Pirates

There's something I'd like to clear up. I am not a pirate. At least, not in the literal, technical sense. I don't commit robbery on the high seas, or in territorial water of any nation (an important distinction). I don't commit robbery at all. Yet many people refer to me as a pirate, and it is not an impression that I seek to undo. Sometimes I encourage it. My friend and former shipmate Abby sent me an email, saying "I saw Captain Blackbeard's College of Piracy and couldn't help but think of you."

Thankfully there are senses of meaning other than technical and literal. In an aesthetic, romantic sense, I like pirates. They are free to move about at will. They adventure. They sing songs. They enjoy life. These pirates are movie pirates, adventure-novel pirates, and ballad pirates, but they are pirates nonetheless, and until the Somali Pirates, they were the only pirates we had. So get your eyepatches out.

Sawdust

Most of my time in the woodshop these past few days has been time sanding. I have never spent much time sanding, or thinking about sanding, but now I have plenty of time. Sanding is the kind of work that sits pleasantly astride the barrier between tedious work and difficult work. It allows plenty of mental energy for other thought, but requires enough concentration so as not to be monotonous.

Sanding involves changing the wood. In particular, it involves removing wood. Most ways that I have learned to change the wood have involved removing: saws, routers, sanders, planes all remove wood. Even the nail, which ostensibly bonds two pieces of wood together, creates holes in both of them. The removing of the wood occupied my thoughts for a while, until I realized that all that wood was going somewhere.

Now, when I leave the shop, I seem prematurely gray. I have a halo of sawdust, and it builds small cabinets in my nostrils.

Life Update:
I'll be out backpacking from tomorrow until early July. Don't expect posts for a while.

ADVENTURE

Despite my angsty musings about adventure, I have discovered an opportunity to take an adventure on the cheap, taking The Man's money and using it to have a grand ol' time. If you want to join me, contact me ASAP. I mean it. I have nothing better to do.

http://exploringmyamerica.com/

Writing, Address

As you may have gathered from the (fact of the) previous post, I'm safely installed in New Hampshire. In the basement of the house shared by my maternal grandparents, my mother's brother, his wife, and their children. My room shares the basement with my cousin's bedroom, the combination storage and exercise room, and the family room, currently home to a string of world cup soccer games on the TV.

I realize, reading back over this blog, that I dislike much of what I've written here. The content is fine, but the form is lacking. Perhaps this is a result of my too-long hiatus from the craft. Perhaps this awareness arises from my recent re-reading of my favorite practitioners. Whatever the case is, I hope, in the future, to steer this weblog back towards the reason for its creation: keeping in touch with you all, yes, but also Writing.

That will be forthcoming. For now, here's my mailing address, should you be interested in mailing me anything. I will respond to all letters I receive.

Greg Albright
c/o Magan
185 New Orchard Road
Epsom, NH 03234


Banjo Update:
After much tinkering, the banjo is playable. I am learning picking patterns. I am not allowed to practice in the house.

My Favorite Things IV: Miscellaneous

A few other miscellaneous things to round out my "favorite things" series:

Website: Daytrotter
If you're into the music scene that is alternately described as Indie, Hipster, Neo-Folk, etc. you'll love Daytrotter as much as I do. They're a recording studio that gets up-and-coming (and sometimes well-established) musicians to drop in and record a few songs. Then, the release the songs for free online. High quality downloads are available for a small price. I've found a number of exciting bands via Daytrotter. One of my current favorite bands, The Low Anthem, did a really good session that you should really check out.

Comic book / graphic novel: Bone
This book is for everyone. Children, adults, comic readers and literature readers will enjoy Bone. Neither of those pairings, it should be noted, are exclusive of each other. It is an epic journey, a sweet tale of friendship, and lots of other things. It is not nearly as corny as it sounds. Well, sometimes it's corny, but it's incredibly original, considering the overworked genres it is in. I have the one-volume black and white edition--the way it was originally published, it should be noted. Some whiners on Amazon seem to think that the admittedly excellent Scholastic color releases are the original.

* * *

I realize, in retrospect, that another part of this "favorites" series is picking the categories. The categories themselves are some of my favorite things: books, movies, and music are all things in which I find a lot of meaning. So I leave you with a parting question: what are some categories in which you have favorites? And what are some of your favorite things in those categories?

To New Hampshire

I’m leaving for New Hampshire tomorrow. I’ll be living together with my grandparents, my aunt, uncle, and cousins. I’ll be learning woodworking from my (highly accomplished) grandfather. I’ll still have internet, so I will continue to post to this blog. Still, I’m leaving my parents’ house in Allentown, so here are a few pictures from recent times in the city.

And though I won’t be traveling by train, I wanted to share this bit of E.B. White’s prose: “Only after many years did I learn that an escaping train carries away with it nothing vital to my health. Railroad trains are such magnificent objects we commonly mistake them for Destiny.”

'Better'

"The annals of tech are littered with 'better' things that we abandoned in favor of more convenient things. We dropped vinyl in favor of CDs, and then dropped CDs in favor of MP3s, even though each new technology offered lower audio fidelity than the previous one."
-Farhad Manjoo, Slate

While I understand the lure and necessity of convenience, I don't think it's worthwhile to accept convenience over quality without thinking about it. Make the sacrifice of quality if you have to (we all do at some point or another) but know that you're doing it, and know why you're doing it. And if you can, listen to it on vinyl. It sounds so much prettier.

My Favorite Things III: Music (Albums)

See a previous post for an explanation of my favorite things.

A note on music: I know that we are now living in the post-album age. Single-song downloads are now the way of the industry, but I have a record player, and I reserve the right to present my favorites in my favorite (long) form. There are plenty of artists and songs that I would consider favorites, but I left them off of this list in favor of favorite albums. My music preferences change regularly, so even as I finish this list, I feel like there are artists and albums to whom I am giving short shrift. Maybe I'll write more about them later.

A Love Supreme - John Coltrane (jazz)

Coltrane's gift to God. This 45-minute-long jazz suite is one of the most moving pieces of music I've ever listened to. I try to only listen to it when I have the time to play it start to finish, with no interruptions. It is truly a religious experience. One of the highlights is, near the end of the first track, where Coltrane chants "A Love Supreme" over and over and over again.

Blood On The Tracks - Bob Dylan (folk/rock)

So many people have written so much about this album. Dylan himself seemed perplexed that so many people liked it. I myself am not sure why I like it so much. But I know I do.

Mercy, Mercy, Mercy - The Cannonball Adderley Quintet (jazz)

If you're going to start listen to jazz, this is a great album to start with. Adderley and his band infuse their bop-era album with the intuitive rhythms and structures of gospel music, making the album both instantly accessible, and deep enough to listen to over and over again. The title track is one of my favorite songs of all time, and I was fortunate enough to get to perform it with a jazz combo and with the Balkan Brass Band. An interesting anecdote: The album is subtitled "Live at 'The Club.'" The story goes that Cannonball wanted to give a friend's club a boost in business, but couldn't record an album there, so they brought a bar, tables, chairs, and a crowd into the recording studio, and wrote up liner notes making it seem as though it had been recorded in a club. The crowd's reactions are, in part, what makes this album so memorable.

Night Train - Oscar Peterson (jazz)

This album sits at an interesting intersection of two of my favorite things: Jazz performance and swing dancing. This is one the first albums I listened to as I was learning to play jazz at Swarthmore (thanks to Dan Perelstein for recommending it and for burning me a copy). Greg Avakian and Laurie Zimmerman, swing dance teachers at Swat have also recommended this album as a great album to dance to. It provides a great introduction to jazz standards and the piano-trio form. I recommend "Hymn to Freedom" as a standout track.

We Shall Overcome (The Seeger Sessions) - Bruce Springsteen (folk)

Springsteen, in an unexpected career move, went and covered songs that had been written or popularized by folk music icon Pete Seeger. The instrumentation and arrangements (often on-the-fly -- in one track, you can here Springsteen calling out key changes as he plays) are tons of fun, and the songs are some great old-timey tunes. Nicole & I perform "Pay Me My Money Down" because we heard it on this album. If you're into swing dancing, some of these tracks are fun to dance to, particularly "Oh Mary Don't You Weep."

RUNNERS UP - I couldn't list my favorite music without listing two more artists: Bill Frisell and William Elliott Whitmore. They were left off because I couldn't pick a standout album for either one. Frisell does ambient-ish jazz guitar work, strongly influenced by folk and americana (but going far afield of that). Check out "History, Mystery," "The Willies," and "Gone, Just Like A Train." Whitmore does (mostly) solo singing and banjo playing. He's been known to tour with punk bands, convincing the audiences that they, too, enjoy roots music. His voice is reminiscent of Tom Waits and his songs are reminiscent of the old Delta bluesmen. Check out "Latitudes" and "Animals in the Dark."

My Favorite Things II: Movies

See the previous post for an explanation of my favorite things.

A note on authorship attribution: A thing we film studies folks discuss sometimes is the fact that a director takes credit for the work of a huge production team. Do I re-ify that flawed system by attributing these movies by director only? Probably, but if you're going to look them up to watch, they'll be easiest to find by director. Sometimes that's how it goes.

I've linked to trailers for each movie from the title.

The Big Sleep - dir. Howard Hawks

My favorite film noir. Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Howards Hawks! Intrigue! Violence! Double Entendre! What more could you ask for? Also, William Faulkner is credited as one of the screenwriters.

The Fall - dir. Tarsem Singh

A pretty movie with mediocre plotting, sometimes cast as a modern-day Wizard of Oz or a 21st century Princess Bride. It's really, really pretty and tons of fun.

Fitzcarraldo - dir. Wener Herzog

One way to frame this movie is a movie about crazy dreams and the efforts necessary to bring them to fruition. The movie's behind-the-scenes story parallels, to some degree, the plot of the movie, with the central set piece (you'll know what it is when you see it) tying them inextricably together. It features the as-frightening-as-it-is-excellent acting of Klaus Kinski.

O Brother Where Art Thou - dir. Coen Brothers

This is the "Cannery Row" of my movie list. Not nearly as critically acclaimed as some of the Coens' other movies, but eminently quotable, tons of fun, and the movie that got me interested in American roots music, an interest that I still pursue. I'm hoping to track down a copy of "Sullivan's Travels," the movie that this movie is based on (and a movie that gets a shoutout in On The Road, incidentally).

Tokyo Story - dir. Ozu Yausjiro

Firstly, I transcribed Ozu's name in the Japanese fashion, family name first. This movie is very, very slow (or, as David Bordwell describes it, "calm"). It is the story of family tensions. Some things happen. Other things don't happen. This is a beautiful, beautiful movie, but I will only recommend it to those with a good deal of patience. Roger Ebert says that he re-watches this movie every year and gets something new out of it every time. If that's not high praise, I don't know what is.

My Favorite Things I: Books

In one of my first posts on this blog, I mentioned that, counter to a cultural trend of ambiguity and inability (or lack of desire) to name favorites, I like being able to have a favorite thing in a category. Sometimes I don't, and sometimes those favorite things come with a lot of disclaimers, but I like being able to note that I prefer certain things. That gives you 1) more of a sense of who I am in terms of my media preferences, and 2) new media products to enjoy (assuming my media preferences align somehow with yours. This is not so straightforward--I have plenty of people who I love and respect from whom I will never take movie/music/book recommendations). So this is the first in a multi-part series on my favorite things. Each post, I'll present five of my favorites within a certain category. Today's category: books.

I chose five of each because five is such a nice number (I do not think, however, that five is my favorite number. Not something I often think about). Also because I don't want to have to choose one of each. The lists are ranked alphabetically, not by preference. Because this post is called "my favorite things," do yourself a favor and listen to the John Coltrane Quartet recording of the song of the same name (yes, the one from The Sound of Music. Shoutout to Bryn Mawr's Mike Tratner, whose ringtone is that recording).

Books

Cannery Row - John Steinbeck
Though it might seem superfluous to have this minor Steinbeck work on this list, what with his magnum opus just below, this book always makes me laugh, and makes me aspire to be like Doc. Williams-Mystic folks will remember our Halloween night search for Truth, making the beer milkshake in the Johnston House kitchen.

East of Eden - John Steinbeck
This book combines so many things that I love: The triumph of the human spirit, quirky characters, quotable quotes, Bible stories, beautiful descriptions of landscapes, even a noir-esque intrigue. When asked to name one favorite book, I often name this one. Though I love movies, and movie adaptations of books, and though I respect that they are separate art forms, not necessitating comparison with one another, I can't bring myself to watch the movie version of East of Eden for fear that it would ruin the book for me.

For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
This one barely edged out The Lord of the Rings for this, admittedly last-of-the-top-five slot. People always seem more surprised to hear that I like Hemingway than to hear that I like The Lord of the Rings, so Hemingway it is. Though it is not often hailed as the best of Hemingway's three major works (The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms), I like it the best. Maybe it's the romance at its center, maybe it's the fact that I was reading John Donne when I first read it, maybe it's the 8-year-old inside of me getting excited about blowing up bridges. I just know that I love so much Hemingway, and when I have to pick one, I pick this one.

Moby Dick - Herman Melville
The (in)famous early American work of literature. I don't think I ever would have read this if it hadn't been required for class at Williams-Mystic, but having plowed through it, I can say that it is one of the most interesting, thought-provoking, and strange (not to mention long) books I've ever read. I regularly use the metaphor of the whale's head to refer to encounters with the ineffable.

One Man's Meat - E.B. White
This book's title has not aged nearly as well as its contents. Sad, because the contents (a series of essay from the early/middle of the 20th century) are charming, insightful, and well-written. If you only know E.B. White as the author of Charlotte's Web, these essays provide a new insight into the man. Of all the writers I read, I feel the most writerly kinship with E.B. White, in large part because of this book.

RUNNER UP: The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
As you know from above, this one was barely edged out, mostly because, at least among Swatties, it's assumed that everyone has some fluency with, and that the majority of people enjoys these books. A small true confession: I went in costume to local premiere screenings of the later two movie releases. I apparently don't have the same reservations about The Lord of the Rings that I do about East of Eden.

The True Adventurer

As those of you who know me know, I like adventures. I also like to to think about adventure. I made a movie that, for the purposes of this blog, I'll frame as being about the sustainability of adventure (in terms of emotional, not environmental, resources). [NOTE: I tried to embed the video, but blogger was being a pain, cropping the player window. Anyone with blogger experience know how to resolve this?]

This summer is particularly interesting to me, as I'm doing a lot of traveling around (adventuring) but doing it (mostly) based out of my parents' house (home). In "On The Road," Sal Paradise (aka Jack Kerouac) frequently returns to his aunt's (actually mother's) house between cross-country journeys. So are home and adventure compatible or is Kerouac a sellout for relying on parental resources?

What is adventure anyway? White people bushwhacking into "uninhabited" jungles and subjugating the (surprise!) inhabitants? Is adventure necessarily counter to the forces of law and order? Is it worth it to go adventuring when some people cannot eat? Can you adventure from a sedentary (living-in-one-place sedentary, not laying-on-the-sofa sedentary) lifestyle?

Basically, as I begin to plan the next stages of my vagabond summer and of my (vagabond?) life, I'm wondering if adventure is a worthwhile goal to pursue. Thoughts?

Car (literature) Talk

"And even though BP execs point at NPR and say 'look what they're spewing!' whenever they hear us say it, this is NPR." -Car Talk

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusions." -On the Road

"We know life, Sal, we're growing older, each of us, little by little, and are coming to know things." -ibid.

My complete-works-of-Michael-Chabon kick has been interrupted by On The Road and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Despite all these car-related media (the two books and, of course, Car Talk), I'm not getting a car--not before New Hampshire, at least. But if you're looking for something to read, here's notes on those two books:

Zen and the Art etc.

I think I expected too much from this book. I'm sure when it first came out, the ideas seemed new, but they're really just the tensions that my entire Swarthmore education has trained me to look for. So as a philosophy book, I didn't find it that exciting. And it wasn't that well-written. But formally, it was impressive--an internal monologue interwoven with a road narrative, with the reveal coming (spoiler alert) that the narrator may in fact be two narrators (end spoiler). It gets a little gimmicky at the end, but all in all, the formal experiment holds up.

On the Road

This book is phenomenal. Problematic, sprawling, as formally messy as Zen etc. is formally tight, but phenomenal, particularly the late sections where Kerouac gets into describing the bop concerts that he attended. For a long time I thought I liked Dharma Bums better, but after this reading of On the Road, I'm not sure.

FOR DISCUSSION:

What is a great road trip route (from your experience or imagination)?

Wavin' Flag

If the last post was in "advice blog" genre, this one is definitely in the "media blog" genre (side note to get us into the media blog genre: what are blog genres? How did they develop? What are genre characteristics? What are exemplars of the respective blog genres?).



I. INTRODUCTION

This particular post is a brief examination of "Wavin' Flag," a song by Canadian/Somali rapper K'naan. Here is the album version of the song, off of his LP Troubador. I first heard of K'naan via NPR's Tiny Desk concert series (Here is the set, including "Wavin' Flag" in acoustic form). Like many artists featured on NPR, K'naan was not very well known, at least in the US. As he raps in "Take A Minute" during the NPR set: "My man Akon is gettin' awards and covers now; this is K'naan and still reppin' the S [Somalia], coming outta Mogadish' and still draped in the mess." Akon is a Senegalese rapper who rose to prominence in 2005/2006.

Though his rap in the 2009 NPR appearance (and the very fact of that appearance) hints at his still-unknown status, 2010 brought and is bringing global recognition for K'naan, via Coca-Cola, 2010 World Cup, and "Wavin' Flag (Celebration Mix)." [Punctuation and grammar enthusiasts: Is that the right way to write that? The song title ends with a parenthesis, the song title is marked off by quotation marks, and sentence ends with the song title, so I figured )." was the correct sequence, but I could also see an argument for )". ]

II. K'NAAN & AKON

Anyway, the song has taken off, with multiple remixes (there's 2 links there--check them both!) and lots of commercial airplay (I heard it in a pre-movie Coca-Cola commercial at Regal Cinemas). I'd like to look at "Wavin' Flag (Celebration Mix)" in terms of K'naan's career. First, a disclaimer: I don't know anything about hip-hop/rap. That said, judging from the fact that I had at least heard of him before I started researching this post, and from his wikipedia page, Akon is fairly mainstream. He is associated, in one way or another, with Snoop Dogg, Young Jeezy, Eminem, Lady Gaga, etc. He has been in jail and in dubious legal proceedings for various crimes. His stage shows and lyrics have been accused of being overly sexual and misogynistic. He is, in other words, the quintessential rapper.

K'naan, however, is different. Both he and Akon grew up in immigrant families. Both were born in and spent time in Africa (Somalia and Senegal, respectively). But K'naan's rap is much more politically aware and active (see below). He has (according to wikipedia) been in no notable legal trouble, and speaks out against the gangster aesthetic of mainstream rap.

III. SELLOUT?

This is not a "what went wrong" analysis of Akon, with K'naan put on a pedestal. Instead, I present the differences because K'naan himself invites the comparison in the lyric quoted above, and because "Wavin' Flag (Celebration Mix)" could (and, to some extent already has) catapult(ed) K'naan to the kind of fame that Akon has/had. My question is about the nature of commercial success, fame, and "selling out." K'naan's new remix is for and from Coca-Cola, and every (legal) appearance of the song is branded as such (ie, the opening shot in the video for the Spanish language remix). It is also for the 2010 World Cup; that is, it is Coca-Cola's promotional song for the Cup, it is not officially related to the Cup except via Coca-Cola. Neither Coca-Cola nor the 2010 World Cup is a musical producer or dsitributor. Both are multinational commercial entities seeking to promote an image of international unity despite (at least in Coca-Cola's case) dubious international practices. K'naan's decision to re-record his song for Coca-Cola is one that could have caught him some serious flack from the activist community (accusations of selling out, etc.) but as far as I've seen, K'naan's reputation as a politically active rapper has been untarnished; he is "still reppin' the S."

That said, "Wavin' Flag (Celebration Mix)" is lyrically de-fanged. It includes a sing-along "whoah-oh-oh" chorus and a section extolling the virtues of soccer as a force of (inter?)national unity ("see the champions / take the field now / unify us / make us feel proud"). These sections are notably absent from the original, album version, and they replace sections referring to real-world poverty ("so we struggling, fighting to eat / and we wonderin' when we'll be free"). These decisions make the "Celebration Mix" appended to the title a much more loaded classification--though "Wavin' Flag" was, in its original form, a feel-good anthem, it did not ignore the realities of K'naan and Somalia. The Celebration Mix glosses over these real issues in favor of abstract, greeting-card platitudes about unity and soccer.



IV. CONCLUSION

I'd like to postualte that it is K'naan's relatively unknown status that allows him to make this particular career decision. He is not being called out as a sellout because the only people who would call him out are his small core fan base, who are happy to see him gaining success and international exposure (yours truly included). Thus, unknown status served to protect K'naan. It is a career move that will only work once--"Wavin' Flag (Celebration Mix)" will (hopefully) make K'naan into a household name. It remains to be seen whether mainstream success will take him the way of Akon, or whether he will return to his activist roots.

---

Sorry for a really long post. My academic gears are still turning. The conclusion is a little sloppy, they tell me, but really this post is just to let y'all hear this fun song before it gets overplayed in all the World Cup hoopla.

FOR DISCUSSION (what this post was originally going to be about):
What is "the song?" What is it that makes all the version of "Wavin' Flag" the same song? Are they the same song?

Manifesto

For those of you who were at Swarthmore's Baccalaureate last week, this is old news: They read the Wendell Berry poem that inspired this blog's title.

A few months before Baccalaureate, on March 31, I had gone out to chalk the Manifesto on the sidewalk. I took my sidewalk chalk, a bottle of water, and my Selected Poems of Wendell Berry (selected, it should be noted, by the poet himself). I had forty-five minutes before a screening for class. I chalked right out in front of the building where the screening was, and when my classmates began streaming past me, I was only halfway done. So I was about forty-five minutes late for the screening. It was worth it.

As I wrote, everyone who passed by had something to say about the poem, or my endeavor to chalk it. Many of them picked up Selected Poems and read the Manifesto in its entirety. Myles put up a line from it on his Facebook. My film professor, in a final paper conference a week or so later said "Did you chalk that long poem outside of the cinema?"

I'm not sure what kind of blog this is going to be. Some blogs like to give advice-- "life hacking" and all that (one of my favorite advice-giving blogs: The Happiness Project). As I have said many times, I don't like to give advice, mostly because I don't like to take advice. To assume other people will take my advice is disingenuous when I usually have no intention of taking theirs. But here's some advice for you: If you live in any sort of populated area, buy some sidewalk chalk and chalk something long. Long enough that you run out of the chalk colors you like and you have to progress to the ones you don't like, in order to prevent your fingers from bleeding. Pin yourself down to a place for a little while and let people pass you by as you do something that does not compute.

As I was finishing my chalking, a student passed by. He read the last line. "Resurrection," he said "doesn't seem like something you can practice. You get it right once or you're screwed." I didn't feel like arguing, but if I had, I would've pointed out that "practice" has more meanings than "attempt repeatedly."

LIFE UPDATE
I have a banjo now.

Large Boat

I'm headed down to Swarthmore in a few hours to work alumni weekend. If you're going to be around, let me know. Meanwhile, ponder this exciting opportunity.

New Blog

I feel kind of silly starting a blog. It seems like a thing that, unless for some unexpected reason it becomes significantly popular and lucrative, is doomed to fail quickly.

Nonetheless, I'm off facebook, and I plan on getting into some interesting stuff that you may or may not want to read about, and (perhaps most importantly) since I won't be making (m)any films in the upcoming months, I need a new medium to work in.

The title (and the url) come from my favorite poem, Wendell Berry's "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front." I know that in some circles (my own), it is in bad form to declare a favorite. The appropriate thing to say is "oh, there are so many I love, I could never pick a favorite." Perhaps this vogue is a symptom of over-mediation in our culture. Perhaps it indicates indecisiveness, or a reticence, a fear of vulnerability to the judges of Taste and Culture. I am guilty of this evasion sometimes with novels, often with music, and almost always with movies. With poetry, however, I have a favorite. "Mad Farmer" is not a particularly elegant poem. It does not make me feel deep inexplicable feelings like some poems do. But it makes me want to DO things, and it makes me feel invincible. So that's why I picked it for this blog's title.

I'm sure what I'm going to post here, except, for now, my email (written in text form to thwart spammers) so that you can contact me in lieu of facebook: g [dot] s [dot] albright [at] gmail [dot] com

-Greg

Bildungsroman

It was in an attempt to read the complete works of John Steinbeck that I ended up embroiled in an attempt to read the complete works of Michael Chabon. I don't know how I got from St to Ch, but I left the Swarthmore branch of the Delaware County Public Library system with "The Short Reign of Pippin IV" and "The Yiddish Policemen's Union." Having already read "Kavalier and Clay," I moved on to "Gentlemen of the Road" and "The Final Solution," but it wasn't until two days after graduation that I finished Chabon's first novel, "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh." It's a bildungsroman, set during the summer after its protagonist's college graduation.

It was one day after graduation that "Pittsburgh" set me to wondering if I wasn't missing out on some important and formative adolescent angst. I was washing the furniture on the patio, preparing for my own graduation party when it hit me that, unlike the protagonist of almost every bildungsroman out there, I feel good about my life. The remorse that overtook me when I thought of what I was missing out on (transformative journeys, brief and ill-fated loves, deep psychological traumas, nostalgic walks through old neighborhoods) quickly became an angst of its own, thus paradoxically assuaging my fears. The kernel my autobiographical bildungsroman is there, in the lack of a kernel for my autobiographical bildungsroman, I thought. I laughed at my recursive post-(yet still eminently indicative of)-Swarthmore thinking. This dispelled the angst.

At the party, my various aunts, uncles, cousins, and family friends all asked me some variation on this question "what's next?" My cousin Chris, just becoming a freshman at the same high school I attended, asked a very different question: "So, uh, Greg, what are you gonna be?" I was, at first, annoyed. Such a question begs a one-word answer, something out of a children's book or The Village People's costume department: Astronaut. Doctor. Firefighter. "Vagabond," I said.

I like Chris's question because I don't know the answer, and I am still in debate with myself over whether it is a question to which I can or should try to know the answer. In one sense, I'm gonna be the conglomerate of the answers to "what's next?". In another, sense, "what are you gonna be?" could give a framework for answering "what's next?"

Regardless, this moment before "next" is one that, today, feels like promise. As I lay in my hammock reading Chabon's early short fiction, I thought about what a time it was: A time to read complete works. A time to track down a banjo on the cheap. A time to decide to buy (or not buy) a car. A time like the time at the beginning of a bildungsroman.

FOR DISCUSSION:
What is the plural of bildungsroman? Bildungsromans? Bildungsromane? Bildungsromanen?
Do you have or know of anyone who has a cheap-yet-functional banjo and/or car with which you/they are willing to part?