Month: July 2024

an artist must follow the call of their feeling, deeply and truly felt, wherever it may go. this, more often than not, will lead to dark crevices we dump gallons of psychic energy pretending into filling up and aren’t there, even though what lurks within them holds far greater sway on the course of one’s life than we like to admit. call it “shadow work” if you must, but in art we tend to call this “honesty,” or even “bravery.”

Israel (presumably) launched a missile on Tehran, killing Hamas negotiator Ismail Haniyeh. the brazenness of this attack, on the man most actively working towards an end to the hostilities against Gaza, is shocking, even by Israeli standards. Israel is in deep crisis, and has been since before the events of October 7, 2023. expect the political leaders and the military to grow increasingly erratic in the coming months, especially as schisms form between the police and the IDF. & whether or not Iran chooses to retaliate is only a matter of timing; at some point Israel’s actions will draw the region into a wider conflict, one that will likely prompt decisive action by Iran, and perhaps even China or Russia, which will embarrass the United States, who has admitted they will not provide the kind of support Israel will need to survive such a conflict.

meanwhile, the US’s steadfast devotion to supporting the Israelis no matter how appallingly they behave suggests that what’s currently happening in the Middle East is a proxy struggle over the all-but-guaranteed unification of Europe and Asia by supply and transportation routes that will leave the United States out in the cold in the back half of the 21st century. my bet is that once the chips are down, the US will switch focus back to the other front in this proxy struggle, Ukraine.

however, most concerning is the prospect that the US is so eager to back the Israelis in their psychotic, genocidal, fascist suppression of the people of Gaza because, to deal with the cascading crises that US supremacy has wrought upon the world—destruction of the global south leading to mass migrations, along with a hollowing out of America’s own internal hinterlands, all exacerbated by worsening environmental catastrophes—the US wants to normalize the most egregious of Israel’s suppressive efforts. that way, vast surveillance networks, open violence against the poor, assassination of anyone inconvenient, destruction of infrastructure, all appear as business as usual, the cost of living in the Greatest Country in the World. the realization of the virtual Fourth Reich that Western Elites have been building since the fall of the Third. if you have a hard time imagining that, consider that once upon at time police officers didn’t wear bullet proof vests and carry M4s like an army occupying Fallujah. the imperial frontier always comes home, as they say.

anyway, I wanted to write about short story craft stuff today, and I didn’t really do what the Knight of Cups called me to do here, but I would be remiss if I didn’t remind my readers that The Empire Never Ended (And It Won’t Any Time Soon).

in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s telling, Pages sit between the 2 and 3 positions, 2 being the number of untapped potential and 3 the number of activity unfolding. 2+3=5, and yesterday I pulled the 5 of Pentacles; 5, according to Jodorowsky, is the hinge point between 1-4 (materiality) and 6-9 (spirituality). needless to say, there’s a threshold I’m at, and it involves transforming, alchemically, base material (pentacles), which I’ve been thinking of as “narcissism,” into spiritual gold—schizomystical proclamations. I came up with this schema for interpreting the card before I had The Culture of Narcissism, by Christopher Lasch, come in for me at the library this morning. in it, Lasch discusses how in the 60s, new literary forms developed, what we might call “New Journalism” or “the confessional mode,” that flaunted the writer’s own particular perspective as a means for interrogating how culture, economics, and politics worked upon the writer to shape that perspective; that is, it refined the base material of the writer’s personal life into gold that shines upon the society from which it arises.

in Lasch’s account, this is a worthy innovation of the period, but, of course, this privileging of the personal as way into the political risks falling into mere self-aggrandizement:

Yet the increasing interpenetration of fiction, journalism, and autobiography undeniably indicates that many writers find it more and more difficult to achieve the detachment indispensable for art. Instead of fictionalizing personal material or otherwise reordering it, they have taken to presenting it undigested, leaving the reader to arrive at his own interpretations. Instead of working through their memories, many writers now rely on mere self-disclosure to keep the reader interested, appealing not to his understanding but to his salacious curiosity about the lives of famous people. In Mailer’s works and those of his many imitators, what begins as a critical reflection on the writer’s own ambition, frankly acknowledged as a bid for literary immortality, often ends in a garrulous monologue, with the writer trading on his own celebrity and filling page after page with material having no other claim to attention than its association with a famous name. Once having brought himself to public attention, the writer enjoys a ready-made market for true confessions. Thus Erica Jong, after winning an audience by writing about sex with as little feeling as a man, immediately produced another novel about a young woman who becomes a literary celebrity.

too bad Lasch isn’t around to comment on Knausgaard. another fun part of the little bit that I’ve read so far is the page he devotes to dunking on Jerry Rubin, clown prince of the yippies-turned-yuppies.

in other reading news, I’m struggling with what else I’m in the midst of. Satantango by Krasznahorkai is phenomenal so far, but with 30-page chapters consisting of a single paragraph requiring intense unbroken focus, it’s been hard to “chip away at it”, while I’m trying to devote more time to this blog, planning two novels, and writing stories. if I don’t pick it back up in a few days I’ll probably set it aside til I can give it more of my attention in a few weeks. on the subject of planning a novel, I’m also annotating Shamanism by Mircea Eliade, having lots of fun with it, but it’s a little repetitive and describes in rotation the practices of various northern and central Asian cultures. it’s quite interesting, but a little too in the weeds for my purposes. and I’ve been sipping from Minima Moralia by Adorno and totally honest, it’s great in flashes, but nearly opaque in others, to the point where I know I’m going to have to reread it once I’m done and therefor I’m tempted to put it aside half-read as well. here’s a famous tidbit from what I’ve read so far:

Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.

the ways by which I sustain a comfortable life—steady employment, safe routine, the support of those better off than me—may be what’s keeping me out in the cold, so to speak, of the life I really want to live, namely, a life devoted to art. anyone who’s kept up with me for a while will known I often fantasize about a bohemian existence, life on the margins, scorning anything that prevents me from thinking about the world honestly and documenting my experience in it. but the truth is that my actions, despite what I think of myself, indicate that I’m only too eager to sacrifice for the sake of a life of ease and stability.

the 5 of Pentacles this morning suggests that, even though I’m warm and cozy in my little house by the beach, spiritually I’ve kept myself away from the work I ostensibly wish to do. it is distraction and laziness, not comfort, that hold me back; yes, perhaps dedication and new priorities will lead to loss of comforts, but to blame the comforts is entirely backwards.

the wall keeping the vagrants out in the cold on the card is of my own making: it is time I let the seekers in.

O Egypt, Egypt, of your reverent deeds only stories will survive, and they will be incredible to your children! Only words cut in stone will survive to tell your faithful works, and the Scythian or Indian or some such neighbor barbarian will dwell in Egypt. For divinity goes back to heaven, and all the people will die, deserted, as Egypt will be widowed and deserted by god and human. I call to you, most holy river, and I tell your future: a torrent of blood will fill you to the banks, and you will burst over them; not only will blood pollute your diving waters, it will also make them break out everywhere, and the number of the entombed will be much larger than the living. Whoever survives will be recognized as Egyptian only by his language; in his actions he will seem a foreigner.

Asclepius, why do you weep? Egypt herself will be persuaded to deeds much wickeder than these, and she will be steeped in evils far worse. A land once holy, most loving of divinity, by reason of her reverence the only land on earth where the gods settled, she who taught holiness and fidelity will be an example of utter unbelief. In their weariness the people of that time will find the world nothing to wonder at or to worship. This all—a good thing that never had nor has nor will have its better—will be endangered. People will find it oppressive and scorn it. They will not cherish this entire world, a work of god beyond compare, a glorious construction, a bounty composed of images in multiform variety, a mechanism for god’s will ungrudgingly supporting his work, making a unity of everything that can be honored, praised, and finally loved by those who see it, a multiform accumulation taken as a single thing.

They will prefer shadows to light, and they will find death more expedient than life. No one will look up to heaven. The reverent will be thought mad, the irreverent wise; the lunatic will be thought brave, and the scoundrel will be taken for a decent person. Soul and all teachings about soul (that soul began as immortal or else expects to attain immortality) as I revealed them to you will be considered not simply laughable but even illusory. But—believe me—whoever dedicates himself to reverence of mind will find himself facing a capital penalty. They will establish new laws, new justice. Nothing holy, nothing reverent nor worthy of heaven or heavenly beings will be heard of or believed in the mind.

How mournful when the gods withdraw from mankind! Only the baleful angels remain to mingle with humans, seizing the wretches and driving them to every outrageous crime—war, looting, trickery and all that is contrary to the nature of souls. Then neither will the earth stand firm nor the sea be sailable; the stars will not cross heaven nor will the course of the stars stand firm in heaven. Every divine voice will grow mute in enforced silence. The fruits of the earth will rot; the soil will no more be fertile; and the very air will droop in gloomy lethargy.

Such will be the old age of the world: irreverence, disorder, disregard for everything good. When all this comes to pass, Asclepius, then the master and father, the god whose power is primary, governor of the first god, will look on this conduct and these willful crimes, and in an act of will—which is god’s benevolence—he will take his stand against the vices and the perversion of everything, righting wrongs, washing away malice in a flood or consuming it in fire or ending it by spreading pestilential disease everywhere. Then he will restore the world to its beauty of old so that the world itself will again seem deserving of worship and wonder, and with constant benedictions and proclamations of praise the people of that time will honor the god who makes and restores so great a work. And this will be the geniture of the world: a reformation of all good things and a restitution, most holy and most reverent, of nature itself, reordered in the course of time, which is and was everlasting and without beginning. For god’s will has no beginning; it remains the same, everlasting in its present state. God’s nature is deliberation; will is the supreme goodness.

“Asclepius,” Corpus Hermeticum [emphasis blogger’s]

sadness accompanies any realization that the ideas you once held were in fact snags along the trail. of course it’s easy to lament how things might have gone had you come to see the errors of your thinking sooner. go ahead, feel the regret. that’s the sense of allowing distinctions that no longer work dissolve. but do not fall into a crisis merely because your thinking was mistaken. is it not a great blessing to come to see the true way forward? one not free of snags but that you can better feel yourself aligned with, so that navigating starts to be a matter of allowing the path run through you, not you over the path.

that’s not to say that the path will be clear. confusion still reigns. you may awaken in the night, lost and distraught. just remember that you are the source of your own misery.

(hopefully I’m coming to settle into some more sustainable working habits. something’s happened, and I’m shedding lots of hang ups that prevented me from writing with any enjoyment. it was always a slog, because I was comparing myself to my models, or because I thought things had to be done a certain way, or because I expected a first draft to come out impeccably. but now, I’m allowing myself to work slower, with less rigid expectations, treating novel writing as I would filmmaking, from notes/drafts/outline all the way through post-production. as a result, I’m totally adrift as far as knowing how it’s all going, other than knowing I’m for once actually eager to work, rather than filled with dread.)

it’s the third day in a row I’ve pulled the Three of Swords in some manner or other; in a full Celtic cross on Wednesday, it occupied the future position, reversed, and again it came up reversed yesterday. here it is unreversed. something needs me to pay attention to this.

Three swords piercing a heart; cloud and rain behind. Divinatory Meanings: Removal, absence, delay, division, rupture, dispersion, and all that the design signifies naturally, being too simple and obvious to call for specific enumeration. Reversed: Mental alienation, error, loss, distraction, disorder, confusion.

The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, A.E. Waite

The vital aspect of the Threes achieves transformation by the birth of the new….A popular expression describing a state of mental confusion is “losing one’s bearings.” This card, like all the Threes, has an adolescent tone. Here, every problem that can arise comes up; there is confusion between believing and knowing, and we think without being united to the world, motivated by the energy of an ideal that could just as easily be fallacious as true. The energy of the Three of Swords is closely connected to the sexual energy of the Wands….

This Arcanum refers to the fanatic bursting forth of primary ideas and first opinions. It is a sign of intellectual enthusiasm that can easily combine with a passion for studying and reading. The still-immature intellect acts purely spontaneously and discerns no difference between believing and knowing. We also can see a desire for intellectual development in this card—for example, a student’s desire to pass an exam. The negative connotations fall under the heading of all kinds of fanaticism, obstinacy, refusal to push deeper, and dispersal. The Three can also point to a lack of follow-through on ideas.

The Way of Tarot, Alejandro Jodorowsky

Swordplay in the hands of a master has been compared to…the sharpening of the ‘psychic power of seeing in order to act immediately in accordance with what it sees”….[The] sword’s essence is to carve, thrust, divide, whether as a deathblow that slays an opponent, a decisive separation from worldly attachment or the separating out of consciousness from psyche’s deep, unconscious recesses….Beyond technical brilliance, the best swordsman is the one who attains the capacity to engage the subtleties of the animating spirit of the sword, so that subject and object, mind and body are one, single-minded, resolute.

The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images

[The sword’s] primary symbolic meaning…is of a wound and the power to wound, and hence of liberty and strength….There can be no doubt that there is a sociological factor in sword-symbolism, since the sword is an instrument proper to the knight, who is the defender of the forces of light against the forces of darkness. But the fact is that in rites at the dawning of history and in folklore even today, the sword plays a similar spiritual rôle, with the magic power to fight off the dark powers personified in the “malevolent dead”….The sword, because of its implication of “physical extermination,” must be a symbol of spiritual evolution….

A Dictionary of Symbols, Juan Eduardo Cirlot

recent things:

William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, Baz Luhrmann: gotta give the Aussie auteur credit, very few major filmmakers have it in them to bring this much excess to the screen. unfortunately this take on R+J is a mess. the modern acting he has the actors doing makes it nearly impossible at times to hear the Bard’s poetry. I forgot Jamie Kennedy is in this. don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun flick, and there’s lot’s of great scenes—the famous first meeting between Romeo and Juliet, from opposite sides of the fish tank, deserves its iconic status, and Peter Postlethwaite brings enough conviction to his portrayal of Friar Laurence to overshadow some of the sillier choices made by Luhrmann.

also, hold on, just some quick math here…yep, I won’t be saying what I thought about Claire Danes in this movie.

miscellany:

Carbyne is an Israeli surveillance company that sells software granting access to 911 callers’ GPS, camera, and other identifying data to emergency dispatch services. on Carbyne’s advisory board is Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of Homeland Security and co-author of the Patriot Act. Carbyne has received investments from figures no less luminary than former Israeli Prime Minsiter Ehud Barak, who got the funds from one Jeffrey Epstein. also among Carbyne’s investors is Erik Prince, of Blackwater fame, as well as the godfather of the PayPal mafia, Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel has been linked to those semi-public intellectuals who provide the philosophical framework of what’s known as the Dark Enlightenment, most notably Nick Land. In Nick Land’s view, capitalism is a program sent back from the future by a transhistorical artificial intelligence directing events such that its eventual takeover of the planet is guaranteed, ushering in a post-human epoch. In this view, those like Prince, Thiel, and Barak/Epstein are merely agents who throw their lot in with the fait accompli of technosoteriology for a chance at merging with the apocalyptic esoteric forces struggling to immanentize themselves. and anyone who doesn’t get with the program will be punished for their impudence. (source)

beset by confusion, despair, and sadness. the operations of the Family have worked once again to thwart any efforts to step bravely into the future with a clear mind and a full heart. the details are of no concern for this; besides, who couldn’t guess, given that all happy families are alike insofar as they don’t exist. bad parents; distant siblings; tensions denied, for the sake of what limited time there is, that inevitably break when the slightest excess stress is applied. and now, even with several days remove, the resultant inner turmoil, always present but usually imperceptible, will not settle.

or perhaps the operation known as the Family, despite all appearances to the contrary, are actually aimed towards some improvement? there is no escaping the saṅkhāra of familial influence. what if, instead of pretending that unhappiness doesn’t lie beneath all this flailing, it is better to keep unhappiness firmly in mind? wouldn’t it, by definition, make it easier to be fully present if the facade of cheery friendliness were dropped and a surly discontent allowed to shine through every action–which it does, regardless of whether the ego acknowledges it as such?

enough of this vague suggestion. ahead still lies confusion and despair. it’s best to admit it. the labyrinth of fate and free will isn’t navigable by reason alone.

I want to learn more and more how to see what is necessary in things as what is beautiful in them—thus I will be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love from now on! I do not want to wage war against ugliness. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse the accusers. Let looking away be my only negation! And, all in all and on the whole: some day I want only to be a Yes-sayer!

The Gay Science (276), Friedrich Nietzsche

recent things:

The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me, Brand New I loaded up my iPod with whatever music I still had from years ago, back when I managed my own music library before Spotify. as of Saturday I will no longer have a paid Spotify account. petty as it may be, the latest $1 hike in subscription rate was enough to get me to finally cut ties to the satanic company that’s pureeing the popular music industry into grey goo and ruining everyone’s ability to meaningfully listening to music. it’s forcing me to revisit albums I haven’t heard in many years, already a kind of radical change, since the instant access to ALL MUSIC EVER had me relistening to things less and seeking out new but ultimately ephemeral things more. The Devil and God, despite (or because of) Jesse Lacey’s failings as a man, still scratches deep into my soul, with acute observations, daring turns of phrases, and way more Kierkegaardian angst than any of Brand New’s 2000s emo compatriots ever mustered. it’s a truly breathtaking record–and now I can listen to it without that 15 cents ever making it into Lacey’s pocket!

Almost Killed Me, The Hold Steady this album is good, some of the songs are great. Craig Finn’s got a short story writer’s sensibility for detail and place. but some of his lyrical tics get tiresome: saying someone “looks just like” any number of famous personages, the accumulation of which never quite add up to any gestalt; too many oh-so-clever plays on words like “I’ve been trying to get people to call me Johnny Rotten; but people keep calling me Freddie Fresh.” Separation Sunday irons out a lot of these more precocious tendencies in favor of more focused character development.

Warlock, Oakley Hall one of the best novels I’ve read in a long while. it’s not often nowadays that I read something and immediately feel the characters carving out space in my mind. the intricate snaking of the three male leads, Tom Morgan, Johnny Ganon, Clay Blaisedell, who each quaver around and yet never succeed in being honorable men, is a thing of beauty, to say nothing of how carefully rendered the politics of Warlock are or the wide-screen documentary perspective Hall brings to the near-mythic story of the OK Corral. Blood Meridian may lay bare the occult strangeness of the American West, but Warlock gives us the hard, dusty truth it. I can’t recommend this novel highly enough.

Happening, Annie Ernaux at the start of this novella I was like “okay, yeah, story bout a girl who has to get an abortion, I think I get it,” and by the end I was like “Jesus fucking Christ this is brutal.” which, very typically male of me, I know.

Seven Samurai, Akira Kurosawa

In addition to the actual script, Kurosawa at this stage often produced extensive, fantastically detailed notes to elaborate his vision. For example, for Seven Samurai, he created six notebooks with (among many other things) detailed biographies of the samurai, including what they wore and ate, how they walked, talked and behaved when greeted, and even how each tied his shoes. For the 101 peasant characters in the film, he created a registry consisting of 23 families and instructed the performers playing these roles to live and work as these “families” for the duration of shooting.

wikipedia

a major point of character development in Michael Powell’s legendary Peeping Tom comes when protagonist Michael takes his downstairs neighbor Helen out for a date. Helen, a bit bemused, asks whether Michael plans to take his camera with them. up until this point Michael is always seen with a camera or film equipment, either his own or on set. the question comes as a surprise, and the audience feels Michael’s hesitation. “I’m worried it’s starting to grow into an extra limb!” Helen jokes. to drive home just how compulsive Michael’s photographing is, while walking home from dinner, the couple happen upon another couple necking in the park. Michael, out of habit, reaches for the camera that he agreed to leave back at the house, a chance to film an unguarded moment of humanity, and anxiety, that he’s unprepared for the opportunity, shades across his face.

though Michael has a traumatic story that explains his pathology—to say nothing of the violence that he enacts—this behavior is exactly the behavior required of any serious artist. for all the bromides about art being a way to deepen empathy, a way to shed light on the questions that unite humanity, a way to provide warmth in the cold desert of the world, the creation of art is, necessarily, profoundly antisocial. the artist always sees the world as raw material to be extracted; this is a subject that Nietzsche returns to several times in The Gay Science. hardly an original analogy, I know, but the artist is a vampire, drawing energy from the world, from real people, for a shot at creating something that transcends human limitations.

As soon as you think about giving yourself permission, you’re thinking about it from an egocentric point of view. In a way, it starts earlier than that, which is that, I’m in service of this art form—do or die. Whether I get a job or I don’t get a job….If teaching acting at a high school in Seattle when you’re 62, if that doesn’t sound great, then get out. Get the fuck out….If you don’t think it’s worth it to do that, then what is it that you’re doing? You don’t get to decide whether or not you’re good or whether she’s good or he’s good or who’s the best. You get to decide whether or not you think art has value, and then you just put yourself at it….You gotta think like a player who wants the ball….If you worry too much about not catching it or not doing a good job, then you don’t want the ball. It’s too much fear in the room. It’s okay if you drop the ball. It’s worth it that people play, right? And so if you get yourself in that mindset, then, you know, there’s nothing to really worry about.

Ethan Hawke

in an interview I’m too lazy to look for and transcribe like I did with Ethan Hawke, Quentin Tarantino reflects on how it was both an edge and a hinderance that he managed to find himself a comfortable situation close enough to filmmaking by working at a video store for five years. it was easy for him to feel like he was working hard at something because no one around him was working on anything similar at all. “a big fish in a puddle,” is how he put it. it wasn’t until he pushed himself to leave the video store and surround himself with filmmakers who were working at a much higher level than he was that he found the motivation to push himself to the next level, rather than continue to stagnate from a vantage point that allowed him to feel superior only because he didn’t have competition.

his account reminded me of my own situation. working in a library. most of the people I interact with aren’t engaged in very serious artistic endeavors. many of those people tell me I’m a good writer. no one ever gives me criticism that would help me improve. I’m fond of saying that my biggest fear isn’t that I’ll be told I’m a bad artist, but that my mediocrity will be enabled. and nothing in my life spurs me to take the steps necessary to really, seriously, figure out how to be a better artist. Tarantino compares it to running: you might be able to beat all your friends in a race if they only run for fun. but if you start training with serious athletes, yeah you might not beat anyone, but your time will improve.

what Tarantino said rhymes with something noted runner Don DeLillo said:

”Somebody quoted Norman Mailer as saying that he wasn’t a better writer because his contemporaries weren’t better. I don’t know whether he really said that or not, but the point I want to make is that no one in Pynchon’s generation can make that statement. If we’re not as good as we should be it’s not because there isn’t a standard. And I think Pynchon, more than any other writer, has set the standard. He’s raised the stakes.”

of course, this all sounds like a readymade excuse for floundering, for failing to live up to my own potential. I don’t want to make an excuse for my own laziness, because that’s what it is: laziness, vanity, and fear. a lethal brew for any artist to drink. see the last piece of this montage for that particular problem. but I think it’s worth noting nonetheless.

should I make anything of the fact that lately my posts here have been primarily about movies? that the advice I shared above, the ideas I drew about the artistic process, come from the world of cinema? when I was a teenager, I didn’t have a burning desire to write. but what I did dream of doing was directing films. I’m a talented photographer, though I haven’t done much of that recently. when I have free time, I almost always want to watch a movie. a frequent self-criticism I have of my writing is that narratively it’s too much like TV: scene setting, character introduction, dialogue. I put it down her book because the content became too unbearable to slog through, but on the level of form, Honor Levy can construct a much more interesting story than I usually do. which can mean one of two things: work harder, try different things, develop skills I feel myself lacking. or else switch media to something more in tune with my natural creative proclivities.

dunno.

Hard work beats talent

“Sleep When U Die” 2 Chainz