I mean, really, where are you going, Kate Moss?

photo credit: whowhatwear

This is a post I was writing on the plane ride to Shanghai, but thanks to the tyranny of censorship (wordpress, like blogspot, tumblr, twitter, facebok, is blocked in China), publication is delayed until now.

I have just spent 15 hours confined to a space I couldn’t and wouldn’t tolerate for more than 20 minutes under quotidian circumstances, but alas, the constraints of travel and modern accommodation. More than 2,000 miles later, I have arrived in Shanghai[1].

If our identities change along with our contexts, it is no wonder that travel writing has become its own genre – rumination on the implications of the temporary displacement and perhaps transient identity crisis being a natural byproduct of travel and human perception.

I won’t contemplate those issues.

Between my last final and my departure, there was a flurry of visits with friends whom I’ve had the displeasure of the typical compulsory estrangement during a law school semester. These rendez-vous were punctuated with a “so, what are you bringing me from China?”, facetiously delivered – something between a “a bientôt” and a “bon voyage”.[2]

The real testament to gratuitous capitalist consumer culture is not the speed of fast fashion, or ostentatious label touting goods of a higher caliber, it is souvenirs with its artificial manufacture of a larger experience which eludes capture. I don’t reject the sentiment behind this kind of gifting that despite the distance and extraordinary time difference, here is an object that reminded me or invoked in me some essence of a faraway you. To this romantic manifestation in a material object, I have a profound affinity

But we all know that most souvenir shopping is not done this way. More likely, it is done in a frantic manner. I don’t object to souvenir shopping if I really did find some kind of token of remembrance that’s meaningful, but inevitably, and especially at a place like Shanghai, that’s nearly impossible.

What is the difference between symbolism and commodification?

If you can’t have the real thing, why bother?

which is to say, i didn’t get any souvenirs for ya’ll.

Like, I wonder if it’s symptomatic of law students, in eras when the global economy is in constant states of uncertainty, to feel like such frauds, because after all, law school doesn’t teach you anything about being a lawyer. Or, in better times, does the certainty of a real job after graduation gives them a sense of purpose that obviates such existential contemplations? Contemplations that are truly inconsequential to the “higher order” of advocacy?

Fueled by B.Y.O.B. bourbon, impressive degrees and the angst that comes with being young and unmoored, members spend their hours filling the air with talk of Edmund Wilson and poststructuralism.

Intellectual circle jerk for the win, Comp Lit seminar redux.

Unemployed Columbia grads are relegated to sponsor their own obscure literary interests whereas the market is rewarding the creative labors of people like Kim Kardashian with numerous book deals.  In theory, copyright laws promote innovation and creativity, but you really begin to question the validity of that statement when society just doesn’t have a demand for anything resembling intellectual efforts. So, the theoretical purpose of the system of protection is kinda moot if there’s not market demand.

China to cancel majors that yield less than lucrative careers.

There seems to be a perennial conflict between training productive human beings that may contribute to society in a meaningful (meaning, of course, being measured by cash money) way and training well rounded INDIVIDUALS which takes a holistic view of the multiple facets that comprise a persona.

Why must they be mutually exclusive? There is no continuum, apparently. Or, it’s broken.

Incidentally, these two events seem to reflect the disconnect between the societal values of China and the United States.

A SEMINAR.

I took my fair share of culture studies, namely just the freshman intro to rhetoric, the syllabus for which was built around relevant pop culture and media, you know, so as to appeal to the sleepy freshman brains who are in class at 8:30am in Binghamton where the sun don’t shine. And, yeah, I did write papers discussing the reciprocal/symbiotic influences between Hip Hop music and fashion, analyzing the seemingly divergent female narratives on the deterioration of a relationship in a Kelly Price R&B jam and a Eve rap hit. But this was in my first semester of college, I was 18 and I never thought for a second that this would be permissible topic of study as a thesis to a 4 year program that is supposed to be the build up of my 21 years on this earth. I assumed dedicating 4 years of education would add a new facet to my life, and that I should at least acquire new knowledge. College, in short, was not supposed to be an extension of my life before or out of college, because if that were a legitimate topic of study, then why would I even need to be in college? Even after composing a thesis on the cultural nuances I witnessed between living in Shanghai, New York and Paris, I always assumed that this intellectual curiosity is a natural by-product of, oh say, living a life. It was not until much later, after having worked for a year, did I realize that there are people out there who take on pop culture and lifestyles as a course of study and then as a overarching theme to a CAREER. People are making a living out of simply synthesizing fragments of everyday life through verbal articulation.

My ninjas, that is bullshit.

I get it. There are implications upon implications in every trend ever in society. But the implication of this particular phenomenon seems to be: this is a generation of people who is so existential so 24/7 that they find enough relevance in these trivialities to not only dissect but to create a whole discourse out of as if such extrapolations can have even a de minimis worth to the society beyond themselves. Not only that, but that the few who are “elevated” as studied in these issues, means that there is a whole generation of people who are interested but are capable of even less.

I am all about reading the casual blog post on fringe social issues that come thru in the movies, ads, or songs on some inadvertent philosopher business, but a seminar class? What do you suppose is the pre-requisite for the class? What are the accompanying texts? Perspectives on the gaze? Feminist response to the male gaze?

A quick google search of the instructor turned up his catalog of works on the Thought Catalog, after which I read a few more random posts on the site, which are desultory, if anything. These are published. When Charlie sent me a NYT post by Edith Zimmerman 2 weeks ago, she was critical of the casual style and generally lax standard of writing. I lamented that it is a new norm, that this is apt as blogs are increasingly legitimized as a medium of expression.

But these jawns are making me weep. I never considered pursuing writing, because I hold the discipline with esteem, and didn’t think that I had the requisite skills. Apparently, those skills? Not such a requisite! These writings make a mockery out of the craft by simply existing beyond a private realm. I mean, I just CANNOT.

Between detailing the five conferences, paper, interviews, book, and committees he’s working on, the professor peppered the narrative of his career with mentions of his deteriorated marriage. At the end of the two hour lunch, having summed up his endless commitments over the next year, he trailed off with “yeah, building an empire…”, which just sounded like a sad consolation.

It is when I chance upon such “creations” (priced at $1,165), that I fear I may lack the requisite empathy to exist beyond my current station in life, because there is no perspective from which I can even deem to justify the existence of “bag”. I cannot empathize with the creator, the buyer, nor the medium which carries it. It is for this reason that I do not think I’m sufficiently qualified to be a lawyer in this area.