Mathematics has gotten a hold of me since high school. Me and a friend Gary would always talk about the fact that math was all around us. We would laugh about graphing two functions of variables that affected the relationship of this guy we knew �Lane�, in order to better understand the point of perato optimality at which he could break up with his partner. We would also talk about electronic music and how if you took a sine wave (trigonometry) and graphed it into an electronic music program and had a base beat at each peak and valley, you would have a drum machine. This is actually how drum beats on a computer work. A year later I started listening to Aphex Twin and an album called Surfing on Sine Waves�
A couple of weeks ago I saw the movie, �The Graduate� for the first time. I have heard about it often and finally realized all the rip-offs the Simpson�s did of that film as well as countless other programs and media that did the same thing�It was a fantastic film. The 10th anniversary issue of Shift, talks about it as being a movie that spoke to its generation. Kill Bill was good, but it didn�t move me like Fight Club did. I didn�t find the hell and contradiction of my own life until I saw that movie. In �The Graduate� Hoffman fells the need to be mean, he feels the need to fly in the face of everything that he has been told he has to do. He is perplexed by the fact that he wants more than the future that has been lid out for him, but doesn�t know what future that is. He is lazy, lethargic and ends up doing ridiculous things, having a degrading affair with a woman he can�t talk to, having no motivation and falling for the first person who understands his predicament. The rest of the flick has him running around the US doing the exact opposite of good. The story is fantastic. The ending, one of the best I�ve ever seen in my life. If I ever get married, I hope it ends up like that.
One of things that I feel my generation is addicted to is the next day. I gather that a lot of people I know are not happy, don�t know why and feel a deep longing that they can never seem to satiate. A hole inside that Buddhist philosophy can�t eliminate. I�ve felt and seen so often my friends and family surf on the sine waves of happiness; finding purpose and motivation in music, work, hobbies, sub-cultures, writing, activism, anything that keeps them going for a little while. But inevitably, they hit the wall and bottom out on the valley. They go from a state where everything is fantastic to one where �everything is just wrong, wrong, wrong,� to quote a friend. Nothing may have changed, it�s just that the stimulous that gave them the impression that they were on some kind of path has either disappeared or showed itself to be real. Contrast this to people I met in Indo. They never worried, got stressed about their future to often. Really they worried about substance, having enough money for their wife if they were men, having enough space for their kids if they were women, having enough of whatever. They got scared if they thought they were gunna die. They got angry for a day and a half about the little things.
Some people I know are begging for an addiction. Half of the ones I hated are getting off TV, as the small self contained universes of Seignfeld, Friends and other high class sitcoms are gone. The phase of reality TV has shown itself to be another fix that is wearing off. Thousands go home in search of entertainment, but there is none to be found for the moment. They don�t know where to turn. They look in the mirror and see themselves and their age for the first time in a long time. They don�t know what to do and they don�t know what�s wrong. They just know that it wasn�t supposed to be like this.
Today I�m depressed. I live in old Europe and have a jazz radio show in a couple of hours. I learned a bunch of Norwegian, had a fantastic breakfast and spent yesterday reading, drinking Bailey�s, frolicking in the snow and getting $20 to wash dishes. My life is a spectacle that some people would probably long for I imagine. It�s the kind of life that 1 year ago I would have longed for when I was in the thick of political activity doing good solid work and talking to people and learning about what it means to have a small and insignificant amount of power. Today I long for more, to be how I was when I was 5 and in the park close to my house on the merry-go-round laughing and playing in the sun and rain. Meeting kids after class who eventually all grew up and stopped coming until I did the same thing. My mom moved away and sold the house. My grandmother just died. My sister just got engaged. And here I am, trying to make a bunch of non-existent pain go away, just so I have something to fight for. Just so I can get to the top of the wave and look down before I fall again�screaming.