2001-02-16

"My name is Kaite and I go to Eastern and I'm a senior majoring in history but I really want to do photography and sing and... Is there something I can do?"

Judith ran around the kitchen cleaning, while Hilde washed dishes. "Yeah, can you rinse off those dishes there?" So, I stood next to Hilde and talked about some things that had been on my mind.

I've been taking a class called "Michigan History." It fulfills part of my history major requirements, but not only that, it's been reminding me of things I've forgotten, Like the Northwest Ordinance of 1785, and the French and Indian war. I've begun to see everything again in terms of what it is in history, but who am I kidding? I see everything in regards to historical context.

As I walked down through the quiet streets of Ypsilanti, I mused to myself the discussion Laura, Jeff and I had last night about Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor and economics, coupled with ideas about the transiency of these midwestern towns. The storefronts were quietly falling apart, the paint peeling off, the cement crumbling, quite like the way Detroit is quietly being reclaimed by nature. The old train station in Depot Town in Ypsilanti is closed. That form of transportation isn't used anymore. Before that, there was the canal and the riverways and canoes, and now we have cars. What form of transportation, I wondered, would replace the car? I mused to myself about how the current consumer culture has really only been in existence for a relatively short time, that being only 50 years or so. That means that it might only be a passing phase. What comes next could either be more technologically advanced, or perhaps it will only return to the lifestyle that preceded the Industrial Revolution. Or what if there is no turning back?

Think about plastic. In particular, think about film. Film is made out of plastic, and within a matter of years it becomes brittle, and not too long after that it becomes dust. That is what our throw-away culture is like. It will become dust in the sandstorm that is the waves of history. I'm wondering if we will even be remembered. If we are remembered, we will most likely not be remembered for our mistakes, because though we may have learned from them, our collective conscious memory will only last as long as our society does, and that might only last another 50 years. Already, the memories of concentration camp survivors are dying with the dead, and 1000 years from now, people won't even know who Hitler was. What if the Egyptians had plastic and we didn't even know it, simply because plastic eventually disintegrates. It simply doesn't last very long. How long will we? My roommate, Beth, recounted to me her experience of visiting Utah and going out into the desert to a place where it was obvious, from viewing the bedrock, that there had been an ocean there billions of years ago. This house I'm sitting in won't be here even 500 years from now. It will crumble and turn to dust. How long does it take for concrete to break and fall apart? Nature reclaims itself. Time passes.

I thought about all these things as I walked to Naomi's apartment and as I stood next to Hilde, rinsing the dishes and putting them on the plastic drying rack. "Yeah, I sure hope this society changes," she said. "That reminds me of a book I read recently in which someone from the year 2160 came back in time to the present and told someone that in the future, they live in a consumer-less, agrarian society..." The question begs to be asked, is that Wishful thinking? Or will we continue on this biotechnology, consumerism/corporate driven, let's splice genes and perfect eugenics kind of life? Will the artists and social dissidents further themselves from that society, or will they throw up their hands and stay entrenched in a society they cannot change? I was listening to NPR recently about a family who lived on a boat off the coast of Virginia, who had lived on a farm in Maryland where the father grew marijuana and they used that as their cash crop, and otherwise just lived off the land completely. And they did this as a political response to the rest of society. They were not born in that lifestyle. The founders of the religious faith I was born into were very socially and spiritually similar in that sense because they strove for separation from mainstream society and they stressed simplicity, pacifism and agrarianism, among other things. Only with time, as its ideals became formalized, did it become a patriarchal system, wherein the beginning there was some sort of gender equality.

So, I drank the cafe latte and conversed with them. Marita, I found out, was a photographer, painter and filmmaker. Hilde graduated with a degree in English and ruminated on the joys of post-graduate life. Judith was close to finishing her degree, and her boyfriend Max had recently moved to the US from Chile, to be with her and to get a job. Naomi is a high school Spanish teacher, and is planning on trekking up the western coast of Africa, from South Africa to Spain, some time next year.

As I sat down on the kitchen chair, an old blanket draped around my shoulders, Naomi chiseling away at my overgrown mop-top, I asked questions of Max. "So, what's the economy in Chile like?"

"It's wild," he said. "It's a wild free-market system, with the strongest job market in all of South America, and this is a result of Pinochet."

I was shocked. This contradicted everything I'd learned and heard about Pinochet, Chile, and the US's interests in driving democratic socialism out of Chile. He said that in all of Latin America, the best jobs and the best economy could be found in Chile. I related this to the state of jobs in Mexico, as I've been reading article after article on the front page of the New York Times about current state of Mexican industrialization, labor issues, sanitation, etcetra. It doesn't sound like a good situation there, but of course, I'm taking the word of a big corporate media company with lots of corporate advertisements -- and so maybe the truth is hard to come by. For example, in the New York Times, I often find it hard to find an unbiased opinion of the Palestinian situation. It often feels as though I'm only getting the Jewish sentiment shown in the article, and if I didn't know there was a Palestinian side to this issue, I wouldn't even think to read into the other side.

And just this morning I opened up the New York Times and found this big article about a mansion in Palm Beach, wherein the article discussed current decorative trends, styles and models. While, on the front page there were more articles about industrialization in Mexico, and the line has to be drawn, pointing out that this rampant selfishism that is the American standard needs to be examined, but we all need to examine it within our selves. Because it is inbred in all of us. We cannot take the Americanism out of us. We cannot simply pretend as though we are not these people who are completely disconnected from the land, and disconnected from the food we eat. We can't just go back to some other form of living, the Americanism within us is the most ingrained form of thinking that we have.

But maybe there are other ways. Like having your friends cut your hair. After I said goodbye to Max and Judith, Naomi and I walked down the stairs and she said to me, "Yeah, I like the barter system." I'm going to take photographs of her classroom and her students as my gift back to her.

So we hopped in her car and picked up her three year old brother, Mike. I asked her about the history of Ypsilanti and asked her about her history in it, as we drove around town. She told me that her family had moved from North Dakota to Minnesota and finally to Ypsilanti to be a part of an Ecumenical Christian Community -- named the Word of God. I was going to ask her more questions, but we arrived at her Mother's house just as she said the word Ecumenical.

Mike jumped into the car and didn't move for a couple of minutes. Naomi looked at me and said, "Sometimes, Mike can be a little S-H-Y." Mike sat in the back seat and stared at me. We pulled over to get some gas. He finally said something. "What's that," pointing to my labret piercing. I explained that it was a piercing like an earring, and I asked him if he liked it. He said no, he didn't like it. But then we started playing with each other, he had a hot-air balloon, and we played with that balloon, hitting it back and forth, until finally when Naomi got back into the car. Mike screamed to her, "She's Silly!" I said, "No I'm not! You're silly! Silly little boy!" And we just laughed.

And eventually, Naomi dropped me off in front of a bookstore, where I finally bought my textbooks. And when I got to class, I went to the bathroom and looked at my new haircut. It was ever-so-cute. And I thought about all these people and things and ideas. And I ran and checked my email. Both Markita and Amber had responded to the one I had sent to them last night. Last night I wrote to them stoned, saying,

"I've been at Jeff's tonight, and we began listening to a Michael Hedges album, and I have to say that I am duly impressed, and I realized that I want to do music that allows every artist speak. That gives each each artist a chance to move around and say something... Like, you have a guitar solo for a while, and then we get back together as a group, and then Wendy has a bass solo, and then we get back together as a group, and then amber has a drum solo, and then we get back together as a group, and then i sing, etc. You get what I'm saying? (I'm stoned.) And so, if we do that, and each person was allowed as much time as they needed.. so, that maybe the songs could be 20 minutes long maybe... Maybe we need to get to know each other first.. I'm not a short song person, though, I never have been."

Amber responded saying,

"I agree. And what better way to be outspoken and to show the collective talent than to focus on all of the participants in the band instead of the front person or the person who fits the mainstream title, or the funny one, or the deep one. I think all of the personalities should be equally explored."

Markita said (among other things),

"The best music is made when all who are involved are communicating and listening to each other."

And so, I am extremely excited about these people I will be working with. Not only are they passionate about music and their respective instruments, but they are talented and excited. We're going to work hard together, I think, in order to make this work. It'll be exciting to see what comes up of it all.

Man, this is one of those ridiculously long entries. I've come to the point now where I don't even know how to end it. It's like some giant scary monster. So I'll just sign off and wish you a happy day.

yours,
kaite

<< // >>
archives // site info // gratitude