Fifties Day.

This morning I put on my favorite pair (my only pair) of 501s and a white t-shirt. Lately I've been putting lots of goo in my hair and slicking it back because I never know what to do with my hair and I don't like the way it looks if I don't do anything. But I realized just now when I looked in the mirror that I look like I'm dressed up as Fonzie for a Halloween party.

I also look quite a bit like my dad. I have a few pictures of him from the late fifties, from just before and just after he and my mom got married, in which he's wearing exactly what I have on right now and his hair is slicked back. It's not hard to see why my mom fell in love with him. So, though it's not not weird, it's not necessarily horrifying that I resemble him more and more. But, in those photos, he's in his early twenties. I'm pushing fifty. Tomorrow is my forty-seventh birthday.

New York.

I got back from New York at midnight last night. I feel like I was gone for months or years. What I'm doing here is so removed from what I was doing in New York, which is not quite the past and not quite the future, but somehow both.

I spent most of the week in T's apartment working, writing, recording. But we went to see Spring Awakening on Broadway on Wednesday and a show that my good friend K directed on Friday. Also on Friday, I went to the Met to see the Courbet show. So I was out and about a little. New York, as always, made me a little sad, but now I think I have a better idea of what that feeling is, so it doesn't hurt as much. I think of New York as my hometown. It's the first place I ever felt any strong attachment to.

I grew up in Indiana listening to my parents disparage where we lived. They're both from farther north: my dad grew up in Minnesota, my mom north of Chicago. They were married and I was born in Waukegan, Illinois, but we moved to Indianapolis when I was 3, and then to a small college town an hour west of there when I was 12. My parents complained about the hicks and the Christians constantly, and for the most part I agreed with them and couldn't wait to get out of there. I moved to New York when I was 20 and stayed for 17 years. I left in 1998.

Of course, the city is very different now. All things change. No place stays the same. There's the simple, nostalgic sadness of that. What is particularly sad though is that the changes to New York in the last ten years are not just the regular changes a city goes through, the gradual shifting and displacement of businesses on a block. Old buildings gone, new buildings in their places. It is the fact that the new businesses are so often international banks, Starbucks, chain restaurants. It's not just that New York is changing, it's that New York is changing into Dallas, or Orlando. Or Indianapolis.

I do miss New York. It's a city I know my way around. I never feel lost or stranded there, even now. Pedestrians rule there. And I realized on this visit that I still believe somewhere deep down what I believed before I had ever been there and what I confirmed when I was 18 and visited for the first time: that New York is special, better. I think I will always be a New Yorker who lives on Austin. I know I could not live there now, even if I wanted to. I could not afford to live there.

Rocks in the Head.

We had our second Geology exam on Monday. I studied like a motherfucker, memorized all the really arcane stuff that I figured would show up on the test -- most of it did -- and I got a 98. Not bad, and it makes up for the 88 I got on the last one. Still, I'm not satisfied. I missed one question. It was the last question on the test, and here's how it went: "Hydrothermal water is _____." Multiple choice, two options are obviously incorrect. The other two are: "B. groundwater heated by contact with a magma." and "D. any heated water (e.g., your water heater)."

Notwithstanding the shaky grammar, both of these are correct. I know this as soon as I read it. What's going through my head while I'm trying to decide which little bubble to fill in with my #2 pencil is: "Hydrothermal means hot water. That's what the word means. I don't know for a fact that this word is used in other contexts, but I know that hydro means water and thermal means heat. I also know that, in our class discussion of the hydrosphere, hydrothermal water was mentioned in the context of groundwater making contact with magma and producing steam. So I imagine, in the filed of geology, this is how the expression is used. Since they're both right, which answer does he want? Am I to consider the larger picture? Or should I narrow my thinking to only include the concerns of a geologist? I finally went with D because I couldn't get around the fact that it is the more correct answer, and I hate second-guessing. I should have known that he wanted B.

I'm not sure what to take from this. Even on the surface, it's annoying because it's a trick question -- I don't know how else to see it. But if you're going to write a trick question, the decoy answer should be in some way incorrect, shouldn't it? I even looked up hydrothermal when I got home, and the first definition is "Of or pertaining to hot water." The second definition is "Geology. Of or relating to hot magmatic emissions rich in water."

Isn't the point of a university education to broaden our minds, not narrow them? I feel like I'm being asked to act as if I know less than I know. Maybe that's the point. Don't assume anything.

J gave me some perspective when I was complaining about this to him. He said, "Well, if you were taking a Spanish exam and you came across a word that could also be Italian but mean something different from what it means in Spanish, you'd go with the Spanish meaning, right?" I guess I would.

Anyway, how can you be worried about a stupid Geology class when there's Spade Cooley?

The So-Called Koolaid.

I hear and read criticism of these pro-Obama music videos, some of it critical of the suggestion of celebrity worship (as in, "the beautiful people love Obama, you should too") or just the generally worshipful tone, the chants, etc. But most of the negative comments I've read have boiled down to something along the lines of "they're creepy."

These videos, as well as Obama's best speeches, have the whiff of the evangelical, and god knows we're scared -- and sick and tired -- of that. Obama has been called a "movement politician" as opposed to a party politician, and movements share characteristics with cults, one of the most obvious being that they attract the dissatisfied. And movements often, like cults, grow around charismatic leaders.

Is the president supposed to be a charismatic leader or a competent manager? Well, both -- but I think the charismatic leader is the more important function. (There's no way a president can really be the CEO of the federal government. The executive bureaucracy is too big and unwieldy, much of it is not accountable to the president, and the president doesn't have a lot of say in its organization. The president can't "make" the various offices and bureaus go along with his ideas. But they'll go along with him if they have a good feeling about him, if they like him. Not to mention the legislative branch of government, which is constitutionally outside of the president's authority but usually ready to help a popular president with his legislative agenda.)

Still, I think most of the negative reaction to these videos is no more interesting or complicated than a distrust of anything that provokes an emotional response. The head vs. heart debate. Music and images are very good at disarming us. When something makes us cry or feel sad or excited, we're out of control, at least for that moment in between our reaction and our response. It's hard to argue with tears.

These videos are so moving because they evoke that paradoxical American feeling which is a mix of deep sadness and shame (the feeling we feel when we learn about slavery, or the extermination of the Indians, or mountaintop removal, or Mexicans dying in the desert, or Iraq) with the optimism and pride we feel knowing that, in America -- though it's not always strictly true, and it's certainly not true equally for all people -- if you work hard you can succeed. And they remind us of how some problems that seem unmanageably huge, like racism, boil down to the simplest thing: changing how you feel. Music can do that, it does it easily and it does it all the time -- it changes how you feel.

In the end, all of the above is over-thinking it. The people making these videos are artists. They are famous, and their particular skill is emotional persuasion. Those are the two things they bring to the effort to promote Obama. They're doing what they do.

I Voted.

I voted early today, since I could do it on campus after class. The line was a block long, all students as far as I could tell. That's a good sign, huh? Next Tuesday, we caucus. We get two votes in Texas primaries. (Even the votes are bigger in Texas.)

Wednesday night I went to a review session for my geology exam (I have three exams next week -- I feel like all I'm doing this semester is taking exams, and I'm not loving it) and afterwards I strolled over to the south mall where I thought I might catch the end of a Hillary rally where Bill Clinton was speaking. It was 6:40 and the thing was supposed to start at 5:30, but he was being introduced as I walked up. The crowd was small, I think, at least much smaller than I would have expected for such an event. There was a core of screaming kids near the stage, but most of the crowd was hanging back with their arms folded, obviously not there to rally for Hillary but to see what old Bill had to say.

The president of the student Democrats gave him a very strange introduction: "We know him from MTV! We know him from playing the saxophone on Arsenio Hall! He's the first rock star president this country has ever had!" My guess is that most of the audience, the speaker included, was about 2 years old in 1991. I doubt they even know who Arsenio Hall is.

Anyway, his speech wasn't particularly interesting. ("I love my wife. But even if she wasn't my wife and she asked me to stand up here and endorse her, I would do it. Because she's more qualified to be president than anyone I've ever known." What an idiotic thing to say. If she weren't your wife, she wouldn't be running for president. If she weren't your wife, nobody would even know who she is. And she is your wife, so how do you know how you'd feel about her if she weren't?)

I stayed for about 20 minutes and then went home. One thing struck me. Not really a new thought, but a clear example of why I don't like Bill or Hillary Clinton. He was talking about how one of the points that is brought up to argue against Hillary as president is that, because of who she is, she would stir up the Clintons vs. the Republicans fighting of the 90s. And Bill said (I'm paraphrasing), "I don't know about you, but I thought the nineties were pretty good. I don't know what's wrong with fighting. I'd like to see someone in the White House who's willing to fight. Fight for jobs, fight for prosperity," etc. Now, everybody knows that's not exactly the fighting Hillary's detractors are referring to. Sure, there was a lot of squabbling over real issues, over legislation, but the fighting that we're talking about is the personal, partisan bickering that colored every issue. Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky. Instead of either ignoring or addressing the real objection, he distorts its meaning and then responds to that because it supports his stance. All with a wide-eyed innocent expression. I guess you'd call it passive-aggressive behavior. It's insulting.

Maybe she learned it from him, but it's their favorite rhetorical tactic. It's not exactly lying -- though they do plenty of that as well -- but it's false.

J and I went to a neighborhood block party for Obama tonight. Free pizza. Kids. White people and black people, together. It felt like the future.

La Tarea.

Here's a treat for my Spanish-speaking readers. La tarea de esta mañana:

El verano pasado, mi sobrino (el segundo hijo varón de mi hermana y su esposo) estuvo muy enfermo. Se contagió de E. coli. Primero, el tuvo un dolor de estómago. Por supuesto, con frecuencia los niños se enferman, así que mi hermana y mi cuñado no creían que era grave, pero un dia comenzó a sangrar. En ese momento, supieron que era grave. El pasó trés meses en el hospital. Sus padres pasaron todos los dias con él, y mis otros parientes lo visitaron frecuentemente. Yo no pude ir, pero mi hermano mayor (el otro tío de mi sobrino) podía visitar porque vive más cerca. Muchas veces, mi sobrino casi murió. Sin embargo, mi familia y yo nunca perdimos la esperanza. Finalmente recuperó y fue a casa.

(The assignment was to write 100 words about an important incident in my life. My friend Z, who, in addition to having vast knowledge of botany and horticulture and various other life sciences, speaks fluent Spanish, helped me with this.)

Double Life.

I arrived in New York for the reading in the nick of time. Actually I was a bit early -- my flight left on time, arrived early, there was no one in the taxi queue, and eerily no traffic on the BQE to Manhattan from Queens. We rehearsed for a little over 2 hours, which, even if you have nothing to compare it to, I'm sure it's fairly obvious isn't a lot of time, but all the actors were quick and focused and did a great job. It was rough, but we expected that. The reading itself was in a rehearsal space in Chelsea that I knew immediately I'd been in before, back in my rock and roll days, one of those big stinky band practice buildings divided up into dozens of little rooms that are never soundproof enough.

Afterwards T and I went to a bar nearby for drinks with the producers. We were happily all of one mind regarding what needs work: mainly two narrative holes, one in the first act and one in the second act. They're problems T and I knew were there, and we were waiting for the reading to see it from a wider angle. The producers are going to fly me to New York again in two weeks (my spring break) so that T and I can do some more writing together.

That evening and the next morning after the reading, feeling inspired, T and I hashed out some ideas. We're writing a new song for the second act, for the trial, which contains the climax of the story. I came home and -- instead of doing Spanish homework -- threw together a rough draft in GarageBand and sent it to T on Monday night.

Okay, now back to Spanish (and Geology and History...) for two weeks.