I took a course called, and based on, "The Political Economy of Oil". It was my first introduction to real economic study. The professor was Yahya Madra, my academic advisor and one of the folks I school I really admire. The course was a lot harder than I thought, but I ended up with an A-, and find myself now rereading all the required text as summer drags on.
One book, a pretty popular one, "Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet" by Michael Klare was sitting in the passenger seat of my station wagon. I had forgotten about to bring it into work; I'd been reading it, sitting out in the garden shop and a dimly breakroom alternatively, and it was about halfway through. This course had stopped at this point, right before chapters that no longer discussed countries, growth and industrialization and instead presented specific geographic areas in moments of crises as a "new international world energy order" attempted to claim them in the name of statist tendency.
This doesn't really matter. It's just a good book and a good course. The oil though; there is a phrase, said in Busdriver's (with Daedalus and Radioinactive) Pen's Oil, where Busdriver takes a break from rapping and simply states, "Just because the world runs on oil doesn't mean oilmen should run the world." This is followed by a nonsensical line about paving the road over the sky. Pitchfork cites this line in a review , which is how I found the song again.
The summer after sophomore year of high school, we'd go out driving in my friend's Cutlass. It was different people, but mostly two people controlled the music, and almost anytime we went out I'd hear Pen's Oil. It was greeted with mostly laughs, and I really didn't even think it was rap music at the time. These same trips would end up blasting Straight Outta Compton driving down a residential neighborhood unfortunately located on Compton Lane. The idea of Pen's Oil, I don't think anyway, wasn't really understood by any of us.
It's weird to think about that, and I would sit there and wonder if I even enjoyed the song then. It was really weird. It's something I don't even appreciate fully now; Busdriver still just seems nasally and awkward, unless I get that timing up just right. Stuck in traffic, going to work or coming home or going grocery shopping, it sounds perfect. It fits so well against being stuck behind a car going five under, or still being trapped in a perfectly formed grid of car going 70 down the freeway. The nonsense of it, what first hits, the almost toy-like production, is brilliant. If these are just folks sitting around, messing with music and trying to have a good time, it's what you want to hear. It's the same music that fit fine with just cruising around this little suburban down in the middle of high school.
The juxtaposition of these ideas is why I fell in love with this song. It's a bunch of guys just playing around with a concept that I spent almost 20 hours a week reading about and trying to understand. It's the weird, laid back discussion of oil politics I was promised when I applied to Gettysburg. It's wonderful, bringing up my present fall into what seems like volatile stability, the idea that everything is changing but it always feels the same, and days when everything was changing and all I could do was feel it.
It all comes back to the oil. Most people don't realize we're already immersed in a time period where oil is a political tool, as deeply ingrained in international strategy as arms sales. Klare's "New International Energy Order" is coming to fruition, and people don't even notice. It just seems like prices going up and down uncontrollably, despite there being measured and calculated plots to gain and control oil. It doesn't feel like all that much is happening when you're stuck in traffic or sitting at work, but it's all going on.
So that's why I love Pen's Oil. Please listen.
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