The Steroid Era

On the early September night that Mark McGwire hit number sixty two, I was in the sun room, walls of windows surrounding me, squinting through the glare as he came to bat with two outs in the fourth inning. It was his shortest homer of the season, barely hurtling over the left field fence, not even reaching the stands. I leapt off the couch, sprinted upstairs and told my mom to turn on the TV.  

We'd been following the numbers in the Times every summer morning, not sure why it mattered so much if a beefy redhead jogged around the bases more times than an old Yankee whom fame and adulation have mysteriously eluded. It mattered because the papers said so, and because the late nineties were about saucy interns instead of collapsing towers.

Years later, I watched McGwire make a fool out of himself in front of congress. He wasn't there to talk about the past, he said, ignorant that his past and present could harm his future. He is a pariah. A public enemy. A joke.

September 11, 2001 was a striking visual of many things that have happened to quaint ideas of the nineties. This is where the laissez-faire approach to international affairs, to business regulation, to real estate, to steroid testing have brought us. The greatest risks have sown the seeds of catastrophic failures.

But even as the bloated era withers before our eyes, let's not forget its small joys. Let's remember what it was like to feel optimistic, to revel in calm before the storm. Let's sit in the sun room on a darkening September evening and honor the spring and summer that came before, and will surely come again.

Stakes

Yesterday on the flight home, I was reading True Enough by Farhad Manjoo. The book's basic argument is that the proliferation of information available on the internet has actually served to divorce people from "truth" more than ever before. All media has become niche markets (selective exposure), and even when we do see the same thing, there is no consensus on what actually happened , that even our senses conform to our preconceived notions (selective processing). I sort of think the information age has just made it easier to see the fracturing of culture that was already there, but he does make some good points about how people are more secure in their sometimes nutty views when they can find a community of like-minded individuals, and that is now accessible to anyone able to spend a few minutes on google. This divorced-from-reality reality is part of why the Swift Boat Veterans were so successful, why 1/3rd of Americans believe the US government was somehow involved in 9-11, why we're still trying to convince the heartland that Barack Obama is not a Kenyon-Born Muslim homosexual.

This was a bummer, so I put the book down and turned on my iPod. I sat back and relaxed, and then the plane dropped.

It was less than two seconds, but it was enough time to scare the Hell out of everyone aboard. We locked eyes and chuckled away the fear. The woman in front of me leaned her head on the shoulder of her seatmate, a man she had never met.

If our plane had plummeted into the New Jersey Pine Barrens, there would be a million explanations by just as many talking heads on television. The CEO of Delta would have to answer questions about the training of the pilot, the decision to fly in slightly inclement weather, the age and condition of the plane (my armrest was broken, a sure sign of engineering quality). A conspiracy theory that oil companies caused the crash to encourage people to drive more would gain legs in the paranoid fringes. The blackbox recording would be played and interpreted in as many ways it takes to make any interpretation suspicious and irrelevant.

But 20,000 feet in the air, there were no questions. When the stakes are raised, when its clear that the only thing that matters is to be alive or dead, the schism is healed. We were falling and we were together.

How do we unite when the stakes aren't so clear?

North Carolina

When I'm in North Carolina, I leave the Plasma TV on, like a buddy I don't spend enough time with in New York. I fall asleep on the couch, wake up and move five feet to my favorite leather reading chair in the corner. I consider the screened-in porch, consider how the mild winter here is still too cold for lounging, consider checking my e-mail for the fourth time in an hour.

My mom and I make one trip per visit to Chapel Hill, scour the racks at the vintage store for one-of-a-kind items for five dollars or less. Sometimes we get bubble tea and walk on the campus, admiring the old buildings that the students probably never visit once they matriculate. When the sky is burnt orange, we go to the Carolina Brewery across from her development. I always want the locally-made beer to be more rich and flavorful than it is.

When we drive to my aunt and uncle's house, we pass Jordan Lake.
Its glassy waters seem to sprawl for miles beyond the four-line highway. The shores are tree-lined and have that mucky look that is unmistakably Southern, the Nawth Cahulahna woods. It is one of the few times I feel like I'm in the South down here - regionalities have been submerged under the Best Buys and Targets and Applebees of the world, like much of the country.

Something that always feels strange is the lack of centrality. Like the internet, this part of North Carolina stretches endless miles without any seeming destination. New Jersey always had New York City, and even in the city there's always Midtown for business and The Village for pleasure. How does someone decide where to live if there's nowhere everyone wants to be close to? What's the organizing principle down here?

At night, the crickets mingle with the light traffic speeding by on the highway behind the house. There's so much in every direction, but when it all looks the same, isn't it nicer to just stay home and enjoy the Plasma?

2008 Music Part Two

I remember watching the music video for "Sour Times" with my dad at his apartment as a fifth or sixth grader. He thought it was great, and I'm pretty sure we went to Scotty's Music in downtown Summit to buy the album "Dummy" that very Saturday afternoon. Pretty dark stuff, but it also makes you feel like an awesome spy while you're listening to it. My dad and I liked to drive around pretending we were awesome spies I guess.

Well Portishead made another album that we didn't buy and suddenly disappeared. Trip-hop evolved into music for Park Slope coffee shops. When I found out that Portishead was making another album, eleven years after their last, I figured it would be a lame attempt to recapture their old glory. I figured they'd be mocked by critics, ignored by fans, and forgotten by people like me who used to love them.

What's so surprising about "Third", other than its lame title for the third album by a band, is how it manages to explore the same emotional territory of Portishead's previous work, but in a completely different way. In place of steady trip-hop beats are songs that shift according to their own whims; second track "Hunter" jumps from a dusty black-and-white horror movie soundtrack to spluttering electronic beeps and back again, just for the Hell of it. "Machine Gun" is four and a half minutes of a pummeling drum machine with an incredibly creepy synth thrown in toward the end. "Deep Water" reminds me of that scene in "Saving Private Ryan" when they come upon a ruined French village and hear some eerily pleasant music that somehow survived the bombings. Every song has something bizarre and unique to offer, almost none of them pleasant to listen to at first, all worth exploring and absorbing over repeated listens.

Here's the album in full. It's a grower.

2008 Music

It seems like every music magazine or person who thinks they know anything about music is making a top whatever-number-I-feel-like list of best music in 2008. I thought about doing that too, but then I considered how dumb it is to rank something subjective like music. Also how can I make a ranking of all music in 2008 when there's so much I haven't heard? Music bloggers, take heed - you're on my "what the hell do you think you're doing??" list.

So instead of doing that, I thought I'd just share some music I like from the year 2008 with my vast readership of two (I've heard rumors of a third reader, but I don't want to get my hopes up). I recently heard "Microcastle" by Deerhunter, a band I long resisted because their name is so similar to Deerhoof, a band that I liked first. Also, Deerhunter's lead singer is absurdly thin (he has something called Marfan syndrome) and not pleasant to imagine caterwauling on stage.

BUT their music is great. They kind of remind me of the Velvet Underground, and I'm sure their sound isn't terribly original, but they've got a kind of nice slow burn to their music that feels good and bad at the same time. Here's some 30-second samples of every track, and if you like it, I'll get you more.

Another album whenever I feel like posting again. And now, the search for Santa begins...

Literacy Biography

This is the second (and final) installment of the personal essay portion of my literacy biography:

For years before seventh grade, I'd relied on reading circles, chapter reviews, and worksheets to lead me along through books. For years after, I would learn to pretend that I had read, listening like a detective when the teacher spoke about a book's material and turning these clues into an entire narrative essay or response paper, complete with limited source materials that reflected this same viewpoint. But when my teacher Ed (we used first names) introduced the reading log book, I panicked. We were expected to record the date, the book, the number of pages we read, and a small synopsis. We were expected to write in the book at least once a week.

The book sat on a low shelf underneath the blackboard, free for anyone to peruse during transition periods or lunch time (we ate in the classroom). My failure to read would be more than a shared knowledge between myself and Ed. The whole class would see that nice, quiet Austin Murphy was lazy, uninspired, unmotivated, unfit to join the ranks of the best and the brightest.

There were many ways to respond to this new challenge. You could lie, write that you read pages whatever to who-gives-a-shit, and copy something it took you twenty minutes to load up on dial-up AOL about the plot. You could pretend to be actively reading a book that you had actually read in an earlier grade, shrug your shoulders thoughtfully when the teacher asked if you'd consider reading a more difficult book. You could pick a book that looked way above your level so that you could do a cursory, sloppy job in the log book, falling back on the semi-truth that you were challenging yourself, so it was OK that you only read ten pages last week or that you're description always involved the phrase, "I'm not quite sure what's happening..."

It was through this third route that I discovered Richard Wright's Native Son. It was the perfect ruse; a stern, uninviting black cover, over five hundred pages in length, and filled with words no white suburban seventh grader would have any reason to understand. I borrowed it from the class shelf and settled in for a semester of faux-intellectual wrangling.

I don't remember how long I went on like this; this lack of memory is probably testament to how little I thought of Wright or his giant book. All my basketball cards were alphabetized, I updated all the old rosters on my NBA Live '95 game to reflect all the off-season trades, I learned the finishing moves of every character in Mortal Kombat, I read the phrases "Knicks suck!" and "Yankees RULE!" in more chat rooms than I care to remember. Occasionally I would pick up Native Son and thumb through the pages. It seemed like a story about a black chauffeur working for a rich white family. I'd think of my rich classmates, and wondered if they had these kinds of people working for them. I'd put the book down and watched an episode of the Simpsons that I had seen five times.

Through it all, I buried the feeling that I was falling behind, that everyone else had made a seamless transition to independent reading. I was happy-go-lucky with my friends, got As and Bs in all my classes, and tried to present myself as the model embodiment of the student I knew deep down I was not.

The change came when Ed announced late one week that we were all required to move on to another book by the beginning of next week. After class, I asked him if I could get extra time because, you know, my book was so big! He said it had been clear at the beginning that we had a limited amount of time to read our book, and I should have been pacing myself or picked an easier read. He was not mean, he did not scold me. In fact, he told me that he allowed me to pick such an advanced book because he thought I could handle it. But it was time to complete the job, and that was that.

The tough thing about memory is that I often have trouble accessing specific details about times when I felt inadequate. I made every effort to avoid listening to my screaming conscious at the time, so it doesn't surprise me that I have no idea what I did on the Saturday afternoon before I was to complete Native Son. Maybe I went to Scotty's Music downtown and visited every listening station, even the country-western. Maybe my friend Jesse and I walked to the newsstand and snuck peeks at Playboy magazine when the cashier wasn't looking. Maybe I said, "Patrick Ewing SUXX you dont know what ur talkin bout!!" to KnicksRDaBomb2543.

Whatever happened during the daylight hours, my dad's insistence that I start tackling my homework before Sunday night led me to the leather chair in the study. And for the first time, I had an experience that I have replicated countless times in the years since; I forgot to check the time, forgot that I even had a body. I was reading.

It wasn't just the act of reading that shocked me; it was the story itself. Without giving away spoilers, I will say that Native Son is a story of how much of life is decided by circumstance and dumb luck, how a small misunderstanding and the fear of being misunderstood can conspire to create grave tragedy, how easy it is to lose everything even when you have almost nothing to begin with. Wright challenged everything I thought I knew about race, class, and power in America. On Saturday afternoon, I was a seventh grader who assumed I had no advantages, that people make it or not based on what kind of people they are, how hard they are willing to work, and whether or not they choose to be good or bad. On Saturday night, my view was so distorted and shattered that I cried for Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of the novel.

My reading of Native Son may be why I have spent my brief adult life working in urban public schools, trying to close the societal gap I first learned of on that Saturday night in seventh grade. I know that it's why I value questions over answers, why I'm always interested in hearing points of view that my limited personal experience doesn't touch upon. Native Son taught me to question everything I think I know. I'm glad I had enough nags in my life to force me to read it.

Update

It seems I wasn't clear when I posted an excerpt from my multi-genre paper. I've written other pieces of it, but that is as far as I've gotten in the personal essay. I will write more this weekend, so expect another installment of that on Monday.
Here's a poem:

STRAIGHT FROM THE GUT

When I hear the name
Jack Welch
Former CEO of GE
I think of the time his book was assigned
for a Corporate Power class
at Vassar

I thought,
what an Ass.
He fucked up the Hudson and
doesn't think he needs to clean it up
because
he didn't know about PCBs

He's a suit
Scumbag

When I hear the name
Jack Welch
I remember Jason in my room
Reading lines aloud
"It's always good to have a power plant
for a neighbor"
Laughing

And Vassar in the Spring
White buds blossoming
Frisbee and hookah and
grass stains on my
cargo shorts

This has nothing to do with
Jack Welch
But everything to do with
Reading
his book.

My Literacy Biography

For my Teaching of Writing class, I have to write a multi-genre paper (five pieces in four different genres). I've chosen to write about myself as a reader, which is important for me to explore before I start trying to transform my students into readers. This is due next Thursday, so I thought it'd be nice to post bits and pieces here and see what you guys think. That is, all two of you guys (er, gals) who actually follow this blog...

When my parents split up, my dad moved to an apartment two towns away. The first time he took me there, he wanted to show me how close he would be. We got stuck in traffic on the highway, and arrived 40 minutes later.

My dad would take me out to dinner on Wednesday nights, and I'd stay with him on weekends. It took him time to fill his apartment with the kind of clutter that makes a house a home. On one of our first Saturdays, we tossed a sock back and forth in his bedroom.

Even when possessions began to move in, I hesitated to explore the space. I slept on one side of my dad's bed for months, ignoring the new unpainted bunk bed I had been excited to get for when my friends slept over. I spent the nights watching college football or basketball, my dad cooking ravioli for dinner as the games ended and I signed onto AOL to browse the sports chat rooms. I'd go home on Sunday night with none of my homework done, my hair matted from not having showered all weekend. My mom scolded me, told me I was old enough to take responsibility for myself.

Responsibility was a big buzz word in seventh grade. After years of being led along by the hand, of having every step of every assignment looked at and commented upon and discussed one-on-one with the teacher, seventh grade was supposed to be the time I started to take education into my own hands. I got a B minus in Math the first marking period, then an A the second after the teacher agreed to tutor me privately. I was not ready for change.

Letter to Vassar

To Whom it May Concern,
My name is Austin Murphy, and I graduated from Vassar in 2005. Although I was not an English major, I took many classes in the department, and I'd have to say that Composition and Narrative Writing were my favorite. My interest in writing has led to my pursuit of a Masters at Teachers College, Columbia University in the Teaching of English. I am eager to share my passion for reading and writing with my students, a passion that might not have blossomed had I not been able to take these writing courses at Vassar. The Vassar Creative Writing program changed my life, and I am incredibly dismayed to hear that you are considering doing away with it.
The Vassar I remember was a place where creativity was valued, where kids who were smart but a bit "off-beat" went to share their unique perspective with others, to invest time and energy in pursuits that were more about discovering their life passions than preparing for a big post-graduation payday. Please have the courage to stand up for the Vassar I remember. Financial difficulties come and go, but the character of an institution lasts. Don't make the mistake of turning Vassar into just another degree factory. I will not be proud to have graduated from that Vassar.
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Austin Murphy
Vassar '05

Elizabethport Public Library

This is a post I made for Open Salon (http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=56447), who were looking for writers on the subject of "the worst job I ever had...":

It may not be the worst, but a job I had was as a desk clerk for the Elizabethport Public Library in Elizabeth, NJ. An off-shoot of the main branch, this was a tiny building that sat less than a mile from Newark airport, directly under the flight path. The defeaning roar of an airbus every two minutes was about the most exciting thing that happened there - the library had only English books in a mostly Spanish speaking neighborhood. The only customer I remember was a man in a torn jacket that smelled like piss who sometimes wanted to use the copy machine.

I sat at the main desk for eight hours every day, trolling the internet till I had spots in my vision. My co-worker, a Hispanic woman who ate foul smelling chicken for lunch in the break room, told me that the library didn't allow the clerks to read books while they were working. Apparently we were supposed to be making sure all the books were in order. The irony of a library that didn't allow its employees to read didn't escape me.

I was home from college for the summer and I was still sitting at home watching Jerry Springer in mid-July, so the library job was actually a bit of a blessing. And I do have a few fond memories from the second half of that summer. Every day, I met my friend Bekah at the mall for lunch. She'd watch me eat a Ranch One Chicken sandwich and waffle fries, and then we'd cruise by Lids for Less or Sam Goody's. I remember buying The Soft Bulletin by the Flaming Lips after reading glowing reviews from my library computer. I don't listen to that album much anymore, but it gave me comfort when I drove home with the sunset in my rearview every night.

"Feeling yourself disintegrate..."

The Auto-Tune Effect

This is also known as the T-Pain effect, that little digital modification that makes a human voice sound robotic. It is designed to correct inaccuracies in pitch, but artists like T-Pain seem to use it as an aesthetic of its own. In the same way that drum machines mimick drums but have an unmistakably different feel to them, so does the auto-tune voice change the way a singer sounds on a track.

Is using the auto-tune effect "cheating"? Country artists like Reba McEntire and Tim McGraw have admitted to using it during concerts, a way to ensure that the audience gets their money's worth by hearing the proper notes. T-Pain, and more recently Kanye West, make no secret of their use of the effect, so can we really think of their use in the same way? Is the auto-tune effect a new instrument altogether, used in different ways by different artists in the same way that a jazz enthusiast can tell Louis Armstong's trumpet playing from that of Dizzie Gillespie?

And the way that it "corrects" pitch...could we see that as a democratizing force in music? If all stray notes are pushed into perfect pitch, doesn't it stand to follow that anyone can sing a song with auto-tune and have it sound polished, maybe even "professional"? Might this allow a wider swath of singers onto the airwaves? Or does the effect actually serve to gloss away any natural characterstics of voice and instead create a one-size-fits-all model of "singer"?

Auto-Tune Democracy...an elective course, coming soon to a liberal arts college near you...

Me as an Educator

I just wanted to get down this thought while it occurred to me. Yesterday, I taught a lesson on the six traits of writing that was WAY over my eighth graders' heads. When I talked with my supervisor about it, it seems the biggest problem was that I just tried to do too much in too little time. I thought too big.

And today, I am constructing a 3-week unit plan for my Teaching of Writing class. I'm pretty overwhelmed with it, so I e-mailed my professor, explaining how I wanted to cover writers' circles, reading of memoirs, accessing our own childhood memories...all kinds of good stuff. She said I'm trying to do too much. Think smaller.

This is something I'm noticing as I try to think of myself as a teacher. I get the big ideas, which my supervisor says is the hardest part. I know what I want my students to know...but when I try to deliver it to them, I expect too much, I cram too much, I don't think of the little details enough. I need to work on much more detail-oriented thinking next semester. And now that I've written it here, I will be reminded of this when I start to over-plan again.