(no subject)

Short hair doesn't seem to fare the night as well as longer. I wake up every morning with it poking out every which way and feathers stuck in it. When it was longer the feathers from my pillow left it alone, but now I'm waking up looking like a bird scratched around, settled in and laid eggs. It's pretty humorous really.

Having one of my mildly panicky days where I'm worried I've already fucked up my kids. Have I not read to them enough? Do I let them watch tv? Did I push too much girly stuff at them? Not enough gender balance? Have I done enough to teach them to think for themselves? Have I spent enough time with them? Have I crippled their self esteems and their future ability to have successful relationships? Do I lose my temper with them too much? Am I too strict? Am I not strict enough? Will they hate me when they grow up? Do I not cuddle Isadora as much as I should? Do I baby her too much? Is Rhiannon on her way to becoming a dictator or serial killer? Have I ruined their ability to focus by letting them watch tv as toddlers? Did the Oreos Isadora ate when she was a year old pump so many preservatives and hydrogenated fats into her body that she'll get cancer and die when she's 20 and it will all be my fault? Was giving them soy milk in their toddler years a wrong wrong choice because I did nothing but fill their bellies with freakishly unnatural GMO juice?! ?#$(*:IO#$%R(*UE^


Ah the joys of parenthood.

(no subject)

I was finishing up the last two discs in the Ken Burns documentary about Jazz that he did for PBS and in a section about a musician named Ornette Coleman there was an interview with a writer, Albert Murray, who had this to say about Ornette and his music,

"Ornette Coleman came up and said, 'This is Free Jazz', but what is freer than jazz? As soon as you say jazz you're talking about freedom of improvisation. The whole thing is about freedom, about American freedom. So why would anybody want to free it because the whole idea of art is to create a form that is a bulwark against entropy or chaos. You see, that's the function of jazz. It's not to be formless and absolutely self indulgent. ... That's like embracing the waves in the sea. You cannot embrace entropy. You cannot embrace chaos."

I was a bit astounded. Seems pretty presumptuous of him to define not just what 'jazz' should be but what art is. I'm not even sure I can define art for myself and I certainly wouldn't attempt to define it for other people. I might not like what you do, I might not understand it or chose to participate in it but that doesn't mean I'm going to tell you it isn't art.