Outlandish Josh's blog

Hippy music, please:

One of my most important original philosophical catchphrases is “The Most Important Thing Is To Stop Struggling.” It’s something I remind myself of frequently as my career goes through its whips twists and turns. Sometimes you find yourself in one of those situations where everything seems hard, impossible to begin on, just overwhelming. Sort of like being waist-deep in rubble.

Often the short term answer is to roll up your sleeves and dig out, because this is sometimes a devastatingly effective cheap psychological trick. That pile of dirty dishes never takes as long as it feels like it’ll take, for instance.

But, then there are the times where you feel constantly like you’re getting reset to that buried state, where you’re beating your head against the wall, doing the Sisyphus shuffle. When you notice that, it’s time to take a breath, look around, and see where/how/when to move laterally. Because as much as life is unfair, and full of adversity and strife and honest-to-goodness challenges, it’s also supposed to be — like the CSNY song there — sort of Easy.

And I don’t mean that in a lazing-about-in-the-sun sort of way, I mean it in the way that people talk about spreading a gospel. I can’t site chapter or verse, but there’s some bit I remember reading about how debating a strident non-believer isn’t a good use of time, because when you’ve got The Word you just need to find someone else who’s ready to hear it.

That’s a meta-lesson I take to heart, because really the whole premise of what I’m doing with my life and my company is a kind of gospel. We basically believe there are good ways to use open tools to make it easy, inexpensive and effective for millions of people to put their thoughts on the internet in ways they can personally own and control. We believe that by lining up all the right tools and making them easy and clear to use, we can radically lower barriers to entry in what is still an Emergent global conversation.

Speaking of old hippies, this idea has some roots for me in this passage:

Now I want to get into the idea of what is it about truth that makes truth important, cause there’s something about truth that’s really special … So, think what is truth, and what is it that we’re doing here, and what is it about being a man … like, one of the things about a man is that a man is the only animal that has a choice to make about truth. See, a cat doesn’t lie to you … you know, if cats like your vibes they crawl right up on you. If they don’t like your vibes, they’re not too hot for you. Right? The thing about truth is … God is I think trying to communicate with himself … And he has, on this here planet, about three and a half billion transceivers walking around, babbling to each other, constantly, trying to carry the circuit load for that incredible conversation that’s going on, of God talking to himself. See? And so there’s something that’s trying to be said too … right, and so we have to talk and we gotta listen when we talk as well as when we listen, in order to discover what it is that’s being said around here.

There’s a fundamental belief we carry that if we can open up enough channels and manage the flow, things will work out ok. That’s why it’s important to get people routed around firewalls in Dubai, because only with a greater ability to exchange information will we move, as a species, beyond the petty bullshit that’s tearing us apart.

Because it’s only through individual impulses, millions of honestly aligned little free-will seekers, that things actually get done. You can’t give people freedom or equality. Those are things that need to be taken. All we can do is make the most of our ability to coordinate, to learn, to align, to act, and to do all this in the common knowledge of a universal fraternity (the French kind, not Greek).

This is happening.

And when you’re delivering on the path to that kind of future, it may be hard fucking work, but it’s also easy. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter, as the poet says. And if it’s not easy, ask yourself why. Did you lose the script, or are you missing the easy way forward?

More music please:

This is a top-40 hit at the moment, and in heavy rotation (obviously) back out there in Nueva Jol. The video is a little ridiculous, but I challenge you not to let that chorus stick somewhere in your brain. You just gotta give it up for Jay-Z. He’s been cranking out anthems for the better part of twenty years now. I remember when I first landed at NYU you couldn’t walk fifteen feet without his hard knock life chorus ringing out from a car passing by. It wouldn’t be the city without him.

I arrived back in San Francisco Tuesday morning having caught up on a little rest (better sleeping through chemistry) and in time for a pretty big pitch meeting followed by a couple long days in the office. Drove up the 101 Wednesday night, fueled by mate and hope and glimpses of stars, really dropping the hammer north of Willits and making the whole run in just about five hours.

Best moment was that stretch between Laytonville and Legget where the road opens up to three lanes to accommodate slow truckers and you get that huge vista of the eel river canyon just packed with great old trees; moon was just starting to rise up behind me and at that point I was up above the fog level, nobody else on the road. Rolled down the window and let the world in; pure north coast magic.

I’ve been starting to notice all the things I’m going to miss about this place. Not just all the wonderful people, but the little things like the view out the kitchen window, the bustle of the old lady bartenders at Everett’s.

But it’s back out into the world for me. If I’m good and lucky, I’ll always have a place here, a toe on some of the best the ground in America, but it’s completely undeniable that my destiny is in some more densely populated space. The future is still uncertain there, but my latest trip back east made a very strong case for stepping up to the eternal challenge that city represents.

And so I’ll take these last months as a blessing. Most beautiful things are at least in some ways ephemeral. Knowing I’ll fly away increases the appreciation, and maybe that means my late days here will be the best yet. Sure hope so.

Music Please.

Looking out over the man-made mountains of Manhattan, full moon reflected off concrete, the lingering bite of snow in the air, wrapped up in shadows out on the fringe of exhaustion, pushing finally to the borderline of innocence past all the complications and angles; there’s where you find the essence of your reality, where control and construction fall away, where you are overtaken by events, have no choice but to Be There, suffering your nerves, grinding your jaw, feeling your guts churn, your heart about to leap or sink or smolder or burn.

And even though this can be at times quite unpleasant, the greater way is to ride these waves, breathe deeper into the butterflied tummy, the tensed-up shoulders; to channel all this energy, to let it all flow, to have the essence of original cool, neither loosing or asserting control. Because this is your life, and it’s not really something that should be rationalized. It’s something you aught to live, deeply if at all possible.

A pretty smart and pretty passionate (and it should be said, pretty pretty) woman I know explained to me once how getting out on a long road trip was a good way for her of “hitting the reset button,” getting re-acquainted with what’s important, real, true, etc. I know the feeling, but unfortunately don’t have a personally reliable formula for getting there myself. So it’s blessed when I’m transported thus, smack dab back to the moment.

It’s not really like turning your mind off so to speak — just drink five shots of whiskey if that’s what you’re after; gets boring, don’t it? — but more like getting your brain to take its foot off the brake. Scary, yes, but scary good, or to be more specific scary in the only way that anything will ever matter.

The cliches run faster than I can parry here — fortune favors the bold, risk is our business, etc — but it’s a lucky day in Koenigville. I feel closer to the truth for a change. Worn thin and frankly a little cranky from plane-sleep and whatnot, but charged up in a deeper more soulful place, with an energy I hope will last in the weeks and months to come.

Just another great weekend in NYC. Got to see some new and unexpected vistas last night — midtown was magical, much as hipsters might malign; rotating bars, passionate opinions, scintillating intellects and wide-open honest folk. There are so many overlapping worlds here, and joy to be had in unexpected quantity.

So now to wrap things up, some NYU-area wandering and hearty food in the East Village, and hopefully a preview/demo of my mom’s big presentation. I wish I could stay and play for longer — “stay a while. stay forever“ — but I’m down to my last day and nights. Strong competition for my future though, I think.

I’m in NYC, but thanks to a return to The Palace (from days of yore) I am moving slooooow. It was a good time though! Fab Dinner with Jeremy and Rachael (who have set a wedding date!) followed up by sister-dude, $8 pitchers of budweiser, Priest on the juke and me stepping up to some guy with my early-2000 street-cred. He was born in the neighborhood, so I ended up buying him a shot, but given that the place is overrun with kids these days I felt like I had to stand up.

Anyway, muddling through things, I goofed around with Pantheon a bit, and then google analytics data exporter, which I plan to start integrating for more accurate statistics of reads on my posts, etc. Fit of pride: 3,500 actual reads of this essay.

And now a txt from the momster. She’s arrived. Time to get up and go!

Just as much as I find myself cringing whenever politicians use phrases like “Main Street” and “Special Interests,” it’s worth noting that people outside the mainstream — my own people, so to speak — have just as many sucktastic language tics.

At the moment I’m reading The Army of the Republic, which was right there next to the just-finished Chronic City in the “Hip Lit” section of the U of O bookstore when I swooped in a couple weeks ago. Downshifting from Letham’s prose is rough, but Stuart Archer Cohen’s subject matter — domestic terrorist/patriots vs. water privatizers — is right up my Red Dawn alley. It’s a fun read so far.

However, it’s reminding me that it’s just as irksome to read leftist cliches about taking it to the streets and whatnot. Even the more radical dialogue can make me wince. The revival we want to see is going to take a new language, purged of these cliches and their anti-meaning. Paging Dr. Lakoff...

Although, it could be closer than we think. Maybe I’m just an old softie, but this still gets me:

And I wish to god that someone would stick all of Perot’s stuff on youtube for posterity. There’s a huge amount to learn from what he was able to do:

And finally, if you made it this far, you are Steppin’ Razor.

Apropos the previous posts about political power-grabbing and whistful public longing, and after a quick trip through the Jon Robb link farm, another thought I’d like to log for the register: in this crazy modern era of ours, in which the existing system is fumbling more than the San Diego Chargers, how long before we really start to think outside the box. Like waaaaay outside the box.

For instance, just off the top of my head:

• Why not real international solidarity between people of the same generation?
• Why do we still grow food in the dirt? Why not just go ahead and use engineering?
• Why not start your own tribe? Literally.
• Why is it only old people get to live in dedicated communities? Own a home with your roommates.

My parents generation was willing to question pretty basic assumptions about how they were supposed to live. It didn’t all work out, but it was a worthy exercise I believe. I think my generation is in an even more (potentially) radical space, thanks to these here internets. Not only can we interconnect with like-minded folks around the world with unprecedented ease, we can self-publish, self-learn, and figure What Actually Works in ways that were completely unthinkable to previous generations.

It looks bleak in some ways, but in other ways it looks pretty bright and wide open. Bears remembering.

I’m an opponent to conspiracy theories, see them as disempowering distractions which create endless rationalizations for complacency. At the same time, I am an unabashed fan of conspiring. It’s my own little paradox of proactivity: don’t waste your time trying to unravel a hidden coterie behind why the world is what it is, just get busy making your own.

Spent last night talking Redneck Socialism over pizza and beer with Face and The Girth. We’re bandying the ideas of rolling up on California’s Canada and implementing a takeover. Prosperous though our lives have become here, the golden state feels like barren ground for the revolution, and we’ve sometimes a great notion there’s an opportunity to do something more than live what passes for the bourgeois American Dream (home ownership, retirement savings, etc) in this 21st Century. At the risk of some material comforts, we can be heroes. After all, risk is our business.

As Eric Schlosser points out, it’s been liberals attempting to “look tough” who are largely responsible for the prison industrial complex. This kind of hollowness, this essentially immasculine fear of appearing weak, the willingness to do truly terrible things to literally millions of people… this is the quintessential malaise which infects the contemporary Democratic party, and prevents real reform.

Redneck Socialism is our answer. Simply put, we see politics not as a deliberative exercise, where senatorial comity and “bipartisanship” are the ideals, but rather as the pragmatic and utilitarian pursuit of the Public Good, which is a very real thing, and which has very real enemies. We’re blowing fat lines of Huey Long style populism here. It’s impossible to contemplate the requirements of the post-modern Public without confronting the realities of inequality, and the abusive nature of much contemporary corporate/other power. We have to stop poisoning ourselves, our planet, and developing a massive underclass for profit, and find more and better ways of making money. It ain’t really that hard to do.

This can also be seen as the boots-on-the-ground extension of The New Freedom Movement, which has a broader cultural agenda to help wake up the zombies and usher in a golden era for the species. By taking on a large but not impossibly huge chunk of territory — bigger than a compound, smaller than the world — we’re looking to enact our ideas for change by directly engaging and altering the course of the existing system. In other words, DC looks like a lost cause but it seams reasonable we might crack Salem or at least Multnomah County.

In sooth, “Socialism” is a pretty meaningless phrase. Almost as amorphous as “Capitalism” in light of how our twin dynamos of Wall Street — “I drink your milkshake!” — and the sad ghost that politicians blithly catchphrase as “Main Street” have collapsed. Finance has devolved into scheming con games and outright gambling, and I don’t know where these fucks live (Disneyland?) that they think bloviating about “main street” can be anything but a reminder of how Wal*Mart used and abused most of regular America, but there you have it.

So we’re looking to move beyond. Our belief is that by outing elephants in the room, having the courage to address unspoken issues and bring up sacred cows, while at the same time remaining totally pragmatic and ready to play bare-knuckled politics with all comers, we can advance something much more meaningful than “bipartisanship” or “centrism.” Splitting the difference isn’t leadership.

Music please.

I got a note the other day that complimented me on the quality of my "public longing" (that as opposed, I understand, to the more conventional "secret longing") and this tender sprout of an idea took root in the unfortunately rocky and barren terrain that is what passes for my subconscious these days. I don't know if it's really something to be proud of, but I think I've gone too far down the road of radical transparency to really make much of a turnaround now. Nothing short of the online equivalent to death (that is, taking the whole thing down) can really extricate me from my legacy. Or, as they say in the middle of a bum trip, the only way out is through.

So public longing it is. New tag. Warning to any groundlings out there who might see this post; it's got mature content, which is preferable to immature content IMHO (and as the man sez), but if yr parents aren't into that sort of thing, maybe trip away*.

I'm back in that Swerengen place, which I know at least some people out there get. It's a nasty cocktail of pressurized and randy, a place I get where the facts of my life stretch me out thin enough that there are a real limited number of things that'll make me feel good, and the first one on my mind is getting epically laid, but of course this is a pretty terrible position from which to go playing the scene.

I ejected from a particularly nettlesome day in the SF office (12 hours spent mostly heads down, and not much to show for it) and ran my bike right in front of a cop against a red light. My bad, totally, and I swung away and saved my own life there, but he wanted to give me some shit about it since I guess it gave him a start too. No ticket, thanks, but it really ruins the near-death adrenaline rush which (sorry mom) is a staple of my urban cycling reverie when you get chewed out by the law after the fact.

So he hassled me into walking the bike, which I did for a block or two in case he swung around, and so got a little sidewalk-level view of Thursday night in SOMA. Ostentatious pretty people smelling good in the sort of atrocious way of perfume. Bouncers and young professionals. Sorority girls past their prime. Needless to say this wasn't quite my scene, but it got me thinking a little bit.

Because, hey dipshit, what exactly is your scene? Sure I can sound some aesthetic or class-warriorish notes, but what exactly am I doing with my life that's more interesting or exciting than the yuppie circus on Townsend? Not much.

And this cuts right to the heart of this whole tied-up wish-i-could-get-some scene I've been inhabiting in and out for years now. My man Jack's commandment #4 is to "Be in love with yr life" and that's been a stretch for quite a while now. I don't meant to cast aspersions on any of the wonderful, talented and entertaining friends, comrades and fleeting lovers who've been my companions over the past few years but the truth is it hasn't really been there for me. What gets you out of the bed in the morning? For me, it's responsibility; the knowing that Shit Will Get Fucked Up if I drop out; which is no way to live, long haul.

At the same time, I'm uber-conscious of my massive privileges. I might have eaten off food stamps and government cheese as a kid, been the first generation of my mom's family to graduate from college, but my pops was a PhD, and even though they weren't together they both loved and supported me fully and completely which is the more important point. It's no legacy Yale admission, but in real terms it's the leg up that matters in life.

In other words, the predicament I find myself in is nobody's fault but my own. Ain't no excuse for not living the dream 'cept maybe it's hard to get to sleep sometimes.

Honestly I think I'm afraid to put my desire out there. It's easy to write public longings in the removed digital safety of a blog, but I mean in meatspace, dig. Here I wrote a whole play riffing on the Jungian conundrum of self/shadow-self, and a short decade later I'm too uptight to let my sexy out. I'm unsure whether it's ye old fear of success, or the less glamorous and more cowardly terror before the specter of rejection, but these submerged parts of my consciousness are pretty well deep under.

Which is, again, no way to be long run. This leads to weird flailing thrashes of emotionality. I can see it clearly: too long out of circulation, starting to make more out of things than they really are, the tone of voice when someone's talking about a relationship that tells you not to question their commitment to sparkle-motion. Playing catch-up on the emotional spectrum. Bringing around someone and making all my friend pretend to like them.

That's not me, but I can see it out there, this dark future.

The alternative is to find something to love about my life, about being a grown up, a professional, a self-made man. I've made much hay from my ability to bridge structural holes over the years, but it's left me with a lot of scattered bits of my identity. My political people and art people and red dawn people and drupal people and oldest dearest friends all know different flavors of a Josh, and explaining one to the other can be difficult verging on impossible. Me is somewhere in-between.

And underneath all the sexual frustration in the world is the prom-night romantic hope that maybe just getting with the right girl would bring it all back home. Seems kind of unlikely, really, but it's there.

More likely is I figure out my shit, own it, love it, rock it, and that makes me feel pretty good, loose, hot and free, and then interesting things start happening.

Until then I don't see much alternative to continuing to fumble along, and try not to let any opportunities pass me bye.

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*I feel increasingly compelled to do these sorts of disclaimers now that I realize my teenage nieces and nephews are on the internet as much as I am, and since my feed hookup cross posts all my stuff to facebook. This whole thing was a lot less complicated when it was more samizdat and all I had to worry about was offending my mom, who's very hard to offend.