Today I finished a years long endeavor to cycle through all 88 counties of Ohio. I woke up in Noble county, in a tent in the rain. I rode back to my car, and drove to Coshocton for the final lap. Stats for the weekend, 5 counties, 100 miles, 7:35 riding time, top speed 71.83kph.
If I was British, I would probably say, "I'm quite pleased with that." But I'm American so I'm going to say
BITCH, I'm a fucking LEGEND. Come at me bro! What you got, 10000 kilometers of stop signs, hairpin turns, 11 percent grades, gravel and pot-holes, assholes in trucks, bad signage? I'll grind over all your washed out coal towns, your downed trees, your 1500 sparkling creeks, past 25000 cornfields, 32000 sycamores, 35000000 ticks and mosquitos. I'll eat your headwinds for a snack without slowing down. Fuck your unleashed dogs.
In terms of cycling counties, this has been my best year to date. I biked in 20 new counties, and repeated an additional 11 (Cuyahoga, Erie, Huron, Lorain, Miami, Clark, Montgomery, Greene, Warren, Clinton, and Preble).
How long did the whole project take? Well, in years, I started when I was eight years old, so 29 years. If we count the shortest time since I've done all 88 including repeats, then I've biked all 88 in the last 10 years. In hours? I didn't track, but several hundred. A typical county would take 2-6 hours to cycle across, so 4*88=352. Several of them I did much faster.
So I'll take some time now, and revel in a win. But also, the only way this works, is if the journey is the win. So, I've been winning this whole time. It's a beautiful state. Every county has something unique to itself. I never could have guessed at so many of the things I've seen. Every view, every picture of sparkling streams, every surprising weasel or musk-rat or blue-fish, every warm breeze and relief of a cloud on a hot day. It's been so fun, so pleasant, so calming, and I would do it again, and again.
And also, I am what I am. I'm forever seeking the next goal, so, Indiana, here I come.
I have biked around Indianapolis two different times, with my cousin Kathryn each time. So much white to paint-bucket fill. I'm excited.
I made a compilation CD many years ago, when I was approximately 19 years old. The only thing written on the disk is the title Elf Mix 2, in scrawling red marker. I've recreated the mix as Spotify and YouTube playlists, depending the reader's preference. Also, here is the song list:
Miserlou - Dick Dale
Fire - Jimi Hendrix
Mr. Brightside - The Killers
Drain You - Nirvana
Say It Ain't So - Weezer
The Man Who Sold The World - David Bowie (Nirvana Unplugged Version)
Have You Ever - The Offspring
Jeremy - Pearl Jam
Within You Without You - The Beatles
Romeo's Seance - The Juliette Letters
Black Angel's Death Song - The Velvet Underground
I Fought Piranhas - The White Stripes
I Can't Quit You Baby - Led Zeppelin
Daze and Confused - Led Zeppelin
Warmth Of The Sun - The Beach Boys
Dueling Banjos - Eric Weissberg (famously heard in Deliverance)
I have two observations. First, I'm quite a consumer of music. I listen to multiple genres of music every day, usually several hours per day, ranging from baroque, electronic, bluegrass, classical guitar, traditional and modern folk, acapella jazz, barbershop, indie pop, hard rock, blues, jazz piano/trio, musical theater and some others. I have been heard to say that some music is 'good' and other music 'not great.' I wouldn't identify as a music snob, but I'm sure at least a few people have considered me one.
Also, I've noticed that many people my age and older, Millennials and Generation X, they are often very self-conscious of their young adult and late adolescent selves. They hide their journals, their drawings, their love letters, pictures of their hair.
Somewhere between these two observations, one might expect me to have great distaste for my late teenage mix tape, to poo-poo it as adolescent pop punk bullshit. But no, it's amazing. Every song on it is fantastic. I would say its only flaw is that it's almost all Up tunes -- that is, I didn't take it down a notch until the second to last song, perhaps except for Within You Without You at track 9. I can give myself grace to have missed that subtle and important point in making a good mix-tape, on my second ever.
Teenagers know quite a lot. They feel quite a lot. It's all real, and their ability to express it is truly something to be respected. As we age, we ought pay more attention to the youth, especially if it is our own teenage selves. Everyone, love your youthful constructs. Read the journal, show the drawings to friends. Listen to your old crush songs, and old breakup songs, and old dance like your hip doesn't hurt all the time yet songs.
The title is a quote of someone I thought was a friend, in reference to Faulkner books. I use it today in reference to my last blog entry, 'So 2020 was a rough year'. I've said to people recently, or started to, 'it's been a rough year' but I have to stop, because it's been a rough several years. Or, can I even think of the last year that wasn't some kind of disease ridden shit-storm?
This blog only goes back to 2007. Before that, I was a late adolescent, which I didn't fare super well in that endeavor. I was deeply depressed and on track to commit suicide more likely than not, until 2007. I guess that 2008 was pretty good, started at Central. I remember being very stressed about making grades. I was in very poor health and physical shape, and a minority as one of only 2-3 white people any given day, certainly the only white person in my whole dorm. I don't mean to say it was all bad. I think overall, 2008 was a good year.
2009, Was ok, I guess? I also retrospectively think that was the year I probably could have seen the writing on the wall and never gotten engaged to the person I would later divorce. But really, no, I had no chance of seeing that far, and didn't have the tools to read the writing on the wall whatsoever. It was a fun year. I'm going to judge that as the last good one for a long time after.
2010, Kicked out of the college of education, the end of a years-long pursuit of being a high-school teacher.
2011, Married (yay!) started graduate school, realized I was under-prepared, realized I might flunk out, screamed and cried and studied all at the same time in December and sought therapy for the first time as an adult.
2012, Cancer.
2013, Serious relationship issues, started at Kent, and struggled since I didn't get full stipend, again under constant stress that my ability to pass exams was between me (us, at the time) and financial ruin. Starting with no social network, but only the second time. It wasn't that tiresome yet.
2014, Juniper was born in June, and that's good, but no parent will ever tell you that the first six months does not constitute a rough year. I studied for qualifying exams with a newborn in the house. I took one of those qualifying exams with the flu. I had fever, chills, and diarrhea, but if I didn't take and pass that exam, I wouldn't get my stipend.
2015, Nothing jumps out at me. I guess it was pretty ok. Maybe that's really the last not rough year.
2016, Vivian quit school, plunging us into poverty, and Donald Trump was elected president.
2017, I wrote a whole blog about that catastrophe.
2018, Mental illness, complex relationships (read, extra-marital), believing I'd found and experienced god, and then realizing... it wasn't real. Realized I was not going to make it at my job, and would have to give up on teaching at a college. A ten year ambition and endeavor.
2019, Separated from my wife, quit my singing group, quit my career. Started dating after 11 years. I didn't like dating. I never liked dating. I always just wanted to get to the stable relationship part. In a lot of ways, things were a lot better for me. But it was still a rough year.
2020, Australia caught on fire. Remember that?
2021, More Covid, separating from my partner who I owned a house with, getting back together, having a strained relationship, getting pretty paltry raises even though I was advancing rapidly and a key member of teams at work.
2022, Serious problem drinking, trying and failing to get a new job, primary cohabitated relationship extremely strained, financial struggle. Wondering how I had been making good money for years and still was completely broke, all the time.
2023, so far, I've joined AA, and started a new job at twice the pay, permanently separated from my partner of 3.5 years, and found myself at 37 years old, pretty much broke, my name stuck on a mortgage I can't get out of, single, and on a diet to lose 30 pounds of self-pity weight I put on last year. I've biked through 15 new counties this year, with only 5 left to go. It's just inevitable now. If my legs were cut off, I could do one of those hand-pedaled ones. I just have to not die for a few more weeks.
I had a plan. This wasn't it. Teaching job, wife, kids, cats, mortgage, dual income, burn the mortgage stay in one place til I die. I lived on Hazelwood avenue for 11 years. The longest I've lived anywhere since is 3 years.
I'm enjoying being alone, to an extent. For the first time since I was maybe 15, I am actually ok with being alone. And I'm also looking forward to casually dating, later, when I'm ready. Being alone affords tremendous freedom. Today, for instance, I could have done anything, no responsibilities. I considered spicy Indian food, going someplace new. I did try to go someplace new, but when I got there, I realized that I had already been once. Huffman metropark. 30k round trip bike-ride, very windy. For the evening, I ended up staying in, and inventing onion chipotle dip, and made a breakfast burrito for dinner with four sausages and Taco Bell baja sauce. I also took time to blog, played go and was sure I'd lost by a good amount til the score said I was up by 1.5 (actually was super duper fun, that). I played guitar on my porch in the rain. I'm pretty good, you know.
No one hears. The windows are closed, air conditioners are on.
I'm deeply depressed. I dream idly of working til I can retire, get a catamaran and a barrel of margarita and just drift away. For so many years, I thought along the lines of Camus. Why shouldn't Sisyphus be happy? The way is the goal, from striving comes the real-ness of the feeling of success. These are the ways I thought. And now, I'm busy, I eat spicy, fatty things, and they taste good, and then they are gone, and I am staring at an empty plate. When I had everything, I had an empty plate. When I thought I was finally full, I was wrong, and it was an illusion. I was a junky, and people lied to me. I don't trust anyone, but at least I'm sober.
I'm like a castaway. I've made a pretty nice drum-kit from coconuts and washed up bottles, bics and netting. I play it sometimes. And sometimes I don't bother.
I've been on Duolingo for a couple months here. The rust is coming off my German. Das Leben ist ja kla wirklich Änderung. Es ist beide das beste, und ganz schlecht. Ich denke auf Deutsch, manchmal, und ich spreche, mit mir selbst. Weil es gibt kein Mann ander zu hören. Und das is der Problem.
I had a bit of an uptick in posts last year, 2019. I was alone a lot, which drove a lot of verbal outpouring into a device no one reads. I actually have had plenty to write about in the last 17 months, but fairly little time to actually write it down.
Just today, I got back to a FaceBook post, "Please brag to me about something you did in 2020 that you're proud of." I liked it, and responded:
I participated in, produced, and edited 3 virtual choruses for my church, plus 2 for my family, none of whom can safely sing together.
I was given a two-rank promotion at work, after sweating blood into a new project for 9 months, to show what I can do.
I was elected member at large for my barbershop chorus, and proposed that we produce virtual choral work for marketing and promotion in the new year.
I moved in with my girlfriend and her children, in a house surrounded by trees and nature and bugs like I've never been. We have two Christmas trees and more lights up than ever before, because we cannot go to parties or visit family as usual.
I provided shelter to my ex and her infant in hard times.
I stopped abusing nyquil.
I voted for Joe Biden.
I biked through 8 counties of Northwest Ohio that I've not biked through before, or even driven through, as far as six are concerned.
I taught the boy how to measure distances small and large, how to cut wood, navigate towns, use Google maps, divide small integers, sum numbers over a thousand, fly a drone, destroy a drone, attempt to repair a drone...
Taught my daughter number line addition and subtraction, how to use number beads, blocks, identify shapes, tell which statements in the online school aren't quite right, regular and irregular verbs, to stop being an unfair SOB to the boy.
I held the little girl when she cried.
I learned how to wire an outlet, a ceiling fan, a nightlight. I learned how to synthesize dubstep using free software. I learned .NET Core Dependency Injection, TestServer, Rest API, Javascript, RPC protocols, rtl diagrams, machine learning. I fabricated nuts for a child's bike in a national shortage of bikes and parts. I repurposed a homemade cosleeper into a headboard and torched wood artfully for the first time. I fabricated a railing for the first time. I rebuilt a patio for the first time since I was 17 years old. I planted 8 different tree seeds with three kids in the back yard. I helped make a map of a new park and brought a precocious and inventive instrument drawing to life with the boy. I folded over 100 baskets of laundry. I put knobs back on three dresser drawers. I sanded paint off 8 different pieces of wood.
I got a paper published in mathematics magazine. Corollary: I got an Erdos number of 4.
-- End of comment. Ultimately, it's been a hard year for most everyone on the planet. I have a lot to be extremely grateful for. Especially an employer that lets me work from home and have a chance at not getting sick, a new family, a home like I've never had, and the chance to sing and bring voices together, in a time when singing together is violently irresponsible.
I have so much hope for a slow and painfully insufficient new year, that is nonetheless better, better lead, less in sickness, less in death, stronger in community, resources, caring for those in need.
Dating is kind of awful. The field is clogged with uneducated, incurious flotsam, interesting people who are unfortunately ugly as sin, educated, interesting and attractive people who somehow end up being Trump supporters, women who like football and fishing, candidates of mind numbing perfection in Detroit or Nashville, one on the far side of Columbus. My super ego is rejecting all the pretty young things my id wants to message, and my id is rejecting all the mature, interesting people I should be talking to. Pretty young things are demonstrating interest in no strings attached sex, and sitting alone in my new house, alone, empty, self destructive, free agent, do what I want, what do I want? To be happy. That isn't happiness. She's really cute (I mean psyche rockingly cute). Just imagine how many quality offspring she could bear, go to bed, get out of bed, go to bed, read Neil Gaiman because 3/4 matching women list him - hey this is really good...
And rejecting people, my god. It's so much worse than flunking people. I mean, when the students kinda did half try and were so blindsided because society and K-12 failed them so hard, it was really tough to have to do. But it wasn't their capacity as romantic partner that I was flunking. Just the math ability, and that can be improved. Just yesterday, a sparky, interesting, many hobbied woman messaged me - said I'm neat and what am I doing tonight? Looking up how to craft a rejection message that hurts as little as possible, that's what. The rejectors in the cartoon diagrams are always women. Sexist pieces of shit.
I added the following to the end of my self-description on Plenty of Fish:
1) For the love of Pete don't post pictures of your kids! Predators exist, they're on this site, they can filter for single moms. 2) Snapchat filters on main pic, or all pics? Do you have teddy bear ears and a cat nose in real life? Are you really trying to sell an algorithmically modified version of yourself? 3) I'm pretty sure asshats don't read the 'first off, no asshats' part of your profile or otherwise don't believe themselves to be asshats. Second off, if 90% of your profile is dedicated to warding off asshats, maybe you aren't offering non-asshats enough substance to consider pursuing you? Just a thought. 4) Down to earth has officially lost all meaning for me. As have fun loving and laid back. Check this out: https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/down-to-earth. Plainspoken. Fo' shizzle. I haven't seen that modifier on a single profile within 250 clicks of here. Stand out from the crowd! Otherwise, you're only going to get attention from asshats (note 3 supra). I am chatting with a viable candidate. There is hope. (Seh-goo) I've been biking a lot. I biked around New Burlington yesterday. It was unreal how amazing it was. I stopped for pictures of river branches over cobbled stones between leaning oaks and grazing pastures for bison (did not know I lived anywhere near a bison farm). An hour ago I saw a muskrat clambour out of a drain and up along a soy field while I sat writing in my journal. It was one of the most beautiful spots. I did my best to draw the scene, clouds, far off highway, beans and corn, gravel and grass. I wrote a full page on the warm wind, the rattle of the corn stalks, the chirp of birds and insects on a patch of road I'd never conceived of, despite having passed within 200 meters at least a hundred times before, to and from Central State campus. I don't believe I've ever seen a muskrat before. My body is capable of simply drifting at paces I once found challenging, and many casual riders still do. It makes me happy to experience this drift between green walls of corn. I'm officially a serious cyclist, riding with a group of triathletes who compete in regional and national races. That came of a sub-plot to a ride I mentioned a while back, a ride to Urbana and back. It was a day so good that even as it was happening I knew I might be peaking for 2019 - and that that was ok. I've had years with lower high points. The Urbana ride, the weather was warm, breeze enough to keep you dry if you stopped, but not enough to really hinder you as long as you were generally pointed north or south (which I was). I left around 9 in the morning, after my ex went somewhere or other with our daughter. On the way up to Yellow Springs I caught a draft on an older fellow cruising at a pretty tough pace on the worst of the uphill in that direction. He told me his name, I think it was Dave, wished me well at a point where he turned around or left or something. Then I was alone again, heading north to Springfield. I had then just recently gone up to Springfield, so it was not so much familiar as not unfamiliar. I was solidly warmed up by this time, prepared to put in serious speed if that was needed, but planning a gentler pace for an all day ride. There's a quality of yellow that comes off of weeds on the side of a path when the sun is really high and bright in summer. I don't really understand it, but I love it. I was seeing this, and feeling powerful, and peaceful, as I got to Springfield. There are a few blocks there you have to ride the roads of downtown before the trail picks back up on the north end. I saw a group of young bloods coalescing in the downtown streets towards the trail northward. Carbon fiber, spandex, mid twenties. I figured they looked fast, would be good for a draft. Indeed once they got on the trail they were cruising about 28kph or so. At each stop, I stopped in among them. On the third stop, the leader asked, "are you trying to pass us?" My goodness no. I'm drafting. I'm not fast enough to pass you guys. She introduced herself as Lisa, and welcomed me to the clip. I got to chat with two or three of them over the next while. We followed an old man who confidently headed up a road, and ended up turning around when it seemed to become a highway. Lisa has been beating herself up for weeks for leading a stranger onto a highway. Whatever, it was an adventure. They broke the wind for me until about halfway between Springfield and Urbana, at a little jangle in the path where it crosses some railroad tracks. They invited me to join their weekly group ride Wednesday nights out of the Lebanon YMCA. On north I went alone, needing water shortly thereafter I saw the kind of roof that looks like it belongs to a public building. Just the kind of weird angle and height that is never on a private residence, you know. It was a bog nature preserve center, and indeed there was a water fountain, and a friendly ranger who doesn't really get enough people to talk to, what with being about equidistant to two fairly small cities. I filled up water and sat behind the building, on benches in the shade overlooking a cedar bog. The wind made the waxy leaves crackle while I ate my peanut butter filled pretzel bites that I've found to be a nearly perfect cycling fuel. A woman walked in from my left on a boardwalk that goes through the bog. She said, 'did you bike here too?' We chatted for a bit about the quality of the day, places we'd ridden. She talked about the GOBA, which sounds a treat. She went on, and I wrapped up my eating, topped off my canteens again and I rode off while she was lacing up her clip-in shoes. In Urbana, right away I saw a perfect spot, The Train Station Cafe, a former depot converted over to a coffee shop. I knew if there was any kind of food for lunch, I'd be set. And they have a full food menu of panini style sandwiches. I got a pretty good reuben and a latte, and drank a lot of water and sat still a lot in the cool. There were bikers (motor and leather) and people with amazing tattoos and kids and local art on the walls. I got in around noon, and started riding back home around 1. Landed a little after 4, a day well spent, another county down, a cool shower and my familiar bed to lounge in and watch youtube into the evening, and sing once my ex left (I was still living in the same house at the time). I did manage to join one Wednesday, and there were some older riders in the full group, but all of them climbed hills like they had places to be, and I was the last to the top of each big climb. I showed my strength as a distance rider on the flataways and actually pulled for a bit. Chatted with a half dozen cyclists and was welcomed and encouraged all around. I can't make the Wednesday rides, but they organize weekend rides often, and I've gotten in on one of those. Always not being the fastest, but neither the slowest, and certainly on the lowest tech, heaviest gear of all. I suppose they are becoming my friends. (Seh-gway) I got a full time paid internship at a defense contracting company today. If they hire me, which the CEO said was the goal, I'd have to get the third tier government security clearance: top secret. The pay isn't amazing, but it will pay the bills, and I'll get a handful of certifications in industry along the way. Which beats the hell out of paying a couple grand on a bootcamp. At the interview, I was able to give a solution to a white board problem that was novel to them, as it comes from a set theory problem of infinities, but also gave the more typical programming approach. That is, I shined as what I am. I'm neither ecstatic, nor disappointed. It's not really the line of work I wanted, precisely. It's the right kind of work, for the wrong kind of customer (defense). It's not a full time job with benefits, but isn't unpaid, and has potential. I guess, just as I once wrote about a restaurant on Google Reviews: it wasn't the best of times, it wasn't the worst of times. (Segue) Two new artists in my sphere of knowing, St. Vincent and Fink. Check them out. They're friggin' epic. Through my headphones Fink is dropping some raw emotion. Through the window nearby the sky dims behinds trees still waving gently in a late July breeze. I love summer. It's always been my favorite season. Your Obedient, Ian Hogan, PhD
Two posts ago I shared an info-graphic of the Ohio counties through which I have biked, color coded by somewhat arbitrary age divisions. There are two colors which correspond only to one county. Red is for Cuyahoga, the only county I biked in before I reached a working age and made it to an adjacent county. Blue is for Mahoning, the only county I added to the list in 2017. I was 31 that year, and had just the year before biked a few thousand kilometers and hit 11 new counties. It was 2016 that I first thought to map out all the counties through which I had biked and set the goal of getting all of Ohio. Looking forward to 2018, I again biked thousands of kilometers and hit over a dozen new counties. So what was 2017? As I reflect now on the year as a whole, it was almost comical in its arc from one of the most hopeful times of my life, to one of the most hopeless.
As of January 1, 2017, my dissertation was complete and I was on vacation, actually relaxing instead of studying even harder, for the first time in six years. My job applications were away and there was no point worrying until February at least. I was picking up old hobbies again, go and guitar, that I had dropped in the struggle to achieve academically while fighting cancer and raising an infant. I had no doubts about the quality of my work. It was my own, I knew that I would successfully defend, and did so as early as the committee was ready to go. I was fit, healthy, sleeping well. Our family was what we wanted it to be. The possibilities were as dazzling as my imagination would let them be.
By December 31, I had been rejected for all the most viable jobs in academia, changed track towards software development and was not making much progress when my undergraduate institution offered me a position very late in the season (well into June). The pay was good, but the institution was one that I had elected not to walk at graduation, for the quality of the school was so low that I had no pride in a degree attached to a 4.0 gpa. Succeeding in getting a job there was kind of like failing at everything that mattered but getting a ribbon because the market was so bad that two of the six graduates in my class got no jobs and were supported by their spouse and parents respectively.
We had a buyer of our house in Kent back out on the day we were loading the moving truck and ultimately lost money on it a month later. This meant that we ended up in tension with the sellers of the house we had contracted to buy near Central State, and spent six weeks paying them rent while also paying our old mortgage. I had already cashed out the small amount of retirement I had accrued as a graduate student just to float us through two more months without income over the summer. We were still the lucky ones in our generation, passing through having a young child, graduate school, and getting a real job with no debts and even some equity, but we had no cash and it was very stressful.
My wife got pregnant over the summer and then miscarried, also while loading the moving truck. Our relationship started to fragment as her mental health deteriorated and our family struggled in a new town with no social network. My mental health started to deteriorate as I attempted to work a terrible job well, teaching four courses for the first time in my life, and constantly unsure of what situation I would arrive to at home when I got there.
In the fall, my mother's parents both died. I had never been very close to them. They were kind of not good people, but it still hit me hard. They were my namesake. I wrote a long blog about their memorial a few posts ago, entitled Goodbye to Love.
It had become clear that my pay wasn't good enough to cover the aggressive mortgage we had elected. The resulting downward trend in the bank account only further drove a wedge between me and my wife, who had elected not to work against my wishes and against our original plans upon marriage.
With all that in mind, some might wonder how I managed to get on a bike and get to an adjacent county at all that summer. I remember trying hard to sneak in rides, just biking long routes home from school to get up to 20k in a day (usual school and back added up to 12). I had a chat with an old friend at some point that summer who biked distance. He asked me how much I was riding, and I said not much, only maybe 20k rides. He said "that's if I just went on a ride." Indeed, now when I just go on a ride at random with no plan and not much time, it'll be 15-25k. But biking is such a huge part of my life. I need to ride in order to motivate myself to keep putting up with all the other bullshit. So I rode as much as I could, and did get up over 40k, and then knowing I wouldn't have easy access to the North East again for at least a long time, I made a trip out to Mahoning county before we moved.
I remember it well. My target was Lake Milton, just inside the county line and a significant landmark. I rode on Tallmadge road almost all the way, straight east west. The weather was perfect for me. Mostly sunny, just a few fluffy clouds to make the sky pretty and give you a break from the heat every once in a while. Maybe 25 to 28 degrees. I remember passing these rural middle and high-schools well away from any major city and even any substantial town. There were football teams doing summer practice in fields next to both schools. Huge teams, what seemed to me must have been every youth of the correct age in the district in a football uniform. I remember my sense of bewilderment that they could fill out such large teams as I gently climbed one rolling hill and drifted down the other side, over and over.
Just when I got into the county, I stopped at one of those marts you get in rural places, a kind of not quite grocery store, definitely more than a convenient store sort of establishment that has bait, some hardware, ammo, and a run down deli counter, but still only three aisles of food and two of them are snacks. I just wanted salty snacks anyway. I grabbed those after going to the bathroom and the checkout lady called me 'Baby' several times and had this really elegant elephant head tattoo, like this one:
I told her I liked it, and that my wife loved elephants. (Yeah, I talk to crazy check-out ladies who call me 'Baby'. Why not?)
There's a bridge that crosses lake Milton, and just before that bridge, coming from the west as I was, there's a little pier with a gazebo at the end, maybe 30 meters out. It's just a wooden dock, no railings and about a meter wide. I risked it and rode out to the gazebo, knowing that if I fell it was just going to be a sopping ride home. I sat down on the picnic table and ate a medium sized bag of something salty in the shade while looking out over the lake. It was beautiful. Everything I wanted it to be.
I did the same thing the Saturday before last. I biked up to Urbana and hit a new county doing it. And it was everything I wanted it to be. Just the right thing to help me keep putting up with all the bullshit. I'll write about it sometime.
I've been thinking of writing up some formal thoughts on two music videos. With regards to my commentary on both of these, there is a good deal more going on in the songs and videos than I will mention. They are art, and I could never hope to fully detail their contents. I don't claim to have anything like a definitive understanding of the artists' intent with their work. I believe all listeners share enough experience to be worth some discussion. With regards to both artists, go check out all their stuff. To quote High Fidelity, "It's really fucking good."
Human, by Dodie:
My Name is Human, by Highly Suspect:
The lyrics to Human:
I wanna pick you up and scoop you out
I want the secrets your secrets haven't found
Paint me in trust
I'll be your best friend
Call me the one
This night just can't end
Oh
Will you share your soul with me?
Unzip your skin and let me have a see
Paint me in trust
I'll be your best friend
Call me the one
This night just can't end
Oh
Oh, I'm so human
We're just human
Lean for me, and I'll fall back
You'll fit so nicely, you'll keep me intact
Paint me in trust
I'll be your best friend
Call me the one
This night just can't end
Oh
I want to give you your grin
So tell me you can't bear a room that I'm not in
Paint me in trust
I'll be your best friend
Call me the one
This night just can't end
Oh
Oh, I'm so human
We're just human
The lyrics to My Name is Human:
Okay
I'm feeling the way that I'm feeling myself
Fuck everyone else
Gotta remember that nobody is better than anyone else, here
(Do you need some time to think it over?)
Look what they do to you
Look what they do to me
Must be joking if you think that either one is free, here
Get up off your knees, girl
Stand face to face with your God
And find out what you are
(Hello, my name is human)
Hello, my name is human
And I came down from the stars
(Hello, my name is human)
I'm ready for love and I'm ready for war
But I'm ready for more
I know that nobody's ever been this fucking ready before, hey
(Do you need some time to think it over?)
So figure it out or don't figure it out
I figured it out
The bigger the river (the bigger the river)
The bigger the drought (the bigger the drought)
Get up off your knees, boy
Stand face to face with your God
And find out what you are
(Hello, my name is human)
Hello, my name is human
And I came down from the stars
(Hello, my name is human)
Fire world, I love you
Fire world
I'm up off my knees, girl
I'm face to face with myself
And I know who I am
(Hello, my name is human)
I stole the power from the sun
I'm more than just a man
(No longer disillusioned)
(I'm not asking questions)
('Cause questions have answers)
(And I don't want answers)
I came down from the stars (so I'll take my chances)
(And what are the chances)
(That I could advance)
(On my own circumstances)
(Said "what are the chances?")
Hello, my name is human (and what are the chances?)
(I don't want your answers)
(I'm not asking questions)
(So you keep your answers)
And I know who I am (so you keep your answers)
(I'm not asking questions)
(I'm taking my chances)
I find some notable contrasts between the two songs and videos. Obviously the musical styles are drastically different with Highly Suspect's use of distorted, tube amplified guitars and pointed, aggressive lyrics against Dodie's gentle harmonies and indie acoustic, whispered verse, love song vibrations. Also it jumped out at me that Dodie uses very minimalist make-up, and in some of her other videos, I suspect none at all. Compare this to Johnny Stevens' body tattoos, gaudy apparel, piercings, time consuming hair and general air of 'LOOK AT ME'. I find this to be an interesting gender role reversal. The overall color tones of the sets, costuming, camera angles and panning, all play into these starkly different approaches of organic and neutral against highly artificial and visually aggressive. I find each complements the associated music extremely well.
Then there are some similarities in the way in which the songs change meaning in the context of the corresponding videos. To listen to Dodie's Human without the visual, or just to read the words, there is just a love song. Humans are feeling animals, it is human to fall in love and be super curious about another human. But then in the video, the object of Dodie's affection is a construction. It plays into the question of where human connection is real or manufactured. It reminds me of such explorations as the world of Data in Star Trek, The Next Generation, the question of the rights of people with sufficient brain damage to have capacity below lab rats, and the extent to which we can compare a text based friendship abroad with an in-person friendship (especially as automated bots are fooling more people for longer periods all the time).
I am no longer in regular contact with the person who shared that video with me, but I was able to take an old recording of their voice, sing a harmony over it and sync the tracks. Listening, I was reminded of this video. Manufactured human connection. We never harmonized that way. It wasn't real. But it sounded real. It would be hard to detect the forgery, you would have to know a thing or two about analyzing recorded sound. Just as automated conversation programs are getting harder to catch, as their caches of natural sounding responses grow and their algorithms dive deeper into what components of a passage of text make it 'flow' with another.
Similarly, My Name is Human, to just hear it or read the lyrics, is just a pointed rock song about the nature of human existence. 'Get up off your knees, stand face to face with your God, find out who you are...I came down from the stars.' Humans are natural things, derived of stardust. We grapple with our nature. In the face of something bigger, we fall to our knees. Here again, the video brings in robotics, sets a contrast of human from the stars and manufactured human. Can a robot stand face to face with its God? Again, Data did face his creator. Robots are being trained to identify those who made them. We're a few major breakthroughs away from anything worrisome, but the questions and potential are there.
I find it remarkable that two songs that deal so heavily in the concept of humanity, but such different aspects of it, both chose in their visual component to set a contrast with humanoid robots. Neither song on its face deals with the boundary cases of humanity in comparison with hyper-human approximations like Data or advanced AI conversation engines. Neither in their verses ask the question of how something made always seems to fail to measure up to something born.
I'm face to face with myself. I know what I am. I ate poison to destroy death running around my body. I have stripped away every part of myself that I did not want or found unwholesome and rebuilt myself to my imagination's specifications. I've stared into the abyss of myself. This aspect of me strides triumphantly while listening to Highly Suspect loudly in my headphones.
I want to give you your grin. I know of myself that I can't be whole without another. I don't currently have a life partner and I feel like a two-legged stool sort of tilted up against a wall of antidepressants and working towards a better future for myself...or something like that. I can never feel the presence of God except through the conduit of deep human connection. That part of myself listens to Dodie and lays quietly.
