Outlandish Josh

Existential crisis of meaning. Four years in Chapter Three. Leaving Westhaven. A new life is coming, but what sort? Well dude, we just don't know.

So here's this table from a slide from a presentation my business partner sent me as part of our ongoing project to raise the level of our entrepreneurial game. It's about people's motivations for starting businesses:

It should come as no surprise to anyone that my heart lines up firmly in the Missionary camp, but what kills me about this table is how much my actions are in the other. Beliefs, they say, are habits of action. What you do is who you are, regardless of what you say you think.

This is a cause of no small consternation. Obviously without the "whole life (that works)" bit things are unsustainable, but beyond that — beyond the fraying social ties, the softening physique — there's a sort of spiritual death that begins taking hold. Operating outside my actual motivational framework is a game of diminishing returns; ultimately ending in who knows what, but probably some kind of dark rock bottom indeed.

The problem is that my "actual" desires are vague, without form, and void. Darkness lies upon the face of the deep, but underneath the perpetual engine of ambition cranks away. I don't believe I'll ever be satisfied — and to be honest I sort of like that fact — but blind groping hungry ambition isn't an especially attractive or effective state to be in, just wanting to "be somebody," like an overgrown infant, crying in anger, gumming at the world.

It's a huge complex to unravel, full of compromises and contradictions. The other day I got sucked into engaging with a canvasser for Greanpeace down on Market street. Nice enough hippy kid, kinda stoned, with a pretty righteous come-on about how if we didn't act now, all would be lost. I had to turn him down and be on my way, but it made me wonder why/how/where I would make up for that.

And on the other side of the ledger, for all I've done in the past four years I've achieved some modest self-made-man status. Feels like a B+. Don't get me wrong, it's a good thing to be free of debt and have a little savings, but beyond the basic bail-out freedom that gets me, money fails to strongly motivate. It's not going to get me any real power or influence at this rate, and when it comes down to it I'm culturally allergic to the petit bourgeoisie lifestyle towards which I listlessly trend.

I would like to say I'd rather be a bohemian pauper genius — a bikeman or beatnik or something or other — but the problem is I'm not sure if that's true. I've lost some of the starry-eyed optimistic bravado, don't feel the universe swirling around me much these days. When the Girth wants to call me out, he tells me I'm just another "aging hipster." Sometimes it does feel like this, like I'm past my prime and I should just adjust my expectations downward, settle.

Fuck that noise though. "Be in love with yr life," is one of the better maxims I know, and I'm not really there. I don't know what I love, just what I'm obligated to do, so I live more and more like a Mercenary, a Missionary who's lost his faith. I'd be happier to be poor and on a higher road, but somewhere along I lost my way it seems.

It's a bad scene, no doubt. This is why I'm not writing so much, I think.

The upside is that there's some conscious self-examination happening. Better to be actively engaged in the pitched battle of spiritual crisis than just... struggling.

How does this sound?

“The state should not tear down the apples from the tree of economics. What the government should do is help grow our apple orchard, develop our economic environment.”

That’s Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, aka shift manager for Boss Putin.

The question I have is why does the President of Russia (in translation, even) seem to have a better grasp of post-free-market-fetish economic rhetoric than our own progressives? I mean, it’ll be really unfortunate if the Left in the US doesn’t come to articulate a competent vision alternative vision to the current “world order.” Though maybe not all that surprising.

Apologies again for absenteeism. I’ve been on the run and under the gun. Catching bits of the world cup and feeling nostalgic for what was, after all, four years hence.

A new day will come.

Hey New Yorkers, get your shit together and go see my hombre Andrew Dinwiddie and his resurrection of Jimmy Swaggart. GET MAD AT SIN!:

In meticulously recreating one of Mr. Swaggart’s early 1970s culture-war sermons (from a vinyl record) in “Get Mad at Sin!” Andrew Dinwiddie reintroduces us to a gifted orator, compelling performer and thunderous moralizer in his prime. It’s a surprisingly generous act of resuscitation.

Strutting back and forth on a pink carpet, kicking up his legs and swooning at his own rhetoric, Mr. Dinwiddie as Mr. Swaggart breaks into a sweat but never loses his cool. He tosses in theatrical pauses and even some slang to attack the evils of homosexuality, premarital sex and acid rock. Mr. Dinwiddie’s powerful voice contains the echo of the great Baptist preachers as well as a breathy rumble that approaches the erotic.

But this is no Reverend Billy-like satire featuring winks at the hipster crowd or political cheap shots. The director, Jeff Larson, lets this fascinating historical document, which diagnoses a culture lurching toward oblivion, speak for itself, absent biography, context or comment. It’s an interesting strategy and emphasizes the stemwinder as a work of theater.

I'll spare you the lengthy cultural diatribe, but I'm fucking pissed that I'll miss this by a week. It's exciting to see my erstwhile creative peers begin coming into their own, and I really like the sound of this work. First of all because Andrew could conjour humidity on stage like nobody's business, and I have no doubt this performance is something of a tour-de-force; but moreover because of how it's constructed.

See, my generation — if I may be so bold — is post-post-modern. Not to be cheeky (we'll find a better term) but the simple deconstructive irony that seemed so bold and vital say 20 years ago is, well, boring. You can't just mock something and expect that to work. Nor can you reduce something to a pile of pieces and say you've done anything really worthy of anyone's attention.

In the spirit of those oversmart drunk-asses in Portland, I'd say we're moving on into a phase of (re)-reconstruction, or maybe we've come all the way 'round to some sort of neo-modernism. Faced with an ever-growing Undercurrent of Doom There's a yearning out there for answers, even if they may be wrong, even with the knowledge that they are almost certainly wrong. Failures pave the way to truth, and we're at a point as a culture, as a species really, where we can't just sit back and take potshot questions anymore.

It's who dares wins in the 21st Century, and you might start by reducing everything to base components, but you can't stop there. You can't just shamble around in a pile of cultural detrus and expect some thinly-veiled autobiographical content about your sex-life to pull it through. No siree, these days, you have to actually attempt to say something.

And in a way I hope that's what my man is doing. By presenting something in a juxtaposed context and letting it really be, in letting us hear the words of yesteryear's fallen moral tyrant, there's something to be said, something expressed. Even if it isn't correct — even if in hindsight is borders on the tragicomic — there's something being said there. As someone who's grown to know and love the "successful fail," I like that.

Go see the show. You'll dig it.

I got handed a voter guide from The League at the 24th and Mission Bart today. Gave me a warm and fuzzy. Love this stuff:

How crazy is San Francisco politics? We're endorsing Gavin Newsom, a guy who blocked us on twitter! We disagree with Gavin a lot. He talks a good game at being progressive, but most of the time he's on the "big money" side of crucial local issues: selling out Bayview/Hunters Point to Lennar, siding with PG&E against public power, etc. His policy of reporting immigrant youth to ICE before they've been convicted of any crimes is horrible. But when you take him out of SF and compare him to the usual hacks who run for office statewide, Gav looks pretty good. He supports reforming Prop 13 and is semi-serious about addressing climate change. His opponent in the primary is Janice Hahn. Her politics seem pretty good, but we don't think she's ready for prime time. She's gotten by on her family name and just doesn't have the experience.

Pssst! Here's a poorly kept secret: the main reason we want Gavin to become Lt. Governor is because if he wins, the Board of Supervisors gets to pick his replacement, and we're hoping that would mean that we'd finally get a Mayor we could be excited about! Some of us are afraid this could backfire on us: Gavin goes on to become Governor or Senator and uses his clout to support candidates and policies that we don't like. Hmm. It's a tough call.

And then there's the comedy. Here's a real ad:

And then this:

Good times...

Mood music from some kind of genius.

I’m coming unmoored from the patterns and places that have been holding me down (or stabilizing me) for the past four years. Like a piece of space-borne high tech equipment that becomes disconnected from the mothership, my relationship to my previous live becomes more and more a product of literal inertia. Gaps begin to emerge.

Nothing as yet is rushing to fill in the spaces. The new direction is unclear, less a product of intention and energy expended than drift. I am shifting geographies and societies, but this is a broad infrastructural initiative — like vowing to lose 10 pounds or to read the classics — and not an end in and of itself. Something that I’m doing the hopes of causing something else to happen.

I’m feeling increasingly strongly that this little fugue should resolve itself in another iteration of various life philosophies. Another turn of the wheel, at which point I’ll be inspired and driven to start communicating The Word again.

Finally, apropops nothing, here’s a nice little piece from William Gibson about how his novels have always been about “now”, and have gradually made the transition in setting from being 300 years in the future (when he was writing in the ’80s) to being set in about a year ago (as he writes now).

I’ve been on a new kick this week, trying to set small and achievable goals for myself both in terms of taking on the often overwhelming sea of responsibilities with which I contend, and in improving the general quality of my life. So far I have a few things working:

• I no longer read the news while I’m at work. I’ll hit my favorite blogs during lunch, but otherwise I have eliminated 90% of unproductive reflex web-surfing. This has been the biggest win so far, as it increases my focus on tasks as well as lowering my general stress level. That oil’s still gonna be spilled after I’m done with the day’s labor, so no point in checking up on it.
• Reading as a bedtime activity helps me get to sleep easier and sleep better. I just finished the sprawling, somewhat overwrought, but utterly enjoyable Shantaram, which Humboldt denizens will not is not about the Lotus-driving proprietor of Hutchens liquor store. However, you will enjoy the book more if you don’t look at the author’s photo first. Just saying. Anyway, I have some back issues of Harpers and the New Yorker to get through, and will probably pick up a new novel after that. Suggestions welcome.

• Waking up early: I’m attempting this, but doing a crap job here. The alarm goes off at 6:45 now, but the past three mornings this has just meant hitting the snooze button until my normal out-of-bed-time at 8:15. I need something more to really adjust this. Scrum calls with London worked last year, but those are off the table now.

So, two steps forward one step back, but I’m feeling better this week than last. We had a big party last weekend — the mighty Country Soul Carnival — and I found myself telling people I was doing, “ok” or “I’ve been better” etc. Feeling sort of boxed in, under pressure, stressed out, and so on. This is what you get when you carry the world upon your shoulders.

But then sometimes you can let a little weight go. Other people, in spite of our impulses, are generally pretty capable and good, and sometimes they can even lift you up as well.

And even better, you can realize what’s really important, and how the things that stress you out might not actually rate very high vs. family, health, etc. It’s far from the hackneyed ’80s movie revelation of a workaholic father rediscovering the joy of baseball with his son — and I remain as ever ambitious — but I’ve turned some little corner when it comes to sweating the small stuff, and this is a good thing.

So, what’s been going on? Clearly I’m not doing a great job of expressing myself in the written word, and aside from what you might intuit from Twitter there’s been precious little to go on in terms of my life and times. If it’s any consolation, I’ve been similarly vague and opaque in real life too; when conversation turns to me and myself these days I’ve been full of noncommittal generalities.

The truth is, a lot is happening, so much and so constantly that I’m not really keeping up with the processing. The spiritual backlog is growing, technical debt to the soul.

One big thing that’s been happening is that I met a woman. When I’ve revealed that to my friends of late I say it with italics — “I met a woman“ — and with a kind of level eye-look that tells them I’m serious. She’s out in New York City, a Lawyer by trade, double Ivy, South Asian, whipsmart and gorgeous (natch) and loves to dance. Her name is Rina and she’s inspired some quality prose and two weekend visits back East this spring thus far.

It’s geographically improbable, but I’m uncharacteristically sanguine. We have passed beyond initial worries that spending 72 hours together might become unbearable — that we won’t actually like one another upon close examination — and into the subsequent worry that oh hey we actually do, and so now what.

Did I mention she’s moving to London? Oh, yeah, she’s moving to London, but again I’m uncharacteristically optimistic. However, it is beginning to dawn on me that this may actually be kind of unpleasant. Time will tell. I play the long game.

Other big news is that I’m in the process of uprooting myself from Westhaven and Humboldt County, the place I’ve rambled to and from but called home for the past four years. Longest I’ve had any one address since moving out of my Mother’s place back in ’97, but my time in the woods is up. It’s time to be back in the world, so I’m subletting in SF for a couple months and looking to spend the balance of the Summer in the Cornell Club again.

A big driver of this is the transition of what I affectionately call “my day job” into it’s latest chrysalis incarnation: we’re up to 22 people and counting, ensconced in professional new Downtown SF offices, organizing 3,000 person conferences, rolling on larger projects than ever, and basically have decided to shoot the moon. We’re trying to turn it into a real business, something that could outlive our selves, stand on its own, grow beyond what just three dudes might dream.

Turns out this is really fucking hard. We’re up against all sorts of challenges — technical, financial, social — that we’ve never had to face before. That makes it stressful, sure, but also makes it an adventure. The groove we carved was good, but it was also getting boring, and we’re collectively more interested in breakthrough success than easy comfort. We’re young yet, and now’s the time to move boldly. It’s who dares wins.

Ultimately this all makes me somewhat unsure about my future. There’s a large and growing part of me that needs to Get Away From It All for a while, to get some perspective on my life and times and Figure It All Out. That’s hardly probable in the next quarter or too, but could happen come the Winter. I need to chart some goals, longer term. Set some sights for myself personally.

For now I’m just happy to be surrounded by good people who inexplicably care for me, healthy, romantically tingling and everbusy with worthwhile pursuits. It’s a charmed life, and I’m looking forward to the next chapter.

That’s right, today I am Thirty One (31) years of age. Been feeling nostalgic for all sorts of things in general — getting ready to move out of Westhaven, for instance — so will hopefully have something nice to write about that soon. Also working on a redesign!

In the meantime, here’s a tune:

Sold:

I’ll start playing with Chrome. After all, Tony made it (which he kept secret from us for like two years — well done there, Google NDA) and it really does appear to be the new hotness.

However, the coolness of this video also provides a little insight into Google’s strategy. They spent money on this, whereas Google Wave had a developer demo and some shitty screencast. That’s a datapoint.