Steven Seagal’s adherence to the most fundamental aspects of human liberty: dialogue.
I’ll never forget the first time that I knew in my heart that I was unashamed to say that I was a Steven Seagal fan. I was sitting in my former professor Enrique Rodríquez Cepeda´s apartment flat in the most affluent neighborhoods of Madrid, Barrio Salamanca. My good friend Brian, whose real name when he is not involved in tactical CIA operations, I am not free to disclose for the time being. I can, however, talk about the small pleasures in life that year as we would get together and watch the dubbed Hollywood movies that would be cast in primetime hours of each evening.
All of the makings for the California taco shop burritos that we were accustomed to eating growing up in San Diego were virtually impossible to come by in Madrid. But that year, I came up with several recipes of actually refrying dry red and brown beans, together with beef stock and a generous amount of spices, that made the trouble seem oh so worth-while. In the meantime, we joked around about the interior decorating of the Professor´s Madrid Flat.
Among other eccentricities, he had a huge amateur painting of himself done by God knows who (perhaps one of the street hustlers “mendigos at or around Puerta de Sol.” Among the most unforgettable stylistic features of this painting, which he insisted on displaying in the most visible area of the family room, was the insist on the artists to use diagonal strokes of a simple green crayon from the top right hand corner and a 45 degree angle to the bottom left corner—except for the space his face occupied. The look said everything. His eyes appeared to drift even though it was a still shot, they seemed to question on their own the sketch artists decision to use the unchanging right to left green crayon strokes.
Outside of that, there were no other paintings or photographs on any of the walls. Only book shelves from the floor to the ceiling, even in the bedroom. There was one desk that was stacked with mounds of papers that never moved during the nine months I lived in that apartment. And then there were two arabesque styled, monstrous ceramic vases that he had acquired in Granada. There was a big iron bell mounted to the side of the sliding door that opened up to a small balcony and what is considered in Spain, “El patio interior.” That is to say the open space left in between multi-storied residential buildings that wrapped around each perfect square block.
We never grew tired of joking around about this arrangement. The idea also, that Barrio Salamanca is the most notorious old-wealth area of Madrid. This doesn’t compare to the significance of old rich vs new rich in a metropolitan area like New York, but with that analogy, it is easy to imagine what type of people would be occupying the apartment flats below, above and beside me.
So it was that on these nights Brian and I would fix ourselves some monster burritos and sit down in front of the 12-15 inch tv that received a signal only by antenna in the living room. At that time in Spain, and I wouldn’t throw out the possibility that things have changed since, virtually all of the movies that they showed on the public broadcast stations were cheap stock Hollywood movies. You would see things like Ghost with Patrick Swayze, Whoopi Goldberg and Demi Moore. I can recall seeing an action movie with Sylvester Stallone or Jean Claude Van Damme one time. But the funny part was that they were all dubbed, which created a totally different feel for someone who has such a characteristic voice as say, Steven Seagal.
Think for a minute about what first comes to mind when you think about Steven Seagal. Number one has to be the fact that he’s good at impossible one on twenty riffraff bar fights. Secondly, he had a characteristic pony tail. Third, he was the last one to speak, and when he did it was in a gruff whisper. Finally, it was that crane of the neck and the squint. All of these things about Steven Seagal are irreplaceable parts of his presence.
In my previous blog I brought in the analogy of the Cobra and the Mongoose. We can think about the irony of the interaction between these two animals as the sometimes inexplicable bait-and-switch between what at first we deem to be the underdog do to his apparent lethargy, but at some point switches to become the undisputable winner. That is the first level; the literal level. The irony.
Well Brian and I sat down to eat our burritos, have a San Miguel or two, talk about how much it sucked for me to teach English to a little spoiled 5 year-old kid named Javier which scratched me on the face on one occasion, because we were “role-playing” different animals and their names and body parts in English. Brian had a whole other list of things to worry about, many of them he couldn’t do to the nature of his work with the CIA.
But to see the disparity between Steven Seagal’s body language (one that I consider now to be way more philosophically suggestive than I did at that point in my life) and the Spanish lisp and idioms was an absolute riot. First of all, the movie we watched was Seagal’s second production, “Hard to Kill,” from 88-89. From the opening credits we knew we were in for a blast. All of those idiosyncratic ways of talking about Chinese acupuncture, shamans he had visited in Navajo reservations, Buddhist karma, care for the environment, and liberty and justice for all. This is impressive subtext.
Now, as I look back I see that within each of Seagal’s productions there are at least two running messages. The first one is I’m going to act like a naïve mongoose, bobble back and forth in my gait, and make it clear that I have more confidence in my Tibetan beads than in any weapon I am packing. Additionally, I´m going to draw you in by putting on this performative episode that makes me seem like a clown, but before you the audience are aware of it, (bait and switch), I´ve gotten you to think about greenhouse gases, oil spills, human rights issues for coal-miners. And above all, no one is “above the law,” as the title of his breakthrough movie proves.
This naïve mongoose presence, became two-fold from the moment the narrator announced the title as being “Difícil de matar.” I will admit that there are some crossing of signals, when the lips of Seagal express the seriousness of ecological issues, but what comes out is a Spanish vulgarism. (so perhaps the Madrid public would never be able to appreciate Steven Seagal the way that I am outlining now.
In contrast, it added a third level of complexity to the viewing of a movie that I had thought about a child as being purely roundhouse kicks and bloody noses. And to prove this with one more piece of anecdotal evidence, I would like to visit a recurring epistemic question opened up by Seagal in his action sequences. My suspicion is that I will need a part III on my reflections on Steven Seagal and his legacy to pop culture, but here goes.
It is the image of the gun and the badge. He refers to it specifically in at least one fight scene in all of the movies where he plays a detective. The question is posed, on a symbolic level, are the gun and the badge empty signifiers? Is it merely a façade or an attempt to annihilate any free exchange of reason between individuals at odds with one another?
When the character played by Steven Seagal is accused by his opposition of being part of a violent oppressor (or agent of hegemonic power structure), he invites the people who do not belong to that order to evaluate what they are doing for a minute before pushing the situation to a combative level. He is opening himself up to dialogue. In artistic representation, this is called opening up space for the other to express his concerns in his own subjective language. Without the symbols that translate to oppression to the other individuals in the environment, Seagal´s character is expressing a genuine desire to hear out their perspective.
The gesture of throwing “the badge and the gun” aside is not to show that he is a man plus one, or some kind of juggernaut who is incapable of listening to the discontent of the throng of people around him. Neither is it an attempt that he is holier than thou—too good to be part of the ranks of the status quo law enforcer.
The most pervasive criticism against thinkers who incorporate structurist content into artistic representations is that they are muting out the voice of the oppressed or the un-spoken for. Steven Seagal does not allow himself to get caught up in these pitfalls.
On the contrary, we see especially when Steven Seagal´s English speech is removed entirely, as Brian and I witnessed watching “Difícil de matar” in Madrid when we were forced to rely strictly on body language and symbolic exchange of property(forfeiting the badge and the gun)
In my last response to Steven Seagal’s legacy in the Motion Picture Industry, I presented his career as a metaphor of individuality. Despite the overwhelming odds against him, Seagal found not just one, but several fictional places to institute his idiosyncrasy against a larger backdrop of a finicky world. In the ebb and flow of Seagal’s artistic production, we see a constant interplay between agency to capital and aperture in the market. With perfect timing, Seagal swept down from the sky at the very instant the two converged. The end result was cultural capital that stands on its own and regenerates time and again into the horizon. When the critics decided for Seagal that his brand of martial arts cinema, one often characterized by ecological and ethical subtexts, had passed its prime, Seagal did not lie down. Instead, he immediately began brainstorming how to work around this debilitating structure.
If I said that we have arrived at a point in modern human interactions where everybody is in it only for him or herself, I’m sure many people would agree. In fact, I am scratching my head right now to think of one grouping of historical events whose most prominent characteristic is selflessness. Don’t look now, but I’m going to use the old Darwinist cliché: are human relations anything other than survival of the fittest?
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
The Cobra and the Mongoose in the American Savanna.
Entremes Five:
We are at a crossroads in our culture. One wants to be unique, but not too unique. One wants to display his brilliant plumage as the Royal Quail does without anyone around him daring to poke fun. One needs to show himself that he is the big fish in the pond, and wastes no time adapting to the peculiarities of new environments.
It is for this reason that when we witness the intuitiveness and drive to surpass all others in excellence, we as humans don’t easily forget. Each of us is acutely aware of our own susceptibility to age, not just in the sense of the aging human body, but also in terms of the appeal we command across a diverse society and across time.
Observe the relatively short history of rock and roll, and the way that the cultural market diagnoses the need for a specific rock star. A symbol of defiance, originality and eternal youth. And behold he appears on the cover of magazines, in talk show interviews and endorsements for fast cars and beauty products. The need he fills is unparalleled. We need him forever, but also for just one quick minute, because in two minutes we will need the one that replaces him.
Observe the cultural agency, and the precision of the surgeon’s knife as it slices through the flesh between decades A and B. And then observe the impossibility to recover that moment, that narcissistic apogee once it has passed. People with agency seek plastic surgeons, the alchemists of our time, but alas, everything including the ones who delegate the ones who appoint the cultural rockstars; they are all subject to an unchanging formula of decay.
It is for these reasons that when we witness a creative genius such as Steven Seagal, we are literally dumbfounded. Forget Sylvester Stallone and his fruitless attempts at reoccupying the body of Rocky Balboa for another go at it some five, ten, twenty years later.
Each time the panoptic committee convened (the ones that delegate the ones that appoint the rockstars), they decided conclusively that Seagal had lost his firm grip of the world’s fascination. They said around the year 1995, after the mainstream success of “Under Sieges” One and Two, that we can solve this cultural problem without solving it. We just won’t finance his next motion picture project.
Whereupon Seagal began growing his ponytail again (because prior to this moment he had cut it off at the suggestion of the studio that had financed “Under Siege”) and chuckled to himself as he gazed at his own image in the mirror. No problem, who needs to screen these productions in the American movie theaters anyway? I’ll just produce them myself and release them immediately through home video.
So began a series of Seagal’s branded ecologically conscious, yet unmistakably tough guy storylines. This one about an oil spill in Alaska and that one about a coal mine in West Virginia. The public was engaged once again, and Seagal found the satisfaction of working in the capacity of a Wizard of Oz, whose projected image was much larger than himself.
Even so, interest began to flag once more. All Steven Seagal fans such as myself began to question if this landmark figure in Martial Arts movies had seen his day (this time for real).
Steven Seagal gave a cold, expressionless squint back at all of us. He did not say anything, but showed with a slight cocking, negating motion back and forth of the neck that said “ye of little faith,” and went back into his den to work on something that we the market could only begin to imagine.
And then came the reality tv show at a time when reality tv shows themselves had attained their maximum effect in cultural capital. Seagal would later point out that there had always been a pervasive subtext in his productions. Not just about environmental awareness, but also the principal that no one is immune to justice. Afterall, his first financial success was carried out under the title “Above the Law.” The critics didn’t respond.
A&E aired for one year reality footage that documented Seagal’s honorary role as assistant sheriff in Jefferson County, Louisiana at which Steven Seagal’s fan club rejoiced, feeling that this being a little bit closer to our everyday lives, he had a good five or six years in the bank with this genre.
But to all of our dismay, a scandal surfaced in Seagal’s private life. A lawsuit alleging sexual misconduct and untendered backpay. A&E pulled the plug on the project after a little more than a season, citing controversy and poor image.
Poor image? Seagal would have none of it. He, much like a pit viper that has a gland whose sole function is to detect the exact core temperature and position of a vulnerable subject, perceived the collective thirst of America’s young generation for energy drinks.
That’s right, energy drinks. Seagal knew immediately that printing his image next to mysterious Chinese characters on a can would make his product sell hotter than pancakes. And so it was that Seagal set out about the world, visiting oriental apothecaries he had taken up residence with as a 17-year old from Burbank, California, long before he had even considered fusing his mastery of martial arts with cinema.
A granulated mixture of a highly sought after strand of ginger in Mongolia , just a trace of the Southeast Asian cobra anti-venom, and most importantly, the bottom line selling point: 100% fruit juice. Seagal had traversed all seven continents and knew his product was one step closer to being on the shelves of every supermarket from here to Timbucktoo.
So here we are once again at the crossroads of capital and market. Time will tell if Seagal’s newest device is capable of shaking off his detractors and conjuring up a new image of himself that coincides with the needs of the newest generation of caffeine junkies.
If, by some stroke of luck Steven Seagal happens to read my take on the series of events that realistically speaking, speak by themselves of his adaptability, I would like to express from my own modest perspective a few words of caution.
Mr. Seagal, you have shaken your finger at the motion picture industry and have triumphed. You have taken your spirituality and made it work in the context of law-enforcement, and met little resistance. Nevertheless, the reaches of the Food and Drug Administration are not to be trifled with. Even if it doesn’t gel with your concept of accountability to the law, pay them off when they come like the tax-collectors of Judea to your door. Other than a big, heart-felt thank you for your incomparable contribution to American pop-culture, that is all I have to say for the moment.
Sincerely,
Christopher Cade
May 24, 2010
We are at a crossroads in our culture. One wants to be unique, but not too unique. One wants to display his brilliant plumage as the Royal Quail does without anyone around him daring to poke fun. One needs to show himself that he is the big fish in the pond, and wastes no time adapting to the peculiarities of new environments.
It is for this reason that when we witness the intuitiveness and drive to surpass all others in excellence, we as humans don’t easily forget. Each of us is acutely aware of our own susceptibility to age, not just in the sense of the aging human body, but also in terms of the appeal we command across a diverse society and across time.
Observe the relatively short history of rock and roll, and the way that the cultural market diagnoses the need for a specific rock star. A symbol of defiance, originality and eternal youth. And behold he appears on the cover of magazines, in talk show interviews and endorsements for fast cars and beauty products. The need he fills is unparalleled. We need him forever, but also for just one quick minute, because in two minutes we will need the one that replaces him.
Observe the cultural agency, and the precision of the surgeon’s knife as it slices through the flesh between decades A and B. And then observe the impossibility to recover that moment, that narcissistic apogee once it has passed. People with agency seek plastic surgeons, the alchemists of our time, but alas, everything including the ones who delegate the ones who appoint the cultural rockstars; they are all subject to an unchanging formula of decay.
It is for these reasons that when we witness a creative genius such as Steven Seagal, we are literally dumbfounded. Forget Sylvester Stallone and his fruitless attempts at reoccupying the body of Rocky Balboa for another go at it some five, ten, twenty years later.
Each time the panoptic committee convened (the ones that delegate the ones that appoint the rockstars), they decided conclusively that Seagal had lost his firm grip of the world’s fascination. They said around the year 1995, after the mainstream success of “Under Sieges” One and Two, that we can solve this cultural problem without solving it. We just won’t finance his next motion picture project.
Whereupon Seagal began growing his ponytail again (because prior to this moment he had cut it off at the suggestion of the studio that had financed “Under Siege”) and chuckled to himself as he gazed at his own image in the mirror. No problem, who needs to screen these productions in the American movie theaters anyway? I’ll just produce them myself and release them immediately through home video.
So began a series of Seagal’s branded ecologically conscious, yet unmistakably tough guy storylines. This one about an oil spill in Alaska and that one about a coal mine in West Virginia. The public was engaged once again, and Seagal found the satisfaction of working in the capacity of a Wizard of Oz, whose projected image was much larger than himself.
Even so, interest began to flag once more. All Steven Seagal fans such as myself began to question if this landmark figure in Martial Arts movies had seen his day (this time for real).
Steven Seagal gave a cold, expressionless squint back at all of us. He did not say anything, but showed with a slight cocking, negating motion back and forth of the neck that said “ye of little faith,” and went back into his den to work on something that we the market could only begin to imagine.
And then came the reality tv show at a time when reality tv shows themselves had attained their maximum effect in cultural capital. Seagal would later point out that there had always been a pervasive subtext in his productions. Not just about environmental awareness, but also the principal that no one is immune to justice. Afterall, his first financial success was carried out under the title “Above the Law.” The critics didn’t respond.
A&E aired for one year reality footage that documented Seagal’s honorary role as assistant sheriff in Jefferson County, Louisiana at which Steven Seagal’s fan club rejoiced, feeling that this being a little bit closer to our everyday lives, he had a good five or six years in the bank with this genre.
But to all of our dismay, a scandal surfaced in Seagal’s private life. A lawsuit alleging sexual misconduct and untendered backpay. A&E pulled the plug on the project after a little more than a season, citing controversy and poor image.
Poor image? Seagal would have none of it. He, much like a pit viper that has a gland whose sole function is to detect the exact core temperature and position of a vulnerable subject, perceived the collective thirst of America’s young generation for energy drinks.
That’s right, energy drinks. Seagal knew immediately that printing his image next to mysterious Chinese characters on a can would make his product sell hotter than pancakes. And so it was that Seagal set out about the world, visiting oriental apothecaries he had taken up residence with as a 17-year old from Burbank, California, long before he had even considered fusing his mastery of martial arts with cinema.
A granulated mixture of a highly sought after strand of ginger in Mongolia , just a trace of the Southeast Asian cobra anti-venom, and most importantly, the bottom line selling point: 100% fruit juice. Seagal had traversed all seven continents and knew his product was one step closer to being on the shelves of every supermarket from here to Timbucktoo.
So here we are once again at the crossroads of capital and market. Time will tell if Seagal’s newest device is capable of shaking off his detractors and conjuring up a new image of himself that coincides with the needs of the newest generation of caffeine junkies.
If, by some stroke of luck Steven Seagal happens to read my take on the series of events that realistically speaking, speak by themselves of his adaptability, I would like to express from my own modest perspective a few words of caution.
Mr. Seagal, you have shaken your finger at the motion picture industry and have triumphed. You have taken your spirituality and made it work in the context of law-enforcement, and met little resistance. Nevertheless, the reaches of the Food and Drug Administration are not to be trifled with. Even if it doesn’t gel with your concept of accountability to the law, pay them off when they come like the tax-collectors of Judea to your door. Other than a big, heart-felt thank you for your incomparable contribution to American pop-culture, that is all I have to say for the moment.
Sincerely,
Christopher Cade
May 24, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
To all of my spanish segret agent friends spending the summer in Madrid
0 eight hundred hours and eight minutes Eastern Standard time on May fourth, 2010
To agent Tenebrosesbeltos:
Enjoy your summer! I miss Spain, and am wondering when I will be able to get back there. Tell those security guards at the Biblioteca Nacional that over the course of 1 year I figured out a way to clandestinely smuggle out original facsimiles of Pio Baroja's La Lucha por la Vida series. Right under their noses! The key was a big tub of what appeared to be sunscreen. I told them I would immediately develop a life-threatening rash if I did not have the cream with me at all times while I was in the reading room. They gave me some authorization stamp that said "lector" on it. As time went on and they got tired of dealing with me, they stopped inspecting the contents of the tub. That is when I started rolling up the facsimiles and stuffing them into the container. Tell them I want one of their hats. If they give me one of their hats, autographed by each one of them individually, I will return the facsimiles. No questions asked.
Cordially yours,
Lope, la vaca loca.
To agent Tenebrosesbeltos:
Enjoy your summer! I miss Spain, and am wondering when I will be able to get back there. Tell those security guards at the Biblioteca Nacional that over the course of 1 year I figured out a way to clandestinely smuggle out original facsimiles of Pio Baroja's La Lucha por la Vida series. Right under their noses! The key was a big tub of what appeared to be sunscreen. I told them I would immediately develop a life-threatening rash if I did not have the cream with me at all times while I was in the reading room. They gave me some authorization stamp that said "lector" on it. As time went on and they got tired of dealing with me, they stopped inspecting the contents of the tub. That is when I started rolling up the facsimiles and stuffing them into the container. Tell them I want one of their hats. If they give me one of their hats, autographed by each one of them individually, I will return the facsimiles. No questions asked.
Cordially yours,
Lope, la vaca loca.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Thanks to Borges and Foucault
Epigrams and Apocrypha: Goytisolo’s Trial Before his Countrymen.
There is something about La Reinvindicación that pulls all of us into its machinations. It is 1970 and Goytisolo obviously has a reason not to be living in Spain. Goytisolo is an analytical individual with reason to remember, forget, to fear and profess, to be anxious, to keep things to himself, but in other instances, to reveal. The writer is one identity in a sea of other beings, past and present, high and low, layered one on top of the other. Who is Goytisolo and who does he want to let on that he is?
What does he mean about faith and treason? Could it be that they are distinguishable from one another. What is exile, if indeed it does exist? Is it a projection? A place inside or out of lines and intersections: geopolitical borders? Though the stream-of-consciousness writing style is perhaps the only enduring stylistic feature of La Reinvindicación, there is something out there in Goytisolo’s cosmic space that speaks for itself. There is no accountability to anyone: not the text, not a country or regime, nor even to himself: a real physical being. What are any of us who think and breath, but the sum total of what we eat and breathe? What are we collectively, other than the sum of our arms, legs, thoughts, and perhaps wounded, failing appendages?
To dive into La Reinvindicación, as a work of fiction is to sever the syllogisms, logic and formulae that exert their force behind us (now merely a projectile) and watch us pinball and funnel down through the maze. To bring meaning to his text is to release oneself from meaning-making, the rigid structure that says why is letter x in sequence abc, and why is that one goat on top of the hill? We, the readers are also the writers. To scour the sources and find the origin of every single one of the author’s referents would be to incite madness. The unlettered reader in his insatiable thirst to know why this one is here and that one is there, thinking that in doing so he is becoming lettered is accomplishing nothing more than inwardly thrusting himself into a state of denial.
This is precisely what René Girard is describing in his chapter “Master and Slave,” a pseudo-masochistic reading of text and intertext within Miguel de Cervantes seminal work Don Quijote. His exploration of interpersonal relationships within the text expose the vanity of those who wish to distinguish themselves from the rest for their firm grasp of an abnormal otherness (as a psychological disorder or otherwise). He centers his focus around the figure of the cultured bachiller Carrasco who, contriving to dupe Don Quijote and his sidekick Sancho, succumbs to seduction occupying a limbo like space of futility. If cultural meaning-making is the barometer that a higher court uses to measure the success of an individual to his relative society, and by extension, posterity, Carrasco proves himself to be completely inept. More inept than Sancho Panza, for example, who does in fact succeed in governing momentarily an insular geographic space. He creates, he dictates and he delegates, however short lived this period of his life might be.
What then is it that I, or any other individual for that matter, have to do to distinguish myself from the rest? It is symptomatic of culture as a sociological mechanism. Back to the analogy of the goat above (not the scapegoat of Girard, but a pedigree Alpha male goat), I ask myself (as I am confident that most everyone does), what do I do to reach that apogee of understanding. What do I do to selectively graze, metabolize, synthesize and enrich my body and soul, and to make this shiny coat visible to those around me? What is the recipe of success to acquire, accrue, and ultimately bequeath cultural and economical capital to the other goats spread out below me (both temporally and physically)? What are the chances? Pierre Bourdieu has an answer for all of this in his book Distinctions: the case studies, statistics, names of well-to-do families, educational systems, neighborhoods and infrastructure. To show how this one became a violin virtuoso and that one deteriorated into the role of a footsoldier for an organized crime organization. With the same tact and precision that a geologist would account for what the Himalayan mountain range is and why, why it is always shifting year by year a few meters to the left or right. Bourdieu inserts his chisel into the exact line that separates the bourgeois strata from the petit-bourgeois and so on.
However, my approach to maximizing the cultural profit margin in La Reinvindicación differs on many fundamental levels from Bourdieu’s efforts to catalogue and diffuse even the most minor of details. In my reading of Goytisolo’s second volume of the trilogy of treason. For me, it is less about the names, places, insects and secret agents that orbit around the reader-writer who enters into its cycle. It is the uncertainties or the many times unpleasant affect that it triggers within my own subjectivity and asking why? It is not about tracing back the intertextual referents to their origin, but about letting go and giving way to where they lead. My reading of La Reinvindicación affords space for these referents to accrue feeling, not meaning, and finally stop. To the reader of my reading, this last part might not initially make much sense; however, if I am successful he or she might become aware of its projection on the other side (that is to say, his or her side).
On the Side of Capital Distinction:
Virginia Woolf on pausing before making decisions, “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” (Mrs. Dalloway).
On the Side of Capital Regulation:
Agent 007, recalling a previous conversation with operative Mr. M, states: “He said that if I was going to get involved in the diamond business I ought to try and understand what was really at the bottom of it all. Not just the billions of money involved, or the value of diamonds as a hedge against inflation, or the sentimental fashions in diamonds for engagement rings and so forth. He said, one must understand the passion for diamonds. So he just showed me what I’m showing you” (Ian Flemming, Diamonds are Forever).
Interchangeability of Stage and Stimulus:
James Fennimore Cooper on semiotics and the divided self: “He draws metaphors from the clouds, the seasons, the birds, the beasts, and the vegetable world. In this, perhaps, he does no more than any other energetic and imaginative race would do, being compelled to set bounds to fancy by experience; but the North American Indian clothes his ideas in a dress which is different from that of the African, and is Oriental in itself. His language has the richness and sententious fullness of the Chinese. He will express a phrase in a word, and he will qualify the meaning of an entire sentence by a syllable; he will even convey different significations by the simplest inflections of the voice” (“Introduction,” The last of the Mohicans).
Narcissistic Knee-jerk Reflex and the Will of the Phantom Limb:
Plainte de la bergére au publique: “Votre plus haut savoir n’est que pure chimère,/ Vains et peu sages médecins;/ Vous ne pouvez guérir par vos grands mots latins/ La douleur qui me déspère:/ Votre plus haut savoir n’est que pure chimère.” (Molière, La maladie imaginaire).
Porcelain and Purpose:
Frank O’Hara to the Film Industry in Crisis: “Not you, lean quarterlies and swarthy periodicals with your studious incursions toward the pomposity of ants, nor you, experimental theatre in which Emotive Fruition is wedding Poetic Insight perpetually, nor you, promenading Grand Opera, obvious as an ear (though you are close to my heart), but you, Motion Picture Industry, it’s you I love!” (Meditations in an Emergency).
Terminal Velocity:
Camus: Le dernier jour d’un condamné; Apocrypha: the letter X, “Ainsi, avec les heures de sommeil, les souvenirs, la lecture de mon fait divers et l’alternance de al lumière et de l’ombre, le temps a passé. J’avais bien lu qu’on finissait par perdre la notion du temps en prison. Mais cela n’avait pas beaucoup de sens pour moi. Je n’avais pas compris à quel point lês jours pouvaient être à la fois longs et courts. Longs à vivre sans doute, mais tellement distendus qu’ils finissaient par déborder lês uns sur les autres. Ils y perdaeint leur nom. Les mots hier ou demain étaient les seuls qui gardaient un sens pour moi” (L’Étranger, II-2).
The Production of Plot:
Christopher Cade on pedigree and purging: “Something about the tribe of Israel. The wandering in the desert and learning the principles of patience. Waiting without wanting. Wanting to dislodge oneself from any sense of purpose from oneself and be part of something bigger… a collective body of arms and legs and burning hearts…something bigger…something that walks forward without second-guessing that leaves a footprint bigger than insular I can. Walking without noticing how far---how great the expanse behind---and how far forward. No, it is not a question of must. Neither is it a discernable experience. There is nothing that says to us that this day is today and it is put in a category outside of all of the rest. It is day day day, and it is also not a question of remembering or forgetting. We are one with the land and there is sweat and dust on our brows. Some have more wrinkled skin than others. And above all, we have a designated place for antonement, a subjective wilderness named Azazel” (Cloud-seeding, mining, and letting go of the Western frontier).
Authorship and Authenticity:
Nina opens before her a vacuum of articulation: “(forcing a smile) You look frightened Charlie. Do I seem queer? It´s because I’ve suddenly seen the lies in the sounds called words. You know—grief, sorrow, love, father---those sounds our lips make and our hands write. You ought to know what I mean. You work with them. Have you written another novel lately? But, stop to think, you’re just the one who couldn’t know what I mean. With you the lies have become the only truthful things. And I suppose that’s the logical conclusion to the whole evasive mess, isn’t it? Do you understand me Charlie? Say life. L-i-i-f-e! You see! Life is just a long drawn out lie with sniffling sigh at the end! (she laughs)” (Eugene O’Neil, The Interlude).
Closure:
Jacques Derrida (still somewhat veiled in response to Hélène Cixous): “Before the verdict, my verdict, before, befalling me, it drags me down with it in its fall, before it´s too late, stop writing. Full stop, period” (Veils).
On the side of Practicality:
When I was growing up in San Diego, California my Dad had an interesting way of demarcating the limit between our yard and that of the neighbors. He wanted privacy for him and his family, but he had an aversion for chain-link fences. What did he do? He imported a unique strand of Eucalyptus trees from what is now Myanmar (myrtaceae frigilis cans-anagnorisis) that would reach heights in excess of forty feet within a span of two years, effectively spreading their desiccated foliage so far outward that they resembled a broad Torrey Pine (pinus torreyana californiense) that are in fact native to the region. Certainly there is a lot to be said about the postmodern city, especially in the case of the southland in California. Nevertheless, people have always been about quick fixes, shopping lists and propriety. One by one lanes are added to the interstates only to exceed capacity and bottleneck again. There is something liberating about owning one’s vehicle. The value of impulse over things like the eco-system. I want and I get. If the locusts are eating away at my fields of wheat, by all means I’ll introduce a menace like the Colorado River Toad (bufo alvarius) to send them swiftly back to their creator.
Grafting to bear a superior fruit:
The Good and the Bad of Richardson’s Approach to Goytisolo and Spatial Discourse.
I decided to stick with the Good and a Bad, although I might have included an “Ugly” if I wanted to offer even more dimension to this discussion. The “Ugly” would have to be slightly sinister, highly exotic and overtly haphazard to bring the spaghetti western and Sergio Leone into the mix. Nevertheless, the Italian who came to love the mythic rough-riding, North American landscape of the Wild West, but instead trans-culturated the whole project back to Europe, putting voiced-over Italian actors into place within a Spanish (?) cinematographic geography, seems to resonate with Richardson’s approach. I will say that I embrace The Ends of Space for not holding back, sticking to his guns and delivering quite a tour-de-force of performative, spatial, and even referential (sign-signifier) bibliography.
Who is the audience of this largely theatrical representation of Goytisolo’s exilic pleasures? I would say that Richardson is very aware of the challenges that a hispanist faces in reaching a broader audience. Despite the fact that Richardson arguably devotes a little too much of his analysis to anglo-themed intertexts, such as the Little Red Riding Hood and Ian Fleming’s 007 secret agent, it is his world to add in his own personal signature to. Interestingly, these two fictional constructions, however inane or boldly womanizing they might have been in their respective contexts, plunged themselves headlong into unarguably daunting spatial territory. I cannot question Richardson for identifying his target audience, and doing everything he could to spice things up.
That being said, I also identified my own susceptibility to the way Richardson is seduced to such a wide gamut of spatial theorists. In one moment he wants “space” and “place” in the Yi-Fu Tuan framing of things to be interchangeable. Don’t both intersect one another in the metaphysical conception of the human anatomy? He correctly identifies the trialectic of Lefebvre, as delineated in the introductory chapter of The Production of Space: lived, conceived and perceived space. Notwithstanding, the all-encompassing historical odyssey, on which the Marxist philosopher from Bordeaux embarks, is left conveniently aside. Furthermore, Richardson seems to string together the three categorical concepts together in a similar vein to Sancho Panza’s proverbs. When involving Lefebvre in a discussion of a literary text of any sort, the differentiality must be clearly identified. If Álvaro unbridled ruminations are conceived space in the fictive sense, then they cannot very well be emblematic of “spatial practice” (drawn from Michael de Certeau, but more appropriately in this context “lived space” a la Lefebvre).
I would like to take this opportunity to remind the reader that my poking fingers into Richardson’s creative re-configuration of the literary and theoretical threads that are available to him, by no means suggests that I refuse to implicate myself of the same deficiencies. On the contrary, I am making a mental note of the good and a bad here, so that when I set out on a similar project to this, I can avoid the pitfall in which the merit of my analysis has oft been buried. Returning more specifically to the good, I would like to laud Richardson for his open-mindedness in weighing all the material that is available to him interdisciplinary. As hyperbolic as it might be from time to time, I would agree that it is indeed symphonic. It is a pleasure to read and is completely readable, regardless of the previous background of any individual who picks it up. Although he reports linking metaphorically the main character Álvaro to the following description, I see it differently. This is a moment of epiphany, and interestingly the collective use of we brings us all into the fold: “We recall that the final annihilation of the body, though a terrific wedding of the material and the ideological, was ultimately the culmination of personal conceptualizations of space” (25). In closing, I will suggest the following to myself for the future: a selfless and methodological annihilation of [my] body when overtly recognizing the presence of these theoretical concepts within the confines of my analysis.
The Verdict:
“Reinforcement of the community is identical with the strengthening of socio-religious transcendence. But such reinforcement demands a flawless scapegoat mechanism, completely unanimous agreement that the victim is guilty” (René Girard, “A Totalitarian Trial,” The Scapegoat, 111).
Primary Work:
Goytisolo, Juan. Reinvindicación del conde don Julián. México: Joaquín Mortiz, 1970.
Secondary Sources:
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, Mass. :
Harvard University Press, 1984
Girard, René. Deceit, Desire and the Novel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966.
----------------The Scapegoat. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.
Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Blackwell Publishing: Malden, Ma; 1991.
Richardson, Nathan. The Ends of Spanish Space in Juan Goytisolo's Reivindicacion del
Conde don Julian. Letras Hispanas. Fall 2008; 5 (2): 15-28 (Electronic).
Soja, Edward W. Postmodern Geographies. Verso Press: London, New York; 1989.
Sources of Mention; Relevant to the Research Process:
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press: Boston; 1969
Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley : University of California Press,
1988
McAuley, Gay. Space in Performance. University of Michigan Press: Anne Arbor; 2000.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis; 1977.
***Extended Bibliography, in addition to an exhaustive definition and etymological analysis of
the word “kitsch”---
--- Available Upon Request.
In deference to the constructs of filtering and editing, I confess sins of mine that have already happened or will happen in the future. Remote to me is a geography I authored for a specific purpose: it is the land of atonement and the rest is between me and the wind (Cade, as himself).
There is something about La Reinvindicación that pulls all of us into its machinations. It is 1970 and Goytisolo obviously has a reason not to be living in Spain. Goytisolo is an analytical individual with reason to remember, forget, to fear and profess, to be anxious, to keep things to himself, but in other instances, to reveal. The writer is one identity in a sea of other beings, past and present, high and low, layered one on top of the other. Who is Goytisolo and who does he want to let on that he is?
What does he mean about faith and treason? Could it be that they are distinguishable from one another. What is exile, if indeed it does exist? Is it a projection? A place inside or out of lines and intersections: geopolitical borders? Though the stream-of-consciousness writing style is perhaps the only enduring stylistic feature of La Reinvindicación, there is something out there in Goytisolo’s cosmic space that speaks for itself. There is no accountability to anyone: not the text, not a country or regime, nor even to himself: a real physical being. What are any of us who think and breath, but the sum total of what we eat and breathe? What are we collectively, other than the sum of our arms, legs, thoughts, and perhaps wounded, failing appendages?
To dive into La Reinvindicación, as a work of fiction is to sever the syllogisms, logic and formulae that exert their force behind us (now merely a projectile) and watch us pinball and funnel down through the maze. To bring meaning to his text is to release oneself from meaning-making, the rigid structure that says why is letter x in sequence abc, and why is that one goat on top of the hill? We, the readers are also the writers. To scour the sources and find the origin of every single one of the author’s referents would be to incite madness. The unlettered reader in his insatiable thirst to know why this one is here and that one is there, thinking that in doing so he is becoming lettered is accomplishing nothing more than inwardly thrusting himself into a state of denial.
This is precisely what René Girard is describing in his chapter “Master and Slave,” a pseudo-masochistic reading of text and intertext within Miguel de Cervantes seminal work Don Quijote. His exploration of interpersonal relationships within the text expose the vanity of those who wish to distinguish themselves from the rest for their firm grasp of an abnormal otherness (as a psychological disorder or otherwise). He centers his focus around the figure of the cultured bachiller Carrasco who, contriving to dupe Don Quijote and his sidekick Sancho, succumbs to seduction occupying a limbo like space of futility. If cultural meaning-making is the barometer that a higher court uses to measure the success of an individual to his relative society, and by extension, posterity, Carrasco proves himself to be completely inept. More inept than Sancho Panza, for example, who does in fact succeed in governing momentarily an insular geographic space. He creates, he dictates and he delegates, however short lived this period of his life might be.
What then is it that I, or any other individual for that matter, have to do to distinguish myself from the rest? It is symptomatic of culture as a sociological mechanism. Back to the analogy of the goat above (not the scapegoat of Girard, but a pedigree Alpha male goat), I ask myself (as I am confident that most everyone does), what do I do to reach that apogee of understanding. What do I do to selectively graze, metabolize, synthesize and enrich my body and soul, and to make this shiny coat visible to those around me? What is the recipe of success to acquire, accrue, and ultimately bequeath cultural and economical capital to the other goats spread out below me (both temporally and physically)? What are the chances? Pierre Bourdieu has an answer for all of this in his book Distinctions: the case studies, statistics, names of well-to-do families, educational systems, neighborhoods and infrastructure. To show how this one became a violin virtuoso and that one deteriorated into the role of a footsoldier for an organized crime organization. With the same tact and precision that a geologist would account for what the Himalayan mountain range is and why, why it is always shifting year by year a few meters to the left or right. Bourdieu inserts his chisel into the exact line that separates the bourgeois strata from the petit-bourgeois and so on.
However, my approach to maximizing the cultural profit margin in La Reinvindicación differs on many fundamental levels from Bourdieu’s efforts to catalogue and diffuse even the most minor of details. In my reading of Goytisolo’s second volume of the trilogy of treason. For me, it is less about the names, places, insects and secret agents that orbit around the reader-writer who enters into its cycle. It is the uncertainties or the many times unpleasant affect that it triggers within my own subjectivity and asking why? It is not about tracing back the intertextual referents to their origin, but about letting go and giving way to where they lead. My reading of La Reinvindicación affords space for these referents to accrue feeling, not meaning, and finally stop. To the reader of my reading, this last part might not initially make much sense; however, if I am successful he or she might become aware of its projection on the other side (that is to say, his or her side).
On the Side of Capital Distinction:
Virginia Woolf on pausing before making decisions, “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” (Mrs. Dalloway).
On the Side of Capital Regulation:
Agent 007, recalling a previous conversation with operative Mr. M, states: “He said that if I was going to get involved in the diamond business I ought to try and understand what was really at the bottom of it all. Not just the billions of money involved, or the value of diamonds as a hedge against inflation, or the sentimental fashions in diamonds for engagement rings and so forth. He said, one must understand the passion for diamonds. So he just showed me what I’m showing you” (Ian Flemming, Diamonds are Forever).
Interchangeability of Stage and Stimulus:
James Fennimore Cooper on semiotics and the divided self: “He draws metaphors from the clouds, the seasons, the birds, the beasts, and the vegetable world. In this, perhaps, he does no more than any other energetic and imaginative race would do, being compelled to set bounds to fancy by experience; but the North American Indian clothes his ideas in a dress which is different from that of the African, and is Oriental in itself. His language has the richness and sententious fullness of the Chinese. He will express a phrase in a word, and he will qualify the meaning of an entire sentence by a syllable; he will even convey different significations by the simplest inflections of the voice” (“Introduction,” The last of the Mohicans).
Narcissistic Knee-jerk Reflex and the Will of the Phantom Limb:
Plainte de la bergére au publique: “Votre plus haut savoir n’est que pure chimère,/ Vains et peu sages médecins;/ Vous ne pouvez guérir par vos grands mots latins/ La douleur qui me déspère:/ Votre plus haut savoir n’est que pure chimère.” (Molière, La maladie imaginaire).
Porcelain and Purpose:
Frank O’Hara to the Film Industry in Crisis: “Not you, lean quarterlies and swarthy periodicals with your studious incursions toward the pomposity of ants, nor you, experimental theatre in which Emotive Fruition is wedding Poetic Insight perpetually, nor you, promenading Grand Opera, obvious as an ear (though you are close to my heart), but you, Motion Picture Industry, it’s you I love!” (Meditations in an Emergency).
Terminal Velocity:
Camus: Le dernier jour d’un condamné; Apocrypha: the letter X, “Ainsi, avec les heures de sommeil, les souvenirs, la lecture de mon fait divers et l’alternance de al lumière et de l’ombre, le temps a passé. J’avais bien lu qu’on finissait par perdre la notion du temps en prison. Mais cela n’avait pas beaucoup de sens pour moi. Je n’avais pas compris à quel point lês jours pouvaient être à la fois longs et courts. Longs à vivre sans doute, mais tellement distendus qu’ils finissaient par déborder lês uns sur les autres. Ils y perdaeint leur nom. Les mots hier ou demain étaient les seuls qui gardaient un sens pour moi” (L’Étranger, II-2).
The Production of Plot:
Christopher Cade on pedigree and purging: “Something about the tribe of Israel. The wandering in the desert and learning the principles of patience. Waiting without wanting. Wanting to dislodge oneself from any sense of purpose from oneself and be part of something bigger… a collective body of arms and legs and burning hearts…something bigger…something that walks forward without second-guessing that leaves a footprint bigger than insular I can. Walking without noticing how far---how great the expanse behind---and how far forward. No, it is not a question of must. Neither is it a discernable experience. There is nothing that says to us that this day is today and it is put in a category outside of all of the rest. It is day day day, and it is also not a question of remembering or forgetting. We are one with the land and there is sweat and dust on our brows. Some have more wrinkled skin than others. And above all, we have a designated place for antonement, a subjective wilderness named Azazel” (Cloud-seeding, mining, and letting go of the Western frontier).
Authorship and Authenticity:
Nina opens before her a vacuum of articulation: “(forcing a smile) You look frightened Charlie. Do I seem queer? It´s because I’ve suddenly seen the lies in the sounds called words. You know—grief, sorrow, love, father---those sounds our lips make and our hands write. You ought to know what I mean. You work with them. Have you written another novel lately? But, stop to think, you’re just the one who couldn’t know what I mean. With you the lies have become the only truthful things. And I suppose that’s the logical conclusion to the whole evasive mess, isn’t it? Do you understand me Charlie? Say life. L-i-i-f-e! You see! Life is just a long drawn out lie with sniffling sigh at the end! (she laughs)” (Eugene O’Neil, The Interlude).
Closure:
Jacques Derrida (still somewhat veiled in response to Hélène Cixous): “Before the verdict, my verdict, before, befalling me, it drags me down with it in its fall, before it´s too late, stop writing. Full stop, period” (Veils).
On the side of Practicality:
When I was growing up in San Diego, California my Dad had an interesting way of demarcating the limit between our yard and that of the neighbors. He wanted privacy for him and his family, but he had an aversion for chain-link fences. What did he do? He imported a unique strand of Eucalyptus trees from what is now Myanmar (myrtaceae frigilis cans-anagnorisis) that would reach heights in excess of forty feet within a span of two years, effectively spreading their desiccated foliage so far outward that they resembled a broad Torrey Pine (pinus torreyana californiense) that are in fact native to the region. Certainly there is a lot to be said about the postmodern city, especially in the case of the southland in California. Nevertheless, people have always been about quick fixes, shopping lists and propriety. One by one lanes are added to the interstates only to exceed capacity and bottleneck again. There is something liberating about owning one’s vehicle. The value of impulse over things like the eco-system. I want and I get. If the locusts are eating away at my fields of wheat, by all means I’ll introduce a menace like the Colorado River Toad (bufo alvarius) to send them swiftly back to their creator.
Grafting to bear a superior fruit:
The Good and the Bad of Richardson’s Approach to Goytisolo and Spatial Discourse.
I decided to stick with the Good and a Bad, although I might have included an “Ugly” if I wanted to offer even more dimension to this discussion. The “Ugly” would have to be slightly sinister, highly exotic and overtly haphazard to bring the spaghetti western and Sergio Leone into the mix. Nevertheless, the Italian who came to love the mythic rough-riding, North American landscape of the Wild West, but instead trans-culturated the whole project back to Europe, putting voiced-over Italian actors into place within a Spanish (?) cinematographic geography, seems to resonate with Richardson’s approach. I will say that I embrace The Ends of Space for not holding back, sticking to his guns and delivering quite a tour-de-force of performative, spatial, and even referential (sign-signifier) bibliography.
Who is the audience of this largely theatrical representation of Goytisolo’s exilic pleasures? I would say that Richardson is very aware of the challenges that a hispanist faces in reaching a broader audience. Despite the fact that Richardson arguably devotes a little too much of his analysis to anglo-themed intertexts, such as the Little Red Riding Hood and Ian Fleming’s 007 secret agent, it is his world to add in his own personal signature to. Interestingly, these two fictional constructions, however inane or boldly womanizing they might have been in their respective contexts, plunged themselves headlong into unarguably daunting spatial territory. I cannot question Richardson for identifying his target audience, and doing everything he could to spice things up.
That being said, I also identified my own susceptibility to the way Richardson is seduced to such a wide gamut of spatial theorists. In one moment he wants “space” and “place” in the Yi-Fu Tuan framing of things to be interchangeable. Don’t both intersect one another in the metaphysical conception of the human anatomy? He correctly identifies the trialectic of Lefebvre, as delineated in the introductory chapter of The Production of Space: lived, conceived and perceived space. Notwithstanding, the all-encompassing historical odyssey, on which the Marxist philosopher from Bordeaux embarks, is left conveniently aside. Furthermore, Richardson seems to string together the three categorical concepts together in a similar vein to Sancho Panza’s proverbs. When involving Lefebvre in a discussion of a literary text of any sort, the differentiality must be clearly identified. If Álvaro unbridled ruminations are conceived space in the fictive sense, then they cannot very well be emblematic of “spatial practice” (drawn from Michael de Certeau, but more appropriately in this context “lived space” a la Lefebvre).
I would like to take this opportunity to remind the reader that my poking fingers into Richardson’s creative re-configuration of the literary and theoretical threads that are available to him, by no means suggests that I refuse to implicate myself of the same deficiencies. On the contrary, I am making a mental note of the good and a bad here, so that when I set out on a similar project to this, I can avoid the pitfall in which the merit of my analysis has oft been buried. Returning more specifically to the good, I would like to laud Richardson for his open-mindedness in weighing all the material that is available to him interdisciplinary. As hyperbolic as it might be from time to time, I would agree that it is indeed symphonic. It is a pleasure to read and is completely readable, regardless of the previous background of any individual who picks it up. Although he reports linking metaphorically the main character Álvaro to the following description, I see it differently. This is a moment of epiphany, and interestingly the collective use of we brings us all into the fold: “We recall that the final annihilation of the body, though a terrific wedding of the material and the ideological, was ultimately the culmination of personal conceptualizations of space” (25). In closing, I will suggest the following to myself for the future: a selfless and methodological annihilation of [my] body when overtly recognizing the presence of these theoretical concepts within the confines of my analysis.
The Verdict:
“Reinforcement of the community is identical with the strengthening of socio-religious transcendence. But such reinforcement demands a flawless scapegoat mechanism, completely unanimous agreement that the victim is guilty” (René Girard, “A Totalitarian Trial,” The Scapegoat, 111).
Primary Work:
Goytisolo, Juan. Reinvindicación del conde don Julián. México: Joaquín Mortiz, 1970.
Secondary Sources:
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, Mass. :
Harvard University Press, 1984
Girard, René. Deceit, Desire and the Novel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966.
----------------The Scapegoat. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.
Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Blackwell Publishing: Malden, Ma; 1991.
Richardson, Nathan. The Ends of Spanish Space in Juan Goytisolo's Reivindicacion del
Conde don Julian. Letras Hispanas. Fall 2008; 5 (2): 15-28 (Electronic).
Soja, Edward W. Postmodern Geographies. Verso Press: London, New York; 1989.
Sources of Mention; Relevant to the Research Process:
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press: Boston; 1969
Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley : University of California Press,
1988
McAuley, Gay. Space in Performance. University of Michigan Press: Anne Arbor; 2000.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis; 1977.
***Extended Bibliography, in addition to an exhaustive definition and etymological analysis of
the word “kitsch”---
--- Available Upon Request.
In deference to the constructs of filtering and editing, I confess sins of mine that have already happened or will happen in the future. Remote to me is a geography I authored for a specific purpose: it is the land of atonement and the rest is between me and the wind (Cade, as himself).
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
A break in the thread: this is not an entremes
Cloud-seeding, mining, and letting go of the Western frontier (anonymous).
Something about the tribe of Israel. The wandering in the desert and learning the principles of patience. Waiting without wanting. Wanting to dislodge oneself from any sense of purpose from oneself and be part of something bigger… a collective body of arms and legs and burning hearts…something bigger…something that walks forward without second-guessing that leaves a footprint bigger than insular I can. Walking without noticing how far---how great the expanse behind---and how far forward. No, it is not a question of must. Neither is it a discernable experience. There is nothing that says to us that this day is today and it is put in a category outside of all of the rest. It is day day day, and it is also not a question of remembering or forgetting. We are one with the land and there is sweat and dust on our brows. Some have more wrinkled skin than others.
This land, this flatland knows not why it is flat and knows not why it is forever infertile. The faith and the frenzy have led us, the search parties out there, and clawing into a soil without substance, arms raised…extending one link and joint to another chain-like and longer than any one forearm and open palm with nerves exposed could stretch out toward the sun…send down send down the rays and let the corn rise up and produce soak in the rays over and over and over until the harvest of endless fields of the goldest sweetest corn you have ever seen is at our feet. At our feet is so much of heaven and joy and fruit of the earth we cannot contain…we cannot save for another day…drought, plague, who knows why? We have learned not to ask these questions. Manna will fall down from the sky while we sleep at night. And that is the thought that lets us close off this day, say thank you and that is enough, drift off, and usher in another.
A break and watch (to you who read-that means pay attention), don’t confuse this with anything else that came before. This is me now speaking. I am someone who was born already knowing about the great dust bowl, why it happened, the black storms that fought back pushed back the throngs of people who shook their fists at the western horizon and said this is our land and with God as our witness we will make it germinate. This is me being vaguely aware of the struggle of the determination of individuals and individuals whom I will never know but can sense. Who saw what I call the heartland and knew on the other side there was something…mountains perhaps…a great glacial rift that would thrust, pierce into the sky and then become still…a natural setting where a higher court than they could see with their eyes through the dust…higher up the court would convene, and give them the discretion to name it and call it theirs.
I profess this faith too, I really do. But digging into it and bringing up out of the earth the substance of life is not a simple question of digging, mining, however else you want to see it. You see, I like to think about it as adaptation. Frankly, I have already atoned for my future sins, I have accounted for that space around me that I have sucked all of the vital air out of. Surely I have burnt some bridges or will burn bridges, will chop down trees on the periphery to bunker down and garrison within. Is this so entirely different from the fence or the moat? I don’t think so. But with this I have given wind to my wanting and have said ok, this is my inclination and this is how I feel about things, and I don’t have any reluctance to sell this image of myself. I don’t doubt that adaptation will allow me to conjure up more substance than is naturally available. For me and for all else who looks back to see the burning fixed glance and gasping beneath rags or handkerchiefs or what have you, there is a solution to all of this and it is as simple as cloud seeding.
A final thought: "The frontier is not out there; it is within, deep deep within."
Something about the tribe of Israel. The wandering in the desert and learning the principles of patience. Waiting without wanting. Wanting to dislodge oneself from any sense of purpose from oneself and be part of something bigger… a collective body of arms and legs and burning hearts…something bigger…something that walks forward without second-guessing that leaves a footprint bigger than insular I can. Walking without noticing how far---how great the expanse behind---and how far forward. No, it is not a question of must. Neither is it a discernable experience. There is nothing that says to us that this day is today and it is put in a category outside of all of the rest. It is day day day, and it is also not a question of remembering or forgetting. We are one with the land and there is sweat and dust on our brows. Some have more wrinkled skin than others.
This land, this flatland knows not why it is flat and knows not why it is forever infertile. The faith and the frenzy have led us, the search parties out there, and clawing into a soil without substance, arms raised…extending one link and joint to another chain-like and longer than any one forearm and open palm with nerves exposed could stretch out toward the sun…send down send down the rays and let the corn rise up and produce soak in the rays over and over and over until the harvest of endless fields of the goldest sweetest corn you have ever seen is at our feet. At our feet is so much of heaven and joy and fruit of the earth we cannot contain…we cannot save for another day…drought, plague, who knows why? We have learned not to ask these questions. Manna will fall down from the sky while we sleep at night. And that is the thought that lets us close off this day, say thank you and that is enough, drift off, and usher in another.
A break and watch (to you who read-that means pay attention), don’t confuse this with anything else that came before. This is me now speaking. I am someone who was born already knowing about the great dust bowl, why it happened, the black storms that fought back pushed back the throngs of people who shook their fists at the western horizon and said this is our land and with God as our witness we will make it germinate. This is me being vaguely aware of the struggle of the determination of individuals and individuals whom I will never know but can sense. Who saw what I call the heartland and knew on the other side there was something…mountains perhaps…a great glacial rift that would thrust, pierce into the sky and then become still…a natural setting where a higher court than they could see with their eyes through the dust…higher up the court would convene, and give them the discretion to name it and call it theirs.
I profess this faith too, I really do. But digging into it and bringing up out of the earth the substance of life is not a simple question of digging, mining, however else you want to see it. You see, I like to think about it as adaptation. Frankly, I have already atoned for my future sins, I have accounted for that space around me that I have sucked all of the vital air out of. Surely I have burnt some bridges or will burn bridges, will chop down trees on the periphery to bunker down and garrison within. Is this so entirely different from the fence or the moat? I don’t think so. But with this I have given wind to my wanting and have said ok, this is my inclination and this is how I feel about things, and I don’t have any reluctance to sell this image of myself. I don’t doubt that adaptation will allow me to conjure up more substance than is naturally available. For me and for all else who looks back to see the burning fixed glance and gasping beneath rags or handkerchiefs or what have you, there is a solution to all of this and it is as simple as cloud seeding.
A final thought: "The frontier is not out there; it is within, deep deep within."
Monday, April 12, 2010
Magic Castles in the Sky and the Unconscious Grendel
Magic Castles in the Sky and the Unconscious Grendel:
In the latter half of the 19th century when Charles Darwin was collecting samples of sea turtle species in the southern hemisphere and post-romantic poets were transposing his ideas into the realm of social determinism, there was another thinker out there on the fray (maybe on a ship somewhere) who was composing volumes and volumes of what he called Modern Cartesian Theory. This seaman, if you want to call him that, was called Charles Fourier.
Fourier understood the libinal side of things as Freud would have it. He knew what it was to sublimate something and he had a more acute sense of the constructs of what “reality” was before him or ever since. C.F. knew that “reality” was something, a room a space, that the human psyche constructed outside of itself, an elliptical extension if you will.
(The writer of this article will admit that he is tired after being up for many consecutive nights and is remembering in a weird way some of the lyrics of a Rod Stewart song, “Maggie”---something about his coffee being cold and having to get back to work---well anyway my coffee is in fact cold and it isn’t because I am drinking iced-coffee. The reason is very simple. I have been up for many consecutive nights. I have been visited by Charles Fourier or one of his entities or whatever you want to call it, and am not entirely sure that it is my fingers that are typing…maybe they are his).
Back to the sailboat and the human psyche. C.F. would swear by the fact that when he was so far out there in the unchanging blue canopy of the Pacific Ocean and had not seen a landmass for several days, that looking hard and fearlessly into the sun, he would close his eyes after and at once he was able to see his multiple alternate identities.
Identity number one could have been Beatrice, Dante’s second half in his efforts to leave Purgatory and identity number two could have been George Michael, a British pop icon who came way after. As he closed his eyes way out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean far away from anything that even closely resembled land, he watched as they danced. Vaudeville with canes; tap tap tapping, spinning and smiling, all of his remote identities.
It was clear to C.F. and he would later profess in no short order of pages (The writer of this article would like to take a moment to acknowledge the invisible work that he has done, reducing the gargantuan corpus of C.F.’s work into a very manageable compendium…it is being printed as we speak and will soon be in circulation) that he had multiplied himself across time (the writer would like to emphasize footnote number 17 in the translator’s introduction that he feels divided is a more appropriate word). In essence, he had multiplied his genetic sequence many times over and in his uninhibited gaze towards the heavens had seen this sequence multiplied several more times and occupying several different bodies, each of which he believed to have only one distinct signature, or variation in the genetic sequence.
But we all know as members of the 21st century human race, how irrational we can be from time to time. No, I am not talking about C.F.’s firm belief that his genetic sequence could be (divided) and reproduced. Why dispute what has already been proven? What I am saying is that C.F.’s project was doomed for failure the minute he understood the nature of what he was doing: dividing himself, or, in a figurative sense grafting himself into the anatomies of remote cosmic bodies spaced out over centuries if not millennia.
It was the ebb and flow, the unpleasant side of harmony, that visited him in his nomadic tent at night. That specter would come and wrestle him down until he desisted and admitted to himself and it (the specter) that he could engender, but never under any circumstance alter these disparate identities. The atom would always be perfectly balanced between positive and negative. If not, relativity would exact change until this equilibrium was established.
C.F. understood in these moments of heightened perception the fact that he was undeniably the master of his own undoing. If there was to be a Roland of the Vanguard there would have to also be a Grendel. This menacing presence might lay dormant for some time before rapping at his door. But he would come. He would come and blow fire into the porthole of every one of Fourier’s vicarious spaces, wiping everything out and bringing his cosmic proliferation back to nil.
Much credit has been given to those around him, but we must pause to reflect from time to time on Fourier’s contribution to mankind. Reality plus one, was and always will be a reminder to us about the impending visitor at our door. The tax collector, however you want to think about it. Modern Cartesian Theory tells us about harmony, but it does not and cannot ever explain how harmony can be isolated (like a chemical compound), no matter how far out at sea each of us might be.
Jacob Darway for "Modern Illuminations of Science and Thinking"
In the latter half of the 19th century when Charles Darwin was collecting samples of sea turtle species in the southern hemisphere and post-romantic poets were transposing his ideas into the realm of social determinism, there was another thinker out there on the fray (maybe on a ship somewhere) who was composing volumes and volumes of what he called Modern Cartesian Theory. This seaman, if you want to call him that, was called Charles Fourier.
Fourier understood the libinal side of things as Freud would have it. He knew what it was to sublimate something and he had a more acute sense of the constructs of what “reality” was before him or ever since. C.F. knew that “reality” was something, a room a space, that the human psyche constructed outside of itself, an elliptical extension if you will.
(The writer of this article will admit that he is tired after being up for many consecutive nights and is remembering in a weird way some of the lyrics of a Rod Stewart song, “Maggie”---something about his coffee being cold and having to get back to work---well anyway my coffee is in fact cold and it isn’t because I am drinking iced-coffee. The reason is very simple. I have been up for many consecutive nights. I have been visited by Charles Fourier or one of his entities or whatever you want to call it, and am not entirely sure that it is my fingers that are typing…maybe they are his).
Back to the sailboat and the human psyche. C.F. would swear by the fact that when he was so far out there in the unchanging blue canopy of the Pacific Ocean and had not seen a landmass for several days, that looking hard and fearlessly into the sun, he would close his eyes after and at once he was able to see his multiple alternate identities.
Identity number one could have been Beatrice, Dante’s second half in his efforts to leave Purgatory and identity number two could have been George Michael, a British pop icon who came way after. As he closed his eyes way out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean far away from anything that even closely resembled land, he watched as they danced. Vaudeville with canes; tap tap tapping, spinning and smiling, all of his remote identities.
It was clear to C.F. and he would later profess in no short order of pages (The writer of this article would like to take a moment to acknowledge the invisible work that he has done, reducing the gargantuan corpus of C.F.’s work into a very manageable compendium…it is being printed as we speak and will soon be in circulation) that he had multiplied himself across time (the writer would like to emphasize footnote number 17 in the translator’s introduction that he feels divided is a more appropriate word). In essence, he had multiplied his genetic sequence many times over and in his uninhibited gaze towards the heavens had seen this sequence multiplied several more times and occupying several different bodies, each of which he believed to have only one distinct signature, or variation in the genetic sequence.
But we all know as members of the 21st century human race, how irrational we can be from time to time. No, I am not talking about C.F.’s firm belief that his genetic sequence could be (divided) and reproduced. Why dispute what has already been proven? What I am saying is that C.F.’s project was doomed for failure the minute he understood the nature of what he was doing: dividing himself, or, in a figurative sense grafting himself into the anatomies of remote cosmic bodies spaced out over centuries if not millennia.
It was the ebb and flow, the unpleasant side of harmony, that visited him in his nomadic tent at night. That specter would come and wrestle him down until he desisted and admitted to himself and it (the specter) that he could engender, but never under any circumstance alter these disparate identities. The atom would always be perfectly balanced between positive and negative. If not, relativity would exact change until this equilibrium was established.
C.F. understood in these moments of heightened perception the fact that he was undeniably the master of his own undoing. If there was to be a Roland of the Vanguard there would have to also be a Grendel. This menacing presence might lay dormant for some time before rapping at his door. But he would come. He would come and blow fire into the porthole of every one of Fourier’s vicarious spaces, wiping everything out and bringing his cosmic proliferation back to nil.
Much credit has been given to those around him, but we must pause to reflect from time to time on Fourier’s contribution to mankind. Reality plus one, was and always will be a reminder to us about the impending visitor at our door. The tax collector, however you want to think about it. Modern Cartesian Theory tells us about harmony, but it does not and cannot ever explain how harmony can be isolated (like a chemical compound), no matter how far out at sea each of us might be.
Jacob Darway for "Modern Illuminations of Science and Thinking"
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
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