voices escape

2011-10-10T19:48:00.002-04:00

Talking to is also touching.
With hands wandering over you.
- Paul Celan

My friend Robbie lent me two books. Platform, by Michel Houllebecq, and a collection of Paul Celan's poetry and letters. The juxtaposition of the two is infuriating and exciting - I love that Robbie gave me both at the same time. He has a certain double quality reflected in his tastes and recommendations. Platform is incredibly well-written in a kind of po-mo 'destruction of all things' kind of way. That said, it is a fluid and fascinating read, a novel punctuated with gorgeously sardonic and rather revealing quotes about the human condition. I am simultaneously infuriated by it and comforted. And then there is Celan; a thorough modernist writer committed to a classic vision of love - its agonies and its redeeming qualities. Sex in two ways, in two styles. I go back and forth between wanting sex to be casual, pornographic, instinctually, and sex as something lovely and warm, like a milky-hued painting or foggy, moist morning. Neither is the truth about sex; it hangs in the balance.

(I got some hate mail last week. Unfortunately I was drunk and it was immediately after a physical altercation broke out between two men (because of me). So being told to "fuck off and die" and that I "create problems in my life because I am bored" just reaffirmed the already-present negative feelings floating around in myself at the time. Fortunately, though, the boys I was drinking with laughed it off and reminded me that it's "just the internet." That said, I think that sending anonymous hate mail to people is one of the most cowardly things to do. It's rather embarrassing for the sender. So, whoever you are, fuck off. I have enough self-loathing to last me a while, I don't need assholes who don't know my situation to send me hateful comments.)

2011-09-28T01:57:00.002-04:00

The heaviness, the lightness, in doing something stupid. Avoiding Kant for a week. Cold nights and toes. I am single again. I fucked up my life as I am prone to do when things get...I don't know. I got my own new place, it is a little bachelor with a tiny deck and no counter space. I spent 200 dollars at the Asian market today getting staples. I can't wait to cook, drink a glass of wine, listen to soft folk music and watch the [future] snow from my big windows. I am being irresponsible.

2011-09-07T11:08:00.002-04:00

It is raining outside my big 10-foot windows and downtown is looking bleak and resigned; summer is over and frat boys will be screaming "Wooo" more often and, to quote my friend Noel, such cries will reach their fever pitch this weekend. Students here are nuts.
Today is a perfect day for research and writing and isolating myself from London's increasingly busy streets. This cold, milky light reminds me of sitting on the old scuffed hard-wood floors at my old Toronto place, chain-smoking and watching the X-Files, or listening to Mount Eerie, or kissing you, or fighting with you, or crying to myself while gripping a glass of whiskey, or just lying back on the floor and falling asleep in those strips of light. The high melancholic pitch of my nostalgia reaches its peak in late August. Based on my observation of the blogs and tumblr's I am subscribed to and read daily, this is a common ailment. August is so painful. September is better.
Maybe only because it produces a different kind of anxiety; that fresh "I'm back to making something with my life" anxiety produced by new responsibilities and tasks, new people to impress, new papers and grant applications to write. Everyone knows or thinks "this year will be different." I prefer anxiety produced by the future to anxiety produced by the past. The future, at least, always turns out better than I expect.
I am lecturing next Friday and pretty scared about it. Although I have gotten more confident in public speaking and I consistently get great comments afterwards, I still fear criticism and I don't particularly like being in the spotlight. Even just being 'back' in and around campus and the theory center over the past few days has made me feel increasingly anxious. Stupidly, I am intimidated of meeting the new cohort of kids. And I am intimidated of having to finish writing this lecture, of having to present it, of having to do the GRE's in October, on having to write 30 pages of my thesis by September 15th, despite not really knowing what the fuck I'm doing. That said, this blog post (specifically paragraphs 2-4) really encouraged me yesterday and put my academic anxieties in perspective: This Week in Writing and the Anxiety of Meaning by Levi Bryant at his blog Larval Subjects.
Anyways, I hope you are all doing well. xo

2011-09-01T20:16:00.003-04:00

Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?
-Camus

So, people. I need some advice or kind words.
The last month or so has been nuts for me emotionally. August and September have always been really fucked up months. I start getting nostalgic and I get this urge to change my life entirely and basically run away to a new place, etc., that kind of cliche self-searching. I've started having dreams of people I miss, mostly old partners or friends, and the result of this is kind of devastating: imagine dreaming of an old lover and reliving the best times you had together, or the worst, and then wake up with either a manic desire to be with them again or a manic desire to "confront them" about obviously unresolved issues. Worst thing is, dreams can't be taken literally (can they?) so I know that more than likely these people are symbols of other issues; one in particular symbolizing my fear of rejection, inadequacy, etc. Instead of focusing on the feelings in the dreams, however, I focus on the person. And get fixated, and locked into a cycle of negative thoughts, wishing things were "different" or had gone differently. Etc. This occurs, sadly, despite my being in a relationship now and in what I consider to be a good situation; i.e. I can't "locate" anything wrong that would provoke such feelings. I don't know how to get out of the cycle. I keep telling myself "get over it." Seriously, why re-hash shit that happened a while ago? But just when I feel that depression subsiding I'll have another dream where, wow, this person is being so nice and loving and oh my if only ____. Sigh/barf. Talking to my boyfriend earlier, I realized that it is easier for me to cope with bad relationships because I don't have to be scared of some baseline falling out from under me - in bad relationships there is no baseline. And that kind of instability has always been easier for me to handle. At least it is predictable.
Seriously, I miss my psychiatrist. I miss someone impartial saying things like "everyone has a hard time letting go of the past sometimes" and "be in the present" and etc., etc. I guess my issue is - is my inability to let go of this person/these people/the past a symptom that I am unhappy now? Do I need to "clear up" things with this or that person, or should I let things be? And am I crazy or do other people experience similar things?
What I would like right now is a sun-drenched day on a secluded beach that ends with a big thunderstorm and a tent and quiet whispered candle-lit talks about philosophy and love and art.
I can't concentrate on anything, or fall asleep, as much as I want to do the latter.
I like that Camus quote because it encapsulates that feeling - when you're mired in existential angst, stuck in whatever past or future of fantasy, and you can either submit to it or say 'fuck it' and keep going with the daily grind. Indulge in small pleasures. Know that difficult things and feelings will pass and be replaced with new difficult but also joyful things and feelings.

goodnight xo

ps. for consistency's sake I'll give my obligatory apology for being sappy and probably much more boring than most of the other blogs you read. The self-loathing! Argh.

2011-08-17T01:39:00.004-04:00

Kind of feel like this.

and this.

and even this.

When you read blogs, do you assume it is written for or about you? Do you feel the rush of a personal address, or look for that little sexy tidbit that may or may not refer to you? In my hubris, I do. That said, mostly only in the blogs of ex-friends and friends. I recognize the ridiculous vanity of this.
That said, when I have the urge to write a blog post it is usually more or less for someone. This one's for you.
Today was brutally, utterly bad. After at least 5 or 6 attempts to quit smoking cold turkey this year alone, and countless times before this year, I've finally caved and purchased several boxes of nicotine gum. So now when I feel overwhelmed or when I start something or when I finish something or when I'm bored I chew this disgusting gum (or rather, keep it nestled between my teeth and gums, as per directions). Sometimes I forget and chew it too fast for too long and my tongue goes numb, and I get bad hiccups, and I start slurring my words. I feel bad because I am obviously edgy.
It is rather horrifying to learn that the feeling of calm produced by a 'cigarette' is actually just a gross tingly chemical, a virtual thing that soaks into my brain. I feel foolish and dumb for relying on something I could hold.
When you remove one or another chemical or security blanket from your system it is like peeling back a scab because everything is a little different, a little off. And it is hard for me to determine what anxieties are inherently "mine" and which are symptoms of psychological withdrawal. I guess that is the dilemma of life, really, now isn't it. It is kind of great, though, to be able to pin point something outside of yourself as a cause of [insert neurosis].
I realize how bourgeois this is. No one gives a shit about me quitting smoking. I was thinking about writing this in the bright pink journal my step-mom gave me for Christmas, as yet unopened, but privacy is so DONE. But fucking blogging is so sickly and gross. Who do we blog for, and why?
Alongside my cigarette-lack-induced-anxiety (or whatever) emerges my social anxiety, again, something that has been pleasantly dulled over the last year. In Toronto I tried to isolate myself from groups. I used to think that groups are too much, and are too risky. As soon as you add a third person to the social dynamic there is room to gossip, room for dissenting opinions, room to be rejected in favour of the other. This, however, I have realized, is a bad strategy. I have, instead, tried to balance groups and singles, and never keep the singles too isolated. (this is what happens when someone with anxiety problems - everyone? - makes friends: it becomes a fucked-up system). I stopped dissecting social relationships just enough in grad school (of all places) to make friends. But with that comes that paranoia: i.e. how much am I 'in the group' or am I really just a lone wolf (do all intellectuals and artists and people think that?); who is who's favourite, and am I being too anti-social this week, this month, this evening? Am I dancing in a strange way? Can I just dance without thinking all these thoughts? Usually, but the last week or so has been marked by an upsurge in insecurity.
The rest of my summer, dwindling into its last days:
1. move 5 groups of friends into their new homes.
2. write my theory session talk on the city as embodied/other in China Mieville's The City and the City (Michel deCerteau, Lefebvre, D&G, blah).
3. avoid my chain-smoking, indulgent, nonsensical but brilliant supervisor until such a point that I can successfully turn down his non-stop cigarette and beer offerings
4. write the first 30 pages of my thesis project on the cybergothic
5. move into my new place, get the cat settled, avoid spending all my money on mid-century furniture, avoid domestic disputes that will unsettle our neighbours (we will be living above an amazing indian restaurant and a used bookstore - heaven, basically, yes). This is the first time I'll be living with a partner since...four years. And of course I pick a spitfire of a smart, amazing, but loud and opinionated man.
6. write, I think, 5 proposals for conferences
7. finish the four mixed media pieces I have started (they're almost done!)
8. calm the fuck down, in general.

I'm going to do my tarot reading now. sweet dreams. xo

images: lukasz wierzbowski, aela labbe, random tumblr, I'm sorry.

Poetry

2011-06-21T12:30:00.004-04:00

Today marks my two-week mark in BC. Yesterday we went into Vancouver and Dock took me to one of the best bars I've ever been to - there is no "entrance," just an open door at the back of a warehouse building. A few dilapidated hallways later and you're in a sufficiently bohemian but non-pretentious red room covered with neo-colonial paintings and local artwork, drinking cider and buying fancy cigarettes from a dude with an amazing tattoo sleeve and getting advice from locals about where to buy the best dumplings in old Chinatown.
People are so much more friendly on the West Coast. I can't count the number of random conversations struck up with mostly working class dudes on random patios, buses, ferries. It helps having a highly personable and outgoing partner.
After the bar my boyfriend was presenting a talk on Hauntology (Derrida, Deleuze, Beckett, Kafka) at a whole-in-the-wall art space filled with kind people. A bunch did talks on random things. It was a great vibe - and so much more relaxed than an academic conference. At academic conferences there is a certain level of "high theory" expected from the speakers, so when people just shoot the shit about stuff they like, I always feel a little disappointed. Not for lack of interest but for lack of theoretical engagement. Here, though, it was just relaxed and good vibes. You like twitter? Tell me about it. You're a teacher and your gifted students wrote a collaborative mystery novel? Amazing.
We have bought almost 30 books while here. I have bought a bunch of mid-century antiques for our new place. I am reading "the Broom of the System" by David Foster Wallace. I just finished reading Mieville's "The City and the City." A fresh volume of Bukowski is sitting beside my bed on top of Deleuze under a mug of peach mango tea. I smell bacon in the air and we are going to a water park later today.
Shit is good.

ps. that Bukowski poem really struck me and made me happy and sad when I first read it. I want a wall of my home covered with Bukowski quotes that make me cry.

2011-03-18T14:18:00.002-04:00

I am so exhausted of bodies and women's parts blown up like balloons or cut into pieces so that they are adequately tiny or adequately round and their skin is sufficiently smooth so that we can reinscribe meanings and our own desire or fear of desire or inability to desire on to their available surfaces. I feel that public sexuality is such a stupid farce; as much as I want people to be comfortable with their bodies and sexuality, what has become so called 'sexual liberation' is the opposite of comfort - it is the putting-on of sexuality as a hard, impenetrable shell so that all we are given to jerk off to is that - those shapes and listless eyes. I don't want sex to have "meaning" in that old, stilted, oppressive way, but I want it to be relational and an exchange between people rather than spectacle, images.

2011-03-17T01:48:00.002-04:00

the world is literally falling apart and I'm just sitting here reading Badiou. I feel so humbled and sad and fearful and helpless. Its been a tough year, Earth. I don't know what I can do.

2011-03-16T17:22:00.002-04:00

I went to New York City for the first time last weekend with a group of friends. We rented a big and disgusting SUV to go to a conference on oil and slime and geotrauma inspired by Reza Negarestani's text Cyclonopedia, which you should check out sometime if you're in the mood for disconcerting speculative realism. I learned a few important things while I was there. It is disconcerting to be with someone you love, but rarely see, and come to terms with changes - that is, changes in them, and the changes in yourself that become visible in that exchange. I only realize how I change when I witness old friends' responses to me in new settings and new times. It is not a negative experience so much as humbling. And it requires a period of grace - to recognize that this is what it means to love someone - to take things as they are. When you love, you are capable of doing that, I think. It is too big a burden if you don't. Don't love, that is. I also realized that my boyfriend is extremely important to me. In the moment - on a rooftop patio overlooking midtown Manhattan and the Empire State building, surrounded by drunk people - that I realized our paths wouldn't line up that night, I just felt such a pain and loss that I haven't felt in a long time. New York is one of those places that needs to be experienced with the people you love, or else it is just exhausting and anxiety inducing, at least for someone like myself. I am blessed to have spent most of my time with one person I love, but lacking my better half during a time at which I so needed him made me realize the extent to which I have found something profound in another person.
I also realized that I am very happy with my life now, to the point at which even such glamorous alternatives as NYC in the springtime are relatively unnecessary in comparison. I love being invested so deeply in work I love, I love being out from under the burden of unfriendly thinkers (i.e. Lacan) and in the arms of those who want me there (i.e. Deleuze).
I don't really have the time or desire to blog anymore, but sometimes it is cathartic. That was the original intent. I don't really have the outlet anymore, except maybe in my working-through theory and philosophy. In any case, followers - drift away, float away, slowly dwindle. I am happy with a whimper and not a bang for an ending.

2011-01-24T13:38:00.002-05:00

Today's women's studies' seminar - "Technology, Gender, Embodiment" - dealt with male fluids, the male abject, and the (white, able-bodied, heterosexual) male discomfort with their own leakiness. Of course we had to speak in generalizations for the sake of clarity; I know and have known men who are more or less comfortable with such things. But this is a topic that, in my opinion, is vastly under-theorized and extremely important - not only because it provides a more rich understanding of how female bodies are typically signified as "abject," but because it allows a certain queering of the "male." This is one reason I shirk away from programs entitled things like "women's studies" rather than "gender studies" - both binary stereotypes should be reassessed and re-theorized. Why not? The title "women's studies" also suggests that it is primarily the role/interest of women to redefine or challenge gender - and I don't think that this is the case anymore. Nor should it be supposed that only women or "othered" sexualities have a stake in these topics. Everybody does, or should.
In any case - one of the main topics brought up in the readings is the fear of contamination between men, of seminal fluids, and others - [heterosexual] men didn't want to talk about their semen or come into contact with other men's semen, and the possibility sparked tons of "humorous" comments not-so-subtly tinged with homophobia. When I refer to "the men" here, I'm specifically referring to the men who were interviewed for a series of case studies conducted by scholar Robyn Longhurst, particularly in her book "Fluid Bodies." In any case - men were only comfortable talking about solid excretions (shit, shaving), and not fluid excretions, unless of course the latter was either 1) sexualized, made to demonstrate virility in some way or 2) made into a joke. Heaven forbid the tightly sealed universal subject becomes obscured by its own (particular) decay, by its own proclivity to "leaking." Leaks, excretions, anything "abject" produces anxiety in [heterosexual] men because male bodies are produced as functional, social bodies, rather than as sites of pleasure. The desire to control these flows suggests a desire to maintain control over one's body, social position, as well as ones own desire - leaks are "feminized" - and therefore, must be suppressed.
One of the more interesting theories (Elizabeth Grosz's) is that straight men see themselves as active "givers" of fluid, rather than as passive "receptacles." Thus, flows between men are terrifying, not only because they threaten the self-contained "hardness" of the masculine, but because the vertical hierarchy of giver/receiver, passive/active is obstructed and replaced by circuitous flows (or what Deleuze and Guattari or Kristeva call heterogeneous flows). Desire is "queered" when it is transferred from a Deleuzian "striated space" to that of a "smooth space," or plateau.
In any case - interesting topic, and one that I will probably return to while researching for my thesis.
I've kind of abandoned this blog because it feels trivial, and I am busy. I've been in a good place. My brain feels full and I have come to terms with where I'm going - for my thesis I'm probably going to focus on virtual and material (sexual/gendered) prostheses, particularly in relation to queering desire and subjectivity. I have a shit-ton of Deleuze to read, basically.
Back to reading - Shopenhauer (sp?) and Schelling, McLuhan and Baudrillard.

2011-01-14T23:05:00.001-05:00

MY ELDER KINSMEN UNLIVING
by Rebecca Farivar

When a thing may

or may not be

real, you sense

it as a half-

presence, a source,

a back-story

you’ve hidden, thrown

into the trough

between two waves.

Now monsters crawl

to you, stalk you,

leave the bogs and

meres for you. A

whole line died to

kill you, but you’re

here still. And yet

you can’t break a-

way. You are full

of dark matter.

That comes from your

fathers, mothers,

your brothers, your

unnamed sister.

Think about what

haunts you, think of

the waves, the meres,

the monster-strewn

shores of somewhere

else, and then ask

again what haunts.

/
from here.

2011-01-04T02:28:00.002-05:00

Capitalism has a very particular character: its lines of escape are not just difficulties that arise, they are the very conditions of its operation. Capitalism is founded on a generalized decoding of every flow: flows of wealth, flows of labor, flows of language, flows of art, etc. It did not create any code, it created a kind of accounting, an axiomatics of decoded flows, as the basis of its economy. It ligatures the points of escape and moves ahead. It is always expanding its own borders, and always finds itself in a situation where it must close off new escape routes at its borders, pushing them back once more...It is endlessly crossing its own limits which keep reappearing farther out. It puts itself in alarming situations with respect to its own production, its social life, its demographics, its periphery in the Third World, its interior regions, etc. The system is leaking all over the place. They spring from the constantly displaced limits of the system. And certainly, the revolutionary escape is not the same thing as other kinds of escape, the schizo-escape, the drug-escape. This is precisely the problem facing marginal groups: to make all the lines of escape connect up on a revolutionary plane. In capitalism, then, these lines of escape take on a new character, and a new kind of revolutionary potential. So, you see, there is hope.

Gilles Deleuze from Desert Islands and Other Texts: 1953-1974, pg. 270

2010-12-30T19:08:00.000-05:00

“i try to carry out the most precise and discriminative analyses i can in order to show in what ways things change, are transformed, are displaced. when i study the mechanisms of power, i try to study their specificity… i admit neither the notion of a master nor the universality of his law. on the contrary, i set out to grasp the mechanisms of the effective exercise of power; and i do this because those who are inserted in these relations of power, who are implicated therein, may, through their actions, their resistance, and their rebellion, escape them, transform them—in short, no longer submit to them. and if i do not say what ought to be done, it is not because i believe there is nothing to be done. quite on the contrary, i think there are a thousand things to be done, to be invented, to be forged, by those who, recognizing the relations of power in which they are implicated, have decided to resist or escape them. from this point of view, my entire research rests upon the postulate of an absolute optimism. i do not undertake my analyses to say: look how things are, you are all trapped. i do not say such things except insofar as i consider this to permit some transformation of things. everything i do, i do in order that it may be of use.”

-Michel Foucault, dits et écrits 1954–1988, vol. ii, 1976–1988 edited by daniel defert and françois ewald, pp. 911-912

2010-11-27T21:55:00.002-05:00

Poets don’t draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up
again, but differently.

-Jean Cocteau

(just realized a good half of the photos on my computer right now consist of stormy seas or abandoned looking houses, why do some images haunt people and not others?)

2010-11-25T23:56:00.002-05:00

Pretty songs! Yeah!

Life has been pretty busy, the weather is horrible, school is picking up in pace and I'm feeling motivated for once. I watched two films by Yugoslavian director Dusan Makavejev on Monday and now I'm writing my final paper on the reappropriation of marxist "sexual liberation" discourses into capitalism, and the dangerous pitfalls of representing the female body in a so-called sexual/"revolutionary" context. Basically, repressive desublimation (Marcuse and Zizek), as well as Sontag and Bataille (taboo, the distinctions made between erotica/art and pornography as similar to the distinctions made between documentary/essay films/fiction or surrealist films). I have a lot of thinking and writing to do, obviously, but this is the crux.
As for the films themselves - "Sweet Movie" is an insane parody, pornographic, semi-fictional, semi-documentary Brechtian montage of insanity. It is one of the only films I have ever seen that truly provokes severe, visceral physiological responses: disgust, physical discomfort, arousal, etc. Much like reading a Bataille novel, except more fun(ny). If you can summon a copy and are into perversion and heavy handed Marxist/political critique and gratuitous sexuality - watch it! I dare not say too much for fear of scaring people away from a brilliant and revolutionary film.
On that note, I feel conflicted about what the fuck I'm doing in grad school. Big surprise. I've become disillusioned and angry with Lacan and basically want nothing to do with psychoanalysis right now. I want to do work in film studies but I feel that if I write an MA thesis on film it will narrow down my options for applying to PhD programs. And I'm not even sure if I want to do a PhD, because I am a little bit tired of theory and the usual philosophy suspects. Not scared, per se - just not as interested anymore. I just want to watch awesome movies all day.
So yeah. That's that. Apologies for the whining.

scooters, vacation, fall

2010-11-08T13:09:00.004-05:00

I feel incredibly guilty and sad today. And disappointed in myself, I guess. For not having any Marxist pep this morning and doodling horrific looking bodies instead of watching Santiago Alvarez films in my Brechtian cinema class. For being someone I would be afraid to be with. For having little motivation to write about Deleuze and modified bodies, and little confidence. I wish I wasn't so scattered and sad all the time.
Of course, I write here pretty much only when I get into these moods, so I am in no way trying to say that my life is bad or that I have any reason to mope. Everyone has certain thresholds that they come up against. When I get here there is nothing left to do but scale down my self-created wall of shame and pool up at the bottom until the feelings pass. Wait it out wait it out wait it out.
I've been meaning to write this quote here for a while. Blake Butler told me to read Zeroville so I did, and it is amazing. And each section functions like a vignette, usually unrelated and readable in its own right.

'In America you have this idea that anything about sex is acceptable only if it absolutely is not, under any circumstances, sexy. The Americans are too romantic to make such a film. They are in love with shame.'
'The French are romantic.'
Maria dismisses this with the flick of her fingers.
'Quelle mythe! No one ever said in a French film, 'We'll always have Paris.' Can you imagine Bogart fucking Bergman with a cube of butter on the Champs-Elysees as the Nazis march in? The pornographer? He is concerned with what the characters do, while the artist, the artist is concerned with what the characters are. The man does not pay me for the sex, he pays me to leave afterward. For the lack of consequences.'
'He pays you to leave?'
'This is what Brando thinks will save him in Dernier Tango...sex without consequences.'
'You are paid to leave?'
'This is what destroys him, because there is no sex without consequence.'
'Perhaps last Tango in Paris isn't just about sex.'
'Cheri,' she laughs, 'sex is never just about sex.'

Images:
3. Georges Rousse
2. Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus
1. Room O (I think) by Yves G. Noir

2010-10-13T23:33:00.001-04:00

I FEEL LIKE SHIT.

in other news, an excellent scene from Godard/Gorin's tout va bien:

When Man Enters A Woman by Anne Sexton

When man,
enters woman,
like the surf biting the shore,
again and again,
and the woman opens her mouth with pleasure
and her teeth gleam
like the alphabet,
Logos appears milking a star,
and the man
inside of woman
ties a knot
so that they will
never again be separate
and the woman
climbs into a flower
and swallows its stem
and Logos appears
and unleashes their rivers.

This man,
this woman
with their double hunger,
have tried to reach through
the curtain of God
and briefly they have,
though God
in His perversity
unties the knot.

My Weekend

2010-10-10T23:45:00.007-04:00

(ego) / “I”

the web of tragedy invites you into
a web of appropriate signifiers.
the real is adequately corralled off
and your body doesn’t ache any more
when you think of your lack; it has been adequately incorporated.
and maybe you have one more symptom, one more twitch on rainy days -
I always thought “but not you -” and then this novelty, also, wears off, and with it my
familiar self.

Every Thing I touch is new and grotesque, like dead skin against new sheets
the cold of my feet touching a pool of rain water
the sun barely touching my shins on the porch. Everything is so close to being present, here with me. Ultimately I can’t pull anything near enough.
I am drenched in you and your lack, you have been rehabilitated here by virtue of this absence between us.
and I could tell you, “you owe me this, my attempt at preservation” -
but you don’t speak that language.

(And soon, neither will I.)

1. stills for le gai savoir (godard 1973) 3. le sinthome, lacan and art 4. got ariana reines' book 'save the world' in the mail, been crying over it a little

Classic Rant on Gender Relations! Excitement!

2010-10-07T14:06:00.006-04:00

Aw, "boys will be boys." This is an issue I frequently get fierce about. And - I have no idea how I cam across it in my google reader, magic fluke, apparently - Amy King (who is a super awesome poet) wrote this fierce blog post on the topic, probably much more eloquently than I:

Ye Olde "Boys Will Be Boys" Plea

Since starting my MA I've been observing the gender dynamics that exist in the program. And by "observe" I also acknowledge my own complicity in the parade of displays, no one is exempt, sure. Despite this it is frustrating to talk to genuinely intelligent men (boys?) who, despite theoretically recognizing the constructedness of gender, despite being at least to some degree self-reflexive and aware of how silly most gender-related performativity is, still partake in it and reproduce certain rituals.
I was talking to someone [male] about the "trade-off" required when they enter into a monogamous relationship; the male "sacrifices" a particular social position in relation to other men. I.e. they sacrifice the freedom/ability to display their potential power to possess multiple women when they want. But the "difficulty" of this sacrifice is not so much the "giving up" of indiscriminate sex per se but rather, the influence this restraint has on their relation to other men, and the power dynamics between them. Basically, restrain from being promiscuous as (what I consider) a sign of respect. Win the girl but give up the ability to constantly reiterate your alpha-male prowess to your fellow men. The irony of the conversation was that he was trying to be "positive" by saying that "winning" the right girl is a good enough "trade-off" to make the loss of status (in the exchange economy of the boys club) worth it.
Predictably, I have a few things to say about this. On one hand, this kind of male behaviour is usually acknowledged (by men) as stupid and juvenile, and yet I can't count the number of times men have tossed off "boys will be boys" (or an equivalent statement) as justification for their behaviour, as though this counts as a real argument to disqualify residual negative or objectifying effects of their behaviour. It is taken as a given that women should just accept the way that the male social economy works, which, inevitably, also implicitly suggests that women should just accept the position that they are given within that economy. Women can't accept the statement "boys will be boys" as self-contained, pertaining only to men's issues; it inevitably involves women taking on a certain object position/self-perception. When men say "boys will be boys" they not only essentialize "masculinity," but simultaneously place women in a position of virtual powerlessness (it is not a rational statement, so there is no rational response, it is a statement taken as unqualifiable justified/true, hence the manner in which gender difference is conceptualized becomes deterministic, etc.). Unfortunately the male social economy is structured around a barred petit object a /woman (not exclusively, obviously, but in this context, yes), which means that no discourse on men in society can ever be separated from how women are positioned in that relationship.
Implicit in the statement "boys will be boys" as an "excuse" is the demand or statement: "all men do certain things, we work in certain ways, and you not only have to accept this but also understand that you can't understand us." It is also simultaneously an attempt to neutralize the discourse: i.e. essentialize it. In this way, women are alienated from that discourse because they are given no way out of it. Women are alien within the discourse of "boys will boys" as circulating objects of desire, and then they are (generally) expected to just stay silent and accept that this is the way men are. In both situations (i.e.: 1. "winning" the right girl and 2. playing catch-release, catch-catch with multiples to prove your "manhood") woman is relegated to an object used in the service of the male libidinal/social economy. Woman is barely even taken as a sexual object herself! Only an object of display to aid in the circulation of desire between men.
And heaven forbid I take issue with this or voice criticism. Unfortunately the taboo against speaking out against these so-called "neutral" statements about masculinity keeps women (and men) silent. Usually my rants of this nature get called out as "uber-bitch-feministy" man-hating tirades, when in fact I am equally concerned with how these ways of being/speaking influence and oppress both men and women. "Boys will be boys" is not neutral. That's my main point. And neither "women" nor "men" can be reduced to categorical grab bags of bad habits and stupidities. I'd like to think we're more responsible than that.

Love you men, love you women, love anyone in between or on the borders.
xo

2010-10-06T00:38:00.001-04:00

Do you recall waking up on a dirty couch in the grey fog

2010-10-04T22:08:00.002-04:00

I actually posted this a few years ago but my love for Bukowski has been rekindled recently and I found this vid of Tom Waits reading it - oh my, too much man goodness in one space, all that's missing is Zizek reclining on a couch in the background or something.

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

2010-10-04T14:52:00.001-04:00

its insane to be surrounded by people and pressed into so many spaces but none of those people and none of those places care about you that much. and the ones who do are gone by your own making or fears or instabilities or addiction to change and pain. addiction to repetition and a kierkegaardian laying down or release that keeps me cracked and separate. so that the only currency is cunt and the ability to smile and be places people want me to be, so that no one notices my eyes filling up or my proclivity to crumble and drift off to where no one demands anything and I am deaf dumb and blind.

Its insane insane insane to be so visible and yet not seen.

sore

2010-10-01T15:40:00.004-04:00

Disordered affinities
or the awkward
letting in and out

transparent anecdotes
flung into the
center, webs of skin
and the familiar touch of
fingers electric and
eager.

i can only give so much
before I fade into the
golden background,
always eventually the too-absent
object a.

memories hit the light
at right angles;
illuminated silhouettes
accumulate at the cracked
base of your beer glass.

---
Feeling very weepy and alone today, possibly a little bit manic, unable to sit still. I've been dancing around for a while. I feel "dripping wet and limp" but I refuse to listen to Mount Eerie for the sake of my own mental wellness and instead dwell on Joanna Newsom and Brecht. This is probably my favourite song of the year so far. Basically the transition at 3.25 makes my heart hurt a lot. So fucking beautiful.

"And there is hesitation
And it always remains
Concerning you, me,
And the rest of the gang

And in our quiet hour
I feel I see everything
And am in love with the hook
Upon which everyone hangs

And I know you meant to show the extent
To which you gave a goddang
You ranged real hot and real cold,
But I'm sold.
I am home on the range

And I do hate to fold
Right here at the top of my game
When I've been trying with my whole heart and soul
To stay right here in the right lane

But it can make you feel over and old
Lord, you know it's a shame
When I only want for you to pull over
and hold me 'til I can't remember my own name"

2010-09-28T17:47:00.002-04:00

(mis)information overload. my head doesn't hurt but I feel my brain fuzzy underneath all those layers of bone crushed together. i hate reading books on a screen and it provokes a kind of mania that I want to escape from and promote at the same time: enter google reader like the information overload it is and wade through images and fragments (unread items: 1081) that I only slightly care about as a source of distraction. things on my mind: a desire to sew, a desire to make grilled cheese, a desire to lie in bed with a naked man, a desire to read deleuze like it was a robert duncan poem instead of a mind-fuck, a desire to be submerged in water so hot my extremities feel shocked-cold when they touch the surface. knowledge that I could do 1 2 3 or 4 and feel a lot better but the intertia holds me back. the click of the hot plate on the coffee machine. the sounds of cyclists murmuring to each other. my anger at lukacs after reading "Realism in the Balance" - how could someone so smart so completely misintrepret the pulse of their time? Upon writing that I immediately feel stupid considering my historical position - now, not then. "periods" and/or periodization only makes sense/occurs in retrospect any ways. anyways, I love Brecht. Sure. I'm eating half a tomato covered in salt.

hate you, internet. love you, people reading this.

2010-09-07T22:52:00.002-04:00

Last night my cat jumped on my face from above me on the window ledge while I was sleeping. Now I have a group of little cuts on my eyelid and cheek that are sore when I blink. I miss my boyfriend a lot when I am not around him.
Today I met with the professor I will be TAing for. Because of my external funding I am only allowed to teach 1/2 full semester, so I am splitting the job with another girl. I like her and I like the professor. I'm excited and scared to teach. My first class will be Sophocles' Oedipus. I really like my new University. It is a lovely campus. I'm feeling overwhelmed and yet very vibrant. Unsure of whether or not I am capable of anything I've committed to (but still excited to try). Everything is new and scary. Shawn and I have been watching Carnivale - I love love love that show. This weekend is the final weekend before the craziness starts so I'm going to explore this new city and hopefully relax a little bit.
Boring post, I know - just wanted to share. Project myself out into the abyss.

2010-08-30T21:39:00.003-04:00

“I have often spoken of what I call the inadequate imagery of today’s civilization. I have the impression that the images that surround us today are worn out; they are abused and useless and exhausted. They are limping and dragging themselves behind the rest of our cultural evolution. When I look at the postcards in tourist shops and the images and advertisements that surround us in magazines or I turn on the television, or if I walk into a travel agency and see those huge posters with that same tedious image of the Grand Canyon on them, I truly feel there is something dangerous emerging here.

…As a race we have become aware of certain dangers that surround us. We comprehend, for example, that nuclear power is a real danger for mankind, that over-crowding of the planet is the greatest of all. We have understood that the destruction of the environment is another enormous danger. But I truly believe that the lack of adequate imagery is a danger of the same magnitude. It is as serious a defect as being without memory. What have we done to our images? What have we done to our embarrassed landscapes? I have said this before and will repeat it again as long as I am able to talk: if we do not develop adequate images we will die out like dinosaurs. Look at the depiction of Jesus in our iconography, unchanged since the vanilla ice-cream kitsch of the Nazarene school of painting in the late nineteenth century. These images alone are sufficient proof that Christianity is moribund.

We need images in accordance with our civilization and our innermost conditioning, and this is the reason why I like any film that searches for new images no matter in what direction it moves or what story it tells. One must dig like an archaeologist and search our violated landscape to find anything new. It can sometimes be a struggle to find unprocessed and fresh images.”

-Werner Herzog

via old hollywood

Such a beautiful quote that perfectly encapsulates how I feel after going to watch "The Last Exorcism" and having to sit through a disgusting trailer for the American remake of "Let the Right One In" (called "Let Me In"). Thank Herzog, because he has saved you from one of my classic rants and done it with more class.

My brain is scattered because of the high caffeine and sugar content running through my blood.

2010-08-30T12:25:00.006-04:00

A few things.
There is this amazing Blake quote at the introduction of "The Posthuman Condition: Consciousness Beyond the Brain" by Robert Pepperell:

ALL Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors:
1. That Man has two real existing principles: Viz. a Body & a Soul.
2. That Energy, call’d Evil, is alone from the Body; & that Reason, call’d
Good, is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.
But the following Contraries to these are True:
1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call’d Body is a portion of Soul discern’d by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
2. Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or
outward circumference of Energy.
3. Energy is Eternal Delight.
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1793

I love this. And Pepperell's text in general has encouraged me to start thinking (once again, after a few months of mind rest) about phenomenology and its application to the so-called "post-human" condition. The radical alterations taking place in our bodies and our relationship to our bodies (i.e. via technology) has brought us to an interesting place: only here can we really start to challenge the view of consciousness dilemma as purely cognitive/mind/brain-based. Losing control of our bodies (in a sense) has brought us back to them, which is lovely to me. Since reading Merleau-Ponty I've really started to think about the knowledge of the body. Or, maybe I've just started to articulate thoughts and feelings that have always been floating around.

--warning--huge shift in focus:

Other than that, I just bought this amazing vintage wrap dress from Purple Deer Vintage. Soooo Mad Men.

(Image propery of Purple Deer Vintage)

I've also watched five Bette Davis films in 24 hours. She is divine. Seems like there's two general categories of "classic" actresses, the Audrey Hepburn Marilyn Monroe variety, and the Lauren Bacall Bette Davis variety. Obviously I prefer the latter, but I still love Marilyn - she is so often cast in the stupidest, most ditsy roles. I feel pity for her but at the same I get filled with admiration. Because its got to take a pretty smart woman to pull off such a cliche of femininity. Does that make sense? Her performances reach such a height of silliness that I feel like she's in on the joke somehow, which makes her all the more charming. I have shitloads of pictures of actresses and actors on my computer, but the ones I love of Marilyn are the ones where she looks like she's been caught off guard (which is another fiction, but one I like to indulge).

Also have a huge crush on Monica Vitti since watching l'avventura last week.

psychotropics

2010-08-27T18:22:00.004-04:00

The artist of the above is Rasmus Emanuel Svensson, and I got them from the flickr set that includes all of the "globes" in the series. I really love these colour combinations and I've been using them for inspiration in my own collage work.
I kind of feel like this blog is becoming a barren waste land, or else, followed by quiet people. This makes me feel more comfortable with this space, like I did in *2007* - and therefore, more likely to just write what I want when a journal doesn't suffice.
I've been heavily engrossed in "House of Leaves" - it is perfection. Seriously, one of the best books I have ever picked up. And by "perfection" I mean that it coheres well on so many levels - conceptually, as entertainment, as the quintessential intertextual po-mo text, as a confession, as a diary of sexual exploits, as philosophy, theory, as a horror movie. I love it so much.
I'm back in London (ON) after spending the last four or so days in Toronto with my boyfriend. I feel as if my brain is coming back in again after a romp outside. I love my new apartment. I'd like to post pictures of my room sometime. The only thing missing is cats. I've been making jewelry all day after spending 60 bucks on supplies while in Toronto. I will be starting up an etsy shop to hopefully make back some of that cash in the near future, hopefully before school starts up again. I hope some of you will check it out once its up :)
I have been obsessed with etsy recently and all things craft and interior design. I'm sure all that will fly out the window once I don't have unlimited spare time.
There is also something I'd like advice about - not sure if this is the right avenue to go about it, but I don't really give a shit. My psychiatrist has re-diagnosed me with bipolar 2 after several sequences of so-called "hypo mania" in a relatively brief period after a good 10 months of no manic episodes. This on top of my already-existing diagnoses. Now, I'm sure there's a lot of you out there who have had similar experiences and no doubt have a handful of similar diagnoses - I'm really anti mood stabilizers, and I have friends with full-on bipolar who take them solely, but I don't know anyone who has been told to take or is currently on both ssri's and mood stabilizers. I'm incredibly critical of psychiatry in general, and I'm not about to take something that I don't think I *need.* I'm just wondering if anyone has advice about how to deal with the doubt that comes with multiple or conflicting diagnoses and how to negotiate philosophical and psychiatric discourses, or...I don't know. I have also been advised to stop taking my ssri's because they apparently cause more frequent and intense hypo mania, but at the same time, if I stop taking the ssri's my anxiety and panic attacks start coming back full force. Therefore - I feel conflicted about the whole shebang and generally kind of scared of myself getting worse on either front. I've kind of eased up on my criticism of psychiatry since it has significantly helped improve my mental health in the last few years, but I still think a lot of it is bullshit. Email me or comment if you have any advice...
(Also, not-so-strangely had a dream about being forced to do a series of complicated tests that resembled circus acts while being observed by my psychiatrist and other "professionals," including my father. one of which involved having to capture a puppy in a sand pit in the most effective and timely way possible. another involved swings and building sand castles that were continuously destroyed by sprinklers. good job, unconscious, try for more subtlety next time.)

2010-08-14T18:55:00.004-04:00

Things I have done in the last 7 days that I should feel ashamed for but mainly just feel ambivalent and peaceful about...as well as things I have done in the past 7 days that have been great and increased my feelings of self-worth, productivity, and/or authenticity:
ate at mcdonalds twice.
told my psychiatrist an embarrassing dream, then started crying, then laughing because of his facial expression.
avoided paying two bills, made 2 customer service reps cry.
watched the first three episodes of jersey shore season 2 while chain-smoking and eating oreos with beer.
played super mario world with ali and got some compliments from her about my "mad skills."
finished reading susan sontag "the volcano lover" and almost done reading "100 years of solitude." only just started to enjoy it.
finished a big job for work.
purchased many things, like books and expensive Japanese paper and designer fabrics and other such art supplies
finished sewing projects, collage projects, and several poems.

as you can see, my life has been unspectacular.
moving on monday, though.
i miss my boyfriend. my body does.
i'm pretty sure this blog will either pick up once i start school or entirely disappear.
i haven't been sleeping or breathing very well.

ph: 2. monica vitti in l'avventura probably from old hollywood
and photo 1...hhhmmm. probably poes mistress or per temeritas

how do I feel?

2010-08-04T21:28:00.002-04:00

Just like that.

2010-07-30T00:18:00.005-04:00

Watched Inception, was thoroughly unimpressed. Watched Dogtooth soon after, was thoroughy blown away. Any way you look at it, that filim is insanely well done. I particularly loved the muted palette, the pastel colours juxtaposed with the blue of the pool and the greens. For a movie about "dreams" Inception is nothing like a dream whatsoever - dreams are not constructed like that. Dogtooth is thoroughly a dream-nightmare. I really wish Baudrillard and Derrida and Marcuse were still around, so I could watch movies with them, and then we could all laugh and cry together at the good parts.

10 minutes and 2 cigarettes after arriving in St.Catharines my Mom took me along with her for manicures and pedicures - a "girl" tradition I am highly unfamiliar with. I don't "do" pedicures or manicures, I feel really childish and get very skittish. I felt like a ridiculous imposter, and accidently ruined by pedicure seconds after walking out of the salon. My mom rolled her eyes and said something about her failing at trying to make me more feminine. I felt a little bit better after that.
I felt like an imposter because when I walked in to the salon I felt like I had entered a secret sect of tired-looking white women, all staring like drones in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors, clutching their purses. But all eyes turned to me when I walked in, and there was a moment of appraisal that I haven't felt so strongly in a while - and then the awkward look away when I proved myself uninitiated. I think that the easiest way to fit in most places is to look bored. If you look a little bit bored, you look like you belong. I have learned how to do this in most bars, on the streets, sometimes - but when I am over-stimulated and interested, boredom is difficult to simulate. Which is why I always become a little clumsy in movie theatres, a little zoned out.
In the salon, there was this little mini shrine, one of those kitsch-chinese displays that I see all the time in mock-authentic chinatown restaurants, complete with lcd-lit incense sticks and scalloped mirrors. It was high up, close to the ceiling, not low enough that anything could have been placed haphazardly. Cheap red and gold plastic. But there was an empty styrofoam coffee cup sitting amongst all that paraphenalia. I looked at it for a long time.

ps. really enjoying tom wolfe - "yah! lower orders. The new sensibility - baby baby baby where did our love go? - the new world, submerged so long, invisible, and now arising, slippy, shiny, electric - out of the vinyl deep"

2010-07-25T21:42:00.004-04:00

My 3-card tarot reading last night was Abundance - Prince of Disks - Queen of Disks. The more I think about it, a very straightforward and positive reading, especially considering that I had a really fucked up day yesterday. I think I was a little bit manic. As for the cards - I'm a little confused about the Queen of Disks, considering the relation to domesticity. Maybe heralding a happy home life in my new apartment. I really like the illustration for the Queen of Disks:

Not sure if I trust Aleister Crowley more or less because he looks like this (though I'm thinking more):

My friend Lendl is publishing an anthology of visual and lit works by a bunch of people, including myself. Below is one of my poems that will be included, along with one more and a flash fiction/hybrid piece. If you're interested in a copy you can email me, they will be available in September, I believe. Or you can email him at passivecollective@gmail.com.

Possess

The pussy-pushing thoroughfare:
unsubtle notation you've written out and
pulled over your body,
now becoming a map without edges or an
incomplete song showing itself in the patterns of your
damp body hair. like a miracle or demon the
pulse of symbols
push against all surfaces.
We read it: never listening with eyes shut tight and a
half smile, like in the movies.
directions protect you
and the parting of each curtain of skin
is a process of dismantling:
not colonization, just curiosity for what you lost.
open up for the double-entendre
embedded in the surface of narrative
[still hot and raised]
and your hands still sticky
from self-service.

we are plural and dispersed and I love you!

2010-07-15T17:16:00.006-04:00

I continue to have dreams where I am exposed to a friend or a stranger's art project film etc. and feel completely repulsed by what they show me - cartoon characters from my childhood being slaughtered and raped, half-human hybrid beings being tortured, group murders on stage. My disgust and fear during the dream is vivid, and then when I wake up I realize - fuck, all of that stuff is inside of me and worst of all I condemn myself for it. Return of the repressed?

I've been reading Jameson: "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," just finished up Bataille's "Literature and Evil" and I'm currently about half-way through the theoretical section of Barthes "Mythologies." I packed up all of my books and only left out the theory, hence my lack of easy reads. The question that has been on my mind is one of Jameson's:
"Can we infact identify some 'moment of truth' within the more evident 'moments of falsehood' of postmodern culture?" I'm sure the 'Answer' is yes, it usually is. But I feel that new theories of the 'hope' inherent in postmodernism need to be articulated by the latest generation. Jamesons's "Postmodernism...or" was initially published in 1984, and I am struck doubly by how outdated and obvious some of his theories are, while also thinking how genius he is - he taps into things that people are saying now as if they're original. And one of his comments struck me in particular - "there has been a mutation in the object unaccompanied as yet by any equivalent mutation in the subject. We do not yes possess the perceptual equipment to match this new hyperspace...in part because our perceptual habits were formed in that older kind of space I have called the space of high modernism." I feel that my generation is maybe different, maybe this time is composed of entirely new kinds of subjects, hyper-subjects. Maybe not. I'll be thinking about it. Also - I flinch away from using terms like "subject" and then feel simultaneously ashamed and pissed at myself for giving a shit about whether or not we can still talk about "the subject." Pow.

1.2.3 - various tumblr's, if you know or want recognition or removal, let me know.
4. - fuck oui jean-luc godard

2010-07-02T02:30:00.004-04:00

Here's a little eye candy to take away from the heaviness/cynicism that has been my blog lately.
These are some of the ones that really struck me, but Kander has a tons of amazing work.
Krisatomic/BOOOOOOOM/Nadav Kander
In other news, I found out that I am getting a big scholarship from the government via sshrc. I feel honoured and happy.
I am reading Baudrillard's The Ecstasy of Communication, Bataille's Literature and Evil, and Perdido Street Station by China Meiville. All of which singularly and combined make for some fucked-up, evil dreams. I really need to record them more quickly than I do.
Any recommendations for great science fiction novels, other than the usuals of Gibson, Philip K.Dick, etc.? I'm house-sitting for my Mom and step-dad next weekend in their spacious home with a pool and a garden and a full fridge, and I'm half terrified of feeling isolated but mostly excited to have the house to myself. I'm planning a little spiritual/intellectual retreat. There is much to be done.

g20 rant 2 - sorry in advance

2010-06-28T13:41:00.004-04:00

The G-20 aftermath is still going on and its getting more complicated.
I just want to clarify some things I may have swooped over in my original post. For one - I "support" peaceful protests. I think that protests in this case are silly and based on false ideas about government and economic control, but I still agree with the fact that people have the right to do so unimpeded.
I feel like this whole event was just an opportunity for a bunch of hip leftists to show off the fact that they are "politically active." The groups that were out actually drawing attention to a particular cause - I get that. But those who are just running around saying "fuck the g-20" were mainly (based on my own observations) well-dressed white kids for whom protest is just another facet of their "alternative" lifestyle. You're fucking participating in the perpetuation of exactly what you are protesting in your regular lifestyles, and yet you have the audacity to act "holier-than-thou" and insult anyone who in any way disagrees with what you think. Call me jaded, I definitely am. Nonetheless, yeah, I agree that you should have the right to go about your protesting, even if I think its a silly performance.
I do have an issue with violent protests, however. The groups that used black bloc tactics were distinguishable from the peaceful protesters/"curious" on-lookers. And the fucking police, as usual, with thier habit for abusing power (coupled with poorly submlimated libidinal energies, ha) incited the show. I was on Queen Street before the protests started and there were at least 10 cops on every corner, yet, strangely, no one around to prevent a bunch of cop cars being set on fire at Queen and Peter. I think these kind of "oops" situations were orchestrated by the powers-that-be. How else could they justify the millions of dollars used for security? A show is necessary, with all the actors playing their parts. Step back a sec and let people do stupid shit so belated over-reaction appears justified. Smart thinking, assholes.
Police corralling of everyone yesterday (peaceful protesters, journalists, etc.) into a little box at Spadina and Queen is unacceptable and disgusting. Police detaining people and "bargaining" the protesters about their release is also disgusting. Apparently, police yelled at protesters to move back, and if they did, they offered to release some people. That is not effective policing, that is an unlawful hostage situation.

2 final things, though - although I think both groups did their best to aggravate the situation, I'm glad to see Canadians being less passive than they usually are. Even if most of them didn't know what the fuck they were protesting.
A lot of online discussion has resulted in insults and battering between people with different opinions. Shouting personal insults at someone because they don't agree with you is just as anti-democratic as the fucked-up action of the police. The facts change based on the perspective, they really do. No one has the definitive version of what went down.

quick rant between Bataille and Meiville

2010-06-27T00:26:00.003-04:00

So a lot of pseudo-anarchists are ruining any attempts at "peaceful protest" and the riot police are out and the city is chaotic, all because a bunch of rich dudes just finished a lovely gourmet dinner at the Royal York and are now conducting a silly 4-hour discussion that might as well be a talk show segment. What pisses me off is the so-called "anarchists" writing shit like "class war" and "capitalism sucks" on various public areas. It just seems like such an arbitrary time to start giving a shit about issues that have been around forever, and such a pointless way to "protest." Since when do you care about capitalism? And why are you only caring now? And if you're stupid enough to think bashing in a few starbucks windows is in any way a sufficient response to capitalism...you suck. The fucking leaders in their plushy chairs don't give a shit about protesters, peaceful or no. They have kilometers of space and concrete and police body and plastic between them and "the people." It's all just theater anyways. We all know that presidents and government leaders aren't the ones who make the real decisions. They are symbols. And now we are fighting symbols with symbols. Typical post-modern pseudo-drama.

Police cars on fire and kilometer-long polic riot lines are a rare site in Toronto, though. Cool pictures here.

ps. I get it, I do - yeah, capitalism sucks, yes I am well-versed in counter-cultural and Marxist theory. I still don't agree with either side.

2010-06-18T14:10:00.002-04:00

When we are in bed together; that is the only time you are heavy.
I cannot handle everything you want to fit inside me.
After we are done the space under my skin under my belly button hurts a little for the rest of the day. I think “maybe no one should ever let things inside them, no matter how good it feels to be full”
If I press my finger into my belly button, hard, I feel it at the base of my cervix. A thread pulls from point A to B. Like the jolt of foot –extending, laughing - when you hit your knee. I like my belly button because of the scar that looks like a nail clipping.
The body is proof that cause and effect is still a rule and a guarantee against chaos theory. That the universe will keep me planted to its fate. That my lungs won’t explode, even though I feel pressure and sadness filling them up.
When I get serious and sometimes cry,
you either laugh, light and nervous, or become very solemn and look away as if I am hurting you.
I wish I could cry less like someone in a new wave movie,
Less composed and less decorative.
You are the only one who has not told me: “you look even more beautiful when you’re sad.”
The only one who disregards the script.

2010-06-16T17:57:00.003-04:00

Today is the first day in a while that I've had to just do my shit at home, eat strawberries, clean stuff, catch up on shit in my google reader (500+ unread items), browse etsy, and most importantly, watch some x-files. Pretty much every actor on that show sucks except for the main two. And everyone speaks in deep voices, and everyone says things like "you have no idea just how deep...the truth goes" all the time. Its great.
In 10-ish days I'll be moving out of the apartment I've lived in for almost 3 years. I'm moving out of this city for a few years to do my MA. And I'm not sure exactly how I'll respond when the shit hits the fan and everything is different. My psychiatrist made me nervous on tuesday, he started talking about establishing some sort of coping strategy/plan-b if the changes instigate any "warning signals" of another breakdown. If anxiety is really just avoidance, then I am anxious about the plan itself, and not the changes - at least at this point. Or {insert psychobabble about repression, projection, avoidance, whatever}. What is the best way to adjust to big life changes? I'm confused.
Losing people isn't so hard if its me leaving, and not them. And any lost relationships will be indirectly lost, not intentionally broken. I feel selfishly comforted knowing that I won't be the one left alone due to another person's actions, abandonment, rejection. And I'm trying really hard not to go into self-preservation sabotage-any-relationships-you-are-afraid-to-lose-later-on mode. It sucks that everyone just grows out of most relationships. Most friendships have expiry dates, when it just stops clicking. I get that feeling pretty often.

cliche stereotypes maybe not

2010-06-13T03:41:00.003-04:00

Maybe I could fuck (art), make it new again because bodies and friction are always new always shedding always reassembling. Bodies are auditoriums and every adolescent breath is worth something. Every assembly is an orgy. Maybe we could make babies together and while experiencing labour pains I could say fuck yes this is something fresh. Maybe I could orgasm at the point of entry. Maybe I could drink myself out of the smoke machine so that my whole body is a white column moving upwards towards the light. Your beautiful faces will be illuminated with words. There will be very little self-restraint at last call when they let the lights release themselves a little. You see more, but with less clarity.
Maybe there will be a conference and we will all do research and decide what it means to be new and sincere and on the internet, and we will all do sufficient research beforehand in order to look as smart as the next person wearing similarly alternative clothing (with the right amount of disdain towards mainstream fashion) and we will all have interesting hair cuts that showcase our individuality and we will all have different names for the tragedy of post-modernism. Let us decide on a name so that we can write a manifesto and feel passionate for a minute until the next trend sweeps us into a new film. Name-dropping is a subtle and important tool. We all know about everything that anyone mentions on html giant. We are all cultured and each of us has chosen the perfect drink to represent a sufficient degree of je-ne-sais-quoi and respect for the too-delicate social order of artists in vintage { insert } and fedoras.
There will be minor difficulties and structural collapses. My lungs will die and curl into each other like lovers /hovering in a smoke-filled veranda/ without genital responses. My breasts are pulsing and heavy and I feel this is what it means to be a woman on television. There will be the hollow sound of another man pissing in the next room (but you will never see his cock). There will be intimacy. Two strangers dancing on the linoleum of a basement dance floor are evidence of god. There is a woman lingering against you holding onto her purse wanting you to BE with her moving while holding onto something inaccessible. There will be little to no thought and only action - only bodies sliding together wet and reborn.

Persona

2010-06-05T16:03:00.003-04:00

I've watched three Bergman films in the past 24 hours. One of which being Persona, which is amazing, wonderful, gorgeous. And difficult like all of Bergman's films. Its a challenge not to look away and compose myself, take a break. It would be easier to take in that way, but I resent my compulsion to do this. I managed to watch all three without pulling my eyes away. I always feel like I'm doing something a little bit dangerous while watching Bergman. I've watched the intro upward of 20 times. Warning: cock, animal slaughter, violence. Y'know. In case you're not into that on a sunny Saturday afternoon. And the last segment...mirror stage, anyone?

Conceptual Art and Philosophy.1

2010-06-04T13:20:00.001-04:00

My recent adoration and interest in Marina Abramović’s performance piece “The Artist is Present” has encouraged a lot of personal research about conceptual and performance art, and in particular, “feminist” and queer performance art. “The Artist is Present” has received a lot of blog/internet attention, deservedly. I think a lot of people feel that it is important, seminal, beautiful. A post on performance art will come later (I’m trying hard to avoid always reading works from a Lacanian perspective; maybe I should just give up and start calling myself a post-Lacanian feminist). In the meantime, I’ve been prompted to revisit conceptualism so that I can actually form educated arguments about it instead of whining, as per usual. I’ve been awake since 5.30 furiously reading a book called “Philosophy and Conceptual Art.” The following are some notes concerning problematic issues and my general responses.
Firstly, there seem to be two main camps of conceptualists: the first and the most “true” (i.e. Lippard straight from the 1966-1972 period) promotes the dematerialization of the [art] object; implies that the “idea is king” and that conceptual art should be non-perceptual (and thus, has a linguistic correlative so that description can be substituted for perception). This view also considers conceptual art to be “non-aesthetic” and a radical break and subversion of modernist codes, incorporating elements of banality, kitsch, repulsion, etc. The second is a little bit less radical. It suggests the work of art is not primarily an “object for viewing,” although sight is still a necessary part of experiencing the work. Basically, the perception of the art work is inferior and necessarily informed and guided by cognition. There is no “essential” or unified meaning to be worked out; all interpretations are legitimate and work art can/should provoke diverse responses.
First off, no work of art can be non-aesthetic, or non-perceptual. Part of what defines art is the fact that it is presented (even an empty room as “art” is a presentation of absence, a negation of space that is presented as something more that the thing in-itself, as something that provokes a response). As Lamarque notes in his essay Perceiving Conceptual Art, art can be anti-aesthetic, but never non-aesthetic. If the purpose of conceptual art is to subvert traditional modes of aesthetics, it does this not by abandoning aesthetics, but by creating an entirely new code of aesthetics in dialectical opposition. This is why, in my opinion, conceptualism is obviously an extension of, rather than a break from, modernism. Danto says, for example, that a work of art is only a work of art in that it is in some way distinguishable from the “mere real thing,” and thus, the work always has an “end” in sight realized through aesthetics as the means. Aesthetics are not confined to “harmony and beauty,” aesthetics can equally provoke less unified and traditional responses. I would argue that conceptualist aesthetics are the new normative guide for what counts as “good” or “bad” art. Conceptualism is responsible for the establishment of a new set of aesthetic “guides” appropriate to the time, place, historical period, etc. We’ve seen this time and time again – new codes subverting old ones that subsequently become standard.
It is also an illusion to think that conceptual art can be non-perceptual. Especially taking into consideration the fact that a lot of conceptual art depends on the re-contextualization of common objects situated in controlled environments to produce a certain experience. This experience is necessarily both cognitive and phenomenological, involving the body of the viewer in relation to the space. As a big Merleau-Ponty fan, I would argue that nothing is purely cognitive, and our experience of art depends on a specific mode of being-in-the-world. Reading a description of a concept-art work may invoke similar cognitive responses, but the sensory experience of the work in its specific environment will change the viewer’s experience, and most likely their intellectual experience of the work. In this case, I feel like conceptual art is equally “perceptual” (albeit, in a totally different way) as, for example, an 18th-century painting. Often the ideas are produced from the perceptual context, and not vice versa. Repositioning the art object or placing a work in a museum or other space is not an act of removing narrative; at most, it is an act of changing what counts as narrative, and creating a new perceptual space/relationship. And the desire to do this reflects the ideologies of post-modernity as much as modernist paintings reflect the oft-hated ideologies of that time.

And finally (for now), there is an illusion of subjectivity and the denial of normativity. Curry writes:
“The idea is that the process of engagement with the work, while it essentially involves knowledge not made available by vision alone, is a directed process: directed, that is, towards a visual engagement with the work. Works are intended to be looked at, but they should be looked at in the right way, with a proper understanding of the work’s circumstances. It is not, on this account, the agglomeration of the looking and the knowing that constitutes a proper engagement with the work: there is also a relation of priority that holds between them. The knowing is the necessary means to achieve the properly informed looking.” (Curry 42)
If this is true, then there is present in conceptualism a biased prioritization of the cognitive, the “knowing” quality over the “looking” that looks a lot like the modernist prioritization of the “looking” over the “knowing.” I guess that is pretty straightforward. But, this also implies that the conceptualist’s alleged support of completely relative interpretations is an illusion – as soon as you establish a hierarchy of experiential modalities, you enforce a normative way of looking, knowing, experiencing the work. The modernist extreme is replaced by the conceptualist extreme, and both enforce at least some degree of objectivity by privileging one type of interpretation over its opposite. The alleged encouragement of unlimited subjective responses to a conceptual work is undermined by this privileging of one kind of interpretation/experience over another.

I was ready to apologize for the length before I realized – this is my blog, and if you want to read, read. If not, that’s okay, too. As much as I appreciate readership support (I really do!) I sometimes miss not having to worry about writing for an “audience,” however loving and unintimidating the audience may be. And yet, I still post this, because I am interested in what people (if any) have to say in response. My next post will be a [shorter] take on (de-) historicization, conceptualism and Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Are you all signed up on MUBI (formerly The Auteurs)? I’m obsessed.

2010-05-25T14:24:00.003-04:00

Elizabeth Weinberg's photography makes me want to be away and in the country, in clean lake water, free to go topless, free enough to make eye contact with people.

2010-05-23T21:37:00.003-04:00

Tonight is Deleuze, Neil Young, Antonioni's L'avventura, the last few chapters of Gravity's Rainbow and white pomegranate tea in abundance. I'm feeling delicate and withdrawn. I'm oscillating between feeling okay with this and feeling anxious that the old agoraphobia is coming back. Sometimes I don't go out because I don't want to. Sometimes I don't go out because I feel like it would fucking hurt a lot. Its not so much fear as it is anticipatory exhaustion and anxiety. Ironically, staying at home and reading dense philosophy and gut-wrenchingly gorgeous but intense films or painting or writing a new short story (started a few days ago, it will probably turn into nothing) is equally painful. I can't explain it. Things impact me way too much. I wish I could turn the sensitivity-meter way down and be buoyant and light.
I've been watching films by Joe Swanberg recently. His latest, Alexander the Last, is really...quite lovely. His older films are less interesting but use the same aesthetic; something people call "mumblecore" (...?). From what I've read, mumblecore seems like a bullshit-genre with derogatory implications. Genres are easy to pin on works of art but they're quickly weighed down by it. I'm pulled in quickly to films without a plot. I like when films reflect life - "realist" cinema can't do this anymore. But I find glimpses of this, I guess, emotional/visual realism in certain films. In one article I read, the critic compared Swanberg's aesthetic to Rohmer's - quite a stretch, but I think there are similarities. Both film-makers appeal to me, even if the former falls dangerously close to cliche. But life is a cliche, so any attempt at "realism" usually negotiates with and uses cliches. Hatred toward "cliches" is a postmodern trend. Why are people (myself included) so consumed with authentic expression, even after accepting the fact that nothing is new, and everything is either recapitulation or bricolage? We theorize about the lack a subject, or a plural subject, but a lot of what we do (the "real" beyond theory) still points to an obsession with unities and a unified self.

Underneath all this trivial intellectualizing is a lot of self-doubt, mainly stemming from concerns about next year. I don't know what to write my masters thesis on. Any advice on how to figure this out and/or ease into grad school? Some people are telling me not to worry about my MA thesis, but I still feel as though its a big decision.

2010-05-18T12:46:00.004-04:00

I am thinking:

That moment - when you reach the focal point of the parabola. The steady upstream is upset and the subject hits a wall and everything splinters and fractures. The parabola is never the same, the downward tilt is obliterated and you're suspended for a split second, waiting for gravity to kick in so you can get a grip of your body again. Maybe a new trajectory is formed and the old is never seen again in the same light. The new is birthed from one of the splinters; it slowly congeals and progresses by its own momentum. Each intersection is a bit painful. Looking back you can only ever observe progress through the screen of debris.

I am reading:

"The most solid materials perish, as do the mightiest thoughts. And the greatest book ever writen can convey only a tiny fragment of the artist's real emotion. No, we are only building tombs for posterity to admire with our words. We are trying to record the changing ego, but the Self will not be revealed thus. We are only throwing off sparks."

- Henry Miller, from his letters to Anais Nin.

Here's a great essay on Miller and Whitman and the relationship between the two. I suggest reading it.

Art is by Linda Spjut, Anders Berggren, and Nhu Duong, from here.

rockets/entropy

2010-05-13T21:43:00.005-04:00

Reading Martin Amis' Times Arrow and Dead Babies to complement (or, take a breath away from) Gravity's Rainbow. To give some brief background before I dive into this post - Time's Arrow is written backwards. So we start with a man at his death and slowly move backwards through his life. All dialogue is reversed. Amis is really easy to read compared to Pynchon. In case anyone hasn't read GR - its a clusterfuck of a narrative, switching back-and-forth between characters, POV, and time periods.
Yes. So, I've been doing some research into the concepts of entropy/physics because both the Pynchon and the Amis tap into and use these concepts. I've always been vaguely aware of these ideas but I've never done legitimate research about it. According to thermodynamics, energy is always exchanged between regions of a "closed space." Heat flows from warm regions to colder regions, but not vice versa (yes, yes, grade school science makes a comeback). As a result, there is always a consistent increase of unusable energy building up within a particular system (you can think of this in terms of a room, an individual - but also, obviously, the world-at-large). This unusable energy is entropy - and entropy and disorder in any particular space increases simultaneously. Leading to fears of an energy-world-death and all out anarchy. *Here I'm reminded of that scene from Godard's "Two or Three Things I Know About Her," when we're watching the coffee spinning in the cup...I need to watch that again*
Tied in with this is the concept of time's arrow, which is a philosophical concept superimposed onto thermodynamics to describe how humans view ourselves in relation to this energy exchange/increase process. Typical anthropomorphizing - we have an innate understanding of time as linear, moving forward as entropy increases, like a wire sliced through a wave of steadily-increasing energy. Essentially, "the inescapable increase of total entropy in a closed system marks the direction of time." So, in a fucked-up way, "progression" is the expulsion of energy that propels humanity forward, towards an unknown "target." And all of history is a rush into anarchy fuelled by the skittish paranoia produced by entropy. I think these concepts are so interesting in relation to the po-mo attitude - which is characterized by a kind of blasé inertia coupled with a manic desire to fragment, to destroy creatively. The symbol of the rocket in Gravity's Rainbow perfectly illustrates these concepts - the ambiguity, Slothrop's desire to move but his lack of a direction or destination, the paranoia, the frustration caused by the lack of any real "self" transferred into sex as violence or violence as sex, or "just" violence, plain and simple. And the immanence of the rocket except as a symbol, except when embodied with the energy of a bunch of sexually-frustrated men rushing into a new period because they have nothing better to do and not enough self-awareness to understand what's making them so impatient. Insert comments about phallic symbols here.
So of course it makes sense that po-mo lit disrupts the linearity of time's arrow, as though post-modernism itself is the "destination" that we've been leading up to since the modernist period. Anarchy has arrived when time is no longer a legitimate or trusted marker.
I love reading about bodies bodies bodies decaying, moving, fucking, shitting, hurting, standing still momentarily to take a breath, incapable of doing anything but creating - mostly by accident. I don't know why I love being reminded of my corporeality so much. But I think the whole process is brilliant, horrific and a little bit dissapointing, all at the same time. Just being human is the most mundane and incredible feat possible.

I got my science info from Richard Menke - "Narrative Reversals and the Thermodynamics of History in Martin Amis's Time's Arrow"
Illustration: Tilman Faelker

2010-05-09T13:42:00.001-04:00

Yet another incredible post from transversalinflections. This is Deleuze (and Badiou, Pasolini and Foucault) used well.

2010-05-08T10:42:00.003-04:00

Pasolini retrospective entitled "The Poet of Contamination" at the Cinematheque July-August! Orgasms ensue. Too bad I'll be semi-migrant those months. Spending a week or two in New York City, most likely. Today, though, it is lovely outside my living room window. Hopefully some more thunderstorms will happen today, because I just got a giant job to do for work and will spend the next day holed up, writing. Candles and Ceremony's new album Rocket Fire, infrequent Gravity's Rainbow breaks and cats sleeping in lazy piles on an unfinished canvas. I'm also going to watch Catherine Breillat's Anatomy of Hell. Any film with the following character list:
The Woman
The Man
Blow-job lover 1
Blow-job lover 2
Man in bar
Boy with bird
Little girl playing doctor
Little boy playing doctor (2)
Pharmacist 1
Pharmacist 2...is quite possibly my cup of tea, if only for the fucked-up Bataille-ish drama I'm expecting.
Art is from Zak Smith's page-by-page illustrations of Gravity's Rainbow.

Just saying.

2010-05-03T22:45:00.002-04:00

The most sad song ever is quite possibly Dream Scream by Daniel Johnston. It is so incredibly gorgeous.

Rant 1: I've noticed the increasing popularity of applying Deleuze (and often the D & Guattari combo) to pretty much anything. Case in point, the following comment from a BlogTO post about a local clothing designer's over-priced, paint-splattered t-shirts:

"Leave it to the philistine BlogTO commenters to completely fail to understand one of the few exciting, innovative designers that hasn't yet been driven from the city. These pieces are a puissant exploration of the themes of difference and BwO (bodies-without-organs) developed in the work of Deleuze & Guattari -- but don't expect the illiterate, uncultured boors commenting here to pick up on any of those nuances. Obviously that level of engagement with art would be just too much to ask of the typical stewing-in-ressentiment, middle-brow Torontonians. Vive la mediocrite! Maybe we should all just read Harry Potter and blog about how great Crocs and Ugg boots are. Would that make you people happy?" - Helen Winthrop-Brougham, disgruntled snob.

Photos of these "puissant explorations of the themes of difference" can be found at Rowe's website. The shirts sell for 95 bucks a piece. Need I even comment on the digusting tone of this comment? Am I missing something? This epitomizes to me the problem with conceptual art and the indiscrimate throwing-around-of-concepts to justify bad art. Sure, its a t-shirt. If you like how it looks, fine. I wouldn't mind throwing around some paint on shit, too. But "innovative?" No. "Exciting?" God help us if this counts as exciting. And don't jazz it up and criticize others for having (perfectly legit, if you are intelligent and socially-conscious) concerns about it. Conceptual art is not all bad and some if it is great. But in my opinion, there is still a line - even in the realm of conceptual art - between good and bad art. And the commoditization and elitism of intellectualism isn't new, but lets at least minimize it. It's a far stretch to apply concepts of difference and bodies-without-organs to paint-splattered t-shirts, especially when there is no such connections mentioned by the "artist."

Rant 2: This article about cunnilingus from Cuntlove is really great - the writer's "take" on an article from here about the "25 Things Not to Do When Eating Out." It irks me because a lot of people take "guides" such as these completely seriously. (Do they?) I hope not, because I enjoy 14 out of the 25 things on the list, and thank god I'm not a close-mouthed sexual partner. I guess my main rule is: talk to your partner and let them know what you like/what you would like to do to them. More or less simple advice depending on the person, I suppose.

when lights are low.

2010-04-30T21:08:00.003-04:00

"Together they are a long skin interface, flowing sweat, close as muscles and bones can press, hardly a word beyond her name, or his...one night in the dark quilt-and-cold refuge of their bed, drowsing to and fro himself, he licked Jessica to sleep. When she felt his first warm breaths touch her labia, she shivered and cried like a cat. Two or three notes, it seemed, that sounded together, hoarse, haunted, blowing with snowflakes remembered from around nightfall." - Pynchon, GR

I'm reading Gravity's Rainbow; therefore, I am extremely frustrated. I know, that's the point, and maybe there is value in that. Every 100 pages or so it starts to make beautiful sense for a few pages and the other 90% feels like I am bashing my head against a wall. I don't really enjoy having to do extensive research every other page. Pavlovian physiology is interesting though. And I'm brushing up on my mythology. And I now know shitloads about the Blitz and other such WW2 facts. But what I love are the little bits of mystic gorgeous descriptions of sex and miscommunication and loss that are absolutely brilliant and wrenching. Still, GR is the opposite of a phenomenological text - ultra cognitive - and it doesn't give you any breaks as a reader, or any place to settle in and get comfortable.
I am listening to music appropriate to Autumn and watching the neighbours across the street separate on their respective porches, letting their children mingle together on their still-unkempt spring lawns. The little blonde girls have so much energy and noise that steadily declines. And their voices slowly quiet down and their little bodies get limp and then the sun goes down and the lights go on upstairs. Young people migrate out of their houses, all heading south a few blocks to busier streets, and the laughter of children is replaced with the cynical, syrupy giggles of drunk girls in stilettos.
Tonight is dedicated to poetry, reads and the mixed media piece I started a few days ago. I wish I had a work room or office to scatter pages around, but presently my bed is my best bet.
I want to tattoo a Walt Whitman stanza somewhere on my body. Which stanza, which poem?

I didn't enjoy An Education but I relate.

2010-04-24T13:16:00.004-04:00

When I first came here I was not wide-eyed but extremely porous and everything was radically beautiful and depoliticized and every step outside was a breath of fresh air and a slap in the face. Every street corner was the first line of a poem I couldn't finish. And each new man was an entry-point into understanding the streets. You're fucking him but you're thinking of the city and it gets you off fast. And I was like a jittery wet kid just learning to masturbate, my body stuck at the front at concerts, vibrating against the speaker. My eyes permanently damp and closed really tight so as not to breathe and each song got me close to climax that released itself like a swell, not a bang. Becoming an adult is learning how powerful people are and the terror of desiring bodies all clenched and holding themselves in. And I learned about the obligation of being an object and I learned that men coerce and pull. Romance is not a well framed sepia toned print with soundtrack and a clear foreground, romance is abandonment on an empty street in chinatown at four AM so drunk the city looks like sticky wet paint. Learning romance is realizing the cruelty I am capable of showing myself.

"It is the possession of a role which provides the impetus to go out in the world, to act at all. The more numerous roles, the greater the number of excursions" - Susan Sontag from The Benefactor

ph: them-thangs.com

Wangechi Mutu

2010-04-21T18:48:00.003-04:00

Pictures are super super inadequate, especially in this case after having seen the actual in real life a few hours ago much much larger - but this work in particular reminded me of Aurel Schmidt's work that I posted earlier this week. And I'm sure both are 100x better in person. The above is "This You Call Civilization" by Wangechi Mutu.
And I just have to say - I absolutely love Wangechi Mutu's art. The wounded wall, the extreme collage, the hybrid sexualities, everything - very cyborg-theory Donna Haraway - and so visceral. If you ever get the chance, see her work. Unfortunately we're hoarding it all to ourselves at the AGO right now.
Here are some related links and more photos if you're interested.
1
2

Heidegger, and other things.

2010-04-20T12:54:00.002-04:00

So, yesterday was amazing. My boyfriend is amazing. I realized today during my psychiatry appointment that I feel ashamed when I communicate positive news to people. I'm not really sure what that means. Most of what I dwell on is negative, which frustrates me. I'm not a negative person, per se, but I feel more invested in unravelling and delving into so-called negative emotions. I've always assumed there is more to uncover and more to learn from more difficult things, but the more I ponder the less I think that is true. There is a lot to uncover from positive emotions as well, and significant room for self-discovery in that arena. I think its partly an age/maturity thing that makes me dwell so heavily on the negative-dialectic side of the existential dilemma.

I got out of the shower yesterday to find a beautiful 1953 typewriter wrapped up in a gorgeous vintage case on the kitchen table as my birthday gift from Andrew. Finally, a typewriter! And we spent the rest of the afternoon in High Park at the mini-zoo and basking in the sun by the pond. Then popsicles red wine and horror movies. Toronto surprises me, often.

The point of this post, however, is this quote from Heidegger, which made me smile this morning on the subway:

"Truth, as the clearing and concealing of what is, happens in being composed, as a poet composes a poem. All art, as the letting happen of the advent of the truth of what is, is, as such, essentially poetry. The nature of art, on which both the art work and the artist depend, is the setting-itself-into-work of truth. It is due to art's poetic nature that, in the midst of what is, art breaks open an open place, in whose openness everything is other than usual" -from "The Origin of the Work of Art"

One of my problems with conceptual art (conceptual in the purest, po-mo sense) is that there is no opening up, no "revealing" in confrontation because the "thing-ness" is entirely immanent, like a case for ideas only accessible via the cognitive. I am conflicted because in a sense conceptual art performs what Heidegger talks about when he differentiates between the object-side and subject-side (the "thing-ness" of the work vs. its "work quality") but in his words, those two sides are collapsed together in our experience of the work. But in conceptual art those lines seem strict. The "thingness" of the work is maintained as thing, as purely representational. That seems to be how conceptual art works, but that kind of separation is counter-intuitive to how humans experience things, or how we would if we weren't all only semi-aware of our bodies. Maybe this paradox of contemporary art is itself an expression of our historical time, and thus a revealing of "truth" in a sense. But it seems more and more the phenomenological component is downplayed purely for the sake of the purely cognitive. A lot of conceptual art is just "thing-ness" without the beauty, until you sit and think about it for a while, and then it opens itself up. Sometimes. And maybe that is also the fault of the whole "exhibition value" theory from Benjamin. But I find less and less inspiration from contemporary art and more and more inspiration from being-in-the-world. Sitting on the side of a grassy hill and watching people touch each other, watching old men shift their weight on park benches, watching the way light moves across water. Sometimes, contemporary art feels dead to me. At most, an interesting diversion, but never something truly beautiful. I am definitely old-fashioned and nostalgic, and maybe all those modernist-theorists and their ideas aren't applicable to art "now." If that is true, I am disappointed, because I think art and poetry should still be about revealing something new, and feeling, and beauty. Authenticity, sure, but sometimes what passes as "authentic" now is just dead-ness, it doesn't add anything to our experience of life. Art should be accessible and we should be accessible to art.

There are, of course, great and interesting things going on. But very rarely do I sense that "rift" Heidegger goes on about. And I am nostalgic for that, even if being 23 in 2010 in North America means that I've only ever experienced echoes and reproductions of it.

strawberries and pink lemonade.

2010-04-16T20:01:00.006-04:00

I want to get Josef Alber's book Interaction of Colour.
Here's an article about it at Lined and Unlined.
I used to be fairly indifferent to colour-block art, until reading Merleau-Ponty.

Dominic Wilcox's new-ish installation, "Field" is really lovely. I've always been a fan of his things, especially war bowls.

I'm feeling conflicted about Aurel Schmidt.
1 and 2 (detail from):
"So Damn Pure" pencil, colored pencil, beer, blood, pepto-bismol, wine, grape crush, imodium, coffee, kool-aid, listerine, tang, urine, comet, daiquiri mix, spit, acrylic on paper
3 (detail from) 4:
"Master of the Universe / FlexMaster 3000" pencil, colored pencil, acrylic, beer, dirt on paper

It's my birthday weekend so I'm going to do what I want. Watch lots of film-noir, visit the AGO to see the Lucien Freud/Rembrandt exhibition, and read a lot of Heidegger.
Feeling a lot less psycho. Lesson learned: don't stop taking heavy psychiatric meds cold turkey and go outside more often, especially when its so gorgeous. I'm trying to be good to myself.
Cheers.

I'm going to read more Judith Butler before bed.

2010-04-11T02:14:00.004-04:00

Fuck, I'm nuts paranoid today. I don't know what's wrong with me. I haven't felt this way in a while, it feels like insurmountable doubt floating up and somersaulting against my chest, or like a man is inside my ribs pushing his hand, or maybe his head, against the skin. There is half of a dead squirrel outside this building, cut straight in half on the sidewalk, with the spine out. What to do with that? I don't know what to do with myself except fuck and eat and smoke and curl up in bed, all of which would be nice right now but I'm feeling scared of the bedroom for some reason. I don't know why. I want my boyfriend here who is light and easy and tall and hilarious but he is across the city. Ever get terrified of something and then figure out what's really going on and feel this intense, euphoric relief that's kind of dissapointing at the same time? Metaphor for life? Like the feeling I get that split second after a great orgasm, and my whole body feels a little tired, pleasurable but forlorn because the climax is done and really, its just a climax. I'm sorry, this is so silly and I feel strange.

Harper: In your experience of the world, how do people change?

Mormon Mother: Well it has something to do with God so it's not very nice. God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching.

Harper: And then get up. And walk around.

Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending.

Harper: And that's how people change.

-one of my favourite bits from Angels in America

ph: Eli Karakoc

2010-04-09T11:31:00.004-04:00

I'm feeling really exhausted, of everything. It's hard to put things in perspective because, obviously, I've done nothing but write papers the last 3 weeks and I have one left and my brain is sore. And I'm not taking care of myself, my body is falling apart. I haven't left my boyfriend's apartment since Tuesday. I need to go out and breath and buy some fruit and make a smoothie and stop being on the internet. I am so tired of being inundated with information but its like I compulsively seek it out when I need my brain to stop thinking about misrecognition and fracturing and Kushner's fault lines of creation. Doesn't anybody get sick of shit, the parade of fucking naked girls online, the fucking disaffected irony of things, the constant updates, the endless google reader-wheel, the making-of-plans, the mutual masturbation of facebook? I want to be out in-the-world but I don't want it to be full of people. I'm really sick of blogging too, I feel like this is a waste of time, but - I compulsively do it anyways. Habits die hard.
ps. I put on comment moderation because of all the spam. Its really irritating to me.

Photo sources
1 + 5 unknown
2 sacha heron
3 baubauhaus
4 a journey around my skull

2010-04-04T11:04:00.002-04:00

Today is a pretty amazing day, except for Miley Cyrus playing on my Mom's radio and her manic window cleaning resulting in heavy vinegar-spring smells. Meh.
[Disclaimer: The following paragraph is a silly departure from my usual blog subjects, but fuck it]
I love my siblings. They are some of the most interesting people I know. Ali and I went to the giant craftstore yesterday and I got a bunch of materials for these little art projects I've been wanting to do. We also went to the BEST Value Village, and I purchased a bright red vintage luggage bag for 2 bucks (I have the same one in blue and I bought it for 40 from a boutique in Kensington in TO) and...wait for it...2 vintage (1978) Star Trek puzzles!!! They are so epic. I'm thinking I'll matte and frame them and put them up in my new kitchen come September. Nerd-kitsch-vintage decor - - my favourite. The horrible thing about chain thrift stores in Toronto is that good things are snatched up immediately by hipsters who then re-sell such items for 4 times the cash at their trendy vintage boutiques. Things like that don't happen in suburbia.
I watched "The Blind Side" yesterday against my will and actually liked it. But, as per usual when I'm watching movies with the fam, horribly obvious manipulative-measures are used that my family is oblivious to. So I add my running commentary and inevitably, recieve a lot of eye rolls from my conservative step-dad who is "just trying to enjoy the movie." The main thing that bothered me is the fact that the "projects" were filmed in green and black sepia-ish tones while the "white" spaces were literally full of fucking sun and peaches and happiness. The film seems to lack self-awareness of the crazy dichotomy it sets up between these two spaces. And I understand that there are horrible differences between black and white America, based on how the system functions. But not all black people in America are sitting on the curb sharpening knifes and threatening female passerbys. There's just no space for liminality between the racial boundaries of this film.
So yes. Just sayin'. Happy Easter.Oh god, the Backstreet Boys are playing on the radio now (and non-ironically). What is going on.

2010-04-02T12:20:00.005-04:00

Good morning. Kind of. Hopefully for you, at least.
I'm feeling tired. Last night I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's while doing work, which cheered me up. I always cry and fall in love with that writer, and when she finds her cat at the end and they kiss in the rain...phew...I can't even stand it. I'm incredibly sappy. And then I watched a bunch of youtube videos of Gene Kelly dancing and singing all over the fucking place like a maniac. I love musicals, non-ironically. Sheer pleasure.
I stopped taking my meds so I'm feeling a little out of it, although really not much more than usual. First stop meds, second stop cigarettes. I want to be free of chemicals and full of sun.
My flash fiction is in the April decomP. I named it "Innocence and Panic" from the first section of Scenes From a Marriage. I guess it was kind of inspired by Bergman, or something.

Innocence and Panic at decomP

Happy day of celebrating Jesus' brutal murder, by the way. My mood is appropriate to the occasion. I would rather be in any one of these sexy libraries:

sorry, just fell in love with this photo of Kenneth Goldsmith...

2010-03-26T21:20:00.001-04:00

from lemonhound.

joanna newsom makes me feel really happy.

2010-03-26T20:34:00.004-04:00

Oh my fuck, I just had the most awesome-weird dream ever. It involved running from a band (ie. musical) of zombies that were "normal" until I turned my back (ie. just like those ghosts from super mario world) and the only antidote was a spray bottle of oil extracted from the corpse of Spinoza. Any time I sprayed them they would scream "not Spinoza oil!!!!" and slow down a little.

Not kidding.

Why didn't I just avoiding turning my back? Because when I did they started singing, which was almost as horrific as being chased.

I am in love with my afternooon-nap-unconscious for having such a grotesque sense of humour.

Speaking of grotesque, one of the greatest images I have come across lately:

"Her teeth are bright and it looks as if she just hit Pause. I want to fill in her gums and smear her teeth with the fish food flakes just for fun. It would look like scabs dissolving. IT WOULD."

-from my newly-purchased copy of Nathaniel G. Moore's novel "wrongbar."

It is very interesting and very well written. He's one of my favourite Toronto writers, for sure. And for those in any way familiar with my preferred poetry-aesthetic you will understand why I wish I had thought of this image before him. That's a sign of a really good writer for me, when I'm jealous of the things they say and wish I'd come up with it. Sometimes I just read and enjoy and bask in something's greatness, and other times some lines grab and pinch me so that it hurts a little and I feel immeasurably insuperior but more complete and a little heavier inside for having read it.

I experience that a lot with Scorch Atlas too, which I am slowly devouring in bits on the subway. Scorch Atlas is dirty and slick and ecstatic. It's hard to describe. I know I'm way behind the band wagon on reading it, but fuck it, better late than never. Now that I have some cash I'm going to slowly purchase books that I've been wanting forever (Shane Jones, Molly Gaudry, etc) so brace yourselves for some good old belated reviews. And please offer me suggestions of things that you think I would enjoy reading.

updates

2010-03-23T21:36:00.005-04:00

{disclaimer: procrastination time. head hurts. too much nicotine, not enough naked man. too much work, not enough sleep.}
I feel overwhelmed right now.
I have a new job that involves writing and editing very dense material at home for hours. I enjoy it but I feel intellectually exhausted.
I got into all the grad schools I applied to. I decided I'm moving to Western for the Theory and Criticism program. That means I'll only be in Toronto for this summer. Get me while you can. I'm excited, mainly to get my own place and move and be someplace new. Big changes are good for me. I also have dispensible income for the first time in my life, so I've been buying art all over the place.
I have to write 1) A paper on Merleau-Ponty and language. Thinking of throwing some Wittgenstein in there for good measure 2) Harryette Mullen and hybrid subjectivity/resistance of woman-as-poet-muse 3) something that combines emily dickinson with angels in america, bloch, benjamin (konvolut n) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (I'm lost on that one) and 4) something to do with transgender theory.
Check out Brandi Strickland, the art above belongs to her and the rest of her work is really excellent. I'm not yet sure which prints to purchase, although I'm thinking the entire dark crystal series.
{I feel a high degree of internal peace that is encased and preserved by extreme external chaos. I like the feeling of external pressure, it keeps me from sabotaging myself. Anxiety is often produced by sheer boredom so I need to constantly challenge myself. I'm really happy with everything. I feel blessed.}

2010-03-20T21:43:00.003-04:00

Feeling grand. Spending this Saturday night browsing etsy for art, watching Star Wars, drinking hot chocolate and reading Merleau-Ponty in periodic spurts. Everything is so good right now I'm kind of suspicious.

A poem of mine has been published in the Toronto Quarterly journal, which I absolutely love. If you have some extra cash and would like to support Darryl Salach, the founder and editor, and us, the writers, you can buy the e-book or a print copy from here: link. I'll post a free .pdf in the right column later, although its not the same, y'all. Or, those of you who live in Toronto - go get it at one of 3 Bookcity locations in the city. I have a love/hate relationship with Bookcity, but I do admit, its one of the only places in TO that has a wide variety of lit mags and journals.

Poetry as Code/De-Coding

2010-03-14T21:45:00.003-04:00

Below is the first part of an unfinished presentation I'm writing for my contemporary poetry and poetics seminar. I'm enjoying writing it and I thought some of you might be interested. The Tapeworm Foundry is a conceptual long poem (fuck, what isn't) available on UbuWeb. Link.
It's strange that my measure of 'presentability' is whether or not I'm comfortable posting something on here. "Is it good enough/engaging enough to be posted on my blog?!" versus "is it good enough to perform in front of 20 people, including someone who will give me a grade?" *rolls eyes at myself and then lights a cigarette*
Also really enjoyed this blog post from a recently-discovered blog that has quickly become one of my favourites. Wicked shit about suicide-art Badiou embodiment etc.
Also just wanted to say thank you to people who read this. My, uh, readership, has drastically increased over the past 4 months and I am genuinely appreciative of all who give a shit. *here I roll my eyes again and feel sheepish*
the word 'sheepish' is strange, yeah?
---
“The issue is not about poetry online. It’s the other thing that’s at issue here: online poetry, a poetry that explicitly includes the processes of coding, programming and designing as part of the creative act; a poetry whose content is, to some degree, specific to the qualities of the environment in which it exists.” DWH.

In “Antifesto,” Darren Wershler-Henry refers to creative writing as “code.” The Tapeworm Foundry engages with this idea and exemplifies "our current confrontation with the codes and code-condition of language, poetry, and digital media" (Drucker). The Tapeworm Foundry performs this process of coding/de-coding the ideological and material foundations of creative production. Each page functions like a screen of data that provides an inventory of information; a list of proposals for art projects and instructions for creating poetry that subvert the traditional modernist definition of art and poetry. In this sense, the poem is radically non-hierarchical, combining low and high culture seamlessly and with great humour. Equally demonstrative of this equalization is the use of “andor” to separate each unit. This strategy implies an opening up of language; the poem unfolds itself and the reader takes up its possibilities.
This focus on form and presentation rather than content emphasizes the materiality of language and poetry-construction/coding. This technique is reminiscent of the language poets attempt to dislodge the signified from the signifier. Similarly, Wershler-Henry shows that language is not inherently meaningful; language is given meaning when positioned within a particular narrative context. Although traditional reading and writing codes typically remain “invisible” and unnoticed, the value of online poetry is that the coding/de-coding is explicit and thus functions as a critique of passive or uncritical reading. Thus, The Tapeworm Foundry challenges and subverts the traditional/modernist narrative codes that condition readers to consume and engage with a text in a predetermined, prescribed framework of reference. The ceaseless flow of text - each unrelated component - prevents the reader from superimposing a linear and all-encompassing narrative onto the poem. As a result, we can't consume the text as we would a commodity. Both the construction of the text as material object and as a narrative is magnified. In this sense, Wershler-Henry decodes how language functions by producing a meta-code that draws attention to its own construction in order to critique how code functions in general.

carnival carnival carnival

2010-03-08T01:04:00.004-05:00

These are some of my favourite bits of Steve McCaffery poems. Click to enlarge.

The best piece from Darren Wershler-Henry's "The Tapeworm Foundry" is

replace sigourney weaver with jacques derrida and then make a film about him chasing hegelians through the airducts of a spaceship in order to immolate these vermin with a flamethrower

This is a really hilarious video. Gotta love bp Nichol. Only poets.

I love my hippie Canadian poets.

2010-03-05T23:23:00.002-05:00

It's a good thing I will never have kids because sometimes I look at my cats when they are curled up and rolling around my feet in ridiculous ways, and I feel nothing except heavy pity that living things always need other living things, and I think 'I can never be what you want all the time' and I feel that way with most people. Like this morning when I tried to leave the bed and you, still mostly asleep, grabbed onto my hand really hard and pulled me back into your sleepy unconsious nakedness, still holding tight to my wrist so that it almost hurt. And I wanted to be comfortable there and less restless, I wanted your erection between my legs and your morning shadow rough against my shoulder. I looked at your face for a really long time, and it hurt like the sun and the sky did when I removed myself later and stood on the roof, smoking my first cigarette, burdened by something hard and light in the pit of my stomach.

2010-03-01T09:48:00.002-05:00

Happy March. The horrors of February have subsided. This is going to be a big month for me. I have a lot of goals that will inevitably be hindered by a shitload of social and performance anxiety. I'm feeling down today, avoiding school, wanting to be alone.

Good news though: I have two poems published in the March Negative Suck. I just read the new stuff and holy shit, it is super good. I feel honoured to be included amongst such a great group of writers (including Lyn Lifshin - her poems are marvellous). Check it out HERE.

ps. Super happy about Canada winning gold in men's hockey. Fucking love Olympic hockey.

2010-02-25T11:36:00.004-05:00

Sometimes I feel very tired of accumulation, of life as layered surfaces that can stifle or comfort. Living is moving between layers of fabric, some thick like wool or glass and others so thin you can pull them up and away from you like dried skin off a scab. Recently I've been feeling like I'm moving through textured surfaces and constantly pulling back layers to get a better view. I want to be sun-drenched. I want thunderstorms. I feel happy but overwhelmed so I want to stay indoors and be in bed with my cats all day. That's all I have to say for now. I feel very private.

photo source.

If you see her, say hello.

2010-02-19T15:24:00.005-05:00

All from baubauhaus.com
Phew. Sometimes I need Jeff Buckley to tuck me in. Live at Sin-e soothes my soul.

2010-02-16T23:33:00.003-05:00

There were a few boxes of books dropped off at the goodwill below the apartment a few nights ago. I rummaged through and picked up an old Norton anthology and a copy of Sexus by Henry Miller with an old Montreal subway transfer in the middle. Quite enjoying it between bits of "Scorch Atlas." I like reading "Scorch Atlas" in public places because it makes me feel cool, like a self-conscious kid with new sneakers in grade school. Its well-written, of course, but the book design itself is so excellent, I like the feel and look of it. Good job, Blake Butler/designers/whomever.

Miller reads like a more accessible Leonard Cohen, which is not necessarily good but fine for this moment in my life. I'm on reading week so a relatively lighter read is a good thing. It is filled with lots of sex intermingled with poignant philosophical ruminations. Example:

"A child has no need to write, he is innocent. A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing is to inoculate the world with the virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in. His inspiration is deflected at the source. If it is a world of truth, beauty, and magic that he desires to create, why does he put millions of words between himself and the reality of that world? Why does he defer action - unless it be that, like other men, what he really desires is power, fame, success. 'Books are human actions in death' said Balzac. Yet, having perceived the truth, he deliberately surrendered the angel to the demon which possessed him."

and etc. I find it rings true. Some writing is just honest, without trying too hard to be honest. Miller doesn't give a fuck so honesty kind of leaks out. And it is unflattering but when you read it all you can do is nod "yes" in response to its humanity.

There are lots of subtle and not-so-subtle references to Whitman in this text. So I found Orwell's summation of Miller particularly interesting:

"Here in my opinion is the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past. Even if that is objected to as an overstatement, it will probably be admitted that Miller is a writer out of the ordinary, worth more than a single glance; and after all, he is a completely negative, unconstructive, amoral writer, a mere Jonah, a passive acceptor of evil, a sort of Whitman among the corpses."

What a lovely, interesting description. Whitman among the corpses.

2010-02-15T02:58:00.004-05:00

Bored Dylan.

Nietzsche tattoo.

Man on man.

I knew that my choice to go out and be drunk yesterday night would backfire on me today. I'm almost done a 3000 word paper due tomorrow morning. I started it on Friday. Its been very tedious. I am sitting at my boyfriend's desk surrounded by recording equipment. He has an electronic drum kit and a really old school synthesizer. His apartment is above a goodwill store and we always rummage through the stuff people drop off at night. Last time we went he bought a light-bright box for 2 bucks. In the other room, Godfather 2 is playing at a subdued volume. Someone just had a baby. There are people yelling outside and breaking things. I find that a lot of people talk about masturbation on their blogs, as though this is the new measure of authenticity. Cool, I guess. It is Valentine's day and I only gave one blow job. He's at work right now so we're postponing the sex and smokes fest until tomorrow.

Sorry for boring you. This blog is my friend first and foremost and I need a neutral space right now.

All pictures were stolen from this person's tumblr.

Mullen, Merlea-Ponty, new stuff to read in near future.

2010-02-08T17:48:00.003-05:00

Reading Harryette Mullen's "Recycolpedia" and I'm really, really enjoying it. The first two sections, in Mullen's words, "are serial prose poems that use playful, punning, fragmented language to explore sexuality, femininity, and domesticity...[that] began as my response to Gertrude Stein's simple yet elusive poetic prose." Here are my favourite bits from "Trimmings:"

Opens up a little leg, some slender, high exposure. Splits a chic sheath, tight slit. Buy another peek experience, price is slashed. Where tart knife, scoring, minced a sluttish strut. Laughing splits the seams. Teeth in a gash, letting off steam.
-
Chaste, apprehended, collared and cuffed. Kept under wraps, as bridal veils visually haze precious, easily torn, gauzy romantic tissues. Thin threads lace into delicate, expensive fabrics woven and unwoven at night by patient spinsters with needles and scissors. Laced in, as fate would have it. Knots and tiniest holes. Surgical cutting and sewing. Peeking as usual. Skin under lace. A thread, a net effect, a web to sleep in. A white nightgown, girl, child, baby, laced and unlaced. A ruffle, a frill. A pale piece of something, almost made of air.
-
Thinking thought to be a body wearing language as clothing or language a body of thought which is a soul or body the clothing of a soul, she is veiled in silence. A veiled, unavailable body makes an available space.

That last bit reminds me (both as a response to/engagement with/argument against) of the section from Phenomenology of Perception (shock!) that I read on the subway this morning:

"It has always been observed that speech or gesture transfigure the body, but no more was said on the subject that that they develop or disclose another power, that of soul or thought. The fact was overlooked that, in order to express it, the body must in the last analysis become the thought or intention that it signifies for us. It is the body which points out, and which speaks. [ie. speech is not 'sourced' from thought, from the intellect removed from its lived-body; rather, speech is gestural, and is "wholly motility and wholy intelligence"]
-Merleau-Ponty from "The Body as Expression, and Speech" (part 1 of PoP)

And then my brain bounces in two different directions:
1) Black Mountain poetics seem very influenced/informed by phenomenology/Merleau-Ponty and I'd like to explore this more.
2) I can't wait to start reading feminist/queer responses to Merleau-Ponty. I'm anticipating problems but also great collaborations.

And finally...two forthcoming publications - flash-fiction in April decomP and 2 poems in March Negative Suck. I'm happy about this.

2010-02-06T19:53:00.002-05:00

Rant 1.

"Living Dolls explores the dark side of the sexual revolution. Walter makes the point that the pressure on young women to live up to a shag-happy ideal can alienate more reserved and quietly brilliant females who aren’t that interested in shaking their arse for FHM. Seventeen-year old Carly: ‘There aren’t any other options. You’re a sex object, and then you’re a mother, and that’s it. There is no alternative culture.' I think Walter could have explored that last statement more. As soon as a woman reaches a certain age (say, about twenty-six) the pressure to down Aftershocks and fall out of nightclubs stops and the pressure to find a man and churn out some babies begins. We have managed to combine the objectification of women with the cult of childbirth. The nuclear family crumbles, divorce rates shoot up, and yet against all sense and evidence we continue to promote the idea that the best thing a woman can be is a mother. Result: an epidemic of teenage pregnancy as young girls learn to associate reproduction with empowerment."

From "In the Company of Men" at 3:AM magazine. Link. Italics are mine.

This looks like an interesting read. I'm always ranting about this: the fact that "sexually-liberated" women are suspiciously "liberated" in a way that is structured by male desire. Many women have still not learned how to articulate what it means to be sexually liberated outside of the limits of the male gaze framework. It irks me to see women either 1) "act like men" because "we're equal" and "can fuck around too" or 2) conform to some sort of porn-star "bad-ass" ideal. In the latter case, this ideal is the same as when men were creating it, only now women themselves are propagating it and pretending that its new and liberating because they feel "in control." Riiiight. I think its equally significant and awesome that the writer indicates that women are under pressure to go to nightclubs and be that "sexually-liberated, freedom-loving" young woman. Her wording suggests (correctly, in my opinion) that this is not a lifestyle automatically suited to all young people, nor something all women strive for within that same framework. I consider myself sexually-liberated and free, blah blah blah, but I want to feel it and live it on my own terms, not as some silly alt-coquette man eater. I feel like I've grown out of that phase but I still feel pressure (perhaps internally and socially) to be out and about and showing myself off. But I just don't want to.

Rant 2.

I've noticed recently that commercials that target women usually use the stupid-as-fuck husband as some sort of prop stock character to sell shit. Ie. man who can't load the dishwasher, man who can't cook eggs without making a huge mess, man who just generally looks like a dumb-fucking-failure. Insert image of smirking smart-ass wife in the background pulling out the fucking lysol while the children look on knowingly. Men are not stupid. Most men that I know personally are very self-sufficient. Most women I know are very self-sufficient. I feel that this kind of commercial epitomizes what the ignorant masses have taken as the "moral" of second-wave feminism: your husband is stupid, you can pretend to give him a little power but ultimately you have complete control. I hate this interpretation/mis-reading of feminist concerns and I hate the fact that one gender is always placed under the other. Sugar-coated "equality" stuck with needles. Passive-aggressive "neutrality" masking resentment.

Rant 3.

The amount of "alternative" girls posing in so-called "provocative" poses is driving me nuts, mostly because its so hilarious. Girls in AA sprawled over random pieces of furniture, girls with "pensive" looks and stupid fucking looks on their faces. My personal favourite is the "intense eye" (usually coupled with thick-rimmed glasses) which is usually 100% terrifying. It was interesting for a while but now that the whole internet is inundated with the self-portraits of girls obsessed with their own "unique personal brand" I just want to hit a big ERASE ALL button and start my brain over.

Done, done, done.

oh, Pessoa.

2010-02-05T22:56:00.005-05:00

Down the steps of my dreams and my weariness, descend from your unreality, descend and be my substitute for the world.

One longed, in order to truly feel life, to be a patient convalescing from an illness.

I created various personalities within myself. I create them constantly. Every dream, as soon as it is dreamed, is immediately embodied by another person who dreams it instead of me. In order to create, I destroyed myself; I have externalized so much of my inner life that even inside I now exist only externally. I am the living stage across which various actors pass acting out different plays...

I did not act the part. It acted me. I was merely the gestures, never the actor.

Civilization consists in giving an appropriate name to something and then dreaming what results from that. And in fact the false name and the true dream do create a new reality. The object really does become other, because we have made it so. We manufacture realities.

Leaning on the bridge, I wait for the truth to pass so that I can regain my null and fictitious, intelligent and natural self...to know nothing about oneself is to live. To know a little about oneself is to think. To know oneself precipitately is suddenly to grasp Leibniz's notion of the dominant monad...a sudden light scorches and consumes everything. It strips us naked even of our selves.

[feeling isolated, angry, anxious deep into the
pit of my stomach self-deprecating and intellectually exhausted.
Reading Pessoa is like stepping into already-familiar words.
I want to sit in a pool of water near a beach, one of those little pockets that becomes stale and lukewarm, watch people swim and feel water droplets slowly evaporate off my skin under white-blind sunlight, experience the chill of close-to-summer-sunset breezes, feel at home in my body again
why are people so inpenetrable and why do I turn away so quickly?]

All text is from Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet. All photos belong to Miranda Lehman and can be found at ghostinthewoods.com

Two out of three

2010-01-31T17:28:00.005-05:00

"I thought I saw you in my tea leaves, I thought I saw you in a forest flame" -Owen Pallett from "Great Elsewhere"

"The world is... the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself." -Merleau-Ponty from Phenomenology of Perception

(these are the two men rocking my world right now. I can't stop listening to Heartland and I'm compulsively reading Phenomenology of Perception like a dirty novel between fucks and cigarettes)

2010-01-27T11:33:00.001-05:00

my body's all juiced up on whiskey and you,
you are across the city and there are no hands on the curve of your back
there is no language circling the fine hairs at the nape of your neck
your eyes are not on me.
my face is all torn up and I'm pulling at scars on the backs of my hands
hardening each day callouses are unavoidable
like children wandering aimlessly on streetcars
and coffee buzz paranoia in the foggy streets
empty like me.
we are lazy ecstatic together.
your body is so familiar under my mouth
that it becomes strange in frequency,
like a word swilling around at the back of my throat
becomes foreign when you realize these parts randomly collide,
when you realize [noun] can't curl into [verb] like Whitman's do.

I cannot suck I suck
out

that's where you are rooted in me,
dug in the back of my skull, warm and
perpetually wet.

2010-01-22T00:13:00.004-05:00

Just watched this film "Taxidermia" by th Hungarian director György Pálfi. It was really amazing. Amazing ideas, visualization, production. I'm going to write a long review of it at some point when I get the opportunity to watch it again. If you're a fan of darkly humourous, surrealist, generally fucked-up "horror" cinema, please please watch it. It's not so much a genre film so its not easily classified as "horror," but it is disturbing. And there is lots of body-grossness-awesomeness going on. Fuck. Another item on my list-of-things-to-write-about-purely-for-the-sake-of-enjoyment. A friend of mine is also interested in assembling essays on Mad Men (for a book, not for a book, for pleasure, whatever). The idea has nestled itself in the back of my brain and I'd like to write something on that, too.

2010-01-21T00:06:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I stretch my body's limits to see how much it will take before it revolts. I'm pretty sure its a bad thing that I can separate the cognitive and the sensible so easily, wilfully. Over the past year I have developed a very difficult relationship with my body, which is what makes reading existential phenomenology so interesting. I like to tease my body into corners. The prof teaching us Merleau-Ponty quoted Pere Ubu today, which instantly makes him even more awesome. After the lecture, my friend said somthing like "we don't talk with language games; every body has its gestures" etc. So the problem that comes to my mind, especially in the context of feminist philosophy and post-feminist theory like cyborg theory is how to reconcile phenomenology - consciousness as/of your body in-the world - with technological advancements that continue to redifine what it means to be "embodied." Although Merleau-Ponty would probably say that computer-communications are an extension of our bodies, incorporated into our bodily experience like other "habits," I'm kind of worried about the implications. Haraway and Merleau-Ponty go really well together. I guess the main question on my brain is, if my consciousness necessarily involves my body in relation to the world, what happens, phenomenologically, with internet-communications? My body cannot interact with yours, so there is always this inability to communicate, purely on a bodily level (in addition to every other theory that posits an irreconcilable divide between the subject and other). And how does this affect the subject-object dialectic? If you - reader - are never more than an object to me on the other side of a screen (because, by virtue of you being a 'conceptual/imaginary' rather than 'real' audience) how can I ever write honestly to other individuals not as objects, but as lived-body-consciousness'? I'm rambling and anxious. I feel restless like I'm waiting for something. There is way too much shit to write and research and so little time/life to do it. And (this is especially what I love about Merleau-Ponty) it is also necessary to just be in the world, to just sit down and shut-the-fuck-up. A lot of philosophy majors seem resistant to Merleau-Ponty, I think its because he is very simple. His dialectics are circular and always point back to the same simple advice for living. I like that he de-emphasizes the cognitive....(which is ironic considering his method...). Whatever, its a weird paradox.

BLAH

I'll start posting poems here soon.
To, you know, "lighten" shit up.
Although 90% of my poetry is anything but "light."

Can't you just feel the self-derision emanating from me tonight?
Sweet dreams and such. x

2010-01-16T10:19:00.002-05:00

I'm still a little bit drunk, forgive me. My favourite part of life and every day is that first hour before I have to do things, when I sit on the floor of my living room with a cup of coffee, chain smoke my lungs away, write emails, read new things, sift through the many un-read google reader items. My cats are always a little bit hyper and over eager in the mornings. I'm always a little bit stuffed up and groggy. My apartment is really fucking amazing. Really. The big window in the living room lets in this gorgeous blue-gray light. My apartment is always very very warm. A t-shirt is sufficient and you still feel cozy. If I've forgotten my medication I'm a little bit dizzy, a little bit tight in the chest. I'm surrounded by little single shot bottles of rye that my good friend Shawn brought over last night before we ventured out for beers and onion rings. I'm not close to many people but the ones I love, I truly love. And there is no shame between us, and no desire to lead a poetic life, only to talk about the pitfalls of analytic philosophy and punk sub-genres.

I'm going to read and review poetry submissions for the journal this morning. If I had to review the prior paragraph I would say "Feels incomplete. What is the point of these statements? Not a lot going on here" and then I would write a "no" underneath that. But I'm not writing poetry and I'm not concerned.

2010-01-16T10:05:00.000-05:00

One of my favourite songs ever. Not much makes me this happy.

2010-01-14T21:30:00.002-05:00

I think reading Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception will probably change my life. Like Lacan, Haraway, Hegel, Spinoza and Nietzsche did (and in that order, reversed). I'm into grandiose statements. I'm into philosophy that makes me feel grandiose and alive. I want to write a paper on phenomenology and Emily Dickinson, I think that would be very fun. Merleau-Ponty died of a stroke while reading Descartes. That is too perfect.

This year there are a few things I want to do. I don't understand why people get sappy and set up goals in January. I'm moderately sappy all times of the year. But I've been contemplating goals and here are some of them: read all of Being and Time. thoughtfully, carefully, and with help from secondary sources and online lectures. I am impatient with Heidegger but I think if I give the bastard some real time we'd get along okay. Start listening to more poetry, because it soothes my soul, yeaaaah. Regain all my French. Start getting poetry submitted to print journals and generally just write more poetry. Cut out superfluities. I'm generally good at cutting things out. But I want to really learn what needs to be cut and what should be nourished. I'm bad at editing.

My laptop is still a few hours away, now fixed and fresh and waiting to be transported back home by my most generous brother. Lack of a computer for the last month means that I am behind in reading blogs, behind in television, behind in internet-mediated information. But as a result, my mind is clear and fresh and I am stuck in books. Today I went to this antiques store to buy an old vintage clock I've been yearning for since December. The [very] old man behind the counter has thick red fingers with gold rings on each and asked me if I like Oscar Wilde. We talked about Oscar Wilde's time in prison and the fairy tales he wrote. Alone in this peach coloured room full of expensive and inexpensive furniture smelling of old life, he read "Ballad of Reading Goal" from a bright pink 1972 pocket edition of Wilde's collected works. He read softly in a shaky voice but with a beautiful consonance.

Another goal for this year is to be more kind to strangers.

Everything feels good.

I love love love and hate this city and I don't want to leave it, yet.

I hope you are all well.

christmas brain food.

2009-12-26T20:42:00.003-05:00

I had a terrific Christmas. Once everyone is gone and there is no longer any pressure to be a "happy family," I realize that I am indeed part of a relatively happy family and enjoyed my day. The day itself always feels anticlimactic and emotionally draining. I really enjoyed seeing my Dad for the first time in a long time. He was really really nice which made me feel guilty about the prior post and my general bitterness. People surprise me, sometimes. My favourite presents: the Sartorialist book, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer - which I read in a few hours and want to read again - and the origami crane my sister made for me. Here is a portion of an essay I just wrote that I am incredibly pleased with. On Whitman and Heidegger's "Thinker as Poet" and of course I had to throw some Lacan in there:

Whitman's manic desire to consume and be consumed by everything - and his inability to achieve either - exemplifies Heidegger's quote: "Thinking’s saying would be stilled in its being only by becoming unable to say that which must remain unspoken" (Thinker as Poet). Part of the function of language is to play within and expose its own limitations. Language does not only function superficially as self-contained and transparent, but also in relation to this limit or its ability to expose this limit. Formal experimentation is one strategy of playing with and around the inability of language while simultaneously exposing the lack underlying what is made visible. The malleability of poetry in particular draws attention to this semiotic and material limit. That which visibly manifests itself is also the symptom of a residue, of something that cannot be expressed in language. For Heidegger, "What is spoken is never, and in no/language, what is said" (Thinker as Poet). A similar thought is expressed in Whitman: "Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,/Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn" (Whitman 22-23). Thus, what is said includes the content of the language as well as what is lacking in the language; Leaves of Grass performs this relation and the inability of language. This discourse reveals the limit of the language (what is lacking, what remains unspoken because it is untranslatable) in dialectical relation to the words used and the relationship to the speaker as creator and conduit of 'Being.' What is seen (the content communicated) emphasizes the absence of the unseen (that which necessarily underlies what is visibly and materially taking place). The inability of language to succinctly express experience and realize this desire results in a struggle with and against this limit; therefore, the subject matter of the poem is not only what is said but the issue at stake in saying or not saying, and the problems of language as a system of representation. This reality motivates Heidegger's statement that "such inability would bring thinking/face to face with its matter" (Thinker as Poet). Thinking is a process that struggles to explicate itself through saying; however, the subject of thought cannot be confronted directly, in language. The best and only strategy for negotiating this problematic is to play within the limits of the language itself in order to expose the contradiction inherent in the process of thought and its communication. Thus, Leaves of Grass succeeds because it communicates the vitality of life while sustaining the contradictions inherent in the process of channeling thought into language.

Lacan's distinction between the symbolic and the imaginary realms exposes the function and 'inability' of language within Whitman's poetry. The Lacanian reading reveals the misrecognition that occurs through linguistic expression. Whitman's desire is expressed in language that cannot grasp what he desires and how he desires. Explication of desire in language results in a hierarchical systematization of that desire which results in the subsequent annihilation of that desire. Desire fails when it is [mis]recognized, and thus the untranslatable essence of Whitman's experience - the component that underlies what is communicated - must remain unspoken in order to for the 'Being' of the poem to be realized. This process reveals that desire itself is structured; desire is not free of form. If, according to Lacan, "the unconscious is structured like a language," desire too is structured like a language, but is not a language and cannot be explicated via language. This desire "is without name - it is a word unsaid,/It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol" (Whitman 68). Whitman swings between a desire to consume and a desire to release (sensually but also within language and the construct of the poem) because he recognizes that desire is extinguished through explication. This is one reason why Whitman advises against "tak[ing] things at second or third hand...looking through the eyes of the dead...[and] feeding on the spectres in books" (Whitman 22). His attempts to mediate his desire through verse to the reader necessarily fails. This is the "paradox of desire at its purest: in order to sustain itself as desire, to articulate itself (in a song), a piece must be missing" (Zizek xviii).

2009-12-22T23:59:00.004-05:00

I feel ridiculous, my head has been swimming and murky for the past week. I want to have electric-shock-underwater-half-asleep-when-you-crawl-into-bed-with-me-early-in-the-morning sex after I (exhausted and half naked) curl up and doze off to the sound of you and your stoned friends murmuring delightful things in your well designed living room painted neutral colours. You and your chocolate stout. You and your extremely long fingers. I'm nervous to see/talk to my Dad and his wife for the first time in a while. I am afraid. I feel afraid around my family because I know that nothing I say would even crack a hole in their shrink-wrapped shell minds incubated in religious juices. Religion works so well, it sucks up everything like a vaccuum, all doubt condemned, everything soaked up and churned out and half-digested. Syrupy faith. You can't reason with faith, which makes it very powerful and stupid. I am so absent from everything except my body. It keeps producing things and moving along streets and I'm watching it with a stupid fucking grin, feeling like a brain-in-vat staring dumb faced at my own flesh that is unwilling - incapable - of not moving. I'm tricking everyone! No one knows that I am so incredibly removed from myself and others. Sometimes when we fuck I look down at my body moving and I am impressed. I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay. Write, write, repair. Know your language, know your neighbours. I want writing just for me. I want hard copies of everything. I am afraid of losing or wanting to lose because that's easier. I want paper cuts and ink stains and callouses on the inside of the ring finger on my right hand. I want you to suck the blood from my paper cuts and read me the 'Grand Inquisitor' when I'm leaned against the wall and you are deep in and the street-lamp-light filtered through blinds cuts up your hard, angular body. Condemn me. I feel close to you and only you.

*I forgot to credit these:
the first is Francis Bacon, the second is an unknown source re-posted from another blog (and I don't remember, I'm sorry).

2009-12-05T01:33:00.004-05:00

One fun thing I like about working at the library is finding scraps of paper and peoples private lives in books; inscriptions, lists, notes in the margin. I have been collecting "found papers" since I was 14. I have a binder, a box, and a notebook full of other peoples random trash. I don't know why I find it so interesting. Tonight's lists:

1.
quit sdtt
alone time
quit gf
more alone time/cry
gain confidence
work out
stand up to family
find yourself
sing
travel
get priorities/goals
kali

the only thing with a check mark beside it is the first item.
this one makes me feel that everyone everywhere is exactly the same and want the same things when they think no one is reading. and to put "find yourself" on a to-do list is ridiculous, stupid, charming, sad and lovely.
i don't know what sdtt is.

2.
pity/fear - green
catharsis - green
hero - yellow
ontology - blue
truth - red

memory paint by numbers

2009-12-04T01:17:00.006-05:00

Yeah, yes, indeed.
Insert colour.
I just wrote this nostalgic and highly self-indulgent thing that I like inspired by this ridiculous piece of writing I found in one of my notebooks from five years ago. I happily roll around in memories, snug as shit.
Who gives a fuck. There is logic but its not clever.
My best people are visiting for Christmas. I'm excited.
I can't stop listening to "Make Love that Lasts" by Karl Blau, its such a fantastically happy song with snarky lyrics.
I'm super excited but I'm not sure what about.

1.
cucumber melon candles
jeans rolled mid-calf
peanut butter sandwiches and coke
masturbation
tosca goldfrapp jazzanova
you narrowly missed the paintbrush but I can deep throat

2.
nag champa and the annex in autumn
torn up cargos and propagandhi t-shirts
eggs benedict and pad thai
walks/locked up guitar/masturbation
elliott buckley loveless
i came in through the bathroom window/why did you break the glass

3.
cigarettes and soapy dishwater, weed
ill-fitting leather jackets
alfredo pasta and gravy
talk it out and fuck, gently
chili peppers pink floyd and other mediocrities
what the fuck did you do to the closet door

4.
semen and sweat
green plaid shirt and brown polyester
blt with red onion
yell insult throw fuck carpet burn
of montreal captain beefheart pavement
()

5.
blueberry muffins
hair. 90's. dad's leather jacket
rice and salmon
sullen silent treatment
neil young jeff tweedy the boss
leave, now, anticlimax, side 2

6.
sweat, skin, water
paint and scrubs
gnocchi with scissors
draw escape retract cold as fuck
tom waits nina simone
<

art is here.

Sources of inspiration this week.

2009-12-01T19:26:00.006-05:00

Jonathan Zawada

All night dreaming of a body
space weighs on differently from mine
We are making love in the street
the traffic flows off from us
pouring back like a sheet
the asphalt stirs with tenderness
there is no dismay
we move together like underwater plants

Over and over, starting to wake
I dive back to discover you
still whispering, touch me, we go on
streaming through the slow
citylight forest ocean
stirring our body hair

But this is the saying of a dream
on waking
I wish there were somewhere
actual we could stand
handing the power-glasses back and forth
looking at the earth, the wildwood
where the split began

from "Waking in the Dark" by Adrienne Rich

Sanne Sannes

I cannot explain the action of leveling,
Why it should all boil down to one
Uniform substance, a magma of interiors.
My guide in these matters is your self,
Firm, oblique, accepting everything with the same
Wraith of a smile, and as time speeds up so that it is soon
Much later, I can know only the straight way out,
The distance between us.

from "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" by John Ashbery

...more typewriters...Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Will Self.

I'm really tired and cranky. We're reading Moby-Dick for my Literature & Philosophy course. I thought it was going to be one of those books that are excruciatingly painful to get through, but its actually been a really fun read. It reminds me of being a kid and reading adventure novels 10 hours straight in my backyard during the summer.

I now have two jobs, plus my poetry editing job which will kick back into the forefront around January. Plus end-of-semester papers and 4 grad school applications to pump out. I want this month to be over and I want a day to write and drink tea and lounge around with my cats. I also want to stop whining, because my life is pretty damn good.

unattainable x-mas wish-list.

2009-11-19T21:58:00.006-05:00

Vintage typewriter. This is Hemingway's old Royal.

Bergman.

Babuskha dolls.

Schiele prints.

New Zizek.

This broad's cigarette holder/life.

Think think think think.

2009-11-19T20:53:00.002-05:00

Still wet around the edges, you enter the subway station. Pavement saturated-blue. The day is still heavy with moisture. Recesses are not the same as alcoves. Mirrors are not the same as windows. Street chaos is accompanied by loud music. One strand of your hair tucked into the folds of my scarf. Most parts of your body are long and angular. Loose threads against my face startle. Text messages rolled back and forth. "Again and again there comes a time in history when a man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is that of knowing whether two and two do make four." (That is Camus, it is important to cite your sources, that way you know I am well-read and form connections, that way, you can say: "yes") I am ashamed.
The exhalation when we braced ourselves for the waves. The sour gulp inward, the sting at the back of the throat. Panicked re-emergence. The sand gathered in the crotch of your fluorescent bathing suit. Dead seagulls with their eyes picked out, half buried. Cold nipples at dusk. Fish skeletons draped against driftwood delicate like nail clippings. Back and forth. Can I enjoy poetry without exegesis. Can I enjoy your body with my eyes closed. Can I lick your inner thighs?
The man in a well-tailored tweed suit lowers his paper looks up and licks his left thumb. People's reflections are looking at your reflection in the black train windows. Back and forth.
I can't resist syllogisms, I can resist. Back and forth.

sleep and sleep and sleep.

2009-11-13T22:28:00.003-05:00

yikes. whiskey drunk. angry at new people. new gossip, the same old patterns of my past repeated in other faces equally forgettable. language poets. silliman. bits of Whitman. conflict-resolution. not wanting to relinquish the signified. the fascination with the signifier reflects historical materialism, which, as a metaphor, is a contradiction. existentialism overview. ayer intercepting tyson via naomi watts. blisters on three fingers from burns on different days. imagining professors sleeping, shaving, feeding children, straightening ties; the face softens or hardens in routine. early morning subway ennui. needing your body when i least expect it. I intercepting objectivity, intercepting the fatigue of the signifier. a warm plate of onion rings balanced on my thighs. broken glass in four places. the grand inquisitor. stale glasses of lukewarm water to dip fingers into. leaving pill bottles untouched. periphery. circumference. social anxiety disorder. waning flirtations. would you name your child fyodor. defamiliarization is the birth of love. stray hairs on water-stained wine glasses. social interaction as self-discipline. loss of blood flow in bent legs. catching your eyes on her. dream machine. dylan's face is in his hands. tom waits is on the subway. language is a performance. i want your brain to explode all over me.

2009-11-05T16:54:00.001-05:00

Love this. Burroughs and his cats.

sorry in advance.

2009-11-05T13:32:00.005-05:00

November does good/bad things for me. Something shifts and my perspective is re-oriented. Consistently over the past five years my motivation to do school completely diminishes at this time. I have zero motivation to read philosophy or wrestle with issues in papers right now. And I don't really care about it either. Bad timing, though. Keeping things in perspective is good. Sometimes I realize that regardless of what I do to fuck up my life, even if I went on hiatus for a month or so, nothing would be ruined in the slightest, any damage due to dismissed papers, missed classes, forgotten phone calls can be undone pretty quickly. Recognizing the great insignificance of my life and problems is very liberating.
New lovers are so fun, everything dims except that. Just when I think I'm getting too jaded about people I meet someone who is easy to get along with, comfortable as fuck, and generally on my wavelength. So fucking refreshing. My inability to concentrate is probably a result of good vibe endorphins that make me feel like dancing or fucking at all times. I pretty much want sex all the time but the dancing is a new development. Its more like a pent up physical energy that usually expresses itself in one of those two outlets.
I really like this photographer, found via Garance. His site is here. His photos incite wanderlust and that wonderful feeling in the pit of my stomach in response to beautiful things found on screens, through headphones, behind windows or in my hands. I really like the latest post at Ani Smith's blog, I really like Ani Smith in general, I really like this photo of Alain Delon, I really like the new the Big Pink album. Here is a poem at read some words that I wrote a long time ago, I like it, although I think it is very simple, which is not necessarily a bad thing but I feel self-conscious.

I really really want to live in that house. Serious. When I was a kid I used to write super long stories and epic naive love stories about people living in abandoned houses on misty cliffs against water. I like reading those stories, I nod in agreement and approval of my former self. I drew portraits of the characters to go along with the narrative, and, later, I drew floorplans and detailed interiors of the houses I described. There are certain themes and images that still hit me in the same ways. Which makes me feel a sense of continuity of self, a uniformity- recognizing similarities between my 10-year-old self and now. I wonder why certain images stick with certain people. As in, what is the root of that influence, the tugging that happens when different people see different images with a particular vibe. I wonder if its connected to dreams at all. I wonder if its genetic . If I asked my sister, 'do you feel this way when you look at this' I wonder if she would understand at all. I know she wouldn't.

I love love love the texture and the colours in this photograph. Sometimes I save photos to my computer not because of content or composition but just because of the colour combinations.

Halloween nostalgia.

2009-10-31T12:43:00.004-04:00

These are my favourite Halloween pictures. The first is classic and pretty much tells you everything you need to know about me and my brother. My brother is currently politically-conservative quasi-religious and in the army. I'm the crazy one consistently in disarray. Of course for the yearly Halloween parade I was wearing a skin-coloured top underneath my flashy purple shells. I can still - I kid you not - recite the lyrics from every song in the Little Mermaid. The second is epic on all levels. Strangely, my sister dressed like a princess that year (highly uncharacteristic of her, she was a menace). My brother is a fighter pilot. I am...so awesome. Pretty much every other year I dressed up as Princess Leia; unfortunately, I couldn't find any pictures.

2009-10-30T15:29:00.002-04:00

So I'm back in suburbia again. It is raining really hard, permanently overcast, chilly and damp, but the entire back yard is covered in bright yellow leaves and the ivy against the butter-coloured brick has turned golden orange. I would rather spend this weekend drinking beer with my brother than in Toronto watching half-clothed drunk people do stupid things that make them feel interesting and 'alt.' I'm going to hand out candy to rich suburban kids. Any excuse to indulge in nostalgia is taken. I'm not in a very good place mentally. I feel like something is rotting in my chest (and no, not my lungs, thanks) and like my brain is floating around in my skull, untethered. Such is anxiety. Most of my anxiety stems from changes that have to happen in the next month. The antipation of realizing this and the fear of having to make such changes happen. Anticipatory anxiety results in heavy and paralyzing inertia, which is why I've been sleeping 16 hours a day and loading up on carbs and tea. Fear is paralyzing and the paradox is that if I just moved, if I just got shit done, I'd feel a lot less anxious. I need someone to push me out of this space, I don't feel very strong. Then again, my moods change so often and in such extreme directions, I may feel amazing tomorrow.
On the agenda for today - -
blueberries and pineapple cashew chicken
Kant, metaphysics of morals
some Parfit essays
hot chocolate and home-made carrot cake
musical accompianment by Girls Real Estate Flaming Lips Zola Jesus
Silence of the Lambs @ 9
bubble bath with Brothers K.
good things :)

Some shaky first drafts.

2009-10-25T22:12:00.003-04:00

grimy first moves, bones drawn to bone
friction against skin shedding itself

cocoon bodies pushed out of their private darkness,
corrupting forms too material for
sighs that sway up into the overhead light
singed on bulbs like moths crowded in the dusty glass
lacking legs and single wings:
torn up asymmetrical shadows of sounds and failing bodies.

Artificial flame draws me into that rain-soaked space
between a rock and a hard place.
steady suction lubricated fingers slippery and
unsuccessful
mouth moves like an angry epileptic body open against
ambiguous mattress-stains and smoke-smell pillows
eyes roll back into skin pockets
flushed milky white, sheathed in moisture.
dirty flecks of yesterday's mascara
float like insects in the corners of your
sealed eyes.

tequila-skin and another man's sweat
darken your profile

thick full lips stained october-cloud-purple
sloppy wine mouth stains chin blood red
mop your face playfully, too self-conscious
the glass delicate and water-stained:
I'm fingering the stem and licking my lips.

shrink-wrapped body contained to
save energy, keep the freshness in and
tongue pieces fluorescent
like that space behind your ear,
each touch a more intense
invitation to infection

strange strong hands have a pulse
that echoes in organs, I can see the outline of your body
and its place in a sprawling soupy city
impervious to rain

---

The final act is an awkward look-away
dress rehearsal for the big
anti climax, poorly lit. And I can barely hear your voice on the phone.
the amputation swift, one fell swoop before the crash and
no one hears the tree fall in the forest, either.

Each lover a bandage placed over the scar left from the last
scab ripped off with the wrapping,
negligence sting-proof tingling wound that grows,
self-contained

Wiping your semen from my browned belly,
eyes sway with guilt like you've stabbed, not loved.
"you can't leave like that, sudden"
removal a shock too loud
the lid of a sealed jar popped open with force
a seal peeled off a closed envelope,
my contents exposed for consumption.
cover me.
panic pulls shame out of me
(but i need love, i need this)

before retreat you stuck it out,
Appease-her
curled back between swollen breasts
now wet with fluids that
smear and suck into belly buttons,
into the curved skin boat
of upper thigh.

you are hard and seamless
you never leak when held up to light.
turn me upside down,
test my contours.
taste me, I am leaking quietly.

2009-10-24T23:41:00.003-04:00

Oh and 2 things.
I got rid of comments, it makes me feel less self-conscious about writing whatever I want. I still want to talk to you if you have anything to say, so email me.
I like the way my skin smells when I wake up after a night in a club. Perfume mixed with my skin, my pheromones, other peoples pheromones (and by that I mean sweat) tequila, the city. Gross, I know, but I feel really great in my body after a night out meeting and talking and dancing.

Antichrist

2009-10-24T23:26:00.002-04:00

Here’s another essay on film that no one will read.
This will spoil the movie if you haven’t seen it and want to in the future. Some things are best left as surprises.

Antichrist is a very powerful movie. Trier is trying to tackle and critique issues of misogyny and gynocide but he does so in a way that is…misogynistic. This puts me on edge and I’m not sure if these tensions can be reconciled - but that’s part of the strange beauty and insanity of the film. On one hand, Trier is criticizing the ways that women have been historically and ideologically damaged by patriarchy, particularly through male conceptualizations of women over time. Ironically though, the female character is portrayed as each and every one of these archetypes of femininity – she is pure corporeal body, catalyst for sin, irrational, instinctual, primal, hysterical – and Trier chooses to enforce these constructed visions of Woman rather than develop an alternative vision of femininity that could in some way, emancipate ‘Eve’ from this pigeon-holed male vision. She is active but only in a destructive way. Lier admits, yes, women have been wronged. But the response of this female character is to engage with her victimhood, to revel in it, to choose an active role only in a destructive capacity. And the act of self-mutilation is not an affirmation of powerful femininity – it is emancipatory, but its not emancipation from the cycle of victimization – it’s a sad acceptance (on the part of the character) that she is indeed only what ‘Man’ has told her she is, that she is indeed evil – and the act of self-mutilation is an attempt to free herself of femininity in all its forms, but particularly, that one component of femininity not capable of appropriation within phallocentric discourses – the woman as capable of pleasure, of choice. Strangely, she never castrates her husband, but she does castrate herself. This is a strange reversal that puts ‘Woman’ in an active role only so that she can deny any opportunity for active and autonomous femininity. It is also interesting that the mutilation does not prevent her fertility; she is still capable of sex and pregnancy and birth; only her capacity for orgasm, only her capacity for sexual pleasure is removed, by choice. So in this sense, without a clitoris, she better conforms to the idealized, stereotype of Woman as a vessel for male desire, without any opportunity for jouissance, except through the male phallus. The self-castration is a symbolic removal of that element of Woman that slides between pleasure-for-self and pleasure-for-Him (as an object for birth and male pleasure). In many ways, the film engages with these issues, but it does so in a way that consistently draws our attention back to the woman as the harbinger of evil.
At the beginning of her violent rage, she rushes into the room and accuses her husband of wanting to leave her, etc, and starts to fuck him. Again, the rage is a response to her need for the man – her violence is reactionary (regardless of whether or not it is founded in anything ‘real’) and reinforces the image of the woman as dependent on the man, not only in the obvious ways, but as a catalyst for her own activity and rage.
The film is obviously critical of psychiatry and therapy as a symbol of patriarchal ratiocination. Of course, the male is conceived as the ‘voice of reason’ who must teach (ie indoctrinate) his wife on how to control her body (in this sense, her physiological anxiety symptoms, her sexual desire and her violence, in that order). The result is that rather than becoming less of an animal, she becomes increasingly less [outwardly] rational by the conclusion of the film. The irony though is that if indeed Trier is trying to criticize psychiatry, by the conclusion we realize that *ta-da* she was nuts all along. Because of this, it is difficult to sustain that critique. Her psychosis wasn’t a result of the ‘manipulative’ and ‘repressive’ pressure of psychiatry, because she was crazy beforehand. The therapy is apparently one of many factors that brought her insanity into a more public space, but it wasn’t responsible for its onset. And by the conclusion, she’s not strong (?) enough to finish the job she started. She still needs him. He must destroy her, and he does, and this is acceptable because the crazy bitch must be put in her place. This is also a symbol of the ‘Man’ ‘killing’ the ‘feminine’ component of his identity in order to sustain that rational exterior. The dichotomy of male/female must be maintained. Trier never really plays with this. The boundaries are set up really quickly and each character never really passes out of their predetermined gender space.
There is a lot to say and write about the film, but one image in particular is insane – a two-part image. The first takes place when she runs out during sex and starts to masturbate under the tree (symbolically, the tree of knowledge, of course). She gets him to hit her and only then does she take him back inside her, etc. Pan out and we see (dead) female bodies entwined within the roots of the tree, surrounding them. This is insane on many levels:
1) ‘Eve’ invites and tempts ‘Adam’ into sin (the violence)
2) He can’t resist her ‘power’ which is purely sexual and tied to her body
3) She cannot achieve pleasure on her own, she requires the phallus for any degree of jouissance (which also probably relates to her self-mutilation later, the inadequacy of the autonomous female to achieve pleasure on her own except through the male)
4) Knowledge necessitates violence and destruction – the Fall is both a fall into knowledge and suffering, the two are intertwined and involve a dialectic explored in the passive/active interplay between the male and the female – he overpowers her because she wants and asks him to overpower her (ie. who is the active/passive agent in this situation, really?).
5) The ‘fall’ – this whole patriarchal, Christian discourse is founded on the sin and the suppression of the feminine (the bodies are the ‘sacrifices’ required to support and sustain this discourse, biblically and in relation to ‘gynocide’ of the 16th century, etc). The bodies of the women are entwined within the roots of the tree of knowledge to symbolize their role as the sacrifices necessary to sustain ‘maleness.’
The female character is sacrificed for the same purpose, later. I think the final image of the hoards of women entering the forest could symbolize a bunch of different things. They are the women ‘released’ from their position in the roots of the tree/as the foundation of Christian discourse/maleness. How this emancipation makes sense in the context of the films narrative, I’m not sure, although it might be related to the killing of the original ‘Eve’ figure as a means to emancipate all women from the ‘shit Eve started.’ This would be fucked up. The fact that the hoards of women walking in the forest are clothed and walking (aka not dead) also implies that they are women liberated from their ‘sin,’ from the flesh – they are covered and ‘imaginary’ women, suggesting that women can only ever really escape their essentially evil and destructive nature by retreating into Lacan’s imaginary realm again, as idealized concepts but not real, fleshy, active Subjects. Woman as Subject is problematic for Man.

But goddamn, Willem Defoe is super hot in this film.

2009-10-23T09:17:00.004-04:00

Sartre admitted in 1939 that he never experienced the existential nausea he wrote about. I feel cheated by this a little. I never really enjoyed Sartre as a person. I've read too much of Simone deBeauvoir's autobiographical material to respect Sartre. A combination of Camus, Kant and fucking Schopenhauer has put me in a very strange head space. I hate hate hate my dreams. Even when they are pleasant enough visually they terrify me. I was floating in the ocean and it was sunny and beautiful and despite this I continued to experience waves of panic, feeling that something foreign and larger than me and dangerous was about to brush against my legs. That's only one part of the sequence that involved lots of people I don't really want to dream about, but I do all the time. Schopenhauer is a very bleak and sad man. Everything is utterly meaningless and absurd and despite that we still possess 'will to life' that results in the fabrication of a 'bubble of illusion' - a fabricated excuse to keep our body moving, to justify reproduction. The only metaphysically respectful form of suicide (according to Schopenhaur) is starving-yourself-to-death because it involves a slow process of waning 'will to life' - when your body shuts down you enter a state of depersonalization where its possible to step outside of your body and detach from its petty concern to remain alive. No wonder I'm feeling groundless and sad. Camus is the same:
"At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them. The primitive hostility of the world rises up to face us across millennia. For a second we cease to understand it because for centuries we have understood it in solely the images and designs that we had attributed to it beforehand, because henceforth we lack the power to make use of that artifice. The world evades us because it becomes itself again. That stage scenery masked by habit becomes again what it is. It withdraws at a distance from us. Just as there are days when under the familiar face of a woman, we see as a stranger her we had loved months or years ago, perhaps we shall come even to desire what suddenly leaves us so alone."
This in particular bothers me a lot. The absurdity of seeing someone that I have touched in every way possible, that I spent hours in bed with - now as a stranger. I no longer know them and I never really did. "Knowing" people is familiarity and habituation; association. I want to shake people hard when I feel this way, scream at them, "what the fuck, this is a stupid game, I know you;" I want to sustain that illusion because it makes me feel less lonely. But instead I keep up the stupid vacuous exchange, I continue to let words spurt out of my mouth mechanically, mundane fucking shit. I can't even deal with it. The loss, but also the indifference. It's paralyzing. When I first read Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia" (which you should read, by the way) I felt "fuck yeah, I get this" but then I felt, confused, that I can never really reach that state of indifference again. I feel irreparable sometimes, in certain areas. In my seminar yesterday my professor asked: "if, according to psychology, Schopenhauer's philosophizing is the result of a chemical imbalance or psychological disorder, does that devalue what he wrote?" I guess you could ask the same of most philosophers, who, for the most part, either killed themselves or went insane (except for dudes like Sartre who were apparently faking anyways). Of course I don't think so, I am still wary of 'diagnoses.' Maybe some psychiatrists (I doubt mine would, he's become aware of my sensitivity in this area and is generally a cool dude) would probably say, yes, everything you wrote over the past few weeks has been symptomatic of your various 'disorders.' How to reconcile my identity and creativity with this, I don't know. I'm supposed to ask myself a series of questions when I feel this fucked up. "Is anything really broken?" "if you are broken, do you need to pick up the pieces" "is it possible to relinquish the struggle" These questions make me feel nauseous and silly. They feel like stock psychology questions meant to manipulate a certain response out of me. But when it comes down to it: yes, I think most people are 'broken' and yes, I think most of us, including me, try to pick up the pieces, because who the fuck enjoys feeling untethered. Who the fuck wants to feel like damaged goods. As for relinquishing the struggle, I don't really know what the fuck that even means. I don't feel that I'm struggling, I just feel depressed. There is a word for this world-weariness in German that has an untranslatable connotation in English. Weltschmerz. World-pain. I think that this kind of angst probably sounds less trite in German. English words are so inadequate, they betray my meaning. I'm pretty good at life, though. There is no reason for me to feel waves of panic and literal nausea while sitting in groups of people talking about stupid shit. There is no reason for me to feel disgust at people's faces, people that I love or respect. I wish I could control these things. And when it comes down to it, I want to affirm life. I don't think everything is meaningless and absurd, or rather, I find it insanely liberating to feel untethered and disillusioned. According to Camus, thats when consciousness starts. I believe that. But I also believe that philosophy is really, really dangerous, and that its impossible not to swing between those extremes: elation and desperation in the face of absurdity. What I love about most of my professors is that they're all very good-natured, very chill and seemingly content people, despite having read so much depressing material. I admire this, and I want to be like this. I wish I could just snap my fingers and feel less terrified, less sad, less angry. My Dad always told me that happiness is something you can just choose. Simple, just give your problems to God, he used to say, completely serious. But that's not going to happen.

Serious.

2009-10-16T23:45:00.003-04:00

Watched “A Serious Man,” really liked it. I got a really Dostoevsky-ish vibe from the whole film, maybe because of the absurdity, the religious confusion, the oscillation between moments of intensity verging on catastrophe (but not really getting there) and lament for the mundane fatigue that fills up the spaces between. Plus, quick reference to gambling, creepy dreams, the theme of doubles, etc. The title/content reminds me of Dostoevsky’s distinction between the ‘underground man’ and the ‘serious man’ (did I get that right?) in Notes from Underground. D. is in my brain.
Here is my humble and sloppily-written analysis of one amazing scene.
Larry awkwardly climbs up the roof of his suburban house to adjust the antenna. The camera looks down at his face from the sky as he adjusts one component, then another. As he moves the antenna we hear channel voices coming in and out of focus between bits of white noise. When he turns around he notices his neighbour sun-bathing nude in her yard. Her body is obscured by the fence due to his position. He moves down the roof in order to get a full view of her body. She holds out one hand to the table and moves it around, without moving or taking her sunglasses off, as though blindly looking for something. She finds her cigarette and moves it to her mouth.
The relationship between Larry and the visual image produced by his fidgeting with the antenna is indirect. He is literally disengaged from the image he is producing (albeit production mediated by technology). There are different levels of disengagement and alienation going on here, 1) the image itself 2) the technological medium/mediating tool. A lot of communication in the film is mediated by technology, contrasting the more religious/spiritual component. The television is inside the home, a symbol of security but also constraint. The nondescript suburban home generally symbolizes 1) stagnancy and complacency 2) libidinal sublimation and/or repression. Larry is still connected to his home; he has not escaped it, however, he is at this point outside of it, above it – still within the limits but not entirely contained. There is a lot of concern about this whole ‘transgressing the boundaries’ of home in the film – Larry is often preoccupied about the neighbour crossing the invisible property line separating their lawns. Significaaaaant.
So it is interesting that the sequence of events relating to the naked neighbour directly parallels this episode with the antenna. When he turns away from the antenna, the image of his neighbour becomes immediately visible, but the image of her body is also obscured by another symbol of domestic complacency and libidinal restraint – a white picket fence. This limited and restricted image is only accessible to him ‘outside’ the bounds of his home (ie. outside the standards of ‘normative social behaviour’). Nevertheless, he is alienated from the image of the naked female body and, by extension, alienated from his own desire – he cannot realize this desire within the psychological/material ‘home’ he has established. This is why he only realizes this desire for the neighbour in his dream. Many of Larry’s important relationships are mediated, suggesting that his desire is necessarily sublimated.
It’s also interesting that despite being entirely naked, the woman’s eyes are obscured by sunglasses and she literally gropes around indifferently for the cigarette, echoing Larry’s attempts to fix the antenna and his attempts to get a clearer image of the woman’s body. In both cases, he is attempting to access an alienated and fragmented image but he never really comes into direct relation with these images. Both Larry and the neighbour are ‘blind’ in a certain sense, which perhaps explains their weird connection. But both of their playing-around-with-phallic symbols results in different pleasures: Larry’s searching is desperate and alienated, whereas she is in direct relation to her desires and is capable of pleasure.
The score of the movie is really amazing too, like in all Coen brothers’ movies…in this case, it was so well-timed: the more melancholic score only starts up during these really significant scenes, like cues to pay attention. There’s lots of other sequences of images that I’d like to (and probably will, because I've decided to stay home on this fine Friday evening) write about.
1) all the images in the final Rabbi’s room (especially the painting of Abraham & Isaac)
2) the moment when Larry rummages through his brother Arthur’s crazy notebook (insert crazy music) and the brother being in trouble for 1) gambling and 2) sodomy
3) the dream sequences
4) the teacher struggling to open a locked door while the students stand outside watching a fucking tornado, and Larry’s son is trying to repay a debt to his fellow classmate – argh, so goooood.

Blackberry song.

2009-10-15T15:08:00.003-04:00

Kurt Vile's new album makes me feel really good. I bought it yesterday along with the new A Place to Bury Strangers. If only I quit smoking I'd have more money to splurge on actual albums more often. I love being in Soundscapes and Rotate This (ie the best record stores in this city). They were playing this amazing soul album by some dude named Famous L. Renfroe called "Children." I don't know a lot about gospel/soul but the three tracks I heard were...um, fucking great. I want to learn more because music like that makes me so happy, my body just starts moving and I couldn't stop humming on the walk home. I don't think Kurt Vile's face matches up to his voice. He's still really young, his voice is not. It is really cold here today. I'm having a hard time getting out of bed in the mornings because of this fact. The past few days have been good. One of my favourite things to do is unlimited coffee and a smoked salmon bagel sandwich at Nirvana with my friend Shawn. That was yesterday and then I cuddled on his couch with his warm warm knit blankets and his kitten as he sifted through feminist ethics course packs to find me good articles for my proposal. He lent me Berger's small book of essays "Ways of Seeing." I'm going to finish it today, its super good and tiny but powerful. Today was coffee with my friend Julie, who is a dancer and absolutely sweet and beautiful. When I went out for a cigarette I met an interesting cyclist who does triathalons for a living. We talked about buying long johns for the winter. 2 old men wearing non-ironic fedoras approached me later and we discussed mittens and windy days. Everyone is preparing for the widespread seasonal depression that sets in right about now. People are friendly but nervous about it. October is full of simple pleasures.

Impossible cool.

2009-10-13T00:20:00.003-04:00

(some of the most amazing melt-worthy portraits of) James Dean, Cary Grant, Kerouac, Tom Waits, Marlon Brando, Hemingway, Bowie (that I have ever seen. So many of my favourite men in one place is overwhelming). This is my new favourite site: the impossible cool.

Nope.

2009-10-12T16:05:00.003-04:00

Almost done the proposal (ie plea to the government for study money). Must. Procrastinate.
I got a mean email from a former internet stalker because I won't add him on facebook.
He said: "the only reason people put up with you is because you're good looking."
Harsh.
I kind of said the same thing to my boyfriend (whatever, I use the term loosely) a few days ago. That is the irony. Although I said it in a half-joking manner and apparently, according to him, its okay to say really mean things as long as you're joking. I just meant he's too good-looking for his own good.

Okay, enough drudgery, time for a survey:
Quote:
"Brothers Karamazov is supposedly about the human condition, but it is actually a study of male relationships written by a man, so, as a woman, you will not 'get' the same 'things' from it as a man would."
Questions:
True/False?
Sexist/Non-Sexist?
Is there a problem with men 'getting' something different from a text than women would and vice versa? Is this inevitable? Or old-fashioned? Can gender really determine the degree to which you "understand" the author's message (authorial intent is usually an illegitimate question but I don't give a fuck) or certain elements about the work?

I'm neutral here. Wondering what you think.

Rape Tunnel/Rape as Fetish

2009-10-07T21:21:00.008-04:00

But rape is way more extreme than a punch to the face. Is your intention to ruin people’s lives?

Possibly. I’m not necessarily concerned with the positive or negative effects of this project so long as there is some effect on people’s lives. I’ve merely set up a situation where there is potential to impact people in meaningful ways. Maybe I won’t be able to rape everyone who crawls through the tunnel, but the door is open for all kinds of scenarios; rape, serious injury, maybe even death. I might even get arrested. Right now the installation isn’t even complete, and I’ve riled up a substantial portion of the local population. The installation as an idea is powerful enough itself.

- Richard Whitehurst interviewed by Sheila Zareno for Artlurker

The enigma is that of an object which offers itself up in total transparency, and hence cannot be naturalized by critical or aesthetic discourse. It is that of a superficial, artificial object which succeeds in preserving its artificiality, in shaking free of any natural signification to take on a spectral intensity, empty of meaning, which is that of the fetish. The fetish object has no value, Or rather, it has an absolute value; it lives off the ecstasy of value.

-Baudrillard, "Machinic Snobbery" from The Perfect Crime

This article fills me with so much distaste and anger and resentment on so many levels.
What the fuck is going on with the post-pomo art scene? How does a rape tunnel in any way contribute to art becoming 'meaningful' again within contemporary society? If anything, this kind of..."installation" contributes to the increasing meaningless of contemporary art, which has become a scene of increasingly 'weird' people invested in maintaining identities as 'crazy' artists making as much noise as possible to promote increasingly boring ideas about irony and absurdity and the death of the artist, blah blah blah. I think as soon as art took a turn towards absurdity for its own sake, all of its social purpose or 'meaning' disintegrated except as a vehicle for personal self-promotion, under the guise of the artist as a 'non-entity.' Baudrillard talks about this, it is not new. But I think it is an illusion to say that the artist has disappeared, because I think all that remains is the artist as some stupid laughing asshole throwing shit around and demanding an audience.
Why, if art is indeed meaningless, are we only reinforcing this message by focusing more and more on the absurdity of art? Wouldn't it be more radical at this point to create art with a purpose and some sort of social intent, with values and a particular aesthetic manifesto in mind? How does more shock = a return to meaning? Doesn't this method actually result in the opposite? Art is reduced to publicity stunts for attention that evoke little else but shock value. If you read his interview, he doesn't actually give a shit about what is actually going on here, in terms of interpersonal relationships (if you can call it that), hyperreality, any sort of message, etc. The 'artists intent' is literally "evoke a response." Never mind what kind of response or the irrevocable damage it could cause; any response will do, and apparently, the only thing that even evokes mild discontent or concern within our society currently is a pseudo-staged strategized rape scenario. The really frightening thing is that the public becomes increasingly desensitized as a result, and this phenomena produces shit like this asshole's 'rape tunnel.' What the fuck is wrong with our society that makes us so fucking numb to everything except the thrilling possibility of "consensual rape"? And doesn't this whole installation trivialize the experiences of actual rape victims? Doesn't this trivialize the experience in general by turning it into a hyperreal simulacrum of violence? Are people so numb and dead and unaffected that they would enter this tunnel knowing full well that it will lead to sexual assault? It is sad the lengths people will go to feel anything, and the associated absurd attitude that all experience is good experience, which corresponds to the whole paradox of more shock = more meaning. Meaning is not a quantitative value; you can't measure meaningful experience according to its severity or, in this case, the degree to which you are possibly psychologically and physically damaged. There seems to be a general attitude of 'fuck it, I'll try anything once, why limit my experiences' hence, 'fuck yeah, sure, I'll enter a rape tunnel.' There is enough sadness and destruction and rape and violence going on in the 'real' world; why the fuck do we seek out simulated hyperreal versions of this in (of all places) the art scene? I thought art was supposed to detract from this, not contribute. Why do people feel that excess is required to achieve any sort of meaningful existence? Our widespread existential groundlessness results in this compulsion to fill ourselves up with 'new' experiences but the irony is that all of these so-called 'authentic' experiences are manufactured for consumption, they are not genuine, authentic or meaningful experiences. Everyone wants to 'live life to the fullest' but no one ever thinks about picking and choosing experiences in terms of their positive or negative effects. For example, I find it incredibly ironic that people feel they are living 'fun and exciting lives' by going out to bars and drinking their asses off every fucking weekend. I mean, really? This is exciting to you? It all just seems very manufactured and simulated and repetitive to me. And so fucking easy. Art and bars and social situations in general are all laid out for us to pick and choose from (for a price, of course). Everything - 'contemporary art' 'live music' 'the bar/club scene' - are designated spaces purchased and purchasable, we can pick and choose pre-fabricated experiences and then pretend like we've earned it and have some free choice in the choosing. And apparently rape is now on the board of possible experiences produced for easy consumption.
When I read early post-modern poetry, poetics are still meaningful, the artist has a method, a system of values that guides their creative process. When I read this kind of poetry I respond strongly, in ways that I never really do when I read most current contemporary poetry. I mean, there are amazing moments when I read something new and think 'fuck yes, this means something' but for the most part, I just feel kind of bored with the cynical post-ironic, blase tone (of some, dare I say most) of the literature being produced by my generation. Call me old-fashioned or romantic, but I'd like to reinvest some real values into art. Some passion, some ethics. Nobody works hard at anything any more, everybody wants everything to come easy. And, voila, it does. It just doesn't mean anything.