March 2011
27 posts
The homogenization of culture was predicted over a century ago by Adorno, and his nightmarish image of a world in which people, products, and places become all the same is, daily, frighteningly more accurate. Differences are now only aesthetic. Can you hear the same message you’re told every day? Listen. Film is imprinting the same horrible banner on every relationship and racing them all against a standard that is inhuman. “The only thing in life,” actors, musicians, and songwriters whisper cunningly in your ear, “is love.” Of course, and it is by no accident, that the only truly valuable thing in life, by their estimation, is also the most ambiguous, inexplicable concept known to men. If there were ever an era in which “Love” in any sense escaped predetermined roles and took on a completely original character, we do not live in that era. Look. Idealistic authors keep telling you how wonderful life can be. If only you read their words. Ink crawls from paper and inscribes the same message on the back of every lost soul’s eyelids. Love, this message reads, is what everyone, including you if you are sane, is after. Explanations are unnecessary (Hah. Hah.), but it assumed you know that this “love” is there and that you are in its pursuit. Any other emotion, by comparison, is deemed unnecessary or even toxic. One hundred years ago, classical American authors, setting themselves apart from English authors, were telling us that hatred is poisonous. Now, the analogy is metallic. It is a double edged sword, they say. It is only you inevitably cut. Well, I protest. If nothing is true, and I assure you none of the parables each person is exposed to per diem are, I know one thing:
How much I hate you, and nothing else, has impassioned me insurmountably. I embrace all of my emotions with the same vigor, many of which birth, or are born from, incomparable creativity and intensity, while this ostensible illustration of what others may call “Love” (but is really just pathetic dramaturgy) evokes only emesis.
Thunder blowin’ up your horizon.
Anger is anxiety is sleep paralysis. I’m conscious, I’m awake, but I can’t fucking move and everything, absolutely everything, either pisses me off or evokes hysteria as it flies toward my limp body.
NYU sucks. It is the most pretentious, elitist, bureaucratic educational institution I’ve ever had the displeasure of setting foot inside.
Also, it’s the biggest slap in the face when someone throws something you want away like it’s worthless.
In more positive news: I leaned the intro to Mumford & Sons “The Cave” on guitar. It’s actually really fun to play.
This week was long, winding, whirling. I hated and loved every moment of it, simultaneously. I will no longer, ever, be intimidated by an “art student.”
Oh God, oh Great Puppetmaster in the sky, you are a joker aren’t you? A jester wrapped in his own grin, a clown in shoes made of chagrin - tapdancing above me -, you are wondrously comical. Hah. Hah!
