{"id":162657316,"date":"2025-05-21T06:29:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T11:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=162657316"},"modified":"2025-05-21T06:29:00","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T11:29:00","slug":"re-centering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=162657316","title":{"rendered":"Re-centering"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cA beach house isn\u2019t just real estate. It\u2019s a state of mind.\u201d – Douglas Adams, \u2018Mostly Harmless\u2019<\/h4>\n\n\n\n


Warm weather always helps. Not shivering when I wake up, the ability to be comfortably barefoot in my house, the increased willingness to leave it. \u201cLet\u2019s go for a walk,\u201d becomes so much easier at even 65 degrees, let alone 75. So is, like, sitting at my desk and motivate myself to work. I keep reminding myself that spring is the worst, most capricious season, and that it will end soon. All bad moods end. Of course, I’m not necessarily in<\/em> a bad mood<\/em>. I’m bummed about the state of the world, man<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"graffiti
on a walk in West Ridge (credit: Chris Corlew)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s exhausting, engaging with the overwhelming amount of shit. Twitter\u2019s AI has been programmed to spout white genocide conspiracies<\/a>, unprompted. ChatGPT and CoPilot are spitting out transphobia<\/a> thanks to RFK’s Health & Human Services Department declaring transphobia cool<\/a>. Meanwhile, employers are using unholy GenAI holograms (or whatever) to interview candidates<\/a>.\u00a0Society is sleepwalking into a planet-killing technology that actively makes us stupider and more eagerly indoctrinated. Meanwhile, ICE continues<\/a> to run amok<\/a>, as the US fully embraces<\/a> its Gestapo era<\/a>. If you need whatever the opposite of a pick-me-up is, genocide and settler colonialism in Gaza<\/a> continues apace. Not that Joe Biden ever cared<\/a> (yes, I know he has cancer, sure, that’s sad, people in Gaza are eating leaves to not starve to death<\/a>. People old enough to happily lunch with Strom Thurmond<\/a> get cancer all the time). The Democratic Party, instead of fighting any of this, are about to be civil warring over whether they should be the Party of Cryptocurrecy<\/a> or the Party That Fights Oligarchy<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, as I said last week, is not a society worth participating in<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Miyazaki said, I fear that humans are losing faith in ourselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"a
truly, it’s owl or nothing (credit: Chris Corlew)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It helps to log off, even though I fear logging off is sort of like cleaning your room by shoving everything in your closet. So I try to re-center. I turn to music, I turn to poetry, I turn to horror novels and movies, I turn to cooking. Those things make sense to me. My problem is that it’s easy to get distracted by the world burning, which I resolved not to do during this administration<\/a>. There’s a pressure that comes from the Rod Serling idea of a writer being responsive to their times, but I think too much of that can get distorting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"more
do stop littering (credit: Chris Colrew)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What am I saying with this blog? I suppose I want to state publicly\u2014and maybe for anyone else who needs to hear it\u2014that you don’t have to comment on every little thing. The bad people are going to do the bad stuff, regardless of what The Shipwrecked Sailor Blog has to say about it. So idk. If you start seeing a bunch of writing- and music-related posts, it’s not because I’m not paying attention. It’s more like, this blog’s mission is not politics. It is, like the podcast, the deliberately vague life from the writer’s perspective<\/em>. Sometimes, that’s commenting on what’s happening. AI is a lot of what’s happening, and AI is a direct threat to art and nature, so it does<\/em> concern this blog. But again, I really don’t need to comment on every new development, every new dystopia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"a
West Ridge is an uncool neighborhood but living walking distance to Andersonville rocks (credit: Chris Corlew)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Shall we end with a reading from Studs? Here’s an excerpt from an interview with Henry Threadgill:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An artist can’t live on an island. Sometimes this information is not translated to people. We can’t stay in these little small worlds. What I do in music is exactly what should go on in our natural life. I can’t just listen to American music; Americans are not the only people in the world. We’re not the only people that have something to say. I can’t just<\/em> listen to music. I have to see what’s going on in dance. They might take the direction further, they might open me up to a great sensibility. Opera, film might open me up. Music will only show me so much. I have to look at the accompanying arts and see what they have to say. <\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\"a
we have nothing to lose but the oligarchs (credit: Chris Corlew)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sorry you will eventually get this in an email,
Chris<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cA beach house isn\u2019t just real estate. It\u2019s a state of mind.\u201d – Douglas Adams, \u2018Mostly Harmless\u2019 Warm weather always helps. Not shivering when I wake up, the ability to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162657316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-wednesday-column"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162657316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=162657316"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162657316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162657323,"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162657316\/revisions\/162657323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=162657316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=162657316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=162657316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}