The Pit

In the beginning was the pit.

Yesterday, I did something I hadn't done in a quarter century. To be entirely frank, that quarter century has gone so fast that I didn't realize how much I missed it.

I moshed.

It was the perfect 'dance' for Generation X; a simplistic jumping motion, bouncing into other flannel-covered, Birkenstock-wearing, holey-blue-jeaned grungers, like molecules under high heat and pressure. Moshing was wild abandonment to a moment of uncaring. The 90's were a time of transition, from the overly-synthesized 80's to the crunching, distorted guitars. The music reflected this transition: the nostalgic syrup of Baby Boomers, fresh from Disco and its tight polyester, to under-dressed and overly-simple catchy tunes and lyrics. Gone were the days of Toto and their rains in Africa; in was Weezer and their mournful retelling of the ruination of a sweater.

While yesterday I moshed with a group of teenagers to the greatest grunge song of all - Smells Like Teen Spirit - my thoughts floated back to a day, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. 

In October of 1994, I was a bartender at the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) in Waverly, Iowa. On the north side of town, the VFW was a quiet, smoky dive, decorated with the autumn colors of the seventies - bright oranges, chocolatey browns, tans and a smattering of faded yellow. The mottled carpet was worn thin in places and holes created from long dead cigarettes pocked the material, especially around the pool table. On the long south wall was a juke box with a coin slot. 

One song for a quarter. Eight songs for a dollar! The discs were tracks straight from the 70's: Steppenwolf, Kansas, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles. 

On most nights the faithful few, three or four WWII veterans and their wives would pull up to the bar stools and order their drinks (which we got to know very quickly) and then the women would retreat to a table while the guys would tell stories and tease the bartenders. They came for the camaraderie and the conversation, not to mention the incredibly cheap drinks which their $20 yearly memberships bought them. 

One night, as Don and Ray (I still remember their names) were chatting with my brother and I behind the bar, Don said, 'Why don't you bring some of your friends down here? Liven the place up a little bit?'

'You mean that's legal? Even if they aren't veterans?'

Don raised an overly long, curly eyebrow and snorted. 'As long as they pay their dues, we'd love to have them.'

To be fair, $20 seemed like a lot of money in those days. For a college student on a budget, it could buy 1/3 of a college text book or five cases of Grainbelt Beer (free t-shirt included!). Ryan and I decided to invite a few of our closest friends and see what they would do. 

The next weekend, we brought half a dozen of our preppiest friends - ones that scrubbed up pretty nice so as not to frighten the veterans and their wives. One friend, Eric, walked through the door and his eyes lit up. Suddenly, it appeared as if he'd walked into Nirvana: 70's furniture, 70's music, 70 year old people, 75 cent draughts of beer! Eric strode confidently across the room and without further ado slapped a $20 bill on the counter. 'Make me a member and give me a beer!' Within seconds of his membership, Eric and Don, a suspender wearing man with a protruding gut, were in avid conversation about life and all that it meant. 

Fast forward four months. 

It's February of 1995. The bitter cold winter of the midwest had settled in. Mounds of snow were heaped on the corners of streets. The wind had a bite that stung. But I didn't feel it, because the VFW was the site of a concert unlike they'd ever had before.

For four months, word at Wartburg had spread. The VFW was THE place to be on weekends and Wednesdays. The half dozen preppies in the beginning grew to one hundred and fifty memberships. Almost nightly, college students were driving to the south side of town, away from the dance club on the main drag, to drink beer and talk to old people. In fact, it wasn't just an increase in college students wanting to drink cheaper, more older folks were coming in to check out the noise and the laughter. 

On that magical night, though, there was a lineup at the bar twelve deep. The juke box was ringing out a song about a magic carpet ride; a score of veterans were chatting with college students clinking glasses and and asking the young ones to talk a little louder. We were running out of cheeseballs and onion rings, and for some reason, the owner of the VFW had purchased pickled eggs which were being gobbled quickly. There was so much excitement that night because above us, on the second level, was a dance floor, and the band was getting ready to play. 

Generally, musical groups that played at VFW's lean in the Big Band direction, but that night - that most memorable night - Sweatlodge, made up of Wartburg's own students, was playing. The sound began to thump through the floor, glorious thrashing sounds of grunge. As the students two-fisted their cheap beers and headed up the stairs, I caught Don's raised eyebrow. 'You should go check it out,' I said.

He shrugged, grinned, and nodded and limped his way after Eric who had, unsurprisingly, begun wearing matching suspenders to Don. These two unlikely twins marched up the stairs. After a while, when the rush for beer had ended, I could tell the moshing had begun above us because the ceiling was starting to bounce. Dust filtered down on us from the antiquated (and most likely) Asbestos flavored tiles above us. I looked at Ryan. He said, 'I hope the building holds.'

When almost everyone had gone upstairs, I told Ryan I was going to see what was going on. I dropped my bartending towel on the sink, lifted the bar barrier, and took the steps two at a time. With each step, the music got louder and louder, harsh, scratching guitars, thumping bass, out of control drums and the throaty, vibratoed voice of Mike Jensen singing about going to a Happy Chef to dance around. People were moshing as if their life depended on it. Sweat and happiness dripped from the phalanx of Gen Xers, but then I found Don and Eric positioned at the edge. Eric was teaching the 70+ year old veteran how to mosh.

And so yesterday, when Smells Like Teen Spirit blared from the speakers, I couldn't help but start bouncing, and sweating, and laughing. I closed my eyes and remembered a time gone by, what it was like when life seemed easier and less fraught with drama and stress. I jumped and jostled people, people, like in 1995, who were only in your life for a short while so we needed to bump into them more often. 

Life is a mosh pit. It really is. Don't stop bumping into them. 

It's Nirvana.

Artificial

I'm having reservations. 

At the risk of sounding old-ish, technophobic, or even wallowing in grumpiness, I'm hesitant about embracing artificial intelligence. But it's not for any particular Hollywood reason: I have no reason to think humankind is about to be used as batteries, or that computers will take over the world, or AI will don a maroon, Spandex outfit and float off with the rest of the Avengers. I believe that AI's greatest threat to humanity is not in the destruction of civilization, but destruction of creativity. New technology like ChatGPT offers an incredible opportunity to save time, but at what cost?

Isn't that the question of every new technology invented? When the car was invented, travel became faster. When electricity was harnessed, heating and cooling became easier. When the computer was invented, almost limitless amounts of information and data could be crunched. But what did we lose?

To go slower meant we spent more time together in conversation. Now we are solo drivers in cars, or ear-phone-stuffed commuters, or video-watching flyers who struggle to connect verbally.

To have no central air (not that I'm complaining now), meant that we were more adaptable to the elements and able to survive in difficult conditions. We were fitter, quicker, more aware of our surroundings.

To have search engines rather than the Encyclopedia Britannica, means that we can find things out faster, but we don't retain (maybe even learn) anything. 

And now we have the ultimate laziness tech barreling down the digital highway on a collision course with our creativity, the very thing that makes us human. Over the last thirty years, during the evolution of music, we've seen how computers have (in some ways) enhanced music, but we also found a genericking of music. One no longer even needs to be able to play an instrument. One can push a button on a keyboard and the rhythmic crashing of drums can be recorded, or a looped guitar riff, maybe even the vocals! Processed sounds, combined with generally inane lyrics, have undermined the music industry and reduced it to a (and I'm vastly generalizing here) talentless pool of bass beats and thumping drums. And now, with AI, we have come to a place where computers will not only help us with music, they will actually write it. Barry Manilow can no longer claim to write the songs that make the young girls sing. Albert Indigo can now be credited.

And what does this do to us as a species?

We'll be even lazier than we already are.

We'll be even more sedated by the vivid colors that computers create, the sounds that AI manipulates, and the words that no longer mean anything at all. Suddenly, I'll receive a letter from someone I care about and consciously wonder if they wrote it. And the only way I'll be able to tell for sure is if that person hand writes it.

But that won't happen. Because we don't really teach handwriting anymore.

We'll be even more dependent on the digital world for everything, until eventually, we forget what a spring breeze smells like; what snowflakes on our eyelashes feels like; what a lemon tastes like; what the enmeshed fingers of a lover feel like; what the voice of the ocean sounds like before and after a storm. 

AI will not destroy our humanity, but it may destroy what's best about who we are as humans: our ability to sing, to paint, to dance, to cook, to speak, to love, to sigh.

These are my reservations, and it has nothing to do with saving time writing a formal letter or take the MCATs.

I want to retain my ability to feel.

And so I will be careful and watch where my digital footsteps take me.

I want you to know that I did not use ChatGPT to write this blog post. But can you be sure?

The Pen

I have to admit it. 

I suffer from a particularly strange form of covetousness about pens, writing tools, you know - sharp pencils are a source of fascination for me, and the mere thought of a fat ball point pen makes me shiver with delirious glee. Why, if I see someone has left a pen on a bench, or a seat in the park, maybe lying on the ground after it's dropped from their bag, I rarely will say, 'Excuse me, but I think you dropped this.' The chivalrous thing to do would be to pick up the pen, hold it like the holy grail in front of them, and await their over-the-top gratitude for returning it.

More often than not, I don't do that. I wait with restless, malfeasant expectation, hoping that they overlook the lost pen, so I can collect it, like Gollum and his Precious, and put it with the other hundred pens that are strewn inside my desk drawer along with paper clips, rubber bands, and anything else that wasn't nailed down.

Is this weird? I don't know, but I don't think it's rare. In fact, the BBC approved an article entitled:

The Psychology of Stealing Office Supplies.

According to the study, 100% of office workers - every last one of them - have 'stolen' something from the office. Whether the 'thrill' of lifting a pack of neon Post-It notes, or the more nefarious photocopying ten photos of a missing cat on the office Xerox, everybody does it - everybody has done it.

But why? Why do we take stuff from the office?

According to The Psychology of Stealing Office Supplies, it comes down to what I'll call the I'll-Show-You reasoning.

When people accept a role in a company or business, they generally align themselves with assumptions that the company will keep their promises about employment. For example, some companies will say, 'We will hire you to work 9-5, Monday to Friday, and no weekends unless reasonably related to your role.'

Employees read: Eight hours a day, five days per week unless I need a personal day, a sick day, a dog carer's day, a doctor's appointment day, or any other number of necessary 'days' to keep their personal life finely tuned. And, for heaven's sake, no weekend duties. According to an employee, there is no weekend reasonably related to the role, and any ask would be completely 'un'-reasonable.

Now, what generally happens, is that companies may need an employee, during the busiest times of year, to fill in on a weekend, or aid a colleague. Certainly, this is above the 38.6 hour work week, and if it happens more than once, the employee may feel somewhat put out that the employer has gone back on his/her word. But the employee does not want to lose the job. No way; it's a good job and pays well for 38.6 hours, but working on a weekend is miffing. Instead of confronting the manager about the outrage, the employee opens the drawer at work and thinks:

'I'm entitled to this highlighter because you made me work a weekend. Ha! Take that! I'll show you.'

The more I think about this, the more I wonder about its universality with regards to humankind's inability to be sinless. Paul writes to the Romans about their righteousness - both Jew and Gentile - and that 'All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.' This sinning often takes the same shape as our justification as the Psychology of Stealing Office Supplies. In general, we are under the general assumption that God is very much like a benevolent genie who will, during the course of a day, week or lifetime, bring about overwhelming happiness whenever we desire it. 

That's got to be in the Bible somewhere, right? My life is meant to be happy, therefore, the omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God, will use his power, his knowledge and his presence to bend to my will. That's the contract I signed up for. 

I'm sure of it.

But somewhere along the line, in the fine print (or more likely the parts we don't like to pay attention to), the scriptures point out something quite frightening, 'Not only (do we boast in the hope of the glory of God), but we also glory in our sufferings.'

There it is. Suffering is part of life. It's part of the contract.

But I don't like it. And so, instead of working through this with God, we shake our fists silently, with outrage, and outrageously say, 'Okay, okay, God, you who are all-powerful and all-knowing, I'll show you. I'm going to sin and see if you're going to do anything about it. I'm going to... to... to... take your name in vain! Yes, that's what I'm going to do. Or, I'm not going to go to church for a couple of weeks. (Not that church-avoidance is a sin, but you can see what I'm getting at). Or, I'm going to lie a little bit on my income tax, or covet my neighbor's shovel. I'll show you!'

And then, if you're like me, when I sin, I say, 'You haven't held up your end of the bargain. You owe me, so I took it.'

Of course, this is the sophomoric, kindergartenish, childish response to an egotistical worldview. 

But what's the alternative?

We recognize that the fine print, the work-on-weekends, the suffering has a point. 'We also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.'

The theft of glory from both God and suffering leaves us with shame, but the recognition of God's faithfulness in suffering, or perceived altered-promises, leads us to find hope. And hope is a very rare spiritual resource in our frequently hopeless world.

At the end of this missive, I want you all to know that I've found the owner of the Uni P/N Fine Line water and Fade proof pigment ink pen (2.0, in case you needed that detail). 

She was quite happy.

I like making people happy, even better than filling my drawer with stolen pens.