I think the idea of First Night, a city-sponsored set of events occurring on December 31 to usher in the New Year, began in Boston, MA, my home town. But it has spread to other cities across the country, including here in Austin, TX, my adopted home.

In a way it is cooler than other holiday public events, because it is less formulaic, less top-down in its conception. Yes, there is the parade, the speechifying and the fireworks. But in Austin, and I am sure in other cities, First Night feels a little like Halloween mixed with Mardi Gras.

I think it has to do with the ritual aspect of ending one time and beginning another: All holidays are rituals, but some are more staid and reflective, while some are about embracing change, stepping outside the normal routine, what anthropologists call entering a liminal state. For a brief time during these holidays we can look back on who we have been and imagine who we might be.

Halloween is of course the ultimate holiday for stepping outside your everyday self. Mardi Gras is similar, though it has less to do with subconscious fantasy, and more to do with overt celebration of life (often to excess). First Night is becoming, I think, a gentler blend of both.

Here’s my reasoning: Halloween and Mardi Gras have their origins in religious rites. Scholars debate the fine points, but we can generally say that these contemporary holidays draw from a melange of ancient Indo-European practices, among them Druidic, Christian, and Roman Pagan. They celebrated basic human life cycle moments, the seasons, life and death, real nuts and bolts stuff.

New Year’s Eve celebrates something a little more cerebral and arbitrary, the end of the calendar year. It’s important and arguably more humanly universal, as we all rotate together on this third rock from the sun. Different cultures use different calendars, but they all celebrate the New Year, even if at different times.

We all mark the progression, and it is both cyclical and linear. One year ends, another begins, in an unbroken continuum. But each year we pause to look back and look ahead, or consciously try to do neither. Champagne helps either way.

This year, on the last day of 2007, I found myself marching down Congress Avenue as part of the Golden Arm Trio brass band (2 trumpets, 1 trombone, 1 tenor sax, 1 baritone sax, 1 sousaphone, and 3 drummers). As we stood in the street waiting for the parade to begin, I saw a good representation of Austin culture: Lots of musicians, lots of costumes, hand-crafted floats and tricked-out bicycles, jugglers, dancers, all kinds of people tickling the edge of the imagination.

It was cold. It was exhausting. It was great. We marched from about 8th street down to Cesar Chavez, then west to City Hall Plaza. It was a bunch of people dressed up and making a bunch of noise, just celebrating the fact that we all made it through another year.

While I tried to keep in marching step, fighting off a headcold, blowing on my ice cold tenor sax with numb fingers, looking out at the folks lining the street, kids digging our barely controlled cacophony, I thought, “This sums up my year pretty well.”

Happy New Year.

I know the key to getting website hits is to keep it current, with cool and interesting posts, or at least something to momentarily distract websurfers from the daily drudgery, in between latte sips. And so the role of musician increasingly comes to include data entry, which is the kind of thing I became a musician to avoid. But like I always say, “I’m not complaining, just describing.”

Well, it has been a busy 6 months, not just for me but for most of my friends. Zipping to & fro, trying to keep one’s balls in the air (or perhaps spinning plates would be a less problematic metaphor), finding more and more arcane ways to pay the bills.
I had several good roadtrips this period: June/July in San Francisco with the Broken Clock Cabaret; August in Los Angeles with the Golden Arm Trio; and September/October in NYC & Boston with my own project Manteca Beat.

Some of the musical moments include: Various states of inebriation and debauchery with the No Salvation Army Band as we tried to keep up with stage performers’ craziness… A quick recording session in L.A. with guitarist Tommy Kay…And my dad’s 80th birthday party courtesy of the Harvard Chemistry Department. I got together with pianist (and former classmate) Joseph Reid and we played some cool jazz while the scientists waxed eloquent over cocktails and memories.

I also had an enjoyable radio interview with Bob Putignano of 88.1 in New Jersey, played some cool shows and re-connected with some Texas ex-pats who are honing their music chops in the Big Apple.

Back in Texas, both my bands PK Sax and Manteca Beat have been staying busy, playing club dates and private parties. I also got to hang out with oud maestro Marcel Khalife and his group when they played in Austin. Really nice people and great musicians.

Along with swanky shows with Memphis Train Revue, and some serendipitous calls to play with other Austin bands like Hot Wax, Take Five, Stephanie Bradley, Austin Hot Trax, Groovin’ Ground, Jon Emery, the Jazz Pharoahs, and other hepcats, it has been a busy, busy fall.

Of course Halloween is the main holiday in Austin, and I celebrated in style at the Enchanted Forest. Many fantastical costumes, as well as the dependable standard fantasies: pirates, cats, sexy nurses, sexy stewardesses, naughty schoolgirls, and a surprising number of sexy Raggedy Ann’s… It’s good to see that tradition still counts for something around here.

Now that November is here, it is just a fast downhill rush into the holidays…tryptophan, tinsel, and New Year’s Eve tiaras, and then onward into 2008!

-PK

The wettest summer ever in Austin, or so it seems.  Rainiest summer since I moved here, back in 1982.  Global warming seems to agree with Texas, except for the floods, ruined crops, and who knows what unforeseen liabilities to come… Maybe the weather will slow down the money-grubbing suits (as they pre-occupy themselves with water damage to their mcmansions), but i doubt it.

However, why dwell on the negative?  The grass is green instead of the usual mid-summer brown.  It’s harder, though still possible, to get toxic levels of UV radiation, and the beat goes on.  True, a lot of outdoor gigs have been cancelled, festivals, rooftop bars, lawn parties.  But that’s part of the deal for jobbing musicians. 

It has been a busy year so far:  The Manteca Beat CD, "Manteca-licious!", is doing well.  A Manteca Beat East Coast tour for the fall is coming together.  We’re looking into making a video around one of the CD tracks, not to mention a complete line of Phez Kimono fashion wear.

I had a blast touring the San Francisco area with the Broken Clock Cabaret (June 26-July1), and it looks like we will have ongoing Tom Waits-related performances through the year.  Check out www.brokenclockcabaret.com for the latest byzantine machinations of the troupe.

August 1-5 the Golden Arm Trio goes west, with shows in Tucson and Los Angeles.  I’m happy to be part of that configuration.  Also, thanks to Graham Reynolds for having me on the "Scanner Darkly" movie soundtrack and the new "Tick-Tock Club" CD.

August 8-10 I will be playing in Houston as part of a burlesque show.  More on that to come! 

PKSAX World is this beautiful place inside my head where everything works out and all my dreams come true. I’m sure everyone has their unique personal version in their own heads, albeit some of us have shrunk the mental real estate dedicated to our hopes and dreams, in order to make more space for doubts, nightmares, and nagging regrets.

But the point is: Dare To Dream. Even if your dreams are childish, self-involved, and totally impractical, you have to start somewhere. So I did, and three CDs later I have expanded the real estate of my personal dreamspace to the point where I have enough room for a computer desk, a Captain-Kirk-esque office chair, and a bouncy yoga ball on which to prostrate myself when reality starts to infringe too much.

The three CDs represent my three musical projects:
1) PK Sax, the jazz/world music group has the CD “Texas Tenure.”
2) The Klemperer Group, an experimental/acid jazz ensemble, has the
CD “Man In Chamber.”
3) Manteca Beat, the roots/R&B band, has the CD “Manteca-licious!”

I’m hard at work, trying to expand the real estate of my dreamscape (hmmm…that sounds like a good title for a New Age Workshop…”Expanding The Real Estate Of Your Dreamscape”: a 2-day workshop in which you will learn techniques to realize your dreams, work through emotional blockages left over from past-life issues, free your inner child, and visualize the person you want to become. Only $350; lunch and weak lukewarm green tea will be provided…)

But I digress. What I meant to say was that, as I develop these projects, I hope to use the internet and my website to communicate and deepen the artistic scope of all my projects, musical, literary, educational, what-have-you. The first step will be to reorganize my main website (www.pksax.com) as the command center or clearinghouse for all my related projects. I am tentatively caling this main site “P.K.S.A.X. World Headquarters” which, after much introspection, I feel is less pretentious than “PKSAX Center For World Domination”… Of course I am open to creative suggestions, so feel free to creatively suggest.

As of now I have several weblinks that will direct interested parties to my various projects:

Manteca Beat has its own site at http://mantecabeat.pksax.com. There is also a MySpace page at www.myspace.com/mantecabeat.

PK Sax and The Klemperer Group will soon have their own linked sites. In the meantime, you can access information on these projects through www.pksax.com.

For internet CD sales and digital downloads you can go to CD Baby at cdbaby.com/cd/klemperer.

I guess that’s all for now. Feel free to leave a comment here, or drop me a line at paul@pksax.com.

Ciao,
Paul Klemperer

This just in from P.K.S.A.X. Command Headquarters:

Manteca Beat, the startling roots/R&B project of saxophonist Paul Klemperer, has actually done something right. The CD, almost exactly a year in the making, is finished, tweaked, powdered and pouffed, and will be available March 9.

Yes, grease is the word here and “Manteca-licious” lives up to its name, with a range of blues & rootsy grooves featuring some of Austin greasiest players. Special guests on the album include: Malford Milligan, Marcia Ball, Seth Walker, Stanley Smith and Mark Goodwin, plus other allstar heavy-hitters adding their own “special sauce”… hmmm, these culinary-sexual musical metaphors are getting a little icky. Leave us just say that if you are hungry for good music, your ears will be well-fed. Whether you’ll want a toothpick or a Q-tip after listening to Manteca Beat is up to you.

March 2007 will see Manteca Beat at several Austin venues, including instore appearances at local record stores. Check the calendar at www.pksax.com, or go to http://mantecabeat.pksax.com for more details.

Later in the spring & summer Manteca Beat will be appearing in other Texas cities, with plans for selected national touring to follow. Wherever they go, their mission is “to bring the grease.”

Check back here for information on Manteca Beat merchandise, including select cooking utensils, protective eyewear, and thumbcuffs. Christmas is less than a year away, so plan your holiday shopping now!

1/15/07
Is it just me, or is the justification for the ongoing GWB occupation of Iraq more and more obviously about oil? Of course, way back when GWB was just rattling his sabre, the “No War For Oil” bumper stickers began to sprout on Volvos, Toyotas & Hondas, but this linear logic soon became obscured by the layers of geo-political complexities involved: Saddam was a mass-murderer, Saddam was a threat to regional stability, the U.S. needed to take the threat of global terrorism more seriously after 9/11, the U.S. couldn’t just sit back and wait for the terrorists to strike again, the Arab world saw him as a threat too, a free and democratic Iraq could only emerge if Saddam’s regime was toppled, etc., etc.

For a time after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the war of words was thicker than the actual physical combat. Europe was divided in its allegiance to the U.S. unilateral action, with Britain leaping onboard and France urging caution. Knee-jerk American hawks came up with the brilliant propaganda blitz of “freedom fries.” The Arab world was divided for its own reasons: Islamic fundamentalism threatened existing regimes, allies of the U.S. like Saudi Arabia, which thrive on class inequality. Religious zealots have the power to mobilize masses of poor people against the status quo. But at the same time these regimes gain some breathing room when the anger of their poor populations can be directed against a foreign, demonized enemy like the U.S. The result has been for Arab political leaders to play both sides of the fence, positioning themselves with the U.S. on the global stage, while encouraging anti-U.S. sentiment among their citizenry.

So it is not too surprising that the Bush administration has been able to push its war agenda along, taking advantage of the confusion and ambiguities of the issues, even as all the lies, mistakes and lack of planning became more exposed each day. The argument, which seemed to trump all the questions, went like this: The U.S. had to do something. Maybe it was a mistake to invade Iraq, but now that we are there, we can’t just leave.

This argument seems to suggest that GWB did make a mistake, that his administration has been somewhat misguided and inept in its Iraq misadventure, that we created a power vacuum when we toppled Saddam’s regime, but that the U.S. is now committed to stabilizing the situation, and supporting a new democratic Iraqi government until it can stand on its own feet. This is the “stay the course” logic which GWB has been reiterating for years now. Even his most vociferous critics within the U.S. government tow the line that we can’t just pull out of Iraq and leave a power vacuum. Ostensibly this is because of the U.S. commitment to political stability in the region.

But what is the purpose of this stability? Is it to promote peace, save lives, reduce suffering, allow for the civilized political resolution of geo-political conflicts? Methinks not. For the Bush administration and all the power brokers involved, stability is narrowly defined as “business stability,” which can be further narrowly defined as “oil.”

GWB has been getting, in my humble opinion, something of a free ride from his critics. He has been painted as the C-student frat boy who rode into the White House on the wealthy coattails of his dad. He has been painted as the dangerously self-confident cowboy guided by his fundamentalist simpleton view of the world. This character portrait has explained his refusal to admit any mistakes, to examine opinions outside his small coterie of advisers, or to work with groups which have agendas different than his. But I think this is misleading. GWB may be a dangerous man, but he is still the representative of the corporate powers which guide U.S. economic and foreign policy. He may be a mediocre mind, but he still represents the best and brightest among the monied elite. So the question really is what is their agenda. And once again, the answer is “oil.”

A more accurate reading of the Bush administation’s approach to Iraq is that U.S. companies need access to Iraq’s oil, and we will not leave that country until they get it. The new Iraqi government can hem and haw all it wants, it can institute democratic reforms or not, it can revert to a repressive police state if it wants, as long as we get that oil. Laws are being set up now that will ensure foreign access to Iraq’s oil. The only problem is if the Iraqi government that ratifies those laws is toppled, foreign companies are back to square one.

It’s becoming clear to a growing number of journalists (those not completely in service to the corporate elite) that the most serious issue on the world stage in coming years may not be terrorism or religious fundamentalism, but the struggle to control energy resources. In the name of national security, governments will use any means to secure access to these resources, even if it involves violating civil liberties at home or international laws abroad. If government and corporate leaders believe that controlling and securing access to oil and other energy resources is the most important thing, then sacrificing the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians and military personnel, decimation of communities and infrastructure, despoiling the environment, exponentially increasing toxins, disease and human suffering, are all a small price to pay. In this strategic view, nothing is more important than securing access to energy resources.

Therefore, no matter how crazy it seems, no matter how badly managed this war has been and still is, it makes more sense to GWB and the corporations which back him to stick it out, because the one thing they can’t give up on is that Iraqi oil. Everything else is just details.

I came across a new term the other day: “Disease Mongers.”

I thought at first it was another way of saying hypochondriac, and in a way it is. But instead of someone thinking they have all kinds of health problems (the hypochondriac), the disease monger makes you think that you have all kinds of health problems. I guess you could call a disease monger a “hypochondriacer”.

Who are the disease mongers? Those who stand to benefit from convincing people that they are sick. This can include a lot of groups and individuals, who benefit in different ways. But the clearest way to spot them, as usual, is to follow the money. The biggest group, in terms of sheer size & profits, is the pharmaceutical industry, which seems to come up with more pills for more obscure conditions every year. To do this, of course, they need to work hand-in-glove with the medical industry, research organizations, the Food & Drug Administration, and whoever else has a vested interest in disease mongering.

Obviously, medical research, and advances in medical technology are crucial for the advancement of human civilization and the alleviation of suffering. Yes, and corporate capitalism helps this advancement by centralizing funds into focused research, and this is done by pursuing the overall process of profit-investment-expansion. So one is tempted to say that socially detrimental byproducts of this process are necessary evils. Not just tempted; we are blungeoned with this message by the disease mongers every day. As if it were a cut-and-dry, all-or-nothing proposition. But is it?

These ideas are at the heart of John Le Carre’s “The Constant Gardener,” a well-constructed spy novel that was recently made into a movie. In the novel, it is pretty clear that a huge pharmaceutical company is doing evil things. The company reps and their lobbyists/lackeys/bought politicians use the “necessary evils” argument. The greater good is served even if a few eggs get broken in the making of the health omelette (or some such bland metaphor for killing people). Le Carre paints the situation with a stark brush, but we all know that such evil things are done in the name of progress all the time.

In general I think it is better to avoid good vs. evil, us vs. them frameworks. In other words, it’s better to use a smaller brush to paint the picture, with greater detail and shading. Having said that, I do think there are disease mongers. One could say that it is a general tendency, a phase that our society is going through. But this phase is carried out by individuals, real people who make real choices with real moral ramifications. That’s where the Hall Of Shame comes in. Within the large corporations, the contracted lobbying groups and PR firms, the advertising agencies, the medical organizations, and other businesses that make a profit from the process of disease mongering, within all these faceless bureaucracies are real people who make and implement decisions.

These individuals, when they fight the status quo of profits before people, when they work to alleviate preventable human suffering, deserve our respect and gratitude. But when they just play the game, help the faceless bureaucracies profit from human suffering, when they not only don’t try to change the system but actively profit from its corrupt practices, then they deserve our scorn and anger. It’s important to remember this scorn and anger, for it serves as a collective pressure exerted on these individuals when they are exposed. Exposure is only the first step. High-priced lawyers, dissembling, obfuscation, all that soon follows exposure. The corrupt individuals know how to manipulate the bureaucratic slowness of our judicial system, dragging things out with the hope that the public’s memory and attention span are short. All too often this is true, and the criminal acts of money-grubbing suits get only a slap on the wrist.

But I’m not saying anything you don’t already know. The important thing here is to isolate the disease mongers, to expose immorality of exploiting human suffering for profit, and not to buy into it ourselves. One way to reduce the power of the disease mongers is to be less susceptible to their hypochondria-inducing propaganda.

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Emergenza Festival Showcase at Momo’s on Friday Sept. 29. My roots R&B band Manteca Beat played in the “battle of the bands” and we got a great response, so we are moving on to Round 2, which will be held in May 2007 at the Parrish. Seems like a long ways away, and it is. By then who knows? We could be doing a world tour or, my other, darker fantasy, holding down the house band slot in the lounge at the regional internment camp for dissidents and doubters. But anyway, that’s months away, and we have many things happening until then…

The Emergenza Festival is an international year-long event. I believe it originated in Italy over 9 years ago, with the purpose of helping to bring unsigned bands into the limelight. Bands around the world compete for slots in the various elimination rounds, culminating in a final competition round which will be held in the summer of 2007 in Germany. The website for this lumbering juggernaut of musical momentum is: http://www.emergenza.net/eng/default.asp
Manteca Beat is happy to be part of the doings, and we’ll see where it all leads. My philosophy is “Just play.” In that spirit we will just play music as best we can, survive as best we can, and hope no one gets hurt too much in the process (especially ourselves).

I want to thank my musical cohorts who lent their talents for the showcase and helped Manteca Beat kick some butt:
Kenny Felton on drums, Brian Vose on bass, David Hamburger on guitar, Andrew Moorhead on keyboards. What a band!
Photographer Emily Ng also lent her talents to document the show.

Plans for the fall include finishing the debut CD and playing some choice venues to showcase the new material. Check the calendar for dates, and also visit the Manteca Beat web page at http://myspace.com/mantecabeat.

Until the next time, may your groove be greasy.

-PK

I remember a slogan that was popular during the Cold War: “Peace Through Strength.” At various times it was the name of an actual right-wing group, an official jingoistic catchphrase of the federal government, the philosophical trope for American foreign policy, and just a good ol’ knee-jerk reaction to anyone who might question the usefulness of war as a means of solving political problems.

Yes, “Peace Through Strength” summed it all up: We live in a Machiavellian world, where the Law of the Jungle is the ultimate reality. We don’t want to start nothin’ but we sure as hell are gonna finish it. Speak softly and carry a big stick. Successful deterrence depends on being able to carry out the threat of force. When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Etc.

This logic has always prevailed in our post-colonial militarized geopolitical chess game. We can’t seem to get beyond a phase of human civilization characterized by nations competing with each other for territory, markets and resources. Economic cooperation and interdependence rests in a fragile state atop the global war machine. Everyone knows it is dangerous, wasteful, immoral and just plain idiotic, and yet we can’t seem to evolve past the Law of the Jungle mentality. So, “peace through strength” sums up our collective political philosophy.

But does “peace through strength” work? You could argue that in certain circumstances, and for certain types of social groupings, yes it does work. Big dogs don’t have to fight as often as small dogs. Bullies prey on the weak. Aggressors may be crazy but they’re not stupid. That all makes sense. But there is another level of reality which gets ignored by looking at the world only in this way.

We consume, produce and rearrange our planet’s resources. That is what we do. We eat, we shit, we die, and our bodies get recycled into the planet. That is what we are actually doing while we build elaborate visions about the meaning of our lives. Perhaps the best argument against war is our mathematical ability to quantify, to list, all the resources used in war. When the bombs stop falling, the screams fade into silence, what is left is the bill, the list of expenses.

As our modern societies get more technologically efficient, the number crunchers can accurately tabulate all the costs of war, not just the costs of the bombs, bullets and guns, but all the tertiary resources involved, such as food, fuel, training and so on. They can also tabulate all the secondary costs of the destruction wrought by war, not just buildings, bridges and roads blown up, but things like the environmental cleanup costs after an oil refinery is breached, the medical costs of all the refugees, amputees and maimed orphans created by war. The practical, human, unromantic costs of war.

We are now at the point in our human social development that we can accurately predict the cost of most human endeavors. You want to send a guy to the moon? It’s gonna cost X million dollars. You want to build a tunnel connecting England to France, it’s gonna cost Y million Euros (by the way let’s call it the “Chunnel.” Catchy name, huh?). You want to invade Iraq, topple the government and install a new government? Ooh, now that’s gonna cost you.

In fact, mathematical estimates were made for the cost of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the costs were predicted to be exorbitant. And the Bush administration ignored or denied these estimates. The Bush dream weavers spun a fantasy about the war paying for itself, and it was “bombs away!” And now the waiter comes with the bill: “Did you enjoy your bombs, sir? Very good. We do take mastercard, or you can mortgage your children’s future, if you’d like.”

So “peace through strength” has thrust the U.S. economy into a downward spiral of unimaginable debt, caused massive death, destruction and suffering, and created conditions for civil war in Iraq, not to mention helping to further disenfranchise millions of poor, desperate and angry people, who will serve as a reservoir for terrorists with nothing to lose.

I guess all this is not news to most of us. The question is: Was this the plan all along, or are our world leaders so stupid that they thought things would go differently? Did they make the mistake of believing their own lies? Seriously, I wonder about this.

As Israel carries out its own version of the Bush plan in Lebanon (doing to Lebanon what we did to Afghanistan and Iraq), are the Israeli military leaders thinking that they are really going to eradicate Hezbollah by blowing up Beirut, throwing the Lebanese economy into chaos, and creating hundreds of thousands of refugees? Israel, of course, is one of the most steadfast proponents of “peace through strength.” But do they actually believe their own rhetoric?

Who is in charge of this madness? I think it is the bombmakers, and by this I don’t just mean the highly profitable companies that make the bombs, guns and bullets. I mean all the corporations and individuals who profit from war. They are short-term planners. They blow stuff up and then rebuild it. They make obscene profits from all phases of war, from the planning and staging, to the destruction, to the rebuilding. And in the process of reaping all these short-term profits, they divert humanity from longer term, more productive goals. Definitely Hall of Shame material.

Information overload is generally considered a problem which arose from mass media. Maybe you could track it as far back as the invention of the printing press. Back in the 15th century, when only the creme de la creme could read, most of the average joes got their news from scruffy minstrels wandering around with their lutes and a wineskin. As literacy slowly increased in later centuries, you would have broadsides nailed to trees and walls. From there it is just a short jump (in geological time) to lardasses like myself skimming the internet news sites over morning coffee. And here we are, inundated by information from print and broadcast media, everything from giant corporations beaming the Big Brother Show directly into our subconscious, all the way down to crazed street-corner preachers adding to the din.

Common complaints of this modern information age are 1) The power elites control and package most of the information we receive, shaping and limiting our awareness to suit their economic and political needs; 2) Information comes at us from every direction, swamping us in a flood of random data and errata, to the point where we can’t discern what is important and what isn’t, what is truth and what is lie, and ultimately we have to shut it all out to preserve our sanity; 3) All this random data overwhelms the brain’s ability to filter, organize and process information. If we don’t give up altogether, we fall back on generalizations, comfortable “common sense” and the opinions of various “experts.” This limits our ability to learn new things.

Obviously, no one can know everything…there would be nothing left to learn. But we don’t have to go to the opposite view, that there’s no point in trying to learn more, even though it is tempting to feel that way sometimes. Learning, acquiring new information, is a mental process but it is also an emotional process, involving curiosity, excitement, desire, anger and other murky feelings. When I read a news article or hear an interview, I want to feel stimulated by the information I’m getting. I want to go “I didn’t know that!” or “This jerk should be selling cars, or in jail!” or simply just “What the hell?!” If I don’t have any reaction then a warning light comes on in my brain.

Information should stimulate us, add to our lives, spur us to grow as people. When information acts as a numbing agent, placebo, or buffer preventing change, then something is wrong. Of course you need some kind of filter, some framework to process and organize information. But if that framework just neutralizes new information, a warning light should go off in your head. If your religion, your politics, or your philosophy causes you to mouth platitudes, to fall back on reassuring generalizations, to lump people, things and events into simplistic boxes, then something is wrong.

That kind of thinking may have been excusable 800 years ago, when most of humanity slogged through each day trying to grow, grind, pick or kill enough to eat; when evening meant the end of all activity because candles were an incredible luxury; when current events included a radius of maybe 50 miles; and when voicing your opinion might easily get you hung, burned or whipped to death. But in this day and age, the only excuse not to learn from new information is that there is just too much of it. It is a real problem, but not an insurmountable one.

I often have typical information-overload symptoms: I watch way too much TV, most of it crap. I consume news through TV, internet, newspapers, magazines, to the point where it becomes a wave of meaningless clucking from the media poultry factory. My mind is inundated with all kinds of input, from the smallest fortune cookie message to the scariest pronouncements by government officials. Several times each day my brain just wants to shut it all out, to say “Enough!”

But a basic, instinctive curiosity keeps me coming back. I want to learn, I want to fit together just a few more pieces of the reality puzzle, I want to grok (look it up, if you haven’t read “Stranger In A Strange Land”). If new information makes me depressed, frustrated, or worst of all bored, then something is wrong with the way I am thinking. Learning should be fun, or at least not boring. Of course there are people and groups out there whose main purpose is to inhibit our thinking, to feed us crap that numbs our brains, lies, distortions, misinformation and all that. Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware. No one said it was easy to find the truth. But it should not be boring.

Thinking is a skill, a game, sometimes a fight. The first mistake is to take it for granted. From there it is a short step to letting others do the thinking for you. You can’t grok if you don’t do your own thinking.

Here’s a little game I do when I feel the first twinges of information overload: I take two very different pieces of information and compare them, look in my own mind for a link between them. Sometimes the link can be corroborated in the objective world; sometimes it is just in my own imagination. But this game is a reminder that reality is fluid, multi-levelled, and one’s individual mind can see it from many angles, not just the straight (and often boring) line of mass media.

Example: Scientists discover a new dinosaur, an aquatic creature that swam in the cold waters near Australia. Mars will be closer to Earth on August 27 than at any other time in my lifetime. Just thinking about these two bits of information makes my mind marvel. We are just now discovering how much prehistoric marine life existed and can be found in the fossil record. For a brief time, mars will look as big in the sky as the moon.

What do these two bits of information share? Or rather, by thinking of them together, what ideas are triggered in my mind? Well, the scale of geologic time is comparable to the scale of astronomical distance. Or, events in the distant past and events in distant space, neither of which impact my daily life, can serve as reminders that we are constantly adding to and revising our human understanding of the universe. Or, these two exemplars are a reminder of the ongoing debate in NASA and the scientific community about spending priorities: A manned mission to mars, or better understanding of our own planet’s history and environment. Which is more important? Are they mutually exclusive?

Once you pose one question, more usually follow. Try it. The next time your brain feels numb or crushed by the weight of inane chatter flooding it, as you stand in the supermarket checkout line, or sluggishly work through cable TV channels, or drag yourself through another oppressive day at the J.O.B., pick two bits of information, compare them, and see what you can grok.