So Carissa's dad is in town this weekend to watch the kid while we have a fancy Valentine's day downtown, and he brought a pile of great vinyl with him. One of them was this Jim Croce record.

Love Disorder from Bruce Charlesworth on Vimeo.

via Christopher Baker

v2 of new EP cover

(v1 was here)

what do you think?

Offered w/o comment for now. It took so long to throw this simple thing together (had to clear a bunch of disk space, the original Lacan video was an hour long). I don't know what he's saying. I know the subject, roughly.

Derek Powazek - Meaning-Making Machines:

Recently a researcher named Jennifer Whitson published a study in the journal Science called “Lacking Control Increases Illusory Pattern Perception.” She did an experiment with two groups that were given a test. The “powerless” group was told that their answers were half right, half wrong, no matter what they said. The “in control” group were told that their answers were right.

Both groups were then shown a series of images of random static. Here’s the interesting part: The people in the “powerless” group were more likely to see images in the static - to find meaning in chaos - than the people in the “in control” group. So, while all our brains are meaning-making machines, the results of this study show that stressed out brains work harder to find meaning. They literally see things that are not there.

Don't be silly. It's ok. Expectations are at an all-time low. Please, continue. Symbolic identity structures are at stake!

Let's try a different reading of this:

He said: "Signs are formed from language, but not the one you think you know."

There is no language without deceit.

I realized I had to free myself from the images which in the past had announced to me the things I sought: only then would I succeed in understanding the language of Hypatia.

...And when my spirit wants no stimulus or nourishment save music, I know it is to be sought in the cemeteries: the musicians hide in the tombs; from grave to grave flute trills, harp chords answer one another.

Only a saint in his asceticism might find jouissance that is not linked to the big Other. But there are no gallery openings for a saint's performance. #

Jeff Buckley - I Know It's Over

It's funny to me how we are surprised at nation building. We do exactly the same thing with our lives and communities. That it extends to nations and worlds makes sense.

We tell lies to get ourselves into something. Then, when it all goes south, we tell more lies to cover up our failures. We rally allies. Build ideological boundaries.

Many of us are Switzerlands. We just put our fingers in our ears and claim neutrality.

These stories are all too complex to understand completely.

We avoid, engage, attack, sign treaties, and culturally copy.

We develop propaganda campaigns that make the cold war look like child's play.

What is interesting is how dreams survive the violence. They float there as the dust settles, taunting both the dead and the red-handed, frustrating a common longing for peace. These vile ghosts, these messengers of a cruel God...We will build our walls and our weapons, and they will dance on the battlefield.

...in yesterday's post

...You're probably a little behind the curve. Most people have already barricaded their doors against the epidemic of inexplicableness with neo-racist political activism, old fashioned book burning bigotry and a refound committment to some ancient desert faiths' paranoid notions of chosen people...

the rest at Overheard Starbuck

It goes something like this: symbolic orders survive at the cost of our dreams. They are sacrificed at the cost of everything. Joy and madness can be found down either path. If madness comes from the fear of what might compromise "everything," then it is best to sacrifice your dreams.

Those of us "after the fact"--those left without a façade of order, be it at the violent hands of an other and/or the machinations of our own hearts--cannot produce violence because the purpose of violence is the survival of the order. The positive outcome of violence is death--a reminder to those still "alive" that the lack is a fait accompli. (This is why we put the insane and dying away out of sight.)

What is interesting is how dreams survive the violence. They float there as the dust settles, taunting both the dead and the red-handed, frustrating a common longing for peace. These vile ghosts, these messengers of a cruel God... ...we can name them all day long because they reside outside the abilities of our words.

Those who are either chosen and trained or who thrust themselves upon the laughing Deity, they come at worst to compete with these Caspers of the Castle, at best they return to us as one themselves. We will build our walls and our weapons, and they will dance on the battlefield.

Something is really bothering me this morning. It is something that bothers me frequently, to the point of being annoying. It doesn't have to be my problem. I don't know why I take such offense at it. I don't know why it turns my stomach and ruins my mood. I would rather not let it. The thing is hard to describe (and non-specific, in case you were wondering). I'm hoping that if I attempt to describe it, it will help me get over it. The thing is something like this:

When the hype around something exceeds its result.

( Read more... )

Dallas, your symbolic orders have survived, but at what cost?

Don't you see you are exactly as those you mock? It's not eradicating, but recognizing the sameness that is the most difficult. We will do violence to ignore the fact.

Those of us after the fact are left with many choices, but violence is not one of them.

While we do all enter these delicate transactions with our own stuff, the nature of that stuff can differ to great degrees. And it seems that nature is the most violent when identity formation is part of that stuff. And the mechanisms of both love and hate are identical when identity is on the line, i.e. most of the time for most of the population. And the mechanisms of identity revolve around the symbolic order, the big Other.

By uttering [hate] speech, the subject seeks out the Other that would confirm his or her identity and grant his or her authority. And paradoxically, it is the addressee of this speech who plays the role of the "mediator" between the sender and the big Other: by recognizing him- or herself as the addressee of the sender's words, he or she actually occupies the place in the symbolic structure from which the speaker receives confirmation of his or her identity and authority.

Salecl, 121

In both love and hate, we position l'objet petit a in the place of the Other. When the a has become a critical element of our identity formation (which is the nature of its existence in the first place), it is no wonder how we flip from love to hate so easily and so violently. It is our own identity that is paramount, and the human signifier of that identity will be used however necessary to maintain that identity.

Part of all of this as it relates to me is what I've made the objet petit a. (See also. I'm sure the connections I'm pointing out are too vague, even with the title attribute in my anchor tags.) But learning that perhaps a cojourneywoman whose identity formation has moved beyond this set of almost animal mechanizations would be...a place to start.

There's more here. There's always more here. I'm late for many meetings.

...outside he could see people passing by. He could see out, but they couldn't see in. Many of them were carrying large packages on their backs, and they were wearied and weighed down by them.

While he was watching, he gradually became aware of a weight on his own back. And then it dawned on him; he was carrying a package as well.

He became aware of a distant noise...a persistent knocking. he tried to ignore it, but it forced itself on him. he went to open the door, and then suddenly became scared.

He opened the door, and there was Estiva..."What have you come for?" he asked her. Her eyes were so lovely and peaceful. "I've come to take this," she said, and suddenly she was holding the package, and he was feeling refreshed and strong. "Does it belong to you?" he asked. "Not really, but I'm happy to take it for you."

Mike Riddell, while on my first smoke break of the day.

The thing is, there is no human signifier who will show up without their own stuff. And the thing is, we're almost all trying to put our stuff on someone else. The result is often violent. That's what this little French sentence I'm keeping close is about.

( Read more... )

Just wondering: how much and for how long can someone perform premeditated character assassination on me to such a degree? I understand the psychology of it, and will spare you dear reader (that's just part of it). But I do know that it has to be more tiring for the hater than for the receiver of said hate. And man, I'm tired of receiving it! So how do these people feel? Wouldn't they rather be happy?

And I guess there you have it. All I can do is choose to be happy. yay.

You thought you could keep me from loving
You thought you could feed on my soul
But while you were busy destroying my life
What was half in me has become whole

So this is how it feels
To breathe in the summer air
The feel the sand between my toes
And love inside my ear
All those things that you taught me to fear
I've got them in my garden now
And you're not welcome here

from a song i posted in an mp3 mix also a long time ago.

the record is so much better now. i can't wait to get it out so everyone can hear it

Only a saint in his asceticism might find jouissance that is not linked to the big Other. But there are no gallery openings for a saint's performance.

Salecl, 115

How many times must I shake my clown's bells
And kiss your low brow, sad caricature?
In order to strike the target, of mystical nature,
How many javelins must I lose, O quiver?

We will wear out our souls in subtle schemes,
And dismantle many a heavy armor,
Before contemplating the great Creature
Whose infernal desire fills us with sobs!

There are some who have never known their Idol,
And those banned sculptors branded with an affront,
Who as they walk beat their chests and their brows,

Have but one hope, strange and somber Capitol!
It is that Death, hovering like a new sun,
Will cause the flowers of their minds to bloom!

Baudelaire

{More related to the title was going to go here.}

Of all the changes of language a traveler in distant lands must face, none equals that which awaits him in the city of Hypatia, because the change regards not words, but things. I entered Hypatia one morning, a magnolia garden was reflected in blue lagoons, I walked among the hedges, sure I would discover young and beautiful ladies bathing; but at the bottom of the water, crabs were biting the eyes of the suicides, stones tied around their necks, their hair green with seaweed.

( I felt cheated and I decided to demand justice of the sultan )

I realized I had to free myself from the images which in the past had announced to me the things I sought: only then would I succeed in understanding the language of Hypatia.

( Now I have only to hear the neighing of horses and the cracking of whips and I am seized with amorous trepidation )

True, also in Hypatia the day will come when my only desire will be to leave. I know I must not go down to the harbor then, but climb the citadel's highest pinnacle and wait for a ship to go by up there. But will it ever go by? There is no language without deceit.

- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 49-50, emphasis mine

Gary Jules - Falling Awake

Gary Jules - There's a Hole in the Sky