September 28, 2014

What are Kool and The Gang saying to YOU?

I'm currently floating through space and time, and I hear the song 'Get Down On It' whenever I find some solid ground. I'm not playing this song, but someone is always playing it around me. Clearly, this is of cosmic significance, and I must divine the message—line by line. Success not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.


Hey, hey, yeah, what you gonna do? You wanna get down?
Tell me, what you gonna do? Do you wanna get down?
This is crisis decision-making. Do I want to risk my life and go out to Syria to stop the heinous crimes of Isis? Ought I drop everything and aid the Ebola victims in West Africa?

What you gonna do? You wanna get down?
Get your back up off the wall, dance, come on
The world has built up an edifice of ease on which we in the West could indefinitely lean, but is slouching any way to live? Complacency is no longer an option. Kool's is a pragmatic, immediate injunction, and The Gang is calling:
Get your back up off the wall, dance, come on
Dance! Go forth into all the world's wallow, your heart pounding with joy... I think.

Get down on it, get down on it
Get down on it, get down on it
Come on and
Get down on it, get down on it
Get down on it, get down on it
Well. I've followed you thus far, Kool, Gang, and you have inspired me. But what is it on which you want me to get down? I can tell this is your central message. Please help me understand.

How you gonna do it if you really don't wannna dance
By standing on the wall?
Get your back up off the wall
Yes, the reiteration stresses the global, existential importance to act boldly and now.
Tell me, how you gonna do it if you really don't wanna dance
By standing on the wall?
Get your back up off the wall
Ibid.

'Cause I heard all the people sayin'
Get down on it
Vox populi, vox dei. Whereas I assented to Kool's clarion call, I now know it to be the cry of all humanity. Frustrating me still, though, is the hitherto undisclosed "it" on which I'm supposed to get down.
Come on and
Get down on it
If you really want it
With the strength of Zarathustra, I do; only tell me what it is!
Get down on it
You gotta feel it
This is not just a matter of intellect or will, but the heart. Okay, I will so commit, but I still await specific instruction.
Get down on it
Get down on it
repeat...

I say people
(What?)
Ibid!
What you gonna do?
I don't know!
You've gotta get on the groove
If you want your body to move, tell me, baby
I'm gonna need you to caesura there, Kool. I can accept "getting on the groove" as an uncommonly enthusiastic Taoist epithet, but wanting my "body to move" is quite literal. Also, Kool, I appreciate your affection, I really do, but it's emasculating to be called "baby" at a time when I need all potency, apparently even bodily, to marshal my descent "on it."

How you gonna do it if you really don't wanna dance
By standing on the wall?
Get your back up off the wall
Tell me, how you gonna do it if you really won't take a chance
I'll take the chance if you'll tell me what it's for. Frankly, I'm losing interest.
By standing on the wall?
Get your back up off the wall

'Cause I heard all the people sayin'
Has the public cried out anew, or are you recounting the prior outcry? You seem wont to repeat.
Get down on it
Get down on it

What you gonna do? Do you wanna get down?
I thought I did.
What you gonna do?
Tell me, "baby."
Get your back up off the wall, dance, come on
Get your back up off the wall, dance, come on
Get your back up off the wall

Get down on it
etc...

How you gonna do it if you really don't wanna dance
etc...

Listen, baby, you know it when you dancin', yeah
I don't know it. I really, really don't. I'm even dancing (metaphysically), and I still don't understand.
You show it when you move, move, move
Demonstrable only to you.
You know it when you dancin', yeah
You show it as you move across the block
City block, cell block, or Soviet bloc? You're raising more questions that need answers, Kool. I'm happy to shout along with The Gang, but you're not being forthcoming about what you want from me or what you want me to want.

Get down on it
...
What you gonna do? Do you wanna get down?
et al., ad infinitum

I did not find the heart of this dance hit by tearing it limb from limb. Kool and his gang indicate that I must find my heart by tearing it up on the dance floor with my limbs. Not having dance grounds, I have nevertheless removed my back from the wall and wanna get down. I remain confident that I will soon get down on it.

September 12, 2014

7 things you do that YOU WON'T BELIEVE you used to hate

This piece is not about 'you' but me. (Joke's on you. I already got your pageview for my stats.) And of relevance to the great changes happening in my life—completing a master's degree, flat hunting, friends moving away, vocation re-focusing, starting a new service at church—this has none. So, for the fifth time, here's seven things. I've omitted cantaloupe from this list, but I didn't use to like cantaloupe.

1. Preferring button flies
Buying clothes in central London poses challenges not found at the Old Navy in Danada West. Chiefly, all pants (trousers) are slim fit, and they're usually secured with button flies rather than zippers. I shuddered at these inexcusable conventions when first I dredged the TJ (TK) Maxx by The Gherkin. Now, I'm prone to tear at the zipper on my monthly-disintegrating jeans from Primark. Alas, if I owned trousers of consistent fastenings I would not suffer this cognitive dissonance, but I now prefer button flies just 'cause more of my pants use them. And because of additional Pavlovian conditioning, I now perceive straight-cut jeans as bell-bottoms. Crikey.

This is almost as good as the lip sink I shopped.

2. Liking films with no plots
This goes with difficult and opaque poetry and much borderline hipster nonsense. I don't know what happened, you guys. You go from watching Adam Sandler's Jack & Jill ironically, and soon you're hunting through the Guardian to see what's doing well at TIFF. I'm only parroting other authors when I call Thomas Jefferson a 'sphinx' and Julian Assange a 'cipher', but there is no excuse for my curating the Wikipedia page on post-irony and getting excited about normcore. The worst part about sinking into these warm, murky waters is that I want to swim in them. I still ponder Rick Alverson's character study about a guy just kinda living; I never stop thinking about The Comedy and am genuinely excited for his next project. In interviews, Alverson is the epitome of a self-important and self-styled auteur, and I hate that I love the work he's doing.

3. Letting my computer get scratched up and messily annotating texts
Hazards and habits of doing archival and library research. There's no time for OCD at Kew or St. Pancras when you're working in the brief overlap of your waking hours with their opening hours, feeding on the precious information that sustains the life of your mind. That is, there's no time for OCD with your own items. I wouldn't dream of damaging their materials. That's a felony and a war crime.

4. Doing the Indian head nod
I have not visited India. I have no friends from India. I'm not into Bollywood films. I find this expression of ambiguity annoying. But now, if I'm not politely nodding along to the banal ramblings of recent acquaintances, this is the most common way I shake my head.



5. Pointing with my middle finger
I'm not 80 years old. I'm not unaware that extending the middle finger is an offensive gesture. I'm not into flipping off strangers. I find using the middle finger for any purpose socially disquieting. But now, if I'm not throwing both my thumbs up in over-eager greetings and farewells, I'm using my middle finger to navigate everyday life.

I have no idea what this means.

6. Keeping ticket stubs
Colin Stetson, Deltron 3030, Neil Hamburger—these are some of the artists I've enjoyed seeing and whose show's ticket stubs I've saved to use as bookmarks. None of these ticket stubs are narrow and long enough to be useful bookmarks, so I must be a hoarder. Hoarding is having one corner of one drawer stacked with six more slips of paper than you'd like, right?

Stan Lee or Alex Trebek?

7. Drinking white wine and multiple cups of coffee
Neither taste good or are good for you. Both are addictive but not addictions of mine. I suppose the subpoint to this one, and this whole list, is that I've shrugged off trying to understand "even the most minute and obvious aspects of everyday life." It's all good in the hood, and it's all right 'cause it's all white. I hath been brought here safe thus far, and that'll do, pig.