Gina Harris's Blog, page 125

Band Review: Dead Swords

Dead Swords is an ambient band from New Jersey, started by Alex Rosamilia of The Gaslight Anthem and Corey Perez of I Am the Avalance (plus at least one more band each). I came to the band because of Rosamilia.
I was not sure what to make of them at first. There is a beauty to the music, but it is combined with a brutal harshness, living up to genre labels like "doom" and "drone". "Interlude 03" is crushing.
I began to see a context when I looked at their Facebook story.
"Listening to Dead Swords is like being lost in the loneliest darkness. Theirs is a world of overwhelming static and feedback, or eternities-long melancholy, of the purest beauty shrouded and obscured by the blackest night."
That confirmed that it was intentional, though I wasn't really sure that it was for me.
As luck would have it, I am posting their review on a day when an abomination of a president signs an executive order that refers to freedom to deprive others as religious freedom and the House is celebrating putting healthcare out of the reach of millions by bringing in beer.
If there is ever a time when it is necessary to have music that can accompany you through chilling darkness and wring some beauty out of the void, this would appear to be that time.
Thank you Dead Swords.
https://deadswords.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/deadswordsnj/
https://twitter.com/dead_swords

Conspired

A scant two and a half months since writing about getting sidetracked from some reading plans by other reading plans, it happened again. This time I have kind of finished though. I should back up.
I already wrote that a reference to The Obesity Myth sent me to The Panic Virus. What I could not write at that time because I did not yet know is that it was also going to send me to Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History by David Aaronovitch, and also Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences by John Allen Paulos. (That one wasn't as productive.)
A lot of it was interesting anyway, but the overall theme became how much people will believe things that are wrong. Sometimes there are bad actors involved, like Andrew Wakefield. He was on the take, he lied, he used bad research methods and ignored ethical standards; that coming to light doesn't seem to have changed anyone's minds about vaccination. Of course there were people who worried about vaccines before, but he widened the field and caused real harm.
The intentions aren't always terrible. One of the conspiracy theories that was covered was the death of Princess Diana. Belief in a conspiracy (beyond the apparent difficulty in believing that bad things can happen to beautiful and beloved people) was partly driven by Mohamed al-Fayed, Dodi Fayed's father. I understood his obsession to be at least partially fueled by grief, and I can feel compassion for that.
I also suspect some of the fuel came from extreme wealth, where you feel like you should be able to be in control of things. More may come from guilt, where the family organization's business practices kept someone employed who would drink while on driving duty. I can understand wanting anyone else to bear the blame, but at some point it becomes irresponsible.
The point of Innumeracy was that poor understanding of math makes people more susceptible to being misled, which was a valid point. (Unfortunately, I don't think the execution of getting people more numerate was particularly effective.) Certainly there are people who skew facts intentionally, and there are things that seem more memorable, especially based on what we already know. Sometimes it is just advertising because someone wants money.
That is why I found this article so fascinating:
https://psmag.com/how-to-debunk-myths-about-autism-686de125e618
It leads into this whole other idea of how you get information known, and studying folklore as a way of doing it.
And those aren't easy answers. It feels like that if you have good science and know things, you should be able to tell people and they will get it and we will all move forward based on fact. There is no evidence of that.
We can wring hands about it (which feels appropriate) and talk about improving schools (which is definitely appropriate, though there is disagreement about what that entails), but it won't necessarily be effective. People are good at ignoring facts. That really comes through hard in Voodoo Histories.
There are no answers in this post, though there may be beginnings of answers. It is still something that I find interesting, and something that reminds me that there is hope. I have seen effective techniques for cementing disinformation in minds, but it isn't all there is.
It can't be.
Related posts:
http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2017/02/when-reading-lists-collide.htmlhttp://sporkful.blogspot.com/2017/03/sidetracked-by-books-again.html

Misapplication

I read a lot more than I post, and more than it would be practical to bookmark. It is inevitable that sometimes I will want to find something and not remember where I saw it or how to get back. Even if I never find what I originally intended, the search results can be interesting.
I was not looking for this story the other week, but I found it:
http://nypost.com/2015/01/16/i-gained-43-pounds-to-prove-obese-people-are-lazy/
I may vaguely remember reading something about her before, probably with someone else reacting to the article. Reading it so soon after reading The Obesity Myth put her experience in a new light.
She had to work very hard to change her body's natural shape. It consumed her, affected relationships, hampered other activities and made her miserable. Once she stopped fighting it, her body went quickly back toward her original point. Despite that, she did end up heavier overall (by about 6-12 pounds, depending on when you ask), and her body still does not completely meet the wishes of those around her, though they thought she was too thin.
That is exactly what Paul Campos would have predicted. If Hopkins were to try it again, she would find her weight creeping up each time. Of course, there is no reason for her to try that. She is naturally slim.
The really notable thing about that is that even though she says she has new understanding, she misunderstands. Yes, listening to her body and doing what came more naturally to her worked for her, because that's her body type. It happened to correspond to losing weight, but it doesn't work that way for everyone.
I was able to find something else I remembered from a few years ago:
http://www.celebitchy.com/393855/twiggy_interview_obesity_is_a_tragedy_its_so_much_easier_to_buy_rubbish/
Twiggy knows that she was incapable of putting on weight, no matter how much people criticized her thinness (despite it also being quite lucrative), but is still sure that obesity is the result of bad choices.
I suppose there is a segment of the population who sees a body like mine and imagines that I live a life like Hopkins did when she was trying to gain weight: thirteen meals a day and not able to move. That does make it seem ironic that when I am out walking by myself I get catcalls, or that a heavier person at the gym might have people snapping photos and making snide comments on Instagram - this is your fault but trying to change it will be mocked.
There is probably something about human nature worth exploring there, and I may get to that later. Currently it seems more important to take a look at Susan Estrich.
Estrich was also featured in The Obesity Myth. She has an impressive resume, having been the campaign manager for Michael Dukakis and a law clerk for US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. Before that she was the first female president/editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review.
Despite that, she says her proudest accomplishment was going down from a size 12 to a size 6 (sometimes a 4). As part of that, she had to focus to a point where she could not do those other things. She had to be miserable and food-obsessed to do it. And I guess she did find it was worth it, but how much of that is because society told her that's how she should be? Size 12 sounds pretty good to me.
Here's something else that's really old:
http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html
There were a lot of interesting ideas, though I didn't agree with all of them, but the one I always come back to is that nerds can't be popular because they care too much about other things. In an environment where maintaining the right level of cool detachment takes complete effort, kids who also care about anything else can't achieve it.
I care about a lot of things. They come up in the blog all the time. I care about books and comics and music and animals and gardening and politics and so many things. Mainly I care about people, which has its downsides, but is still often rewarding.
Yesterday I admitted that I want to be thin, and I have wanted that for a long time, even back when it wasn't quite so far away. I did not grasp the total dedication it would take then, though in retrospect it makes sense given the lack of payoff for some pretty good efforts.
There may be some sense of absolution now in looking back and seeing how the odds were stacked. There is a greater sense of how good health is not out of reach, but is in fact more attainable once you stop conflating it with thinness.
Most of all, I have to acknowledge that I can't want it as much as I want everything else. I can't want thinness as much as I want knowledge and friendship and peace of mind.
I know some people will judge me for my size, and others won't, but in my judgment of myself there are too many things more important than that number on the scale.

Absolute honesty

I am copying something from my journal from December:
As much as I do want to be healthy, and know that I need to be okay with who I am inside, and even for having made a fair amount of peace with being bigger, and knowing also that I am old and possibly will not get married until the Millennium, and technically knowing that people who do not fit standard beauty requirements fall in love and get married, I want to be slim and beautiful and have people like how I look.
I remember it fairly well because I spent some time deconstructing all of the different parts of it. Actually, it started with a question of whether weighing myself was beneficial, or with what frequency to weigh myself. The simple question had too much baggage to be simple.
Ideally the next few posts will deal with how I feel about my body size, and my attempts to see things honestly and accurately and make good decisions based on that. There are elements that are personal, and societal, and I am still unpacking them. Even if I write several cogent posts, there will still be things that I only realize after I am done writing.
The thing that seems important to get out of the way before going there is that no matter how much I am learning to like myself and value myself as I am, I still want to be thin. I want to be beautiful. There is still a part of me that believes that beauty requires thinness and that believes that both are required for being loved.
That is not surprising. There is a lot of social conditioning that goes into it. There are constant messages that this is how it works through film and television. And, because of that, I probably really don't know how it works.
I think that I would like to have people see me and consider me attractive and want to get to know me, but there are probably several false ideas there. I do not get a lot of street harassment. Some of that is white privilege and some of it is the invisibility that comes with fatness. (Also, some of it is that I don't get out much.)
If I were thin, I might get more attention that way, but it could also be frightening and unpleasant.
I can think it would be nice to have lots of men wanting to date me, but the truth is I don't really want to go out that often, and I hate hurting people's feelings. I don't know that the ego boost of multiple people desiring me would make up for the discomfort of having to reject people.
Really, I just want one, but a good one with whom I am a good match and it is reciprocal. There is still a feeling that greater conventional attractiveness would facilitate that more, but also greater social skills or confidence or coming out of my shell more might do that too.
Right now all of this is abstract, because I don't have anywhere in my life to put that kind of a relationship right now. About five years ago I wrote that my ideal relationship would be that he comes over around 9 PM, we talk for five minutes and neck for ten and then it's "See you tomorrow night!" It looks like that's still where I am.
All of which isn't really so much about the weight, except that there are a lot of things that feel tied in with the weight, even if they really aren't. And I say this not because I am being particularly insightful, but because I want to be clear.
No matter how liberated or wise or accepting anything that I write over the next few posts sounds, I have still been totally subject to the same conditioning that everyone else has, and it is still in me.

Band Review: Mikey Reaves

Going back to early recommendations, Mikey Reaves was recommended by Parachute, one of the bands that played at the concert that inspired my first five music reviews.
Parachute knows Reaves because he has worked as a guitar tech and tour manager for them. Outside of that, Reaves works as a producer, songwriter, engineer, drummer, and mixer.
Because he does so much, it may not always be clear what his role was on a specific song. I will also guess that if you get a chance to see him live it will probably be as a drummer.
It may also mean that you get a wider range of musical styles. Much of it is country-tinged; not surprising as Reaves is based in Nashville.
I particularly enjoyed his work with Emily Hackett, whose songs like "Bad Weather" and "Worth the Weight" were beautiful and emotional. That being said, there were also several songs about beer. For added perspective, there is also a very short piece from a very young Reaves, "Jungle". Lots of musicians start young, but there isn't always evidence.
I enjoyed listening, and it was important to have a break in the gloom after yesterday's band.
http://mikeyreaves.com/
https://soundcloud.com/mikeyreaves
http://www.umpgnashville.com/en-US/Artists/M/Mikey-Reaves.aspx
https://twitter.com/mikeyreaves

Band Review: Frightened Rabbit

Frightened Rabbit was the very first band recommendation I wrote down, before I was even tracking bands in a spreadsheet. They were recommended by Daniel Pearson, whom I reviewed back in March 2013.
Obviously it's been a long time. One reason for the delay is that I saw they had a lot of material, and it was going to take a lot of time to listen to them all, even though the preliminary listening seemed promising. In scheduling reviews, I have not been great about remembering to include recommended bands along with the bands who follow me, but I would work in others and still not get to them.
I give this unnecessary prelude because while I believe Frightened Rabbit is a good band, I did not enjoy them. The extra hours spent listening made that worse. If I had only listened to two albums' worth I would feel better, but that probably shouldn't be held against them.
There were two factors that combined with the length. One is that it felt like a lot of unnecessary profanity. That doesn't bother everyone. It doesn't always bother me as much as it did this time. Actually, it felt appropriate for a Scottish band, except that I associate Scottish profanity with rowdy good times. Frightened Rabbit is so gloomy.
Again, that doesn't always bother me, but here it was hour after hour of gloom, sometimes livened up by unnecessary profanity.
It didn't have to be this way. Among their songs, "The Woodpile" especially shows their ability to build in emotion and drama. They can do that. They have a pub band sound - which can be used for good times - and they were doing it for years before Mumford and Sons.
Therefore, regardless of my frustration, it is completely reasonable to check out Frightened Rabbit. I do recommend doing it in short bursts, especially if you're experiencing down times in your own life.
http://www.frightenedrabbit.com/
https://www.facebook.com/frightenedrabbit
https://www.youtube.com/user/frabbittv
https://twitter.com/FRabbits

Consuming

Two books from the long reading list were very similar in theme:
Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein
Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketer's Schemes by Sharon Lamb
Both were about the marketing that is done to young girls, preparing them to constantly be buying goods and services.
Packing was much longer, so had more information on types of merchandising. Even for relatively young girls there are lifestyle magazines and novels that are actually catalogs, and many toys have web components that provide the opportunity for more brand association and more shopping.
(I'm sure parents of young girls have a much better idea already.)
Packaging was also more scholarly, which has value, but Cinderella is a much shorter and more engaging read. Both pay attention to the psychological effects, though I think Orenstein has a better grasp. Neither was able to offer much in the way of solutions than awareness: know about this, discuss it sometimes, but they are still going to want these products.
Although we have not covered them yet, when we get to The Feminine Mystique and The Beauty Myth, those also have a lot to do with marketing, so there are ways in which they all go together. I am also more aware now of how consumerism is incompatible with environmentalism. It is hard changing things that systemic, so it's a concern.
But the point I will leave with today - I think it came from Orenstein - is a claim that the focus on dieting and weight loss started around the turn of the century. Previously preachers had tended to focus on greed, but as many people were doing really well financially, that became less safe to condemn. Gluttony was also a deadly sin, and about taking more than your share, so it made a good substitute.
That indicates that before, people thought of body size as more like height or hair color - maybe some variations were more popular, but there wasn't pressure to change it.
Now there are many products and services designed to help you change your body size, but it is still almost as difficult to change as your height. (At least changing hair color has gotten much easier.)
The almost guaranteed failure of the products combined with the likelihood of the consumer blaming herself makes it an almost perfect business. Yes, you have to make your offering more attractive than the many competing offerings, but there is still a strongly motivated market.
There are plenty of problems with that, but it's interesting to think that it could have all started as a dodge for ignoring the destructive behavior of capitalists right around that time that "robber barons" and "gilded age" were entering the lexicon.

Smile!

When my mother's dementia started, at first it was just that she wasn't taking in new information; she still knew all of her past.
More recently there has been a split, where she sometimes thinks there is another home and another set of twins. She misses her home and her youngest children and worries about them, even when she is in her home with them.
It doesn't help that we only have very old pictures available. The most recent family portrait is about twenty years old, but most are older than that. My mother looks at pictures of my sisters when they were ten and twelve and is not confident that these forty-year-old women are the same. My sisters weren't even blonde yet when they were twelve.
It's because we all hate having our pictures taken. We mainly wish we were thinner, though we might also wish for more hair or less hair or smoother skin. That last family portrait was taken after my father left, and it was a way of affirming that we were still a family. Maybe my sister-in-law pushed for it. I know she said we would take the next one when someone else got married - just one more reason to avoid marriage!
(This aversion to pictures among the family is also why pretty much every adult picture we have of my brother contains his now ex-wife.)


I knew it would be a hard sell, but I thought we needed to take some new pictures for Mom's sake. We were getting together on Easter; let's just take a few. No one fought me too much, because we love Mom. There was still some feet dragging when the time came, but everyone pretty much cooperated. I can see where a professional would do better.
My favorite picture was not posed. I was getting Mom and Maria into position. Honestly, I was snapping to create a feeling of there being no point in resisting, so just smile and pose. This is not a good picture, and it is blurred, but I feel it captures something.

I did get a regular picture with Maria, but then Julie got in, and the old pictures that confuse Mom are of the three of them. We decided on this group shot. I like it.
 Julie took my picture. I was a little horrified about the size of my arm - is it really that big? (Some of that's the angle, but it is big now, isn't it?) Still, we have to keep going. This is for Mom.

Then came my biggest challenge.

"Can you smile more?""That will take a lot of work."
I started trying to tell jokes, but I was taking too long to set them up. If I had been capable of suddenly expelling any gas loudly - regardless of which end it came from - that would have done the trick. Of course, when he does laugh, he moves.

I probably spent too much time on that one. The battery was starting to get low, and Mom was getting a little tired of smiling - the downside of being the only one in every picture. Still, I kind of feel like this captures something too.

So that's my family: flawed, frustrating, and funny.

I can't rule out that we should do an actual portrait again at some point. My brother does intend to get married again, probably. If we do, do I trust the professional to be able to get him to smile? Do I make everyone eat a lot of fiber before we go? That poor photographer!
We'll work something out.

Seeing the good in myself

Being able to see the good in myself was fairly high up on the Wants list. I am happy to say I  have made progress there.
I am less happy to admit that I am not sure how it happened. I don't really remember working on it.
There have been two areas where I have noticed it. The more general one is that when I have failed to live up to my expectations and start beating myself up mentally, I have to stop; no I am not really stupid and a bad person. There are obstacles that aren't my fault. There are things that I do right. It's not that I don't still want to improve, but I am not a monster. Honestly, I'm not sure that vicious self-recrimination was ever particularly effective.
Also, a few weeks ago I had posted the What are you asking blog post, and I knew I needed to give some credit to Sid (the college friend I mention in it). I tagged him and he responded...
"Thank *you*, Gina! It's so flattering you would associate me with such an insightful piece. Thanks for years of friendship!"
My first thought was that it wasn't that insightful, but I hedged on my hedging. If he thought so, maybe it was.
We have been down this road before, where I think all the people I hung out with in college were so amazing, and then they say things back that sound as if I was also amazing. It becomes this very warm and grateful moment, but there has always been this question about whether they even remember how annoying I was. I mean, I was, right?
That has been part of a larger pattern where I have had great associations through school and church and neighborhoods, with people who seem to enjoy my company and appreciate me. Despite all the many kindnesses, I have always felt on some level that they were just being nice.
Yeah, but they would do that for anyone.Yeah, but they don't know how I get sometimes.Yeah, I am starting to see it doesn't work that way.
I do not know why I am feeling the difference now, rather than only trying to come at it mentally.
I know that I recently went through a round of checking on people who I have known to be at risk. Usually I just respond to things that I see, but sometimes I am more proactive, just in case. There were some good exchanges, and some people are doing a lot better. That would be affirming anyway, but I have read that when you attempt to build someone else's self-esteem up, yours gets built up as well. That could have had an effect.
Also, if my focus has been more on my weaknesses, it has been in more productive ways, with a focus on scrupulous honesty. Maybe I am just open to seeing everything now, good and bad.
Maybe it matters that the selfies helped me get over some of the rough areas with my personal appearance.
Otherwise, perhaps I should just view it as a miracle. I know my weaknesses, but they do not exclusively define me.
I am smart and caring and loyal and tenacious. I am strong. If I am not always successful in being good, I am nonetheless committed to being good, and for good reasons.
Sometimes things work out.

Band Review: Tantric

It wasn't actually Tantric that followed me, but bassist Scott Wilson. He does some bass-related merchandising on his own, so I am including his specific links at the end as well.
(And let me say, links are important, because the immediate search engine results for "tantric" focus heavily on sex and yoga.)
I had heard of Tantric before but never listened; I ended up really enjoying them. Singer Hugo Ferreira brings a layered richness to the vocals, blending warmth and pathos. I suspect I would have better ways of describing it if I were a coffee drinker.
The rock is generally straightforward and strong on guitar, but they incorporate some interesting departures as needed. There is effective use of more orchestral elements on "The One", and the intro to "Love Song" reminds me of Hendrix.
I especially appreciated "Mourning", and while covers of "Let It Be" are never necessary, theirs is good enough to justify itself.
It feels like they would be easily enjoyed by Alice In Chains fans, and possibly better for the couples among those fans. There is plenty of pain in their music, but not without the ability to enjoy love.
I suppose that's helpful if they want to live up to their name.
http://tantricrockband.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Tantric
https://twitter.com/TantricOfficial
Scott Wilson
http://bassbomb.bigcartel.com/
https://twitter.com/Scottofficial