Day: September 6, 2015

I having a tough time stringing together a coherent argument today. I’ve been thinking about a lot of different happenings, such as the work Neal Stephenson is doing on Hieroglyphs, the questions raised by Paolo Bacigalupi’s Water Knife, and my own limited role in the science fiction community.

A lot of this goes back to earlier conversations about not knowing what my next big ‘ambition’ would be. I spoke far too much about the fact that I had the wife, kids, white picket fence… basically the American dream at some level, yet was deeply unsatisfied by that experience. It sounded at the time like a mid-life crisis. A thousand posts later I blew up my marriage and it sounded even more like a mid-life crisis. The more I reflect on what has been happening both in my private and professional life, the more I recognize that it wasn’t a mid-life crisis at all.

It turns out I don’t subscribe to the so-called American dream. The family issues are largely unrelated to the other stuff, but separating from that specific situation put me in a state of mind to ask myself what I want, which led to me recognizing that I have never wanted those standard things I was supposed to. Yes, I appreciate the house and the stucco fence, but it is not what drives me. When I was directed towards ASU’s Project Hieroglyph, I realized at once that it was exactly what I’d been trying to do all along.

Hieroglyph marries science fiction with scientific speculation to forma  relationship in which what is being written is not only reflecting on the role of science in society, but pushing it and doing so in a way that positively impacts the community. In other words, it isn’t just about telling cool stories, it is about telling stories that matter.

So, when I think about what I want to do and be and leave as a lasting impression of my life, I want to tell stories that trigger the imagination of others in a way that compels them to act–be it to research, consider, to create, or just to rationalize their own role in the world and ultimately their purpose.

Big goals indeed.

So, I finally had a chance to recap the MTV Video Music Awards and by that I mean recap my lack of understanding of the modern video music industry. Maybe I am that old. Miley Cyrus in an Atelier Versace outfit that looks like the 5th Element made love with Thunderdome is just wrong. Not because she’s too young or any of that standard crap. No, I hate it because she’s straight up not sexy enough to pull it off.

Miley Cyrus looks like a Raggedy Ann doll done up in a bunch of different outfits–badly. Supposedly, the entire gamut of looks are ‘her’ but I think what all of it reveals is that there is no ‘her’ and in that no personality in her sound or stage presence. She is trying hard to be someone who is noticed and over the top and it doesn’t feel genuine. Cnn said it best when they called her the ‘garish avatar of the American id.‘

This is my real argument: Music doesn’t feel genuine in the MTV realm. From Taylor Swift’s Bad Blood to Drakes, well, anything that he creates. The music seems false and prepared. There are several genuine artists on the music scene coming out with something genuine to say–even if what is real to them sounds poppy to the world (See: Call me maybe). The music scene has lost a lot of its authenticity and thus its credibility.

This is why Kanye can run for president. If we are willing to continually follow along with a series of songs and artists who, for all intents and purposes, are as vapid as an average K-pop band, we might have a generation just brazen enough to elect that dude.

Lost in all this is the efforts by Nicki Minaj to address an attack by Cyrus that basically amounted to being belittled as an ‘Angry Black Chick’. So, what did her response wind up doing? Making her seem more like an angry black chick, of course. Instead it should have reconfirmed the flagging identity of the MTV viewer and this incumbent sense of American slippage back into a period of time where we just don’t get it.

We were on the verge of something big–between civil rights for all and finding our purpose on the world stage. One glance at MTV and I’m starting to think that all that was illusion and we are still chasing that next popular pretty face.