Is it wrong-- who am I asking-- to not want to be surrounded by negative people? Well, taste this: what if the negativity is me, and, and wrong is right?
All would be simple if..
All would be simple if...
I stare at you books, telling me to reject a causal account of our sickness, but isn't that a diagnosis in itself? Come, let us read back into the original moments to see if there isn't something MORE- slow down life, frame by frame, to see the speed of silence.
Now, apply this to your mind- ready, go! Freud makes us guilty to place our neuroticisms in categories but still, it feels good.
"Psychoanalysis is a Jewish science." -Derrida
Is that why all the Jews I know, myself included, are crazy?
I don't use words-- rather, words use me. It's as if all at once they wash over my body and flow out of my eyes, through my wrists, and onto the screen. You can make the claim that words and images are doomed to be representational, but I see no difference between the images I make and the words I write and ME-- intense, bubbling, subdued, singular Me.
So, sick because I'm unhappy or unhappy because I'm sick? Why must we need a cure, anyway-- how did we get here? We keep spinning webs and spinning webs, and now we have nowhere to go but backwards. We must deconstruct our experience to unravel what we've built up.
Museums are houses of incomplete truths.
Gathered up, packaged, and meant to show us origins.
My mind is too far beyond trust that everything I look at materializes behind suspicious eyes-- I want to be generous, and usually am when people give me the urge to think about things in different ways instead of telling me "this is the WAY" it is- it is FAIR- and it is beneficial to society.
You must learn these rules, they tell you, and become really good at spitting out the rules to control others, so that you finally fall asleep in a pile of restrictions and wake up to do it all over again.
The institution of science-- the application of formulas to give us a figured explanation of the order of the universe. Experiential data. Embellish with wikipedia, or whatever.
Give me power and I will substantiate these words. Just kidding! Do you believe what you're reading? Or do you let the sentences wash over you, piss you off, bore you? And again, the dangerous, unrestricted ramblings arise from a mind that's far from healthy, but I'd have it no other way.
I know who my audience is. I know who my parents are, where I "go" to school, and my ongoing sickness-- And I will say right now that I think Nietzsche was sick, too, and Freud and Foucault and Descartes and Heidegger and on and on. (There's no way in hell I just compared myself to them, but the condition is the same, is it not?). Sickness, here, is just a blurring of the inability to stop thinking and the refusal to accept tradition + institution without contestation. But this is more than a nostalgic hope to break out of the box that we tragic, poor graduates think "Society" places us in. Sitting around the fire, strumming on our American Pie guitars in a pathetic attempt to hold on to childhood may feel good, but the dilemma that comes to my mind operates on a completely different level. "Goes beyond." That phrase is comical. No, but really, I know of the sacrifices people make in encountering the future, so determined to avoid cliche and hold onto some shiny ideal of what a "free" life is.
A free life is now. <-- what? It sounds good.
I admire a lot of the poised, intellectual grad students who can keep their knowledge in perspective and proceed with slow and steady vigor. They're smart, shrewd, and will go on to help other students like me pick out the inconsistencies in discourses and develop a pace of their own.
I, on the other hand, can't do that right now-- I read these texts with unabashed and total submersion, throwing myself completely into the arguments and trying to learn to swim. Faulty method? Probably. I'll come up for air at some point.
If the older posts tell you anything, it's that "Panoosh" used to be this concept we built up to express our ongoing struggle with the inner and outer worlds, and the eventual conclusion that there is no conclusion-- the privileging of the mind AND the body. That's all cool and everything, but what's even cooler is noticing that people lie. How is that cool? Isn't that an overly angst-ridden attempt to rationalize current unhappiness? No, no, no! People lie, and it's beautiful!
Everything collapses perfectly-- people lie, and people die. Bitchez will put their feet out before you, sacrifice their bodies in a blind attempt to Get, Maintain, and Sustain happiness in a formula that's been recycled for centuries, probably since the Middle Ages. Fake, shallow, deep, real. Pretty fucking emo? Put it on a Green Day album then, that's fine with me.
What I'm attempting to do is reach a state of shallow depth. I think it's much safer, really. Good if you're claustrophobic too. This state should be one in which the dumb bitchezz of society are incapable of breaking my spirit, because I can "relate" to them, in some sick sense, by being partially shallow and realizing their primordial needs-- but I'll be so deep underwater that anything they say doesn't really matter, despite its banality. Did any of that make sense? Hopefully not. That's why I'm still attempting to reach this in-between state.
It's all a dance, how things fall together and fall apart, and frankly I don't care if this is vague because you know exactly what I mean if you turn off your computer and take a look into your eyes to hear them speak.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
On a Lighter Note
Admittedly, that last post was beyond insane and needlessly RANTing. I've been wondering a lot about beets- both the band from Doug Funnie and the vegetable. They have such magnificent color. One of the things I know for sure, and I don't know many things, is that receiving under 2 hours of sleep is equivalent to the after-effects of partaking in an herbal experience. I don't "get" blogs, and I never will- but I'll still write on them. It's pretty much like a public microsoft word, good for straightening out your thoughts and getting feedback on how others digest your thoughts and deem you worthy of internet time. Time is money, baby, and that's what it's all about. I also wonder if it is not too late to change my name, though I have nothing wrong with my current signifier. The thoughts that flow now are disjointed, self-reflexive, and fun to type. Type-ity, type type. May G-d have mercy on your soul if you just read the previous post, as I was not in a sane state of mind when writing that. One could say I was existing in a brief Emo (?) land- yuck. The thing about art is that it's whatever you can get away with. Care to partake in the death/rebirth?
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Generating a New Gaze: Totally & Tragically
You know The Gaze.
Black and white pictures of philosophers, heads in hand, brows furrowed, hard eyes fixated into the distance. Great thinkers plagued by the Great work of Great ones who came before.
I wish I could have slipped surreptitiously into this discourse; I should have preferred to have been enveloped by speech. I steal from Foucault-- and so? We are as much ourselves as we are a mechanism for transferring the constantly moving body of knowledge. I am you and you are me-- again, it's just too much! The shininess of this hippified statement is alluring; are we all not recycled artists? Someone stop me before I hurt myself.
I walked all morning to catch up with my thoughts, but the world kept moving and my thoughts kept going. Funny, right? And so the keypad now droops beneath heavy fingers, words sloshing down and around, and I mourn the predictability of being prepared. The preparedness of predictability. Preparing for one's predictable life? Are they not all the same thing, a tired, tired, song?
Careful! What? I said be careful of the individual. The individual. The INDIVIDUAL. Oh free, unitary, acting subject, how GREAT a notion! Well, Sometimes A Great Notion.
I don't care what philosophical terrain I'm stepping into, what Freudian reading in which this can be contextualized-- the pure idea of the individual as a free and acting agent is never what it seems to be: free. Is that saying we are constantly bound by the restrictions around us, doomed to be vessels of pre-existing art, choices, and thousand year-old dilemmas? Perhaps: A slimy, two-syllable deferment of judgement. And so? What matters to me right now is the event of thoughts unfolding; the questioning, the entire act of labeling this flow of thoughts as an "event," the event of judging it, and then the refusal to judge it once it's over-- oh, and that whole event, too. All of it.
What is this, a post-modern reluctance to latch onto a solid definition of The Subject? The fact that I even thought that right now points to the all too knowable attempt by theorists to categorize, rationalize, and organize these very attempts into modern/post-modern/post-post-modern posts-- wait, what are we posting? The unavoidable and BLARING dilemma of merely existing as an individual with supposed freedom necessitates some sort of a discussion on our "rights," our "powers," right?
Ooooh no. No, no, no. This is shaky territory. I can't commit to discussing Rights and Power unless my lawyer is present.
What do you eat? Where do you live? How do you recreate? Spending time over these questions seems more useful to me than attempting to systematize methods of thinking of OURSELVES, and placing them into certain camps. What for? Are we that self-centered? Or are we too lost in the big, complex world that we need these labels to help us make sense of ways of making sense of ourselves?
And The Gaze emerges. I knew you could sense it. Let's stop right here and track it.
My language is sweeping, ridiculous, wordy, and reluctant to commit, and so? In typing these words, do I not perform the same angst found in The Gaze? (Look closely, it's different) A Gaze that once formed from the need for linear, rational explanations instead emerges out of the radical abandonment of this weighty "problem of causality," and the shift into the immediate event of thinking. *Wild, glittering eyes replace a dead, glazed over frown* The result? A different look-- just as scrutinizing--but instead finding its furrow over the absurd and wonderful dualistic nature of the individual as both bound AND free.
What could this possibly "mean," you ask? A multiplication of the notion of the "individual" into something constantly bound by its limits, and internally free to play. Moving around with this notion behind one's eyes is at first unsettling: but isn't that the most liberating part of this gaze? The secret instinct that I am both written by and write the world as I go through it- day by day, moment by moment.
Symptomize this idealistic move as a classic coming-of-age tale. Yes, the young Holden Caufield so aptly sits immersed in his studies, relishing the immediacy of his freedom, and plagued by the weight of the world-- and so chooses both! Yes but. Yes but. Fast forward, rewind, it's always been the same story. Caught in a state of hyper-awareness of the function of the individual as both an Object and Effect of the movement of power-- HOW CAN ONE NOT? How can one not begin to become, and unfold, into this gaze....
* * *
So, how about it? Let's play this game. Because while it's magically wild to re-think the entire notion of freedom, that's a pretty sweeping move, right? Is that what I'm doing? (*smiles*)
On the one hand, it is tempting to think that the significance of this whole discussion rests in attitude. How you "perceive" your situation. I am free because I "choose" to be. Thoughts are powerful things, you know, and they create your reality, and if you buy my book for $10.99 you'll also get my DVD that will tell you the same thing and blah and blah and blah-- positive vibes, numbing the internal knots with blankets of future-based sentiments and hopes for a better place. Feed me the good tasty recipe for happy living, give me a hand to hold and a body to lay next to at night, and reserve a table for two as we blindly move from relationship to relationship, seeking warmth and attempting to exercise our "freedom" as INDIVIDUALS. Unique people, doing unique things. Believing this is the way we are supposed to act, preparing ourselves for a life of predictability, we convince ourselves that we CAN prepare ourselves for a life of predictability, and so do it.
Self-medicated freedom.
But in this effort to avoid the threat of a mundane, powerless existence, we instead normalize ourselves, discipline ourselves, and limit OURSELVES, utilizing recycled notions of success and freedom to see immediate results in our personal lives. Oh yes, here comes Guilt, stepping into the already crowded foyer.
The allure of living an outwardly "free" life used to excite me: "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds." Wow. So bold. So "true." I have the power, man! ME! But what I'm concerned with now is WHY this mental slavery is here in the first place? When did we reach a point where we had to have other "free" people tell us how we, too, can be free? Doesn't that negate the notion of freedom? Does any of this even matter?
I don't know what this all "means," but I notice that the notion of freedom tends to become wrapped up in the search for happiness. We all "want" to be happy, in theory. And we very well can be. It's simple. Just ask the Dali Llama, and I'm not kidding (?)
And here comes the other side. Despite the easily attainable path to comfort I have so unfairly attacked, there's still a darker route. I'll still walk home alone, and gaze at the individuals who easily couple themselves off believing this is IT, man, I have found it, or: I have time, why not? I'm young, this is what it's alllllllllll about! I'm free, and invincible-- and, and shit man, existentialism!
The struggle, then: Blindly participating in this game where freedom/happiness (what's the diff?) is just a drunk text message away vs. Critiquing the choice to engage in this discourse of power, and liking it too. They're both extremes, and they both can immediately fulfill the need to exert some sort of freedom. So what's all the fuss about? Which one's better?
If you say "depends" I will walk out of this conversation right now...
Depends.
Sometimes, I'd rather feel the weight of my restraints a little; walk around some more, and sift through these neuroses, rather than stroll along in silence, hand-in-hand, never knowing the person next to me or the person inside of me. Yes, the delectable pleasure of thinking too much. Inactivity. Paralyzed by knowing too much, Descartes sits fondling his wax. There's a time for that.
Other times, I AM DOWNN to jump headfirst into life, allowing myself to partake in the simple, superficial, yet perfectly delightful experiences of ignoring homework for a couple more hours of Saturday night freedom. To be sad, but convince oneself otherwise, is part of the process of participating in a sometimes much-needed FOL (fuck our lives) session. Been there, done that. See other post.
So let me ask you again, which is better?
What I am arguing for is both. Both are better. By shifting of the terms of this strained, tired discussion on "what it means to act freely," I'd like to banish this stupid binary and instead offer up an invitation to appreciate both the privileges AND limitations of having a choice, at once, all the time. And that this choice is beautifully ongoing and overlapping is what makes the magical weirdness of each word I type come alive-- your thoughts and my thoughts become part of a larger Gaze that attempts to come to terms with the limits of our freedom.
And for the love of G-d, cherish this: totally & tragically. Contempt. Fear. Lust. Anger. Serenity. All of it.
Caught up in this sticky dualistic mess, we partake in a generative, networked engine of power that's been running since before I was conceived. There is no escaping the fray-- we are always already enmeshed. In what? Perfect. All of it.
"So that's what you were day-dreaming about, huh?" Yes.
Black and white pictures of philosophers, heads in hand, brows furrowed, hard eyes fixated into the distance. Great thinkers plagued by the Great work of Great ones who came before.
I wish I could have slipped surreptitiously into this discourse; I should have preferred to have been enveloped by speech. I steal from Foucault-- and so? We are as much ourselves as we are a mechanism for transferring the constantly moving body of knowledge. I am you and you are me-- again, it's just too much! The shininess of this hippified statement is alluring; are we all not recycled artists? Someone stop me before I hurt myself.
I walked all morning to catch up with my thoughts, but the world kept moving and my thoughts kept going. Funny, right? And so the keypad now droops beneath heavy fingers, words sloshing down and around, and I mourn the predictability of being prepared. The preparedness of predictability. Preparing for one's predictable life? Are they not all the same thing, a tired, tired, song?
Careful! What? I said be careful of the individual. The individual. The INDIVIDUAL. Oh free, unitary, acting subject, how GREAT a notion! Well, Sometimes A Great Notion.
I don't care what philosophical terrain I'm stepping into, what Freudian reading in which this can be contextualized-- the pure idea of the individual as a free and acting agent is never what it seems to be: free. Is that saying we are constantly bound by the restrictions around us, doomed to be vessels of pre-existing art, choices, and thousand year-old dilemmas? Perhaps: A slimy, two-syllable deferment of judgement. And so? What matters to me right now is the event of thoughts unfolding; the questioning, the entire act of labeling this flow of thoughts as an "event," the event of judging it, and then the refusal to judge it once it's over-- oh, and that whole event, too. All of it.
What is this, a post-modern reluctance to latch onto a solid definition of The Subject? The fact that I even thought that right now points to the all too knowable attempt by theorists to categorize, rationalize, and organize these very attempts into modern/post-modern/post-post-modern posts-- wait, what are we posting? The unavoidable and BLARING dilemma of merely existing as an individual with supposed freedom necessitates some sort of a discussion on our "rights," our "powers," right?
Ooooh no. No, no, no. This is shaky territory. I can't commit to discussing Rights and Power unless my lawyer is present.
What do you eat? Where do you live? How do you recreate? Spending time over these questions seems more useful to me than attempting to systematize methods of thinking of OURSELVES, and placing them into certain camps. What for? Are we that self-centered? Or are we too lost in the big, complex world that we need these labels to help us make sense of ways of making sense of ourselves?
And The Gaze emerges. I knew you could sense it. Let's stop right here and track it.
My language is sweeping, ridiculous, wordy, and reluctant to commit, and so? In typing these words, do I not perform the same angst found in The Gaze? (Look closely, it's different) A Gaze that once formed from the need for linear, rational explanations instead emerges out of the radical abandonment of this weighty "problem of causality," and the shift into the immediate event of thinking. *Wild, glittering eyes replace a dead, glazed over frown* The result? A different look-- just as scrutinizing--but instead finding its furrow over the absurd and wonderful dualistic nature of the individual as both bound AND free.
What could this possibly "mean," you ask? A multiplication of the notion of the "individual" into something constantly bound by its limits, and internally free to play. Moving around with this notion behind one's eyes is at first unsettling: but isn't that the most liberating part of this gaze? The secret instinct that I am both written by and write the world as I go through it- day by day, moment by moment.
Symptomize this idealistic move as a classic coming-of-age tale. Yes, the young Holden Caufield so aptly sits immersed in his studies, relishing the immediacy of his freedom, and plagued by the weight of the world-- and so chooses both! Yes but. Yes but. Fast forward, rewind, it's always been the same story. Caught in a state of hyper-awareness of the function of the individual as both an Object and Effect of the movement of power-- HOW CAN ONE NOT? How can one not begin to become, and unfold, into this gaze....
* * *
So, how about it? Let's play this game. Because while it's magically wild to re-think the entire notion of freedom, that's a pretty sweeping move, right? Is that what I'm doing? (*smiles*)
On the one hand, it is tempting to think that the significance of this whole discussion rests in attitude. How you "perceive" your situation. I am free because I "choose" to be. Thoughts are powerful things, you know, and they create your reality, and if you buy my book for $10.99 you'll also get my DVD that will tell you the same thing and blah and blah and blah-- positive vibes, numbing the internal knots with blankets of future-based sentiments and hopes for a better place. Feed me the good tasty recipe for happy living, give me a hand to hold and a body to lay next to at night, and reserve a table for two as we blindly move from relationship to relationship, seeking warmth and attempting to exercise our "freedom" as INDIVIDUALS. Unique people, doing unique things. Believing this is the way we are supposed to act, preparing ourselves for a life of predictability, we convince ourselves that we CAN prepare ourselves for a life of predictability, and so do it.
Self-medicated freedom.
But in this effort to avoid the threat of a mundane, powerless existence, we instead normalize ourselves, discipline ourselves, and limit OURSELVES, utilizing recycled notions of success and freedom to see immediate results in our personal lives. Oh yes, here comes Guilt, stepping into the already crowded foyer.
The allure of living an outwardly "free" life used to excite me: "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds." Wow. So bold. So "true." I have the power, man! ME! But what I'm concerned with now is WHY this mental slavery is here in the first place? When did we reach a point where we had to have other "free" people tell us how we, too, can be free? Doesn't that negate the notion of freedom? Does any of this even matter?
I don't know what this all "means," but I notice that the notion of freedom tends to become wrapped up in the search for happiness. We all "want" to be happy, in theory. And we very well can be. It's simple. Just ask the Dali Llama, and I'm not kidding (?)
And here comes the other side. Despite the easily attainable path to comfort I have so unfairly attacked, there's still a darker route. I'll still walk home alone, and gaze at the individuals who easily couple themselves off believing this is IT, man, I have found it, or: I have time, why not? I'm young, this is what it's alllllllllll about! I'm free, and invincible-- and, and shit man, existentialism!
The struggle, then: Blindly participating in this game where freedom/happiness (what's the diff?) is just a drunk text message away vs. Critiquing the choice to engage in this discourse of power, and liking it too. They're both extremes, and they both can immediately fulfill the need to exert some sort of freedom. So what's all the fuss about? Which one's better?
If you say "depends" I will walk out of this conversation right now...
Depends.
Sometimes, I'd rather feel the weight of my restraints a little; walk around some more, and sift through these neuroses, rather than stroll along in silence, hand-in-hand, never knowing the person next to me or the person inside of me. Yes, the delectable pleasure of thinking too much. Inactivity. Paralyzed by knowing too much, Descartes sits fondling his wax. There's a time for that.
Other times, I AM DOWNN to jump headfirst into life, allowing myself to partake in the simple, superficial, yet perfectly delightful experiences of ignoring homework for a couple more hours of Saturday night freedom. To be sad, but convince oneself otherwise, is part of the process of participating in a sometimes much-needed FOL (fuck our lives) session. Been there, done that. See other post.
So let me ask you again, which is better?
What I am arguing for is both. Both are better. By shifting of the terms of this strained, tired discussion on "what it means to act freely," I'd like to banish this stupid binary and instead offer up an invitation to appreciate both the privileges AND limitations of having a choice, at once, all the time. And that this choice is beautifully ongoing and overlapping is what makes the magical weirdness of each word I type come alive-- your thoughts and my thoughts become part of a larger Gaze that attempts to come to terms with the limits of our freedom.
And for the love of G-d, cherish this: totally & tragically. Contempt. Fear. Lust. Anger. Serenity. All of it.
Caught up in this sticky dualistic mess, we partake in a generative, networked engine of power that's been running since before I was conceived. There is no escaping the fray-- we are always already enmeshed. In what? Perfect. All of it.
"So that's what you were day-dreaming about, huh?" Yes.
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