Posts Tagged With "Culture"

Asheville: Portlandia of the East

April 7, 2016 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

Outside the Moog store and factory in Asheville, NC.

With just a few minutes before our tour of the Moog factory, it was decided that a drink was in order. Luckily, a quick survey of the vinyl and guitar shops on N. Lexington also yielded a bar with afternoon hours.

A Symbiotic Colony

Maybe you’ve had kombucha. The thought of different species in a “symbiotic colony” is a little much for some. The reminder of that colony in a sometimes gooey or lichenous form is too much for others. Anyway, those taps weren’t beer taps. And, it was delicious. Buchi – local to Asheville – is delightfully effervescent on draft, and it is served without the lichenous surprises at the bottom.

Beautiful, Wonderful, and Handmade Things

People making things in America.

It was with effervescent delight that we kicked off the visit to Moog headquarters. Yes, there’s a store there. More importantly, there are Americans actually building things at Moog.

And, they are beautiful, wonderful, and important things: Electronic musical instruments.

Job creation: Graffiti seen inside Moog.

I could go on for hours about Moog. Thanks to Bob Moog and the Moog brand, we have music as we’ve known it since the 60’s: The sonic climax in “Lucky Man,” important chunks of Sun Ra’s flavor of Afrofuturism, countless themes and sound effects. Dubstep. The reason that “Here Comes The Sun” sounds different than other Beatles songs.

And still, they make these instruments by hand in Asheville. On this particular day, clouds were literally over the factory, but inside, there was another cloud – that of the loss of another music icon, Keith Emerson.

History and Perspective

Back at the Grove Park Inn – I’m sorry, the Omni Grove Park – the evening was already in full swing with the ever-present music of the Great Hall. Smaller halls feature portraits of distinguished guests, annually selected. Some years were apparently bigger than others – I spotted both Eleanor Roosevelt and Richard Simmons.

Black Mountain College Museum awning in Asheville

Outside Black Mountain College Museum in Downtown Asheville.

Later that night I tried to explain to an Uber driver that our view was over the entrance/exit for the parking garage. She tried to convince me that this was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s favorite spot, so that he could monitor the comings and goings of the guests.

I must have had the wrong parking deck.

Creative Community

Black Mountain College studies building outside Asheville

Beside what was once the Black Mountain College studies building.

The centerpiece of this trip with Atlanta Contemporary donors was to explore the story and site of Black Mountain College. Atlanta Contemporary makes guided trips like this available to its donors, and these excursions provide unique experiences with sights and stories you might otherwise miss. Like a trip to Hale County, Alabama that we took some time ago.

In today’s era of academic inflation, Black Mountain College is an almost unbelievable story: Some of the world’s greatest creative minds of the 20th century congregated just east of Asheville in an effort to explore new ways of learning and creating.

Merce Cunningham and John Cage gigged here: The dining hall at Black Mountain College today.

On top of that, they actually had some graduates.

Two Views of the Past

Black Mountain College hosted the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, Willem De Kooning, Josef Albers, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, and dozens of others during its time.

The story is kept alive in downtown Asheville by Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. They show Black Mountain College related work as well as house a collection. In addition, the Asheville Art Museum houses works by Black Mountain College artists, and they highlight them in their exhibitions.

Paint drippings remain in one studio at the former campus of Black Mountain College.

Meanwhile at the actual site on Lake Eden, about twenty minutes east, the former studies building stands as a stark reminder of the school’s role in shaping countless creative paths.

Other structures remain. There’s the dining hall, where the residents put on plays and performances. Beneath the studies building, two frescoes by Jean Charlot are weathered, but still visible.

The campus is now home to a kids’ camp. I’ve read a few accounts regarding the experience there. It was intimate. It was experimental. It was hippie dippy before its time. Being part of the community actually required labor, sacrifice, and personal investment.

“Knowledge” – part one of the now faint and weathered frescoes by Jean Charlot.

Having the opportunity to walk the campus now, you get the distinct feeling that life would not have been easy by our standards at all.

But, there would have been a spirit, a creative drive, that would keep the residents moving forward in their purpose. What is that? What does it look and feel like? Where are the Black Mountain Colleges of our day?

They’re out there. Or are they?

Further Fermentation

“Inspiration” – part two in the Jean Charlot frescoes, painted in the summer of 1944.

Sure, the arts are alive in Asheville, but right now, beer is the bigger draw. Fun fact: Asheville has more breweries per capita than any other city in the US. But, if kombucha or beer isn’t your thing, there are any number of drinking and dining establishments from moonshine cocktails to sunset cocktails. Then, there’s The Crow & Quill, membership required.

And there are the handmade goods. Amid the sound of a distant drum circle, you can shop for any handmade leathergoods you might require. While waiting for brunch, you too can discover a fantastic shop with vintage belt buckles and handmade wallets, keychains, belts, and checkbooks. Which is nice. It’s real, man. And it’s there waiting for you.

Meanwhile if you find another kombucha bar or an artisan knot shop, let me know.

The view from Lake Eden at Black Mountain College.

When The Alternative Goes Number One

August 27, 2015 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

As explored among earlier posts, country music has a problem. If Jason Isbell is accurately capturing the rural southern experience, then there isn’t really anything alternative about alternative country.

Add the fact that his Something More Than Free has spent time at number one on the country chart, and it isn’t even alternative in a market or business sense.

Hard kicking southern rock hat made in China.

Cultural confusion on multiple levels . . . a hard kickin southern rock cap made in China.

Alternative Country

There are countless other acts in the “alternative country” space that are producing extremely good work: Amanda Shires, Ryan Bingham, Bobby Bare Jr, and Hayes Carll come to mind. All are expanding on themes that have run from country music’s inception through its blues, R&B, and soul influences. In their music, contemporary humor meshes with traditional thematic material, and though it may not always aim for the emotional or psychological impact that is a consistent component of Isbell’s work, it doesn’t have to.

Alternative? If anything, it’s just the next logical evolution in country music. Or, what “country” really is.

Americana

Isbell took some well-deserved trophies home from 2014’s Americana Music Awards. Here are lyrics from a song that helped earn those awards – “Elephant” – about a friend dying from cancer:

She said Andy you’re better than your past,
winked at me and drained her glass,
cross-legged on the barstool, like nobody sits anymore.

She said Andy you’re taking me home,
but I knew she planned to sleep alone.
I’d carry her to bed and sweep up the hair from the floor.

If I had fucked her before she got sick
I’d never hear the end of it
she don’t have the spirit for that now.

We drink these drinks and laugh out loud,
bitch about the weekend crowd,
and try to ignore the elephant somehow.

John Hiatt, another artist classified as “Americana,” painted this picture in “Master of Disaster” – a blues rock trip through the LA area (with a shoutout to Madame Wong):

Close one there
Choking in clean underwear
Bleeding tongue
8-ball pounding in my lungs

I still don’t know what Americana as a genre really is. To me, Americana is the flea market ephemera that decorates the dining area of Cracker Barrel. All that the Americana label does is keep the more intellectually challenging country-influenced music conveniently away from the trough of fodder that distributors and big box stores can easily peddle as “country.”

These are lyrics penned by contemporary human beings wrestling with contemporary pain.

The Real Alternative?

Logically, the real alternative country sound is what emanates from the alternative universe created by musicians mimicking thick southern or country accents native to nowhere. They stick to themes that are now industry standard and keep convenient stereotypes of country life and southerners alive.

Why kill the golden goose anyway?

If Americana is the decorative ephemera in Cracker Barrel’s dining area, what has become identified as country is the Chinese-made shlock pushed in their waiting area “gift” shops. It feigns authenticity . . . just enough.

A Timely (And Quick) Look At The Plunge Protection Team Theory

August 24, 2015 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

Trust The Algos - #StopInfluenceNow smartphone case on Samsung Galaxy S5.

Algorithms are pervasive. This #StopInfluenceNow smartphone case meme could refer to both the algorithms driving stock market trading and those driving your search results.

Anyone watching the Dow’s 1000 point dip-rally today has to wonder . . .

Where and how did this idea of a Plunge Protection Team (PPT) – also known as the Working Group on Financial Markets – come about?

Anyway, it’s an interesting academic exercise at least.

Something More Complicated

August 20, 2015 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

Every geographic region has its own flavors of joy and hardship. Life in southern Mississippi demands something different than the plains of Oklahoma. Job prospects in Trenton or the ports of New Jersey are different than those of Mobile or New Orleans.

Bottling The Essence

Consistently across his writing and recording, Jason Isbell is capturing probably better than anyone else the unique experience of contemporary and rural southern life.

You thought God was an architect and now you know
He’s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow.

Jason Isbell (image from Picasa)

With that line from “24 Frames,” it’s easy to see that Something More Than Free requires more than just one good listen.

A line like this:

I don’t keep liquor here, never cared for wine or beer
And working for the county keeps me pissing clear.

. . . is comic on one level, but it also nails the vicious cycle now so common in southern rural life: Pain of personal ambition choked by lack of job prospects; add drug or alcohol addiction as a way of escape; further limit your job prospects; repeat.

It’s one thing to craft the imagery (in Something‘s “Speed Trap Town” for example), but it’s another to bottle the essence.

Even with Wal-Mart a half hour away, the country life is one that requires a different grit and know-how than what is required in urban life. Sound farfetched in 2015? Deal with a flooded dirt road in southern Alabama, a dried up well in middle Georgia, or an ice storm in the foothills of Appalachia. Sure, it’s easier now than it was in 1915, but life can be surprisingly difficult.

Meanwhile, farming isn’t what it used to be and most of the manufacturing jobs are gone. It’s a big deal when the new Kia, Mercedes, or BMW plant opens.

Then there’s military service, a related theme Isbell frequently explores. It is a fact that military enlistments have always been represented disproportionately by southerners and the trend actually continues to rise. As a result, armed conflict disproportionately impacts southern families and communities. Take a look at the lyrics from “Dress Blues”, a cut from the previous album Southeastern:

You never planned on the bombs in the sand
Or sleeping in your dress blues.

And no, Zac Brown did not write that.

Digging Deeper

As with “Dress Blues” and so much else in his work, Isbell insists on digging deeper into the southern and rural psyche – so much so that at times the writing has a Faulknerian quality. Isbell has expressed genuine surprise at the commercial success of Something More Than Free, and it’s understandable. The message in this work is contrary to the blind, usually mindless flag-waving, God-fearing, beer-guzzling stereotype peddled in what has become known as country music.

The southern existence is a lot more complicated. Indeed, country life – not just southern life – is a lot more complicated.

The Right To Be Forgotten

March 29, 2015 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

With the proliferation of mobile and social technologies and their resulting integration into our lives, humankind is grappling with new existential questions.

Among them: Do individuals have a right to be forgotten?

Contemporary Mixed Media from Emerging Artist Matthew White

Detail from #RightToBeForgotten by Matthew White, 2015.

Forgotten how?

Forgotten in terms of you as a discoverable digital entity – both in the most minor sense, such as online references to you in your last professional role, all the way to your presence as a social media profile.

Continually, we’re leaving digital breadcrumbs everywhere, and try as you might, you will not be able to cover your digital tracks. After all, you have to cover the “cover up” tracks as well.

Human Memory

But, I don’t have anything to cover up. Anything I do online, I’d do in public.

Fair enough. However, we live our lives – whether physically or virtually – within the realm of human understanding, a central part of which is human memory.

We go about daily life with the expectation that minor social and even legal infractions are mostly forgiven in the minds of others, if they don’t fade away altogether. An off-color remark, a heated response, a single poor choice, or simple misfortune will begin to dissipate as soon as it passes from the present moment. This is the nature of human memory.

Time heals all wounds right?

Digital Memory

In the digital world however, the laws of digital memory apply. Things live on – and not just bad selfies. Technologies and services such as Forget.Me are available to assist in the process of cleaning the digital residue of individual existence. But let’s face it, there are a lot of breadcrumbs: Check-ins, status updates, mentions, tags, reviews, tweets, purchase histories, listening histories . . .

Like something out of a Philip Dick novel, the process of having aspects of our digital lives “forgotten” is increasingly being referred to, particularly in the EU, as de-listing or being de-listed.

#RightToBeForgotten

In #RightToBeForgotten, a piece I began while in residency at Hambidge Center, I explore these and related issues . . . and some unrelated ones too. Part of an ongoing project I call the #Hashtag series, this mixed media work consists of a manufactured panel and two manufactured canvases.

What are your thoughts on the issue? Your thoughts on the artwork?

Please, leave another breadcrumb here.

So What Did You Do At Hambidge Center?

March 15, 2015 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

What you don’t do at Hambidge is more important than what you do.

I came to that conclusion about halfway into my two-week creative residency there. If you haven’t heard of it, the Hambidge Center is a place where creatives of various kinds go, once accepted, to work on proposed projects or creative objectives. At any given time, eight artists reside in separate studios scattered among the woods. The studios generally have no connectivity, no TVs, no mobile signal, and the phone doesn’t dial out. Except for 911.

The Rock House is the gathering point for dinners, laundry, and most importantly, wifi.

In fact, if you choose, you may see no one until 6:30pm when all the creatives commune for dinner in the Rock House. Lively discussion can last well into the night. The largely vegetarian dinners are prepared by a chef who expertly bobs and weaves the finicky dietary requirements that artists are often known for.

Scenic hiking opportunities are plentiful. Spaces to sit and stare at the sky or the neighboring mountainscape are everywhere. One could consume countless days studying the history of the Hambidge Center and the Hambidge Fellows that have passed through it.

But that’s not what you go there for right? I mean, you’re there to work. To produce.

Well, yes and no.

Idle Brains

In his excellent study, Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi both confirms and debunks a number of long held ideas regarding the creative process for everyone from artists to scientists. In it, he says that achievements in creativity require “surplus attention.” Later he expands on one reason why:

Something similar to parallel processing may be taking place when the elements of a problem are said to be incubating. When we think consciously about an issue, our previous training and the effort to arrive at a solution push our ideas in a linear direction, usually along predictable or familiar lines. But intentionality does not work in the subconscious. Free from rational direction, ideas can combine and pursue each other every which way. Because of this freedom, original connections that would be at first rejected by the rational mind have a chance to become established.

I just remembered where I left my keys.

So What Are You Working On?

Admittedly, while at Hambidge Center, I did not take on quantum dynamics – the domain that one of Csikzentmihalyi’s subjects claimed. But, immediately upon arriving the first night, other creatives do naturally ask, so what are you here working on?

The surroundings are rustic and authentic. This is the way refrigeration was done back in the day, and water at Hambidge Center is spring fed.

I had my prepared answer which I provided. Uncomfortably, I knew that the nature of what I wanted to accomplish while at Hambidge Center might – though would likely not – yield objects I could point to and say look what I made!

My intention for the residency was to finally carve out time during which I could experiment and dive into some technologies I needed to revisit and explore. That’s not usually pretty. It means downloading (which you can do in the Rock House), reading, tinkering, screwing up, realizing that you’re missing a cable, etc. And, in the end, there is often very little, if anything, to show for it. Especially when you forget your Mac’s admin password.

OK, But What Did You Accomplish at Hambidge Center?

You thought I was setting you up for the news that I didn’t do much of anything. Well, that’s not true. I did complete a mixed media work, something that probably would never have happened the way it did if I hadn’t had a pedestal as a furnishing in my studio. I had never had this in my work surroundings, and it made me look at a particular construction in a new way.

And, one day on a hike, I encountered stacked stones that presumably another Fellow had left behind. About that time, the solution to a problem I had been thinking through boiled to the surface.

Ruins along a trail at Hambidge Center.

Looking up at misty mountains on another day during gestural mark making, I had a realization bubble up that will change the direction of future work.

Even more lasting perhaps, I learned a lot about myself and my daily work habits.

Whatever the domain, it is difficult sometimes to get OK with the realization that ideas, answers, and improvements take time. We have an innate or culturally engrained requirement to point to a result – a product, an object, a manuscript – as quickly as possible after time spent with a problem. But, if innovations or a breakthrough in any field are to occur, staring at the sky is a necessary part of the creative process.

If you can get over the self-imposed production requirement, things start to happen in time. And, time is what you have at Hambidge.

A Visit to the Georgia Guidestones

February 25, 2015 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

The Georgia Guidestones are located conveniently off of Guidestones Rd.

About 45 minutes east of Athens, GA sits Elberton. The town is mostly known for granite. And, since 1980, it’s become known for a few particular slabs.

The Georgia Guidestones, often called America’s Stonehenge, stand on a hill overlooking Hartwell Highway. You have to seek them out, and when you do find them, you realize that they’re massive. They reach over nineteen feet high and weigh over 100 tons.

But, it’s their mysterious origins and the more than 4,000 characters sandblasted on them that attract the most attention: The guidestones feature a kind of new “ten commandments” in twelve languages.

Mysterious Origins of the Georgia Guidestones

The Georgia Guidestones’ placement does undeniably call to mind the Stonehenge site.

So how did they get there? The history has been explored in a number of places online and perhaps best explained by Scott Wolter on H2’s America Unearthed.

In short, the story goes like this: A man using the pseudonym R.C. Christian walks into an Elberton bank with cash and very specific instructions for the site. The bank coordinates Christian’s wishes via the Elberton Granite Finishing Company. Still, no one knows who R.C. Christian was except the banker who, to his credit, continues to honor his commitment to his customer and the request for anonymity.

Today, the guidestones sit on private property and remain the property of Elbert County.

So, Who and Why?

Some say R.C. Christian was L. Ron Hubbard. No one really knows, but it doesn’t really sound like Hubbard. Supposedly, R.C. Christian – his name supposedly chosen because he was a Christian – represented “a small group of Americans who seek the Age of Reason.”

Christian made it known both to Granite City Bank and Elberton Granite Finishing Company that the monument was undertaken with the hopes of encouraging a new age of reason and appreciation of conservation.

The stones are now seen by many as a Ten Commandments of a godless New World Order. Some of the commandments seem harmless enough. I particularly like:

Avoid petty laws and useless officials.

That sounds like something most of us could rally around. However, it is difficult for many to get a handle on #1:

Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.

Anytime you start talking about population control, people understandably get uncomfortable. The world population is over 7 billion right now, and at the time of the stones’ placement, the number was around 4.5 billion. So, do the math – what would that 500 million number look like in practice?

What The Guidestones Are Telling Us

The placement of the stones, and the stones themselves, specifically draw from traditions of solar and astronomical calendars. The tone of the site suggests a coming apocalyptic event that the rest of us didn’t get the memo on. Or, are the stones and site calling for a man-made apocalyptic event?

Note the archaeoastronomical feature at the top slab of the guidestones.

One thing we can say for sure is that the commandments themselves are thematically consistent with known ideals of the Bavarian illuminati. Here they are in English, one of twelve languages that appear on the stones:

Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
Unite humanity with a living new language.
Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
Balance personal rights with social duties.
Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.

I do like how they have the big ideas down but don’t get bogged down in the details.

In The End . . .

The placement of the stones orients with the North Star as well as the summer and winter solstices.

While driving away from the Georgia Guidestones, you realize that you leave with even more questions than you had upon arriving. It’s all too elaborate and costly to be a hoax.

And why, besides the availability of the granite, would it be situated there in Elberton? Christian named the climate and his ancestry as reasons, and the site is located near what the Cherokee believed to be the center of the world. (That may be where I stopped to get gas. Dirty bathroom by the way.) But, how does all of that synch up with the precision of the archaeoastronomical features?

As with any tourist site, visitors were parking cars, looking, laughing, and asking others to take pictures for them. I did not however see any selfie sticks.

And, nearby, in the spirit of leaving room for nature, a traveler walked her dog on a potty break.