A twelve year-old kid sneaks into his older brother’s room down in the basement. In an immaculate black tolex-covered guitar case resting on the floor, lays the object of his fascination..

Confident that his oldest sibling is out of the house for the time being, he unbuckles the case and as usual forgets to open the rear-side buckle of the sturdy case bearing the logo: Gibson. As he opens it the gleam of gold delights his curious eye. Inside lay an instrument of a nature derived from what had been the stuff of hearsay, photographs, television, — record albums.

Case fully open, the boy gazes upon the object: a wine red triple pick-up Gibson solidbody guitar, complete with gold-plated hardware. It sits there snugly in its pink velvet-lined case, as if to suggest, “Boy. Do you have ANY idea of what I am? I mean.. look at me for chrissakes! — You have any idea whatsoever of what to do with one as well-crafted as me? Close my case, right now, you little punk! You’re in new waters and you don’t even have a compass..”

But the boy knows what he came down here for. This is it — a Gibson Les Paul Custom. After taking in the magnificence of the three gold-plated humbucking pickups wired to four potentiometers capped with serious looking knobs — with a pickup selector switch labeled rhythm and treble — he passes his finger over the strings like so many initiates to the guitar before him. In time, cautiously progressing to embracing his brother’s guitar, he’d learn to alternately fret the 3 thinnest strings at the second fret so as to make a progression — a chord progression — strummed open strings, leading to that single-fingered chord and pulled off to open-stringed home base — eventually throwing in a little descending part with that same single-finger chord up at the fifth fret — descending like some Hawaiian ukulele thing, down a fret at a time until he was right back to those open-strings — those open strings sounding — what is it? — a cluster of 4th intervals? A G13th chord? Doesn’t matter..

Doesn’t matter unless you were that kid in a Minnesota basement taking your brother’s gleaming Les Paul Custom for a ride while he’s out..

(The preceding is my way of noting the passing of Mr. Les Paul, a man largely responsible for the advancement of the solidbody guitar and the Gibson Les Paul guitar in particular — and multitrack recording — and a hell of great guitar player.

I’m sure history will note Les Paul’s significant contributions to modern recorded music.

Me, I just want to post a thing or two of what Les Paul means to me.

Sorry Spinal Tap fans. While this is undoubtedly a potential jumping off point for a Nigel Tufnel-inspired testament to the Les Paul guitar — truly a rock and roll icon — what I have to elucidate is more of a shameless and solipsistic reminiscence and expression of what the man and the guitar have contributed to my personal journey. (Was gonna call this, “I Came Ten Thousand Miles to Rock!!” but have resisted the temptation..)

Les Paul, the man? You’re fuckin’ aye right! Les was the man! It does a disservice to this tribute to even mention that Les apparently dropped out of school at 17. However, in a world that has been conditioned to think of competence as correlated to length of schooling, we might do well to try and understand how an innovator of Les Paul’s genius would find his path most decidedly away from school. (note: Indeed, Les Paul was an Honorary Board Member for Little Kids Rock, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing free musical instruments and music instruction to underserved schools across the United States of America.)

Les admired the playing of the great Belgian gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt. Both of these masterful musicians suffered severe injuries — Django in a fire that disfigured and maimed his fretting hand — Les having broken his “picking” arm in several places in a car crash. After healing from their respective traumas, both of these men continued to expand and influence music with a passion that would lead one to believe in a transcendence of situation that is inspiring.

Les Paul, the instrument? While Les Paul was not solely responsible for the Gibson Les Paul guitar, he was one of the inventors of solid-body guitars. He and the Gibson guitar company worked together on the Les Paul. The Gibson Les Paul just is. And it is to many people all over our planet. While teaching high school in Japan I’ve shared in the delight upon some Japanese kid unveiling his prized Les Paul. The attraction to a Les Paul guitar is surely universal. (I’ll bet that right as I’m typing this some guy — in perhaps Lapland — is marveling at the warmth of a Les Paul plugged into a tube amplifier. While his reindeer herd gently sleeps..)

Me, I grew up in the 70s any way you slice it. Rock and roll punch was pretty much delivered with the Les Paul guitar. And visually it was is a thing to admire — perhaps like some spaceman’s race car controller-thing, or a race man’s space car controller-thing..

It’s complete. That’s it! Unlike some guy and his Fender Jazzmaster, where you kind of want to see if he is gonna be all right or not standing there; the guy with the Les Paul is fully covered, thank you very much. These days I tend to think of that unsure guy and his Jazzmaster as way more cool — that could just be me, or the times, or dunno — better for another post. Still, an unsure guy holding a Les Paul guitar is indeed an awkward sight.

Countless guitar players delivered rock guitar on a Les Paul, and Les Paul himself provided a wealth of guitar riffs and approaches for others to appropriate for their own developing styles. (read: too many to possibly cover) I once saw the late Randy Rhoads playing his Les Paul Custom with Ozzy Osbourne in the Duluth arena. Randy played a Les Paul through a little MXR distortion pedal into a cranked Marshall tube amplifier and it was.. sublime — hitting all these squeals and driving his fretboard “off the rails” with this ..sound. (Me, I’m thinkin’ if I got my Suzuki up to about 12,000 rpms upon driving off of the upward slope of my substantial shed roof..well, right before hitting an ohia tree or two, I’d maybe get a sound vaguely reminiscent of Randy Rhoads’ Les Paul..but way more lame.)

Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Alex Lifeson of Rush, Ronnie Montrose, Thin Lizzy, Tom Sholz of Boston, Jeff Beck, Peter Frampton, Gary Moore, Al Di Meola.. These and thousands upon thousands of other great guitarists played the shit out of the Les Paul solid body guitar.

All right. I’ve fallen off of the track myself. My personal Les Paul story?

One day when I was fifteen I went into Crippa Music in my hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota. In the back lay the shittiest, most duct-taped Gibson guitar case. Upon opening it I saw before me the most road-abused 1973 Cherry Sunburst Gibson Les Paul Custom guitar. The bar-stench of a zillion gigs was most perceptable. Mark the store manager off-handedly told me that the guitar player from the band currently playing at the Kahler hotel bar just up at the entrance to town had just brought it in on a trade-in for a new Telecaster. (I still remember the band’s name: Pearl Harbor. What are the chances?)

I had never seen such a beautiful thing, stench or no stench.

As sly as a fifteen year old can be, I asked the manager if I might take it home and try it out a little. (That gorgeous brand new Les Paul in the basement that I mentioned earlier? My brother bought that while working at this same Crippa’s so I had a little in with the store.)

I owe all three of my brothers for, among other things, helping me learn stuff. With the Les Paul bro, I never took formal lessons, although he gave them at said store. I do remember the briefest of lessons when I came to him all excited about striking upon what I thought to be a new note to bend up too. I announced to my brother, “I think in guitar you can bend to the so-and-so note. And he says, “You can bend to any note!” That’s how our lessons went. I also stayed up very late as his television watching buddy. We’d watch the Midnight Special and he’d set me straight about Gibsons and Fenders. That was years before I tried learning to play. On nights when it was late-night monster movies, he’d set me straight about what actor portrayed the best Dracula or Frankenstein. (That actually turned out to be less useful.)

..So I grab this seemingly thrashed guitar and take it home and thoroughly clean it and guess what? It takes on a shine like a jewel! At that point it was abundantly clear that Mark and Crippa Music would never again see that guitar until after we negotiated over the price for a filthy used-up [sic] guitar.

If you’ll permit this shameless self-indulgent post a little longer, that night I recall thinking twice about going out with my buddies, as I just didn’t want to take the risk of getting in a crash or something, and not have the chance to explore the new heaven I was residing in as an owner of an actual Les Paul! My very own! (When you consider that going out with the boys in Hibbing, even at fifteen, pretty much meant drinking and smoking like idiots, I had probable cause for concern.)

So to end what started as something spawned by hearing the news that Les Paul died today, and to be consistent in my, Les Paul Dying is About Me! -theme, I’ll close with a recording of my band in high school (1982), Sergeant Rock, and our version of a Rick Derringer song called, Teenage Love Affair. (It’s okay, because we were teenagers..who worried much too much about playing in tune, and cleaning our strings, and as such, we didn’t get a whole lotta punani™, love-based or otherwise. Again, another post perhaps.)

My beloved de-stanked and re-stanked Les Paul is sort of on the right side sounding the wah-wah solo — heavy as wearing some kind of coffee table furniture around your neck, but an open A chord through an overdriven tube amp never felt so good:

Sgt. Rock – Teenage Love Affair

Les Paul the man was certainly beyond and apart from the Les Paul musical instrument. Yet in the act of recording, the two collaborated to produce beautiful music:

Les Paul Trio – Honeysuckle Rose

Aloha Les Paul!

Postscript: Upon massive public outcry for more Sgt. Rock rocking, here’s our version of the Judas Priest song, Running Wild. Be forewarned — it’s a tad heavy. Not your standard Starbucks fare for sure. Come to think of it, this should maybe be played for customers who opt for that double frappo super big gulp coffee as they gnash their teeth on the way out.

Sergeant Rock – Running Wild

Posted in music/audio/interviews Tagged: guitar, Les Paul, recording, Sergeant Rock ]]> http://islandnotes.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/les-paul-and-a-teenage-love-affair/feed/ 10 IslandNotes gibson_les_paul (10) http://islandnotes.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/scatological-hope/ http://islandnotes.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/scatological-hope/#comments Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:04:30 +0000 IslandNotes http://islandnotes.wordpress.com/?p=3095 ]]>

A colleague of mine from the school where I sometimes teach sent me an article written by one of his former colleagues. The article: Note to Educators: Hope Required When Growing Roses in Concrete by Jeffrey M. R. Duncan-Andrade, appears in the summer 2009 edition of the Harvard Educational Review.

It opens with this quote from Paulo Freire:

“The idea that hope alone will transform the world, and action undertaken in that kind of naïveté, is an excellent route to hopelessness, pessimism, and fatalism. But the attempt to do without hope, in the struggle to improve the world, as if that struggle could be reduced to calculated acts alone, or a purely scientific approach, is a frivolous illusion.”

The piece then goes on to identify what Duncan-Andrade terms, “enemies of hope” and “false hope” namely: Hokey Hope, Mythical Hope, and Hope Deferred.

Eventually, the author identifies Critical Hope as the true hope that is crucial for the betterment of lives of urban youth — inner city young people inhabiting what he terms “socially toxic environments“.

A metaphorical vehicle for the thesis stems from a quote by Tupac Shakur whereby young people, transcending such obstacles, are like that of “roses that grow from concrete” — and a perfectly fine metaphor it is for lives overcoming the obstacles of concrete, analogized as, “one of the worst imaginable surfaces in which to grow, devoid of essential nutrients and frequently contaminated by pollutants.”

Nonetheless, a glaring omission from Duncan-Andrade’s analysis is educational technology’s mix in the concrete — concrete through which Duncan-Andrade suggests we encourage cracks through “the quality of our teaching, along with the resources and networks we connect our students to.”

After characterizing the effective urban teacher’s strategy for critical hope as, “a committed and active struggle against the evidence in order to change the deadly tides of wealth inequality, group xenophobia, and personal despair”, the author concludes: “At the end of the day, effective teaching depends most heavily on one thing: deep and caring relationships.”

Fine. I don’t argue with sentiments such as, “treat every classroom as having the potential to be a crack in the metaphorical concrete that creates unnatural causes in the lives of urban youth.”

What gets me is that this call for compassionate and caring teaching, essential to the “radical transformation that Obama is calling for” as Duncan-Andrade adds, does not, at any point, address a significant antagonism to this human-centered pedagogy: the zealous imposition and promulgation of information technology. (Hooking students up to “resources and networks” seems more of an advocacy for such technology.)

Does the author not see this as significant to the discussion of generating genuine hope in urban schooling? I do. I also reckon that the Harvard Educational Review and Harvard’s latest presidential alumnus President Obama have a technocratic, high-energy-demanding, economic agenda that won’t allow for recognition of such things. I wonder if the Harvard Educational Review might publish my little educational ditty which goes:

“You know what folks? Educators are running around, talking hope — using metaphor of roses and concrete. Guess what? The concrete is largely being poured by professional educators, corporately/institutionally co-opted into the notion that PowerPoint, Clickers, various other gadgetry, and a fixation on information/data processing, is the preferred route to growing lives into whole persons capable of critical thinking for better livelihoods.

It’s a misguided route. Yes, the digital machinery of our times will demand that we learn to use it if we want competitive and competent skill-sets. But there ain’t gonna be any hope, compassion — love — in information technology, or Management Information Systems.

Roses? No my friend.

Okay. Well, then how about, uh.. Hope Management Systems? And how about we develop such systems in our urban schools? How much info-edu media technology will we need? (i.e. budget, i.e. money, i.e. tickets with which professional educators can buy beer and sandwiches.) Er, let’s just say not enough. President Obama knows this. He and countless others, perhaps deep down, realize that hope — the kind not from slogans or prescribed curriculum — does indeed grow from cracks in concrete.

And wouldn’t it be salient to the discussion to recognize what constitutes the concrete?

As well as the stuff that goes into growing roses?

Of course it would.

Would also be a quick way of shooting one’s professional-edu-career foot: bam! (read: no beer, no sandwiches.)

Computer labs? You know how much money gets budgeted for such things? — How much testing? — How many “educational testers”, engineers, programmers, managers, lobbyists, institutions, publications — are fully invested in perpetuating .. concrete?

To borrow from Freire’s above quote: “..reduced to calculated acts alone, or a purely scientific approach is a frivolous illusion.” – Illusion perhaps. Frivolous? Hardly. Actually highly profitable. Actually a not so hidden global curriculum that local communities would do well to recognize — use it, like how concrete can be judiciously used — doesn’t mean we gotta pave the whole friggin’ landscape.

Illusion is where the money is — Educational Money — a big fat wad of publicly-generated money.

Shit.. I’m sitting at my computer lab right now. You too. I got technological-communication-management-ability-galore under my fingers. Don’t need a school. Public equal-access community resource centers perhaps. Media? How about equal access to media? Got to know how to read for sure.

Gotta have kids off of the street?

That’s a different issue.

But hope? — that’s in the eyes, words, laughter, sensitivity, — the human being — of my friends, family, community members. It’s in the ‘aina (land) — doesn’t pay shit. Well, no — that’s just it — it does pay shit!

The shit that grows roses.

I drive some five miles to get to the Volcano highway — pretty much the same route, in and out. You become quite familiar with most aspects of the road — bumps here, houses there. Naturally on this recurring drive out of the subdivision you notice whatever might hold out the possibility for surprise — like the guy building his rock wall, or that new addition, hitchhikers, whatever. Alan Watts said that if our computers (and we didn’t even have computers in his day) had to be reduced down to one last key that we’d still want to push, it’d be the one labeled with the tantalizing word, surprise.

So you drive out to the highway, looking to for some surprise..

Oh. And the wave.

Don’t know how it is in other Puna subdivisions, but up here we tend to wave. When I first moved here, I thought it was maybe like how I recall driving through west Texas on a cross-country road trip. Driving my Chevy fast and straight down the seemingly endless highway — to get to New Mexico’s version of straight and endless — the people you’d briefly pass at your collective 150 MPH, would give this wave. “Howdy partner! You’re not alone on this stretch. Happy trails and”…woosh! They’re speeding to San Antonio, and you, gunning for Albuquerque in your No va — a misnomer if ever there was.

Still, I’m pretty sure those west Texas waves weren’t signifying some message: “Hey there! We’re driving 150 MPH past each other. Let’s stop off and have a sandwich together..” Or, “Howdy amigo! Republicans in the White House. We got handguns in our Pontiac’s glove compartment..but we’re not gonna shoot you! Have a big Texas barbecue day with Jesus and all the fixin’s!..”

Shit. I don’t really know. I could have been missing out on the essential significance of those big Texas waves — wouldn’t be the first time. I’m pretty sure it was just the desolation of it all — we’re sailing down the Straights of Nowhere — might as well wave good-bye..

But Eden Roc is different.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that it took me a while, the poetic dude that I am, to realize that the wave here meant something much more concrete. What did Freud call it? Transference? Over-determination? I just assumed that, on the partially-paved lower road of our little latter-esque subdivision, the peeps were desperate to convey some sense of, “Howdy and aloha haole! You ain’t in Texas no more, but until we meet on this road again..Gosh darn it, I LOVE YA MAN! And have a safe trip to KTA!”

Anyway, as I say, wasn’t too long before I realized that one simply tends to move over so as to not obliterate yourself and your momentary roadmate — one of you’s gonna pull off of the pavement, i.e. onto crunchy bumpy bad road.

“Thanks for getting out of my way..”

– That’s it. No need for metaphorical mythological underpinnings. That’s about it.

The old-time pioneers of Eden Roc (say, from the 80s.. the 1980s) tell me that you could easily spend an hour getting out to the Volcano highway — uphill, both ways! You’d have to pack a lunch. Had helicopters hovering above ya, just in case. Hey! Wait a minute.. That must be a bunch of bullshit..

Uphill both ways..

Fast forward. Summer 2009. No! Back up. Just a bit. South Kopua Road. The county portion that gets you from the anthurium farm to the highway? Well, anyway, a drive down So. Kopua in the late afternoon — back home from say a dump run — with the expanse of Puna stretching down the mountain, from Hilo all the way out to Kapoho, down to the Pacific beyond — well, it’s real nice. (See? Poetic soul. Let’s see.. ‘Real Nice View’ – a poem. Shit ya! That could work..)

Hauling My Trash

On a late Saturday afternoon drive

Hauling my trash to the dump

Today’s new radiator is working well

Looking across the mountain’s flank

A tear begins to swell

Hauling my trash

Brought to tears

Beholding the breadth of my home

A day fades into a ride home.

The sight and the luck bring tears and a poem

Jeez, this must be how Barry Manilow feels — when he hauls his trash.

(to be continued..)

Did I peak your interest with such a provocative title? Heh, it’s getting tough to get heard out there in the blog-slog. You gotta resort to dirty little tricks..all about the pimping, ya know. I had thought about going with, “NAKED PEOPLE BEATING THE HELL OUT OF EACH OTHER!!” Maybe next time. Today’s little title alludes to the actual content. Hmm.. “ACTUAL CONTENT!” ..now there’s a conceptual-title to bring the peeps through the virtual door.. sounds good anyway.. Well, too bad today’s content is actually entirely nabbed from today’s broadcast from the estimable Democracy Now.

Heh, thought I had an original thought did ya? Forget it! No one has an original thought..We just sort of snip and paste.

In light of this morning’s cyber-wandering, whereby I finally (seemingly after the party ended, but I’m used to that) became aware of the discussion I was looking to see develop over last month’s HTA sponsored blogger spectacular. It’s here at David Shapiro’s blog, Volcanic Ash. Anyway, it’s pretty rich. People showed up (as opposed to my little chicken-blog) and the discussion is quite educational. I especially like the way the sponsored co-opted blogladites try and defend their sincerity (very little persuasive chops..but hey! they do digital content, so can not help, right? One guy at the end of the discussion even started pulling virtual hair. Pretty silly.) Also picked up a new term, SMORE — as in Social Media Whore. Ain’t that great? (apparently and ironically coined by one, Guy Kawasaki.) Anyway, that discussion may or may not be your thing..

What I was getting at, is that after such cyberclusterfuckery (is that a term?) it was all the more edifying to hear this piece concerning the remarkable and excellent journalist that (who? whom?)* all of us blogcheeseheads would do well to emulate or at least be aware of:

I. F. Stone

This is the link to Democracy Now’s audio stream of said presentation, which (don’t ask) play’s on dial-up connections and RealPlayers.

This post sort of began as a comment to Big Island Chronicle and a discussion concerning fast food businesses coming to the entry of Pahoa, Hawaii, a truly.. unique village in the lower Puna district on Hawai’i Island. A fellow, Mike Middlesworth, writes this comment at the tail-end of a good discussion:

All of this begs the real question:

If local businesses are so much better, why don’t more people shop at them so they can succeed?

Why are WalMart, Target, Costco, McDonalds, Longs, etc. so successful?

Could it be it’s because they offer things more people want at good prices?

Isn’t that what Free Enterprise is all about?

In this instance of degradation of a community’s natural heritage in the name of “free enterprise” perhaps the real question is:

Should capitalism be regulated (by gov’t) such that the public good of a community is dominantly expressed politically, to determine pono (righteous) policy?

An old rivalry: private property vs. public (democratic) government.

Actually, the Capitalist dogs, and the dreaded Commies have merged: institutionally co-opted consumption is the great imperialistic leveler. Community engagement becomes defined — educated — to be that of consuming: food, entertainment, education, health care, information, mileage, and of course lots of stuff: homo economicus is born.

This is where the Chamber of Commerce-types get nervous — but they shouldn’t really. We’re really just talking about an insane imbalance that need be recognized.

Imbalance balanced with what?

Doing stuff, essentially. Doing stuff that produces something. Doing stuff that establishes friendships. For fucks’ sake, doing something that might get you laid! For chrissakes, doing something that might avoid our tax-money financing slaughter for driving the FreeWay™ !

You know what? The big secret that you never hear? This doing stuff — as opposed to sucking stuff into our spectacular SuckHoles™ — doesn’t require ABC/Disney or McDonalds or yikes! even broadband. What it requires is renouncing all that shit — giving it up. No more DiGiornos. No Hoggy Dog..

Sounds pretty boring huh?

You’re fuckin’aye right it’d be pretty boring! Hell, I might just rather drive my car way too fast off a cliff with a big ol’ spoonful of RockyRoad hangin’ out my face! — Fuck that! No stuff?! Ya right. I’ll just sit on my stump, entertaining myself watching cardinals. ..Fuck cardinals anyway! They don’t even come from here.. bastards..

See what I mean? It seems as though we’d be entirely unprepared to just casually step off of our little program we’ve been raised — conditioned — educated — to.. quite like. (I’ll admit it. I actually want to see Paris Hilton driving a MonsterTruck™..like a hundred miles an hour into a vat of grease being fondled by horny leprechauns — don’t know why exactly, its just there..why deny it?)

I digress. What I was getting at is that, in order to adopt widespread advocacy, upholding, sharing, and appreciating of locally self-reliant use-values (doing, producing), as opposed to the thoroughly entrenched, behemoth, lobbied, corporate/institutionally directed, consumption paradigm (our status quo), we would need to develop organizational efforts that have heretofore not existed. The fragmenting and isolating quality of consumer-reality is just too pervasive. If you are a corporation/institution profiting quite well from people having your Product™ stuck in their Faces™, are you really gonna have a concern for changing that?

This organization to balance, integrate, and foster our doing and producing together as a community must involve: political participation, non-commercial media, and recognition of appropriate business practices and appropriate technology application for optimum community health.

A case in point. I live in a Puna subdivision (Eden Roc). There are 1800 1-acre lots here — perhaps what, 400 homes? A guy around the corner recently puts up a sign indicating that he will sell his locally produced eggs for a reasonable price. You know what? His once overwhelming supply can now no longer keep up with the demand of his now aware customers. The innovation for his new successful business model? A little frumpy sign hiked up onto an ohia tree on his lot next to the street — it works — a giant pulsating neon egg-sign just isn’t necessary — an appropriate level of technology.

Okay. That’s eggs. But what about social, educational, and other material deficits being met locally with just the appropriate level of organizational technology? Guaranteed, get choke! (translation: The current status quo has people sitting on their asses, conflicted about: “Gee, must I get in my motorized crutch (car) once again to go: buy, eat, watch, play, talk, heal, learn, drink, fuck?” (Not necessarily ALL and in that order..however, I can think of worse itineraries..)

Um, ya.. So organization is the thing.

Some of our new digital gadgetry would seem to have great potential as local community organizing tools. However, in the obfuscation that accompanies the marketing of these things (keeping you as a screen-staring client), there seems to actually be more fragmentation — whereas integration of community is our highest goal.

Oh, and not to put off the enterprising types out there — this doesn’t mean villifying business at all. Organizing for self-determination regarding our community wellness has no conflict with business that supports this. It doesn’t take long to see that the barometer for measuring a company’s appropriateness is, “Are we as a community gainfully using the product/service, or is the business concern a parasite with very little benefit to the community?”

Am I missing something in such a yardstick?

Lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention austerity, which, from where I live, seems almost unnecessary. Nevertheless, the more that you think you might have some God-given right to accumulate as much stuff as you possibly can, or consume like a CokeWhore™ in Miami Beach at a Bacardi convention, the more you would be.. deemed problematic in this call to community organization.

Community radio for Hawaii Island — simply advocating for community wellness, public dialog, local government service, synergy, and self-reliance — would be an extremely sensible development at this time. I ask anyone reading this to refute such an assertion with a compelling reason.

More importantly, I hope we can organize to make it happen.

Why doesn’t it happen?

It’s too sensible?

Are we that lame?

I know of a lot of competent people on this island as I’m sure you do too. The idea that we can’t organize around this development to create something decidedly of great value to our community would seem to be absurd. Don’t you think?

Some fifteen years into the Internet’s emergence onto our lives, we are informing and being informed at a rate that was inconceivable prior to our connection to this digital network. As kids growing up in the seventies we fantasized about the all-knowing, all-powerful computer to which we’d just inquire for answers to pretty much everything.

So now we’ve thoroughly inquired of the great machine. Some have tried to engage it sexually, if not just find a date. Others have practiced varieties of digital alchemy whereby cleverly programmed computer code, or portals established for gathering yet more information, has led to untold riches if not merely new strategies for paying the rent.

Information in itself, and attempts at commercial ways of presenting information is nothing new. What is new and unfolding within our planet’s digital information network is the conflation — confusion really — of digitally transmitted information, with that of human expression. Surrogate versions of knowing, meeting, and befriending have developed online — through the digital media we present.

Authentically living expression by human beings, or by any living creatures is an altogether different matter. Confusing these two aspects of our existence leads to illness. And while perhaps interrelated, digital information and living expression are somewhat exclusive of one another.

Be that as is may, this admittedly esoteric rap most definitely applies to communities of living people. People are dependent on expression of their collective life force, not the least of which is expression of the very land that sustains the community. Conviviality, arts, and all measure of healthful activity is through living human expression.

On the other hand, information and its unfolding means of digital presentation affords previously nonexistent means of conducting business — indeed a resource to be packaged and sold; markets (perhaps cornered), and a demand to be engineered and supplied with varieties of information — currently referred to as “social media”.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that, for information capitalists, a new equation demands that this information marketplace be established as dominant — superior and displacing the non-commodity of living face-to-face expression; something much more resistant to monetary profit.

So Darren, what compels you to inform of such things? Shouldn’t you be off playing your cello beneath some waterfall or something?

Perhaps. Yet these two antipodes (in my mind anyway) of: information and expression, are being tossed around in harmful ways, especially by stakeholders in the highly exploitive educational industry.

As such, if communities and parents fail to clearly distinguish these things..

Uh..It could get pretty stupid. (note: gratuitously bad ending)

No one is about to deny that our way of life, particularly from an economic standpoint is, at best, currently in a sort of holding pattern. At worst, many are in a real hurtbag — foreclosure, lost job — the spigot for money has slowed to a pathetic trickle — the water is murky — no one really knows the size and weight of the dominoes in play. (A little bit of that ancient and current literary genre: doom porn, but can not help.)

And yet, as a nation that has feasted on the planet’s wealth for the past sixty years or so (in addition to the prouder American tradition of actually producing wealth), we have a store of resources, both human and material, that is certainly in our favor.

But what concerns me, and what concerns all of us whether we choose to recognize it or not is:

Are we too broke to not scam?

As summer 2009 gets under way, one hears things like, “Well, if it will bring in some dollars, I’m all for it..”

Resonating among the words of such declarations is a sort of implicit disregard for responsibility. This lowering of moral standards has historically accompanied such tough times. It’s a cycle that also produces a lot of anger — anger directed in many diffuse directions. Obscurity’s great manipulative potential takes on various fragmented forms — “social media”, pacts of “main street with wall street” and countless other slogans.

Yet our times also provide a receptive medium for sowing seeds for community health and empowerment — the links among us are more apparent than ever.

The way I see it we can embrace one of two mutually exclusive approaches:

The first one, mentioned above, involves a sort of selfish, short-term, frontier-mentality that goes something like:

“Hey Jack, I’ve got to feed and house my family and I frankly don’t give a damn if it’s good or bad. I gotta do what I gotta do.”

Cooperation, our last card in the deck, is destroyed.

The other, and what I consider the more essential pono (righteous) stance goes more like:

“You know what? We are in this very gnarly economic collapse due to parasitic scamming. How self-defeating, cowardly, and pathetic would it be at this point to just scramble around with nothing but the back pocket as the sole determinant of one’s behavior? — and not just self-defeating, but with ramifications for the community (on an island no less) that are obviously destructive.”

And if you’re still on the fence, try and reflect upon the unscrupulous dealings that have brought our economy to its knees. It’s been capitalism perpetuated by people having absolutely zero regard for personal and social responsibility — people with “value sets” (as one sweet potato farmer puts it) unable to even recognize this morally bankrupt behavior.

This survival of the greediest – morals be damned-ethos is the very same strategy we could choose to operate our personal economies — the very same approach as global venture capitalists. And similarly, it suffers the same unsustainable outcome:

..collapse.

And unless I’m missing something here, this strongly indicates that the only approach to take, the critically important approach, is:

“We’re not too poor for pono, but we are too broke for more corruption.”

So how you gonna act?

Homebred — Homespun — Homegrown — Homemade

The word vernacular refers to a way of being, doing, and making that is community and self-reliant, as opposed to formal exchange and/or from vertical distribution — produced and transported from elsewhere. It’s about reciprocity patterns as integral to all aspects of life.

Tomas Belsky Six Musicians

Obviously, traditional native Hawaiian culture has much to instruct on such ways.

I bring up this word vernacular because it speaks to the activities of people that are not motivated by thoughts of exchange. Vernacular refers to autonomous, non-market related actions through which people satisfy everyday needs — beyond bureaucratic control (some might add incompetence). In this vernacular mode, satisfying of our needs in turn shapes these actions in a sort of feedback cycle that likewise elevates our satisfaction. Try that next time you plop down for your Super Big Gulp Slurpee™!

All right, all right.. What I started out to do is to note that yesterday I had the pleasure to once again go kani ka pila with my friend Wes Awana, on Wes and Nancy’s back lanai up in Volcano. We were fortunate to have Kahele Miura join us for our little jam. I say jam — we’ve been couching this in terms of rehearsal for a certain bi-cultural semi-enigmatic alternative-tourism-visionary and a gig he’s throwing our way. Me, I just always enjoy playing tunes with these guys.

Once again Wes on baritone ukulele, Kahele on 12-string, both singing, and me playing my Dobro or a Chinese made Alvarez brand acoustic flat-top. Wait a minute! Does that qualify as vernacular? Well, no, I s’pose it doesn’t — where’d I put that Slurpee anyway..

Recordings are 128 kbps* mp3s:

E Ku’u Morning Dew

*These songs were originally recorded at a 192 kbps bitrate. Compared to the posted 128 kbps rate, you get a little nicer top-end, etc. And while his jam ain’t exactly an exercise in perfection (can’t change any goofed notes!), if you might like to download the 192 kbps-versions, drop a line or something and I’ll get right on it.

I first learned of the Hawaii Tourism Authority’s (HTA) sponsoring of a group of eight mainland internet entrepreneurs, dubbed, So Much More Hawaii, through local media impresario Damon Tucker’s blog. (Damon really wants to down some Mai Tais with these folks. “Hey everyone! I’ll twitter for the next round! Oops, my dang cell phone is stuck!”)

Apparently, the idea is for these folks to tour the islands whilst blogging away in their respective “vertical niche markets” : convention biz, blog talk-radio, travel; both family and solo, food, and so on.

Sounds like a great gig to me. (Heck, if they make it to the Island Notes homestead, we could all burn a fat Puna Stankstick™. “Hey everyone! I’m twittering for..uh, I forgot what I was twittering for..”)

All kidding aside, the HTA sponsoring of these savvy social media marketers, to have a good time and broaden their bloggees’ online understanding of the “real Hawaii”, could be viewed in various ways. And yes, the Hawaii Tourism Authority is in the business of generating tax revenue and tourism money.

Well, that’s part of their objective anyway. The other goals of the HTA are what you might call of a social, cultural, and environmental nature.

What compels me to write about this is that, while money changing hands is obviously essential to our state’s economy, other aspects of community wellness are not necessarily pegged to money. Indeed, sustainable practice, acknowledged by all as essential to a sustainable Hawaiian society, requires significant non-monetized values: ethics that uphold and utilize appropriate technologies and sustainable energy input/output levels, among others.

Unfortunately, internet technology marketing tends to lack any discernment regarding appropriate uses. A fundamental and shared characteristic of internet marketers and their client sponsors is that not one of ‘em has any incentive to blog, or tweet, or suggest, in any way, that community members may benefit from turning their digital content off – and empower their community to be more self-reliant. This perspective is simply less profitable to the social media technology industry. Indeed, it would delegitimize their influence.

Many potential tourists likewise cherish these same use-values. (If they just wanted to be entertained by over-the-top displays of dolphins doing amazing trapeze feats, get trashed on Mai Tais, and then play the slots all night, well, they got ‘Vegas, right?)

A viable alternative tourism scenario hinges on authentic community participation, within itself and with visitors. This alternate plan calls for organization and communication among communities and people. Integrity resulting from sustainable practices done in convivial ways also relys on unfettered access to communication technologies (i.e. net neutrality). Also, this paradigm values the public good. It doesn’t do away with voter-mandated public land and open spaces initiatives.

No offense to these bright and enterprising internet marketing specialists, but I’m not sure where they fit in to all this.

Among their “sponsored conversations” as one of them puts it, will they be discussing:

“How does pono (righteous) media play a part in healthy communities?” Or, “What exactly is the purpose of pono media’s content? Is it to sustain Hawaii’s natural, physical, cultural, and human resources? If so, please indicate how.

As for malama aina and the rest, I’d think that such a discussion would also pose questions such as, “How do we as a community learn and organize to sustain ourselves, such that Hawaii will attract visitors as a paragon of self-reliant communities working, sharing, and using their unique and diverse competencies?”

And if this comes off as a tad ranty, it is really more of an attempt to advocate the non-sponsored (i.e. less promoted) side of community-oriented media.

Nonetheless, I do welcome our more market-savvy visitors and look forward to spocking their online interpretations of Hawai’i.

Here are seven Hawaiian songs that Wes Awana, Kahele Miura, and myself played up in Volcano the other day. This is actually a rehearsal for a later gig. As such, be forewarned, they ain’t polished into fine art — more like rough-hewn chunks of lava. (And the occasional digital distortion on these recordings is about as smooth as said chunks!) Nevertheless, it is a blast to play with these guys, and the older I get, the more I see that mental flaws are about as essential as dental floss.

Wes is playing his baritone ukulele and singing, Kahele is playing his 12-string guitar and singing, and me, I’m playing my Dobro guitar, sometimes with a brass slide on my pinky.

Recorded a little high (the input levels that is) as 128 kbps mp3s with a digital stereo recorder:

Hene Hene Ko Aka

The Maku’u Market is held every Sunday from about 9am until 2pm in lower Puna. The place seems to be burgeoning. Anyway, aside from getting down the mountain to score some good veggies, lunch, and to generally enjoy the diverse crowd that comprises the market, today’s trip had the added excitement of stopping by to meet Greg Henkel. Greg has a stall at the market (E-6) where he sells some very tastefully sandblasted tiles among other things.

Greg also has started a sort of cartoon-blog called Punatoons. He has gone in for the caption-contest paradigm, which as a writer I find hard to resist. It’s like being able to reach your audience in a most stream-lined way. Moby Dick? War and Peace? — forget it, but give me a picture that someone wants to add some resonant words to and I’m all over that..

I mean, as a musician, it’s like, instead of having to tune-up, rehearse, focus..all that preparation slogging, now you can just take your trusted guitar..and just toss that sucker into a busy intersection, with the slim chance that is will make this weird sound as it hits the pavement that will cause others to say, “Dang. That was a weird-ass funny sound!”

Boom! You go home, you know? Maybe just read a book — or sleep. Easy.

What I was saying is that my caption was selected from..like ..um..I forget–but let’s just say a lot of hopeful caption contestants who commented upon Greg’s captionless cartoon. (At Poonatunes your comment is your caption entry.)

Anyway, as the caption contest winner for week #2, I was awarded $25 dollars worth of Greg’s wares. Not the least of the award was having the chance to go visit with Greg. (My mantra seems to be something like, “The internet is pretty neat..but it’s really great if it can lead to living encounters among community members.”)

Thanks Greg — not only for the set of four beautifully crafted tiles but also for taking the time to have a chat..and for being aware that COMIC is really COSMIC..without an ‘S’. (..it’s a lower Puna thing. Btw, the following interview should stream on dial-up connections too.)

Interview w/Greg Henkel 32kbps, 4 minutes

Oh. I almost forgot. Here’s Greg’s cartoon with Darren’s caption. It ain’t quite Lennon and McCartney (Jagger and Richards perhaps?), but it was fun:

..you think that one’s bad..you should of seen some of the other ones!

Hey, isn’t that numbnuts staring at his reflection again?

--some Greek person

(The following ideas are largely, um, borrowed from an essay by Marshall McLuhan entitled: The Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis appearing as Chapter 4 of his book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. In the essay McLuhan borrowed the ideas of medical researchers Hans Selye and Adolphe Jonas, Lewis Mumford, and William Blake. He also sometimes said that the Virgin Mary provided intellectual guidance for him..and if ya can’t borrow from her, who can ya?)

Narcissus comes from the Greek word narcosis, or numbness.

Narcissus did not actually fall in love with himself, contrary to popular interpretation.

In the Greek myth, young Narcissus was numbed by his own reflection which he took to be another person. His perceptions were numbed until he became the servomechanism of his own extended or repeated image — he had become a closed system.

Similar states of numbness result from various extensions of ourselves. People become fascinated by extensions of themselves — in material other than themselves. The term auto-amputation has been used to describe these extensions. When our perception can not identify or avoid irritation, the body’s strategy of auto-amputation results from the attempt to maintain its equilibrium. Whether expressed as freaking out or through healthy sport and play, these are manifestations of how we isolate offending parts of our being so as to deal with life through protection of our central nervous system.

This process also occurs with our inventions.

The wheel, for example, as an extension of the foot, is a strategy to relieve stresses of acceleration of pace and increase of load. Pressures resulting from acceleration of exchange (of various stuff) resulted in this extension which in turn resulted in an “amputation” of this function (walking) from our bodies. The feet in rotation (wheel) are amplified and our nervous system handles through a numbness or blocking of perception.

The myth of Narcissus is about the young man’s image resulting in self-amputation — an extension that causes numbness. He doesn’t recognize the situation as he has self-amputated. Self-recognition and self-amputation are mutually exclusive.

This gets more profound when we consider the unfolding digital computer interface with which most of us participate (at least those reading this).

Our body functions as a group of sustaining and protective organs protecting our central nervous system, to buffer sudden variations in the physical and social environment — a broken heart, or busting a move to avoid physical disaster. Physical activity or social therapy (our old friends, pleasure and comfort) are counter-irritants to aid in equilibrium of the physical organs which protect the central nervous system.

With internet technology humans have extended, or set outside of ourselves, an entirely new prosthetic for our central nervous systems. To the extent that aspects of the internet are embraced by some as “live” and as “friends”, this is a type of auto-amputation unassisted by our physical organs to help our central nervous system in dealing with the imposition of these new mechanisms.

Like Narcissus, this self-amputation brings numbness as the only response to this new type of psychic shock. Our perception — our sensibility — dwindles. The extremely specialized stimulation by these technologies, that selects a single sense for intense, extended, and/or isolated stimulus, causes the central nervous system to respond with generalized numbness. The senses compensate, depending on which sense has been extended technologically.

Infusion of a particular technology demands new ratios among the other organs and extensions of the body — you tweak your visual or your auditory, and your sense of touch and taste change. Any medium at once affects the entire field of the senses.

The Narcissus myth shares some wisdom with Jewish tradition and its concept of idolatry:

“They that make them shall be like unto them.”

Or to bring it into the Internet-era: beholding your laptop conforms you to it.

People have become what they have beheld.

What they have beheld, William Blake says (he didn’t even own a laptop), is the spectre of the reasoning power in man which has become fragmented and separated from imagination and enclosing itself as in steel — technology as self-amputations of our organs, such that each organ becomes a closed system of great intensity that hurls man into martyrdoms and wars. (War and the fear of war have always been considered the main incentives to technological extension of our bodies.)

Thus, we are fragmented by technology, and when you realize that fragmentation is counter to integrity, you realize how much we should be educating ourselves as to appropriate levels and uses of this stuff.

Blake, on the organs of perception:

If perceptive organs vary, objects of perception seem to vary:
If perceptive organs close, their objects seem to close also.

We embrace technological extensions of ourselves into our personal systems and we necessarily submit to the resultant closure or displacement of our perceptive powers. We relate ourselves to IT (internet technology) as its servomechanisms. To use IT we must serve these devices, not unlike a religion.

Not only that, but as people are perpetually modified by their use of technology, and in turn find new ways to apply it, people function essentially as the sex organs of internet technology. As the bee assists in the generation of the plant-world, so too, we serve to generate this IT stuff. (I’d think that how one feels about being a gonad for the internet is open to several interpretations.)

Nevertheless, internet technology as a healthful extension of our physical bodies requires that we accept and recognize the numbing of our human senses inherent in this technology.

This morning I drove down to the Kino’ole Farmers Market to pick up a box of fresh produce from Hamakua Springs Country Farms in Pepe‘ekeo. My caption was selected as one of the three winning captions in Hamakua Springs’ caption contest which appeared on their website, Ha Ha Ha!

Richard assures Darren that his best salad days are ahead of him..

In addition to awarding me a box of the finest of salad greens, cucumbers, green onions, and tomatoes; Richard Ha, president of Hamakua Springs Country Farms, graciously took the time to talk about Hamakua Springs and express his views on the Mauna Kea Comprehensive Management Plan (CMP), food sustainability, genetically modified organisms (GMO), and bio-fuels:

Interview w/Richard Ha, 64kbps, 5 minutes

And to the other two contest winners: lettuce enjoy our Hamakua Springs veggies!

(dang, should’ve quit while I was ahead..)

Mahalo to Richard and the folks at Hamakua Springs Country Farms.

Posted in 'aina (land), music/audio/interviews Tagged: caption contest, kinoole farmers market ]]> http://islandnotes.wordpress.com/2009/04/11/interview-richard-ha-of-hamakua-springs/feed/ 2 IslandNotes richardha-me http://islandnotes.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/interview-larry-geller-of-disappeared-news/ http://islandnotes.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/interview-larry-geller-of-disappeared-news/#comments Wed, 08 Apr 2009 05:04:46 +0000 IslandNotes http://islandnotes.wordpress.com/?p=2638 ]]>

Today I called Larry Geller. He’s the guy who does the Disappeared News blog. In our discussion we talked about his brand of activism and some important issues he has recently written about: the media and current Hawaii and national political matters. In the following segment, Larry details some of the lobby efforts concerning broadband internet, Act 221, and Hawaii legislative House Bill 128 which is about campaign finance.

Interview w/Larry Geller, 32kbps, 23 minutes

Thanks to Larry for taking the time to discuss these things and for his value to the community as a progressive news blogger.

(This interview will stream on dial-up connections..well..should.)