Dear Neil,
So, this summer I went back to the New Jersey beach that I went to last year. I went with my brother and my sister up I-77, I-85, I-95, I-97, and I-495 and through some back roads to get to our destination, a beach house rented by our grandmother.

After I-95 during the middle of I-97, we rested for the day in Maryland at my cousin's house around eight hours from home. My cousin's a pretty cool guy about a year younger than me. He's got the same problems as most kids (his food-obsessed parents know more about what he eats than what he thinks), and we get along. So, we were discussing movies and pop cultural ephemera.

He, "Hey, have you seen Fight Club?"
I, "Have I? I read the book!"
"Really? I have a great poster!"
"Me too!"
In unison, "Mischief, Mayhem, Soap"

See, the ironic thing is, you are not the movies you watch. But this is the age of mass production, in which nothing you own or use exists as a singular object. Everything is a copy of a copy.

This is the part where you imagine two Masai tribeswomen showing up at the tribal council in the same dress.

Qué embarazando.

OK, so the person I am, I have trouble using the word "love." And it's not like this stems from some childhood trauma, 'cause my parents used the word pretty incessantly. No, I think this is more John Keats' fault. It seems like, if I were in love, I'd be the first to know, right? And, I'd be sure about it, maybe?

Well, I dunno.

The whole thing confuses me, really.

I like a lot of different music. Of course, by different I mean different than mainstream music. My music itself is all the same, in that I only like one kind of music: good.

So, when we drove to the beach, we had like twelve hours to kill. So we used music to fill in the some gaps. My brother, he's still young and impressionable and is stumbling into a lot of my favorite bands, the way he stumbled into my dad's favorite bands five years ago.

Peter, Paul and Mary & The Beatles —> Radiohead & Sean Lennon

My sister though has always been conforming to societal pressure in her own dorky kinda way. So she likes songs on the radio, in spite of the fact that for the most part, it's all just product without any heart in the process, making art into shoddy craft.

Whatever.

So everything these days is mass produced. Even good things. Things I like.

CDs, Waffle Houses, iBooks, digital cameras, even the clothes in Goodwill, none are unique.

I was at a fast food joint the other day, and I wrote on a napkin:

And isn't that the problem? I can't remember where that Wendy's was anymore (somewhere in North? Carolina, maybe), but it doesn't matter, because they are all equal.

Nobody ever warned the Founding Fathers that democratization results in homogenization.

So since I can't say I'm in Love with girls, I like to think I'm in love about them.

Back during the school year, I made a list of dozens of girls I had seen and a couple I knew, on whom I had crushes.

And it's true, I'm in love about girls with curly hair and girls with straight hair; girls with their hair in a bun; girls with shoulder length hair, neck length hair, tomboy-ish hair; girls with messy hair with glitter; girls with red, brown, black or blonde hair; girls with dyed hair; girls with freshly washed hair, still wet, smelling of shampoo, uncomposed; girls with thick glasses and girls with oval glasses; girls with pretty eyes; girls accessorized and girls unadorned; girls with stickers on their foreheads; girls with buttons; girls with hemp necklaces; girls with pale skin and girls with freckles; girls with smooth skin and girls with rosy cheeks; girls who are tall or short; girls with epicanthic folds and girls without; girls in skirts or jeans or overalls; girls in sun dresses; girls who always wear black; girls who always smile; girls with wide eyes and arched eyebrows; girls with pensive glances and scowls; punk girls and squares; tramps and naïfs; modesty and immodesty; girls unprepossessing and girls self aware; girls who are smarter than me; girls who aren't; girls who are librarians, hackers, English majors, psych majors, CS majors, chemistry majors; girls with angles; girls with curves; sharp and rounded; A, B, C, and D; girls with classical proportions and breasts whose medium size complement the angularity of the hips better than larger breasts would; girls who look like a Botticelli, an Ingres, a Picasso, a Duchamp; little girls and old women who show the seed of something beautiful germinating or wilted; girls with one thing, anything that makes them catch the eye.

And I'm in love with all genres of music. Which was always the beauty of Cibo Matto. It's a band that will let you tour the world of sound on one CD. Beck, too, in his way. When I first got into music, I was very into bands that tried a little everything. Now, I'm moving toward having one incredible band for an individual purpose, instead of having an all-purpose band. Each band has a sound. Gotta catch 'em all. But I still love Cibo Matto in a special way.

So, my brother, being sixteen, was thinking about that thing that kids think about too much these days while we were at the beach house. So at night, he and some of the male cousins and I would walk around the streets of Sea Isle, looking for. Just looking.

But all we ever found were some drunk girls shouting down from their balcony, like more tragic Juliets.

My brother, I said to him how there oughta be a very special Sunday School, wherein the Presbyterian Church in America lays down its guidelines on these things. Rules of thumb. Base numbers. Refutation or confirmation of the moral assertions of an ex-president.

Instead, there's this fuzzy line that some inner part of you wants to get as close to as possible. Without crossing, of course.

Of course.

These days, there are so many people they may as well be mass-produced. You can't meet them all. You can't meet most of them. It'd take meeting ten people a day for ten years to meet a majority of the people in my city. And it's a small city.

So, naturally enough, most people tend to do the same kinds of things. Watch the same shows, eat the same things, shop at the same stores.

And it’s the modernity's job to play up the similarities. It makes production simpler for people to be the same. Still, you gotta wonder what all this same is doing to our psyches…

When I'm looking to make a crush, I'll find a girl with one unique thing about her.

Back during the school year, my friends started joking around by picking girls at random for me to ask to take me to the grocery store, as I was without car. A good pick up line and first date all in one. Well, that's the joke anyway.

But they kept picking these faceless blondes. Nothing about the girls they picked stood out.

Besides, I'm too shy for that anyhow.

If I like a girl, I'll arrange some coincidences. We'll meet "by chance." I'll happen to talk to people we both know in her presence. I'll happen to be eating at the same time. To be in the lobby at the same time. Run into her. Ask her a question in a survey. Stuff like that.

I've only met a couple girls who have known about Cibo Matto. It's a pretty neat thing. Two girls at Furman noticed my Cibo Matto t-shirt and knew what it meant. One wanted to know how to get one for herself. Kungfunation.com, I told her. The shirts are, of course, mass-produced.

By way of pickup conversation, I told the girl who wanted a shirt that I had dreamt of meeting a girl who likes Cibo Matto. But it went nowhere. She had a boyfriend, of course.

When we were driving back from the shore, I put in a four-hour shift driving, just like everyone else. During my shift, we snaked down I-83 toward I-77 but never changed roads or states. I listened to Buffalo Daughter's "Captain Vapor Athletes" because I think it's a good driving CD. Buffalo Daughter has to be one of my favorite bands, and "Li303ve" has to be one of my favorite songs. It's so beautiful, the way the 303 line moves the song forward slowly during its 10 minutes, 54 second course, past the laundry list of lyrics toward the three beautiful epiphanies that punctuate the piece. The song constantly threatens to grow out of control until the beautiful chorus comes in and drives away doubt. It builds and builds until the final glorious crescendo, when the guitar line is given full expression and a joyous eargasm promises that everything will be all right. The song even has samples from an Apollo mission. What more could you want?

Except someone with which to share it.

This song, I don't play it for my brother, because I think he isn't really worthy of it, in a way. It's a very personal song.

But I wish I could share it. I wish there was someone that understood its classical scope and new rock pretensions. Someone who would be shocked to learn that on a rare Japanese "Tribute to the Blues: Evolve or Die" album, Buffalo Daughter produced its spiritual opposite, "Sad Days, Lonely Nights," in which the moog line is never fully allowed to express itself and instead the listener is frustrated and maddened by the tantalizing prospect of a full blown jam, only to be devastated by the concluding sentiment and only lyrics: "Sad days, lonely nights."

I want a girl who knows about Buffalo Daughter, too. I don't wanna be unique.

Our vacation was basically the stuff of mass production. We went to the beach. We lounged with relatives. We watched cable TV and played in the surf. We crabbed. We walked along the Ocean City boardwalk with a zillion other people. All that good stuff.

There are four basic categories of girls I love: Gwen Steffani, Helena Bonham Carter, Renée Zellweger, and Lisa Loeb. Punk riot grrrl, irresistible temptress siren, super cute romantic, and Diana (untouchable moon goddess). I've dated three girls of three types. Still fishing for that moon goddess.

This summer, to a large extent, I'm living in a fantasy land. I'm waiting for school. I'm punching the clock, sitting in the lobby, pushing the rock up the hill, until I get back to real life, ie. college.

My college friends agreed via IM the other day that they too just wanted to get back to life that mattered.

So, until I get to school, I live in fantasy land with fantasy girlfriends. *Sigh*

These days, since everything and everyone is a copy of a copy, how does one stand out? The question of why to stand out will be considered axiomatic.

This problem really seems to vex the kids I know from Airport High. They seek attention and spread their standing out disease. Its fun to watch, but just makes bystanders go, "Hmmm…" Which these days is becoming the best case scenario. (Re: Seattle, Montreal, Genoa.)

At this point, they advanced to the level where they have to not conform by announcing their intentions to conform. Fake school dress codes, Britney Spears worship, GAP bags, Abercrombie and Fitch. It's a remarkable sight. The kids twist trendy onto itself.

Mario, he's a mass produced work of art. And, every cartridge, every rom file, all of those little masterpieces of gaming perfection on which he exists, the love of his lives is built in.

Peach, Princess of the Toadstools.

And, every time you play, you exist for the end of reuniting Mario and his beloved. It's a beautiful thing, the love those kids have. It's like stairs with too few stars, endless.

I'm just happy to be a part of it.

Me, I hope there's some little Paula out there for me. A perfect companion with whom I'll be able to get through any adventure.

the Earthbound skirt.

I dream, dream, dream, as my magicant summer self.

When you get down to it, that Fight Club thing me and my cousin love so much is just another love story, with B plot about overthrowing the industrialized world thrown in.

Guy meets girl at a self-help group, and falls for her, but like in all romantic comedies, starts by hating her. (As a side note, no one has given me an example of that old cliché happening in real life, fake hate covering a real love. "When will you two kids stop fighting and see that you love each other!")

In the book, the climax is when the narrator admits that he kind of likes Marla.

Not Love or anything though.

On the way to and from our vacation, we stopped and ate a Cracker Barrel, a Southern-style chain restaurant with a gift shop, built in. My sister noticed the metal barcodes on the old-timey wall decorations. We took a complimentary map of the USA that showed us the four hundred some locations in which we could eat a Cracker Barrel dinner (or breakfast, which is served at all hours).

I love just looking at maps. Seeing the subtle twists and turns of the interstates as they bind the country. I like to observe the slow rise in their number as one moves from California's I-4 to Maine's I-95. I like to see which cities are starting points and endpoints for a stretch of highway. It's such a beautiful thing, so endlessly engaging. The interstates are life in America™, and one is tempted to believe that by studying them, one can understand it.

So many people are bound together by these impersonal phalanxes of concrete and asphalt that the mind boggles.

The question of where we're going has become void. We know all that matters is how we get there.

Neil, the problem with mass production is you start to see everything as replaceable, interchangeable, but it isn't that way at all. I may own stuff that other people own, but it's still mine, uniquely so. I may be in love about so many girls that one is tempted to blend them together into the ideal of woman, but that doesn't make it so. Each one is unique.

Besides, there are unique things, like Carolina Lunch and the tobogganing hat my grandmother made for me. And what's more uniqueness is something that we all posses, something even copies posses. They all stand on their own, even if they are supported by others.

Neil, you are uniquely the first person to step foot on the moon. And no one can take that from you.

Neil, you married right out of college, and y'all are still together after all these years of a long distance relationship, so I know that to you Janet Shearon of Evanston, Illinois is one in six billion. And that's what love is, maybe, seeing what it is inside of each other that makes us unique and appreciating it.

So, I guess I'm in love. I just want someone to notice.