Geography is a curious thing.  In Josh Ritter’s Live from Vicar Street DVD, he explains the first time he went to Ireland.  He was living in New York, and It was cheaper for him to fly to Ireland rather than back home to Idaho.  He’s gained a tremendous fan base in Ireland, exemplified by the beautiful gal singing along at the top of her lungs with ‘Kathleen’ in the front row.  On the Hello Starling album, the song ‘California’ has an irony in the lyrics, ‘ill be back when I’m good and ready, California doesn’t seem to think I’m ready.’ How can a lad from Idaho ‘make it’ in California — as the psychology between these states is quite different, and the song insinuates.

One day I’ll look back and understand and appreciate the surroundings accompanying this prose.  No matter how fast I run to get things done, the job will never be finished, there is no home, at least for now.  I’ll still have the couple miles or so of wiggle room for the time being; a captive of high walls, barbed wire, and a clash of civilizations.

What was said on the Alcatraz tour; The rock was such a tough place to be because it was right off the heart of San Francisco, so the inmates could see the free world, so close yet so far, they knew precisely what they were missing.

Similar circumstances exist for a person deployed.  You can see the world through the lens of web browser, you can see what you’re missing, but you can’t physically interact.

Today I whip out my favorite snow albums for the cold windy Baghdad rain…I don’t know much about the snow, but the boys from Travis who produced The Man Who and Sondre Lerche who’s album Two Way Monologue were written from the perspectives of the Scotts and Norwegians respectively.  My feet can feel the Wet Ground, literally and figuratively. 

I’ve braved the gas pumps in International Falls in -30 degree weather, but I knew the heater wasn’t far away.  When it’s cold here, sometime there isn’t escape.  The morning greets you with a cold shower, the building I work in has a lovely draft that chills you to the bone.  You try to escape back to your sleeping area to get a heat blast only to discover the power has gone out.  By the time you make this discovery, you’ve already drenched your feet in 3-4 unavoidable puddles of water giving your socks that o’ so wonderful soggy feeling.

In the infinite pursuit of self knowledge, I’ve learned to trust myself, respect my family, throw reckless abandonment aside for a better life.  I’m glad I’ve had these miserable days to test my zen and help me put life into perspective.

I can suggest that the beauty and simplicity of the song falls in line with the philosophy of Thoreau from an earlier era. I’ve always enjoyed listening to the raw emotion of songs like this, often over and over.  It’s 100 words or so, but the textures and fragility speak volumes. Gravitating to simplicity, I’m able to admire Thoreau’s quote, ‘A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to leave alone.’

Later in the morning, my RSS feed presents me with some of the most complicated lamentations I can find on geopolitics, economies and finance, history and philosophy.  I skim these for situational awareness and await patiently for some good public discourse.

Most have an inclination that personal discourse is dictated by the poison of your choice; breaking news, personal experience, cherry picking data, finding someone or something articulate or boisterous and cling with both hands.

The question of the day, how do you achieve an objective mind?  Where have the genuine and rational discussions gone?

Taking notes from my informal class, I try to conceive the intrinsic value of formal academia, when colleges like Yale and Berkeley put lectures online for free.  What I can come up with: physical world and institutions for networking, entertainment value, and to collate information, books and the digital world, ..pluck age old wisdom at your discretion.

Some excerpts from the lecture:

JOKE:  We’ve all heard to people who talk in their sleep, economists are people who talk in other people’s sleep

WHAT MR KEYNES SAID ABOUT THE MASTER ECONOMIST: 

The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts …. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher — in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular, in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man’s nature or his institutions must be entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood, as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near to earth as a politician.

INTERPRETATION:  At one side of the pendulum there’s communism, the other is anarchy.  We’re fixated somewhere in the middle depending on which special interest controls what.

The very nature of economics is ‘people who understand tradeoffs and take them seriously,’ which by nature polarized politics cannot accomplish.

3 QUESTIONS ECONOMICS ASKS OF SOCIETY: what should be produced?  How is it going to be produced?  Who gets it?

RESPECT: The more you study the markets, the more respect you will have for them.  That doesn’t mean its right or wrong, its the same respect you’d give something like a hurricane.

The pencil example suggests that there isn’t a human alive that could single handed-ly create a pencil.  The lead, the wood, the metal, the eraser.  However markets can mass produce this at a cheap price.

INCENTIVES:  Incentives change ball games.  The advent of mad cow disease in England left the grocery stores with shelves full of meat.  The supermarket cuts the price in half, the meat is gone instantly.

SELFISHNESS:  An organizing principle for society.  Economists don’t believe in individual responsibility for prices.

Exxon isn’t the ‘evil one’ for increased prices in fuel, consequently, they aren’t the generous ones when prices are lower.

I found some found gem’s one our media share today, they brought me down memory lane with a huge smile on my face.

• Live’s Throwing Copper- Recall I was in the batters box, Schulenburg Texas, 3-2 count, I was playing the tune lightning crashes in my head, and listening to my minds rendition, fastball comes, I’m done.
• Eve 6 – One of the first outings I had with Jenny J, San Antonio, opened for Third Eye Blind at Sunken Garden
• Marcy Playgroud- Self titled album, no spectacular, but just damn good, recall jamming it often — song one about opium makes more sense now that I’ve studied the opium wars, and the one little two little three little Indians all in suits makes sense now.  Wow I guess they knew what they were talking about. 

Random Note: Google hit #1 for tao, you find a New York restrant, the wisdom of eastern philosophy, #2.

With that being said, its been a great year for the soul, and the soundtrack reflects. It also reflects someone that’s getting old.

10 – Conor Oberest / Conor Oberest and Racounters – Consolers Of The Lonely — Number 10 is a tie between these two great. Conor is a great songwriter that surrounds himself with some of my favorites, too deep to be considered whiny emo. The Racounters are there b/c of the mere precense of Mr Benson, the Jack White singing style gets to me every now and then, but its a great jam. This year used it as a pump Roland and Mike D up for the Marathon car drive.

9 — Belle and Sebastian — BBC Sessions — Even if they’d fart on a snare and record, they’d be in the top 10. An album that shows there ain’t much studio magic to their perfection.

8 — John Denver’s Greatest Hits — What memories are made of. Mike P and D and I rolling throught the mountains of Colorado with Mr Rocky Mountain high hippie on repeat. We did see it raining fire in the sky on Mike P’s wedding trip. The soundtrack is memorable if you take something like this, roll it on repeat, get annoyed, get past annoyance, and sing at the top of your lungs. I’m there, just got to get the others in the car to that point.

7 — Fleet Foxes -- The only mainstream hipster band on the list. I like them because of the reverb, the lyrics, the nice little fills.

6 — Old 97′s Blame it On Gravity — Rhett and the Boys put out consistently good stuff. Rollin with the top down in Shiner, acting cool, blaring these tunes. Not to mention, even people who aren’t up on music can hop in the car and say, hey, this sounds good. It’s approachable and hip.

5 — Dan Wilson — Free Life — Album that talks about love, love, love, and spins it every which way. In my line of work we deal with analytics and OLAP cubes, well Dan can spin that cube any and every which way in this album, as it pertains to love. He traded in his gyrating hips of Semisonic for a solo career, and producer of great albums like the recent Dixie Chicks.

4 — Ben Folds — Way too Normal –He has the crowd pleaser song with Regina Spector, love it, and also……

He’s the geek that puts the mistery, debate, and complexity behind in defining gender roles. This little dude brings a huge set of nuts to the debate, representin’ for the intellectual, representin’ for the non-athletic type.

The first line of the song says it all…

(The answer you seek my son only poses more questions.
Ask many women why relationship has failed.
Each woman offer unique reason for demise.
One woman may say, “man could not commit.”
Or, “man is douche, and is now free to make love to himself instead.”
Another woman may say, “man had changed,”
or even, “man no longer satisfactory lover.”
But my son, ask many men same question all over the world, “why has relationship failed?” Each man, each time, will give same, simple answer.) —- The B*tch went nuts..

3 — Billy Bragg — Mr Love and Justice — Billy brings me a contemporary outlook on life throught the lense of an active Brit. Uncanny that I agree with most he preaches, he’s a positive vibe in a world full of trouble.

2 — David Byrne — Everything that Happens — Wow, caught on to this one late, but Byrne works wonders with the album, his vocals are amazing. The man is superhuman.

1 — Josh Ritter — The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter — Number one goes to the album that was in my car CD player for the first 6 months of the year. Driving to work, I listened to the Temptation of Adam at least 5,000 times. The music is emotionally anomous despite deep lyrics and insite.