Filed under: observations
On Thursday, I saw a man attack another man with a shovel.
I was walking to class (NYU doesn’t really advertise that aspect of the “urban education”) and saw them scuffling, the people around them tried to break it up, there was some shouting. It looked like they were going to just walk away. Then one man said something, and ran. And thats when the other man grabbed a shovel and started swinging.
I realized afterwards that I was witnessing someone else experiencing a moment they would never be able to take back, but would want to very dearly. I had just witnessed the moment that would culminate (potentially) into an assault with a deadly weapon charge. I just saw community service turn into potential jail time. I just watched a moment that this man might remember and rethink for the rest of his life. If the term blinding rage has any factual merit to it, then I will probably remember him reaching for the shovel and the dull crack of it making contact better than he will.
It is trite to say that one moment can change a lifetime. But it is flooring to watch it happen.
Filed under: diatribes | Tags: high school, hip, hipster, Mark Edmunsdon, pretension, urban outfitters
I have come to realize that I hate hip.
Not in the way that you say you hate something so you don’t have to face the fact that you actually want to be it secretly because you think it’s cool. I actually hate it. Honestly. Hip is like cool’s younger sibling. Where cool is exuberant and self-assured, hip is mangy and intensely self-aware, just trying to stay in cool’s good graces. Like the high school geek finally let into the cool kids’ club, hip is infinitely more cruel to those on the outside than cool would ever feel compelled to be (kinda like how the sophomore frat boys always haze the freshman the hardest, the seniors don’t really care). If hip ever started to be uncool (and by this I do mean unmarketable) the hipsters will be the first ones to publicly denounce it and jump ship to a new genre.
Filed under: introduction | Tags: facebook, introduction, talking to strangers
I am quickly losing my ability to chat, make small talk, shoot the breeze, chew the fat, and all the like. When confronted with strangers, in the awkward moment when you both are made aware of each others presence and shared usage of any space, that crucially defining moment as to how your relationship with this stranger will take shape, pregnant with self-consciousness, I almost always choose to let deafening silence prevail. That moment is when you either will chat with this person or won’t. Either will discuss things obvious to both of your immediate situations, then eventually each others personal experiences, or you will both awkwardly act as though the other one ISN’T right there, waiting for to board/for your number to be called/the elevator to come. Once this moment happens, you are pretty much stuck down whichever path you took and it will be even more hugely awkward to either stop chatting if you have started or start talking if you let it sit too long.
I can’t help but feel that this graceless gablessness is defining characteristic of our generation. I almost feel like if my grandpa (who could strike up a more meaningful conversation with a brick wall than I can even manage with some of my classmates who I see every other day) witnessed this insular little ipod cocooned life I live he would be disappointed in me. What I am good at, however, is thinking intensely about how I would phrase what’s going on around me if I were to write it out to a friend. This, I am positive, is a direct result of Facebook (and a little bit of myspace too). I actually sometimes think to myself of my current status, in the third person, as though there was a little status bar attached to me at all times, monitoring exactly my mood/activity. Like when I almost get run over by a biker crossing the street, what pops into my head is the completion of a statement that starts with Valerie is… (in this case: so hungover she is unable to judge spatial relationships with moving objects). I don’t say this proudly. But I can’t escape it. It is like instead of actually discussing the world in front of me with the people who are present at that moment, witnessing it too, I can only internalize it for how I would tell my friends about it. And after all, they are always only a text message/phone call/IM/email away. As a result, I have never developed the easy bantering grace that it seems like everyone from our parents’ and grandparents’ generation has.
What I am really getting at here is what one of my professors would call the “Ahem” moment. That little pause before you actually get to talking about whatever you are going to talk about by clearing your throat and talking about the fact that you are going to talk about it. Confusing I know, she in fact only references this phenomenon to tell us not to do it.
So, now that that’s out of the way. I have decided to start writing a blog. This blog in fact. The above realization makes the fact that I am becoming even more entangled with this multi-headed hydra of media self representation slightly hilarious to me. And I hope you too. Because unless we can all realize the comedy of this orgy of self-indulgent expression, we will probably all melt into our computer screens and die.
That may be a bit extreme. Get really bad carpal tunnel syndrome at the very least.
As for the chatting, who knows? If I get too into this blog I may just stop talking out loud all together.
