An unjustifiably obscure figure, RENÉ DAUMAL (1908-44) made his mark as much in how he moved through the world of letters as what he produced there. As a punky teenage sorta surrealist, Daumal baited Breton, did drugs, and wrote about his experiences in the journal Le Grand Jeu; in the following decades his study of Sanskrit, mountain climbing, and the Gurdjieff work refined his sensibility into a model of avant-garde spiritual revolt that remains pungent, relevant, and funny today. A poet, story-teller, and translator of Buddhist texts, Daumal also turned his intense process of self-inquiry into tart manifestos of absurdist negation. “I always deny being what I think I am.” Daumal’s most lasting works are his novels: the satirical Night of Serious Drinking and the great Mount Analogue, a masterpiece of 20th-century spirituality whose peculiar charm is suggested in its subtitle: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing. Part Meetings with Remarkable Men, part Le Petit Prince, part pataphysical self-help manual, Mount Analogue was left fittingly incomplete upon Daumal’s early death from tuberculosis — a disease that may have resulted from the carbon tetrachloride he huffed as a wayward youth on the hunt for what he later called “the revelation of laughter.”

READ MORE about the Partisan Generation.

Each day, HiLobrow.com pays tribute to one of our favorite high-, low-, no-, or hilobrow heroes on that person’s birthday. Click here for more HiLo Hero shout-outs. To get HiLo Heroes updates via Facebook, click here.

As a journalist and critic (The Boston Globe, The Boston Phoenix, Barnes & Noble Review), and as a columnist for The Atlantic Monthly, James Parker is as exciting to read as W.H. Auden and Geezer Butler rolled into one. However, although James wants to write fiction, he’s discovered that he can’t do so without the pressure of deadlines, an expectant readership, and a paycheck. We’ve seen drafts of THE BALLAD OF COCKY THE FOX, and it blew us away. Hence this ingenious plan!

Each post in the series will be illustrated by Kristin Parker, who will also design a COCKY THE FOX t-shirt. Between installments, we’ll email subscribers a PDF newsletter that might contain status reports from James, Kristin’s sketches, and replies to reader letters, not to mention fun vulpine trivia, fables, poetry, games and puzzles. To access enjoy these goodies—and to have a hand in the adventure—you’re invited to contribute to THE BALLAD OF COCKY THE FOX via kickstarter.com. If we raise the money, we’ll post twenty installments, between April 15 and the end of the year, to HILOBROW; after that, we’ll publish a printed book. Every dime raised via Kickstarter will be used to pay James and Kristin a small amount per installment; to print the t-shirts; and to self-publish the book’s first edition. Hilobrow’s editors won’t keep a dime for ourselves. This is a labor of love. Please donate—you can use the link above or the widget in the sidebar below—and spread the word!

Personal computers entered the market in 1977, with RadioShack’s TRS-80, Commodore’s PET, and Apple’s Apple II. In 1981, when the oldest members of the Reconstructionist Generation (1964-73) were turning 17, IBM introduced its PC; in ‘84, when the youngest Recons were turning 11, Apple introduced the Macintosh. Reconstructionists are a technologically nimble generation — not just adept at using software, but creating and manipulating it.

[This is a selection from a longer post about the Reconstructionist Generation published earlier today.]

As Time would point out in a “Whoops! We were wrong!” cover story in 1997, the former “twentysomethings,” now called “Generation X”) were “flocking to technology start-ups.” During the dot-com boom of the Nineties (1994-2003), Reconstructionists founded the following websites, publications, and services.

1963 [honorary Recons]
Larry Augustin — open-source software pioneer, SugarCRM, Geeknet, SourceForge

1964

Jeff Bezos — Amazon

Halsey Minor — cofounder, CNET

Michael Hirschorn — cofounder of Inside.com [an honorary OGXer]

1965

Mark Frauenfelder — founder, BoingBoing [birthdate a guesstimate]

Michael Dell — Dell Computer

Michael Tiemann — open-source software pioneer, Open Source Initiative, Embedded Linux Consortium, authored the GNU C++ compiler

1966

Jimbo Wales — Wikipedia

David Filo — cofounder, Yahoo!

Niklas Zennström — cofounder, Skype, Kazaa, Joost

Chris DeWolfe — MySpace

Matt Drudge — The Drudge Report

Joi Ito — Creative Commons, Technorati

Nick Denton — Gawker Media, parent company for Gawker, Fleshbot, Gizmodo, io9, Kotaku, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Jalopnik, Jezebel. Also founded Idolator, Gridskipper, Wonkette, Valleywag, Consumerist, Oddjack, Screenhead, Sploid, Defamer

1967

Pierre M. Omidyar — eBay

Peter Andreas Thiel — co-founder, PayPal. An early investor in Facebook.

Col Needham — Internet Movie Database (IMDB)

John Battelle — The Industry Standard

1968

Philip Rosedale — Linden Lab (Second Life)

Larry Sanger — cofounder, Wikipedia

Sabeer Bhatia — co-founder, Hotmail

Eugene Volokh — Volokh Conspiracy

Steven Berlin Johnson — cofounder, Feed

Jerry Yang — cofounder, Yahoo!

Jamie W. Zawinski (jwz) — open-source software pioneer, Mozilla, XEmacs, early versions of Netscape Navigator

Jessamyn West — Librarian.net, MetaFilter moderator

1969

Caterina Fake — cofounder, Flickr

Joshua Micah Marshall — Talking Points Memo

David Sifry — Technorati

Linus Torvalds — open-source software pioneer, created the kernel for the GNU/Linux OS

Rebecca MacKinnon — cofounder, Global Voices Online

1970

Jay Adelson — co-founder, Digg

Jason Calacanis — cofounder, Silicon Alley Reporter, Weblogs Inc.

Ethan Zuckerman — cofounder, Tripod.com; founder of Geekcorps; cofounder, Global Voices Online

1971

Carl Steadman — cofounder, Suck

Markos Moulitsas — Daily Kos

Marc Andreessen — co-founder, Netscape

Jim VandeHei — cofounder, Politico

Heather Havrilesky — Suck columnist

1972

Evan Williams — cofounder, Pyra Labs (creator of weblog-authoring software Blogger) and Twitter

Meg Hourihan — cofounder, Pyra Labs (creator of weblog-authoring software Blogger); co-founder, Kinja

Mark Abene — hacker Phiber Optik

Ana Marie Cox — editor of Suck, original Wonkette blogger

Matthew Haughey — founder, MetaFilter

1973

Sergey Brin — co-founder, Google

Larry Page — co-founder, Google

Xeni Jardin — BoingBoing

Jason Kottke — Kottke

Stewart Butterfield — cofounder, Flickr

Drew Curtis — Fark

Brian Behlendorf — open-source software pioneer, primary developer of the Apache Web server,

1974 [honorary Recons]
Paul Bausch — co-creator of the weblog software Blogger, developer at MetaFilter

FWIW, the one music genre pioneered by Reconstructionists (gangsta rap, new-school and alternative hip hop, grunge, nu metal, alt-rock were developments of music genres pioneered by Boomers and OGXers) is electronic/techno music.

In September of last year, I blogged a thought experiment: what if the book—the beloved codex, that thing of paper and covers—had a terms-of-service agreement? My point was to argue that the book isn’t a particular physical object or technology but a social contract, one that mingles liberty with responsibility, privacy with the commons. The resulting feuilleton first appeared on my future-of-the-book blog, library ad infinitum; later, it was featured at the Barnes & Noble Review. And in early 2010, I turned it into a slide presentation for the inaugural Boston Bookfuturists meetup.

Now, with production help from Hilobrow’s indispensable Peggy Nelson, we’ve turned it into a movie. (To be perfectly accurate, it’s a slideshow—but it’s very cinematic.) We hope you enjoy!

Most Anglophiles know that Cockneys have historically enjoyed walking up a flight of apples and pears (stairs), strolling down the frog and toad (road) and chatting on the dog and bone (phone). But nobody seems to have a didgeridoo (clue) about how Cockney rhyming slang first emerged. Most theories and stories propose that it evolved at some point in the 19th century and that, like many cants and vernaculars, it acted as a device for concealment; criminals discussing business without raising any eyebrows down at the rub-a-dub-dub (pub); market traders colluding on prices under a customer’s I suppose (nose); prisoners talking about contraband in front of screws without getting in tom tit (shit).

Rhyming slang has been part of British English ever since, propagated by each new generation of Londoners and Elsewherers who fall for the attractive mix of humour and exclusion that it brings to their speech. And with each round of propagation, old rhymes that no longer have cultural resonance disappear from the lexicon and new rhymes that capture the mood of the moment appear in their place. If you find yourself a little short of money in Whitechapel and ask a friendly young rhymester if you can borrow a Lady (Godiva = fiver), you’ll probably get a baffled look. But if you ask him whether he can spare you an Ayrton (Senna = tenner) instead, you’ll at least be understood, even though the response to your cheeky request might be a kick up the Gary (Glitter = shitter).

In my limited experience of discussing rhyming slang with Americans, it has been regarded, with a mixture of confusion and fascination, as yet another example of quaint British pointlessness, to be filed alongside real ale, hot tea and the National Health Service. But I would like this to change. More than that, I would like Americans to start including a quasi-Cockney comedic cryptolect in their everyday conversations. I believe American English would become a richer brew for it. And this is the nub of the inaugural Magister Ludi Challenge: invent a piece of rhyming slang that is compelling enough to warrant its adoption into everyday American usage.

Before I officially launch the challenge, perhaps I can tickle your creative neurons into compliance by presenting some of my favorite examples of rhyming slang, ancient and modern.

***

Nelson Mandela = Stella (Stella Artois, a strong lager found in just about every British pub)

e.g. “It’s my round. Nelsons for everyone?”

Listen

***

Jacob’s Crackers = knackers (Jacob’s is the leading brand of British cracker; “knackers” is slang for “testicles”)

e.g. “Oof. That hit me right in the Jacobs!”

Listen

***

Hank Marvin = starving (Hank Marvin was the lead guitarist for The Shadows)

Ruby Murray = curry (Ruby Murray was a popular Irish singer in the 1950s)

e.g. “I’m Hank Marvin. Fancy a Ruby?”

Listen

***

Pony and trap = crap

Frank Boff = off (Frank Bough used to be a TV presenter in the UK; “doing the off” means “leaving”)

e.g. “I’ve had enough of this pony. I’m doing the Frank.”

Listen

***

Barry McGuigan = big ‘un (Barry McGuigan was a British boxer; “giving it the big ‘un” is slang for “throwing your weight around”)

Bobby Moore = score (Bobby Moore was the captain of the English team that won the World Cup in 1966; “score” is slang for “situation”)

e.g. “Don’t give it the Barry if you don’t know the Bobby.”

Listen

***

So, on to the challenge:

1) Come up with a piece of new rhyming slang that you could imagine Americans using in conversation.

2) Indicate whether it should be said in full (like Hank Marvin) or in part (like Ruby).

3) Provide at least one sentence that illustrates its usage.

4) If you’re feeling extroverted, upload an audio recording of you demonstrating your slang exemplar (using Audioboo or similar) and supply a link to it.

5) Explain why you think your creation should win the the challenge.

6) Add your complete entry as a comment to the end of this post.

The Hilobrow reader who posts the winning entry (judged as such by virtue of its ingenuity, semantic multi-layering and/or all-round chuckleworthiness), will win a Hilobrow t-shirt. The challenge will close at 9pm EST on Sunday 21 March and the winner will be announced and publicly lauded shortly thereafter.

Before chatroulette, there was the Circuit. A combination of Match.com, Skype, and the transporter from Star Trek, the Circuit allowed you to scroll through the evening’s available hotties with the “next” button, rez them in your living room, then conduct your effortless seduction with caftan and sunken leather seating. No expensive bars, no friends of friends, no agonizing over a profile; the system was clean and efficient. It probably would have been a little more efficient if you had an “advanced search” option for your preferred type, or at least your preferred gender; but whatever, it was always only one night, and everyone was young enough that the notches of the new trumped the ennui of the old: inevitably, there was Michael York.

We don’t have transporters yet, but we’ve brought the other technology online: profile pictures, video ads, lists of likes and dislikes, finely-grained pseudo-statistical analysis (do you consider yourself a dog-lover, on a scale of 1 to 10?), date-like-it’s-a-job-interview advice, and other pre-baited hooks. And of course the internet itself, which more often than not collapses distance while managing to drain the immediate of any charge of je ne sais quoi. Actually, nous savons exactement quoi, it just doesn’t fit into the nice Apollonian grids of radio buttons. Or 1’s and 0’s in the database.

We get un petit quoi back in chatroulette, a randomized video chat with two screens, a chat window, and a “next” button. Log in, see who pops up, stay and chat—or whatever, or hit “next.” Clean, efficient, and with a little frisson of mystery—who is out there? It might be “Some Enchanted Evening!” Or, probably not! But, you never know! And it’s a little voyeuristic and a little exhibitionistic and I’m not sure if that’s taboo but it’s kind of exciting and let’s just, you know {beer} {giggling} log on for a minute, and, um, check it out!

Like all social networking platforms, it is a relatively unscripted space. Many people are posting, there is the occasional short back-and-forth, but ultimately, the action (“um hi.” “hi =)” “wassup.” “how r u girlz 2nite?” etc.) is repetitive and a little dull. Not necessarily because the participants are dull, but because the lack of narrative structure homogenizes the space. Endless horizons of sameness make you long for a single, strategic rock to trip you up.

But platforms can be used to stage narrative interventions, and sooner or later, someone climbs up onstage. Light narrative interventions include curation, where you present a variety show of links and explain which of these things is just like the others. But a stronger narrative intervention is to create or inhabit a character, one who sings or dances a story into shape, which in turn shapes the indifferent space.

Another creation story says that there is “no earth, only water.” Silver Fox (a female) feels lonely and mentions this in a prayer song, and then meets Coyote. Silver Fox makes an artistic proposal: “We will sing the world.” They create the world together by dancing and singing. As they do so, the earth forms and takes shape.

[-Siri Woodget, in an email, regarding Coyote and Silver Fox, Miwok tradition]

Chatroulette is a space for the id, for the powerful primal drives, for sex, for play, for chaos; at least in potential. It’s anonymous, visual, and immediate. This space invites chaos dancers, trickster gods, who guide us through ambiguity, yet who also delight in tripping us up, tricking us, implicating us in their whimsical, often dangerous, aesthetics.

Both more and less than the ego, the id is stronger and older than the Self and can overwhelm in a surging sea of desire, rage, and fear. But it is also less, in that it cannot determine a desire, even its own; it dwells in a unindividuated, furious present, while desire requires a future, and a past. And an agent. We are its only way out, and it is our only way through. (I’ll leave out the superego for now, which basically thinks you have better things to do. And call your mother.) It is through this uneasy, unending negotiation that we define ourselves, and conduct our journeying.

Our guides thus far have been externalized, non-human entities, who we follow at our own risk. Chaos dancers have an inhuman amorality, or perhaps it does not make sense to speak of morality here, but rather of ambiguous intent, aligned to their ambiguous dwelling. However, in the midst of chaos the trickster is all you get; the rest of the gods have their set definitions and guarded perimeters, and don’t need to venture into the borderlands.

So of course a trickster spirit like the fox is a perfect fit for chatroulette. Shakko, the red fox, is a manifestation of a kitsune, a Japanese fox spirit that takes on animal or human form. Here, in a therianthropic reversal, a simple mask invokes the latent ghosts in the machine:

But we’re well past the age of gods, even the age of their deaths. In a twist particularly suited to our own postmodern era, Shakko has no words; she has no path, no defining tale. Is she a trickster at all, or is she a mere echo in a plastic mask? On this point, as on others, she is silent.

So why then call it a narrative intervention? What kind of a plastic trickster has no tricks? What kind of storyteller tells no story? Well, that’s not quite accurate—Shakko tells many stories, just none of her own. She tells yours. Her appearance on the screen mirrors you back to yourself, to recognize the trickster within, to author your own ambiguity, to recognize this difficult, fascinating place in the mirror for what it is: a stage.

It follows that if the whole area of terra firma is owned by A, B and C, there will be no place for D, E, F and G to be born, or, born as trespassers, to exist.

[-Ambrose Bierce, "Land," The Devil's Dictionary]

If everything is already occupying its assigned category, and if all the categories are assigned, then we can’t create anything new: chaos is the cauldron of creation. And even if we don’t feel particularly devilish, we’re all occupants of the borderlands; trickster territory underlies all our careful plans and grids, and can reverse the virtual and the real with the flick of a tail.

The reason the Circuit was fiction was not just that Michael York would never really condescend to a caftan. It’s that the Circuit was just too easy. As is chatroulette—the quoi will never fit into the database, the “next” button will never produce the zipless fuck. Or true love. The dream of perfection, and the perfect technology to mediate it, is just that, a dream. The reality is a little more compromised, a lot more entangled, generously ambiguous, and endlessly resistant to rampant quantification.

In the absence of gods we need to mind the gap, but we often don’t realize it until something startles us out of our unintended complacency, like a sudden, masked entity. We’re our own guides, and we need to mirror ourselves, and our drives, back to one another, each to each. Our secular era turns out to contain powerful, dangerous tricksters, and by that I mean: all of us. You never know when you’ll be called upon to be one; but, as Yoda says, you will be.

[Shakko is a creation of Siri Woodget, who performs and creates in various real and virtual territories.]

Were you born between 1964-73? If so, then like me, you’re a member of a lost generation mistakenly called “Generation X.” Members of this misidentified cohort were in their teens and 20s in the Eighties (1984-93, not to be confused with the 1980s); and in their 20s and 30s in the Nineties (1994-2003).

I’m not saying that there wasn’t a Generation X. However, that term was first adopted and popularized by men and women born between 1954 and 1963. The Original Generation X, as I’ve dubbed that cohort, regarded themselves as an unrecognized (i.e., “X”) generation because until very recently they were lumped in with their immediate elders, the Boomers — even though most OGXers were too young to participate in, or remember, the Boomers’ coming-of-age decade: the Sixties. To be a Gen Xer, then, is to be a resentful younger sibling of the Boomer Generation. Those of us born from 1964-73 don’t fit the bill.

As a direct result of mis-periodization, those of us born between 1964 and 1973 never developed generational consciousness. Worse, the mis-periodizers seized upon the confusion they’d caused, and tsk-tsked the youth of the Eighties and Nineties for not being a coherent generation. The generation supposedly born between 1961 and 1972 “possess only a hazy sense of their own identity,” according to an influential 1990 Time story on “twentysomethings.” (Then, in 1997, Time claimed that “Generation X” was born between 1965-77. Whose sense of generational identity is hazy?) Neil Howe and William Strauss’s influential Generations (1991) and 13th-Gen (1993) claimed that the post-Boom “13ers” were born between 1961-81. However, in their 1997 book The Fourth Turning, Howe and Strauss would make a half-confession: “Compared to any other generation born in this century, [the 13th generation] is less cohesive, its experiences wider and its culture more splintery.”

Hazy sense of generational identity, splintery culture — and on top of that, when the 1964-73 cohort were undergrads, deconstructive theory was all the rage in humanities departments. Small wonder, then, that this cohort’s collective disposition is accommodationist — i.e., in the cognitive-development, not the political sense of that term. The 1964-73 cohort shares, that is to say, a marked tendency to brood over taken-for-granted cultural, political, social, and philosophical forms and norms, not rejecting but self-consciously remixing these fragments into innovative new patterns. In honor of the 1964-73 cohort’s post-deconstructionist capacity for accommodationism, I’ve named it (us) the Reconstructionist Generation.

A reminder of my generational periodization scheme:

1844-53: [Progressive Generation] Prometheans
1854-63: [Progressive, Missionary Generations] Plutonians
1864-73: [Missionary Generation] Anarcho-Symbolists
1874-83: [Missionary Generation] Psychonauts
1884-93: [Lost Generation] Modernists
1894-1903: [Lost, Greatest/GI Generations] Hardboileds
1904-13: [Greatest/GI Generation] Partisans
1914-23: [Greatest/GI Generation] New Gods
1924-33: [Silent Generation] Postmodernists
1934-43: [Silent Generation] Anti-Anti-Utopians
1944-53: Boomers
1954-63: [Boomers, Late Boomers, Post-Boomers, Generation Jones] OGXers
1964-73: [Generation X, Thirteenth Generation] Reconstructionists
1974-83: [Generations X, Y] Revivalists
1984-93: [Millennial Generation] Throwbacks
1994-2003: [Millennial Generation] TBA

LEARN MORE about this periodization scheme | READ ALL generational articles on Hilobrow.

The Reconstructionist predilection for brooding over fragments can be glimpsed:

* in second-generation hip hop’s (not to mention the Beastie Boys’, Beck’s, and DJ Spooky’s) frenetic sampling

* in the playful overdetermination of Wes Anderson’s set design

* in Spike Jonze’s and [honorary Recon] Quentin Tarantino’s referentiality

* in Jonathan Lethem’s early literary mashups, and his recent essay on “the ecstasy of influence”

* in the magpied art, design, and cartoonistry of Shepard Fairey, Chip Kidd, and David Rees

* in the torn-up visuals of South Park

* and even in the middlebrow paranoid style of J.J. Abrams and Dan Brown.

Meet the Reconstructionists.

HONORARY RECONSTRUCTIONISTS (born 1963): Alex Star (magazine, newspaper editor), Mike Myers (actor, Austin Powers), Lisa Kudrow (actor, Friends), Brad Pitt (actor), Johnny Depp (actor), Ted Rall (cartoonist), Toby Young (journalist), Quentin Tarantino (director, Pulp Fiction), Conan O’Brien (talk show host), Rick Rubin (record producer, Def Jam), Elisabeth Shue (actor), Coolio (rapper), Eric McCormack (Will on Will and Grace), Derrick May (techno pioneer), Jeff Mills (techno), Larry Augustin (open-source software pioneer, SugarCRM, Geeknet, SourceForge). Maybe Juan Atkins and Eddie Fowlkes (techno pioneers, born ’62).

1964: D.M.C. (rapper, Run D.M.C.), DJ Run (rapper, Run-D.M.C.), Maggie Cheung (actor), Chip Kidd (graphic designer), Jonathan Lethem (author, Motherless Brooklyn), Biz Markie (rapper), Greg Mottola (director, Superbad), Dan Savage (weekly sex columnist), Marisa Tomei (actor), Joss Whedon (film/TV producer; creator of Buffy, MCA (rapper, Beastie Boys), Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse, Dr. Horrible), Suzan Lori-Parks (playwright), David Cross (comic, The Ben Stiller Show), Stephen Colbert, Janeane Garofalo (comic, The Ben Stiller Show), Kevin Saunderson (techno pioneer), Trey Anastasio (singer and guitarist for Phish), Adam Duritz (singer, Counting Crows), Greg Graffin (singer, Bad Religion), Maynard James Keenan (singer, Tool), Stephan Jenkins (singer, Third Eye Blind), Buzz Osborne (singer, The Melvins), Mark Lanegan (singer, Screaming Trees), Dave Pirner (singer, Soul Asylum), Eddie Vedder (singer, Pearl Jam), Chris Cornell (singer, Soundgarden), Christopher Reid (Kid of Kid n’ Play), Mike Allen (chief political writer, Politico), Stone Cold Steve Austin (pro wrestler), Michael Bay (director, Armageddon), Glenn Beck (conservative TV and radio talk-show host), Monica Bellucci (actor), Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon), Juliette Binoche (actor), Barry Bonds (baseball, holds all-time home run record), Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code), Sandra Bullock (actor), Tracy Chapman (singer), Don Cheadle (actor), Neneh Cherry (musician), Courteney Cox (actor, Friends), Russell Crowe (actor), Hope Davis (actor), Guillermo del Toro (film Director, Hellboy), Chris Farley (comic, Saturday Night Live), Niall Ferguson (historian), Calista Flockhart (actor, Ally McBeal), Bridget Fonda (actor), Vivica Fox (actor), Tim Gane (guitarist, Stereolab), Davis Guggenheim (director, An Inconvenient Truth), Teri Hatcher (actor, Desperate Housewives), Laura Ingraham (conservative pundit), Cheryl James (Salt of Salt-N-Pepa), Wynonna Judd (country music star), Lenny Kravitz (musician), John Leguizamo (comic, actor), Laura Linney (actor), Kid Loco (French trip-hop DJ), Courtney Love (Kurt Cobain’s widow, frontwoman for Hole), Debi Mazar (actor), Duff McKagan (ex-Bassist for Guns N’ Roses), Clive Owen (actor), Mary-Louise Parker (actor), Rosie Perez (actor), David Rakoff (author), Amy Ray (The Indigo Girls), Keanu Reeves (actor), Molly Shannon (comic, Saturday Night Live), Tavis Smiley (The Tavis Smiley Show), David Spade (comic, actor), Matthew Sweet (musician), Wanda Sykes (comic, actor), Patrick Warburton (Puddy on Seinfeld), Andrew Wilson (actor brother of Luke and Owen), Ian Ziering (Steve Sanders on Beverly Hills 90210), Todd Field (director, Little Children), Jennifer Lauck (memoirist), A. Manette Ansay (author), Jonathan Ames (novelist), Fareed Zakaria (journalist), Jane Horrocks (actor). HONORARY OGXERS: Nicolas Cage (actor, Fast Times at Ridgemont High), Matt Dillon (actor, The Outsiders), Bret Easton Ellis (author), Rob Lowe (actor, The Outsiders), Adam Carolla (MTV), Adam Curry (MTV), Melissa Gilbert (actor, Little House on the Prairie), Hank Azaria (actor, voice of Moe and Apu on The Simpsons), Yeardley Smith (voice of Lisa on The Simpsons), Michelle Obama (First Lady), Dana Plato (Kimberly on Diff’rent Strokes), Michael Hirschorn (media whiz).

1965: Thomas Frank (liberal columnist and author, editor of The Baffler), Eric B (DJ, Eric B and Rakim), Bjork (Icelandic musician), Frank Black (singer, Pixies), Steve Coogan (actor), Mike D (Beastie Boys), Julie Doucet (cartoonist, Dirty Plotte), Damien Hirst (British artist), Jam Master Jay (DJ, Run-D.M.C.), KRS-One (rapper), Gong Li (actor), Slick Rick (rapper), Chris Rock (comic, actor), James Wood (literary critic), Sen Dog (rapper, Cypress Hill), J Mascis (musician, Dinosaur Jr.), John C. Reilly (actor), Mark Moore (British DJ who helped introduce techno), Moby (DJ, techno, singer-songwriter), Laura Albert (novelist, JT LeRoy), Paul W.S. Anderson (director, Alien vs. Predator), Roger Avary (co-Author, Pulp Fiction), Emmanuelle Béart (actor), Todd Bridges (actor, Diff’rent Strokes), Augusten Burroughs (memoirist), Julie Cafritz (guitarist for Pussy Galore), D. J. Caruso (director, Disturbia), Alan Cumming (actor), Kristin Davis (Charlotte on Sex and the City), Michael Dell (founder of Dell Computer), Andy Dick (comic, actor), Robert Downey, Jr. (actor), Dr. Dre (music producer), Christine Elise (actor), Linda Evangelista (model), Sherilyn Fenn (actor), Goldie (electronic musician), Mark Halperin (Time senior political analyst), Cheryl Hines (actor, Curb Your Enthusiasm), Khaled Hosseini (novelist, The Kite Runner), Elizabeth Hurley (actor, model), Kevin James (actor), Famke Janssen (actor), DJ Jazzy Jeff (DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince), Kool Keith (rapper, Ultramagnetic MCs, Dr. Octagon), Suge Knight (rap mogul), Martin Lawrence (comic, actor), Doug Liman (director, The Bourne Identity), Marlee Matlin (actor), Sam Mendes (director), Krist Novoselic (bassist for Nirvana), Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie on Sex and the City), Ty Pennington (Trading Spaces), Jeremy Piven (actor), Paulina Porizkova (model), Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails), Gavin Rossdale (singer, Bush), J. K. Rowling (author, Harry Potter series), Joey Santiago (guitarist, The Pixies), Charlie Sheen (actor), Brooke Shields (model, actress), Bryan Singer (director, X-Men), Slash (lead guitarist, Guns n’ Roses), Nicholas Sparks (novelist, The Notebook), Ben Stiller (actor), Maura Tierney (actor), Larry Wachowski (director, The Matrix), Paul Weitz (director, American Pie), Fareed Zakaria (Newsweek foreign affairs), Rob Zombie (White Zombie singer), MC Shan (rapper), Dennis Lehane (author), Chang-rae Lee (novelist).

1966: The GZA (rapper, Wu-Tang Clan), J. J. Abrams (film/TV producer, Alias and Lost), Ad-Rock (rapper, Beastie Boys), Jeff Buckley (singer), Nick Denton (founder, Gawker Media), Chris DeWolfe (co-founder of MySpace), Doug E. Fresh (rapper), Stephen Malkmus (Pavement frontman), Stephin Merritt (singer/songwriter, The Magnetic Fields, The 6ths), Adam Sandler (comic, actor, Saturday Night Live), John Cusack (actor), Jimbo Wales (co-Founder of Wikipedia), Dav Pilkey (children’s author, Captain Underpants), Frankie Bones (techno/house musician, brought rave culture to US), Grand Puba (rapper, Brand Nubian), Kamal Ahmed (comic, Jerky Boys), Sherman Alexie (novelist), Fred Armisen (actor, Saturday Night Live), Tim Armstrong (Rancid frontman), Rick Astley (singer), Justine Bateman (Mallory Keaton on Family Ties), Halle Berry (actor), Toni Braxton (singer), Edie Brickell (singer), Bill Callahan (singer/songwriter, Smog), Helena Bonham Carter (actor), David Chalmers (philosopher), Chip E (music producer, godfather of House), Garry Cobain (electronic musician), David X. Cohen (film/TV producer, Simpsons, Futurama producer), Cindy Crawford (model), Blag Dahlia (frontman for The Dwarves), Dimebag Darrell (lead guitarist for Pantera), Patrick Dempsey (actor), Tanya Donelly (musician, Throwing Muses, Belly), Rachel Dratch (actor, Saturday Night Live), Matt Drudge (blogger, The Drudge Report), Jon Favreau (actor, director), David Filo (co-founder of Yahoo!), Jennifer Finch (bassist, L7), Ben Folds (singer/songwriter, Ben Folds Five), Matthew Fox (actor, Party of Five, Lost), Antoine Fuqua (director), Stone Gossard (musician, Pearl Jam), Mary Hansen (musician, Stereolab), Salma Hayek (actor), Kristin Hersh (frontwoman for Throwing Muses), C. Thomas Howell (actor), Michael Imperioli (actor), Joi Ito (Creative Commons, Technorati), Janet Jackson (singer), Tea Leoni (actor), Donal Logue (actor), Shirley Manson (frontwoman for Garbage), Nancy McKeon (Jo on The Facts of Life), Cynthia Nixon (Miranda Hobbes on Sex and the City), Sinead O’Connor (musician), Jason Patric (actor), Robin Wright Penn (actor), Luke Perry (actor, Beverly Hills 90210), Gordon Ramsay (TV chef, Hell’s Kitchen), Andy Richter (comic, actor), Chris Robinson (lead singer, The Black Crowes), Darius Rucker (singer, Hootie and the Blowfish), Hope Sandoval (singer/songwriter, Mazzy Star), David Schwimmer (Ross on Friends), Zack Snyder (director), Kiefer Sutherland (actor), Tone-Loc (rapper), Jeff Tremaine (film/TV producer, co-creator of MTV’s Jackass), Mike Tyson (boxer), Rainn Wilson (Dwight on The Office), Billy Zane (actor), Kevin Powell (MTV’s The Real World: New York, writer for Vibe, political activist).

1967: Kurt Cobain (frontman, Nirvana), Judd Apatow (director, The 40-Year-Old Virgin), Chris Ware (cartoonist, ACME Novelty Library), Matthew Barney (artist, director, The Cremaster Cycle), Lisa Bonet (Denise on The Cosby Show), Ivan Brunetti (cartoonist, Schizo), Will Ferrell (comic, actor in Adam McKay movies, Saturday Night Live), Col Needham (founded Internet Movie Database), Pierre M. Omidyar (founded eBay), Liz Phair (musician), Lili Taylor (actor), Jeff Tweedy (frontman, Wilco), Roger D. Hodge (editor, Harper’s), A Guy Called Gerald (techno, acid house musician), Monica Ali (novelist), Mike Morhaime (his company developed World of Warcraft), Vin Diesel (actor), Elizabeth Wurtzel (memoirist), Sasha Frere-Jones (music critic), Pamela Anderson (actress, Baywatch), John Battelle (blogger, The Industry Standard), Boris Becker (tennis champ), Brian Michael Bendis (Marvel Comics writer), Poppy Z. Brite (author), Meg Cabot (author, The Princess Diaries), Tia Carrere (actor), Amy Carter (daughter of president), Harry Connick Jr. (actor, singer), Billy Corgan (frontman, Smashing Pumpkins), Heavy D (rapper), Evan Dando (frontman, Lemonheads), Laura Dern (actor), Jamie Foxx (comic, actor), Noel Gallagher (guitarist, Oasis), Paul Giamatti (actor), Lauren Graham (actor, Gilmore Girls), Juliana Hatfield (musician), Faith Hill (country musician), Philip Seymour Hoffman (actor), Shannon Hoon (frontman for Blind Melon), Louis C. K. (comic), R. Kelly (musician), Nicole Kidman (actor), Jimmy Kimmel (talk show host), Jhumpa Lahiri (author), Matt LeBlanc (Joey on Friends), Lisa Lisa (singer), Kevin Macdonald (Scottish director), Master P (rapper), Dave Matthews (musician), Mo’Nique (actor), Takeuchi Naoko (cartoonist, Sailor Moon), Dave Navarro (guitarist, Jane’s Addiction), Guy Pearce (actor), Julia Roberts (actor), John Romero (programmer, Doom, Quake), Mark Ruffalo (actor), Adam Savage (host, MythBusters), Liev Schreiber (actor), Phil Selway (drummer, Radiohead), MC Serch (rapper, 3rd Bass), Jenny Shimizu (model), Andrew Shue (actor, Melrose Place), Anna Nicole Smith (model), Tabitha Soren (journalist, MTV), Mira Sorvino (actor), Courtney Thorne-Smith (actor, Melrose Place), Benicio Del Toro (actor), Andy Wachowski (director, The Matrix), Emily Watson (actor), Scott Weiland (frontman, Stone Temple Pilots), Young MC (musician), Craig Kanarick (cofounded Razorfish), Robert Rummel-Hudson (memoirist). NOT TO MENTION: yours truly, Joshua Glenn (editor, Hermenaut, Hilobrow.com).

1968: Laylah Ali (painter), Ol’ Dirty Bastard (rapper, Wu-Tang Clan), James Parker (author, journalist), Tom Hodgkinson (author, journalist, editor of The Idler), Lisa Carver (perfomance artist, Suckdog; zine publisher, Rollerderby), Margaret Cho (comic), Tony Hawk (skateboarder), LL Cool J (rapper, actor), Parker Posey (actress), Raekwon (rapper, Wu-Tang Clan), Rakim (rapper), Molly Ringwald (actor), Philip Rosedale (founder, Linden Lab — Second Life), Lydia Millet (author), Larry Sanger (cofounder of Wikipedia), Tricky (trip-hop rapper), U-God (musician, Wu-Tang Clan), Eugene Volokh (blogger, Volokh Conspiracy), Owen Wilson (actor), Thom Yorke (frontman for Radiohead), Andrew O’Hagan (Scottish novelist, journalist), Steven Berlin Johnson (popular science author, cofounded Feed), Sam Lipsyte (novelist), Celine Dion (Canadian singer), Adam McKay (comic, director: 40 Year Old Virgin), Dave Clarke (the Baron of techno), Will Smith (actor, musician), Damon Albarn (Blur frontman), Gillian Anderson (Scully on The X-Files), Patricia Arquette (actor), Sebastian Bach (Skid Row vocalist), Eric Bana (actor), Yasmine Bleeth (actor, Baywatch), Josh Brolin (actor), Edward Burns (actor), Tisha Campbell (actor), James Caviezel (actor, Outlander), Brandi Chastain (soccer player), Eagle-Eye Cherry (musician), Helena Christensen (model), Gary Coleman (Arnold on Diff’rent Strokes), Aaron Cometbus (zine publisher, Cometbus), Daniel Craig (actor, James Bond), Inspecta Deck (rapper, Wu-Tang Clan), Aaron Eckhart (actor), Sully Erna (Godsmack frontman), Brendan Fraser (actor), Cuba Gooding, Jr. (actor), Anthony Michael Hall (actor), Vanilla Ice (white rapper), James Iha (guitarist, Smashing Pumpkins), Hugh Jackman (actor), Alex James (bassist for Blur), Ashley Judd (actor), Heidi Julavits (author, editor of The Believer), Moira Kelly (actor), Jane Krakowski (actor, Ally McBeal and 30 Rock), Ricki Lake (actor, talk show host), Lucy Lawless (actor, Xena), Steven Levitt (Freakonomics economist), Shawn Levy (director), Lucy Liu (actor), Lisa Loeb (singer/songwriter), Traci Lords (pornstar, actress), Ziggy Marley (musician), Mark McGrath (frontman for Sugar Ray), Timothy McVeigh (domestic terrorist), Debra Messing (Grace on Will & Grace), Kylie Minogue (pop singer), Tracy Morgan (actor, 30 Rock), DJ Muggs (DJ, Cypress Hill), Stuart Murdoch (Belle & Sebastian frontman), Ed O’Brien (guitarist, Radiohead), Lisa Marie Presley (Elvis’s daughter), Kool G Rap (rapper), Rachel Ray (TV personality), Adam Rich (Nicholas on Eight is Enough), Guy Ritchie (director, married to Madonna), Sam Rockwell (actor), Robert Rodriguez (director), Laetitia Sadier (singer, Stereolab), Pauly Shore (comic), John Singleton (director), Sammy Sosa (baseball), Naomi Watts (actor), Olivia Williams (actor, Rushmore), Scott Wolf (actor, Party of Five), D’arcy Wretzky (bassist, Smashing Pumpkins), Jerry Yang (cofounded Yahoo!), Steve Zahn (actor, Reality Bites), Puck (MTV’s “The Real World”), Alex Ross (comic book painter, illustrator), Christopher Noxon (journalist, Rejuvenile), Charlie Sexton (musician), David Bennahum (journalist, memoirist), Kay Hanley (musician), Jonathan Knight (New Kids on the Block), Junot Díaz (novelist), Mohamed Atta (9/11 terrorist).

1969: Wes Anderson (director, Rushmore), Darren Aronofsky (director, Pi, Requiem for a Dream), Jack Black (actor, musician), Mike Diana (cartoonist, Boiled Angel), Caterina Fake (cofounded Flickr), Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters), Linus Torvalds (programmer, created the kernel for the GNU/Linux OS), Kathleen Hanna (musician, Riot Grrl), P. J. Harvey (musician), Spike Jonze (director, Being John Malkovich), Natas Kaupas (skateboarder), Will Oldham (folk singer, actor), Trey Parker (cartoonist, co-creator of South Park), The RZA (music producer, Wu-Tang Clan), Elliott Smith (indie musician), Gwen Stefani (singer, No Doubt; fashion), Roxanne Shanté (rapper), Jennifer Aniston (Rachel on Friends), Javier Bardem (actor), Jason Bateman (actor, Arrested Development), Cate Blanchett (actor), Bobby Brown (singer), Mariah Carey (singer), Tucker Carlson (conservative pundit), Max Cavalera (Sepultura frontman), Kevin Corrigan (actor), Ice Cube (rapper, actor), Edwidge Danticat (author), Julie Delpy (actor), Marc Forster (director), James Frey (author, memoirist, A Million Little Pieces), Zach Galifianakis (actor, comic), Elizabeth Gilbert (memoirist, Eat, Pray, Love), Jonah Goldberg (conservative pundit), Ben Harper (musician), Sam Henderson (cartoonist), Jesse James (custom motorcycle builder), Jay-Z (rapper, mogul), Jennifer Lopez (singer, actor), Marilyn Manson (Goth shock rocker), Joshua Micah Marshall (liberal pundit), Matthew McConaughey (actor), Edward Norton (actor), Patton Oswalt (comic), Matthew Perry (Chandler on Friends), Tyler Perry (playwright, Diary of a Mad Black Woman), Jason Priestley (Brandon Walsh on Beverly Hills 90210), Sean “Diddy”‘Puff Daddy” Combs (music producer), Brett Ratner (director), MC Ren (rapper, NWA), Paul Rudd (actor in Adam McKay/Judd Apatow movies), Duncan Sheik (musician), David Sifry (founded Technorati), Christian Slater (actor), Christy Turlington (model), Sarah Vowell (This American Life), Donnie Wahlberg (New Kids on the Block), Renée Zellweger (actor), Catherine Zeta-Jones (actor), Rick Perlstein (liberal historian), Aimee Bender (novelist), David Mitchell (novelist), Marjane Satrapi (Iranian-born French graphic novelist), Pankaj Mishra (Indian novelist), Hari Kunzru (British novelist, journalist), Arthur Bradford (author).

1970: Beck (musician), DJ Spooky (DJ), Shepard Fairey (artist), Tina Fey (actor, 30 Rock), Ghostface Killah (rapper, Wu-Tang Clan), Damon Gough (musician, Badly Drawn Boy), Sarah Silverman (comic, actress), Matt Taibbi (political journalist), Q-Tip (rapper, A Tribe Called Quest), Dave Eggers (author, memoirist), Jay Adelson (co-founded Digg), Andre Agassi (tennis star), Paul Thomas Anderson (director, Boogie Nights), Will Arnett (actor, Arrested Development), Josie Bissett (actor, Melrose Place), Lara Flynn Boyle (actor), Jason Calacanis (founded the Silicon Alley Reporter, and Weblogs Inc.), Kirk Cameron (Mike on Growing Pains), Naomi Campbell (model), John Carmack (programmer, Doom, Quake), Neko Case (musician), Rivers Cuomo (frontman for Weezer), Matt Damon (actor), Ani DiFranco (singer/songwriter), DMX (rapper), Minnie Driver (actor), Fred Durst (frontman, Limp Bizkit), Joseph Fiennes (actor), Heather Graham (actor), Miho Hatori (vocalist, Cibo Matto), Ethan Hawke (actor), Jamie Kennedy (actor), Naomi Klein (author, The Shock Doctrine), Jordan Knight (New Kids on the Block), Padma Lakshmi (model, host of Top Chef), Queen Latifah (rapper, actress), Christopher Nolan (director), Chris O’Donnell (actor), Beth Orton (folk singer/songwriter), Todd Phillips (director, Old School), River Phoenix (actor), Samantha Power (human rights activist), Michael Rapaport (actor), Kelly Ripa (actor, TV host), Zack de la Rocha (musician, Rage Against the Machine), Claudia Schiffer (German supermodel, TV host), Rick Schroder (actor, Silver Spoons), M. Night Shyamalan (director), Kevin Smith (director), Lemony Snicket (author, A Series of Unfortunate Events), Morgan Spurlock (documentary filmmaker), Louis Theroux (TV presenter, Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends), Uma Thurman (actor), Mary Timony (frontwoman for Helium), Treach (rapper, Naughty By Nature), Vince Vaughn (actor), Malcolm-Jamal Warner (Theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show), Dean Ween (guitarist, Ween), Gene Ween (singer/songwriter, Ween), Mike White (screenwriter, School of Rock), Richie Hawtin (techno musician), Ethan Zuckerman (Internet guru), Danzy Senna (author), D-Nice (rapper, Boogie Down Productions), MF Grimm (rapper), Pete Rock (rapper), Phife Dawg (rapper, A Tribe Called Quest), Tom Anderson (cofounded MySpace), Mix Master Mike (turntablist, Beastie Boys), Sean Wilsey (memoirist), Neal Pollack (satirist, Alternadad), Shalom Auslander (memoirist).

1971: Dame Darcy (cartoonist), Richard D. James/Aphex Twin (techno musician), John Hodgman (actor, author, humorist), Sacha Baron Cohen (actor, Borat), Snoop Dogg (rapper), MF Doom (rapper), Johnny Knoxville (MTV’s Jackass), Method Man (rapper, Wu-Tang Clan), Markos Moulitsas (blogger, Daily Kos), Tupac Shakur (rapper), Marc Andreessen (co-founded Netscape), Christina Applegate (actor), Lance Armstrong (bicyclist), Sean Astin (actor), Peter Beinart (political pundit), C-Murder (rapper), Sofia Coppola (director), Cory Doctorow (blogger, sci-fi author), Shannen Doherty (Brenda on Beverly Hills 90210), Jon Hamm (actor, Don Draper on Mad Men), MC Lyte (rapper), Joey Beltram (house/techno musician), C. J. Bolland (techno musician), Jim VandeHei (cofounded Politico), Vendela Vida (author, married to Dave Eggers), Missy Elliott (rapper), Nathan Fillion (actor in Joss Whedon shows), Martin Freeman (British actor, Tim on The Office), Charlotte Gainsbourg (actor), Tom Green (actor), Lil’ Jon (rapper), Duncan Jones (director, David Bowie’s son), Alison Krauss (bluegrass musician), Jared Leto (actor, My So-Called Life), Emmanuel Lewis (Webster on Webster), Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes (singer, TLC), Natascha McElhone (actor), Ewan McGregor (actor), Sandra Oh (actor), Amy Poehler (actor, Saturday Night Live), Kevin Richardson (Backstreet Boys), Kid Rock (white rapper), Tom Rowlands (musician, Chemical Brothers), Winona Ryder (iconic actor), Pete Sampras (tennis champ), Peter Sarsgaard (most talented actor of the generation?), Selena (crossover Tejano music star), Ione Skye (actor), Jada Pinkett Smith (actor), Matt Stone (cartoonist, co-creator of South Park), Sheryl Swoopes (WNBA basketball player), Tiffany (teen singing sensation), Timbaland (rap producer and performer), Mark Wahlberg (actor, ex-rapper), Luke Wilson (actor), Noah Wyle (actor), Mary J. Blige (singer), Neil Strauss (pick-up artist), Ruth Shalit (journalist, plagiarist), Kara Walker (artist), Matthew De Abaitua (British science fiction author), Stella McCartney (fashion designer).

1972: Eminem (white rapper), Chan Marshall (singer/songwriter as Cat Power), David Rees (cartoonist, Get Your War On), Stephen Glass (plagiarist), Mark Abene (hacker Phiber Optik), Ben Affleck (actor), Billie Joe Armstrong (frontman for Green Day), Melissa Auf der Maur (bass player for Smashing Pumpkins, Hole), Notorious B.I.G. (rapper), Elizabeth Berkley (actor), Selma Blair (actor), Jonathan Chait (Senior Editor, The New Republic), John Cho (actor, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle), Ana Marie Cox (political journalist, founded the blog Wonkette), Cameron Diaz (actor), Carmen Electra (TV personality), Ze Frank (blogger, The Show with Ze Frank), Liam Gallagher (lead singer for Oasis), Jennifer Garner (actor), Jennie Garth (actor, Kelly on Beverly Hills 90210), Geri Halliwell (Ginger Spice of Spice Girls), Mia Hamm (soccer star), Angie Harmon (actor), Matthew Haughey (blogger, MetaFilter, PVRblog), Albert and Allen Hughes (directors), Violent J (white rapper, Insane Clown Posse), Wyclef Jean (musician, The Fugees), Alex Kapranos (Franz Ferdinand frontman), Jude Law (actor), Leslie Mann (actor), Jenny McCarthy (model, actor, advice-giver), Joey McIntyre (New Kids on the Block), Alyssa Milano (actor), Gretchen Mol (actor), Thandie Newton (actor), Shaquille O’Neal (basketball player), Gwyneth Paltrow (actor), Amanda Peet (actor), Busta Rhymes (musician), The Rock (actor), Rebecca Romijn (supermodel, actor), Michael Rosenbaum (Lex Luthor on Smallville), Eli Roth (director), Maya Rudolph (actor, Saturday Night Live), Chris Tucker (comic, actor), Dita Von Teese (burlesque star), Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: TNG), Si Begg (techno musician), Jacinda Barrett (MTV’s Real World: London, actress), Myla Goldberg (novelist, musician), Chuck Klosterman (music writer), Ben Kunkel (novelist, cofounded n+1), Gary Shteyngart (novelist).

1973: Dave Chappelle (comic, Chappelle’s Show), Xeni Jardin (BoingBoing blogger), Andrew Bird (singer/songwriter), Madlib (musician), Jason Kottke (successful blogger), Mike Daisey (spoken word performer), Stewart Butterfield (cofounded Flickr), Jason Acuña (Jackass dwarf), Akon (singer), Kate Beckinsale (actor), Sergey Brin (co-founded Google), Adrien Brody (actor, The Pianist), Neve Campbell (actor, Party of Five), Drew Curtis (blogger, Fark), Carson Daly (MTV Total Request Live), Mos Def (rapper, actor), Ioan Gruffudd (actor), Heidi Klum (German supermodel, host of Project Runway), Monica Lewinsky (intern), Juliette Lewis (actor, musician), Mario Lopez (Slater on Saved by the Bell), Seth MacFarlane (actor, creator of Family Guy), Megan McArdle (Atlantic Monthly blogger), Rose McGowan (actor), Larry Page (co-founder of Google), Efren Ramirez (actor), Tori Spelling (Donna in Beverly Hills 90210), Rufus Wainwright (musician). HONORARY REVIVALISTS: Neil Patrick Harris (actor), Stephenie Meyer (author of Twilight series), Franklin Foer (New Republic editor), Jason Zengerle (New Republic writer), Tyra Banks (model, created America’s Next Top Model), Brian Austin Green (David on Beverly Hills 90210), Nas (rapper).

HONORARY RECONSTRUCTIONISTS (born 1974): TBD

RECON DOTCOM

Personal computers entered the market in 1977, with RadioShack’s TRS-80, Commodore’s PET, and Apple’s Apple II. In 1981, when the oldest members of the Reconstructionist Generation (1964-73) were turning 17, IBM introduced its PC; in ‘84, when the youngest Recons were turning 11, Apple introduced the Macintosh. Reconstructionists are a technologically nimble generation — not just adept at using software, but creating and manipulating it.

As Time would point out in a “Whoops! We were wrong!” cover story in 1997, the former “twentysomethings,” now called “Generation X”) were “flocking to technology start-ups.” During the dot-com boom of the Nineties (1994-2003), Reconstructionists founded the following websites, publications, and services.

1963 [honorary Recons]
Larry Augustin — open-source software pioneer, SugarCRM, Geeknet, SourceForge

1964
Jeff Bezos — Amazon
Halsey Minor — cofounder, CNET
Michael Hirschorn — cofounder of Inside.com [an honorary OGXer]

1965
Mark Frauenfelder — founder, BoingBoing [birthdate a guesstimate]
Michael Dell — Dell Computer
Michael Tiemann — open-source software pioneer, Open Source Initiative, Embedded Linux Consortium, authored the GNU C++ compiler

1966
Jimbo Wales — Wikipedia
David Filo — cofounder, Yahoo!
Niklas Zennström — cofounder, Skype, Kazaa, Joost
Chris DeWolfe — MySpace
Matt Drudge — The Drudge Report
Joi Ito — Creative Commons, Technorati
Nick Denton — Gawker Media, parent company for Gawker, Fleshbot, Gizmodo, io9, Kotaku, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Jalopnik, Jezebel. Also founded Idolator, Gridskipper, Wonkette, Valleywag, Consumerist, Oddjack, Screenhead, Sploid, Defamer

1967
Pierre M. Omidyar — eBay
Peter Andreas Thiel — co-founder, PayPal. An early investor in Facebook.
Col Needham — Internet Movie Database (IMDB)
John Battelle — The Industry Standard

1968
Philip Rosedale — Linden Lab (Second Life)
Larry Sanger — cofounder, Wikipedia
Sabeer Bhatia — co-founder, Hotmail
Eugene Volokh — Volokh Conspiracy
Steven Berlin Johnson — cofounder, Feed
Stefanie Syman — cofounder, Feed
Jerry Yang — cofounder, Yahoo!
Jamie W. Zawinski (jwz) — open-source software pioneer, Mozilla, XEmacs, early versions of Netscape Navigator
Jessamyn West — Librarian.net, MetaFilter moderator

1969
Caterina Fake — cofounder, Flickr
Joshua Micah Marshall — Talking Points Memo
David Sifry — Technorati
Linus Torvalds — open-source software pioneer, created the kernel for the GNU/Linux OS
Rebecca MacKinnon — cofounder, Global Voices Online

1970
Jay Adelson — co-founder, Digg
Jason Calacanis — cofounder, Silicon Alley Reporter, Weblogs Inc.
Ethan Zuckerman — cofounder, Tripod.com; founder of Geekcorps; cofounder, Global Voices Online

1971
Carl Steadman — cofounder, Suck
Markos Moulitsas — Daily Kos
Marc Andreessen — co-founder, Netscape
Jim VandeHei — cofounder, Politico
Heather Havrilesky — Suck columnist

1972
Evan Williams — cofounder, Pyra Labs (creator of weblog-authoring software Blogger) and Twitter
Meg Hourihan — cofounder, Pyra Labs (creator of weblog-authoring software Blogger); co-founder, Kinja
Mark Abene — hacker Phiber Optik
Ana Marie Cox — editor of Suck, original Wonkette blogger
Matthew Haughey — founder, MetaFilter

1973
Sergey Brin — co-founder, Google
Larry Page — co-founder, Google
Xeni Jardin — BoingBoing
Jason Kottke — Kottke
Stewart Butterfield — cofounder, Flickr
Drew Curtis — Fark
Brian Behlendorf — open-source software pioneer, primary developer of the Apache Web server,

1974 [honorary Recons]
Paul Bausch — co-creator of the weblog software Blogger, developer at MetaFilter

FWIW, the one and only music genre pioneered by Reconstructionists (gangsta rap, new-school and alternative hip hop, grunge, nu metal, alt-rock, jungle were developments of music genres pioneered by Boomers and OGXers) is electronic/techno music.

NOTES AND DRAFTS

* The so-called Culture Wars. During the Eighties, a dramatic polarization transformed US politics and culture. Society split into two warring camps — defined not by nominal religion, ethnicity, social class, or political affiliation, but rather by ideological world views. All of a sudden, there were only two positions that one could take on hot-button issues (e.g., abortion, gun politics, privacy, homosexuality, censorship): either orthodox or progressive. At the same time, the term “political correctness” was first used by conservatives as part of their challenge to university curricula and teaching methods. And during this same period, deconstructionist theory — which pursues the meaning of a text to the point of undoing the oppositions on which it is apparently founded, and to the point of showing that those foundations are irreducibly complex or impossible — gained ascendancy in college and university humanities departments. Our cohort’s mission is post- but not anti-Deconstructionist.

* Premature biographication. It’s astonishing how many Reconstructionists currently in their 30s or 40s have already written their memoirs. Someone please explain this! Examples: Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation (1994); David Bennahum’s Extra Life (1998); David Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000); Jennifer Lauck’s Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found (2001); Lauck’s Still Waters (2002); Augusten Burroughs’ Running With Scissors (2002); Stephen Glass’ The Fabulist (2003); James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces (2003); Dito Montiel’s A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2003); Bo Peabody’s Lucky or Smart? (2004); Lauck’s Show Me the Way (2004); Alison Smith’s Name All The Animals (2004); Sean Wilsey’s Oh the Glory of It All (2005); Chuck Klosterman’s Killing Yourself to Live (2005); Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love (2006); Susanna Sonnenberg’s Her Last Death (2007); Shalom Auslander’s Foreskin’s Lament (2007); Dan Kennedy’s Rock On (2008); Margaret B. Jones/Margaret Seltzer’s Love and Consequences (2008). Plus, there’s Noah Baumbach’s 2005 movie, The Squid and the Whale.

ON THE POLITICS OF MIS- or DIS-PERIODIZATION

* In 1992, Ross Perot’s presidential campaign attempted to capture the youth vote by funding a libertarian generational front organization, Lead… or Leave, which was fronted by a couple of wealthy Reconstructionists, Rob Nelson and Jon Cowan, and which argued for the privatization of Social Security. Then there was self-proclaimed “economist and renowned Gen X’er” Meredith Bagby, a protegée of Perot’s and the author of 1998’s Rational Exuberance — a “post-partisan” manifesto that argued for the privatization of Social Security. Bagby said she was proud to be a member of Generation X, which she defined as those born between 1965-76. Why did she stretch Generation X so far into the 1970s? Because Bagby, who was born in 1974, is a generational carpetbagger. The so-called “Gen X” was a shibboleth to conjure with, and she wanted a piece of the action.

* In 1993, another suspect generational group, Third Millennium, announced that it had formed to represent the concerns of those Americans who’d been dubbed “twentysomethings” or “Generation X.” Its leaders claimed the cohort in question was born between 1961 and 1981. No wonder TM founder Richard Thau said: “The soul of Gen X is amorphous, intangible, elusive.” They had their dates mixed up! Not coincidentally, 13th-Gen coauthor William Strauss was a Third Millennium advisor; and Meredith Bagby was on its board; also, Lead or Leave’s founders helped craft the Third Millennium manifesto. Third Millennium is best known, these days, for lobbying Congress on behalf of those interested in privatizing Social Security.

DAVID CRONENBERG (born 1943) has been lauded for his blurring of boundaries between technology and the individual, but this praise has consistently missed the point, for his films have singularly denied the existence of any such boundaries. The lines between media and the consumer, organic and inorganic, the life of the mind and the life of the body, are false divisions — and it is this simultaneity of vision that makes his work so strangely resonant. Videodrome (1983) and Existenz (1999) are often seen as cautionary tales of a media-saturated future, but it’s not the future that the viewer is trying to wrap their viscera around as James Woods repeatedly whips the television while a bound woman on the screen screams, or when his abdomen splits open to accept VHS tapes, or when confronted with the revolting eXistenZ Metaflesh Game Pod ™ — it’s the now. Even the simple but effective envisioning of J.G. Ballard’s Crash (1996) resists easy reduction. The hyper-sexualized car crashes mutate from S&M parable into cyborg centaurs blazing towards perpetual climax. Works like Dead Ringers (1988), A History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007) joust with the only dichotomy that does exist — the self and the self — while opening veins to vigorous, but more understated horrors.

READ MORE about the Anti-Anti-Utopian Generation.

Each day, Hilobrow.com pays tribute to one of our favorite high-, low-, no-, or hilobrow heroes on that person’s birthday. Click here for more HiLo Hero shout-outs. To get HiLo Heroes updates via Facebook, click here.

Word is, a fox is coming to live in Hilobrow’s garden. Have you seen it? He’s already showing up in the sidebar—skulking at the bottom, yawning & feigning nonchalance. Tomorrow, we’ll have more news about picaresque vulpine adventures coming soon to Hilobrow. For now, let’s see if we can catch a bit of the foxy musk and its hilo glamor.

What is biting you, fox? It’s good to be the trickster, isn’t it? Unless being the symbol of artful deceit and double-dealing gets you down.

The hungers of the fox are shared by every one of life’s kingdoms. And yet while the lion’s hungers are styled noble, and the wolf’s eldritch and primordial, those of the fox, when not pronounced craven, are called diminutive, fey, cute. Too rarely do humans take notice of fox’s uncanny powers.

In fact, sometimes, people sing about fox in grocery stores—accompanied by the ukulele.

So if fox seems a trifle unhinged—if he betrays a murderous temper, if his eyes go vacant and grim—well, can you blame him? For beyond folklore and magic, fox is a creature with his wants, his needs, and perhaps even his ambitions. He’s just a bloke trying to get by, avatars and archetypes be damned. You may be inclined to call him the hilobrow creature par excellence—bushy of tail and sharp of jaw, sprite of leg and long of vision; fox, for his part, may be inclined to spit in your eye.

As for crows? Don’t get a fox started on the crows.

THE CHILD OF GOD:

The last time a Joanna Newsom record came out, I was roiling in a vat of emotional turmoil, a confusion that drove me restlessly toward refuge like the baby bird in Are You My Mother? I sought succor from pretty much everything that came down the pike: friends, billboards, sleep and beer and Precor machines. Then Ys (2006) came down the pike, offering balm without denial, a labyrinthine sympathy, a sonic retort where I found my feelings fixed, refined, and occasionally even redeemed. I was so marked by this record that I wrote, for free, a 10,000-word profile of Newsom for Arthur magazine, portions of which came back to me like uncanny spectres upon reading the recent New York Times Magazine piece on the musician. But no matter. It was the best love letter to music I ever wrote, and I wrote it out of my definite experience that records can heal.

These days I find myself in more choppy waters, an older and in some ways grimmer man with no less need of visionary consolation. And so, at at 10 am on February 23, with the calm conviction of an acolyte, I gathered up some ripped and abandoned CDs and tromped down to Amoeba Records, where I promptly swapped them for Have One on Me. I got it on vinyl, natch, a chunky black box like Christ: the Album or All Things Must Pass. Someone had sent me a link to the MP3s days before, but though I wanted to get to the album as quickly as possible, in order to give myself a now-wasted shot at twittery relevance (chop! chop!), I waited until I could submit myself to the analog ritual. As soon as I got home, I sliced off the plastic wrapping, unpacked the discs, briefly admired Ms. Newsom’s admirable legs, and placed the first record on the platter. I dropped the stylus, settled onto the couch, and slowed down enough to float downstream.

The sounds spilled out of my two skinny Mordaunt-Short speakers like the river in the Moon trump,  passing between two dark towers. Glittering and plaintive, twisted and sometimes dull, Newsom’s music always flowed knowingly, disc after disc, down to that damn old sunless sea. Down to farewell. But the river invoked more than endings, those deaths of love and bodies that haunted Ys. At times the river called up the mountain source as well — not so much Joanna’s mercurial artistic intention or the “real person” behind the beguiling California child-mage avatar that she has constructed out of waxwings and gilded buttons, but something like the great and tender nerve that hums beneath all our emotional perception, that raw permeability of outside and in that Joanna has called skinlessness.

How does one speak of a record one plays for medicine, especially if one also belongs to that benighted tribe driven to analyze and to limn? That an artist of such copious originality as Joanna might also offer balm is a blessing, albeit one so personal as to render it, at least from a more critical perspective, moot. “My faith makes me a dope,” she sings in “Jackrabbits.” I know what she’s talking about. Faith is a corny move, even if sometimes it’s the only jimmy crack you’ve got. But there’s the rub: the second you sink your teeth into it, you must do more than feed. You must taste as well.

THE MAN OF TASTE:

Whatever its successes, Have One On Me provides a full clip of ammo for those already convinced that one of Joanna Newsom’s chief characteristics is her self-indulgence. Filling up three discs, the album runs over two hours long, and features a half dozen songs that swell towards the full ten-minute mark, a handful of which she would have done better to trim or to simply leave on the cutting room floor. There are hardly any lyric refrains, which means that words and images pile up and drift with sometimes logorrheac abandon, while choruses and verses couple in endless increase as the audience, or some of them anyway, admires. The lyrics can be as cryptic as those on Ys, but Ys was a masterpiece by any measure of sense or soul, an ornately organic webwork whose emotional and thematic control fully justified its difficulty and rewarded its many exegetes. Taken as a whole, in contrast, Have One on Me is a sprawl — a luxuriant cornucopia, for sure, but also a bit of a mess.

You can see the difference on the album covers. The painstakingly painted still life that announced Ys was redolent with the symbols — half revealed through careful listening, half hopelessly obscured — that held together the album’s holistic brocade of mourning. Have One On Me pictures Newsom in a claustrophobic theater of zoological curiosities and neo-hippie decor. Our fey heroine is no longer sitting up, stiff with a Mona Lisa smile. She lies recumbent, sultry, glass in hand, the mound of her ass book-ended by two leopards facing off on a pillow case. In the lower right there lies what I first took to be a small framed butterfly or moth, an echo of one of Ys’s key symbols, but a closer look revealed the thing to be two iridescent eyes clipped from the tail of a peacock — a stuffed specimen of which dominates Newsom’s menagerie, proud in its prodigal display.

THE CHILD OF GOD:

The balm Joanna offers wells up from her profligacy. The too-muchness of Have One On Me — the title, the run-on songs, the useless interludes, even the down-home cheesecake shots on the inner sleeves — are a kind of potlatch, an earthy celebration of excess despite and even because of the maziness and rot such excess implies. Rather than sustain the visionary control of Ys, Joanna here lets it all hang out, confident that someone out there, somewhere, will find a use for it. This is the “hour of effortless plenty” she sings about in “Esme,” a song that inspires a koan of gratified desire: “How do we know which parts of our hearts want what, / with such base generosity?”

In other words, the cornucopia swamps our fractured selves, filling in the gaps. Let go, embrace it all, taste the one taste. What makes such excess a balm rather than lazy decadence is its relation to origin, which is nothing less than our first fecundity. In The Man Without Content, Giorgio Agamben argues that the authentic work of art goes beyond taste by opening up the curious temporal dimension that belongs to our origin, a dimension that both transcends and precedes the usual flux of one damn thing after another. “By opening to man his authentic temporal dimension, the work of art also opens for him the space of his belonging to the world, only within which he can take the original measure of his dwelling on earth and find again his present truth in the unstoppable flow of linear time.”

Joanna frames that original measure in “’81,” one of the strongest songs on the album, and, perhaps not coincidentally, one of its shortest. Over a solo harp, Joanna throws us into the garden of Eden, the soulscape of original profligacy. Like a pioneer, Joanna finds a plot of land there — not soil but “dirt,” marginal and low, like chaos, understood not as ruin but as the undifferentiated potential that allows us to reboot desire, to “start again.” She contrasts this state of pregnant potential, perhaps, with our present state of things, “hotter than hell,” a confusing fall of desire that impels her, like William and Catherine Blake in their garden, to strip down “naked as a trout” and regain some of that potlatch innocence.

In triumph she decides to throw a “garden party” in Eden, one that heals the great dualistic wounds of the Christian tradition — the heart-splitting “war between St. George and the dragon” — by inviting both sides along. (In the wilds of California, which saturate this album, we do not just befriend our demons — we party with them.) Embracing heresy, even as she plucks a sober lullaby on her heavenly harp, Joanna asks: “what is meant by sin, or none, / in a garden / seceded from the union in the year of A.D. 1?”

This is a core question of American Gnosis, a conundrum of antinomian innocence, and it is one I cannot pretend to answer. You’re just gonna have to plant your own little plot of land and see what grows. Here I just want to point out the pun that links “A.D. 1” — the first year of the Christian era — and the “’81” in the title, when Joanna — born in 1982, on the cusp of Capricorn and Pisces — was herself created from the union of her parents, an act that is, of course, both a continuity and a secession.

This is not megalomania — this is a rich harmonizing of origins, personal, religious, national. Puns are of a piece with Joanna’s excessive and often obscure wordplay, the delightful mania that impels her to describe waves as “dangling entrails from the gut of the sea.” But here this pun clears room for a disarmingly naked claim. With her matured voice sailing up into the empyrean, Joanna announces that she believes in innocence, and the wonder is that at that moment you — or me anyway — believe in it too. Such innocence is nothing less that the ability or drive to “start again” — not like Billy Idol in “White Wedding,” or the old American story of the reinvented self, but in the manner of that base generosity of spirit that allows us occasionally to proclaim, to one another, to ourselves: “I believe in everyone.”

THE MAN OF TASTE:

Newsom’s music is a crazy quilt stretched between the two pillars of the art song and the folk tune. The Milk-Eyed Mender (2004) tugged one way; Ys the other. On Have One On Me, Newsom quite consciously walks a middle path. It is an attempt to marry the ambition and scale of her material on Ys with the simpler and more accessible song forms that characterized her more hard-scrabble though finely executed debut. As she announces in the opening cut, she wants to be “Easy / Easy to keep.” Colorful and sometimes informal instrumentation replaces the careful drama of Van Dyke Parks’ orchestration on Ys, while the strong polyrhythms that peppered that album are nearly absent, transmuted into vocal lines whose beats skip across more conventional musical measures. We also find increasing use of the piano, an instrument Newsom wields with a charming and sometimes ham-fisted simplicity worlds away from her fleet-footed majesty on the harp.

In many of the songs, Newsom modifies her high style of moody brocaded balladry with down-home genre moves — blues, boogie, sassy ’70s horn charts — along with frequent and unexpected shifts from minor to the major key. The most successful expression of this last gesture — and one of the musical peaks of the record — lies at the close of the gorgeous “Autumn,” a haunted song of nostalgia and drift rich with mountain Californiana. At the close of the track, she invokes the melancholy of linear time: “Cannot gain ground / cannot outrun; / but time marches along.” Singing with a mind of winter, she shivers over a sad solo harp. “When the final count is done / I will be in my hometown.” But with that “hometown,” the music quickly blooms into a major-key bouquet: a cloud-splitting crescendo, a jazzy shrug of Ivesian brass, and a richly resolved figure on the harp, slightly undercut by a final fallen phrase. Wonderful.

That said, Newsom’s fusion of polarities — high and low, sadness and pleasure, demotic and fey — also explains the fundamental problem with this too-long record: songs largely based on smaller “traditional” forms that nonetheless go on and on and on. A few of the cuts begin with compact savor but become, by their weary close, a watery gruel that a crisp three-minute limit would have kept properly salted. “Baby Birch” is the worst offender here. It opens in rustic lullaby mode, short and sweet, and should have stayed that way. Instead, over the course of nearly ten minutes, the charm natters on, without genuine musical development or the pure repetition that Dylan, say, employed on his epics. When some distorted guitar begins to leak in, I hoped the song would start banging away like the art-folk tracks on Talk Talk’s The Colour of Spring (1986), but nothing much comes of it. We end with a cloying and exotic melody on the Bulgarian tambura, and then, in a manner unforgivable for an artist as composed as this, the tune simply fades out.

One of the beauties of sorta traditional popular song forms is, of course, their economy. From the point of view of the potlach, this is paradoxically their strength. The brilliantly concise can be more “generous” that the brilliantly prolix, since you get more for less. Listen to neo-trad songs like “Long Black Veil” or “Crash on the Levee” or “Ripple,” and you get a big rock candy mountain the size of a gumdrop. “On a Good Day,” the one diminutive cut on Newsom’s album, is a 1:49 dollop of what more of this record could have been. Four verses, a simple old-school rhyme scheme (AAAB, CCCB), and a wry emotional fusion of commitment, nostalgia, observation, and resolve. It’s small but it stays with you, like a marble in your pocket that reflects a different color every time you give it a glance.

THE CHILD OF GOD:

Why do the bereaved and bereft so often choose to listen to mopey music in the midst of grief rather than slapping on P-Funk or some glittering bauble by Mozart? The point is not, as is often imagined, to take refuge in shared sentiment, to “know you are not alone” in your hardship. When a depleted me turns to Nick Drake, it is not to relieve loneliness — after all, it is no relief to hang with a sonic simulacrum of some sad dead guy. I turn to Drake, or to new Newsom songs like “Go Long” and “Occident,” because the beauty and excellence of the art makes the emotions sounded by the music shine. The feelings do not disappear; they are rendered, through the old chords of sympathetic magic, shapely and reverberant. They become arrows rather than wounds.

In “The Awakening of Desire in the Classical Musical Work,” one of the most engaging and unusual articles in Visions of Joanna Newsom (2010), an engaging and unusual collection of critical essays and poems edited by Brad Buchanan, Robert McKay argues that both the story and the effect of Ys involve the tutelage of desire. Working with some Kierkegaard he says he first read in college, McKay argues that, in its awakening, desire passes through stages of dreamy narcissism and active hedonism to finally come to fruition in “the serpentine knowledge of desire’s necessary connection with suffering and death.” This theme — which is really a vision, and the richest of affects — courses through Ys but at first glance seems cloaked in the new one. As Joanna declares in “Easy,” she is now “worn to the bone by the river” — the river being a vital image in Ys of rough transformation, including the skinlessness that leaves the self behind. In many ways, Have One On Me is about putting on new flesh, a singer-songwriter quest for self.

But it is still a record of comings and goings, of shuffling between East and West, of dogs and violent loves and roads between. It is still a record where we begin to die the moment we are born. And it suggests at times another version of McKay’s serpentine wisdom, a vision of transience less beholden to Omar Khayyam’s carpe diem and more to what one might call the retrospective view. Most of the time we look at our lives from the point of view of the main character within a story; we struggle and choose and act, dividing and seeking good against bad. But if we are able to view our life retrospectively, from our deathbed as it were, then we can see it instead — as my pal Danny Castro puts it — from the author’s point of view. Gazing back at the life that is nonetheless before us, we see the whole story, the whole book of right on, and it is all one weave, not just the worm in the apple but the saint and the dragon, the desire and the pain, the spring and fall and the final mind of winter, for whom the self grows as transparent as ice.

This esoteric perspective touches a number of songs on the album in that fragmentary oracular manner that Joanna shares with few lyricists. “No Provenance” begins with a character who has died happy and lived to tell the tale, waking after a Rip Van Winkle sleep “to find me gone.” In “On a Good Day,” Joanna sees the “end from here” but chooses to “stay for the remainder.” The retrospective gaze receives its clearest statement in “Occident,” a gorgeous piano ballad that reminds me of an inky blue Joni Mitchell but with more diffidence. “All my life I’ve felt as though / I’m inside a beautiful memory, replaying / with the sound turned down low.” Towards the end of this great song, which might actually help you reframe reality, she holds out the possibility that “When I die, may I relate.” Relate (to) what? Is this the final relationship with the unity of things, the ultimate congregation in spirit, or is it rather the prerogative of the singer to relate, in death, a tale that can only then be told and done?

This question concerns us all, because we are all such tall tale-tellers, or should be. And what we relate, in our retrospective story, is our relations — in other words, our loves, the people, the poems, the animals, the land. This is the doubled moment Joanna captures in “Kingfisher,” a tune whose use of recorders and stately neo-medieval chords initially reminded me of — gasp — “Stairway to Heaven.” Two-thirds through this loosely apocalyptic number, over a solo harp, Joanna suggests a practice:

Stand here and name the one you loved,
beneath the drifting ashes
and, in naming,
rise above time
as it, flashing, passes.

These are end-times ashes, folks, both the grim fallout of dirty bombs that now threaten the bodies and imaginations of us no-longer-innocent Americans, and the flakes of a larger entropy, the refuse of the “loose universe” that is, in another tune’s memorable image, “rushing, unhinged, / toward diminishing lights, / like a headless caboose.”

But it’s the second half of this strange practice that rivets the whole record. In naming the time-bound love, the doomed relationship that calls us ever back into our story, we paradoxically rise above time, into that view that is both retrospective and original, the flash of return. Once again, Agamben hits the nail:

Just as all other mythic traditional systems celebrate rituals and festivals to interrupt the homogeneity of profane time and, reactualizing the original mythic time, to allow man to become again the contemporary of the gods and to reattain the primordial dimension of creation, so in the work of art the continuum of linear time is broken, and man recovers, between past and future, his present space.

And you know this in “Kingfisher” because you hear it: when Joanna utters the word time, the music bends, the pulse warps, and a glissando in the strings rises to a sustained pitch that forms the bed for the single most gorgeous and heartrending melody of this entire crazy-quilt album. The melody is carried by Joanna’s now more darkened voice, a phrase suggesting transcendence by being, for once on this babbling record, wordless. Here music alone, eagle-eyed, lets down a sky-hook for the sad-ass baby bird, still scrabbling for worms in time. The line lasts only a moment of course. But it’s the kind of moment you take to the grave.

***

Pop Arcana is a series of columns that will be published on Hilobrow.com for the first half of 2010.