Category: art

The yawning generation gap

I remember as a kid, and especially a teenager, being really, really into music. I still am, but it was something most vital to me back then. An escape, a place to speak emotions and thoughts I didn’t have the words or maturity to say. It spoke to my soul.

And I remember my grandmother or mother or some adult making a comment about the music that mattered to me, and thinking, “they just don’t get it.”

I recall swearing to myself, SWEARING that I wouldn’t let there be that generation gap as I got older.

And I’ve fought it. Hard. I listen to current music. I do my best to stay up to date, so I’m at least conversant.

Yesterday, I was listening to my iPod on the way home from work, and the shuffle landed on a Rihanna song.

I like Rihanna. I like her a lot, actually. I think she’s not only stunningly beautiful, but she’s talented.

The song that came on is entitled “Unfaithful.”

In the song, the story goes that the woman is with a guy, and that it’s more than love, he is “The reason that the sky is blue.”

But gosh darn it all, she just can’t seem to stay true to him.

She cries out, “And I know that he knows I’m unfaithful/And it kills him inside/To know that I am happy with some other guy/I can see him dying.”

She then wraps up the chorus with, “I don’t wanna be…/A murderer.”

Ok, ok, this is all very emotional. Her cheating is “killing” him. He’s “dying inside” and she is the “murderer” for doing this to him.

And this is when the yawning chasm that is the generational gap became oh so apparent and the years of my experience in this thing called life kicked in.

I found myself, listening closely to the words, and then *yelling* at my stereo:

“THEN LEAVE HIM! IF THERE IS NO WAY YOU WON’T CHEAT AND IT PAINS YOU TO SEE HIM ‘DYING INSIDE’ THEN BE A GROWN UP AND WALK AWAY!!!”

Ahem.

Yeah.

Sure, I know that, “He’s a nice guy but I just can’t be true to him and so I did the mature thing and broke up with him so I could go sow my wild oats, knocking boots with everything that walks so that one day I can be a sad, bitter old hag wondering whatever happened to my life and why I never found a nice guy,” doesn’t really make for fun, emo deep pop songs.

And I’m fairly certain that the young twentysomethings that work for me would roll their eyes and think, “she just doesn’t get it.”

I think I just grew a new gray hair.

“Hey you kids, get off my lawn!!!”

That which is taboo

Yup, I’m in love again. Painful, lustful, forbidden love with a steely, powerful object.

My new employer is a lot behind the times when it comes to IT expertise, but they are hip as hip can be with the portable crowd.

When I started work, I was asked “Would you like a PC or a Mac?”

Why, the answer was simple. Mac, please!

In fact, that was one of the go-no go requirements of changing jobs. Having used nothing but a Mac for the past twelve years, I would say I was reluctant to slip back to the Windows based environment.

So, my previous employer provided Macs, but they were refurb and a step or two behind the technology curve.

Not so with fascinating new employer.

No, I got to work and was greeted with a sleek, sexy, top of the line MacBook Pro. The 15-inch variety, 2.53GHz. Four beefy GB of memory. A roomy 300GB hard drive.

Yum!

It has this utterly awe inspiring, new crystal clear glass screen, the cool backlit black keys, and the glass trackpad with NO button. Nope, it’s all in one. You can scroll on that bad boy, click anywhere and whoa does it work nice.

The unibody design is light and compact and feels solid and well built.

This thing beats the crap out of my last work machine, an old style MacBook pro, that poor dented aluminum thing.

Then yesterday, I had occasion to work from home, and as I sat on the couch, caressing the keys of this hot young MacBook Pro, I looked at my VERY old, personally owned 17″ PowerBook (it dates back to, I believe, 2004) and then at my new work speedster and yes…I fell in love.

I mentioned later to The Good Man that I was in love, and that I may have to save our pennies (a LOT of pennies) to buy one of these. This might ensure that my writing projects are no longer in peril of going to the great bit bucket in the sky when my PowerBook fails…and it will. Soon.

He couldn’t hear me. He was too busy caressing his own brand new MacBook Air (well, new to us…he bought it refurb on a smoking good deal).

The family that computes together (on the same platform) stays together.

We’ll call this: Still life with Macsexy Beast. Taken with my company provided 3G iPhone.

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Oh, a small bit of irony. My beautiful, glorious MacBook Pro machine……well my IT organization got a hold of it first to set it up. They also turned it over and used an old fashioned electric engraver to scratch the company name and identifying information into the unibody metal case in a shaky script.

I believe, when the tip of the engraver touched the silky nickel aluminum blend unibody, somewhere in Infinite Loop, Steve Jobs shuddered.

Who engraves stuff anymore? My *dad* used to do that!?!!?!?

It never gets old

This weekend, The Good Man and I met some friends up in Sausalito for fun and merriment.

Getting to Sausalito means traversing the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge.

I believe this year makes twelve years for me living here in the Bay Area and driving across that big orange bridge is still as exciting as it was the first time I ever did it.

I have about a zillion photos I’ve taken of the Golden Gate Bridge, because no matter how many times I see it, I always find something more interesting I need to try to capture.

Then sometimes, like yesterday, I decide to come out from behind the camera and just watch as we drive by. The art deco uprights are still so endlessly fascinating to me, the way the light plays off of them, the subtle texturing. The stout cables that hold it all in place still look like dental floss in perspective of all the iron and steel and concrete that make up the bridge.

I wondered, as we drove across, if the men who finished the bridge back in 1937 could ever fathom what it this bridge would become. Could they have ever imagined the magnitude of traffic that rolls over it every day?

And how freaking cool that something built 72 years ago still stands tall and proud and virtually unrevised (but for some retrofitting and upgrading) since then.

I got to thinking, was there anything from my life in New Mexico that could even come close to this? Something that in driving by with some frequency, I still have the sense of awe and wonder every time I see it?

The closest I got was not a man made item. First thought in my head was Tijeras Canyon. Similar in that it is a roadway to transport people from one side of a great geological obstacle to another.

It still fills me with awe at the beauty and wonder at the too fast development growing in that gap between the Sandias and the Manzanos.

I tried to think if there was something like this, something man made and yet so enduring. Of course, the Indian ruins are far older than the Golden Gate, but not something that one drives by with frequency, as they tend to be back in the hills.

I suppose the most awe inspiring bit of human engineering and transportation in New Mexico is the Sandia Peak Tramway.

I don’t know, to my New Mexico friends, do you have any ideas? I’m sure I’m forgetting something…

Photo by Karen Fayeth

Things like this shouldn’t be allowed to happen

I’ve been listening to the Holly station on my Sirius radio pretty steady for the past few days.

It plays a nice mix of old standards and contemporary holiday songs. Not all the songs jingle my bells, the Ann Murray and the Manheim Steamroller could get toned down a little, but so far so good.

Until this morning.

As I dressed for work, I heard the sounds of a woman caterwauling the John Lennon protest song “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)“.

I glanced at my receiver to see just who was perpetuating this abomination, and gasped when I read the readout.

Celine Dion

How could this happen? Where are the controls to manage such things? It is not ok for the soulless and vapid Celine Dion to put her trilling note-running shriek on a song that is both moving and meaningful. And written by a talented artist and not some sham with a daddy-husband’s money to make her famous.

I was beside myself, truly.

Look, all you Celines and Josh Grobin’s and John Tesh’s and Yanni’s (and dare I say, Nelson Martinez’s) need to just stay back behind the very explicit WonderBread white line in the sand. You just commit your egregious crimes against musical taste and soul and leave the heavy lifting to those who are much more qualified.

Meanwhile, I had to cleanse my aural cavities with some holiday sounds from James Brown followed by John Lee Hooker.

It was the only way to get right after what I experienced.

There oughta be a law for such crimes against humanity.

(Aye God, can this woman not be stopped? Evidently her cover of AC/CD’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” was voted worst cover song in a magazine survey.)

I’m doin’ it!

Clearly I’ve lost my mind. But that’s ok, I never really had it gripped all that tight to begin with.

And that’s oooookay.

In the midst of traveling and changing jobs and the upcoming holiday season, I have decided, once more this year, to participate in National Novel Writing Month, or as we in the know call it, NaNoWriMo or just NaNo.

This will be my fourth year to attempt the death defying feat of writing 50,000 words in thirty calendar days.

I have tried and succeeded each time. Each year has been its own odyssey into learning about myself, about how I write and about scooting that internal editor over to the side and just putting down the words.

This year is looking a little…shaky.

I wasn’t as fired up about my story idea as I’ve been in past years. And I’ve learned when you are lost in the abyss at about 25,000 words, a really good, fun, story idea helps you climb through.

So that’s worrisome.

Last year I got a late start but ended up finishing in fifteen stupid whirlwind days. Who does that? 50,000 words in fifteen days?

Ah, the occasional benefits of being rampantly OCD!

This year, I got a late start, and despite having a killer six thousand word day yesterday, the fire just isn’t in my belly.

And that worries me.

Ah well, too soon to get really concerned. There are still 19ish days left in this race. A marathon, not a sprint.

If you want to follow my progress, I’ve put a handy dandy little widget over on the left sidebar so you can follow me along. Today I’m at about 12k words. Still many, many left to go.

All good thoughts and voices of support are welcome!