On the Merits of Christmas Music and Human Happiness in December.

It's that time of year again. Before Thanksgiving can even fade gracefully from our memories, radio stations across the city are ramping up the Christmas tunes for all to hear. For many this is a yearly annoyance. These types are content simply to think of Christmas one or two weeks out from the actual day. And who could blame them? It's a tad unsettling to be driving to Thanksgiving dinner only to be serenaded by 'White Christmas'. Will I eventually be dreaming of a white Christmas? Yeah. Am I dreaming of it on my way to Thanksgiving? Not until I heard that song. And that's really the point. More and more the familiar 'Christmas spirit' is being foisted upon us at earlier and earlier dates. From a purely cynical worldview, one could imply that this push is done largely to encourage retail surges in the weeks leading into the most joyous of days. Realistically this is most likely the most astute assumption. Stores want more customers with more dollars going through their stores earlier and earlier to garner a higher yield when the season is said and done. Me? I like to imagine that the Christmas music is coming on so early these last few years at least in part because we as a society need it. You may notice that Christmas music in general hasn't changed too drastically since you were a child. For some of us that's a couple of decades and for some us it's considerably longer. I think it's safe to say that Christmas music is timeless, and because of that the amount of memories attached to it are substantially greater in volume.

I guess it is my hope that somewhere out there playing Christmas music is a way to cheer people up in what is otherwise a dismal time of year (especially in my hometown of Milwaukee). The sun goes down at 5pm, the weather is becoming increasingly unforgiving, and the rush and stress of the holiday season can take a toll on a person. Christmas music, if given enough thought, can be a reminder that if we slow down and really take in the season there is a lot to be joyous about.

Personally, I didn't really embrace the Christmas music push wholeheartedly until last December. For whatever reason I was listening to the festive music for a good month and a half before Christmas ever happened. Generally in years past, thanks in large part to my time served in the retail shopping world, I loathed the idea of having to be reminded that increasingly angry customers with increasingly insane demands would soon be pouring into my checkout line and berating me. This year, as an extension of last, I have decided to attempt to let listening to holiday music a whole month before the holiday become a tradition. While not the most original tradition ever generated; for me it represents a time where I'm going to try and redouble my efforts to really appreciate the season and the winter to the full extent. As with any tradition, it will likely take a year or two more before I am fully confident I'll even want to embrace this tradition. For the time being though, I have decided to allow myself to drop my defenses and give in to what I would in years past considered 'cliche'. Sure, my attitude is pretty much exactly what retail chains everywhere are banking on to make some extra scratch in our hobbled economy, but so help me if somewhere years and years ago this music wasn't written to bolster the holiday spirit for the sake of bolstering it.

It's that last sentiment that I am placing all of my childlike Christmas hopes upon: That the world is inherently good, and that even though things can seem bleak, things are ultimately what we make of them. Christmas can be one of two things. It can be a stress-filled couple of weeks fraught with anger and frustration, or it can be a time to revel in the unnaturally cheery facade of everything around you. Personally, I plan to make it my own and enjoy it because in personal experience it will be over before I know it. And that's all having to listen to Christmas music this 'early' in the year really is; an invitation to attach your own personal emotions and memories to a time of year that is otherwise pretty unbearable. So in the meantime I'll be listening and getting in the spirit of the season, whatever that may be. And who knows? While I may be shuffling into someone's pre-planned scheme to get me to spend my money; if I come out of it with even a smidgen of personal joy isn't that more than worth it in today's world?

'White Christmas' - Bright Eyes

To All My Friends and Readers, a Video: Turkey Day Love

I don't know how many of you who read this are people I don't personally know, but I welcome you all the same. Heck, let's go ahead and say I'm thankful for you. And to all my friends whom I know in person, may your Turkey Day be good and may it remind you what in all the world you have to be thankful for however minuscule that may be.

Thinking of you, and thankful all the same. Happy Thanksgiving! This is for you:



Here's a YouTube Version too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-WgzvwUVX8#watch-main-area

Diversion: Dinner Parties and Shiny Shores

The new post I'm writing is proving extremely difficult to get through. It very much feels like a school paper which means, I imagine, the few of you who do end up reading my humble rantings will probably become fewer. Anyways, in an attempt to keep new content rotating onto these intertube pages I have decided to slip in with some MORE sunrise pictures (because I'm staying up longer and longer and sleeping less and less) and a few snaps from a recent dinner party I hosted for my friends at my apartment.

Firstly, here are some sunrise shots from a new but favorite location, and taken with a much fancier camera. As everyone knows, the fancier the camera, the better the pictures you take. Right? These pictures fall right into my 'World in my Mind' series in that I've tweaked them passed the point of being realistic outside of my own brain. Honestly though the scene was pretty magic before I got my fingers on them.


On this one I only slightly tweaked the contrast levels and I also desaturated the picture. I took some color out because, while the picture does not convey this, it was absolutely freezing out Wednesday morning. I feel like taking away some of the color made it feel like less of a warm, cozy morning at the beach.


I didn't really mess with this one so much. I just upped the red and darkened the shadows. Like I said, it was cold out, but looking at these pictures off my camera it really could be a warm day.


This last one I didn't retouch at all. I snapped this as I was leaving the lakefront, and honestly I can't think of a better way to start a morning.

Last order of business is a quick snapshot of this spaghetti casserole thing I whipped up for a meal for some people. It's not quite scenery, but I feel like it definitely classifies as art.

Picture: Saturday Morning Sunrise

It's funny how some of the most stunning imagery in a day is only available for about three quarters of an hour at night and in the morning. While I was out taking this (a rare occurence for me to be up so early), it dawned on me that the idea of a burning ball of gas hundreds and thousands of miles away that provides life and light for our entire planet is actually both very profound and absurd.

Good morning, everyone.

Philosophy: John Cusack Explains It All

I was watching a John Cusack movie the other day, and like a lot of John Cusack movies it also costarred Joan Cusack. Seriously, I get they're related but she's scary looking. I digress though. Like many John Cusack movies, Martian Child has scenes of the actor waxing philosophical about life and how it works. In this particular movie is a scene in which John is speaking to his adopted son about his problem with thinking that he is a Martian. The means in which he uses to convince his son to stop thinking he's an extra-terrestial struck me as pretty heady for a six year old boy, but it got me thinking. It's very poetic so in the interest of not mucking it up with my paraphrasing I'm just going to post up the word-for-word:

Dennis, can I just say one last thing about Mars? - which may be strange coming from a Science-Fiction writer - But right now, you and me here, put together entirely of atoms, sitting on this round rock with a core of liquid iron, held down by this force that seems to trouble you, called gravity, all the while spinning around the sun at 67,000 miles an hour and whizzing through the milkyway at 600,000 miles an hour in a universe that very well may be chasing its own tail at the speed of light; And amidst all this frantic activity, fully cognisant of our own eminent demise - which is our own pretty way of saying we all know we're gonna die - We reach out to one another. Sometimes for the sake of vanity, sometimes for reasons you're not old enough to understand yet, but a lot of the time we just reach out and expect nothing in return. Isn't that strange? Isn't that weird? Isn't that weird enough? The heck do ya need to be from Mars for?

In the context of the movie it works very well. Personally, I feel like it speaks to a much more intrinsic and basic understanding of the human condition - a topic I have been increasingly interested in over the last few months. The thing I like most about the above speech though is that it does not offer any answers. It's content to simply lay it out how it is. In a universe in which our existence very well may be a product of random chance, we as humans do things everyday that in the most basic rational sense do not coalesce with the enormity of the circumstances of our actuality. The implications of this thought process caused me to put in context a lot of the things in life that we may take for granted.

First among the many thoughts that I had was the idea of 'growing up' - something that from a young age we are aware that we will do, but never get a clear idea on how to make happen. I'm speaking here about the figurative growing up, and not the literal aging and growing we do as part of being alive. So what is 'growing up', really? In the grand scheme of things it's really only a perfunctory title we apply to ourselves to reassure us that we're living life correctly. Of course this doesn't mean that 'growing up' in a greater, more philosophical sense is not important. Maybe assigning titles and stages to our lives give context to the greater complexities that comprise our being here. In other words we assign greater purpose to our own lives in order to further allow ourselves an existential pivot point in which the rest of our lives settle around. This all flirts dangerously close with the 'meaning of life' discussion; something I don't find myself capable or qualified to even attempt to tackle. Instead what I am trying to say is that in our quest to discover the meaning of existing (something I believe is essential to the natural progression of all human life and its fancy higher brain function) we set rational parameters to what amounts to an otherwise irrational circumstance. I'm aware that this may come off as a slightly bleak outlook on things, but it's simply my attempt to pull back the ordinary focus on things to take a look at the bigger picture.

So let's analyze what growing up entails. On the surface, it's the taking up of greater responsibilities both on ourselves as well as those around us. Logically this opens us up to all kinds of opportunities to cause harm to ourselves, or at the very least make us more vulnerable to both emotional and sometimes physical aggressors. At basic face value these risks we take are completely unnecessary, yet in the greater definition of our lives established over hundreds of years of civilization, the risks are entirely inevitable. Essentially in order to satisfyingly justify our lives, we put ourselves out there against all rationality and leave ourselves vulnerable to harms and sensitivities that, outside of a realistic world, we'd be foolish to allow. But life is one which risk can often yield great reward, and perhaps it is the promise of such rewards that make all the so-called pain of living worthwhile. What is life without experience, and in the context of an existence that is weirder than many ever slow down to take note, is the rite of growing up a means to enrich oneself with said experience?

It's hard sometimes when you're in the moment to contextualize the reasoning behind many of the experiences a person will encounter in life - be it death, heartbreak, sadness, apathy, or sometimes even joy. A lot of the time our minds may never be able to fully comprehend the effects of these things, for many of them are only byproducts of actions and chances we've taken simply for the sake of it. It would be a mistake though to look at life through a primarily singular vision. Though we experience life almost exactly this way, the brunt of the human condition is communal. Just like life and living it are sometimes counter intuitive to the cosmic logic of existing, reaching out to others is very similar. Attachment in and of itself goes against the very nature of singular experience, but we do it anyways. Perhaps it is to justify our own actions. The approval or condolence of the fellow kind may in fact be the closest we ever get to justifying our existence. By the same token, to have another disapprove of our existence on however minuscule a level may in fact be the greatest harm we could expose ourselves to suffer.

So why do we do it? In the depressing, bleak philosophical view of life (one which I have never been a fan) life should be about staying alive from day to day and doing that which best serves yourself. There are a lot of people who do this very thing; sometimes in an insular way, and sometimes in a way that serves themselves through the manipulation of people around them. And who's to say that this method is wrong? In the greater picture it is certainly a more logical way of handling attachment and self-preservation. In the end, we live and we experience because life is too weird not to. We're all going to be okay because life will always adjust. All we have to do is figure out what we want to do when it does. Like John Cusack said, we're all just molecules roughly hewn together spinning around a universe chasing its own tail and in the end isn't that profound enough to justify almost anything we do with the time we have?