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.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
