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Saturday, December 27th, 2008
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3 feet of snow melted in one record-settingly warm day in Michigan gushes down the rain gutters. Smoke from what is one of my final cigarettes wafts into the mist. The decay of a civilization bound to finance like an idiot to a shiney object seethes in the hearts of the people around us. There are no geniuses in a time like this. There are no futures. We fester and pulse.
Disappointment in my contemporaries has pulled me to minor pleasures; fantasies are the only livelihood for the imagination. (Love and lust remain wondrous, but they also remain ineffable, and I'm ok with that. I do not struggle with love. I have no desire to enunciate the human relation to love.)
That capital has been embedded in art for more centuries than I can reckon appalls me. That the freedom from capital that art is now attaining has produced an attitude in which every gasp of a mind is considered noteworthy or remarkable frustrates me. That there are only a handful of people that really understand what art's potential can open tires me--especially on reflection that these few are quite busy with the same old bullshit that surrounds us.
I have not read a good book in ages. I have not seen a good movie in almost as long. There is music that still awakens; musicians that are alive and working; but music, like love, is ineffable... And unfortunately, my penchant is for effing.
I may, someday, write again. In the meantime, I recommend you read something by Alphonso Lingis.
Also: Someone please alert the artistically sensible that self-loathing defies exploration, and is boring. It is, and has always been, and will always be, and it is, indeed, a struggle. You have discovered that you are a part of the problem, and that's true, you are; however, telling us how problematic you are does not arrest this process. Now if we may return to the lounge, I will remind you of what is beautiful, of what is sublime, and what it feels like when your heart leaps with joy.
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Tuesday, January 1st, 2008
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three thoughts coalesced for me this evening in a remarkably improbable way. let me begin with some background.
when talking to my mother about God, in a fit of bravery, i told her (the truth) that the whole God thing strikes me as really, really hard to believe. it doesn't make much sense to continue the ancient folly of attributing all the things we can't understand to some form of divinity; it makes much more sense to admit that there may be things about the world that we just don't understand (yet). her response was good, though unsatisfactory: it came down to Life. that we are alive, not to mention conscious, for her, was proof that there is something that made that happen. i, like all other good atheists, can't prove her wrong, but i can give you my point of view. and tell you about how these three thoughts came together.
1. "somewhere in the deeply remote past it [a massive moment of improbability--read the source to understand this] seriously traumatized a small random group of atoms drifting through the empty sterility of space and made them cling together in the most extraordinarily unlikely patterns. these patterns quickly learned to copy themselves (this was part of what was so extraordinary about the patterns) and went on to cause massive trouble on every planet they drifted to. this is how life began in the universe." HHG2G, by douglas adams (hereafter, DNA). p.78-9 of the 1981 Pocket Books copy.
(but this is so improbable as to be completely impossible!)
2. (this is a paraphrase.) it is absurd to call something impossible that has quite clearly already happened. DGHDA, by DNA.
3. (this is the least important of the three.) back in, o, i'd say, 1995, i was walking from high school to a friend's house, as i often did, with a different friend (some of you may remember Matt Kramer). we often shared a chunk of our walks, as they dovetailed nicely. we spent those walks talking. one day, we were talking about HHG2G, and he made all these veiled references (as was his wont) to some sort of large and secret (even mystical) understanding, hidden within the book, that he shared with DNA, that, for some reason, he wouldn't disclose to me. he even mentioned some sort of organization that he and DNA were a part of, based on this understanding that they shared, and, if i understood this thing, i would immediately know who and where to find this organization. i think of that particular conversation a lot, partly because it was, basically, a riddle, and partly because, years later, with LSD wracking my system, i brought it up with him, as a bit of bogus buffoonery that he would have done better to have stepped over--that wracked night, he said, no, it was not buffoonery, and that he stood by it. in reading quote 1 tonight, i realized that the people, and the organization, to which he referred, was surely the American Atheists. and i have since confirmed it: DNA was a card-carrying member.
4. (epilogue: an explanation.) the universe is perfect. this is not because it was designed to be so, but because it is a plenum. all things which exist within it (read: all things) exist not by some virtue it is demonstrating, but because things with do not exist within it could not possibly exist in it. imagine a puddle in a pothole. the puddle thinks to itself, wow, the universe is amazing, and perfect, amazingly perfect, and divinity is confirmed, because this pothole in which i sit is contoured perfectly to my shape. but the pothole has made the shape; it is the reason the puddle has its shape. the universe has made our shapes.
ps: i love adding the music i'm listening to while writing my posts, but this one took four songs to write, and they were all exceptional:
dead kennedys - the man with the dogs
sparklehorse - sad and beautiful world
bikini kill - this is not a test
guided by voices - gold star for robot boy
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Sunday, August 12th, 2007
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"To the very dear and well beloved friend of my prosperous and evil days. To the friend, who, though in the early stages of our acquaintanceship, he did ofttimes disagree with me, has since come to be my warmest comrade. To the friend who, however often I may put him out, never (now) upsets me in revenge. To the friend who, treated with marked coldness by all the female members of my household, and regarded with suspicion by my very dog, nevertheless, seems day by day to be more drawn by me, and in return, to more and more impregnate me with the odour of his friendship. To the friend who never tells me of my faults, never wants to borrow money, and never talks about himself. To the companion of my idle hours, the soother of my sorrows, the confidant of my joys and hopes, my oldest and strongest Pipe, this little volume is gratefully and affectionately dedicated."
--the dedication from The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow by Jerome K. Jerome, 1886.
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if i weren't the center of my intensities, as i once was not, simple grinds and trills would send me on my way. if i am not the center, i am one of the many, shooting out from myself. but i have become myself. irrevocably, intolerably, myself. o to be nothing more than one of my own tangents again! one of my own lines of flight.
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intensities will happen, they love to. they surely have to begin somewhere, i have made many. but they do not need me. they will happen, they love to.
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intensities shoot out in every direction; i am in the middle, being left behind.
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| Time: | 3:26 pm. |
| Music: | some obscure lou barlow track from his website. |
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i hate doing shit like this, because it really undercuts the whole idea of education, but, on the other hand, who fuckin cares.
______________________________________________________________
Rough draft of Persuasive Essay xxxxxxxxx
Posted: 05/13/2007 07:39 PM, by: xxxxxxxxx ( xxxxxxx@email.phoenix.edu )
Attachments: rough draft for final essay.doc (15 KB)
this is my rough draft, I hope I done ok on it.
______________________________________________________________
ugh. srsly.
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| Subject: | death |
| Time: | 9:17 pm. |
| Music: | harry potter book on tape (book 4). |
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my students, nowadays, are quite a bit older than my students were, at my previous job. old job, they were usually 17-22; now they're more like 23-55. what's interesting is that though the age bracket is quite different, and quite a bit larger, there are still a great many family deaths; about the same--one or two close family members die in each class. i used to think that was strange, but now i realize that it's just because people die a lot.
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Thursday, April 19th, 2007
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"I had a wonderful moment or two in St. Louis, thanks to the horror and misery about me. Walking through the old section of the city, where some gigantic piece of reconstruction work is going on, walking through a sort of abattoir upended by an earthquake or a tornado, my disgust grew so great that I passed over into the opposite--into a state of ecstasy."
-H. Miller, from The Air Conditioned Nightmare
this conversion is often made. this is not, however, why i find power lines so beautiful. this is, however, why i miss binghamton.
(ecstasy is one of the many words that has nearly been destroyed. (i mean, of course, by the recreational drug.) i mean it here in the strictest sense, as the immediate encounter with, or incarnation of, god(s).) |
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[the background: student writes a paper on why musicians should not be held accountable for the actions of their fans. a peer review is assigned (not chosen); the reviewer suggests that musicians do have a responsibility to their listeners. author (not reviewer) expresses concern. there is little to no indication that the student is interested in the depth of this reply.]
Well, her points in #s 4 and 5 were her opinion; she's making it clear in that moment that she disagrees with you, or, more specifically, isn't convinced by your argument. I, unfortunately, already agreed, so that alters my perspective greatly.
Regarding parental and "supplimental" moral education, she's right, parents should not be the only ones--they cannot be; children are influenced by many more people than just their parents. And that's how it should be. Historically, these aspects of us come from two main groups: nuclear family, and extended family. I'm thinking of tribe societies and such; nuclear family being your parents, extended family being not only your grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc, but also "village elders" or "sages"... It's the latter that we're concerned with here. Who are our "village elders"? These kinds of positions are filled in a lot of different ways these days.
1) Church leaders. If the family is religious, and I mean actively religious (quite rare, really), then a church leader can provide that.
2) Governors. I mean anyone who governs; our main figurehead, the President, is mainly a figure, not a person; people haven't genuinely trusted our (federal) governors in quite a long time. Local leaders are often trusted, but are very small-scale, and are thought of much more as servants than as leaders.
3) Teachers. I'm only bringing this one up because my friend made me. K-12 teachers have to learn a great deal about child development in order to be certified. They have the ability to have a profound influence on a child, and I suppose they should do so responsibly. What that means, exactly, I don't know. College professors are quite different. We proudly take zero responsibility for our students' personal affairs; if a student comes to us, we're happy to help, but otherwise, we're there to teach writing (or math, or science, etc).
4) Celebrities. This is what I fear the most. Brad Pitt did not achieve his fame because of his wisdom; it was achieved by his skill in his art, and, of course, his appearance. There is no necessary correlation between an artist's (or businessman's ) talent and their "moral hygiene"... A long list of derelict producers of incredible beauty (Baudelaire, Elliot, Bukowski, etc) will prove this. Musicians in particular, because they often can be considered poets, which is "deeper" than acting, even if they're terrible, will be put in this position.
So. Legally, free speech has almost always won the court cases. (See the Dead Kennedys Frankenchrist affair for an exception.) However, though they will--hopefully--continue to bear no legal responsibility, they will continue to influence people, morally and emotionally. It seems to me that what a parent should be doing is teaching artistic interpretation. When Ice-T says, "I want to kill a police officer" (which I don't think he actually said) he does NOT mean that he wants to kill a police officer. He means that the abuses of power perpetrated by the police, particularly against ethnic minorities, bring him so much frustration that he FEELS LIKE he wants to kill a police officer.
I'm really getting going here, so I won't stop myself.
Art does not invent the society it describes; it reflects it. Think about surrealism; this was a movement in painting that seems to have appeared in multiple places all over the globe, independant of each other. (A lot of them eventually got together, but they got together because they had common ideas, they didn't have common ideas because they got together.) They were all responding to something in their culture; they were painting what they saw. If so many rappers/singers are singing about the same thing, we have to assume that they, too, are "painting" what they see. In 1920, there were not actually melting clocks sitting around; nor did 50 Cent do most of the things he says he's done. His imagination may be limited, he may be a bad artist, but he's still following the rules of art, not the rules of real life.
Another case for consideration. Lorena Bobbitt (sp?). From what I understand, she was repeatedly raped and beaten by her husband before her infamous crime. He did awful things to her; he deserved to be punished for what he did. However, her actions were, I think you'll agree, a bit extreme. Her situation was a very difficult one; women have a very hard time getting out from under an abusive husband; but, doing what she did was crazy--she was probably a bit nuts to start with. The same goes with Columbine. There is no excuse for what they did, but there may be an explanation. Excuse implies blame; explanation implies understanding.
We all are struggling in one way or another. Most of us express those feelings in a healthy (that is, non-psychotic) way. Music and musicians may be able to shed light on what's going on inside our struggles, but they should not be blamed for them.
And I think that's all I have to say about that.
[signature censored ;) ]
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Monday, February 26th, 2007
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| Subject: | time |
| Time: | 5:02 pm. |
| Mood: | dizzy. | | Music: | polvo - time isn't on my side. |
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listening to a song i havent heard in a long time.. found it stuck in my head, lord knows why.
1997. (a decade now!) the world tasted so different then. the air smelled different; the ground was of a different texture; gravity pulled me slightly diagonally i think. i was dizzied by drugs, naturally. frozen after a spin: posed. now this song returns me; i am in repose.
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Tuesday, February 20th, 2007
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| Subject: | .... |
| Time: | 4:06 pm. |
| Music: | mice parade - guitars for plants. |
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i have a student named chuck right now, and every time i write his name, i really really want to write chunk. partly because it's a more aesthetically pleasing finger-movement, but also because chunk is really funny.
hope alls well. the internet is a big scam, by the way. stay the heck away from myspace. those pipple creep me out now.
long cold winter months..well, month. supposedly in the 50s finally today, but i havent been outside to check. the outside..its a bit of fraud, i think; im bathing in air molecules whether ive more recently entered or exited a door.
(speaking of which, to rip off a joke i heard, i saw a door marked "exit only" the other day. i entered it, and went up to the proprietors inside.. "i have good news," i said. "you've seriously underestimated your door. by like 100%.")
where was i...oh yeah, the virtual and the outdoors are both scams. fine by me, i'll take the takers, grift the grifters, i'll leave em spinning and smiling.
i better get outside.
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Monday, November 27th, 2006
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Thursday, November 23rd, 2006
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| Time: | 6:42 pm. |
| Music: | mice parade - a dance by any other name. |
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"i woke up in the late afternoon. on a day like this i always wonder if you age less because you didn't use all of it."
i refuse to cite that source, because, though i like his poetry, typically, it's at that moment in that particular poem that this poet becomes completely self-indulgent in the guise of grieving. and though grieving is almost always a self-indulgent act, this particular poem degenerates into something so profoundly beautiful and frightening that it makes me want "to throw down [my] hat and say, 'good god, do i gotta be like that?'"
those last words are from an eminently citable (sp?) source, mr. robert zimmerman. but not those first. two different poets. all on one, very different, day.
would anyone like me to say something about the sublime? are the following words simply self-indulgent? well, i don't grieve edmund burke, but it's his notion that the sublime is terrifying. those first words mark a turn from the properly poetic to the disturbing; an opening of the gates of hell. i don't have the time or the will to get into that one.
for those of you who are curious little kitties, 20 $ says if you googled the right bits of that first quote, the whole poem would be found pretty easily. and for those of you who know my deepest, longest standing ghosts, you will sit forward and say, 'ah, right.' and those of you who don't will have that window uncurtained. though the text will not do it justice; you really gotta hear it read.
yes; a little red bull and a quick piss before i bike to turkey-related festivities.
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Friday, October 27th, 2006
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somebody get a chapel, somebody get a ring
somebody get a [something], get a choir to sing..
somebody get an organ to play
cuz somebody's getting married today [next week]
(two weddings in two consecutive saturdays. for one of which i will wear mohawk up, the other, down. the first, i don't know these people; i saw the girl once, from afar. the second, i've known the girl for a long time, i think(my stepcousin),,i love my family, and even most of my stepfamily; however, this girl's mother is really unpleasant;;this may suck. but at least i'll have all the rest of the AWESOM-Os to soften those blows.)
(if any of you know the rest of the lyrics to that song, please post them in a reply. for those of you who don't know, stoo (ihearthappy) and i once had a band together, and we tried briefly to cover that song. it wouldve gone well, i suspect, if that band wasnt so strange, and stuffed with heggens.)
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Tuesday, October 10th, 2006
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so im back from barcelona (bcn). that place rules. and no, skating it in THUG2 doesn't do it justice. pretty much every time i go on a "vacation" i come back wanting to move to the place i went, and this time is no different. i could definitely enjoy a little pad in barceloneta (a neighborhood in southeastern bcn).
i would say more about it, but i have to use the bathroom. next time, my pretties.
big news! i found out that ophelia has finally left binghamton! for portland oregon, interestingly enough. i don't know if i told y'all this, but that was one of my possible destinations when i left there, too. BOY AM I GLAD I DIDN'T GO THERE! i heard this from steve g. who is still rocking out in his attic apartment. he's collecting the equipment to transfer his 16mm and 8mm films to digital..utube, watch yr ass: here comes steve!
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Thursday, October 5th, 2006
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| Time: | 9:38 pm. |
| Music: | terrible internet cafe radio..music to make u want to hurry. |
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so, for those of you who were wondering, barcelona is awesome. i strongly recommend it. there are a lot of tourists in certain areas (such as the area this internet cafe is in), but if youre careful, you can avoid most of that. and, for whatever reason, barcelona has way more than its fair share of beautiful women. i think they have a lot of DC´s share. and skateboarding is embraced here. and god, the freaking graff..i took a train today to a nearby town, and the stuff i saw was like the shit i used to see in magazines, back when i used to look at those kinds of magazines. freaking awesome.
however, though there are about 30 million bicycles every square mile (and that info comes from the bicycle census data, that´s not an exaggeration)..i havent seen ONE SINGLE FIXED GEAR BICYCLE. i dont understand it! ive always assumed that the reason it became cool in the u.s. is because of downtown bike messangers being awesome, ,, ¿do they not have bike messengers in europe?
¿like how easily i can make upside-down question marks?
ok, im working. back to it. hope all you suckers in bush-land are having fun!!
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Tuesday, September 26th, 2006
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for those of you who are struck by the apparent sexism of this quote, please know that this is taken from an essay called "A Man" and, therefore, purports to speak about men. (it's actually mostly about che guevara.) it's from the book Trust. please comment. i look forward to finding out who actually read all of this.
Courage is the trance into which a body is cast by the chance vision of a great hope and great risk... We see another's courage by feeling the pounding of that very courage in us. Our trust then is not an assured dependency on his courage but a surge of courage in ourselves. For trust requires courage. The courage that mobilizes the body is shadowed by its simulacrum, muscular power entranced not by chance but by certainty--by a political or religious doctrine that gives itself out as truth. In the measure that, in the determination of storm troopers pledged to an ideology, certainty drives out chance, brutality replaces courage. Virility is lost by giving up. By arranging for alibis. And by selling out. One sees them everywhere--ill-groomed, self-indulgent suburbanites seated before televised football games; on city sidewalks gray-skinned, gray-eyed men in business suits whose bodies cannot imagine any other garb. By the age of forty they have given up; they still have half their lives to live but have decided they will never be seductive to other humans. Giving up begins by giving in; it begins in comfort. It begins each time comfort enters as a factor in any decision. It begins when one does not go down the Grand Canyon because the trail is hot and dusty and the mule the guide is offering you lurches, when one does not go to Italy and France because of the hassles of not understanding the language and not digesting the food, when one did not set out to escape czarist Russia by hiding in a hay wagon at night. For how many men the press of family and professional responsibilities, economic necessities, the importance of a long-term job function as alibis! Alibis for not being set on fire by chance nakedness, alibis for not ecstatically opening one's eyes to the fierce bird of hope and risk soaring in the skies of chance. He took on this summer job in case a buddy would roar by on a wreck of a motorcycle and shout, "Let's travel the hemisphere!" He hastily married and sired a child in case his buddies would rush off to join the insurrection. How many family and professional responsibilities were first taken on in order to function one day as an alibi for not taking chances, not plunging into passion, not fighting for justice! One loses one's manhood by selling out. One exchanges the hot passions of youth--passions for eroticism, ecstasy, and justice--for the cold passions of age for wealth, power, and fame. How much cowardice is there in the greed for wealth, power and fame! Indeed everything one despises in oneself turns out to be some cowardice. Manliness--that is to not take anybody's shit. It is also not to shit on others, and not to let anybody shit on others. Injustice--the use of one's strength and brightness, flair, and dash to acquire the goods of which the needy and the talented are thereby deprived--makes one lose one's virility in greed, self-indulgence, and brutalization. Nature does not distribute its goods according to need or merit. Virility, the force at grips with chance, strives against the injustice of bad luck. Virility is maintained in the passion for justice. Virility gives force to anger. Not the violence unleashed in frustration, that is, in weakness, not the bluster of unoccupied and peevish brutality, anger is the force of the inner vigilance against comfort, alibis, and corruption. Anger marks out what is unjust, inadmissible, intolerable. It casts itself from the first beyond the perception of what can reasonably be expected or demanded. It exercises a refusal, a resistance, an intractable vigilance. -Alphonso Lingis, from Trust
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Monday, September 25th, 2006
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i love muzak, i really do; i love muzak in the same way i love heaven--i wish i could believe in heaven and muzak, i wish muzak and heaven could be enough. enough to get me by, enough to help the struggles. i can't comprehend muzak for the same reason i can't comprehend God: if there's a God, then why is my arm not a lilac branch. i love muzak like a hope: that maybe in my next life, i will be able to fill my record collection with it, listen to it exclusively; the tragedy that i can't do that is one that bugs me occasionally--well, it bugs me on very specific occasions: whenever i hear muzak.
(citation to leonard cohen is appropriate--the lilac image is his. read his book "beautiful losers.")
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Sunday, September 24th, 2006
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| Subject: | .. |
| Time: | 1:03 pm. |
| Music: | kool & the gang - summer madness. |
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don't believe it when they tell you there's no air in space.
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libertalia's journal