December 31, 2008 12:40 AM

(Loose crumbs towards a loose meal)

Regionalism/parochialism in the face of invasive globalization, in itself, can be a useful philosophy towards a new aesthetic (personalize import knowledge, embody local values, export carefully and unassumingly).

Some ostensibly 'bad' decisions are made out of the need to conclude personal logic (an aesthetic) positively. Ignorance implies a lack of something, and nothing is lacking in this kind of decision-making, at least not in a sense that matters. Smoking, in medical terms, may be bad for you, but no one smokes for medical reasons -- they smoke for James Dean's reasons, or Serge Gainsbourg's, etc. Medical logic and cultural logic are at odds -- medicine seeks to attain physical immortality; the Deans and Gainsbourgs of our world, an imaginative, pleasure-filled one. Smart smokers know this, and keep smoking.

I have a hard time writing music in Hawaii because nobody I know here wants to hear it. When I work on it, I feel like it's bothersome to everyone else. When I do write music, I have to write it completely for my own mind and ears, which is something I'm no longer interested in doing.