John West

I haven’t written a rambling blog post in a while, and it’s 3am on a monday… so why not?

In addition to yanking my name back to my actual name (I’ll always love you, Public School moniker), I’ve recently entered the world of quickly approaching fatherhood.  This was announced on social media last week via a joint Instagram/Facebook post by me and my wife.  We shared a recent sonogram pic of young James Finley West, and, oh, what a nice little nose he already has 4 months before birth.  

Like most musicians, I dabble in gear lust.  That’s when you spend (waste) hours of your life reading online reviews of microphones and audio interface devices that one day you may or may not buy in used condition from someone in the Inland Empire.  

Now that I have baby on the brain, I’ve started to troll around the “baby and kid stuff” page on Craigslist.  Looking for a racecar-shaped bed for under $70?  It’s here.

(Random sidenote:  at what age did you realize racecar spelled backwards was indeed… racecar?)

Now let me turn it serious..  The reason I enjoy scrolling through the stream of strollers, bassinets, and car seats is the same reason we all get lost on our twitter/facebook/youtube/instagram/soundcloud/netflix feed… it’s sort of addictively endless, isn’t it?  Just pages and pages of STUFF.  Hell, I think there’s a reason the word “porn” gets attached to so many behaviors these days - all this consuming is numbingly stimulating ... when you snap back into real life after hours of lusting/stalking/binge-viewing, you feel dirty and exhausted.

Just this morning I got caught up in a ball of stress trying to book a spot on AirBnB.  So many options equaled too many options.  I’m sure there’s a grad paper on "choice overload” floating around the internet somewhere.

The final rabbit hole to fall down?  Redfin.  Am I the only one to do this?  Please tell me you know what Redfin is.  Just a nice little piece of real estate crack for people who have no business looking at $500,000 homes for sale in the greater Los Angeles area.  Why do I end up on this website sometimes?  I guess because houses are the shiniest STUFF in town.  I can easily waste three hours drifting around a map of Echo Park, click-baiting my way through photos of overpriced cottages in gentrified neighborhoods (or is $600/sq ft reasonable?)...

When I emerge from this stardust, speedball of a low-income capitalist pipe dream, I inevitability feel deflated, poor-ish, and pretty much like the greedy little boy with grubby hands that I often am, even as my less self-interested ambitions steer me towards social justice related headlines on the new york times about… the evaporating opportunities for upward mobility in the first world?  the rise of machine automation and coinciding slow death of the American truck driver (uber driver)?  The moral bankruptcy of mass shamings via Twitter?      

I realize that we’re living through a moment in history when people can efficiently congratulate themselves on loop, share collective wisdom via inspirational (barf) quotes, or mimic political views through a repost of a meem involving the black kid whose mom whooped his ass in Baltimore… all that while lusting our way through the online marketplace in search of the perfect diaper bin for an unborn son.

The question is — does all of our chatter blur out the airwaves with pointless noise?  When the next big idea comes along that doesn’t involve a future billionaire selling us a disruptive technology, but is rather that uncut truth-telling, that type of shared wisdom & knowledge that leads us towards more just, equitable societies with legitimate opportunities for ALL people…

i mean, if Jesus himself jumped online and set up a new twitter account and started spitting the absolute truth...

Would anyone pay attention?  

Or would we all be too busy killing time on Craigslist and coming up with our next witty caption?