The "forgotten class" nightmare

There's a reoccurring dream that I have whenever I find myself in a new, unfamiliar situation, with new, overwhelming responsibilities. I remember the exact time that I first had this dream. As an elementary school student, I attended a very small, Christian school, in which I progressed through grades one through six with the same group of 8-10 others. We had one teacher who taught us every subject. We had one classroom that we stayed in all day. And we all kept our books in our desks. This was a very simple upbringing.

When the time for middle school came, I switched to a slightly larger school, though by no means the largest in town. Suddenly, I was confronted with the responsibilities of switching classes, switching teachers for each different subject. I kept all my books in a locker, which was out in the hall amongst a series of other lockers, where I had to go and switch out my books before each class. I had to keep up with the different assignments in each different class. And each day, I had to navigate my way through a sea of other kids just to get to class, to break, to lunch.

One night during my first week of middle school, I was kept up by this half-dreaming, half-waking fear that I had forgotten one of my classes. That I had been going through my day, trying to keep up with all my different classes, all my different books, but one had fallen through the cracks. I was gripped by an anxiety over forgetting something. And having some irreparable harm take place as a result: failing a class, for example, suffering a great humiliation. I have had this same dream reoccur on at least four different occasions, and I can name each one of them. But I'll start by mentioning the most recent example, which happened last night.

Prior to starting my current job at a small, fairly high-volume plaintiffs' litigation firm, I worked for the state government for a number of years. That job did not involve a lot of client contact, out-of-office experience, or a diverse range of responsibilities. I essentially took in cases as they came, evaluated those cases by reviewing the record and researching the law, wrote memos and briefs, and handed them off to a supervisor. It was a peaceful, if not monotonous, existence. I often found myself craving excitement, worldly contact, and dramatics. And I got all of that in my current job.

Now, I am in a very different position. Having had a certain degree of experience already, I was placed into a fairly high-responsibility, low-training position. I manage my own cases, am the primary contact for many clients, draft all my pleadings, write all my own correspondence, attend hearings, negotiate settlement, and do basically everything that is required to take a piece of litigation from start to finish. At present, I am managing at least 20 cases, and I am the primary working attorney on at least half of those. To say the least, this new set of responsibilities has been challenging. Overwhelming is a better word. And its all compounded by the fact that many of my new responsibilities are things that are completely new to me. For example, I never conducted discovery at my old position, and this is something that has proved to be time-consuming and at times very complicated.

It doesn't take much to see where this is going: Last night, I had the dream again. But it was a variation of the dream from middle school. This is the dream that I've had since college. In this version of the dream, it is very near to the end of a college semester. I have many classes for which I am preparing for final exams or preparing some final paper. As I'm going through everything I have to do, I realize that there is one class that I've been enrolled in all year, to which I started going at the beginning of the semester, but which I've since forgotten about and haven't attended at all for a long period of time. This is a feeling of complete helplessness. I try frantically to think of what to do: is there any way to salvage this? Is it possible to start showing up now and hope that I haven't missed too much? But in my dream, this question is never resolved: I wake up from a feeling of complete helplessness, complete loss. I've let something fall through the cracks and now there's nothing I can do about it.

The dream represents the ultimate fear of a young litigator. Or of anyone who is suddenly confronted with more responsibilities than they know how to handle. The other three times that I remember having the dream (or something very similar) are once when I started high school, once when I started college, and then again when I started law school. Looking back, each of these things seems progressively easier, but, at the time I started them, the challenges they presented were entirely new and entirely terrifying. There were so many new things to remember, and it seemed impossible really not to forget to do something. In the litigation context, this fear is especially acute, due to the added dynamic of hard, statutorily-prescribed deadlines.

I spoke today with a couple of slightly more seasoned attorneys at my firm, and, much to my surprise, they both had experienced the same dream at some point in time. I neglected to ask if the dream followed the beginning of their experience as litigators, but I can't help but think that this is the case. There is a certain common horror of responsibility that we all feel, and this is manifest in our dreams. It makes one wonder why we ever take on such responsibilities at all? What drives us to do something that fundamentally terrifies us? For some, it is probably a sense of duty. For others, a sense of ambition. For most, probably some combination of both. That, and then there is the sweet and eventual moment when you realize you've finally become comfortable with your new responsibilities, and your anxieties can rest. Perhaps that is truly the thing we crave: simple, sweet, well-deserved release. 

This kid does not believe any of these things

Before I start on this venomous rant, let me make two disclaimers. First, I love NPR. Second, I consider myself, on most social issues, politically liberal. But, there is one thing I can't stand: and that is cliche. Another thing I can't stand is self-congratulation. And ANOTHER thing I can't stand is when kids regurgitate political slogans they've heard their parents recite ad nauseum, and the parents and their friends fawn over the kid for being so insightful and opinionated (and at such a young age!) This, my friends, is obnoxious. If people just kept it to themselves, that would be one thing, but when they force me to listen to it in the morning while I'm trying to enjoy my breakfast, that, my friends, is something different.

Now, I submit to you one of the most trite, cliche, obnoxious, self-congratulatory things I have ever heard on NPR. In this edition of the already-sometimes-eye-roll-inducing "This I Believe" series, a young tike named Tarak McLain rattles off every politically and socially "progressive" cliche he's ever heard his parents proclaim. Here is the link to the page with a full transcript. You can hear the audio by clicking on the "Listen now" button. Prepare to vomit.

Let's just go through a couple of these precious little tidbits. Highlights include, "I believe God is in everything," "I believe hate is a cause for love," "I believe we should help the Arctic and rainforest animals" (I mean, really!), "I believe we live best in a community." Now, one reason I know that this is bullshit is because, when I was 7 years' old, I spent a lot of time with my Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh-loving dad, and, during that time, my "This I Believe" would have probably sounded something like, "I believe I should say no to drugs," "I believe Democrats are stinky," "I believe the Soviet Union is the evil empire." And I would have said that, too, on tape, and it would have been sent to the Rush Limbaugh show, and Republican adults everywhere would be fawning all over this insightful and intelligent kid who had decided to adopt political conservativism all on his own (and at such a young age!). And how obnoxious would that have been!

What's really happening here, I submit, is a demonstration of the truism that people like the hear their own beliefs regurgitated aloud. This is the premise behind conservative talk radio: the hosts seldom offer challenging insights; rather, they simply repeat ad nauseum the same conservative precepts over and over again. The average NPR user, on the other hand, is more apprehensive about his or her news coverage coming across as overtly partisan. If there was just some guy on the air saying "God is in trees; save the rainforests; stop the war," we'd all feel a little uncomfortable; we'd feel like we were being too partisan. But if a kid says it, well then that's just precious!

This isn't to say that kids aren't capable of having political insights. Of course, they are, and some more than others. But, if an adult had sent in this tape of himself rattling off one generic liberal maxim after the other, the folks at NPR would have thrown it in the trash and certainly would never have aired it. Why? Because it offers no insights. Its just a series of bumper-sticker like slogans, and people think its cute because a kid says it. Its things like this that most undermine the political left. Of course, its not unique to the left. The right experiences its own self-righteousness and self-reference. But there is something uniquely annoying about the parent who sends in this tape of their kid reciting the family's favorite cliches, along with a description of their kid as one who "collects and hands out food to the homeless and raises money for orphans and impoverished schools," and who "reads about the world's religions and listens to public radio." Being a proud parent is one thing. But this requires some real self-aggrandizement to try and convince the entire market for NPR that you've raised the perfect progressive messiah. I'm sure this is a great little guy and all, but come on, mom and dad, get over yourselves.

With this kind of parenting, I bet the kid grows up to be a Neocon.

Celebration time is over

I write the following as a supporter of Barack Obama. In a big way. I, like many other people in my generation, have found great inspiration in our new president. We have for too long felt alienated from our own identity as Americans. So comfortable we had become in being outsiders in our own country, we forgot that we ever wanted to be Americans in the first place. But then there was a presidential candidate with whom we could truly identify. Someone who seemed a bit like us, but, at the same time, seemed genuinely presidential. And then he won.

Without a doubt, this is cause for celebration. And there was much celebration, and rightly so, when the final results came in on that first week in November. But, as the hype surrounding the inaugural festivities has built and built, I have found myself frequently annoyed. Maybe its just a sense of burn-out: after advocating so vigorously for Obama the candidate for such an extended period of time, perhaps I'm just worn out of talking about him. But there's a little something more. And that is the feeling that, now that the campaign is won, the time for unbridled advocacy and unqualified support has ended. Obama is no longer a long-shot candidate, a figure representing the hope for something new. Tomorrow, he will be the President of the United States. And our task should shift from that of vigorous campaigners to that of skeptical, demanding citizens.

In fact, the level of ecstasy that some feel as a result of the Obama presidency is one of his greatest potential pitfalls. "The bigger they are, the harder they fall," is a maxim that sums up this concern. Unless his supporters can sober up a bit, both in their own expectations and in the expectations they create in the minds of others, we face the possibility of an unusually strong backlash when trouble emerges. And, inevitably, it will. No leader can completely avoid crisis. No man is infallible, and Obama will, without a doubt, make mistakes. There will be low points. The true test of his presidency will be his resilience, his ability to recover from mistakes and to keep moving forward. So betting it all on a perfect and dream-like next 8 is a bad move.

If I were on the Obama team, my advice would be to start tamping down expectations, and hard. One way to do this would be to forgo all of the spectacular inauguration activities. I saw that a conservative friend of mine had posted on his facebook status something like "I can't believe we're spending $100 million on an inauguration during a recession." And, you know, this was a little annoying to me, just because I know his feelings are rooted in some sort of Rush Limbaugh mind frame, but, at the same time, that sentiment is one that a lot of average Americans could probably identify with. There's a certain obvious truth to it. Perhaps a little bit of modesty, a bit of sobriety are in order. What if, after the swearing in, Obama said "Thank you for all the praise, but the time for inspirational speeches is over, here's the economic bill I want Congress to pass this week." What a way to both calm people's enormously high expectations and to transition from the picture-perfect image of the campaign and into what will certainly be a much rougher, much clumsier 4 years as president. Its going to happen sooner or later. Why not capture the opportunity to manage that moment on your own terms?

Esthero

There was a time when Esthero represented everything that I wanted music to be. I am thinking specifically of the group's debut (and really only, as a group) album Breath From Another. The lead vocalist had a voice that was completely perfect. Soulful, powerful, sensual, with an enormous range. The drum parts were made up of the hip-hop and jungle-style break beats that I craved. The melodies were crafted with smoky, reverby samples, loungy keys, and driving synth basslines. The lyrics were all somewhat cryptic, sometimes dark ("you looked her eye / I watched her lie / she didn't have to die") and sometimes uplifting ("long as I have my voice / I don't need arms to hold"). It was a perfect album.

At some point around 1999 or 2000, I discovered the movie Slam. This was one of the first "indie" films that I really knew existed. At 19, I had never seen anything quite like it. The unfortunate side-effect of my short obsession with this movie was a brief flirtation with slam poetry. This, thank God, did not last. But the film, with its sober yet romantic depiction of a young, charismatic, intelligent young man who finds himself trapped by both his poverty and the legal system, allowed me to empathize with the minority experience in a way that I had never experienced before. And the poetry, while cringe-inducing when performed by most, was truly moving. And its just a great movie overall.

But that's all really an introduction to my ultimate point: during the final credits, what do I hear, but Esthero singing the chorus to a Goodie Mob rap song. You see, at the time, I had also developed an obsession with Goodie Mob and all things Dungeon Family. And this meeting of these two wonderful things was almost too much to stand. As a bonus, the VHS of Slam featured a great, great video of the song (its called "The World I Know"), where Esthero sings atop a car with Big Gipp in the driver's seat. Sound too good to be true? Well, to you, probably not. But it was to me. In case you're pinching yourself too, here it is: 

Esthero (once a group name, referring both to the vocalist and the producers who worked with her, but now adopted by the vocalist as her own personal monicker) has had a rough time commercially, as far as I can tell. I know that she has a loyal following of a number of devoted fans. This is clear both from the frequent activity on her myspace page as well as the very large crowd that showed up to see her in Atlanta a few years ago. That being said, her most recent album was what one might call a "commercial flop." And, to be honest, it just wasn't nearly as good as the original album (which, honestly, probably was not a huge hit itself). I understand that Esthero did much of her own songwriting for the album. Maybe this is a case where her strongest talents lie in her performance, and she's been unable to connect with a songwriter whose music truly suits her.

In any case, as her devotees can attest to, the artist has made at least one very powerful and effective artistic statement, and that is much more than most can say. There are only a handful of artists who have made a truly lasting impact on me, and she certainly ranks among them. Here's hoping her the best for the future. But also recognizing that she's among the few artists to have done something truly great to begin with.

Darkest before the dawn: Flight 1549

I'm not the kind of guy who just hops right out of bed when the alarm goes off in the morning. It takes me a while to acclimate to the waking world. I'm the type that usually hits the snooze button 2 or 3 times before finally getting up. It turns out that, for me, a little morning time NPR is the very perfect thing to transition me from bedtime to awaketime. We have a radio that's set to come on every morning at 6:30 am, and we always have it set to NPR, where the sounds of Morning Edition greet us every day. The stories are almost always interesting enough to draw in my attention and thereby persuade me to stay awake. But its unobtrusive enough not to be jarring, like an alarm clock is. By 6:45 (er... 7), I'm out of bed.

This morning, we were awoken by the most compelling "good news" story I've heard in a long time (ranks right up there with "Obama wins"). It was the story of US Airways Flight 1549's emergency landing in the Hudson River, right outside of Manhatten. Link to NPR story here. What made this story so great is that it begins with a premise of great horror and tragedy, but ends with the incredibly unexpected and unbelievable "but everybody made it out unharmed!" And this just never happens. You never hear this kind of story. Every disaster is newsworthy, but every disaster ends in tragedy. Never does a disaster have such a happy ending. Here is a gallery of some great images taken at the scene.

As a bonus, we're presented with the hero of the whole thing, C.B. "Sully" Sullenberger, who did everything right, and saved the whole flight from certain death. Who was well-trained, proficient, and alert. And then the rescue crews, who had dutifully practiced their operations and executed them exactly according to plan. In an era where every figure in the news is presented as incompetent, thieving, ill-intentioned, and undeserving-of-his-post, the story of this perfectly executed rescue is more than refreshing: its downright incredible.

There is, of course, somewhat of a downer here, which is, good news never gets any media attention unless its somehow connected to some sort of disaster. I recall one scene from the (actually overrated) Michael Moore film Bowling for Columbine, where he compares Canadian and American TV news. While the Canadian news featured plenty of "good news" (new speed bumps!), American news was focused on all the bad things that happened that day and the dangers lurking in the corners (escalators of death!). Like it or not, Americans have an appetite for disaster, for spectacle. Perhaps our intensely capitalistic culture is to blame: news is a product, just like anything else, and the networks compete by attempting to one-up one another with shocking, "must-see" news stories. Whatever the case, its a shame that we are so hung up on the disasterous and the tragic that we miss the good, non-"event" news that surrounds us all the time.

Whether it takes a disaster to get us interested in a happy event or not, I imagine that this story has provided people across the country, and across the globe for that matter, with a positive, uplifting, inspirational story to begin their day, their weekend, the rest of their lives. Maybe it will serve as a small reminder that things can go right, that people can do good and noble things, and that, with determination, potential disasters can end up right-side-up after all.

A Forgotten Classic: Witchdoctor's A S.W.A.T. Healin' Ritual

It's been a while, hasn't it?

I write today to muse on a hip-hop album that received far too little attention upon its release, and which has been largely forgotten, despite its high quality and its innovation. That album is Witchdoctor's A S.W.A.T. Healin' Ritual. This is an album that I purchased in my youth amidst my burgeoning obsession with all things Dungeon Family. Having recently been absorbed by Outkast's Aquemini and Goodie Mob's Still Standing, I began to seek out all things Dungeon Family. Witchdoctor's debut was one of my first acquisitions.

At the time, I was struck simply by the 'Doctor's smooth flow, the dark and murky quality of the music, and the numerous excellent guest appearances by other members of the family: Cee-Lo, Andre, Big Boi, Big Gipp, and others all drop in for some great verses. Witchdoctor was not a rapper whose skill lay in his ability to rhyme multiple syllables, to rap especially fast, or to say anything particularly mind-blowing. Rather, his talent lay in his delivery. Like contemporary favorite Young Jeezy, the thing that made the music so listenable was the smoothness of the rapper's voice; the particular inflection he brought to his speech; the ad libs that he used as rhythmic devices.

Withdoctor's raps were emotional and compelling. Far from glamourizing the drug trade, the "thug life," etc., Witchdoctor brought a sullen realism to his descriptions of these oft-romanticized elements. There was a sadness in his voice. The beats that accompanied his raps had a certain melancholy quality. Even when he seemed to relish in crime, drugs, and sex, he sounded less like a cocky, self-assured promoter of these things, and more like a downtrodden, wise-to-the-world veteran, reminiscing over the things that he once loved, though he knew they had nearly destroyed him.

This was made all the more compelling by the almost self-unaware quality of the record's tone. Witchdoctor never came across as the "conscious rapper" type, trying to teach the youth a lesson about his mistakes. Rather, his tone was a realistic one; you heard in his voice that he had been there and done that, but also that he knew that others would go there and do that, and while there will be some pain involved, its something that we all do, and its a part of life, and that's somehow beautiful.

Another key element of this album, and one that I have only begun to appreciate now, is the acoustics of the music. If you listen to old Goodie Mob and Outkast records, and read the credits, you'll realize that much of the music was produced acoustically (as opposed to digitally), via a live bass player, pianos, guitars, etc. While there is certainly a fair share of drum machines and sampling on these records, the use of live instruments adds a certain openness and airiness to the sound. A certain dynamic, organic quality. This is an often-unrealized and unappreciated fact about Dungeon Family records at the group's peak. A S.W.A.T. Healin' Ritual bears all the signs on this phase in the group's sound. It's something that is lost of later releases from the now-defunct family, such as the debut records of Slimm Calhoun and Killer Mike. But its all there in the Witchdoctor record.

Based on a look at his myspace page, Witchdoctor has apparently continued to make music, first on a small label, producing sounds that seem as if they came right out of someone's garage, and more recently recording an album with the Cartoon Network's record label (strange, yes). Some of these new songs sound pretty good to me. But there was a certain point-of-view on that first record that can never really be reproduced. You can feel the energy and the spirit of those early Dungeon Family recordings on that album, and for someone who takes something from that sound, A S.W.A.T. Healin' Ritual is a rare and precious gem.