Bomba Shack, Tortola, BVI. 

Brewer's Bay, Tortola, BVI. 

Josiah's Bay #2, Tortola, BVI. Population: 8! 

Josiah's Bay, Tortola, BVI.  

Tortola photos

I was just running through some photos of our trip to Tortola and I am glad that I did. Before any observations or criticism--crrritic!--I realized hey, three nights in the British West Indies is just dang awesome! So, a few pictures first.

Vultures Row

Interesting post (titled "Where the Streets Have No Shame")from this blog for several reasons:Vultures Row


First, Vulture 6 blogs:

A story that got very little attention last week was one concerning U2. The story is one of artistic integrity. It seems some advertising agency wants to pay the band some 12.5 million pounds ($22,785,212.46) to use the song "Where the Streets Have No Name" in a television spot. The band in the end turned down the money because “Where the Streets Have No Name” was a song they did not want associated with a commercial.

It turns out Bono and the boys are joining the Live 8 concert coming soon for the purpose of raising money and awareness in the G8 nations about the poor of Africa. Vulture 6 seems to write a literate and interesting blog from the conservative perspective--"Aid to help in building a future is one thing, but a redistribution of wealth just for the sake of giving them more is wrong."--I happen not to share.

A cynic might suggest U2 take the commercial and use their own money to help the poor of Africa instead of preaching. Vulture 6 does suggest this but he's not the cynic here. A reporter of course must have been prompt with the suggestion to ellicit this reply from Bono:

“We almost did. We sat down. I know from my work in Africa what £12.5 million could buy. It was very hard to walk away from £12.5 million ($22,785,212.46)... So we thought, we'll give the money away. But if we tell people we're giving the money away, it sounds pompous”

Puh-leeeeze, Bono. There's much to admire in you, but you are not exactly covering yourself in glory with that reply. With Vulturesrow on this one.

We'll save redistribution of wealth arguments for another day.

Second (still with me?):
The "people's band" often is cast in the rosey light of integrity and well-meaning. This recent tour stopped in Boston and it is probably the third go-round I have happily missed. I still think they're great and mostly sincere, but a friend of mine had signed up at the online fan site. A $40 fee "ensured" tickets to concerts in the area. Well, he got his tix of course, for a premium, at the Fleet Center (ahem, Bank North Garden I mean) and I believe they were for Lousy Nosebleed Telescopic Section 4, Row 2. Wouldn't you think that a $40 annual fee paid by loyal FANS at a FAN SITE could ensure not only two tickets, but maybe decent seats as well? Can we get a reporter to pose that question?

Third. Yes third:

I've just come back from three nights in Tortola and a world poverty issue like above prompts comments I had planned on blogging anyway, including the tribulations of an Innocent Abroad treated like THE MAN and a DAMN YANKEE no matter how humbly servile he became in ordering his cheeseburger. Next post:

Tortola, Lotsa Fun
or
Kill, Cramp, and Paralyze (Yankee go home)

Letters to a Young Poet

In fourth term AP English my students read The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. After this cheery read, I have them read selections from Ranier Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet because the letters are filled with inspiration and wisdom.

You must pardon me, dear Sir, for waiting until today to gratefully remember your letter of February 24: I have been unwell all this time, not really sick, but oppressed by an influenza-like debility, which has made me incapable of doing anything.

Some of it might be deemed sentimental and I am sure that some of my seniors feel that way when they read the letters, but more than a few I hope are quietly struck with insights that are very relevant to their time of life.

And finally, since it just didn't want to improve, I came to this southern sea, whose beneficence helped me once before. But I am still not well, writing is difficult, and so you must accept these few lines instead of your letter I would have liked to send.

This year I only had time for one letter, and I didn't even bother to talk much about Rilke or the circumstances of the letters. I just had them read letter two.

Of course, you must know that every letter of yours will always give me pleasure, and you must be indulgent with the answer, which will perhaps often leave you empty-handed;

My assignment is based on this passage:

Irony: Don't let yourself be controlled by it, especially during uncreative moments. When you are fully creative, try to use it, as one more way to take hold of life. Used purely, it too is pure, and one needn't be ashamed of it; but if you feel yourself becoming too familiar with it, if you are afraid of this growing familiarity, then turn to great and serious objects, in front of which it becomes small and helpless. Search into the depths of Things: there, irony never descends - and when you arrive at the edge of greatness, find out whether this way of perceiving the world arises from a necessity of your being. For under the influence of serious Things it will either fall away from you (if it is something accidental), or else (if it is really innate and belongs to you) it will grow strong, and become a serious tool and take its place among the instruments which you can form your art with.

I like them to discuss their understanding of irony, not as an artist would per se, but as a function of personality. We talk about sincerity and "sarcasm as a tool for the weak."

This year, however, one student wanted more information on the letters. I got the feeling she was going to go find them and read them. I like this student a lot, because she has a genuine intellectual curiosity. But I like her best I realized then, because she isn't a local. She's a Serbian refugee who has lived on three continents.

I chatted with her after, before the seniors left for the year, and I gave her readings on Third Culture Kids and the rest of the Letters. She told me she wasn't going to the prom because she felt no real connection to many friends or the school. I hoped she'd find some insight in the readings, and inspiration in the Letters.

I looked back through the letter # 2 to find what else might have touched her.

for ultimately, and precisely in the deepest and most important matters, we are unspeakably alone; and many things must happen, many things must go right, a whole constellation of events must be fulfilled, for one human being to successfully advise or help another.

New demo

I have a new demo at soundclick. Not really happy with it yet, but I put it out there to motivate myself to finish it properly. One of those songs where I was really excited by how good I thought it, but during revision and recording, I'm struggling a bit.

What do you think?

It's called A Nation of One (or maybe No Common Trade.) I wrote it by combining some personal experiences and feelings with some "found dialog" on the 'net regarding the Global Nomad/Third Culture Kid experience.

Lyrics:

Although accustomed as he was to the freedom of traveling
Over the ocean, miles in the air
Across the horizon, between home and home
Jesse felt neither here nor there.

He had a home for the summer and a home for the school year
And more than an ocean divided the two
Jesse made a success at separating himself
Never thinking that he'd want to choose

Chorus:
Between the shores
From which his two parents came

Jess grew up a trickster, he took everything lightly
And he chuckled his way through secondary school
It was his way of keeping the world at arm's distance
Underneath he was guarded, confused

Two places at once, Jesse couldn't see how to be
Stuck on the outside, A nation of one
Two many voices, the illusion of choices
Jesse took off to wander around

Chorus:
And Jesse swore
He'd take no common trade

Jesse succeeded with customs and creeds
He'd take on or shed friends like a coat that he wore
He'd blend in so well, that friends couldn't tell
Until Jesse didn't live there anymore

But love caught Jesse the way that it often does
He staggered himself, when he bought her a ring
She loved him sincerely bought told him forget about
That international thing

Chorus:
But Jesse'd sworn
He'd take no common trade

They moved to Manhattan to be close to the world
On the eve of September 2001
A trade high up amidst steel, glass, and space
It helped Jesse to feel settled down

Jesse joked he could see from the top of the tower
The coast of that country that beckoned him home
Limbo he recognized then as his legacy
Suspended in air between homes

What does it take for a man to feel settled down
Does self-understanding bring freedom and peace
Does the moment of death ensure an epiphany
Do only the lucky gain insight before release

Jesse doesn't live here anymore


Click here for the direct play.
Here for lo-fi.
Here for MP3 download.

Who, me?

I was recently made to remember a time when my American cousin and I were drinking stout in a pub in a small town in East Kerry. We were both just twenty years old at the time. The place was fairly well empty. I had been in Ireland for the better part of the year at school while my cousin was back in Massachusetts, so we were doing some catching up. Our conversation grew animated and I zoned out the rest of the pub while I was getting the real news about each of our friends back home. Suddenly there was a tap on my shoulder. I turned to the person who had tapped me and saw that it was a middle aged Irish man, conservatively dressed- seemed like a normal guy. He said, "Were you just talking about me?" It was obvious that he was agitated and for the life of me I didn't know why. I was too startled to answer with anything but the truth, and gave him a cursory, "No". "That's good," he spat, and stalked out of the pub.

I was baffled then as to why he would have assumed we may have been talking about him. Truthfully, I still don't know. But I have since found myself in situations where I was the only person in a room who could not speak a language common to everyone else. Often, when the conversation gets animated and the participants are laughing I can't help but think that maybe they are talking about me. I wish I could say this is all completely unfounded paranoia, but on too many occasions to be a coincidence I have known enough about a language to know that they were indeed talking about me. Just this February while I was in Korea auditing our bank's branch there I clearly and definitely heard the staff warning each other that I could understand what they said. This happened after I had heard them talking about their boss, who could not speak Korean, and me. One wondered aloud to another if it were bothersome for us foreigners to not understand everyone in the room (this was while we were having a cake for a staff member's birthday). I said aloud that it might bother the boss, but it was OK with me. They were stunned.

This kind of othering I can understand, even though it is discomfitting. The language barrier is often accompanied by other traits, such as physical appearance or notions of speed, that set the participants apart. When this gentleman assumed he was being othered, I wonder by which criterion he made that judgment? Was it because we were younger and he was middle aged, or was it because he was Irish and we were American? There is definitely a matter of degree here. We were different, but not so dissimilar as I am with Koreans or Africans. How different do we have to be to consider ourselves "other than" a generalized other? How big a factor is gender? Sometimes my daughter now laughs when my wife makes pronunciation errors or lays her African accent very thickly over her English words. I can see it upsets my wife, and how much more similar can two people be than to share 50% of their actual genetic makeup?

I guess I could come to this point: While we do not have control over other people's sensitivity to the linguistic and cultural distance between them and us, we do have control over the amount of sympathy we can apply to situations resulting from the exercise of that sensitivity. I felt like that guy had done me a wrong and owed me an apology. He felt as though he were wronged. If he were of the same mind but had been fifteen years younger our collective indignation may have resulted in a confrontation. I should've been cooler about it. His indignation was an indicator that hurt existed for him, and regardless of my initial reaction I should have been able to take a quick step back and offer some sort of solace to his injured condition. OK, I'm sounding really weird now, but the idea takes on new propriety when put in the light of more important interpersonal relationships. Those of you straddling cultural boundaries may know what I mean.