First post, something of a manifesto

I have some fucked up notions about whether or not it is ok to like somthing that is popular. I have struggled with it with movies and music, clothing and culture, society at large, everything. I don't think I like the idea of having my goals, ambitions, and desires defined by ever shifting zeigeist.

Which is why I've been afraid a little bit to let myself read new books. If I really fall in love with one or two, and decide to incorporate the messages that the book offers into myself, and those books were selected for me by Amazon's uber-advanced product recommendation service, then I will have indirectly let the zeitgeist define me.

Even if I read old "classics" such as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (which I can't lie, I did love), I'm just passing the zeigeist buck back to the previous generation.

So I've spent the past five~ten years hearing names of authors, Murakami, Eggers, Pynchon, but I've been forcing myself not to read them, because I was afraid when I did, I would want to talk about them, and either come across as pretentious, or worse, fossilize myself.

But maybe these authors are popular because they have something to say. I don't want to trust material that comes from "the System", but I need some material to trust, and the System was always defined very loosely. Maybe the system isn't even that bad. (am I selling out? right now? Is it possible for me to sell out? what does selling out even mean? and why am I so concerned about an outdated 30-year old notion anyways?)

So basically, I'm gonna use this blog for three related things: 1) to think out loud, my food for thought will be snooty intellectual books. I'm gonna try and tie ideas from them to happenings in the world. If this sounds appealing you can read it and if it doesn't don't. 2) As a repository. I have a terrible memory. What's the point of reading a bunch of books if I am just going to forget everything. If write down summaries, or identify key ideas, and keep them all somewhere, then somewhere down the line if I forget something, it should help to jog my memory. 3) I'd like to be able to express ideas more clearly, especially in writing. Presumably after a couple months of doing this, I'll level up in writing, and I'll be able to take a second pass at articulating some of the ideas I'm trying to express. I've got words and sentences down, next is paragraphs.