8/4/2023 0 Comments Tumblr pocket casts thevergeThe friends I kept in this new circle were decidedly anti-racist-if not entirely non-patriarchal-and were instrumental in ushering me towards the pursuit of a more leftist politics than what I had known up to that point. ![]() Then a real big change happened when Grunge swept through the zeitgeist, when I ditched my suddenly uncool headbanger threads and got interested in more “real” musics which were becoming fashionable in the wake of Seattle’s incursion such as punk-hardcore. Patriarchy and racism were part and parcel of the working class Elmhurst, Queens of the ‘80s which was my home, along with the “small town” car mechanic culture I aligned with in the New Jersey suburbs as a metalhead in the early ‘90s. I started out on the right and not just because of my dad. Sadly for him, his worldview could not compete with the persuasive power of modern media and education, both of which turned out to factor greatly into my turn to the left in my late teens. I grew up with a steady stream of “owning the libs” rhetoric, before that was even a thing. Mostly this turned out to verge on the paranoiac and was almost singularly trained on the illumination of the moral failings of the liberal world view. He was adamant about checking the progress of what he saw as liberal propaganda in the schools and on the television with the alternative framework of his conservative vision. Thanks to my father, I grew up suffused in politics. Why, then, do my interests in ideological contestation persist? ![]() When I engage in political discussions, whether on Twitter or while talking with neighbors, I notice immediately the much more piquant vibe, a saucier texture of staccato rhythms and higher blood pressure, than, say, the singing bowl tintinnabulation of all of my meditation music and nebulous sound baths. I am especially inquisitive about this recently, as my art has sought to evoke much quieter spaces, such as wilderness settings, than the boisterous and contentious atmospheres that characterize the political sphere. This is the view afforded by my uncle’s desk in his study.Īs an artist I often question why I’m so drawn to politics. Today I’m enjoying looking at the image I’ve pasted at the top of this blog post. I’ll write about the particulars of that involvement some other time. I learned more about Colombian history from him during the first part of my stay than in my entire life, along with my own family’s involvement with it. He has that steady diction of a professor well-accustomed to spontaneous aggregates of clauses and arguments and he deploys rhetorical devices, such as self-questioning aloud, that move his cases forward. My uncle is a respected political scientist in Colombia and was instrumental in “El Proceso de Paz” and it was easy to detect all this in the way his impromptu lectures unfolded over the first handful of evenings I spent at his house the other week. I may be more restless than average, but, regardless, it seems to be a universal truth that life is about change, so it’s good when there’s proof. I mention this anecdote because it illustrates most directly how wonderful it is in life when time passes and someone confirms that change has indeed occurred. ![]() All she really said was that today, as compared with that erstwhile visit from over a decade-and-a-half, I seem to be a much more open human being, owing perhaps slightly to my greater facility with the Spanish language, but not exclusively so. My aunt-married to my uncle who is the brother of my mother-has confirmed this impression, if perhaps without the hyperbole I’m certain the above paragraph contains. They knew me as a nephew or a cousin, depending on who we’re talking about, who managed to become wildly successful in the music industry and they also knew me as someone with a slightly jaundiced complexion. The last time I was in Colombia, where a good chunk of my family resides, was in the mid-aughts, back when the aspect of the man I was greeted my family with a different mixture than today. I recently paid a much overdue visit to my uncle who lives in Bogotá. “How many different translations of Das Kapital does a man need?”
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