This inaugurates the first use of my ASUS netbook, Flea, that I purchased back in October. It fits nicely on a table yet has large enough keyboard for comfortable typing. Not a big screen though.
I loaded it up with Windows 7, Chrome, and Mcafee, and now I’m set to document the earth shattering details of the SXSW experience….
SWAG
It may pay to one day post on the use of the term Media Circus when applied to a thing like the SXSW festival. A Media Circus about the Circus of the Media. Actually it’s three Circuses altogether, three festival in one place. A largish Film festival, interactive media festival, and humongous industry music festival.
Austin has two of those. SXSW and ACL fest, but SXSW is for music industry professionals first, fans second. That has cause a lot of alienation here in Austin. We regularly have anti-SXSW parties at casa Axio, but this year I just couldn’t dredge up any more faux cynicism. I wanted my SWAG.
Swag is the pile of gifts you receive for paying to attend. It’s a Pavlovian scam commonly used by dog trainers and casinos. Alternatively, Swag is a kind of a warm comfortable mediocrity. Home cooking in hype. To read the descriptions, it sounds as if you and Jack Sparrow were about to score big time but really 90% of it is just the upscale cousin of that spam the mailman keeps putting into your mailbox everyday. I did get a trancy green glowing LED pen, so there’s that. Still, those few precious moments between when you receive the goody bag, wherein the Swag rests, and you get somewhere safe to rifle through it all, are sweet moments of willful self delusion.
I think Swag works well as a metaphor for the glamor arc of most things in life. And it also gives you clues to where you stand in the human scheme of things. Down here at SXSW I got the pen, but I suspect top notch Swag elsewhere has really expensive electronic toys, jewelry, tickets to exotic private retreats. Of course I sorta expected that in my SXSW bags too. Instead, I now have 15 different magazines on guitars, indie music, indie movies, graphics, it looks like I was bedazzled by the cutest coed door to door magazine busker ever. Nope, we only get The Watchtower in this neighborhood. Maybe if I dig deeper in the goody bag I’ll find the latest edition.
Who sees clearer, the camera or the man?
Cinema is the theme of this blog for the next few days. I have embarked on my 6th or 7th blogstart due to a deprivation of rest, a platinum pass into SXSW, and a generally grave outlook on my near term prospects. It’s not the economy, no I have a job. It’s paid for the pass and that camera to the left and lots of other toys. It just feels like a clean break is far past due but I either lack the courage or the energy for it.
I call this phase of life, inertia. It is my constant companion. So in order to try and pile as much change and difference, to jimmy me out of my decades long rut, I am willing myself into that circus. That’s what I will attempt to chronicle in this blog. I hope the writing will reinforce the experience, channel it, and keep me out of my head and in the street. From rut to curb sounds like a good small start.
