None of My Business

When I was in sixth grade, my best friend’s parents were getting divorced. Her mother was seeing a man who lived an hour and a half away. My best friend told me they would probably move. This upset the entire foundation of my eleven-year-old existence, so I asked her mother when and if they were going to move in with her boyfriend. She replied, “None of your beeswax, as you kids say.” This was not what I wanted to hear, and I vowed I would never say, “None of your business” when asked a question by a young child.

I must confess I was part of the work-place gossip the other week. To avoid “gossip,” I went right to the source and asked one colleague if she was having sex with the other colleague in question. Afterwards, people brought to my attention that even if they were or had, they weren’t going to tell me the truth. More importantly I realized, it was none of my business.

You see, over the years, I’ve learned to see the value in none of your business. There are some things I am better off not knowing. There are some things that are better off never being in my mind. There are certain things I no longer want exposed in my subconscious.

It’s a tricky balance. Because on one hand, I don’t want to ignore the murders of the women of La Juarez. But on the other, I don’t want images of raped naked women with their nipple cut off rotting in the desert to occupy my mind before I go to bed at night as a single woman living alone.

Years ago, when I was in a workshop with Rosalyn Bruyere, a student said she kept her Qi gong practice she learned from Rosalyn for herself, and didn’t teach it to her clients. She said she wanted to just keep something for herself. I now understand that kind of privacy, when I didn’t necessarily at the time.

Sometimes none of my business is about boundaries because we don’t live in public.

I Got Had by The Hills

Since its inception, I was a loyal follower of The Hills. Even worse, I'd been a Laguna Beach watcher. Why? I never had any good reason. It was sad really - I was a full-blown, working, insurance-paying adult, but in my spare time, I followed the saga of uppity Orange County teenagers through high school graduation and beyond.

One reason (beyond the undeniable fact that I clearly must have liked the show) may have simply been because I liked television, and despite the fact that Laguna Beach and The Hills were somewhat vapid and inane, they were still doing something different than I'd seen before, and it intrigued me. Not exactly fiction but not quite reality TV, these shows were "semi-scripted." The names and faces were real, but the storyline was contrived. Sort of. But none of the viewers were ever really told how and when.

So I watched, knowing full well that a lot of the "scenes" that took place were the product of writers, not reality. Still, I always believed that a solid element of truth was woven through the story - not because I was idealistic, but because I was convinced that the cast members simply were not good enough actors to carry off tears.

But the final scene of the series threw me for a completely unexpected loop. In it, the main character, Kristin Cavallari, is saying an emotional good-bye to long-time love Brody Jenner just before she takes of for Europe. (Just "Europe." They never specified where.) The two embrace, Kristin tears up, (tears! No way she's faking those.) and she's off. Brody, in front of a sunset sky and the Hollywood sign, gazes after her longingly. Then moments later, the background moves, and Brody is revealed to be on a soundstage. The show wraps, and Kristin comes running back and gives Brody a hug. In a wink to its audience, the show revealed the ending was staged, and in doing so, implied much of the series most likely was.

I was shocked when I saw this ending (and continued to be as I rewinded the DVR and rewatched) mostly because I realized the cast had really fooled me. Despite the forced interactions of the cast members and the crafty editing, and even knowing some of the story was preconceived, I'd still always believed the tears.

In the end, these kids were better actors than I thought.

Banksy Makes a Movie

This year, one of the Oscar nominees for Best Documentary is Exit Through the Gift Shop, and no one knows who directed it. Sure, the credits list the director as Banksy, but go ahead and Google him. Look for a picture of him.

Find anything?

The London street artist has been , er, displaying his work around the world for years while maintaining anonymity. His website currently shows examples of his mischief around Los Angeles, probably because he's in town for the Academy Awards. He did the same in Park City, Utah when Exit premiered at Sundance last year.

So what does a faceless, first-time director film? The doc started out as Thierry Guetta's sort of attempt to record the street art movement that started over a decade ago, but since the vast majority of what he shot and edited was unwatchable, his friend Banksy offered to take over the re-edit, but ended up turning the camera back on Thierry, who went on to become Mr. Brainwash, aka MBW. Confused enough? Just watch the movie. It's engaging, exciting, surprising...

...and quite possibly, a total and complete lie.

Banksy has been provoking and poking fun at society throughout his career. Why stop with graffiti? Why not make a movie, convince everyone it's true, and reveal later that you orchestrated the whole thing? Or better yet, never reveal anything at all. It wouldn't be the first fake documentary out there, and I'm not the only one questioning the veracity of the film.

But in spite of the probability that one of my favorite films of 2010 was a hoax, I choose to believe it's real. I want to believe that this strange and ironic chain of events actually transpired. I want to believe a guy named Thierry created MBW, and that it wasn't a hugely counterproductive move on the part of creative genius Banksy. I want to believe the Q&A I saw with the producer, editor, and art show producer that I saw last fall. I want to continue watching Exit Through the Gift Shop and feel that unique mix of inspired and outraged, not simply duped.

Fiction is More Real than Truth

Reality television has really hurt us. Yeah, in the brain-cell-killing way of course, but also by weakening the authority of the moving image as a documentary tool. After all, the earliest surviving film – all 2 seconds of it - was a documentary. But when “reality” on TV is defined by oversexed egotists on the Jersey Shore (or Atlanta or the San Fernando Valley or Miami, for that matter), can we trust anything we see anymore?

It’s telling that what is considered the precursor to reality television aired on PBS. Debuting in 1973, An American Family followed the Loud family in Santa Barbara, California as they struggled with divorce, an openly gay son, and the trials of middle class life. Contrasted with The Brady Bunch, airing concurrently on network television, the 12-part documentary was a shocking and controversial antidote to the saccharine image of American life presented on scripted television.

Fast-forward 30 years and the ascendence of Survivor, The Real World, Big Brother, The Bachelor, and The Amazing Race. These reality television series – mostly game show-style competitions – promised actual human drama with none of the snooze-inducing journalistic conceit of documentarians.

It’s not shocking to anyone that reality TV is a massaged, molded, mangled form of reality. Even to call it “reality” is misleading when the “real world” is presented not as a disinterested observer documenting life’s progress but as a casted competition with beautiful people – or unattractive/obese ones, if it heightens the plot – striving for money, fame, or some kind of contrived “opportunity.”

Worse, beyond mere “creative editing,” reality shows producers have been accused of coaching their subjects through interviews, deliberately shuffling scenes, and even faking footage. In 1973, An American Family listed no writers in its credits. Since 2005, the Writers Guild of America has been actively courting reality show writers to organize.

With fake documentaries like Sasha Baron Cohen’s Borat and Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix’s I’m Still Here plus millions of YouTube mini-docs of varying authenticity (and worth), who tells us what’s real? Are reality shows less real than fiction because they sell the aura of authenticity? And even though we know reality shows are fake, are we still unconsciously duped because a worn aphorism – “truth is stranger than fiction” – has been ingrained in us all?

Scripted television programs are fictitious but do they teach us any less about the human condition than a vapid reality series? You need only watch dramas such as Law & Order or The Wire to see that modern dramas hold more of a mirror to the world than, say, The Apprentice. Even a sitcom like The Office captures the ennui of the corporate world more closely than any reality show ever could. After all, who would you rather watch: an actor portraying a real person or a real person trying to act?

Tonight on the Academy Awards, the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature will be presented to a film you've never heard of. Meanwhile, four of the 10 Best Picture nominees are engaging dramas based on true events. The documentary still lives, just in fictional form.

We Live in Public

I saw the documentary on Josh Harris, "We Live in a Public," about six months ago. Apart from his bizarre experiment to tape the most interesting people he could find in a bunch of pods, I think the most telling part of the film was the follow-up project with his girlfriend. The concept was similar—film everything, everywhere—except all the cameras were plugged into the apartment he shared with his girlfriend. The footage was broadcast to their website, which attracted a devoted audience numbering in the thousands, as this level of voyeurism was still novel at the time. The couple would interact with their fans through a chat feature. Once the girlfriend even asked, “Where are my keys?” and someone watching them online was able to tell her. Eventually, however, as their audience dwindled, their relationship also spiraled out of control, as though the two were irrevocably intertwined: Their affinity for one another was tied to the level of theatrics it provided.

Thinking of this documentary makes me also think about values. With the forward march of technology, it seems that there are values being left behind in the dust. Nowadays, I marvel every time I meet someone who is genuinely humble, and does not seem to be clamoring for your attention, in person or online. Can a value be anachronistic? I guess this connects back to the Zadie Smith essay—while by age, I am a part of the People 2.0 generation, I much prefer looking for the People 1.0 mentality in others, and most importantly, myself.

F for Fake

Fraud, fakery, and falseness: the bane of the internet. The wilds of the web, where charlatans, skulking amongst the 0's & 1's, fleece the unknowing flocks with spurious claims and unreal promises.

Ha! As if that were anything new!

Watch "F for Fake" by Orson Welles (currently on Netflix Instant) for a little perspective. Released in 1974, it was the last movie directed by Welles and another little-known entry in an oeuvre so often overshadowed by his monumental "Citizen Kane."

Critically and commercially a flop when it debuted, it is now considered a masterpiece of film editing. Indeed, Welles spends much of the movie narrating from the editing room and includes many shots-within-shots of the film flickering on a moviola editing machine.

The emphasis on the editing process was a conscious choice by Welles to illustrate that not only are all documentaries a "fake" interpretation of real events through the subjective eye of the director but, by extension, art in general.

Ostensibly, the documentary is the story of Elmyr de Hory, a Hungarian painter, who is such a skilled forger of established artists that his works regularly appear alongside the genuine articles. De Hory succeeds where other forgers failed because he produces paintings in the style of the Masters, not forgeries of their known works, making it that much harder for "experts" to debunk.

Welles adds another layer by introducing Clifford Iriving, a writer researching De Hory. Irving, also, is a fraud having produced a fake biography of Howard Hughes. Then there's Picasso - who appears in the movie via animated photographs à la Monty Python - and Joseph Cotten (randomly) and Oja Kodar - Welles' Croatian girlfriend, 26 years his junior - all topped off with excerpts from Welles' infamous "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast... that are completely fake.

At the beginning of the film, Welles promises to tell the truth for the next hour. The movie lasts 85 minutes. But even that is not strictly true. Welles the narrator doesn't lie, but Welles the director intercuts faked footage, intentionally misspells titles, and replaces actors with lookalikes.

In an era of digital manipulation, it's even more spectacular that Welles the flim-flam man produces all this fakery with mere sleight of hand (and cut of film). The internet may have made fraud easier for the common huckster but nothing compares to the work of the Old Masters.

Astral Biochemistry

This is your brain. This is drugs. This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?

I grew up on this public service announcement, which to this day makes me laugh when I clicked on denaturation (biochemistry) and thought about it.

I made eggs for breakfast the next morning.

The public service announcement didn’t do much for me—I had a mother who was an R.N. and used to tell me horror stories about drug patients she treated who had lost their septum from snorting too much coke. This was lovely to tell your young child, but I have to hand it to her—it worked. Before I even knew what the vocabulary word septum meant, I vowed never to put anything up my nose, for fear of my nose collapsing.

As I was taking a trip down memory lane, I came across this parody.

I laughed even though my gay best friend died of addiction, because he would have seen the dark humor in it.

I watched a documentary about Taboo, the musical Broadway flop by Boy George produced by Rosie O’Donnell. Boy George was the face of God singing to me as a young child. I suppose it is rather odd for an eight-year-old to be having fantasies of hanging out with a drag queen…but it does explain my confusion with gender roles to this day. A colleague said I was “the patron saint of misfits.” As I was listening to Stranger in this World, I missed my gay best friend because being with him made me feel not so alone. He told me if he were straight, I would be the one.

When Facebook came out, our mutual friend posted pictures of our high school gang, but she avoided posting pictures of him. Sometimes I wish he could still have a Facebook avatar. I wish I could post on his wall, “Go see Next to Normal—you’ll love Alice Ripley even more than the Sideshow CD you made me.” Instead of sending my message into cyberspace, I send it out into astralspace and hope he gets the message.

Ahead or Behind?

A Russian billionaire recently bought the New Jersey Nets basketball team. Don't worry this isn't just a story for sports fans. The reason I bring this up is because this mogul, Mikhail Prokhorov, runs all of his businesses without the use of most modern technologies. He doesn't own a cell phone. He doesn't have an email address. His response to whether he uses a computer is "I don't use a computer. We have too much information and it's really impossible to filter it." Sounds pretty refreshing to me.

On one hand I couldn't just tell my employer that I don't have an email address anymore, but this guy is worth 13.4 billion dollars and he's done it all without these tools we covet. Is he a visionary and a role model, or just some lucky guy that takes advantage of unique entrepreneurial circumstances?

Regardless of what you think about Prokhorov and his stance on technology, you should check him out because he is certainly an interesting character. How he became wealthy sounds a bit sketchy, but that's only the start of it. I've attached the link to the 60 minutes clip on him when he bought the Nets. He also paid a Hollywood movie budget to professionally film him doing jet ski stunts. The video is on YouTube. It is hilarious.

Curse of the News Feed

My friend called and asked me what was new in life, so I told her I'd gone to Vegas over the weekend. "Yeah," she replied in a very duh-tone. "You had that crazy drink and ridic food at the Bellagio." Uh...yeah... We hadn't communicated via voice, text, email, or any other form of direct messaging in weeks. "I saw it on your Facebook." OH.

People always say that what you post online is available for all the world to see (or depending on your privacy settings, just your "friends"), but there's still something strange about when digital and physical lives converge. I know that, when I post something on FB, others can see it and will likely comment. Likewise, I keep up with friends on the East Coast by scrolling through their walls. Yet when someone talks about my FB information in person when they never acknowledged it online, I still experience a brief disconnect. I wonder how they know these things, and my post-Truman Show paranoia flares up. My life-show's script supervisor must have screwed up his continuity.

Most of my friends will keep Facebook on Facebook, Gchat on Gchat, SMS in SMS. Every once in a while, we'll be at dinner and refer to an article someone shared online, or maybe bring up something we both saw on the News Feed--a.k.a FB's auto-stalk function--but rarely do we leave a conversation thread in one venue and pick it up in another. That just doesn't seem natural. But just as we all got used to being ever-accessible with cellphones, I'm sure we'll get used to the latest digital crossovers. Eventually. Whether we want to or not.

You vs. Your Blog

Imagine you're an attorney. Imagine you're a successful, 30-something lesbian attorney with a dry wit and hilarious dog. You date around, you live the high life. It's fodder ripe for an anonymous blog.

So you blog.

None of your readers know who you are. In fact pretty much everyone assumes you're a man, based on your profession and the many women you date and write about.

You have friends, though. And your friends know the real you behind the blog.

Of course you have a Facebook profile as well, and it uses your real name but doesn't mention your blog. Your Twitter handle is your blog avatar, and you tweet as "anonymous blogger," but of course your friends know who you really are.

But your blog followers don't.

You have girlfriends. Sometimes you have many, occasionally you have one.

Then you have only one serious one and you tell the world about all the many millions of things you love about her. She becomes part of who you are.

Then you break up.

Or do you?

You say yes, the blogger says no. The girlfriend still appears all over the blog. And Twitter.

Somehow girlfriend (who your friends know both by real name and by blog avatar) still comments on your Facebook wall even though you have unfriended girlfriend. Your friends (real friends) have no idea how this is even possible.

Communication with you becomes scarce. You tell your friends one story. The blog tells another.

The lines become blurred. Either you or blogger isn't telling the truth, and no one's sure which.

Your friends don't know who they're really friends with.

Until recently, the word "denatured," called up, for me at least, an egg frying in a greased pan or a picture of a metal pipe rusting from my 9th grade chemistry textbook. Lately when I think about the process of denaturing, I find myself picturing my own synapses as they rewire themselves irrevocably thanks to the inordinate amount of time I spend on the Internet. I've also been considering this process of denaturing on a more universal level. How has the redefinition of privacy sparked by social networking changed our own individual natures as human beings, particularly when it comes to the forging of human relationships? Facebook invites us to break our friendships and ourselves up into "likes," "favorite movies", "education", and "languages spoken" Spend enough time on twitter and it becomes possible to construct an entire image of a stranger and his or her life based on a series of carefully-constructed 140-character "tweets." But how does the crafting of these online personae impact the personalities we lug around with us in real time? How does social media denature our natures? These questions were mostly inspired by the movie We Live in Public (see trailer below) and this article in GQ, which I invite you all to read and respond to.

LOLA

My mom and dad raised me around music. I can't listen to the Beatles white album without getting vivid flashbacks to my childhood. Singing was another huge part of our family dynamic. We never did cheesy sing-a-longs or anything, but when someone was singing in the house it was a tell tale sign that things were going well.

My dad and sister used to sing the song Lola by the Kinks all the time. One of them would start at one end of the house and the other one, no matter what they were doing, would chime in. I'm sure you have all heard the song. It's the one where you spell out the name L-O-L-A LOLA a bunch of times in a row.

I just blindly assumed it was a love song about some girl this guy met in a bar in SoHo. Turns out LOLA was written about a transsexual. Had either my father or sister took the time to learn more than just the chorus it would have been very apparent. (Check out the lyrics below.) My personal favorite is "I'm not the worlds most physical guy, but when she squeezed me tight she almost broke my spine, oh my LOLA." I've decided not to tell them. I'd hate for them to think twice about belting out a few notes. If they're in a good mood, why not let them sing about a transsexual at the top of their lungs?

LOLA

I met her in a club down in old Soho
Where you drink champagne
It tastes just like Coca Cola, C-O-L-A cola

She walked up to me and she asked me to dance
I asked her her name and in a dark brown voice
She said Lola, L-O-L-A, Lola, L-L-Lola

Well, I'm not the world's most physical guy
But when she squeezed me tight she nearly broke my spine
Oh my Lola, L-L-Lola

Well, I'm not dumb but I can't understand
Why she walked like a woman but talked like a man
Oh my Lola, L-L-Lola, L-L-Lola

Well, we drank champagne and danced all night
Under electric candlelight
She picked me up and sat me on her knee
And said, "Dear boy, won't you come home with me?"

Well, I'm not the world's most passionate guy
But when I looked in her eyes well I almost fell for my Lola
L-L-Lola, L-L-Lola
Lola, L-L-Lola, L-L-Lola
[ From: http://www.elyrics.net/read/k/kinks-lyrics/lola-lyrics.html ]

I pushed her away, I walked to the door
I fell to the floor, I got down on my knees
Then I looked at her and she at me

That's the way that I want it to stay
I always want it to be that way for my Lola, L-L-Lola

Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up muddled up, shook up world
Except for Lola, L-L-Lola

Well, I left home just a week before
And I'd never ever kissed a woman before
But Lola smiled and took me by the hand
And said, "Dear boy, I'm gonna make you a man"

Well, I'm not the world's most masculine man
But I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man
And so is Lola, L-L-Lola, L-L-Lola
Lola, L-L-Lola, L-L-Lola

Lola, L-L-Lola, L-L-Lola
Lola, L-L-Lola, L-L-Lola
Lola, L-L-Lola, L-L-Lola

Lola, L-L-Lola, L-L-Lola
Lola, L-L-Lola, L-L-Lola
Lola, L-L-Lola, L-L-Lola

My Graduation Song

In eight grade, we were supposed to vote for a class song to commemorate our upcoming graduation. The two nominees were "Graduation Song" by Vitamin C and "Time of Your Life" by Green Day. I remember my friends and classmates actually campaigning for their preference, even though it would just be played once at one of the graduation festivities and not graduation itself. Roughly speaking, the two songs carved out a gender divide, with girls voting for Vitamin C and the boys gunning for Green Day. As there were more boys in the class by the slightest of margins, "Time of Your Life" won.

In later years, I found it strange when other people told me their graduation song was also "Time of Your Life." I could not fathom how something so intensely personal as my eighth-grade graduation song had been co-opted by other people, who I all swore did not get the lyrics as well as I did. But now I understand there was never anything in the lyrics that spoke to me; rather, I had spoken to myself through the lyrics. The lines were so generic, like high school poetry— "Another turning point /a fork stuck in the road / Time grabs you by the wrist / directs you where to go" — through which I could superimpose my own meaning onto the song. I think the best songs function in this manner, that is, like a horoscope: You are able to read in them whatever you wish.

Creep

As a kid, the bands I sparked to tended toward the embarrassing and overloved. I skipped class once to go to a Cake concert in Austin. Benjamin Gibbard and Conor Oberst fought for a place in the discman attached to the tape deck in my Volvo 240 DL. I knew who Death Cab for Cutie was pre-Postal Service, and I have the We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes tee-shirt to prove it.

In college, I pretended to hate the music I liked so that the boys I liked would like me back. I didn't understand yet that boys who ask you out because you listen to Gang Gang Dance instead of Mirah are not the kind of boys that anyone should date. For whatever reason, the one group that seemed to find approval across the spectrum was Radiohead. It is my experience that not many people will admit to not liking (or even feeling indifferent to) Thom Yorke. I think this trailer from the Social Network, which, by now, I'm assuming everyone has seen, goes a long way toward explaining why:

I remember sixth grade, a friend of mine reciting these same lyrics mournfully into the phone at four in the morning. The girl he was in love with (a mutual friend) had broken up with him, and my friend wanted to know if it was because he was unlovable, too skinny, not quite witty enough, and so on. Over the course of that six-hour long conversation, I came to understand that self-loathing is, in itself, a particular kind of narcissism. A different strain of narcissism keeps the Facebook engine running, but it's narcissism all the same, something the creators of this trailer obviously get. It's difficult to imagine a more apt soundtrack for the particular elements of the current cultural moment that this film so expertly critiques. There's a reason everyone loves Radiohead, but what the impact of this trailer suggests is that it might not be the reason we assume.

Oh, Those Lyrics Are So Beautiful... Sounding

When I tell people I don’t really listen to song lyrics, the customary response – combined with a incredulous look – is “Um, aren’t you an English major?” Yeah, I say, but I’m also a musician and I’m lucky enough to have decent relative pitch. I’m usually so tuned into the melody that the lyrics are more important for their rhythm and feel than what they say.

I often like songs that annoy other people just because I enjoy the melody, harmony, and rhythm. There are definitely exceptions. “California Gurls” – as catchy as it is – cannot escape its vapid lyrics. But the inverse: songs that have great lyrics but only so-so music don’t really interest me at all. You know, songs from Bob Dylan or folksy “chick” singers like Sarah MacLaclahan or Alanis Morrisett.

I’ve been on a Radiohead kick lately. I know I’m way late to this boat but one song in particular is beautiful: “Pyramid Song.” Released on the band’s 2001 album “Amnesiac,” it’s a very dreamy, haunting song. I had to look up the lyrics online but it wasn’t what they meant but how they sounded.

I jumped in the river and what did I see?

Black-eyed angels swam with me
A moon full of stars and astral cars
All the things I used to see
All my lovers were there with me
All my past and futures
And we all went to heaven in a little row boat
There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt

If I could characterize the song in a word, I’d say “ethereal” and though the lyrics are a bit out-there, the afterlife imagery fits perfectly with its dreamy feel. They just sound cool. And that’s all I can ask of a song.

All come to look for America

“Michigan seems like a dream to me now”
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I’ve gone to look for America

The famous Simon and Garfunkel "America" lyrics which put Saginaw on the map.

Usually we show people on our hand where we’re from—it’s a trick only people from Michigan, the mitten state can do. When I tell people I’m from Saginaw, I say, “Stevie Wonder is from Saginaw. Have you ever seen his house? Neither has he.”

When I was first teaching is South Central, a student said they lived in the ghetto. The bridge coordinator gave him a lecture about how the word ghetto originated during World War II when the Jewish people were quartered off in the Warsaw Ghetto.

As I was telling my best friend from high school this, he said, “Well you don’t get any more ghetto than Saginaw.” I was stunned. I had never thought of myself being from the ghetto. I had been in denial for years. My friend continued to tell me how Habitat for Humanity was actually tearing down homes, instead of building them in Saginaw. Then I learned it is one of the nation’s top ten most violent cities.

So when I read the article, Finding Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘America’ In Saginaw, MI on NPR, which quoted a guy I went to high school with, I thought deeper about those lyrics.

Madonna is from Bay City, twenty minutes away from Saginaw. She said in an interview that she just wanted to get the hell out of Michigan. She received a lot of flack for saying that. But I understood. I wanted to get the hell out of Michigan.

I hated growing up with the Saginaw, ghetto mentality. My father used to say, “When you grow up, you can go live other places. You’ll see what a great town Saginaw is to raise kids.”

I moved to New York City right after I received my college degree. I turned down help from my father and my boyfriend at the time. I didn’t want to deal with their shit. I wanted to do it on my own. I’ve never moved back.

Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They’ve all come to look for America

I have my students write an essay about “What is an American?” based on the essay by Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur. It makes them define for themselves what an American is. Many of my students have come from other countries to live in South Los Angeles.

All come to look for America

A Mosaic of Sorts

Read it through, then click on the different phrases to see where they're from.

LA Lady

Cool drink of water, such a sweet
surprise. She’s always ready—
pulls those shades down tight. She’s just like a maze,
blue jean baby. She won’t cooperate
as long as she stands there waiting. She’s a runner,
rebel and a stunner, sophisticated lady
got my number; just a kiss on the lips
and I was on my knees, begging,
give me: big black boots, long brown hair, pretty face
she hid, I see her everywhere. She came to my show
just to hear about my day. She was
shakin’ her hips, holdin’ on my heart
like a hand grenade. She brings this liberation
that I just can’t define. When she wakes me,
midnight is in her eyes. A little loaded,
she steals another breath. She’s the salt of the earth
and she’s dangerous.

There's a reason we get songs stuck in our heads, and sometimes it's the music, but sometimes the narrative or emotions behind the lyrics get under our skin in a way that has us singing them over and over and over again, out loud or otherwise. Part of what led me to write compilations of preexisting lyrics was the fact that so many say the same thing in different ways--Frank Sinatra's "The Lady is a Tramp" and Green Day's "Last of the American Girls" use different chords, tempos, and diction, but aren't they both just men singing about women they love for their imperfections?

Another aspect of song lyrics that never ceases to amaze me is the way so many artists manage to slip in outrageous easter eggs while distracting listeners with a catchy tune. Some of pop culture's favorite songs are about rape, while some of the most reputedly hardcore rappers put out lyrics that, well...maybe they should have run them by a third party first. I bring this up, not because such examples appear in the piece above, but because when you sift through hundreds of song lyrics to distill them down to a dozen or so lines, you come across some major WTFs.

Lyrical Genius

(Piano Piano!/Flickr.)

I've always been a lyric dissecter. I'm a lover of music too, but in many cases I'm more interested in what the artist is saying in any particular song.

When I was a camp counselor, at the end of the day each of us would run a little discussion in the cabin we called "Devotions," in which the campers would have a chance to share their thoughts in a safe environment. (Though I hear the boy campers mostly just talked about superheros, but whatever.) My favorite Devotions were the ones where I asked each of the girls to play their favorite song and talk about why it was important to them. Most of the time the conversation centered around lyrics that spoke to them. Sometimes the tears flowed. I was doing important work, I thought.

I always participated too, and my song choice varied. I have lots of favorite songs and favorite albums, as we all do. Paul Simon's Graceland is one of them. My family had the LP when I was little and I loved when it played. I knew nothing about African music in the mid-1980s (and actually I don't know a whole lot now), but I knew it sounded different than any other record we had, and I liked it. Especially "You Can Call Me Al." You can call me Al! Amazing coincidence.

It's still one of my favorites and the CD plays in my car pretty frequently. Recently, though, I heard the opening track, "The Boy in a Bubble" with new ears.

Graceland came out in 1986, but in a way, the lyrics to this song seem very current. The chorus could be a commentary on the way we communicate today.

"These are the days of miracle and wonder.

This is the long-distance call.

The way the camera follows us in slo-mo

They way we look to us all."

To me, these lines apply to the advent of both social media and reality television - the way we can almost miraculously keep tabs on the minute details of each others lives at a constant rate, despite being far away from some of our virtual friends. Additionally, as we've discussed, Facebook in particular is a sort of representation of ourselves. Is it our real self? When posting, do we think about "the way we look to us all?"

Regarding the third line, reality TV is a hugely popular genre today. Some of our biggest celebrities are simply the product of being followed by cameras, enjoying their "15 minutes." What makes us celebrate them for humiliating themselves on TV? How do they look to us?

Later in the song, the chorus changes:

"These are the days of lasers in the jungle,

Lasers in the jungle somewhere."

(Ok, this part doesn't really apply to what I'm talking about.)

"Staccato signals of constant information,

A loose affiliation with millionaires and billionaires and baby..."

Are Twitter and Facebook not essentially summed up by that third line? Social media also allows us to have loose affiliations with "millionaire and billionaire" celebrities or pretty much anyone we deem important. We're able to "like" them, tweet them, or even comment on their statuses.

Perhaps Paul Simon was psychic. I certainly never thought about any of this as an 1980s baby.

What song lyrics speak to you? Has your opinion of a song every changed over time?

Super Bowl Ad Annoyance

During the Super Bowl this year, Chevy ran a commercial that showed an average looking guy awkwardly kissing a relatively attractive girl on what appeared to be a first date. It started out mostly cheesy, especially for a red blooded football audience, but that’s not what made it offensive. What really made your stomach churn was that when the guy got in his car to head home, he pressed a button on his rear view mirror and was told by a standard GPS voice that the girl's Facebook status had already been updated to “best first date….ever.” The commercial ended with the narrator stating, “When the good news just can’t wait.” Has there ever been a more perfect line to best describe our current generation?

The entire group I was watching the game with let out a collective groan. The negative reaction to the commercial didn’t feel like just a response to gimmicky advertising or the improbability of such an immediate status update. That’s a whole different story. There was a real annoyance for this ad, far more than for any of the others. A deeper emotion seemed to be at work. A friend of mine leaned over and said, "You know what’s sad? This car will probably sell and sell well.” I agreed, and for some reason felt guilty about it.

JG