Hell is Other People

Perhaps.

Last night went to the theatre to see a movie. "A Girl Cut in Two" or "La Fille coupée en deux" as our brother is France would call it. Directer by Chabrol. It was good. Not great. Over commercialised, I would say. Nouvelle Vague should leave you asking question, of yourself the characters and the reality of the film and the reality of reality. The good ones do. The play of absense is a little more center for Nouvell Vague, at least in my mind. It is in the absense of detail or the too-muchness of detail that we get sucked into the film itself. Because I know options exist, options plural, it is in the play of these possibilities that I get lost. If I am told every conclusion it is no fun. See Aurerbach's Mimisis for more on this idea. So went the movie. As my friend said, Chabrol is no Godard.

What made the film slightly more aggrevating was not the movie itself but the people at the theatre. Let me elucidate. The threatre is small. It is in a converted storefront, the building perhaps built in the 1920s. It is a very quaint place. Seating only 30, it harks back to old time picure show. Felt curtains of rich red drape the walls. A single attendant, no doubt a film student somewhere the single attendant. As my friend and I walk in, we are greeted by a group of seven or so, later middle-aged people. Loud, perhaps a bit drunk, they ask for our names and introduce themselves. We comply. They continue to ramble amongst themselves and attempt to bring us into their conversation. "Are you sure you want to go to this movie?" What an idiotic question, why else would we be hear I think? "You sure you want to sit in front of us?" Again with the questions that have been answered by the reality of the situation. Of course, as beings possessing free will or acting under the illusion of it we have made a decision if decisions can be made to sit in front of you.

Yet they continue to ramble. Bastards. The most talkative woman of the bunch informs us that her friend "Andrew" has written a book and acted in Hollywood. I turn around; sitting with a well groomed salt and pepper beard and a white turtleneck, is a mna in his late fifties. The illustrious Andrew chimes in "My book is in its second eddition." The drunken woman continues talking about Andrew's personal history, nothing I wish to hear. I cannot stand these people. I wish I would have said that my dissertation is in paperback and that you can pick it up at Barnes and Noble. It has a pretty cover so idiots like you might pick it up. I didn't. Of course that isn't true. There is really not a lot worse, relatively, than the pseudo-intellectual hob-knob. The people in some kind of film club that go to movies simply because they have subtitles. They can't talk about the film after they see it. At least anything beyond simply plot summary. They give people who enjoy film a bad name, and they deter the enjoyment of those same people while they are in the theatre.

Just like the Oprah book club, these people think they are in the know, some kind of avante guard party of culture, where in reality they destroy it. It reminds me of a poster I saw once, with a familiar phrase" Culture is Dead" written on a burning book. Spawned from the kitsch that has become culture, these people are the same. These are the people who read a book because of the Oprah approved sticker, who buy the books with pretty covers to stack their bookshelves. They might memorize the plots from sparknotes and have a few witty things to say about each book, but nothing beyond that. I have been to parties with these people. You ask a question, they give you the "themes and motifs" section of sparknotes. Same with film. They see what they are "supposed" to see. They have a list. A line by line of all the directors they are supposed to see. Have they read Cahiers du Cinema? Puzzled looks, the response.

Am I a snob. No. I plead ignorance. I know I have not seen everything, I don't know all the histories, I have only a small understanding of French. To paraphrase Socrates, I can only know I know nothing. These people are the worst kind of ignorance. They think they know (only what they are told) and spout their "knowledge" at every oppertunity. It is like culture zombies. They are the vestige of the living dead, the undead, culture between both living and dying but not either. Culture isn't dead, it is un-dead. A more powerful gesture, and it is these folks who embody the un-dead spirit. Walking (reading, viewing, talking) aimlessly with only dead facts that they continue to try to bring to life with no conscious thought behind them, attempting to assimiliate more to their collective and horrifying the people who know what is going on.

It is a shame you can't shoot them or hit them with a board like they do in the movies.

Tools of Tools

Thoreau once wrote "Men have become tools of their tools." I agree. We have become so accustomed to computers and modern luxery that we might forget who is the master of our machines. I encountered this when my hard drive failed. It was a sad day. I cried. Not really, but seriously. No just kidding. It was terrible though. Luckily it was reparable (thank God!), and under warranty (hooray!) but it though a monkey wrench as the saying goes into my schedule. I had planned on doing quite a bit of writing. Well I had to go old school, way old school. Pencil and paper. I enjoyed it, it has been a great while since I have written something formal on paper. I have my notebooks for my various thoughts/ideas/musings, but very rarely do I write any sort of extended tract. It was refreshing and somehow reminds me of worthless biographic narrative. I am kidding, it is very powerful to be able to know your own narrative.

When I was a child I learned how to read quickly. It just happens. I read every book I could get my hands on. I remeber in 1st grade I would rush through my work so I could pull out a book and read. I got bored in second grade that I spend that year devouring book series. When they showed us the school library, how the dewey decimal system works, how the card catalogue (the real card catalogue, not the fancy electronic stuff of nowadays) works. I was amazed. So many books. Of course my elementary school was a bit impoverished. We had children bused in from housing projects and underfunded (as a great deal of the education system is always) so our library was not ideal; however, for me it was like a dream world. I loved flight and space. I guess everyone wants to be an astronaut at some point, maybe not, but I did. I read everybook in the astronomy section. Then I moved to biography, the best fiction as Wilde said...maybe not him...don't remember, but they seemed just really boring. They were heavily edited and just the old triumph stories. Not that I don't mind them, but I read the newspaper by this time and realised people lose as much as they win. So I soon tried to read all the "grey" books. The books at the 12th grade reading level. There were not too many.

I finally went to the principal and started to ask him what to read. He gave me a list of books, most had one something. The first one was Majorie Kinnan Rawlings' The Yearling. I loved it. The written was fun. The story had dark turns, was bittersweet and touching. Thus began the literature years. But also at this time I recived an encylopedia, the young learners edition. Slightly outdated (USSR and East Germany, Zaire, etc), but I would try to re and re-read a volume each day. I love history.

In 8-9th grade transition I was introduced to philosophy. How? The internet of course. I enjoyed quotes. Witticism are great and handy when in a verbal argument or just conversation. The king of wit, or one among them, Voltaire interested me. I memorised a great deal of quotes and then I thought, why not read his books? Well I did. Next came all this nice little aphorisms. The man writing them, Nietzsche had a rich, albeit somewhat synical humour. Okay, I'll read him. Upon reading the both of them, both of whom I loved, I realised I needed a better background for all the people they were talking about. Thus came Descartes, then Plato, then Aristotle--basically a self lead history of philosophy course.

My writing soon spawned after those readings. I began to see people and the world in a different light. The characters of lit and the problems of philosophy seemed to fill not just by readings but my world. I had to write. I had to see how the characters I read were for the most part real. The interactions real. Thus writing. Journals and notebooks upon notebooks. A practice I still continue. Write and read.

Thus my education continues, it must always continue. History, philosophy, literature. Those three summarize but not totalise my academic career. Education/ Knowledge is always something to come (a venir) like democracy it is a state of being, not an end goal. It never really arrives, it is always deffered but it is this impossbility that allows for education to continue.

There you go. Life story in a nutshell. I kid, I am deeper than my readings, but it explains a great deal.

We'll Always Have Paris

Everyone has to love Casablanca, right. Humphrey Bogart and his nice dark antihero film noir roles. It is one of my favourite movies of all times. I mean, he gives up his passes for the love of his life, so that she will survive with her lover (the leader of the resistance) . Good story. Emblematic of the US's lack of understanding about Nazi Germany and the Vichy. But that is a story of a different sort. A very psychoanalytic one, and I am sure you (wouldn't it be great if you were plural?) are tired of it.

There is a line in that movie, from where I grab the title of this post. I write because I read an article by Roger Cohen of the International Herald Tribune/ NY Times, because they are virtually the same, right? In it he details how Paris has become so globalized, so packaged and deaescetizied that it is not longer the city he fell in love with early in his career. That Paris has somehow slipped away, even though he always knew that it would remain for him. That the world of blackberries and cosmetics and neat little packages would somehow eat away from Paris' allure never encountered him, until he went to Cuba.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/07/opinion/edcohen.php

Havana without many TVs and Cellphones, and all the amenities that we have grown so accustom of, have somehow allowed Havana to retain its 1950s getaway charm, though at a great price (read embargo). Somehow the aesthetic has remained.

Now I am not an expert on these kinds of things and shall try to to appear as one, but this scenario reminds me of what the German Jewish mystic Walter Benjamin wrote about how art will be used in the age of what he termed "Mechanical Reproduction." He lived in Paris and even wrote "The Arcades Project," a kind of philosophic "Paris Je T'aime." He killed himself and burned all his books because he thought Hilter was after him. Shame. But, in the essay(Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction") he postulates that Nazism/Totalitarianism will attempt to celebrate the aesthetic, to make the aesthetic more aesthetic , beauty is X. Love is X. Monet's works are simply beautiful, beyond reproach, etc, etc. This is how they will attempt to remain in power, to assure their power base. Communists on the other hand (did I mention Benjamin was a Marxist) would attempt to make art more attainable, to make art political in itself. Look at all the soviet worker art. The powerful propaganda and depictions, the kitschy artwork that we all get. Art can contain a political message and the goal of politising the people. He also speaks of aura and the concept of the original work, but again that is another story.

To add another layer, we have Jacques Ranciere, who postulates that art takes on the political message of the age. That for the Ancient Greeks art was utility, the figures on the Grecian Urns, the Temples, etc. Then it moved to Stained Glass for the feudal ages. Glass could depict the message of God above Kings, Kings above men, while communicating Biblical and hierarchical structure. The to capitalism, where the world turned art into art about art. The Romantics and the like wrote poems about poems, the "Ode to the Grecian Urn" by Keats often cited. But what of globalism, of this new phase. What of postmodernism if such a thing exists and we are in it? Well, I might postulate that we are in Cohen's predicament. Art has become completely deaestheticised to the point that the kitschy tourism stops and postcards are the artwork of the age. Where Paris, of old is losing itself to the Paris of the post cards, where in globalism history is not quite as important. You once needed the art to make a new art about the art, but let's move even further, to the point where we forget the art of old, where we move to a history without a history to a beyond history that is not history. Perhaps politics can have no place without a history, but art can. Art among the only ways to usher in and maintain this new ideal.

Even the notion of the postcard implies this disjointness from time and history. The postcard is emblematic because the picture on the front, the purchase of the postcard and its location always arrive too late to the receiver, they never arrive at the right place, thus nothing arrives at the right place. The letter never arrives. What does it say when the aesthetic, the political message of the aesthetic never arrives?

But places like Cuba still exist, and as long as they do, we are reminded of the past. Of a a place where the history lives. But what is a living history, perhaps history as a performance act is what we need, of what we try to abandon as all our models of economic progress attempt to survive by a gradient, by inequality.

Welcome to progress(?).



As a sidenote, I am writing a great deal because I am a)bored, b) sick. Those things mixed together coupled with lots of cold medicine result in a flurry of writing activity, at the expense of other duties, unfortunately, but alls the better.

Limited, Inc.

This blog title of course refers to the book by my hero, Jacques Derrida. A little history. I was drawn into Derrida when a professor of mine gave me a booklist for a class he was teaching and a project that he invited me to participate in. I could not join his project, sadly, because of other commitments. I did decide I wanted to read the booklist which he gave me. The first name on the list was Jacques Derrida. I never really had heard of him, I knew he was a philosophic "bad boy," rejected by most people. However, this was my heavy Nietzsche phase, so I went out and bought one of his books. Acts of Literature. Wonderful expose, I absolutely loved it from page 1 to the next. The books he read in his youth were those I had read in my youth. His blurring of distinctions, questioning the question itself. The framing, all things needed to be examined, nothing could be taken for granted. How the frame became a part of the picture and thus always same.

I enjoyed it to say the least. The major thing I loved about Derrida and still love is that he is a reader. Some philosophers, even most, will take a abstract "tool" into a problem or a text and just apply this tool, make it fit. Unfortunately, Zizek is very guilty of using Lacan and Hegel like this which is why Derrida and he didn't get along...among other reasons. But, Derrida read the text, he found his terms in the text. Dissemination and Plato's Pharmakon gave his Plato's Pharmacy, the Pharmakon, dissemination--all stories from Plato, the Phaedrus, Phaedo, etc. The to differance all of his readings of Levinas and Heidegger, of Celan and Valery. His works were not just dead tools ,they were readings, good, deep critical readings that generated the texts that followed.

Nothing is worse than a topographical reading. It is anathema to me. It kills me. To make the story a parable about the life of the author. Or to attack the text as a journey though the woods like a New Critic. Perhaps we never even know the meaning we impart into a text when we write it or speak it. The author dies with the birth of the text, thus the birth of the reader and reading says Barthes. Topographical readings imprison the text, they disallow it to live to fall into existence, to be born. But far worse, if a topographical readings just gives text one meaning and thus disallows future reading, the whole creative process dies with it.

Read. Seek to understand. Read all the words, the texts and their subtexts, the language and the metalanguages.

Why Can't a Man Stand Alone (?)

The title of this post is of course a reference to the song by Elvis Costello on his "All This Useless Beauty" album. The title of course could be a response to Romanticism/ Aestheticism. Either way, it is a good album and the question raises an interesting question.

Why can't a man stand alone?
Must he be burdened by all that he's taught to consider his own?
His skin and his station, his kin and his crown, his flag and his nation
They just weigh him down
You know pride is a sin that we tend to forgive
But it gets hard to live
When you don't have the love in her heart to begin with
Why can't a man stand alone?

So, what does that mean? Why the question( among many?) raised is if man, human kind can stand alone. Each person in-itself or/and for-itself. You might recognize those terms. They are phenomenological in nature. I do not recall, but they might be put forth by Husserl...or maybe Merleu-Ponty. Regardless of this small fact, can these terms really exist? I would argue no, the terms these two require are false. We can never exist purely for ourself, by ourself, in need of only ourself. I tried for a long time, to say oh I don't care what they say, I'll do what I want. I don't need them, etc, etc. Teenage angst encapsulated. However, upon examining these little rants, you can easily see that:
1) the Traumatic event that occurred to cause these feelings were not in-itself or for-itself. The conditions necessary for these comments to be made were with me interacting with others. With me amongst the others can I only experience this. We cannot exist only for ourselves, we need this interact, this interaction gives us being. Our being with is our co-dependence. "Co-" think about that for a moment, both the "co" the latin for "with" the dash, the phallus in the space, the void too speaks, they touch, it is both the difference and the touching of "co" and "dependence."

2) This entire blogging project requires us, or beckons us to communicate amongst and with others. If we wished to be a solipsism, we would not write on a public forum. We may not even write, or even speak for that manner. There would be no reason to do so really. It would also be impossible. If we were to live of solely ourself, what language would we speak? We always speak the language of the other. We are always other to ourselves, and thus the same in our radical alterity to others and ourselves. Think about this, "poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility," sayeth Wordsworth. How does that exist without experiencing and becoming, being other?

In the end everything is contiguous, not continuous. Difference, differance still exists. To deny it would be ludacris. Now I am tired, thus I depart.

Why can't a baby sleep at night and dream of the time to come
And never fear the world outside the touch of someone very near
Why can't a man stand up?
Why can't a man stand up?
Why can't a man stand alone?

People are Strange

Yes, this is a reference to The Doors. Both the band and a reference to how Jean-Luc Nancy uses it. It was cold outside. Not too cold, but freezing nonetheless. I might be coming down with a cold, which is bad. That means a great deal of green tea and reading. I can't say I can complain at/for that.

But to something Other. I cannot sleep. I stayed outside all day then went to a friends house. I was there until maybe 3AM the witching hour they call it, something to do with the opposite of when Christ died. I don't know about all of that, but I do know I can make myself scared, but more often I expect something to happen, and it always seems to happen.

The problem with people is that you never know them until you live with them. I am a pretty laid back person, but I like some space now and again...and for people to respect the communal areas. Like I said, I left and of course my one roomate brings back some rather facil lady. I am no puritan, but rather a more Romantic in nature. Perhaps of the brand of people who think Milton was right when he said, "Sensual pleasing of the body AND pleasant conversation." Where both need to be there. Well, my id driven roomates don't feel too keen on the latter and not that it bother me, because life is too care to worry about their actions, but I do wish they wouldn't take up the living room. I mean, they have rooms. So I wonder in at 3, all the lights off and in a flash I see ass crack and fleeing bodies. Not so funny for them, I know. Somewhat funny for me. People put themselves in the oddest situations, but the issue arises with the fact that I wake up early. Normally 6 or so to make the coffee, cook breakfast--and here are two bodies downstairs, in-between me and my coffee, taking up the largest room in our apartment. Whatever right?

So is the soap opera of my life. My roomates and my mutual friend is now dating the love of my roomates life and we all hung out this evening, one person was friendly with the girl that he was talking less than kind things about the entire week before, another was reconnecting with the girl he broke up with and cursed out nearly weekly for a year. I do not know.

People just need each other. People must need to feel some kind of closeness. I don't know why though, I really don't. I just wish they could let me make my coffee....And I left my Neruda downstairs and I dare not go get it.

Alas.

A Personal Rant

I get tired of writing intellectual bull. Is it really intellectual? Can you ever really make positive statements? When I say this is X, is it not true that it is X because it is not Y, and then you exclude Y, which invites and necessitates a new reading of what X is and what Y is and what the reading in the first place means, but what it can't quite say is the problem, so all you do is develop a series of differences without positive statements, always an infinite departure without a return in sight (or even possible). Welcome to my mind. Of course it could be said that everything is in this system of differences, we are all seemingly bound and linked by language, I mean think of the word link, link to chain, so our communication is our link, our language a link to the other, thus our chain to the other, for we are never ourselves because we possess some divine connection, we are ourselves because we are not you, thus my self is constituted by my otherness to you, so you constitute me, but at the same time I am bound up in you, so we never are solipisms in any way at all. Just a web, a net, a sea of signifiers.

Sorry, that is what I do--everyday.

Not that I don't enjoy it.

But, you really have to take a break from it every now and then, at least look back on it with some sort of skepticism. No system of thought is ever complete. I don't know if anything can ever be a totality.

Oh, so yeah...the problem with people is that we need people. I know this isn't anything novel, it may be cynical to some extent, but it seems problems arise when we have to depend on people. Granted we need this dependence, we are social, we long for something always, this extra desire that exists. Nearly every conflict, every piece of literature, every love story--all seem to center around the issue/the condition of the glance, the experience of the other, of meeting someone and how that communication goes, how it is broken, how you leave, to link to the previous post--the duet. I love the song, a lot a lot. I don't why exactly, I used to sing the duet with my sister, but I haven't done that in a long time. But back to the concept of the duet. Who listens? We all speak with the hope that someone listens. We all blog with the hope that someone reads it. That is this messianic promise that we all hope for, that almost preconditions our speaking/writing and even is embedded in our reading. This seems to be echoed in the duet. Call and response, but there seems to be a break. Is Dean-o listening to the female lead. Is the fact that I don't know the female lead is the issue? Is the song phallologocentric because the voice of the female is echoed, it is disembodied and denied a true presence? Notice how the volume level changes, even the idea of the echo reminds me of Echo from mythology. She (notice the gender) could never complete her own sentences, she had to echo the others. Perhaps this is a love story between Echo and Narcissus. I might just be reading too far into it though.

So this turned not into a personal rant. Perhaps I meant it as a joke. Like Zizek does (look out Mr Kirsch).

Baby, It's Cold Outside

I absolutely adore that song. For some reason. Duets are pleasant, especially with Dean Martin. And the Elf version was quite funny.

It actually isn't that cold though. However, this relates to several dreams which I would like to explore.

My first dream was an episode of the Office [American (per)version]. Michael and Dwight pulled a prank on Jim. They called the police and has his home searched. How they managed this, I do not know. But these coppers brought in his nightstand and home desk and started riffling through the drawers and showing all of his stuff to the rest of the office. It was embarassing as they found the traditional man stuff etc.

I think this may explore the concepts of stereotypes and secrets. The setting of the office is peculiar, I am unsure of how this fits in to everything. I watch the show only because it reminds me of my work experience, so perhaps it relates to me and working/employment, or the plans thereof. Now the idea of both the prank and the secret material possessions both center around the idea of a secret, those who know and those who are kept outside. This can be related to everything. Interesting how I use a deception to uncover secrets...but that is espionage in its finest.

My second dream was of me going to Everest. I would love to climb Everest. I do not think I will though, just based on time and money, perhaps something smaller, but to the dream, I was going climbing. I was in a boat in the Everglades when I got the call that I was going to go climbing. I do not know why I was in the Everglades, but when I returned to my apartment, I begin to pack for my journey and I found that I didn't have anywhere near the proper clothing. I only had my wind resistant jacket and a sweater. My mom called and asked if I wanted by down jacket and I kept thinking about how i could layer these clothes. I then pulled out my pack and realised that for an everest climb it had far too low a capacity and my sleeping bag wasn't rated low enough the conditions. At that point I realised it was a dream and started to lucid dream, which is no fun....

To this one, I cannot comment on really. Just an example of how my logical faculties tend to distort my thoughts. Not really distort, just overpower any sort of creative activities. The motif of a journey is fascinating especially the diametric change in the local, from the florida Everglades to the tallest peak on Earth. However, I think it mainly had to do with the fact that I left my window open and my room was virtually freezing that made me think of Everest. However, there is a classic relationship between this. Zizek would say that I constructed the dream so that I didn't have to face the reality of a cold room, that I created the dream, the journey motif of going to Everest and searching for clothing so that I didn't have to face the trauma of awakening to a room that was virtually frozen by the subfreezing temperatures of the night air. This is possibly. Lacan would say that in the awakening I found some kind of ethical responsibility of memory, that I would awake to reality and bring with it some kind of repetitive strife, but still a more real view of reality.

It just shows how far you can take this stuff, but if you don't apply it to everything then you can't apply it at all. If you say that dream X is significant for y reasons, then dream z should be just as important for a reasons. If nay, then you create some kind of hierarchy, privileging the one of the other and then that system is both often wrong and subject to myriad of abuses. It is called art critics. I kid, but do I really. The problem with satire is you never know when it starts or stops.

Read an interview on Kate Winslet. Very interesting, we need more people like here. Grounded, moderately intelligent, rolls her own cigarettes, eats, opinionated, good actress. Hopefully our generation will continue to see an influx of smart people who take on public life...but we need a Zizek too, perhaps another public intellectual that is just all around great(artist, actor, philosopher, writer(of fiction too?), funny, up on current topics)...like a Tina Fey rolled in with a Zizek rolled in with a JS Foer. That would be neat. And if it turned out to be a woman, I would marry her. Seriously.