Die Kraft

Remembering the time in junior high, in the middle of the “Satanic Panic” of the 80’s, when my mother came into my room and earnestly asked to inspect my cassettes. She pulled out my Kraftwerk “The Man Machine” tape and said, “Kraftwerk, huh? That’s not about witchcraft is it?”

I was amazed, floored even, that my own mother could make that leap (or lapse) in logic. I confirmed to her that they were indeed German and not about witchcraft or Satanism at all. That two things are homophones does not mean that they mean the same.

We won’t even get into the Deutschophone festivals of Hexennacht (Witch’s Night) or Sankt Walpurgisnacht (St. Walpurgis Night), which feature in German folklore and literature. Doubtful my mother had those in mind.

Shortly after putting the tape back down, she left comforted that her virginal, voluntarily-goes-to-church son was still an untarnished good kid.

I still sometimes laugh about it.

Watermarks Along the River

Got up this morning, put on some Enya. It’s been a while.

What was my path into electronic music? That’s a storied past, the result of a chain of personal connections. Started with an 8-track of Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn” that circulated among my uncles; later a buddy handed me “The Man Machine”; Emerson, Lake, and Palmer “Lucky Man” on the radio; Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time”; new wave. Those all primed me. But the one that really broke the dam and released the flood was Enya. She was my gateway into electronic music, and into admitting — in the land of hard rock — that I like electronica.

But someone walked me to the levee.

Like my peers in our small town in the late 80’s, I was an on-fire-for-God Jesus-fish Christian. Didn’t know much about the world, but what I did, I was certain of it because someone told me. At that end of the decade, the Baptists were on this holy crusade against New Age culture (yeah, you read that right). They said New Age was just regular old Satan worship in disguise, using its seductive messaging to lure people into its velvet traps with Eastern mysticism. Because of these lessons, and being a thumb-headed teenager myself, I was hyper-vigilant about its presence in the world. I wanted to find this New Age stuff and destroy it.

11th grade, math class. My classmate Samir was an avowed atheist but a good guy who liked to shake things up a bit by challenging true believers by Just Asking Questions. Being 2nd generation Indian immigrant in a small town, he was on the edge of classroom society and was frequently chatty to make up for it. Finding common interests in music, he loaned me his tape of “Watermark” by Enya. I was hesitant, but I took it home. Liked it. Made a copy on my church’s dual-deck while running sound for Sunday service.

Spent weeks listening, trying to discern if Enya was New Age. Given the provenance of the tape — with me holding so many stupid stereotypes about Samir, who was Desi but squarely atheist — I kept getting the wrong ideas and constantly asked myself questions about her. Later at academic summer camp, my friend Gary and I also asked those questions as we shared headphones on long bus trips. We talked about faith often; it’s why we meshed so well. Ultimately, we couldn’t discern if Enya was New Age or not, but agreed that it was OK to like her anyway.

At that moment, a ripple formed in my mind and I was finally able to let out the slack for a bit and just enjoy something for what it was instead of judging everything so seriously all the time.

Fast forward a bit, I leave my small town and run off to a smaller town with a bigger school filled with people from a bigger world. Of course I grew up, gained more of those ripples, and my own struggle of faith just couldn’t hold up to all this new information. Of course Enya isn’t New Age; she’s Irish, for Christ’s sake, a prodigy from a family of musical prodigies. I released my grip on the bad assumptions I previously crafted from the limited information I had at the time and let them fall into the river.

I understand Samir’s contribution better. We connected in class, and through that he helped me step toward a tangential path to becoming something different. Butterfly effect. I ran into him a few years after I had left the church; he confessed with wide smiles that he had joined the church. He found his own connections. Again, butterfly effect.

People change in surprising ways, but not without precedent and priming. We are the result of our decisions and the decisions of those we share our time with. Connections form our culture. My choice in music here seems like something so vapid and minor, but it’s a watermark of those connections. See here: this is how high the flood waters reached at the turn of the decade.

I like what I like because of the people I like, who also like what they like.

That’s culture.

Soap Boxes

I want people. I miss people. I need people. I spend time with people. But every person now is a preacher. Everybody has a sermon. Everyone has an opinion. I have opinions too, but there is no room for me. No space. Not in this marketplace of ideas. Soapboxes everywhere, in and out of every free speech zone. So many voices. So many voices in my ears, slapping arms into chests in the race up hill. I am so tired. So very, very tired.

Intentional Fan

As I stood up on the bench and pulled the rusty chain of the ceiling fan above the sweltering café patio, I told my friend, who was complaining of the still-air heat, “I am an engineer. I fuck with my environment to make it better.” After a few tugs, the dead fan sprung to life and kicked up a steady breeze below.

This line of action is the finest way I’ve found of nullifying the learned helplessness I’ve been taught along the way. I have agency; I don’t have to suffer. Nobody has to suffer. I can do a small public act and offer a bigger public gift: comfort. And what taught me this? That scene in “Men In Black” where Will Smith’s character loudly dragged the heavy table over to his egg chair so he could write. That intentionality is what saves the world.

Get up and improve something.

Es hat endet

As I predicted and/or intended, I failed Deutsch IV. It was inevitable. I previously swore to myself that I would at least finish the semester so I didn’t get the figurative DNF (Did Not Finish, racing term). Well, I stopped running in the last chapter. Burned out. I was so far behind on my homework, papers, discussions, and readings, that I stopped bothering. Just quit going to class. Didn’t do the chapter test, the final interview, or any of the projects.

I stopped running. Eventually the lag wagon picked me up and brought me to the finish line where I crossed reluctantly to get my participation ribbon.

After grades were delivered, I wrote a note to the Professor to explain to her what happened and where I went. She understood, and encouraged me to continue learning. I might.

But I need a break. I’ve been studying German as a hobby for roughly 3 years (including my stupid daliance with Duolingo). I’m tired from the loss of all that downtime spent on study. Just stop. I’ve already forgotten so much because of the embarrassment of not keeping up. It’s kinda bad.

I hope I can look past that and figure out what it was about learning that inspired me. The challenge? The struggle? The new avenues of society to explore? The chance to travel, to be somewhere else and talk with the locals? To retire in Deutschland?

For now, I’ll have to be comfortable with tourist-level competence. For anything deeper, I’d have to become a resident.

I should’ve taken Spanish.