Stories from Summer Vacation: The David Byrne Experience, by Carrie Andersen

Our next story comes from Carrie Andersen, who writes about an unexpected collision between her orals exam reading and David Byrne:This summer finds me in the midst of reading for my oral exams, which will take place next spring, come hell or high water. But I have been fortunate to take a few breaks from the books and from Texas. Of note was a trip with my family and a friend, my perpetual travel companion, to Italy. We explored the Tuscan countryside from our home base in a tiny village, Pian di’ Sco, before travelling southward to Rome, which was not so much a tiny village but a nonetheless welcome break from the books.Another trip—a decidedly shorter jaunt to my hometown of Chicago—unexpectedly stirred up a host of questions relating to my reading (people have been telling me you can never get completely away from the books; I’m beginning to  think that’s true). The event responsible for the whirring of orals brain? A David Byrne concert.Or, more accurately, a David Byrne – St. Vincent concert. The former Talking Heads frontman (and one of the most creative and fundamentally weird men in the public eye today) has been on tour for a few months in support of his recent collaboration with St. Vincent called Love This Giant. The show was one of the most hilarious and fascinating performances I’ve seen in recent memory. Byrne maintained his jerky, stunted choreography made famous during the Talking Heads years—at one point, he shadow-boxed a theremin—but he was so earnest that his yoga-like motions moved quickly past awkward, past endearing, and straight into perfection.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=_5yJZUyr_cM]

(note: he still dances like this)

Although much of the show focused on Byrne and St. Vincent’s newer material, we did enjoy four Talking Heads covers, one of which was (of course!) “Burning Down the House.” The joy of the crowd singing along with Byrne belied the macabre tinge of the song’s lyrics (you know, houses burning, calls to jump off of this worthless structure while lacking any visible means of physical or metaphorical support, the usual...).Fear and paranoia have long been of lyrical concern for Byrne, according to Jonathan Lethem, whose Talking Heads’ Fear of Music attests to various sources of Byrnian unease from apocalyptic war to writer's block to air. (Note: for a clear example of this apocalyptic spirit, see the above  performance of “Life During Wartime” - this ain't no party, this ain't no disco—this is the end).These hang-ups are still floating around his oddball mind. One of his newest songs, “I Should Watch TV,” expresses ambivalence towards a technology that claims to offer a window unto the people but actually creates a demented version of identity and selfhood. What's fascinating here is that Byrne is not alone in fixating upon everyday sources of anxiety that are often dwarfed by massive looming pseudothreats like terrorist attacks or nuclear warfare. Those fears are, so I'm reading, usually inflated by a government that benefits materially from the misconception of what is truly dangerous about modern life in America. These books tend to offer the same despairing refrain: forget terrorists. Focus on economic insecurity. (Or systemic racism. Or an existential crisis. Or air.) But even given his lyrical emphasis on dread, Byrne performed with unironic joy, smiling through songs about devastation and prompting the audience to laugh with him. Lesson learned: when everything is going down the tubes, dance your heart out.

Stories from Summer Vacation: Bentham in a Box, by Randy Lewis

Today, Dr. Randy Lewis tells us about chilling with philosopher Jeremy Bentham during a research trip to London:One of my happy tasks this summer was not just exploring the splendors of the British Library, but also visiting the collections at nearby University College London. For anyone writing a book about surveillance, UCL is a special place because it is home to the philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Scholars can consult a vast trove of papers and books related to the myriad projects and interests of this early 19th century reformer, best known for his controversial plans for English penitentiaries. Eager to create a more humane alternative to the shackling of convicts in pre-Dickensian hellholes, Bentham tried to imagine a scheme in which mental constraints would replace physical ones. By locating a nearly invisible warden at the center of a specially designed circular prison, Bentham proposed “a new mode of obtaining power, power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.” Because prisoners would never know when they were being watched in this so-called Panopticon, they would have to assume that they were under constant surveillance and act accordingly. Although the design was not widely implemented in English penitentiaries, the concept of the Panopticon has become fundamental to surveillance studies in the age of all-seeing drones, online dataveillance, and the sort of Orwellian NSA activities to which Edward Snowden has alerted the world.As delighted as I was to ruminate over Bentham’s correspondence and personal book collection, I was even more charmed to meet the man in the flesh, sagging though it was. It’s not every day that you have a chance to meet a 250-year-old philosopher, but you can always find Mr. Bentham sitting quietly in a public hallway at UCL. In an act of considerable irony, the architect of the Panopticon is now on permanent display in a sturdy wooden box. Fresh-faced students pore over their exam notes at nearby tables, seemingly oblivious to the ghoulish sight in their midst: a well-fed utilitarian, almost two centuries dead, stuffed like a hunter’s trophy and mounted in a box. Philosophical taxidermy may sound off-putting to some, but it is exactly what Bentham sought in his afterlife. The master of omnivalence wanted to keep gazing at the world he loved, keeping a waxwork eye on the subtle passage of time at a university he helped to found. Perhaps his only gripe is that he can’t get out to see more than the contents of a dark academic hallway. Would he enjoy boating on the Thames or a touring the countryside in the back of a pickup? I’d like to think so. Unfortunately for the ever-curious philosopher, his wooden crate is not just stationary (no wheels or hovercraft skirts are evident) but also subject to banker’s hours. Each night at 5:00 pm, he is sealed up unceremoniously in his windowless box like Senor Wences’s puppet on the old Ed Sullivan show.Notwithstanding the eccentric fate of his corpse, the intellectual seriousness of Bentham’s life and work continues to reward those who approach his oeuvre with an open mind. He is not the heartless stooge of the Enlightenment that some have suggested---even if he is indeed headless. After many years on display, Bentham’s head could no longer survive the inadequacies of 19th century taxidermy. Allegedly, its decomposition was accelerated when UCL students used it as a soccer ball on a campus lawn. The university denies the charge, but does concede that Bentham’s head has been replaced with a suitable replica whose expression is charming to behold. Bentham looks quite pleased with himself nowadays---and why not? He is one of the few 250-year-old men to remain above ground in suit and hat, smiling at students who continue to debate his ideas. Despite his unorthodox afterlife and somewhat distorted intellectual reputation, Bentham still has something to teach us---or so I’m arguing in the pages I’m now writing. As is the case for most books about surveillance, Bentham is lurking somewhere at the core of my project, exerting a subtle influence over all that he surveils from his invisible perch. Indeed, for someone writing about security, discipline, and the psychology of surveillance, Bentham is always the ghost in the machine, the uninvited presence that haunts every page of prose. It may seem spooky to have a spectral companion spying on one’s scholarship, but the master of the Panopticon wouldn’t have it any other way.

Stories from Summer Vacation: Eddie Whitewolf Visits Old Fort Parker

Next up is a travelogue from Eddie Whitewolf, who describes his journey to Old Fort Parker, the site of the Fort Parker Massacre:This summer has been spent working.  Thrilling, right?  However, my wife Brandi and I have spent each Sunday going on a road trip to the surrounding areas of Austin and/or visiting different Travis County and Texas State parks.  We’ve become incredibly familiar with the hiking trials of Inks Lake State Park, we’ve gone swimming in the Pedernales River the past three Sundays at Milton Reimer’s Ranch, and we’ve climbed to the top of Enchanted Rock (remembering why we shouldn’t while wearing only our jogging shoes).However, for most of the summer I was looking forward to one road trip in particular.  This was my trip to Fort Parker State Park to visit Old Fort Parker, just north of Groesbeck, Texas.  In 1836, my great-great-great grandmother, Cynthia Ann Parker, was abducted by a group of Comanches during the Fort Parker Massacre.  The first I heard of this story was when my grandmother, Ann Whitewolf (maiden name Parker), told it to me.  She passed it down to me as a sort of watered down family history: Cynthia Ann was kidnapped, assimilated to Comanche life, took a husband and gave birth to the famous Comanche chief Quanah Parker, my great-great-grandfather.  The history is of course a lot more complicated, as I’ve learned over the years, but I’ve always wanted to visit the site where two sides of my family violently clashed in what is a truly mythic story from the American frontier.There are a number of books and films, fiction and non-fiction, that tell the story of the Fort Parker Massacre and the life of Cynthia Ann Parker.  I had a pretty distinct image in my head: a fort surrounded by rolling fields of high grass close to the Navasota River.  Instead, I found it to be situated in a small clearing that was almost completely surrounded by a forest.  Additionally, the fort seemed to be missing certain structural features that played a large part in the history.  Where, for instance, was the giant door into the fort that was fatefully left open on that day in 1836?  Finally, everywhere I looked I was reminded of the fact that this recreation was available for a number of uses.  Electric extension cords and twinkling Christmas lights stretched over the entire fort.  It was a constant reminder to me that the fort, a mythic site of American frontier history (at least to me), can be rented out for private parties and weddings.The strangest feature of all, however, was the educational video that seemed to be the centerpiece of the fort. When Brandi and I got to the fourth cabin while touring the fort, there was a small television set and a DVD player with a nearby remote.  We had to restart the DVD, which began to play a video that had obviously been poorly transferred from VHS. Written and directed in 1986 by eighth-grader Jillian Preet, the video was titled “The Blue-Eyed Comanche,” and it told the story of Cynthia Ann Parker.The video featured a number of problematic issues.  It used imagery of American Indians that had no relation to the story being told, thereby conflating all American Indians under the banner of “Comanche.” Additionally, it seemed to imply that all Comanches are now simply figures of a brutal and romanticized past of truly mythic proportions, thereby ignoring the modern Comanche Nation and our continued existence.And yet, the video was strangely endearing.  Ms. Preet actually did a remarkable job on the research for the time and for her age.  She gave a truly balanced history, not privileging either the side of the white Parker clan or the group of American Indians that banded together to raid Fort Parker.  Finally, given the image and sound editing facilities that the normal eighth-grader had access to in 1986, the video had a pretty complex sound design!What did this visit to Fort Parker teach me?  As someone who comes from a background in cinema studies, wherein research trips really only took the form of visiting an archive or spending some time on Netflix, the trip to Fort Parker reminded me of the importance of tempering my preconceived notions of what a historical site could or should be.  Additionally, it also pointed out the dangers of presenting educational material to the public that was wildly out of date and potentially biased (as some of the displays really seemed to be).I now have a new goal in regards to Old Fort Parker now that I’ve visited it: looking into helping them update their educational displays.  As interesting as “The Blue-Eyed Comanche” was for me, perhaps it’s time to update the version of the story told by an eighth-grader in 1986.  Maybe that can be a project for an upcoming summer.

Stories from Summer Vacation: Kirsten Ronald's Summer of Dance

Here's a dispatch from Ph.D. student Kirsten Ronald, who discusses her summer of teaching dance lessons.

Hello friends!  I passed my oral exams in April, so this summer I’m doing all those fun post-orals things: putting together a dissertation committee, working on my prospectus, and investigating the brave new world of grant writing.  And yes, for those of you who know about my penchant for rubrics, I am already making flowcharts and schedules galore to help keep myself on track.  I’ve even got a timeclock called Toggl, so I can punch in and out of work.  Some things are just too much fun to resist.

But after so many months of sitting still and not talking to anyone while studying for orals, man, I've just got to dance.  I learned how to two-step back when I first moved to Austin, and there’s still nothing I like to do better on a hot Texas summer night.  For all its aspirations to be a global city and the live music capital of the world, Austin is still very much in Texas, which means that in addition to being home to some of the best barbecue in the state, it also has an awesome (and growing) old school country and honkytonk scene.  I’m not talking the watered-down twang of pop country here - Austin’s country music is hot, dirty, and downright swampy, with far more boozy lovin’ and leavin’ than will ever make it onto KUT.  The dance is alive and evolving, too, a hot and sweaty mashup of traditional moves with East Coast swing, Lindy Hop, West Coast, and jive.  It’s Texas two-step with a cosmopolitan twist, and the chance to create something new and beautiful every single time you go out on the dance floor makes it wildly addictive.Last summer, I started teaching two-step lessons at a local honkytonk called The White Horse, and since then my partner and I have formed a little dance company called Two Left Foots that teaches free beginning and intermediate lessons to 50 or 60 students a week.  We’re a small, new addition to a very large, very old and very well-established scene that is growing like everything else in Austin.  It’s a ton of fun with a lot of wonderful, warm, accepting people, it’s great exercise, and it’s a great way to be a living part of Austin and Texas history.  So come on out, y’all.  And don’t forget to bring your boots!