David Fishkind
David Fishkind was born in Worcester, MA in 1990. In 2008 he spent ten days in Nova Scotia. He lives and works in New York.
How Not to Think: A Few Words
A year ago I was in Germany, alone and growing a beard—the only beard I’d ever had or since—for questionable and seemingly unironic reasons. I felt some prejudice, especially at the doors of clubs, of which I saw several facades but never an interior. I experienced some new forms of illness, peed on myself in a cab and bought an €11 plane ticket to Norway. I felt lost and rarely thought of death, and now my life has leveled out a bit. I live with my girlfriend and signed my first official lease on part of the second floor of a two-story house. I cook and drink American beers, plan my weeks around the presidential debates. Compulsive paranoia regarding the suspect preparation of cappuccinos has been replaced with making sure my clothes are off the couch and bills are paid. New fixations, too, have arisen: to map the narratives of my amaranthine nightmares, to parse the patterns of diffuse images of terror and decay that drift throughout my consciousness, to grapple with religion, God, the transmutation of the body and the limits of the human mind, the actual capacity of the thing and the shape of its components. Lately a vague sensation of erosion has begun to worm its way into my cognizant perception—a knowledge of mental illness, colors swaying into a kind of one color, that which contains every color and/or imageable, magmatic structure.
David Fishkind—
Do you think it’s inappropriate to talk politics on HTMLGiant? Do you tell people who you’re voting for? Are there any honest Republicans out there willing to write a long ideological rant about Mitt Romney? (Please no liberals.)
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The Best American Review of the Best American Poetry 2012
I flipped to five poems in the anthology at random and wrote five sentences about each one.
1. “Hate Mail” by Carol Muske-Dukes
I can’t tell if this poem is supposed to be ironic or reflective or pissy. It doesn’t matter though because the poem doesn’t matter. It explores some really wack-a-doodle subjects such as blimps, the ozone layer, pigs flying, uses the words “whore,” “God” and “honkers,” and even references the completely relevant world of l33t culture, inserting “btw” in the middle of a line. I don’t care about either side of the phrase “Queen Tut”—I just don’t care. This poem is trying so hard to be funny, controversial and current that it feels used up and desperate.
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September 19th, 2012 / 9:11 pm
September 19th, 2012 / 9:11 pm
Shitty Youth Update
As you may remember, Adam Humphreys, director of Franz Otto Ultimate Highballer and co-designer of these t-shirts, has been working on a documentary about elusive author Zachary German titled Shitty Youth (taken from German’s now-defunct weekly radio show).
I worked with him on the tail end of shooting earlier this summer and have seen some excellent prescreenings of the work.
I received an email from Adam this morning:
Thanks for your continued interest in this project.
Shitty Youth has been something I’ve been pursuing for a while off and on and it is nearing a place where it feels like I am unable to take it any farther and I want to get on with my life.
something something online release near future, more details forthcoming
In the meantime I highly recommend people check out Fi卐hkind, the band, especially the EP “Brooklyn” which was a band I conducted featuring Zachary, Erik Stinson, and you, wherein they can hear Zachary free associating some really brilliant shit.
“College”… is just… wow.
Here’s the logo for the movie [pictured above]. Link to the facebook page if people want to engage: facebook.com/killcops2
:)
Regards,
Adam
Interview: Reader Who Yesterday Finished The Recognitions
HTMLGiant: So how long did it take you to read the book?
David Fishkind: Three weeks I think. It took me about three minutes per page, so… forty-eight hours. I spent two days reading the book.
HG: Did you ever read the book in public places or leave the book out purposefully when visitors were over?
DF: It was a library copy, so really, it didn’t matter. But yes, I read it on the subway and kept it on my bedroom desk and in my backpack.
HG: How did you deal with it? Do you think you’re a big man or something?
DF: I don’t know. I thought I’d feel proud of myself. I ate seven or eight handfuls of blueberries when I finished. I didn’t cry or anything. Sometimes I looked words up in the dictionary.
HG: Have you read other Gaddis? How did this book compare?
DF: No. I guess maybe I’ll read JR in a year or a few months or so. I guess I’ll read them all if I don’t first die.
HG: Did you ever read the book while on drugs or alcohol?
DF: Once or twice I’d had a some alcohol to drink, but it didn’t really do anything. I didn’t feel drunk, though I was… I didn’t tell anyone I was drunk… so…
Frank Ocean Channel Orange Listening Party
Music by Frank Ocean. Commentary by David Fishkind, Adam Humphreys, Erik Stinson. Food by Trader Joes and Bob and Betty’s.
My History with The New York Times
I first remember perceiving the term “The New York Times,” sometime in the mid-nineties, living in Granger, Indiana. My parents, a Jew and a soon-to-be-converted Jew, who had spent their entire lives (thirty-something years) on the East Coast, were beginning to feel the cultural ache that came along with Midwestern life. They subscribed to the Sunday edition in order to reconnect with their intellectual elitist roots—a form of journalism invested in the liberal ideology, the arts and sciences of a better tomorrow, which actually did seem possible during the long reign of Clinton’s social wealth. My sister and I bought silly putty and warped the faces of Calvin and Hobbes, of politicians and Paul O’Neill. About a year later my parents cancelled the subscription for reasons I can’t quite recall. Maybe it was because of the money (at that point they didn’t make a lot), maybe it was because they realized they were so isolated, one thousand miles from the local and penetrating stories that carried no immediacy or urgent weight. Or maybe it was because they thought the news was not what it once was. They’ve said this before about 60 Minutes as the past two decades have rolled by, growing more and more nostalgic for something that may never have even been there.
David Fishkind—
What are your most highly anticipated books/movies/albums/etc forthcoming in 2012?
Progress vs. Catastrophe: Underworld by and beyond Benjamin’s Angel of History
A Brief Introduction to the Themes
In 1940, Walter Benjamin published an essay, consisting of a collection of brief reflections, titled “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” The ninth thesis describes Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus, in which an angel “look[s] as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating” (Benjamin 257). Benjamin links this to “the angel of history” observing the world through the position of the past. While the future pushes on inevitably—insists he take notice—the angel is turned away, caught up in the disasters of the past. This overseer wants to arrest the present, stop progress altogether in order to amend the disasters and failures of history, and finds itself in a struggle against the powerful reality of the ever-advancing state of existence. Thus, a rivalry between progress and catastrophe is established.
Don DeLillo’s 1997 magnum opus Underworld meditates heavily on Benjamin’s ninth thesis. The progress of society, through the lens of the Cold War begins in 1951 and is presented in reverse chronological order, backwards from 1992, after the complete dissolution of the Eastern Bloc. The undulating anxiety regarding Western society’s seemingly imminent doom is displaced by an anxiety within the context of the American Dream. Baseball, bureaucracy, sex, waste, art, religion, and crime take on the weight of the present’s baggage through the obsessive compulsions of the past.
There is no direct solution to the conflict of Benjamin’s thesis, just as DeLillo offers little individual resolution for his characters. However, the driving force of salvation, the one in which we thrust our faith and loyalty, is the same in both dilemmas: the angel. The angel of history is trapped in a moral and physical bind; it seeks some way in which to move on from humanity’s historical failings—the “single catastrophe”—and to avoid, or amend, the forthcoming quandaries of the world—the “storm” (257-8). DeLillo’s angel, Esmeralda, extends this notion further, and acts as a Christ-like sacrifice for history and an entity from which to begin anew, look around, and turn toward progress.