4/29/08

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Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 4:42pm.

Again, back to the loneliness of the crowds - kinda - but also - who is the intended audience? The collectivity of said audience, yet, the individuals within the crowds. How would each specific intended individual receive the message, how much thought would they put in to it; would that person consider the weight behind the intended message. Would the realization and distinctions be made between the difference of the intended and the actualized.


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not exactly the first time I explored these thoughts. Nonetheless it's troubling me again, and will continue to do so for sometime. Partly, because there's always a specific individual, or group of individuals I have wanted acknowledgment from in many of the things I've put out in whatever various mediums: song, words, visual art, letters, or even gestures, etc.
Oh the weight behind even this question.
AND not even just that, but the lengths some people go through to be self indulgent is rather ridiculous. I recently read an essay on how the internet is very much like the panopticon (look it up), and a lot of us are falling into that trap. I don't completely agree, but it does raise interesting points. Afterall it was recently published that certain agencies use Facebook to monitor people.

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I've decided not to send out an email concerning my birthday parties and spring break events, partly because I have a lot of work to catch up on. but I wanted to say thank you to everyone involved, that showed up, that went out of their way, spent any money in any shape or form, made any sort of sacrifice, said hi, etc.
I do have to say that Algernon Cadwallader is amazing.

that's me in the red all blurry like.

The French Letter

Eventually, after their demise, Juno solidified themselves as one of my top ten essential bands of all time. Arlie's writing is a huge influence on me, and listening to some of their songs now, I realize that quite a few things I said were inspired by the way he stated them. I've always been curious about the line "Bulgakov to Woland's crowd" in the song the French Letter. It's one of my favorite songs, I've probably intentionally listened to it more than any other song (my new computers itunes count is already in the double digits for both versions after a few days). So I felt a little dumb for not having any idea what Arlie Carstens was referencing, especially after so long; A Future Lived in Past Tense came out in 2001.
It turns out it's in reference to a famous Russian Novel, "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov. Woland is a character in the book, a manifestation of Satan.

I haven't read the book myself, yet - but it is now on my list. From what I gather it is a classic tale of good and evil, the ironies of the relationship between social power and Art. It's a controversial novel, with a very interesting history, even being banned as Satanic propaganda. You can read more about it here -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita


Also the line "When you were young listening to 'the lung'..." makes me wonder if that is a reference to the song by Dinosaur Jr. - I'd like to believe so.

Most of my friends love this band and song, so I wanted to share this with them.

here's an absolutely amazing live version that is required listening.
The French Letter - Live at Graceland February 1, 2003 --> right click (or control click for mac) and save target as, etc.

Who was it you said you were? and what was it you were sent here for? To drive him out so no one knows the true sentiment of your analysis now. Slave to the assassin? Bulgakov to Woland's crowd. Your ruse of sublime benevolence tapped out. A future lived in past tense right now. Who was it you said you were? and what was it you were sent here for? Bad cop wants to stir it up at the scene of the accident. Good cop wants to kiss and make up. Ever suppressing the evidence, court of opinion whispers, "there's no point left." Who was it you said you were? and what was it you were sent here for? "Only your insincerity thanks him for waiting" Stop off for a pack of smokes & a length of rope at the nearest Safeway. Hero slapped across your face. So badly in need of belief to distract from this emptiness you mistake for feeling. Who was it you said you were? Mistaking might for miracles. And what was it you were sent here for? Mistaking might for miracles? This is not going to hit you from behind, but right between the eyes. Watch the whole blinding light from the comfort of your car. A future erased by the things you never were. Who was it you said you were? Mistaking might for miracles? And what was it you were sent here for? Mistaking might for miracles? Born into oblivion, swept up and back out again "You'll leave behind all we ever did." "The only things forgotten will be the things you knew to hide" Mistaking might for miracles. Focusing on the spectacle, the purpose in the animal. Who was it you said you were. Mistaking might for miracles. What was it you were sent here for? Mistaking might for miracles. Find a sequence of numbers, all's revealed in the codes. While you sleep keep your ear on the dulcet tones. Hell no, you're not wrong if you think you're alone. Hell no, you wonder why they torch your car and smash your windows? Who was it you said you were? and what was it you were sent here for? Mistaking might for miracles. When you were young listening to "the lung" and acting like a kid. Who knew you'd always stay so thick. Faking is not enough. Wasting is not enough for this "You're not who you say you are you have no idea what you were sent here for."

yet even more

I've been doing A LOT of reading, and I find these things meaningful on some level. I want to share.

Max Horkheimer, "The End of Reason"
- "Rationality in the form of obedience swallows up everything, even the freedom to think."
- "Nietzsche proclaimed the death of morality; modern psychology has devoted itself to exploring it. Psychoanalysis as the adjustment form of modern skepticism triumphed over moral law through its discovery and unmasking of the father in the superego. This psychology, however, was the "owl of Minerva" which took it's flight when the shades of dark were already gathering over the whole sphere of private life. The father may still posses a superego, but the child has long unmasked it, together with the ego and the character. Today the child imitates only performances and achievements; he accepts not ideas, but matters of fact."
- "The Rationalistic society gave children legends and fairy tales so that they might mirror hope back to their disillusioned elders."
- "During good times, children are trained as future heirs; during bad times, as prospective breadwinners for their parents..."
- "The terror which pushes reason is at the same time the last means of stopping it, so close has truth come. If the atomized and disintegrating men of today have become capable of living without property, without location, without time, they also have abandoned the ego in which all prudence and all stupidity of historical reason as well as its compliance with domination was sustained. The progress of reason that leads to it's self-destruction has come to an end; there is nothing left but barbarism or freedom."

Max Horkheimer, "The Authoritarian State"
- "the consequence that flows from historical materialism today as formerly from Rousseau or the Bible, that is, the insight that "now or in a hundred years" the horror will come to an end, was always appropriate."
- "The belief that one is acting in the name of something greater than oneself is bankrupt."
- "The mass media assimilate the revolution by absorbing its leaders into their list of celebrities. The isolated individual who is not appointed or protected by any power cannot expect fame. Even so, he is a power because everyone is isolated. Their only weapon is the word."

Baudelaire : "You have no right to despise the present."

Michel Foucault -
On the Genealogy of Ethics
- "Plato asks, "How can the eye see itself?" The answer is apparently very simple, but in fact it is very complicated. For Plato, one cannot simply look at oneself in a mirror; one has to look into another eye, that is one in oneself, however in oneself in the shape of the eye of the other. And there, in the other pupil, one will see oneself: the pupil serves as the mirror. And, in the same manner, the soul contemplating itself in another soul (or in the divine element of the other soul), which is like its pupil, will recognize it's divine element."
Technologies of the Self
- "Faults are simply good intentions left undone."
The Masked Philosopher
- "Hence too, the declaration, repeated over and over, that everything nowadays is empty, desolate, uninteresting, unimportant: a declaration that obviously comes from Those who, not doing anything themselves, consider there are too many others who are."
About the Concept of the "Dangerous Individual" In Nineteenth-Century Legal Psychiatry
- "...those in power treat political misdemeanors in the same way as ordinary crimes in order to discredit them. Little by little, an image was built up of an enemy of society who can equally well be a revolutionary or a murderer - since, after all, revolutionaries do sometimes kill."
Questions of Method
- "Critique doesn't have to be the premise of a deduction that concludes, "this, then, is what needs to be done." It should be an instrument for those who fight, those who resist and refuse what is. It's use should be in processes of conflict and confrontation, essays in refusal. It doesn't have to lay down the law for the law, It isn't a stage in a programming. It is a challenge directed to what is."
Lives of Infamous Men
- "A comical effect, no doubt: there is something ludicrous in summoning all the power of words, and through them the supreme power of heaven and earth, around insignificant disorders or such ordinary woes."
Nietzsche, Genealogy, History
- "What is found at the historical beginning of things in not the inviolable identity of their origin; it is the dissension of other things. It is disparity.
- "Where the soul pretends unification or the Me fabricates a coherent identity, the genealogist sets out to study the beginning - numberless beginnings, whose faint traces and hints of color are readily seen by the historical eye. The analysis of descent permits the dissociation of the Me, its recognition and displacement as an empty synthesis, in liberating a profusion of lost events."
- "'Effective' history leaves nothing around the self, deprives the self of the reassuring stability of life and nature, and it will not permit itself to be transported by a voiceless obstinacy toward a millennial ending. It will uproot it's traditional foundations and relentlessly disrupt its pretended continuity. This is because knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting."
- "...street vendors of empty identities."
quotes from Nietzsche used in "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History"
"During barbarous ages... if the strength of an individual declined, if he felt himself tired or sick, melancholy or satiated and, as a better man, that is less dangerous. His pessimistic ideas only take form as words or reflections. In this frame of mind, he either became a thinker and prophet or used his imagination to feed his superstitions." - The Dawn of Day
"I can't stand these lustful eunuchs of history, all the seductions of ascetic ideal; I can't stand these blanched tombs producing life or those tired and indifferent beings who dress up in the part of wisdom and adopt an objective point of view." - On the Genealogy of Morals

more words

"Our concept of human nature is certainly limited; it's partially socially conditioned, constrained by our own character defects and the limitations of the intellectual culture in which we exist. Yet at the same time it is of critical importance that we know what impossible goals we're trying to achieve, if we hope to achieve some of the possible goals. And that means that we have to be bold enough to speculate and create social theories on the basis of partial knowledge, while remaining very open to the strong possibility, and in fact overwhelming probability, that at lease in some respects we're very far off the mark."

"It is not true in our given society that all people are doing useful, productive work, or self-satisfying work - obviously that's very far from true - or that, if they were to do the kind of work they're doing under conditions of freedom, it would thereby become productive and satisfying.
Rather there are a very large number of people who are involved in other kinds of work. For example, the people who are involved in the management of exploitation, or the people who are involved in the creation of artificial consumption, or the people who are involved in the creation of mechanisms of destruction and oppression, or the people who are simply not given any place in a stagnating industrial economy. Lots of people are excluded from the possibility of productive labor."

- both from Noam Chomsky during the The Chomsky-Foucault debate, a live discussion/interview by Fons Elders, on Dutch television in November 1971.