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tomorrow, mañana, I go to Mexico City. in preparation, I’m studying mi español, because I’m a language pervert and would really love it if I knew more than just stodgy-ass English. no espero entenderlo todo, pero queiro practicar y aprender. as much as possible. tanto como sea posible.

in order to really learn a language, one must develop the ability to think in the language. this means submitting to what the language makes possible: affectively, intellectually, practically. it is perhaps difficult to accept if one wants to be an egalitarian humanist, but different languages create different possibilities. this doesn’t have any bearing on intelligence or intellectual ability, of course. in my experience, with trying to embody Spanish, not merely “know” it, I have found that, in leaving English, one must accommodate themselves to a more direct expression of emotion and desire that the Latin-derived languages require. it is for this reason that the Romantic movement is so named, with stuffy Northern European Anglos striving for the passion they thought the classics of the Romans (Latin speakers) expressed. this is also the source of the stereotypically fiery Latin character.

I find it fascinating to compare English and Spanish as two extremely successful colonial languages. they are languages of power and authority, as all dominant languages are, to varying extents. but the colonial, imperial projects of both the English and the Spanish are ideologically tied up in what is made possible by their respective languages. Spanish, arising out of the imperial language par excellence, Latin, is adapted for use in commerce and trade: it is a market language. this is because Spain geographically sits at the crossroads of several trade routes, where traders from Africa to the South, Rome to the East, and the Norman Celts to the North, meet and do business. Spanish is well-designed for quick learning and even quicker speaking; one can perform many transactions in rapid succession without raising one’s voice above a murmur. with these trade routes crossing through the language’s homeland, those wishing to make money had to adapt to its dictates. which made it easy to export the language in the final direction, al oeste, to el Mundo Nuevo.

English is slightly different. it is also a language of commerce, but of commerce at a distance. English, being a mutt born from the Germanic languages, the weird Celtic dialects on the British Isles themselves, and the Vulgar Latin popular in Normandy which eventually became French. as such, English is exceptionally good at absorbing things, whereas Spanish is less malleable phonetically and grammatically, but more easily adapted to because of it. there’s probably some kind of analogy to be made here with Protestantism vs Catholicism

tengo que escribir en español todos los dias cuando estoy en México.

no sé cómo terminar este post, so I’m just gonna stop writing.

perhaps the feeling that it’s so hard to communicate nowadays, that there’s been some fateful line crossed technolinguistic-sociopolitickepistemologically, that all is decadence and alienation, perhaps this is merely the nature of being human. we seem to be on the forefront of whatever realm is dictated by the gods of language, ie Thoth/Hermes/Mercury, whose caduceus also symbolizes commercial trade and the ambivalences that endeavor requires. it is a struggle. whence the opportunity to use language, as it uses: to shape the possible, to broaden the scope of the possible. to create. “creation” and “formation” are translations of the Hebrew יְצִירָה (remember, read it right to left), yetzirah, as in Sefer Yetzirah, or the Book of Creation, which outlines a sophisticated linguistic theory for how the universe is created, out of nothingness, from the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. it is also an important work in the development of Jewish mysticism, specifically the Qabbalah (KAH-baluh, not kuh-BALL-uh). scholars generally date Sefer Yetzirah to the Talmudic pediod, though some suggest a more recent, early Medieval authorship. “early” and “recent” of course relative to the ordering of events demanded by the reign of commerce.

as much as commerce (1. social interchange broadly speaking 2. market activity 3. sex) governs the conditions of existence, the principle that gives broad shape is Time, which is felt as growth, loss, pain, transformation and death. something is changing (he says less meaningfully than those words could mean), and decisions must be made. on a long weekend desert bender, I hoped to gain clarity/distance/perspective on how to reapply myself to the task at hand, and all I thought the first day back at my job was “I need more time for Work”. there’s a job interview in two weeks. if it goes well, I will not have more time. resting from Work for six days made Work on the seventh day kind of a drag. it is likely that soon I will need to move out of my apartment. J’s roommate will be moving out of their house in two months.

too much worry, too conservative, too egotistical—all I need is space to act out ideologies, jokes, stories. combinations of words, made up of letters. also need the allowance to be a little bit, or maybe a lot bit, crazy. need to throw a short story I workshopped with friends through another edit at least. also nurturing an idea for some ~cyberliterature~.

do, for there is nothing to “be”. be, a verb? yes. here now, even. there’s no where else, is there?

when photography developed, there was a tectonic shift in the visual arts. painting’s role as documenter of vision had been displaced, leading to a crisis over what job painting could still do. this is standard art history summarizing, the advent of impressionism neatly coinciding with the rise of photography, the need for mimetic resemblance having been met thanks to new chemical processes and technology. it is a topic still discussed today, whether painting is obsolete, with the latest wave of technological innovation generally contributing to an overabundance of images, most of them digital, the rest digitally reproduced. yet painting continues.

anxiety over the supposed “death of the novel” is hardly new, nor is it new to procrastinate on novel writing by considering this anxiety. a “job” I have seen ascribed to the novel is in collecting and organizing, via aesthetic principles, information. writing novels in the 19th century and earlier involved amassing sociocultural data descriptive of whatever milieu constitutes the subject of the work. but thanks to the advent of the internet, wikipedia, mass data collection, so on, the idea that the novel is in someway responsible for organizing information might be questioned. I have also seen it said, somewhat bizarrely, that conceptual art broadly speaking took over this job from the novel in the late 20th century.

the function of language is not to communicate, since “communication,” as conceived as the expression or conveyance of privately held thoughts to another’s mind, is impossible, for reasons far to complicated to get into here. sartre, never one to skip a chance to be extremely French, has it that speaking is fundamentally a seduction. he puts it more generally by saying language causes to be experienced. if this is the case, then a writer is someone who deliberately anticipates what experiences their language is likely to elicit, as a chess player anticipates how their moves will be answered. skill or talent then lies in how many moves ahead are considered, in employing tactics that catch off guard. I’m also fond of D&G’s metaphor that language is a synthesizer—in which case a writer in the 21st century must approach their task as lee scratch perry would approach a crate of vinyl, the recording tape, the sampler, and the mixing deck.

Abstract beatz, math rock, intelligent Techno, proper Drum’n’Bass, these clever genres for stupid people resurrect the premodern opposition in which the mind is bizarrely superior to the body. By frustrating the funk and impeding the groove, clever music amputates the distributed mind, locks you back in the prisonhouse of your head. Far from being futuristic, cerebral music therefore retards you by reimposing a preindustrial sensory hierarchy that shut up your senses in a Cartesian prison.

More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction

We heard a similar point from a more global perspective this spring at a conference in London on inclusive capitalism organized by my friend, Lynn Rothschild, who’s here with us tonight. Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, offered what we in America might call straight talk….

Hilary Clinton, in a speech to Deutsche Bank, 2014

in the days following intensive stretching, I felt like shit. like, flu-like fatigue, lower back aches where my kidneys sit, gastrointestinal discomfort. I’m skeptical of anyone that touts “detoxification,” unspecified, as a benefit for any practice, and the idea that “toxins” stored in the body are released by massage or yoga seems dubious, but it is true that people often experience malaise following deep tissue massage, and at this blog we’re actually not sure if we totally believe Western science. my symptoms were lessened when I drank more water, suggesting that my kidneys were working overtime and therefor in need of fluids. it’s possible excessive strain actually creates toxins in the body, with the trauma causing spillage of metabolic wastes created by injury–extreme instances of this are called rhabdomyolisis, which my piss was never dark enough to actually suggest. muscle tightness and knots are caused by excessive build up of lactic acid, so stretching, which increases bloodflow and therefor lymphic filtration, it would seem, might promote the body’s natural detoxing, though I’m also seeing that lactic acid might not be the culprit. rest effectively reduced the malaise, and exertion, ie walking on the beach, greatly increased it. who knows, I might have been unwell independent of my stretching, in which case I did nothing to prevent spreading a potentially infectious condition. feeling better now though, so idk

when thinking over the sociopolitical situation, one must always recall what Deleuze says about how while the discipline society is symbolized by the tunnels and chambers of a mole’s nest, the control society is better symbolized by the coils of a snake.

any stance counter the present culture, which is defined by surveillance and control, will necessarily involve secrecy and unpredictability.

further, no counterculture ever afforded anyone an easier life—thinking otherwise is the bitterest dregs of the last viable counterculture, the victory of which lay in how effectively its aesthetics, drained of revolutionary desire, runs cover for the machinations of power.

the problem of the hypocrisy of “so-called” radical thought originating in bourgeois circles is considerably lessened if intellectuals are forced into a lower class by deteriorating material conditions and a drought of well-paying options—that there are increasingly few lucrative avenues for artists and writers is a blessing to any intellectual hoping to transcend mere provocation for genuine subversion.

Whiteness may preclude, or at least make very difficult, true participation in any counterculture opposing the AmeriKKKan Cultural Empire, colonizer par excellence.

Media & Technology pose a dilemma thanks to the friends you made along the way (love you jordan sam chris chellsey ken)

something I evidently believe with my whole being is that continuous effort is required not only for success, but for existence. the evidence for this belief is the degree of tension held throughout my body, mostly concentrated, unconsciously, in my hips. I occasionally semi-deliberately exert energy, flexing at the neck and shoulders, walking gingerly on tensed tip toe, as some kind of proof of existence to myself, in times when it feels as though I need to prove to some hitherto unseen observer that I am here. subperceptual muscle tension seems somehow related to the unfolding of the Tao through human life, and the fact is I often am unconvinced of my presence in the world.

therefore, of course, I am not very flexible. I never have been, even when a competitive swimmer, despite the stereotypical lisomeness of that set. least of all in my hip girdle. if ever to prove the point I attempt a sideways split, groin barely stretched obtuse, someone will inevitably, hoping to make me feel better, point out that I’m attempting the pose in jeans, which tend to prevent use of a full range of motion. “I assure you, the jeans are not limiting my mobility even slightly. this is all me, baby.”

whence this constant wincing in anticipation of some yet-to-be sprung ambush I don’t know. as though constant vigilance is a healthy, open-hearted way of encountering the unexpected. as though rigidity ever promotes the supple spontaneity required to grapple with whatever will next be throw from an angle unaccounted for.

this morning, and last night before bed, I did a few yoga asanas focused on loosening the hips, which, to be fair to myself, are often a place people store their tension. I have attended many yoga classes where the instructor warns prior to entering poses that stretch the hip girdle that such movements sometimes overwhelm yogis, not merely physically, but emotionally, revealing buried worry and despair stowed out of mind. it sounds wonderful to break down and cry from yoga.

now I feel like, legit high. like. stoned as fuck. positively soporific, baby. at the same time, aches appear in response to a new distribution of strain–knee slightly sore, left side dorsal oblique mildly smarting. my legs feel like they’re going to fall off. my body is unused to being comfortable in relaxation.

not sure what to make of that, but I do know that all the increased blood flow through my hip area sure gets my dick hard.

Andre couldn’t even say what he was missing out on. People populated the bar’s wooden deck. Conversations, here polite curiosity, there intimacy, everywhere boisterousness: a warm ambience in minor protest against the gloom. Moments prior, considering where his head was, he decided against having Maria order him another drink, a beer this time, what with work the next day being an obstacle to the good times he imagined. Every day he had off approached in his mind as pure possibility, another chance to….something, he couldn’t exactly say, least at the end of the day, when whatever it was he hoped for ultimately, inevitably, failed to happen.

With Maria inside, Andre sunk into the margarita he’d practically chugged. He spent many afternoons on this deck, reading Flaubert or Henry Miller, but that was a few years ago now. Since getting a promotion, and therefor working twice as much, he no longer had days to fill wandering about town, fancying himself a flaneur. He needed the money, of course, so there was never any choice about accepting the position, but that only made it worse. In the months leading up to the first round of pandemic quarantines, Andre managed to establish a growing network of acquaintances and drinking buddies. But then the lockdowns, the mandates, the shuttered establishments: major buzzkill. By the time things uneasily reopened, he was working forty hours a week and much less inclined to spend Tuesday night making an ass of himself at karaoke or following strangers home for half-remembered trysts.

Was that what he missed? In a sense. On certain nights, girls kept scantily clad long past sunset by the summer heat, the World felt a great carnival, norms upholding the order of things apparently dissolved, much as his inhibitions were by drink. This of course wasn’t true, another rosy reminiscence. But sitting there, Friday afternoon becoming evening, Andre pined for the nights when cute bartenders served him drinks for free, and every new face could potentially change his life forever.

Not that he always used that free time to good ends. In fact, by any karmic accounting, Andre blithely allowed minutes, hours, days of freedom to slip by him entirely uncapitalized. Structure was good; obligations keep him honest. Whatever romanticizing he might do by idolizing bohemians belied what he knew to be true of himself, namely that he didn’t trust himself. Benjamin Franklin cliches floated through his head. Early to bed, early to rise. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings.

There are those who believe the Devil to be man’s true steward, for he taught us that even divine prohibition may be ignored.

This week though, Andre merely slept off his sour mood.

I just think it’s curious that science, the thing that was supposed to banish the demons of superstition, ended up in the same place as religion, scrying omens and prophesying The End of the World