This isn't something that's exactly in the forefront of my life right now, (having had my rather fanatical stage burn down slightly), but just last night I had my friend Dave listen to "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" by Neutral Milk Hotel and he went ape-shit over it. "Genius, fucking incredible, hey, lemme see the CD case, why hasn't this sold billions?"

This thing came out 3 or 4 years ago, it's obscure and that can be a problem, but so is this web page. I don't know, I guessing that at this point if you haven't loved it you probably don't care, but I couldn't care less if you don't care, I'm going to write about it. Because it's important. This is music criticism....yawn...but I'm going to try to make it worth your while -- even if you decide not to devote your life to Neutral Milk Hotel.

This disc brings music critics (who, remember, are professional music appreciators) to their knees, not just in admiration of it but in humility. I can hear in their voice the naked insignificance and impotence before the task of describing this work of art. Is it possible to say that it's the most important popular music recording of the last 10 years? Probably. 20? 30 years? Important because of the responsibility one feels upon hearing it. For what it means to each person -- what it can do to you; not what it stands for, or how many teenage hair-dye jobs it inspired.

Sometimes critics rave about the rare vocal talent or how he blends distant musical styles or they quote a chunk of his lyrics in an attempt to give you flavor. They cannot give you're the shock to the system that hearing this music will. They, (well maybe they can) will not be able to make you cry like this music can. You cannot resist it. The music will nuzzle up against your fear and enchant your confused postmodern brain.

You have to be a seeker. If you're not looking for it you won't find it. Seekers know that they may not know they've found it when they do. Most people think they're seekers but they're waiters, waiting to be shown things. I think I can tell the difference between people (it has nothing to do with how many CD's you buy). Can you recognize when art is affecting you (even in the tiniest way) and harness that interest and let it drag you into a deeper appreciation? It's a rookie mistake to judge people by whether they like a piece of art. Gotta watch that, but it's hard not to judge a person by their reaction to Neutral Milk Hotel -- really hard.

Do you have to be a college educated upper-class artistic white person to like this music? I don't know many people that aren't like that. But I would like to know the demographics. One thing's for sure, it's not a big seller. And I'm not prepared to dismiss it if it turns out that it has no reach beyond that class of people.

Know this: if you think it's all hopeless and everything that our culture is trying to shove down your throat is vomitous; this thing remains. It's there. I can tell you that there is a sustained piece of genius, a marker that you can point to, that came out in the late 90's proving that it can still happen. This one thing is all I need to keep hope alive. No, it's not even hope, it's assuredness. (Pretentiousness needle entering the red zone)

The Zen Guerrilla show at the Bottom of the Hill last night taught me that we need to rejoice. If you have no hope the first step is to rejoice and be thankful for what you do have. You have Neutral Milk Hotel. Take a little bit and rejoice that you have that.

I just love Hindu men streetsleeping in the 96 degree Bombay heat

The wall of my room at Mehta Hostpital for Women Care, Bombay.

Don't know where this is but I think it's in front of Dave Farsan near Babulnath Chowk. Bombay.

I just watched Gandhi for the first time since 1985. It was very moving and relevant. Gandhi was killed by a Hindu extremist who thought he was giving too much away to the Muslims during the shaping of independent India.

Indians today know almost nothing of Gandhi nor do they care. They learn about his political role and his philosophy is brushed aside as naiveté or extremism. While I was in India, I was very curious about this mass amnesia of the ideas of the father of their country. I lived on his street for a while. It's something similar to our society still playing the music of the late sixties on the radio all the time but the ideas that went along with it are derided old "hippy daydreams" -- naked, dirty failures of the "Age of Aquarius". They will say, "Gandhi is ours" but he is not theirs any more. I will not let them have him. They just want him, so when it's convenient, they can flash a cardboard cut-out of him to the world and say, "this is our great father, our ancient culture deserves your respect". This is the most disingenuous crap I can imagine. I could go on forever about all the conflicting and countercultural ideas that got Gandhi killed but I won't.

I felt really bad yesterday. I'm sure everyone did. I watched too much TV. You shouldn't watch too much TV I think. I say that as Peter Jennings streams live on my laptop.

I tried to get a handle on why I was feeling so bad. I felt the immediate pain of the scene -- imagining falling 1000 feet inside a crumbling, flaming office building. But my own brand of fear was not a feeling of vulnerability -- that it could happen to me, but hopelessness that the attack would not further polarize the earth. I was in India when the nuclear standoff with Pakistan was at its most insane. Many people who've been to Israel have witnessed the brand of intolerance that I saw all over India. Hindus and Muslims have been killing each other for a thousand years there. Actively and enthusiastically killing, stopping only for brief periods when they faced a greater enemy, such as the British Raj.

These two groups were so similar to me (at least relative to a westerner). They were all Indian and I was confounded by their hatred of each other. The differences between Hindus and Muslims are not as great as their difference from the west and Christianity but the hatred and fighting is more intense because of proximity. While I've never been to a purely Muslim country, the northern region of India is very traditional and has had less multicultural and modern influence than the south. To my untrained eye, the Hindu areas of the north resembled traditional Islam more than they resembled the Hindu areas of the south.

Sure, for a thousand years Muslim conquerors had swept down from the north into the Indian Subcontinent. Temple desecration is a favorite sport of both groups. They have different views of God, Islam is more exclusive and Hindus are supposed to think that every God is holy, but so many other things are similar. Some of the cultural differences that make Muslims hate the west so much -- the debasing sexually explicit conduct, personal selfishness and independence, the secularism, moral relativism, equal rights for women -- all are equally opposed by traditional Hindu culture. These are things that worry all Indians as the west begins to erode their culture. "MTV is ruining my daughter."

Their society cannot battle the new temptations that the media imports. Commercials make people ashamed that they don't have sparkling white smiles but nobody can buy toothpaste. Why the ads? It seems like a most cruel form of punishment and I don't blame them for the rage that boils out of their helplessness. They want to fight but they don't even have the skills to combat the media. We fight media with more media but what do you do if you don't want more media and aren't very good at making it in the first place?

Most Indians, Muslim and Hindu distrust the west and its "we're superior, so of course you want to be like us" smugness. (Although I must admit that, naturally, most of the people I spoke to were enthusiastic about becoming "westernized and modernized". They were businessmen and convent-educated upper-class urbanites, but these people were a very small minority.) Living in that climate has made me feel that I understand the mindset of our "enemy" in a way that is not possible if you've never been to that region. It made me feel the pain more. This is my home but I know what people are like over there. I know a little bit of what they respect and respond to. And I think I know why they did it. It was more painful because it wasn't so random to me. It was as if I'd seen threats made into reality.

This was very hard for me to take but even harder was the thought of what we would do. I know that subtlety will be completely lost on these people. We watch in-depth coverage for 10 hours a day but they get at most a sound byte from the President. I'm afraid that we can do nothing short of annihilate them to achieve the kind of safety we want. Completely spiritually breaking these people, so that they do not raise all their young to one day become suicide bombers, is a gruesome task. The American people are ready for carnage I'm sure, but snapping the backs of every country in the region until they all become happy democratic capitalist outposts is going to require a lot more killing than we did in WW2. I'm very pessimistic.

We can do nothing also. I saw how Hindus and Muslims can coexist. The week I spent in Ajmer is an example. Ajmer is predominantly Islamic. I was taken by Hindus to one of the most holy Islamic shrines and was welcomed there. I was shocked that my Hindu friends acted like it was their own church. They knew the rules and they were devoted worshippers. What happened to me in the Dargah was the most profound religious moment of my stay in India. It was religious for me because of the tolerance I witnessed.

This was an example of the pacifying aspects of religion. I think there are too few of these to sustain the people. I saw a lot of prejudice (prejudice like we Americans are not allowed to express). Our country was founded on religious freedom and even though people generally don't want to behave, those rules do have some restraining properties. Hindus and Muslims trash talk each other and think nothing of it. "They're dirty" or "They cannot be trusted" are common asides whispered by a new confidant. Almost every person I met tried to win me over to their side. I was shocked to see very caring and rational doctors say stupid racial things as a matter of fact. This is where I noticed the caste system kicking in. It's perfectly "holy" to act as if someone else is genetically inferior to you.

If we do nothing we will look like fools to half the world. I'll bet dollars to donuts that Indian Muslims will not pull out the words of Gandhi, (There is no way to peace, peace is the only way), who once was their protector -- and died for it, and praise us. They will mock us as incompetents. There is no great leader to pour higher meaning on this situation and have it penetrate into Islam. Gandhi could do it but what have we got? George Bush? Fer crissakes. He keeps saying "good" and "evil". Those words suck so bad. George, Mr Christian, listen to what Gandhi has to say about Christianity in the West:

It is my firm opinion that Europe today represents not the spirit of God or Christianity, but the spirit of Satan. And Satan's successes are the greatest when he appears with the name of God on his lips. Europe is today not nominally Christian. In reality it is worshipping Mammon. "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom." Thus really spoke Jesus Christ. His so-called followers measure their moral progress by their material possessions.

It is a very curious commentary on the West that although it professes Christianity, there is no Christianity or Christ in the West, or there should have been no war. That is how I understand the message of Jesus.

Consider this when you strike back in the name of God. And also consider what Gandhi said on avoidance of anger:

I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.

I spare neither friend nor foe when it is a question of departing from the code of honor.

It is not that I do not get angry. I do not give vent to anger. I cultivate the quality of patience as angerlessness, and, generally speaking, I succeed. But I only control my anger when it comes. How I find it possible to control it would be a useless question, for it is a habit that everyone must cultivate and must succeed in forming by constant practice.

 

I just posted a picture of myself on hotornot.com. This site is really fun. It's what I would call a True Internet Classic. I'm putting this little rating graphic in my blog before I've had any votes. I went totally non-anonymous with my photo. Maybe that's stupid. Hellifino. Even if it was stupid, I'm pretty sure the results will be interesting.

HOT or NOT Official Rating ? Not enough votes to calculate a rating Check out my picture! My raw votes: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 How HOT are you? - www.hotornot.com

I found this on my way home one morning. It was across the street from us.

Creaky Flag :27 seconds or download 700 kb

I just watched "Not One Less" and I have to admit to being pretty ambivalent to the thing going in but...WOW. I figured it would be one of those touching independent cinema, make me wanna get out my checkbook, kinda old-yellers but I wasn't prepared for the spontaneous beauty of those kids or the frustration with the coldness of the adults. 'Cause I'd seen "Raise the Red Lantern" and that was pretty good and the ad for this one made me think it was some manipulative, over-sentimental crap but I was stunned by this film. It never let me have what I wanted, holding back and staying true then only letting me witness redemption when it was finally due. Then, watching the credits I find out that this was a true story, played by non-professional actors and my admiration grows. Where else are you going to see 26 thirsty third graders share two cans of coke? They've never tasted the shit before! Brilliant! Sure it's hokey, with a Bad-News-Bears sort of turnaround at the end, but goddamn it, I needed that.

Watch as David Maltz, gentleman and scholar, gets down and gets pixelated.

Blue Feet :37 seconds or download 677 kb