People — Ya Gotta Love 'Em

Welp, South-by-Southwest's come and gone. They call it "South-by" down there. It was pretty fun, but there wasn't much time for wandering around or seeing shows. Actually, none. But our show went really well and the hired pedal steel player from San Antonio, Tommy Detamore, turned out to be a fantastic musician and swell guy. We had a lot of fun practising and hanging out with him.



On the way home, as on the way there, all of our flights were late, causing us to miss all of our connecting flights. I don't want to sound like a whiner, but it really was a very tiring ordeal. For awhile it looked like we were going to be stranded overnight in Houston, because the snotty little nineteen-year-old behind the Continental Airlines desk told us it wasn't his airline's fault what the weather was like and there was nothing he could do. The shoulder shrug that accompanied the following "sorry" sucked any sincerity it might have pretended to contain right out of it. He wouldn't put us on another flight or give us any hotel vouchers, so we asked him if we could talk to someone else. Maybe someone older and less solipsistic? He told us we were welcome to try the desk two airport terminals away, where we would be told the same thing. We thanked him sarcastically and were wished, equally sarcastically, "May Jesus go with you." At that point we took off as fast as we could, so as not to unintentionally punch the dear little disciple's face in, so, to be fair, it's not clear whether Jesus' ticket would have been offered gratis.

Luckily, the (older) woman at the other terminal did turn out to be much more sensible, and got us standby onto a flight leaving half an hour later. Mind you, our general demeanour was probably more menacing at that point, but still, she was very kind and efficient. She may even have pulled a bit of bureaucratic weirdness to get us on a tiny flight that was allegedly full. There was a passport check at the gate before they started boarding, and when they did board us, they called the people who had shown their passports first. People who had happened to be in the washroom or wandering around when we'd lined up to show our ID were pushed to the side, and I never did see them get on. The really weird thing is that one of them was wearing sandals and kept asking the flight attendants why they had forsaken him.

Also luckily, I had purchased in Austin a copy of Daniel Dennett's latest masterpiece of rational Darwinian thought, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, so I was plenty entertained and enlightened all day, despite my frustration and exhaustion. It's really a great read (at least so far, and I see no reason to think it shouldn't continue to be), and, as with most of his work, I wish I could somehow force everyone in the world to read it. Of course I know I can't, and that trying to would make me into the worst kind of preacher — the unprovoked pedagogue — but thinking about what would compel others to read it has caused me to stumble onto what I think is a pretty great idea in the field of cultural phenomena: the Motivated Book Exchange (MBE). The basic idea is that one person thinks another person really needs to read a particular book, so in exchange for that actually happening, the first person agrees to read any book that the second person would like her to read. That's it. They just have to read. No arguing or intellectual bullying need occur, though they could agree to sit down and discuss what they've read afterward, in order for two people to get a substantially better understanding of another point of view than the one they currently harbour. It could potentially be more eye-opening and profoundly affecting than the traditional debate, which can get derailed by slow thinking and blinding emotion.

And the MBE wouldn't have to be limited to individuals, either. Traditionally disparate social groups could have the majority of each others' members read a work that they believe key in breaking through long-held misunderstandings. Or a country could agree to teach a certain book in its schools in exchange for another country's leader's reading a book they've selected democratically. The possiblities for local and international consciousness-raising are excitingly abundant. I personally think it would be fun to read something outside my usual tastes, knowing that in exchange someone else was going to get an education I thought they needed but never dreamt they'd get. Now I just have to figure out how to get Oprah to tell everyone about it.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, nothing too exciting has happened around here since I got back. We've gotten a few more snowfalls and other March bum-outs. Saturday morning we woke up to a city laminated in ice and blanketed in fog. It was quite eerie and beautiful.


That afternoon we went to see Music and Lyrics (wait for the DVD) with Matt, Meg, and Johanna, and later that evening Matt and Johanna and I visited Gus' Pub to see The Got to Get Got and a band from Montreal called Thundra. I didn't know anything about the latter, but they turned out to be a really interesting and exciting experimental-type rock band of young upstarts. A fun show that made up for the Blonde Redhead one I didn't get to go to at South-by.

- Andrew