Rik's Blog

I was on Twitter for a couple of years, but I never took it seriously. The best thing about it was reading posts from people like Bree Newsome, the Nap Bishop, and Katie Mack. But it also kind of sucked because the platform encourages everyone to interact like celebrities and/or shitposters. It never held the sort of intimate space of actually knowing other people that Facebook had in its heyday, at least for me. But I joined when I was already learning to hold social media at arm’s length.

My son is not on any mass-social-media platform at all, and I’m glad that works for him. Communities of choice (like Ravelry, Discord, old-school forums, even subreddits) can be unhealthy too, but can be moderated. The site I spend the most time on is Metafilter, a community link-posting-and-discussion site that dates back over 20 years. Unlike most users there, I’ve always posted under my real name, so I’m easy to find.

I’m trying to intentionally get away from doomscrolling and dopamine-drip browsing, and part of that is to use my time on the computer more for thinking and writing and less for endless checking on what new posts pop up.

I miss the old days of finding web sites that were continually updated, that I could visit once a day or once a week to catch up on. Like The Sneeze, that was a classic. Or Seanbaby or X-Entertainment or Cockeyed. Webcomics, flash cartoons, and dumb blogs. This is the internet I want to return to. And I plan to do my part by not posting updates to Facebook or shitposts to Twitter. I will put all those things here, whether anybody reads them or not.

This tweet got me thinking about “male socialization.” School for me was learning to experience the pecking order, which I was usually at the bottom of. I felt bullied and excluded constantly. As a boy who was more interested in listening to classical music than playing football, I was picked on, which often made me burst into tears, which of course only got me picked on more. There were years I didn’t really have a single friend.

I never wanted to be the weirdo, but I eventually accepted that as the only social role I was allowed to inhabit. I certainly would always rather be the weirdo than the bully, and I was not interested in pretending to like football just to try to fit in. In my era in the Midwest, there were no openly gay or trans kids in high school. I got called the slurs just for wearing a paisley shirt.

A friend recently asked me if it was weird for me to hang out in a big group of queer people. And I tried to explain why I feel more at home there. I don’t feel right trying to place any claim on the label of “queer,” having been married to my wife for over 25 years. But the weirdos at the bottom of the pecking order have always been my people. The typical male gender expression is bullshit. I feel at home in a skirt (I don’t care if you call it a kilt or not).

The pecking order taught me a lot about who I didn’t want to be, and about the sort of people I belong with. It’s probably at the root of why I have trouble trusting people, why I always expect disaster, why I jump to defensiveness and anger so immediately when I feel vulnerable. The pecking order (which encompasses both male and female socialization in our culture) scarred me in ways I’m still recovering from. And it damaged the people at the top of the pecking order in other ways–in worse ways, I think.

So I do feel that strange ambivalence of having pride in being a weirdo, in surviving those years as an outsider, while hating the system that creates weirdos in the first place. No one should have to go through that. The pecking order should never even be a thing. But sometimes it feels hard to define myself without it.

Why do I love this anime? Because it pokes fun at the role of househusband while also taking it seriously. They get so much mileage out of one joke (that being a yakuza and being a househusband have a lot in common), but it’s a funny joke and a creative setup.

But mostly I love it because of all the little details I recognize as true from my own life. I loved being a stay-at-home dad, and all the little ways of making the chores more fun (or just get done) ring very true.

I found it truly touching in places. It demonstrates a form of masculinity that is not toxic and incorporates traditional gender expression in nontraditional ways. Tatsu is serious, but deeply playful. Of course, it doesn’t linger on or ask too many questions about his violent past; the tone is too light for that. But as an in-the-present, everyday fella, you could do a lot worse for a sensei than Tatsu.

I love your term “punk lite” in your pitch of this. I grew up in the Alternative era (for a while it was called Modern Rock before the term “indie” came around). It was very much a punk-lite, goth adjacent vibe. I was in a bad garage rock band that only played one show (my high school graduation party).

I was a nerd who aspired to be cool in an era when you definitely could not be publicly both. I never cared about being popular, but I desperately wanted to be cool. So in college I put away the D&D books (only to find years later that some of my closest friends were also closet D&D nerds and we should have been playing the whole time!) and started listening to Brian Eno and hosting wine & cheese parties and trying to be grown up and artsy. I was using my overactive imagination to try and be a novelist instead of playing with action figures (It took me twenty years to learn that running role playing games is much closer to the latter, and much more fulfilling for me.)

As a smart, sheltered Catholic school boy in a small decaying rust-belt city it was hard to get to even a rough approximation of the kind of cool I wanted to be around. Everyone weird enough to be attractive was by definition a social outcast, so the best I could do was find a collection of different semi-cool-adjacent people that didn’t really fit together to hang out with.

In college, when I visited Washington DC and New York City, I realized those places were where I had always wanted to be and contained the sort of people I aspired to be. (Of course, when I did move to New York City, I realized that I would never be able to be cool enough to hang around the scene I aspired to.)

What I’m getting at is that Scott Pilgrim documents a scene about 8-10 years after my scene, but kind of similar to what I wanted to be a part of. The comic really captures the mood of dudes in their early twenties who know they ought to have broken out of the adolescent mindset by now but can’t quite bring themselves to. I dated a 17-year-old when I was 20, which was somewhat awkward but not as yikes as Scott being 23. I really struggled after that breakup and my next girlfriend was Elizabeth (though I didn’t have to fight her evil ex-boyfriends).

I like that the comic gets across that almost everyone in the scene is totally anxious that they’re not actually cool enough to be hanging out with everyone else (except Ramona, who is obviously on another level). But I worry over whether any of the characters will grow up enough to be worth spending all the time with. They are realistic early-twenties people and that’s not a period I have a lot of desire to relive. Scott himself is posed as both a hero and a dingus, but it’s hard to know if the author is self-aware enough to really pull that off.

The whole shift into shonen manga/video game fighting/bollywood dance at the end made me wonder “why didn’t you lead with that, if this is what this is going to be?” The gender politics of fighting for the prize of dating a girl (especially on top of the whole 23-year-old dating a 17-year-old) is not super promising, and the sort of anime + NES type references slide off me because of my age. But at the same time, I’d also had about enough of Scott’s simultaneous laziness and try-hard-ness, so the shift was welcome.

I love the art, and it gives off a very strong mood. The coloring is great, though I think it would look awesome in black-and-white, too. (I was there for the black-and-white boom of the 1980s.) And I kind of get what it’s trying to do mixing the mundane setting of Canadian indie rock with more magical/sci-fi/anime stuff. But I don’t think that mixing works super well. It’s too well grounded to take off.

Maybe I’m judging it too hard because it feels too close, just as I judge myself too hard.

Live in brokenness. Err repeatedly; tell everyone.

I’ve always lived in old houses. The house I live in now was built in 1927, and that’s later than the construction date of any other house I’ve ever lived in. (Of course, I keep aging, too, so the house I grew up in, though it was built in 1913, was only 63 years old when I moved in.) Old houses have problems. Sagging floors, wonky windows, roofs that need replacing, beams that need shoring up, wiring and pipes that need to be replaced. Best case scenario, you’re hoping for a Ship of Theseus where nothing matches because all the parts have been replaced at different times by different people. But old houses also have their charms: they are an entry point into a different world, with different standards and needs.

If you live in an old house, you know that nothing is ever really fixed. Problems are addressed enough that they fade into the background for a while. But there’s never enough time or money to maintain everything to the degree that it probably needs. And you know that no matter how fastidious you are in keeping up with routine stuff, something you didn’t even know about could reach a crisis state at any moment. And you just have to be okay with that. Some people can’t live in old houses, because they can’t accept that major systems could age out and collapse without warning. Of course, the joke is on them, because new houses aren’t really immune from similar problems; we’re all just one bad storm away from a flooded first floor, or something similar.

As I get older (and as I encounter more home maintenance problems), I realize that the whole world is just a bunch of old houses. Our economic system, our political system, our criminal justice system, our transportation, our farming, everything–it’s all just old plumbing ready to back up sewage into our “clean” kitchen. As a society we try to keep things patched up enough so that most people can pretend it’s okay enough, but we’ve had a lot of renovations by unlicensed contractors along the way.

I can try to contribute to working toward fixing whatever systems I can, but I have to live in the world the same way I live in an old house, knowing that everything is some level of broken or worn-out, that nothing will every truly be “fixed,” just jury rigged and painted over. “Good enough” is the watchword. Perfection is for people with more time and money than I’ll ever have.

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I make mistakes. Sometimes costly ones: I once signed off on a book cover that had a significant typo, and had to be reprinted (a mid-four-figure mistake). Sometimes costly in other ways: I was running an event at my store and a homeless guy came in asking for money, interrupting things, and I berated him for it. I wish I had a do-over.

There have been times my mistakes have weighed on me so much that I’ve thought of myself as a bad person, spiraling into self-disgust. That’s a mistake of thinking itself, and once I got some help I learned to practice better mental habits.

The worst thing you can do with mistakes is to hide them, to pretend they never happened, to cover them up. Especially as a white man, I’ve been trained since birth that I can bullshit my way through anything. I can say something wrong that sounds plausible and get away with it. So I’ve had to retrain myself to normalize not knowing things, and being wrong about things. It used to take a terrible emotional toll to own up to having screwed up; it’s still not easy. But I understand that admitting my incredible fallibility is a good thing. Only by being vulnerable can I claim my humanity. Beware of people who are never wrong.

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I can’t live in anger over every awful thing that people do. I’ve seen more disasters in my life than I expected to, and I’m starting to understand that this is the cost of living, and of being human. I’m going to see towers fall, and houses burn down, people cavorting unvaccinated and sewer lines back up, innocent people shot by police and roofs cave in. There are things I could have done to mitigate disaster, maybe, but when things are busy a little gurgle in the pipes doesn’t seem like a big deal until it’s too late. And then maybe I can do better next time, but I’m also just one person in a broken world. You try to fix what you can, when you can, but you also have to accept living in an old house, living amongst multiple systemic problems that can never truly be fixed, just patched up until next time. Because we’re all humans; we all make mistakes. And eventually enough mistakes and maintenance issues lead inevitably to disaster.

Do you ever wonder what it would sound like if Radiohead had written Pink Floyd’s seminal album, The Dark Side of the Moon? Of course you do. You’re not an idiot!

Fortunately, I have curated a playlist to answer all your questions.

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLckZjg5K9mlo5PUVA02jpijIc7DgUcHRw&feature=share

For head-to-head listening, start this playlist and when you hear “No paranoia,” start up the Pink Floyd album and listen simultaneously. If you listen to it this way, they line up pretty well initially, but side 2 gets messed up because of song lengths. So you miss out of how great “Where Bluebirds Fly” and “Any Colour You Like” work so well together.

I tried to keep the themes of DSOTM intact, as well as general song structure in terms of instrumentals/piano vs guitar heavy vs electronic. I tried to dip into every Radiohead album (save the first) and only double-dipped once. I was sorry not to get a Douglas Adams connection in, though.

Dark Side of the Moon is about the alienation and existential dread of modern life, and of growing up. The loss of idealism and the loss of sanity. Roger Waters was turning 30 when the album was recorded in 1973, the rest of Pink Floyd was the same age or slightly younger. They were turning a corner from the youthful experimentation of psychedelia to more adult concerns.

“Speak to Me” opens the album with a heartbeat blossoming into tape loops and samples from other parts of the album. It introduces the spoken comments about madness that are sprinkled through the piece. For the Radiohead song, I chose “Fitter Happier,” from OK Computer, which uses a computer voice to read out lyrics that start out banal and end up unhinged. It’s considerably longer, but immediately states the thesis that the Pink Floyd song only hints at.

“Breathe” is a slow, lazy, casual strumming song. At first the lyrics seem to match this relaxed attitude, but they turn dark and disillusioned. “Everything in Its Right Place” from Kid A has a similar feel to me, of calmness calcifying into oppression. Its lyrics are less straightforward, but “woke up sucking a lemon” seems uncomfortable and misaligned with everything being all right.

“On the Run” is an instrumental making heavy use of synthesizer and sound effects (things Radiohead would also renovate their sound with). The comment here is “Live for today, gone tomorrow, that’s me!” followed by a large crash. The Radiohead track is “I Am Citizen Insane” from Com Lag. It’s an instrumental with a driving beat, synths and effects, and the song title fits the theme of the album (compare to Floyd’s “Brain Damage”).

“Time” begins with a cacophany of chiming clock, followed by a long introduction of drums and chimes. (If you listen to the playlist and the album simultaneously, “I Am Citizen Insane” continues through this part of “Time.”) The lyrics echo the sentiments of “Breathe,” that it is easy to take life for granted and suddenly find yourself in a rut you can’t easily get out of. In fact, it transitions into a reprise of the earlier song. The Radiohead song, “Present Tense” from A Moon Shaped Pool, is connected through the themes of time (“self-defense against the present”) and despair (“my world comes crashing down”). It’s also got a more traditional use of guitar than many of the Radiohead songs, and its echoing lyrics play well against the Pink Floyd song.

“The Great Gig in the Sky” is lyricless, but its comments and title are about dying, and the long emotional vocalizations make one thing of grief, shock, loss, and mourning. It’s a song based in piano and organ, and it’s matched with Radiohead’s “Sail to the Moon” from Hail to the Thief. The Radiohead song also prominently features piano and sweeping vocals. Its lyrical themes mention a series of hopeful but impossible things, and the tone resonates with regret.

“Money” begins with a rhythmic sound collage of cash registers and adding machines. The lyrics are about greed and getting rich and how nice that is and yet amoral at best. The thing that attracted me most to Radiohead’s “Dollars and Cents” (from Amnesiac) is Philip Selway’s drumming, particularly his use of cymbals. The way he hits the ride cymbal sounds to me just like the coins hitting the counter in “Money.” It was listening to this song and recalling the Pink Floyd song that inspired this playlist to begin with. The Radiohead lyrics are cynical commentary on politics, capitalism, and selling your soul just to exist in the modern world.

“Us and Them” is a piano piece with a dramatic saxophone solo that delves into the distance and violence between people, whether it be countries or individuals. The Radiohead song is “Videotape” from In Rainbows, a piano song with lyrics about death, the devil, and technology. Both these songs do a bit of double duty with the other Rick Wright song “The Great Gig in the Sky” and its partner above.

“Any Colour You Like” is an instrumental. I encourage you to find the live versions of this song from before and after Pink Floyd recorded the album–it’s a fascinating musical evolution! The synth line feels like a waterfall, and there are some scat-style vocals. It pairs absolutely perfectly with Radiohead’s “Where Bluebirds Fly” (an over-the-rainbow reference if there ever was one!) from Com Lag.

“Brain Damage” is about going insane, or at least feeling insane. Of course the original founder of the band, Syd Barrett, had to leave the band five years earlier due to his deteriorating mental health. It was obviously a frightening experience that stuck with them, a theme they would return to many times. The Radiohead choice here, “Give Up the Ghost” (from The King of Limbs) is also sung over a strummed guitar, and the lyrics are sad and disturbing and ultimately as defeatist as the Pink Floyd ones.

“Eclipse” is the culmination of Dark Side of the Moon, a great list song (Pink Floyd has a few) with a triumphal build saying that everything and everyone everywhere is in tune. BUT … “the sun is eclipsed by the moon.” Which means what? That none of it really matters? (The final comment on the albums states, “There is no dark side of the moon really, matter of fact it’s all dark.”) It’s a wonderfully self-undermining climax that can be interepreted to mean whatever you like. Looking to Radiohead, I pulled a track from The Bends which sounds much more like a traditional straight-ahead rock song than anything else on this playlist. It makes a great resolution song, it’s about blaming all the bad things on the black star, the falling sky, the satellite (the bad things being mainly a breakup with a seemingly mentally unstable partner). It’s a rocker that presages the depressive, claustrophobic, paranoid output of later Radiohead.

I hope you found things to enjoy in this playlist. Thanks for attending my TED Talk. And for Christ’s sake, why did no one tell me to start listening to Radiohead 20 years ago?