Make Austin Weird Again

The pace of growth of Austin, Texas cannot be believed. The tentacles of Austin spread in every direction from downtown. I attended a pre-Thanksgiving gathering today in Bastrop, Texas-- maybe 20 miles to the east of Central Austin. The highways were jammed with motorists traveling in both directions. A weekend jaunt to Lake Travis used to be a leisurely pursuit for swimming at Hippie Hollow or boating on the lake. Now you look over your shoulder in fear, striving to stay ahead of the competition on our racetracks, er... I mean our  highways and toll roads.

The Mopac Expressway bulges with traffic for more hours of the day. Rush hour has degenerated to many hours of rush-- gridlock in the morning and from 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM. in the evening. The pattern of growth continues while many of us fret over the disappearance of the beautiful, onetime bucolic town, that has attracted new arrivals since the 70s. I was one of them-- or us.

We still have Barton Springs for swimming in the heart of the city. The beautiful Hike & Bike Trail parallels the banks of the Colorado River and bustles with joggers and walkers just a few feet from downtown. And incredible entertainment, a constantly expanding array of restaurants and cultural events like SXSW and ACL, make this a special place.

But what if the onslaught of increased population continues at this present rate? Austin lacks the transportation infrastructure (subways) of that add to the viability of older American cities. We have a functioning bus system but most citizens avoid bus travel. Bicycle traffic represents a tiny portion of the community. Instead, we have become a sea of automobiles, a constant movement of shiny steel.  Even high quality, well-maintained vehicles degrade an environment at a certain point. We have too many damn cars!

Our reputation for being different, or weirder than other Texas cities led to the proud slogan "Keep Austin Weird." Maybe we need an orange-haired political leader to start a revolution to "Make Austin Weird Again." We can all start wearing those ball caps and recall the old days in Austin when a redheaded stranger named Willie Nelson united the hippies and the cowboys at the Armadillo World Headquarters.

The city leaders have grand visions for fighting the overwhelming influx on individual arriving on our shore from California, the East Coast, Michigan. The money and energy provided by our prosperous emigres-- the young, restless and computer literate-- have made us overconfident.  We are buzzing with energy and American optimism-- a belief that any problem can be solved through sound thinking. But this problem...life is good, but maybe just a little too good could leave us drowning in a sea of gridlocked traffic, and singing the blues... "I'm too sexy for my shirt."

I'm Too Sexy

Right Said Fred

I'm too sexy for my shirt
Too sexy for my shirt
So sexy it hurts
And I'm too sexy for Milan
Too sexy for Milan
New York, and Japan
I'm too sexy for your party
Too sexy for your party
No way I'm disco dancing

Election Day Angst (2016)

Our Reactionary Age 

From the New York Times (Op-Editorial)

To live a modern life anywhere in the world today, subject to perpetual social and technological transformations, is to experience the psychological equivalent of permanent revolution. Anxiety in the face of this process is now a universal experience, which is why reactionary ideas attract adherents around the world who share little except their sense of historical betrayal.

Mark Lilla—

Mark Lilla’s nice article makes more sense of the election day angst than all the hours of teeth-gnashing from left leaning CNN journalists and right wing Fox News partisans, the briefest of tweeters, the longwinded radio tycoons, the neocons, the rabble rousers, the rooftop shouters, the Cubs fans, the Kardashians, The View, the others with an obstructed view, the great unwashed, The Voice, those others without a voice, The Housewives, the white educated ladies in the Philly suburbs, the Latino voters, the vote suppressors, the Second Amendment gun toters hiding up in the hills loading up on ammo, Taylor Swift, LeBron James, Jay-Z and Beyonce, the dog whisperer, the paint sniffers, opioid abusers, Jimmy Fallon and his unnamed sidekick (Steve Higgins), the victims of micro-aggression, the refugees, the terrorists, the fellow travelers, not to mention Flo from Progressive, the Mayhem guy and the Good Hands guy, all keeping us safe 24/7 but still we feel so vulnerable.

Lilla’s op-ed makes more sense than almost everybody else—with a single, powerful exception, a man who speaks to us most eloquently, even from the grave, the great thinker and media guru Marshall McLuhan.

McLuhan always argued for the need for an awareness of present circumstances. We must bring to consciousness the vortex of swirling media energy encircling us. Mcluhan compared the situation to an Edgar Allen Poe short story, Descent into the Maelstrom, a cautionary tale in which a fisherman finds himself caught in the midst of a whirlpool of swirling waters.  The fisherman saves himself  by achieving a moment of clarity in the midst of the whirlpool. The Norwegian fisherman in Poe’s story gathers himself for a brief moment and, by observing the wild vortex of energy, ocean waters swirling with debris, finds a solution. He separates from his boat and grabs on to a steamer trunk as a way out of the maelstrom.

McLuhan referred to the story in his first book, The Mechanical Bride, (1951) devoted to the subject of advertising and written before the real advent of television. McLuhan the book with a reference to the Poe story, and the hope that his work will render the maelstrom better understood. Here is McLuhan’s statement:

The present book likewise makes few attempts to attach the very considerable currents and pressures set up around us today by the mechanical agencies of the press, radio, movies and advertising. It does attempt to set the reader at the center of the revolving picture created by these affairs where he may observe the action that is in progress in which everybody is involved. From the analysis of that action, it is hoped, many individual strategies may suggest themselves.

(McLuhan, The Mechanical Bride, preface)

The maelstrom has clearly grown wider, deeper and more ferocious than in 1951, but McLuhan always retained the Poe story as a core metaphor for the man’s need to study the vortex of media energy as a means for survival. The question for the present age—Have we determined even a single strategy for protecting ourselves from the maelstrom?—unfortunately remains unanswered.