Yet Bingham is a likable character, and this should be credited to Clooney who instills his subject with both smoothness and self-irony, yet also a subtle vulnerability that allows the audience to invest in his capacity for change. Bingham takes pride in the memberships, privileges, and points that come with traveling on business 322 days of the year. His hubris and bizarre predilection for the alienation of modern life and the dispiriting airport and hotel settings in which he lives are clearly source for much comedic value, but the true substance of the film emerges as Bingham’s minimalism is confronted with genuine emotion and humanity. His lifestyle of perpetual escape – epitomized by his constant travel – is threatened when a young Cornell graduate, Natalie (Anna Kendrick), posits that the company should cut costs by terminating employees via teleconference instead of flying around the country to do the job face to face. Secondly, his ethic of personal disinvolvement is called into question when he falls for his road warrior alter ego Alex, brilliantly portrayed by Vera Farmiga (“Think of me as yourself, only with a vagina,” she tells him). The relationship starts off as impersonal as we’d expect for a man whose highest dream is amassing 10 million frequent flyer miles. But Bingham ultimately discovers that physical and emotional baggage are inescapable and that life cannot fit neatly and succinctly in a carry-on sized suitcase.

“Up In The Air” is both the smartest and funniest film of 2009. It’s also the most topical and gutsy. A film about a man whose job it is to fire people when over 10% of the nation is unemployed is daring to say the least. Ultimately, Clooney’s character could be interpreted as a metaphor for the way in which corporate America has lost sight of personal value and human emotion. To be sure, the film does chide the coldness of modern society – the superficial smiles, the impersonal perks, the artificial hospitality – but it does so much in the way that Jacques Tati derided the sterility of modern urban lifestyle in his film “Play Time“. It is a judgment of aesthetics and personal values, not politics. To view this film as a diatribe against capitalism or even as a prescription for a better future is to miss the point. “Up In The Air” is a film that asks us to weigh what is important in our lives. Bingham may be right when he says “The slower we move, the faster we die,” but what he learns is that it’s better to die fast and have shared connections than to die slow and have missed the flight altogether.

On our second day in Hong Kong, we ventured over to mainland China, into Guangdong Province, en route to visitseveral factories in Donguan (one of the major manufacturing capitals in the nation). Guangdong is one of the most prosperous provinces in all of China, with the nation’s leading GDP of $522 billion, and an economy roughly the same size as Sweden (though 9 times the population). This region, more than any other during the trip, was a true eye-opener. As the train passed by factory after factory in what seemed like endless cities that stretched for miles, one could visibly witness the evolution of the Chinese manufacturing sector. Many of these factories were already outdated and abandoned, even though most had been built (out of shoddy materials) only 20 years ago. No problem for the Chinese, who are capable of building cities in what seems like decades time and lightning speed. Take Shenzhen for example. In the late 1970s this city was nothing more than a miniscule fishing vilage. Today it stands as China’s second largest port, and a rapidly growing metropolis with over 9 million residents. Shenzhen also houses the manufacturing hub that makes the majority of Apple hardware, everything from ipods to iPhones to their notebooks.

We saved the best part of our trip for last, and frankly if I had 8 days all over again, I might spend them all in Shanghai. This city is very quickly emerging as the culutral and economic center of the world. More than anywhere else on the trip I was able to literally watch the city evolve before my eyes. Whereas Hong Kong has already defined itself as a fully cosmopolitan (one might say “Westernized” ) center on the world’s stage, Shanghai with its nearly 20 million residents is clearly still in the process of defining itself and discovering its cultural identity. That’s not to say that Shanghai is not rich in culture already. Settled in the 5th Century, Shanghai has a rich history of its own – but it is also a history and culture deeply influenced by foreign immerison. This largely started with the Opium Wars and the Treaty of Nanjing (and Wangsia) in 1843, which saw many territories of Shanghai “conceded” to foreign nations including the British, American and French. Adding to the eclectic mix were the Russians who fled during the emergence of the Soviet Union and the Japanese who exerted significant control in Shanghai after the Sino-Japanese war. The Japanese, apparently, were the first to introduce a manufacturing trade in Shanghai.

Like any good “Shanghailander” I was keen to explore these cultural influences on the cities identity. The influence is seen most obviously in the 19th & 20th century architectural masterworks that line the Huangpu River, the area known as The Bund. Walking up and down this “International Settlement” is really an architects wet dream, with countless archetypal manifestations from art deco to gothic to neoclassical all in one stretch. I would say the Customs House (circa 1927) with its imitation Big Ben was probably the highlight. Also a highlight on the trip was the famous “French Concession”, which is one of the best preserved districts in the city. With tree-lined avenues and cafes sprawling onto the street, it really did feel like I had stepped out of the futuristic megapolis and into a lazy afternoon walk in the 7th arrondissement. (For pure Paris in Shanghai, check out the “Mansion Hotel”. It was a true gem)

All in all, I found Shanghai (and Hong Kong) to be very dynamic cities. Even despite the pollution, I was surprised by the cultural richness of Shanghai and also the evolving art scene that is taking hold (with emerging artists like Mian Mian, Teng Kun Yen, He Jia & Sui Jianguo, I’m convinced Shanghai is poised for the next art renaissance). But the massive scale of growth was inescapable. The Pudong district of Shanghai, where we stayed, is like a glimpse into the future: supertall skyscrapers like the Shanghai World Financial Center (at 492 meters, the second tallest building in the world) and the Jin Mao Tower pierce the skyline, all the while reminding us of the great upward sweep that is taking hold in China. When you consider that Pudong itself was nothing more than marshlands 20 years ago, one begins to understand the economic transformation that is underway. But it does remain to be seen whether, with such economic growth (and thus a growing middle class and exposure to foreign cultures and politics), China will be able to maintain its strict political and oft anti-democratic ways. As a foreigner, the only way I could sense this was that sites like Twitter, YouTube and Flickr were all blocked in China (though my friend informs me these firewalls are easily breakable). But new techniques are seemingly more antediluvian – like the Chinese government’s requirement that all personal computers sold in China after July 1 must have content-control software pre-installed (known, perhaps more kindly, as Green Dam Youth Escort) that controls what Chinese webizens can do and view on their PCs. It seems to me like a paradigm that will pose some trouble from within unless the Chinese government begins to embrace more democratic ways.

Most works of western tonal music are characterized by the regular recurrence of rhythmically patterned pulses. Andrew Bird’s eccentric cross-pollination of gypsy ballad violin and folk infused art-rock is defined by it. The importance of meter and repetition is clear on Noble Beast , even thematically, as whistled motifs emerge in defiant contrast to already established themes.

Noble Beast is Bird’s fourth solo album and it made its debut this past January as a live stream on NPR. While the melodic electricity from Armchair Apocrypha has been subdued, the inter-connected ambience laid out on Noble Beast is more clearly defined, and the scope of the album is decidedly more visceral than the esoteric meanderings of Bird’s prior work. Indeed, on Noble Beast, Bird has created a vivid landscape, layered by elegiac violin melodies and punctuated by pizzicato notes, plucked guitar and clip-clop percussion that is more approachable to the casual listener.

On a thematic level, Bird seems to struggle with the classification and taxonomy of the natural world. It’s probably little coincidence that Noble Beast was released right near the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth. Bird elicits lugubrious and meticulous observations of the surrounding world, with scientific specificity and attention to detail as pertains to the rise and fall of species. On Souverian, he laments the inability of cyclical nature to overcome internal wounds. “while thistles will burn my feet / you promise spring, still my lover won’t return to me.” And on Anonanimal, Bird seems personally afflicted, even infected, by the evolutionary process. Singing of a sea anemone Bird predicts, “I will become this animal / anomalous appendages, anonanimal, anonanimal.” Evolution apparently comes with its own unforeseen casualties.

Bird’s drifting song structures are more coherent and sophisticated on Noble Beastthan previous albums, if nothing less than for their tonal quality and gracefully collective harmony. Where Bird’s previous works presented stuffed canvases full of interesting sounds, the latest incarnation embraces the same ornamental delicacy but with a focal point. For example, on Effigy and Tenuousness the album’s best songs, Bird uses church organs and operatic whistling not as mere sidenotes, but as compliments to vocal harmonies and intricate guitar picking. To be sure, the same affinity for odd phrases and abstruse lyrics is ever-present, but Bird seems more concerned here about creating a verbal topography, suffused with syllable play and alliterated language, than the actual meaning of words themselves. From the “calcified arythmetists” of Oh No to the decaying “anthurium lacrimae” of Natural Disaster Bird evokes an alternate version of the world as he sees it, eerily seductive as it is bizarre.

We saw this first with Radiohead’s “In Rainbows“, a pay what you want model that was overwhelmingly successful in terms of conversion (despite the fact that Radiohead refuses to give data on sales, know that this first experiment was very successful). Radiohead was followed up by NiN with a truly original offering, which saw Reznor & Co. offer their fans a variety of bunled offerings – everything from 9 free tracks to digital ownership ($5), to digital + physical ($10), to value add offers including blu ray discs and signed LPs, costing upwards of $250 for the most expensive offer. The effort by NiN was hugely successful and embraced by a music industry hungry for a new method of music delivery and discovery beyond the colluded offer of traditional radio and the impersonal presentation of traditional physical retail. Check out some great google earth screenshots here that demonstrate the global potential brought on by self-distribution and disintermediation.

As for the Eno/Byrne collaboration released this past Monday on Topspin’s platform – I would say I am pleased with the outcome, though not floored. “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts“, their 20 year old previous collaboration is the far more challenging and diverse of the two albums, infused as it is more by Byrne’s 80’s-infected instatiable pop rhythm than Eno’s more reserved and electronically (over)-produced soundscapes and sonic curiosities. That said, the album is hugely important as a defining mark towards artists owning their relationships with fans, instead of handing off their rights to corporate behemoths. To be sure, songs like “Life is Long”, and “Strange Overtones” represent Byrne and Eno at their very best. For those interested, the digital album costs $8.99. The CD and the digital album together go for $11.99. For the deluxe package, including a film about the album, it’s $69.99.

Notions of right and wrong, according to Solzhenitsyn, have been trumped by the freedom of the individual and the ascension of the legalistic framework of his society. But does “the law” ipso facto define moral standards or does a suspension of legal precedence exist in a higher ethical realm?

“An oil company is legally blameless when it purchases an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: after all, people are free not to buy it.”

Solzhenitsyn can be heuristic at times, if not downright prophetic in the manner typical of the Russian literary tradition, and his assessment of US foreign policy and the anti-Vietnam movement comes across as outdated. Compelling, however, is his criticism of Western journalism, which is supposed to represent the highest mark of freedom in our society.

“Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press. It stops at sensational formulas.”

In my view, journalists have an unwritten duty to society to provide an in-depth depiction of the truth, yet that obligation has largely been sidestepped by a more pervasive concern surrounding ratings and what I call “news as sports”, less about informing people than about entertaining their every whim with pornographic pop culture pizzaz.

“a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development. I have received letters in America from highly intelligent persons, maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but his country cannot hear him because the media are not interested in him. This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era.”

Solzhenitsyn puts the blame of what he calls “psychological weakness” and “spiritual exhaustion” on a fundamental flaw in the humanistic tenets that our society is founded upon, namely the notion that mankind in a natural and free state is good and rational, and that only a flawed society will corrupt him. He clearly sees the disease as endemically related to the core of our system’s fundamental belief in the freedom of the individual. I would say, instead, that morals and ethics are strongly tied to the notion of collectivity, which in our society at least is often displaced by individualistic priorities such as material possession and status. In other words I don’t necessarily think individual freedom is inherently problematic, but when coupled with a system that more or less ignores the importance of social duty, the higher ethical spirit of man is diluted.

“If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding… Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.”

In almost half a century, more than 30 million of Solzhenitsyn’s books have been sold worldwide and translated into some 40 languages. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel prize for literature.

I also think NiN embracing “free” is a very wise move, given the particular climate of the music industry. Earlier today, a friend expressed curiosity at the new release: “What is the business model?” I would call the business model community relationships 2.0, one in which the model is fundamentally based on built and fostered trust between artist and tribe following. Reznor already proved that he can cater better to his fan base than any major record label could do in the old model, by allowing fans to pay anywhere from nothing to $300 based on their individual loyalty, audiophile status, and economic flexibility. Given that he raked in over $1.7 million on Ghosts, it seems like the perfect strategy to reward fans for sustaining his model. We are quickly shedding the mentality of music as a one-for-one commodity, into one where music begins to gain value precisely because it is free.

The Slip is being released with a Creative Commons license. Stay tuned for my review of the album…

Stanford Law Professor and founder of the Creative Commons, Lawrence Lessig, is starting a new movement aimed at reducing corruption in politics. Lessig’s contention is that the fundamental obstacle preventing political change is not a misunderstanding or disagreement over policy, but instead a lack of transparency and, therefore, accountability. Because campaigns are privately financed, our candidates are able to take money from lobbyists and political action committees and often do out of lust for power. The obvious problem here is that these candidates are no longer solely accountable to the American people that elect them but are forced to compromise their supposed duty to their constituents by returning favors to those special interests that helped elect them. The ultimate result of this is a lack of trust in government, manifested by consistently low congressional approval ratings that today stand at 23%. Lack of trust, of course, leads to two even more profoundly detrimental trends: apathy and disengagement.

Lessig’s project, Change Congress, will aim to establish a wiki-style watchdog movement that will seek pledges from elected and running officials in terms of campaign finance, with the goal of reducing the influence of lobbyists, PACs and earmarks. Ordinary citizens will be called upon to hold their representatives accountable and to upload their own political pledges for reform, so that like-minded candidates can link up with like-minded citizens. It will be interesting to see whether or not Lessig can galvanize a community around building an application which has as its sole function a kind of use-value and utility that members of the web 2.0 community are unfamiliar with. Social media applications have rarely been centered around the idea of political utility, but instead are more often centered around more hedonistic or voyeuristic value propositions. So, yes, you can build a site that enables people to upload home movies or pictures, or allows peers to keep up with their ever growing network, and these applications have tremendous value in terms of creative collaboration and social utility. Lessig is asking whether that social energy can now be leveraged into political activism.

The album opens with the lugubrious Flume, which somehow begins in mourning and transcends into personified metaphysics, “Only love is all maroon / Gluey feathers on a flume / Sky is womb and she’s the moon.” Vernon’s voice pierces through the harrowing, hollow guitar chords and quivering electronic sidenotes to communicate an ethereal yet poignant spiritual ascension. Indeed, his voice is layered and re-layered over itself throughout the album, ranging from heights to depths though usually rooted in an angelic falsetto. But for all his hushed fragility, Vernon always has the potential to reinforce the strength he finds in natural isolation by catapulting his voice through powerful sforzandos and accentuated fortes. “I told you to be patient / I told you to be fine / I told you to be balanced / I told you to be kind” castigates the incensed Vernon on Skinny Love. “Now all your love is wasted? / Then who the hell was I? / Now I’m breaking at the britches / And at the end of all your lies.”

Vernon overcomes the lack of versatility that sometimes detracts from other wistful folk acts like Iron and Wine by relentlessly pushing the boundary. Wolves (Act I & II), takes a soulful chorus line encumbered by deep spiritual trauma (“Someday my pain, someday my pain / Will mark you / Harness Your blame, harness your blame / And walk through) and infuses it with a percussive and violent retort, a seeming refusal to acknowledge a past wrought with painful memories (“What might have been lost – / Don’t bother me!”). And on the wonderfully percolated “For Emma” Vernon clearly steeps himself in the tradition of Simon & Garfunkel, but leaves a place for incredibly nuanced brass voices, accompanying his high pitched yearnings like a friend that knows compassion but doesn’t know the best way to communicate it.

The highlight of the album, if I had to isolate a single song, would definitely be Re: Stacks, a hauntingly austere examination of the relationship between nature and loss. Has there ever been a more fragile song than this? It brings to mind some of the sweepingly intimate epics of Red House Painters and gives Nick Drake a run for his money in terms of poetic frailty. “I’ve been twisting to the sun I needed to replace / The fountain in the front yard is rusted out / All my love was down / In a frozen ground.” “For Emma, Forever Ago” is clearly a cathartic act for Vernon as he isolates himself in the wintry confines of northwestern Wisconsin and confronts old wounds by recognizing their inextricable relationship with the natural world. But the album is neither about resignation nor about resolve, and catharsis is not ultimately the resolution. Instead, Vernon seems to have found what he came for in Wisconsin and seems to want to hold onto memories no matter how painful they ultimately are. “This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization / It’s the sound of the unlocking and the lift away / Your love will be / Safe with me.”

Vernon went to the woods as a sort of Rousseaun retreat, isolated himself in a log cabin for 4 snowy months, and confronted his private tragedies and interiorized emotions. The music is particularly evocative of cold wintry nights, but somehow Vernon’s embrace of universal themes and his penchant for cathartic lyrics allow the music to transcend this kind of taxonomy. I listen to the album at the break of dawn, and just as the sun goes down, here in Southern California. It is as beautiful in the open sun as it must have been in the hallowed and darkened beauty of the wilderness.

Listening to this speech I am humbled by the power of King’s words. There is a great sense of disappointment in his words, yes, but there is a powerful distinction between disappointment and resignation. Disappointment by nature requires a belief in a higher moral ideal as a priori to the standard being upheld, whereas resignation implies moral and spiritual passivity. King clearly believes in a higher ground that America can reach for and indeed calls for a “radical revaluation of values”. King is prophetic and could be speaking today:

“Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin…we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

And later:

“A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.”

Reading this, I am led to wonder, where is the moral courage of our age. Where is the strength and fortitude that instills a man like Martin Luther King, who saw injustice and made it his life duty to call it out and to protest it, no matter the consequence. It is certainly in none of our candidates for president. I respect Obama and I perceive strong moral values at his core, but not at the level of King or the movement that once existed in this country. By many standards, the war in Iraq has been a graver injustice than the war in Vietnam. We have spent $3 trillion on a war without pretence, while at home our citizens cannot afford healthcare, our teachers are underpaid, poverty levels continue to rise and now an economic crisis has taken hold. We have spent $3 trillion on a war that has resulted in the deaths of over 4,000 Americans and, lest we forget, the 90,000+ Iraqi citizens that have perished as result of our presence (is it odd that the number 4,000 is boldly in my mind, but I had to scour the web for the civilian toll, which, as it were, is only the documented casualties; thousands more have surely perished). Where is the fury and the moral indignation of the youth? Of the media? When can we finally say enough is enough?