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Wednesday, Jun. 09, 2004 - 3:40 p.m.
Viewer Mail
The Twin Towers
Alektra writes:
I really liked the movie. I laughed. Especially at George W., but then, when do I not? The sequel, however, turned my stomach. No matter what the cause, the loss of human life in a tragedy should never be used that way. I believe the same for people who are "pro-life" and have disgusting posters and billboards. Perhaps I value individuals too much?
I see the sequel as of a piece with the rest of the movie. Corporate globalization has killed lots of people too. I don’t mean protesters. I’m thinking of all the juntas used to disappear and execute opponents of the New World Order in Latin America and throughout the world. Hundreds of thousands killed. Labor leaders, nuns, the whole nine yards. El Mezote and hundreds of other villages massacred. The School of the Americas played a big role. See the movie Men With Guns for a generalized fictional depiction of these dynamics. (Maybe you’re well aware of all this stuff already. I don’t mean to talk down to you if you are. I put it here for the edification of my other readers as well.) The Fellowship of the Ring of Free Trade may be “funny” (I want to emphasize the quotes), but the issues discussed are real matters of life and death for billions of people. I think there’s enough evidence to show that elements within the U.S. government were complicit in the September 11th attacks (the evidence that’s missing so far is exactly who in the government did what, when), and that these were used as pretenses to start two wars to further corporate hegemony. Thus, The Twin Towers coming attraction fits right in with the theme, as I see it. I see no contradiction in laughing while one cries.
Wasted Years
My old friend Tom, who has been a member of Twin Oaks Community for around 9 years, writes:
gee nexus, do you rally think, you wasted seven years of your life at the commune. What about high weirdness, the community committee for irrelevance and disimformation, and all the sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll.
Hi, Tom. Long time, no see. I’ll answer your questions issue by issue:
That’s a really tough question. If I hadn’t spent my twenties at Twin Oaks, I probably wouldn’t be broke now in my thirties. Though I might be. I might have had a resume right now that would get me a good job. But having only half an Ivy League education contributes to that as well. Or if I had stayed in the “Outside World”, I might have drifted from disaster to disaster. Who knows? I guess the relevant question might really be, “would I not have wasted those seven years doing something else?”
Twin Oaks definitely had me working full time for two dollars a day, and I left with only a $50 farewell gift, plus what I had managed to save of my allowance. My number one regret is not leaving a few years earlier to cash in on the dot com boom. No, my number ONE regret is spending those years working full time (with nothing to show for it) whereas on the outside, I could have gotten by working part time, and then had 20 extra hours a week to work on projects that were personally meaningful to me.
For my first four years there, the commune was my personally meaningful project, and the drudgery was just to support my dream. Then I figured out that if my dream was widespread qualitative social change in the world, Twin Oaks was just an insular curiosity that wasn’t getting us any closer to that goal. Twin Oaks can’t change the world because it lacks a coherent vision. When I joined Twin Oaks, I too lacked a coherent vision. I didn’t even have the theoretical acumen to discern the progressive Left from anarchism. Instead, I passively absorbed concepts from Noam Chomsky, from the Intentional Communities movement, and from the magazines in ZK lounge. To my shame, I even spent a few months working for a liberal reform group and lobbied Congress. I figured that someone, somewhere must already be wise and must know the way for society to go. Some organization must be waiting for me to come along and plug into it. Only now that I have finally sat down and started writing FunSmart 1.0, do I feel like I’m starting to construct the coherent vision I’ve been seeking for over ten years. And I still have not begun implementing that vision. So yeah, in terms of doing something deeply meaningful with my life, those years were a waste, but on the other hand, I can’t imagine I would have been able to come up with anything better during those years.
After I intuited a possible psychosomatic role in my two bouts with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I wondered if Twin Oaks’ intense work-camp culture was to blame for my two years of debilitation. Since everyone at Twin Oaks does not get chronic fatigue, I concluded that there must have been something special about me. Pehaps the powerlessness instilled in me in childhood combined with my strong need for acceptance set me up to internalize Twin Oaks’ culture of grim resignation to self-sacrifice. But what pushed me over the edge was trying to put so much time and effort into work that was not personally meaningful to me. That’s the reason my subconscious decided to shut my body down.
Gratitude to Twin Oaks Community
I’m glad I spent the 90’s as culturally as far away from America as I could (while just a two-hour drive from Washington D.C.) Twin Oaks did give me a lot I was grateful for. A lot of that was in what I was able to avoid in the outside world:
Twin Oaks also had a lot of good stuff to offer.
That was an “art happening” kind of event I put together on November 3, 1995. I named it after Ivan Stang’s book, High Weirdness By Mail, and I sought to embody the Situationist International’s dictum, “the future of art, if there is to be one, will be in the creation of situations.” Lacking a clear motive for the event, by default I decided to go for sensory overload. I had a disjointed soundtrack coming from three separate sound systems positioned around ZK dining room, and jarring video clips, and a dozen other weird things to see and do. I guess the event was a success.
We put up a couple of joke/satirical/hoax announcements, but now I don’t even remember what they were.
That was mostly you. Sometimes I regret not trying to seduce some of the luscious visitors, but I saved myself so much trouble, heartbreak, and consternation. What I lacked in sex, I made up for in peace of mind.
Again, that was mostly you. Only about a third of the community does drugs on a frequent basis. I was not in that third. (I)An-ok once raised the point that if commune life is so great, why do so many feel compelled to numb themselves to their existence there?
The rock-n-roll was great.
First there was the band you and I had, sometimes an acoustic duo called Dr. “Bob’s” Psychic Enema and Broadway Revue, playing original songs, that looking back, I think pretty much sucked. A valiant attempt we made, though.
Our 80’s cover band, Tears for Bon Jovi, for which I was the singer, and Tom was the bass player, was my first chance to be in a real band. We learned 17 songs, played about 8 shows within the commune scene, and we did not completely suck.
Then there was the unnamed band that had bluesy grooves that I rapped over. That was alright, and prepared me for Macrophage, the band I was in after leaving Twin Oaks.
But the community was not always tolerant of rock-n-roll. More than once, people asked me to turn off the music I had on the stereo during my K-shift. And then there was the time you said Jake shoved you because our Tears For Bon Jovi concert was too loud.
I can’t believe I’ve spent all day writing this. In the sage words of Iron Maiden, “don’t waste your time always searching for those wasted years.”
Dream Theater
Gus writes:
WHOOOO! DREAM THEATER!!!
Ditto.
Debut - Monday, Apr. 11, 2005
Sequential Art - Monday, Mar. 21, 2005
Alpha and Omega - Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2005
Faith No More - Friday, Dec. 24, 2004
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