Category Archives: Essay

On the value of knowing your history

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Today, while reading down my Facebook newsfeed I ran across this article by Bob Lefsetz at Variety. In it he bemoans the loss of the album as a musical format. Then he links the demise of the album to the demise of musical artistry. I agree with him that album sales are dropping, but disagree with his conclusions based on that data. He is forgetting that the album is not the natural form of musical distribution, but is an artificial construct created under certain conditions. Conditions which have now largely passed.

To me this is a classic example of not knowing your history. So please allow a slight digression.

For starters, up until about 120 years ago there was no widespread music industry. Music before this time was controlled and consumed only by the very wealthy. The poor and even the middle classes did not have the means, nor the available time to enjoy music outside of small gatherings, or public concerts. Short of church music, most people did not listen to music unless they played it themselves.

What altered this status quo were two major changes, both of which were dependent upon the other, 1) the advent of the printed sheet music industry, and 2) the widespread knowledge of reading sheet music for the piano and other instruments. Sheet music allowed songs from vaudeville to be consumed at home and for friends. It was not a particularly fast way of spreading music, nor was it easy to share as one needed to have a requisite level of musical ability to play sheet music. Still an industry grew until there were songwriters in New York, many living in an area called tin-pan alley, who did nothing but write songs for the sheet music industry.

What eventually toppled the sheet music industry was the advent of a new technology, the vinyl record. Prior to vinyl records, recorded music was expensive to purchase, and unreliable. Vinyl records changed all that. Vinyl allowed for inexpensive mass-produced chunks of music that could be played on a machine which required almost zero technical skill.  Suddenly one didn’t need to spend years and years practicing the piano just to hear a song. Even the least knowledgable musician could crank up the victrola, drop the needle and start dancing. Moreover, recorded music brought not just a single instrument, but the entire band. Before this time, if you wanted to hear a band you had to be especially rich, or lucky enough to be nearby (and have the extra cash and time) to attend a concert. Now, a concert could be held in a home, for the price of a victrola and a single vinyl disc.

On the whole vinyl was a boon for the average consumer as it lowered the bar to hearing musical performances, especially for entire bands. However, vinyl was not a benefit for others. Lost in this musical struggle was tin-pan alley, and its many songwriters. Also losing out were musicians themselves as the value of knowing how to play an instrument dropped dramatically. Having a reputation as the best piano player in town was a boon either financially or socially, but the widespread adoption of vinyl records decreased that value considerably.

Mind you, vinyl records did not entirely kill-off sheet music sales or piano playing. There will always be a niche market for such things. What vinyl did do was make these activities unprofitable for the mass market.

Because of the shape of vinyl records (a flat disc with a hole in the middle), and because of how they are manufactured, it was reasonably cost effective to sell two songs together, one for either side of the disc. This was a departure from sheet music, which sold songs individually (the only “true” single).  As the popularity of vinyl records increased, and its speed decreased, it became technologically feasible to sell more than two songs per disc. It was only at this point that the vinyl album as we know it, The LP record, that is a collection of songs totaling under an hour of time, was born.

Albums were cost effective for a few important reasons. 1) they distributed the high cost of recording music over several different songs, 2) likewise they distributed the high cost of distributing music over several different songs, 3) they allowed a consumer to purchase a variety of songs from a single artist all in one easy package, and 4) they were highly profitable for music distributors if sold in large numbers. But for almost all artists, albums themselves did not sell on their own. Album sales were almost always leveraged via the traditional ways of music promotion: Playing singles on the radio, and concert tours. It was radio play and touring that drove artist awareness and thus increased album sales, not the other way around.

This is because the single largest problem with musical artists is, and has always been, awareness. In the case of small or unknown artists, most people simply do not know who they are. In the case of larger artists, most people do not know they have a new album out. The only way to make consumers more knowledgable is to reach them. Traditionally this was done vis radio play and concert tours. Now the internet allows one to circumvent some of this process. Its possible to substitute internet downloads for radio play. Its more difficult, but feasible to substitute internet downloads for live concerts. Certainly, the internet allows an artist to have direct contact with their fans, and allows them to be in complete control of their music’s distribution. Alas this direct control doesn’t automatically convey expertise. The skills one needs to write and perform good music are not the same skills it takes to sell the music and generate awareness for the artist.

At the same time the computer has been changing the way we distribute and market music, it has also had a huge impact on making of music. Not only are the ways we write and create music massively different that the past (can you imagine Duke Ellington remixing Cab Calloway, or what Miles Davis would have done with cheap, high-quality sampling?), but most importantly the cost of recording high-quality music has decreased hugely. At one point to record an album you needed a recording studio (with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment) and the technical expertise of a recording engineer, a mixer, a producer, and a mastering engineer. All of these people occupied high-paying positions, which cost a lot of money. Ad in the cost of studio time, and you can see that an album could easy cost 100 grand or more to make. Today, all of these things can be done in one’s bedroom using a laptop. Mind you, the quality of today’s bedroom music may not be as high as that which is done in a recording studio, but generally the quality will be higher than was done 40 years ago in a studio, and that is significant.

Taking all this together we can clearly see a few trends: 1) The cost of recording music is so low that it no longer needs to be distributed over several songs to be cost effective. 2) Likewise, the cost of distributing music is so low that it no longer needs to be distributed over several songs to be cost effective. 2) Unless they are recording specifically for vinyl, an artist is not limited to this format for sales. 3) The internet of today sells and promotes singles better than it does albums.

Add these things together and its easy to see that albums are on the demise. Musical artistry however is not. Moreover, neither is the music industry. Albums were never the
“perfect” medium, but merely a way of selling music that is slowly fading away. Like the 8-track tape player, albums represent a particular technological trend which came up under certain conditions, and will eventually go when those conditions leave. Will the music made 100 years from now be different than it is today? Certainly. The music industry evolved in the past to technological trends, there is no reason to assume it won’t in the future. Will the musicians of tomorrow be just as good as those today, or of yesterday? You can bet on it.

The inadvertent racist

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I am not the hero of this story. Not even close. But its a true story all the same. This really happened.

I was coming home from work.
I was standing on the Expo line platform at La Cienega and Jefferson. The station there is elevated a good 30-40 feet above the traffic below. It offers a nice view of the lights of Culver City, especially at night. Its also a short block away from a Sees Candy factory/shop. When the wind is right you can smell them making chocolates.

A young african-American man approached me and stood nearby.
He looked to be in his late 20s. My height. Well groomed. He had on slacks, a long-sleeve button down shirt, and a tie. A coat as well, but I can’t recall exactly what kind. Not a suit jacket, more like a trench coat or a rain coat. It was dark, and cold (what people on the East Coast would call cool). The elevated station not only offers a excellent view, but it also exposes you to the on-shore breeze, the Pacific Ocean being only a few miles away. It was cold enough people were wearing gloves, stamping their feet, moving around, and standing instead of sitting on the concrete benches. So we stood.

I was dressed like a person of privilege.
I don’t recall exactly what I was wearing, but this is how I dress for work. Jeans and a fitted t-shirt. On warmed days, tan dockers, but more than likely it was jeans. The t-shirt was colored, and might have been long-sleeved. I buy them at Target because they’re cheap, and because they look good on me. I was probably wearing my skating jacket which is bicycling jacket: comfortable, lightweight, stuffs into a small pouch, is 100% synthetic, and is amazingly warm. The jacket looks like something a cyclist would wear on a windy day because that is precisely why it was made. It was a gift from my in-laws, is the perfect coat for anything but a serious downpour, and is easily hauled around in my back-pack.

All this to say I was dressed like a person who doesn’t give a damn about how they dress. That’s because I don’t. My day job is being an artist, a pixel-pusher, a photoshop expert. A great job for people who like to dress like they don’t give a damn. My outfit has evolved to this point as being the perfect blend of comfort, ease of use while skating, and just professional enough to give the appearance of confidence. As such my outfit is strictly utilitarian; clothes I put on to accomplish the task at hand, and nothing more. The uniform of a slightly socially awkward artist.

But its also important to point out I dress this way because I don’t have to dress better. No one expects me to prove my worth based on my dress. Quite the opposite in fact. No one has ever questioned my value to society based solely upon my clothing. Or at least not since I was in college. And it would be considered rude for someone to do so. Its not something I ever have to worry about.

We started talking.
Possibly because he was friendly, but more than likely because I like to talk to strangers. I try not to be too pushy, but almost anyone will engage in casual conversation. “Sure is cold tonight,” that sort of thing.

I asked what he did for a living.
I do this with everyone. Its a great way to get a stranger to talk about something they’re comfortable with. Since I collect stories, like some people collect butterflies, I use this question, among others, as a method of exploration; a way to dig deeper. Everybody has good stories tucked inside somewhere, and I am shameless in my hunt for them. Up until a friend posted something on Facebook, I didn’t realize that asking someone this particular question has another meaning in the black community.

He told me to “guess.”
I thought this a funny response, a bit like a girl who is flirting with you might want you to guess her age. Only we were definitely not flirting. So I looked at his outfit, at the way he carried himself, noted the other passengers (remember I ride the train and busses all the time, so I’m familiar with the clientele), and took a wild guess.

“Are you a security guard?” I asked.

“I work in a bank,” he said. “As a loan officer.”

He may have said something more about his job. He may have not actually been a loan officer. I don’t recall. All I remember is that he worked in a bank, and not just as a teller.

He was angry after that.
Not sneering angry, not growling angry, not “ball up a fist and punch someone” angry. Nothing so overt. It was more subtle than that. More of a “slight tightening of the jaw” angry.  That, and he all but stopped talking with me.

I won’t pretend to be the most observant guy in the room, but I can tell when someone is done talking with you. They turn a shoulder. Ignore the next question. Don’t say or waive goodbye. They are done. Period. And this guy was done.

He walked far away to another entrance to get on the train.
That is to say, he made it very clear he wasn’t going to sit near me. Now I talk to people all the time on the bus and train, like I mentioned before, so I’ve learned a thing or two. I knew our conversation was over, and I had a pretty good sense the man was angry at me, but at the time what I didn’t get was why. I didn’t know if I had done or said something wrong, or if he was over-reacting. He didn’t have any of the signs of mental illness (I know, I talk to those kind of people all the time), and there was nothing about the conversation that I could see that would make someone upset. Sure I had guessed wrong at his occupation, but so what? I mean he asked me to guess. He could have just told me what he did, and we could have gone on from there. Hell, I would have loved to talk to him about his job. I’ve never worked in a bank, and I could easy have asked a hundred questions. Everything from, “do you still keep banker’s hours,” to “do you get any play with the ladies?”

He probably went home thinking, “what a racist asshole.”
He probably was right.

So that’s the story. Now, I’m going to turn the conversation over, and try to present it from his point of view. He was coming home from work. He was dressed well, dressed better than 95% of the people at the station. He works in Culver CIty which could mean anything, but probably meant he worked at a bank in the nice part of town–and the nice part of Culver CIty could give Beverly Hills a run for its money. He stood for his train, and was approached by an old white guy who dressed like a bum. They talked for a bit, and then the old gut started pestering him about his job.

I’m going to stop here for a moment because I want to talk about this specific topic. Its worth mentioning because its possible the white people in the room might not get all that is going on here. I know I didn’t at the time, so feel free to go to school on my mistake.

There are rules about how society functions. These rules are not written down, nor are they in a real sense enforced, yet they do exist, and they do come into play in public. For instance, if you are out in public late in the morning on a school day, and you see a couple of pre-teens out on the street, you will probably note them, especially if you are a parent. A child out of school sticks out. If you’re a teacher, you will probably say something to them. Anything from, “How’s if going,” to “Aren’t you suppose to be in school?” If you know the kids personally, you definitely will say something to them. “Billy Jones. Does your mother know you aren’t in school?”

There are two things to this example that are important. The first is that perfect strangers in public, who normally do not talk to each other, will speak out at kids who they think should be in school (whether they need to be in school or not, as my friends who have have home-schooled their kids will tell you). Its a social function. A protection. The social equivalent of white blood cells attaching themselves to a virus. Its not done to attack the kid as much as to preserve a perceived order; in this case having kids in school where they belong.

The second important thing about this example is that the person speaking will do so from a perceived place of authority. A kid on the street on a school day will not be enough for most people to overcome their natural inclination to not speak to strangers. But if that person is a parent, they will have more of an emotional stake in the issue, especially if they have kids near that age. They understand deeply what a kid out of school means. For a teacher, this is doubly true. They have first hand experience with kids and their motivations. They also have, what my sister (a long standing middle school science teacher) calls “the voice”. In others words, they know how to be effective. And if the stranger actually knows one of the children and their family, they will almost certainly say something.

In each of these cases, the person doing the talking is doing so from a place of authority. They know something, or feel something and are compelled to act. They do this from a place of privilege. This is what privilege means, having a raised point in a social experience.

So this social system, this method by which people of privilege speak out in public to correct a perceived flaw, also happens to be the very same method by which racism is carried out, and perceived racial divides are maintained. The equivalent of weeding in the racist garden.

I think most of my readers can imagine themselves in the dim dark past, out in a small town somewhere deep in the south, and see how white strangers might have have asked a black person what they were doing out on the street in the middle of the day. Especially during the time of slavery, where free blacks were as rare as kids not needing to be in school. This is what I like to think of as “safe” racism. Its somewhere deep in the past, doesn’t involve us, and doesn’t match or present social context. I mean, after all, no one today would ask a black person what they are doing out on the streets, right?

Well yes and no. You see, I don’t see white people doing anything of the sort, and as a general rule they don’t. But what they actually do is not all that different from it. If you’re like me, you probably won’t notice until its pointed out to you, but these kinds of things often still go on. All you have to do is ask enough people of color. They’ll tell you.

Go to a university and see how often the black students are asked, “are you here on scholarship?” compared to how often the white students are asked. Go around your neighborhood, especially a nice neighborhood, and see how many times a black person is asked, “do you live around here?” compared to a white person. Or go on a public train platform and see how many black men are asked, “what do you do for a living?” compared to the white men. If you are white, and confronted with these questions it doesn’t bother you because the questions will be few and far between, and the answers do not reflect poorly on you. But what if you got asked these things all of the time? What does it mean when every white person you see, even the well meaning ones, ask you the same questions over and over? And why these particular questions?

Are these questions just a part of the friendly banter between strangers in public, or are they analogous to the, “aren’t you supposed to be in school?”? If you’ve only experienced these questions once or twice, I’d guess the former, but if you hear them more often, they start to look an awful lot like the latter.

Which is how I accidentally ended up a racist. See I wasn’t trying to subtly tell this young man he didn’t belong in my world of white privilege, I was genuinely curious what he did for a living. Only its hard to tell sometimes the polite question from the pointed, and intent–as any competent trial lawyer will tell you–is damn hard to prove, and easy to mistake. Asking a young black man if he has a job (which is probably how he took my question) is no joke. The unemployment rate for men of color, especially young men, is incredibly high. Only a few short times since the 1960s has it dropped below twice as high as white unemployment. I’ll say it again. The average is more than twice as high.

So if I had had to work twice as hard to find a good job, and then was bugged about it by someone who looked as if he had been handed their job on a silver platter, I can imagine I would be a little bit testy. Because men, especially young men, often measure their self-worth by their jobs and the money they make, this is a topic that is rife for misunderstanding and hurt feelings. Few things can make a man feel insecure faster than questioning his financial virility. This is true for men of any color.

Since that day I’ve learned to by more circumspect. I’ve learned that if someone talks about their work as being “a little of this and a little of that,” what they are really saying is either they’re unemployed, or they don’t want to talk about their work. Older men tend to be more sanguine about this, then the younger ones. They’ve found other ways to measure their own value to society instead of, or in addition to, making money. But it wasn’t until my friend posted something on facebook the other day that I realized I needed to find a different topic to bring up, or find a more socially acceptable way of asking. That, or I needed to acknowledge that my current style of questioning could end up with me being labeled a racist asshole. Again.

Dwelling design and politics

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What if the great rift that separates the left and the right were not in fact a product of political belief, but an artifact (at least in part) of design?

This is at heart the premise I’ve come up with while reading over a wonderful book called The Death And Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. I should start by saying this is not Ms. Jacobs premise at all. Her book is about urban planing and how the way a city is designed will effect the way people live within it. The book is wonderfully clear, straight forward, and has taken my mind into places of design I had never contemplated before. More importantly, it made me question the way we socialize and how that socialization might change our character.

At the beginning of her book, Ms. Jacobs talks about the use of sidewalks. Not as a conveyance (although that is covered too) but as a social structure. Its about how the many small things, corner grocery stores, bars, front porches, stoops, stairways, and any old place that people will use to congregate, will give those living on a street a sense of shared ownership. Such places allow the people living and working there to establish social relationships that are numerous, shallow, and yet important, and at the same time they make a sharp divide between public social lives, and private ones.

While her book mostly talks about these relationships in the context of a city, I could not help but translate this into the small-town world I grew up in where everyone on the block knew your name, and if you did something stupid they would be happy to tell your parents. I got my first job though small town connections, and my first sense of the world though them as well.

Mind you, these small town connections were not always appreciated. I remember vividly one Friday afternoon when a Clovis cop gave me a tongue lashing for throwing my bundled up dirty gym clothes against a street sign. At the time I thought he was being a power-hungry jerk, but I never tossed anything at a street sign after that. Moreover, what I now understand as an adult but could not see then as a sullen teen was that his anger was not directed at any potential damage to the street sign, his anger came from a sense of ownership. He owned that sign, at least in part, because it was part of his world, and he felt a sense of responsibility for it. In the same way he felt responsible enough to me and my actions to say something.

That is both the gift, and the cost of group ownership. The joy and the responsibility, both at the same time. And I believe that this is a crucial element to small town America, and more importantly large city America.

Except it is no longer an element in either.

How many of you know your neighbors? How many of you trust them? No I don’t mean trust like share your innermost secrets with, that kind of trust belongs within the private relationships of your family and close friends. By trust I mean trust enough to leave a key to your house with them, and conversely owning a key to their house in your home.

I ask this because Ms. Jacobs mentions that on her block the local deli has keys to half the homes around it. This is an informal thing. The deli owner is not paid for this, and does not offer it as a service. That he holds their keys makes it easy for relatives or outsiders to visit, even if the owner of the house is not home. You can tell your friend, “Go down to the deli and ask Joe for the key.” Its safer than keeping a key under the doormat, and it means that anyone coming to visit is noted on the block and looked after.

So why does Joe the deli owner do this? He doesn’t get paid, and it doesn’t necessarily lead to any more service. Why do the home owners do this? There are no contracts, no signatures, nothing legal at all, and such a situation is ripe for abuse. Yet one block over it’s the candy store that holds the keys for that block, and the next block it’s the cleaners, and the block after that…

At the heart of these relationships is a thing called public trust. Its not a close relationship, its not like a close friendship, its more informal, and much more shallow. Its trading a little bit of your private space for a little bit of theirs. Its exchanging small bits of information over coffee. Its the bits of gossip that are helpful and not necessarily hurtful. Helping the new mother with the complex ins and outs of the school district, telling a lost neighbor the quickest way to the bus stop, offing a cup of flour to a neighbor who is out, feeding the neighbor’s cat when they go out of town, or driving a neighbor to the airport.

These things are not all that important. There’s is no specific reason why one “needs” to do these things for or with their neighbors, yet by doing these things one gains a sense of belonging, a feeling that they are part of a larger community. Everyone starts to own a part of a public space that is independent of them, yet beneficial to them.

And beneficial it is. As Ms. Jacobs points out, city blocks that have a shared sense of ownership experience much less crime. The kids are much less delinquent, there are less robberies, and much less strife. Why? Because everyone is watching out for everyone else. If your kid acts up, your neighbors will tell you about it. If a suspicious looking guy starts following women, he’ll be accosted. If a drunk gets too angry, he’ll be held in check. Someone is always willing to call the police for you, because they know you’ll do the same for them. And why do they do that? Because they know you. They see you everyday walking your kid to school, or buying a cup of coffee at the newsstand, or picking up a head of lettuce for your wife and the corner grocery. They don’t know you well, but they know you well enough to have a sense of belonging to you. By living in their area and interacting with them you have become one of “them”. Part of their team. Close enough to call the cops if a burglar starts to pry open your window, but not close enough that they need to know everything about you.

And its this sense of community, this belongingness, that I think sits right at the heart of our political divide.

Let me first start out by saying that I don’t think one political group has more of a sense of belonging than another. I think they’re both pretty equal right down the line, because I think the desire to form and maintain social contacts is equally distributed amongst the entire population. Sure some people want little public contact, and some people want more, but on average, either group of people has pretty much the same desire.

So since it is not lacking of desire, then what lies at the difference between the two political sides. Well I think it is the way in which we form and maintain or social contacts.

Rural Americans live far apart from each other. I know people who would have to walk a half mile to knock on a neighbor’s door. This is a massive distance when compared to a suburb like ours (about 60 feet, to either side), or an apartment in the city (as little as across the hall, or as long as 30 feet down the hall). This distance makes for some interesting things. For instance our more rural cousins enjoy a lot more privacy than those living in the city. They don’t have to put curtains on their windows so the neighbors can’t see in, there’s not a house close enough to worry about. On the reverse side, our city dwelling cousins enjoy much more social contact. All I have to do is step outside the front door and I’m almost guaranteed to talk to someone. Teri jokes about this all the time. If we lived in an apartment it would be even easier. I’d just have to open the door. Now compare that to our friends living out in the country. Short of picking up the phone (or the internet) the only way they can have a conversation with someone not in their house is to get in a car and drive.

Now neither of these are good situations or bad ones. As far as I know there is no empirical difference between living in the sticks or living in the smog, with the exception of personal preference. One might prefer one over the other, and most people do, but the homes themselves are similar enough for all practical purposes, except for one obvious point. People who live in the city will have the opportunity for a larger and more complex social circle. In short, they will belong to a larger social group than those living in the country.

Now if you’re with me so far, then the rest should be easy. This is where we get to the heart of the political aspects. You see, one of the key differences between liberals and conservatives is how they see those around them. Both groups believe in helping their fellow man, both groups I believe genuinely care about other people, but both groups show their care is significantly different ways.

Conservatives like to keep their giving private. They like to donate to their church, or their school. If they see a poor man on the street, they like to hand their $20 over to that person themselves. And based on the amounts that they give, conservatives they care very much about their fellow man. Much more, in terms of dollars, then liberals.

But in all these things the giving is happening to someone who is socially close to them, or to an organization that is socially close. Why? Well look at the relationships a person maintains while living in the country. Family they see everyday, sometimes too much of them. Neighbors they see occasionally. The same is true of shop owners, and other merchants. The only other places they can make and maintain public relationships is either in school or at church.

Seeing this, a pattern starts to arise. Rural Americans will likely not have many social relationships, but the ones they do have will be tight and deep. And what do we see when we look at how conservatives give? We see them spending their money in the places that are close to them.

Now lets visit our liberal cousins living in a city. City people have much more opportunity for public trust, and use this to their advantage. While their rural neighbors might use 20 acres to gain a sense of safety, a city person uses their neighbors (and curtains) to the same effect. When we look at how city people like to give, we see they want to spend their money not on churches or on schools, but on their neighbors and their neighborhoods. Because they live in a tight web of social interactions they know that handing a poor person $20 might or might not help them. But they also know that handing that same $20 to the right person, within that poor person’s neighborhood, will definitely help them.

When a city person says that giving money to the poor is beneficial, what they mean is inserting money into the right place in a poor person’s social network, will greatly benefit them. But consider this same problem from the point of view of their cousin in the country. The country cousin doesn’t have a large social network. Such things are completely invisible to him. If you told him you keep a key to your house at the local deli he might go into shock. The idea is foreign to him. So saying you want to spend money on a thing he doesn’t see strikes him as foolish. “Why don’t you spend that money in church instead,” he’ll say, because this is exactly how he would solve the same problem in his social network.

“But that doesn’t work over here,” his city cousin would reply, because in his world this is true.

And thus we find ourselves at odds. Not over the desire to give, but the method in which it is accomplished. And these alternative methods of giving hold their roots in the ways that we live amongst each other. In short, the design of our communities constricts the way in which we view a problem, and how we come up with a solution.

Is it any wonder that liberals generally come from big cities and conservatives from more rural areas? Perhaps one of the reasons Americans become liberal or conservative might have something to do with the design of their surroundings.