I guess I'm going to start using this again. I tend to have a lot of things wandering around in my head that don't really leave if I just write them in a notebook. Maybe it has something to do with private vs. public bastions of consciousness, you know? Like, if I write something on the internet, no matter who reads it (if anyone), it is somehow gone from me...or, more accurately, no longer solely mine and can then be contextualized and re-evaluated in some sense-making kind of way.
On the myspace there's another finished recording, a psych-ballad entitled "Xenia." I'm incredibly pleased with how well the recording worked out. I spent a long time watching Mike Rocha do all sorts of crazy shit to and with other people's songs and recordings before recording any of my own music with him. He's brilliant. He's given many of our unfulfilled ideas a sonic legitimacy that we were never able to achieve on our own. (i.e. the crazy ass tape echo all over Xenia).
There are two more songs that are complete and one more that is a hair away from completion. I'd say the record is at a good 70% now, pre-mastering anyways. It's taken forever.
----------------------------------
"Shaking the Rust Off"
In what direction will our flesh wander
when the Other's not around?
senile skin
an aged growth,
a page divided where I loaf
and change
deranged
perverse
unsure
silent seeking validation
stupid concept of a cure.
Twisting turning combi-nations,
find the numbers in the words,
level-headed consternation,
what is said is never heard.
What's been hiding in between the moonlight and the frozen shore?
(line deleted for embarrassment)
Are we just a horror movie,
humanoid and hungry forms?
Where's the beauty in remarking on the beauty of the norm?
Adept in death I dance deliberate dodging doldrums dumbly drab
Askance I glance in gardened grievance gripping grizzled gaping gaps
between the modern and the ancient
between your technophilic loves
No body's made me write like this since I said I'd had enough.
Willow, start to shed your branches,
I can offer comfort here,
boundless depth of autumn answers freely for the fallen fear.
------------------------
Onwards and Funkwards.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Friday, October 1, 2010
Human Resources
So, here is what is. Everything else still isn't, but almost is. I'm almost positive that you'll like everything else better than this one, but this one exists just as surely and more stubbornly as a result.
"Human Resources"
"Human Resources"
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Song Memory #1
A few years ago the dusk was tight and powerful. Waiting and waiting; no ideas: dreary glorious middlecity uptown surrounded everything. All I wanted were the drugs, really. At that time he was my friend…
A man inside himself so deeply that even the inside was on the horizon of his actual location. Wonder if any of us can claim differently, to the superior or inferior consequence; Regardless.
Whatever the case, his apartment (the old one), draped in flags of sub-cultural nationalism, was filling with the smoke of two expertly constructed blunts, one peach and one cherry, when you called to check up on my progress. In all decency (which I pretend to have) and 20/20 hindsight (which eludes me), I should have told you to make other plans.
Wait for hours—Take the ride—screaming fight in front of strangers and friends—the dusk I never knew could be the glassy eyes of meteorological ancestors, toiling, toiling, building storms, chinooks, the warm wind from where the cold wind should exist—I resided myself to take the bus. There was no middle ground of acceptability.
Note: One thing I have definitely learned is that there is always a middle ground of acceptability. My back problems seem too easily exploited to be used as a suitable metaphor.
The fateful walk home from Bathurst and Sheppard, enjoyed and loathed on a million days before and since, was solipsistic glory. The world and I were created to exist in relation to the walk itself, the mid-album lull, the cold reader’s wall, the glass ceiling in the stone pantry filled with berries and preserves for the coming season. My tongue on your legs taking careful note, drawing blueprints, writing treatments for the purpose of deep scene by scene analysis at a later date when the script can be incorrectly reconstructed and raised to a level of monocultural ubiquity (quit me, quit me, quit me). I reach to you in non-physical media with fingers of saliva that taste for burnt pages who’ve never seen fire. My face curling inwards upon itself, lips and nose and teeth are blips, closed and sheathed by a RADAR unit that never I met nor ever met me or you or us. My grandfather’s service record is the same sky that could not be a memory yet; I flew high and friendly (thank you Marvin) towards your rage and disappointment.
The feeling was significant if the aftermath was not. Thank you.
A man inside himself so deeply that even the inside was on the horizon of his actual location. Wonder if any of us can claim differently, to the superior or inferior consequence; Regardless.
Whatever the case, his apartment (the old one), draped in flags of sub-cultural nationalism, was filling with the smoke of two expertly constructed blunts, one peach and one cherry, when you called to check up on my progress. In all decency (which I pretend to have) and 20/20 hindsight (which eludes me), I should have told you to make other plans.
Wait for hours—Take the ride—screaming fight in front of strangers and friends—the dusk I never knew could be the glassy eyes of meteorological ancestors, toiling, toiling, building storms, chinooks, the warm wind from where the cold wind should exist—I resided myself to take the bus. There was no middle ground of acceptability.
Note: One thing I have definitely learned is that there is always a middle ground of acceptability. My back problems seem too easily exploited to be used as a suitable metaphor.
The fateful walk home from Bathurst and Sheppard, enjoyed and loathed on a million days before and since, was solipsistic glory. The world and I were created to exist in relation to the walk itself, the mid-album lull, the cold reader’s wall, the glass ceiling in the stone pantry filled with berries and preserves for the coming season. My tongue on your legs taking careful note, drawing blueprints, writing treatments for the purpose of deep scene by scene analysis at a later date when the script can be incorrectly reconstructed and raised to a level of monocultural ubiquity (quit me, quit me, quit me). I reach to you in non-physical media with fingers of saliva that taste for burnt pages who’ve never seen fire. My face curling inwards upon itself, lips and nose and teeth are blips, closed and sheathed by a RADAR unit that never I met nor ever met me or you or us. My grandfather’s service record is the same sky that could not be a memory yet; I flew high and friendly (thank you Marvin) towards your rage and disappointment.
The feeling was significant if the aftermath was not. Thank you.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
A Valley Of Giants
The last time I ever did sit in this place
we drank by the moonlight
I dissolved in your face
A vibraphone badder than sound in the silence
floating in space like a waterless island
decrepit intrepid, a beautiful violence
loveless, unique -- the last of decidings
A new home enraptured
A distance uncaptured
A life that you lived that might not have mattered --
the particles flash in and out of existence
and foreshine the movement,
they can't ever prove it,
but the fact is that pathless there is no resistance
the fact is that pathless there is no resistance.
A garden of heathens
A garden of time
gives meaning to meanings
but nothing to mine --
and leaving the loved ones that formerly were
we step into endlessness, nouns without verbs
our bodies as copies claim us as our own
never to read by the Rosetta Stone
original dwarfed in the face of the clone
now a valley of giants that must be our home --
has arrived.
we drank by the moonlight
I dissolved in your face
A vibraphone badder than sound in the silence
floating in space like a waterless island
decrepit intrepid, a beautiful violence
loveless, unique -- the last of decidings
A new home enraptured
A distance uncaptured
A life that you lived that might not have mattered --
the particles flash in and out of existence
and foreshine the movement,
they can't ever prove it,
but the fact is that pathless there is no resistance
the fact is that pathless there is no resistance.
A garden of heathens
A garden of time
gives meaning to meanings
but nothing to mine --
and leaving the loved ones that formerly were
we step into endlessness, nouns without verbs
our bodies as copies claim us as our own
never to read by the Rosetta Stone
original dwarfed in the face of the clone
now a valley of giants that must be our home --
has arrived.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Usurper
So, Alex Chilton of Big Star died today...well, yesterday now. We listened to their whole discography and wrote a 70s pop song.
Usurper:
Stop writing songs about Jesus
I don't want to hear them anymore
our thoughts are so impure
and I'll never know for sure
Maybe I'll meet you again someday
in some glass the world has stirred
I don't need you anymore
but I'll never know for sure
We'll go to your house in our motioning bodies
and try not to sing "You Really Got Me."
Spent so much time moving forward and back
I could draw a map of the sidewalk cracks
Usurper
You've been feeling underwhelmed
and feeling so uncertain
oh, a shell's such an interesting kind of a person
And what is the source, my friend
of the desert's desertion?
And what is the world if it's not a diversion?
We'll go to your house in our motionless bodies
I started to sing but your expression stopped me
Spent so much time moving forward and back
I could draw a map of the subway tracks
Usurper
Usurper, Usurper, Usurper.
And if our bodies never touch,
I don't know what I'll do.
And if our bodies ever touch,
always searching, never rushed
heated, supple, at full blast
the flags are rising from half mast.
Usurper:
Stop writing songs about Jesus
I don't want to hear them anymore
our thoughts are so impure
and I'll never know for sure
Maybe I'll meet you again someday
in some glass the world has stirred
I don't need you anymore
but I'll never know for sure
We'll go to your house in our motioning bodies
and try not to sing "You Really Got Me."
Spent so much time moving forward and back
I could draw a map of the sidewalk cracks
Usurper
You've been feeling underwhelmed
and feeling so uncertain
oh, a shell's such an interesting kind of a person
And what is the source, my friend
of the desert's desertion?
And what is the world if it's not a diversion?
We'll go to your house in our motionless bodies
I started to sing but your expression stopped me
Spent so much time moving forward and back
I could draw a map of the subway tracks
Usurper
Usurper, Usurper, Usurper.
And if our bodies never touch,
I don't know what I'll do.
And if our bodies ever touch,
always searching, never rushed
heated, supple, at full blast
the flags are rising from half mast.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Thursday, March 4, 2010
I like your cosmology, baby
Here are some ideas I recycled from last year's Loebel into this year's Powe:
Still Cosmic After All These Years
Wired in. Motionless. Unaware of anything outside the hove of vision. Electronically sustained; force fed, IV drip saline solution, body losing definition every passing moment in favour of a different kind of survival.
OR
Expanded. Evolved. Understanding of both immediate surroundings and electronic extensions. Growing outward as a means of growing inward and vice versa. Interchangeable ideational planes that inform one another instead of one that dominates and obscures all others.
These two scenarios represent two possible theories of the potential outcome of fully embracing the new media. One is worse than even the most stubborn Huxlian would conceive of being possible and one is so optimistic about emerging digital realities that it seems far too good to be true. One of the questions posed by the emergence and subsequent ubiquity of the new media is that of the effect that have on society’s consciousness with regards to the constant balance struck between the individual consciousness and all other individual consciousnesses: “By surpassing writing, we have regained our wholeness, not on a national or cultural but cosmic plane.” (McLuhan, Probes 296) Previous structures of understanding the divisions created physically and ideologically between our minds and bodies seem to dissipate in the face of the global village. This dissipation, rather than a regression, is a simulated return to Lacan’s imaginary and a realistic growth into Haraway’s cyborg. But what does it mean that these two processes happen hand-in-hand?
To begin, Lacan’s imaginary is the unmediated realm that every child exists in before he sees his reflection. It is at this point that the child begins the process of differentiation:
The jubilant assumption of his specular image by the child at the infans stage, still sunk in his motor incapacity and nursling dependence, would seem to exhibit in an exemplary situation the symbolic matrix in which the I is precipitated in a primordial form, before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other, and before language restores to it, in the universal, its function as subject. (Mirror Stage 2)
For Lacan, the moment at which this process begins is the moment at which every person becomes alienated from his desires, which cannot properly be encapsulated in language and thus cannot be expressed in communion with others or the Other. Thus, all of our relations are constituted in a lack and our chief goal in life and as a society becomes the removal of this lack through various means.
The shift from writing to the myriad of other potential communications is a social and technological embodiment of our attempt in this regard. While McLuhan’s aforementioned aphorism uses the word “surpassing” to describe this process, it seems more correct to assert that writing has been dethroned as the king of communications and engrained into a larger system in which other technologies are at least its equal. Since writing is a physical representation of the language that initially catapults the subject out of the imaginary and into the symbolic, it is necessarily less effective in the attempt to return to our originary oceanic primordial phase of existence than its successors, television and the Internet. While the process of learning language can never truly be reversed, the revitalization of oral culture in the new media simulates this process by fostering a collectivity that plunges us into a different ocean, a digitized oceanic mosaic of others relating to Others relating to others in an endless weblike chain.
Donna Haraway’s cyborg is a convenient example of how this chain produces the individual and necessarily, the collective, identity both technologically and emotionally. She likens the shift in consciousness to the difference between thinking and processing. By developing into processing machines, humans (or now, cyborgs) achieve a kind of community impossible in the world of the written word as the process of reading and writing is rendered close to, if not totally, obsolete in a world in which our minds can directly connect to one another:
Human beings, like any other component or subsystem, must be localized in a system architecture whose basic modes of operation are probabilistic, statistical. No objects, spaces, or bodies are sacred in themselves; any component can be interfaced with any other if the proper standard, the proper code, can be constructed for processing signals in a common language. (Haraway 11)
The common language that Haraway refers to is necessary in the creation of the new symbolic, the state of Lacanian lack in which the new media harness an oceanic collectivity in which we extend outward into each other via our lack rather than being sealed inside ourselves by it. Since “no objects, spaces, or bodies are sacred in themselves” it must be concluded that, in this case, the physical is inconsequential in the face of this common language that binds the entirety of human thought.
This dissolution of the physical body’s importance in the process of identity making is what McLuhan seems to mean by probing about “regain[ing] our wholeness, not on a national or cultural but cosmic plane.” National and cultural identities still hold weight in our society, but only on a surface level (as can be seen in the Olympics). The true divisions between nations and people are actually based in issues of wealth and prosperity, which are directly tied to and have a reciprocal relationship access and control of new media and information technology. It is important to remember that access to McLuhan’s cosmic plane, the possibility of communion with the Other that the new media seem to offer, has a price. Everyone can be wired into the system in different ways, as Haraway asserts, but the new systems definitely have hierarchies of control, in much the same way that pre-existing systems of communication did, that should not be mistaken or taken for granted.
That being said, there are more television sets in existence as of this moment than at any other point in history. The Internet can be accessed, mostly wirelessly, from any place in the world given the proper resources (which are becoming increasingly available.) As I type this very sentence I am doused by electric light in a heated room, surrounded by gadgets and devices flashing and charging their batteries, with the Internet open on the same computer I use as a creative tablet. Each of these is an extension of my mind outward into my own lack, my drive toward desire, and an extension outward into McLuhan’s cosmic plane and each is ingrained into the normalcy of my everyday life.
The move into the new symbolic as evidenced by Lacan, Haraway and McLuhan seems to highlight a different kind of evolution. Our technologies undergo natural selection rather than our bodies. The human body, at least in the Western world, is becoming increasingly sickly and powdered from living in environments that are created for and by the evolution of the mind. The common acceptance of wildlife as the natural is rooted in the idea that our bodies constitute as large and important a part of us as our minds, but as a society our system is structured to give our bodies cheap and useless food for the good of information, money. To assert that this is only because of greed on the part of the food providers is short-sighted; the system is self-regulating, and while power denominations exist, there is no ultimate puppet master pulling the strings. De-emphasizing the importance of the body on a global scale is something that we are doing on a global scale, and regardless of whether it proves to be positive or negative, it certainly affirms the idea that the evolution of our technologies and thus our minds and their connections to each other is taking precedence over our physical concerns.
This is the element of McLuhan media theory that can seem quite a bit like Christian mysticism at times; all this talk of communion with society and cosmic unity can be a little lofty and heavy handed. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s theories of Noosphere and Omega Point are certainly very close to many of the ideas I have just juggled with; the sphere of human thought evolving into an absolute complexity of consciousness has vast implications for desire, the body, Lacan, Haraway and pretty much everything and everyone else that exists, has existed or will exist. While McLuhan’s probe asserts that we have indeed surpassed writing (which is not quite correct) and that we have achieved our wholeness (which I do not quite believe either) it is more likely that all of our mental and technological efforts seem to be moving in the direction of the cosmic plane. We are not there yet.
------------------------------->
Not sure how much of it I agree with. I also think it's a pretty bastardized use of Haraway... anyhow, there it is.
Still Cosmic After All These Years
Wired in. Motionless. Unaware of anything outside the hove of vision. Electronically sustained; force fed, IV drip saline solution, body losing definition every passing moment in favour of a different kind of survival.
OR
Expanded. Evolved. Understanding of both immediate surroundings and electronic extensions. Growing outward as a means of growing inward and vice versa. Interchangeable ideational planes that inform one another instead of one that dominates and obscures all others.
These two scenarios represent two possible theories of the potential outcome of fully embracing the new media. One is worse than even the most stubborn Huxlian would conceive of being possible and one is so optimistic about emerging digital realities that it seems far too good to be true. One of the questions posed by the emergence and subsequent ubiquity of the new media is that of the effect that have on society’s consciousness with regards to the constant balance struck between the individual consciousness and all other individual consciousnesses: “By surpassing writing, we have regained our wholeness, not on a national or cultural but cosmic plane.” (McLuhan, Probes 296) Previous structures of understanding the divisions created physically and ideologically between our minds and bodies seem to dissipate in the face of the global village. This dissipation, rather than a regression, is a simulated return to Lacan’s imaginary and a realistic growth into Haraway’s cyborg. But what does it mean that these two processes happen hand-in-hand?
To begin, Lacan’s imaginary is the unmediated realm that every child exists in before he sees his reflection. It is at this point that the child begins the process of differentiation:
The jubilant assumption of his specular image by the child at the infans stage, still sunk in his motor incapacity and nursling dependence, would seem to exhibit in an exemplary situation the symbolic matrix in which the I is precipitated in a primordial form, before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other, and before language restores to it, in the universal, its function as subject. (Mirror Stage 2)
For Lacan, the moment at which this process begins is the moment at which every person becomes alienated from his desires, which cannot properly be encapsulated in language and thus cannot be expressed in communion with others or the Other. Thus, all of our relations are constituted in a lack and our chief goal in life and as a society becomes the removal of this lack through various means.
The shift from writing to the myriad of other potential communications is a social and technological embodiment of our attempt in this regard. While McLuhan’s aforementioned aphorism uses the word “surpassing” to describe this process, it seems more correct to assert that writing has been dethroned as the king of communications and engrained into a larger system in which other technologies are at least its equal. Since writing is a physical representation of the language that initially catapults the subject out of the imaginary and into the symbolic, it is necessarily less effective in the attempt to return to our originary oceanic primordial phase of existence than its successors, television and the Internet. While the process of learning language can never truly be reversed, the revitalization of oral culture in the new media simulates this process by fostering a collectivity that plunges us into a different ocean, a digitized oceanic mosaic of others relating to Others relating to others in an endless weblike chain.
Donna Haraway’s cyborg is a convenient example of how this chain produces the individual and necessarily, the collective, identity both technologically and emotionally. She likens the shift in consciousness to the difference between thinking and processing. By developing into processing machines, humans (or now, cyborgs) achieve a kind of community impossible in the world of the written word as the process of reading and writing is rendered close to, if not totally, obsolete in a world in which our minds can directly connect to one another:
Human beings, like any other component or subsystem, must be localized in a system architecture whose basic modes of operation are probabilistic, statistical. No objects, spaces, or bodies are sacred in themselves; any component can be interfaced with any other if the proper standard, the proper code, can be constructed for processing signals in a common language. (Haraway 11)
The common language that Haraway refers to is necessary in the creation of the new symbolic, the state of Lacanian lack in which the new media harness an oceanic collectivity in which we extend outward into each other via our lack rather than being sealed inside ourselves by it. Since “no objects, spaces, or bodies are sacred in themselves” it must be concluded that, in this case, the physical is inconsequential in the face of this common language that binds the entirety of human thought.
This dissolution of the physical body’s importance in the process of identity making is what McLuhan seems to mean by probing about “regain[ing] our wholeness, not on a national or cultural but cosmic plane.” National and cultural identities still hold weight in our society, but only on a surface level (as can be seen in the Olympics). The true divisions between nations and people are actually based in issues of wealth and prosperity, which are directly tied to and have a reciprocal relationship access and control of new media and information technology. It is important to remember that access to McLuhan’s cosmic plane, the possibility of communion with the Other that the new media seem to offer, has a price. Everyone can be wired into the system in different ways, as Haraway asserts, but the new systems definitely have hierarchies of control, in much the same way that pre-existing systems of communication did, that should not be mistaken or taken for granted.
That being said, there are more television sets in existence as of this moment than at any other point in history. The Internet can be accessed, mostly wirelessly, from any place in the world given the proper resources (which are becoming increasingly available.) As I type this very sentence I am doused by electric light in a heated room, surrounded by gadgets and devices flashing and charging their batteries, with the Internet open on the same computer I use as a creative tablet. Each of these is an extension of my mind outward into my own lack, my drive toward desire, and an extension outward into McLuhan’s cosmic plane and each is ingrained into the normalcy of my everyday life.
The move into the new symbolic as evidenced by Lacan, Haraway and McLuhan seems to highlight a different kind of evolution. Our technologies undergo natural selection rather than our bodies. The human body, at least in the Western world, is becoming increasingly sickly and powdered from living in environments that are created for and by the evolution of the mind. The common acceptance of wildlife as the natural is rooted in the idea that our bodies constitute as large and important a part of us as our minds, but as a society our system is structured to give our bodies cheap and useless food for the good of information, money. To assert that this is only because of greed on the part of the food providers is short-sighted; the system is self-regulating, and while power denominations exist, there is no ultimate puppet master pulling the strings. De-emphasizing the importance of the body on a global scale is something that we are doing on a global scale, and regardless of whether it proves to be positive or negative, it certainly affirms the idea that the evolution of our technologies and thus our minds and their connections to each other is taking precedence over our physical concerns.
This is the element of McLuhan media theory that can seem quite a bit like Christian mysticism at times; all this talk of communion with society and cosmic unity can be a little lofty and heavy handed. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s theories of Noosphere and Omega Point are certainly very close to many of the ideas I have just juggled with; the sphere of human thought evolving into an absolute complexity of consciousness has vast implications for desire, the body, Lacan, Haraway and pretty much everything and everyone else that exists, has existed or will exist. While McLuhan’s probe asserts that we have indeed surpassed writing (which is not quite correct) and that we have achieved our wholeness (which I do not quite believe either) it is more likely that all of our mental and technological efforts seem to be moving in the direction of the cosmic plane. We are not there yet.
------------------------------->
Not sure how much of it I agree with. I also think it's a pretty bastardized use of Haraway... anyhow, there it is.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Motherlode-When I Die
It Came From Canada Article about Motherlode's "When I Die."
I am absolutely loving this band right now. London, Ontario funk/soul from '69-'70 with the legendary Carol Kaye on the bass. This is the only record they ever made with this line-up, though apparently the lead singer unsuccessfully attempted to reform the band a bunch of time.
Also, what a fucking band name, eh?
J Dilla sampled the title track for "Donuts (Intro)", which is actually the last song on Donuts...although, there really isn't a beginning or an end to that album as it flows in an endless circle if you cue it up to.
Up all night again, though this one really is my fault. Interesting life developments. Random muscle pain in my stomach! Rubix Cubes!
Also, over the latter half of 2009, Richie Guzman has been making a comedy/hip-hop/funk/ridiculous mixtape of epic proportions. Dennis, Sean and myself co-wrote the song (along with Guzman himself and Brendan Doherty, magnificent man that he is) that's going to kick off the album, an epic funk jam called "Baby Get Me Some Food." It's ridiculously sexist, yes, but also very dope. "What's that in the kitchen? Mm Mmm, Delicious."
It should be online somehow in the next little while.
I am absolutely loving this band right now. London, Ontario funk/soul from '69-'70 with the legendary Carol Kaye on the bass. This is the only record they ever made with this line-up, though apparently the lead singer unsuccessfully attempted to reform the band a bunch of time.
Also, what a fucking band name, eh?
J Dilla sampled the title track for "Donuts (Intro)", which is actually the last song on Donuts...although, there really isn't a beginning or an end to that album as it flows in an endless circle if you cue it up to.
Up all night again, though this one really is my fault. Interesting life developments. Random muscle pain in my stomach! Rubix Cubes!
Also, over the latter half of 2009, Richie Guzman has been making a comedy/hip-hop/funk/ridiculous mixtape of epic proportions. Dennis, Sean and myself co-wrote the song (along with Guzman himself and Brendan Doherty, magnificent man that he is) that's going to kick off the album, an epic funk jam called "Baby Get Me Some Food." It's ridiculously sexist, yes, but also very dope. "What's that in the kitchen? Mm Mmm, Delicious."
It should be online somehow in the next little while.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Man, I like your style V 2.0
Cogito ergo sum, I know that you're the only one...
Maybe we could have some fun.
I'm so variable...I can be the x for anyone.
But oh, I don't know how to tell you so...
No, I don't know how to let you know.
No, I don't know how to let you sew
any seeds at all.
Cogito ergo sum, I know I'm not the only one...
but maybe we could have some fun.
You're so variable...you can be the x for anyone.
But oh, you don't know how to tell me so...
No, you don't know how to let me know.
No, you're never going to let me go
anywhere at all.
It's worth it!
I'm working!
It's worth it!
I'm so sure!
It's worth it!
I'm working!
It's worth it!
I'm not sure!
Man, I like your style...
but I'm thinking about the good things
even though I see
the (happiness/pleasure/loving/potential) that you could bring...
The people that I know!
The people that I meet!
I want to watch them grow!
It's good enough for me!
But man, I like your style.
Maybe we could have some fun.
I'm so variable...I can be the x for anyone.
But oh, I don't know how to tell you so...
No, I don't know how to let you know.
No, I don't know how to let you sew
any seeds at all.
Cogito ergo sum, I know I'm not the only one...
but maybe we could have some fun.
You're so variable...you can be the x for anyone.
But oh, you don't know how to tell me so...
No, you don't know how to let me know.
No, you're never going to let me go
anywhere at all.
It's worth it!
I'm working!
It's worth it!
I'm so sure!
It's worth it!
I'm working!
It's worth it!
I'm not sure!
Man, I like your style...
but I'm thinking about the good things
even though I see
the (happiness/pleasure/loving/potential) that you could bring...
The people that I know!
The people that I meet!
I want to watch them grow!
It's good enough for me!
But man, I like your style.
Friday, January 29, 2010
the space between the night and the morning
Your GAGA ridicule, I hate to love Kevin Drew, but not you. Taking advantage of advantages. Sliding into a more commonly masculine perspective (why? Not sure. Keep catching myself being a meathead.) Turning down male modeling/acting for no specific reason. "It's okay to not understand yourself." Not sure I believe it. I wonder if I believe in God because I use the word believe when talking about it. I wonder if it matters. Not feeling so good about the word "wonder" anymore after Thomas Loebel and Emily Dickinson. I've been looking at pictures of people who don't know they're going to die. Well, I assume they know that they're going to die eventually. But I like it when the photo contains the imminent death and they don't see it coming. I prefer anticipatory punctum to the shock-value catharsis of aftermath. It is 6:30am and I haven't slept yet. I have an optometrist appointment in 3 or so hours. "There's no point in sleeping at this point," he typed pointedly. I was supposed to be communicating via meta-everything with someone and she stopped playing the game. Now I don't know whether it's part of the game or not. Maybe this is, necessarily. I was approached by a beautiful girl on the subway today because me and my brother were loudly singing Bruce Springsteen and she asked me for my number. I wonder if I was actually attracted to her or if I gave it to her because I was attracted to the idea of something like that happening to me. I wonder if it makes a difference. Perhaps I should nip this "wonder" thing in the bud. I'm curious as to whether it makes it a difference. Ah, that's much better. Many of these thoughts are skewed by late-night reading of Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Today I helped a lovely girl surprise a lovely boy. A few days ago I did mushrooms and went to a strip club with an infantry officer (who didn't do any drugs, military), a slum lord and several of my treasured cronies. I did not run into anyone from high school this time. I've been downloading music and it makes me feel like shit but I don't care because it's mostly bands that have a good deal of success. I really plan to buy the albums when I have money but I just don't right now. Maybe I will steal them somehow, which I would love to do, but even so, that's just as problematic as downloading except for the fact that it feeds my object identifications. Although I guess the record stores and their insurance write offs probably eat the cost of the stolen record rather than the artists themselves. (Jerry: Do you even know what a write-off is? Kramer: No, but they do...and they're the ones writing it off)I should look into this. Also, typing about planning crime on the Internet is funny because literally everything I'm doing is being monitored at all times (though I'm sure it's not very attentively in my case. I'm not that interesting or important, governmentally speaking.) I am also very interested in the fall of network television. It will begin with NBC almost for sure. I wonder how many years it will take before everyone merges with Google or something. Rogers digital cable (which I can't afford but still have because of basketball. More on basketball later.) has a new feature which I thought was annoying at first but is actually awesome. You can choose a preselected pack of six channels and watch them all at once based on genre. Like, it will find game shows for you. And basketball. And cartoons. Or the news, if you're into watching that on TV. It seems like a stupid way to get your news, though. 60 minutes is good sometimes. Andy Rooney is hilarious. Have you ever seen him rant about kitchen utensils? That's good TV. McLuhan wouldn't think so; it doesn't use Chiaroscuro well enough for him to approve. Also, there's a vague plot. You should probably try to find some of his old CBC interviews from the 60s and early 70s. They're peachy AND brilliant. Also, Gilbert Arenas is not allowed to play basketball for the rest of the season because he and another guy, who isn't good enough for me to remember his name or to continue having much of a career after this massive suspension, brandished guns at each other in their team's locker room. It was over a gambling debt. The suspension is without pay too. I wish I could play basketball incredibly well. I would want to be on a team like the Phoenix Suns because Steve Nash is the role model in that locker room. They have intelligent discussions and teach each other how to eat healthy. I need someone to teach me how to eat healthy, I think. My wind is really bad. I'm probably going to start running or something. Although I've made several attempts to do this before and I never do. I guess that can be said about a lot of the goals I set for myself. I've been writing a lot of new riffs lately. I have a pretty big arsenal of dope riffs right now. I need some lyrics. I'm finding topical inspiration in places that didn't infiltrate my sphere of poesis, as they say, before, but are now seeming more and more beautiful. The words aren't quite there but I can feel them bubbling to the surface. I'm not so worried (about that, at least.) I find myself missing a whole bunch of people right now. I'm sure that if they were around/accessible, I would be too busy to hang out with them anyways. It's not on purpose or anything, I just end up treating everyone like that no matter how much I care about them. And then there are days like today where I don't do much except clean my room up a bit and think about grocery shopping but decide against it because of the cold. Even though I like the cold in all other situations, typically. The cold only becomes an excuse not to do something when I don't want to do something.
Anyways, this has been a nice thing to do to fill the time that I am awake and nobody else is. I guess I could have worked on some essays or articles or poems but they just weren't on my mind. I hope I see you soon.
Anyways, this has been a nice thing to do to fill the time that I am awake and nobody else is. I guess I could have worked on some essays or articles or poems but they just weren't on my mind. I hope I see you soon.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Man, I like your style.
cogito ergo sum
I know that you're the only one
maybe we can have some fun.
I'm so variable...
I can be the x for anyone.
But oh, I don't know how to tell you so,
I don't know how to let you know
I don't know how to let you sew anything at all.
Man, I like your style.
I know that you're the only one
maybe we can have some fun.
I'm so variable...
I can be the x for anyone.
But oh, I don't know how to tell you so,
I don't know how to let you know
I don't know how to let you sew anything at all.
Man, I like your style.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Gardening, Not Architecture.
"Excerpt from Vanity." I don't know why. I'm really less worried about the contents of reality these days. I've been considering its constitution and my own. The weather is abnormal - we have warm winters and less fortunate nations (read: oppressed nations) experience natural disasters. Who controls the weather? Is there a conflict going on in the atmosphere?
------------------------->
Here's an essay I wrote:
Considerations of Silence and Ambient Writing
“My final merit I refuse you….I refuse putting from me the best I am.”
(Whitman 578, pg. 57)
¨
Restraint and silence are as living and breathing as the loudest linguistic expression. Walt Whitman knows this. Leaves of Grass is a consideration of contingency rooted in the irreducibility of an experiential now: “I believe in you, my soul….the other I am must not abase itself to you,/ And you must not be abased to the other.”(73-74, pg. 32) For Whitman, the berth between the experiential and articulation widens to encompass every I. This berth, or “Being’s truth,” for Heidegger, is a function of its own expression between experience and articulation, signifier and signified and is not reducible to language but rather a practice of performing itself, Being. This is why “poetry that thinks is in truth the topology of Being. This topology tells Being the whereabouts of its actual presence.” (Thinker as Poet) Whitman’s objective in Leaves of Grass seems to be to perform the reciprocal function; saying without speaking and imbuing stillness and silence with a value as great as speech and language; Contingency, being, is used to explicate Being.
§
Ferdinand De Saussure does not seem so sure when it comes to defining the space occupied by articulation within the experiential:
Taken as a whole, speech is many-sided and heterogeneous; straddling several areas simultaneously – Physical, physiological, and psychological – it belongs both to the individual and to society; we cannot put it into any category of human facts, for we cannot discover its unity.
Analysis of speech as a whole entity containing language, word pictures and objectival signifieds, according to Saussure, never reveals the true object of scientific linguistic study. (Saussure 296-297) There seems to exist and endless chain of signification in which truth constantly slips:
My words are words of a questioning, and to indicate reality;/This printed and bound book….but the printer and the printing-office boy?/…The well-taken photographs….but your wife or friend close and solid in your arms?/…The saints and sages in history….but you yourself?/Sermons and creeds and theology….but the human brain, and what is called reason, and what is called love, and what is called life? (Whitman l. 1075-1091)
Positing that one can indicate reality, the totality of the experiential, reason, love and life itself through words of questioning seems at first like an impossible feat of language; to do this successfully would be to successfully boil speech down to its essence and “discover its unity.” It is correct to assume that the feat is impossible: it is accomplished when Whitman uses chains of signifiers to highlight the unspoken. The indication he alludes to is a non-indication and thus a more meaningful indication (because it cannot be cluttered up with meaning.)
©
The essence of speech is located in the action of speaking but not in the action of saying because “what is spoken is never, and in no language, what is said.” (Thinker as Poet) It follows, then, that silence is its own articulation; the choice not to speak says nonetheless. This is precisely Whitman’s angle: his free verse is not so much the words being used but those which cannot be used because they do not exist, the expressers of the truth of Being. This is what it means to “sing the body electric;” (129) for Heidegger, “singing and thinking are the stems neighbour to poetry,” and must thusly grow close to the topology of Being.
ª
I mentioned earlier that Whitman’s non-indication is more meaningful than an indication without explaining properly why. Silence exists in flux with articulation because they are each the source of each other, each other’s respective anti-environment: “The role of the artist is to create an anti-environment as a means of perception and adjustment. Without an anti-environment, all environments are invisible.” (McLuhan 30-33) While Whitman would probably flightily declare that the artist is no different than you or I or the president, which is true, he doubtlessly succeeds in the creation of a literal anti-environment in his poetry. Leaves of Grass uses the contingent to access something transcendent, an actual environment inexpressible through articulation but enacted through the failure of articulation: “Clear and sweet is my soul….and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul/ Lack one lacks both….and the unseen is proved by the seen/ Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.” (l. 43-45) Whitman’s anti-environment is useful in that it makes clear the reciprocal relationship between language and the unsayable; that one cannot exist without the other is a fact worthy of careful consideration.
¨§©ª
Though it probably does not actually exist as a literary term, Whitman’s writing is ambient in its effect. Reading any portion of Leaves of Grass demands immersion; the words drift by and embed themselves as small seeds around a mental garden, moving conceptually outwards rather than upwards. One of the Oblique Strategies cards created by ambient godfather Brian Eno and his colleague Peter Schmidt for the aiding of creative decisions reads: “Gardening, not architecture,” suggesting that nurturing growth through hinting at an unarticulated idea can yield organic results at least as rewarding as forced upwards motion, if not more so. While the tradition of ambient music has always been more about sonic and technological experimentation, its primary focus has always been an unsaying rather than speech itself. Whitman’s poetry is the same; while verbose, his lines function as a way to get at the unsaid in similar fashion to Eno’s fiddling with tape loops in order to articulate through the negation of articulation. Being is understood only through immersion in the reciprocal process of saying and not saying.
-------------------->
The pre-edit edition, anyways. Some of those citations are UGLY. Oh well.
Kerplunk.
------------------------->
Here's an essay I wrote:
Considerations of Silence and Ambient Writing
“My final merit I refuse you….I refuse putting from me the best I am.”
(Whitman 578, pg. 57)
¨
Restraint and silence are as living and breathing as the loudest linguistic expression. Walt Whitman knows this. Leaves of Grass is a consideration of contingency rooted in the irreducibility of an experiential now: “I believe in you, my soul….the other I am must not abase itself to you,/ And you must not be abased to the other.”(73-74, pg. 32) For Whitman, the berth between the experiential and articulation widens to encompass every I. This berth, or “Being’s truth,” for Heidegger, is a function of its own expression between experience and articulation, signifier and signified and is not reducible to language but rather a practice of performing itself, Being. This is why “poetry that thinks is in truth the topology of Being. This topology tells Being the whereabouts of its actual presence.” (Thinker as Poet) Whitman’s objective in Leaves of Grass seems to be to perform the reciprocal function; saying without speaking and imbuing stillness and silence with a value as great as speech and language; Contingency, being, is used to explicate Being.
§
Ferdinand De Saussure does not seem so sure when it comes to defining the space occupied by articulation within the experiential:
Taken as a whole, speech is many-sided and heterogeneous; straddling several areas simultaneously – Physical, physiological, and psychological – it belongs both to the individual and to society; we cannot put it into any category of human facts, for we cannot discover its unity.
Analysis of speech as a whole entity containing language, word pictures and objectival signifieds, according to Saussure, never reveals the true object of scientific linguistic study. (Saussure 296-297) There seems to exist and endless chain of signification in which truth constantly slips:
My words are words of a questioning, and to indicate reality;/This printed and bound book….but the printer and the printing-office boy?/…The well-taken photographs….but your wife or friend close and solid in your arms?/…The saints and sages in history….but you yourself?/Sermons and creeds and theology….but the human brain, and what is called reason, and what is called love, and what is called life? (Whitman l. 1075-1091)
Positing that one can indicate reality, the totality of the experiential, reason, love and life itself through words of questioning seems at first like an impossible feat of language; to do this successfully would be to successfully boil speech down to its essence and “discover its unity.” It is correct to assume that the feat is impossible: it is accomplished when Whitman uses chains of signifiers to highlight the unspoken. The indication he alludes to is a non-indication and thus a more meaningful indication (because it cannot be cluttered up with meaning.)
©
The essence of speech is located in the action of speaking but not in the action of saying because “what is spoken is never, and in no language, what is said.” (Thinker as Poet) It follows, then, that silence is its own articulation; the choice not to speak says nonetheless. This is precisely Whitman’s angle: his free verse is not so much the words being used but those which cannot be used because they do not exist, the expressers of the truth of Being. This is what it means to “sing the body electric;” (129) for Heidegger, “singing and thinking are the stems neighbour to poetry,” and must thusly grow close to the topology of Being.
ª
I mentioned earlier that Whitman’s non-indication is more meaningful than an indication without explaining properly why. Silence exists in flux with articulation because they are each the source of each other, each other’s respective anti-environment: “The role of the artist is to create an anti-environment as a means of perception and adjustment. Without an anti-environment, all environments are invisible.” (McLuhan 30-33) While Whitman would probably flightily declare that the artist is no different than you or I or the president, which is true, he doubtlessly succeeds in the creation of a literal anti-environment in his poetry. Leaves of Grass uses the contingent to access something transcendent, an actual environment inexpressible through articulation but enacted through the failure of articulation: “Clear and sweet is my soul….and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul/ Lack one lacks both….and the unseen is proved by the seen/ Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.” (l. 43-45) Whitman’s anti-environment is useful in that it makes clear the reciprocal relationship between language and the unsayable; that one cannot exist without the other is a fact worthy of careful consideration.
¨§©ª
Though it probably does not actually exist as a literary term, Whitman’s writing is ambient in its effect. Reading any portion of Leaves of Grass demands immersion; the words drift by and embed themselves as small seeds around a mental garden, moving conceptually outwards rather than upwards. One of the Oblique Strategies cards created by ambient godfather Brian Eno and his colleague Peter Schmidt for the aiding of creative decisions reads: “Gardening, not architecture,” suggesting that nurturing growth through hinting at an unarticulated idea can yield organic results at least as rewarding as forced upwards motion, if not more so. While the tradition of ambient music has always been more about sonic and technological experimentation, its primary focus has always been an unsaying rather than speech itself. Whitman’s poetry is the same; while verbose, his lines function as a way to get at the unsaid in similar fashion to Eno’s fiddling with tape loops in order to articulate through the negation of articulation. Being is understood only through immersion in the reciprocal process of saying and not saying.
-------------------->
The pre-edit edition, anyways. Some of those citations are UGLY. Oh well.
Kerplunk.
Monday, January 18, 2010
I will be embarking on sonic experiments as of....now.
"Remember those quiet evenings."/"The tape is now the music./"Gardening, not architecture."
These things are all very important. I'm going to get a deck of Eno's Oblique Strategies.
Also, experiments with ambient writing. I've been pretty creatively inspired by the realization that I'm not and will never be a true academic. Though I bet you could have told me that.
"Remember those quiet evenings."/"The tape is now the music./"Gardening, not architecture."
These things are all very important. I'm going to get a deck of Eno's Oblique Strategies.
Also, experiments with ambient writing. I've been pretty creatively inspired by the realization that I'm not and will never be a true academic. Though I bet you could have told me that.
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