Just another Chamber of Commerce sort of day, the sort you selfishly want every day, even if you know that it doesn’t work that way, shouldn’t work that way, that it can’t work that way. Doesn’t matter. It should work that way because you want it to. The sun is bright and yellow and high and soft and the temperature is best described as: room.
It bled over into the rest of the day, too. Got everywhere on time. There were no problems. Everything felt unhurried. Everything felt pleasant. Hopeful. The weekend was also just around the corner.
In class we wrapped up the week’s discussion on Jose Van Dijck’s Culture of Connectivity. We are now getting to the real meat of the semester, which I have been teasing, hinting at, flirting with, and making casually aloof references for eight weeks. I think that the class might be ready, mostly because they are ready.
We also discussed a recent essay by Anil Dash. I read this a few weeks ago in one of my reading chairs — yes, I have reading chairs, three of them in fact, but I need two more — and thought, immediately, I have to find a way to get this into class.Then, just a few days later, someone made a reference very similar to Dash’s appeal. I said, “I have something we’ll read on that very subject next week, and I want you think about how this might very important in the broadest sense. Today was that day. Anyway, Dash says …
Our creativity can be constrained by the language we use — our imaginations are limited by what we can think to say. If we’re trained to limit the words we speak just by habit, and those limits are put in place by people whose social, political, cultural and moral goals are the opposite of what we value, then our work is unalive before it is even born.
[…]
The best artists around you are invisible to you, and the most important statements by activists that you care about are being silenced. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s a system working as designed. And the proof is as obvious as the fact that the angriest activists you know can’t even talk about systemic abuses or state violence without having to put it in algorithmically approved speech or censoring their captions like they’re going to be read by 5-year-olds.
It should make you furious. It is time to kill “unalive.”
[…]
If we keep accepting the words that are forced upon us by TikTok and Meta and Google and all the rest, while platforms like Twitter/X allow the most hateful and harmful content in the world to be distributed completely unfettered, we’ll only see authoritarianism rise, and the harms against the vulnerable accelerate. But what breaks my heart almost as much is that we’ll see so many brilliant artists and activists and thinkers whose genius will be muted or silenced by mindless, heartless algorithms that capriciously decide who gets to say exactly what words, in what ways.
After class, we lingered for a moment on campus and then set out for further fields.
We had tickets to see a rock ‘n’ roll show. Toad the Wet Sprocket are doing an acoustic tour. Tonight they played this little theater in a cute little downtown of a bedroom community.
We walked the two blocks a few times, visited an odds and ends store, where we picked up two cat toys. We stuck our heads in a record store — where I was primed to purchase vinyl, but left empty handed. Everything was ancient and obscure and I want merely the old and familiar-to-me.
We tried to have dinner in one of the four recommend spots, but they required a reservation. So we went to the second place, which was a soul food theme, with blues blaring from hidden speakers. Blue South opened earlier this year, but it feels comfortable, competent. Like they knows who they are. I tried the short ribs. They were adequate, but I doubt I’d have them again. The sides were terrific. People were hyperbolic about the sides on the review sites, but it was not hyperbole. My lovely bride tried the chicken. She liked it. I had a bite. It was good, but not my favorite sorts. (There are different batter approaches and this is very important.)
We left the restaurant with plenty of time to make the short walk back to the venue. Walked right in. Missed the crowds entirely. Got to our seats without causing a scene. Had plenty of time to settle in before the show. Then Willy Porter came out. He may be one of the most underrated guitarists you’ve never seen live. The man can just play. Here’s an old clip.
Then the guys from Toad the Wet Sprocket came out to the requisite clip from Monty Python.
It’s funny, in a way. We’ve listened to these guys for half our lives now. We saw them twice, a few years ago, supporting a Barenaked Ladies tour, but have never had the chance to see the full show. And now, finally, one of the recurring elements of the soundtrack of my life is about four rows away.
Tonight, they sounded like this.
And, look, this is a me statement, not a theme statement, but I am not prepared to see my almost-contemporaries looking like this.
They’re only six or seven years older than me. Dean Dinning sat down a few times during the set. (He did it very cool, though, so it could have been a part of the act, or that he needed a break. I, a person who sits down, am not judging.)
They also covered Neil Young. They played all the hits, the favorites, and a few deep cuts.
We’d parked just across the street, and before we got out of the lot, which happened fast, we were already trying to slot this show into its proper place. It was a great concert. I’m glad we had the chance to do that. We made it home easily, beating the initial GPS estimate by two minutes. It was the end of a great day, the sort you selfishly want every day.
