Much talk in one of my courses about the nature of originality and its relationship to authenticity. Here's a quote in that context:
"Is there room for a conception, an elaboration, which gives the conceptual and the experiential their due, which is not reductionist, but draws them both on to an expanding track, enriching them while critiquing them by one another? Submitting both to a creative activity comparable to that which produces works of art, without thereby aligning oneself with an aesthetic theory?" -- Henri Lefebvre, The Critique of Everyday Life Volume III, 34.

transmission (below) and politics

More on the transmission idea, posted below:

This concept applies also to politics and globalization. Think of a state as an enclosed system sustained by the will of a particular people, and consider the transnational nature of globalized capitalism. The state's policies in this sense stand between the destructive forces of the market and individual human beings: it either exposes them or protects them. The state moderates the power of the market like a transmission does.

What's interesting is the very different policies that states have towards globalization, if one considers that these policies at some point are an expression of the people's will. Americans, for example, are extremely exposed and vulnerable to the forces of the market. Europeans, on the other hand are less so: this is in fact what the debate over the EU Constitution was all about. Given this contrast, it begs the question as to why Americans allow themselves to be exposed and vulnerable to the marketplace, when other people in other states do not. Americans for example work longer weeks, take fewer vacations, and have fewer benefits than the citizens of almost any other industrialized country. Why is this, when they could definitely have otherwise? I find this baffling and troubling.

I'm actually gasping for breath in this picture. Pico weighs a damn ton.

Heavy rotation at chez ringo

This is what I'm listening to right now:
1. Shoes, Present Tense lp
2. Cars, Panorama lp
3. Wrists, Freak of Natures 7" ep
4. M.O.T.O., El Stop b/w She's Gone Nuts 7"
5. Human TV cd

transmission

In my Murakami class, we've just finished Sputnik Sweetheart and in it there's a passage where Sumire (one of the three main characters) talks about the power of narrative as a kind of "transmission." That is, like a car's transmission. I know this seems weird, but her point (it actually comes from the narrator of the story who thinks it up) is that the world around us is full of hostile and chaotic forces, and the stories we tell about the world moderate those forces in the same way that a car's transmission directs the engine's raw power into something that can turn a drive train and move the wheels. Get it? I think it's a pretty interesting idea. It certainly relates to a lot of experiences that seem to make sense only in retrospect: when they're occurring, they're often painful because they seem random and meaningless.

This reminds me too of something Hannah Arendt said: narrative makes life endurable. The problem? People seem to be losing the ability to tell interesting stories.

Pictures of pictures

Got a new toy -- a Canon 530. Too tired to write much today, so here's a nice shot of a nice shot. Pico and me.

Another OED

brumous, a. Wintry, foggy. [f. L bruma (=brevima shortest day f. brevis) + ous]

Avoiding parenthood

I have to admit: parenthood is completely baffling to me. It's misunderstood too. Someone once argued that being a parent is the least selfish thing one can do, when in fact it seems to me the most selfish. From my (contingently) middle-class existence, as soon as someone becomes a parent they start to obsess about distinctly bourgeois kinds of concerns: what neighborhood am I going to live in, what kind of house do I have, how can I get my kid into the best schools, etc. Doesn't this exclude other people?

Being a good parent depends above all on "safety" at all levels and at all times. And there is perhaps no more bourgeois notion than safety. Are safety and happiness compatible?

Dogs and cats -- a feminist (!) post

As I mentioned before, I'm a cat person. I have a theory about affinity for animals, and the way it breaks down according to gender. Men who hate cats also hate women, because somehow (subconsciously?) the feline represents the feminine. Men like this are controlling and they resent rebellion: they don't like cats because cats don't "mind." They're disobedient. The converse of this is not that men who love cats are feminine, of course, but that they appreciate the feminine. This is something I've talked about with a lot of my friends -- all of whom love cats, of course.

Why would anyone want a dog? They're obsequious.

Benjamin on Marx

"The experience of our generation: that capitalism will not die a natural death" (Arcades Project, 667).

"Schiller: 'Common natures pay with what they do; noble natures, with what they are.' The proletarian pays for what he is with what he does" (Arcades Project, 659).

word geek

There are word geeks and then there are number geeks. I'm a word geek. As such, I was pleased as punch to get a discard copy of the OED (abridged). I'm first in line also to get a copy of the unabridged OED (all 100 lbs of it in 9 or ten volumes). I can't wait. I'm gonna read that sucker from start to finish.

Word of the day: barmy, a. Full of barm; frothy; (slang, also b. on the crumpet) wrong in the head, cracked. (OED abridged, 88).

From Found Magazine, "Find of the Day," May 23, 2006. Brilliant!

Watching another movie, again about 9/11. This time it's "DC in Crisis," a Showtime production that came out a couple years ago, with actors playing the roles of the administration inner circle. The acting is alternately wooden and ham-fisted, with actors sometimes reading their lines as if cue-cards are placed in front of them. What went wrong with this movie?

Part of an answer is that it was produced by Lionel Chetwynd, a prominent (and rare) Hollywood conservative. The point of the movie seems to be less about aesthetic impact or experience, and more about apologetics (which usually isn't beautiful or even logical). The movie is there to convey a message, that is, and nearly everything else about it is pointless. It's sort of like those afterschool specials that we all used to watch as kids in the 70s: watchable only in an ironic way, laughable, obvious. But this goes back to my question below: wasn't 9/11 too important to be instrumentalized in this way (as a mere means to tell a larger story about the rightness of the neocons)? The work just seems to cheapen a collective trauma.

Greengrass movie -- United 93

Watched the Paul Greengrass movie last night -- United 93. It raises the important question of the representability of suffering. Actually it revisits this question, which has already been raised a lot in light of Holocaust books and films and even cartoons (Spiegelman): what can properly be represented, what is in good taste and what is tacky or in poor taste, what amounts to exploitation, etc. How do we represent such horrific and truamatic events with justice? Is the proper response just to leave an absence where there might otherwise be a (tacky, tasteless) presence? To my knowledge, no book has yet tackled this question with respect to the 9/11 commemoration industry. And trust me, it is an industry: someone's making money off all those plastic yellow ribbon decals.

"Cats are punk rock. Dogs are Dave Matthews Band."

-- Ringo

http://flickr.com/photos/29057634@N00/236023258/

sleepy post

Benjamin:
"Rites de passage -- this is the designation in folklore for the ceremonies that attach to death and birth, to marriage, puberty, and so forth. In modern life, these transitions are becoming ever more unrecognizable and impossible to experience. We have grown very poor in threshold experiences. Falling asleep is perhaps the only such experience that remains to us" (Arcades Project, 494).

Oh yes -- I'm a cat person. More on cats and cat posts later.
(pic info: http://flickr.com/photos/zamario/64571920/)

More Benjamin

"The flaneur is the observer of the marketplace. His knowledge is akin to the occult science of industrial fluctuations. He is a spy for the capitalists, on assignment in the realm of consumers" (Arcades Project, "M: The Flaneur," 427).

"The idleness of the flaneur is a demonstration against the division of labor" (Ibid, 427).

The Postpunk Post

I recently finished Simon Reynolds' "Rip it Up and Start Again." Would recommend to any reader interested in postpunk. It's a bit too Anglocentric, but beyond that excellent. Check it out.

More on "Rip it Up" later, but for now, here's Reynolds' blog:

http://blissout.blogspot.com/

Cheers!

I'm putting the final touches on a conference paper that addresses the role of doctors in interrogations at GTMO. I came across this bit of ironic fun, at the expense Dr. William Winkenwerder (Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs). I'm sure he really didn't mean to say this (or didn't understand fully what it implied):

"Winkenwerder, who formerly worked in the insurance industry, argues that most of the detainees have never received better care than they have been getting at Guantanamo. The Pentagon, he told me, took extraordinary pains to insure that detainees were treated in compliance with medical ethics and American values, and he presented statistics showing that last year Guantanamo detainees got more frequent medical treatment than most Americans." Jane Mayer, "The Experiment" (The New Yorker, July 11 and 18, 2005) 63.

I *know* this is meant to be a defense of GTMO, but it ends up being an indictment of our own health care system. For all I know, it may be true that most Americans see a doctor less often than those poor yobs in orange jumpsuits, but that's because millions of us are uninsured.

Remember Gary Condit? Didn't think so.

What's the connection between this fellow and Mark Foley? Only a tangential one, dear readers. But it's an interesting tangent.

Condit was a suspect in the disappearance of Chandra Levy. She was his intern (and some suspected, his lover): the story was all over the papers and of course the TV news back in 2001. But then 9/11 happened, and Condit was forgotten. What ever happened to the guy? I don't even remember (except that he was found completely innocent -- but that's another story).

Anyway, here's the angle, and the provocation: Republicans want to Condit-ize Foley. How? By foregrounding the fact that North Korea has nukes, that the "axis of evil" is alive and well, and that we need to securitize ever more aspects of life both domestically and internationally in the GWOT. The best and safest way of doing this is by keeping Rs in office. Never mind the fact that Bush's policies had a good deal to do with the mess we're currently in right now (remember dear reader that under Clinton, NK was regularly and meaningfully monitored by a system of cameras that reported back in real time, what they were doing and how). What matters now is to conjure up an enemy -- even better if that enemy represents somewhat of a real threat -- that can serve as a distraction from Mark Foley's mess. All they have to do is keep Foley off the front page for four more weeks.

Every day Foley's off the front page (and NK is on) equals one to two points in the polls. Trust me on this. The Rs may be down by 20 points in some places, but there's plenty of time to catch up. Democrats are going to have some unpleasant surprises in November unless they counteract this.

Progress and Catastrophe

A thought from Walter Benjamin: "The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are 'status quo' is the catastrophe. It is not an ever-present possibility but what in each case is given. Thus Strindberg (in To Damascus?): hell is not something that awaits us, but this life here and now" (Arcades Project, N: "On the Theory of Knowledge, Theory of Progress", 473).

I plan on posting Benjamin quotes/thoughts/images here in part because their fragmentary nature lends itself well to the blog format. Also, we live in a time where the observation that "status quo is the catastrophe" certainly seems relevant.

Dear readers,
Take a look at the following article from the NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/technology/06tube.html). Useful in juxtaposition with the excellent extended polemic by the Retort collective (Afflicted Powers: Verso Press, 2005). Here's what the Retortists say, with respect to Debord's "society of the spectacle" in particular:

"The notion 'spectacle' was intended, then as a first stab at characterizing a new form of, or stage in, the accumulation of capital. What it named preeminently was the submission of more and more facets of human sociability -- areas of everyday life, forms of recreation, patterns of speech, idioms of local solidarity, kinds of ethical or aeshtetic insubordination, the endless capacities of human beings to evade or refuse the orders brought down to them from on high -- to the deadly solicitations of the lifeless bright sameness of the market" (Afflicted Powers, 19).

It is fascinating how both state and terror are entwined and entrapped in the spectacle. Witness how one of the readers quoted in the NYTimes piece liked the video and found it compelling because he "liked to watch stuff blow up."

completely, absolutely new

Greetings,

This is something completely new for me: a novel experience if you will. My hope for the blog is to synthesize my disparate interests in a way that's readable and relevant. If you care about politics and punk rock (and who doesn't?) then you'll want to stay tuned.

xo, ringo.