Word: riffs
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...avert devolving into a sub-Nicholson Baker riff, we can shift into lamentation. Sad, sad, sad: New is better; pop culture is disposable and laughs at its ancestors; masturbatory fashionistas dictate and bulletproof their fopaganda. Where can we access the past, without fear of reprisal or dismissal? Ad firms parallel the AI race for the perfect chess computer, in their appropriation of our precious individuality and irony, engineering the perfect corporate android to convince us to match the image in the mirror--the billboard, the TV screen--the one now and forever, until the next profit margin rolls around...
...differs from his rivals' in two important respects. First, he was offering his brand of cosmic humanism long before the political consultants realized people might be receptive to it. Almost two years ago in Greensboro, N.C., I watched him transfix 1,200 people at a volunteerism conference with a riff about "being alive to the smallest things: a child's question, the color of a turning leaf, a sight you've never seen that you pass on your way to work each day." Second, unlike Bush and Gore, Bradley doesn't mention God during his poetic flights...
...never make it that far. "It's a guess; it's a bank shot--you throw it on the wall and hope for something," he says. "I'd like to have one big success, but I could just as easily have all failures." He goes on a long, breathless riff: "I mean, I love this. I could do this for the rest of my life. It drives my friends crazy. But it's amazing, cool stuff. If you can be part of the next big revolution--man, that's a trip...
Dunn, the interim president of Radcliffe College, presented "an extended riff" on translation and transformation to an audience of about 50 people, mostly first-years...
...something more interesting was going on: the bit was significant in part because it wasn't aimed at the ears of whites. Blacks have long complained about being ignored by the larger community, unheard, unseen. Rock's riff aired on HBO, not BET, but it was about black folks, for black folks. He didn't care what whites thought or whether they were even listening. Suddenly whites were the ones rendered invisible, inaudible...