In the mist

So there are some problems with this obituary. I could do without the line, "Even at 40, her looks were pretty much in tact." Would they write that about a MALE gorilla, hmmm?? They would NOT.
That picture above is about the cutest picture ever. So maybe this is all an excuse to repurpose that image. But the fact of the matter is that only a few months ago, I would have glanced over this piece and barely stopped to read it. I'm not an animal person. Then I got an animal.
I grew up with pets, and even had a cat for several years of my adult life. But then something changes and a particular pet enters your life and you're a little older and more interested in care taking and all hell breaks loose and you're texting pictures to your friends and loved ones and they are pretending to be amused by a disgusting creature that bites and scratches. Not long after we got this cat, I was reading a book in which something awful happens to a dog--not even the same species--and I had to put the book down. Right now I'm ignoring her as her little teeth ruin an article of clothing I am currently wearing. It's like something happened to my actual heart and suddenly I stop and read articles about dead gorillas because I look at their faces and they remind me of a cat.
It's stupid. It's boring. It's deeply uncool. It reveals every part of me that I'd like to ignore and my god, if you think this means I'm now interested in YOUR pet you are dead wrong.
But I get it now. I get why an entire city of people who hate other people were enamored of Pattycake gorilla. She was born adorable, beat the odds to survive, lived long enough for people to grow up with her, have kids of their own, and take them to the zoo to meet her. She's a teddy bear and wild beast and local monument all in one. She is terrifying and uncomplicated and her eyes belong to a primate and it's hard not to respond to that.
Nobody's innocent except animals. That's debatable, of course, but in the moment you look at them, you feel it to be true.

Good advice

I just now heard about this death. This one's a little different, because this is someone I actually knew. Not well. We had exactly one conversation. But it was truly one of the most important conversations of my life, one that I talk about often and that I think about even more often. It was a turning point and I'm so sad that I never got the chance to let her know.
One of the rites of passage that grad students go through, if their lucky, is a practice interview. My alma mater sponsored an evening of mock interviews, in hopes of preparing us to face the (admittedly grim--and only getting grimmer) job market. One of my practice interviews was with her, someone who I had never met before (she taught in a different department.) And it went all right. She asked me some questions about my research, smart questions that forced me to define my terms. And when it was over, she told me she thought I had done fine. That was great. I needed to hear that. It was in the midst of one of the hardest times of my life. Because at that point, I was failing at the job market. I sent out many, many applications, into the dark silent void, with no sense of what I was doing, or what I was doing wrong. And it was demoralizing--I felt I was failing at work, which was something I'd never failed at before. I had no idea who I was, if I was someone who wasn't able to work.
But then she said something that I needed to hear even more. She told me, in the most gentle terms, what I was doing wrong. She took a long pause before she said it, thinking carefully about how to say what she wanted to say. And then, in the kindest way, told me to stop being such a fucking girl. Of course, what she really said was something like "I've noticed that sometimes women, especially younger women, have tendency to apologize or undermine their research. Don't. do. that." And something about the way she said, about who she was and her thoughtfulness, I was able to hear it, really hear it.
I was raised by a woman who interjected feminist commentary at every passover seder. Who put a "Ms."magazine t-shirt on my teddy bear before I could read. She shouted down anti-abortion protestors on a regular basis. They called me "feminazi" in high school (that was a thing in the early 90s). I had the bona fides. But still, there I was apologizing... for what? For my ideas? For articulating them? For answering a question I had been asked? I had every reason in the world to know better, but it took someone not too much older than myself, with a quiet confidence and clarity, who had never met me before in my life, to call me out on that.
I feel so grateful to this person I barely met. I have thought of her in the last few years--often when I catch myself apologizing for expressing an idea or describing an accomplishment. But I also think of her when I encourage a student. When I talk about institutionalized sexism in a class. I try every hard to be a good mentor and I've been lucky enough to be given some great role models in my life. But in some ways, the 20 minutes I spent with her were as important as relationships that developed over years.
Her shockingly early death is a great loss. Nothing that lessen that. But I will honor her words by being the best mentor I can, to give her credit for the way she affected me, to use her name when I tell that story.

Study and difference

This woman--wouldn't you want to be in her class?
The older I get, the more I realize my mother was right about everything. And by everything, I mean her unwavering second wave feminist beliefs. She put a Ms. magazine t-shirt on my (male) teddy bear. She got into screaming fights with anti-abortionists. I short, she was generally intolerant of stupidity--I can't think of a more appealing definition of feminism.
But I couldn't understand all of this until I was solidly in my thirties, with a few worthwhile things to call my own (a real-deal career, a decent husband, a little respect). Sure, I had been a good lefty soldier since I could shout, but it was when I finally had some of the things I had worked for that I started to understand that someone might try to undermine them for reasons having to do with my identity. I mean, I would have told you I understood that all along, but something about being in the fourth decade makes it all real. I'd love to grab a few 20-year-olds and tell them something about what I see now. But I'm no so far past that age myself that I can't predict how deeply uninterested they would be.
All that said, I hesitate to join that endless ongoing conversation about women "having it all," for all the reasons one might imagine, and also because I am a feminist (see definition above.) And what I like about this obit for Susan Nolen is that she seemed to do something about these issues (if you consider research doing, and oh, I do). She studied them. She looked for the hard data. She drew her conclusions from that. She identified an epidemic of "over-thinking." And she made that her life's work. I haven't read her book, truth be told. Maybe I wouldn't like it. But I appreciate that she noticed the different mental health issues that men and women face and looked at that difference. Me, I traffic in abstracts and clever anecdotes, and they have their place. But sometimes, you just want a scientist to give you some perspective.

Extraordinary/ordinary Klemens von Klemperer

This is not an obituary that I would have thought, at first look, would have had such an impact on me. The life in question is, obviously, extraordinary. And of course, I love to hear about anyone who turned an academic career into a tool of social justice. The idea that knowledge and a relentless pursuit of truth might be a kind of heroism, even when the hero in question lives in an ivory tower (I hate that term), is very moving to me. But what I love the most about this obit of Klemens von Klemperer, besides his undoubtedly amazing name, is this line: “I was not an extraordinary person, but I did live in extraordinary times,” he wrote, “and my small mission was somehow to make sense of it all.” The idea that the responsibility to "make sense" of the world around you might be, in and of itself, an extraordinary act, is inspiring. 

The nun who taught me about gynecological health

I can't stop thinking about this obituary. What I love so much about Midge Turk Richardson is the fact that her life took such drastic turns, and they were all of her own choosing. She was a child actor who gave it up to become a novice. She spent 18 years as a nun, a career which she saw largely in terms of service, only to leave at the age of 36, and move to New York with one suitcase. Somehow, less than 20 years after that she managed to become the editor in chief of Seventeen magazine, and moved the magazine towards discussing more serious topics. I would almost be willing to bet cash money that the first issue of Seventeen that I ever purchased was the one above, in 1990, firmly in the middle of Richardson's tenure as editor. I was 13, undoubtedly "so fresh," and in need of some guidebook for adolescence, which was taking its sweet time arriving. Look, I'm a card-carrying member of the Sassy generation, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that Seventeen was my gateway drug. I feel so much better knowing that I was ushered into puberty by a social-justice-minded former nun who was committed to making sure I had the facts about sexually transmitted disease.
It's inspiring to read about people who lived lives that were tempest-tossed--subject to dramatic historical and personal dramas that were beyond their control. It's comforting to read how they dealt with misfortune and challenge with strength and grace. But I also love reading about people who made their own drama, who were willing to uproot themselves and take big chances and live several lives in one lifetime, simply because they were interested in different things and followed their passions.

Peg Leg Bates and learning from death

When I was in college, I went through a phase of being obsessed with obituaries. This was back when we still read newspapers on paper, and I would sift through the cast off left in the student center. I don't remember how this started, but I remember Peg Leg Bates' obituary. He was, as you might imagine, a tap dancer who lost his leg in a work accident when he was 12 and still made it big on the vaudeville circuit. This fascinated me, and because I was young and thoughtless, I also found it kind of hilarious. I cut the obituary out of the paper (something else we still did back then) and showed it to all my friends who were equally callous and amused. Death seemed so far away--at that point life was much scarier. Looking back now, I realize part of the fascination with obituaries was the very vague sense that by reading about people who had done enough to merit a write-up in a major newspaper, I might find some guidance on how to live my life, on how to be the adult that I was about to have to be, on how to be, at least a little extraordinary. In the truest sense of the word--ordinary, but with a little extra. At that point in my life, I remember having the overwhelming urge to sit at the feet of every teacher and mentor I had a say "please, please tell me how to be a person." That feeling is still so vivid, over a decade later, and I know that urge is a big part of why I teach college-students now. I want to be that person for someone else, at the same time I realize that no one can ever tell you how to be anything. I like reading the obituaries of people I've never heard of, as it reminds me of how much there is for all of us to do, how little of it gets seen. So I'm thinking about going back to that, and maybe writing about it, writing about what I learn from obituaries. I think I'm a little less callow now, if no less self-involved, and I am in need of as much guidance as ever. Look at that image of Peg Leg Bates. How could that NOT be a lesson on how to live life and be a person?
Important note: Some friends who also found the Peg Leg Bates obit hilarious tried to use it as a teaching tool in a writing class for middle-school students. The middle-schoolers were horrified, rightfully so, that their teachers were laughing at an obituary. Mentorship comes in all shapes and sizes and unexpected ages. 

Native

This is a piece I performed last week at Write Club at the Hideout. Two opposing ideas. Two writers. I wrote about "native." The incomparable Mary Fons wrote about "foreign." Mary won. The picture above is what I looked like. Here's what I wrote.

Imagine, if you will, that you are a smallmouth bass

First off, you are adorable

Those golden iridescent scales cascading down your back

That Betty Boop mouth. Sensual. Small.

You are, and I quote a very reputable fishing site, a “plucky game fish that gives good fight on the line”

Well well well…

Native is what is here and what belongs here

It is the indigenous and the natural and the group with deepest roots

BUT

We can’t deny that in this globalized, post-colonial age, we are, and should be a little suspicious of the term

The word NATIVE has been used to delegitimize the colonized (“the natives are restless”—hint: they mean DARK people!)

The word NATIVE has been adopted by conservative cranks to describe all those guys that they CLAIM were disenfranchised by our most recent election results  (hint: they mean WHITE people!)

So I want to take NATIVE out of the realm of politics altogether, and wash it clean of its historical muck in the fresh, sweet waters of that closest body of water. Lake Michigan.

Back to you, a smallmouth bass, shimmering through the chilly damp atmosphere, maybe blowing a kiss to a drum fish, maybe winking at a perch (or not, cause you know, no eyelids)

It’s a good life

Swimming peacefully through the green-brown haze of the Greatest of Great Lakes, and the world, is not your oyster, but your delicious local crayfish

When all of a sudden, it’s coming at you, the gaping maw, a huge hole in the middle of the lake, framed by teeth

You are staring into the abyss

Then your eyes meet the eyes of this creature

(I mean this metaphorically, because not only do you not have eyelids, your eyes are actually on the side of your head)

You are looking down the throat of your own destruction

You may have heard of the terrifying ASIAN CARP. The possible invasion of this species of hulking meaty fish, gnashing at the water around them, their bottomless hunger, their rapacious need to eat everything in sight sends environmentalists into a frothy panic

They don’t belong here, the Asian Carp

Their presence destroys the delicate balance

They are the foreign, and they will destroy the native

And you, the innocent little fish, just trying to swim around

Is it your fault that globalization, that the rapid speed at which every beast, fish or fowl can now travel to parts of the glove where they were never meant to be means that your very ability to gurgle and spawn should be threatened by pre-historic monsters from Asia?

It is not.

It is our fault. The humans. We enjoy our first world access to cheap electronics that sending boats around the world allows. The destructive foreign influence has merely hitched a ride on our greed. But still, the native will pay.

Now I am fully aware of the racialized undertones to this story. Lest you fear that I espouse any sort of xenophobic, nativist philosophy, let me assure you that I am big fan of the human Asian-American community, having gone so far as to MARRY an Asian-American

For you see my husband was raised by foreigners

And let me tell you, no one loves all things deeply, disgustingly American like a man who was a little boy with 2 heavily accented parents. He’s at home right now figuring out how to deep fry a turkey for god’s sake.

I’m glad his parents were both brave enough to become foreigners in a strange land. I love foreigners. We live in a city, which seems by definition a celebration of the foreign. Cities are the places where foreigners arrive, where they buy cheap property and open restaurants. Where they get their footing in a new world and I am thankful for that for both ethical and culinary reasons. But that is merely the built environment. Nature, that thing that is native by definition, peeks through the cracks in the pavement, the spaces between parking lots. There are places you can stand, on the shores of Lake Michigan, within the city limits, where you can watch the native grasses swaying, and listening to the birds who have sung the same songs since long before you came here.

Everything I know about the native small-mouth bass I learned from the aforementioned turkey frier, my own little Asian Carp. He’s dragged me out to the lakefront at ungodly hours of the morning to go fishing. Here you see Polish grandfathers, sipping their Ice Mountain beer as the sun comes up. Vietnamese men who have arrived on bicycles, balancing heavy buckets as they pedal. Men from places in Africa I can’t identify, whispering rapid French to one another. They each love the lake. They trade tips and disagree about which of the native species is the tastiest. And if you walk past them on an early morn, you’ll see them periodically pull a fish from the Lake frown at it, and throw it behind them to be fed to the seagulls. Foreign, invasive species. These foreigners share one thing, a love of the native.

me and studs

Studs Terkel would have been 100 today. I had already been obsessed with him for many years when I finally got to meet him. I shook his hand after a speaking engagement he did with Howard Dean. I leaned in close to his ear and said, “STUDS, WE HAVE THE SAME BIRTHDAY.” He was very deaf, so I had to speak loudly. He said, “MAY 16??” I said, “YES.” He said, “THAT’S GREAT! WHAT DO YOU DO?” I said, “STUDS, I’M IN THEATRE, AND I KNOW YOU WERE IN THE THEATRE ONCE.” He gave me a big smile and said, “I CAN’T HEAR YOU.” It was great.

He means a lot to me. He means a lot to me because he listened to people and because he liked them. He means a lot to me because he believed things, and you know what he believed when you read his interviews. I like that he never hid that.

So I’ll say the same thing I say every May 16: When I grow up, I’d like to be a short, bald, gravelly journalist who believed in work so much he wrote a book about it. And I hope my life work values humans as much as he did.

This is a piece I wrote for this.  The theme of the night was the Supreme Court. I played a little ukulele during the piece, because, as I have been told over the years, I am a one-trick pony.

Strict Scrutiny

© Chloe Johnston (2012)

For some reason, it’s really easy to picture them, even from a simple description.

10 small children, dressed in elaborate American colonial era costumes, sporting enormous white powdered wigs and holding a pre-revolutionary flag. Their faces are very serious because someone has told the to be still for a photo. Someone else must have given them those costumes to wear and lines to learn. That’s what it’s like to be a kid. Constantly the smallest person in the room and never allowed to eat exactly what you want and told to put this one, say this, stand there, smile. Look—you’re in a play now!

It took two executive orders, one official, one implied, to get them here. In 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive order 9066 ordering all American of Japanese descent into internment camps for the duration of the war. It’s been four months since Pearl Harbor.

But what executive order demanded that these Japanese American children end up dressed up at Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson?

The American concentration camps. That’s what the Japanese man said to the Jewish girl over Nepalese food. Well, he’s part-Japanese, and I’m only half Jewish, but he’s studying the language pretty seriously and me, I’ve been known to light a Hannukah candle on occasion, and we would have both ended up in camps if we’d had the misfortune to be born in the wrong place at the wrong time. I spend a fair amount of time around people who are much better schooled in history and oppression than I am, so I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut in key moments. Still, I shudder when he uses the word.
But what else to call them? A group of people defined by race, forcibly concentrated in government-run camps.

There’s a quietness around certain stories. Shouts are left empty and words don’t quite fit the page. There are stories and pictures that fall into the dustbin of history. But these pictures are hidden under the papers in the false bottom of the locked drawer of history.

Fred Korematsu challenged Executive Order 9066 by refusing to report to a camp. The case goes to the Supreme Court, where it is upheld by the principle of strict scrutiny. The order is deemed constitutional because it protects America’s interests.

And these kids. Someone put them in those wigs and handed them that flag and said smile. Someone said to them show them who you are, maybe not who you look like, but who you are, which history is yours and which flag is yours. And the people who did that were the people who wrote the rules but the people who were told where to be. Who were handed the metaphoric wig and flag and told to smile and perform a part of something that were also being told they could never be.

It would be another 40 years before the government releases documents that reveal that at the time of the order, most experts believed none of the internees posed a real threat. Locked drawers of history are never unlocked in time.

Accomplishment of the week

I made some students fight this week. So that's good right? It got heated over the issue of whether identity should matter in evaluating a work of art. Also, a student wrote on the board, in response to a probing question from the other side, "2+2≠art." She wiped chalk from her righteous fingers and sashayed back to her seat triumphantly. That about made my week. Also, it was over this lady pictured above. Hrostvitha (or Hrostvita or Roswitha) of Gandersheim. 10th century nun, playwright, and all around bad ass. Her plays feature folks falling in love with pots and pans. Good stuff.
Spent a night in my own state of self-righteousness this week trying to talk a friend into a new career path. When, of course, really what I was describing is the path that I wanted to follow. But I don't think I'm sad about that, even though my psychology was showing in the most embarrassing of ways. I think getting people to fight over 10th century nuns is great, too.

During a January thunder storm

Things I’m thinking about before I go to sleep tonight…

-January is good for the brain. I always dread it and it’s endless grey, but when it actually arrives, it turns out that I have inculcated myself through intensive pre-worry, and my brain is free to think about new projects and get excited for new things to put in my ears and my eyes and a whole unspoiled year ahead of me—that stands in stark contrast to the chunky grey snow outside.

-I somehow hoodwinked my way into this amazing “un-conference” sponsored by the VERY SMART people at Google and Inventables for the second year in a row. Surrounded by certifiable tech geniuses and radio geniuses and BBQ geniuses will make you really want to a) Invent something worth googling, b) wonder what you were doing while everyone else was learning to code (I know what I was doing, I was in rehearsal for the better part of 34 years—what do I have to show for that?, c) update dormant blogs. It was energizing and exciting and made me think lots of things are possible. I also found myself thinking about this article I recently think, which is a bit of an attack on the concept of group brainstorming. So how can some of these methods I learned about be modified to be useful on an individual basis? This might be a think problem that takes me through to February. Also, at this conference, I tasted all the constituent ingredients of gum. Amazing.

-Will be teaching Aristotle AND Judith Butler this week. Great to be teaching texts that I discover I don’t understand each time I return to them. I think that keeps me alive to the way my students’ brains are changing throughout the 16 weeks I get to spend with them (nevermind the 4 years of college) and how I never know what will sink and when, and just get a front row seat to a fraction of their development. I like that.

Lecture lecture

There’s really nothing like Harold Pinter to make you feel like you’re not doing much with your brain.

This is not to say I am the biggest Pinter fan of all time. Personally, I enjoy a little more entertainment in my entertainment (though I must admit, I heartily enjoyed the production of Old Times now happening at Strawdog Theatre. Sexy and funny and it helps when the cast is cute.)

Bu, oh, watch that Nobel lecture he gave. Although he was accepting the prize for LITERATURE, he gave the most eloquent speech on past WWII American foreign policy that one could hope to hear. He was playing to an audience that had honored him for just this reason, but his mastery of the finer points of recent history was daunting. His plays are these marvels of economy, disciplined and rich and suspenseful, and in his spare time he has honed a sharp mind for politics and social justice.

I value eloquence these days, especially the spoken kind. In my heart of hearts I fear that 6 years of graduate school has ruined me for ever expressing myself with simplicity and clarity, in such a way that I might profoundly affect the hearer. I have a job now for which I am supposed to do just that, for 18 years olds that have a thousand things more interesting than me to think about, and it keeps me up a night, worrying that I’ll never have an ounce the grace and legibility that would allow me to affect the listeners.

I’m not quite sure how you learn it. I suspect it has something to do with carefully constructed and rehearsed lectures, but as much as I think I am preparing, I never sound quite right to myself. The more I talk, the more sense slips through my words, and once I realize that, it’s hard to get my thoughts back on the train. Or wagon. Even my metaphors become tortured. I mispronounce things, too.

I hope it does one good to simply listen to a voice like Pinter’s. Economical writing and speaking might get imprinted on the brain, I tell myself. How do you do more with less? How do you think more but in the right ways? How do you look someone straight in the eye and say just what you mean?

Me and Igor--Paper Machete October 8, 2011

Hey, this is a piece with more than you ever wanted to know about international copyright law. Still isn't much! Also, Feist, I'm sorry:

Before I tell you about this thing that you should totally be outraged about, let me warn you that there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. You can rant all you like and you can shake your fists at the gods but the gods are cold and unfeeling when it comes to this particular topic. The sexy rock and roll issue. Of international copyright law.

This week the Supreme Court heard the case of Golan vs. Holder, a case in which the plaintiffs are arguing to overturn a 1994 law passed by Congress which removed thousands of works of art from the public domain and returned them to copyright protection. An op-ed piece in the New York Times this week argued that this essentially robbed young artists of access to important works. I argue that it’s also just totes unfair. See, this challenge is what I like to call a “no-backsies” argument, which is an argument that I have been fervently in favor of since at least the 2^nd grade. If you give me something, like the last Charleston Chew in your Halloween bag, for example, you cannot simply take it back if you later regret this generosity. Similarly, if I should find a way to foist a smushed Almond Joy on you during a diabetic stupor, you cannot later try to return said smushed Almond Joy to the aforementioned Halloween bag. That is pretty much what you learn in law school.

What kind of things would be removed from the public domain if the Supreme Court upholds the lower court decisions? Really cool things. Things like the Fritz Lang’s 1927 movie Metropolis and the complete works of Igor Stravinsky. Things that I personally don’t consume on a regular basis but that lots of people more cultured than me do and by god, if one single undergraduate film theory paper were to go unwritten in this country because of this law, that crime would be on the heads of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia.

This what I mean about our collective political impotence on the topic. Once any issue of importance gets to Supreme Court we are all essentially on the sidelines because those fuckers are there for life and could really give a Fritz Lang what we think of it. I’m basically comfortable with that, but only because I’m saving my energy for protests that could really change things. Like, circulating clever Cornel West quotes via facebook. I’m pretty sure that’s gonna dismantle the capitalist system by early next week.

Also, I’ve had to spend a lot of energy this week trying to decide if I should purchase new Feist album. Has anyone heard it? Is it good?

A friend under the age of 25 promises she can download it for me for free. She even offered to lie to me about how she got it so that I wouldn’t have to feel guilty. I don’t really believe that everyone should be giving away the things they made for free.

Although I am doing that. Right now. That money that you forked over today bought you a drink, not my legal insights and I won’t see a penny of it. And that’s cool. I’ll get paid in other ways. I’ll get the adoration of half-drunk crowd of the kind of people who chose to hide in a dark bar on this beautiful day. I’ll earn the kinds of cultural capital that can only be earned at a weekly live magazine.

Much like the work of Fritz Lang and Igor Stravinsky, I feel that my work belongs to the people. Here’s the single difference between me and Igor Stravinsky. He’s dead. He has been dead for 40 years. He doesn’t need the cash, he needs to be remembered. He needs to be part of the canon of Western music and to continue to influence young composers, good and bad, and to do that, they need to hear him.

I’m not quite sure how Ms. Leslie Feist of Canada feels about it. I kind of owe her some cash. I never paid for her last album, my buddy Anthony burned me a copy.

Here’s the difference between Igor Stravinsky and Feist. She appeared looking adorable under her bangs and sang her little song for the nice people at Apple computers and they put it on TV 1, 2, 3, 4, MILLION times and she made a fuckload of money. Though certainly not as much as Steve Jobs made. Because I can promise, he gave nothing away for free.

So, I guess, in conclusion, don’t give things away for free. Or do. But only if you’re Russian and canonical and dead. Or if you’re Canadian and are getting compensated in other ways. Or if you’re me and you’re just happy if people listen to you talk for a few minutes. Just don’t expect to get rich. That’s for the smart people who have better lawyers and a more sophisticated understanding of the “no backsies” doctrine. Just know that with your delicate artistic temperament comes an instinctive understanding that payment comes in lots of different currencies and hopefully you get the one that you need the most.

Also, during the justices’ questions, Chief Justice Roberts revealed that he is a closet Jimi Hendrix fan who got nervous about the possibility that changes in public domain law might prevent us from listening to Hendrix rocking out on the national anthem. So let’s all just take that image home with us. Chief Justice Roberts, in his smoky smoky chambers, weeping under the black light bulb and listening to Hendrix tear it up. Copyright law is SO rock and roll.