"• Western planes are leading air strikes against Muammar Gaddafi's military as world leaders ordered the biggest intervention in the Arab world since allied forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The Pentagon announced that the action, codenamed Operation Odyssey Dawn, was under way."
Operation "Odyssey Dawn"? As in, the beginning of an endless, circuitous, tortured path, beginning in media res after the real war itself has ended, the dawn of what should be a simple return but will constantly find itself caught in eddies, sticky situations, complications? The doomed entry into what might well be called a morass?
To their credit, as titles for interventions "in the name of democracy" go, this is a step forward in transparency, up there with the self-aware baldness of Operation Freedom Deal.
[I do not recall if I shared this before. I suspect I have. It does not matter. I'm thinking of it again today. It should be watched once a week, a tonic against mediocrity.]
You understood nothing because you're an average man, right?
Well, yeah.
But you don't know what an average man is. He's a monster.
Always underrated, always a path not quite taken (a tracking out of gangsta R & B past the Bone Thugs terrain, carrying that torch West), always more than just hook-voice there to bail out others (Warren G, we're looking at you), always one of my favorites. The sinister fact of being smooth.
[By the way, the moment with the cops - where they bow down by popping up on lifts - in the video cannot be missed. It sums up. The whole world, from the shirts of the kids to the on-time stutter of going backwards and forwards with equal ease, falls beneath the swaying rule of the voice and its refusal to hurry.]
I first listened to Music & Me - his solo album, that flowering of a single backing hook into patterns of insane jazz flute, the un-vocoded plateau pitch shifts stepping down the scale, the recurrent effect of a chorus of an echoing, supporting cast of Nates, an echo chamber of the one and only, such that he's almost an orchestra himself, such that he is now getting his own back, even as he takes the lead for once - around the time that a long relationship of mine ended. At that time, at that mood, it sounded just right. It was the sound of a collision that doesn't lose the thread of a beat. It was pitch perfect then and now. A whole crowd of voices boiled down into one that didn't waver. The stroke that ended his life is the first time the surface buckled. And that's more than can be said.
Words from Carl Barks, creator of Scrooge McDuck, with annotations. I've always looked at the ducks as caricatured human beings. [Eisenstein on Bambi: not an anthropomorphized deer, but a human "redeerized"] In rereading the stories, I realized that I had gotten kind of deep [20 ft, the
in some of them: there was philosophy in there that I hadn't realized I was putting in. [
]
It was an added feature [that "dangerous supplement"] that went along with the stories. I think a lot of the philosophy in my stories is conservative —conservative in the sense that I feel our civilization peaked around 1910. [Version One: Civilization means that which was but now...
- is going up in impure flames. Version Two:
and finally comes the period of decadence, which in Spengler's view is synonymous with "civilization." This "seasonal" flow of history is a predicament of all nations, although the historical timing of their decline varies with the virility of each nation, geographical area, or epoch. In the field of politics and statecraft, the process of decadence is very much the same. Thus, the closing years of the First World War witnessed the passing of the feudal rule of the landed aristocracy and the emergence of budding forms of parliamentary plutocracy - soon to be followed by the rise of rootless mobocracy and the "dictatorship of money"]
Since then we've been going downhill. Much of the older culture had basic qualities that the new stuff we keep hatching can never match. [
]
Look at the magnificent cathedrals and palaces that were built. Nobody can build that sort of thing nowadays. [
]
Also, I believe that we should preserve many old ideals and methods of working: honor, honesty, allowing other people to believe in their own ideas ["Federici explains how the movements became increasingly revolutionary as they grew in size. "In the course of this process, the political horizon and the organizational dimensions of the peasant and artisan struggle broadened. Entire regions revolted, forming assemblies and recruiting armies. At times, the peasants organized in bands, attacking the castles of the lords, and destroying the archives where the written marks of their servitude were kept." In the 1420s and 1430s, the Taborites fought to liberate all of Bohemia, beating back several Crusades of over 100,000 men organized by the Vatican. The uprisings became contagious, so much so that in the crucial period of 1350-1500, unprecedented concessions were made including the doubling of wages, reduction in prices and rents, and a shorter working day. In the words of Federici, "the feudal economy was doomed." The author documents that the initial reaction by elites was to institute the "Holy Inquisition," a brutal campaign of state repression that included torturing and even burning heretics to death. But as time went on, ruling class strategy shifted from targeting heretics in general to specifically targeting female community leaders. The Inquisition morphed into the Witch Hunt."]
, not trying to force everyone into one form [
]
The thing I have against the present political system is that it tries to make everybody exactly alike.
[The result of the total movement is the production of a universal class, a numerous proletariat, proletariat is the sense of the totality of men who have no reserves (old proletariat + new middle classes). It is a universal class as it forms the largest part of the population and 'because it cannot demand in a particular way, but only in a human way.]
We should have a million different patterns.
[Ornament without repetition, impossible - we should have - wallpaper: none are singular instances, not a million little pieces, but a million different patterns. Hence a density of line that is just a scribble. Time may be river that cannot be stepped into twice, but it freezes at times, and such it obstructs its own flow and it is this hold-up, this eddy, that alone is responsible for the creation of folds and patterns. And the winter is never long enough to skate.]
They say that wealthy people like the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers are sinful because they accumulated fortunes by exploiting the poor. ["O.E. synn "moral wrongdoing, offense against God, misdeed," from P.Gmc. *sundjo (cf. O.S. sundia, O.Fris. sende, M.Du. sonde, Ger. Sünde "sin, transgression, trespass, offense"), probably ult. "true" (cf. Goth. sonjis, O.N. sannr "true"), from PIE *es-ont-, prp. of base *es- "to be" (see is)."They are sinful because they are, because unlike the proletariat, they are not enemies of mankind. They are sinful because they are not misanthropes.]
I feel that everybody should be able to rise as high as they can or want to, provided they don't kill anybody or actually oppress other people on the way up. [
["Envy which is establishing itself is a levelling, and while a passionate age pushes forward, establishing new things and destroying others, raising and tearing down, a reflective, passionless age does the opposite, it stifles and hinders, it levels. This levelling is a silent, mathematical, abstract process which avoids upheavals. . . . Levelling at its maximum is like the stillness of death, where one can hear one's own heartbeat, a stillness like death, into which nothing can penetrate, in which everything sinks, powerless."
The leveled is the stillness of the money pit's tiled bottom. For there is the shorn chill of undried sweat, the only trace of the frantic doggy-paddle of a hoarding duck who mistakes money for matter and who has forgotten how to swim.]
1) Primitively accumulate (mechanism of extraction and control)
[Brief value-producing interlude:
Culture industry reinvigoration via slotting in of the barbarian, he who does not speak as you, who does not speak at all. Circulate capital (read: bring not just a wheelbarrow but the sticky, voracious good intentions of the young ducks, for always remember Unhappy Mr. Peel who provided for everything except the export of English modes of production to Swan River!) back through the geographical site of original extraction.]
2) Weaponize the primitives (mechanism of self-destruction and leveling) on their home turf
3) Leave be to flatten itself in the echo chamber of a disavowed zone (mechanism of walking away while "sadly" looking back)
(And no, no one doubted that you would "take vanilla".)
2. I will once again write substantive things here, despite the recent slide back into scattered ephemera. Writing projects I've taken on, the kind with collective schedules or official deadlines, have became monstrous Eaters of Time, and I've been gathering, polishing, and hoarding theses in private. Will begin dropping them here.
3. Combined and Uneven Apocalypse is finally coming out. Should be available in the U.S. by the end of this month. Urge your local bookstore to put it up front alongside Twilight, because at night, when the store closes, it will eat those books and use their spines to make siege engines to take on the self-help section. Conversely, it's about $10 off on Amazon, if local business isn't one's thing. I'd like to give talks about it in various cities, so if you live in one and know a bookstore/library/gallery/university/museum/bar/house that would be interested, let me know.
4. The 70s Film Series I run with Erik turned out incredibly. We're starting up again in April with Melodrama, of the Mexican, British, American, and German variety. Those who might be saddened about the prospect of the falling weirdness quotient (although House sets the bar unfairly high), don't be. These are some of the stranger, sharper films out there, and they should be watched together (as should almost all films), with the transmission of giggling, dejection, turned-on-ness, and unease that does not happen in the echo chamber of the One and Only. Plato was worried about a "plague of pathos" - these are that well-lit nightmare.
5. Arab Revolt Reading Group will be starting in April as well, have gathered names of those interested, and will be working up a reading list in the next few weeks.
5. Pride to those in Wisconsin, shame to all of us just watching slack-jawed, and utterly yes to general strike.
THE LAST IN OUR SERIES THIS WINTER. TOMORROW NIGHT.
At that level, a hit movie about shark attacks
leads to a movie about bear attacks.
That’s the best they can do.
This is not a film you have to “see to believe.” You will see this film, and still you will not believe it. We’ve watched some odd films this quarter. This one, our last in this winter run, cannot be called “odd” or “weird.” It has no adequate adjectives, and it exists in a realm where natural light does not shine, where everything glitters soft, where pianos eat girls, where a theme song gets stuck on repeat, where landscapes open inward like double doors, where faces break like mirrors and there is fire beneath.
Criterion, responsible for its recent DVD release, states that it is a “psychedelic ghost tale” that “might have been beamed to Earth from some other planet.” That’s about right. But more accurately, it is an strangely pure cinema of effects and techniques, craft gone wild. It’s a joyous hijacking of all the tricks of the advertising trade, given a big enough budget to fully let loose not what comes from outside but from inside, the deep madness barely restrained by the conventions of profit-making. What results is a manic goofiness so profound it becomes sinister, and a shuddering collapse of the gap between the sublime and the moronic. We see, at the same moment, one of the better sunsets committed to film and a severed head flying through the air to bite the ass of her friend. It is gorgeous and cheap, a profound gag, and the anarchic giggling of an unhinged ludic impulse which asks, in deadly seriousness: actually, what can film do that other media cannot?
Also, you will see a painting of a fluffy white cat named Blanche vomit enough blood to flood a house.
He tends to become marginal, the pollution of capital. Capital is autonomized and surpasses its limits (a kind of surfusion of capital), but it cannot do this without men, the necessary pollution. They are the limit to capital.
Camatte, "About the Revolution"
Today "pollution" is in fashion, exactly in the same manner that revolution is: it takes hold of the entire life of society, and it is illusorily represented in the spectacle. It is boring chatter in a plethora of erroneous and mystifying writings and discourses, and in reality [dans les faits] it gets everyone in the throat.
Reacceleration of chopped and screwed tracks to their "normal" speed. The slight shudder beats become hiccups. There is little difference except we know what it has been through and that can't be forgotten. A hangover made to sprint.
Project 2:
To cut through this absurd confusion of values, we can observe that Griffith’sBirth of a Nation is one of the most important films in the history of the cinema because of its wealth of innovations. On the other hand, it is a racist film and therefore absolutely does not merit being shown in its present form. But its total prohibition could be seen as regrettable from the point of view of the secondary, but potentially worthier, domain of the cinema. It would be better to detourn it as a whole, without necessarily even altering the montage, by adding a soundtrack that made a powerful denunciation of the horrors of imperialist war and of the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, which are continuing in the United States even now.
(Debord and Wolman)
Very well then. Time to answer a call. For a start, a one minute section of the film stretched out to ten minutes.
The soundtrack?
Chopped and screwed down to the lowest of all stuttering bass. The codeine dirge of an black American communist singing out the words
("Dat's de ol' man that I'd like to be...", "you gets a little drunk / and you lands in jail," "Ah'm tired of livin' / An skeered of dyin'")
Melodrama mining project continues. Watching this tonight - do the same in your respective zones or homes, and we'll meet halfway, between the Vaseline-hued glow of her and the gathered shadows of doors too large to be opened by those pass through them.
Shooting the moon. (To demand that we demand nothing, or everything, or whatever.) The best form of "internal contradictions."
Stay strong, Milwaukee. Pretty sure we can work out a way to simultaneously end winter - though you may have to keep global warming - and get you some ice. (Heads on their way, packed in said ice.)
If it wasn't already obvious, Thomas Friedman is a staggering waste of flesh and breath. It's a common and stupid thing these days to overuse the word "literally." (As in, "I didn't eat lunch, so I was literally starving.") Here it is justified: he literally has no idea what he is talking about. To even remotely suggest, let alone straight-up state, that Egyptian revolt was inspired by Obama (“Hmmm, let’s see. He’s young. I’m young. He’s dark-skinned. I’m dark-skinned. His middle name is Hussein. My name is Hussein. His grandfather is a Muslim. My grandfather is a Muslim. He is president of the United States. And I’m an unemployed young Arab with no vote and no voice in my future.”) or by Israel ("when you live right next to a country that is bringing to justice its top leaders for corruption and you live in a country where many of the top leaders are corrupt, well, you notice"), you cede any right to publish anything further, in any format, in any medium, in any language. Stop.
The Arab TV network Al Jazeera has a big team covering Israel today. They frequently report Israeli incursions on Palestinian towns, illegal settlements on Palestinian land, Israeli killings, torture and illegal detention of Palestinians as well as Israel’s continual transgression of international law. I will ignore this and focus on a few incidents of domestic housekeeping (and include a completely irrelevant reference to Google maps!) in order to prop up my theory and ignore the fact that if Egyptians are in any way inspired by anything that happens in Israel, it is their ability to identify with Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. When you write a column for the New York Times and your name is Thomas Friedman, well, that’s what you do.
With Gopal Balakrishnan and whoever else wants to offer input or help plan, I'm going to organize a spring reading group in Santa Cruz on the Arab revolts, including both long-term historical analysis and recent writings on the current situation. Think it would be a big help to a lot of us, myself very much included, who are quickly discovering how little we actually understand of the region and its dynamics. If you're in the area and want to join in, let me know.
[If you aren't around these parts but want to contribute or follow along, at the very least we should be able to set up ongoing email threads. And if there's interest elsewhere, perhaps we can work together to set up roughly similar reading lists for groups in a few cities. This could be a useful occasion for us to begin to develop a common analysis - or, at least, more fleshed-out contentions with each other - on the present moment. And that is surely a needed thing.]
We don't care what as much what people chant, but as long as they increasingly define their position they will increasingly come into an internal contradiction with democratic logic.
