Saturday, December 31, 2022

New Year's Eve 2022

 I woke up at something like 5 in the afternoon. I'd woken up around noon, remembered I'd told myself I could sleep all I want, and then, well, slept some more. It's pouring outside and on Reddit people are showing photos of local creeks which are really full. 

I wonder how many people remember the Katrina-level flooding we got in a part of downtown some years ago? Not right where the big buildings are but an area with older houses. It wasn't a large area but I believe it was something like 15 feet of water in some places and the guys who have those trucks that are jacked up high with the big tires went around doing rescues. 

I had no special plans for today anyway. I knew it was going to rain heavily. I've heard back from the guy on the island of Oahu, the guy with two houses and all the antiques etc., so now we're able to communicate using email. That's not as easy to do as it was decades ago. For instance, Ken's wife Suzy and I can't communicate using email. It's phone calls (and I always feel like I need a real reason to call) or it's written letters. We've tried email and have not been able to get it to work. 

I actually have a theory that The Internet wants people to hate each other. It's fairly well documented in cases like Twitter, Facebook, etc. More hatred = more traffic and more use of the sites. More use of the sites means they can charge advertisers more for ads. More hatred is going to result in more views etc. on YouTube also, and I watch YouTube a lot. It's nice to know all the free-floating hatred is enabling them to make more on the endless ads for cars (I hate cars!), Doritos (a real puzzler as I've not eaten them for years and don't like 'em) off-the-wall shit anywhere from maternity pants to holidays in Portugal advertised in Spanish, and for some high weirdness, I keep seeing ads for the latest model of Learjet. Like, WTF? 

So maybe email programs or The Internet make more money somehow even on emails if people either hate each other, or what I'm noticing is, email being very unreliable and strange. It might be that they're Apple users but both my friend on the big island and my evil aunt send emails that are all chopped-up and nearly indecipherable. In fact I just told my friend on the big island that I'm going to cut-and-paste what new stuff he's written that I can find, and quote it in a new email with a new subject. Otherwise it's like an electronic version of trying to piece back together a letter that's gone through a paper shredder. 

I was having coffee etc. just in time for "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" to start on the radio, and to turn it off. I can't stand that show. It's predicated on the idea that being smart and clever and quick are desirable qualities to have, that will get you far in life. The real world doesn't work that way and I hate anyone who tries to pass this lie off as truth. Reality is that you are born into a level in the social class system and there's really nothing you can do about it. What you do for a living and even your interests are based on this basic social-class position and other factors such as your all-important race classification, location, what your parents or their friends are interested in, etc. I can rank my relatives in terms of wealth and in terms of the inverse of their intelligence and it will come out the same ranking. Empathy, a bit harder to measure but I have a general idea, would result in the same ranking also. 

What "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" proposes is that you can be witty and clever and it will gain you social "points". In reality, try to treat life like an episode of that execrable show and the people you are trying to impress will get together at tennis or golf and talk a bit about how you're "odd" or ruined the "mood" and then without words even, mutually agree that you must never be promoted, or invited to tennis or golf, and must be walled-off the way the body walls off any irritant. You were Trying To Rise Above Your Station. 

This is why I'm the fuckup, really. From youngest to oldest: Married a cop, Went into the Army then went to work for a credit-card company nagging people poorer than herself for money (did great at this, as she's bossy, petty, and mean; perfect qualities for the job), myself, then older brother went into the Navy then worked building fighter planes for the kind of company you get into straight after being in the Navy. The oldest was sent to that elite prep school and married a guy who also went there (you're really not allowed to marry a "commoner") who's not very smart but again, smarts don't matter. He came from enough wealth that being a lawyer or doing anything he wanted to do was a given, and now she's a fat hausfrau who's very satisfied with herself as well she should be. 

Except for myself, none of us set foot on a college campus. I'm the fuckup because I'm the one who got suckered into the scam of "going to college to rise up in life". Again, that's not how things work and my siblings were at least smart enough to realize this. The oldest, pampered and promoted and given the best of everything, was able to successfully wear the camouflage of being my father's original social class, was a perfect fit for Punahou School as she had the snobbery bit down pat, and thus lives as someone in that social class now. 

The rest of 'em were smart in that they went into, or married someone who was, the upper respectable end of working-class. The police, the Army, the Navy, a credit-card company (where China has a social score which is at least based on the good one does for society, in the US we have the credit score which just measures how useful we are to the banks and that is used as a measure of how useful we are to society). 

When I was little I wanted to be a lot of things. I was told, often, that I wanted to be an artist so I kind of believed that. I wanted to be scientist, very much. I read all the books I could get my hands on about science and loved the microscope I got from the Punahou Carnival "White Elephant" sale and the chemistry set my mom got me. Maybe she had wanted to be a scientist also. I remember one day, she actually got together with me to do an experiment to electro-plate a key. It kind of worked, in that the copper went to the key but it didn't stick and we just ended up with a key that had a brown fuzzy coat that washed off. But Mom was really interested. I've even heard rumors she took college classes, and studied things like calculus. But people of her social class don't become scientists. 

I think I was steered toward art because it was seen as a good blue-collar profession. Even as late as the 90s, an artist could make good money working for magazines and advertising and such things. At the time, it seemed a sure ticket to starvation (I didn't know then what I've since learned about begging and hustling and I wish I did!) and I didn't want to go into anything that made next to zero money. 

A friend of my dad's was in electronics somehow and I hung over his shoulder one evening watching him build a kit, and he told me what the parts were all named. It seemed electronics was a good field to go into, and tons of people - I wish I could go back in time and kick them all in the teeth - told me "You're smart, you should go to college". That's how I ended up making less than the guys in the warehouse who only needed to be high school drop-outs to get *their* jobs and with college loan debt to pay off too. And even that 1980s job was doomed, as there are no jobs for electronics techs at all any more.

Forget about being a scientist. Only a select few, who come from money, get to do that. Art seems to have gone back to how it's been, traditionally, also. A hobby for the rich and an occupation for a very, very few. I've tried to get into sign painting, a good solid blue-collar profession, but it actually takes a lot of materials and it takes a good work space, which I don't have and would have to pay for. I imagine myself having to go out busking to pay for a studio in the School Of Visual Arts downtown, then busking more to afford materials to make and sell signs at a loss... 

I could have been knocked over with a feather when I learned that my mother and her sister, my rich evil aunt, had played accordions as a "sister act" in theaters in Southern California. They must have been at least fairly good at it. The story is my mother didn't want to do it any more when she began to "develop". And I guess any and all thoughts of her playing any kind of music were done and over with when she married my dad, because nice upper-middle-class WASPS and those aspiring to pass themselves off as such, don't play the accordion, or anything really. 

Electronics seemed like a way out of the highly class-and-race stratified society in Hawaii of the 70s and 80s. Plus, I thought synthesizers were fascinating and thought it might be a sort of sneaky way to get into music. Music was what really interested me. I think it's one of the few windows of hope for a working-class kid. You don't need to be big and strong to do it (if you're really working-class you're growing up small and lean and wiry, not big enough to go into basketball or football) it doesn't take up tons of room like a sign-painting studio would, and it's quite inexpensive to do as occupations go. 

It was made clear to, whether actually true or not, that I'd not get funding for college unless I went into something "useful" like engineering. And I'm not sure how one gets into a music program even now. I believe you have to audition, and that would have required at least a few years on an instrument with proper training in classical works and technique, to get in. Maybe it would have been possible to study "World Music" or "Ethnic Music" or something and get around the audition filter, but it was made clear to me that one went to college for survival, and that meant a "useful" degree. I didn't know at the time how useful a survival skill music is! 

My dad would tell me, regarding are, "Someone can beat you up, and you can get up and still draw a picture". Of course a "moke" (Hawaiian version of redneck) can simply break every bone in my hands or bash my head in, and I'd certainly not be able to get up and draw a picture. That's where he was wrong. But, if I can play music and as long as I am not an utter, utter, shithead, the moke or anyone else, would not want to beat me up in the first place. 

I've seen that here on the mainland, talking with working-class whites outside a sports bar, as handy a place to find a fight as down by the docks in Kalihi, and we get talking about Deep Purple's Machine Head album or where Lynerd Skynerd got their name, and it's just all hearts and flowers. 

There's a lot of "You think you're better than me?" type resentment in Hawaii and it's for good reason. Haoles thinking Hawaiians are dumb, when Hawaii had a nearly 100% literacy rate when it was a kingdom. Different groups being excluded from opportunities, for instance Punahou School was whites-only once upon a time. The result is, it's really, really easy to offend someone even with things that would fly just fine on the mainland. Being a caricaturist or even a portrait artist is out. Especially if you're white or white-passing. In fact, if you're not Pacific Islander, selling anything in Waikiki is right out. The rules are bent considerably for most and only enforced to the very letter on haoles. But playing music, that's fine. And playing an instrument that's considered understated and "classy" is even fine-er, as Waikiki, like Santa Cruz years ago, is a bit over-populated with amplified guitars. 

Even in a place where it's not forbidden for physical things to be exchanged for money, music wins because if you sell a thing, then the person buying it has to carry the damned thing around and maybe they walk a few blocks and and decide they regret dropping that $20 on a little painting of Diamond Head. But having heard music and impulsively dropped that $20, they won't feel so bad about it because ... it's music. 

I'll even go so far as to say, if a mainlander comes over and is hustling all kinds of art they've made, maybe even they've done workshops with leading impressionists and plein-air artists and have come to Hawaii to exercise their skills, there's going to be a certain resentment. Aren't there enough local artists trying to make a living? And impressionism, we've got the Herb Kawainui school of painting, what more do we need? 

But music is 180 degrees opposite. Sure, competition for "gigs" is probably fierce as it is everywhere. But music is much more cooperative, not individualistic the way art is. Go out and busk, be easygoing, prove you can "go along and get along" as Mom used to say, and there's not going to be the feeling that you're competition "against" those who are already there. 

It rained all day and into the night and it's nice to be in, just listening to it. Eventually I got around to taking a thing apart that a customer wanted to make a lowball offer on, and I decided to just "part out" as we can get 3X as much for it in parts. But it was a real bastard to take apart so that took a few hours. But eventually I had it done and put the scrap metal out for the bums. 

I also put out trimmings from salmon trimmings. I occasionally get these packages of salmon "trim" that I further trim and freeze in single servings, and end up passing on about 1/3 of it to the birds. So the crows and gulls should eat well tomorrow morning. 

 


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