country, gaining national attention, Lee refused to leave L.A. Self-obsessed in the debauchery of life in their mansion in the hills, drug abuse and delusion set in. Heroin would lead to the demise of the group and Lee would go on to continue under the name Love with multiple configurations of members well into the mid-70s. Forever Changes was embraced by the UK, hitting #24 on the charts, but back in the States, it was a much different story; it hit a meager #154. To their own detriment, they never were able to enjoy the praise that their ghost has enjoyed. The film takes the viewer on a bittersweet ride, examining a story that must be told. This archive will forever stand as a living blueprint to a band that deserves its place in the halls of rock history.

I wish to address Stanley Kubrick’s prologue in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Twenty minutes of neanderthal wanderings slowly lead into the discovery of a bone used as a tool. If you recall, this discovery significantly altered their society’s existence. Suddenly, violent altercations broke out establishing a stratified hierarchy -- evolution of mankind. Albeit pain-stakingly boring to watch, the principles of the segment are timeless. Mankind will progress and society will consequently be altered.

We live in a society infatuated with quantity and progress. This pursuit has persuaded society to discover and digest information at an accelerating rate. We are convinced that absorbing the increasingly complex messages in the world around us is of dire importance in order to maintain a tip-top perspective. We constantly want and expect more, compounding these confusing complexities in trying to make sense of it all within the context of our lives.

Marshall McLuhan, a pioneering scholar of media theory stated, “Today, each of us lives one hundred years in a decade.” Although this sentiment was coined in the early 70s, his point is made more evident as the decades pass. We are exposed to more and more imagery everyday, inundated with complex messages. How much do we consciously absorb versus what ricochets off of our eardrums? Let’s first look at our history.

Human kind is advancing exponentially faster by means of technology and media. For example, hunter & gatherer societies existed for many millennia. Then, in an exponentially smaller time span, mankind evolved and discovered the application of agricultural techniques. Consequently, villages grew around the cultivation of sustenance. These agricultural times existed for about half the time until simple machines accelerated mankind further. New millenia came and went with new advancements evolving us even faster. Eventually, the Industrial Revolution evolved society within 100 years. Soon the Information Age set in for a few decades and now the Post-Information Age will end in the next decade. Evidently, mankind has evolved and accelerated society since the days of Kubrick’s ape-man. Since this progress can be seen as evolving exponentially, one starts to wonder how long this exponential acceleration can last. The motors on our machine have always spun faster and faster. Can it be that our advancements will eventually accelerate from one year to the next or possibly from one month to the next? So how do we continue to appropriately adjust to this ever-accelerating machine?

We live in an age where we rely upon media & technology for so much of what we do. McLuhan noted that, “The ignorance of how to use new knowledge stockpiles exponentially.” We are convoluting our lives by trying to digest and maintain information at such an accelerated pace that we may not be able to appropriately handle it. Simply put, we are forgetting to stop and smell the roses and live life on terms of what really matters. We’ve forgotten how to live in the present. We forget the humanity of living life and worry about understanding all the media contexts we are exposed to.

What happens to us when we continually try to absorb more and more? What will we displace? What happens when our world around us is moving faster than what we can cognitively or mentally handle? Our lives inherently accelerate, just like the contexts around us. It’s easy to understand why Marshall McLuhan suggested that we are now living one hundred years inside of a decade. Technology and media allow us the opportunity to taste more and our lives are moving faster and faster because we are programmed to do so.

Can humans be compared to computers? If we can, what happens when one asks a computer to process more information than it can handle? It will bog it down, unable to perform its requested task. If we are not like computers, then we must either possess the evolving ability to increase our storage and processing speed, or we simply plateau at what levels of information we can digest.

Of course we are all familiar with the well-known saying that “necessity is the mother of invention.” However, McLuhan proposed that “invention is the mother of necessity.” This established the societal phenomenon that we invent not simply because we need something, but simply because we desire more. In other words, we are faithful to the virtues of more production and consumption. We can continuously absorb copious amounts of information, rearrange and process complicated contexts, offer rational interpretations, and always want more.

Maybe McLuhan is secretly an Amish superhero, disguised in the modern fatigues of suits and sportcoats trying to make the modern world internalize the consequences of advancing media & technology. After all, the Amish reject the life of modernity and progress. They believe in the virtues of the simple life and recognize the negative grip modernity can have on the life of a society. Maybe they are onto something, but not necessarily convincing enough for me.

Perhaps what we are learning from figures like McLuhan and the whole of the Amish is that no matter how much or how little we divulge into digesting the complexities of the advancing world around us, we still need to embrace and cultivate our humanity. It’s important to understand that this larger media context is an extension of our lives and not meant to define our lives. Keeping mental pace with the acceleration around us will facilitate something deeper, something more significant. We need to keep our reliance on the larger media context in check, unplug ourselves from time to time, and keep our eyes smaller than our stomachs.

Leading his father’s band, Egypt 80, Kuti uses funk fused with African percussion and vocals to paint a picture that defames many African leaders for their negligence and dishonesty. His songs, which follow in the footsteps of his father’s—filled with the corruption, ignorance, woe, sadness, pollution and the many other ills that ravage contemporary Africa—are veritable musical treasures, flamboyant jubilatory songs that teach as well as entertain. Many believe that Kuti’s songs, like those of his father, are akin to “the most beautiful flowers growing out of manure,” gems of musical and political importance blooming from the shit that has overtaken and despoiled their homeland.

From a young age, Kuti had been engrossed in the iconic sounds of Afrobeat, a style of music that would eventually act as the conduit of his messages. At eight years of age, Kuti was the mascot for his father’s orchestra (previously named Egypt 70 to honor the history of black Africans originating from Pharaonic civilization). It was a way for him to be close with his parents while Egypt 80 toured—his father was the band leader and his mother danced and sang in the chorus. Young Kuti would often find himself backstage watching his parents perform, watching his father sing and thinking to himself, “I want to sing too.” Fela laughed and let him try anyway, with much success. From that moment on, Suen was a permanent fixture in the orchestra, taking control after his father’s death in 1997 at the age of fifteen.

The orchestra itself is legendary in the true sense of the word, considered Africa’s equivalent of what the world-renowned Duke Ellington’s jungle music did for the Afro-American Diaspora, boasting some remarkable resemblances in instrumentation. The orchestra is said to embody the major aspect that has been lost in popular music—endurance. Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 are more than just an orchestra, they’re a musical family who deserve enormous respect for having stayed united so long, especially since the last years of Fela and those that followed, were so hard. This cohesion and longevity alone explains the absolutely terrifying precision of the rhythmic reflexes down to the thousandth of a second that makes their ultra-syncopated polyphony the perfect ‘swing’ model. It could seem passé to use a word like ‘swing,’ but it’s difficult to find a better way to characterise Afrobeat at this level of expression. The Kuti family not only draws inspiration from Afrobeat, but also from the adapted jazz style that has been established as the direct ancestor of Afrobeat from the 30’s and 40’s, dubbed “highlife,” making the most of this long musical tradition. Fela’s Afrobeat was a pungent blend of funk and jazz with an African sensibility, reminiscent of James Brown but grittier, nastier and vaguely unsettling, like fermenting fruit. With Seun, Egypt 80 seem as explosive as they were under Fela, combining horns, keyboards, percussion, guitars and vocals in a sophisticated and overpowering blend that is at times discordant but always insistent.

Egypt 80 has been established for more than 20 years, bringing the big dance orchestral influences from the likes of Fletcher Henderson, James Brown and Sun Ra, Count Basi and Lionel Hampton to the groove/funk feel of Seun Kuti’s music. Despite the similarities between Seun Kuti and Fela Kuti, and despite the fact that two thirds of the orchestra’s members had remained from during Fela’s leadership, under Kuti’s direction the orchestra has become more than just a clone of his father’s. Performance-wise, it is a similar sight—crazy, frenetic stage presence must be hereditary.

Since adopting the Egypt 80 as his own, Kuti has produced two albums—his first, entitled Think Africa, was a 12” record that was released in 2007. His second and most prolific album to date is called Many Things and was released as a CD in 2008. This album propagates the grave message of corruption, ignorance, and coldness demonstrated by the Kuti family’s sworn enemy, President Obasarjo. Many of the songs he performs pillory by naming Nigeria’s current president.

The title track off of Kuti’s most recent release is considered a satirical song, beginning with a well-chosen extract of a recorded speech by Obasanjo, summarizing his dotted 30 years in power, explaining how they build magnificent bridges but the people underneath them still had to drink the water into which they piss. Apart from the erotic “Fire Dance,” Many Things is a ravaging pamphlet against corruption and carelessness of African leaders. Each song is a powerful movement towards change and the voice of the people, bringing exposure to the crimes of the African government and ending with a harsh cry for revolution.

Kuti’s family roots have been entwined with Obasarjo for over 30 years—when Obasarjo became president in 1977 following a military coup, he had already organized a murderous assault with over 1,000 armed men on the residence of Seun’s father, dubbed “The Independent Republick of Kalakuta”—this is the area where Seun Kuti and the musicians of Egypt 80 still reside today. Seun’s grandmother, Funmilayo, Nigeria’s most important human rights and feminist activist, was murdered by Obasarjo’s troops. These deep strains of long-harbored antagonism toward Obasarjo are revealed without rage or violence in Kuti’s music, but it is obvious that President Obasarjo’s terrible and appalling actions are a large part of Kuti’s inspiration for the commanding musical messages compiled in both Many Things and Think Africa.

But Kuti’s anti-Obasarjo messages have many facets. Having recently joined Youssou N’Dour in a major project fighting against malaria, Kuti uses “Mosquito Song” to explain how the government’s negligence in teaching the importance of hygiene is responsible for the effects of this plague that kills more people than AIDS.

Kuti’s musical prowess is largely due to his natural talent—he briefly studied music, as his father had long ago, in England. However, Kuti does not consider himself a virtuoso saxophonist, he understands that the clinical details are not what counts in the music he performs. Instead, he focuses on perpetuating the longevity of his father’s music, Afrobeat, mixing ideas, words, melody and percussion with an obvious passion for his work.

His musicians, however, are the finest of their kind—bassist Kayode Kuti (no relation to Seun), drummer Ajayi Adebiyi, and guitarists David Obanyedo and Alade Oluwagbemiga work together to form an unmatchable rhythm section that works as an arresting, unrelenting machine. Egypt 80’s brass section is blessed to have Emmanuel Kunnuji and Olugbade Okunade on trumpet—their remarkable solo performances on “Many Things” and “Mosquito Song” off of Many Things add a whole new level of power to Kuti’s music. Veteran musician Lekan Animasahun—nicknamed Baba Ani—has relinquished his lead bari-sax to the excellent Adedimeji Fagbemi—who goes by the name of Showboy and also plays the role of MC for Egypt 80—as the instrument had become too heavy for the seventy-year-old. Baba has now taken to playing the keyboards for the orchestra but remains a musical director. Kuti lends his saxophone to the music, often taking lead on many songs, but it is his compelling vocals and driving lyrics that define him as a musician.

The Yoruba people have always maintained a particular esteem for the youngest family member, and it’s no different for Seun Kuti, the third son to be recognized by Fela Kuti. His father did well to pass on his beloved orchestra to his youngest—Suen has done a spectacular job continuing his father’s music and message. In contrast, his half- brother, Femi Kuti, also a musician, works hard to differentiate himself from his famous father’s image. In live performances, Kuti pays homage to the late Fela Kuti by playing several of his songs, including “Suffering and Smiling,” in which Seun deftly performs his father’s sax solos with little quirks, flourishes and runs of his own. “If I’m in my father’s shadow then it doesn’t trouble me to be,” he says. “If that’s all I can get, it’s a very good place to be. He was a very great man.

But of course every artist wants to define themselves.” Seun hopes to offer his listeners a slightly different message from his father’s. “I want to make Afrobeat for my generation. Instead of ‘get up and fight,’ it’s going to be ‘get up and think’.” Suen’s energetic, booming voice is reminiscent of his fathers but it is clear that his own raging rhythm has been influenced by rap. When asked, Kuti cites Chuck D, Dr. Dre, and Eminem among his musical heroes, demonstrating that despite his love of 70’s style funk he also has a taste for the contemporary.Seun’s name (pronounced “Shehoun”) is an abbreviation from his Yoruban name, ‘Oluseun,’ which translates to “God has done great things.”

It is an appropriate title, for Kuti’s music has certainly caused quite a stir within its listeners—no doubt Kuti’s powerful message will someday accomplish the change it clamors for. It’s already clear that Seun’s name and music resonate with a new generation of Nigerians, many of whom are too young to remember his father’s heyday. Ironically, ‘Seun’ is also President Obasarjo’s first name, further braiding the two men together with similarity and opposition. Kuti has also adopted his father’s second Yarouba name, ‘Anikulapo,’ which means “I’ve got death in my quiver.” In other words, his songs have a purpose, a target he aims to destroy—the corrupt, bribers, and oppressors.

Kuti is a charismatic figure onstage, channeling much of his father’s enthusiasm and energy and inheriting his commanding stage presence. “Once you’ve met me, you can’t forget me,” Kuti has been known to say. “I’m crazy. It’s just the way I am. My father was too.” He’s a treat to see live, and had made several triumphant tours before Many Things was recorded, charming audiences all over Africa and spreading his truth as far as his voice could possibly reach.

Last summer, Kuti completed his first American tour to support his newest album with only marginal difficulty—at the very least, he and his band certainly made an impression on the American public. The musicians of Egypt 80 had some issues acquiring visas. Said visas were received only after presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, intervened. Upon arriving in Chicago, Seun Kuti and Egypt 80 made sure that their first concert in the United States was something wildly memorable—the concert practically became a riot as hundreds of spectators rushed the stage, leaping onstage to join the musicians and singing along with Kuti with loud, excited voices, much to the chagrin of the security services. Even the festival organizer claimed that Kuti’s electrifying performance and the crowd’s raucous, bracing response made the concert one of the best of his life.

“You gave me your mud and I made it into gold”—this famous Baudelair quote is a favorite motto of the Kuti family, employed by father and son alike, for it describes how music inspired by the trials and misfortunes of their beloved Africa is a precious entity, a gift that demonstrates the power held in the hands of the country’s people, not its government. Seun Kuti speaks not only to the followers of his father, but also to the next generation already disenchanted with the dark horrors of Africa. It can’t be easy to be a leader to the teeming, aggressive and often undisciplined legions of Nigeria’s youth. But maybe Seun Kuti is one man for the job. Accompanied by both his father’s band, the activist and groovewriter no doubt has a lengthy career ahead of him—you would be well-advised to keep a close watch on his progress. It’s a guarantee that he’ll give you something epic to watch for.

Speaking, on the other hand, brings us together in the simultaneity of sound, and physical presence. Speech immediately places us in a relationship, makes us kin, forges tribal bonds. The reader is an isolated individual, the audience a collective, a group united by the experience of listening.

In speech, we are joined in the moment, which is fleeting. As Walter Ong said, “sound only exists as it is going out of existence.” Writing fixes words in a permanent form, material and visual, so that I can communicate to you from a distance, and a time now past.

And as for me, I am little more than a figment of your imagination. I am not present for you, nor can you see or hear me. In reading this, you are essentially bypassing the physical, and reading my mind, thinking my thoughts, or rather, thinking thoughts that I once had, and set down in writing.

Of course, to me, you are even less real, a barely imagined fantasy, a glimmer of a possibility, an abstract and generalized other. I jot these words down on a pad, addressed to no one in particular. By the time you read this, these words will have been typed into my computer, revised, sent on to the editor, edited and copy-edited, put into page layout, proofed, reproduced, and distributed.

By the time you read these words, the me that wrote them will be gone, replaced by a slightly older version of myself, and I myself will read them as if they were written by a stranger—as Eric Havelock put it, “writing separates the knower from the known.” By the time you read these words, I may not even be alive. But through these words, a trace of me can live on.

The written word, independent of the specific content or uses it is put to, is fundamentally different from speech. And a handwritten document is fundamentally different from the impersonal technology of print. And the printed page is fundamentally different from text appearing on your computer screen.

A picture is not worth a thousand words, contrary to popular wisdom, as Susanne K. Langer has shown us. Pictures may serve as evidence, but they cannot present arguments. They do not make statements, unless we add a caption or interpretation. They can be faked, but they are neither true nor false, they just are. As Neil Postman argued, the reason why the Second Commandment forbids the use of all imagery is that it represents an attempt to change the way people think and view the world, from one rooted in imagery and the concrete, to a more abstract and literate approach that open the door to monotheism and ethics.

Every medium has its own bias, influencing how and what we communicate. Artists know that the same subject will yield different results if they use oil paint or watercolors, or if they sketch with charcoal, or pastels, or if they were to form a sculpture by chiseling stone, or carving wood, or molding clay. Musicians can tell you that the same melody creates a different effect if played on violin, or trumpet, or kazoo. This simple rule applies to all of our media, and every one of our technologies. And so we arrive at McLuhan’s famous aphorism, “the medium is the message,” by which he also meant that our technologies and our symbol systems influence the way that we think, feel, and perceive, as well as our culture and social organization. The key to understanding media is to understand media as environments, to understand that we live within our words and our images, our pages and screens, and of course within our buildings and cars and cities.

Media ecology, the study of media as environments, is the key to the most creative mode of thinking imaginable. And, it is the key to our future.

With bassist Eric Wilson and drummer Bud Gaugh, Sublime turned out music that felt good, never straying from the easy-loving vibe that Bradley radiated. An organic blend of reggae, punk, ska, hip hop, surf, and dance, delivered in both electric and acoustic forms, Sublime released three energetic LPs, selling over 17 million albums to date.

While Bradley was a member of Sublime, Sublime was an extension of Bradley. The blood, sweat and tears of his life came pouring through his music. It was a spirit that lived then, just as it lives now, in the brilliant and ever-present dimension of song. The man was an original in every way, and his raw creativity was the fuel for one of the greatest bands to ever rock the coast of California.

When 40oz to Freedom was released under Bradley’s label Skunk Records, the music scene was mostly unaware of Sublime. The record was clever and melodic, but not fully appreciated at the time. They released another full-length album two years later called Robbin’ the Hood. It was a collection of self-produced 4-track recordings and Sublime continued as one of those bands that few knew. Then, in 1996, just before the release of their self-titled album Sublime, Bradley Nowell passed away - and suddenly everyone saw the light. “What I Got”, “Santeria”, and “Wrong Way” became mainstream hits and Sublime grew to represent the best of Southern California music.

Today, kids no older than twelve are skating through Venice Beach, rocking to Sublime, soaking up every single lyric and chord, feeling every heartfelt note, and realizing every shared truth that Bradley provided. Kids know that he is real. They can hear it in his vocals, in his words. People see it in YouTube videos and hear it in new tribute albums. Sublime stands as a model for sincere music, in the shape of beautiful melodies and vibrant rhythms, dancing under Bradley’s irreplaceable gift of voice. He is one of very few musicians to carry energy over multiple generations, across all genres and styles, through life and death.

Now an icon in many music circles, Bradley is renowned as a dynamic vocalist and marvelously-skilled guitarist. Bradley, as the distinct voice and firm strings to countless jams, was blessed with the gift of rock, sharing some of the most genuine music ever created. In performance, Bradley seized lead in a style that drew the attention of everyone within earshot. He carried a natural groove with the guitar strapped to his chest and the mic-stand in his grill. The man was comfortable in himself and he glowed with the confidence of an angel when he was on stage. As the creative breath and soul of Sublime, Bradley was blessed with a gift that he immediately returned to others through his music. The glory of his life’s work and the bounty for his legacy is the millions of lives that he has touched.

Knowing the hard-knocks of life, and in spite of them, Bradley was compelled to believe in the greater good. By his frequency and his word, he was an honest musician and an honest man. He carried this tone of ultimate confidence, like a superior wisdom, that in the end, no matter what, everything was going to turn out fine, passing an infinite sense of hope through every song that his soul touched. An endless faith in ourselves through music - that was Bradley’s gift to us.

Sublime’s music was the epitome of groove and Bradley Nowell was the epicenter. His music was gripping and his lyrics were truth. Beloved by his fans then, now, and forever, Bradley lived and breathed life into every creation that was ever exposed to his beauty.

“If you only knew all the love that I found, it’s hard to keep my soul on the ground.”

— Bradley James Nowell, Sublime, “Garden Grove”

This was partly true in some cases, but certainly not in all. Many books simply required much time for study and research, and authors revised, edited, and then, after many years of refining and reducing down to its essential elements, they offered up the finished product. Such books, as integrations of narrative, argument, evidence, and conclusion, would be thoroughgoing condensations, products that correlatively demanded digestive capacities for those who would consume the whole. The word “ruminate” comes to mind in this context, for this word is commonly used to describe processes involved in reading. But the word, “ruminate” is actually a farming term that means “to chew cud.” Cows are unable to digest all that they swallow, but fortunately they have four stomachs. And so they have some partly undigested food, cud, tucked into one of the stomachs, and then they occasionally kick the cud up for more chewing and digesting. Many texts, similarly, are to be ruminated upon and they take time and our own digestive juices to break down their condensed substances; they need to be chewed again and again, masticated, to release their imbedded nutrients. And, admittedly, someone with considerable digestive capacities can sit down and, within several days (or perhaps a week or two), read a book that took many years to put together. Yes, some people can read, in a relatively short period, books that took many years to compose. But in today’s all 24-7, Instant Everything Now world, more and more people are exposed to more and more media that are uncondensed and thin, and correlatively, need no chewing. So much from the worlds of video, blogging, and text messaging are unscripted, unedited, and instantly consumable. They are not so much condensations, as drinkable shots of life. The digital age has ushered in a host of communication media that give permanent record to what was fleeting and evanescent, and it deals with what can be consumed, drunk right down, in minutes or even seconds. Most of the stuff on YouTube is for drinking, not for chewing.

Film culture, at its inception, was highly aligned with early book culture: films were carefully constructed and thoughtfully edited, and much footage was left on the cutting room floor. Unfortunately, like still-photography, non-digital film increasingly is going the way of the buggy-whip. It is used, but often in an antiquated way, perhaps for nostalgia’s sake. The youth of today consume either what has been digitally altered or what has been shot on the fly. Witness the rapid growth in homemade slices of life, actions and scenes that have neither actors nor multiple angles, and where there are no re-takes, though there may be considerable post-production digital modifications.

Consider, too, the rise of “blogs.” Anyone and everyone can have their own blog, and blogs can be filled with typos, misspellings, countless factual and historical errors, and other signs that very little time was spent carefully thinking about, composing, and proofreading the work. Leadership consultant and scholar Lee Thayer tells us that it is no less difficult being a great reader than being a great writer. The latter is simply more romantic.

What will be the consequence of people increasingly consuming uncondensed pap? What will be the result of people consuming countless hours of unscripted and raw video, stuff that takes little digestive juices to break down? A tragic but comic prediction is forecast by a recent Saturday Night Live skit: the setting is a restaurant called “Pre-Chew Charlie’s,” where dinner guests have wait staff at the table who chew the food for the patrons and then deliver the pre-chewed food to patrons’ forks. Increasingly dining on potables and pabulum, children of the digital age may become unable to digest anything that isn’t drinkable. And, if they do encounter anything condensed, they may be unable to chew it themselves.

First, are we not all sick to death of “God talk” that boils down to a some-bearded-guy-in-the-sky scenario? Is this how sophisticated we are as a culture? Why such reductive personifications? Seriously, are the only viable options in today’s culture a kind of uninspired individualistic atheism or a ridiculous caricature of outdated religious dogma?

At the least, too many people act as if disease, sickness, and death disproves all divinity, as if disproving a fantasy (some kind of all-powerful cosmic dude in the heavens who grants eternal life) is proof that all “God talk” is illegitimate. Clearly, once people take the Divine to be some kind of guy, a being, who thought about what he was going to do before he did it when he created the world, they inevitably wonder why God “let such suffering happen.” Couldn’t God have created a world without cancer, or plagues, or earthquakes, or other forms of unjust human suffering? All such questioning, I would argue, is a distraction and it partly guts out the possibility of real spirituality.

We ought to be able to begin by admitting, de facto, that the universe somehow had the potential to achieve a most miraculous balance of countless relations. For life to emerge — and especially for self-conscious life to emerge — many dialectical relations need to be balanced, and they could not each have been balanced one at a time. We need heat but not too much heat, light but not too much light, water but not too much water, salt but not too much salt. We might be able to build a car one piece at a time, but a living body never grows or develops in such piecemeal fashion. The total wisdom operating in your body at this very instant would take many, many books to describe, and yet it manages these functions (such as respiration, blood circulation, digestion and metabolism, healing wounds) all simultaneously and without any conscious forethought. Such “mindless wisdom” is the culmination of millions of years of adaptation.

We also might benefit from considering how the Stoics understood and talked about the Divine. Divine Providence, for the ancient Stoics, was like the eternality of pi, or like Euclidian principles. They saw God as a regulative ideal, a principle of order behind the particulars of the world. pi and the “golden section,” for example, characterize the proportionality relations throughout the natural world, including the bones in your hand and body. Eternally registering such form and order, the Divine was therefore likened to the kinds of symmetry and proportionality and harmony that one finds in music, geometry, and botany. These were taken as evidence of miraculous balances that needed to be achieved and eternally managed.

And so, we need not imagine some kind of guy in the sky, we simply need to consider the possibility that life itself emerged only by countless relations that were balanced and harmonized simultaneously. People ought to read Philip Ball’s book, Life’s Matrix: A Biography of Water, to realize how miraculous are the properties of water, the source of life on this planet. Water, for example, is one of the very few fluids to expand when it freezes, and this is because all the molecules align at right angles to each other during the phase change. Such properties were crucial to the development of life and its maintenance underwater. To meditate upon such delicately balanced relations, and all that eternally needs to be harmonized and simultaneously integrated (gravity, heat, light, amount of water, oxygen for the atmosphere), is to give new form to the “supposed” problem of evil.

Do you want to know the truth? No one really knows why, but the universe somehow balanced a miraculous number of opposing tensions, and, without death, life wouldn’t have emerged. Furthermore, we need not put an “omnipotent and responsible” Divinity into existence before the universe emerged, as if some grand fellow in the heavens, through conscious forethought, produced a product that now stands independently. Why separate off a creator from all that is? Why not see the universe itself, with all of its precarious balances, as the Divine mystery as well as the product of the mystery? If we can do that, we might actually shift the spiritual question from an adolescent whine, such as, “Why does God let humans unjustly suffer?” to a more mature and philosophical reflection: “Why did the Mysterious All That Is, the Divine, allow itself to be subjected to the balancing acts such that place and moments of itself, ‘self-aware’ animals who are caught in endless chains of births and deaths, can emerge and yet yearn for an eternality they cannot have?”

It’s important to remember that in those days, obtaining wealth had a stronger correlation with hard work than it necessarily does now. The infancy of capitalism was not yet corrupted by a societal addiction to getting rich. Of course, in today’s world, this addiction is rampant, and perhaps has become the new American pastime.

During the 20th century, capitalism quickly convoluted society into a consumer orgy, promoting individualism and materialistic gratification. Furthermore, the explosion of mass media in the mid-20th century exponentially increased our insatiable appetite for consumption, broadcasting a constant array of information on consumables through the airwaves. Consequently, consumers become gluttonous and blind to this hunger. After all, this is the ‘American Way’, right? This current state of capitalism has displaced its founding ethic of hard work with making more money easily. This has become a new definition of our American culture — and it’s dangerous.

Capitalism reinforces competition, individualism, and economically outdoing your neighbor. Culture reinforces homogeny, community, and socially identifying with your neighbor. Capitalism and the cultivation of social values are inherently on opposite ends of society’s spectrum. Our pursuit of wealth has taken precedence over our culture to the point where the actual pursuit of wealth in and of itself has become culture. Magazines, television broadcasts, and radio shows have dedicated a lot of resources toward the

art of obtaining wealth. Social traditions and the perseverance of heritage are becoming more challenging tasks. The values have become displaced by the pursuit of wealth as we try to discover our American Dream. This dream that we hold dear to our hearts has been masked by retiring such virtues as freedom and hard work. The new American way is to amass wealth with a smile, no matter if it’s fake or real. Our nationality no longer has much to do with culture, tradition, or heritage. We even go as far as to romanticize the culture, traditions, and heritage of other countries that we take vacations to. Could we ever fathom the idea that we could champion and celebrate our culture like these foreign countries do? Our culture is spotted with some vague tradition and heritage, but there is no true societal glue that we all can relate to and identify with because our society does not reinforce the value of it.

This will continue as we push our youth to choose a career path earlier and earlier in order to get a jump on their peers. Do 17-year-olds really have any clue about who they are, what they are all about, or what profession they want to pursue? Hell, no. However, we don’t question this as a society because the primary motivator has become the pursuit of wealth. The earlier, the better, right? Gotta’ get a jump on those retirement mutual funds, you know? We have been trained to make decisions solely on the economic return and we put off really enjoying life until we retire.

We all know an older person, maybe a parent, who has tried to steer you toward a career because of the money you could make. Sometimes this person may even criticize your choice of study because, “What are you going to do after you graduate?” These old folks speak of the wisdom of realism, and laugh at your idealism. We have been trained to follow a path toward the land of satisfactory salaries so that we can afford stuff that we pretend will produce a desirable quality of life, while believing we’re only supposed to tolerate what we spend our working hours doing... and then do it again tomorrow.

It is the accumulation of stuff and status that has taken over our culture. We relate to material goods and economic success, and allow these characteristics to define who we are because this is all we have left. We’ve grown lonelier, unhappier and more isolated from each other, left with dollar signs in our eyes, with nothing left in our souls. However, since this societal consciousness has manifested itself, a subconscious recognition of community and brotherhood is being discovered. Social capital is finally being valued with more potency. People, places, and ideals are becoming the new heartbeat of America and questioning these values of yesterday is giving birth to a new cultural horizon.

Inherently, useful dialogue is an exchange of known and unknown components. As both an element and consequence of communication, conflict is natural, even necessary. The social forces that restrict and inhibit interpretation of the ‘truth’ are active, and ultimately, our sense of the ‘truth’ might depend upon our willingness to be an open-minded communicator, and a positive member of the dialogue. Differences can be embraced as opportunity to engage and rearrange our understanding, stimulating conflict with resolution, and further community growth. If our ‘truth’ is a result of basic communication, we can create a collective awareness that evolves as we grow in our understanding of ourselves.

Forces that define our ‘truth’ are rooted in conflict, conscious and unconscious, personal and social, through passive and aggressive expression. We are bound to engage tools that sort and resolve confrontations, and these developments define us, becoming the body of ourselves as a society, and our understanding of what we know to be ‘truth.’ War, law, science, literature, and pop culture, communicated and recorded via various technologies and media, collapse space and time into a digital here and now. Infinite communication through shared databases, incorporating an enormous range of expression and comprehension, the Internet has created new digital communities, new conflict, and new opportunities to build resolution. In randomly woven ‘wiki’ worlds, some strange ‘truth’ emerges.

‘Wiki’ communities exist in all types of digital realms. Espousing the ideal of freedom in communal knowledge-building, Wikipedia is the best known ‘wiki,’ with millions of articles, factoids, data sets, and resources, contributed by countless well-meaning ‘wiki’ users. Wikipedia develops under steady criticism, representing approval from the ‘wiki’ community. The belief is that the more people that contribute, the healthier the ‘truth,’ evolving through conflict, resolution, and the forces of content selection. Under impressions of specialized and general contributors, the ‘wiki’ changes, as do the elements of its existence, redefining and recreating the community, documented digitally for as long as the contribution is accepted as ‘truth.’ If ‘wiki’ users and administrators are not offended, the ‘truth’ will remain intact.

An aspect of the well-documented digital divide is the limited population that is capable of participating online. A limitation in skilled computer users is a cap on the community capable of investing in a particular ‘wiki.’. Not everyone has physical access, and it seems even fewer have the knowledge to utilize and contribute ‘truth’ to a ‘wiki.’ Resource and informational gaps prevent a totally inclusive ‘wiki’ system, and though we continue to make strides providing tech-knowledge and resources to everyone, it is silly to expect a fully inclusive ‘wiki’ system. We all weren’t meant