sherry poured out. her heart, late into the night, finally let her open up without recoiling. circling the drain of pain inscribed where love once was thought to reside, these hissing imps prod forward toward a goal never realized, multiplying as insect eyes the angles of reproach neatly focused on the foundations of the abyss. the acuity of it all burned flesh smooth with scar tissue, enough to singe new nerves. a swerve around subjects peek-a-booing too crassly to earn a livable wage on stage and we find new ways of desecrating the profaned. unguent resentment, show the way. tenon without place, eager to waste whatever’s available, uncertain bile extrusions be damned. a bit of luck, here come six chorus girls, wearing feathers, bringing to mind delicious places to hide. consigning away to whom or what is never clear but it’s done all the same, the effective negation of ritual stylized into the very air. what metaphor? careening farther than night could allow, the reign of cronos unfolding in precision engineered psychologies bound by nothing but their chains. a little longer now, only a few moments more, scheherazade’s gambit reduced to the synapses between syllables. expecting relief? it is tension here, no catharsis. the mark was never sighted. weave quickly! thread measured and cut reminds that this is unrenewable, not valid at select times. intertwining dissolves and strengthens, lest left unloved.
spinning the wheels
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 it is a topic still discussed today, whether painting is obsolete, with the latest wave of technological innovation generally contributing to an overabundance of images, most of them digital, the rest digitally reproduced.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.
#2
digress long enough and the path reintroduces itself exactly where whatever shouldn’t happen begins. a warbling sky alerts to what might yet be if things go according to plan. on a sunday is such a cliche, sashaying this way and that with that fey crown of thorns. um, it’s lowkey kinda a male manipulator move to hold over people’s heads something no one asked for. lots of people got crucified. leave your stupid business of miracles and start fucking up the moneychangers or shut up mr. bigshot clickityclackety yackittyyackity talk lots of smackitty keep coming backitty apply for a math degree to see if there are any available. what’s to stop. puerile pimps, sipping a mix of aperitif and digestif (they call it dinner), ask “why did quetzalcoatl go away?” fools in love with the possibility that not everything is known and thank the lord it is so. pilloried for the filigree adorning these, ya sabes, capisce? it’s an open secret. what will tomorrow be? coordinated. rock the cradle, for it is full of tragicomic carmelites. sister, pray, answer a query—fair warning, it is a little coarse…
Kodwo Eshun on “intelligent” art
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
#1
levelheaded and dreaded by dudes who’re wedded, wives panties wetted, cuz everywhere I get feted and headed and breaded, regretted. unleaded at the pump and dumb, boy you know I’m a chump. you know I ain’t vote for Biden. you know I always be hidin. open DMs? I be slidin. are y’all jellyous of those? they be a rebellious house, with a cat and a mouse. what did I say about your spouse?? sorry no disrespect, I just haven’t had sections of skin folded over again. language can be so strange. strange, don’t you think? over again? and what more could we, wielding a pen, ask for? an errata is left in, the critics are flexing, art’s anorexing, yes it’s all so perplexing: why continue this task, there’s no everlast, when the work is as prickly as smilax?
emphasis the blogger’s
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
Aldous Huxley on sacrifice
There can be no communism except in the goods of the spirit and, to some extent also, of the mind, and only when such goods are possessed by men and women in a state of non-attachment and self-denial. Some degree of mortification, it should be noted, is an indispensable prerequisite for the cration and enjoyment even of merely intellectual and aesthetic goods. Those who choose the profession of artist, philosopher, or man of science, choose, in many cases, a life of poverty and unrewarded hard work. But these are by no means the only mortifications they have to undertake. When he looks at the world, the artist must deny his ordinary human tendency to think of things in utilitarian, self-regarding terms. Similarly, the critical philosopher must mortify his common-sense, while the research worker must steadfastly resist the temptations to over-simplify and think conventionally, and must make himself docile to the leadings of mysterious Fact. And what is true of the creators of aesthetic and intellectual goods is also true of the enjoyers of such goods, when created. That these mortifications are by no means trifling has been shown again and again in the course of history. One thinks, for example, of the intellectually mortified Socrates and the hemlock with which his unmortified compatriots rewarded him. One thinks of the heroic efforts that had to be made by Galileo and his contemporaries to break with the Aristotelian convention of thought, and the no less heroic efforts that have to be made today by any scientist who believes that there is more in the universe than can be discovered by employing the time-hallowed recipes of Descartes. Such mortifications have their reward in a state of consciousness that corresponds, on a lower level, to spiritual beatitude. The artist—and the philosopher and the man of science are also artists—knows the bliss of aesthetic contemplation, discovery, and non-attached possession.
The Perennial Philosophy, Aldous Huxley
he’s toxic
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
conversations with friends (notes on the disappearance of counterculture)
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)