I’ve been reading about John Cage lately.

And, looking at some comments on Youtube videos of him, it seems to me that a lot of people call him either “pretentious” or “crazy” without actually considering why they think that of him. If you actually read more than about a page about John, you’ll quickly find out that he was neither crazy nor pretentious; he just asked “Why?” to everything, and then he followed through with it.

So, going through with this line of reasoning—that to ask “Why?” and follow through is to be pretentious and crazy—Steve Jobs, Mahatma Gandhi, all of the Beatles, Jesus, Philip Pullman, Beethoven, Jim Jarmusch, Richard Wagner, Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, Buddha, George Carlin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bill Hicks, David Bowie, Jack Kerouac, and plenty of others are all pretentious and crazy as well. (And that’s just the men, because the women in this society in which we live don’t matter. Why?)

Anyway, the above reasoning means one of a few things. 1) To be pretentious and crazy is actually a good thing for the advancement of civilization as we know it. 2) To be pretentious and crazy is bad, and none of the above people are either. 3) To be pretentious and crazy is bad, and the above list of people are destroying civilization. 4) None of it matters or means anything, and we should let them do what they will without carelessly judging them or throwing perceived insults at them. Because they don’t care. Why should they?

Got some books to read…

I hate to go all “book club” and stuff—even though I don’t really care if any of you eight God-forsaken people who currently follow me read any of these—but I’ve got some books to read. And I’m posting them for no better reason than that I can. And maybe it’ll somehow magically create motivation for me to actually finish reading these books, though I’m not counting on it. Anyway, on to the books. (And I’m still subconsciously bothered that I can’t underline stuff on Tumblr, but honestly, screw grade-school English and their preposterous book-title conventions.)

  • The Element, by Ken Robinson. I already like this book. I kinda got the idea by the time I’d stopped reading, but now I’m gonna finish it.
  • An Anthropologist on Mars, by Oliver Sacks. Because I apparently like books by smart British people, and it’s a first-edition hardcover I stumbled upon in Canadia.
  • Visions of Jazz, by Gary Giddins. It was a birthday present from my aunt and uncle, and I asked for it because I loved what I’d already read.
  • Jazz, by Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux. Because of a mistake, I have this book too, which is good because I like it.
  • The Trial, by Franz Kafka. Never even really started it. So there it is. Plus, I now have a coffee mug from a place called “Kafka’s,” so there’s a bit more incentive, with it bleakly staring me down as it does.
  • Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, by Robin D.G. Kelley. Because apparently I’m obsessed with enormous books about jazz. Also, I bought this in Texas last summer, so I figure I’d better get to it sooner or later.

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