Sunday, November 30, 2008

consider this

: Dung literature appears with the life of
officials, with the advent of the officious, when
it is impossible to argue or to be kind in a
straightforward way. If one cannot anymore be
overtly kind, the expression of kindness
must become a guerilla affair. The official life,
the life of this empire, the life of rules, is a life
that does not readily allow the choice to be
kind: insurance companies find such choice
risky, and corporations find such choice costly.
Officiousness is not a thing, but the very action
that removes kindness. The purpose of
lampoon is, then, to show us that the
correct thing is often the improper thing. The
purpose of decent dung literature is, in part, to
show that the decorous action is often the
dangerous action. In
fact in such an age, in an age of militarism and
canned heroism, tragedy is the mere
commodification of suffering and the glue of
nationalism. A nation does not laugh, it grieves.
Yet it is a false grieving; the grief of nationalism
is merely a scrim to hide the buttocks of
revenge. America

does not know how to suffer because it does
not know how to endure. And it does not
know how to endure because it cannot laugh.
We need dung therefore. Like laughter, the
anus is innately disruptive. Dung is laughter.
The landbridge of laughter is a preposterous
isthmus leading to a seldom visited region of
purposeful metaphor, a region where cultural
and aesthetic politics matter. And, too, the idea
that the comic may be at once oppositional in
its uses and concordant in its pleasures is
something one may touch upon nicely here.
Gabriel Gudding, Rhode Island Notebook. Champaign: Dalkey, 2007. 106-107

Friday, November 14, 2008

what we want

According to [Silvan S.] Tomkins, natural selection has favored distinct classes of affect for the preservation of life and for people. Tomkins argues that the "human being is equipped with innate affective responses which bias him to want to remain alive and to resist death, to want sexual experiences, to want to experience novelty and to resist boredom, to want to communicate, to be close to and in contact with others of his species and to resist the experience of head and face lowered in shame."
Kaufman and Raphael, Coming Out of Shame: Transforming Gay and Lesbian Lives, 1996. 26

Sunday, November 9, 2008

crack



"Anthem"
by Leonard Cohen

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see.

I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.

Ring the bells that still can ring ...

You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen, The Future (1992)

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

practically true

Pain always produces logic, which is very bad for you.
Frank O'Hara, "Personism: A Manifesto"