Forced Priority

(Not my neighborhood) Fuck Twee. My neighborhood is great....

Fri, 31 May 2013 12:55:00 -0400

(Not my neighborhood)

Fuck Twee.

My neighborhood is great. Clusters of mid-rise apartments pop up alongside neat lines of rowhouses bordered by brick sidewalks, wrought iron planters, and streetlamps. There are enough shops and restaurants to make it lively, but it isn’t quite dense enough to be capable of true ‘bustle’. It’s leafy. Ten years ago I would’ve described it in less dendrophilian terms, but compared to larger cities it might as well be a forest.

On a cold day two winters ago, I noticed something attached to a young, barren maple tree. A rainbow sweater was crocheted around the trunk. Besides the fact that a homeless man lay shivering under damp furniture padding a few yards away—someone took their time and used resources to crochet this sweater around a tree—something about this cheerful display of gay-proud yarn made me cringe. What exactly drives people to knit a sweater around a tree trunk? Maybe they see themselves reflected in the tree—lonely and cold—and want to create an image of comfort. Perhaps they are trying to express their sexuality through knitting.

My guess, however, is that they saw it on pinterest or buzzfeed and decided they’d do it here in their neighborhood too. More than likely they took a bunch of photos afterwards to post on various social media sites to warm our hearts and souls. Adorable! Heartwarming! Creative! Twee! I think the entire thing is probably a desperate search for compliments, or at the very least a sense of smug satisfaction that strangers who pass by may secretly think that their tree-sweater is whimsical. But is it, really?

I generally dislike anything people would describe as ‘crafty’. I think this is rooted in my distaste for “Christian Bookstores” which I would be forced to visit as a child. If you aren’t familiar with this retail concept, I strongly suggest you visit one if you have the chance. No text could possibly describe everything that lies beyond those becrufixed doors. Inside, it smells so heavily of potpourri and sandalwood candles that I once considered hanging myself with one of the myriad decorative translucent fabrics available behind the novelty candies (they have scripture themed breath mints called testamints). This was shattered upon the slow realization that I’d have to die listening to Sandi Patty’s “Love in Any Language”.

I need counseling.

Anyway, I guess I don’t hate crafts as much as I hate people who love crafts. Crafts are the material equivalent of fan-fiction. Fan fiction writers may be meticulous or even readable at some basic level, but their lack of originality is inherent to their work. They depend fully on a predetermined set of rules or a previously written book. The possibility for value-added content is there, but largely this writing exists only to please other fan fiction writers. I don’t find it offensive, because I have to seek it out. Which brings me back to the sweater knitters, who slap their ‘crafty’ works on trees in my neighborhood. What have they done to deserve my praise? How have they contributed? Have they added to the beauty of a scrap of nature in an otherwise concrete-and-brick city center? Must we offer them a smile for their photocopied creativity? Do we all gather together, hold hands, and sing each time little Marjorie Wilburs finishes a paint-by-number rendering of a famous artist? At least her work is based in art history: she may learn something or grow her passion for art. The tree sweater is based off of an article of clothing. Made for humans. The tree sweater makes me angry.

New York City - a bunch of full grown adults converted an...

Wed, 22 May 2013 15:27:00 -0400

New York City - a bunch of full grown adults converted an abandoned water tower into an exclusive, illegal, invite-only speakeasy in Chelsea, Manhattan this week (via nytimes.com). In their quest for secrecy, they delivered their whimsical story to the New York Times and invited along a professional photographer.

Mustachioed twenty-somethings in costume hats danced with women in period hats, sultrily smoking unfiltered tobacco and pursing their lips for the cameras. All the while, reclaimed wooden walls reverberated with the music of two kidnapped Mumford and Sons bandmembers forced to play songs from an elevated platform high above the revelers.

“Isn’t it whimsical?!” shouted the organizer between managing his events team via earpiece and selling tickets to the next seating, “Isn’t it WHIMSICAL?!” he said again, his eyes now angry, searching…

The End of "Nerd"

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:49:00 -0400

“Oh my God, I’m such a nerd sometimes!”

The intellectual equivalent of a beauty queen divulging her darkest secret (hint: she eats haagen-dazs once in awhile), what it means to be a nerd is changing. In this false display of humility the traditional meaning of nerd—an intellectually obsessive, emotionally and/or socially stunted person—is inherent. That meaning, however, is lost.

It is precisely the ability to recognize a single aspect of one’s life as nerdlike that renders the meaning null.

The very essence of nerdiness relies entirely on our values as a society. As Americans we are taught to believe that individuals must be ‘well-rounded’. While I think that this pursuit is a good one—particularly in early childhood education—I also believe it to be overblown. As adults, does it really serve us better to helplessly—and publicly—glop paint onto a canvas in a desperate attempt to prove to twenty strangers around you at the art/paint/music studio that you are creative? Would it serve us better to spend time alone in the halls of our great museums? To spend time alone with masterpieces, draw our own conclusions about them as individuals, and resist the temptation to photoblog the experience?

We fling the data of our daily lives around like the skins of a frantically peeled carrot. Much like our tweets and photographs line up in a queue, the translucent fibers stick to the stainless steel walls of the sink before slipping down the drain.

We seem to be ashamed by spending too much time in any one area, but simultaneously struggle with the emptiness that comes with the search for meaning and depth. We consume TED talks in the hopes that we can capture the future in a fifteen-minute chat so that we can go back to our placid, unthinking rituals. If being a nerd used to mean intellectual obsession with any one topic at the expense of social acceptance, it now seems to mean precisely the opposite: an obsession with social acceptance at the expense of any intellectual value.

We’re turning homemade lasagna into Totino’s pizza rolls: repackaging and relegating intellect to a medium that can be consumed by most, yet offers little true substance. What’s so awful about Totino’s pizza rolls? Nothing. Just don’t call them lasagna.

Nerdiness today is nothing more than mid-cult intellect.