Rant: A call to villainy

Throughout human history people have grappled with the unassailable forces of adversity and found strength in their struggle against them. Be it natural disasters, war or highly irascible mega fauna there has always been some horror beyond the next bend. Humanity has been propelled to this point in its development by adversity, strife, chaos and the urge to overcome it. Not just overcome it, but to tame the chaos surrounding their lives, to use it towards their own ends. Villains provide us with a human face to that struggle, a corporeal and mortal manifestation of our frustrations. They provide the world a target in times when there is no one to blame. At times villains take action that causes them to be blamed. But most importantly, villains provide opposition.

Opposition and strife has generated far more innovation than any other force in human life. Through this agent of change humanity has altered the face of the planet, invented endless new technologies to alleviate suffering and in a moment of striking irony, secured future generations their fair share of suffering with the byproducts of developing that technology. So not all is lost for the budding villain. Humanity has devoted it's time and attention in equal measures to feeding people and finding new ways to turn those crops into a fiery wasteland, don't think that utopia is around the corner just waiting to be found.

The benefits of villainy have been heaped upon society, of this have no doubt. Why the greatest friendships ever known were formed under considerable duress! Is there a greater friendship than one that was formed in battle? A man who has held your life in his hands countless times, who has risked his own so you might both survive the horror is the greatest friend you can know. Whom do you suppose drove the engine of war to manifest that battle? Villains. It requires a villain to look at the bleak, senseless horror of warfare and extract this gleaming heart from it's chest - we are blessed to know adversity.

Being heartless is not the only requirement of true villainy. There is a subtlety to it that escapes the vast majority of politicians, investors, broadcast anchors and other aspiring villains. There is a prevailing philosophy amongst these pretenders that a villain must burn down the whole building to spite a room. Any five year old with access to a large enough arsenal can destroy the planet wholesale. That is simple. A true villain will only crush as much as is necessary to instill paralyzing fear in what remains. It is a far more effective use of resources than attempting to dominate the entire planet at once. Too often in today's pathetic excuses for villainy do I see those with the heart of a villain but with none of the restraint that is needed to fill the role. We, as persons of integrity, do not want to see the world destroyed. Just a little more under control. Our control.

So does this call for villainy go out to the world, a call for any who wish to see the world a better place. People of vision, integrity, honor and considerable personal wealth with little moral grounding I call upon you all. Act now towards providing the world its adversaries, its nemesis, its good fight. The world has need of measured doses of evil perpetrated by those who will understand the nature of their goals. We must stop the amateurs from disgracing the role. These hack villains must be stopped, they lack grace in their actions and lower the art to mere thuggery.


Thank you for your time:

Eriq Nelson
Adversary.

Awesome things tonight!

Come out and celebrate RVA Magazine and Gallery 5's 3rd birthday tonight! The festivities will begin around 7 o'clock. Tonight is First Friday as well, so there's many other wonderful happenings in the area as well.

From RVAmag.com:

WHAT: Gallery5/RVA Mag 3 Year Anniversary Benefit Party!!!
WHEN: 7PM - 2AM
WHERE: Gallery5
DETAILS: First Friday, April 47PM - 2AM $5Gallery5 turns 3 years old April 4th! Come join us as we celebrate three years of hard work, frustration and sleepless nights.On April's First Friday we do battle with our crib-mates RVA Magazine (also turning 3) in a mural competition. Artistic gladiators include your local favorites Jim Callahan, Oura, Adam Juresko, Bizhan Khodabandeh, Ross Trimmer and a secret special guest. Great live music from Fight the Big Bull, Prabir and the Substitutes and cabaret sister act, Vermillion Lies. The high energy antics of G5 Fire Performers will be outside spinning, spitting, twirling, and breathing the hot stuff. Late night brings DJ sets from the Party Liberation Front starring DJ Reinhold and Discotizer on the second floor and local unstoppable sonic sensations, SoulPower downstairs. As if that were not enough, Sailor Jerry Rum, Level Vodka and Richbrau Brewery will relieve you of your inhibitions.Take part in our Silent Auction with entries from Firehouse Theatre Project, TheatreVCU, Henry, Rumors, Ian Graham, Ken Howard, Revolve, Chop Suey, Tagur Shoes, Sticky Rice, Taboo, OPUS and others.Raffle Tickets will be available for purchase. 3 Lucky winners will receive tickets to EVERY Gallery5 and RVA Magazine event for a full year!!
URL: http://www.gallery5arts.org

See you there!

Public transit

I spent the better part of my 20's sans car and I rocked GRTC back and forth to work at Tower for most of that time. Taking an hour to get up Broad St. every day was a real pain in the ass when it took less than 10 minutes by car or scooter. I'm almost certain that anyone who's relied on GRTC for their livelihood has developed a deep and abiding hatred for it. That's not really why I'm here. Bitching about a thing really does very little to end the problem. It does make you feel better though.

I've been thinking of ways to improve the public transit around here and I think there's a few ways to do it without creating tons of waste or costing obscene amounts of money, further indebting our municipal government to private investors. I think a lot of the problems in revitalizing Richmond city's economy can be traced back to the influx of private capital into public coffers and the kind of closed door meetings where public policy is dictated by private investors. Anyone want a baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom? I thought not. So when we approach creating a functional public transit system that is affordable, scalable and sustainable the first thing we must do is keep investment interests the hell away from it. Public transit has never been, nor will it be, profitable. So why do people keep investing in it? I have no idea, perhaps political weight, perhaps a tax shelter, the methodology and reasoning of investors is beyond me. I'm certain of one thing, it's either fear or greed.

Reusing existing byways seems like the best way to get people around the city. We've done enough blowing holes through neighborhoods (read: Interstate system) in our history as a modern city. I'd say the best bet in getting light rail between the city and its suburbs is the abandoned rail lines and tramway paths that cover the entire area. Richmond is one of the biggest rail centers in the country and the very notion that we don't utilize it to move people around the area is laughable. I need to spend some time researching the existing right of way agreements between local municipalities and rail companies before I'm certain, but it seems like a good idea to lease access to the local lines for commuter traffic. Look at the map, CSX lines mirror 64 and 95 quite nicely.

Light rail has done incredible things for other cities, my favorite is Portland for its use of mixed service transportation. The real problem is getting Richmonders and Suburbinites interested, or dare I hope, excited about the prospect of getting to work on the train in the morning. So how do we approach that? Discuss.

Rant: East Side till I die.

The East end of Richmond is the land of my teenage years. My parents moved out there so I could attend county schools when I arrived here from Maryland. Evidently the county schools were "better" but I've never been able to tell. My experiences there taught me that people are cruel but I think that's more of an age thing than a location. Varina high school was at the intersection of Wannabe Lane and Misinformed Drive. We were close enough to the city that half the white kids wanted to be gangsters and near enough to true country that The Way of the Redneck was strong and true. It created an interesting hybrid, the jacked up pickup truck covered in rebel flags blasting the emergent sounds of the G-Funk West Coast rap scene. Big Johnson t-shirts with baggy pants. I was always mystified by the racist rap listeners, it seemed they would implode with paradox at any given time. I think all teenagers wear their uniforms with pride, I certainly did. Hot topic before Hot Topic existed. My first wallet chain I bought at Kroger, a dog chain attacked with pliers adorned my one pair of Jincos that I treasured above all else.
So here I grow up in this cultural crossroads, one half country, one half ghetto, confused as any young man and assaulted on all sides by fictional racial tensions. They were a fiction, it required a constant stream of inventions by the believers in it to keep the rest of us even paying attention. Ours is a generation where some of us were raised by civil rights activists, some by flat out dogmatic racists and the vast majority by parents who were ambivalent towards the whole issue. The East End is steeped in it all, the old and the new. It's not really a place to me any more, it seems like a metaphor for so much of what's going wrong in our little slice of the human experience. Really, you can see the same cancers in any neighborhood that you do a MRI on, it's just that the East End is one I've seen a lot of.
There was a phone circuit manufacturing plant on Laburnum Avenue when I was living out there in the mid-90's that has been torn down in favor of a new shopping mall. People in the local media laud it as a "step forward" for an area that has seen some really hard economic times. All I can think of is the people I went to high school with that never graduated due to children, their parents or their own drug problems and all the other myriad issues that arise in modern teenage life. When that plant was open, their entry level positions paid anywhere from 9 to 10 dollars an hour and required little more than a GED and the ability to show up sober and on time. From there workers could get training in one of the technical or supervisory fields the plant required and get their wages up to the 12-15 dollar range. Not excessively high, but something you can survive on, maybe even thrive if you plan and save. The work was boring, but not demeaning.
So now we're going to replace that with a fucking shopping mall? That'll really stimulate the local economy, more low paying go nowhere fucking retail and service jobs. People who make minimum wage aren't going to establish roots in the community because they can't afford to buy the housing built during the manufacturing era. They might be able to rent but in all probability they'll have to live a few miles away and take the bus to work. Especially as he local housing revalues higher due to the availability of nearby shopping and services. It occurs to me that this is not a new problem, urban planners have been watching this trend for years. But the Powers That Be (being capital) have no need for solid community. Solid communities lead to things like demands for better education, labor unions and people who expect something approaching a quality of life.

So we end up with a golden cap on an infected tooth, new construction next to abandoned farm houses. It's like refacing a building who's foundation fell apart years ago and expecting that to fix the problem. It pains me to see this pathos repeated all over our country and the only way we're going to stop it is to start buying back our land from the investment class and building community in only way that is sustainable, from the roots up.

Prose: The Delicate Dance of Desire

And so I dance.

This dance has steps that resemble nothing else in the world. They are hidden rules and everyone follows them religiously. Like a secret society that everyone else is a member of, whispering the dark secrets of form and ritual in hushed back alleys just outside my earshot. A twist here, two unspoken understandings there all done behind the screen. I've been listening as long as I've been alive and the steps elude me even to this day. Perhaps I lack the subtlety required of its participants. The grace of the common man is beyond my reach despite the dizzying patterns I dance around the hard wood floors and pillars of beer cans.

It is a cruel thing at times, desperate and clinging. The fever pitch of a thousand paper hearts flying through the air smothering the floor and choking the life from anyone caught in the swarm. The band reaching its crescendo and falling face first into the crowd. Everyone is staring around, wondering if this maelstrom can outlast their willpower. The answer is yes, and you won't know your face when it's done.

Then you watch the grace of two seasoned veterans, toying with emotions that rattle like sabers in the hands of a master. Each perfectly poised and perfectly detached from the reality of the steps. Smirking bastards. These are the people who write the rules of engagement for everyone else. It is cool and inhuman, pausing for breath only to suspend your disbelief. I can enjoy the show, watching robots try to fuck if only to give me an uncomfortable laugh. The truth is that the methodical actions of these dressing dolls are as much a mystery to me as the ramblings of the madman whirling in his endless hair. It is perhaps the last mystery we're allowed.

At a certain point the vast majority of people expect that you don't believe monsters are hiding under your bed. I think they go to live in your heart when you banish them from the comfort of dust balls and one left socks. All you're left with is the boring underside of your mattress, a few boxes of random crap and a crumpled up porn magazine. Gone is the myth we carry around as children, the wonder of a spiderweb and the witching hour between this world and the next. We place all of our belief and mystery into smaller buckets, call one Love and the other one God and move on with life. It is all boiled down and bottled up in a dance and we dance it all the time, whether we know it or not. It eats up all of our time and energy and most of the time we're pretty unaware of it.

But I've been watching my feet very closely.
I think they'll betray me soon.

Cashmas

Well it looks as though the frenzy is in full swing here in Babylon. I'm sure I can be placed among the hordes of Christmas curmudgeons out there and plenty of people have commented on the hyper-consumerist nature of the holiday. A few years back when I worked at Tower I decided to stop being such an ass during the season and try to have some fun with the whole thing. Thus was borne Cashmas unto the world. Cashmas is a holiday celebrating the dominance of the American dollar over the worlds economy and our relentless practice of buying huge quantities of goods from overseas. The Cashmas spirit is somewhat diminished this year by the falling value of the dollar against other currencies but the country is determined to drive itself into debt appeasing the never ending hunger of our consumers regardless of economic circumstances.

Hey, more power to 'em! I figure, why get in the way of the natives and their traditions? I love watching people trying to find a Wii this year. It reminds me of every other "must have" toy for every other Cashmas season I've been alive for. Who's up for Tickle me Elmo? Anyone? I've never lusted after a thing that badly. I'm kind of jealous in a way. There's a certain amount of blissful oblivion found in obsession and the feeling of achievment when it is satisfied. Don't get me wrong, there are things I have a serious jones for (anyone want to buy me a M-Audio Keystation 88e?) but it doesn't consume my waking life like Cashmas does for some folks. I'd like to pretend that it has always been thus for me but I too had the obsession when I was a kid. I can't help but wonder how different my early experiences with Cashmas would be if I wasn't surrounded by ads and peers telling me What I Need. It's hard to tell, hard to seperate what we learned from the enviornment from what we truly thought and felt growing up. The need for things really started to fade during high school as I started becoming aware of the world around me and questioning consumerist precepts that are held with religious diligence in our society.
Perhaps I'll never be able to fully comprehend the meaning behind it all. Most people that I talk to about Cashmas claim that I am a cynic. Perhaps. I simply prefer to be honest about my intentions and the vast majority of people in this country are not celebrating the birth of a Jewish prophet when they descend upon malls in a frenzy of buying. Neither am I. My experiences growing up here have led me to believe that Santa Claus holds considerably more weight in the minds of our people than Jesus. Well, I can't see the problem here. If the people of this country prefer purchasing over compassion, let us celebrate the season!

I do see people celebrating other holidays and doing so very honestly. This is simply my attempt to give a name to the herd surge towards malls and shopping centers every year and every year my holiday gets longer and longer. Soon the Cashmas season will extend it's grasp to the entire year and we'll never stop the snow machines until every last thing on the Earth has been wrapped in mylar and stuffed under a dead pine tree.

The Suburbs

I've never really liked the suburbs. This feeling has only gotten worse since I started working out there. I went to the shiny new Starbucks after work today and I realized something about the place. All of the Starbucks here in the city are very alive, full of interesting people pursuing there passions and talking. I've met some damn fine folks at Starbucks (including my roommate!) either working at or hanging out at Starbucks. The suburban ones feel so dead. Every customer hunched into their shells, seeking the solace of a latte held alone. It's like wandering into a hermitage unannounced, blaring your boombox at top volume. Every glance, measured. Every greeting, brief. I often wonder at the chicken and the egg nature of this crowded suburban solitude. Is it that the suburbs attract people who want to be left alone, or does it change the people there into these shades? It's an overcrowded ghost town and it makes me feel so gray so alone. I can generally avoid leaving the city all weekend. I make plans to go outside like a military commander. I have a strategic overview of what needs doing in the wastelands, a tactical map of my terrain and above all, my armor. What happened out there? Was it a slow and painful death? Was this nightmare soulscape once teeming with life and hope, to be drained as a swamp is for another shopping center?
I like to look back at the facts about suburban development to give me some perspective. The modern American suburb is a direct result of several key corporations involved with automobiles and fuel production selling these old farm lands as an escape from city strife and overcrowding. It's so depressing. So much of our social order and landscape has been determined for us by people with only profit in mind. And short term profit at that. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for profit being made. But at what cost to our national identity? I'd like to think that at one time our people were innovative workers, citizen soldiers and thinkers unafraid to speak their minds. Ah, it is but an illusion I learned as a child. The more I look and learn, the more this becomes apparent. I swallowed that red pill lock stock and barrel all the way through middle school and I still have a hard time shaking the idea that this is a great nation. It sounds so damn good on paper too. A secular, pluralistic representative democracy ruled by law. What we see is certainly not what we get. I see parts of it here in the city, people helping each other, being tolerant of others beliefs and participating in the governance of our home.
It gives me joy and hope that my childish dreams may yet see reality in one form or another. But every time I get into the wastes it fades from my vision and the harsh tungsten lights conceals all else. The scurrying, honking noisy mess full of hyper-caffeinated shoppers tries to herd me in. I can understand how people out there get eaten by this crap. Where did it all start? Who was the first person to start this vicious game of eat and be eaten? I do not know the answers, but the questions are getting clearer and that is all I can ask.