Young, Rich, Single Women

After my work is done, I'm going to start a blog about young, single, rich women. I'll probably have to set up a lot of interviews to keep providing appropriate content. And what's the etiquette when interviewing someone? You can't invite yourself over, but you certainly can't invite them over to your place. They'd get the wrong idea. Obviously you have to meet in a cafe or restaurant. Is it appropriate to buy their drinks?

It's not like anything would happen, studies now show:

Young, Single Women Earn More Than Male Peers - WSJ.com: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Last night some hopeless academic named Dougherty trumpeted America's feminist gains among single people, celebrating the fact that single American women now earn more money than our single men. While this certainly represents a step toward overall wage equality, I'm not sure whether it's more disturbing that married women still earn less than married men or that lower-income, less-college-educated men are apparently not marriage-eligible. Or maybe it means that higher-income women can't overlook their patriarchal assumptions and find happiness in the economic dependence of someone kind of hopeless but kind of hopelessly good looking, like higher income men used to (and apparently still) do.

Dougherty suggests that one reason for the income discrepancy is that more women than men now attend college. It doesn't look at why that is. In my experience as a student, dropout, grad-student and teacher, students stay with school as long as they receive consistent positive reinforcement from at least one of their teachers. Is there any reason why teachers should positively reinforce young women over young men?

Well, one possibility is that there are many more female teachers than male teachers, especially in the younger grades, where students form lasting impressions of the educational apparatus and of themselves as students or, if their teachers describe them otherwise, non-students.

An elementary educator recently told me that overwhelmingly more boys are dyslexic than girls. A more experienced colleague corrected her. She said there simply aren't numbers on who has more trouble decoding visual stimuli, but that boys are overwhelmingly more often diagnosed because they aren't taught the same academic coping skills that might help dyslexic young women slide by.

I think another obvious piece is that teachers, for all of their educational theories and training, are still human. Human beings empathize most strongly with the children who remind them most strongly of themselves as children. This is why we all like babies even more than kittens. The same principle can extend to gender differences as long as we as a society view those differences as constructive elements of identity.

If our young children have mostly female teachers, and all of our teachers are still growing up in an overtly gendered society, then young women are more likely than young men to receive approval from their teachers. These young women are then more likely to stay in school, more likely to finish college and more likely to let fond memories of school guide them into careers as educators, themselves.

Should men go out and blame feminists for this discrepancy? No. Men should get over their ingrained patriarchal assumptions that teaching is women's work. Men, go back to college. Men, go get a degree in education. It can be physical education or math education if you need to still keep the world divided. Or if you want to really do something novel, go get a degree in how to teach kindergarten. Learn how to teach Spanish. Teach Home Economics. You'll be a precious resource for schools that recognize their need for diversity. You might save the next Emeril Legace from dropping out.

When a few million single American men go back to school and get teaching degrees, they won't just even out the statistics on college degrees among American singles. They won't even just even out the statistics on income among American singles. If my knee-jerk interpretation of the above data is correct, they'll actually stop being a part of that statistical category of "singles," entirely.

And maybe they'll help us reach toward a state of equality. That's not a numerical achievement like equity. Equality is a state of fairness. Equality means that instead of saying "boys need more money so they can feed girls," or "girls need more money so they don't have to depend on boys," we recognize that everybody needs money (or, really, farmland) to feed themselves. Equality means that instead of assuming that young men, whatever struggles they may face, will eventually put on a shiny suit and become successful businesspeople with horses and castles, we all will have to do our best at whatever we're best at to earn our wages.

Equality means that instead of asking teachers to tell us which of our kids are "good" and which ones are "bad," and then taking them at their word regardless of how many female educators keep telling us that our "boys are gross and they can't sit still," we'll have to start asking all teachers what our kids are good at, and developing those talents. Let the grossest among us become comedians and artists. Let the rest find love for themselves, that they may someday find it for others. We don't need everybody to learn to be good officepeople. I'm not even sure we all need offices.

If more of our young women work in offices, this should not be a surprise. Offices are designed for women. An office, in the traditional, patriarchal construction, is a place where you show up at a certain time to sit still and read and write all day long. Whether by nature or nurture, more American young women learn how to sit still than American young men. American young women get more practice reading than our young men. They also get more books written and published specifically for them, even when literary values would dictate otherwise (*twilight*). American young women get more practice being on time than young men. It is tremendously ironic that our economic patriarchy has so scrupilously maintained an arbitrary system of merits by which to ensure its own dissolution.

Of course I say maintained and not established because it was established by a woman. The Virgin Queen of England, finding herself in charge of a number of men distinguished for their feats in equitation and brutality, held contests among them in poetry. All it took was one woman in authority to change gender roles as we still think we know them in spite of four hundred years of evidence to the contrary. One woman in charge, and there was never again hope for patriarchy.

But I have trouble with the concept of a modern patriarchy. I don't think it's dissolving. I think it's so long gone it's as if it never existed. The idea belongs to a world of talking heads on the TV and other relics of an incomprehensible past. I can't even conceptualize anyone I have ever met seriously claiming to belong to such a group as a patriarchy--the men who own the world. None of us can own the world. Not singly or in any number. We can only borrow this world from our great grandchildren and try to get it ready for them, whatever gender or non-gendered futuristic identity-construct they may be.

64x30: First Quarter--Wherein he Toiled in Obscurity

Rolling Stone hasn't written back. In fact, my subsequent emails updating them on the progress of this project have come back undeliverable. Are the editors of Rolling Stone so divorced from the production of independent music that if you send them a letter telling them about the album you just started making, they block your email address, or is the "Reply" button on G-mail busted? You decide.

The folks at Brooklyn Vegan came over and listened, and one commented over on their side that they wanted royalties, but as the comment was again anonymous, I'm going to have a hard time paying up.

The editor of Pitchfork hasn't written back. Did I tell you I wrote to the editor of Pitchfork? I did. But it's only been a couple days. I'm not giving up hope yet.

Also, this morning, I commented on Lucinda Williams' facebook wall to ask if she minds my quoting her songs in my song about her, "Lucinda." It's been like, eight hours, and so far there's no reply at all. There's no reply at all. Is anybody listening?

Oh, also, yesterday I posted "You're Really Hot," which brings 64x30 up to sixteen songs. That's six more than the Eagles' greatest hits and seven more than Michael Jackson's Thriller. But I'm not stopping. Before this is through, I'm going to record sixty-four more original songs. I even mostly wrote one this morning. Hopefully tonight I'll figure out how to play it and produce a high fidelity multiple track recording for your listening enjoyment.

But while we're on the subject of contacting people who aren't likely to be very interested in hearing back, does anybody have an email address for Stephen Merritt? Tell him I'm coming.

64x30: Brooklyn Vegan Comment War?

There's a good review of Arcade Fire's new album up on Brooklyn Vegan. However, some of the comments were less than charitable. It got me thinking about how hard it must be to make music for millions of people you haven't even met. I mean, I have a hard enough time writing a song that means something to both myself and the woman I wrote it about. So it must be really difficult to write songs for, say, everyone who lives in any suburb, everywhere, as Arcade Fire have to do now.

On my current superalbum, 64x30, I'm trying to write sixty-four songs in sixty-four days. I don't expect that anybody but me is going to love all of them. Actually, I myself hate certain aspects of each of them, even though on the whole I love them each as if they were my own children. If I were spending sixty-four days recording one perfect song, I wouldn't put out a song with a little piece I didn't like. But I feel like that's what I do in most bands I play with, and now I'd like to try the opposite. My goal now is that, by the end of the album, anyone who listens to the whole thing will be able to find one or two songs that they completely relate to. Maybe they won't understand half of the other ones at all, but they'll be able to point to one or two and say, "that's my song. That's what I feel like."

So this is a song that's not for the commenters at Brooklyn Vegan, although along with Walt Whitman I love them as though they were myself, this is a song that's for Arcade Fire to relate to, and say, "yeah. if you took all the negative stuff people in just one community can say about an album we just spent years working on, well, you could write a pretty good song."

Fall Catalogue

Aside from my solo work, I've got this band I play with, called Fall Catalogue. They're basically the awesomest band ever. Tonight we played a really beautiful show with The Slowest Runner In All The World and Ascent of Everest. They're both awesome, incredible groups with cellists who will one day play in Rasputina.

It was a great show tonight. It surprised me that the highlight of the evening was hearing the other bands. During the first song of Fall Catalogue's set, I managed to play the riffs from both Iron Man and Smoke on the Water. I didn't think it could get much better than that. But it did.

Those other two bands are playing in Baltimore tomorrow night. You should probably go see them. Otherwise you'll be sad and lonely for the rest of your life. Okay, not really that long. But for tomorrow night, I'm not making any promises of happiness or great rock and roll unless you listen up and check it out.

64x30: Cover of the rolling stone?

So, I may not quite be ready to live out Shel Silverstein's dream, but I have set my sites on a different, and deeper desire.

Yes. It's been two days since I emailed the editors of Rolling Stone magazine about my intentions to become internationally famous by recording and releasing sixty-four new songs in the last sixty-four days of my twenties. I still have yet to hear a follow-up requesting more details. Two whole days, people. In a twenty-four hour news cycle, that's the equivalent of....

...long enough to realize it was a pipe dream, writing to them in the first place, especially since I forgot to include a link.

But I haven't given up with trying to get my face on the front of something. I present my latest original composition, Cereal Monogamy, about my longstanding desire to get my face on the cover of Quaker Oat Squares.

64x30: New website

I've started migrating my files from Garageband over to Bandcamp. The new site is at http://eliresnick.bandcamp.com/album/64x30 and will eventually be able to hold all sixty-four songs. Garage band also offers artists the choice to give songs away for free, charge a set amount or let purchasers name their price. I'm going to keep everything free for at least a few more weeks, so download and enjoy.

Take a minute especially to check out last night's creation, Eminently Lovable. My lead guitar came out just beautiful and hauntingly electronic. Through a combination of a dead nine-volt battery in the guitar's balancing circuit, a little bit of radio interference that wouldn't go away until I turned the treble almost off on the amp and my own preference for fingerpicking even on lead parts, the notes are just barely there, but over the fingerpicked classical rhythm guitar they offer a really interesting blend of textures.

I think it's quite possibly the most beautiful recording I've been a part of since I played bass and engineer on a home recording The Casual Occupation's Friday Night. Lobby Gabe for a copy. Hear what I'm remembering, and why I'm so thrilled with my lead tone on Eminently Lovable.

64x30: Dick Cheney and English Class

Yesterday I recorded two songs. The first was a triumph of quick and dirty, single-take, acoustic guitar improvisation. Dick Cheney is just a straightforward blues in E, the lowest, best (and the easiest because rock players practice it the most) guitar-blues key. I'm switching up between chords and lead to compliment my voice and that's about all it needs. Of course, the cuban drum-loop doesn't hurt, either. Let's hear it for royalty-free things that serve as metronomes while simultaneously adding actual content.

English Class is a little bit more refined now. The only piece of cliched writing advice that didn't make it into the lyrics proved to be the guiding force for the recording process here: you don't write; you edit. And if there's anything I've learned about the editing process, it's that it usually involves more writing than the writing process.

After staying up a few hours past my bedtime working on the guitar and vocals and overlaying a rough bass take, I put it aside for this morning. In the morning I decided to start from scratch. There is no force stronger than sleep for getting things done. First thing in the morning, the song was easy to play and easier to sing.

I think overnight I actually learned a lot of the nuances of it that eluded me last night. Also, having tried to play an appropriate bass part over my first, really free guitar part, I understood that I wanted to start out with a rhythm-only guitar line, lay down a simple, basic bass part over that and then see what I could do about lead and fancy things, once the foundation was there.

After playing the guitar and bass for the song and singing one take, I couldn't decide whether it needed harmonica or backing vocals more, so I tried a take where I switched between the two. After that, it didn't sound like it needed anything else.

In fifty-nine more songs, I'm going to get plenty of opportunities to play guitar solos. I'm a lot more excited about getting each song to sound good for what it is. If they need guitar, I'll play it. If they don't, well, I hope I got it out of my system at the end of Electron Directions.

The other really exciting development from last night is that I switched up how I was routing the signal from the mixer to the line-in on my computer, and suddenly the left-right balance is fine. That old, beat up, Californian mixer has some rock-solid, center-detented pan controls after all.

The problem now is that I'm routing my mix into the computer through a headphone amp. Still, I think you'll agree the sound quality has improved 200%. I really hope there's time to go back and re-record the first few tracks at some point, but until I find a lower-distortion solution than the headphone amp, I'm going to rule that dilatory.