Impossible Mike
http://topologyoftheimpossible.com
refuse reality, live forever.
Impossible Mike—
“Poetry is nothing but a certain astonishment before the world and the means for this astonishment.”
Andre du Bouchet, 1954
2
I LIKE HYPNOTISM A LOT
Have you ever been hypnotized? Tell me about it. I was hypnotized at my highschool “after-prom” party thing and it was amazing. The best way I would describe is that the while you are hypnotized the man who is telling you to do things has very good ideas. Werner Herzog hypnotized his entire cast to film Heart of Glass, which (despite my predisposition towards Klaus Kinski) is one of my favorite of Herzog’s films. In H.G. Lewis’s The Wizard of Gore, Montag the Magnificient hypnotizes all who watch him, even those watching him through a television, so he can kill people on stage under the guise of magic. I am interested in magic mediated by technology. There are so many books about “the language of power,” etc, and it all seems aimed at becoming a CEO or like how to seduce someone. I like the idea of mastering language to the point where it can be manipulated into the creation of an experience that transcends the page. I think it would be amazing to read a book that literally held power, could hypnotize a reader with no external control other than language. Is my desire for this book, this book that can hypnotize, fascistic? What if a book masquerading as narrative fiction held an ulterior narrative that hypnotized you into quitting smoking, overcoming trauma, controlling binge eating, etc? Is the moral operative of hypnosis what excuses it? I believe there’d be merit in the use of text-based hypnosis to create experience.
destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy
Why is empathy more important than affect to most readers (/film viewers)? Why would you want to vicariously experience something through a character rather than experiencing [the thing] yourself? When someone says, “I like this because I can relate to it,” doesn’t that just insist upon a passivity, a refusal to actively do? In 2012 we launch our quest to destroy representation that aims at empathy. It doesn’t matter what something means, all that matters is that we are feeling things at the zero-degree. Fuck the distance, the gap.
PORTRAIT OF THE WHATEVER AS A YOUNGER MAN
the stupid squirrel collective
001:time for a bed time
I saw my father the other day, and he told me he had a bedtime now. Together we laughed and began to talk about how our lives have changed since time has passed. We decided that time was a good thing and that bedtimes were good things as well. He told me his bedtime was the only thing he looked forward to now since he retired and lost most of his sight. When I questioned him on this statement he simply looked at me and smiled. Today I lost my vision, henceforth I lost my job. I am tired now. I want a bedtime.
002:atari and the rise of the video game empire
once there was an imaginary man named atari and he liked to count and he counted to the number one-hundred and eighty-two and he decided he liked this number so much that he would invent a game around it. he called the game pong. he put pong on a big piece of cardboard and he called out one-hundred and eighty-two different places that you could put that piece of cardboard while his brother whose name was nintendo wrote them all down. atari invented a computer to play his pong on, and he named it after himself, calling it the atari 2600 because the number 2600 has nothing to do with one-hundred and eighty-two. nintendo decided that his wonderful brother named atari needed to invent the atari 5600 so nintendo invented the nintendo then he invented mario brother and then he invented mario brothers two and then he invented mario brothers three but then he died because the brothers cousin sega invented sonic the hedgehog and sonic ate the two brothers killing the atari and nintendo and now sony which is sonics nickname rules all the empire known as earth.
003:when I stuck my finger in the power outlet that I plug my fan into
when I stuck my finger in the power outlet that I plug my fan into nothing happened. I was expecting a shock or at least some minor pain, but I found out the reason the fan didn’t work was that the outlet was dead.
004:oops I ate you
once upon a time I decided to write a book and it was really horrible and nobody liked it so I decided to make a movie and nobody liked it so I decided to write a poem and nobody liked it so I decided to write a song and nobody liked it so I decided to make dinner and I accidentally ate you.
005:ouch my hand itches and my head hurts
I like cheese, and I like starch a lot. one time I ate a whole lot of cheese then I ate some bread and some pasta and lots of other starchy thingys and my hand started to itch, so I started to scratch it and then my foot began to itch so I used a staple gun and staple my foot to the ground ouch my head hurts.
006:blue
I saw this movie the other night, I believe it was titled, oh wait, it didn’t have a title yet, because it wasn’t real yet, it was a movie I saw in my head. I liked it a lot, and I clicked my heals together three times and said I wish I had blue pants I wish I had blue pants I wish I had blue pants! and I was still wearing the same pair of blue jeans I had always been wearing. anyway, the movie was really good, it was beautiful and I started to cry when I saw it, and the crying turned into paint and I used the paint to make a picture of god and it was a blank sheet of paper and it was an empty canvas and I woke up this morning depressed.
007:when you wish upon a star
when I wished upon a star this giant cricket came flying out of the sky and I was like, “Jiminy Cricket!” and everybody laughed and called me queer. then I said look it’s a giant cricket and hehehehehahahah I laughed out loud at my wonderful joke and then the giant cricket started to eat my friends and I got really mad and then I walked out under the giant cricket and he jumped on me and it hurt a lot then I saw snow white performing dirty deeds on the prince and she was smiling when she did it I wanted to take her to court for inaccurate portrayal of character but she said no so I said ok and laughed a lot louder than I usually do HAHAHAHEHEHEHEHAHAHAHEHE
008:the second time I stuck my finger in the outlet I plug my fan into
the second time I stuck my finger into the outlet that I plug my fan into nothing happened again. so I did it a third time and still nothing happened. I continued doing this for several hours until I got bored so I went and got a fork and stuck it into another outlet and now I have sinuses.
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The Feeling of Floating, Like the Body is Absent: My Favorite Books of 2011
Reality meant that I could neither afford nor have time to read every book that came out this year that I wanted to read, but out of what I did read (which was, coincidentally, a lot more books than I normally read that are released/realized in the year I currently exist in), the following were my favorites.
FANGED NOUMENA by NICK LAND
The first book on this list I haven’t even finished reading, an immense 560 page tome collecting virtually all of Nick Land’s writings from 1987-2007–excepting only the full-length text The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism–is a massively important text, because Nick Land is, in my opinion, one of the most important thinkers of our present. Land takes apart the world and rebuilds it, offering particularly apt readings of Kant, Nietzsche, Bataille, Heidegger, and more that really flows new light into the dusty thoughts of many often-over-valued thinkers (can a known philosopher be over-valued? maybe not, but often the most known/taught readings of said thinkers certainly can be). Land pioneered the idea of the theory-fiction, using fiction as a tool to explore critical theory, a technique now practice by many affiliated with the book’s press, Urbanomic. This book is a map towards the next level, and as the jacket copy proposes: “Can what is playing you make it to Level 2?”
Buy from Urbanomic (in the UK) or Sequence Press (in the US)
THERE’S NEVER BEEN A DAY THAT DIDN’T REQUIRE KNIVES LIKE THESE by JEFF GRIFFIN
Jeff Griffin is a poet who is, sometimes, from Iowa, who writes some of the most amazing contemporary poetry I’ve encountered. THERE’S NEVER BEEN A DAY… is, as the Human500 website describes, “A book composed of transcriptions of found papers from the desert and original poems by Jeff Griffin.” It’s a hazy mess of desperation and excitement, the desert being a place of secrets, magic, and despair. I read this hung-over in a train-station after I missed my train and had two hours to kill, and upon finishing it I relished my hang-over, smiled to myself, shut my eyes, and blissed out until it was finally time for me to board my train.
Out of print from Human 500
THE ZERO-DEGREE NOISELESSNESS OF DEATH: LECTIO IX-XII
Systemic limits to growth require that the inevitable recommencement of the solar trajectory scorches jagged perforations through such civilisations. The resultant ruptures cannot be securely assimilated to a metasocial homeostatic mechanism, because they have an immoderate, epidemic tendency. Bataille writes of ‘the virulence of death’. Expenditure is irreducibly ruinous because it is not merely useless but also contagious. Nothing is more infectious than the passion for collapse.
-Nick Land, “After the Law”
LECTIO IX: Beyond Novelty, Into The Uncanny
LECTIO X: Shame and the Texture of the Flesh
LECTIO XI: Artaud as Arrogance Without Ego
LECTIO XII: When Nothing is Real
ToBS R1: the Georgia Review vs dinner at Chili’s
[Matchup #30 in Tournament of Bookshit]
I’ve never read the Georgia Review. I have eaten dinner at Chili’s probably 50 times throughout my life. My favorite dish to get at Chili’s, the dish that has remained my favorite transitioning through all of the various eating habits I’ve had (being no-restriction to vegetarian to pesceterian to vegan), is the fajitas. The fajitas at Chili’s are exciting because they are a spectacle. Looking at the website for the Georgia Review, I see a complete lack of spectacle. Chili’s was my favorite restaurant growing up because it took me a while to develop any sort of palate for foods that are not ultimately mediocre. While it would seem that both the Georgia Review and Chili’s are ostensibly mediocre, Chili’s maintains a specific midwestern magic. Chili’s is, I guess, supposed to be “Tex-Mex” food, though that term really has no meaning whatsoever. READ MORE >
LIES/ISLE IS FILLED WITH TERROR
The new issue of LIES/ISLE, which I’d been working on since like February or March or something, finally came out last month. It’s my favorite issue I’ve ever done, so I want everybody to see it. It features killer work from Ken Baumann, Helen Vitoria, Mitch Patrick, David Peak, James Tadd Adcox, Mike Buffalo, Erik Wennermark, Ben Segal, Tyann Prentice, Nate Dorr, Elizabeth Witte, William VanDenBerg, and Clayton T. Michaels. Halloween might be over but horror lives forever. This is also possibly the second to last issue of LIES/ISLE that will ever exist.
Check it out?
JAMES LEE BYARS – TEXT OF 100 ONE PAGE STONE BOOKS
1. I AM IMAGINARY 2. I GIVE YOU A STIGMATA 3. MAKE A SOLILOQUY ON WHAT YOU THINK GREAT IS 4. I MAKE YOU BELIEVE 5. WHY BYARS 6. WE HAD EXACTLY THE SAME IDEA 7. THE IMAGINARY PERFORMANCES OF JAMES LEE BYARS 8. I GIVE YOU PERFECTLY NOTHING 9. I WRITE A 100 POEMS A YEAR 10. THE GIRL IS SO PURE SHE DOESN’T EVEN DRINK WATER 11. B?B 12. DON’T YOU LOVE MY NEW FRAME :: :: 13. ½BELIEF IS A LOT 14. I’M HIS IMMORTALITY 15. WHISPER PERFECT TO THE GOLDEN PEAK OF THE KUNSTHALLE 16. SEE IT IS THE GIFT 17. TOODOOLOO 18. BEAUTY IS MY MOTIVE 19. HYPOTHESIS DOESN’T EXIST 20. HIS STYLE IS A GLASS OF WATER 21. I MADE UP THE CONSCIENCE OF THE EXHIBITION 22. THE PERFECT AUDIENCE IS TO TURN AROUND 23. HE KNOWS HOW TO TAKE COMPLIMENTS THANK YOU 24. MAMA WAS HIS DEATHWORD 25. SEE HOW HE SHOWS HIS NAME 26. TELL MY STYLE 27. THE EXHIBITION OF MR B. THINKING 28. I FREE YOU 29. THE SHOCK OF WRITING A LETTER 30. IT’S TOO BEAUTIFUL 31. THOUGHT IS PERFORMANCE 32. THE PERFECT DOOR IS A SPHERE 33. I CAN’T FIND A THING 34. PERFORM THE IMAGINARY STONE 35. ALL WORDS COME FROM O 36. IT IS A POEM IF YOU BELIEVE IT 37. I TEACH ME 38. THERE ARE 100 HEARTBEATS IN THE ROOM 39. WHAT’S ABOVE PERFECT 40. THE SILK WRITING CHAIR MAKES YOU SIT UP STRAIGHT AND IS SOFT AT THE SAME TIME 41. I LOVE MAYB 42. THE STONE MAKES ME WANT TO KEEP 43. THE EXHIBITION RECALLING THE ATTENTION OF THE CITY 44. THE END OF NAME 45. I MADE THE POETIC FLAG OF SWITZERLAND IN THE TRADITION OF THE IMAGINARIES 46. I WROTE A WORD THAT KNOCKS YOU OUT 47. BLACK CHAMPAGNE IS A POEM 48. THIS IS 7 THINGS 49. HER LAUGH IS SILENT 50. I SEE THE WORD ON MY BREATH 51. THE PEDESTAL FOR LISTENING TO PERFECT 52. LAUGHING OVER MY SENTENCES IS A GOOD WAY TO SHOW THEM 53. WATCH NOW I’LL PERFORM IN YOUR IMAGINATION 54. I MISS B. 55. GOD TAKES THE FIRST PERSON 56. I VOCALLY PUBLISH 57. THE PLAY OF GREAT IS GR. 58. SH 59. I’M LAOTZU POCHUI CHUTA BASHO ISSA ZEAMI AND HAKUIN 60. FROM NOW ON YOU WILL HEAR PERFECT EVERY ALL THE TIME 61. STEPPING OVER THE STONE IS MYSTIC 62. A WORD IS YOUR EPITOME 63. I HAVE EVERY HUMAN GLORY 64. SELFCONSCIOUSLY FORGET SELFCONSCIOUSNESS 65. I MADE IT OF THOUGHT 66. THE PERFECT WHISPER IS TO NOTHING 67. THE HIGH ROMANCE OF THE LILAC ARROW 68. GUESS WHAT MIND CAME BY AGAIN 69. MY CHEEKS TINGLE WITH A 100 KISSES ON THE LEFT AND A 100 KISSES ON THE RIGHT 70. IT’S A WORLD COMPLIMENT 71. I’M 50 72. I DON’T THINK A WORD IS EVER LITTLE FOR ME 73. ARE YOU SO SOPHIS AS TO THINK YOU COULD TRY TO TELL A LIE 74. I MET A SAINT PERSON 75. I WROTE THE FIRST TOTALLY INTERROGATIVE PHILOSOPHY 76. SAY BOTH TO THIS STONE 77. TOT. TRU. 78. WHAT’S A WATERLILY TO MONET 79. JOKES DON’T EXIST 80. YOU GATHER 700 PEOPLE TOGETHER AND TELL THEM TO THINK ABOUT THEIR PSYCHE 81. THE GREAT ART SHOW MOTHER AND DAUGHTER GO TO EUROPE 82. THE PEARL COVERED BOOK OF BOTH 83. I SAID GR. ONCE IN THE MUSEUM THAT WAS THE EXHIBITION 84. I PUT THE PERFECT SIGH IN A STONE 85. THE GHOST OF BOOK 86. INFLUENCE IS IMPOSSIBLE 87. THE CENTER OF THE ROOM IS HOLY 88. I SAW HIM OVER THERE 89. THIS WAY TO THE MIRACLE PLAY 90. A SINGLE SYLLABLE IS ELOQUENT 91. A MYSTIC DIALOGUE B. SAYS TH FL TO IN PH C. SAYS YES 92. HISTORY IS A CONSTANT 93. I HUM WHEN I THINK 94. IT’S THE FIRST TIME YOU SAID SOMETHING I DON’T AGREE WHIT 95. IMAGINE YOU SAY I CHANGE MY MIND THROUGH THE GOLDEN HOLE 96. THERE ARE ONLY 3 GREAT IDEAS IN HISTORY 97. I CANCEL ALL OF MY WORKS AT DEATH 98. THEY SAID OPEN AMERICA IN CONVERSATION ON THE 50TH FLOORS IN N.Y. AND L.A. THAT WAS THE EXHIBITION 99. THE LIGHT OF A KISS 100. DO YOU THINK THERE COULD BE TWO PERFECTS
(Text taken from I’m Full of Byars: James Lee Byars – A Homage, p. 144)
Unread Books
It’s 9pm on a Friday night and I’m at home freaking out about how awesome this article about Bernard Tschumi’s ADVERTISEMENTS FOR ARCHITECTURE by Kari Jormakka is and simultaneously tweeting constantly while uploading Tschumi’s images to Tumblr because I drank an organic “energy drink” that has lots of yerba maté in it and I think at some point I’m going to go “out” and I’m broke so I’m going to try to do it without “drinking” but until that actually happens, while I was reading this essay, I was also thinking about how there is a significant list of books and articles and short stories that is a lot of “holy shit how is it even possible, with my specific interests and praxis, that I haven’t read yet???” Because I was thinking this, I decided to actually make the list because I am a man of action. Here’s my list, it’s very personal and mostly based on a “personal canon” (please refer to my earlier post on canons if you take issue with the word “canons” as I basiaclly do) but more realistically it’s based on things that I know will totally cement a lot of things that I should really just fucking read but clearly I am scattered and fragmented and oh my god so 21st century. Also, it’s worth noting that I own all of these books and still haven’t read them. Anyway, here’s my list. I’m curious to see your list in the comments humble reader. Sometimes I feel like what I feel guilty about having not read is just as revealing about me as what I have read and gush over.
LIST OF BOOKS THAT I HAVEN’T READ OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD THAT I SHOULD HAVE READ BY NOW JESUS
-Bachelard’s THE POETICS OF SPACE
-Blanchot’s THE SPACE OF LITERATURE
-Any of De Sade’s longer works
-Bataille’s EROTISM (in fact I can’t believe I still haven’t finished his entire English language oeuvre by this point, but as TJY pointed out to me I have stated that once I’m finished I basically don’t need to be alive so I guess I can still take it slow)
-Borges’s short stories (I’ve only read like 6)
-Ballard’s complete short stories
-The Atlas Archive on The Vienna Actionists
-Collapse Vol 4: Concept Horror
-Edmund Jabes’s THE BOOK OF QUESTIONS
-Brian Massumi’s PARABLES FOR THE VIRTUAL
-All of Thierry Kuntzel’s articles
-The issue of Film Comment dedicated to Paul Sharits
-Denis Holier’s AGAINST ARCHITECTURE
-Philippe Sollers’s EVENT
-Deleuze’s CINEMA 1 and CINEMA 2
-Deleuze & Guattari’s ANTI-OEDIPUS and A THOUSAND PLATEAUS
-Hardt & Negri’s EMPIRE
-Vaneigem’s REVOLUTION OF EVERYDAY LIFE
-Perec’s LIFE: A USER’S MANUAL
-Michel Surya’s massive “Intellectual Biography” of Bataille
-Robert Smithson: The Collected writings
-Jean Genet’s QUERELLE
-Anything by Klossowski
LIES/ISLE PRESENTS: Unrepairable by Russ Woods
Since it’s the terrible day of capital-death known as BLACK FRIDAY, I’ve decided that a more positive gesture, to assuage all the guilt of those who are pimp their souls to save a buck (we’ve all been there in some regard), is needed. Thus, I’d like to publish a brilliant work of literature that specifically makes use of the medium it’s being published on; namely THE INTERNET. Russ’s work takes a note from old text-based RPGs (MUDs to be more specific) on telnet, an entirely antiquated form that, as Russ’s work proves, is ripe for exploration.
Russ Woods lives in Chicago and edits Red Lightbulbs with his wife Meghan Lamb.
Click “more” to read Russ Woods’s brilliant Unrepairable.
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To Afford Polyvalence
You use the heading “Dialectic of Modernization” to describe how society’s empty center is filled with illusionary images of a center.
In Spheres III, I attempt to explain why we should not only purge the two portentous words revolution and mass from our vocabulary, but also the concept of “society.” It suggests a coherence that could only be achieved by violent asserting conformism. The conglomerate of humans that has, since the 18th century, called itself “society” is precisely not based on the atomic dots that we tend to call individuals. Instead, it is a patchwork of milieus that are structured as subcultures. Just think of the world of horse lovers—a huge subculture in which you could lose yourself for the duration of your life but which is as good as invisible if you are not a member of it. There are hundreds if not thousands of milieus in the current social terrain that all have the tendency from their own viewpoint to form the center of the world and yet are as good as nonexistent for the others. I term them inter-ignorant systems. And, among other things, they exist by virtue of a blindness rule. They may not know of one another, since otherwise their members would be robbed of the enjoyment of being specialized members of a select few. In terms of their profession, there are only two or three types of humans who can afford polyvalence in dealing with milieus. The first are architects who (at least virtually) build containers for all; the second are the novelists, who insert persons from all walks of life into their novels; finally come the priests who speak at the burials of all possible classes of the dead. But that is probably the entire list. Although, no, I forgot the new sociologists à la Latour.
In other words, the multiple personality on the one hand and the single networker on the other— those are the two options I see open to individualized populations. The way homo sapiens is influenced by the dowry from the days of hording is no doubt insurmountable, but because the explication of that old heritage continues simultaneously in various directions, the proto-social elements of the life of sapiens can be reworked. They lead to an electronic tribalism. In the dyadic motifs, by contrast, the intimate relationships are explicated to such a degree that intimacy can quite literally be played through with the technical media of self-supplementation. In the long run, human types arise that are fairly unlike what we have known to date.
THE TRANSPARENCY OF CAPITAL
(hat tip to “kashi butterfield”)
ARTIFICE 4 RELEASE / APOCALYPSE / LETTERS FROM THE LIVING TO THE DEAD
“Kafka Writes to Romeo / Romeo Writes Back,” by Catherine Gammon; video by Meghan Lamb
Artifice Magazine is releasing its fourth issue in Chicago this weekend
There will be readings and short films and disembodied voices
If you are in or nearby Chicago we would love to see you there
Here are the details:
Elegant Mr. Gallery
1355 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago
November 12
8 to midnight
Here is where you can find our fourth issue, otherwise
“POETRY OPENS THE NIGHT TO DESIRE’S EXCESS”
STEP TWO ON A SERIES OF POSTS DEVELOPING A THEORETICAL-FICTION TOWARDS WHAT I WILL COIN A ‘RECKLESS UTOPIANISM’
UTOPIAN VISIONS OF KESHA
STEP ONE ON A SERIES OF POSTS DEVELOPING A THEORETICAL-FICTION TOWARDS WHAT I WILL COIN A ‘RECKLESS UTOPIANISM’
I DECLARE WAR ON REALISM, I DECLARE WAR ON A WORN-OUT JOY, I DECLARE WAR ON EVERYTHING.
SOMETIMES YOU GET DRUNK EVERY NIGHT FOR TWO WEEKS, SOMETIMES YOU MAKE OUT WITH A DUDE IN A CAB AND THEN YOU END UP DOING DRUGS AND PULLING YOUR DICK OUT IN A BAR YOU’VE NEVER BEEN TO BEFORE, SOMETIMES YOU BUY MORE WHISKEY AND GO BACK TO YOUR PLACE WHERE YOU FUCK AROUND WITH THE DUDE IN YOUR LOFT WHILE YOUR ROOMMATE’S FRIEND SNORES ON THE COUCH BENEATH YOU, SOMETIMES YOU DON’T GO HOME FOR 36 HOURS, SOMETIMES YOU FORGET THAT YOU HAVE THINGS TO DO OTHER THAN GOING TO WORK AND GETTING DRUNK & LAID, SOMETIMES YOU REALIZE YOU HAVE THE CAPACITY TO MANIFEST THE FUTURE SIMPLY BY MAKING THE DECLARATION, SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO REALIZE THAT POP MUSICK IS A FUTURE THAT WE’RE ALL AFRAID OF, AND THE POP MUSIC THE LITERATI ARE NOT AFRAID OF IS ONLY FALSE, SOMETIMES WE ALL KNOW THAT THE WORLD IS ALREADY OVER AND FEEL GREAT ABOUT IT, HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THIS THING CALLED CAPITALISM? IT’S STUPID. THERE’S A BUNCH OF PEOPLE WHO WANT TO TELL YOU WHY IT’S STUPID, MAYBE YOU SHOULD LISTEN, SOMETIMES YOU KNOW THERE’S FINALLY A CLASS WAR GOING ON AND LIFE STARTS TO MAKE SENSE FOR THE FIRST TIME, SOMETIMES YOU WAKE UP NEXT TO SOMEBODY AND YOU DON’T REMEMBER THEIR NAME, SOMETIMES YOUR BEST FRIENDS SEND YOU THE BEST TEXT MESSAGES YOU’VE EVER READ IN YOUR LIFE, EVERYTHING IS SURPRISING, SOMETIMES WHAT LIFE AMOUNTS TO IS NOTHING BEYOND WHAT YOU CAN REMEMBER, SOMETIMES WHAT LIFE AMOUNTS TO IS NOTHING BEYOND WHAT YOU’VE FORGOTTEN AND YOU FEEL GREAT ABOUT IT.
SOMETIMES YOU JUST DON’T DO ANYTHING, SOMETIMES YOU TRY TO MAKE PANCAKES AND YOU USE BAKING SODA INSTEAD OF BAKING POWDER AND THEY TASTE LIKE POISON, SOMETIMES YOU READ NICK LAND ESSAYS ON THE BUS AND YOU ACTUALLY LAUGH OUT LOUD, SOMETIMES YOU KEEP FORGETTING TO DOWNLOAD A PDF OF NIETSZCHE’S BIRTH OF TRAGEDY SO YOU CAN PUT IT ON YOUR PHONE TO READ WHILE YOU DRINK ALONE AT THE BAR, SOMETIMES YOU FORGET ABOUT LITERATURE COMPLETELY BECAUSE YOU’RE TOO BUSY FUCKING WITH SOME CONCEPTUAL EXPERIMENT THAT ASSUAGES YOU OF ALL MORALITY OR GUILT, SOMETIMES THIS MAKES MORE SENSE THAN ANYTHING YOU’VE WRITTEN OR READ, EVER.
LADY GAGA IS A FACADE.
LIFE IS ONLY FLOATING. FAME IS IRRELEVANT. STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING. MOMENTUM AS CONTRAST TO REALITY. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? WE CAN GO ANYWHERE WE WANT TO. THE WHOLE WORLD NEEDS TO DIE BEFORE WE CAN REST.
i think i fell in love last night
Last night I went to a, well, artist talk I suppose, featuring my good friend D-L Alvarez, and an artist I wasn’t formerly familiar with, Colter Jacobsen. The event, as a whole, was terrific. But this is perhaps because I like when I encounter new things to think about.
Darrell’s talk was fantastic, of course, a personal narrative lauding his relationship with books, with art, how these things are working, with people. The distance between D-L’s performative aura and his mode-of-everyday-being always catches me off guard, but it’s good, it’s professional. Darrell’s story was lovely, of course. Stories I had heard part of before, stories that featured the artist Jennifer Locke who I was sitting next to, who hugs me every time she sees me, stories about Raymond Carver, stories about Stockton, CA. Well, one story, really, with all of these.
Colter was second, and there was a sort of beautiful disorientation to it. There was no performative aspect here, there was basically only stuttering and a power-point presentation of some of his own work. However there was a winding sense of thought that, due perhaps to how much more space was left open, found me thinking more about ideas that are, perhaps, tangential to the work. The space also left my wanting the talk to be a discussion, but I kept my mouth shut.
At one point a work was presented that was a drawing of a cell-phone photo that Colter’s boyfriend had sent him of a snapshot from Bas Jan Ader’s “I’m Searchin’,” part of Ader’s In Search of the Miraculous. At the specific revelatory moment of sentimentality, I fell completely in love and fugued into the daydream of a conceptual artist boyfriend who couldn’t watch I’m Too Sad To Tell You without crying himself. How it would be a perfect combination of his praxis to my theory. A fit. My day dream ended, of course, and I remembered how mostly I actually think relationships are terrible and how nothing in the world can ever fit into my headland. But, then, just as I was returning to earth, Felix Gonzales-Torres’s words arrived:
The theory in the books is to make you live better and that’s what, I think, all theory should do. It’s about trying to show you certain ways of constructing reality. I’m not even saying finding (I’m using my words very carefully), but there are certain ways of constructing reality that helps you live better, there’s no doubt about it. When I teach, that’s what I show my students – to read all this stuff without a critical attitude. Theory is not the endpoint of work; it is work along the way to the work. To read it actively is just a process that will hopefully bring us to a less shadowed place.
an excessive pointlessness beyond terror and despair: why do i write
today i was thinking, ‘why do i write things.’
i don’t know what the answer is. i mean, at least in general. i write things on this blog because i feel like it’s an outlet that forces me to concretize, to some extent, theoretical implications of things in life like experiences and books and movies instead of just letting the ideas float around in my head where they eventually either fizzle out or find their way on twitter or end up via some twinned form in poetry or fiction or whatever it is that i’m calling my own ‘writing’ at the moment. i could write things for my own personal blog but the fact that htmlgiant has a built-in audience (whereas any attempt at a personal blog i make doesn’t), sort of, i don’t know, provides the motivation to make myself deal with my own thoughts.
like does that make sense? i don’t get paid to write here, as far as i know none of the contributors do. i’ve basically stopped submitting stories and poems to journals in the last year, yet i still post here. i’m sort of wondering why that is. i mean, the idea of someone else reading your own words makes it feel like more of a utile activity, writing that is, i guess. it’s a particular kind of egotism, or narcissism. but really i often feel more of an obligation. i don’t mean to a public, or to an audience, rather, like i said above, the idea of ‘people’ actually reading my hazily constructed ideas on art and literature and whatever-the-fuck i end up posting about here, i think, makes me actually try to think harder about what it is that i’m writing. obligation in that sense. like: don’t be totally fucking stupid and absent here, otherwise someone will call you out on your bullshit.
the obtusity of that sentiment is bullshit in its own right; no one in the entire world is obligated to pay any attention to me or to call me out on my bullshit. i’m tired of ideas of fame because i don’t think they make any sense.
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