Tuesday, January 03, 2006
More people, fewer artistes
I spent New Years with friends at a party thrown by artists/grad student types. The friends were great; the party was not. Two DJs played music without any rhythm whatsoever. All you could do was stroke your chin thoughtfully to it; I tried that, but I was drunk and stoned and somehow it just wasn’t enough. The 3rd DJ played techno – fine, fair enough, but it was heavy, driving trance, with no letup. On New Years, for crissakes. I guess having music with lyrics, or variegated rhythms, or something that wasn’t composed by a pasty introvert on a laptop in his basement, wasn’t on.
This music is for, how do you say, pretentious wankers?
Worst of all, they didn’t even announce New Years! Every party I’ve been to, the music stops and the DJ counts down. Not here; I realized it was New Years when I noticed a couple of people hugging, looked at my watch and it was 10 after 12. These artists were so cool, so insouciant, they couldn’t be bothered with such primitive, plebian customs like celebrating the reason why were there in the first place. That would’ve required some public displays of emotion – or maybe they didn’t have the Swedish version of Auld Lang Syne cued up. Either way, the affected disengagement boils down to one thing: elitism, a distaste for the common rituals that bind us. Getting together to listen to discordant music, and stand around and stare at everyone else is not a celebration: it’s a way of blocking out the outside world.
On the plus side, I shared a bus ride home with a 20-something guy studying politics. We got talking immigration, racism, development – and he was incredibly receptive to new ideas. I didn’t talk down to him, but I challenged him, suggesting electoral politics was a dead end, that real politics was about mobilizing people in their communities and workplaces. I wasn’t sectarian. I didn’t denounce him for wanting to learn about the parliamentary system. I just suggested that I didn’t understand it, I found it confusing; since he agreed with that, I suggested it’s set up that way to exclude poor people, who don’t have the language or the connections to participate. He agreed with that too.
We got onto immigration; I said that Canada was a racist, imperialist country, that immigration was about supplying cheap labour and making it illegal or marginal to keep it cheap. I knew I had connected with him on the Rwandan genocide. He was from Central Africa, so I thought it might be a sensitive topic, but he brought it up. I said it’s always posed with a racist subtext: "look at those Africans who descend into savagery, needing a strong white man to help them." He laughed and agreed with me, and stopped talking about the tough job Romeo Dallaire had.
If all leftists looked like grandfatherly, good-natured curmudgeons, we'd sell more papers
As happens so often, the more left I talked, the more left he talked. It’s like people are waiting for leftist ideas, and they just need someone to articulate them in a sane language. (If I’d had an activist group to recruit him to, I could’ve done so.) The left needs fewer ideologues, people who denounce or browbeat others for having the wrong ideas, and more patient people willing to smile, listen and talk.
This music is for, how do you say, pretentious wankers?Worst of all, they didn’t even announce New Years! Every party I’ve been to, the music stops and the DJ counts down. Not here; I realized it was New Years when I noticed a couple of people hugging, looked at my watch and it was 10 after 12. These artists were so cool, so insouciant, they couldn’t be bothered with such primitive, plebian customs like celebrating the reason why were there in the first place. That would’ve required some public displays of emotion – or maybe they didn’t have the Swedish version of Auld Lang Syne cued up. Either way, the affected disengagement boils down to one thing: elitism, a distaste for the common rituals that bind us. Getting together to listen to discordant music, and stand around and stare at everyone else is not a celebration: it’s a way of blocking out the outside world.
On the plus side, I shared a bus ride home with a 20-something guy studying politics. We got talking immigration, racism, development – and he was incredibly receptive to new ideas. I didn’t talk down to him, but I challenged him, suggesting electoral politics was a dead end, that real politics was about mobilizing people in their communities and workplaces. I wasn’t sectarian. I didn’t denounce him for wanting to learn about the parliamentary system. I just suggested that I didn’t understand it, I found it confusing; since he agreed with that, I suggested it’s set up that way to exclude poor people, who don’t have the language or the connections to participate. He agreed with that too.
We got onto immigration; I said that Canada was a racist, imperialist country, that immigration was about supplying cheap labour and making it illegal or marginal to keep it cheap. I knew I had connected with him on the Rwandan genocide. He was from Central Africa, so I thought it might be a sensitive topic, but he brought it up. I said it’s always posed with a racist subtext: "look at those Africans who descend into savagery, needing a strong white man to help them." He laughed and agreed with me, and stopped talking about the tough job Romeo Dallaire had.
If all leftists looked like grandfatherly, good-natured curmudgeons, we'd sell more papersAs happens so often, the more left I talked, the more left he talked. It’s like people are waiting for leftist ideas, and they just need someone to articulate them in a sane language. (If I’d had an activist group to recruit him to, I could’ve done so.) The left needs fewer ideologues, people who denounce or browbeat others for having the wrong ideas, and more patient people willing to smile, listen and talk.
