music etc.

I've got about eight different blog posts in various states of disrepair on various topics ranging the whole wide universe of ideas and experiences. Or something. I'll maybe finish the recent spate of unfinished posts though, maybe. It's like that. I roll on posting for a time, and then I want to work in a different format. Usually I want something longer. I'm not naturally anywhere near as brief as I am here. They say that thing about brevity though so, you know. I'll maybe try ta work on that sometime.

I will get back to Khanna's The Second World though because that man has got the geopolitical scholarship tied down tight. He does seem to miss how incredibly dangerous the endgame on the imperial expansions of current energy infrastructures is. Whether it's climate craziness or peak oil, that shit could very well go nuclear on us sometime in the not to distant if we're not careful with our future. And shit.

He is much too blithe about the oil problem for my taste. If we're at 100 million barrels a day, which is about right (his figure was 120 million by 2030, which is a 35% increase from now, so it's close if you average it out over that period), that's 36.5 billion barrels a year. He gives some general reserve estimates, which admittedly have almost without fail had to be revised up multiple times pretty much everywhere, and the largest reserves are in the several hundred billion range. My intuitive calculation on peak oil from these general numbers would be around 80 to 100 years (depending on the expansion of use and the accuracy of current reserve estimates). Honestly, I think it'd probably be better if there was less and we were being forced to be more serious about energy transition, but such is life. Nor does he acknowledge the concern over the improper use of groundwater that's leading to the serious problem of shrinking water tables or other of the serious environmental concerns of globalization. It is a book on politics though, but the proper and sustainable use of resources is a main political question, so in truth my assessment has to be that he ultimately misses the boat.

Anyway, I went to see some live music for like the first time in eons the other night and holy god is there something so, just, therapeutic and awesome about live music. It really does the soul good. One of the opening bands was this group called The Portland Cello Project, which is exactly what it sounds like, a group of cellists (?). I dig the idea of trying to bring different styles of music to different types of venues and all that, and they were pretty cool, turning songs from the video game Halo, Pantera, and Outkast into all cello pieces, but mostly the room just talks drunkenly over music that mellow in the more bar-like music venues, so the music it gets overshadowed by the cacophony of drunken conversations.

Still the main act, Thao w/ the get down stay down, was wond-a-ball, a lot of fun, and great, bubbly danceable music with lyrical darkness there under the surface, which is right up my alley.

So, good and much needed release of steam. I've been sort of trying to organize myself a little better with regards to scholastic and creative work, and it's an on-going process for sure. The true facts of our world though can be disconcerting to say the least. So it's always important to reground the self in the spirit and so forth, and live music and ecstatic dancing is the best way I know of to achieve that goal (though clearly there are many roads to the top of that mountain).

Still, I'll admit the question of subjective and intersubjective existence has been existentially weighing me down a bit lately and has been contributing to various difficulties with the necessaries of health and well being. Things to work on. Always more things to work on. Hmm. Sigh.