interview of Joe Rowe by Jon Lebowski on Howard Rheingold's dot.com

[Michael Eisenstadt]

reproduced in violation of copywrite (bite me Jon Lebowski)

for your convenience this is the interview Harry Edwards
referenced this morning 

some context: Howard Rheingold is an Internet early adopter
pioneer from the days of the WELL which was a kind of pre-
Internet BBS (bulletin board systems) in the Bay Area. he 
has many published books on the big implications of this new
technology. Jon Lebowski is an Austinite/WELL early adopter 
who has long had a blogging type maillist which follows 
the hip Austin scene and does culture diagnostics -- this
kind of maillist is subscribed to but generally only 
Lebkowsky posts to it.

austin - jon lebkowsky 
A Parisian Spring in Austin 

It's a hell of a commute, Paris to Austin to Paris. Joseph Rowe's been
making it for the last six years. He spends most of his time in Paris,
but he still hangs out in Austin, where he was born and raised. 

Joseph first traveled to France in 1968, opting for the asylum President
Charles De Gaulle offered to Vietnam-era draft resisters: "De Gaulle
wanted to show his independence from American policy," says Joseph, "and
to irritate the Americans." But once in France, the radical Americans he
sheltered proved a constant irritant to the patriarchal De Gaulle.
Joseph joined the national revolutionary movement led by Daniel "Danny
theRed" Cohn-Bendit, which for a time paralyzed France with nationwide
strikes and fighting in the streets. 

Fortunately, Joseph wasn't tossed out of the country on his ear. In
Paris, he hooked up with some Argentinean musicians and toured parts of
Africa as their percussionist before returning to the US. More luck: his
local draft board never moved to prosecute draft resisters, so Joseph
got on with his life, earning his living in radio and by doing
translations. 

Six years ago he returned to France, and there met vocalist Catherine
Braslavsky through a mutual friend, David Hykes of the Harmonic Choir.
They eventually married during a short trip to the US. In 1995, they
recorded a CD, " Alma Anima: towards a new Gregorian Chant," and they're
currently working on another. 

Their subtly powerful music is a blend of Gregorian chant and African,
Asian, and Indian rhythms. Says Joseph, "I discovered that Afro-Arabic
rhythms, added to ethereal Gregorian chant, bring sensuality and even
sexuality back into this austere medieval music. The great wound of
Christianity is its rejection of sensuality -- a full-bodied sexual
Christianity really inspires me." 

Joseph is a practicing Buddhist, with the Buddhist's appreciation for
paradox -- especially useful given the paradoxical qualities of his
Austin/Paris bilocation. He was eager to discuss the different energies
he finds in the United States and Texas vs. France. 

"It's a love-hate affair," he says, "an attraction-repulsion of the two
very different cultures. Paris is intense: nervous rhythm, very high
energy. In Paris people are alert, very present -- sometimes in a
narrow, overly focused way. Whereas Austin is slackertown; people are
laid back, easygoing. They really are opposites." 

But isn't the slacker thing a myth? Austin is not without its enclaves
of intensity, if not downright craziness. 

"I don't think the slacker thing is incompatible with a certain kind of
intensity. Slacker doesn't mean weak and milquetoast. Folks here are
just as relaxed about their intensity as they are about everything else.
The good thing about the slacker ethos is that it's very tolerant and
noncombative. Its negative aspect is that there's often a lack of
initiative, an inability to see anything through -- some things just
don't get done." 

Isn't that kind of behavior actually in line with the thinking of
twentieth-century French intellectuals? 

"That's a good point. Though the attitude is different, they share a
common nihilistic base. I witnessed an interview once of Michel Foucault
by Noam Chomsky, during which Foucault openly smoked marijuana. In the
course of it, he let fly with a disgusting nihilistic rant. I had never
seen such darkness. The more Chomsky would say things like 'surely there
are human values; after all, we have many different cultures, many
different systems of thought, still there is a fundamental human value,'
the more Foucault would insist: 'No, there is no fundamental value.' 

"This kind of intransigence appears in both the postmodern and the
slacker stance. It's a disease that we have to oppose in ourselves and
others, a rejection of any kind of meaningful values. Whether you find
it in the laid-back slacker style or the intense Parisian style, it's
still nihilism." 

Yet, both the Austin and the Paris sensibilities have positive aspects:
"On the slacker side are tolerance, relaxation, openness. On the French
side, there's conservatism in the pure philosophic sense of the word,
not in the modern political sense. They conserve ways of doing things,
traditions, a sense of history." 

Though Joseph occasionally finds himself profoundly contradicting
traditional approaches, both he and Catherine value the concept of
tradition as an essential component of community. Both agree that
traditions are formed neither through abstract communication nor through
books or other media. It is in the face-to-face transmission of
experience that profound changes are instigated. This sense of
one-on-one passing on of knowledge is diminishing in both the US and
France. Joseph and Catherine are creating CDs of their music and
performing regularly, but their primary focus now is on workshops and
retreats, and on helping to build new traditions of human understanding. 

FIN