Analog Aesthetics

Watching a train disappear into fog at 8 a.m. was certainly not the best way to start today. But worth every second.

Please be sure to send me your address before Christmas if you want to get in on the holiday gift-giving. I'd love to set up some sort of Secret Santa system, because frankly, we're all broke and besides - think of the surprise! The glorious surprise!

There's something about the cold here now that has me more than afraid to leave my house. Let's pray for snow!

Thanksgiving brought lots of food, most of which didn't get eaten. Also, you'll be happy to know my yogurt binging has finally tapered off. Whew! Close call.

This week will be the week of shows, one every day. I'm thinking of skipping some. It's all a whirlwind of music and smokey bars if you don't pick and choose. Besides, I'm missing the one person who would make even Serenity a great night out.

Posted to tell you I'm still alive and freezing.
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I've decided to add Google ads to my site. Whatever revenue they generate will go towards some type of charity/organisation to support artists of all kinds. I'll probably hold a public vote as to where they should go, so please email me any suggestions.

Going to Trier this weekend; it's almost like returning to my youth. Or like when you return home after being gone so long. Trier was my first exposure to Germany, my first home here, and I don't think I could ever forget it. There will be some wild stories to spread around the Pi-Rho Commune Campfire when I return.

Wired News featured a story today on the new $100 laptops designed to reach "every child on the planet." Two pieces of the interview with Nicholas Negroponte, MIT Media Lab and Wired magazine founder, particularly alarmed me:

1.)

WN: Is the goal literally to make computers available to every child that wants one in the world?

Negroponte: It's every child in the world whether they want one or not. They may not know they want one.

2.)

WN: Is it too early for me to preorder one?

Negroponte: You have nobody to order it from. I cannot tell you -- I even get checks in the mail from people who are ordering them. The fact that it's not going to be on the commercial market is something that really bothers people, because when they see it, a lot of people who see it say ... "I want to be able to buy one." Well, the truth is, if you could buy one it wouldn't be $100, it would be $225. And you'd still buy it.

1.) Children don't really have a choice. It's either keep up with the latest technology or be left behind. Where in this article did we talk about the ethics of technology? Teaching children to use it wisely, not writing viruses? It's also pretty alarming how many students these days copy/paste from the internet for scholarly papers, and professors are having a terrible time catching them for plagerism. In a world where all knowledge is at your fingertips, why bother creating? Why bother writing anything new? Just put your opinion out there (see, I'm guilty too). We want to give these kids the opportunities to learn skills to compete in a world market, so we're taking one element of our culture and making it immediately viable for them - but what happens is that their culture isn't ready for this shiny, bright aspect of American culture, and the bottom falls out. You've got kids with cell phones and internet but poor housing, broken families, inadequate health care, and no real social infrastructure for upward mobility. Learning to program is a good thing; they'll learn some good skills. But you can't expect a laptop alone to save a child's life.

Which brings me to the most alarming aspect of this - why is it more pressing in today's day to provide children with laptops than it was 10 years ago with books? I can't get over the passion with which technology companies want to change the world with their products, telling us all NOW's the time to focus on educating the world's children. What about 10 years ago? Private companies didn't feel it imperative to reach out then. Are they willing to do more than just shove technology in their faces, perhaps also donate large profits to other charitable groups, to actually improve the quality of their lives?

2.) The first thing the consumer thinks after reading this article - not, "oh great! Finally, someone thinking of the children" but instead "when and where can I get one?" We're a nation of consumers through and through. We see a fascinating new gadget and want one; the companies are already forming a market for them, so when they're finally ready, we'll all rush out and buybuybuy. This will be hotter than any iPod. We'll have tons of colors to choose from, lots of cozy covers to personalize our technology. It's pretty pathetic that in a world where everyone's downloading the same music, sharing the same knowledge, buying the same products, there's still a focus on remaining an individual through fashion.

I'll apologize if this sounds more bitter than it was meant to.

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Dr. Frank's written a novel! Which leads me to think: is this where the music industry has pushed the Little Guy?

Musicians everywhere are starting their own blogs (and as you can see, writing novels) in a growing effort to personalize their music (and make some money *gasp!*) in this free-for-all Digital Age. And they're speaking out more than ever before on and against illegal downloading, the fall of the music industry, and world events in general. Everyone's so busy being "personal," not even the roll-n-roll star can remain aloof. They've got to get out there, selling their hearts and minds to you, as you (yes, YOU) have made it clear that the music alone not longer cuts it. We all want it bigger, faster, flashier and moremoremore, so musicians are stepping up to create for you.

But it's not all love for the "music fan." Ben Weasel speaks out against the growing trends damaging the music industry. And sadly, the numbers speak for themselves. Contrary to popular belief, album sales and general revenue are still down from previous years, despite legal venues for purchasing music online. Yes, musicians are still losing out to Thieves, and it doesn't help that they have to cut record costs to encourage you to actually buy an album. I would take it one step further - even in encouraging digital music purchases, they're opening the door to more theft, as they've done the work of providing the necessary file formats, the industry has provided the gadgets for easy and convenient playback, and culture has provided the excuses for massive playlist swaps.

So why don't they just stick to the live show if they really want to make money, you say? Well, gee, they sure would love to come to your town and play their hearts out for you, but by golly, gas sure is expensive. And so is taking off work to tour extensively. Besides, you'll just pay your measely $10 for the show (of which only a small percentage can and will go to the bands themselves, as it's also not free to run a venue) and skip the merchandise table, so why should they bother?

Buy more records. Don't let music breed mediocracy.

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Lessons learned today:

Get up when your alarm goes off.
Don't leave the house without your wallet.
Don't walk in the rain for an hour.
Don't place your electronic gadgets in any compartments exposed to water.

My books are soaked, my notes bleeding into one another, and my cell phone has stopped working. I would even guess permanently. For about 5 minutes, I was really frantic - how will people reach me? How can my German friends send me text messages for late-nite beer rendevous? Then I remembered. I hate cell phones and have only had this one for 2 months. And I'm already frantic when it breaks! Goodness. This is a sign. Sorry everyone, I know it'll mean you won't always reach me, and believe me when I say I always want to talk to you, but you'll just have to call my house phone. I may or may not be getting a new cell phone.Whew! Battled that addiction.

NPR's All Songs Considered is an online opportunity to hear lesser-known artists broadcast on another show, All Things Considered. This is as good as it gets for using internet to augment radio broadcasts. Who says the two can't reach a compromise? One more reason I'll be crossing my fingers for an internship with them next year. And because I DO want you to check them out, here's a live CocoRosie set on All Songs Considered. Listen and buy their records!

Reading Charles Olsen for class: poetry should be energy of the heart expressed through the breath or the LINE; energy of the mind expressed through the ear or the SYLLABLE. Interestingly, he argues against "closed" verse for its restriction in form (like Shakespeare's sonnets), but not against using a typewriter, claiming it gives the poet at last the bar and staff of the musician. He insists poets pay attention to a poem's place in both space - which he calls a field - and time so that form reflects content - but to use a typewriter, one has a sort of code for spaces, which in turn translate to pauses, and line breaks, so that the reader "knows" how to read the poem both silently and aloud. He's taken the limitation of form of sonnets and freed poetry from it, but in doing so opted for another limitation, which he cleverly disguises as an "objective system" for pause. I found this an interesting analogy for what I see occuring in the Digital Era - we are freed from wired connections, slow speeds, pen and paper, physical reality, but in doing so we're only shifting the restrictions and limitations to other areas: now we need the equipment, now we need more power and money, now we need clear skies and big landfills and everything fully functioning. If one area of the map goes haywire, you're likely to lose the entire system. Are we more free than before? Or is the illusion of freedom so great we accept a bit of "inconvenience," a term now used in place of "restriction"? Or is it all about the greater convenience, the greater freedom?

I'm all for the utopia of pure freedom, but I think it's foolish to place your faith in technology - a complex network of systems based on rigid rules, logical connections, hierarchy and power, indescribable wealth - to set us free. It's a bit like taking free creative energy and imposing a system of rules so the human heart can decode it. As if we're incapable otherwise...
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Cold weather means hibernating in your apartment, but it doesn't have to mean sitting in front of the TV for hours or hanging online mindlessly surfing (unless it also includes a call to me on Skype!). Here are Ama's Winter Tips:

Music:
CocoRosie, Noah's Ark. This record includes cats meowing, horses braying, and beautiful female solos. While you're at it, check out their 2004 release, La Maison de Mon Rêve.

You don't have to believe me when I say they're ethereal. Here's a short biography, courtesy of Touch and Go Records:

"Sierra Rose and Bianca Leilani (a.k.a. Red Bone Slim) were born in Fort Dodge, Iowa and the big island of Hawaii respectively. They are the third and fourth daughters of spiritualist Timothy Casady and artist/teacher Tina Hunter.

“As a small child,” Red writes, “I was carried in a papoose around sacred Anasazi grounds by my mother and her partner, Brook Medicine Eagle. Periods of my adolescence were spent living in a trailer on the outskirts of Joseph City, Arizona with my father. We spent our time burning ants and hunting rabbits from the burned out chassis of a station wagon. I left at fifteen owing to a feeling of alienation caused in part by my reticence toward a formal education. As soon as I was able to garner the necessary means – I sold both day-old flowers in restaurants and expired raffle tickets to the elderly – I boarded a bus north to San Francisco. I toted around soft paper copies of Genet and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness that I scarcely read.”

Less is said about the formative years of Sierra Rose. What is known is that she spent much time studying Rumi, Halal Nashids and Eurythmy. She also exhibited an innate talent for trigonometry. Speculations abound. Members of her family attest to the fact that she learned how to harness lightening so as to charge her body with electricity. By her twenty-third birthday Ms. Rose had received many accolades in Paris as a refined Soprano with a promising career ahead in the opera.

Red Bone and Ms. Rose reunited in 2003 to become Coco Rosie. Their first album, a hip hop project called Word to the Crow, was made only days before their second album, La Maison de Mon Reve. They were signed to Touch and Go Records shortly after their inaugural public performance. In 2005 their third full-length album, Noah’s Ark, was released and they are currently working on their fourth.

The some time sisters are both aspects of a north Brooklyn clan, Voodoo-Eros, which has recently surfaced to release The Enlightened Family and Diane Cluck’s Countless Times. Sierra is one half of the white-bearded metal lullaby band Metallic Falcons with Matteah Baim.

Dreams for the future include:
- Making an album with RZA
- Write and produce an opera
- Disappear as vagaries in North Africa
- Retire as lesbian welders in New Mexico
- A marriage with Antony!

Oh, good lord, yield such tender mercies!"

Literature:
Penguin Books' latest - releasing classic and contemporary authors for less than $3 a book to celebrate their 70th birthday. A list of what you can find and devour in an hour includes some of my favorites: Vladimir Nabakov, Albert Camus, Nick Hornby, Anais Nin, John Updike, Gabriel García Márquez, Franz Kafka, and Dave Eggers.

Film:
If you haven't seen Lars von Trier's first critical installment of American culture and society, Dogville, go rent it. Then head to a theater and see the second and latest film in the planned trilogy, Manderlay. But don't stay for the credits unless you've got a strong stomach. Why would the Dutch filmmaker care about making a trilogy about the US?

"America is a big subject because such a big part of our lives have to do with America," he said, "I must say, I feel there could just as well be American military in Denmark. We are a nation under influence and under a very bad influence... because Mr. Bush is an asshole and doing very idiotic things." Continuing, he reflected on the U.S. dominacnce over other countries and culture. "America is sitting on our world, I am making films that have to do with America (because) 60% of my life is America. So I am in fact an American, but I can't go there to vote, I cant change anything. I am an American, so that is why I make films about America." (Indiewire)

...

Finally, check local listings for theater performances, symphonies, concerts, local film viewings, poetry and book readings, and yes, parties. Don't be afraid to head outside for a nice walk around the lake, down the block, to your friend's house. Ride a bike in the freezing wind. Bundle up and invite your friends to go on a hike. Bring beer and wine to stay warm. Light a candle. Make a coffee and watch the street outside your window. Exhale, inhale. Write a letter. Bake a cake. Chew slowly. Befriend someone 5 years younger than yourself. Touch a tree. Talk, talk, talk until 8 a.m. Plan your spring vacation. Sleep. Laugh loudly.


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Say you live in Greenwich, Connecticut, during, oh, the early 1850s. Your older brother left home a few years back to try his luck in the California gold fields. Like the vast majority of those who risked everything to go west, he came up empty. Now he's stranded, working in some dive on the San Francisco waterfront, pulling steam beer for the other would-be millionaires nursing their dashed dreams.

You take quill to parchment (OK, you have paper, but it's pitted with wood pulp) and write him a letter.

The Pony Express doesn't yet exist (the first rider won't set off from St. Joseph, Missouri, until April 1860), and telegraph won't be functional until late 1861, so your letter will go the usual way: by sailing ship around the Horn. Assuming it doesn't run into heavy seas or founder off Tierra del Fuego, the vessel should arrive in San Francisco Bay about three months after weighing anchor at Mystic. It's the cutting-edge technology of its day.

Today, sitting at home in Greenwich, you can dispatch an e-mail to your bartender brother out west that he'll be able to read within minutes of mixing the day's last cosmopolitan. Or you can call him and leave a message. Heck, if you guys use text messaging, you'll be chatting almost instantaneously.

On balance, any of those are probably a better alternative to the clipper ship. Hey, if I miss my brother it's kind of nice to be able to get hold of him -- now.

But that's the point. My expectations have been raised to this ridiculous level by technology running amok through my heretofore-bucolic existence. I used to be a laid-back guy. Now I'm impatient. I chafe. I get irritable when my gratification isn't instantaneous. And it isn't just me. The whole world is bitchier these days.

I'm old enough to remember when waiting a few days for a letter to arrive was standard operating procedure, even in the bare-knuckles business world. I recall a time without answering machines, when you just had to keep calling back on your rotary phone until someone picked up. (Which had the unintended benefit of allowing you to reconsider whether the original call was even worth making in the first place.) The world moved at a more leisurely pace and, humanistically speaking, we were all the better for it.

Just because technology makes it possible for us to work 10 times faster than we used to doesn't mean we should do it. The body may be able to withstand the strain -- for a while -- but the spirit isn't meant to flail away uselessly on the commercial gerbil wheel. The boys in corporate don't want you to hear this because the more they can suck out of you, the lower their costs and the higher their profit margin. And profit is god, after all. (Genuflect here, if you must.)

But what's good for them isn't necessarily good for you, no matter how much filthy lucre they throw your way.

Civilization took a definite nose dive when the merchant princes grew ascendant at the expense of the artists and thinkers; when the notion of liberté, égalité, fraternité gave way to "I've got mine; screw you" (an attitude that existed in Voltaire's day, too, you might recall, with unfortunate results for the blue bloods). In the Big Picture, the dead white guys -- Rousseau, Thoreau, Mill -- cared a lot more about your well-being than the live ones like Gates or Jobs or Ellison ever will.

But stock-market capitalism is today's coin of the realm, consumerism its handmaiden, and technology is the great enabler. You think technology benefits you because it gives you an easier row to hoe? Bollocks. The ease it provides is illusory. It has trapped you, made you a slave to things you don't even need but suddenly can't live without. So you rot in a cubicle trying to get the money to get the stuff, when you should be out walking in a meadow or wooing a lover or writing a song.

Utopian claptrap, you sneer. So you put nose to grindstone, your life ebbing as you accumulate ... what?

Look around. Our collective humanity is dying a little more every day. Technology is killing life on the street -- the public commons, if you please. Chat rooms, text messaging, IM are all, technically, forms of communication. But when they replace yakking over the back fence, or sitting huggermugger at the bar or simply walking with a friend -- as they have for an increasing number of people in "advanced" societies -- then meaningful human contact is lost. Ease of use is small compensation.

The street suffers in other ways, too. Where you used to buy books from your local bookseller, you now give your money (by credit card, with usurious interest rates) to Amazon.com. Where you used to have a garage sale, you now flog your detritus on craigslist. Almost anything you used to buy from a butcher or druggist or florist you can now get online. Handy as hell, to be sure, and nothing touched by human hands. But little shops lose business and close, to be replaced, if at all, by cookie-cutter chain stores selling One Size Fits All. The corporations have got you right where they want you.

Is this the world you want to inhabit? Really? I live near San Francisco Bay. When I think about all this, I miss the canvas sail and the wind whistling through the shrouds.

**************
Tony Long is copy chief of Wired News. He is, by his own admission, a hopeless romantic.
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Despite minor setbacks, today brought a return to big breakfasts and days spent lounging around my room reading and listening to music, times of my childhood - the Slumbering Saturday. It could have been rainy or sunny outside my window; it would not have driven me from the sanctuary of my bed. You have to love days when you actually get a lot done but feel as if you've done nothing at all. That is, nothing except think of the one you love, shared memories, hours spent in wishful thinking. Vivid appreciation. Today I just want to say I'm happy for all the things that have come, what has culminated in today. Today I looked back on my life and knew there was a lot to smile about. The laughter of a lover, for one. And your interest in my life, for two. Tomorrow: out of the city!
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This week: Waffles vs. Pancakes

Inspired by heated debate (Aaron, darling, you've already lost!), I've come to realize the war wages on, even over breakfast.

Waffles are digital.
Waffles and pancakes are made in similar ways, using similar ingredients. The main difference? To make a waffle, you need to use a separate device, comprised of raised and unraised surfaces, to imprint a design into your breakfast treat. Pancakes, on the other hand, can have a loose form, traditionally circular (of a sort), but merely as gravity works on the batter when you pour it into the pan to spread it somewhat evenly in all directions. What you are left with is a mostly flat, mostly round pancake, but like snowflakes, no two pancakes are alike. There are an infinite number of possibilites. With waffles, however, your size and form are dictated by the specifics of your waffle iron.

So what have we learned? In the debate of Digital vs. Analog, what breakfast pastry you prefer may just give you away. You can be sure I'll take note.
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speed. go go go, can't slow down, gotta live and work without thinking of how this turns out, because words are enslaving us already every day, right? flying through conversations like madmen, we're talking, we really just open up and share, you can tell me what you think, like how i'm a lying jerk when i get drunk and i can admit i think you look funny in that hat, because admit it, you just don't have the right shaped head, not many of us do. but maybe first we have to have a few beers, smoke, whatever, because i think sometimes you want to hold out on me. like you're saving your true secrets for a really big time, a time when you can create a hush and all eyes are on you, and then you can really see the pity in their eyes, like a god standing over his minions. you can wrap them around your little finger, and there's no remorse because remember, you're the one with the deep dark secrets, it's your moment to shine, no one can take it from you. i have no problem telling you, but sometimes i feel like you don't want to hear it, so i hold it back for your sake, but man, i'm open, don't you worry about that. maybe you won't do it out of vanity, the vanity that takes hold of us in the morning and can't seem to shake us loose, so we hold our heads high or maybe look at the floor, in the hopes that we look like we don't give a shit if you like our haircuts, because ya, we know it's not exactly the best but then again how do people look so good in the first place? how do they pull it off? i'm beginning to think it's magic, they have some kind of magical power to always buy the coolest things and must eat the healthiest and when they drink, you can bet they open up in the best way, the absolute best way, because that's what it means to be charmed, you see? me, well, i just swallow my vanity whole, try to really play it up, because i like the feeling of being less than perfect. i used to think it was a good idea to fix the things about you that bring you shame, embarrassment, white-knuckled terror, but i've since seen the light, i know the struggle is bottomless, and there's just no point in trying. i used to try but man it made me so tired, i never had time left to live, just live, so i gave it up. there's no shame in that, i don't care if you try to convince me otherwise, the human race was born imperfect and we'll stay that way and who are you to try to turn us into soulless monsters? i like knowing you can't replace me with some propped up doll, you can't ever tell what i'll say next, sure sometimes it's kind of forced but what else? at least i'm trying, really trying to get to the bottom of things, where life really circulates its warmth, not this sterile existence that's plagued us these last hundred years, where we take little whiney baby steps ever and ever farther away from the truth, from the rawness of life, its vivid way of reminding us of our own humanity, where we can breathe in and out and not feel like we have to hold it for your benefit, because you don't want to have to recognize we're flesh and blood, and we're standing right next to you. one day you're going to realize this, and man, then you'll open up, you'll just open your mouth and let it all pour forth for days, vocals raw, and we'll listen, we'll listen until our ears bleed and we nod, nod, yes, keep it up and let it out and know the world is listening

(in honor of Kerouac and Kafka)
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Why is it that the greyest days in winter bring more cheer and productivity than even the sunniest afternoons? I suppose I'm a sucker for being able to stay in my apartment all day reading and working without feeling guilty for missing out on the gorgeous weather. Or maybe I'm just crazy.

I'm sitting in on some very interesting lectures this semester, one of them being a course entitled "American Mediascapes." What I've learned in this course thus far has been difficult to wrap my head around, toying with the theories of Humberto Maturana and Niklas Luhmann for radical constructivism. Luhmann felt that a medium (or here also: media) is something that can be formed but does not have its own form, something loosely coupled with form, like the alphabet. By themselves each letter means next to nothing, but in a certain form they can mean volumes. He also argues that letters, like in this example, makes a digital distinction: either the letter is or isn't (a distinction of meaning for each letter is, of course, made by society, but its existence is a given). The medium of sound, however, is more analog, but you must still make a digital distinction of those sounds to pick out individual letters, furthering communication. Here the computer is viewed as the super medium, as it can replicate all other analog media, often to a degree that is difficult to perceive as different from the analog. Of course experts and people like myself will argue that the difference is easily perceivable, i.e. ANALOG IS BETTER.

I learned today I subscribe to the Utopia of Analog. Population: me + you.

And in celebration of our quest for perfection, I leave you with a wonderful poem by Pablo Neruda, translated (because my Spanish is awful) to English by Stephen Kessler:

Oneness

There's something dense, united, sitting in the background,
repeating its number, its identical signal.
How clear it is that stones have handled time,
in their fine substance there's the smell of age,
and water the sea brings, salty and sleepy.

Just one thing surrounds me, a single motion:
the weight of rocks, the light of honey,
fasten themselves to the sound of the word night:
the tones of wheat, of ivory, of tears,
aging, fading, blurring,
come together around me like a wall.

I toil deafly, circling above my self,
like a raven above death, grief's raven.
I'm thinking, isolated in the depths of the seasons,
dead center, surrounded by silent geography:
a piece of weather falls from the sky,
an extreme empire of confused unities
converges, encircling me.


Also: send me your comments on Intelligent Design. I'm in the mood to get defensive.
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Today I made a futile attempt at hiking in the woods outside the city. I got off the train and had a terrible time finding the entrance among the scattered businesses of this obvious Dorf. I've gotten so used to city life that the empty view of such a small town startled me. I began trekking through the bare trees, trying hard to envision the beautiful forests of the Appalachian Trail, but it proved really difficult as the woods were completely surrounded by highways or the Autobahn - I could hear the roar of traffic despite wearing headphones and listening to some "hiking" rock. What a shame, although the beauty was a nice change, the golden-orange-red-brown of the fallen leaves, bare limbs making it easy to pick new footpaths. I didn't even mind the hobo camping out, creepily eyeing me as I went by.

That is, until I encountered a band of horseback riders on my way back to the train stop, where I pleasantly greeted one of them who had ridden towards me. He greeted me just as warmly, then proceeded to tell me (in a frank manner I've come to really associate with Germany) that he had a full bladder and needed to relieve himself. As I frantically tried to edge my way around prickly branches and the back end of his horse, he whips it right out. To make my embarrassment even more permanent, as I passed his companions they asked if I had encountered a young man. I said yes, to which they asked me what he was doing. Of course, they knew very well, and in keeping with the anything-goes nature that had apparently gotten into everyone on this unusually sunny and warm November Sunday, I said I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about, shrugged profusely, and hurried to the train platform.

Nature is beautiful, but human nature can sometimes be something else altogether.

And in other news...

The youth revolt in France has me thinking of Pi-Rho, only these kids are really frightening. They have next to no remorse for any of the destructive things they are doing, but who's to blame? They feel justified; the law feels justified in locking them up for life if they ever catch them, causing the youths to feel ever-more justified in this cyclic power struggle. It isn't hard for me to imagine the kind of life and future these kids lead; I see it every day in Cologne, although there are definite areas to escape the reality and apathetically rejoin your safe utopia if you wish. And to top it off, how did the youths get away before the police could arrive? Using cell phones and text messages to alert each other of police positioning. And I'm told digital technology will save us all.

I can't wait, however, to get my modem in order and start playing the games Wally keeps talking about. I find them as fascinating as watching a car wreck. The fact that whole worlds exist where seemingly no life resides, is incredible. I'm pretty removed from culture as it is, at least popular culture, but this is another culture altogether, one that terrifies and intrigues me at the same time. More on it later.

Bonn is officially my favorite city in Europe. Birthplace of Beethoven, home of one of my heroes in broadcasting, Deutsche Welle, and full of beautiful houses and buildings galore, as well as street-lined streets to make you weep. And I almost did. Walking towards the Palace, I was struck with such a Glücksgefühl I nearly had to sit down. Had it not been raining fiercely, I might have, and enjoyed a quick perusal through the outdoor book shelf standing there, offering passersby the opportunity to "borrow" books and replace them, perhaps with new ones. Outdoor libraries - what a fantastic idea. And in an age where books - that is, real, physical books, the kind you open and breathe in their delicious paper smell, so intoxicating - are quickly becoming an outdated fashion, the outdoor library brought immense cheer to my heart.

As part of my digital-defiance, I'm going to try to double the amount of letters and postcards I send out each week. Please email me if I don't have your address.
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I know somewhere out there in the blogosphere I already made my first post, so I'll try not to think of this as counting for anything special. I figured it was high time to update the world with an insider view of the Amasphere.

What prompted this post? Google Print. I just tried it out and found countless books on my research subject of Digital Culture and Digital Media. I hate that this is a useful research tool, as it pains me to know the authors I find may not receive but miniscule pay for this wonder of innovation. I do have to acknowledge the fact that I will use the new technology to research why the technology is fundamentally breaking down significant culture values and catering to convenience. Hopefully, in my case, the convenience will be well worth it.

Refraining from spouting off my techno-dolt (thank you, James) ideals (for today), what my life in Cologne has boiled down to is one of simplification. Even living in this booming German metropolis I have learned to simplify my life - resulting in some much needed clarity. Without TV or Internet at home, all I'm left with is myself, my thoughts, my books and research. I've learned to always cook at home, resist impulsive spending, entertain myself by walking down new streets, communicate more honestly and genuinely with my friends and family, and appreciate the sparkle of a laugh, shared over coffee.

Never before have I yearned for a city so much as now, Clemson in autumn, almost able to smell the rain on the trees and the wet squish of countless cars on countless fallen leaves. There is no real darkness here, not the kind of darkness that used to scare me walking home to my apartment off Elm St. There are no people here (yet) I could always count on to brighten even the greyest of days with a quick lunch (and a quick cider!) at TDs. It's ironic that the things I'm learning here would help me better appreciate where I just came from, a city I will never live in again, at least not permanently. But I'm not really sad, as I know there are an infinite number of other towns in America to explore, towns that make life effortless.

So my time here has made me acutely simple and sentimental. I welcome the change.
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