.
And what did it mean that we felt no true sense of direction, that we were aimless, paralyzed, confused and at the end of the day could not really say why. That we were not criminals of action but only criminals of thought. That we hungered for something new but when we saw something new felt sure it was only the same old thing we’d seen so many times before. That in the morning we waited for evening and in the evening we waited for night. That travel sounded good but staying home sounded even better. That books were written, and re-written, and re-written again, but it was so very difficult to find anyone to actually read them. That the war most certainly continued though it was often no longer possible to read about it in the papers. What did it mean that a crime could be committed and no one could care less. Or that we would pretend to care but essentially fool no one. Profit is difficult to maintain. Sensationalism still works whether or not one can easily see through it. A vague sense of menace hangs stilted in the air. The world we wanted was a world only able to change so much.
[Berlin, 2006]
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May 5, 2006
April 9, 2006
As is generally known, the figure of the art critic...
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As is generally known, the figure of the art critic emerges at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, alongside the gradual rise of a broad, democratic public. At that time, he was certainly not regarded as a representative of the art world but strictly as an outside observer whose function was to judge and criticize works of art in the name of the public exactly as would any other well-educated observer with the time and literary facility: good taste was seen as the expression of an aesthetic “common sense.” The art critic’s judgement should be incorruptible, i.e. bear no obligation to the artist. For a critic to give up his distance meant being corrupted by the art world and neglecting his professional responsibilities: this demand for disinterested art criticism in the name of the public sphere is the assertion of Kant’s third critique, the first aesthetic treatise of modernity.
The judicial ideal, however, was betrayed by the art criticism of the historical avant-garde. The art of the avant-garde consciously withdrew itself from the judgement of the public. It did not address the public as it was but instead spoke to a new humanity as it should – or at least could – be. The art of the avant-garde presupposed a different, new humanity for its reception – one that would be able to grasp the hidden meaning of pure colour and form (Kandinsky), to subject its imagination and even its daily life to the strict laws of geometry (Malevich, Mondrian, the Constructivists, Bauhaus), to recognize a urinal as a work of art (Duchamp). The avant-garde thus introduced a rupture in society not reducible to any previously existing social differences.
The new, artificial difference is the true artwork of the avant-garde. Now it is not the observer who judges the artwork, but the artwork that judges – and often condemns – it’s public. This strategy has often been called elitist, but it suggests an elite equally open to anyone in so far as it excludes everyone to the same degree. To be chosen doesn’t automatically mean dominance, even mastery. Every individual is free to place himself, against the rest of the public, on the side of the artwork – to number himself among those constituting the new humanity. Several art critics of the historical avant-garde did just that. In place of the critic in the name of society arose social critique in the name of art: the artwork doesn’t form the object of judgement but is instead taken as the point of departure for a critique aimed at society and the world.
The art critic of today inherited the older public office along with the avant-garde betrayal of this office. The paradoxical task of judging art in the name of the public while criticizing society in the name of art opens a deep rift within the discourse of contemporary criticism. And one can read today’s discourse as an attempt to bridge, or at least conceal, this divide. For example, there is the critic’s demand that art thematize existing social differences and position itself against the illusion of cultural homogeneity. That certainly sounds very avant-garde, but what one forgets is that the avant-garde didn’t thematize already-existing differences but introduced previously nonexistent ones. The public was equally bewildered in the face of Malevich’s Suprematism or that of Duchamp’s Dadaism, and it is this generalized nonunderstanding – bewilderment regardless of class, race, or gender – that is actually the democratic moment of the various avant-garde projects.
– Boris Groys
.
As is generally known, the figure of the art critic emerges at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, alongside the gradual rise of a broad, democratic public. At that time, he was certainly not regarded as a representative of the art world but strictly as an outside observer whose function was to judge and criticize works of art in the name of the public exactly as would any other well-educated observer with the time and literary facility: good taste was seen as the expression of an aesthetic “common sense.” The art critic’s judgement should be incorruptible, i.e. bear no obligation to the artist. For a critic to give up his distance meant being corrupted by the art world and neglecting his professional responsibilities: this demand for disinterested art criticism in the name of the public sphere is the assertion of Kant’s third critique, the first aesthetic treatise of modernity.
The judicial ideal, however, was betrayed by the art criticism of the historical avant-garde. The art of the avant-garde consciously withdrew itself from the judgement of the public. It did not address the public as it was but instead spoke to a new humanity as it should – or at least could – be. The art of the avant-garde presupposed a different, new humanity for its reception – one that would be able to grasp the hidden meaning of pure colour and form (Kandinsky), to subject its imagination and even its daily life to the strict laws of geometry (Malevich, Mondrian, the Constructivists, Bauhaus), to recognize a urinal as a work of art (Duchamp). The avant-garde thus introduced a rupture in society not reducible to any previously existing social differences.
The new, artificial difference is the true artwork of the avant-garde. Now it is not the observer who judges the artwork, but the artwork that judges – and often condemns – it’s public. This strategy has often been called elitist, but it suggests an elite equally open to anyone in so far as it excludes everyone to the same degree. To be chosen doesn’t automatically mean dominance, even mastery. Every individual is free to place himself, against the rest of the public, on the side of the artwork – to number himself among those constituting the new humanity. Several art critics of the historical avant-garde did just that. In place of the critic in the name of society arose social critique in the name of art: the artwork doesn’t form the object of judgement but is instead taken as the point of departure for a critique aimed at society and the world.
The art critic of today inherited the older public office along with the avant-garde betrayal of this office. The paradoxical task of judging art in the name of the public while criticizing society in the name of art opens a deep rift within the discourse of contemporary criticism. And one can read today’s discourse as an attempt to bridge, or at least conceal, this divide. For example, there is the critic’s demand that art thematize existing social differences and position itself against the illusion of cultural homogeneity. That certainly sounds very avant-garde, but what one forgets is that the avant-garde didn’t thematize already-existing differences but introduced previously nonexistent ones. The public was equally bewildered in the face of Malevich’s Suprematism or that of Duchamp’s Dadaism, and it is this generalized nonunderstanding – bewilderment regardless of class, race, or gender – that is actually the democratic moment of the various avant-garde projects.
– Boris Groys
.
April 2, 2006
I am currently reading Secret Publicity by Netherlands art critic Sven Lutticken...
.
I am currently reading Secret Publicity by Netherlands art critic Sven Lutticken. There are many relevant quotes but here are one or two from his essay on performance:
"The conclusion from this can only be that performance art has never been a real threat to the spectacle: its integration into spectacle as media performance comes as no surprise. Yet if performance artists were to radicalize the anti-production tradition, if they were to really roll up their sleeves and take the fight against reproduction seriously - couldn't this result in a form of performance that was incompatible with capitalism? This line of reasoning rests on the assumption that 'the media' are virtually identical with advanced capitalism. Yet following Guy Debord, one can argue that the spectacular character of the capitalist economy is not primarily located in media like film, photography and video, but in commodity fetishism: commodities seem to maintain whimsical 'social' relations due to their exchange value. In the process the commodities become images, hieroglyphic representations of the relations in human society. This primary spectacle of commodities-become-images is thus the prevailing social condition, which is reflected in 'the media' in the form of a secondary spectacle of images-become-commodities, which reinforces the primary spectacle. To get rid of the society of the spectacle, it is hence not enough to get rid of 'the media'; the whole of society must be revolutionized."
[...]
"In recent years it has become more and more obvious that the spectacle has taken a 'performative turn'. Typical of the neo-liberal performance culture is the TV programme in which a mediagenic entrepreneur like Donald Trump selects a new appointee from candidates who must perform themselves in a way that will win them a highly-paid job. The spectacle of the Situationists, which involved a distinction between a dreamlike theatre of commodities and the passive consumer, has been succeeded by a participatory, performative spectacle. Thus we have entered a phase that the Situationists themselves failed to forsee: in spite of the fact that commodities need not be objects, immaterial commodities such as services were somewhat neglected by Marxist theory, including that of SI, and the transformation of anonymous services into personalized performances is a development that was not seen or forseen by the Situationists.
The primary immaterial commodity in Marxist theory was labour power: a statistical average of the amount of labour needed to produce a certain industrial commodity, which is responsible for the exchange value of goods (contrary to the fetishist illusion that they obtain value through mutual relations). In principle, this theory of labour power can also be applied to many services that do not depend on a performer. Services too are commoodities in which labour has been invested, and in most cases the worker will be paid a wage that represents an abstraction - the amount of labour normally needed to do the job. Today, however, it seems increasingly difficult to base the value of goods on this statistical average - plus the surplus value, which the employer pockets. In the contemporary economy, value has spun completely out of control. A trendy cup of coffee may cost a small fortune because it represents an 'experience', a top manager can take home an absurdly inflated bonus because he is a unique performer: he sells a habitus with capabilities and personal qualities that are supposedly unique. The value of such performers and their performances can no longer be measured in abstract labour power. If object-commodities become images in classical spectacle, in the performative spectacle the service too turns into an image. Of course, this does not mean that the other, anonymous service jobs no longer exist, but increasingly the performative colonizes labour: even in jobs where wages are standardized (and low), the worker is expected to put his or her unique charms and qualities into the job if he or she wants to keep it. As anonymous services become performances, even abstract labour power has to be enacted in a personalized way by individual performers. This turns not only performance into a commodity, but ultimately the performer as well."
[...]
"The loose way in which contemporary critics and theorists use the notion of the performative owes much of its charm to the magical, animistic suggestion it imparts. In a culture of the performative imperative, the notion of performativity (or at least its sound-bite version) suggests a world that is infinitely malleable. If everything is performative, everything is open to influence and transformation. Performative language becomes the thinking person's magic: if contemporary society often seems to correspond to the grim picture Adorno painted of modernity as irrational and constraining as the most primitive stages of civilization, the performative alleviates this by reenacting the over-estimation of the mind's power which authors such as Tylor, Frazer and Freud considered to be typical for the earliest stages of civilization: magic as an oneric attempt at controlling a hostile environment. The transformation of the performative into magic is signalled by the refusal to investigate the conditions under which an action or speech act may be truly performative; it is nicer to dream of being a heroic performer like Beuys, than to acknowledge that one is an actor is someone else's spectacle. The first step towards preventing the further degeneration of performativity discourse into sham progressiveness is to acknowledge the conditions of the performative spectacle, which also means acknowledging that Tino Sehgal is not that radically different from Matthew Barney, or Donald Trump."
.
I am currently reading Secret Publicity by Netherlands art critic Sven Lutticken. There are many relevant quotes but here are one or two from his essay on performance:
"The conclusion from this can only be that performance art has never been a real threat to the spectacle: its integration into spectacle as media performance comes as no surprise. Yet if performance artists were to radicalize the anti-production tradition, if they were to really roll up their sleeves and take the fight against reproduction seriously - couldn't this result in a form of performance that was incompatible with capitalism? This line of reasoning rests on the assumption that 'the media' are virtually identical with advanced capitalism. Yet following Guy Debord, one can argue that the spectacular character of the capitalist economy is not primarily located in media like film, photography and video, but in commodity fetishism: commodities seem to maintain whimsical 'social' relations due to their exchange value. In the process the commodities become images, hieroglyphic representations of the relations in human society. This primary spectacle of commodities-become-images is thus the prevailing social condition, which is reflected in 'the media' in the form of a secondary spectacle of images-become-commodities, which reinforces the primary spectacle. To get rid of the society of the spectacle, it is hence not enough to get rid of 'the media'; the whole of society must be revolutionized."
[...]
"In recent years it has become more and more obvious that the spectacle has taken a 'performative turn'. Typical of the neo-liberal performance culture is the TV programme in which a mediagenic entrepreneur like Donald Trump selects a new appointee from candidates who must perform themselves in a way that will win them a highly-paid job. The spectacle of the Situationists, which involved a distinction between a dreamlike theatre of commodities and the passive consumer, has been succeeded by a participatory, performative spectacle. Thus we have entered a phase that the Situationists themselves failed to forsee: in spite of the fact that commodities need not be objects, immaterial commodities such as services were somewhat neglected by Marxist theory, including that of SI, and the transformation of anonymous services into personalized performances is a development that was not seen or forseen by the Situationists.
The primary immaterial commodity in Marxist theory was labour power: a statistical average of the amount of labour needed to produce a certain industrial commodity, which is responsible for the exchange value of goods (contrary to the fetishist illusion that they obtain value through mutual relations). In principle, this theory of labour power can also be applied to many services that do not depend on a performer. Services too are commoodities in which labour has been invested, and in most cases the worker will be paid a wage that represents an abstraction - the amount of labour normally needed to do the job. Today, however, it seems increasingly difficult to base the value of goods on this statistical average - plus the surplus value, which the employer pockets. In the contemporary economy, value has spun completely out of control. A trendy cup of coffee may cost a small fortune because it represents an 'experience', a top manager can take home an absurdly inflated bonus because he is a unique performer: he sells a habitus with capabilities and personal qualities that are supposedly unique. The value of such performers and their performances can no longer be measured in abstract labour power. If object-commodities become images in classical spectacle, in the performative spectacle the service too turns into an image. Of course, this does not mean that the other, anonymous service jobs no longer exist, but increasingly the performative colonizes labour: even in jobs where wages are standardized (and low), the worker is expected to put his or her unique charms and qualities into the job if he or she wants to keep it. As anonymous services become performances, even abstract labour power has to be enacted in a personalized way by individual performers. This turns not only performance into a commodity, but ultimately the performer as well."
[...]
"The loose way in which contemporary critics and theorists use the notion of the performative owes much of its charm to the magical, animistic suggestion it imparts. In a culture of the performative imperative, the notion of performativity (or at least its sound-bite version) suggests a world that is infinitely malleable. If everything is performative, everything is open to influence and transformation. Performative language becomes the thinking person's magic: if contemporary society often seems to correspond to the grim picture Adorno painted of modernity as irrational and constraining as the most primitive stages of civilization, the performative alleviates this by reenacting the over-estimation of the mind's power which authors such as Tylor, Frazer and Freud considered to be typical for the earliest stages of civilization: magic as an oneric attempt at controlling a hostile environment. The transformation of the performative into magic is signalled by the refusal to investigate the conditions under which an action or speech act may be truly performative; it is nicer to dream of being a heroic performer like Beuys, than to acknowledge that one is an actor is someone else's spectacle. The first step towards preventing the further degeneration of performativity discourse into sham progressiveness is to acknowledge the conditions of the performative spectacle, which also means acknowledging that Tino Sehgal is not that radically different from Matthew Barney, or Donald Trump."
.
March 26, 2006
I feel that man should not have thrown himself into this amazing adventure that is history...
.
"I feel that man should not have thrown himself into this amazing adventure that is history. Everything that he does turns against him because he wasn’t made to do something, he was made solely to look and to live as the animals and the trees do."
– E.M. Cioran
"I fear the animals regard man as a creature of their own kind which has in a highly dangerous fashion lost its healthy animal reason – as the mad animal, as the laughing animal, as the weeping animal, as the unhappy animal."
– Friedrich Nietzsche
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"I feel that man should not have thrown himself into this amazing adventure that is history. Everything that he does turns against him because he wasn’t made to do something, he was made solely to look and to live as the animals and the trees do."
– E.M. Cioran
"I fear the animals regard man as a creature of their own kind which has in a highly dangerous fashion lost its healthy animal reason – as the mad animal, as the laughing animal, as the weeping animal, as the unhappy animal."
– Friedrich Nietzsche
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March 20, 2006
Every impulse of renovation, at the very moment when it approaches its goal...
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"Every impulse of renovation, at the very moment when it approaches its goal, when it realizes itself through the State, creeps towards the automatism of the old institutions and assumes the face of tradition. As it defines and confirms itself, it loses energy, and this is also true of ideas: the more formulated and explicit they are, the more their efficacy diminishes. A distinct idea is an idea without a future. Beyond their virtual status, thought and action degrade and annul themselves: one ends up as system, the other as power: two forms of sterility and failure. Though we can endlessly debate the destiny of revolutions, political or otherwise, a single feature is common to them all, a single certainty: the disappointment they generate in all who have believed in them with some fervor."
– E.M. Cioran
.
"Every impulse of renovation, at the very moment when it approaches its goal, when it realizes itself through the State, creeps towards the automatism of the old institutions and assumes the face of tradition. As it defines and confirms itself, it loses energy, and this is also true of ideas: the more formulated and explicit they are, the more their efficacy diminishes. A distinct idea is an idea without a future. Beyond their virtual status, thought and action degrade and annul themselves: one ends up as system, the other as power: two forms of sterility and failure. Though we can endlessly debate the destiny of revolutions, political or otherwise, a single feature is common to them all, a single certainty: the disappointment they generate in all who have believed in them with some fervor."
– E.M. Cioran
.
March 5, 2006
Nicholas Mosley quote
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"I think I must always have had the feeling (as apart from conscious idea) that words were things that, if one was to do anything worth-while with them, would be very difficult. I suppose one of the key things here might be that I stammered – when young, stammered badly – I often forget about this now, because although I still stammer a bit it's almost completely stopped worrying me. But it was hell as a child: and I suppose it put me into an odd relationship with words. They could not just be trotted out, that is: they had to be worked on. But more than this – Deep in a stammerer's psyche I think there is an unconscious outrage at the way that people use words – at the way that one is expected to use words – there is a pretence that one is using them for communication, whereas in fact people are protecting themselves, attacking others, etc., etc.; and they will not admit this. And the stammerer feels something of this (however unconscious) and in himself goes into confusion."
– Nicholas Mosley
.
"I think I must always have had the feeling (as apart from conscious idea) that words were things that, if one was to do anything worth-while with them, would be very difficult. I suppose one of the key things here might be that I stammered – when young, stammered badly – I often forget about this now, because although I still stammer a bit it's almost completely stopped worrying me. But it was hell as a child: and I suppose it put me into an odd relationship with words. They could not just be trotted out, that is: they had to be worked on. But more than this – Deep in a stammerer's psyche I think there is an unconscious outrage at the way that people use words – at the way that one is expected to use words – there is a pretence that one is using them for communication, whereas in fact people are protecting themselves, attacking others, etc., etc.; and they will not admit this. And the stammerer feels something of this (however unconscious) and in himself goes into confusion."
– Nicholas Mosley
.
February 26, 2006
Murau's Tabu
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A few hours ago I got back from the Goethe Institute where I watched the silent film Tabu by FW Murau with live piano accompaniment. I went to the screening alone, thinking that perhaps a short break from working on this screenplay might help me re-focus. But then I ran into a few old friends at the screening who invited me out for dinner afterwards. I politely declined, saying I had to rush home and get back to work on the screenplay, and now I'm home and staring at the computer screen, not really making any progress, wishing I had gone for dinner before re-entering this struggle between my artistic temperament and my desire to have more discipline.
Tabu is such a beautiful film, so simple and cruel and sad. I'd sort of like to read a 'post-colonial studies' critique of it's racial politics but I will not procrastinate working on the screenplay further by searching the internet for just such a document. There's a moment near the end of Tabu where the male lead is swimming and swimming, trying to catch up with his lover who is being taken away by boat to be sacrificed to the gods, and he finally catches up with the boat and grabs the rope and the villain (not really the villain, more the village elder) calmly cuts the rope without even so much as looking down at it and the male lead keeps swimming but he can't catch up to the boat a second time and soon he gets tired and drowns. Murau is so good at those utterly precise images of otherworldly cruelty.
Working on this screenplay, full of witty dialog and more dialog, is such a stark contrast with the poetic silence of Tabu. Limitations really do add something.
.
A few hours ago I got back from the Goethe Institute where I watched the silent film Tabu by FW Murau with live piano accompaniment. I went to the screening alone, thinking that perhaps a short break from working on this screenplay might help me re-focus. But then I ran into a few old friends at the screening who invited me out for dinner afterwards. I politely declined, saying I had to rush home and get back to work on the screenplay, and now I'm home and staring at the computer screen, not really making any progress, wishing I had gone for dinner before re-entering this struggle between my artistic temperament and my desire to have more discipline.
Tabu is such a beautiful film, so simple and cruel and sad. I'd sort of like to read a 'post-colonial studies' critique of it's racial politics but I will not procrastinate working on the screenplay further by searching the internet for just such a document. There's a moment near the end of Tabu where the male lead is swimming and swimming, trying to catch up with his lover who is being taken away by boat to be sacrificed to the gods, and he finally catches up with the boat and grabs the rope and the villain (not really the villain, more the village elder) calmly cuts the rope without even so much as looking down at it and the male lead keeps swimming but he can't catch up to the boat a second time and soon he gets tired and drowns. Murau is so good at those utterly precise images of otherworldly cruelty.
Working on this screenplay, full of witty dialog and more dialog, is such a stark contrast with the poetic silence of Tabu. Limitations really do add something.
.
February 20, 2006
Some comedians
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Some comedians are actually funny while others are not. Would it be correct to say the comedians who are not funny are actually not comedians? It would not be correct. Both the funny and unfunny comedians still fall within the larger category of comedian.
Let us then take the hypothetical situation of a comedian who was trying not to be funny. Could such a comedian still be said to be a comedian?
[Unfinished]
.
Some comedians are actually funny while others are not. Would it be correct to say the comedians who are not funny are actually not comedians? It would not be correct. Both the funny and unfunny comedians still fall within the larger category of comedian.
Let us then take the hypothetical situation of a comedian who was trying not to be funny. Could such a comedian still be said to be a comedian?
[Unfinished]
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February 12, 2006
On Double Consciousness
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Simply giving people ‘the information’ will not suffice, for it is a central characteristic of the modern world that we are able to live in a state of highly advanced ‘double consciousness.’ For example, you know driving a car contributes to the depletion of the ozone layer but, for a whole variety of reasons (convenience, status, because everyone else does it and therefore it seems normal, etc.) you continue to drive regardless. Some degree of such double consciousness is an absolute necessity if one is to survive in the contemporary world, undermining it completely is simply not an option. However, how do we open up a dialogue with this mental reality, can discussing it forthrightly be one way of re-opening questions which currently seem closed?
.
Simply giving people ‘the information’ will not suffice, for it is a central characteristic of the modern world that we are able to live in a state of highly advanced ‘double consciousness.’ For example, you know driving a car contributes to the depletion of the ozone layer but, for a whole variety of reasons (convenience, status, because everyone else does it and therefore it seems normal, etc.) you continue to drive regardless. Some degree of such double consciousness is an absolute necessity if one is to survive in the contemporary world, undermining it completely is simply not an option. However, how do we open up a dialogue with this mental reality, can discussing it forthrightly be one way of re-opening questions which currently seem closed?
.
February 7, 2006
Ideologues Want It Desperately
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Fucking right wing scuzzballs simply want it more badly then the rest of us, aren’t plagued by the same doubts, the same suspicions of power, don’t anticipate the desperate hangover backlash that inevitably follows each new success, believe in their ends absolutely (perhaps only as an overcompensation for a neurotic insecurity which is equally absolute) and, this being the case, will continuously find ways of gaining power at all costs.
Here on the other side we’re all just a little bit nervous, not sure which next move is most likely to give the desired result and which next move is most likely to just completely fucking backfire. This puts us at a clear disadvantage. And just like the classic T-shirts: ‘Drummers Do It With Rhythm’, ‘Truckers Do It While… (I don’t know… while driving trucks I suppose.)’, ‘Environmentalists Do It Without Polluting’; future Salvation Army T-shirt racks will feature faded ‘Ideogolues Want It Desperately’ logos but (and this is only a fear) I suspect the scuzzballs will sadly not fade away as well.
.
Fucking right wing scuzzballs simply want it more badly then the rest of us, aren’t plagued by the same doubts, the same suspicions of power, don’t anticipate the desperate hangover backlash that inevitably follows each new success, believe in their ends absolutely (perhaps only as an overcompensation for a neurotic insecurity which is equally absolute) and, this being the case, will continuously find ways of gaining power at all costs.
Here on the other side we’re all just a little bit nervous, not sure which next move is most likely to give the desired result and which next move is most likely to just completely fucking backfire. This puts us at a clear disadvantage. And just like the classic T-shirts: ‘Drummers Do It With Rhythm’, ‘Truckers Do It While… (I don’t know… while driving trucks I suppose.)’, ‘Environmentalists Do It Without Polluting’; future Salvation Army T-shirt racks will feature faded ‘Ideogolues Want It Desperately’ logos but (and this is only a fear) I suspect the scuzzballs will sadly not fade away as well.
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December 19, 2005
Nasty / Compulsive
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In a Friendster profile from some exciting looking stranger in (I think it was) France I read “I have a nasty habit of avoiding things that make me feel” and I thought it was rather elegant and wanted to write it down so I reached for my notebook and wrote “I have a compulsive habit of avoiding things that make me feel,” in less than a second misremembering the word ‘nasty’ as ‘compulsive,’ perhaps implying that I don’t find anything particularly nasty about it, or perhaps only stressing how (for me) all such endeavors are fundamentally obsessive.
.
In a Friendster profile from some exciting looking stranger in (I think it was) France I read “I have a nasty habit of avoiding things that make me feel” and I thought it was rather elegant and wanted to write it down so I reached for my notebook and wrote “I have a compulsive habit of avoiding things that make me feel,” in less than a second misremembering the word ‘nasty’ as ‘compulsive,’ perhaps implying that I don’t find anything particularly nasty about it, or perhaps only stressing how (for me) all such endeavors are fundamentally obsessive.
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December 12, 2005
The Triage of Small Things
I had forgotten that I had said that modern life was like triage, that we deal with each thing in our lives on a strictly emergency basis, and things that seem less urgent are mercifully shuttled off to the sides. That we are all much too busy and this fact infects the very texture of our consciousness. I had forgotten because somehow, somewhere along the way, I slipped off the fact of all of that and sometimes it seems like I no longer spin. Who (of any substance) speaks of what is the good way to live? (All we get are tepid self-help books the sub-text of which always has something to do with how the individual can survive all the pain, damage and loneliness that capitalism unknowingly inflicts.) But of course we already know what the good way to live is (easier said than done): a life against the triage of small, daily things and towards giving meaning its due, against pushing things to the side and towards bringing that which is essential towards the centre of one’s heart. (But perhaps it is better to keep such thoughts to oneself.)
December 5, 2005
Happening Time
.
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Corporate oligarchy isn’t my idea of a happening time. An investment in our future is an investment in the enemy’s consolidation. Take the have’s and the have-not’s, toss them all in a big old blender, and let’s really mix things up. Passion belongs on the internet. A feeling of warmth on the cusp of the genitals is a feeling that must remain unredeemed. Back when communism was strong text fragments of advertising had a reason to be afraid and union bosses had greater leverage. We belong together, a together so black there is simply no denying its impotent potency. A momentary lapse in judgement reveals criminal intent where previously only claustrophobia prevailed. Reconsidering my previous precious position, corporate oligarchy might sometimes, or even occasionally, become my idea of a happening time. In particular, a focus on the living essence of the question raises questions as to what exactly such questions might actually mean. I don’t know if our collaboration has been a positive experience for you but, apart from the normal intensities of frustration that one finds in any successful collaboration, I would generally have to say that it’s been a positive experience for me. Conflict is the way we are invited to explore change. Perhaps too negative to be a ‘real’ activist. If current trends continue to intensify, my idea of a happening time will potentially have to change.
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November 28, 2005
Confusion Always Leaks
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Confusion always leaks. Like a middle child unsure where exactly it falls within the general family pecking order, a sense of being unsure might attempt to generate borders, but such borders will always remain permeable. All applications are subjective. A land where infinite certainty reigns is a space prepped for near-infinite calamity. Ordinary people have crises which are by no means ordinary. Particular confusions leak in particular ways. Experimental forms, subtraction from endlessly permeable borders, middle children struggling to regain their rightful place within the residue of former hierarchies, practical solutions to impractical questions – every confusion generates its own leaky parameters. Even what comes naturally may occasionally become fatal, become fiction. Give yourself the freedom confusion makes possible. Let it open. Let it close.
.
Confusion always leaks. Like a middle child unsure where exactly it falls within the general family pecking order, a sense of being unsure might attempt to generate borders, but such borders will always remain permeable. All applications are subjective. A land where infinite certainty reigns is a space prepped for near-infinite calamity. Ordinary people have crises which are by no means ordinary. Particular confusions leak in particular ways. Experimental forms, subtraction from endlessly permeable borders, middle children struggling to regain their rightful place within the residue of former hierarchies, practical solutions to impractical questions – every confusion generates its own leaky parameters. Even what comes naturally may occasionally become fatal, become fiction. Give yourself the freedom confusion makes possible. Let it open. Let it close.
.
October 16, 2005
Ring Tone Sonata
.
Take one large sheet of tracing paper. Place it over top of the screen of your television set. If you do not personally own a television someone else’s will work equally well. As images flicker past, rapidly attempt to trace them onto the translucent surface of the tracing paper. If you follow these instructions carefully, a series of incoherent markings will unfold, gradually becoming more cluttered, until eventually you have achieved the figurative state we like to refer to as ‘a complete mess.’
When I began this sonata I had intended to strain towards an analogy between the ‘complete mess’ produced upon the tracing paper and the equally ‘complete mess’ watching television produces within the mind of the viewer. Such ill thought out, but nonetheless intuitively resonant, moral judgements are a common enough feature of my written output. I believe there is a kind of quick, cheap pleasure to them and we should never deprive ourselves of such pleasures. However, as the art critic Peter Schjeldahl writes: God knows most of us Americans [and Canadians] hate being alone. This may explain why our popular culture is the best in the universe. We keep pouring the cream of our genius and love into producing the antiloneliness serums that our movies, pop songs, and television shows. We take nothing more seriously than our fun. Well, all of this has been said many times before, often by pundits displaying that other familiar compulsion, to make people feel bad about what makes them human and sociable in whatever way their world allows. Loneliness is no sin. It is “an infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing” in need of infinite consolation.
People frequently tell me my writing has become too didactic, that they prefer my earlier, more poetic, more evocative style (like in Stardust Memories when they tell him: ‘we prefer your earlier movies, when you were funny.’) And it’s true, perhaps my thinking has become a bit dry, a bit too critical, or is it only critical in the wrong way, or is it in fact not critical enough.
About five years ago I stopped watching television. And I can’t help but wonder if this shift, this newfound dryness, isn’t a direct result of a very specific deprivation, of searching for some sort of purity of mind, trying to remove the clutter, to wipe away the ‘complete mess.’ Television, that perfect hybrid between furniture and propaganda, also compels us to take life just a little bit less seriously. You can always change the channel (and in less than an hour it will be a different program anyway.) While watching television you rarely feel trapped. But now I’m straining towards another analogy, still thinking about that tracing paper, how when you press too hard it so easily tears. About how the things we do to clear our minds have endless, unintended consequences. And purity is always an opening for poison.
.
Take one large sheet of tracing paper. Place it over top of the screen of your television set. If you do not personally own a television someone else’s will work equally well. As images flicker past, rapidly attempt to trace them onto the translucent surface of the tracing paper. If you follow these instructions carefully, a series of incoherent markings will unfold, gradually becoming more cluttered, until eventually you have achieved the figurative state we like to refer to as ‘a complete mess.’
When I began this sonata I had intended to strain towards an analogy between the ‘complete mess’ produced upon the tracing paper and the equally ‘complete mess’ watching television produces within the mind of the viewer. Such ill thought out, but nonetheless intuitively resonant, moral judgements are a common enough feature of my written output. I believe there is a kind of quick, cheap pleasure to them and we should never deprive ourselves of such pleasures. However, as the art critic Peter Schjeldahl writes: God knows most of us Americans [and Canadians] hate being alone. This may explain why our popular culture is the best in the universe. We keep pouring the cream of our genius and love into producing the antiloneliness serums that our movies, pop songs, and television shows. We take nothing more seriously than our fun. Well, all of this has been said many times before, often by pundits displaying that other familiar compulsion, to make people feel bad about what makes them human and sociable in whatever way their world allows. Loneliness is no sin. It is “an infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing” in need of infinite consolation.
People frequently tell me my writing has become too didactic, that they prefer my earlier, more poetic, more evocative style (like in Stardust Memories when they tell him: ‘we prefer your earlier movies, when you were funny.’) And it’s true, perhaps my thinking has become a bit dry, a bit too critical, or is it only critical in the wrong way, or is it in fact not critical enough.
About five years ago I stopped watching television. And I can’t help but wonder if this shift, this newfound dryness, isn’t a direct result of a very specific deprivation, of searching for some sort of purity of mind, trying to remove the clutter, to wipe away the ‘complete mess.’ Television, that perfect hybrid between furniture and propaganda, also compels us to take life just a little bit less seriously. You can always change the channel (and in less than an hour it will be a different program anyway.) While watching television you rarely feel trapped. But now I’m straining towards another analogy, still thinking about that tracing paper, how when you press too hard it so easily tears. About how the things we do to clear our minds have endless, unintended consequences. And purity is always an opening for poison.
.
October 3, 2005
Possible Dialog For A Future Detective Novel
.
“He behaved badly. And then I behaved badly. And now it’s done.”
“You think you’re tough. You’re not tough. I could pull out my dick and poke out your eye. That’s how tough you are to me. Hit me again.”
“To be perfectly honest, what you’re saying really just makes me want to cry.”
“I have pretended for too long that everything is fine.”
.
“He behaved badly. And then I behaved badly. And now it’s done.”
“You think you’re tough. You’re not tough. I could pull out my dick and poke out your eye. That’s how tough you are to me. Hit me again.”
“To be perfectly honest, what you’re saying really just makes me want to cry.”
“I have pretended for too long that everything is fine.”
.
September 26, 2005
Happiness isn’t always cheerful.
.
There is the pretence that the purpose of language is to communicate when so often we use words only to protect ourselves or attack others. Yet we cannot or will not admit to this. Behind all of our honesty is a deeper dishonesty which is inevitable and cannot be named.
I find lately that the least little ambiguity between myself and others is so heavy with failure. Failure to do the right or good thing. Is it even possible to be clear? What could clarity mean other than an attempt to signify mysterious sadness or elucidate the pathos of things.
Communication cannot save us from ourselves. Attempts to communicate are just the fragile, awkward gestures we hide behind time and time again. And yet without these fragile gestures what would be left of us? Only apathy and self-interest? Desire, of course always desire, but desire without communication is only impotence or war. (I am forgetting about joy.)
Attempts to communicate signify, however ineffectively, that we still care. Tenderness and failure. We must go on.
.
There is the pretence that the purpose of language is to communicate when so often we use words only to protect ourselves or attack others. Yet we cannot or will not admit to this. Behind all of our honesty is a deeper dishonesty which is inevitable and cannot be named.
I find lately that the least little ambiguity between myself and others is so heavy with failure. Failure to do the right or good thing. Is it even possible to be clear? What could clarity mean other than an attempt to signify mysterious sadness or elucidate the pathos of things.
Communication cannot save us from ourselves. Attempts to communicate are just the fragile, awkward gestures we hide behind time and time again. And yet without these fragile gestures what would be left of us? Only apathy and self-interest? Desire, of course always desire, but desire without communication is only impotence or war. (I am forgetting about joy.)
Attempts to communicate signify, however ineffectively, that we still care. Tenderness and failure. We must go on.
.
September 19, 2005
Coincidence
.
1.
When we see coincidences as meaningful what we are really saying that there is some sense to life, that everything is not just chaos, that seemingly random similarities between parallel events open up a door in what is known through which it might just be possible to glimpse that which we will never know. And so I made a kind of quiet resolution: to follow the coincidences that life presented me and see where they might lead.
2.
Milan Kundera has an essay about the six different kinds of coincidences that can be employed in the contemporary novel. I can't remember what these six are exactly but this half-remembered inventory makes me think that coincidence helps us form stories about our lives and without stories we are lost. But these stories must be open and flexible or they will bury us. And coincidences, because they are unexpected and out of the ordinary, help us open up our stories again and give us a taste of how perhaps anything is possible.
3.
The problem with following coincidences is a problem of interpretation. When a coincidence occurs in which direction should I follow it, how am I to understand what it means? For that matter, even if a certain interpretation presents itself as obvious and clear that doesn’t necessarily suggest some specific decision. Action remains on the periphery of the phenomena.
4.
In what ways is it still possible to use words such as fate or fortune now that science has made them archaic? But I almost drifted backwards into semantics. Fate and fortune still exist, whether or not we have words to describe them.
.
1.
When we see coincidences as meaningful what we are really saying that there is some sense to life, that everything is not just chaos, that seemingly random similarities between parallel events open up a door in what is known through which it might just be possible to glimpse that which we will never know. And so I made a kind of quiet resolution: to follow the coincidences that life presented me and see where they might lead.
2.
Milan Kundera has an essay about the six different kinds of coincidences that can be employed in the contemporary novel. I can't remember what these six are exactly but this half-remembered inventory makes me think that coincidence helps us form stories about our lives and without stories we are lost. But these stories must be open and flexible or they will bury us. And coincidences, because they are unexpected and out of the ordinary, help us open up our stories again and give us a taste of how perhaps anything is possible.
3.
The problem with following coincidences is a problem of interpretation. When a coincidence occurs in which direction should I follow it, how am I to understand what it means? For that matter, even if a certain interpretation presents itself as obvious and clear that doesn’t necessarily suggest some specific decision. Action remains on the periphery of the phenomena.
4.
In what ways is it still possible to use words such as fate or fortune now that science has made them archaic? But I almost drifted backwards into semantics. Fate and fortune still exist, whether or not we have words to describe them.
.
September 12, 2005
Cinema
.
1.
There is no such thing as anti-cinema, all cinema is equally enthusiastic. I believe this is the case because technology requires belief to transform itself from a useful gadget into a meaningful entity. Without belief, cinema is only a trick.
2.
You are watching an extremely violent movie. You can feel your central nervous system tightening as you watch. That is why you prefer theatre to cinema. Because theatre doesn’t affect the central nervous system in such a direct and insidious manner. Cinema is like a dream. It is projected onto the inside of your retina. Theatre is more real. And as human beings we require reality. Because without reality there is no basis for moral and ethical decisions.
3.
Cinema is a horrible victim of its own success. The more people who are deeply moved, enchanted and affected by something the more money they will pour into it and the more money they pour into it the more that money will dictate the parameters of its existence. Therefore, movies are terrible because people love them and not, as is generally assumed, the other way around. /// The filmmaker, like anyone on the receiving end of a terrible love, also faces a great responsibility. As the object of devotion he/she must also realise that the audience, like any devoted lover, is willing to undergo any degree of dejection or humiliation in service of their love. Films may pummel them or even ignore them but they will always come back for more. /// Of course, today people do not go to the movies in order to be moved, enchanted or affected. They go only to have something to do, to pass the time or perhaps have something to talk about at the office, some proverbial hook on which to hang all there instantly arrived at opinions. Movies today are a direct response to the fact that people don’t have anything better to do. A distraction from everything including themselves.
.
1.
There is no such thing as anti-cinema, all cinema is equally enthusiastic. I believe this is the case because technology requires belief to transform itself from a useful gadget into a meaningful entity. Without belief, cinema is only a trick.
2.
You are watching an extremely violent movie. You can feel your central nervous system tightening as you watch. That is why you prefer theatre to cinema. Because theatre doesn’t affect the central nervous system in such a direct and insidious manner. Cinema is like a dream. It is projected onto the inside of your retina. Theatre is more real. And as human beings we require reality. Because without reality there is no basis for moral and ethical decisions.
3.
Cinema is a horrible victim of its own success. The more people who are deeply moved, enchanted and affected by something the more money they will pour into it and the more money they pour into it the more that money will dictate the parameters of its existence. Therefore, movies are terrible because people love them and not, as is generally assumed, the other way around. /// The filmmaker, like anyone on the receiving end of a terrible love, also faces a great responsibility. As the object of devotion he/she must also realise that the audience, like any devoted lover, is willing to undergo any degree of dejection or humiliation in service of their love. Films may pummel them or even ignore them but they will always come back for more. /// Of course, today people do not go to the movies in order to be moved, enchanted or affected. They go only to have something to do, to pass the time or perhaps have something to talk about at the office, some proverbial hook on which to hang all there instantly arrived at opinions. Movies today are a direct response to the fact that people don’t have anything better to do. A distraction from everything including themselves.
.
August 29, 2005
Individualism Was A Mistake.
1.
Individualism represents a kind of freedom and excitement but also generates a very specific and intense strain of powerlessness. This powerlessness results from the fact that in order to change things people have to work together and, more often than not, individualism erodes the very sense of common human purpose that might make working together possible.
2.
I don’t like to win. More of a problem than it at first seems. Easy enough to avoid conflict (most of the time.) Perhaps easy enough to just simply lose, if by some casual accident one unfortunately finds oneself in actual competition. But never to win: an altogether painful business.
3.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a great deal about that utterly childish aspect of the human mind, the part that instantly demands: “I want this” or “I don’t want that,” which in a split second desires or just as quickly rejects. How before any information has been gathered, before any time has been taken to weigh the various pros and cons, before even the first glimpse of thought has had a chance to emerge, already such an intense impulse overtakes the body and already we know.
4.
And yet there’s always a degree of hypocrisy and bad faith. Everyone and everything is just a little bit corrupt and that’s exactly the way we like it. To be completely consistent is both boring and impossible so let’s not pretend. Instead let’s rejoice in the openness and exhilaration of inconsistency, of doubt, of questioning, of changing ones mind when faced with new information or simply for the hell of it, of being undecided or even indecisive, of not knowing the truth and continuing to search without finding, always searching, and believing this search to be an honest and meaningful way of life. But I’ve fallen slightly off the point which is of course that I live and work as an aggressively isolated and alienated individualist while at the same time seem to be saying that it is the exact opposite condition which in fact would be most effective and liberating and right. The exact opposite. Proving even I can be exact now and again.
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