The Tarpeian Rock

the troublesome moment

2012-02-10T17:44:00.004-05:00

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives.

Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone.

After custom has successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, this supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.

The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which convention is the shepherd.

The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, 1962)

Text from Tocqueville's Democracy in America. (Altered, abridged, and with the original intent perverted.)

Mind Over Matter: Félix Fénéon on Trial

2012-02-07T22:35:00.011-05:00

Among my favorite things are instances when people use their imagination to shift or transform reality in some small way, usually in their favor. One of the greatest examples of this is Robert Desnos reading palms at a concentration camp in the 1940s (previous post), an effort that couldn't have been any more desperate performed with the utmost naturalness.

What follows is another example of imaginative magic, also with high stakes.

* * *
The text, up until the next three asterisks, was collaged from Alastair Brotchie's Alfred Jarry: A Pataphysical Life (2011); Roger Shattuck's The Banquet Years (1955); The Anarchist Encyclopedia; Julian Barnes' review of Félix Fénéon's Novels in Three Lines; and Wikipedia.

Félix Fénéon's mugshot

In the summer of 1894 began the mass trial of thirty ill-assorted men accused of anarchist leanings and treasonable acts. Among them was the prominent literary figure Félix Fénéon, an early champion of the impressionists. In the end, only three common criminals were found guilty from among the thirty so-called anarchists. (One of them, a butcher's apprentice, had been accused of stealing a pork chop from his employer.) This was not a little to do with Fénéon's phlegmatic and expressionless ripostes from the dock, which reduced the proceedings to a simple farce.

"Are you an anarchist, M. Fénéon?"
"I am a Burgundian born in Turin."
"Your police file extends to one hundred and seventy pages. It is documented that you were intimate with the German terrorist Kampfmeyer."
"The intimacy cannot have been great as I do not speak German and he does not speak French." (Laughter in courtroom.)
"It has been established that you surrounded yourself with Cohen and Ortoz."
"One can hardly be surrounded by two persons; you need at least three." (More laughter.)
"You were seen conferring with them behind a lamppost!"
"Can you tell me, Monsieur le Président, which side of a lamp post is its back?" (Loud, prolonged laughter. Judge calls for order.)

Part of the evidence against him was that a police search of his office had turned up a vial of mercury and a matchbox containing 11 detonators. Fénéon added to the history of implausible excuses by claiming that his father, who had recently died and was therefore unavailable to corroborate his evidence, had found them in the street.

"You could not have found them in the street!"
"The judge asked me how it was that rather than take the detonators to the ministry, I had not thrown them out the window. This demonstrates that one could find them on public roads." (Laughter.)
"Here is a bottle of mercury which we also found in your office. Do you recognize it?"
"It's a similar bottle indeed. I do not attach the slightest importance."
"You know that mercury is used to make a dangerous explosive, mercury fulminate."
"It also serves to make thermometers, barometers and other instruments." (Laughter)

Charged with illegally carrying a firearm, the judge asked:

"You know you had on you everything you needed to commit a murder?"

Fénéon replied:

"Yes, but I also had on me everything I needed to commit a rape."

The climax of the trial came when the government attorney unwisely opened in the courtroom a package which had been sent to him containing, not explosives, but excrement. He asked for a recess to wash his hands. Fénéon's voice rose over the assembly: "not since Pontius Pilate has a judge washed his hands with such ostentation." In England, Wilde's witticisms earned him hard labor, but in Paris Fénéon's had him acquitted.

La Goulue dancing, by Toulouse-Lautrec (1895)Oscar Wilde is the figure in the foreground on the left wearing the light overcoat; Fénéon is the man in the bottom right corner

* * *

Law and Order were at a loss as to how to proceed against someone who refused to acknowledge their authority. It was as if none other than Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty had been put on trial, a very dangerous proposition for any institution whose credibility rests on how seriously it's taken.

"Why do you sit out here all alone?" said Alice, not wishing to begin an argument.
"Why, because there's nobody with me!" cried Humpty Dumpty. [...] Here's a question for you. How old did you say you were?"
Alice made a short calculation, and said "Seven years and six months."
"Wrong!" Humpty Dumpy exclaimed triumphantly. "You never said a word like it!"
"I thought you meant 'How old are you?" Alice explained.
"If I'd meant that, I'd have said it," said Humpty Dumpty. [...] When I use a word ... it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

Paul Signac, Portrait of Félix Fénéon (1890)

James R. Mellow, in an article for The New York Times, pointed out the retroactive irony of Signac's portrait given Fénéon's gesture in the painting and the fact that he was later arrested for the bombing of a restaurant in which the bomb was placed in a flowerpot.

Tarkovsky Allusions in The Tree of Life

2012-01-30T22:39:00.007-05:00

Throughout his career, Terrence Malick has been moving towards his own form of non-narrative cinema. His feature debut, Badlands (1973), contains by far the strongest traditional narrative, though within it are glimpses of the style to come (the sections with Kit and Holly hiding out in the woods, for example, which still rank among the finest sequences Malick has shot). With Days of Heaven (1978), his next film, the narrative is pushed further into the background and the characters become somewhat less defined. Much like the story, they're weighed against the landscape, residing and disappearing (to a degree) within it.

By filming around events as well as events themselves, Malick's cinema sets itself against the dominant mode of filmmaking that emphasizes plot and narrative. There are no distinctions in his films between what commercial movies tell us are "significant" and "insignificant" events. In Malick's world, everything is significant. A group of kids playing in a field or a gust of wind sculpting the top of a lake are given as much weight as a wedding or a funeral. His is a cinema of fleeting moments. To further emphasize this shift, the editing of Malick's films has become looser in each subsequent film, his camera more seemingly aimless. Narrative and story come second to sensation and emotion, much like music -- the art Tarkovsky considered to be cinema's closest relative. This method of composing films ends up making The Tree of Life feel a lot like a hyper-version of Tarkovsky's Mirror (1975).

The Tree of Life is Malick's style distilled to its essence. Likewise, Mirror is the film that best adheres to Tarkovsky's theory of cinema; it's the essence of his unique form distilled. (One could even say he was working towards Mirror ever since his feature debut Ivan's Childhood, which is similar to Badlands in that it's more-or-less a traditional narrative that also contains unique, singular bursts of what was to come.) Finally, in terms of their subject matter and structure, both Tree of Life and Mirror deal with memory in a kind of stream of consciousness-like flow of images (though the former is more of a river, the latter more of a lake).

Below are more similarities between Tarkovsky's films and The Tree of Life. I recognize that just because thematic similarities or rhyming compositions exist between certain images doesn't mean an actual reference is being made. After all, no filmmaker should hold a monopoly on characters lying in the grass or being framed in doorways; however, Tarkovsky does hold the copyright on inexplicable levitation (which Malick quotes), so we can be certain that The Tree of Life tips its hat to Tarkovsky at least once. I'll leave it to you to judge the rest.

Note: In the following images, Tarkovsky's films are on the top and The Tree of Life is on the bottom. They're grouped by film, and in the following order: Mirror (6 images, including the one above); Nostalghia (3); The Sacrifice (2); Solaris (1); Stalker (5). Stalker is the only Tarkovsky film I was able to capture from on my own, the rest I had to find online after taking captures from The Tree of Life.

(Alternate)

(Alternate)

The Book of Jobs

2012-01-23T11:12:00.018-05:00

"One important measure in this provision that I want to highlight is the Keystone pipeline. As you know, this project would create tens of thousands of jobs in our country. This jobs project has broad support in the House and Senate. It is backed by a broad-based coalition, and I hope the President will approve this pipeline to put those Americans to work." --House Speaker John Boehner, 12/22/11

"The president has apparently vetoed the Keystone Pipeline. Look, let me be honest, this is a stunningly stupid thing to do. These people are so out of touch with reality it's as if they were governing Mars. Stupidity number one - we need the jobs." --Newt Gingrich, 01/18/12

For the past few months, a debate has been raging. If the 1700-mile Keystone XL Pipeline were to be built, how many jobs would it create?

According to Ray Perryman, president of an economic research firm hired by energy giant TransCanada, the answer is 250,000 (or "14,400 person years of employment"). Included in this number are jobs related to hotels, restaurants, and all manner of other nearby businesses that would see a rise in patronage if pipeline construction were to begin.

Perryman's number seems wildly inaccurate. Did he, to use a random example, remember to include Porta-Potty manufacturers in his calculation? (Surely many portable toilets would be needed by construction crews.) If he forgot to include them, then his estimate also ignores the jobs created by whatever company produces the chemical brew used in said Pottys, as well as the new demand for toilet paper manufacturers. This is a problem. By forgetting to include even a few things, Perryman artificially stops the near endless chain reaction of "spin-off" jobs, as they're called by professionals, which makes his jobs number grossly inaccurate by way of underestimation.

Or so I thought.

Once I dug a little deeper, I learned that Perryman was a step ahead. He counted jobs for "dancers, choreographers and speech therapists," citing a previous report on the impact of wind farms. Since the Keystone pipeline will lower the cost of oil, he reasons, it will give people more money to spend on entertainment and the arts.

According to Perryman's very own commonsense calculations, here are some other jobs that will be created by the construction of the pipeline:

138 dentists
176 dental hygienists
100 librarians
510 bread bakers
448 clergy
154 stenographers
865 hairdressers
136 manicurists
110 shampooers
65 farmers
1,714 bartenders
898 reporters
98 public relations people

Reading these numbers embarrassed me: How could I have given Perryman so little credit? How could I have been so naive? If there's one thing I could be sure of, it's that Porta-Pottys had definitely been included.

Despite its stunning sensibility and comprehensiveness, this 250,000 jobs number (later changed to 20,000 permanent jobs and 118,000 spin-offs) has been abandoned by all but the most principled Republicans and replaced with the woefully modest "tens of thousands." This isn’t so surprising; after all, most environmentalists have never once stepped inside a shower, let alone a Porta-Potty, so it's no wonder they don't think to account for such things as "spin-off" jobs (or jobs at all, since they've never had one).

The new number is certainly a low-ball, but I think I can understand why it's being used. Politicians need the support of the people, and some people are against the job-creating pipeline. And if those people are against something that’s going to create jobs, then the problem they have must be with the very idea of jobs. So underestimating the number of jobs created must be a ploy to gain the support of these job-hating environmentalists.

It follows that TransCanada has instructed its supporters to concede some jobs numbers so that those opposing the pipeline's construction won't have to worry about losing their best excuse not to work: the bad economy. If hundreds of thousands -- possibly millions -- of new jobs instantly became available, parents of these hippies would be more inclined to kick their children out for choosing to remain unemployed. And this is a prospect that causes vigorous opposition from the environmental movement. If "hundreds of thousands of jobs" is changed to "tens of thousands," however, then the prospect of employment isn't as omnipresent and opposition will therefore wane.

A make-believe crossing guard -- the closest thing this person will ever have to a job

It's kind of strange logic, I admit, but -- like Perryman's original numbers -- it makes perfect sense once you think about it. That said, I still don't like that this is the prevailing strategy because it demonstrates yet another example of hard facts being forced to cave to the lowest common denominator. If you think about it (and please do; this is the second time I've asked), being forced to dishonestly shrink the jobs numbers is basically a form of political correctness. Instead of scaring the laziest among us with the true number of jobs that the pipeline would create, TransCanada's supporters have decided to shrink the number just to gain more support.

This approach to the truth was recently demonstrated by the State Department, which put out a report saying that the pipeline would only create only 5,000-6,000 new jobs, almost all of which would go away after construction ends. I get the strategy, and it’s certainly better than risking outright rejection of the project. But the State Department number is far too low -- it must remain at at least "tens of thousands," or TransCanada risks losing the support of everyday, hardworking Americans.

And speaking of hardworking Americans, some on the extreme left are even trying to turn them against the pipeline. The liberal network CNN actually had the nerve to cite a study from someone named "Cornell" (they neglected to include a last name, obviously trying to hide the fact that it was written by the Marxist professor Cornel West [also why they spelled it wrong]), which said that the pipeline "could actually cost jobs by hurting the development of alternative energy and allowing for the export of oil from the Midwest, driving up the cost of gasoline in that region." I don't know for sure who wrote that, but whoever it was is certainly an idiot. Q.E.D.

The Tube Boobs

"President Obama was elected by appealing to global warming alarmists, among other groups on the left. Will he cave in to their demands to leave untouched the vast oil sand deposits in Alberta that could provide millions of barrels of oil to fuel economic growth in both countries for decades to come? Development of Alberta's energy sector would be led by U.S. companies, too, thereby boosting growth on both sides of the border." --James M. Roberts and Ray Walser, The Heritage Foundation [X]

But let's go back for a moment to hard facts being forced to cave to the lowest common denominator. One of the most egregious examples of the media kowtowing to this kind of politically correct BS happened during the infamous BP oil-rig bonanza of 2010. During that time we saw tons of heavily politicized headlines like, "Families Bid Farewell To 11 Killed In Gulf Rig Explosion," and "Deepwater Horizon's 11 Dead Remembered." Such headlines were much more common than the unvarnished but much more to the point "Eleven Jobs Lost in Oil Rig Explosion." I understand that the latter headline is much more tragic, but at some point the media has to stop treating us like babies. We can handle it!

Still, there were a few people out there astute and bold enough to write proper headlines, like: BP Spill Is 'Opportunity in Disguise' for Rig Makers Keppel, Samsung Heavy (from Bloomberg). In an article titled BP Oil Spill Fuels Government Contracting, someone observed: "Others can still look to take advantage of opportunities at the prime contracting level in such industries as manufacturing, construction, maintenance and technical services, information technology, even coastal restoration." And an insurance company pointed out that life was actually better for the fisherman in the region after the spill: "More than 46,000 people - and nearly 7,000 boats - are now employed in the response. While fishing business was struggling before the disaster, fishermen are now making $1,200 - $3,000 a day laying floating booms that contain oil once it rises to the surface."

This leads me to wonder how different things might still be in the Gulf had BP not been pressured by Big Government to cap the well. Only an idiot would have failed to see the silver lining! Even the eleven jobs lost in the rig explosion provided an opportunity. Sure, the unemployment rate must have risen a fraction of a decimal point as a result, but look at it this way: eleven new job opportunities instantly became available!

I still haven't read this guy's sign... (I only took the picture because I thought it was Tobey Maguire)

Since the media was so biased about the BP spill, I want to highlight some more of the spin-off jobs the spill was (and will be) responsible for. According to my calculations, the oil spill created a demand for:

13,568 new doctors to treat people for chemical exposure over the next few decades
3 new hospitals (approximately 18,000 jobs)
6 new rehabilitation centers (thousands more jobs)
2 more schools to train all the specialists (thousands more jobs)
11,967 new scientists working to genetically engineer new kinds of sea-life that can live in toxic water yet still be (relatively) safe to eat
56,094 engineers to build new robot-fishing machines after long-term, low-dose chemical exposure -- as well as the annihilation of the fishing industry -- forces people to move from the coast (I'm tempted to count the 767,894+ employees who'll be building the fishing-robots, but they won't be Americans. Still, we should find joy and happiness in imagining the opportunity for employment this will provide for many poor jobless people across the globe)
And let's not forget 4,256 new Porta-Potty's to line the streets for people on the Gulf Coast who can no longer walk more than 500 feet without shitting themselves, as well as 1 new toilet paper plant and 1 new chemical formula plant (thousands of jobs)

And that’s not even including the huge boon to the company that supplied the dispersant!

Now, I'm not as smart as Mr. Perryman, so I can't think of everything. The countless other job opportunities that will become available after families lose their breadwinners to cancer and poisoning is a figure too complicated for me to even begin to calculate, but let me assure you, it'll be

HUGE.

Leave it to a clueless hippy to bring a live polar bear to a protest. I ended up watching this poor woman die right before my eyes. (Note: I'm just assuming she was poor)

More animal cruelty! The nerve of them making their dog wear that vest (I couldn't stop kicking it!)

This makes me think that maybe Perryman's numbers weren’t as close to the truth as I thought. After all, they don't account for any of the thousands of new jobs -- and millions of "spin-off" jobs -- that would instantly be created should there happen to be a Keystone XL spill. Perryman also failed to include the everyday, normal activities of tar sands production, which is known to pollute rivers and streams (more jobs).

A schmuck, sure, but at least he's not a hypocrite like everyone who drove to the protest

This kind of logic, crass as it might seem to extremist hippies and tree huggers, can be applied to almost any situation. Take the Holocaust, for example. If only Goebbels had had enough confidence in the German people, he could've cast Hitler's plan in the cold hard logic of common sense and skipped all of the obscuring, dishonest propaganda. Something like:

"Unemployed? Looking for work? Worried about the economy? The Nazi Party has your answer.* We promise to provide tens of thousands of new jobs, among them:

738 dentists
4,673 doctors
154 stenographers
865 hairdressers
110 shampooers
109 book burners
18,956 Zyklon B factory employees
691,714 bartenders
401 architects
898 reporters
98,775 public relations people
553 lampshade artisans

This is sure to lift us out of our economic depression. But, if that wasn't enough, we also promise to instantly create six million additional jobs!"

* All solutions final.

Let's face it: Hitler brought his country out of a horrible depression and provided endless work opportunities for (almost) everyone. Under his leadership, the German economy was booming, and a lot more than 6 or 10 million jobs would have been lost to poverty had he never come to power. Sure, he's not without fault (who isn't?), but must we continue to have complainers and naysayers constantly dwelling on every little negative aspect whenever we try to take a step in the right direction?

Film Moments: 2011

2012-01-17T20:03:00.010-05:00

Note: For the sake of encouraging more reading and less skimming, I'd like to point out that the length of what follows is mostly derived from images.

And now for the part of lists no one reads.

It feels a bit silly to create one of these types of lists after much of what appears on it has already been noted elsewhere, yet it feels even sillier to scrap the notes and captures I took a few weeks ago simply because I have this reservation. Too many of my posts end up getting abandoned due to loss of interest or frustration, and since that's something I want to work on curbing this year, finishing this post was the only sensible option.

This is not an attempt at a "Best of 2011" list or even "Best Moments of 2011" -- I see far too few new films for that (around 35 this year, with 9 or 10 viewed in the theater). The point was to select -- from the new films I did see -- the moments, feelings, and experiences that meant something to me in some way. The list is divided into two categories: "Theatrical Viewing" and "Home Viewing." The former is comprised of things I saw in the theater that I felt hinged on that particular format; the latter is made up of favorite moments I saw (again, new films) via a television. Though my selections range from 2008 - 2011, everything that follows -- due to distribution, when it premiered etc. -- is seemingly eligible for consideration under the grouping "2011."

For the sake of fulfilling a list's main function -- turning people on to things they might be unaware of -- what follows is likely to be lacking left-field picks. Unfortunately this cannot be helped; I don't live in a place that allows much opportunity for non-mainstream film viewing (I have yet to see The Turin Horse, to name a most frustrating example), and I don't make a practice of downloading films to my computer that will eventually be coming to DVD (even if I have to wait a few years). Perhaps "2011: A Year in Phantoms" or "Most Anticipated" would have been a better choice.

* * *

Theatrical Viewing 2011: Highlights

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Herzog, 2010):

Herzog: "3-D was imperative because I initially thought there were flat walls and paintings in the cave. But there are no flat areas. The drama of the bulges and niches was actually used by the artists. They did it with phenomenal skill, with great artistic skill, and there was something expressive about it, a drama of rock transformed and utilized, in the drama of paintings. This is why it was imperative to shoot in 3-D."

A detailed look at the 30,000 year old paintings in Chauvet Cave would have been enough to land this film on my list, but the fact that it was my first 3D film, and specifically because it was made with 3D as an integral component, easily makes Cave of Forgotten Dreams one of my standout movie experiences of 2011.

After reading several of Herzog's remarks concerning his choice of 3D, I made it a point to catch the film as it was intended to be seen (which meant driving over an hour -- pretty much the standard for seeing anything relatively non-commercial in my whereabouts). The experience was rewarding and often dazzling, and I was glad to have waited for something meaningful to introduce me to the format. Herzog's film demonstrates the difference between "a film shot in 3D" and "a 3D film."

I wouldn't rank Cave as one of Herzog's strongest "documentaries," though many who don't care much for the films I'd consider his best have unsurprisingly taken the opposite view. At any rate, these questions of "greatness" are soon made out to be a trifling matter by the glimpses we're given of the drawings in the Chauvet Cave. The images alone instantly elevate the film to essential viewing.

"I was here," as drawn by a cave bear / as drawn by a human

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Weerasethakul, 2010): Cave Sequence

A theatrical viewing of Boonmee showcases the film's murky darkness and does justice to the night scenes. But it also -- unless you have a great home set-up (I don't) -- allows the viewer to be enveloped in the film's buggy jungle sounds, which, as a crucial component to the atmosphere, play a key role in the film's success.

The highlight for me was the cave sequence, a section that takes all of the above into account and combines it with some of the best images in the film. It's a particularly strange and mysterious part of a particularly strange and mysterious film, and the fact that a movie theater can be experienced as as surrogate cave of sorts (dark, and often quite cold in the summer months) certainly doesn't hurt the film's ambiance.

Specific highlights: The moon roof, the spying ghost monkeys, the next morning when the dark cave shadow and the bright sun light bisect the characters bodies, and, most of all, the moment when the sparkling stones in the cave wall briefly turn into an artificial night sky...

I watched Boonmee again at home and, though I still liked it, it wasn't quite the same. I had to brighten one of the above images -- the "ghost monkeys" in the jungle -- just to make it discernible. (I remember how this shot looked in the theater and the above image isn't very close.)

Films that are first and foremost experiences seem to suffer the most on DVD and (especially) streaming.

Hugo (Scorsese, 2011): Papa Georges recalls his past lives (& Méliès in 3D)

I am referring to the montage wherein Georges waxes on about the days he spent creating dreams in his glass studio. This is where Hugo suggests that destroying people's imagination in order to fulfill some seemingly practical end (melting down Méliès' films -- his imaginative output -- in order to make shoes), is the first step in a mentality that leads, ultimately, to the burning of bodies on the battlefield. It's important to note that this largely factual remembrance, which takes place in a period that's been referred to as "the childhood of our era," is framed as being brought to an end by the violent adolescence of World War I. In Scorsese's world, Méliès is imagination made flesh, and he's brought to ruin by a world stripped of its sense of child-like wonder. In this metaphor, imagination (art) is not the opposite of "reality," "existence," or "reason", it's the opposite of immorality. (This reminds me of The Nutty Professor, a film in which Jerry Lewis attributes a moral component to humor.)

Hugo, though not great by any stretch, is, in its final third, a much needed paean to one of humanity's greatest, most luminous forces.

Along with the above, the opportunity to see selections from Méliès' films in 3D was a highlight. The novelty still fresh (Hugo was only my second 3D film), my experience was perhaps not wholly unlike -- solely in terms of its potential for causing wide-eyed wonder -- someone seeing the magic of Méliès' time-lapse techniques in the early 1900s.

The silliest moment in the film, which I only mention because, as far as I know, it has yet to be commented on, occurs when we're shown one of Méliès' old films. In it, a handful of French women in the background have their arms raised above their heads, and one of them is the director's wife. Being French women from that period they, of course, have hair under their arms in Méliès' original. But when Scorsese cuts to a close-up of Méliès' wife (obviously replaced with Helen McCrory, the actress playing his wife in the film), everything is meticulously recreated -- make-up, hairstyle, costumes, set -- except that her armpit is hairless. OK, yes, I get it; McCrory has shaved armpits in real life so it might seem silly to put some fake hair under her arm for the sake of continuity. But why bother with everything else if you're not going to try to make the cut looks as seamless as possible? Could it be, possibly, that they thought this would be off-putting or strange in some way for American children to see? I don't know. It might be a bit of a cynical leap, but it looks like cultural sanitation to me. Anyway, I thought it was silly, though I'm sure others will think I'm even sillier for commenting on it. (Note: It's possible I was imagining things... None of my friends knew what I was talking about when I pointed it out, and, like I said, I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere (most likely because no one cares). I'll have to watch it again before I can know for sure.)

Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011): the final 20 (or so) minutes

"[I]n spite of my melancholy temperament, I've never been able to take anything seriously—not even my worst troubles." --Strindberg

(The above quote is not an introduction to my remarks; I just thought it fit the film too well not to share.)

The way the final sequence of Melancholia made me feel was unique. For a moment while I was sitting in the darkness at the conclusion I felt, in some small capacity -- and for lack of a better and less-pretentious sounding phrase -- like I had some grasp of nothingness. For the last few seconds my mind felt completely clear, focused and unfocused at the same time. But then this feeling was ruined by the closing credits. Agitated, I remember thinking that von Trier had made a mistake by not choosing to have the credits at the beginning of the film, which would've been a much better choice because it would have allowed the black finale -- accompanied by the low rumble of galactic collision that only a movie theater can provide -- to stand as the film's true ending. Instead what we have is a recovery, the scrolling words reminding us -- all too soon! -- that it was all just a depressed man's dream.

A few images from the prologue (I couldn't find any good ones from the finale):

Because of its title plate, themes and style, and because its director has a penchant for trilogies (Europe; Golden Heart; USA), it's easy to assume that Melancholia is part of some sort of trilogy that began with Antichrist. I've heard the name "Depression Trilogy" floating around (it's starting to stick), but I prefer to think of the two films as part of a "Chaos Reigns Trilogy." "Depression Trilogy" is a name that will encourage people to simplify (or even misinterpret) the films. Instead of pointing to the world outside, "Depression Trilogy" points to the world inside.

Drive (Refn, 2011): Opening scene + credits sequence

Drive eventually degenerates into what feels like a director trying to come up with more and more inventive ways to kill people off, but before that happens all I kept thinking about was how much I wished the film had been an hour shorter and directed by Kenneth Anger...

But even before all of that there is the opening scene, which is just flat out exhilarating filmmaking... And after it is the credits sequence, which I sat watching with a big goofy grin on my face... It was refreshing to see a film paying homage to all the worst aspects of Hollywood's 80s action/thriller sensibility without constantly winking at the audience. That (which includes the film's use of music and superimposition in the first half) is what Drive gets right. Unabashed pastiche. (Too bad it's little else.)

Tree of Life (Malick, 2011): Creation of the universe

The creation sequence (sans dinosaurs) was a definite highlight, especially the moments in outer space accompanied by Preisner's Lacrimosa. I saw this again recently at home and found it to be underwhelming compared to seeing it in the theater. A giant screen is definitely needed to overwhelm with image and sound. Looking forward to Malick's Voyage in Time (IMAX, I hope).

Home Viewing 2011 (DVD/VOD/Streaming): A few highlights

House of Tolerance (Bonello, 2011): "Nights in White Satin" mourning dance

Years ago, working nights at a book publishing warehouse, I distinctly remember The Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin" coming on the radio and filling the gigantic building with its tinny echoes. I remember this because I never liked the song before that moment. In fact, I hated it. (My mom used to play it over and over again on some tape she had while I was growing up, which conditioned me to resent it.) That night, however, standing alone in my aisle in the artificially lit warehouse, surrounded by stacks of cardboard boxes, books, and the humming of the omnipresent conveyor belt, I thought to myself that "Nights in White Satin" was the only true love song ever written.

And then, a few days later, I went back to hating it again.

I have no idea why I felt that way that night. I still don't like the song very much, and I certainly don't consider it to be the best, most authentic love song ever written...

But then recently I heard "Nights in White Satin" used during a particularly perfect moment in Bertrand Bonello's House of Tolerance, and it made me feel the same way again. Who knows, maybe it just needs to be accompanied by an atmosphere of utter despair before it can be fully appreciated?

(Above image not from the aforementioned scene)

Tree of Life (Malick, 2011): Waco, Texas

(This could easily be on the previous list, but, unlike the universe sequence, this part of the film doesn't lose as much on DVD.)

I concur with everyone who's said that The Tree of Life is deeply flawed yet completely remarkable. Taken as a whole, it's hard to argue that Tree isn't Malick's worst film. The ending -- and by that I mean the final 15 or 20 minutes -- is simply horrendous in every conceivable way. On the other hand, I'd put the 90 or so minutes that comprise the middle of the film up against anything that's ever been shot (minus the last minute or two in which the mother whispers a couple of cheesy lines of narration that cheapen everything that has preceded it by way of its simplistic, reductive summation). As a film about the major themes Malick seems to have been after, The Tree of Life is a failure. But the middle section -- a film about small moments, childhood, and growing up -- feels like a major success.

Putty Hill (Porterfield, 2010): The swimming hole

A favorite moment of a different sort occurred during Matthew Porterfield's Putty Hill. At one point in the film, a group of young people go swimming in a river... there's nothing more to it than that. But the scene caused me to have a disoriented feeling until I realized why it felt so strange: they were at the very place (somewhat secret, I thought) that I used to frequent growing up! Hiking, swimming, hanging out... A beautiful spot about 20 minutes from where I spent most of my adolescence. I've taken (or been taken) there with most of my close friends and still go from time to time.

Porterfield's DVD commentary confirmed the location, though since I knew he was a Maryland filmmaker, I was already convinced; I just wanted to hear what he might say about the place. Other locations in the film were recognizable but none with which I have a personal connection.

Le Quattro Volte (Frammartino, 2010): Part 2: The kid

I wish I'd caught this in the theater, though I'm not sure it even played anywhere in the remote vicinity. Anyway, there's a much talked about long take in the film some people are calling "the shot of the year" that's well deserving of its praise. That's the first highlight. The second highlight is the outstanding section that follows this take (it's obvious what I mean once you've seen the film).

Le Quattro Volte is a very fine film overall but the long take, and the section following it (part 2 of 4), are on a level the rest of the film doesn't quite reach. The first half, which contains the best parts, sorta reminded me of what it might be like had Roy Andersson directed Sweetgrass.

* * *
And now for some random categories.

Favorite dissolve: Meek's Cutoff (Reichardt, 2010)

Favorite metaphor: The Future (July, 2011)

The character Jason has recently joined an environmental organization. He goes door-to-door in order to raise money to help fight global warming. A man answers. Before even finding out why Jason is there, the man turns him down:

Jason: That's all right. I mean, it's probably too late for all of this anyway.
Man: What?
Jason: Well, you know how like in the cartoons, when the building gets hit with the wrecking ball, right before the building falls down, there's always this moment where it's perfectly still, right before it collapses? We're in that moment. The wrecking ball has already hit all of this, and this is just the moment before it all falls down.

The rest:

Man: Is that the official word?
Jason: No, that's just my gut feeling.
Man: So why are you going around, then?
Jason: I thought this was great, all this... The air and the grass, yeah, but it was just the people and the houses and the cars and the TV and the music. I mean, I just -- I love this place.

The best part is that after giving the above speech, the man asks again why Jason is there, and, after Jason tells him, the man still doesn't change his mind. (I always thought the big flaw in Twelve Angry Men was Lee J. Cobb's character's epiphany at the end and his quick change of heart after it. It just doesn't reflect human behavior. Cobb's verdict comes off as completely contrived.)

Most ridiculous montage: Love Exposure (Sono, 2008): upskirt training camp

And the subsequent one where they take their newfound knowledge to the streets.

Sorry but there's no better way to comment than WTF? and LOL!

Best return to form: Hadewijch (Dumont, 2009)

Not actually. This is just my excuse to post pictures from the film. I was never one to think Dumont "let everyone down" after La Vie de Jésus, but those who did will likely be pleased with Hadewijch; he's back in La Vie de Jésus mode.

An amusing anecdote:

"Programming a Bruno Dumont movie under any circumstances is a risk. He's a great filmmaker, but his movies are slow, downbeat and depressing, and their appeal is rarefied, to say the least. But last week the Roxie Cinema went that one better: They booked Dumont's latest, "Hadewijch" [...] in the week between Christmas and New Year's. True, suicides tend to be up around the holidays, but how many like-minded people could the Roxie reasonably expect to find?

Well, on the first night things did not go well. For the 9:20 show Dec. 29, the theater had only one paid admission. The sole attendee? It was none other than filmmaker John Waters, who is, it turns out, a Bruno Dumont fan."

Anyway, I'm not even sure if Hadewijch is one of the best or one of the worst films I saw last year. What I do know is that I enjoyed watching it immensely. Whether Dumont is (or was) seen as Bresson's heir, imitator, or neither, it must be said that he -- like Bresson -- makes films that have absolutely zero fat.

Best film I saw that isn't getting enough attention:

Weekend (Haigh, 2011)

(I imagine that Haigh's film -- which I have seen on a couple of Best of 2011 lists -- is probably underseen more than it is underappreciated.)

a note for the new year

2012-01-04T11:27:00.008-05:00

Since blog activity has diminished significantly in the past two months, I wanted to let people know that I plan to resume posting on a more regular basis shortly. Additionally I'm going to make an effort to average more posts per-month this year than I have previously.

I also plan to create a Tumblr that will act as a kind of frontispiece to this blog, the purpose of which will be to display things more suited to that particular format -- short thoughts, quotes, links, pictures, videos, songs -- while posting everything else here.

Finally, since making a blog post that doesn't contain a single visual component might now -- under sections 1021 and 1022 of the newly signed National Defense Authorization Act -- lead to my indefinite detention ("blog terrorism"), here is a detail from Odilon Redon's Roger and Angelica (1910), compliments of Google Art Project.

<<<< the prism >>>>

2011-12-13T15:32:00.015-05:00

"I bent forward, suddenly conscious of my legs in new blue trousers. But how do you know they're your legs? [...] For it was as though I were looking at my own legs for the first time — independent objects that could lead me to safety or danger."

Reading the above passage from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man a few months ago instantly reminded me of Marina de Van's In My Skin — a film I hadn't seen for a couple of years. Thematically, the excerpt and the film are similar. De Van's film revolves around a woman (played by the director) who scrapes her leg at a party, an accident that sends her on a self-inflicted journey where she obsessively investigates the disconnect between mind and body (perhaps the phrase "scrape of chairs" preceding the above excerpt also helped trigger the connection). Much like Ellison's protagonist, de Van becomes conscious of her body as some separate, foreign thing. On the one hand, yes, that's my leg; on the other hand, it's just a slab of meat and bone. Exploring this mystery becomes more important to her than anything else.

In My Skin's great strength is that it doesn't try to intellectualize (or even verbalize) these questions. Quite fittingly (considering its subject), de Van's excellent horror film bypasses the viewer's mind altogether, opting instead to take us on the same visceral journey as its protagonist. It explores its ideas simply by showing.

Dans ma peau / In My Skin (Marina de Van, 2002)

The value in connecting the above passage from Invisible Man to In My Skin is scant (at best); nevertheless, it's part of a mental process I want to briefly explore.

* * *

When I'm in the middle of reading a book (and for a few days after I've finished), I tend to see everything in the book's terms. It acts as a prism that filters the world around me, and it even works its way into my memory from time to time, illuminating and distorting distant thoughts through its lens. A few weeks after reading Obedience to Authority, for example, it seemed to me as though everything in the world could be explained and understood in terms of Milgram's book.

The prism also tends to cast the book all around me, causing it to magically appear. I'll hear it referenced in an overheard conversation, see it in an article, notice it on a shelf or table in a film; it'll even turn up as an answer to a question on a game show. All of this is part of the effect of the prism, highlighting what I previously wouldn't have noticed. (Of course it's not really possible to consciously note the numerous times this doesn't occur, but it's more fun to pretend that the Universe is smiling on me.) Until I've absorbed a book more fully, it remains on the forefront of my mind, defining the world in its own terms (oftentimes with a disproportionate or unwarranted influence).

Below, I will continue using Ellison's Invisible Man to explore the prism through which I briefly viewed the world several months ago.

* * *
The following, which occurred in August while I was reading Invisible Man, is strangely similar to Ellison's text. It's almost as if the novel had somehow started to bleed into reality...

First, some set-up.

At one point in Invisible Man, the unnamed protagonist walks past an angry crowd and looks up to see them standing around the home of an elderly black couple who're being evicted. He sees — piled on the sidewalk and spilling from drawers — some of the couple's various belongings: a portrait of the couple when young, potted plants destined to die in the snow, a curling iron, a card reading "God Bless Our Home," and another with the message "Grandma, I love you" written by a child, etc.

These objects take on significance for him and connect him to the couple and his own past. He has a vision of his mother "hanging wash on a cold windy day." Moved, he gives a speech to the sympathetic crowd, hoping to prevent the situation from boiling over into violence.

The following day he picks up a newspaper:

"On the subway people around me were reading their morning papers, pressing forward their unpleasant faces. I rode with my eyes shut, trying to make my mind blank to thoughts of Mary. Then turning, I saw the item Violent Protest Over Harlem Eviction. [...] It had lasted for two hours, the crowd refusing to vacate the premises."

The very same day I read the following in an electronic newspaper:

"In New York City, an 82-year-old resident of Brooklyn facing eviction was allowed to stay in her house on Friday after more than 200 people gathered in front of her home to block the eviction."

The woman, Mary Lee Ward, gave a speech to the crowd:

"We're not slaves anymore. My grandfather was a slave, but I'm not. And they're not going to force me to do anything against my will. You've got to put up a hard fight for the faith, and that means the fact that you have to stick with it when you know you're right, you know you have the evidence, you know you have the facts. Don't let nobody walk over you. Don't let nobody make you a slave."

Mary Lee Ward

Now, the "Mary" mentioned in the Ellison excerpt is not the woman being evicted but a maternal woman the protagonist is staying with, and it was Mary Lee Ward — not a man from the crowd — who gave the speech in reality, but seeing the name "Mary" mingled into the mix of New York, evictions, an angry crowd of onlookers, a speech, and evocations of slavery... Well, it was pretty bizarre to read on the very same day I finished a similar section of Invisible Man! Serendipity, obviously, but odd enough to give me the very brief feeling that my imagination was leaking.

An exclamation point was added later by the fact that Mary Lee Ward surrounded her house with a chicken-wire fence as an "imagined security blanket of sorts." Chicken-wire, I found out 40 or 50 pages later, is also evoked symbolically by Ellison. And in a section related to the Harlem eviction, no less:

"Outside, the audience had begun to drone; a distant, churning sound that brought back some of the terror of the eviction. My mind flowed. There was a child standing in rompers outside a chicken-wire fence, looking in upon a huge black-and-white dog, log-chained to an apple tree. It was Master, the bulldog; and I was the child who was afraid to touch him, although, panting with heat, he seemed to grin back at me like a fat good-natured man, the saliva roping silvery from his jowls."

Not a conclusion but a digression:

What of this? Shall we draw a comparison between Mary using chicken-wire to "keep the dogs at bay" and the above excerpt? Shall we make a feeble remark about art mirroring life, life mirroring art? How about the cliche "the more things change the more they say the same"? Dear readers! Why sell me so short? Let's dare for a moment to step beyond the limiting views that imprison us in the tower of What Never Could Be. Yes! Now what do you see? I read, and it was so. Yes! Does that bring anything to mind?

"And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so."

(Call me biased, but that's the insight I took from the experience.)

* * *

"Since you never recognize me even when in closest contact with me, and since, no doubt, you'll hardly believe that I exist, it won't matter if you know that I tapped a power line leading into the building and ran it into my hole in the ground. Before that I lived in the darkness into which I was chased, but now I see. I've illuminated the blackness of my invisibility — and vice versa. And so I play the invisible music simply because music is heard and seldom seen, except by musicians. Could this compulsion to put invisibility down in black and white be thus an urge to make music out of invisibility?" —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Putting "invisibility down in black and white" in order to "make music [art] out of invisibility" is exactly what Mark Singer did in his documentary Dark Days (pictured).

The film follows some of the homeless inhabitants of New York City's underground subway system, specifically an area dubbed Freedom Tunnel. In the prologue of Ellison's novel, the unnamed protagonist is living rent-free in an underground room in New York City, somewhere that's been "shut off and forgotten during the nineteenth century." His ceiling is covered with 1,369 light bulbs powered by electricity that he's siphoning illegally from the city's power grid. Likewise the residents of New York's Freedom Tunnel siphon electricity from the city's grid, and once — as Greg, one of the homeless men tells us — they even had running water down there. "When you have lived invisible as long as I have," Ellison's protagonist tells us, "you develop a certain ingenuity."

Top: Jeff Wall, After 'Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue (1999-2000); Bottom: Dark Days (2000)

Unlike the homeless in Dark Days, Ellison's protagonist withdraws purposefully, though he does so largely because of something he cannot control — the racism and indifference of the world above. There's a scene in Dark Days where some of the people come up from the tunnel to look for food, sifting through huge piles of trash that have been stacked in bags on the streets. Usually they were completely ignored by passersby while doing this (people wouldn't even look in their direction, let alone look at them) — in other words, they had become invisible. However, as Singer notes on the DVD commentary, when they were being filmed, people would crowd around to watch (which understandably annoyed and embarrassed them).

"I'm an invisible man and it placed me in a hole — or showed me the hole I was in, if you will — and I reluctantly accepted the fact. What else could I have done? Once you get used to it, reality is as irresistible as a club, and I was clubbed into the cellar before I caught the hint. Perhaps that's the way it had to be; I don't know."

After spending months living with the homeless, Marc Singer decided to make Dark Days with the explicit goal that the money generated from the project would go towards getting everyone out of the tunnel. He was someone who decided to integrate himself — whether through curiosity, compassion, or some variation of both — into the lives of the people in the tunnel, not a filmmaker who came there to exploit them. In fact, he didn't even have the slightest idea how to make a film when he first came up with this idea, and since he had no help, he ended up asking the homeless people — by that time, his friends — if they would like to become the makeshift crew for the film. It's in this beautiful idea that Dark Days becomes something rare: a work of political art in which the process itself becomes a form of DIY activism. Not only did Singer offer everyone the chance to help themselves, he also gave them the opportunity to take part in the telling of their own story.

Henry, for example, was a former railroad worker, so he was most equipped to build the dolly. After finding a shopping cart, he stripped off the wheels and assembled them to some plywood he found. Construction was underway. Once completed, the dolly turned out so well that Singer asked him to make a second one (which he did), but it was soon lost to the environment (someone found it and integrated it into their makeshift shelter).

Singer, who had been staying in the tunnel with a homeless man named Ralph (who, in an act that demonstrates the film's true communal nature, can sometimes be heard asking people questions from behind the camera) shot 20 hours of footage without even knowing if any of it was going to turn out. It was so dark down there that he couldn't even see what he was filming most of the time, and, on top of that, the eye-piece tended to fog up. In order to know where to point the camera, he tried to make out the top of a person's head, aimed when he found it, and then simply hoped for the best... After awhile, some of other people involved learned how to use the camera as well as set up lights.

Eventually the shooting had to stop for 10 months so that Singer could involve himself with the social work that was underway. Much more than a snag in the production, this delay was part of the fruit that was created by the process finally coming to fruition. One can hardly imagine a shoot more in opposition to the mentality of Hollywood.

Marc Singer has yet to make another film.

"I couldn't return to Mary's or to any part of my old life. I could approach it only from the outside, and I had been as invisible to Mary as I had been to the Brotherhood. No, I couldn't return to Mary's, or to the campus, or to the Brotherhood, or home. I could only move ahead or stay here, underground. So I would stay here until I was chased out. Here, at least, I could try to think things out in peace, or, if not in peace, in quiet..."

For another example of Invisible Man as a prism, see THIS POST.

NOTE:

Though I would consider Dark Days to be an essential documentary — that is, one everyone should see — it does contain, in the form of an editing choice, a very unfortunate mistake. Judging from what is known about Singer's process as well as the finished film itself, I'm confident that the cut is nothing more than an unnoticed mistake (as opposed to some kind of malicious editorializing). Nevertheless, for this oversight I am forced to wrap Mr. Singer's knuckles until the blood flows, and I will also have to award him an "A" for his very fine work (instead of an "A+"). Intentional or not, it is there, and the association it makes is very off-putting.

The cut — which I present more or less accurately but not down to the frame — goes as follows:

So you see, here we have two homeless people rummaging through the trash to find food, and at the end of the scene they mention milk. CUT TO: a shot of two rats eating a discarded piece of trash that appears to contain milk or a milk product. Undeniably the film has drawn a comparison between the men and the rats.

I found out more details about this scene by listening to the audio commentary. Singer was interested in filming the rats because he wanted to give an impression of the environment the people living in the tunnel were faced with, but every time he put the lights on to film, the rats would scatter. They weren't afraid of people at all, just light; in fact, there were so many unintimidated rats down in the tunnel that, once it was dark, packs of them — hundreds and hundreds — would come out and cross the train tracks. Sometimes there were so many that you'd literally have to stop and let them pass.

One day someone (Singer, I think) was eating a bottle of Yoplait yogurt, didn't like it, and threw the half-filled (see, I'm an optimist!) bottle onto the tracks. Within seconds, hundreds of rats went for it... It didn't take long for Singer to get someone to buy five or six bottles for him to throw on the tracks when he was ready to film. And once he did, voilà! Rats and rats!

D.J. Carlile Reviews Bruce Duffy's Disaster Was My God: A Novel of the Outlaw Life of Arthur Rimbaud

2011-11-30T23:54:00.006-05:00

I was lucky enough to pick up a very cheap copy of Bruce Duffy's book many weeks ago at a Borders going-out-of-business sale, and immediately lent it to my friend D.J., knowing that he was anxious to read it. (Coincidentally, I received Jamie James very recently published Rimbaud in Java: The Lost Voyage in the mail today; its beautiful design brings to mind an antique adventure-book.) For D.J.'s review I tried to select images that Rimbaud aficionados haven't already seen hundreds of times (with perhaps two exceptions).

D.J. Carlile is a poet, playwright, critic, and translator of Rimbaud: The Works. He lives in a thousand gallon tank in Los Angeles where he is kept alive by a respirator that's powered by hundreds of tiny goldfish and a dozen vegetarian piranhas who keep the goldfish working hard.

* * *

A novel on the life of poet Arthur Rimbaud— a life that already reads like a novel— is not a novel idea. Richard Hell has updated it in Godlike (2005) and James Ramsey Ullman set The Day On Fire in 1971. But this time, with Disaster Was My God (2011), Bruce Duffy has accomplished it with something like the hallucinatory brilliance of the subject's best work. It is not a biographical study. It is, after all, fiction; the facts are altered, tweaked a bit here, broadly embellished there, and woven into a tapestry of dysfunction, desire, derangement and destiny.

It begins at the end, with the opening of the poet's grave by his mother for a re-interment. And it ends, some 400 pages later, with a series of funerals, Rimbaud's, Verlaine's, and finally the mother's in 1907. For the body of the main narrative, we are whiplashed between Africa and Europe in alternating episodes: the child Rimbaud, the precocious scholar, vis-a-vis the gaunt African trader in hides, coffee, guns and gold... A.R. the drug-dissheveled, poetic demon-teen versus A.R. the crippled invalid borne across the desert to the sea in the company of armed Yemeni and Somali— and burdened with a banished British missionary, his wife and kids, along the way. And then there's Paul Verlaine, the lover, the spoiled and spoiling alcoholic, the cracked lyric genius, who is unsentimentally portrayed in the gaps between.

Hovering over all is the spirit— and presence— of La Mother, "The Mouth of Darkness," Madame R, the widow Rimbaud, the poet's notoriously harsh and hard-edged mother.

The four D's mentioned earlier here might seem to be alliteratively overstating the case, but they are the strands of Duffy's tapestry that make for a tightly-woven tale. They effect the design around which all the action turns and is embroidered.

Most of the characters in the book (as in their actual lives) are seriously dysfunctional in some way, that is, impaired or abnormal in their dealings with each other or the world. Rimbaud, a gifted youth, good-looking, educated, eloquent, stops bathing or washing, collects vermin, drinks and does drugs to excess at age 16, assuming an uncouth, surly manner to keep people at a distance. This dysfunction is, of course, part of his plan for "deregulating all the senses." Verlaine, despite his literary elegance and sensitivity, is a closet queer, a violent drunk and a wife-beater, and he follows the younger poet in his plan to "change life."

Rimbaud by ~~Fernand Léger (1948)~~ (Correction: This is a forgery. See comments section for details.)

Both Rimbaud and Verlaine came from dysfunctional families— father gone, an overbearing, ever-present mother— and even the fictional British missionaries, the MacDonalds, are askew, with a gormless dad, a feisty mom and two spooked children. Djami, Rimbaud's Ethiopian factotum, is portrayed as having been an orphan, a streetboy, when he is hired. Likewise, Tigist, Rimbaud's Abyssinian mistress, is a jealous and temperamental teen whose demands and desires eventually lead to her dismissal.

All these characters, including the poet's sister, even La Mother herself, are survivors or victims of a family dynamic severely impaired or shattered. Verlaine's child-bride Mathilde is the pampered princess of a snobbish upbringing, as spoiled and willful as her erratic husband.

The desires (aside from the purely sexual) that drive these characters are all for a makeover, some sort of change, manipulation, or a refashioning. Rimbaud wants to make another self— even in Africa— (the famous Je est un autre, "I is somebody else"); he wants to change the world with his poetry, to re-invent love. Verlaine wants to make poetry to noise with his boyfriend; Mathilde wants to make herself the perfect wife to the perfect poet. The mothers want a "successful" boy, via coddling on the part of Mme. Verlaine, via tougher-than-tough love with Mme. Rimbaud. The MacDonalds just want to start over with their lives. Djami— and Tigist too— want more trust and commitment than Rimbaud is capable of giving. And all these desires revolve in some way around the "love" that Rimbaud insists must be re-invented.

The Abyssinian tribesmen, "the skinny men," who stealthily follow the invalid's caravan have but one desire. "Men hard as fire sticks carrying long gut-stirring spears," they want to massacre the Euro interlopers. They strike by night, killing off the men of Rimbaud's bodyguard one at a time, hacking off their genitalia for trophies.

Derangement is the most vivid strand in the tapestry, set off as it is by dysfunction and desire. The teenage Rimbaud, acting upon his credo of "a long, immense and reasoned derangement of all the senses," disassembles Verlaine's marriage, turning the older poet's desires into sexual submission and deranging his passions with physical abuse. Verlaine is complicit in these activities... all for a new kind of poetry, to "achieve the level of dream and fracture."

Valentine Hugo, Portrait d'Arthur Rimbaud (1933)

The mothers are just plain crazed in their own peculiar ways. Madame Verlaine keeps the miscarried fetuses of Paul's two brothers and a sister in jars of alcohol on her dresser like an altar. She prays before them every night and talks to them as if they were able to hear. As an adult, in a drunken rage, Paul will smash these jars. Madame Rimbaud hoards money, hoards her affections; she physically and verbally assaults her children for the least inattention to chores, treating them like workers under her iron rule. Her experiences with a drunken father, wastrel brothers and an absent husband have poisoned her relations with all men, even God whom she perceives as male through and through. As the novel progresses, she is presented with some compassion, for all her hardness of heart.

The MacDonalds are uprooted, displaced, impoverished— on the wrong continent at the wrong time in the wrong vocation. Mrs. MacDonald castigates the crippled Rimbaud (to whom she is in fact beholden) for the violence that keeps "the skinny men" at bay; she is like a soft-focus version of La Mother, disapproving, confrontational. In the case of Isabelle, the poet's younger sister, her life is deranged (or re-arranged) in a positive way when she becomes his nurse and caretaker. This allows her to assert herself at last, to get out from under her mother's thumb, to become her own woman. From the repressed quasi-servant she turns into a strong female mirror-image of the latter-day Verlaine— icon-maker, devotee and flamekeeper of the idolized Poet-brother-lover. Another sort of derangement, yes, but certainly an improvement over crushing servitude (in Isabelle's case) or slavery to alcohol and sex (Verlaine).

Rimbaud in bed after being shot in the wrist by Verlaine (Jef Rosman, 1873)

So: The destiny of poets, the fate of those who put their lives on the line, the word, the syllable, to be idolized or excoriated, is to disappear as a living body into the body of work. Likewise, the destiny of all the characters in this novel, both factual and fictional, is to be subsumed into Le Mythe de Rimbaud.

Early on there is a scene where the invalid Rimbaud, his knee swollen to more than twice its normal size, waits on his stretcher in the fly-infested heat of Harar, waiting to depart, "...when he looked across the white desert, blazing like freedom, free freedom..." And as he waits his mind wanders.

"Seeing again, that's it— seeing, such as he hasn't seen in years.... Days of light and storm when, high above, clouds coiled and spoke and limbs crashed and leaves blew.... Cold and darkness coming. Then coldest of all, that windy, hair-raising excitement, the sudden zero of writing. Writing— you, my willed and willing disaster, my storm....

"Bitten-down nails. Moving lips. When he wrote— that is, when life yanked him hard by the hair— he always moved his lips, mumbling and murmuring to himself. Trees shook and shone like ice. Leaves struck his nose and electricity seized his hair, until he felt like a candle, a very blown-down candle, to the point that he forgot his own hunger as the wind commanded, Write more. So, opening a rusty penknife, he whittled his already whittled-down pencil stub. Then, trembling, moved it over the dirty paper, then covered it with his body as the rain splattered down, walloping hot pellets that lashed his back and ran down his nose. And camped over himself, over words like hot food, he pushed and pushed the pencil, until suddenly it stopped: literally stopped, and he dared not look or speak.

" 'Monsieur!' comes the voice that breaks him from this reverie. It's Djami. Shading his eyes, Djami is pointing across the street. 'Monsieur, don't you see? Look. It is Monsieur Bardey! All the frangis. See? They come to see you go.' "

Indeed, we all come to see him go, the man with his heels to the wind.

The title page and dust jacket of this book read, "A novel of the outlaw life of Arthur Rimbaud." Duffy capably delivers exactly that— exactly that and more: a meditation on family and failed expectations, on the vagaries of self-image, idealism and art, on the ecstasies and execrations of love.

Billy the Kid, Rimbaud [via]

Oh yes, many details are bent, are non-factual, outright blue-sky fabricated. But the little lies convey the larger truth. These people actually seem to live and breathe, eat, love, starve and defecate. If you choose to read this "more allegorical than historical" tale, prepare to be yanked hard by the hair, moving your lips as you read.

Horrific, harrowing, sad and hilarious, it holds its own against the most "accurate" of biographies— whether Steinmetz, White, Robb or Starkie. Here is how Duffy conjures Verlaine:

"Paul Verlaine, arise then! ... Sing to us of unquenchable angers— of literature as a blood sport, a criminal enterprise, and war by other means. Sing, heartbroken even now, of the teenage Pied Piper who wrecked your marriage, destroyed your reputation, spent the better part of your inheritance, then led you, a grown man, into the whirlwind, beyond which lay the portals of immortality.

"Sing, great shade, of the monsters together."

Paul Verlaine, 1896

repossession

2011-11-17T21:28:00.017-05:00

Main chant on Brooklyn Bridge: "We are unstoppable; another world is possible."

[via]

"Opposite the Verizon building, there is a bunch of city housing. Subsidized, rent-controlled. There's a lack of services, lights are out in the hallways, the housing feels like jails, like prisons. I walked around, and put up signs in there offering money to rent out an apartment for a few hours. I didn't say much more. I received surprisingly few calls, and most of them seemed not quite fully there. But then I got one call from a sane person. Her name was Denise Vega. She lived on the 16th floor. Single, working mom, mother of three.

I spoke with her on the phone, and a few days later went over and met her.

I told her what I wanted to do, and she was enthused. The more I described, the more excited she got.

Her parting words were, "let's do this."

She wouldn't take my money. That was the day of the eviction of Zuccotti, the same day. And she'd been listening to the news all day, she saw everything that had happened.

"I can't charge you money, this is for the people," she said.

She was born in the projects. She opened up her home to us.

She was in there tonight with her 3 daughters, 2 sisters. The NYPD started snooping around down on the ground while the projections were up, it was clear where we were projecting from, and inside it was festive.

"If they want to come up they're gonna need a warrant!," her family was saying. "If they ask us, well, we don't know what they are talking about!" They were really brave and cool.

[...]

The scale of the environmental and economic crisis we are facing, it's extraordinary. This movement is a response to that crisis. Our leaders aren't responding to any of that in a way that is commensurate to the crises we face. And that one sign has always spoken to me. We have to throw off our despair about the future world we might be facing, because if we come together as people and humanity, we can change it. And what Occupy Wall Street makes me feel is that for the first time in a long time that might be possible." --Mark Read, creator of Occupy Wall Street "bat-signal" [X]

Mark Read, from the above interview: "I knew I wanted to throw it on the Verizon Building. Everyone who lives in New York has looked at that big monolithic structure. For some of us, every time we look at it we think of how cool it would be as a projection surface."

It doesn't sound like the Verizon building was selected for any reason other than because of how physically great it is as a space, but symbolically it's also perfect to use the actual building (or body) of a giant communications company as a means in which to relay messages in support of OWS. Not only is Verizon providing its technology as a communicative aid to the movement, but now, through the creative use of other technology, they are providing their physical presence as well.

If they haven't quite been co-opted, they've certainly been "repossessed."

"Occupy London has taken over a huge abandoned office block in the borough of Hackney belonging to the investment bank UBS in a move it describes as a 'public repossession.'

Overnight on Thursday, a dozen activists from Occupy London, campaigners for social and economic justice as part of the global fight for real democracy, gained access to the building and secured it, giving them a legal claim on the space.

The multimillion pound complex, which has been empty for several years, is the group's third space and its first building, adding to its two camps at St Paul's Courtyard – near the London Stock Exchange in the heart of the City...

Occupy London supporters Jack Holburn said: "Whilst over 9,000 families were kicked out of their homes in the last three months for failing to keep up mortgage payments – mostly due to the recession caused by the banks – UBS and others financial giants are sitting on massive abandoned properties.

"As banks repossess families' homes, empty bank property needs to be repossessed by the public. Yesterday we learned that the Government has failed to create public value out of banking failure. We can do better. We hope this is the first in a wave of 'public repossessions' of property belonging to the companies that crashed the global economy."

The group say the space will be reopened on Saturday morning as the 'Bank of Ideas.'

Sarah Layler of Occupy London added: "The Bank of Ideas will host a full events programme where people will be able to trade in creativity rather than cash. We will also make space available for those that have lost their nurseries, community centres and youth clubs to savage Government spending cuts." [X]

fish in a barrel

2011-10-26T01:11:00.026-04:00

I just caught the trailer for this abomination:

Tower Heist is a comedy about a bunch of disgruntled hotel employees who were scammed by their Wall Street businessman tenant and decide to avenge themselves by robbing his penthouse. It stars a group of rich actors pretending to be average Joes & Janes while simultaneously lining their pockets with the cash of said Joes & Janes, and it's distributed by Universal Pictures, a company largely owned by a corporation famous for having paid zero in taxes last year. So basically the film is disguised as something that sides with (or at least tries to tap into) populist anger but which actually helps to deflate the anger, monetizes it, and then redistributes it upwards to the very Wall Street villains the audience is meant to root against.

Universal originally planned to release Tower Heist via parent company Comcast's video on demand service three weeks after opening it in theaters but decided against the idea after several theater chains threatened to boycott the film if Universal went through with the plan. The cost of ordering the film on demand was going to be a head-scratching $59.99. (Surely this must have been an homage to one of William Castle's gimmicks, the idea behind it being that the audience of Tower Heist would have actually been defrauded, thereby giving them the feeling of having been one of the characters in the movie.)

Also from the trailer:

"We're not criminals. We don't know how to steal."
"Don't worry, I know someone who does."
Cut to: Black Man (Eddie Murphy).

It sure is funny(?) that the trailer for a film in which the villain is supposed to be a rich white man who stole everyone's money still cuts to an imprisoned black man when the image of a "thief" is to be evoked.

* * *

While I'm on the subject, I'm sure I'm not the only one to have noticed how uncreative and condescending movie titles have become (I know this isn't anything new, but aren't they getting worse?). The major studios seem to have arrived at a formula where the stupidest movies (ie, the ones aimed at the largest possible audience) are given titles in which the sole purpose is to sum up exactly what the film is about in as few words as possible. Take a moment to actually consider the fact that, out of every conceivable possibility, the aforementioned film was named Tower Heist.

Here are a few other examples:

Dolphin Tale (cute pun!)
Hot Tub Time Machine (I guess this title is supposed to be funny?)
Vampires Suck (another pun!)
Night at the Museum
Horrible Bosses
Cars
Cars 2 (Roman numerals are confusing)
Bad Teacher
Battle: Los Angeles
The Fighter
And Killer Elite, a film about elite hitmen starring Robert De Niro as "Hunter." Unfortunately the much simpler and even more to the point "Hitman" couldn't be used because it was already taken four other times -- five if you count The Hitman. And make sure not to confuse Killer Elite (2011) with The Killer Elite (1975). (Killer Elite is based on a novel called The Feather Men, which, in terms of telling the audience exactly what the movie is about in just two words, would have been downright confusing. The Killer Elite is based on a novel called Monkey in the Middle, a title that is clearly unusable because of the word "monkey" (which is only permitted for horror films and comedies), and because it uses the letter "y" (which is sometimes a vowel but no one really understands why).

The precious titles that follow are an even more advanced demonstration of this mentality:

Fast & Furious
Monsters vs. Aliens
Aliens vs. Predator
Cowboys & Aliens

(Keep all of this in mind when you find out the title for Clint Eastwood's newest film starring Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover.)

It's only a matter of time before we see trailers for the movies Explosions & Cleavage and Guns & Gore. But, unfortunately, even those titles will sound creative compared to their culmination:

Action & Adventure
Action & Adventure 2
Action & Adventure 3
Action & Adventure 4
Ad Nauseam
Suspense 2
Horror Film 6
Action & Adventure 5
Ad Nauseam 2

* * *
It's only in this context that one can make (some) sense of the Michigan woman who recently decided to sue the distributor of Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive (2011) because the film didn't feature enough... driving! It "bore very little similarity to a chase, or race action film," she said. If the film is called Drive, according to the formula, it had better have a hell of a lot of driving in it! Viewers, accustomed to movies being summed up (or represented literally) by their title, have now started to sue for false advertising when this is not the case(!) What else can be said?

* * *
Probably the most famous (semi-)recent example of dumbing down a title is Harry Potter. Fearing that American children wouldn't want to read a book with the word "philosopher" on the cover (and ensuring that they never would), the publisher of Harry Potter changed the title of Rowling's first book to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, even though "philosopher's stone" refers to something very specific. As a result, the publishing company played their own role in a kind of alchemy: the turning of American children into future illiterates.

This brings to memory something Christopher Hitchens once said in an interview:

" ... They'll say, “Don't use the word 'Promethean.'” Actually, that happened recently. I used the word 'Promethean' and the [magazine editors] said, “Take that out because people won't know what Promethean means.” I said, “Maybe they won't. I'll cut it out if you give me another synonym for it. You give the words that would stand in for it and I'll change it.” “There doesn't seem to be one,” they said. “No, there isn't, is there?” You either know what “Promethean” means or you don't. If you do, it saves you about 50 words. And if you don't, then you can look it up! So I said, “No. I'm going to keep it, because it's an important word and it's actually not condescending to Americans in the least. You have to condescend far more by finding the 50-word substitute. No, I won't change it. Fuck you. And I don't mean to publish in your magazine, either, for that matter.” I'm reading this review, and I happen to remember – I forget what the review was of – but they mentioned Tolstoy. This sentence said, “This is reminiscent of the 19th Century Russian novelist Count Leo Tolstoy.” Now, clearly, the author [of the review] had not written this. But someone had thought, “Not all our readers know who Tolstoy is. We better tell them.” This is ridiculous! If you don't know who he is, that doesn't tell you any more than what you don't know. [...] “Homer's Iliad, based on Homer's The Iliad.” “The 19th Century Russian novelist…” It's insulting, the people who do that. It completely broke the rhythm of the writer's sentence. Whatever he had, it's completely undone by shoving all this crap in. It's yet another case of one thinking, 'What are they taking me for? Do they think I'm a moron?'"

* * *
And now the moment you've all been waiting for:

portals

2011-10-16T23:34:00.014-04:00

"All imaginative and creative acts, being eternal, go to build up a permanent structure, ... above time, and, when this structure is finished, [...] its scaffolding will be knocked away and man will live in it. [...] Nothing that the heroes, martyrs, prophets and poets of the past have done for it has been wasted; no anonymous and unrecognized contribution to it has been overlooked. In it is conserved all the good man has done, and in it is completed all that he hoped and intended to do." --Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake

Imagine for a moment that a group of people got together and somehow managed to open a portal to an alternate reality. Imagine also that those who opened the portal made the alternate reality available to everyone.

Hard work and determination were required in order to keep the portal open, and those who opened it did their best to nourish it even if they weren't always sure how to do so (the portal was mysterious, almost unfathomable).

Tourists and the media came to look at the portal. Some of them pointed at it and said that it was underwhelming, pointless, or even silly. And some of them -- the media especially -- couldn't even see the portal. Sure, they thought they could see it, thought they could make out some idea of what the portal was, but they saw it only through the bodies and faces of those who had opened it, as well as those who had come to help nourish it.

Others who were seemingly sympathetic to the idea of alternate realities found the portal interesting, yet they couldn't seem to stop themselves from pointing at the mysterious vortex with a puzzled look. "What is the goal of this portal?" They would ask. "What are those who opened it trying to achieve?" It never once occurred to them that the portal was an achievement unto itself.

It's no wonder the media keep insisting that Occupy Wall Street is unorganized. How else could a leaderless community be viewed within a system that has dismissed such a possibility?

adj. 1. lacking a leader; as, a leaderless mob running riot in the streets.

The Occupiers at Liberty Plaza/Zuccotti Park have their own kitchen, their own medical, media, and legal centers, their own general store and library, their own art shows and displays, their own work groups and scheduled daily events, their own form of government called the General Assembly (click to watch an excellent mini-documentary), and even their own treasury which recently allocated $3,000 to purchase cleaning supplies that were then used in a highly successful (all-volunteer) clean up effort. Yet the Occupation is continuously said to be unorganized.

The majority are having trouble seeing this movement for what it is largely because they're trapped in a paradigm that says "nothing exists except for that which we already know." To give the Occupy movement the credit it deserves would be to acknowledge the existence of a secret door -- one that has been sitting under our rug all along -- and the current ideology is unable to permit that because the concept of a door that leads to a world outside of itself is impossible. By trying to parse some simplified meaning from the Occupation movement, people are missing the whole point.

The "door to Wonderland" that inspired Lewis Carroll. The Liddellsisters were not allowed to enter the Cathedral Garden (pictured).

As a Pakistani cab driver said in a (live streamed) conversation with some Occupiers (paraphrasing): "It's a new world now. The world started with the church, then it started again with the politicians, and now it has started with the public. People. That's it. The Public has to be everything. This is a new creation."

The implication of such a view is precisely what's meant by the slogan OCCUPY EVERYTHING!

* * *

"In April 2011, the Chinese government prohibited on TV and films and in novels all stories that contain alternate reality or time travel. This is a good sign for China. It means that people still dream about alternatives, so you have to prohibit this dream. Here we don't think of prohibition. Because the ruling system has even suppressed our capacity to dream. Look at the movies that we see all the time. It's easy to imagine the end of the world. An asteroid destroying all life and so on. But you cannot imagine the end of capitalism." --Zizek (from his speech in Liberty Plaza/Zuccotti Park)

Los (by William Blake), creator of consciousness and Golgonooza (the city of imagination).

Cops of the Rich

2011-10-12T22:12:00.005-04:00

Inspired by recent events, my friend Sarah B. refashioned the lyrics to Phil Ochs' "Cops of the World" to fit the police response to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

First, two quick things.

It's hardly a secret by now that J.P. Morgan Chase donated $4.6 million to the NYC Police foundation, but for anyone who hasn't heard about this I've placed a short interview excerpt in the comments section that highlights its importance. (Along with setting a frightening precedent, it seems very likely that this donation -- at the very least -- influenced a certain police action directly related to Occupy Wall Street. And of course it also relates to Sarah's lyrics in a major way.)

Second, for those who aren't already familiar with Ochs (one of the all-time great folk singers), or for those who simply want a reminder, here is his original song (followed by Sarah's reworked lyrics):

Cops of the World (1966)

* * *

Cops of the Rich

Come get out of the way, boys

Quick get out of the way

You'd better watch what you say, boys

Better watch what you say

We've roped you in corners and sprayed you with mace

And tied up your hands to expose your whole face

We are arrest you and tell you that YOU'RE the disgrace

Cuz we're the Cops of the Rich, boys

We're the Cops of the Rich

We pick and choose as we please, boys

Pick and choose as we please

You'd best get down on your knees, boys

Best get down on your knees

We shackle you up if you're part of a plot

We'll shackle you up even if you are not

Your guilt and your rights just don't matter a lot

Cuz we're the Cops of the Rich, boys

We're the Cops of the Rich

We'll meet you with shields in a line, boys

Meet you with shields in a line

The status quo is just fine, boys

Status quo is just fine

We've got to protect the executives' pay

No matter they flushed all our pensions away

Just stop making trouble and do as they say!

Cuz we're the Cops of the Rich, boys

We're the Cops of the Rich

Dump the tents in a pile, boys

Dump the tents in a pile

We'll change the rules all the while, boys

Change the rules all the while

We're confident that your resistance won't last

But still, if it does, you will all be harassed

The public we serve is the public we gas

Cuz we're the Cops of the Rich, boys

We're the Cops of the Rich

We have the Law on our side, boys

Laws are made for our side

Come in our van for a ride, boys

Step in and go for a ride

Stop your complaining that we act too rough

We don't need to catch you in illegal stuff

You're young and you're here and for now that's enough

Cuz we're the Cops of the Rich, boys

We're the Cops of the Rich

Here's a club in the back, boys

Here's a club in the back

You could use a good smack, boys

You could use a good smack

We'll target the ladies and rough them up too

We bloody your noses and cause you to bruise

If only YOU'D stop all the violence YOU do!

Cuz we're the Cops of the Rich, boys

We're the Cops of the Rich

They bankrupted your son, boys

Bankrupted your son

All in the name of good fun, boys

They sure had a lot of good fun!

They own all the money, oh say can you see

And maybe some day they will give some to me

So, like it or not, that is how it will be

Cuz we're the Cops of the Rich, boys

We're the Cops of the Rich

Occupy Wall Street: some photos and impressions

2011-10-07T20:09:00.006-04:00

None of the pictures that follow are very good or particularly interesting, but they give some sense of things from a personal perspective. My camera was acting up and eventually stopped working altogether (from rain, I assume; it's better now), and by the time of the march -- which I mention first -- it was no longer functioning.

Had I been quicker on the draw I could have snapped a great photo of a tall, handsome man in a well fitting suit standing motionless with the leash of his small dog in hand while the dog urinated on a pile of garbage. It might not sound that great, but to me it was an image of perfect symbolism. Another missed opportunity involved a man in a suit getting his shoes shined with an expression on his face that would be impossible to describe (my friend and I both laughed when we saw it). To give some indication I'd say he was expressing simultaneous contempt, embarrassment, and horror, but words don't do it justice. Rather I think what we saw was the birth of some as of yet unclassified emotional state.

Anyway, here's a brief recap from when I went up to Zuccotti Park with two friends (Monday, October 3rd).

* * *

Between 5:30 and 6:00 we marched through the financial district of New York City, forcing some streets to close temporarily and keeping some cars and cabs waiting. Though our numbers were in the hundreds and not the thousands, it was satisfying if for no other reason than we were a nuisance, a small plug in the flow of the city. (Certainly this is why, aside from the more obvious reasons (real and symbolic), it makes perfect sense to march through that particular part of the city -- pressure through inconvenience.)

At one point an expensively dressed woman turned to a police officer as she was trying to get through the crowd (more accurately, as she was waiting for the crowd to pass) and asked, with utter annoyance, "Could you make them go home this week?"

Someone else, a man with a thick New York accent standing outside a restaurant smoking, said to his friend with complete contempt, "The dregs of society," as we passed.

Another man, as the chant "WE! ARE! THE 99%!" made its way along, yelled from a doorway, "I! AM! THE 1%!" But the strange thing about this man -- at least judging from the company around him as well as the way he acted, dressed, and spoke -- was that he was almost certainly not part of the 1%. He struck me more as someone who was simply trying to be antagonistic for the sake of it, or perhaps someone with no real understanding of what being the top 1% really means and therefore deluded himself into thinking he was part of it.

Some of the march was a little bizarre -- bizarre in the sense that we passed some very nice restaurants filled with dressy people drinking wine and chatting to one another, and some of them were looking away on purpose (our presence -- loud chanting and banging drums -- could not be missed). Other people in the area -- waitstaff, residents, various workers -- gathered by their building's front door (or peaked out), taking pictures when we walked by as if the circus had just arrived in town.

When we approached the Post Office a heavyset woman employee inside had a big smile on her face and was pumping her fists in the air, dancing to the rhythm of the drumming. Another worker -- a man with a short beard (or perhaps just a mustache) -- was applauding with a look of respect and thankfulness on his face while standing behind the counter. The other workers were looking up and smiling, though they seemed to be concentrating more on getting things done (or at least pretending to). It was very nice to see this after experiencing the other, more negative reactions. (At least some people get it, I thought.)

A little later I smiled again when I noticed a street vendor giving the peace sign to us and smiling as we passed, though I cynically wondered after the fact if his reaction was sincere or just an attempt to grab some quick business.

* * *

The camp itself seemed to be well run.

A couple of people were peeling various kinds of fruit when we arrived, and shortly thereafter a big bowl of tasty looking fruit salad was placed on the table. (People were alerted to its presence by a guy who yelled, well, "FRUIT SALAD!") No restrictions were put on who could eat what; the food was placed on the table when ready and up for grabs to occupiers and tourists alike.

* * *
Here is a map of the park taken from The Occupied Wall Street Journal (which I will scan shortly if no good copies make their way online) [update: HERE ]:

* * *

Early on I noticed some commotion and a small crowd, so I made my way towards it. A disheveled man was holding a sign that read "Nazi Bankers Wall Street", and he was going on a long (endless) rant about Jews and Wall Street and all kinds of other ridiculous anti-Semitic nonsense. I'm sure that pretty much everyone -- if not everyone -- was only standing there listening to him because it was such a spectacle. A few people yelled that they didn't want to hear his racism, but the man persisted. Others were laughing. And there was lots of media there, which fueled him more. My immediate reaction was to see this as an illustration of one of the inherent dangers in forming a group that's generally accepting and all inclusive (he could do real damage if not kept in check), but people there had their own way of dealing with it:

The two people holding disapproving signs followed him around for awhile, and eventually I never saw the man again.

But before he disappeared, another guy came up to him and started yelling in his face:

"The people on Wall Street are not Jews! They people on Wall Street are white Anglo-Saxon Protestants! Got it?!? We don't want your hate here! This is not about race, religion or color!"

The irony was too funny.

* * *

Along the outskirts of the park sit a band of vendors peddling their wares.

For all I know they might very well park themselves there for most of the year, but of course it's much more likely they were in those spots to take advantage of the occupation and the publicity it was generating.

It struck me as parasitic behavior at worst, opportunistic at best. But at the same time, I can't really blame them too much. It's smart business (I doubt being a vendor is easy or particularly lucrative).

* * *

A couple of places in Zuccotti Park are covered with various signs the protesters have made. The signs sit on the ground all day on display (as information and decoration), and when the marches take place, everyone grabs their sign (or a sign) and carries it with them. When they return, the signs are placed back in the designated space. (Most of them are made on the back of pizza boxes.)

The occupied area is never totally abandoned. During the march I went on, some people stayed behind to, I imagine, "hold the area" -- i.e., keep watch over it / keep the attention and spectacle aspect of the occupation alive (a group played drums at the camp the entire time we were gone). Many of the people who went on the march were people who came just to join in for the day, which illustrates part of the importance of the occupation itself: holding a public space where people can come and join whenever they have the opportunity. It's something constant and on-going, and a great place for organizing.

memory lane

2011-09-26T23:55:00.007-04:00

Some unintentional humor from days long passed, found in an old notebook the other day while I was rummaging. As silly as it sounds to me now (the last paragraph, mainly), I'm fairly certain it was written in earnest.

"A man caught my ear as I was browsing the literature section in a bookstore today. I heard the words "Dickens" and "authentic poetry" in the same sentence and decided to hone in on the conversation. I walked over to the poetry section where the voices were coming from and saw a man sitting on the floor with a large stack of books and -- as the cliche would suggest -- a huge beard. He was speaking with a younger intellectual looking man about the younger man's poetry. As I drifted away to another shelf I heard the words "child prodigy" followed by the magic skeleton key to all things eye-enlarging: "Rimbaud." I couldn’t believe it!

The Beard then told the young man about a 19 year old musician who went to Mozart to ask for help. Mozart turned him down because he was too young. The young musician retorted: "But you composed symphonies when you were 5!" To which Mozart replied, "Yes, but I didn’t need any help!"

How perfect! The Beard used that story to prove his point and to get the young man to stop bothering him.

I moved in closer, reaching down for Baudelaire, hoping The Beard would notice and comment, confident that I could stand up to whatever he dealt me (I know a considerable bit about Baudelaire). He made no comment. I moved in again, my back turned in hopes that he would see the Artaud drawing and quote on the back of my shirt. He didn't. Like a true poet he paid no attention to me, his mind too busy with his books."

* * *
DIY jacket I wore during my late high school years

I used to make ink drawings of the likes of Artaud and Rimbaud and place them next to various excerpts from their writing. I'd draw them on old white shirts and cut them out (in squares or rectangles) so that I could safety pin them to whatever shirt or jacket I wanted to wear. I still remember the Artaud quote referenced above:

"You are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary man does not know, you exceed the normal level, and it is for this that men refuse to forgive you, you poison their peace of mind, you undermine their stability. You have irrepressible pains whose essence is to be inadaptable to any known state, indescribable in words. You have repeated and shifting pains, incurable pains, pains beyond imagining, pains which are neither of the body nor of the soul, but which partake of both. And I share your suffering, and I ask you: who dares to ration our relief? We are not going to kill ourselves just yet. In the meantime, leave us the hell alone."

(For some reason it never seemed to occur to me to make the excerpts short enough for someone to actually be able to read!)

I remember another shirt I made with some Crass lyrics on the front and a stencil of the Crass symbol (see jacket above) spray painted in red on back. I wore it frequently on a road trip I took with a friend across the United States a week after we graduated high school.

While in San Francisco, a homeless man stopped me in the street, pulled the front of my shirt taut, and read the following (I stood there until he was finished):

Be exactly who you want to be, do what you want to do
I am he and she is she but you're the only you
No one else has got your eyes to see the things you see
It's up to you to change your life and my life's up to me
The problems that you suffer from are problems that you make
The shit we have to climb through is the shit we choose to take
If you don't like the life you live, change it now it's yours
Nothing has effect if you don't recognize the cause
If the program's not the one you want, get up, turn off the set
It's only you that can decide what life you're gonna get

Or maybe it was:

If you don't like the rules they make, refuse to play their game
If you don't want to be a number, don't give them your name
If you don't want to be called out, refuse to hear their question
Silence is a virtue, use it for your own protection
They'll try to make you play their game -- refuse to show your face
If you don't want to be beaten down, refuse to join their race
Be exactly who you want to be, do what you want to do
I am he and she is she but you're the only you

(I think it was the latter.) In either case, after reading it he looked up with a huge smile on his face, gave me a thumbs up, and walked away.

* * *
Years later I saw the following in the book Post Secret. I smiled and felt sad at the same time.

11:08PM

2011-09-21T23:29:00.011-04:00

       "What are you waiting for me to tell you? What good will it do? What if I say that this isn't a funeral, that it's a holiday celebration, that if you stick around the band will end up playing 'Damit-the-Hell the Fun's All Over'? Or do you expect to see some magic, the dead rise up and walk again? Go home, he's as dead as he'll ever die. That's the end in the beginning and there's no encore. There'll be no miracles and there's no one here to preach a sermon. Go home, forget him. Go home and don't think about him. He's dead and you've got all you can do to think about you.
       I've told you to go home, but you keep standing there. Don't you know it's hot out here tonight? So what if you wait for what little I can tell you? Can I say in twenty minutes what was building twenty years and ended in twenty seconds? What are you waiting for, when all I can tell you is his name? And when I tell you, what will you know that you didn't know already, except, perhaps, his name?
       All right, you do the listening in the moonlight and I'll try to tell you in the moonlight. Then you go home and forget it. Forget it. His name was Troy Davis and they killed him. His name was Davis and he was tall and some folks thought him handsome. His name was Davis and his face was black and his hair was short. He's dead, uninterested. Can you see him? Think of your brother or your cousin John.

His lips were thick with an upward curve at the corners. He often smiled. He had good eyes and a pair of fast hands, and he had a heart. He thought about things and he felt deeply. I won't call him noble because what's such a word to do with one of us? His name was Davis, Troy Davis, and, like any man, he was born to a woman to live awhile and fall and die. So that's his tale to the minute. His name was Davis and for a while he lived among us, and those who knew him loved him and he died. So why are you waiting? You've heard it all. Why wait for more, when all I can do is repeat it?
       Very well, so I'll tell you. So he died; and those who loved him are gathered to mourn him, and those who didn't know him are mourning him also. It's as simple as that and as short as that. His name was Davis and he was black and they killed him. Isn't that enough to tell? Isn't it all you need to know? Isn't that enough to appease your thirst for drama and send you home to sleep it off? Go take a drink and forget it. Or read it in The Daily News. His name was Davis and they killed him.
       Aren't you tired of such stories? Aren't you sick of the blood? Then why listen, why don't you go? It's hot out here. There's the odor of embalming fluids. The beer is cold in the taverns, the saxophones will be mellow at the Savoy; plenty good-laughing-lies will be told in the barber shops and beauty parlors; and they'll be sermons in two hundred churches tomorrow, and plenty of laughs at the movies. Here you have only the same old story. The story's too short and too simple.
       Troy Davis is one with the ages. But what's that to do with you in this heat under this moon? Now he's part of history, and he has received his true freedom. Next he'll be in a box with the bolts tightened down. He'll be in the box and we'll be in there with him. It's dark in that box and it's crowded. It has a cracked ceiling and a clogged-up toilet in the hall. It has rats and roaches, and it's far, far too expensive a dwelling. The air is bad and it'll be cold this winter. Troy Davis will be crowded and he'll need his room. 'Tell them to get out of the box,' that's what he would say if you could hear him.
       So there you have it. Troy Davis will soon be cold bones in the ground. And don't be fooled, for these bones shall not rise again. You and I will still be in the box. I don't know if Troy Davis had a soul. I don't know if you have a soul. I only know that you are men and women of flesh and blood; and that blood will spill and flesh will grow cold. When he was alive he was our hope, hope for the law and hope for justice. But why worry over a hope that's dead? So there's only one thing left to tell and I've already told it. His name was Troy Davis, he believed in Brotherhood, he got our hopes up and he died."

                                                                                    --text (somewhat altered) from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952)

comments on two current events (and one more in the comments section)

2011-09-19T19:15:00.059-04:00

This post -- well, part 2 -- feels more like a sketch for something lengthier. But since I'll never end up writing the lengthier piece, the seed will have to suffice.

1.) Today President Obama unveiled his new deficit reduction plan which includes a minimum tax for all households earning more than $1 million a year. The tax is officially called the "Buffet rule" after the popular editorial, Stop Coddling the Super-Rich, that billionaire Warren Buffet wrote for the New York Times in mid-August. The twisted irony here is amusing. Once again, it's only the super-rich whose opinions seem to get any traction!

2.) The Occupation of Wall Street has thus far been underwhelming. Two thousand people (at most) showed up on Saturday, with somewhere between 200-400 people camping out overnight. The event is supposed to (I think) continue on for about two months, so it could easily swell to various sizes throughout or dwindle and fade into nothing after a few days. Time will tell.

But that isn't why I'm writing this.

Reading about the event I came to find out that $2,800 in pizza orders were called in to Liberato's Pizza (NYC) on Sunday. The orders came in from all over the world. (This also happened, I just found out, to a pizza place in Wisconsin back when protestors were occupying the Capitol building.) What's interesting to me about this is the hint it gives about the future of protesting.

I think we can all agree that the effectiveness of the traditional protest model -- getting approved for a permit, advertising, showing up at the appointed time and leaving when the permit has expired -- is minimal, at best. But now, because of the ease with which we're able connect with one another, new ways and models are becoming possible.

I wrote the following in June, 2009 (at the outset of the Iranian uprising): "Not only do we feel part of it, but because of the way technology was utilized, people from all over the world can (to some degree) take part in, and support, revolutions. The implications of this are obviously immense." The form this took in Iran was the sharing of uncensored outside information, as well as people around the world helping Iranians access the Internet. Recently -- as we saw in Wisconsin and Wall Street and presumably many other places as well -- the form this "outside participation" took was simply that which was most practical: the supplying of food. But isn't this seemingly insignificant act another harbinger of what is to come? Does it not suggest that the potential for large scale, sustained, high pressure protests is greater than it has ever been? Protests that can shut down entire cities (or corporations) for months. Protests that have real leverage. Protests that don't cede their power on the dotted line.

Granted, protests that have lasted for months have happened before -- Egypt, recently, and Syria, currently (once they last long enough they're called uprisings and revolutions). In America, however, the prospect of this seems increasingly less likely (the many reasons for this are a subject for another time, though the single largest contributor is probably the fact that Americans don't view themselves as being ruled by a tyrannical elite). But now the young -- who have the unique ability to spend long stretches of time doing as they please, especially during the summer -- and the poor/unemployed -- who obviously lack the means to travel somewhere distant or to stay somewhere overnight if it costs money -- now these two large groups have the potential opportunity to mobilize in unprecedented ways. Instead of a few thousand people having to emerge from a single location, both of these groups can now be freed up to swarm any city in the country with nothing but a bag of clothes in their hand and money for a return trip home in their pocket. And they can stay as long as they're being supported. Granted, this would have to be incredibly well organized -- a Kickstarter of sorts (though it'd have to be live and mutable) -- for protests and revolutions.

It's certainly true that this might be overly idealistic -- apathy might be a barrier too great to be overcome -- but, unlike a decade ago, it's not impossible. And, for me at least, I think it's potentially a very real way to create change without resorting to violence (which is something I'd all but given up on).

The pessimistic way to view the slew of worldwide pizza orders is to see it as evidence of an ideological shift in the way people perceive themselves. Adbusters, who organized the event, promoted the occupation by saying, "On September 17, 20,000 people will swarm into lower Manhattan and occupy Wall Street." The joke that has apparently been circulating on the Internet is that they did show up... on Twitter. As the online and off-line worlds continue to mingle, this kind of "virtual participation" could easily become a way for people to shift the responsibility they feel burdened with from the real to the virtual. And, let's face it, this has probably already happened to some extent. (Isn't it likely that more people would have gone to New York on Saturday had they not been able to "show up" virtually?) The end result of such a mentality might be summed up with the following image: a computer screen sitting in front of the White House displaying a live chat room filled with 1.1 million people texting voraciously. The room is called "End the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan NOW!!!"

* * *
Watching CNN this evening I was surprised to see Wolf Blitzer mention the Wall Street Occupation. Like everything seems to be on the news, it was perpetually "up next," so I sat and sat, and watched and waited, and many hours or days or weeks later (I lost track), the brief coverage of the protest/occupation finally arrived. And what route do you think CNN took to cover it? An interview. Who did they interview? Ray Kelly, New York City's Police Commissioner! I'm not making that up.

ten years later

2011-09-11T00:45:00.005-04:00

I.

09/02/11: "[N]ew details of a 2006 Iraq house raid in which an Iraqi family was allegedly bound and executed by U.S. forces [has recently been disclosed]. The cable excerpts a letter written by Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, to Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Secretary of State at the time. Alston describes how 10 Iraqis living on a farm were killed. The dead included a 28-year-old man and his wife, the man’s 74-year-old mother, his sister, a visiting relative and five young children ranging in age from five months to five years old. According to the cable, U.S. forces were fired upon when they approached the property, resulting in a firefight. The American troops then entered the house, bound all of the residents, and executed them. Shortly thereafter, an air raid was called in to destroy the home." [X]

* * *
"It seemed like everywhere we left..."

"...if the enemy wasn't there when we got there..."

"...they were when we left."

"We seemed to be sorta growing them, you know?"

"Planting them, like seeds."

"Wherever we went, we sorta bred the enemy."

"He just came out of nowhere..."

"It was almost as though, if we weren't there..."

"...there would be none."

Images & text from Joseph Strick's documentary Interviews With My Lai Veterans (1970)

II.

The following was written by Wallace Shawn in 2001, shortly after the destruction of the World Trade Center. (Originally published in The Nation magazine.)

To: The Foreign Policy Therapist

From: The United States of America

November 12, 2001

Dear Foreign Policy Therapist,

I don't know what to do. I want to be safe. I want safety. But I have a terrible problem: It all began several weeks ago when I lost several thousand loved ones to a horrible terrorist crime. I feel an overwhelming need to apprehend and punish those who committed this unbearably cruel act, but they designed their crime in such a diabolical fashion that I cannot do so, because they arranged to be killed themselves while committing the crime, and they are now all dead. I feel in my heart that none of these men, however, could possibly have planned this crime themselves and that another man, who is living in a cave in Afghanistan, must surely have done so. At any rate I know that some people he knows knew some of the people who committed the crime and possibly gave them some money. I feel an overwhelming need to kill this man in the cave, but the location of the cave is unknown to me, and so it's impossible to find him. He's been allowed to stay in the cave, however, by the fanatical rulers of the country where the cave is, Afghanistan, so I feel an overwhelming need to kill those rulers. As they've moved from place to place, though, I haven't found them, but I've succeeded in finding and killing many young soldiers who guarded them and shepherds who lived near them. Nonetheless, I do not feel any of the expected "closure," and in fact I'm becoming increasingly depressed and am obsessed with nameless fears. Can you help me?

To: The United States of America

From: The Foreign Policy Therapist

Dear United States,

In psychological circles, we call your problem "denial." You cannot face your real problem, so you deny that it exists and create instead a different problem that you try to solve. Meanwhile, the real problem, denied and ignored, becomes more and more serious. In your case, your real problem is simply the way that millions and millions of people around the world feel about you.

Who are these people? They share the world with you--one single world, which works as a unified mechanism. These people are the ones for whom the mechanism's current way of working--call it the status quo--offers a life of anguish and servitude. They're well aware that this status quo, which for them is a prison, is for you (or for the privileged among you), on the contrary, so close to a paradise that you will never allow their life to change. These millions of people are in many cases uneducated--to you they seem unsophisticated--and yet they still somehow know that you have played an enormous role in keeping this status quo in place. And so they know you as the enemy. They feel they have to fight you. Some of them hate you. And some will gladly die in order to hurt you--in order to stop you.

They know where the fruits of the planet, the oil and the spices, are going. And when your actions cause grief in some new corner of the world, they know about it. And when you kill people who are poor and desperate, no matter what explanation you give for what you've done, their anger against you grows. You can't kill all these millions of people, but almost any one of them, in some way, some place, or some degree, can cause damage to you.

But here's a strange fact about these people whom you consider unsophisticated: Most of the situations in the world in which they perceive "injustice" are actually ones in which you yourself would see injustice if you yourself weren't deeply involved. Even though they may dress differently and live differently, their standards of justice seem oddly similar to yours.

Your problem, ultimately, can only be solved over decades, through a radical readjustment of the way you think and behave. If the denial persists, you are sure to continue killing more poor and desperate people, causing the hatred against you to grow, until at a certain point there will be no hope for you. But it's not too late. Yes, there are some among your current enemies who can no longer be reached by reason. Yes, there are some who are crazy. But most are not. Most people are not insane. If you do change, it is inevitable that over time people will know that you have changed, and their feeling about you will also change, and the safety you seek will become a possibility.

_ _ _ _

2011-09-05T17:17:00.014-04:00

"Why worry about them?"

"Oh, my darling, why is it that love makes me hate the world? It's supposed to have quite the opposite effect. I feel as though all mankind, and God, too, were in a conspiracy against us."

"They are, they are."

"But we've got our happiness in spite of them; here and now, we've taken possession of it. They can't hurt us, can they?"

"Not to-night; not now."

"Not for how many nights?"

—Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited (1945)

Paris, Texas (1984)

Voltaire Rolls in His Grave

2011-08-31T23:57:00.014-04:00

Voltaire's Death Mask

"In the castle of Baron Thunder-ten-tronckn in Westphalia there lived a youth, endowed by Nature with the most gentle character." —Candide (opening sentence)

A few months ago while I was in bed trying to fall asleep, the word "Westphalia" from Voltaire's Candide randomly popped into my head. Instantly I realized how much "Westphalia" sounded like "West Philadelphia," and, as someone who grew up watching too much '90s television is wont to do, I wondered how the first sentence of Candide could be re-written to match the theme song of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. In my head I sung: "In Westphalia, born and raised, on a courtyard is where I spent most of my days." And that was enough to amuse me until I fell asleep.

Weeks later I remembered it again and decided to see if anyone had ever toyed with the connection.

After searching various phrases, I found the following (via Philosophy Archive):

"In the country of Westphalia, born and raised, in the castle of the most noble Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh, I spent most of my days, lived a youth whom Nature had endowed with a most sweet disposition."

Was this someone's subtle prank? Considering that this exact opening sentence is to be found nowhere else online, yes, I'd say it is. Also, the key phrase "I spent most of my days" is clearly just jammed in nonsensically.

Someone else, in a YouTube comment, went even further:

"In Westphalia born and raised,
Learning from Pangloss was where I spent most of my days.
Philosophizing, thinking, dreaming all year
And knowing that the world was nothing to fear.
When innocent Cunegonde was up to no good,
Dropped her handkerchief and in a flirty mood.
I gave her one little kiss and the baron got scared
He said Go somewhere, as long as it's not here!"

And that, my friends, is how dreams become nightmares.

Maugham on Adolescence

2011-08-25T18:39:00.004-04:00

Scorpio Rising (1964)

"It is an illusion that youth is happy, and illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life. The strange thing is that each one who has gone through that bitter disillusionment adds to it in his turn, unconsciously, by the power within him which is stronger than himself." —Of Human Bondage

William Somerset Maugham, 1959

"I read a lot of classical books, like The Return of the Native and all, and I like them, and I read a lot of war books and mysteries and all, but they don't knock me out too much. What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though. I wouldn't mind calling this Isak Dinesen up. And Ring Lardner, except that D.B. told me he's dead. You take that book Of Human Bondage, by Somerset Maugham, though. I read it last summer. It's a pretty good book and all, but I wouldn't want to call Somerset Maugham up. I don't know, he just isn't the kind of guy I'd want to call up, that's all." —Holden Caulfield, one of literature's quintessential adolescents, from The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

Scorpio Rising (1964)

Mystery in Aden, part IV

2011-08-21T21:19:00.012-04:00

(Parts I, II, III)

* * *
Once more, the enigmatic photo:

(Far left: "The Bearded Man")

The second most remarkable thing about the above photo -- or the first, if you've no interest in Rimbaud -- is the role played by various online Rimbaud enthusiasts (mostly on the Mag4.net forum). Together they provided theories, exchanged information, and deciphered various clues that led to many important questions and discoveries. An on-going creative conversation took place which, among other things, resulted in the identification of Henry Lucereau, something that had not yet been done even after the photo had been vetted for approximately two years by Rimbaud biographer Jean-Jacques Lefrère. This discovery was incredibly important because it created a concrete time frame in which the photo was forced to reside -- somewhere between September 1879 and August 1880, the dates when Lucereau was in Aden. To paraphrase Jacques Desse, one of the booksellers who discovered the Rimbaud photo, the controversy and progress of research related to this picture would not exist without the Internet. On the other hand, Desse recognizes the downside of democratization and immediacy: all voices are placed on the same plane without any "traceability." Thus it becomes very difficult to discern fact from fiction.

And so here we are.

In my previous post Henri Lucereau had just been identified in the photo, a fact that ruled out the possibility of Rimbaud if the bearded man on the left was Rimbaud's employer Alfred Bardey (which was commonly assumed at the time). This is because Bardey was not in Aden in August 1880, and Rimbaud was not there before mid-August 1880. And we know that Lucereau was not there after August 1880 (as I wrote previously, Lucereau made a last passage through Aden between July and October, which, it has been said, can be dated to approximately the 10 - 20th of August; he was killed in the surroundings of Harar on October 20, 1880). Therefore, in order for Lucereau and Rimbaud to be in the photo, the date of the picture had to be August 1880.

So, I wrote, "who is the bearded man if not Bardey? Lefrère doesn't rule out the possibility that it's Colonel Dubar (brother-in-law of Jules Suel), or even Suel himself..." Six-months after I made those remarks, Jacques Desse emailed me a link to the research he'd been working on with fellow book-dealer Alban Caussé. The Bardey double had been identified: photographer and African explorer Georges Révoil.

(Révoil - taken sometime in 1880, before July 25... or possibly not until 1884!)
(The Bearded Man, 1879-80; Georges Révoil, 1881)

Since that time there have been some new developments, many of which delve deeper into the identity of the bearded figure.

But first, to give an indication of the murky and transient nature of this whole ordeal, let me go back again to Lucereau. After he was positively identified in the photo, some people thought that his presence alone -- irrespective of Bardey's presence -- prohibited Rimbaud from being in the picture. Lucereau, they thought, was not in Aden in August. But this theory was debunked by a signed letter (discovered by Jacques Desse) that Lucereau sent from Aden to the consul of France, dated August 13, 1880. (The authenticity of the document has not been disputed.)

* * *
Doubt was cast on the narrative of Révoil-as-the-bearded-man when Rimbaldian Jacques Bienvenu posted months of research on his personal blog, Rimbaud Ivre.

Enter Dr. Dutrieux:

In February 1881, Dutrieux, after being informed that Lucereau had been killed a few months earlier, wrote a letter to an Egyptian newspaper. "The brotherhood that unites all African travelers put me in sympathy with Mr. Lucereau... and I owe it to myself to honor the memory of the unfortunate traveler." In the letter he mentions the time he spent with Lucereau in Aden, a mere fifteen days in November... 1879 -- a full year before Rimbaud had arrived! And this short stretch seems to be the only time they ever met. Thus, Dutrieux's photo and letters not only cast doubt on Révoil, they also cast a very real doubt on, and possibly even disprove, the presence of Rimbaud. And so the identity of the bearded man once again takes on crucial importance. Is it Révoil or Dutrieux?

Well, after all of this came to light, Jacques Desse and Jean-Jacques Lefrère speculated that it was not impossible for Dutrieux to be in Aden in August 1880. Their reasoning? Dutrieux was in Egypt during the summer of 1880 as part of a mission to fight slavery, but when he found out that his mission would not extend beyond the city of Siut, he gave up. It seems not unlikely, they surmised, that Dutrieux would then go to Aden (easy travel via the Red Sea) in order to talk to his friend Lucereau (before Lucereau left on his travels), as well as to gather information. Not a very convincing explanation, especially in light of Dutrieux's letter, which never mentions a second meeting.

Another idea that suggests Dutrieux's presence in August 1880 is the fact that he had been to Zanzibar. This is interesting because we know that Rimbaud spoke of going to Zanzibar in his letters, and the idea here is that someone (Dutrieux?) put the idea into his head. This is quite tenuous, though I suppose it is somewhat suggestive.

All of this was put to rest, however, when German scientist and literary detective Reinhard Pabst discovered an autographed letter of Dutrieux's dated August 16, 1880. It begins: "I am writing from Siut [a city south of Cairo, now known as Asyut] where I have been a few days."

This means, of course, that if the bearded man is indeed Dutrieux, then the photo was taken in 1879, not in August 1880. This was more-or-less known before with Dutrieux's other letter recounting his 15 day meeting with Lucereau in 1879, but now there could be no doubt about his absence during the only period when Rimbaud and Lucereau could have met.

Since Pabst's remarks are amusing as well as informative, I will quote (via translation) what he makes of this:

"Even if the doctor had thrown his pen into the corner of the room and left for Aden as soon as he finished the second page of his letter ... he would not arrive in time for Lucereau's departure. Even the hero of Jules Verne, Phileas Fogg (Around the World in Eighty Days) could not have made this happen! To make the 1,310 mile journey on the Red Sea from Suez to Aden around 1880, a steamboat would take eight days... In addition, Siut / Assiut is located several hundred kilometers from Suez. And why would Dutrieux have to go so suddenly to Aden? ... Defenders of the bold hypothesis of Rimbaud are now in serious trouble. They can still keep the photo taken outside the Universe Hotel as part of Rimbaud's iconography, but it seems more uncertain than ever. And if they do, then how?"

Jacques Desse and Alban Caussé have done so in various ways, one of which points out that the photo Jacques Bienvenu used of Georges Révoil was crudely retouched, as are all of Révoil's other "official" pictures. The majority of them were taken taken by Eugene Pirou, probably in the late 1880s, and in them Révoil's baldness was retouched because it was considered to be unbecoming for a diplomat.

So, Révoil's baldness could no longer be used as a means in which to conclude that he is not the mysterious bearded man (which, among other things, Bienvenu (and others) had done up until then).

The "unofficial" pictures of Révoil give an entirely different impression:

There are also other representations that have been found of Dutrieux that, according to Desse, have been ignored and/or glossed over by Bienvenu because they don't look much like the man in the Aden photo:

(Left: The tomb of Dutrieux; Right: Engraved portrait, "probably from a photo taken in 1877")

And historian of photography André Gunthert had another way of looking at the photo, namely, the technique. The objects in the photo, he pointed out, are marked by a slight tremor. This shows that the photo was taken using gelatin dry plates, a technique that replaced the collodion process in the 1880s. "There are no known photos of collodion which have made a blur of this type (characterized by an equal distribution over the entire image, a very small amplitude and two distinct edges)."

Why is this important? Because Georges Révoil was in Aden August 7, 1880 with photographic equipment that "perfectly matches" the characteristics of the Aden photo. André Gunthert (paraphrased via translation): "Although the dry plate begins to be used by avant-garde photographers in the early 1880s, its use remained uncommon ... until the middle of the decade. It [is] therefore particularly interesting to see [it used] early in the summer of 1880, which is counted among the earliest examples preserved in the practice of the dry plate. Fortunately, Jacques Desse and Alban Caussé support this hypothesis by examining the archive of explorer Georges Révoil... The blur from the image that everyone can see is the signature technique of gelatin, and one of the few irrefutable facts about this document. That this image has been executed in 1879 is very unlikely. This hypothesis would require someone to prove that another photographer practiced gelatin in Aden before Révoil." (At the same time it must be said that André Gunthert wrote all of this thinking that the bearded man was likely Dutrieux. And it was before Reinhard Pabst had discovered the letter showing that Dutrieux was not in Aden in August 1880). Regarding '79 vs '80, Jacques Desse wrote that gelatin silver was certified in Aden in August 1880, but "certainly not" in November 1879...

So where does that leave things? Clearly the technical details of the photo add compelling reasons to consider Révoil over Dutrieux (or the unlikely scenario of Dutrieux somehow in '79), but what about the likeness? Who does that favor? The strange hairline makes one want to proclaim Dutrieux. The eyebrows, too. The eyes, however, match much better with Révoil (though not the eyelids)...

Here are the ears and beard-line:

Unfortunately I think the Aden ear is a little bit too blurry for anything to be determined with certainty, but it might slightly favor... I'll let you decide.

I think it's also worth noting that the Dutrieux photo has the distinct advantage of being taken from a very similar angle as The Bearded Man, something that's not true for the most convincing Révoil photo.

The verdict? Well, much of the media has already determined -- prematurely, in my opinion -- that this is NOT Rimbaud. The consensus is that the man is Dutrieux, which, because of his letters, means that there's no way he could have been on the terrace of the Universe Hotel in 1880. Even Wikipedia outright states that the presence of Rimbaud has been completely debunked. Referencing an article Jacques Bienvenu wrote for Le Monde, it says: "The man sitting on the right was believed (in 2010) to be be Arthur Rimbaud but turned out not to be."

But, wait! As if to demonstrate the perils of the Internet, there's a document on THIS BLOG that claims evidence proving that Dutrieux was present in Aden during the month of August, 1880. The problem, however, is that I don't know who the author is, where the document comes from, or even if the document has been deemed authentic. As far as I can tell, no one has even commented on it! (To add a modicum of credibility, I found it via a link on the main page of the Mag4.net Rimbaud website.)

* * *
Personally I think there's still a decent chance the mustached man is (inexplicably) Rimbaud, but a lot of that has to do with the very unscientific and biased fact that, unlike most, I happen to think that the face on the terrace looks a lot like him (or at least how one might expect him to look)... The droopy eyes, the ear, the puffy bottom lip...

Reversed and contrasted image revealing a somewhat gaunt face (via contrast):

Reversed image with blur removed:

But then again, what do we really know about the face of Rimbaud?

Note: Not every single detail has been relayed here. Dutrieux, for example, wrote that he was "dying" when he came back from Zanzibar and arrived in Aden in 1879. This is noteworthy because it doesn't seem to match with the image of The Bearded Man in the photo. But other people believe this remark to be hyperbole on his part (citing other letters he wrote etc)... There are simply too many details like this to include every single one, and it gets complicated when there are various sides arguing different things. Instead, since very little of this information is available in English, I tried to give an overview of the photo in a way that allowed me to shape the developments into a sort of narrative (albeit a somewhat simplified one).

Credits: Jean-Jacques Lefrère, Jacques Desse & Alban Caussé (their blog), Jacques Bienvenu (his blog), Reinhard Pabst, André Gunthert, and Mag4.net, as well as a few other articles I've long lost track of. For more on Révoil and Dutrieux (with more pictures of Révoil), see THIS.

On Thought Diving and its Many Uses (blog game experiment 2)

2011-08-07T19:50:00.018-04:00

What follows is my friend Ellen's contribution to the blog game / experiment that I proposed in January. A topic was provided (in this case, thought-divers, deep divers, divers, or any and all variation(s) thereof), along with various materials (images and text), and the participant was asked to make a post following the instructions I gave. (I recommend taking a look at the materials -- before or after reading the post -- but everything that follows certainly works perfectly well as a stand-alone piece.)

Anyone who enjoys this will want to check out Ellen's excellent blog altarpiece.

The first blog game / experiment (with a different topic -- Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop) can be viewed HERE.

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Go, speed the stars of Thought
On to their shining goals—
The sower scatters broad his seed;
The wheat thou strew’st be souls. [1]

I. Exploration

The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every expansion. The mind that grows could not predict the times, the means, the mode of that spontaneity. God enters by a private door into every individual. Long prior to the age of reflection is the thinking of the mind. Out of darkness it came insensibly into the marvellous light of to-day. In the period of infancy it accepted and disposed of all impressions from the surrounding creation after its own way. Whatever any mind doth or saith is after a law, and this native law remains over it after it has come to reflection or conscious thought. In the most worn, pedantic, introverted self-tormentor’s life, the greatest part is incalculable by him, unforeseen, unimaginable, and must be, until he can take himself up by his own ears. What am I? What has my will done to make me that I am? Nothing. I have been floated into this thought, this hour, this connection of events, by secret currents of might and mind, and my ingenuity and willfulness have not thwarted, have not aided to an appreciable degree. [1]

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Herman Melville

Nay, I do not oscillate in Emerson’s rainbow, but prefer rather to hang myself in mine own halter than swing in any other man’s swing. Yet I think Emerson is more than a brilliant fellow. Be his stuff begged, borrowed, or stolen, or of his own domestic manufacture he is an uncommon man. Swear he is a humbug — then is he no common humbug. […] The truth is that we are all sons, grandsons, or nephews or great-nephews of those who go before us. No one is his own sire. [2]

We do not determine what we will think. We only open our senses, clear the way as we can all obstruction from the fact, and suffer the intellect to see. We have little control over our thoughts. We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven and so fully engage us that we take no thought for the morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own.
[...]
Each truth that a writer acquires is a lantern which he turns full on what facts and thoughts lay already in his mind, and behold, all the mats and rubbish which had littered his garret become precious. Every trivial fact in his private biography becomes an illustration of this new principle, revisits the day, and delights all men by its piquancy and new charm. Men say, Where did he get this? And think there was something divine in his life. But no; they have myriads of facts just as good, would they only get lamp to ransack their attics withal. [1]

Now, there is a something about every man elevated above mediocrity, which is, for the most part, instinctuly perceptible. This I see in Mr Emerson. And, frankly, for the sake of the argument, let us call him a fool; — then had I rather be a fool than a wise man. — I love all men who dive. Any fish can swim near the surface, but it takes a great whale to go down stairs five miles or more; & if he don’t attain the bottom, why, all the lead in Galena can’t fashion the plumet that will. I’m not talking of Mr Emerson now — but of the whole corps of thought-divers, that have been diving & coming up again with bloodshot eyes since the world began. [2]

II. Whaling

Text of this section excerpted from Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives.

And then one of them said Señor Salvatierra, we want to talk to you about Cesárea Tinajero.
...
Ah, I said to them, Cesárea Tinajero, where did you hear about her, boys? […] We haven’t read anything she wrote, they said, not anywhere, and that got us interested. Got you interested how, boys? […] Then I raised my hand and before they could answer I poured them more Los Suicidas mezcal and then I sat on the edge of the armchair and in my very backside I swear I felt as if I’d perched on the edge of a razor.

And when there was only a little bit left I poured a last round of Los Suicidas, saying a mental goodbye to that old elixir of mine, and I read…the Directory of the Avant-Garde. […] And when I had finished reading that long list, the boys kneeled or stood at attention, I swear I can’t remember which and anyway it doesn’t matter, they stood at attention like soldiers or kneeled like true believers, and they drank the last drops of Los Suicidas mezcal…and I too raised my glass and drained it, toasting all our dead.

And then one of the boys asked me: where are Cesárea Tinajero’s poems? …And I said: on the last page, boys. And I looked at their fresh, attentive faces and I watched their hands turn those old pages and then I peered into their faces again… I asked them again what they thought, now that they had read a real poem by Cesárea Tinajero herself in front of them, with no talk in the way, the poem and nothing else…and they said gee, Amadeo, is this the only thing of hers you have? is this her only published poem? and I said, or maybe I whispered: why yes, boys, that’s all there is. And I added, as if to gauge what they really felt: disappointing, isn’t it?

The poem is a joke, they said, it’s easy to see…A boat? I said. Exactly, Amadeo, a boat… That was all there was left of Cesárea, I thought, a boat on a calm sea, a boat on a choppy sea, a boat on a storm. For a moment, I can tell you, my head was like a stormy sea and I couldn’t hear what the boys were saying, although I did catch some phrases, some stray words, the predictable ones, I suppose: Quetzalcoatl’s ship, the nighttime fever of some boy or girl, Captain Ahab’s encephalogram or the whale’s, the surface of the sea that for sharks is the enormous mouth of hell…And then, after I’d drunk my tequila, I filled my cup again and filled theirs, and I said that we should drink to Cesárea, and I saw their eyes, those damn boys were so happy, and the three of us raised our glasses as our little ship was tossed by the gale.

III.

Our soul before the wind sails on, Utopia-bound;
A voice calls from the deck, "What's that ahead there? — land?"
A voice from the dark crow's-nest — wild, fanatic sound —
Shouts "Happiness! Glory! Love!" — it's just a bank of sand!

Each little island sighted by the watch at night
Becomes an Eldorado, is in his belief
The Promised Land; Imagination soars; despite
The fact that every dawn reveals a barren reef.

Poor fellow, sick with love for that which never was!
Put him in irons — must we? — throw him overboard?
Mad, drunken tar, inventor of Americas...
Which, fading, make the void more bitter, more abhorred. [3]

the big lie

2011-07-28T20:18:00.015-04:00

I was going to put this on the depository and link to it on the sidebar, but since I only have 2 posts so far this month, I'm placing it here.

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If a Christian, inspired by the Bible, commits an act of terrorism, Christians (more generally, the West) are quick to say that the person could not have been a Christian because Christianity is clearly against such things (Bill O'Reilly: "Breivik is not a Christian. That's impossible. No one believing in Jesus commits mass murder. The man might have called himself a Christian on the net, but he is certainly not of that faith.") Yet when an identical act is committed by a Muslim the perpetrator is not a traitor to their religion but simply a loyal follower who's fulfilling its most extreme teachings, hence the ubiquity of the term "Islamic extremist" compared to "Christian extremist" or "Jewish extremist." This ubiquity is not based on the prevalence of the attacks in relation to their religious inspiration, it's based on the way in which the attacks are covered and portrayed by the government and the media. According to the FBI (see below), between 1980 and 2005, 7% of all terrorist attacks on the United States were carried out by Jewish extremists, while only 6% were carried out by Islamic extremists. This is a damning fact, and it proves just how much media coverage and government policy forms people's perception of reality. It should come as no surprise to us now that, after years of government and media distortion for political ends, Islamophobia is growing, and people who immerse themselves in the misinformation and false-realities created by sites like JihadWatch.org have been inspired to gun people down.

Let me briefly return to the idea that "Christian terrorist" is a self-contradictory term... Mark Twain once recalled how his preacher used to read pro-slavery passages from the Bible whenever the topic came up, thus ending any debate (as the Word of God -- if you believe it as such -- is wont to do). It's not a stretch to say that what went on in America during, before, and after Twain's life -- especially in the South -- is an example of a brand of mass terrorism that was specifically supported by, and largely perpetrated by, Christians who believed they were carrying out God's plan. These days, the Bible is not only evoked to justify anti-gay legislation and discrimination, it's also used to pit Christianity ("good") against Islam ("bad"), in a way that brings to memory the Crusades (a tradition evoked by Breivik in his manifesto).

Glenn Greenwald:"[I]t was widely assumed, based on basically nothing, that Muslims had been responsible for this attack [in Norway] and that a radical Muslim group likely perpetrated it, it was widely declared to be a "terrorist" attack. That was the word that was continuously used. And yet, when it became apparent that Muslims were not involved and that, in reality, it was a right-wing nationalist with extremely anti-Muslim, strident anti-Muslim bigotry as part of his worldview, the word "terrorism" almost completely disappeared from establishment media discourse. Instead, he began to be referred to as a "madman" or an "extremist" [or a "lone wolf"]. And it really underscores, for me, the fact that this word "terrorism," that plays such a central role in our political discourse and our law, really has no objective meaning. It’s come to mean nothing more than Muslims who engage in violence, especially when they’re Muslims whom the West dislikes."

The following numbers highlight -- in an objectively damning way -- the utter stupidity and hypocrisy of many people's perception of Muslims, terrorism, and the War on Terror.

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From Europol, the European Union's criminal intelligence agency:

[via]

Glenn Greenwald: "...[M]ore to the point, I think, is this idea that Islamic terrorism is some kind of a unique problem in Europe. There are reports issued each year by the E.U. that count the number of terrorist attacks, both successfully executed and attempted but failed. And each year, for the past five years, the number of attacks perpetrated, in general, exceeds several hundred, 200 or 300, sometimes 400. The number that are perpetrated or attempted by, quote-unquote, "Islamists," as the report calls it, people driven by Islamic ideology, religion or political grievances, is minute, something like one out of 294 in 2009, zero out of several hundred in 2007. This is the statistic that the E.U. documents every year. There are terrorist attacks in Europe. Sometimes left-wing groups perpetrate them. Sometimes right-wing groups perpetrate them. Sometimes people with domestic grievances, that don’t really fit into the left-right spectrum, attempt them or perpetrate them. But the idea that Islamic terrorism is some sort of unique threat is completely belied by the E.U.'s own statistic. This idea of equating Muslims with terrorism is an incredibly propagandistic and deceitful term. The idea is to suggest that, as several of your guests were saying, that Islam is some sort of existential threat to Western civilization, to Europe and the like, and it's propagated with this myth that terrorism is an Islamic problem. And that’s why the idea that the establishment media in the United States and in political circles equates terrorism, as a matter of definition, with violence by Muslims is so problematic, because it promotes this lie that terrorism is a function of Islamic ideology."

[via]

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Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Soil by Group, From 1980 to 2005, According to FBI Database [via] [click HERE to view the FBI document]Note: The highest number of terrorist incidents in the U.S. by region (90) took place in Puerto Rico.

Glenn Greenwald on the media's coverage of Anders Behring Breivik and the Oslo attacks: "Well, that was completely predictable. I mean, on Friday, when the attack actually took place, there was quite substantial and intense interest in what had taken place. Everybody was talking about it. There were complaints that—on Friday, that CNN wasn’t running continuous coverage. But in general, there was a lot of media interest, because at the time people thought, based on what the New York Times and other media outlets had said, based on nothing, that this was the work of an Islamic—a radical Islamic group. And at the time, I wrote, when I wrote about the unfolding story, that if it turns out to be something other than an Islamic group that was responsible, especially if it turns out to be a right-wing nationalist who’s anti-Muslim in his views, that interest in this story was going to evaporate to virtual non-existence.

And what’s really amazing is, you know, every time there’s an act of violence undertaken by someone who’s Muslim, the commentary across the spectrum links his Muslim religion or political beliefs to the violence and tries to draw meaning from it, broader meaning. And yet, the minute that it turned out that the perpetrator wasn’t Muslim, but instead was this right-wing figure, the exact opposite view arose, which is, "Oh, his views and associations aren’t relevant. It’s not fair to attribute or to blame people who share his views or who inspired him with these acts." And it got depicted as being this sort of individual crazy person with no broader political meaning, and media interest disappeared. It’s exactly the opposite of how it’s treated when violence is undertaken by someone who’s Muslim."

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From Wikipedia: "Breivik's far-right militant ideology is described in an online manifesto 2083 – A European Declaration of Independence, posted by Breivik on the day of the attacks under the anglicised pseudonym Andrew Berwick. His ultranationalist manifesto lays out his xenophobic worldview, which includes support for varying degrees of cultural conservatism, right-wing populism, anti-Islamization, "far-right Zionism", and Serbian paramilitarism. It further argues for the violent annihilation of Islam, "cultural Marxism", and multiculturalism, to preserve a Christian Europe. [...] His manifesto calls for a revolution to be led by Knights Templar. During interrogation, Breivik claimed membership in an "international Christian military order" that "fights" against "Islamic suppression". This order allegedly is called the "Knights Templar" and, according to his manifesto, has between fifteen and eighty "ordinated knights" besides an unknown number of "civilian members". Breivik has claimed that the group has several "cells" in Western countries, including two more in Norway."

The World of Broken Unicorns: Echoes of Three Fictional Searchers (Jake Blount, Larry Slade, Philip Carey)

2011-07-22T22:17:00.019-04:00

"And how many of us are there in this country? Maybe ten thousand. Maybe twenty thousand. Maybe a lot more. I been to a lot of places but I never met but a few of us. But say a man does know. He sees the world as it is and he looks back thousands of years to see how it all come about. He watched the slow agglutination of capital and power and he sees its pinnacle today. He sees America as a crazy house. He sees how men have to rob their brothers in order to live. He sees children starving and women working sixty hours a week to get to eat. He sees a whole damn army of unemployed and billions of dollars and thousands of miles of land wasted. He sees war coming. He sees how when people suffer just so much they get mean and ugly and something dies in them. But the main thing he sees is that the whole system of the world is built on a lie. And although it's as plain as the shining sun — the don't-knows have lived with that lie so long they just can't see it." —Jake Blount via Carson McCullers (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Part II, Chapter IV)

"I'm through with the Movement. I saw men didn't want to be saved from themselves, for that would mean they'd have to give up greed, and they'll never pay that price for liberty. So I said to the world, God bless all here, and may the best man win and die of gluttony! And I took a seat in the grandstand of philosophical detachment to fall asleep observing the cannibals do their death dance." —Larry Slade via Eugene O'Neill (The Iceman Cometh, Act I)

"But there's this. You see, we just can’t settle down after knowing, but we got to act. And some of us go nuts. There’s too much to do and you don’t know where to start. It makes you crazy. Even me — I've done things that when I look back at them they don't seem rational. Once I started an organization myself. I picked out twenty lintheads and talked to them until I thought they knew. Our motto was one word: Action. Huh! We meant to start riots — stir up all the big trouble we could. Our ultimate goal was freedom — but a real freedom, a great freedom made possible only by the sense of justice of the human soul. Our motto, "Action," signified the razing of capitalism. In the constitution (drawn up by myself) certain statutes dealt with the swapping of our motto from "Action" to "Freedom" as soon as our work was through. [...] Then when the constitution was all written down and the first followers well organized — then I went out on a hitchhiking tour to organize component units of the society. Within three months I came back, and what do you reckon I found? What was the first heroic action? Had their righteous fury overcome planned action so that they had gone ahead without me? Was it destruction, murder, revolution? [...] My friend, they had stole the fifty-seven dollars and thirty seven cents from the treasury to buy uniform caps and free Saturday suppers. I caught them sitting around the conference table, rolling the bones, their caps on their heads, and a ham and a gallon of gin in easy reach." —Jake Blount (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Part II, Chapter IV)

"Since he had been at Lynn's he had often gone there and sat in front of the groups from the Parthenon; and, not deliberately thinking, had allowed their divine masses to rest his troubled soul. But this afternoon they had nothing to say to him, and after a few minutes, impatiently, he wandered out of the room. There were too many people, provincials with foolish faces, foreigners poring over guide-books; their hideousness besmirched the everlasting masterpieces, their restlessness troubled the god's immortal repose. He went into another room and here there was hardly anyone. Philip sat down wearily. His nerves were on edge. He could not get the people out of his mind. Sometimes at Lynn's they affected him in the same way, and he looked at them file past him with horror; they were so ugly and there was such meanness in their faces, it was terrifying; their features were distorted with paltry desires, and you felt they were strange to any ideas of beauty. They had furtive eyes and weak chins. There was no wickedness in them, but only pettiness and vulgarity. Their humour was a low facetiousness. Sometimes he found himself looking at them to see what animal they resembled (he tried not to, for it quickly became an obsession,) and he saw in them all the sheep or the horse or the fox or the goat. Human beings filled him with disgust." —Philip Carey via Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage, Chapter LXXXVIII)

"You asked me why I quit the Movement. I had a lot of good reasons. One was myself, and another was my comrades, and the last was the breed of swine called men in general. For myself, I was forced to admit, at the end of thirty years' devotion to the Cause, that I was never made for it. I was born condemned to be one of those who has to see all sides of a question. When you're damned like that, the questions multiply for you until in the end it's all question and no answer. As history proves, to be a worldly success at anything, especially revolution, you have to wear blinders like a horse and see only straight in front of you. You have to see, too, that this is all black, and that is all white. As for my comrades in the Great Cause, I felt as Horace Walpole did about England, that he could love it if it weren't for the people in it. The material the ideal free society must be constructed from is men themselves and you can't build a marble temple out of a mixture of mud and manure. When man's soul isn't a sow's ear, it will be time enough to dream of silk purses." —Larry Slade (The Iceman Cometh, Act I)

"Philip had cultivated a certain disdain for idealism. He had always had a passion for life, and the idealism he had come across seemed to him for the most part a cowardly shrinking from it. The idealist withdrew himself, because he could not suffer the jostling of the human crowd; he had not the strength to fight and so called the battle vulgar; he was vain, and since his fellows would not take him at his own estimate, consoled himself with despising his fellows." —Philip Carey (Of Human Bondage, Chapter LXXXVIII)

"'The things they have done to us! The truths they have turned into lies. The ideals they have fouled and made vile. Take Jesus. He was one of us. He knew. When He said that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God — he damn well meant just what he said. But look what the Church has done to Jesus during the last two thousand years. What they have made of him. How they have turned every word he spoke for their own vile ends. Jesus would be framed and in jail if he were living today. Jesus would be one who really knows. Me and Jesus would sit across the table and I would look at him and he would look at me and we would both know that the other knew. Me and Jesus and Karl Marx could all sit at a table and —
‘And look what has happened to our freedom. The men who fought the American Revolution were no more like these D.A.R. dames than I'm a pot-bellied, perfumed Pekingese dog. They meant what they said about freedom. They fought a real revolution. They fought so that this could be a country where every man would be free and equal. Huh! And that meant every man was equal in the sight of Nature — with an equal chance. This didn't mean that twenty per cent of the people were free to rob the other eighty percent of the means to live. This didn't mean for one rich man to sweat the piss out of ten thousand poor men so that he can get richer. This didn't mean the tyrants were free to get this country in such a fix that millions of people are ready to do anything — cheat, lie, or whack off their right arm — just to work for three squares and a flop. They have made the word freedom a blasphemy. You hear me? They have made the word freedom stink like a skunk to all who know.'" —Jake Blount (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Part II, Chapter IV)

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"Perhaps his taciturnity hid a contempt for the human race which had abandoned the great dreams of his youth and now wallowed in sluggish ease; of perhaps those thirty years of revolution had taught him that men are unfit for liberty, and he thought that he had spent his life in the pursuit of that which was not worth the finding. Or maybe he was tired out and waited only with indifference for the release of death." —Philip Carey (Of Human Bondage, Chapter XXV)

"...I've nothing left to give, and I want to be left alone, and I'll thank you to keep your life to yourself. I feel you're looking for some answer to something. I have no answer to give anyone, not even myself. Unless you can call what Heine wrote inn his poem to morphine an answer. (He quotes a translation of the closing couplet sardonically)

'Lo, sleep is good; better is death; in sooth,The best of all were never to be born.'"
—Larry Slade (The Iceman Cometh, Act I)

"[Jake] knew and could not get the don't-knows to see. It was like trying to fight darkness or heat or a stink in the air." —Carson McCullers (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Part II, Chapter XII)

"All we want is to pass out in peace, bejees! (A chorus of dull, resentful protest from all the group. They mumble, like sleepers who curse a person who keeps awakening them, "What's it to us? We want to pass out in peace!") —Harry Hope (The Iceman Cometh, Act IV)

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JIM: Did something fall off it? I think—

LAURA: Yes.

JIM: I hope it wasn't the little glass horse with the horn!

LAURA: Yes. [She stoops to pick it up.]

JIM: Aw, aw, aw. Is it broken?

LAURA: Now it is just like all the other horses.

JIM: It's lost its—

LAURA: Horn!

—Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

Strauss-Kahn

2011-07-18T18:23:00.010-04:00

"As I understand it, this young friend of yours is pursuing some fantasy of [her] own, and it includes me. Is that correct?"

"Something like that."

"I don't find that very pleasant. You understand that?"

"Yes, I do."

A few moments later...

"It was you."

"What if it were?"

The final words of Ivan Passer's 1981 film Cutter's Way — "What if it were?" — are spoken by oil tycoon J.J. Cord when he's confronted about the rape and murder of a young girl, a crime he's very likely responsible for. The words are particularly unsettling because of what they imply about the irrelevance of moral accountability in the face of so much power and influence (to say nothing of their ambiguity). It just doesn't matter if he did it or not; he's J.J. Cord.

A somewhat related post from 2008 (written right before the second Wall Street bailout): Salò and the banality of evil

affinities (2): sterile masculinity

2011-06-29T15:26:00.006-04:00

Husbands (John Cassavetes, 1970)
Harold Pinter's The Homecoming (Peter Hall, 1973)

a quick update & this American life

2011-06-16T20:29:00.013-04:00

I haven't been posting much but plan to start back up on a more regular basis soon. Partially to blame is my AC adapter -- it only works when it's in a specific place (I have to tweak the wire to get it working). I also can't take my laptop anywhere as my battery is not holding a charge. So basically, using my computer right now is a pain. On top of the technical difficulties some blame must be placed on whatever it is that's causing me to spend two weeks (and counting) reading the same 100 page book (I've made it to page 68!). Mental fatigue, lack of motivation, whatever.

Below are some simple numbers I calculated which detail something many people probably intuitively know that I nevertheless find interesting as a way of looking at life and time. I've never seen the numbers broken down in this particular way before, but there have probably been more in-depth (and more accurate) studies done along similar lines...

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Assuming a 77.7 year life expectancy, the average American can expect to:

Spend 1.6 years in the bathroom (30 minutes per day)

Spend 2 consecutive years in school

Spend 10 consecutive years at work (assuming full-time, 40 hour per-week employment, beginning at age 22 and extending up until age 65)

Spend 26 consecutive years sleeping (assuming 8 hours per day, every day)

Spend 3.2 consecutive years eating and drinking (assuming 1 hour per day, every day)

Spend about 1 year cleaning / doing housework (assuming 2 hours per week)

Spend 3 consecutive years online (assuming 1 hour per day after childhood)

Spend 13 consecutive years watching television (assuming 4 hours per day)

TOTAL: 59.8 years.

Many of these numbers are made from my own assumptions, though I think in most areas I underestimated, if anything. The television average is correct. For school I calculated starting at age 5 and ending at age 20 (the latter number was selected to account for those who don't attend college). And starting work at age 22 is not near the average for most Americans, but, again, I wanted to lean toward underestimating (see also my estimates for "time spent online").

Everything on the list -- except for television watching and time spent online -- is more or less essential. If we subtract the two aforementioned activities we arrive at a sum of 43.8 years. And of course this list doesn't account for activities like grocery shopping, driving and other things that are also essential for most Americans, so I think it's safe to assume that (at least) 45 years of our lives can pretty much be crossed off for us in advance. (The huge amount of television watching most Americans engage in is probably largely due to the fatigue caused by much of their preordained time).

From this I think we can say that our [Americans] real life expectancy, if we look to define the term another way, is closer to something like 32.6 years (of which the average American will spend about half of in front of the television).

But not to fear! About 81% of Americans believe in Heaven.

his own image

2011-05-31T19:56:00.011-04:00

"I think [the contradictions we have] were best illustrated a few years ago when a ranger in Zimbabwe shot and killed a poacher who was about to kill a black rhinoceros and human rights groups around the world said how dare you take a human life to protect an animal! The ranger's answer really illustrated a hypocrisy. He said, "Ya know, if I was a police officer in Harari and a man ran out of Barclays Bank with a bag of money and I shot him in the head in front of everybody and killed him, you'd pin a medal on me and call me a national hero. Why is that bag of paper more valued than the future heritage of this nation?" [These are] our values. We fight, we risk our lives, we kill for things we believe in. Imagine going into Mecca... Walk up to the Black Stone, spit on it... See how far you get. You're not going to get very far. You're going to be torn to pieces. Walk into Jerusalem, walk up to that Wailing Wall with a pick axe, start whacking away. See how far you're going to get. Somebody is going to put a bullet in your back, and everybody will say you deserved it. Walk into the Vatican with a hammer, start smashing a few statues. See how far you're going to get. Not very far. But each and every day, people go into the most beautiful, most profoundly sacred cathedrals of this planet — the rainforests of Amazonia, the redwood forests of California, the rainforests of Indonesia — and totally desecrate and destroy these cathedrals with bulldozers and chainsaws. And how do we respond to that? Oh, we write a few letters and protest. We dress up in animal costumes with picket signs and jump up and down... But if the rainforests of Amazonia and the redwoods of California had as much value to us as a chunk of old meteorite in Mecca, a decrepit old wall in Jerusalem, or a piece of old marble in the Vatican, we would literally rip those pieces limb from limb for the act of blasphemy that we're committing. But we won't do that because nature is an abstraction, wilderness is an abstraction — it has no value in our anthropocentric world where the only thing we value is that which is created by humans." —Paul Watson [X]

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

The Illusionist(s)

2011-05-22T21:31:00.005-04:00

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Contra Gandhi

2011-05-14T17:44:00.021-04:00

Let me begin by saying that I have not studied Gandhi, nor have I read anything he wrote save for the many oft-quoted excerpts that one tends to encounter throughout life. I know the basics concerning his place in history, and I know what he has come to represent — that is all. He has become a sacred figure, even a saint, and it is taken as a matter of fact that he was a Great Man. By extension his creeds — pacifism being chief among them — are given more weight to the point where, in many people's eyes, merely to agree with them is to hold the moral high ground (dogma).

The crux of what follows is by Derrick Jensen; the opening and closing quotes are taken from a short essay George Orwell wrote in 1949 called Reflections on Gandhi. Orwell's piece is laced with criticism but, unlike Jensen's, it is not without praise. Jensen's criticism of Gandhi is excerpted from his larger masterpiece Endgame (volume II). His writing — indebted to Lewis Mumford — is free-flowing, conversational, and, at times, seems to spiral into wild-tangents. But it also almost always finds its way back, often in unexpected and insightful ways.

I started to write a lengthy introduction to Jensen centered especially around pacifism (the basis for a lot of his criticism of Gandhi), but after I began I realized it was going to morph into something far removed from the post at hand, so I opted instead to introduce Jensen (to those unfamiliar) via association:

"Let me begin, only because I'm sort of in debt to Derrick probably a little more than he's in debt to me... And I think that Derrick has confronted a very harsh reality that large numbers of people — I think because of an emotional incapacity — are unable to confront, and that is the kind of death spiral that we're on. [...] It's very clear now, as I think Derrick has pointed out, that the engines of corporatism cannot be halted. They are impervious to the will of those they exploit, they are more powerful than the governments they control, and they have built within them an inevitable kind of mechanism for self-annihilation, because corporations have a strange pathology where they turn everything into a commodity." —Chris Hedges, from THIS audio conversation with Jensen. (Some of the above, due to conversation being a bit imprecise and unclear, is inexact.)

* * *

"It was also apparent that the British were making use of him, or thought they were making use of him. Strictly speaking, as a Nationalist, he was an enemy, but since in every crisis he would exert himself to prevent violence — which, from the British point of view, meant preventing any effective action whatever — he could be regarded as “our man”. In private this was sometimes cynically admitted. The attitude of the Indian millionaires was similar. Gandhi called upon them to repent, and naturally they preferred him to the Socialists and Communists who, given the chance, would actually have taken their money away. How reliable such calculations are in the long run is doubtful; as Gandhi himself says, “in the end deceivers deceive only themselves”; but at any rate the gentleness with which he was nearly always handled was due partly to the feeling that he was useful." —George Orwell [X]

"Erasmus’s statement,“The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war,” used to strike me as insane and cowardly (not that this was true of all Erasmus’s work). Now I just say I disagree.

Gandhi came out with a different version of this when he said, “My marriage to non-violence is such an absolute thing that I would rather commit suicide than be deflected from my position.” I guess there are ways I can understand this, in that there are things I would kill myself rather than do. But this statement seems inflexible to the point of insanity. Is he saying that if he had the opportunity to stop a rape/murder, but could do so only through physically stopping the assailant, he would kill himself (and let the other person be raped/murdered) rather than break his sacred vow to non-violence? Is he saying that if he had the opportunity to stop the murder of the planet, but could do so only through physically stopping the assailants, he would kill himself (and let the planet be murdered) rather than violate his sacred vow to non-violence?

Unfortunately, he does seem to be saying these things. Now it’s true that Gandhi perceived cowardice as worse even than violence (and please note that while I’m accusing Gandhi of fuzzy thinking, naïveté, and, as you’ll see in a while, misogyny, never would I accuse him of cowardice: the man was stone cold brave), saying, for example, “Where the choice is between only violence and cowardice, I would advise violence,” and “To take the name of non-violence when there is a sword in your heart is not only hypocritical and dishonest but cowardly.” Even more to the point—and if all of Gandhi’s words were this great he’d certainly be my hero—he said, “Though violence is not lawful, when it is offered in self-defence or for the defence of the defenceless, it is an act of bravery far better than cowardly submission. The latter befits neither man nor woman. Under violence, there are many stages and varieties of bravery. Every man must judge this for himself. No other person can or has the right.” And here’s one I like even more: “I have been repeating over and over again that he who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honour by nonviolently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live forever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully.”

But damn if he doesn’t follow this up with more of that old time pacifist religion. His very next paragraph is: “The strength to kill is not essential for self-defence; one ought to have the strength to die. When a man is fully ready to die, he will not even desire to offer violence. Indeed, I may put it down as a self-evident proposition that the desire to kill is in inverse proportion to the desire to die. And history is replete with instances of men who, by dying with courage and compassion on their lips, converted the hearts of their violent opponents.”

Let’s do a little exegesis. Sentence one: “The strength to kill is not essential for self-defence; one ought to have the strength to die.” Problem: Although this makes a good sound bite, it also makes no sense. The first clause is a statement of faith (why does this not surprise me?), logically and factually unsupported and insupportable yet presented as a statement of fact. The same is true for the second. Perhaps worse, if one of the purposes of self-defense is to actually defend oneself (to keep oneself from harm, even from death), then saying that self-defense requires the strength to die becomes exactly the sort of Orwellian absurdity we’ve all by now become far too familiar with from pacifists: self-defense requires the strength to allow self-destruction, and self-destruction requires strength take their fine place alongside freedom is slavery, war is peace,and ignorance is strength. His sentence would imply that the Jews who walked into the showers or laid down so they could be shot in the nape of the neck by members of einsatzgruppen were actually acting in their own self-defense. Nonsense. Now sentence two: “When a man is fully ready to die, he will not even desire to offer violence.” Once again, a statement of faith, logically and factually unsupported and insupportable yet presented as a statement of fact. I have read hundreds of accounts of soldiers and others (including mothers) who were fully prepared to die who sold their lives as dearly as possible. Sentence three: “Indeed, I may put it down as a self-evident proposition that the desire to kill is in inverse proportion to the desire to die.” This is actually a pretty cheap rhetorical trick on his part. Any writer knows that if you label something as self-evident people are less likely to examine it, or even if they do and find themselves disagreeing with it, they’re prone to feeling kind of stupid: If it’s so self-evident, how stupid must I be to not see it the same way? A far more sophisticated and accurate examination of the relationship between a desire to kill and a desire to die was provided earlier in this book by Luis Rodriguez. Oftentimes a desire to kill springs from a desire to die. It’s certainly true that the dominant culture—I’ve heard it called a thanatocracy—manifests a collective desire to kill self and other. But there is something far deeper and far more creepy going on with this sentence. Read it again: “Indeed, I may put it down as a self-evident proposition that the desire to kill is in inverse proportion to the desire to die.” Let’s pretend it’s true. It is Gospel. You have never in your life read anything so true as this. Now let’s ask ourselves whether Gandhi had a desire to kill. The answer is pretty obviously absolutely not. He said as much many times. What, then, does that mean Gandhi had a desire to do? If we take him at his word, it means he had a correspondingly absolute desire to die. He has an absolute death wish. Suddenly I understand why he would rather kill himself than break his marriage to non-violence. Suddenly I understand his more or less constant rhetoric of self-sacrifice. Suddenly I understand his body hatred (we’ll get to this in a moment). Suddenly I understand why Gandhi—and by extension so many other pacifists who are drawn to his teachings—was so often so little concerned with actual physical change in the real physical world. Pacifism as death wish. And don’t blame me for this one, folks: it’s nothing more than a strict literal interpretation of Gandhi’s own text. Gandhi repeatedly stated his absolute desire to not kill, and stated here explicitly: “the desire to kill is in inverse proportion to the desire to die.”

But that isn’t even what bothered me most about his paragraph. Sentence four horrified and appalled me: “And history is replete with instances of men who, by dying with courage and compassion on their lips, converted the hearts of their violent opponents.” If Gandhi’s statement contained a shred of evidence to support it, the Nazis would have quickly stopped, domestic violence would cease, the civilized would not kill the indigenous, factory farms would not exist, vivisection labs would be torn down brick by brick. Worse, by saying this, Gandhi joins the long list of allies of abusers by subtly blaming victims for perpetrators’ further atrocities: Damn, if only I could have died courageously and compassionately enough, I could have converted my murderer and kept him from killing again. It’s all my fault. Nonsense. Many killers—and nearly all exploiters—would vastly prefer intended victims not resist. The overwhelming preponderance of evidence just doesn’t support Gandhi’s position.

And his position leads him into (even more) grotesque absurdity. During World War II, as Japan invaded Myanmar (then called Burma), Gandhi recommended that if India were invaded, the Japanese be allowed to take as much as they want. The most effective way for the Indians to resist the Japanese, he said, would be to “make them feel that they are not wanted.” I am not making this up. Nor am I choosing one out-of-character statement. Gandhi urged the British to surrender to the Nazis, and recommended that instead of fighting back, both Czechs and Jews should have committed mass suicide (death wish, anyone?). In 1946, with full knowledge of the extent of the Holocaust, Gandhi told his biographer Louis Fisher, “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.”

This is—and all you pacifists can get your gasps out of the way right now— both despicable and insane.

The insanity continues. If you recall, Gandhi said, “Mankind has to get out of violence only through non-violence. Hatred can be overcome only by love.” By now you should be able to spot the premises that, like any good propagandist, he’s trying to slide by you. Violence is something humankind “has to get out of.” Nonviolence is the only way to accomplish this. Hatred is something that needs to be overcome. Love is the only way to accomplish that.

These premises are statements of faith. They are utterly unsupported and unsupportable in the real world, and they are extremely harmful. Let’s go back to the same basic example we’ve been using. A man breaks into a woman’s home. He pulls out a knife. He is going to rape and kill her. She has a gun. Perhaps if she just shows him by shining example the beauty of nonviolence, perhaps if she dies with courage and compassion on her lips—or if she offers herself to the butcher’s knife or throws herself into the sea from a cliff—she will convert his heart and he will realize the error of his ways and repent, to go and rape no more. Perhaps not. If she guesses wrong, she dies. And so do the rapist’s next victims.

Gandhi’s statement reveals an almost total lack of understanding of both abusive and psychopathological dynamics. His comment is one of the worst things you can say to anyone in an abusive situation, and one of the things abusers most want to hear. As I mentioned earlier, among the most powerful allies of abusers are those who say to victims, “You should show him some compassion even if he has done bad things. Don’t forget that he is a human, too.” As Lundy Bancroft commented, “To suggest to her that his need for compassion should come before her right to live free from abuse is consistent with the abuser’s outlook. I have repeatedly seen the tendency among friends and acquaintances of an abused woman to feel that it is their responsibility to make sure that she realizes what a good person he really is inside—in other words, to stay focused on his needs rather than her own, which is a mistake.” I want to underscore that Gandhi’s perspective is, following Bancroft, “consistent with the abuser’s outlook.”

Too often pacifists have said to me, “When you look at a CEO, you are looking at yourself. He’s a part of you, and you’re a part of him. If you ever hope to reach him, you must recognize the CEO in your own heart, and you must reach out with compassion to this CEO in your heart, and to the CEO in the boardroom.” It’s revealing that none of these pacifists have ever said to me, “When you look at a clearcut, you are looking at yourself. It is a part of you, and you are a part of it. If you ever hope to help it, you must recognize the clearcut in your own heart, and you must reach out with compassion to this clearcut in your heart, and to the clearcut on the ground.” The same is true for tuna, rivers, mountainsides. It’s remarkable that pacifists tell me to look at the killer and see myself, while never telling me to look at the victim and see myself: they are telling me to identify with the killer, not the victim. This happens so consistently that I have come to understand it’s no accident, but reveals with whom the people who say it do and do not themselves identify (and fear).

So far as psychopaths, Gandhi ignores their first characteristic: a “callous unconcern for the feelings of others.” Far worse, he fails to understand that some people are unreachable. He wrote Hitler a letter requesting he change his ways, and was evidently surprised when Hitler didn’t listen to him.

His statement also ignores the role of entitlement in atrocity. I can love Charles Hurwitz all I want, I can nonviolently write letters and nonviolently sit in trees, and so long as he feels entitled to destroy forests to pad his bank account, and so long as he is backed by the full power of the state, within this social structure, none of that will cause him to change in the slightest. Nor, and this is the point, will it help the forests. Similarly, so long as men feel entitled to control women, loving them won’t change them, nor will it help women.

There’s yet another problem with Gandhi’s statement, which is that he has made the same old unwarranted conflation of love and nonviolence on one hand, and hatred and violence on the other.

There is a sense in which the last sentence—and only the last sentence—of his statement could be true, with some significant modifications. Instead of saying, “Hatred can be overcome only by love,” we could say, “If someone hates you, your best and most appropriate and most powerful responses will come out of a sense of self-love.” I like that infinitely better. It’s far more accurate, intellectually honest, useful, flexible, and applicable across a wide range of circumstances. But there’s the key right there, isn’t it? Within this culture we’re all taught to hate ourselves (and to identify with our oppressors, who hate us, too, and call it love).

* * *
This leads to the next line by Gandhi often tossed around by pacifists: “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall—Think of it, ALWAYS.”

You know how there are some people whose work you’re supposed to respect because everyone else seems to? And you know how at least with some of these people your respect fades over time, slowly, with each new piece of information that you gain? And you know how sometimes you feel you must be crazy, or a bad person, or you must be missing something, because everyone keeps telling you how great this person is, and you just don’t get it? And you know how you keep fighting to maintain your respect for this person, but the information keeps coming in, until at long last you just can’t do it anymore? That’s how it was with me and Gandhi. I lost a lot of respect when I learned some of the comments I’ve mentioned here. I lost more when I learned that because he opposed Western medicine, he didn’t want his wife to take penicillin, even at risk to her life, because it would be administered with a hypodermic needle; yet this opposition did not extend to himself: he took quinine and was even operated on for appendicitis. I lost yet more when I learned that he was so judgmental of his sons that he disowned his son Harilal (who later became an alcoholic) because he disapproved of the woman Harilal chose to marry. When his other son, Manilal, loaned money to Harilal, Gandhi disowned him, too. When Manilal had an affair with a married woman, Gandhi went public and pushed for the woman to have her head shaved. I lost more respect when I learned of Gandhi’s body hatred (but with his fixation on purity, hatred of human (read animal) emotions, and death wish this shouldn’t have surprised me), and even more that he refused to have sex with his wife for the last thirty-eight years of their marriage (in fact he felt that people should have sex only three or four times in their lives). I lost even more when I found out how upset he was when he had a nocturnal emission. I lost even more when I found out that in order to test his commitment to celibacy, he had beautiful young women lie next to him naked through the night: evidently his wife—whom he described as looking like a “meek cow”— was no longer desirable enough be a solid test. All these destroyed more respect for Gandhi (although I do recognize it’s possible for someone to be a shitheel and still say good things, just as it’s possible for nice people to give really awful advice). But the final push was provided by this comment attributed to him: “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall—Think of it, ALWAYS.” This is as dismissive as his treatment of his wife and sons. It’s as objectifying as his treatment of the young women he used as tests. It’s as false as his advice to Jews, Czechs, and Britons. The last 6,000 years have seen a juggernaut of destruction roll across the planet. Thousands of cultures have been eradicated. Species are disappearing by the hour. I do not know what planet he is describing, nor what history. Not ours. This statement—one of those rallying cries thrown out consistently by pacifists—is wrong. It is dismissive. It is literally and by definition insane, by which I mean not in touch with the real physical world.

Further, even if it were accurate—which it absolutely isn’t, except in the cosmic sense of everything eventually failing—it’s irrelevant. So what if the tyrant eventually falls? What about the damage done in the meantime? That’s like saying that because a rapist will eventually die anyway we need not stop him now."

"Of late years it has been the fashion to talk about Gandhi as though he were not only sympathetic to the Western Left-wing movement, but were integrally part of it. Anarchists and pacifists, in particular, have claimed him for their own, noticing only that he was opposed to centralism and State violence and ignoring the other-worldly, anti-humanist tendency of his doctrines. But one should, I think, realize that Gandhi's teachings cannot be squared with the belief that Man is the measure of all things and that our job is to make life worth living on this earth, which is the only earth we have. They make sense only on the assumption that God exists and that the world of solid objects is an illusion to be escaped from." —George Orwell [X]

The Operatic Handwriting of Barbey D'Aurevilly

2011-05-08T20:32:00.010-04:00

Douglas Ainslie, who translated D'Aurevilly's paean to Beau Brummell, Dandyism, wrote briefly about D'Aurevilly's "rainbow of inks" in his 1896 preface:

"[D'Aurevilly's] dress was of the flamboyant order, and this tendency revealed itself in what was most himself — his manuscripts. Here long passages are written in ordinary black ink, but where the blood begins to beat faster and the war of the passions is announced by the throbbing of the arteries, he would change his pen for one dipped in the scarlet color of the emotions to be depicted. This again would give place to blue, to violet, varying with the psychical quality of the matter in hand."

Who is Jan Faust?

2011-05-06T14:10:00.009-04:00

A friend of mine purchased The Underground Sketchbook of Jan Faust (1971) at a used book sale last month, and since neither of us have been able to find out much about him online, we decided to scan some pages for the enjoyment of certain of my readers as well as to add his drawings to the electronic ether. A few of the images -- in their style, obsessions, and general view of things -- are reminiscent of B. Kliban.

Here's what the back cover has to say (see the comments section to read the publisher's preface):

"The pages of The Nation, New York magazine, National Review and The New York Times have recently been enlivened by the drawings of a new talent who reproduces reality with all the meticulous draftsmanship of the old-world engravers -- only to shatter it irretrievably with the most outrageous whimsy and stygian humor. But the artist, Jan Faust, has also done 101 other drawings that could never appear in the public pages of these journals because in them he has allowed his imagination, his comedic satire, his "underground" feelings about our society and its people, to express themselves to the fullest in unconventionality. It is these 101 drawings, never before published, that comprise this sketchbook. [...] Jan Faust has something to say about our lives and our civilization, and no one has ever said it quite the way he does."

Enjoy!

* * *

(This one makes me think of Kliban's "The Victim's Family")
* * *

* * *

* * *

(I dub this one Jerry Rubin)

American Football or: Three Poems

2011-05-02T22:49:00.003-04:00

I.

Hallelujah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.

We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.

It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
They suffocated in their own shit!

Hallelujah.
Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew them into fucking shit.
They are eating it.

Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew their balls into shards of dust,
Into shards of fucking dust.

We did it.

Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.

* * *
II.

Shut your dumb fucking mouth.
You are not intelligent enough
to speak on the subject.

Shut your dumb fucking mouth!
We just killed a guy.
We blew him into fucking shit.

Hallelujah!

Shut your dumb fucking mouth.
Praise America.
And God bless the United States

Military.

* * *
III.

It took 919,967 deaths
to kill that one guy.
But we did it.

It took ten years and two wars
to kill that one guy.
But we did it.

It cost us roughly $1,188,263,000,000
to kill that one guy.
But we did it.

We won.

Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.

I. "American Football" (1991) by Harold Pinter.
II. Someone's "tweeted" reaction to III (with some additions and alterations).
III. Remarks posted on Twitter by Milwaukee Bucks forward Chris Douglas-Roberts (with some additions and alterations).

five facts

2011-04-30T20:31:00.008-04:00

Vincent van Gogh painted over nine-hundred paintings in nine years, eighty of which were painted in the final two months of his life.

Women born in South Africa are less likely to learn how to read than they are to be raped.

Aristotle wrote that men, along with male goats, sheep and swine, have more teeth than their female counterparts. (He was also married. To a woman.)

There is a passage in Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 2 that all pianists play with two hands because of the difficulty. Beethoven, however, wrote fingering for the piece that shows only one hand (the right). To make better sense of this, it's been speculated that Beethoven had large, perfectly built piano hands. Or, perhaps more likely, the fingering was simply a cosmic hoax designed by Beethoven to inspire a mix of awe and jealousy.

According to C-SPAN's interview program In Depth, the number of pages literary critic and professor Harold Bloom claims to be able to read in sixty minutes is... one thousand.

unusual encounters

2011-04-26T16:31:00.018-04:00

Before anyone continues I would like to report some theft.

The Chris Marker photos and the quote accompanying them were lifted from a post on Mubi.com, and the final series of photographs were compiled by Max Brandel (I scanned them from a 1964 issue of Horizon magazine).

You may now proceed.

* * *

Left: from one of Walker Evans' hidden subway photos; Right: a photo from Luc Delahaye's subway series L'Autre
(featured in Michael Haneke's film Code Unknown)

* * *
Above: from Chris Marker's Passengers, a seriesof photographs taken on the Paris Metro

"Cocteau used to say that at night, statues escape from museums and go walking in the streets. During my peregrinations in the Paris Metro, I sometimes made such unusual encounters. Models of famous painters were still among us, and I was lucky enough to have them sitting in front of me." —Chris Marker

* * *

Roman sepulchral relief, first century B.C., Metropolitan Museum of Art; James Cagney
Egyptian magistrate, black schist, c. 300 B.C., Cairo Museum; Anthony Perkins
Sumerian head, c. 2500 B.C., Nelson Gallery, Kansas City; Arnold Stang
Roman head of Augustus, first century A.D., Metropolitan Museum of Art; James Mason
Fernandel; Egyptian functionary, wood, c. 2500 B.C., Louvre
Bette Davis; Roman head of Agrippina, marble, first century A.D., Louvre

Jerry Colonna; Greek head from high-relief panel, after 570 B.C., Acropolis Museum, Athens
Marlon Brando; Head of a young priest, Etruscan bronze, c. 200 B.C., British Museum

Some Thoughts on Participation (blog game experiment 1: Exit Through the Gift Shop)

2011-04-20T16:24:00.011-04:00

Here is Andrew Gilbert's contribution to the blog game / experiment I proposed in January. A topic was provided -- Banksy's film Exit Through the Gift Shop -- as well as various materials (images and text), and he was required to make a post following the directions I gave. I recommend taking a look at the materials in order to better appreciate what Andrew has done, as well as to see how the post came about, but everything that follows certainly works perfectly well as a stand-alone piece.

In the comments section I've written very briefly about what I had in mind when I selected the materials, as well as some initial thoughts on the finished piece in general.

Andrew is the author of two excellent blogs The Kinodrome and The Fifth Terrace.

* * *
Some Thoughts on Participation

I.

Although this post is concerned with Art and Capitalism, it is gender theory that provides us with a scaffold to mount our questions:

"The challenge of rethinking gender categories outside of the metaphysics of substance will have to consider the relevance of Nietzsche's claim in On the Genealogy of Morals that 'there is no 'being' behind doing, effecting, becoming; the 'doer' is merely a fiction added to the deed -- the deed is everything.' In an application that Nietzsche himself would not have anticipated or condoned, we might state as a corollary: There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results." (Judith Butler, Gender Trouble)

Butler constructs her theory in a manner that allows its application to most any conception of identity, not limited to gender. I hope to entertain these concepts in the realm of individual self-expression within Art, and participation within a consumer culture. To cut to the heart of the matter, I am considering notions of responsibility—both individual and societal, which I believe will facilitate a greater understanding of the complexities of our world and how to better mount an opposition to a system(s) viewed as oppressive and destructive.

II.

What follows is my attempt to personalize this quandary, which is so enamored with abstracts and iconic names and faces:

I had a friend in college who was my first dissident—my first brush with radical politics. Over pizza he prodded the barricades of my complacency with his Marxism-Leninism, at the movies he attacked me for drinking Coke. It was tantamount to being a card-carrying member to the IMF or WTO—I was doing my part to finance apartheid and the destruction of the ecosystem. He organized book clubs and reading circles. He opened up brave new worlds through his twin passions of literature and comic books. He professed the ability of the artist to galvanize social movements, of their responsibility to condemn injustice wherever possible.

Years later (a few months ago) I entered a thread of comments on his facebook page. Alan Moore had recently condemned the comic book industry for their draconian practices and imperialist agendas and this old friend was ridiculing him for it. When I chimed in on the side of Moore my comments were promptly deleted. My conversation with this friend moved to email—a private conversation that no one could see. He is now a successful and talented entrepreneur within the comic book industry. He explained that by censoring me he was protecting his friends who work in said industry. He assured me he was still a radical leftist and an anti-capitalist. The correspondence ceased when I raised doubts about ones ability to simultaneously occupy both sides of this argument—that by doing the very things he condemned in capitalist plutocracy he couldn’t possibly represent any kind of movement against it. The person who once decried the imperialist methods of censorship and discrediting of dissenters and critics was now wielding that power on a microcosmic scale with real world implications. I am still doubtful that mere subversion on his part can balance or offset these actions.

Forgive me for sounding like vindictive sour grapes, but is this not the most perfect example of delusional self-exemption? Of a doer convinced of the justification of their deeds by extraneous contextualization and apology? Here we also find the raison d'être for critiquing capitalism and the art world convinced that it is its opposition: the perils of Utopian thought—of the ends justifying the means.

III.

Because politicians and experts are consistently defining humanity in economic terms, I feel we should establish some boundaries for our perceptions of the system we all exist within—even the most critical among us. I believe that Slavoj Žižek provides some of the most concise assessments of capitalism—allowing us to visualize an ethereal entity that we must all go to bed with. Something we can barely name, yet we all live and breathe: "...capitalism today is a matter of everyday religion in the sense of its built on trust..." (X)

He expounds the concept elsewhere:

"One of the most striking things about the reaction to the current financial meltdown is that, as one of the participants put it: 'No one really knows what to do.' The reason is that expectations are part of the game: how the market reacts to a particular intervention depends not only on how much bankers and traders trust the interventions, but even more on how much they think others will trust them. Keynes compared the stock market to a competition in which the participants have to pick several pretty girls from a hundred photographs: 'It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one's judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligence to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be.' We are forced to make choices without having the knowledge that would enable us to make them; or, as John Gray has put it: 'We are forced to live as if we were free.'

Joseph Stiglitz recently wrote that, although there is a growing consensus among economists that any bailout based on Henry Paulson's plan won't work, 'it is impossible for politicians to do nothing in such a crisis. So we may have to pray that an agreement crafted with the toxic mix of special interests, misguided economics and right-wing ideologies that produced the crisis can somehow produce a rescue plan that works – or whose failure doesn’t do too much damage.' He's right: since markets are effectively based on beliefs (even beliefs about other people’s beliefs), how the markets react to the bailout depends not only on its real consequences, but on the belief of the markets in the plan's efficiency. The bailout may work even if it is economically wrong." (X)

Is this not unlike Pascal's motto, conjured by Žižek in his writings on Alfred Hitchcock: “even if you don't believe, kneel down and pray, act as if you believe, and the belief will come by itself"?

IV.

With the line: 'We are forced to live as if we were free.' we arrive at the concept of participation. If we take Žižek and Butler to be accurate, then capitalism is predicated upon individual participation. Whether one can fathom the "bigger picture" is unnecessary. It's very proliferation and longevity is determinate upon deeds: the individual’s identity- the doer- is totally irrelevant. To go a step further, such a critique of capitalism reemphasizes the concept of Adam Smith's Invisible Hand—of a self-regulating, adaptable, regenerating system.

The best metaphor I can conceive is of a phalanx of shark's teeth: rows upon rows in a constant state of replenishment. Does it matter if one tooth was sharper, or whiter, or bigger, or lesser than any of the others?

V.

An example par excellence of these abstracts can be located in the film Czech Dream (Vít Klusák & Filip Remunda 2004). The filmmakers set off to document the creation of a hypermarket that will intentionally never be built. Instead they create a massive ad campaign for the grand opening of what will literally be the front of the store—a Hollywood set piece simulacrum.

The narrative emerges from the individuals whom they employ to see the concept brought to life: photographers, composers, survey and focus group experts, graphic designers, etc. Everyone is fully aware that this store will never be built.

What is most striking are the reactions of the ad industry representatives: all firmly disapprove of the ethics of the filmmakers, yet they all see their contributions through to completion and absolve themselves of any responsibility. They claim to have provided a service and however the employer utilizes that service is the sole responsibility of the employer, even if the employed understood exactly how their work is to be deployed.

Czech Dream was only conceivable through the willing participation of everyone involved—even those vocally opposed to it.

VI.

Let us turn now to an example more specific to the art community.

Shepard Fairey is of interest because he occupies two signifiers: he is both the auteur à la Andy Warhol and entrepreneur à la Donald Trump.

Consider this criticism of his work, which eloquently paraphrases many prevalent objections to Fairey:

"Can Shepard Fairey honestly be described as an artist who can critically assess the "unholy union of government and big business," or offer comments on the "underpinnings of the capitalist machine"? Yet that is exactly how he is promoted in the press release from the Merry Karnowsky Gallery of Los Angeles, where his solo exhibit Imperfect Union opens on December 1, 2007. Missing from that press release, and all other promotional materials released by Fairey, is any mention of his working hand in hand with that "capitalist machine". In a Nov. 3, 2007, interview with the Guardian, Fairey glibly stated, "I'm not against capitalism. If I was, I wouldn’t live in the US. If you get up everyday, work and spend money, you’re participating. But that doesn't mean I don’t want to critique it." - or profit handsomely from it for that matter." (X)

The question is whether or not we believe Fairey to be self aware—and if the answer even matters at all. The consideration of an artist's intent seems to cloud the more pertinent conversation of its implications. Recall my radical friend who adamantly believes in the emancipatory power of embedding anti-capitalist ideas within a consumer product, within one of the largest industries in the country. Here is a prominent criticism of Fairey’s methods:

"I believe Fairey exemplifies in many ways the operational model of capitalism. He extracts resources, largely from political struggles of Third World and working class people, and then slightly processes those resources (images), commodifies them (strips them of any history or relationship to where they came from), and sells them on the market. Like capitalism he simultaneously sells high-art versions to wealthy elites and then cheaper mass-commodity versions to the very same communities he is taking images from. This is how the making of all corporate products works." (X)

Is this not unlike the delusional attitudes of the ad agency folks of Czech Dream? A larger picture is emerging where individuals do whatever they want, and then refuse to consider any consequences of their actions, and retreat into a defense of their ability and/or intent for their actions. Is refuting social responsibility a defense mechanism to protect one from questioning ones constructed worldview? Or better yet, to protect one from considering their place in the social system?

VII.

I would like to propose a mental experiment.

Consider these images.

What is the context for these images, other than this post? Personally, I see them everywhere. I also see variations of the exact same images and similar-but-not-quite-the-same versions. I have to ask myself what purpose or meaning these images have. Certainly, we can explain away any criticism of them as patterns—that is, social symptoms of something deeper than personal expression. Without context or the traditional reductionism of isolating each and literally defining them without any broader connection, we are left with three objectified female forms.

It all seems rather compulsive, does it not?

Multiply this scenario by a million—do we arrive at the art community predicated upon participation?

VIII.

Orson Welles disseminates similar notions in his film F for Fake. Like Czech Dream and Exit Through the Gift Shop it exposes both the invisible hand of a system by way of patterns as well as the indictment of everyone involved by way of participation—including the filmmakers!

Welles not only parallels Art with a Capitalist production model, he intertwines them, makes them one in the same. By setting aside all abstract justification for art and focusing on the practicality of the system, we see the manufacturing of a human need (meaning, purpose) to be exploited as a market. The human condition is thus commodified.

Elmyr de Hory is the stain in the image of this system. His work shatters the protected reality of the Art world by underlining the capitalist requisite of class-structure. It is not meaning nor aesthetic that provides a work with its value, but rather it's exclusivity. A Picasso original is not unlike a Louis Vuitton bag—its importance is that it is only available to those with exorbitant wealth. Its very purpose is to advertise such wealth in the hope of enticing one to desire it. It is possible to argue that de Hory embodies what the critics of Fairey call into question—exposing the construct of a system via their adopted production and distribution methods: mimesis as subversion.

Consider Jonathan Rosenbaum's assessment of Welles in his essay on F for Fake:

For a filmmaker who studiously avoided repeating himself and sought always to remain a few steps ahead of his audience's expectations, thereby rejecting any obvious ways of commodifying his status as an auteur, Welles arguably found a way in F for Fake to contextualize large portions of his career while undermining many cherished beliefs about authorship and the means by which "experts," "God's own gift to the fakers," validate such notions. (X)

Is it not possible, then, to consider all artists as brands, or brands in the making? Despite Welles’ greatest efforts, his film (and Rosenbaum's essay) are currently products of an umbrella corporation that, like Fairey, appropriates the works of diverse filmmakers, homogenizes them, reduces their personal politics to mere platitudes, and sells them as collectibles. A market has opened up that blends "high art" and "mass commodity". I am speaking of course of the Criterion Collection.

Even Welles had to participate in the system he consistently subverted—both as an actor appearing in some of the most wretched works imaginable, and as a spokesperson for countless consumer products. The justification has always been that he used the proceeds to sabotage the system, but I would argue that the system Welles took part in has outlasted Welles. His films are increasingly esoteric, excluded from much of the academic film world beyond Citizen Kane. Most film students in my experience cannot be bothered with anything but that film. Welles has become the darling of a shrinking collective of isolated intellectuals who are seemingly communicating only with themselves. And while I would champion his works to my dying breath I must ask: so what did he really accomplish?

IX.

Is the legacy of la politique des auteurs a paradigm shift with which radicals and subversives can be folded into the system they seek to destroy? Rather than allowing these public figures to raise awareness or galvanize a social movement are they now unwittingly shaping new demographics and lifestyle groups to be sold to? It seems to me like a practical capitalist solution to a societal problem: consider the reactions that arise from conservative condemnation of radical works. Rather than drawing attention to these things, they are allowed to continue unimpaired, and non-threatening to the rest of society. I must add that I am not criticizing this system from outside, but from within. My shelves are lined with hundreds of boutique label DVD's.

X.

Let us now enter Exit Through the Gift Shop.

The success and failures of the film lie in its multiple interpretations. Is it an objective document of the life cycle of a radical movement, from grass roots to corporate assimilation? Does the film fit the pattern discussed above of exposing the workings of system via mimesis? Is it the reactionary prescription of blame onto a handful of individuals for the corruption of a movement? Or, rather, does it serve to discombobulate our simplistic definition of 'movement'.

Short answer, yes.

We must consider the treatment of Thierry Guetta, aka Mr. Brain Wash. The question is whether Guetta symbolizes the complete commodification of the 'movement', if he facilitated this commodification, or if he is directly responsible for it.

An answer may lie in Banksy's editorial decisions regarding Guetta—portrayed as a harmless buffoon, someone who seems to genuinely love what he is doing, yet is completely ignorant to his position and implications. Guetta is a human figure, albeit a pathetic one. It is hardly an effort to mock him, but that is precisely what many have done. Whether intentional or not, a certain cynicism emerges from the film that is akin to certain attitudes toward Christopher Guest or Coen Brothers films or even of The Jersey Shore: we observe human folly from a privileged perspective. As spectator-consumers were are absolved from the sins of these people, whose punishments are meted out in digestible increments for our entertainment.

It can be argued that Banksy is humanizing Guetta in order to illustrate how any hapless individual can wind up in a signifier position. Guetta did not infiltrate a harmonious system and contaminate it with his capitalist drive, rather capitalism allowed the movement to have its fun, to gestate organically, to prove it could be sold, then anyone who happened to be there would willingly make this transition to commodity under the delusion of personal expression. If it wasn't Fairey or Guetta it would have been anyone else. Capitalism bets on this predictable and negative assessment of humanity—it call always rest assured that individuals are convinced of their own autonomy.

One must also consider the prevalent reading of this film as a hoax or mockumentary—both of which I’d consider possible. The problem is not in the reading, rather the dead end of Kantian relativism that plagues postmodern cinema, regardless of how clever or poignant it can be.

I should clarify that I am not proselytizing a proto-fascist dismissal of a complex film. Quite the contrary, I have had many a stimulating conversation on all the films discussed, both at the water cooler and the kitchen table. But, like the secret email correspondence with my radical friend, I have to question its worth if it never impacts our lives to the point of facilitating a change. I am not convinced that the 'enriching of ones' life' is anything more than bullshit to avoid responsibility to other human beings. I am in a privileged position to be enriched by art—this does not justify my callousness in the face of oppression.

XI.

Film is of interest because moving images comprise a language; one that Peter Greenaway has argued eludes most people on the planet. If compared to the written and spoken word, most of us are functionally illiterate to the image language, making it all the more easy to be manipulated.

From an interview with Banksy:

I think its pretty clear that film is the pre-eminent art form of our age. If Michelangelo or Leonardo Da Vinci were alive today they'd be making Avatar, not painting a chapel. Film is incredibly democratic and accessible, it's probably the best option if you actually want to change the world, not just re-decorate it. (X)

From an advertiser in Czech Dream:

All ad manuals always use the example of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, which was an ad made to order. It was a paid advertisement. A mega-billboard on the ceiling stating that God is great. It was done for dough. It was made to order and it’s art. Its goal was not to be a beautiful image that would evoke emotions. The commission was... "paint the ceiling so its obvious that God is great. And it must blow everyone’s mind. Here is the dough".

XII.

Final Thoughts

Everyday, in the most mundane of domestic activity, we are confronted by a popular set of ideologies that espouse that everything is the way it is because that is how the world works. It is what it is as my old manager used to say. This form of circular logic is incredibly flexible and up to the task of deflecting most observations and criticisms of both the problems of such a mentality and the flimsy scaffold upon which it rests. Yet it prevails en masse—some call it ignorance, others call it apathy or ambivalence. Regardless, I believe we may find a better comprehension of why this is so prevalent by searching within the theories of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Please be mindful that I am arriving at such concepts by way of Žižek, and I have quite a way to go before I fully comprehend these ideas. Yet I cannot resist using a particular component to help tie all the threads of this inquiry together.

I would like to propose that rather than touching upon some greater truth, these ideologies conform to what Lacan calls reality: a construct of symbolic order to assuage (or conquer?) the primordial unknowns of the Real—that unexplainable and terrifying chaos of the universe. When we are confronted with a proof (a stain) of this construct we are prone to aggressive reactionary measures. We want the stain destroyed so that balance can be restored to the order we have either created or subscribe to.

I believe this to be crucial, particularly for our questioning of Art, for it is easier to condemn capitalism and agree with Žižek about its metaphysical survival mechanisms than it is to attack our sole refuge of culture. Much of what I have discovered in researching this post, as well as in my own experiences with people, is that economics and consumerism and political authority are easier to be at odds with. There is something inherently cold in our perception of them. But to condemn or indict Art is to be met with the same zealotry of religious people when one not only questions the existence of god, but also exposes the practical, non-life-affirming policies that are informed by such beliefs.

Let us compare the ideas we’ve entertained herein. One of the tenants of the various anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist movements is the dependence on individual participation. When we buy a product, we cast a vote that says ‘yes’ to the status quo. When we purchase, say, animal products, we are not merely agreeing with the subjugation and slaughter of sentient beings, we are agreeing with the practices of an unregulated industry driven solely by profit. We are saying YES to the countless documented cases of workers rights violations, exploitation of illegal immigrants (21^st century slavery), we are saying YES to disastrous chemical warfare and insurmountable ecological destruction, and we are saying YES to the fatal practices of food science that are shortening the human life expectancy and fostering outrageous epidemics of cancers, obesity, and innumerable genetic manipulations to the human body.

When we cast a vote for a work of art, what are we saying YES to? If the piece is sexist, we are saying YES to sexism, or rather patriarchy. If we buy an Obey shirt we are saying YES to the capitalist system, to the class warfare that segregates millions of humans to poverty and homelessness. We cannot pick and choose what components of the society we like and ignore the ones we dislike. If fact, it is this very mentality that corporate America depends upon: dividing and conquering us with "lifestyles".

The smoke screen that we all erect in someway or another to ignore this reality is founded on individual performance—in reassuring ourselves of our beliefs to counterbalance our contradictory actions. We put our faith in the doer in order to excuse the deed. For us to do this we must rely on an essentialist-naturalist argument, which is typically predicated upon Platonic binaries that 'define' the 'essence' of man and woman. And make no mistake, Plato differentiates between the two and there is no reconciling them.

This is what Gary Francione calls "moral schizophrenia", where we condemn one action and defend another identical action through semantics. One example is the differentiation between the ethical treatment of certain animals: Michael Vick is a monster for his treatment of dogs, yet McDonalds is in total compliance for their treatment of chickens and cows. To bring this back to participation, Francione advocates for a boycott of the NFL for allowing Vick back into the game—for saying YES to what Vick symbolizes. (X)

* * *

I opened this post with Butler’s theory of performativity in gender because I believe these concepts to be a key component to better understanding participation. There are one or two key components that will help flesh out this post:

...the distinction between the personal and the political or between private and public is itself a fiction designed to support an oppressive status quo: our most personal acts are, in fact, continually being scripted by hegemonic social conventions and ideologies.
. . .
Butler underscores gender's constructed nature in order to fight for the rights of oppressed identities, those identities that do not conform to the artificial—though strictly enforced—rules that govern normative heterosexuality. If those rules are not natural or essential, Butler argues, then they do not have any claim to justice or necessity. Since those rules are historical and rely on their continual citation or enactment by subjects, then they can also be challenged and changed through alternative performative acts. (X)

We are now treading in murky waters. As per Žižek's principles, we are all integrated in a system that only really exists in our belief in its existence. As Exit Through the Gift Shop, F for Fake, and Czech Dream help us realize, the same can be said of information—fine art, street art, or any other facet of consumerism. The difficulty here is the absence of a scapegoat: there is no enemy to vanquish, no Mr. Brainwash to ridicule. We are the system, and only our performance can change it. Žižek has argued elsewhere that the current catastrophes facing humanity cannot facilitate the collapse of capitalism: the system will not fail because it survives on speculation, exploitation of crisis and uncertainty, and is constantly borrowing from the future. Instead, he argues, what is more likely is a migration away from capitalism as people awaken to the patterns of stillborn solutions offered by the system. Just as religion fails—one cannot pray away the nuclear disasters in Japan—secular belief in the system is equally emasculated.

We must consider Art among these bankrupt solutions. While I will always defend the necessity of expression and culture as an essential component for human survival, it cannot solve our problems merely through commentary that is sold to those predisposed to agree with it. My DVD collection will not deliver a blow to the system I wish to abolish. Artistic subversion can only prompt a shift, it can never embody it. Let me be clear, this 'shift' is not some romanticized revolution or dramatic action captured in iconic images; it is the domestic and banal choices we make everyday. It is whether we choose to say YES or NO to minutiae that supports the system. More aggressive action may be inevitable, but we cannot equally 'scapegoat' our solution to simplistic fantasy. We must strive to make ethical and just decisions as often as we can, otherwise we're just performing to convince ourselves.

a comic i made (#4)

2011-04-12T14:06:00.006-04:00

* * *
A comic but not comedic. To ridicule -- by way of three small exposures -- a certain pervasive mentality.

phantoms II

2011-04-02T23:45:00.025-04:00

Sorry for the delay!

I've decided to keep the same introduction for all "phantom" posts I make so that each one can stand on its own.

* * *
NOTE: The dotted-underlined bits of text are not links; hover your cursor over them to reveal hidden text. (I've been told that this doesn't work well with Safari (the text disappears after about 10 seconds). Firefox recommended.)

* * *

Phantoms are all around me.

I keep track of them with lists or on scraps of paper.

I do this for the same reasons children collect fireflies in jars.

Phantoms are all the alluring things that exist on the horizon.

Phantoms exist only in the future, yet they call back to the past in order to make their presence known.

Phantoms, by definition, are mysterious; thus, they have only imaginary value.

They're called phantoms because it's impossible to know which ones will find us and which ones will forever remain on the horizon.

I once saw a enigmatic, evocative poster for a film with an equally enigmatic title: The Valley (Obscured by Clouds). Instantly the film became a phantom. The plot, unknown to me at the time, formed loosely in my head, and some of the scenes crystallized and played out. Years later I finally had the chance to see the film. It was a disappointment.

Most things don't live up to their imaginative value.

Most things are better left as phantoms.

I have many phantom books on my shelves. Beautiful titles, beautiful covers, beautiful authors, beautiful reputations, and a few beautiful things I know about them. They build and build in my imagination until, finally, they turn into cathedrals.

I do this on purpose because I've learned an awful truth: it is rare for a book to remain better opened than closed.

In certain cultures writers sometimes leave a few pages of their novels blank for the reader to fill with their imagination.

Sometimes I wish all books were just beautiful covers and blank pages.

Here are some of my phantoms.

* * *
Black Mirror: The Selected Poems of Roger Gilbert-Lecomte

Because Gilbert-Lecomte remains on the periphery (even more elusive: his book on Arthur Rimbaud). Because he kept good company. Because of what Artaud said about his poetry (see above). And because of that face.

Film Posters of the Russian Avant-Garde (Susan Pack)

Because it's a 320 page collection of some of the best designed movie posters in history.

End of the Road (Aram Avakian, 1970)

Because 1970s American independent cinema is one of my favorite periods. Because I think it will have the feel of John Huston's Fat City (1972). And because people seem to either love it or hate it, which is often a good sign.

Because I only recently found out this book existed (I didn't know Camus wrote any literary criticism outside of the bits found throughout The Rebel). Because I'm curious to read his essay on Melville and his Encounters with Andre Gide. And because last month I read The Stranger for the third time and it rekindled my interest and admiration for Camus; now I want to go back and (re)explore one of the authors responsible for getting me interested in literature.

Araya (Margot Benacerraf, 1959)

Because the trailer is packed with beauty. Because after seeing it Jean Renoir told the film's director "Above all ... don't cut a single image!" Because it's one of the earlier films to blur the line between documentary and fiction. And because it's another "lost classic" brought to light by Milestone (responsible for my viewing of the great films Killer of Sheep and The Exiles).

A Thousand Clowns (Fred Coe, 1965)

Because I once saw the first few minutes and I've been intrigued ever since.

Safe Area Goražde (Joe Sacco, 2000)

Because Sacco is a highly acclaimed comic book artist who is also considered to be a journalist. Because I don't know very much about the Bosnian War. And because Edward Said made the following remark about Safe Area Goražde: "With the exception of one or two novelists and poets, no one has ever rendered this terrible state of affairs better than Joe Sacco."

Capitalist-Realism (Mark Fisher, 2009)

Because: "Let's not beat around the bush: Fisher's compulsively readable book is simply the best diagnosis of our predicament that we have! Through examples from daily life and popular culture, but without sacrificing theoretical stringency, he provides a ruthless portrait of our ideological misery. Although the book is written from a radically Left perspective, Fisher offers no easy solutions. Capitalist Realism is a sobering call for patient theoretical and political work. It enables us to breathe freely in our sticky atmosphere." --Slavoj Zizek

The Palm-Wine Drinkard (Amos Tutuola, 1946)

Because Raymond Queneau and Dylan Thomas both thought highly of it (the latter described it as "brief, thronged, grisly and bewitching.") And because I know next to nothing about African literature (of which it's often considered to be the seminal work).

Visage (Face), Tsai Ming-liang (2009)

Because Tsai is one of my favorite directors. Because Lee Kang-sheng is one of my favorite actors. And because this is Tsai's third musical and his previous two were interesting, innovative and highly enjoyable (if one is allowed to say that about The Wayward Cloud).

The Obscene Bird of Night (José Donoso, 1970)

Because it sounds like magic. Because of those two disparate covers. And because Luis Buñuel called it "a masterpiece... one of the great novels not only of Spanish America, but of our time" (Buñuel was my father).

The Theory of the Leisure Class (Thorstein Veblen, 1899)

Because it's supposed to be a witty satire of American snobbery, consumption, and wastefulness. Because Veblen sounds like a funny guy (perhaps unintentionally so, which is often better). And because it's considered to be an important and influential text.

Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands (Peter Mettler, 2009)

Because (I think) the entire film consists solely of aerial shots of the immense Alberta tar sands sans narration or editorializing (save for where the camera is pointed), and this seems to me like the perfect way to cover this Canadian Zone (Lessons of Darkness meets Koyaanisqatsi?).

The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch klima">The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch (Ladislav Klíma, 1928)

First and foremost, because the novel sounds very interesting. But also because Klíma "spent the later part of his life living in a hotel, shining shoes for a living, drinking spirits and eating vermin" -- so we owe him at least a perusal!

Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor and other Fantastic Films by Koji Yamamura

Because I like animation, the stills look promising, and, outside of the short film Mt. Head, I'm unfamiliar with the highly acclaimed Koji Yamamura.

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (Lydia Davis, 2009)

Because I've heard from trusted sources that she's one of the very best.

Madame Bovary, translated by Lydia Davis (2010)

Because I read the Steegmuller translation of Madame Bovary years ago and didn't think much of it, and I'd like to give the novel another chance.

The Way Things Go (Peter Fischli and David Weiss, 1987)

Because it's supposed to be a dazzling 30 minute Rube Goldberg illustration brought to life, and I'd like to see for myself just how impressive and imaginative it really is (or isn't).

The Future of the Image (Jacques Rancière, 2007)

Because it sounds like just the book I've been looking for (though I have a Rancière lecture bookmarked for future listening that might change my mind...)

Tennessee Williams: Notebooks

Because Williams is quickly becoming one of my favorites.

Macunaima (Mário de Andrade, 1928)

Because... (see the many possible reasons above). And because I once saw a few minutes from a film adaptation that were so utterly ridiculous that I couldn't help but wonder what might lie between the pages of the book that inspired it.

Casa de Lava (Pedro Costa, 1994)

Because I haven't seen any of Costa's earlier films (unless Ossos counts) and he's always worth watching. And because the film is called House of Lava and the images from it look stunning.

Invasión (Hugo Santiago, 1969)

Because it was recommended to me by a man I met on a safari just before he was eaten by a lion (his last words).

Daemon in Lithuania (Henri Guigonnat, 1974)

Because it just sounds fun, ok?

Away with Words (Christopher Doyle, 1999)

Because I want to see what a 100% Christopher Doyle film looks like.

Hebdomeros (Giorgio de Chirico, 1929)

Because it's written by painter Giorgio de Chirico. And because poet John Ashbery called it "probably...the finest [major work of Surrealist fiction]". (Bonus phantom: Ashbery's translation of Rimbaud's Illuminations is due out in May.)

Blue Light in the Sky & Other Stories (Can Xue)

Because, on that same safari, the lion who ate the man was quickly killed and skinned, and on the two ribs that crossed directly over his heart the following words were engraved: "blue light in the sky STOP dirty snow STOP refuses to melt." And since there is no other logical conclusion I can only assume that the devoured man made another recommendation to me with his pen knife while trapped inside the lion. (Bless his soul!)

Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries, 1900-1969

Because I like comics and frogs, and it's a book about comics with a frog on the cover! (I've been making this post for hours - leave me alone! This phantom is self-explanatory anyway.)

A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang, 1991)

Because it's by Edward Yang. Because for years it has been popping up in things I've read. Because it frequently appears on lists of the greatest films of the 90s (often as number one). And because, like Rivette's legendary Out 1, it has remained elusive, yet it is rumored to be making its way to DVD...

What About Me (Rachel Amodeo, 1993)

Because I like punk/street films about disaffected youth. And because it features appearances by Richard Hell, Dee Dee Ramone, Rockets Redglare, Johnny Thunders (who contributed to the score), and Gregory Corso.

A.G. Rizzoli: Architect of Magnificent Visions

Because I like imaginative/imaginary places. And because I like outsiders, especially those with magnificent visions (again, this one seems self-explanatory if you read the hidden text).

The Journey is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon

Because Dan Eldon was a legendary photojournalist (and artist) who, along with his three colleagues, was beaten and stoned to death by an angry mob in Mogadishu in 1992 (he was 22). This book features selections from his journals.

The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011)

Because Malick has yet to make a bad film and at the same time I can't imagine how something this ambitious can possibly succeed (I've read as little as possible about the plot; I just know it has something to do with the beginning and end of the world (or something) which, if true, is doubly interesting because it sounds like Malick has - for the first time - chosen a "narrative" that will perfectly match his loose, elliptical style.)

testicles (tenuously connected) ... a complaint (from Alexander Portnoy)

2011-03-25T14:17:00.009-04:00

I still plan to make a Phantoms 2 post this month as promised (I'll work on it next week), but in the meantime I wanted to take advantage of my previous post by using it as a silly segue for the following excerpt from Philip Roth's very funny novel Portnoy's Complaint (1969).

The pictures are all illustrations by Alfred Kubin, and I selected them because I thought they would make excellent covers for subsequent editions of the book. Kubin is a perfect pairing not only because of the deep sexual anxieties expressed in his drawings, but also because he tried to kill himself while standing on his mother's grave.

* * *
The Ape

     "Sometime during my ninth year one of my testicles apparently decided it had had enough of life down in the scrotum and began to make its way north. At the beginning I could feel it bobbing uncertainly just at the rim of the pelvis—and then, as though its moment of indecision had passed, entering the cavity of my body, like a survivor being dragged up out of the sea and over the hull of a lifeboat. And there it nestled, secure at last behind the fortress of my bones, leaving its foolhardy mate to chance it alone in that boy's world of football cleats and picket fences, sticks and stones and pocketknives, all those dangers that drove my mother wild with foreboding, and about which I was warned and warned and warned. And warned again. And again.
     And again.
     So my left testicle took up residence in the vicinity of the inguinal canal. By pressing a finger in the crease between my groin and my thigh, I could still, in the early weeks of its disappearance, feel the curve of its jellied roundness; but then came nights of terror, when I searched my guts in vain, searched all the way up to my rib cage—alas, the voyager had struck off for regions uncharted and unknown. Where was it gone to! How high and how far before the journey would come to an end! Would I one day open my mouth to speak in class, only to discover my left nut out on the end of my tongue? In school we chanted, along with our teacher, I am the Captain of my fate, I am the Master of my soul, and meanwhile, within my own body, an anarchic insurrection had been launched by one of my privates—which I was helpless to put down!
     For some six months, until its absence was observed by the family doctor during my annual physical examination, I pondered my mystery, more than once wondering—for there was no possibility that did not enter my head, none—if the testicle could have taken a dive backwards toward the bowel and there begun to convert itself into just such an egg as I had observed my mother yank in a moist yellow cluster from the dark interior of a chicken whose guts she was emptying into the garbage. What if breasts began to grow on me, too? What if my penis went dry and brittle, and one day, while I was urinating, snapped off in my hand? Was I being transformed into a girl? Or worse, into a boy such as I understood (from the playground grapevine) that Robert Ripley of Believe It or Not would pay "a reward" of a hundred thousand dollars for? Believe it or not, there is a nine-year-old boy in New Jersey who is a boy in every way, except he can have babies.
     Who gets the reward? Me, or the person who turns me in?
     Doctor Izzie rolled the scrotal sac between his fingers as though it were the material of a suit he was considering buying, and then told my father that I would have to be given a series of male hormone shots. One of my testicles had never fully descended—unusual, not unheard of... But if the shots don't work, asks my father in alarm. What then—! Here I am sent out into the waiting room to look at a magazine.
     The shots work. I am spared the knife. (Once again!)"

The Promenade

Self-Observation

What I would use for the cover if I were a publisher:
Death Jump

(Just to give an idea of what it might look like. Lacking a better program I used IrfanView, and I couldn't even figure out how to move "Portnoy's" and "Complaint" closer together...)