Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
You've gone way beyond, man. You're doing great.
  

    

Oh yeah, you'll love media.
  

    
which media? which group, as I said, I've never been one forjoining
groups or "networking" (a term which I hate). There's a difference
between helping someone you know and trust, giving them an introduction
so to speak, and just passing someone's name on beyond you went o the
same school, or are in a group. It's probably the same reason why I
never joined a writer's group. But that's me, that's the way it's
always been.

I've been watching this cybermedia thing take over the planet and one
part of me approves and the other part of me is horrified---I think
there's an awful lot of alienated people out there in cyberworld and
that the computer instead of drawing people together, just isolates
them more, reinforces their aloneness. That's not to say that I don't
really love e-mail, but when I look at how my daughter uses it with her
friends---they don't really talk about anything substantive, they sort
of use it to wave at each other electronically speaking. When I write
e-mail and I'm concerned about how it looks, I ususally compose
off-line and then send it on line. When I first started andused AOL
(America Waiting online) I had to cmpose on-line and Ihated that. Now I
use Eudora (except in this case) and it seems to work much
better...but I digress.

Funny, someone gives me a one line question or comment and I go off,
must be starved for companonship, but then again that's a writer's lot
and that's the way it's supposed to be, and if one can't take the
isolation, then one shouldn't be a writer or any other kindof crative
artist.
  

    

David, dear, prepare for a lot of flak about alienation and the well.

Also, prepare for a teensy tinesy bit of flak from me for your MAD CRAZED
SEXISM!

Now I have to take a bursting pup for a walk.
  

    

Media is a conference here on the WELL, at least that's what I was talking
about. Talk about many kinds of media things, and related drift. I assume
you're using Engaged (the web interface) so type    go media     in your
shortcut box.
  

    
Mad crazed sexism, eh Cynthia? Then you'll really get your circuits
fried by "Don't Touch Me There: Whatever Happened to Foreplay" which
deals with the subject as well as I'm able.

As for taking flak, I just but on my cyber zelvar suit to withstand
any attacks that ocme my way. Alienation and the well,  yeah that 's
worth a few thousand lines. As I said there are aspects of cyberworld I
find really neat, but doing research on it doesn't obviate the need to
learn how to discern, to be selective---a website might look great and
have no nourishment in it, a website chock full of factoids and cool
graphics might not be worth squat. I have tell my kids that all the
time though they're starting to figure out that one on their own.

Glad to be your new best friend, Cynthia, hope your little yak at the
92nd Street Y went well (sic!!) and that you managed to piss off those
who needed pissing off.
  

    
Cynthia:   I'm really intrigued by your comment. I trust when you open
your e-mail in a little while, you'll see this modern fable I wrote
which appeared in the SF Examiner a year or so ago, caused a
controversy but I really didn't mean it like that. What think you. If
the rest of you want to read it, I"ll enclose it now:
        The Feminist Who Thought She Had It All

by David G. Walley

        Once upon a time in a far away city there lived a Feminist who
thought she had it all. Growing up in the Seventies, she'd had her
consciousness raised good and had absorbed all the right books and
magazines. As a teenager, he'd vigorously protested whenever any MAN
would hold open the door or pull back her chair, loudly accusing the
offender of gender oppression. It may have put a dent in her social
life, but she always felt it incumbent to stand up for her rights.
        After a four year course in Woman's Studies, she took a degree in
law, specializing in Affirmative Action and Minority Rights.  Favorably
impressed by her dedication and ambition, the firm that hired her put
her on the partnership track. However, despite the fact that she was
now making a good salary, she was rarely awake to enjoy it. But she
persevered nonetheless, and in due time, by juggling her professional
and personal life, married a fellow attorney. (They had to postpone the
ceremony a few times because they were litigating in different parts
of the state.)
        Close to having it all, the Feminist still lacked an essential
ingredient. Accordingly, one evening when she and her husband were too
fatigued to think straight, she proposed they Have a child, which came
nine months later, a girl. 
        Problems arose.
        Her work load and added responsibilities bundled with her husband's
equally demanding schedule quickly forced her to put her darling in
daycare after three months. Thereafter on weekends  (schedule
permitting), she was a full-time Mom and happily brought up baby in The
Cause. The daughter it was said endured all with
stoic fortitude and good nature though in time, she started to resent
having to make appointments in ink in mama's daybook for quality time.
Meanwhile, the marriage continued on autopilot.
        In due course, the Feminist was promoted to Senior Partner and to
celebrate, took off the afternoon to be with her family. Upon arriving
there, she learned that her daughter who she thought was fully
indoctrinated, and whose consciousness was raised to a fever pitch, had
been elected Homecoming Queen and was contemplating a career as an
actress. Looking for her husband, she found a note pinned to her
boudoir table stating that he was leaving her for a woman who liked to
wear garterbelts.
        MORAL: Having It All doesn't always guarantee Getting It All.


This is supposed to be funny, you're supposed to smile, it's a fable
in the style of George Ade (Fables in Slang), Ambrose Bierce (The
Devil's Dictionary) and Mark Twain (Letters from Earth)
  

    


>I think there's an awful lot of alienated people out there in cyberworld and
>that the computer instead of drawing people together, just isolates them
>more, reinforces their aloneness.

I've seen plenty of examples to both support and refute this.  I am part of
several communities -- global ones, even -- that have really taken good care
of their members in significant ways.  I've also seen some really unhappy
people exacerbate their troubles terribly, and afflict larger number of vic-
tims than they could ever reach in the 3-D world.

It's just like real life.
  

    
Actor. The professional term in the craft is actor, be she female or male.

That while true is brought up purely for amusement purposes.
  

    
Awww... David Gans slips a post in ahead of me and ruins my timing.

I agreee entirely that like the telephone or the car, these new technologies
can help you extend a human network, or to avoid one.
  

    
JADP, but I'm not smiling.
  

    
gee, I see to have started a   sidebar conversarion about alienaton
and the web---it's a very old chesnut really, and I'm sorry I wasn't
hip enough to just keep my mouth shut about it. It's an issue and so is
life. I was speaking 'my' peace here, but obviously it's not great
revellation to you'all. As I said, cuyberworld is a tool which I use
and try not to have it use me---and then we can get into the Drudge
report and cyber reporting but that just leads back into how does one
learn how and where to practice discernment---certainly not on the
world wide web where technolgy militates against discernment. Is that
approximately right, David Gans? Gail? and what does JADP mean to me?
better what was it referring to?
  

    
Just Another Data Point
  

    
what's the mean? Really I'm just ignorant of these shortcut words, the
only one which seems to have any resonance for me is GIGO which is one
of the great systems laws of the universe, which sums up this
consumerist hell so well: our media (our lack of it), our political
system (and the lack of it), and especially Barbara Walters and her
Lewinsky problem---no makeit the whole country, and people wonder why
America doesn'rt seem to get out of high school? I rest my case. Jeez, 
Cynthia where are yo now that I need you?
  

    

perhaps i don't understand the context, but where is the humor in that fable
supposed to be found?
  

    

JADP means "I'm just another data point in your obviously massive sample, but
..."  It is often used in a sarcastic way by someone whose personal
experience, feeling or whatever belies the point you're trying to make.

In this case, Sharon was pretty unsarcastically making it clear she didn't
find your fable amusing.
  

    

>certainly not on the
 world wide web where technolgy militates against discernment.

I don't think technology militates much.  TechnoCRATS do, of course.  But
again, the medium is not the message here: critical and uncricital thinkers
abound in cyberspace as they do everywhere else, and silly folks who are
charmed by the bells and whistles are gonna respond to fancy new bells and
whistles.  Drudge is the beneficiary of cheap desktop publishing tools in the
same way that a zillion other voices are; he just happens to have been a
useful tool for the VRWC (Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy) -- and that story, too,
is as it has always been.

It's not the net's fault that so many Americans aren't critical thinkers.
  

    
sorry sharon, it's supposed to be a joke, loaded down with all kinds
of cliches, funny when this was in the SF Chronicle, I got some of the
same reaction though most people took it for what it was supposed to
be. I guess no good deed goes unpunished:-)))


That's a good point David, I can't make generalizations about what
goes or does not go on the web. The web is the web, and there are all
sorts of people on it, and people find other people. I find it amusing
that people would take Drudge seriously, I mean even his name is qa
not-so-subtle joke, but hey with the tools provided anyone can be an
internet journalist or air guitarist. So we go into the age of there
being no experts, sort of an anti-elitism. Which is what happened in
the Sixties in politics with the radical fringe, where being
"intellectual" some somehow elitist. What's that Dylan rag? "I'm just
average, common too, I'm just like him and the same as you; I'm
everybody's brother and son, I ain'[t different from anyone. Don't talk
to me, it's the same as talking to you." Anti-intellectualism in
America isn't dead in the Nineties, it just looks different.
  

    
Anti-elitism is a theme of online life.  It accounts for some of the 
alphabet shorthand used to signal "don't shoot me, no elitism here, just
another earthling with an idea."  Ceremonial gestures: 
JADP = just a data point
IMHO = in my humble opinion
FWIW = for what it's worth
YMMV = your milage may vary    etc...

David, I have your book in my paws.  

I'm wondering about the difference in my personal experience of the
seventies in your laments about feminism destroying foreplay...    
I don't know how to react to this except from my own life.  I am 
pretty sure I'm not alone in having experienced both extremely casual
and not very satisfying 70's sex.  Not quite as "a fashion statement" 
though I sure thought other people had fashion-statement sex.  Good line.

Maybe mostly simply to see what would happen.  Sometimes to see if 
I was desired, or if I could feel irrisistible and equal, or to avoid 
dissapointing someone.   And I think my own interest in feminism, which 
ran towards the humorous and irreverent from the time I was in high 
school reading _Sisterhood is Powerful_, was a counterpoint to 
the rock and roll culture of sexuality.  I forget who said that the sexual
revolution started with Playboy magazine, followed by the Pill, and a
response and backlash from all kinds of women was inevitable, but that's
not original, and it's interesting.  

I think the excesses of second-wave feminism were a helpful counterpoint
in that time.  Deciding that "Under My Thumb" is a bit of mysogynist 
propaganda you just won't hear again, and deciding that you can't stand 
to hear the lyric "come to your life like a warrier nothing will bore yer" 
one more time or you will *scream* are both shared moments for some 
american women of my generation.  Men too, plenty of great men.  I think 
you play with this complexity and construct a feminist monolith and 
bogeyman. Um. bogeywommin?  

I don't challenge your perception, I am just doing that thing, wanting to
see if you perceive the sexual politics part as history or as your
history.  Thanks for the questioning.
  

    
Thanks Gail for the explanation, for a moment I thought it might have
been something I said.

It's exciting to know that as we're chatting here in the ether, you're
actually looking, reading, etc. TNB--this is what I thought my
experience on the Well was gonig to be about and now after a week, it
is---

I'd delighed that your'e responding to my writing, because I busted my
ass to make sure that all was as right as I could make it, that I had
found the apt phrase (as Cuynthia and Carol know, finding the right
word is what writing is all about). TNB is meant to be a jumnping off
place for crucial discussions that effect all of us, I want it to draw
attention from the homogenized, cheese-whizzed, demographically correct
and correctly sociologically- current statistical models of cultural
representatons tells us what is going on. Each essay is a variation on
that theme, for thinking is the most subversive activity in this
country besides laughter--- I don't think it's accurate to cnsider Hef
the man who started the Sexual Revolution. Thre's always been one, it's
just taken many different guises, there was a sexual revolution in
Victorian Europe, the mauve decade, the banquet years in Paris, ask
Steven Marcus about that--- I was just trying to lay out as it struck
me as a man trying to make sense out of all of it--in truth if it
wasn't for women, men would bore themselves to death--- si "Don't Touch
Me There", said title taken from a song by The Tubes in the mid-
Seventies, was written to elicit discussions. I was just happy I was
able to get it all out on paper. We really, men and women, jsut have to
stop all this static and get on with the business of saving the planet
(physically and psychically and spiritually) if that's possible---and
here's all that "hippie" bullshit coming out of me, a man about to turn
54 tomorrow at 11:11 (any numerologists out there, guys into gematria
who can traslate those numbers into something else?)---

I never thought I WAS constructing of femminist "bogeywoman" ( I love
that phrase!!), I was just trying to put it down like it made sense to
me, of course. The question of what is "history" is an apt one for me
to be dealing with now that I am starting on my new book about this
very interesting man, Herbert Feis. Is sexual politics history or my
own history. We all have our own histories, there are personal ones,
shared ones, nmanufactured ones (which is what again TNB tries to
discover and disclose in all forms of Amrican cultural life *including*
music [originally I wanted to call the book, "TNB: Music, Politics and
High School in the Post-Elvis Age"---Sexual politics is one of those
loaded words like feminism or racism or elitism or (and on and on and
on)---oj jeez I'm starting to go into the Starr/Clintonian colloquoy
about "what 'is' is."---

And what I'm trying to tell you is that writers try to report as well
as experience and they try to hit "the note", to induce the reader to
experience what he's experienced (talk about RD Laing---) IU mean look,
I"m not going to deny that some of those things happened to me, but
also with my writer's ego I thought they were possibly repoprsentative
enough of a cerrtain kind of man in a certain kind of situation, or
perhaps Men in general---obviously it's not an exact science, but then
gain if other men extend the metaphor a bit, ride along on it, surf it
(I like that metaphor!)...all I'm trying to do make people think.

Obbviously I'm succeeding.
  

    

David,

See, you're a nice guy, but you ARE a sexist.  It is a generational thing.
I would say that you have done much thinking and have really good
perceptions about many things, but you have not had to do a whole lot of
thinking about feminism.

I would take you to task for your feminist fable, and why I doubt it is
funny to any women here, but I don't have time.  I have to go shopping a
whole lot while I'm in NYC.

Later I will shred you to ribbons!  If you don't mind, of course.


Yours etc.

Cynthia
  

    
Oh please Auntie No-No, not that!!
  

    
you want to talk about feminism, eh Cynthia? Ok, here's my take on it:
the only issue which makes any sense, which ever made any sense to me
was tht of equal pay for equal work. WEverything else springs from
that. Myself I never understood any of it, I mean to me, I never
understoof the idea of "the weaker sex", are you serious? If men ever
had to experience childbirth, they wouldn't be sticking their johnsons
in other people business and then not take any responsibility for it;
if they had to carry a fetus for nine months, they'd have an entirely
different take on motherhood and children and all the rest. But ok,
there are women who aren't into that, and that's fine too. Feminists of
the Sixties did NOT discover feminism, anyone who has ANY
understanding of American history knows how long "feminism" has been
part of the American cultural landscape, women's rights have been part
of the American landscape forever. I need not parade my credentials
here nor would I want to. The whole thing gets sillier and sillier with
every passing moment. I think the thing about feminism that bothers me
so much is that it attempts to make all women act in similar fashions,
which they do not. Women might perhaps all do the same things but
differently---now I know that's gointg to piss someone off out here in
The Well---so be it. Whatever Happened to Foreplay? probably got what
it deserved---
  

    
I'm gonna let Cynthia come back and expound on the generational sex
attidutes riff.  But about the "Don't Touch Me There" chapter...

The question of women in rock was always interesting.  You point out that
women have held their own as rock critics.  and there is that odd
tradition of backup singers and groupies as the available roles in the 
main stream of Rock.  Boys thrusting their way to the forefront of the
stage, boys thrusting their way to the barricades as fans.  It's 
kinda trite to attribute cultural trends to hormones, but, since we're 
talking teenagers...  

How much of rock culture is due to a much desired drug which is manufactured
in greatest quantities in the bodies of young men?  Opiates, acid and
alcohol make the index of Teenage Nervous Breakdown, but the nostalgia the
rock and roll advertisers wield could be for prized testosterone itself.
Maybe that's the hangover and the passage.
  

    
very perceptive of you, Gail, you must have been reading "How Stole
the Bomp" where I talk about rock and women. It's really not what you
think, is it? As for Cynthia expounding on that generational sex thing,
I'm quite aware of the sport aspect of inkwell.vue, that at times I
can be considered a freesh piece of intellectual meat to be sniffed at
or scarfed down.

I'm delighted that you're reading and we're talking Gail, as I said
TNB was written so that there would be discussion, not that it would
end discussion. TNB is the start of the dialogue. And I guess we're
having it. It's supposed to throw out lots of different things, inspire
dialogue, arguments, giggles and the like. Entertainment and thought
rolled together, some of the chapters you would even smoke (I think the
paper's non-toxic :-)))

BTW, in ":This Here, Soon" which sets up the book I do talk about Fred
Davis' study on nostalgia, check that out.