New paradigm blues are what happens in between changes. Changes are what nobody wants because while they are happening there is massive disorientation. New paradigm euphoria is what happens with the sort of hope generated election night. This sort of hope engenders possibilities for change. This writing is about my hopes for art’s possibilities in the coming times.

See, I haven’t really paid my (figurative) dues at the station since I exercised my alumni rights and re-joined two years ago. I admit that. So when they stick me with the Country show, I get it. I’m not mad. But we do get bored. I mean, you can’t exactly kill ‘em with that format, you know? We have a broad enough knowledge and some basic views on the genre, definite respect, by all means, but Country just isn’t where we’re at. There’s a limitation to it, a certain ceiling you hit, and the cracks we make are sporadic and short. We love Hank Williams and Merle Haggard and the outlaw fringe, and we try not to slip into corny in the remaining 2 hours.

After alot of back and forth last week I finally made the firm decision to vote for Barack Obama for president of the United States. This was not an easy decision for me as I am 45 years old and have never in my life voted for a major party candidate for president. Why did I make this decision? Basically, it comes down to three factors:race, culture and a series of conversations that I had with my daughter who is incollege and expressing her political opinions quite passionately andarticulately. A little over a year agoshe sent me a link to a clip of Barack Obama, asking me what I thought. Here is the unedited response I gave to herat the time:

In Remembrance of Things Past, as we've all read, the author is able to recall events from the distant past with tremendous sensory detail after tasting a madeleine cake. In Ma Jian's Beijing Coma, a similarly monumental recall is instituted, not by an experience, but by a unique situation. Struck down by a bullet to the head, the protagonist lies comatose in bed, but, while unable to move, communicate or see, he can still think clearly. Being taken care of by his isolated mother, a retired singer, he has little to occupy his mind but memories, particularly of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in which he was one of the leaders, and at which, when the military cracked down, he was shot.

From what I’ve heard, in biennial organizer Dan Cameron’s description and in other reviews, much of the art in this city-wide exhibition will have New Orleans as its subject. This is quite a difference from other biennials, which are often just a collection of the last 2-4 years of Chelsea hits from disparate sources. Instead, this exhibit will feature work made specifically for this site, unveiling the interpretations and reflections on New Orleans of the international contemporary artist. We in the audience will see what they have to say about the place and events surrounding their art.

Out of nowhere, I’d suddenly begun to wear my hair, my unruly curls, pinned in a tight bun. At the same time, I became a fan of a peculiar shade of purple lip gloss and heavy eyeliner. I wore jeans and over-sized shirts with button-down collars, which I bought at the co-op. My uncertain style amounted to a common-law marriage of punk and preppie — but I was neither, I was just another financial-aid student fumbling my way through Yale.