October 2010
53 posts
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“The real mistake of the classical metaphysician was not the belief that there were metaphysical foundations, but rather the belief that somehow or other such foundations were necessary, the belief that unless there are foundations something is lost or threatened or undermined or put in question. It is this belief that Derrida shares with the tradition he seeks to deconstruct. Derrida sees that the Husserlian project of a transcendental grounding for science, language, and common sense is a failure. But what he fails to see is that this doesn’t threaten science, language, or common sense in the least. As Wittgenstein says, it leaves everything exactly as it is. The only “foundation,” for example, that language has or needs is that people are biologically, psychologically, and socially constituted so that they succeed in using it to state truths, to give and obey orders, to express their feelings and attitudes, to thank, apologize, warn, congratulate, etc.”
—John Searle
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“In the hierarchical opposition, deconstruction/logocentrism… the privileged term “deconstruction” is in fact subordinate to the devalued term “logocentrism,” for, in order to establish the hierarchical superiority of deconstruction, the deconstructionist is forced to attempt to represent its superiority, its axiological primacy, by argument and persuasion, by appealing to the logocentric values he tries to devalue. But his efforts to do this are doomed to failure because of the internal inconsistency in the concept of deconstructionism itself, because of its very self-referential dependence on the authority of a prior logic.”
—John Searle deconstructing deconstructionism
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If what’s always distinguished bad writing — flat characters, a narrative world that’s clichéd and not recognizably human, etc. — is also a description of today’s world, then bad writing becomes an ingenious mimesis of a bad world. If readers simply believe the world is stupid and shallow and mean, then (Bret) Ellis can write a mean shallow stupid novel that becomes a mordant deadpan commentary on the badness of everything. Look man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it’d find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.
Postmodern irony and cynicism’s become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony’s gone from liberating to enslaving. There’s some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who’s come to love his cage… The postmodern founders’ patricidal work was great, but patricide produces orphans, and no amount of revelry can make up for the fact that writers my age have been literary orphans throughout our formative years.
We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendent horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. Once we’ve hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young. The U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it’s stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naïveté. Sentiment equals naïveté on this continent.
You burn with hunger for food that does not exist.
” —David Foster Wallace (via wastingoxygen)
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“During the European Enlightenment, most British subjects drank an inordinate amount of beer, or so I’m told. It was some kind of health and safety initiative—beer was apparently cleaner than water. The effect of this constant beer drinking was as you might expect; people were drunk all the time. Now, this slightly sloshed, and occasionally gin-crazed, existence doesn’t sound like a recipe for an enlightened public. So where did all the sober, rational thought characteristic of an Enlightened public come from? A majority of it came from the coffeehouses. The European coffeehouses of the 17th and 18th century were a fundamental part of Enlightenment culture. People gathered in these places to perk up their minds with a cup of coffee before hammering out important discussions about politics, science and, of course, philosophy…”
—deleted paragraph from my letter of intent.
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Always fun to happen upon someone who shares some of my musical interests - seen any of them live? also enjoy your general musings.....choice posts - why so awesome? :)
Tom Waits is at the top of my list. I have not seen him live. Last year I saw the Wood Brothers twice, saw the Tallest Man on Earth… went to several operas at the Lyric… I don’t go out to see live music nearly enough. Glad you enjoy my posts :)
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Is Banksy’s Mr. Brainwash an Art-World Borat? →
nymag.com
Today, the New York Times’ Milena Ryzik investigates Banksy’s new documentary (and Sundance hit) Exit Through The Gift Shop — asking, essentially, if the film is actually a satire, and the subject, French-Californian filmmaker turned street artist Mr. Brainwash, has been created to dupe the art world and mock the burgeoning art-factory system. Mr. Brainwash himself, a.k.a. Thierry Guetta, didn’t respond to her queries, but we spent three hours with Mr. Brainwash before the opening of his recent Manhattan art show “Icons.” Our two cents? The show was so wretchedly derivative, repetitive, and insultingly insipid that we felt it could only have been an intentional prank: With its prints of famous figures Mr. Brainwash said he couldn’t name from memory, and art made out of broken LPs (a staple of junk sales), it was as if they were taunting hipster collectors into buying the worst possible art to prove their hideous, herd-following taste. (Not to mention journalists’ unethical gullibility: Mr. Brainwash kept trying to push a framed print on us, while mentioning how much we could sell it for on eBay.) We definitely felt put on (even if we respected the prank), but we couldn’t prove it. So we tried to get him to admit it. The process was maddening.
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“Last weekend I was at a pee-wee football game, and saw a man in a Frankenstein costume handing out candy to children. He tried his best to remain in character. I thought it was kind of cheesy, but a nice enough seasonal surprise. I was annoyed by this group of middle school girls though, three of them, a queen-bee and two of her apparent minions. They spent about 20 minutes trying to prove that the Frankenstein get-up was a sham. “This man is not who he says he is!” the queen-bee shouted, leading the other girls away, maybe to avoid confrontation. The Frankenstein managed to ignored the comment. Soon the girls returned, gaining confidence. “How old are you?” the queen-bee asked. The man in costume tried to ignore the girl’s question, but made some vague comment about Mary Shelley’s novel being published in the early 19th century. “But how old are YOU?”, the girl repeated. “Thirty-five” the man behind the mask conceded, handing out a few more piece of candy to the children happily gathered around him. They left, conferred and then returned. “Why do you have fake black hair, and real black hair coming out of the bottom of your head?” the girl asked. Frankenstein gave up and responded, with annoyed-desperation, “Well you see… some questions just can’t be answered.” The girls walked away laughing, apparently victorious. Moments after that, a little boy came up, and Frankenstein handed him his last peanut-butter cup. “Hey Frankenstein, what are you going to be for Holloween?” the boy asked. Perfect.”
—This actually happened.
“I was walking through an orange grove with my girlfriend. We picked some oranges and were just walking along, talking, and eating. The sky was getting dark so we decided to head home. On the way back we spotted some cows and a rabbit. We were almost to the fence when we heard a loud screeching noise. From across the field I could see a man on a horse heading toward us. When he got to us I realized it was Bill Murray. He was dressed in full cowboy garb and carried a huge whip. He smiled at my girlfriend and cracked his whip. He looked at me and said “Nobody will ever believe you”, and then rode off into the grove.”
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