Category: Me Myself&I

He was too dark in Indonesia. A “hapa” child — half and half — in Hawaii. Multicultural in Los Angeles. An “invisible man” in New York. And finally, Barack Obama was black on the South Side of Chicago. This journey of racial self-discovery and reinvention is chronicled in David Maraniss’s biography, “Barack Obama: The Story,” to be published Tuesday.

I read this article (2326 comments) and it’s fascinating to me, this search of being who you are and with whom you’ll grow as a person and feel like yourself. Barack went through a lot and settled down in South Chicago with black folks. I kind of resist thinking about it but I crave it too. I don’t have enough. I have too much of something else. Need more blackness.

Barry and Eric had much in common. They were tall, athletic, smooth, outwardly confident. Moore had grown up in Boulder, Colo., attended predominantly white schools, and like Obama had survived and thrived in an environment where there were few people who looked like him. He came to Los Angeles looking for “a more urban African American experience” where he, like Obama, could sort out his identity.

“Obama was a multicultural mainstream Oxy guy,” Hook said. “He fit right in with anybody. As long as you accepted him, he was good.”

It sounds so familiar to me. It’s the base of our social design: we needed to be part of a group to survive, back in the day and it stayed as the “only way it works”. But when you’re on the fence you don’t choose a group somehow, you’re invited and you can stay but you never really feel like belonging. Until it gets to a rawer level, people looking like you. Is it enough? I don’t know I never joined a group of black folks. I would in LA.

He had been living in the rarified environment of Oxy and Columbia, self-absorbed with his choices, contemplating life on an intellectual plane, and here were people talking about sports and life and family in ways that were not fraught with meanings and symbols. “I felt a greater affinity to the blacks and Latinos there (who predictably comprised about three fourths of the work force . . .) than I had felt in a long time,”

I do understand the refreshing change as it happened to me too, only in reverse: I had been living with countryside white collar down to earth folks and then I was on this intellectual Paris plane. It was good though I learned that with meanings and symbols comes a hell of a lot of BS and segregation, making me divided about knowledge. Sometimes, life is better when you just enjoy it plainly as a life form on a pretty stable amount of matter.

He was a double outsider, racial and cross-cultural. He looked black, but was he? At times he confessed to her that “he felt like an imposter. Because he was so white. There was hardly a black bone in his body.” She realized that “in his own quest to resolve his ambivalence about black and white, it became very, very clear to me that he needed to go black. I told him that. I think he felt very encouraged by my absolute conviction that his future lay down the road with a black woman. He doubted there were any black women he would feel truly comfortable with.

I never thought about my future with any specific concerning the ethnicity of the woman who I would share my life with, but it sure resonates with me. Fuck, it’s like I could have a very private and interesting conversation with the president of the United States of America right now.

“His perspective was universal, removed, not racial. He had reservations about people of every race when it came to tribal thinking.”

*bumps fist* that’s right. And it’s where it’s complex because humans tend to group themselves which is only good to a certain point where it becomes the worst thing. At first it builds up and then, it destroys. History proved it quite often and at a smaller scale, two words: indie game.

But we people on the fence see that as easily as Jedi knights abuse Jedi tricks. And that’s why we freak out/are reserved: we want to be part of all groups and not being part of any group at all, at the same time. It’s unnatural, that’s for sure. The good part is that we have an angle, a capacity of weighing things that nobody has.

I always been an outsider in France but now it’s becoming serious. I feel like a stranger. Speaking French is incredibly odd, searching for words and not feeling comfortable at all.

I don’t know why but seeing Asians and black people NOT speaking English freaks the shit out of me. I want to hear this rolling and low riding Californian accent. This tone.

Of course speaking French fucks up my English and I try not to speak my native language if I can, which is easy by living alone coupled to the rise of self-checkout machines. But my biggest problem is that I really don’t care a lot about what’s going on here. I did before, feeling “back to my hometown” but now I really don’t. Because I don’t feel close in any way. I feel like nothing changes in my old country and my generation is heavily settling down now so it’s going to get worse, as an individual. Being the guitar playing black friend in the park hanging out with white couples+ babies? Not really wanting that. I’ve seen this soft cooning, it’s sad. I’m trying to escape that.

It’s difficult to sit on the fence. Looking back and forth. Left, right.

Composed and created for Flirtatious (but discarded) during winter in Paris, when I was dreaming about sun and warm weather. And then I went to LA in February and I had a pre-mix on my mp3 player and I had forgotten about it. Listening to it while hanging out around Silver Lake, enjoying a warm weather was so powerful.

Now how you get ideas on the go: I recorded the guitar part which sounded good with these settings but added a lot of “hiss”, noise. Solution: adding more noise with waves and birds. And all of sudden you’re at the beach. I can listen to it on repeat, low volume, closing my eyes for a while.

I have a couple of tracks in the work but I don’t really know which one to finish first.

Retirement is a bitch. Retirement homes are more than meh.

My grandfather has Parkinson’s, my grandmother has multiple “dark zones in her brain” forgets everything and has giving up on walking since looking at her husband getting crazier and crazier isn’t helping either.

My dad is bringing them every Saturday for lunch, a bit of TV and family time. It’s now an automatic, long process. It’s more than exhausting, it’s killing all of us to watch a once smart and funny old man getting physically so thin, so stiff and pretty much being a vegetable trying to grab nurses’ breasts and that my mom has to feed before eating. In the rare occasions where he is himself and has all his conscious, he always says “I’m sorry”.

What the fuck is the point of all that. Seriously. It fades out my good memories with him and he’s suffering a slow death.

I don’t know what will be my end but I hope to work until the last day of my life and die in my sleep at home. I never want to be put in a retirement home. My dad’s company works on retirement homes’ ways to do a better job since more that 20 years and I know the numbers: there is no way that elderly’s quality of life gets better because there will be much more old folks than people taking care of them. It’s already a mess and it’s NOTHING compared to the next wave, the baby-papy boom generation.

If something like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s happens to me, I hope I’ll be strong enough and have the possibility to end my life with a sunset, some drugs in my blood and maybe, hopefully a handjob.

It would be nicer, more human and cost-effective for everybody than what we do today.

“I’m aware that men and women are fundamentally different.”

I read that all the time on the Internet and it’s plain wrong.

First it’s kind of a flawed statement as saying somebody is stupid: it shuts down communication and you lose by default. If the statement is so true, then why are we living together? We should fundamentally have our own different countries and just make babies over borders, right?

Of course we are not fundamentally different. We are made of the same, pretty much have the same performances physically and mentally, same needs… Gender role fucks it up though:

Gender role theory posits that boys and girls learn the appropriate behavior and attitudes from the family and overall culture they grow up with, and so non-physical gender differences are a product of socialization. Social role theory proposes that the social structure is the underlying force for the gender differences. Social role theory proposes that the sex-differentiated behavior is driven by the division of labor between two sexes within a society. Division of labor creates gender roles, which in turn, lead to gendered social behavior.

But today this is bullshit. Men and women are everywhere and if there are not a lot of women owning businesses or being at the top, there are some. And growing. And men simply wanting to have a good life instead of dough. Therefore division of labor thing creating gender roles is getting untrue each day. But sadly we’re still having booth babes in 2012 at E3 and so many cultures are way back on this and we still call women loving sex sluts and so forth, because by creating “fundamental differences” we enable judgment which leads to disrespect and then it goes wrong. The difference between reality and what we know and makes sense is too big (dissonance I’m talking about in the previous post). We do believe in equality and all of sudden we destroy this belief “we’re fundamentally different.” What?

That’s why it’s important to say “we don’t want this shit anymore, it’s retarded” to the E3 team and tell kids “really, we’re fundamentally the same. Except for the tits and dick thing, obviously. You don’t need me to see there’s something going on.”

Never has the world seemed so completely united-in the form of communication, commerce, and culture-and so savagely torn apart-in the form of war, financial meltdown, global warming, and even the migration of diseases.
No matter how much we put our minds to the task of meeting the challenges of a rapidly globalizing world, the human race seems to continually come up short, unable to muster the collective mental resources to truly "think globally and act locally." In his most ambitious book to date, bestselling social critic Jeremy Rifkin shows that this disconnect between our vision for the world and our ability to realize that vision lies in the current state of human consciousness. The very way our brains are structured disposes us to a way of feeling, thinking, and acting in the world that is no longer entirely relevant to the new environments we have created for ourselves.

The human-made environment is rapidly morphing into a global space, yet our existing modes of consciousness are structured for earlier eras of history, which are just as quickly fading away. Humanity, Rifkin argues, finds itself on the cusp of its greatest experiment to date: refashioning human consciousness so that human beings can mutually live and flourish in the new globalizing society.

In essence, this shift in consciousness is based upon reaching out to others. But to resist this change in human relations and modes of thinking, Rifkin contends, would spell ineptness and disaster in facing the new challenges around us. As the forces of globalization accelerate, deepen, and become ever more complex, the older faith-based and rational forms of consciousness are likely to become stressed, and even dangerous, as they attempt to navigate a world increasingly beyond their reach and control. Indeed, the emergence of this empathetic consciousness has implications for the future that will likely be as profound and far-reaching as when Enlightenment philosophers upended faith-based consciousness with the canon of reason.

Jeremy Rifkin: The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis

We are here. The old faith-based human consciousness is making us wait and still fucks everything around. I can’t believe that we’re solving insanely complex problems to build microchips with billions of transistors and at the same time we’re fighting over territories or ask the president where he is really born. My best personal example is with my dad with whom I can talk about hemp insulation for sustainable houses but I can’t talk about weed because in his mind it goes: weed-drugs-bad. It’s Good or Bad, faith-based, it’s not about facts and reality in this case. Same plant though.

There’s just this huge, uncomfortable dissonance around that I wish I could harmonize just like *snap* that.

That’s on my to-do list. A nice workshop.

I’m obsessed with tools. I love them, all of them.

They change your life by fixing or building, creating stuff. If they’re not used, they rarely loose value. They’re as useful and welcome the first time you use them as the billionth time.

Everything can be a tool but things stop being tools when we care more about them than what they actually do. What else improve your life the way tools do?

They’re awesome.

Homemade by the bride and the groom

My other family. Anxiety. Smile. Road. Green. Voices. Accent. Jokes. Kids. Dogs. Cars. Alcohol. Jokes. Silence. Noise. Damn hot. 150 people wedding. Smiles. Tears. Alcohol. Food. Jokes. Dance. Storm. Alcohol. Rain. Ricoré. Hangover. Cold buffet. Four kisses. Road. Exhaustion.

Emotions. My foster mom always has this sad face when I leave. Always. The trauma of me leaving for another family, I guess. I’m doing pretty well but I really need buffer days to build up some nerves and fight this huge blues.

I said on Twitter that my life story has probably never been lived before and bam, I found someone pretty close to my case only older, in the UK and with black parents. He talks about the difficulty of interracial adoption but in my case there’s another twist: being an orphan there is no other culture like in his case, Nigerian. No siblings, nada.

I just have “black culture” in its blurry definition. And it’s great. I transitioned smoothly from white-only culture to my own recipe through the years.

It’s always been awesome to imagine things up -OK, all I know is born in Paris and named Harold- when I was younger but since the adult world needs you to define yourself so much -use this, listen to that tribe tribe tribe- it’s confusing and not as fun now. You need a past. Past creates bonds with people which is why a lot of my friends have a not-so-conventional one. Of course in theory all that doesn’t matter. Sometimes the theory almost works long enough to believe in it. But the reality is much colder, I’ve been doing this for over thirty years and I read a lot.

Adewale ended up for a while in Hollywood. That’s a good L.A. thing for us, weirdos. Nobody gives you the stink eye for anything bizarre you do or who you are, it’s always cool right away. Maybe it’s fake and feels like a dream but at the same time, the last  weekend wedding fest in the green middle of France felt like a dream too.

Europe. Full crisis.

Reading this article, quoting comments:

I’m not part of the political elite, yet I would prefer a European superstate over a 19th style provincial Europe with lots of small states constantly at each others throat, instead of working together. European integration wasn’t carried out in a very smart way so far, but the general idea behind it is still very attractive, even to many ordinary Europeans.

I definitely agree. I mean, it’s done. We have to do it. Otherwise, we can go back to our villages, bourgs and motherfucking Middle Age.

Can anybody tell me why, as Dutch citizens, my family has to pay EUR36,000 or more (and this is just into the current ESM) to finance Southern Europe, and on top af all without even being able to have any say in this? And then work until 67 and pay 52% income tax, to finance early retirement and large scale tax evasion in Italy and Greece? I’d prefer to just carry a few more currencies in my pocket when I go on holiday…

Dear Dutch friend, I totally get that but people are kind of assholes and in France for example, they don’t want to do what you already do. Those selfish bastards just don’t care. It’s like people love getting the good stuff from Europe, but not the obligations coming with it and what it takes to create a strong economy overall, benefiting everyone and their children. They play dumb.

Superstate sounds great, but it’ll either break-up or devolve into civil war within 20 years.

Look at the separatist movements in Belgium, Canada, the UK, or Italy over minor differences like language or a slightly different culture. Now imagine that in a country with 23 official languages and over 44 minority languages. You’d have to have a tyrant of the magnitude of Stalin just to hold it together.

Everyone from the Romans, to Charlemagne, to Napoleon have tried to build a European superstate but it has always failed.
The only possible way to achieve it would be through a forced homogenization of the languages and cultures like in America, and that would be almost impossible to do.

Very true. I’m French I’m over the language problem, I thought English would take over the world it did, it does and that’s the language we’re talking between Europeans too. End of the story. Countries are slow to understand and that’s why separatist movements will happen. Whatever.

To me as a German, Eurobonds would only be acceptable if accompanied by thorough structural reforms in the countries benefitting from those bonds, overseen by a European government of some sort ("Superstate"). Such a Superstate would have to give us, the Germans, a far greater say in the economic policy of other European countries than we already have, otherwise it would be a fluke (is that the right term?). But with the Greeks and Spanish already resenting the influence our government has on their lifes, can this work?
Anyways, a superstate would also be far more capable at holding casino-capitalism at bay. Which is probably why the Economist resents it. Which is probably a very good reason to actually take that route. Yay Superstate!

I get your point German friend and because you definitely have the numbers showing how Germany is doing good (after years of suffering), if we had a European government I’d totally leave you guys at the economic wheel. Problem is, that’s just me. As you know, French Spain and Italy are talking shit about you because you’re successful and that jokes are easy. It sucks. But we need you, some people love them some Germany as your exportation can tell you. Leave haters do their jobs, hating.

This is not a financial crisis. This is a political crisis, and the crisis is over our identity. Either we are Europeans first and Germans, Italians, Finns, Portuguese, French, Latvians, etc, second, or vice versa.

And that is why “Angela Merkel the German” shouldn’t be standing up in Brussels telling the Greeks to sort their house out. Instead, “Angela Merkel the European” should be standing up in Athens saying: “We still want you to be in the family and we’ll help you, but you need to accept your responsibilities.”

I always wanted to feel European first. That was the thing of my generation I thought. The generation that will be much less stupid than the previous one by putting our “local” identities second because national frictions don’t end well in Europe. I was wrong.

The mutualization of debt above 60% of GDP combined with a special tax to pay for it sounds good to me. However, France has to show serious signs of willingness to reform. I just can’t stand it that a country like France tries to walk away from the pain of austerity by making the Germans, Dutch and others foot the bill. If we’re going into the direction of more federalism, everybody should respect the rules. Those who don’t, must be forced out: no more euro and no mutualisation of debt for the sinners. France included, even if it is at the heart of Europe.

I apologize. You see France is in a weird position and I would say, a little poisoned by South Europe when it comes to manage stuff, corruption and all that. The Latin-not-too-much-the-morning-not-too-fast-the-afternoon side of France? Yes. We have unsolved structural problems and our new president is surely not going to address them.

Due to its geographic position, France had this very particular balance of enjoying life like South Europe lives it AND the disciplined mind of Northern Europe. We lost this balance because we got preoccupied with a fresh north African culture growing since 30 years in our suburbs but we should have been more preoccupied to define this French culture that still makes everybody dream around the world but which influence is also vanishing (when talking about Europe France is never in the discussion anymore).

It’s all fucked up now. It’s going to be hard but we need to make it happen, we’re Europe, main architect of what human civilization is today or we’re old ass retarded monkeys who can’t get real, let’s go son.

New music!

I started this track in L.A. with no sense of what I was going to do with it. Two weeks and a half in Paris with a talkbox and I shaped it into some romantic boogiefunklectronic music. Or something like that.

It’s never a great thing to force something over, like I did with the voice but that’s the thing to start something somewhere and finish it later, somewhere else. It’s always better at least to me to start and finish a track and not add features when it wasn’t part of the idea first. But, it’s a good exercise too, it pushes me to improvise more and it’s always in these moments that you discover something. “Uh interesting, I might keep that!”

My TV since years. Foobar’s 20 band spectrum, fuck you it’s better than 99% of what TV offers.

I spend a lot of time analyzing sound this way, from my own stuff to everything I can put my ears on. I notice something in the sound, I look at what’s going on in the world of frequencies. The little dance of each band is so fascinating to me.

The process of subtracting things is great too. Shaping by trimming things down, fat, not so clean or great licks, there’s so much of that. It’s scary and a bit of a let down when you created that stuff but it’s the moment the ego has to go away. “Bitch, I’m mixing fuck your bass it will be -6 dB again in her face that’s how it goes”

Sometimes I wish I was going faster but it’s pretty fast to do it everyday and not depending on anyone to put it out there.

Another track or two and I go back to more game development, I have some placeholder/dummy audio assets to create before going further into gameplay and then, I’ll have to get some programmer friend to help me out…