Recently, I ponied up the cash to buy "For All Mankind" (which you can watch for 5 bucks online by following the link), and -as anticipated- I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting it. The documentary is footage of NASA missions to the moon overlayed with audio from new interviews by the astronauts involved, and the direction Al Reinert takes this material in is really interesting. Rather than taking this footage of accomplishments that are dripping with curiosity and the importance of history and making a commonplace narrative out of them, Reinert turns the piece into an exploration of the mundane. No narrator with a silver tongue, no tone of self importance. This is astronauts reflecting on the humanity and ordinary nature of the task laid out before them, and the juxtaposition of that lens against the rosy way we view the accomplishments is an interesting perspective.
So much of this documentary and the narration by those astronauts involved is tied into the fact that this was a job for them, and that surrounding these landmark accomplishments are such simple tasks, things we do every day that are somehow transported to a realm of wonder and disbelief when we see these astronauts doing them. We see them putting on their suits -referred to as their "work clothes"- and its an experience with a complete disconnect until viewed with the humility of common terminology. It seems as though entire portions of Reinert's film are dedicated to deconstructing the mystique surrounding the moon landings, and yet after the ordinary nature of these actions is conveyed we find some indelible level of human fascination is tied up in exploration. The monotony is there; astronauts brush their teeth, take shits and listen to music just like the rest of us, but them committing these actions in the midst of their travels is something like a reaffirmation of our existence. Its almost as if Reinert's saying that if these brave souls are acting in the same way and doing the same things as us while out in the cosmos, we must be doing something right.
In this respect, we can ask ourselves: What is it to revitalize human nature? I think in a couple of my posts here I've talked about the dark shadow of a scientific world and the necessity of romantic liberties, and I think the repackaging of our day to day lives into something fascinating thanks to new scenery is a direct example of that. When astronauts drive a vehicle on the moon, there's little difference from what we do here on Earth. For All Mankind shows them collecting rocks, running, jumping, and using basic tools, and all of this is given to the viewer to be held in captivation, but through the interview clips used Reinert makes the intention very clear: There is such a small difference between the actions of these men and those of us in our day to day lives. In so many ways these accomplishments exist beyond our boundaries of reason and understanding, at a point in our imaginations where proximity has broken down and we become drooling infants, amazed at the magical gestures being performed by those we think beyond us.
In the supplements there's a really awesome piece where famous transmissions from space are spliced together, all over a simple, never-changing picture of the deeply cratered and imperfect moon. You hear Alan Shepard's transmission as he becomes the first American into space, Neil Armstrong's words as he takes the first step on the moon, James Lovell as he reports problems with his ship's approach to the moon. Throughout the excitement, fear and wonder of what these men are reporting, all you have to watch is a simple picture of the moon, it being the perfect foil to the raw emotion of these broadcasts. The contrast goes a long way to put not only our ventures into space in perspective, but also to delve somewhere deeper. This is touching on the very kernel of human emotion and excitement, a place we approach with reckless abandon and whose nature we refuse to recognize or fully acknowledge in the hopes of a brighter day. What is it to go to the moon besides an empty gesture, and yet for so many it's a beacon of intense pride and hope. Even for the detractors, who think our efforts were in vain, there's always something we could have done instead. We could have spent the money domestically, improved our schools or health system or military, but for these people such actions hold the same wonder and promise that our explorations of space do. With this action, we can prove that the future won't be as cold as our past.
In raising these questions, I feel we begin to touch on interesting questions, ones existing in the vein of asking "How much is too much?" The conscious recognition that as a species we may not actually want to know the answer to everything is newer to Western thought, but our times and eventuality give credence to the claims. Maybe it's not so much that we want to know how the universe works exactly or to have a fate laid out before us clearly enough that we never get hurt by surprise, but something different, more simple. Maybe, at the end of the day, we just want to know that things are going to be alright, that even though life will slog on and kick and knock us down, things can get better, our children won't be subjected to the same struggles as us and that the human condition can become more peaceful, loving and accepting. It's probably easy to refute an argument like this, but that's also a pretty good way to bum yourself out. Maybe that says enough right there.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Back to the Future
It's been a hectic couple months, but I've decided to return to my blog in lieu of the fact that I have nothing better to do. I'm pretty sure that in the time from my last post to this one I moved from Portland to San Francisco, so it's probably been an issue of wanting to get acclimated to my surroundings which has prevented me from reviving this sucker earlier.
I think another thing that prevented me from working on this more often is the fact that I always wanted this to be a topic driven blog; a place that was more about opinions and culture than about me trying to celebritize myself as someone worth following. I'm not trying to say that I disagree with people who do stuff like that, it's just not my personal thing. I like ideas and concepts, and those are things I don't see all that often in a setting like this. Maybe I'm just operating in the wrong capacity and should concern myself with means taken more seriously than blogging, but it's not like I haven't always been backwards in quite a few ways, so my stubbornness should be nothing new.
Why something meandering like this? Why not reignite the torch with something more in tune with what I wanted this blog to represent? The answer to that is that is simple: I'm fucking tired and don't really want to deal with anything too complex right now. I've got three hungry cats circling me like sharks with a certain mutiny in their eye, and the terror is climbing up my soul to my esophagus. I have no way to remedy this situation -we're out of food- and all I can do is sit and wait for a more responsible adult to come home with the means to assuage this maddening typhoon of mews.
Diving into a new tangent, I've been doing a lot of creative writing lately, which means I haven't been wasting my time entirely. About a year ago I was overcome with this issue where I couldn't read fiction anymore, and that's something I'm still wrestling with. I've read a couple books by Jonathan Lethem and Roberto Bolano recently, but aside from that it's been slim pickins in the fiction department. I'm lead to believe this is why I've been doing more creative writing of late, and I've been pretty pleased with the results. My writing seems more breathable, more authentic to myself, which is a major point of contention I've always harped on myself about. I've got a lot of stuff that if I were to just type it and polish it a bit would probably be publishable, but for whatever reason I can't seem to climb that hump. I'll do it when I feel more comfortable, more relaxed within myself.
Since I haven't been reading fiction I've been more focused on nonfiction, reading a fuckton of books on space, the space race, military intelligence, the CIA and government secrecy. It seems the way all this stuff culminates is in me being interested in the ownership of ideas and information, and the effects that has on both sides of the issues. I'm an unapologetic fan of the Moon landing and the space race in general, believing it to be a romantic gesture that propelled human thought and inspiration, a sort of distant-look approach to the times and the world that I wish was more readily available today. People are mired in the idea that we need to improve the quality of living around the world -something I wholeheartedly agree with- but there's also the fact that an approach like that wears on you because of how fucked up things can actually be. It seems entirely human that we clean our palette occasionally with a romantic gesture to show what we're capable of. Not something that serves to fix any nagging problem or solves any sort of claustrophobic social issue, but instead just demonstrates that we're capable of doing something we think is beautiful on a large scale. I dunno, I just think there are a lot of ways to put on rosy glasses and view an event of the moon landing's magnificence.
I'm sure this entry doesn't tie together in the most cohesive way, but it serves as an example for me. Proof that I'm still thinking, still able to look at something and extract something I want to say from it. It also serves to get the ball rolling, which is a simple problem that gets significantly amplified over a span of time. Whatever, consider this mutherfucker resurrected.
I think another thing that prevented me from working on this more often is the fact that I always wanted this to be a topic driven blog; a place that was more about opinions and culture than about me trying to celebritize myself as someone worth following. I'm not trying to say that I disagree with people who do stuff like that, it's just not my personal thing. I like ideas and concepts, and those are things I don't see all that often in a setting like this. Maybe I'm just operating in the wrong capacity and should concern myself with means taken more seriously than blogging, but it's not like I haven't always been backwards in quite a few ways, so my stubbornness should be nothing new.
Why something meandering like this? Why not reignite the torch with something more in tune with what I wanted this blog to represent? The answer to that is that is simple: I'm fucking tired and don't really want to deal with anything too complex right now. I've got three hungry cats circling me like sharks with a certain mutiny in their eye, and the terror is climbing up my soul to my esophagus. I have no way to remedy this situation -we're out of food- and all I can do is sit and wait for a more responsible adult to come home with the means to assuage this maddening typhoon of mews.
Diving into a new tangent, I've been doing a lot of creative writing lately, which means I haven't been wasting my time entirely. About a year ago I was overcome with this issue where I couldn't read fiction anymore, and that's something I'm still wrestling with. I've read a couple books by Jonathan Lethem and Roberto Bolano recently, but aside from that it's been slim pickins in the fiction department. I'm lead to believe this is why I've been doing more creative writing of late, and I've been pretty pleased with the results. My writing seems more breathable, more authentic to myself, which is a major point of contention I've always harped on myself about. I've got a lot of stuff that if I were to just type it and polish it a bit would probably be publishable, but for whatever reason I can't seem to climb that hump. I'll do it when I feel more comfortable, more relaxed within myself.
Since I haven't been reading fiction I've been more focused on nonfiction, reading a fuckton of books on space, the space race, military intelligence, the CIA and government secrecy. It seems the way all this stuff culminates is in me being interested in the ownership of ideas and information, and the effects that has on both sides of the issues. I'm an unapologetic fan of the Moon landing and the space race in general, believing it to be a romantic gesture that propelled human thought and inspiration, a sort of distant-look approach to the times and the world that I wish was more readily available today. People are mired in the idea that we need to improve the quality of living around the world -something I wholeheartedly agree with- but there's also the fact that an approach like that wears on you because of how fucked up things can actually be. It seems entirely human that we clean our palette occasionally with a romantic gesture to show what we're capable of. Not something that serves to fix any nagging problem or solves any sort of claustrophobic social issue, but instead just demonstrates that we're capable of doing something we think is beautiful on a large scale. I dunno, I just think there are a lot of ways to put on rosy glasses and view an event of the moon landing's magnificence.
I'm sure this entry doesn't tie together in the most cohesive way, but it serves as an example for me. Proof that I'm still thinking, still able to look at something and extract something I want to say from it. It also serves to get the ball rolling, which is a simple problem that gets significantly amplified over a span of time. Whatever, consider this mutherfucker resurrected.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Pop Culture and Weak Thought pt. 1
Introduction and overview of weak thought
I don't know how many of these posts I've started with "Lately", but it seems like a lot. Get ready for another one.
Lately I've been thinking about the hell-bent speed of pop culture, and was interested when I contrasted its pace and prevalence with the concept of weak thought. In this piece I will be exploring my thoughts on this, but before I delve too far let me first give a decent explanation of what my interpretation of "weak thought" entails.
2000 years ago, humanity as a whole had a structure of belief that differed greatly from what we believe now. 100 years ago –similarly- beliefs were different from how they are today. In looking at human belief and its ebb and flow over time, one major takeaway is the fact that beliefs that once were held as infallible and absolute are now cast by the wayside, left to be strange anecdotes and embarrassing facts about our colorful history as a people. These occurrences are present in almost all realms of thought, whether it's history, science, philosophy or religion. It was once thought that the Earth was the center of the universe. It was once thought that Gods lived at the top of mountains. It was once thought that there was a distinction between mind and body. It was once thought that certain cultures and races of the world were inherently less capable than others.
I say these things as though they are beliefs that no longer exist, but many of them still do, albeit in greater and greater obscurity. As a race, as a collective culture, humanity has run a vast and often troubled gamut of belief, captured at one extreme in the belief that all things have an irrefutable divine purpose and at the other by the belief that nothing is sacred.
Though nihilism was never adopted wholeheartedly as a doctrine by many, its presence in the global cultural conversation is nonetheless there, just as a bombshell development in the ongoing conversation between any two people would affect their discourse. Imagine a girl finding out that her boyfriend had cheated on her or a friend finding out that another friend had stolen money from them. These are occurrences and realizations that impact a relationship for a long time to come, and they must be resolved if the parties involved are ever to develop a healthy relationship again. Problems like these are similar to the mental state we find ourselves in as a culture because they involve trust, belief and intention (amongst other things), all three of which are under assault in an age of pluralism whose undercurrent involves moving entirely away from metaphysics. Nihilism’s wake in the mind of humanity requires reconciliation, as it has presented an eventuality of human thought which is unhealthy to neglect, let alone manifest.
It is here that numerous developments in postmodern thought come to pull us back in, to protect us from the staggering weight of a world in which nothing has meaning or value. Weak Thought is one such stopgap; an attempt to cull ourselves back towards a more rational, working belief of our structured thought and functional purpose. As a belief, nihilism is not “wrong” in the sense that it is not applicable to a given state of affairs, because there is nothing about it which stands in direct contrast to universal laws. A belief in nihilism does not turn orange objects purple, nor does it make objects dropped rise from the ground. Similarly, a belief that the world is only 6,000 years old is not “wrong” in any universal sense. The person who believes the Earth is 6,000 years old is still allowed to do and act in an expansive way, just as the nihilist is allowed to do and act in whichever way they decide to do so. The problem of these convictions is inherent in the hamstringing of their believer, limiting them in their experience to that which their core values will accommodate. The believer in Earth’s extraordinary infancy is unlikely to find themselves working in the field of quantum mechanics and relativity while the nihilist (if diehard) is not likely to find themselves working on much of anything. This effect becomes detrimental as things like doing and believing begin to wear on the nihilist, with the opportunities in their life being increasingly limited by a strong, unwavering belief that everything they see and experience is false or purposeless, giving them an inclination towards what society would generally label “lethargy” (I don’t know if there’s a nice way to approach the nihilist). The Christian becomes similarly deluged by science, the realm of God finding solace in increasingly small corners of universal conception.
I’d like to take a brief tangent here and touch on the relationship between religion and science as I’m trying to present them here, because I’d hate for someone to be given the impression that I’m against religion and believe science is irrefutable, though the greater meat of this explanation will have to be saved for another piece (which I constantly find myself pushing back). My view on religion is this: as a titled concept, it is something that needs to be pushed further and further back from the forefront of our global conversation. There are not many Jews or Mormons in China, and simple concessions like these are ones we need to be willing to accept without criminalization. I do not mean to say that people should abstain from trying to grow their religion or allow a blatant assault on their religious beliefs. What I do mean is that rallying around the dismissive belief that “Christian” or “Muslim” accurately summarizes someone’s beliefs, intentions and character is something that doesn’t help a global culture thrive. Weakness in these areas is desperately needed, and this might be one of the areas where Weak Thought is best exampled. In moving away from titles and archetypes, we’re allowed to take a more thoughtful, intricate approach to understanding the scope and actions of others. Where “Christianity” or “Judaism” are the common grounds of many now, taking a moral by moral approach (i.e. people of different religions agreeing that thievery is wrong ) rather than a titled one allows us to find similarities amongst each other and attain parts of the camaraderie religion produces on a wider scale.
As for science, I feel its place in our society is far too expansive. In the wake of postmodernism, science has been called upon to provide the answers for everything in life instead of religion, and its results as a makeshift God have been equally dysfunctional. Simply put, the drive for a unifying theory which explains everything in the universe won’t provide the end those who pursue it are looking for, which is a Godlike knowledge of the present and future. Using science as our God, as the padding which calms our fears and tells us that things will be alright is an approach which lacks romantic fruition. Scientific data lacks the creative flair we look for in the world, and instead gives us a cold, calculated approach that leaves our emotional selves desiring more. Even if we could unify all scientific doctrines, the scope of our mental landscape wouldn’t allow us to comprehend the universe as an entirety. We’d still find ourselves using quantum physics to address small particles and conventional physics to address the speed of a falling apple. It’s like two different screwdrivers, one designated for use on small electronic components and one meant to torque large screws into wood. They’re similar in premise, but different in applicable uses. As tool using creatures, we need to accept that our thought is structured in a very similar way. The chances of us finding an “omniknowledge” which allows us to think and confront problems in exactly the same way every time is extraordinarily slim. More likely is the continuation of our hodge-podge form of logic in which older, less effective ideas are replaced by newer and more functional ones.
Whether it is unfortunate that we find people more heavily invested in disbelief than strong, irrefutable belief is anyone’s guess, but neither is likely to promote the camaraderie and patience that an increasingly hectic world needs. Weak thought is thus presented as an acknowledgment and apology for mistakes in brashness and underestimation of the past, and offers itself as a means for navigating an increasingly connected, hectic and inclusion-starved global culture. As a concept, weak thought is something we’ve always accommodated ourselves with, but it’s previously been done without a name or direct acknowledgment. Just as the nihilist eats to survive or cherishes something he or she owns, the Christian takes a lax view of Jesus’ word and never actually gives all their worldly belongings to the poor to become a true disciple of Jesus. Both parties claim a staunch, universal position, an irrefutable belief that they refuse to release, but both parties actually labor under the contemporary and relative, the nihilist in their lacking effort and the Christian in their stance on numerous social issues as against “God’s word”.
In establishing ourselves as a culture that is practicing weak thought, who acknowledges the flow of time and ideas, we concede that the beliefs and values we hold are contemporized and in no way eternal or absolute. We are willing to move past the idea of becoming the age that “got it right” irrefutably and instead focus ourselves on doing the best with the information we have, which varies and causes us to change constantly. In the next piece, I will explain how pop culture effects the information we are given and how it relates to weak thought.
I don't know how many of these posts I've started with "Lately", but it seems like a lot. Get ready for another one.
Lately I've been thinking about the hell-bent speed of pop culture, and was interested when I contrasted its pace and prevalence with the concept of weak thought. In this piece I will be exploring my thoughts on this, but before I delve too far let me first give a decent explanation of what my interpretation of "weak thought" entails.
2000 years ago, humanity as a whole had a structure of belief that differed greatly from what we believe now. 100 years ago –similarly- beliefs were different from how they are today. In looking at human belief and its ebb and flow over time, one major takeaway is the fact that beliefs that once were held as infallible and absolute are now cast by the wayside, left to be strange anecdotes and embarrassing facts about our colorful history as a people. These occurrences are present in almost all realms of thought, whether it's history, science, philosophy or religion. It was once thought that the Earth was the center of the universe. It was once thought that Gods lived at the top of mountains. It was once thought that there was a distinction between mind and body. It was once thought that certain cultures and races of the world were inherently less capable than others.
I say these things as though they are beliefs that no longer exist, but many of them still do, albeit in greater and greater obscurity. As a race, as a collective culture, humanity has run a vast and often troubled gamut of belief, captured at one extreme in the belief that all things have an irrefutable divine purpose and at the other by the belief that nothing is sacred.
Though nihilism was never adopted wholeheartedly as a doctrine by many, its presence in the global cultural conversation is nonetheless there, just as a bombshell development in the ongoing conversation between any two people would affect their discourse. Imagine a girl finding out that her boyfriend had cheated on her or a friend finding out that another friend had stolen money from them. These are occurrences and realizations that impact a relationship for a long time to come, and they must be resolved if the parties involved are ever to develop a healthy relationship again. Problems like these are similar to the mental state we find ourselves in as a culture because they involve trust, belief and intention (amongst other things), all three of which are under assault in an age of pluralism whose undercurrent involves moving entirely away from metaphysics. Nihilism’s wake in the mind of humanity requires reconciliation, as it has presented an eventuality of human thought which is unhealthy to neglect, let alone manifest.
It is here that numerous developments in postmodern thought come to pull us back in, to protect us from the staggering weight of a world in which nothing has meaning or value. Weak Thought is one such stopgap; an attempt to cull ourselves back towards a more rational, working belief of our structured thought and functional purpose. As a belief, nihilism is not “wrong” in the sense that it is not applicable to a given state of affairs, because there is nothing about it which stands in direct contrast to universal laws. A belief in nihilism does not turn orange objects purple, nor does it make objects dropped rise from the ground. Similarly, a belief that the world is only 6,000 years old is not “wrong” in any universal sense. The person who believes the Earth is 6,000 years old is still allowed to do and act in an expansive way, just as the nihilist is allowed to do and act in whichever way they decide to do so. The problem of these convictions is inherent in the hamstringing of their believer, limiting them in their experience to that which their core values will accommodate. The believer in Earth’s extraordinary infancy is unlikely to find themselves working in the field of quantum mechanics and relativity while the nihilist (if diehard) is not likely to find themselves working on much of anything. This effect becomes detrimental as things like doing and believing begin to wear on the nihilist, with the opportunities in their life being increasingly limited by a strong, unwavering belief that everything they see and experience is false or purposeless, giving them an inclination towards what society would generally label “lethargy” (I don’t know if there’s a nice way to approach the nihilist). The Christian becomes similarly deluged by science, the realm of God finding solace in increasingly small corners of universal conception.
I’d like to take a brief tangent here and touch on the relationship between religion and science as I’m trying to present them here, because I’d hate for someone to be given the impression that I’m against religion and believe science is irrefutable, though the greater meat of this explanation will have to be saved for another piece (which I constantly find myself pushing back). My view on religion is this: as a titled concept, it is something that needs to be pushed further and further back from the forefront of our global conversation. There are not many Jews or Mormons in China, and simple concessions like these are ones we need to be willing to accept without criminalization. I do not mean to say that people should abstain from trying to grow their religion or allow a blatant assault on their religious beliefs. What I do mean is that rallying around the dismissive belief that “Christian” or “Muslim” accurately summarizes someone’s beliefs, intentions and character is something that doesn’t help a global culture thrive. Weakness in these areas is desperately needed, and this might be one of the areas where Weak Thought is best exampled. In moving away from titles and archetypes, we’re allowed to take a more thoughtful, intricate approach to understanding the scope and actions of others. Where “Christianity” or “Judaism” are the common grounds of many now, taking a moral by moral approach (i.e. people of different religions agreeing that thievery is wrong ) rather than a titled one allows us to find similarities amongst each other and attain parts of the camaraderie religion produces on a wider scale.
As for science, I feel its place in our society is far too expansive. In the wake of postmodernism, science has been called upon to provide the answers for everything in life instead of religion, and its results as a makeshift God have been equally dysfunctional. Simply put, the drive for a unifying theory which explains everything in the universe won’t provide the end those who pursue it are looking for, which is a Godlike knowledge of the present and future. Using science as our God, as the padding which calms our fears and tells us that things will be alright is an approach which lacks romantic fruition. Scientific data lacks the creative flair we look for in the world, and instead gives us a cold, calculated approach that leaves our emotional selves desiring more. Even if we could unify all scientific doctrines, the scope of our mental landscape wouldn’t allow us to comprehend the universe as an entirety. We’d still find ourselves using quantum physics to address small particles and conventional physics to address the speed of a falling apple. It’s like two different screwdrivers, one designated for use on small electronic components and one meant to torque large screws into wood. They’re similar in premise, but different in applicable uses. As tool using creatures, we need to accept that our thought is structured in a very similar way. The chances of us finding an “omniknowledge” which allows us to think and confront problems in exactly the same way every time is extraordinarily slim. More likely is the continuation of our hodge-podge form of logic in which older, less effective ideas are replaced by newer and more functional ones.
Whether it is unfortunate that we find people more heavily invested in disbelief than strong, irrefutable belief is anyone’s guess, but neither is likely to promote the camaraderie and patience that an increasingly hectic world needs. Weak thought is thus presented as an acknowledgment and apology for mistakes in brashness and underestimation of the past, and offers itself as a means for navigating an increasingly connected, hectic and inclusion-starved global culture. As a concept, weak thought is something we’ve always accommodated ourselves with, but it’s previously been done without a name or direct acknowledgment. Just as the nihilist eats to survive or cherishes something he or she owns, the Christian takes a lax view of Jesus’ word and never actually gives all their worldly belongings to the poor to become a true disciple of Jesus. Both parties claim a staunch, universal position, an irrefutable belief that they refuse to release, but both parties actually labor under the contemporary and relative, the nihilist in their lacking effort and the Christian in their stance on numerous social issues as against “God’s word”.
In establishing ourselves as a culture that is practicing weak thought, who acknowledges the flow of time and ideas, we concede that the beliefs and values we hold are contemporized and in no way eternal or absolute. We are willing to move past the idea of becoming the age that “got it right” irrefutably and instead focus ourselves on doing the best with the information we have, which varies and causes us to change constantly. In the next piece, I will explain how pop culture effects the information we are given and how it relates to weak thought.
Friday, April 17, 2009
The voice of the silent
As I've been feeling intellectually impish lately, I recently decided to start re-watching the films of Terrence Malick and post some thoughts and insights on the ol' blog. Some of you may know that I'm a huge fan of Malick's, but there are aspects of his films which have remained foreign to me, things about them I couldn't quite grasp. In each there's a light cast on the struggle between man and nature, but I was never really satisfied with the conclusions I reached on it. I began rewatching the movies last week and have watched Badlands and The Thin Red Line thus far. I imagine most of this piece will be about Badlands, with a piece on TTRL to follow.
Something I've always noticed about Malick's films is the vantage he gives to his narrators and "main" characters, as in each of his films that role is played by someone with little to say in the world and even less effect in it. In Badlands, this role is shown through Holly, played by Sissy Spacek. In TTRL its Jim Caviezel as Private Witt and in Days of Heaven its Linda Manz as Linda. Whats most striking and bizarre for me about each of these characters is how they're all so helpless in society and yet unvanquished against nature, absolutely unattached and unafraid of whats to come. Society is constantly beckoning them to join the flock and get involved in the struggle and the drama, but they never seem to invest themselves. In many ways, it seems like they operate on a level outside of immediate experience, something less influenced by the moment and instead more thoughtful or pristine.
A good example of this is when Kit shoots Holly's father (played by my favorite American actor Warren Oates, for the record), and her reaction. To both Kit and Holly a door seems to open as a result, but for each character the road therein is very very different. For Kit the road leads to fame and stardom, an excitement and newness in life that heavily contrasts his former life as a garbage man, but remains similarly within the dregs of society. Holly's lifeless reaction to her father's murder takes a different tone, and throughout the movie it seems that she isn't necessarily an agent of her own change but is instead just along for the ride, watching how depraved humanity can be while at times seeming to wish that she could understand the emotions involved in what she was watching. Jim Caviezel's character from TTRL shares a similar disconnect from society, but his sense of human spirit seems to shine with a little more optimism than Holly's, who never really subscribes to whats around her in any meaningful way besides just wanting to leave once she knew the gig was up. She never asks or encourages anyone's death, she just follows with an appearance of helplessness but an interior dialogue which makes us think she understands more.
In all of Malick's films nature plays a prominent role. Whether it be human nature or that which surrounds us, at the end of the day these movies all seem to revolve around this concept that we're missing something, that we've made our conflicts too heavily based on humanity and have left out a major, indifferent and yet influential player. Kit and Holly are on the run, and they find themselves in a number of safehouses. Whats interesting is how they all interact and how little difference the characters find between their venues, here exampled by their fort in the woods and their time holed up in the mansion. Kit builds them the fortress in the woods and it seems so natural, the Swiss Family Robinson solution to their problems. The thing is, we never see these characters clamoring for anything while they're there, and this simplicity when wrapped in nature is a theme you see in TTRL and Days of Heaven as well. Richard Gere's character can't stand the bustle of the city, killing his boss and running off to the midwest. Jim Caviezel can't stand active duty, finding tranquility living with a remote tribe in the Pacific Islands. No matter how far any of these characters gets from society though, it always finds a way to draw them back in. Hunters come looking for Kit, Richard Gere schemes to steal a farmers money and Jim Caviezel is found by the Navy. For Malick, there must be some kind of undesirable poison in society, something so inexorable that actions against it are in some perverse way forgivable. The need and the pressure to get away manifests itself in all these characters, and all of them are surrounded by death. Its only with Kit's growing recognition of fame that he turns his back on these things, eventually finding the open wild too boring and perhaps not free enough to please him.
When Kit is arrested he is a monster, but the police don't treat him as such. As a garbageman, he knows that everyone's trash looks the same, that we're all as sloppy and disgusting on the inside. He's played his sociopathy like a fiddle, and the film takes an interesting tangent as it treats this piece of trash as something else. Because of his notoriety the cops admire him, basking in his fame, no matter how disgusting the reasons for it are. Kit is a mass murderer, and yet people want to know him just so they can say they've met him, as a conversation piece. I think this attitude of admiring the famous for fame's sake is something we can relate to all too well 30 years later. People want Kit's watch, his lighter, his pen, whatever memorabilia they can grab. They're honored to have it, honored to have been graced with the attention of a serial killer.
Malick obviously sees a sickness in society, one that's not reflected in nature. The sickness of corruption and greed is something entirely human, and while nature may be heartless it is not malicious. Kit and Holly don't come off in Badlands as the villains, but instead its the fervor and celebration surrounding the killings which is meant to disgust. Law enforcement is in place for our own good, and they do their job, but they're mollycoddled by the excitement just like anybody else. What is said about a culture and a people who admire these sorts of actions? Are we the villains for liking it? I can't say I found it insulting or disgusting in the least, meaning my pulse beats in tone with society. At the end of the day, I'm left asking myself, is this natural?
Something I've always noticed about Malick's films is the vantage he gives to his narrators and "main" characters, as in each of his films that role is played by someone with little to say in the world and even less effect in it. In Badlands, this role is shown through Holly, played by Sissy Spacek. In TTRL its Jim Caviezel as Private Witt and in Days of Heaven its Linda Manz as Linda. Whats most striking and bizarre for me about each of these characters is how they're all so helpless in society and yet unvanquished against nature, absolutely unattached and unafraid of whats to come. Society is constantly beckoning them to join the flock and get involved in the struggle and the drama, but they never seem to invest themselves. In many ways, it seems like they operate on a level outside of immediate experience, something less influenced by the moment and instead more thoughtful or pristine.
A good example of this is when Kit shoots Holly's father (played by my favorite American actor Warren Oates, for the record), and her reaction. To both Kit and Holly a door seems to open as a result, but for each character the road therein is very very different. For Kit the road leads to fame and stardom, an excitement and newness in life that heavily contrasts his former life as a garbage man, but remains similarly within the dregs of society. Holly's lifeless reaction to her father's murder takes a different tone, and throughout the movie it seems that she isn't necessarily an agent of her own change but is instead just along for the ride, watching how depraved humanity can be while at times seeming to wish that she could understand the emotions involved in what she was watching. Jim Caviezel's character from TTRL shares a similar disconnect from society, but his sense of human spirit seems to shine with a little more optimism than Holly's, who never really subscribes to whats around her in any meaningful way besides just wanting to leave once she knew the gig was up. She never asks or encourages anyone's death, she just follows with an appearance of helplessness but an interior dialogue which makes us think she understands more.
In all of Malick's films nature plays a prominent role. Whether it be human nature or that which surrounds us, at the end of the day these movies all seem to revolve around this concept that we're missing something, that we've made our conflicts too heavily based on humanity and have left out a major, indifferent and yet influential player. Kit and Holly are on the run, and they find themselves in a number of safehouses. Whats interesting is how they all interact and how little difference the characters find between their venues, here exampled by their fort in the woods and their time holed up in the mansion. Kit builds them the fortress in the woods and it seems so natural, the Swiss Family Robinson solution to their problems. The thing is, we never see these characters clamoring for anything while they're there, and this simplicity when wrapped in nature is a theme you see in TTRL and Days of Heaven as well. Richard Gere's character can't stand the bustle of the city, killing his boss and running off to the midwest. Jim Caviezel can't stand active duty, finding tranquility living with a remote tribe in the Pacific Islands. No matter how far any of these characters gets from society though, it always finds a way to draw them back in. Hunters come looking for Kit, Richard Gere schemes to steal a farmers money and Jim Caviezel is found by the Navy. For Malick, there must be some kind of undesirable poison in society, something so inexorable that actions against it are in some perverse way forgivable. The need and the pressure to get away manifests itself in all these characters, and all of them are surrounded by death. Its only with Kit's growing recognition of fame that he turns his back on these things, eventually finding the open wild too boring and perhaps not free enough to please him.
When Kit is arrested he is a monster, but the police don't treat him as such. As a garbageman, he knows that everyone's trash looks the same, that we're all as sloppy and disgusting on the inside. He's played his sociopathy like a fiddle, and the film takes an interesting tangent as it treats this piece of trash as something else. Because of his notoriety the cops admire him, basking in his fame, no matter how disgusting the reasons for it are. Kit is a mass murderer, and yet people want to know him just so they can say they've met him, as a conversation piece. I think this attitude of admiring the famous for fame's sake is something we can relate to all too well 30 years later. People want Kit's watch, his lighter, his pen, whatever memorabilia they can grab. They're honored to have it, honored to have been graced with the attention of a serial killer.
Malick obviously sees a sickness in society, one that's not reflected in nature. The sickness of corruption and greed is something entirely human, and while nature may be heartless it is not malicious. Kit and Holly don't come off in Badlands as the villains, but instead its the fervor and celebration surrounding the killings which is meant to disgust. Law enforcement is in place for our own good, and they do their job, but they're mollycoddled by the excitement just like anybody else. What is said about a culture and a people who admire these sorts of actions? Are we the villains for liking it? I can't say I found it insulting or disgusting in the least, meaning my pulse beats in tone with society. At the end of the day, I'm left asking myself, is this natural?
Postmodernism and the bummer that comes with it
Alright, so I'm an expressed postmodernist and I'm willing to wager that there are a lot of people who don't know what that means. In all honesty, tough fucking luck. Postmodernism is where thought is bound to go, and not because of any grandiose idea but instead because there is no grandiose idea. Concepts die, history fades and the moment takes on greater weight than the future or the past.
I'm sure there are more than enough people who have fallen victim to it but can't announce it, but lets get it out in the open. To me, the essential aspect of postmodernism is that we've been talking about subjects for 2000 years trying to make them a a reality and that's never going to happen. At this point, with the discussions we've developed, we don't really need to harken to Aristotle or Socrates or whoever the fuck else we've established as a God of thought because in the most basic sense what they've said has been discussed to a near endless extent, and the human condition has moved past it. Its not necessarily that these philosophers were right or wrong but instead its that we've moved forward as a culture, and it can generally be said that the way these classic figures spoke of humanity and the human condition isn't all that applicable to us anymore. Of course there are moments of lucidity and practicality in what they said, but the hope for a modern and finite future is becoming an increasingly dead one.
I think of myself as a pragmatist, but I'd also like to think of myself as a person who's ready to apologize for its shortcomings. In a postmodern world, to me Pragmatism is really the only philosophical standpoint which can account for the dreariness of modern existence and shine a light upon it, allowing for a simplicity and weakness in thought that is both healthy and accommodating. I say this standpoint is healthy only because it encourages the discussion of further subjects, not because it is a safe resting point. Where is a safe resting point? To Rorty, pragmatism is but a stone in the path; something which is to be abandoned once something superior is thought of. I can't think of myself as someone invested much more than this. I think a lot of the troubles people find in postmodernism is that it doesn't offer an overall solution, it just poses as a stopgap. Something to wile our time away with until something more interesting comes along.
Interestingly enough, most postmodernists will accept this, but the area covered by the "discipline" is vast. Why is it vast? Because we're completely redrawing our conceptions of reality man!!!! In a trickle down sense, all of the world is beginning to experience the effects of a philosophical hippie flip, which is like Jer-Bear smoking a roach laced with DMT on the Haight in '72. Things are currently getting that wild. As a result of this wildness, we've found ourselves reanalyzing most concepts we've held dear within cultures and the human spirit over the past whatever, which amounts to a whole lot of change, a whole lot of uncertainty and a whole lot of freaky freaky fear about letting go of whats "true". But where to begin?
To me, there are bits and pieces of I like from a lot of postmodern thinkers. Rorty is obviously a staple of mine, and I'd say the only other philosopher who holds weight with me like him is Wittgenstein and his conception of language-games. I'm also very interested in Derrida's contrasting of a predictable and unpredictable future with l'avenir, as well as with the religious explorations of Vattimo, political justice as presented by Rawls, and I've been reading up on Searle's intentionality lately which seems like a pretty swell deal. The latter two aren't postmodernists necessarily, and I have quite a few bones to pick with Searle, but I think their stuff can pretty easily be read and applied to most any overarching doctrine you'd like. Don't take my word for that.
I bring these things up because they are good representations of what and how I think, and with an understanding of the world that grows more subdued yet chaotic by the day, I think these are things that can draw in and interest a lot of people who want to waste their time with them. Because at the end of the day, there's nothing. No God, no pat on the back for helping that lady across the street, no free pass on avoiding a head on collision based on the fact that you were a cub scout and cleaned a church, nothing. All stories will be bastardized for the victors and history will fail to be adequate for all parties involved. Suck it up losers, because you're going somewhere colder and a whole lot more indifferent than hell.
Actually, I'm kidding. Life ain't so bad.
I'm sure there are more than enough people who have fallen victim to it but can't announce it, but lets get it out in the open. To me, the essential aspect of postmodernism is that we've been talking about subjects for 2000 years trying to make them a a reality and that's never going to happen. At this point, with the discussions we've developed, we don't really need to harken to Aristotle or Socrates or whoever the fuck else we've established as a God of thought because in the most basic sense what they've said has been discussed to a near endless extent, and the human condition has moved past it. Its not necessarily that these philosophers were right or wrong but instead its that we've moved forward as a culture, and it can generally be said that the way these classic figures spoke of humanity and the human condition isn't all that applicable to us anymore. Of course there are moments of lucidity and practicality in what they said, but the hope for a modern and finite future is becoming an increasingly dead one.
I think of myself as a pragmatist, but I'd also like to think of myself as a person who's ready to apologize for its shortcomings. In a postmodern world, to me Pragmatism is really the only philosophical standpoint which can account for the dreariness of modern existence and shine a light upon it, allowing for a simplicity and weakness in thought that is both healthy and accommodating. I say this standpoint is healthy only because it encourages the discussion of further subjects, not because it is a safe resting point. Where is a safe resting point? To Rorty, pragmatism is but a stone in the path; something which is to be abandoned once something superior is thought of. I can't think of myself as someone invested much more than this. I think a lot of the troubles people find in postmodernism is that it doesn't offer an overall solution, it just poses as a stopgap. Something to wile our time away with until something more interesting comes along.
Interestingly enough, most postmodernists will accept this, but the area covered by the "discipline" is vast. Why is it vast? Because we're completely redrawing our conceptions of reality man!!!! In a trickle down sense, all of the world is beginning to experience the effects of a philosophical hippie flip, which is like Jer-Bear smoking a roach laced with DMT on the Haight in '72. Things are currently getting that wild. As a result of this wildness, we've found ourselves reanalyzing most concepts we've held dear within cultures and the human spirit over the past whatever, which amounts to a whole lot of change, a whole lot of uncertainty and a whole lot of freaky freaky fear about letting go of whats "true". But where to begin?
To me, there are bits and pieces of I like from a lot of postmodern thinkers. Rorty is obviously a staple of mine, and I'd say the only other philosopher who holds weight with me like him is Wittgenstein and his conception of language-games. I'm also very interested in Derrida's contrasting of a predictable and unpredictable future with l'avenir, as well as with the religious explorations of Vattimo, political justice as presented by Rawls, and I've been reading up on Searle's intentionality lately which seems like a pretty swell deal. The latter two aren't postmodernists necessarily, and I have quite a few bones to pick with Searle, but I think their stuff can pretty easily be read and applied to most any overarching doctrine you'd like. Don't take my word for that.
I bring these things up because they are good representations of what and how I think, and with an understanding of the world that grows more subdued yet chaotic by the day, I think these are things that can draw in and interest a lot of people who want to waste their time with them. Because at the end of the day, there's nothing. No God, no pat on the back for helping that lady across the street, no free pass on avoiding a head on collision based on the fact that you were a cub scout and cleaned a church, nothing. All stories will be bastardized for the victors and history will fail to be adequate for all parties involved. Suck it up losers, because you're going somewhere colder and a whole lot more indifferent than hell.
Actually, I'm kidding. Life ain't so bad.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Identity and Reason
AIG has decided to change its name to AIU Holdings Ltd., and this has stuck a strange chord within me. Not too long ago we saw Blackwater change its name to Xe, and now we have another corporate entity changing its name to avoid public backlash. Admittedly, its only fitting that these entities scramble their familiarity to retain competitive leverage, but the question I find myself asking is just how functional is this conceptually? Corporations have legal personhood in our society, meaning their entity is treated as a singule citizen in both cases against them as well as in political representation, so even in viewing it in terms of fairness against the common I have a hard time reconciling the weight of this. I mean, when a felon changes their name after getting out of prison we don't drop all charges against them, levying to accept his or her sincerity in change as greater on account of it. For me, this goes beyond an assault on corporate personhood into a realm where we stand back and look at exactly what the fuck we've created.
I can't say that I'm a person who damns corporations outright, but there is a certain degree of responsibility they should be held to. Its just upsetting to see that they can manipulate public perceptions so easily, and while I'm sure its going to cost them millions of dollars to accomplish this shift there's something that just doesn't meld well within me. It's come to a point in our society where our identities are under assault in such a drastic sense, and I can't say its any one party to blame; its just something that's apparent and unhealthy. There are options offered to those financially capable and influential enough to forget their misgivings, but those same escapes aren't afforded to the many. We find ourselves under constant bombardment from advertisers trying to crux our personal value and identity, and yet the symptoms of this are largely left in silence. People in America are dissident and depressed, malcontented and inconsolable. Are we really supposed to believe that this isn't a reaction to the assault on our senses at a nearly nonstop pace?
I'd say this is the ugly reflection of my previous point, being that capitalism spawns complacency; the idea that this same complacency is an intense and uneccessary gaze into our personhood. I'm in no way vouching for the idea when I present it, but could it be that we're simply too mollycoddled and too comfortable for our minds to be able to rest comfortably against our primitive convictions? I think something like this is mostly sensationalized, but there's also an aspect that interests me within it.
I was recently reading an article which talked about transhuman architecture, or an architectural approach which kept things difficult and uncomfortable for the dweller, much like a natural environment. Some of the threat of the actual wild was left out (i.e. predators), but the idea of an environment in which the inhabitant is constantly forced to think constructively about how to accomplish tasks is an interesting one. Would someone actually benefit from being in an adversarial situation like this or is it all just fanfare? Maybe the question I should be asking is this: How do we regain our right to self manifestation and personhood in a society where almost everything is force-fed to us and nothing is safe from the touch of the marketplace.
I'd like to look back at another subject I've referenced here, that of John Dos Passos and the U.S.A. trilogy. As I said when addressing it, the point of these books was to question the aim of this country as a realm of self creation above all in a world that was structured and oppressive against the uncommon. Should we consider ourselves less free than the characters presented in these novels as a result of the omniscient presence of corporate needs, or are they largely indifferent? I'm inclined to say they aren't, but its also hard to judge against a point in the past where modernism was so prevalent and beliefs held a harsher conviction than they do now. Conversely, I don't think people felt as compromised or assaulted as we do now, which is a testament against a financial world which constantly wants our attention. Its a hard point to lobby.
What I'm trying to say here is exactly how many exceptions are we willing to let corporate America afford? They have personhood, but they also have our personhood, and the cycle seems broken. I'm willing to confess that the problem is in part due to the (currently) lacking conversational ability to bring about change coupled with a moral dilemma which can be pinned to no one particular party besides the practice, but that doesn't mean the rules of the game shouldn't be changed to protect our contentment. In simplest terms, being told that our desire for material goods should never be substantiated doesn't really seem like a healthy way to go about living, and while the economic influx has been beneficial in some senses, its a practice that's far from perfectly honed. I'm not sure the voice against these practices has evolved into anything which can offer a shift or compromise which is at all satisfactory, but the voice is there. People are upset and complacent, and how are we supposed to break this practice without breaking the market which offers us prosperity and health?
I can't say that I'm a person who damns corporations outright, but there is a certain degree of responsibility they should be held to. Its just upsetting to see that they can manipulate public perceptions so easily, and while I'm sure its going to cost them millions of dollars to accomplish this shift there's something that just doesn't meld well within me. It's come to a point in our society where our identities are under assault in such a drastic sense, and I can't say its any one party to blame; its just something that's apparent and unhealthy. There are options offered to those financially capable and influential enough to forget their misgivings, but those same escapes aren't afforded to the many. We find ourselves under constant bombardment from advertisers trying to crux our personal value and identity, and yet the symptoms of this are largely left in silence. People in America are dissident and depressed, malcontented and inconsolable. Are we really supposed to believe that this isn't a reaction to the assault on our senses at a nearly nonstop pace?
I'd say this is the ugly reflection of my previous point, being that capitalism spawns complacency; the idea that this same complacency is an intense and uneccessary gaze into our personhood. I'm in no way vouching for the idea when I present it, but could it be that we're simply too mollycoddled and too comfortable for our minds to be able to rest comfortably against our primitive convictions? I think something like this is mostly sensationalized, but there's also an aspect that interests me within it.
I was recently reading an article which talked about transhuman architecture, or an architectural approach which kept things difficult and uncomfortable for the dweller, much like a natural environment. Some of the threat of the actual wild was left out (i.e. predators), but the idea of an environment in which the inhabitant is constantly forced to think constructively about how to accomplish tasks is an interesting one. Would someone actually benefit from being in an adversarial situation like this or is it all just fanfare? Maybe the question I should be asking is this: How do we regain our right to self manifestation and personhood in a society where almost everything is force-fed to us and nothing is safe from the touch of the marketplace.
I'd like to look back at another subject I've referenced here, that of John Dos Passos and the U.S.A. trilogy. As I said when addressing it, the point of these books was to question the aim of this country as a realm of self creation above all in a world that was structured and oppressive against the uncommon. Should we consider ourselves less free than the characters presented in these novels as a result of the omniscient presence of corporate needs, or are they largely indifferent? I'm inclined to say they aren't, but its also hard to judge against a point in the past where modernism was so prevalent and beliefs held a harsher conviction than they do now. Conversely, I don't think people felt as compromised or assaulted as we do now, which is a testament against a financial world which constantly wants our attention. Its a hard point to lobby.
What I'm trying to say here is exactly how many exceptions are we willing to let corporate America afford? They have personhood, but they also have our personhood, and the cycle seems broken. I'm willing to confess that the problem is in part due to the (currently) lacking conversational ability to bring about change coupled with a moral dilemma which can be pinned to no one particular party besides the practice, but that doesn't mean the rules of the game shouldn't be changed to protect our contentment. In simplest terms, being told that our desire for material goods should never be substantiated doesn't really seem like a healthy way to go about living, and while the economic influx has been beneficial in some senses, its a practice that's far from perfectly honed. I'm not sure the voice against these practices has evolved into anything which can offer a shift or compromise which is at all satisfactory, but the voice is there. People are upset and complacent, and how are we supposed to break this practice without breaking the market which offers us prosperity and health?
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Two steps forward
I may have overstated myself in my previous entry, so I wanted to take this opportunity to slow it down so we can speed it up.
In using the term "hope" in my previous entry, I in no way am trying to say that I believe that there is some sort of ultimate culmination to our cultural pursuits; I do not believe in a Utopian end to our efforts. Instead, what I mean in my use of hope is that things will generally get better for everyone in terms of basic and essential needs, i.e. food, shelter, healthcare etc. When I say these things, they do not at all reflect potential for contentment, improved demeanor or overall happiness. If anything, we've found ourselves stagnated in response to the success of the marketplace, with people becoming trite and vacuous. Capital invokes complacency. As a person who spends a large amount of time in strangers' homes, I can't say I see a whole lot of diversity. Rarely (if ever) do I see customers with a decent selection of literature or quality films in their house, and maybe its my sour approach to my job which causes me to view these people so negatively, but I have to think of this as an instance where it takes two to tango.
I want to get back to this idea that capital invokes complacency, because it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. In essence, its this idea that the more things are provided for us, the less people are interested in self manifestation and improvement, probably because the approach of the new is silenced by the needs of the marketplace. In a society where immediacy oftentimes trumps practicality, there are a lot of ways we can look at ourselves and say we've taken the wrong step. It just seems like people are more willing to be force fed things that aren't necessarily what they want, and I think the American cultural perception of what's artistically nifty reflects this via things like The Da vinchi code, Titanic and Live Laugh Love placards. I'm sorry if you like all three of those things.
Maybe things have always been this way, and to a large extent I'd say thats right, but there's also this creeping fear inside of me which says that people are more apt to accept what they're told to do now than they have been in recent and comparable American history. Maybe its that what they're willing to accept is more dangerous and emotionally bereft than it has been before. That could be the case. It just seems like there's no actual desire to break the status quo, and whatever desire there is is typically outweighed by a desire to become famous once the shackles are broken rather than continued pursuit of what's actually good or useful. When i see these hackneyed attempts by people to make a moment mean something or create something beautiful it feels so forced, as though there's no sanctuary to hide in from the corporate ghosts. And I don't mean this in a personal sense because I have a lot of friends who I'm proud of and who I don't think fit into this mold at all, but what I'm talking about is in a global sense, and how average people while their time away.
I may have gotten a little off track, but what I wanted to say here was that I don't believe that society will get more prosperous and survivable on account of an abstraction like hope but instead out of necessity. We will always be moved towards what is in our best interests, and better sense of global fraternity should typically be viewed as the easiest way for us to get by in a world that is increasingly plural. Generally, this progress can be viewed positively, but its no reason to stop prodding society to improve conditions and allow inspiration for new thoughts. I may have contradicted myself here, but if you have a problem with it either write a comment or go fuck yourself.
In using the term "hope" in my previous entry, I in no way am trying to say that I believe that there is some sort of ultimate culmination to our cultural pursuits; I do not believe in a Utopian end to our efforts. Instead, what I mean in my use of hope is that things will generally get better for everyone in terms of basic and essential needs, i.e. food, shelter, healthcare etc. When I say these things, they do not at all reflect potential for contentment, improved demeanor or overall happiness. If anything, we've found ourselves stagnated in response to the success of the marketplace, with people becoming trite and vacuous. Capital invokes complacency. As a person who spends a large amount of time in strangers' homes, I can't say I see a whole lot of diversity. Rarely (if ever) do I see customers with a decent selection of literature or quality films in their house, and maybe its my sour approach to my job which causes me to view these people so negatively, but I have to think of this as an instance where it takes two to tango.
I want to get back to this idea that capital invokes complacency, because it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. In essence, its this idea that the more things are provided for us, the less people are interested in self manifestation and improvement, probably because the approach of the new is silenced by the needs of the marketplace. In a society where immediacy oftentimes trumps practicality, there are a lot of ways we can look at ourselves and say we've taken the wrong step. It just seems like people are more willing to be force fed things that aren't necessarily what they want, and I think the American cultural perception of what's artistically nifty reflects this via things like The Da vinchi code, Titanic and Live Laugh Love placards. I'm sorry if you like all three of those things.
Maybe things have always been this way, and to a large extent I'd say thats right, but there's also this creeping fear inside of me which says that people are more apt to accept what they're told to do now than they have been in recent and comparable American history. Maybe its that what they're willing to accept is more dangerous and emotionally bereft than it has been before. That could be the case. It just seems like there's no actual desire to break the status quo, and whatever desire there is is typically outweighed by a desire to become famous once the shackles are broken rather than continued pursuit of what's actually good or useful. When i see these hackneyed attempts by people to make a moment mean something or create something beautiful it feels so forced, as though there's no sanctuary to hide in from the corporate ghosts. And I don't mean this in a personal sense because I have a lot of friends who I'm proud of and who I don't think fit into this mold at all, but what I'm talking about is in a global sense, and how average people while their time away.
I may have gotten a little off track, but what I wanted to say here was that I don't believe that society will get more prosperous and survivable on account of an abstraction like hope but instead out of necessity. We will always be moved towards what is in our best interests, and better sense of global fraternity should typically be viewed as the easiest way for us to get by in a world that is increasingly plural. Generally, this progress can be viewed positively, but its no reason to stop prodding society to improve conditions and allow inspiration for new thoughts. I may have contradicted myself here, but if you have a problem with it either write a comment or go fuck yourself.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Hope and Indetermination
Despite my grim and often contrary perception of others, I for some reason find myself with an undying optimism for tomorrow. Maybe I've relinquished myself further than others and therfore can apologize for more than others allow themselves, understanding that the horrific and traumatic are aspects of life which are fairly necessary, and in simplest gratitude I think I could be okay with the idea that the human race continues on only (granted the example survives for further generations).
My brother came to visit a couple of weeks ago and it was interesting how our perspectives differed. He's much less likely to be critical of isolated incidents as I am, but he conversely doesn't share my (perhaps bizarre or misplaced) optimism. He's much more critical of the poor educational system we find ourselves with and doesn't agree at all with my ideas on God's death in the first world. I, in juxtaposition, am constantly chomping at the bit for things to complain about and confounded by the amount of shepherding done by society, but somehow this negativity doesn't crush my overarching perspective on things and strangely detached optimism for a humanity I'm disgusted by on a personal level.
I still believe that history serves as a compass which is generally helpful in our decision making process, and I think that besides this all society needs is to slowly be deconstructed. People still hold onto the stigmas of the past (racism, sexism, etc etc etc) in a world where those things are less and less helpful. In an honest capitalist sensibility, segregating the marketplace is in almost all ways detrimental, and I think its the perpetuation of this global market which does allow for a lot of added equality, because all people at the top want as many people as possible giving them money.
Problems arise on a personal level and in terms of employment. Where we want to appeal to a certain segment of society in one sense, we concurrently draw them back through an exploitation of labor. This is why the free market in itself doesn't work. We need people watching out for the commonwealth, because the aristocratic will always be trying to appeal to the broadest spectrum possible but rarely recognize that their pursuit of this damages those directly beneath them through unfair wages, unfair treatment of ethnicities and unfair hiring and promotional practices. Throughout history, this has been a balancing act.
Now we find ourselves on a global scale, a place where prejudices and bigotry are (as best as we can enact it) left to cower in the shadows. This is a work in progress. My argument is that things have never been so good for so many people at any point in the past, but that's no reason to soften our resolve or believe that this is as good as it gets. When the largest amount of people work together, the largest amount of people prosper. Capitalism, even in its flaws, accomplishes this appeal to commonality and fraternity better than anything before it at least. Monarchies, Oligarchies (even though this is still us in some senses), Communism, etc never provided the prosperity we now find ourselves with. This is why I can't just look at society and view us as fucked. The contented who suffer and the stubborn have always existed, but they've also always been forced to flex. The point we find ourselves at is no different, albeit frustrating. Universal freedom wrought in a common understanding of one's best interest on a grand scale works much better than a theistic mandate. I think that eventually the idea that what works best doesn't need to step on one's personal beliefs can gain traction, its just the subject is particularly hot and contentious right now. Feelings will settle and things will continue to move forward. More on this later.
My brother came to visit a couple of weeks ago and it was interesting how our perspectives differed. He's much less likely to be critical of isolated incidents as I am, but he conversely doesn't share my (perhaps bizarre or misplaced) optimism. He's much more critical of the poor educational system we find ourselves with and doesn't agree at all with my ideas on God's death in the first world. I, in juxtaposition, am constantly chomping at the bit for things to complain about and confounded by the amount of shepherding done by society, but somehow this negativity doesn't crush my overarching perspective on things and strangely detached optimism for a humanity I'm disgusted by on a personal level.
I still believe that history serves as a compass which is generally helpful in our decision making process, and I think that besides this all society needs is to slowly be deconstructed. People still hold onto the stigmas of the past (racism, sexism, etc etc etc) in a world where those things are less and less helpful. In an honest capitalist sensibility, segregating the marketplace is in almost all ways detrimental, and I think its the perpetuation of this global market which does allow for a lot of added equality, because all people at the top want as many people as possible giving them money.
Problems arise on a personal level and in terms of employment. Where we want to appeal to a certain segment of society in one sense, we concurrently draw them back through an exploitation of labor. This is why the free market in itself doesn't work. We need people watching out for the commonwealth, because the aristocratic will always be trying to appeal to the broadest spectrum possible but rarely recognize that their pursuit of this damages those directly beneath them through unfair wages, unfair treatment of ethnicities and unfair hiring and promotional practices. Throughout history, this has been a balancing act.
Now we find ourselves on a global scale, a place where prejudices and bigotry are (as best as we can enact it) left to cower in the shadows. This is a work in progress. My argument is that things have never been so good for so many people at any point in the past, but that's no reason to soften our resolve or believe that this is as good as it gets. When the largest amount of people work together, the largest amount of people prosper. Capitalism, even in its flaws, accomplishes this appeal to commonality and fraternity better than anything before it at least. Monarchies, Oligarchies (even though this is still us in some senses), Communism, etc never provided the prosperity we now find ourselves with. This is why I can't just look at society and view us as fucked. The contented who suffer and the stubborn have always existed, but they've also always been forced to flex. The point we find ourselves at is no different, albeit frustrating. Universal freedom wrought in a common understanding of one's best interest on a grand scale works much better than a theistic mandate. I think that eventually the idea that what works best doesn't need to step on one's personal beliefs can gain traction, its just the subject is particularly hot and contentious right now. Feelings will settle and things will continue to move forward. More on this later.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
The part about borders
As I've been getting at, a lot of 2666 is about experience and the borders which sequester us to and from different levels of interaction with others and entire cultures/communities. Like I said in my previous post on this subject, thus far every character in 2666 is an agent of indirect influence on that which they follow. None of them are the ones shaping that which they're after, and instead they just follow and try to interpret what is shaping them. This theme is elevated by cultural and societal borders, which Bolano paints as a thing that varies quite a bit globally.
To view this abstraction in any sort of "post" sense is fairly easy, seeing as how a comprehension of our deteriorating borders and increasingly humanitarian worldview is a prominent symptom of a postmetaphysical conception of things, and I think this is a sense in which Bolano tries to appeal to the reader and at the very least tries to convey the indetermination of the contemporary. At the most basic, Bolano presents in his novel not an antagonist in the purest sense, but instead that of human compassion, and the use of the proximity of Santa Teresa to the United States isn't entirely coincidental. Just as the European intellectuals are comfortable in the interchangeable borders of their landscape but not of others, Bolano paints the Americas as an entirely diverse and divided population, with a simple and imaginary border posing as the greatest difference between depravity and proliferation. I may express this in terms that are too simple, but the conception in the novel is entirely different. Never are the United States harped on directly for being a cold and uncaring juggernaut, but the parallel doesn't hurt in furthering what Bolano is saying.
Also in defense of the United States is Fate, the American journalist who has no knowledge of the murders prior to his arrival in Mexico but who slowly gets drawn into the culture of them. He searches as hard as any for a reason behind their happening, instead only coming up with the strange characters whose lives are interwoven into the conflict and the way they all come to terms with their hopeless knowledge of this and the way they talk about it as a result. Just as there are many different branches of journalism and how Fate has no idea how to report boxing when he gets to Mexico, there are also many ways in which humanity can and is suffering currently, and the United States can't be expected to make things just everywhere or to even know how to in so many different instances. Its not that the United States plays a larger moral role than any other country in the novel because if anything it plays a more noticeably absent one, but in terms of proximity its easiest to draw this particular comparison with. Every culture plays a different role in human conflict and their ability to reconcile any is drawn by an innumerable number of sliding scales.
I imagine the pain of cruelty across a border was one that came particularly close to Bolano, since he was a self enforced Chilean exile. A leftist figure who was a little bit moreso than the public appreciated, Bolano had left Chile after struggling to Socialize the country and bring about revolution. Spending time in Mexico and finally Europe, its not beyond reason to think that Bolano may have had a similar experience to the academics in the first part of the book, finding the ease of crossing imaginary borders a juxtaposition to the border of his native Chile. Writing this novel while he knew he was dying of liver failure, the thought that he could make himself in so many countries besides the one he was born in could have been aggravating, especially when viewed through a lens of an increasingly homogenized humanity. Though at no point do I feel the novel approaches the question, its one I find myself asking fairly regularly: What does it take to break apart the borders that disconnect us?
To view this abstraction in any sort of "post" sense is fairly easy, seeing as how a comprehension of our deteriorating borders and increasingly humanitarian worldview is a prominent symptom of a postmetaphysical conception of things, and I think this is a sense in which Bolano tries to appeal to the reader and at the very least tries to convey the indetermination of the contemporary. At the most basic, Bolano presents in his novel not an antagonist in the purest sense, but instead that of human compassion, and the use of the proximity of Santa Teresa to the United States isn't entirely coincidental. Just as the European intellectuals are comfortable in the interchangeable borders of their landscape but not of others, Bolano paints the Americas as an entirely diverse and divided population, with a simple and imaginary border posing as the greatest difference between depravity and proliferation. I may express this in terms that are too simple, but the conception in the novel is entirely different. Never are the United States harped on directly for being a cold and uncaring juggernaut, but the parallel doesn't hurt in furthering what Bolano is saying.
Also in defense of the United States is Fate, the American journalist who has no knowledge of the murders prior to his arrival in Mexico but who slowly gets drawn into the culture of them. He searches as hard as any for a reason behind their happening, instead only coming up with the strange characters whose lives are interwoven into the conflict and the way they all come to terms with their hopeless knowledge of this and the way they talk about it as a result. Just as there are many different branches of journalism and how Fate has no idea how to report boxing when he gets to Mexico, there are also many ways in which humanity can and is suffering currently, and the United States can't be expected to make things just everywhere or to even know how to in so many different instances. Its not that the United States plays a larger moral role than any other country in the novel because if anything it plays a more noticeably absent one, but in terms of proximity its easiest to draw this particular comparison with. Every culture plays a different role in human conflict and their ability to reconcile any is drawn by an innumerable number of sliding scales.
I imagine the pain of cruelty across a border was one that came particularly close to Bolano, since he was a self enforced Chilean exile. A leftist figure who was a little bit moreso than the public appreciated, Bolano had left Chile after struggling to Socialize the country and bring about revolution. Spending time in Mexico and finally Europe, its not beyond reason to think that Bolano may have had a similar experience to the academics in the first part of the book, finding the ease of crossing imaginary borders a juxtaposition to the border of his native Chile. Writing this novel while he knew he was dying of liver failure, the thought that he could make himself in so many countries besides the one he was born in could have been aggravating, especially when viewed through a lens of an increasingly homogenized humanity. Though at no point do I feel the novel approaches the question, its one I find myself asking fairly regularly: What does it take to break apart the borders that disconnect us?
Thursday, January 29, 2009
The Schwartz
I took a pretty formidable cocktail of drugs tonight, and its amounted to me feeling pretty stellar at the moment. The results of this will drive the rest of this post.
Admittedly, I'm fairly strange. In taking all of this, I can't really think of anything I'd rather have done than come home and write and be by myself, and I guess that speaks to my intensely personal nature. Its not that I don't enjoy the company of those I did it with, because I think Brian is a pretty spectacular friend to have, but I just have this weird weight at the depth of my character, a sort of bizarre manifestation of self who has so much to say and wants so badly to say it, but for whatever reason never has felt particularly well-expressed in action. Its very frustrating. There are things I wrap myself up in, and in many aspects overwhelm myself with, but in a moment of tranquility like this I feel approachable and at ease with myself, which is something I strive so hard to find in a nearly breakneck ambition but can't seem to get all that close to that often.
Maybe its just that I want to express these things to something perceivably public so that I can feel that I'm confident in facing the world and at best hope that I can dismiss any concerns people have with the way I choose to live my life and "roll" so to speak. My mind has always been a prickly pear, and the things I take interest in, am naturally inclined towards and have set myself after have been difficult for me to explain always, but I've never been without a guiding principle or conception of what it could all become. I understand society, I understand people. I can look at a conception of human relation or another's personal conflict or even emotional insight and understand it almost immediately (something I find best exampled best by my affinity with literature and art), but I have trouble reconciling these same simple problems within myself and still don't feel like my expression in comprehension comes that close to explaining just how well these things resonate within me. I've been trying in this blog to show the parallels that connect the everyday things I experience and how I tie them to what I've read or thought or believe, but it all still needs work. I dunno, its not that I want to sound exceedingly deep or give the impression that I think I'm better than everyone because of what I am, because I really don't. I'd honestly hate to conceive of myself as some sort of "writer" or intellectual giant, but there's also the dissatisfaction and valuelessness that comes with the ambiguity of not labeling myself as such. Mostly, I think I want to avoid feeling as though I do the things I do just to have them seen as some sort of social parlor trick or facet of my personality, because I don't and I care about them on a much more personal level than that. I also don't want to sound too angsty or tortured in my approach to this, because I don't think that's the level I experience these things at. I mean, I don't have a girlfriend and I feel mostly unapproachable and overwhelmed or overwhelming in most social situations, so the situation has created a strange limbo within me.
I'd hate to come off as someone who just wants to brag about what he's known and how weird a niche of knowledge he's found for himself, because its nothing like that. At the most basic, I feel as though I love the art and perspective I've taught myself, and again the choices behind this weren't in the interest of constructing myself into some certain social pillar, but instead because these are things that fascinate me and ultimately the realm of literary art and art in general is one where I want to contribute to the conversation, move it forward and reflect my mark upon. Is it too arrogant to say that I feel in these things that I have something valuable to say beyond just reciting them?
I have fun in connecting these things, in taking the disparity of weird shit I've read and watched and experienced and drawing them together, wrapping them into a creation that in part pays credence to where I've taken them from but ultimately (hopefully) is a conception and expression which I can safely say is mine. In terms of output, my ambitions as an author have been lethargic and mostly destructive, and maybe the idea I had of turning myself into something like that will never pan out, but I just haven't found the way I want to allow myself to be like that yet. Somewhere on the landscape of my mind, I haven't been able to reconcile whether I've never read anything I'd want to sound like or can't understand where I want to draw from most. I know the two aren't exactly compatible, but those are the two polar views I typically find myself confronted with. I like Pynchonian surreality and playfulness, but at the end of the day his novels feel too maddening and chaotic and unrelatable. He's post structure and absolute, but his novels mostly reflect that too well and don't ever feel terribly relatable or welcoming. I think Delillo's work is wonderful and much more breathable, and I adore his conversational writing ability as much as I adore Pynchon's wordplay, but his novels lack a certain magic of the world I see and love in authors like McCarthy, Faulkner, Greene, and in weirder yet probably more appropriate ways Rushdie and Garcia-Marquez. I love how those authors can take a setting and make it feel like something that mattered and has a relatable resonance (if only, in certain instances, because of nostalgia, but that still counts), McCarthy with his conception of the American Southwest and Faulkner in his sickening yet romanticized realization of the South. These authors have a way of using a setting to establish an easy, accesible and formidable value at the core of their works, and I like how it contributes to whats essential about their novels. Another instance I find is Proust, Genet and other more introspective authors (Doestoyevsky probably goes among them as well) who for whatever reason I can only think of as European.
As it stands, I'm probably most inclined to write in introspection, but its something I really hate about anything I try to come up with. Assumedly because of how personal I find myself, these sort of authors really strike a chord within me, as I really enjoy the plurality and mental exploration of characters who seem decidedly relegated or entirely vapid and social but are ultimately used as devices to express things that are more humanistic and connect disparities between conceptions. I'd like to say more about this and would've preferred to use a more colorful selection of authors to mention, but I'm sure this seems like more of a namedropping than anything, and I don't know how to avoid having it sound like that.
So what of my productivity? Am I really supposed to rest on the laurels of this idea that I haven't found an accurate means of expression or balance? I mean, what else can I say? This way of expressing things seems to be the only shoe that fits, so that's how it'll come out. I know my decisions may seem chaotic and oftentimes even erratic, but they're all in league with a larger picture that I'm trying to get at. What I'm trying to say is that while it all makes sense in my head sometimes, I think my hands are just having a hard time catching up. There are moments and values and tones which I'd like to let loose, but they just haven't been all that easy to catch. Whether these things will ever congeal into something that works is anyone's guess. At times I hope they will, but at others I think I could walk away into an entirely different means of expression that would be more up-front and nonliterary. All I can really say is that all my life I've been having this conversation with myself in my head, and at this point I'm not sure the person I've imagined myself talking to actually exists (not in a crazy way, idiots) or whether I'm trying to draw them out. All this amounts to is me being fairly antisocial and withdrawn even though I've got some decent social skills and people seems to dig on the vibe I'm setting. In essence, I'm weird.
Admittedly, I'm fairly strange. In taking all of this, I can't really think of anything I'd rather have done than come home and write and be by myself, and I guess that speaks to my intensely personal nature. Its not that I don't enjoy the company of those I did it with, because I think Brian is a pretty spectacular friend to have, but I just have this weird weight at the depth of my character, a sort of bizarre manifestation of self who has so much to say and wants so badly to say it, but for whatever reason never has felt particularly well-expressed in action. Its very frustrating. There are things I wrap myself up in, and in many aspects overwhelm myself with, but in a moment of tranquility like this I feel approachable and at ease with myself, which is something I strive so hard to find in a nearly breakneck ambition but can't seem to get all that close to that often.
Maybe its just that I want to express these things to something perceivably public so that I can feel that I'm confident in facing the world and at best hope that I can dismiss any concerns people have with the way I choose to live my life and "roll" so to speak. My mind has always been a prickly pear, and the things I take interest in, am naturally inclined towards and have set myself after have been difficult for me to explain always, but I've never been without a guiding principle or conception of what it could all become. I understand society, I understand people. I can look at a conception of human relation or another's personal conflict or even emotional insight and understand it almost immediately (something I find best exampled best by my affinity with literature and art), but I have trouble reconciling these same simple problems within myself and still don't feel like my expression in comprehension comes that close to explaining just how well these things resonate within me. I've been trying in this blog to show the parallels that connect the everyday things I experience and how I tie them to what I've read or thought or believe, but it all still needs work. I dunno, its not that I want to sound exceedingly deep or give the impression that I think I'm better than everyone because of what I am, because I really don't. I'd honestly hate to conceive of myself as some sort of "writer" or intellectual giant, but there's also the dissatisfaction and valuelessness that comes with the ambiguity of not labeling myself as such. Mostly, I think I want to avoid feeling as though I do the things I do just to have them seen as some sort of social parlor trick or facet of my personality, because I don't and I care about them on a much more personal level than that. I also don't want to sound too angsty or tortured in my approach to this, because I don't think that's the level I experience these things at. I mean, I don't have a girlfriend and I feel mostly unapproachable and overwhelmed or overwhelming in most social situations, so the situation has created a strange limbo within me.
I'd hate to come off as someone who just wants to brag about what he's known and how weird a niche of knowledge he's found for himself, because its nothing like that. At the most basic, I feel as though I love the art and perspective I've taught myself, and again the choices behind this weren't in the interest of constructing myself into some certain social pillar, but instead because these are things that fascinate me and ultimately the realm of literary art and art in general is one where I want to contribute to the conversation, move it forward and reflect my mark upon. Is it too arrogant to say that I feel in these things that I have something valuable to say beyond just reciting them?
I have fun in connecting these things, in taking the disparity of weird shit I've read and watched and experienced and drawing them together, wrapping them into a creation that in part pays credence to where I've taken them from but ultimately (hopefully) is a conception and expression which I can safely say is mine. In terms of output, my ambitions as an author have been lethargic and mostly destructive, and maybe the idea I had of turning myself into something like that will never pan out, but I just haven't found the way I want to allow myself to be like that yet. Somewhere on the landscape of my mind, I haven't been able to reconcile whether I've never read anything I'd want to sound like or can't understand where I want to draw from most. I know the two aren't exactly compatible, but those are the two polar views I typically find myself confronted with. I like Pynchonian surreality and playfulness, but at the end of the day his novels feel too maddening and chaotic and unrelatable. He's post structure and absolute, but his novels mostly reflect that too well and don't ever feel terribly relatable or welcoming. I think Delillo's work is wonderful and much more breathable, and I adore his conversational writing ability as much as I adore Pynchon's wordplay, but his novels lack a certain magic of the world I see and love in authors like McCarthy, Faulkner, Greene, and in weirder yet probably more appropriate ways Rushdie and Garcia-Marquez. I love how those authors can take a setting and make it feel like something that mattered and has a relatable resonance (if only, in certain instances, because of nostalgia, but that still counts), McCarthy with his conception of the American Southwest and Faulkner in his sickening yet romanticized realization of the South. These authors have a way of using a setting to establish an easy, accesible and formidable value at the core of their works, and I like how it contributes to whats essential about their novels. Another instance I find is Proust, Genet and other more introspective authors (Doestoyevsky probably goes among them as well) who for whatever reason I can only think of as European.
As it stands, I'm probably most inclined to write in introspection, but its something I really hate about anything I try to come up with. Assumedly because of how personal I find myself, these sort of authors really strike a chord within me, as I really enjoy the plurality and mental exploration of characters who seem decidedly relegated or entirely vapid and social but are ultimately used as devices to express things that are more humanistic and connect disparities between conceptions. I'd like to say more about this and would've preferred to use a more colorful selection of authors to mention, but I'm sure this seems like more of a namedropping than anything, and I don't know how to avoid having it sound like that.
So what of my productivity? Am I really supposed to rest on the laurels of this idea that I haven't found an accurate means of expression or balance? I mean, what else can I say? This way of expressing things seems to be the only shoe that fits, so that's how it'll come out. I know my decisions may seem chaotic and oftentimes even erratic, but they're all in league with a larger picture that I'm trying to get at. What I'm trying to say is that while it all makes sense in my head sometimes, I think my hands are just having a hard time catching up. There are moments and values and tones which I'd like to let loose, but they just haven't been all that easy to catch. Whether these things will ever congeal into something that works is anyone's guess. At times I hope they will, but at others I think I could walk away into an entirely different means of expression that would be more up-front and nonliterary. All I can really say is that all my life I've been having this conversation with myself in my head, and at this point I'm not sure the person I've imagined myself talking to actually exists (not in a crazy way, idiots) or whether I'm trying to draw them out. All this amounts to is me being fairly antisocial and withdrawn even though I've got some decent social skills and people seems to dig on the vibe I'm setting. In essence, I'm weird.
Friday, January 23, 2009
The part about borders
As I've been getting at, a lot of 2666 is about experience and the borders which sequester us to and from different levels of interaction with others and entire cultures/communities. Like I said in my previous post on this subject, thus far every character in 2666 is an agent of indirect influence on that which they follow. None of them are the ones shaping that which they're after, and instead they just follow and try to interpret what is shaping them. This theme is elevated by cultural and societal borders, which Bolano paints as a thing that varies quite a bit globally.
To view this abstraction in any sort of "post" sense is fairly easy, seeing as how a comprehension of our deteriorating borders and increasingly humanitarian worldview is a prominent symptom of a postmetaphysical conception of things, and I think this is a sense in which Bolano tries to appeal to the reader and at the very least tries to convey the indetermination of the contemporary. At the most basic, Bolano presents in his novel not an antagonist in the purest sense, but instead that of human compassion, and the use of the proximety of Santa Teresa to the United States isn't entirely coincidental. Just as the European intellectuals are comfortable in the interchangable borders of their landscape but not of others, Bolano paints the Americas as an entirely diverse and divided population, with a simple and imaginary border posing as the greatest difference between depravity and proliferation. I may express this in terms that are too simple, but the conception in the novel is entirey different. Never are the United States harped on directly for being a cold and uncaring juggernaut, but the paralell doesn't hurt in furthering what Bolano is saying.
Also in defense of the United States is Fate, the American journalist who has no knowledge of the murders prior to his arrival in Mexico but who slowly gets drawn into the culture of them, searching as hard as any for a reason behind their happening and instead only coming up with the strange characters whose lives are interwoven into the conflict and the way they all come to terms with their hopeless knowledge of this and the way they talk about it as a result. Just as there are many different branches of journalism and how Fate has no idea how to report boxing when he gets to Mexico, there are also many ways in which humanity can and is suffering currently, and the United States can't be expected to make things just everywhere or to even know how to in so many different instances. Its not that the United States plays a larger moral role than any other country in the novel because if anything it plays less of one, but in terms of proximity its easiest to draw this particular comparison with. Every culture plays a different role in human conflict and their ability to reconcile any is made by an innumerable number of sliding scales.
I imagine the pain of cruelty across a border was one that came particularly close to Bolano, since he was a self enforced Chilean exile. A leftist figure who was a little bit moreso than the public appreciated, Bolano had left Chile after struggling to Socialize the country and bring about revolution. Spending time in Mexico and finally Europe, its not beyond reason to think that Bolano may have had a similar experience to the academics in the first part of the book, finding the ease of crossing imaginary borders a juxtaposition to the borders of his native Chile. Writing this novel as he knew he was dying of liver failure, the thought that he could make himself in so many countries besides the one he was born in could have been aggrovating, especially when viewed through a lens of an increasingly homogenized humanity. Though at no point do I feel the novel approaches the question, its one I find myself asking fairly regularly: What does it take to break apart the borders that disconnect us?
To view this abstraction in any sort of "post" sense is fairly easy, seeing as how a comprehension of our deteriorating borders and increasingly humanitarian worldview is a prominent symptom of a postmetaphysical conception of things, and I think this is a sense in which Bolano tries to appeal to the reader and at the very least tries to convey the indetermination of the contemporary. At the most basic, Bolano presents in his novel not an antagonist in the purest sense, but instead that of human compassion, and the use of the proximety of Santa Teresa to the United States isn't entirely coincidental. Just as the European intellectuals are comfortable in the interchangable borders of their landscape but not of others, Bolano paints the Americas as an entirely diverse and divided population, with a simple and imaginary border posing as the greatest difference between depravity and proliferation. I may express this in terms that are too simple, but the conception in the novel is entirey different. Never are the United States harped on directly for being a cold and uncaring juggernaut, but the paralell doesn't hurt in furthering what Bolano is saying.
Also in defense of the United States is Fate, the American journalist who has no knowledge of the murders prior to his arrival in Mexico but who slowly gets drawn into the culture of them, searching as hard as any for a reason behind their happening and instead only coming up with the strange characters whose lives are interwoven into the conflict and the way they all come to terms with their hopeless knowledge of this and the way they talk about it as a result. Just as there are many different branches of journalism and how Fate has no idea how to report boxing when he gets to Mexico, there are also many ways in which humanity can and is suffering currently, and the United States can't be expected to make things just everywhere or to even know how to in so many different instances. Its not that the United States plays a larger moral role than any other country in the novel because if anything it plays less of one, but in terms of proximity its easiest to draw this particular comparison with. Every culture plays a different role in human conflict and their ability to reconcile any is made by an innumerable number of sliding scales.
I imagine the pain of cruelty across a border was one that came particularly close to Bolano, since he was a self enforced Chilean exile. A leftist figure who was a little bit moreso than the public appreciated, Bolano had left Chile after struggling to Socialize the country and bring about revolution. Spending time in Mexico and finally Europe, its not beyond reason to think that Bolano may have had a similar experience to the academics in the first part of the book, finding the ease of crossing imaginary borders a juxtaposition to the borders of his native Chile. Writing this novel as he knew he was dying of liver failure, the thought that he could make himself in so many countries besides the one he was born in could have been aggrovating, especially when viewed through a lens of an increasingly homogenized humanity. Though at no point do I feel the novel approaches the question, its one I find myself asking fairly regularly: What does it take to break apart the borders that disconnect us?
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Setting things straight
Barack Obama was inaugurated as President a couple days ago, and its been an experience which I find hard to place my head around. On the one hand I share the general public sentiment that he's a great guy and that he's exactly what we've been needing in this country, but on the other hand I'm looking at the scope of this event and I don't feel as though I've begun to grasp it at all.
Honestly, all I could think about as I watched the inauguration was how inadequate I felt in the wake of such an historic moment. Its weird, and it may seem too melodramatic, but it was a feeling like that which washed over me as I watched the whole thing go down. I would be sitting there, watching history be made, and I'd think to myself "Is this the position I want to remember myself in as this happened? Is this angle from my TV where I want to remember being as I watched this?" It was strange, and probably about as heady and introspective as I could expect something coming from myself to be. For whatever reason, when presented with a moment of importance I just couldn't seem to find myself gaining the adequacy to stand up to it, as though I wasn't prepared to understand what I was witnessing.
How do you understand something like this? Its hard for me to invest in a singular event like this for an abundance of reasons, but probably highest amongst them would be that I still haven't seen this guy do much politically and for the most part when I'm watching him speak I'm just waiting to see him assassinated. Sorry to be a downer, but the thought rarely leaves my mind when I see him in a public setting, and I think half of me is just waiting for him to get killed so I can finally begin to wrap my head around what he meant to me and the collective American consciousness. 9/11 wasn't like this. There wasn't this same anticipation, this same feeling that something else was going to happen that would either make or break what was happening on the screen. 9/11 was finite; an event that happened entirely unexpectedly and which for the most part was resolved in the act of mourning. Sure, anger remained after we'd come to grips with what had happened, but the thrill was mostly gone, we'd been sorrowed and we knew what to expect from the future. Obama's presidency isn't like that. The experience has cast a strange limbo over the land, the kind of thing where I look at almost any aspect of American life and its surrounded in mist and uncertainty, as though the future is finally as chaotic and undecided as I've always wanted it to be.
There were things I was able to relish in. Though his inaugural address didn't have the memorable jab of FDR, JFK or Reagan, there were definitely meaty parts attached to the bones of it. As some of you may know, I'm very fond of the Pragmatic school of thought, and though he's never spoken of himself as such, Obama is fully and embracingly a pragmatist. His line about forgetting the differences between big and little government and instead focusing on a government that works for the people was the one that sent me over the top, because finally I saw a person in charge of this country whom I feel I agree with philosophically. I've never been able to find any evidence supporting this, but I feel that Obama must have at least read the works of Rorty, Dewey and other pragmatists in the past. I mean, both he and Rorty taught at the University of Chicago around the same time, so if their paths never crossed or if Rorty's ripple was never felt in Obama's neck of the woods I'd be very surprised. I really wish there were some evidence to substantiate this.
I recently started reading the 2nd book of John Dos Passos' "U.S.A" trilogy, which I feel ties into what this is all about. In the books, Dos Passos weaves a tale of men and women in a fledgling 20th century who embrace freedom and revel in the promise of a future in America, but who are ultimately crushed under the weight of the mundane and that which is expected of them in society. Characters will come along who have a brilliance and blindingly optimistic view about the undrawn landscape before them, and slowly we'll watch as they're crippled by a society that demands they toil beneath the headlines and the promise of our nation. In the novels, there is always some reservation about the characters; some unrealized dream or unspoken tragedy which has befallen them to prevent their ultimate rise to greatness. Watching the inauguration, this is the thought that I can most closely connect with my own feelings. I wasn't where I wanted to be, I wasn't who I wanted to be and I wasn't free enough to be doing what I wanted to do. I don't know how to reference this outside of calling it the curse of society. No matter the promise we feel we have within us or the clearcut ambition we have in our actions, most people in this and any other country will never fully realize their dreams. America is proposed as a country where amazing things can happen, and for someone like Barack Obama that's true, but for the most of us we're left toiling in labor, never admired for the finer points we find within ourselves. It just seemed like a strange book to pick up and recognize in the wake of this inauguration, and I think the sentiment is something a lot of people can empathize with. How does someone get out under the toil of whats expected of them and experience a true freedom? I understand the idea's ridiculous because it wouldn't allow society to function, but I think this is an angle that Dos Passos was getting at. At the time of his writing it he was largely Socialist, and I think the largest question Dos Passos was asking was exactly how free is the land of the free? How free are we to pursue our hopes and dreams and actually accomplish them? To what extent are we to compromise ourselves?
These are books about characters who are living in historic times but are not themselves historic. In a society where phoney sentiment and meaning are crammed down our throats at an alarming pace, I think this is relevant. What does it feel like to be completely irrelevant when in the presence of a great event? Are we supposed to fashion ourselves as something better for the moment, as though we're some unwelcome beast on the world front? How do we clean ourselves up for this? How do we find significance for our actions during and after this? Most notably, as advertisers have been telling us our entire lives that we do, do we actually matter and press influence in anything outside of a capitalist and strategic sense? Where does actual influence lie? Who holds it and how closely? In large part, I recognize that we as a people aren't where we'd like to be. In Dos Passos' novels, his characters experience a similar sentiment, finding themselves constantly compared to the headlines which are shaping the American collective but never finding any trace of themselves in those same headlines. I know our interest isn't necessarily in finding ourselves as the darlings of society, but it would be nice to feel our voices heard on a larger scale than getting a public official elected. Admittedly, something like this has never happened before, but as a typical liberal I'm non-appreciative of this fact, demanding more. My thirst for governmental support can never be substantiated.
Please don't think I'm trying to come down on America, because I'm not. I think the evil eschewed here is a necessary one, because as I said, society wouldn't function under absolute freedom. I guess I just wanted to draw attention to those of us who watched these events and weren't actually free, though we had the closest thing to it. I apologize if this isn't all that coherent in meter and composition, I'm fairly drunk.
Honestly, all I could think about as I watched the inauguration was how inadequate I felt in the wake of such an historic moment. Its weird, and it may seem too melodramatic, but it was a feeling like that which washed over me as I watched the whole thing go down. I would be sitting there, watching history be made, and I'd think to myself "Is this the position I want to remember myself in as this happened? Is this angle from my TV where I want to remember being as I watched this?" It was strange, and probably about as heady and introspective as I could expect something coming from myself to be. For whatever reason, when presented with a moment of importance I just couldn't seem to find myself gaining the adequacy to stand up to it, as though I wasn't prepared to understand what I was witnessing.
How do you understand something like this? Its hard for me to invest in a singular event like this for an abundance of reasons, but probably highest amongst them would be that I still haven't seen this guy do much politically and for the most part when I'm watching him speak I'm just waiting to see him assassinated. Sorry to be a downer, but the thought rarely leaves my mind when I see him in a public setting, and I think half of me is just waiting for him to get killed so I can finally begin to wrap my head around what he meant to me and the collective American consciousness. 9/11 wasn't like this. There wasn't this same anticipation, this same feeling that something else was going to happen that would either make or break what was happening on the screen. 9/11 was finite; an event that happened entirely unexpectedly and which for the most part was resolved in the act of mourning. Sure, anger remained after we'd come to grips with what had happened, but the thrill was mostly gone, we'd been sorrowed and we knew what to expect from the future. Obama's presidency isn't like that. The experience has cast a strange limbo over the land, the kind of thing where I look at almost any aspect of American life and its surrounded in mist and uncertainty, as though the future is finally as chaotic and undecided as I've always wanted it to be.
There were things I was able to relish in. Though his inaugural address didn't have the memorable jab of FDR, JFK or Reagan, there were definitely meaty parts attached to the bones of it. As some of you may know, I'm very fond of the Pragmatic school of thought, and though he's never spoken of himself as such, Obama is fully and embracingly a pragmatist. His line about forgetting the differences between big and little government and instead focusing on a government that works for the people was the one that sent me over the top, because finally I saw a person in charge of this country whom I feel I agree with philosophically. I've never been able to find any evidence supporting this, but I feel that Obama must have at least read the works of Rorty, Dewey and other pragmatists in the past. I mean, both he and Rorty taught at the University of Chicago around the same time, so if their paths never crossed or if Rorty's ripple was never felt in Obama's neck of the woods I'd be very surprised. I really wish there were some evidence to substantiate this.
I recently started reading the 2nd book of John Dos Passos' "U.S.A" trilogy, which I feel ties into what this is all about. In the books, Dos Passos weaves a tale of men and women in a fledgling 20th century who embrace freedom and revel in the promise of a future in America, but who are ultimately crushed under the weight of the mundane and that which is expected of them in society. Characters will come along who have a brilliance and blindingly optimistic view about the undrawn landscape before them, and slowly we'll watch as they're crippled by a society that demands they toil beneath the headlines and the promise of our nation. In the novels, there is always some reservation about the characters; some unrealized dream or unspoken tragedy which has befallen them to prevent their ultimate rise to greatness. Watching the inauguration, this is the thought that I can most closely connect with my own feelings. I wasn't where I wanted to be, I wasn't who I wanted to be and I wasn't free enough to be doing what I wanted to do. I don't know how to reference this outside of calling it the curse of society. No matter the promise we feel we have within us or the clearcut ambition we have in our actions, most people in this and any other country will never fully realize their dreams. America is proposed as a country where amazing things can happen, and for someone like Barack Obama that's true, but for the most of us we're left toiling in labor, never admired for the finer points we find within ourselves. It just seemed like a strange book to pick up and recognize in the wake of this inauguration, and I think the sentiment is something a lot of people can empathize with. How does someone get out under the toil of whats expected of them and experience a true freedom? I understand the idea's ridiculous because it wouldn't allow society to function, but I think this is an angle that Dos Passos was getting at. At the time of his writing it he was largely Socialist, and I think the largest question Dos Passos was asking was exactly how free is the land of the free? How free are we to pursue our hopes and dreams and actually accomplish them? To what extent are we to compromise ourselves?
These are books about characters who are living in historic times but are not themselves historic. In a society where phoney sentiment and meaning are crammed down our throats at an alarming pace, I think this is relevant. What does it feel like to be completely irrelevant when in the presence of a great event? Are we supposed to fashion ourselves as something better for the moment, as though we're some unwelcome beast on the world front? How do we clean ourselves up for this? How do we find significance for our actions during and after this? Most notably, as advertisers have been telling us our entire lives that we do, do we actually matter and press influence in anything outside of a capitalist and strategic sense? Where does actual influence lie? Who holds it and how closely? In large part, I recognize that we as a people aren't where we'd like to be. In Dos Passos' novels, his characters experience a similar sentiment, finding themselves constantly compared to the headlines which are shaping the American collective but never finding any trace of themselves in those same headlines. I know our interest isn't necessarily in finding ourselves as the darlings of society, but it would be nice to feel our voices heard on a larger scale than getting a public official elected. Admittedly, something like this has never happened before, but as a typical liberal I'm non-appreciative of this fact, demanding more. My thirst for governmental support can never be substantiated.
Please don't think I'm trying to come down on America, because I'm not. I think the evil eschewed here is a necessary one, because as I said, society wouldn't function under absolute freedom. I guess I just wanted to draw attention to those of us who watched these events and weren't actually free, though we had the closest thing to it. I apologize if this isn't all that coherent in meter and composition, I'm fairly drunk.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
2666 pt.2
I finished the 2nd volume of 2666 so I figured I'd come back to share some of my thoughts. I think I talked about borders in my first post, and I've started to grab a similar tangent that Bolano works from in the novel, that of experience. Looking at the characters, they're all people who live vicariously through the actions of others, a sort of secondhand livelihood. The scholars all talk about Archimboldi but never express anything artistic themselves. The professor teaches philosophy written by other people. The reporter reports what other people do. The police and investigators follow through on the actions (read: murders) of others. I'm coming up on the 5th book, which is the part about Archimboldi, and I'm not all that certain what path the book will take.
Archimboldi has definitely taken things into his own hands in prison and has proven to be decisive and a person who makes things happen, so I imagine Bolano is going to explore what makes a person who "calls the shots" in the world tick. But there's also the idea of unreality, and that even the writing of Archimboldi is secondhand because he's writing about someone else. Bolano is obviously exploring humanity and trying to comment on the human condition and human nature through a plural piece, but in some ways the novel hangs by a thread right now, totally under his command and ready to go down one of two fairly different but still linked paths, and it all depends on what he wants to say about the role of the artist.
There's probably plenty I've missed here, but the book is FUCKING DENSE and I'd need to reread it knowing what I know now to have a more comprehensive vantage point, because I wasn't really able to test these theories against the piece as I came up with them. Also, I don't know if I actually did cover the part about borders in my first post, so I may come back and recant that to y'all.
Archimboldi has definitely taken things into his own hands in prison and has proven to be decisive and a person who makes things happen, so I imagine Bolano is going to explore what makes a person who "calls the shots" in the world tick. But there's also the idea of unreality, and that even the writing of Archimboldi is secondhand because he's writing about someone else. Bolano is obviously exploring humanity and trying to comment on the human condition and human nature through a plural piece, but in some ways the novel hangs by a thread right now, totally under his command and ready to go down one of two fairly different but still linked paths, and it all depends on what he wants to say about the role of the artist.
There's probably plenty I've missed here, but the book is FUCKING DENSE and I'd need to reread it knowing what I know now to have a more comprehensive vantage point, because I wasn't really able to test these theories against the piece as I came up with them. Also, I don't know if I actually did cover the part about borders in my first post, so I may come back and recant that to y'all.
How do you ruin perfect weather?
I've been doing a fair amount of writing lately and I feel like there's some stuff I want to say about how and why I write, because I'm feeling particularly "deep" this morning. I've kind of gained insight into what scenario I like to write under, and it has a lot to do with the weather. When an idea comes to me, it just feels like its wrapped into this day of perfect weather thats either warm or too warm, and it becomes my job to translate that enjoyable weather and ruin it or turn it into something that matters. Like no matter how perfect things can be outside, a life can still be suffering or ruined or intensely contemplative. I'm probably not being all that eloquent or well mitered on the account that I'm not feeling all that well, and if what I'm saying seems too simplistic its not meant to be, its just meant to present what I view as an open canvas.
I used to be meticulous when I wrote, demanding perfection from every sentence and stupid idea I had, but lately I've come to be much more malleable when I write, oftentimes throwing weird stuff and strange tangents into my prose just to see if they work when I reread it. God, I used to hate editing my writing so much, thinking that if I read something shitty I wasn't going to have the wherewithal to pull it out of the dumpster, but thats changed lately too. I've definitely become more accepting of the frailty in my writing, and a lot of the time that feels like something I'd like to exhaust and overuse in my writing just to see what happens to it. Its something about understanding happens to this particular tenderness when its pushed to exhaustion that compels me. It seems so innocent and weak, but it can be stretched so far.
Oftentimes I find myself wanting to write about children or childish things, and I definitely always want to incorporate something from science fiction or fantasy in my prose. I guess I enjoy magical realism pretty well, so its probably seeing that example that brought it to my mind. I really like the idea of fun, playful backdrops and the idea of child protagonists as well. I think the ideas I enjoy most are the ones where I can imagine myself thinking of it as a child and getting wrapped up in the emotion of it in my youth and just playing in the idea for hours outside on the asphalt or in the yard by myself. Its a totally tranquil feeling, and its something about my childhood which I really, really enjoy thinking about. I had a lot of friends as a kid, but I think even then I liked spending a lot of time alone imagining things, and even though none of them mattered in a grand sense they all seem to have congealed into something that has.
Thats another thing I like in writing, and it goes well with the idea of frailty. Just like trying to pull up these old, fragile and hard to rekindle emotions from my childhood expresses that tenderness, so does a certain diction. I never like to be too much of a positivist with what I say, so I oftentimes use words like "just", "seems", "like" "sort of" etc to eschew a certain weakness in what I'm saying. The use of "too much" in the previous sentence is a pretty good example as well. I don't think I'd want any one thing I said in writing to be held in higher esteem than everything else, for me its more about the cumulative. I like grand concepts hammered out in tiny steps, and I like how inviting simple and uncertain language can be to make it feel as though the reader could change or tweak what was written if they wanted to, even if them actually doing that would drive me absolutely fucking bonkers.
The Dominant Magnetic was dark, and I don't know if I intended it to be. Like I said earlier, the concept started out with a bright and beautiful landscape, but on that I guess I really wanted to explore what was going on underneath. It started out as 3 pages and turned into almost 15 and I've considered posting it here but I'm still ultra-lazily trying to get it published so I think that would be a conflict of interest if the theoretical publisher were to do an internet search of part of the text and have the fucking thing pop up. I've only sent it to one place thus far and it was DECLINED because the person who read it was obviously dense and a dolt and wouldn't know good writing if it walked up and stabbed them in the dick. That statement blankets both genders, use your imagination. So yeah, I don't know how that story became so dark but such is life, and I can't tell whether I never want to write anything like it again or if I'm just not in the mood for it right now. It uses my perferred device of taking a strange or magical item and incorporating it into a normal scenario to explore humanity from a different and puppeted angle, trying to come up with something more unilaterally human in the end. I like the device and I like the piece, but I think looking back I'm just a little disappointed in it's being not as imaginative as I'd have liked and certainly not as playful as I am. The story itself isn't all that cruel, but the tone seems cruel to me, as though it were something I just couldn't find anything to be happy about, but I really like the piece so this gets weird and fragmented and entirely personal and complex and I think delving into it would take too long to express and mean too little in the end.
So I'll end this with an example of what I like. This is Lee Ranaldo's poem from the Ciccone Youth song "Me & Jill, Hendrix Cosby", and I can't describe it in any way other than "awesome".
We had just left shore when everything began to happen at once
the water came in and we started to go down
I looked at jill and she looked back,
thinking it would be alright to go down
but then the railings broke and the motors gave out
the hall emptied out and no-one was left for the band
the amps all wet, speakers burst, soaked
we, up three flight now, tried to meet up with the galley crew
but it seemed everyone had gone
we had a smoke to pass some time
Jill said "I'd love to, right now"
what could I say?
We did while the waters rose, licking our feet
it was fun and funny so we laughed
I loved the way she could laugh, so full bodied
when we hit the sky we were high over the rooves
a field of gnarled antennas coiling upwards
waves and waveforms joining in a nice hot blast
so different from the boat
the cold silver sky opened for us and we passed through
last I saw of Jill she was heading into the coils of the antennae
laughing, so beautiful
saying she hadn't yet had her fill of the boys there
and the electricity
saying she wanted to plug in again and fry a bit
I said: "watch the water love"
she kept laughing and shook her hair
she said "I'd love to, right now, you know"
so we did, and had a smoke too, and her lips parted
there in amongst the coiling snakes of an antenna
she looked right at home
the waves came up and a blinding flash caught me dreaming of her
as she looked all across with wires and spikes watching the blast
everything went orange and all my thoughts dissolved into the cloud
I thought one last: how different from the sea is the boat
I love so much about this piece, but I'll just say that that I really love the first line and the use of "it was fun and funny so we laughed". The entire thing is just so breathable and it feels like it could be blown in any direction by the wind, which is something I'd love to be able to say about something I write eventually. I think about this piece a lot when I write, especially those two lines. They capture a certain tempo I'm really striving for. Thanks.
I used to be meticulous when I wrote, demanding perfection from every sentence and stupid idea I had, but lately I've come to be much more malleable when I write, oftentimes throwing weird stuff and strange tangents into my prose just to see if they work when I reread it. God, I used to hate editing my writing so much, thinking that if I read something shitty I wasn't going to have the wherewithal to pull it out of the dumpster, but thats changed lately too. I've definitely become more accepting of the frailty in my writing, and a lot of the time that feels like something I'd like to exhaust and overuse in my writing just to see what happens to it. Its something about understanding happens to this particular tenderness when its pushed to exhaustion that compels me. It seems so innocent and weak, but it can be stretched so far.
Oftentimes I find myself wanting to write about children or childish things, and I definitely always want to incorporate something from science fiction or fantasy in my prose. I guess I enjoy magical realism pretty well, so its probably seeing that example that brought it to my mind. I really like the idea of fun, playful backdrops and the idea of child protagonists as well. I think the ideas I enjoy most are the ones where I can imagine myself thinking of it as a child and getting wrapped up in the emotion of it in my youth and just playing in the idea for hours outside on the asphalt or in the yard by myself. Its a totally tranquil feeling, and its something about my childhood which I really, really enjoy thinking about. I had a lot of friends as a kid, but I think even then I liked spending a lot of time alone imagining things, and even though none of them mattered in a grand sense they all seem to have congealed into something that has.
Thats another thing I like in writing, and it goes well with the idea of frailty. Just like trying to pull up these old, fragile and hard to rekindle emotions from my childhood expresses that tenderness, so does a certain diction. I never like to be too much of a positivist with what I say, so I oftentimes use words like "just", "seems", "like" "sort of" etc to eschew a certain weakness in what I'm saying. The use of "too much" in the previous sentence is a pretty good example as well. I don't think I'd want any one thing I said in writing to be held in higher esteem than everything else, for me its more about the cumulative. I like grand concepts hammered out in tiny steps, and I like how inviting simple and uncertain language can be to make it feel as though the reader could change or tweak what was written if they wanted to, even if them actually doing that would drive me absolutely fucking bonkers.
The Dominant Magnetic was dark, and I don't know if I intended it to be. Like I said earlier, the concept started out with a bright and beautiful landscape, but on that I guess I really wanted to explore what was going on underneath. It started out as 3 pages and turned into almost 15 and I've considered posting it here but I'm still ultra-lazily trying to get it published so I think that would be a conflict of interest if the theoretical publisher were to do an internet search of part of the text and have the fucking thing pop up. I've only sent it to one place thus far and it was DECLINED because the person who read it was obviously dense and a dolt and wouldn't know good writing if it walked up and stabbed them in the dick. That statement blankets both genders, use your imagination. So yeah, I don't know how that story became so dark but such is life, and I can't tell whether I never want to write anything like it again or if I'm just not in the mood for it right now. It uses my perferred device of taking a strange or magical item and incorporating it into a normal scenario to explore humanity from a different and puppeted angle, trying to come up with something more unilaterally human in the end. I like the device and I like the piece, but I think looking back I'm just a little disappointed in it's being not as imaginative as I'd have liked and certainly not as playful as I am. The story itself isn't all that cruel, but the tone seems cruel to me, as though it were something I just couldn't find anything to be happy about, but I really like the piece so this gets weird and fragmented and entirely personal and complex and I think delving into it would take too long to express and mean too little in the end.
So I'll end this with an example of what I like. This is Lee Ranaldo's poem from the Ciccone Youth song "Me & Jill, Hendrix Cosby", and I can't describe it in any way other than "awesome".
We had just left shore when everything began to happen at once
the water came in and we started to go down
I looked at jill and she looked back,
thinking it would be alright to go down
but then the railings broke and the motors gave out
the hall emptied out and no-one was left for the band
the amps all wet, speakers burst, soaked
we, up three flight now, tried to meet up with the galley crew
but it seemed everyone had gone
we had a smoke to pass some time
Jill said "I'd love to, right now"
what could I say?
We did while the waters rose, licking our feet
it was fun and funny so we laughed
I loved the way she could laugh, so full bodied
when we hit the sky we were high over the rooves
a field of gnarled antennas coiling upwards
waves and waveforms joining in a nice hot blast
so different from the boat
the cold silver sky opened for us and we passed through
last I saw of Jill she was heading into the coils of the antennae
laughing, so beautiful
saying she hadn't yet had her fill of the boys there
and the electricity
saying she wanted to plug in again and fry a bit
I said: "watch the water love"
she kept laughing and shook her hair
she said "I'd love to, right now, you know"
so we did, and had a smoke too, and her lips parted
there in amongst the coiling snakes of an antenna
she looked right at home
the waves came up and a blinding flash caught me dreaming of her
as she looked all across with wires and spikes watching the blast
everything went orange and all my thoughts dissolved into the cloud
I thought one last: how different from the sea is the boat
I love so much about this piece, but I'll just say that that I really love the first line and the use of "it was fun and funny so we laughed". The entire thing is just so breathable and it feels like it could be blown in any direction by the wind, which is something I'd love to be able to say about something I write eventually. I think about this piece a lot when I write, especially those two lines. They capture a certain tempo I'm really striving for. Thanks.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Oakland
That cop who murdered the kid in Oakland on new years finally got arrested today, which is something I think took way too long to happen. Call me a bleeding heart liberal, but I think the double standard employed in this situation has been absolute bullshit. Simply put, had the roles been reversed I think the outcome would've been much more drastically acted upon by law enforcement.
Everyone recognizes its a tragedy and admittedly its a pr nightmare for the BART authorities, but I just can't stand the fact that this guy wasn't locked up from moment one. Its a difficult situation to find even a single positive thing about, and its been making me think about the nature of power and the corruption therein. We can fight, we can stay upset, but in the end even if the power is toppled the oppressed would just become the oppressors. In a listless world, we can't take solace in the ideas that God will do what's right or since someone is placed in an authoritative position they know how to miter just authority. Corruption is everywhere.
Where do we find solace then? In what way can we find security, comfort or a reason for laws of justice and equality, and beyond that a reason to even trust in them? I offer this: The rules and abject skew of power may not be where we want them, but even in the wake of the postmodern we can find reason to be happy. In countless points in history and even in more dilapidated areas of our world right now, this very moment, crimes like these have gone unpunished. Those in power never want to give it up, and our justice system, as fucked as it may be, shows us reasons for progress and hope. We have built a vociferous and remainingly democratic society, and its the fact that those in power have no room to squirm from the damning of their actions which we should be grateful about in moments like these.
Racism still exists in this country, and a lot of people in this country get carried away with stupid bullshit, but we remain largely democratic. What we have to focus on as a collective is defining our values, creating rules for this game we all play in society which makes cheating or taking advantage of those less fortunate harder and less socially acceptable to do. 150 years isn't that great an amount of time, but its all its been since we abolished it from our shores and even less since we actually tried to bring about equality. In a society where we've been taught to expect most everything instantly, we have to understand that an incident like this has fortunately become the exception and not the rule.
I don't know how other to say it than this, and it may sound too simplistic or inferior, but its what I believe. Things are getting better for humanity as a whole, and people at least have it in their hearts that they want the best for one another for the most part, no matter how fucked up it comes out based on their actions. This isn't an ideology that has existed forever, and the amount of humanism we've brought about through time and even within our own limited lives is something to be happy about.
It was weird: when I saw that former officer's mugshot today, I couldn't help but feel sorry for him. I imagined what I would feel like were I in the same place, what an unconscionable monster I'd think I was. This stain will never be erased from his life, and in some ways it may be a greater hardship on him than some others who've committed a similar act. The ruling class in this country is entirely narcissistic, and they prefer to commit their crimes against their fellow man in the dark rather than with a public forum passing judgment on their imperfection. It just seems tough to fall from a position that has such overwhelming support and appreciation from the public into a level of beast whom is a pox on society; someone we're ashamed to have mistakenly allowed into our powerful elite. When the american people see themselves reflected as a result of their moral actions across the globe, they hate to be reflected as this. It must be worse to fall from a vaunted position into that of a beast rather than that of the perpetual "beast", if for the chronological shock of losing everything which comforts you so quickly.
I in no way am trying to exhonorate this man or what he did as anything outside of murder, I just think its interesting to look at the tangents at play. In the end, though, we can hope that the situation is handled correctly and that people take a serious look at some of those they may be treating with undertoned but still entirely existent inequality.
--
Sent from my mobile device
Sunday, January 4, 2009
2666 pt.1
So I picked up 2666 by Roberto Bolano about a month ago and now being about halfway through it I figured I'd share some of my thoughts on the book. As if the reviews haven't already been glowing enough, I figured I'd throw my gauntlet into the ring if for no other reason than to shed light on some of the finer points I've stumbled across in the first half of the massive novel. This will be posted in multiple pieces.
The novel revolves around the true story of the rape and murder of 300-400 women in the Ciudad Juarez region of Mexico (referred to as Santa Teresa in the novel), though it grows in scope by adopting worldly and multicultural vantage points. Divided into five seperate books, we are given a glimpse of how the murders affect people stemming from disparate social, academic, moral and cultural backgrounds, which soon effaces itself as the central aspect of the novel. We are first introduced to a small group of European intellectuals, who are united under a fondness for the elusive author Benno von Archimboldi and who eventually are drawn to Mexico and Santa Teresa in their search for him. Maybe the strangest of all the things I've noticed about the novel thus far is the fact that during this first book, Bolano adopts a sort of undertone of latent disapproval and a very faint reading of contempt for these academic types. He explores the supposed open relationship between three of the academics (two male, one female), but no matter how rationally and learned they sound in trying to justify their open relationship and make it work, it fails on account of petty emotions. Perhaps this is the first instance we see of Bolano trying to tell his readers that there are animalistic aspects of our being which cannot be exorcized.
When the intellectuals try and do anything, its always very drab and calculated. They fly back and forth between various residences in Europe, they attend conferences and give lectures, but for all the yearning they have for the exciting life they read about in books, they never get too close to excitement themselves. Once they finally reach Mexico, we're left watching them sit at various coffee shops hearing about the murders but never getting too close to the actual epidemic. All this left me with a feeling that for all their self-imposed worth in the world, the intellectuals were just as vapid and succeptable to basic human emotions and desires as anyone else. Because of the environment they choose to enmesh themselves in, the academics are unaccustomed to both violence and the lifestyles of the rural third world, leaving them and the skills they've harnessed in life almost entirely useless.
Throughout this (and every other) portion, Bolano does a masterful job of writing an accesible, compelling narrative that draws in what he wants but rarely becomes boring or tedious. The reader is drawn into a European lifestyle which is glamorous at first, but in the end (or perhaps out of its context) proves to be fairly boring and dripping with timidity.
More to come later.
The novel revolves around the true story of the rape and murder of 300-400 women in the Ciudad Juarez region of Mexico (referred to as Santa Teresa in the novel), though it grows in scope by adopting worldly and multicultural vantage points. Divided into five seperate books, we are given a glimpse of how the murders affect people stemming from disparate social, academic, moral and cultural backgrounds, which soon effaces itself as the central aspect of the novel. We are first introduced to a small group of European intellectuals, who are united under a fondness for the elusive author Benno von Archimboldi and who eventually are drawn to Mexico and Santa Teresa in their search for him. Maybe the strangest of all the things I've noticed about the novel thus far is the fact that during this first book, Bolano adopts a sort of undertone of latent disapproval and a very faint reading of contempt for these academic types. He explores the supposed open relationship between three of the academics (two male, one female), but no matter how rationally and learned they sound in trying to justify their open relationship and make it work, it fails on account of petty emotions. Perhaps this is the first instance we see of Bolano trying to tell his readers that there are animalistic aspects of our being which cannot be exorcized.
When the intellectuals try and do anything, its always very drab and calculated. They fly back and forth between various residences in Europe, they attend conferences and give lectures, but for all the yearning they have for the exciting life they read about in books, they never get too close to excitement themselves. Once they finally reach Mexico, we're left watching them sit at various coffee shops hearing about the murders but never getting too close to the actual epidemic. All this left me with a feeling that for all their self-imposed worth in the world, the intellectuals were just as vapid and succeptable to basic human emotions and desires as anyone else. Because of the environment they choose to enmesh themselves in, the academics are unaccustomed to both violence and the lifestyles of the rural third world, leaving them and the skills they've harnessed in life almost entirely useless.
Throughout this (and every other) portion, Bolano does a masterful job of writing an accesible, compelling narrative that draws in what he wants but rarely becomes boring or tedious. The reader is drawn into a European lifestyle which is glamorous at first, but in the end (or perhaps out of its context) proves to be fairly boring and dripping with timidity.
More to come later.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
