I'm botching this, but Sigfried Krakauer once wrote a great tract on boredom--his main point being that reaching a state of boredom was quite a noble accomplishment because this meant shrugging off all the pointless stimuli consumer society hurls at you.
Often I get up quite early, drink coffee, and then try and "accomplish" as many things as possible before I run out of energy. Well, not really, but this basic scenario happens more often than it should. I innately have this sense that there is something important behind being able to "produce." Production in the form of either grading all my papers, fixing my bike, doing the dishes, writing 2134290348 emails, or applying for a job.
But, is this all necessary? I love to play music and write creatively. These activities don't seem to make themselves to the tops of my TO-DO lists often enough. I definitely don't love writing emails, but I spend way more time doing that.
This seems very much like an American mindset. But I also know lots of Americans don't feel this way. When I lived in Berlin, people sat around all day and did NOTHING. I mean, really did nothing. If you exerted the energy to go out and get a one Euro scoop of icecream you were putting out some serious effort. That really made me try and keep my jittering American motivation-drive in check.
From a young age, many of us are constantly asked what we'll be when we're young. Everything builds in culmination of becoming something, and you need to produce--our economic system depends on YOU!--and so the relentless toil of Western life poses you the threat of seeking gainful, productive, employment or you'll be starving outside.
So, you could try protesting the final research paper on grounds that you've spent all your energy just to make yourself nobly bored and have no energy left for writing. Yes, you could try this my fellow COMP I revolutionaries.
On Boredom.
Give me marketing or give me death
anne elizabeth moore, somewhere.
Last night, I went to see Anne Elizabeth Moore speak last night at the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Lansingburgh. Ms. Moore was an editor for Punk Planet for about 13 years. I only know Punk Planet for its record reviews, for it completed boatloads of reviews, but Punk Planet I think was also really interested in providing critiques of pop culture and a provided a general reading of different music "scenes" in general.
Anyway, Moore's new book, Marketing the Unmarketable is supposed to discuss the trends taken by marketers to appropriate smelly indy rock cultural products, (like music, hoodies, and hair), and use these previously "unmarketable" traits as new sales ploys. She also has other "cultural texts" to focus on besides "indy rock," such as the American Girl Dolls you may have grown up around.
In the talk she gave at the Sanctuary, she talked primarily about her "mocketing" efforts to culture jam the American Girl store in Chicago--a store she has now been banned from entering because of her strategic placing of pamphlets that look like official Amercian Girl literatures, but are actually Anne Elizabeth Moore tracts about how American Girl dolls are made in China by 19 year old girls literally working themselves to death.
The talk was pretty good, but the culture jamming arguments are something that I'm familiar too and their attractiveness and effectiveness begins to pall on my ears. It often seems efforts of the left merely critique advertising practices for their distorted presentations of reality (American Girl Dolls may make six year old girls think that everyone has money to afford these expensive doll accessories, and no one has to work for that money), but they do not often CLEARLY EMPHASIZE an alternative message.
http://www.anneelizabethmoore.com/
Blog Assignment for Week 10
Blog this before your Week 11 Class!
Write a blog about someone you have met at HVCC this semester. Who is this person? Why are they unique? Why do you admire or not admire this person? Where and how often do you interact with them? What do you think this person thinks of you? How does this person compare to other friends you have?