7 the dead awoke and followed for a time

I am not well versed in the various productions of Breton and his band of knights. Of all the documents that I have examined, the one that seemed to convey the deepest appreciation of the movement as a whole is a work by Vaneigem, who inherited its legacy and whose own perspective was largely honed as a reaction to its apparent failings. The breadth of his analysis and sharpness of his criticism is very impressive. Although I'm not at all familiar with French, I would say from the translations that the writing in "cavalier" is more accomplished than in "everyday life," his signature work...

The destruction waged by Dada was primarily a rejection of "aestheticism," defined as follows:
...................."Aestheticism acquired ideological force as the contrary of commercial value, as the thing which could make the world worth living in, and which thus held the key to a particular style of life, a particular way of investing being with value that was diametrically opposed to the capitalist's reduction of being to having."

The vantage point here really seems quite acute. For my own part, it articulates an intuition. a reservation that has always undermined my enthusiasm in the face of the "artistic." On one level we have reality, in which things and people are owned and controlled by others. On another level we have imagination, within reality but only a very small part thereof, a consolation and a distraction for those who are owned and oppressed. At some point, the people who fabricate imaginations, or are particularly devoted to them...at some point these people have been affiliated with possessing some sort of more desirable...a loftier...a "holier" existence than those who own and those who are owned. This affiliation with a more desirable way of life is at first portrayed as a challenge or an opposition to the powerlessness of the average individual. Some years later, others, for example, the gymnasts of provocation who proclaimed: "dada," came to believe that the idealization of particular individuals as uniquely being "creative" was a mindset that reinforced powerlessness.

I urge anyone reading this to abandon it and take up the Vaneigem essay. The depth of that work far exceeds this collection of paltry remarks- the impoverished intelligence that they reflect. I return to the essay often, and I am challenged time and time again by personal weaknesses which force out of focus my attempts to confront what it affirms and denies. The situationalists departed from the history of their time to conduct some extremely trenchant operations whose objective was to lay bare the inadequacy of symbolic expression. I would prefer to relate to these efforts directly, but I am still trying to fathom both a sufficient technique/technology and a sufficient context.

8 against the flash of color

MP3:AGAINST THE FLASH OF COLOR




"The reduction of being to having" quite an enormous universe in this tiny phrase. Why might it be rejected?

Let us cut to the quick of it. What can a person have? They can own physical objects. Their house, their furniture, their car, their own body, the bodies of other people. They can own these by being, exclusively, the person who is responsible for what happens to them...The ideals which might in someway legitimize ownership, which might justify it, these change with respect to time and place and are certainly not immediately obvious. Reality, heedless of this, continuously confronts us with situations of ownership. Certain people have exclusive control over certain things. Very little is as obvious.

In subtlety different ways, a person can perhaps be thought of as owning...having... ideas...as owning techniques and procedures, but I want to avoid, for a short time, at least, this rather more complicated and abstract situation, consider instead: ownership of the "object"

Vivimos el fin del tiempo lineal, el tiempo de la sucesion: historia, progresso, modernidad. En la esfera del arte la forma más virulenta de la crisis de la modernidad ha sido la critica del objecto; iniciada por Dadá, hoy culmina en la destruccion (o autodestruccionj) de la "cosa artistica", cuadro o escultura, en aras del acto, la ceremonia, el acontecimiento, el gesto. La crisis del objecto es apenas una manifestacion (negativa) del fin del tiempo, nuestra idea del tiempo. La idea de "arte moderno" es una consecuencia de la idea de "historia del arte"; ambas fueron invenciones de la modernidad y ambas mueren con ella. La sobrevaloración de la novedad se inscribe dentro de una concepción historicista: el arte es una historia, una expresion más immediata de lo nuevo es el arte instantaneo pero asimismo su refutación: en el instante se conjugan todos los tiempos sólo para aniquilarse y desaparecer. Otro arte alborea? En algunas partes, especialmente en los Estados Unidos asistimos a distintas tentativas de resurección de la Fiesta. Esta tentativas, expresan una nostalgia por un pasado irrecuperable o son la prefiguación de los ritos futuros de una sociedad apenas en gestación y que, si no más feliz, quizá será, al menos, mas libre que la nuestra? No lo sé. En todo caso, reconozco en ellas al antiguo sueño romantico, recogido y transmitido por los surrealistas a la juventud actual: borrar las fronteras entre la vida y la poesía. Arte de encarnacion de las imágenes que podria satisfacer la necesidad de ritos colectivos de nuestro mundo."

(((Al mismo tiempo, cómo no imaginar otro arte, en el polo opuesto, destinado a satisfacer una necesidad no menos imperiosa: la meditacion y la contemplacion solitarias? Ese arte no seria una recaida en la idolatrai de la "cosa artistica" de los ultimos doscientos anos; tampoco sería un arte de la destruccion del objecto siono que veria en el cuadro, la escultura o el poema, un punto de partida. Hacia donde? Hacia la presencia, hacia la ausencia, hacia allá...No la restauración del objecto sino la instauraction del poema o el cuadro como un siglo inaugural que abre un camino.)))

(p.46)

We are living at the end of linear time, the time of succession: history, progress, modernity. In the sphere of art, the most virulent form of the crisis of modernity has been the criticism of the object; initiated by Dada, now culminating in the destruction, (or auto destruction) of the artistic thing, painting or sculpture in: the ceremony, the acknowledgment, the gesture. The crisis of the object is perhaps a (negative) manifestation of the end of time, our idea of time. The idea of “modern art” is a consequence of the idea of “art history” both were inventions of modernity and both will die with them. The overestimation of novelty inscribes itself within a historical conception: art is a history, the most immediate expression of what is novel is the art of the moment, but it is at the same time, its refutation; in the moment, all times conjoin only to annihilate one another and disappear. Will another art arise? In some places, especially in the United States, we have seen different attempts towards the resurrection of the festival. These attempts express a nostalgia for an unrecoverable past...or are the presentiment of future rites of a society scarcely in gestation. One that which, if not happier than our own, will, perhaps, at least be more free. In any case, I recognize in these efforts the ancient romantic dream, recognized and transmitted by the surrealists to the youth of today: the erasure of the frontiers between life and poetry. An art of the incarnation of images that perhaps could perhaps satisfy the need for collective rites in the world of today.
(((At the same time, how might one imagine another art, at the opposite pole. Destined to satisfy a need no less urgent: meditation and solitary contemplation? This art would not be a relapse into the idolatry of the artistic thing of the last two hundred years, nether will it be the destruction of the object of the painting, sculpture, poem. It will be a point of departure. Towards where? Towards presence. Towards absence. Towards the beyond…not the restoration of the object rather the installation of the poem or the painting as an inaugural sign that opens a pathway)))

To summarize, the end of conceiving time as a linear progression of events has led to the end of a concept of art as a production of objects. Time was a favorite theme for Paz, the subject of his Nobel lecture, and his concern, coarsely stated, amounts to challenging the predominate intention behind the use of the word "progress" - to replace the world's variety of cultures and ideals with ones that imitate those found in the economically prosperous West. "The end of linear time" is difficult to conceive of: scientific, mathematical, technical knowledge continues to progress from a body of earlier discoveries towards newer ones. And there are the common sense things, no? The kind of uncertainty that is specific to the future...and the kinds of impossibilities: a shattered window or mirror not suddenly running backwards in time: piecing itself back together. Proclaiming that linear time is dead is perhaps, rather to suggest that there are certain things that it is not applicable to, to urge a perspective in which civilizations distinct in time are seen in parallel with one another, differing responses to problems and pleasures which are the same for all human societies. The second paragraph alludes to this. We are supposed to be reconciled with the creation of objects because they offer us points of departure, doorways to other perspectives.

9 beauty was a weight

MP3:BEAUTY WAS A WEIGHT





                El objecto, aquello que se presenta a los ojos o a la imaginación, nunca aparece tal cual es. La forma de aparición de la presencia es la representación. El ser es invisable y estamos condenados a verlo a traves de una vestidura tejida de símbolos. El mundo es un racimo de signos. La representación significa la distancia entre la presencia plena y nuestra mirada: es la señal de nuestra temporalidad cambiante y finita, la marca de la muerte. Asimismo, es el puente de acceso, ya que no a la presencia pura y llena de si, a su reflejo: nuestra respuesta a la muerte y al ser, a lo impensable y a lo indecible. Si la representación no es abolición de la distancia - el sentido jamás coincide enteramente con el ser- es la tranfiguración de la presencia, su metáfora.))

(paz, el signo y el garabato, joaquin moritz, p. 33)

                The object, that which presents itself to the eyes or to the imagination, never appears the way that it truely is. Its presence is an appearance formed by a representation. Its true being is invisible and our limited perception of it is by virtue of symbols that have been woven together into its veil. Reality is itself an association of symbols. Representation signifies the distance between a complete presence and what we are able to perceive: it is the sign of our own temporality, mutable and finite, the mark of our mortality. At the same time, it is the point of encounter, not with a real presence of some reality-in-itself, but with its reflection: our reply to existence and to death, to what is unthinkable and unsayable. If representation is not the abolition of the distance, in which the meaning coincides completely with the presence, it is the transfiguration of the presence, its metaphor.

(translation mine)

The first page to corriente alterna, contains one of the keys to what I am attempting to address by cobbling together this essay. Paz begins that book by mentioning that there is an underlying similarity between poetry, eroticism, and mysticism. He doesn't immediately go on to make explicit what this might be, but the anaysis of "the object" presented above, shines a light on how that similarity might be interpreted. The object of poetry that is language. The object of eroticism which is some other person. The object of mysticism which is the world itself. And the practice of all three of these pursuits: to regard their objects by virtue of fashioning an expression which contains within itself the recognition of its own fallibility- its own inadequacy.

10 medallion of a wolf

MP3:MEDALLION OF A WOLF


So with this in hand, we return to the question with which we began: Why write anything at all? Why fashion poems, stories, histories, theories, explanations... "objects" composed of text...distracting and enchanting others, distracting and enchanting ourselves?

Several of these objects reoccur in my mind- something causes them to be read from memory:"...the reduction of being to having...""...the principle problems in life..." phrases like these return to me throughout the various dead time moments that I am away from following these sorts of inquiry. These phrases: objects made of words, objects behind which there is some sort of comprehension at which I have not yet managed to arrive... If indeed, it does exist. I'm reminded of another yet another phrase at this juncture, following me for a decade: "It may be false, but if so, so is everything else."

In all barbarity, I have to confess that I resent the way that the written word has exerted such a grasp upon my attention. Can you really pull anything through a series of words on a page...grasp something that exists in reality that you were not hitherto aware of? With mathematical symbols, yes, you can manipulate the symbols and foretell the future, the future of moving objects at least. And there is something in this which seems to promise a profound understanding of the world to those who can truly appreciate why it happens to be so: What is the nature of what is real, given that we can construct symbolic systems whose concatenations mirror patterns in nature? What is the nature of this special relation between words and things? What is the basis for it? What accounts for how calculations can be efficacious, how they can possible be applicable to the world?

...but, excluded from an aptitude with mathematical symbols, I'm personally limited only to words and English...and the more familiar with theses that I become, the better that I become with manipulating them, the more I become convinced of their total inadequacy, if not their absolute falseness. A falseness, particularly, with respect to where they derive their origin and how they are supposed true. You begin a conversation, or a theory, an explanation, and the dimensions along which which these linguistic constructions develop seem to follow a preordained path...Certain assertions provoke certain replies...Like "thank you" provokes "you're welcome," on the model of a knee jerking from a hammer or drool from the sound of a bell. Yet: this model that we are drawing from as we perceive and arrange words, this could very well be inadequate for modeling what we really need to understand.

Allow me to attempt my breakthrough from another direction- Consider, the opposition: rational versus irrational. By rational we indicate: something that takes place by virtue of a reason- - - associating from this, we find ourselves encountering various, related ideas: something that takes place according to methods that can be reliably followed...some set of instructions that can be carried out...some procedures or algorithms which can be exactly specified and carried out by a machine.

Now this is not the traditional emphasis when it comes to conceptions of the rational. The rational, ascribed to the mind, was that which was in opposition to the body, which were appetites: thirst, hunger, sex, the comforts of sleep and temperature.

The rational: your deliberate persona with a narrative that others can understand, a narrative driven by desires that they can conceive of. A narrative that weaves through names which are in common and familiar...The rational: words whose meanings are shared because they express common, similar, shared fears and desires. Desires that belong to your persona itself- and therefore words and meanings that belong to it as well.

Words have meanings like effects have causes. And rationality, which all people share, can deduce the former from the latter.

Yet the irrational exists. Is it exclusive to man? Is the universe ran according to intelligible laws and man the only part of it that has within himself the irrational?

Breakthroughs from some other direction: to select words from random and to examine them in such a way that they might convey some meaning. Is this a contradiction? What does it mean, from random? There must be some methodology of selection...this methodology, whatever it is, itself contradicts the very meaning of random. There must be something trying to communicate with you if the symbols are to have any meaning...Meaning on the

...things to consider... firing off in different directions from this moment of the essay: the various ways that have been created to generate phrases by random methods, most especially, computer programs written to do this...the "logic" of projecting a meaning into phrases so generated...depictions of methodologies for using such phrases to deduce, to enter into a relationship with, irrational aspects of existence...the meaning of "irrational"- it's existence limited to animals, or no?...Physical phenomena are said to sometimes follow reason- but they are not said to possess reason. We do not say that a falling object is thinking about the law of gravity.

the meaning of chance versus determinism aka patterns of behavior that are recursive, can be repeated...the idea that words themselves, or something whose nature is distinct from deliberate awareness, could be responsible for the meanings of words...the relationship of this theory of meaning to probability and chance...

11 your presence the occupation

MP3:YOUR PRESENCE THE OCCUPATION


Reading this now---understand that my compulsion is to have this inquiry eventually be honed into something so rigorous that it resembles a mathematical deduction. The way to achieve this is not presently evident to me-so I will be investigating possibilities in the form of digressions...


Learning Spanish, I've been browsing over the collected works of Vargas Llosa, since most of it is readily available is translation- and this makes
learning unfamiliar words more convenient...In the book, mala niña, the narrator refers to the "la aventura de Mayo de 1968, en que los jovenes de Paris llenaron el bario latino de baricadas y declaron que habia que ser realistas eligiendo lo impossible" (p.94) (the adventure of May 1968 in which the parisian youth filled the streets of the latin quarter with barricades and declared that one had to be a realist by choosing the impossible. )

On my next visit to the library, the title: "the temptation of the impossible" forced me to stretch out my hand and pull the book from the shelf. Its subject is an appraisal of Hugo's Les Miserables...more specifically, it is an appraisal of Victor Hugo himself and his motivations for constructing such an astonishingly longwinded epic. Vargas Llosa uses the occasion to reflect upon more general considerations: What is purpose of novels generally? Given the real world of human problems, can a tale of fiction play any role in solving them? Hugo himself avowed the belief that portraying characters harmed by social injustice would serve as a means to provoke society to change itself...he believed that society was something that was able to progress to a more just state of affairs. Surprisingly, to our 21st century eyes, this rather modest suggestion of the possibility of reform was judged as seditious by the authorities of Hugo's day. The book was banned by the church and attacked by some of Hugo's peers.

And is there any merit in their objections? All perspectives have their arguments, so let us attempt to understand the proponents of injustice. First...and obviously...many books and societies have flowed under the bridge since the appearance of Hugo's epic. Monstrously, the intention to create a society that was more just than those of the past has served one of the founding motivations for places that became some of the most oppressive and tyrannical that the world has ever seen. (...China and Mao, Stalin and USSR, Pol Pot and Cambodia...) This is the essential precipice over which this entire discussion must eventually drive. But before we take that path, let's reflect on some visions from 19th century France. In this case those of Lamartine, Hugo's dissenting contemporary:

...................Los Miserables lleva a cabo "una crítica excesiva, radical y a veces injusta de la sociedad, algo que puede inducir al ser humano a odiar aquello que lo salva, el orden social, y a delirar por aquello que es su perdición: el sueno antisocial del ideal indefinido' p. 210 '¿Ha creado la vida la sociedad? ¿Ha inventado ella la muerte? ¿Es ella, por ùltimo, la que produjo la desigualidad, inexplicable pero parte orgànica de la naturaleza y de la condiciòn humana? No, no ha sido ella, sino Dios. Compadecerla, sì, aconsejarla, bueno; pero, acusarla, no, porque es irreflexivo y bàrbaro" p. 212

....................Los Miserables has brought about "an excessive, radical, and at time unjust criticism of society, something that could incite humand beings to hate that which is their salvation, the social order, and to desire that which is their perdition: the antisocial dream of the indefinite ideal" p.210 "Has society created life? Has it invented death? Is it, ultimately, that which has produced inequality, that inexplicable but organic part of nature and the human condition? No, God, not society, is responsible for these things. To commiserate with it- yes, to advise it- good; but to accuse it--- no, because this is thoughtless and barbaric p.212

attributing the responsibility for human suffering to society is incorrect. It is thereby dangerous, for when the masses discover that there is no possibility for a reality to exist which would correspond to their desires for happiness, their disappointment would culminate in a sacred fury whose outlet consists in nothing other than their own destruction.

VL goes on to express the sentiment: "Las temores de Alphonse de Lamartine harian sonreier ahora a muchos. Quien cree in nuestro dias que una gran novela puede subvertir el orden social?" (((Today, the fears of Lamartine would make many smile. Who in our days believes that a great novel can subvert social order))) Common sense to be sure. But the words "in our days" may be crucial to this sentiment. Who is to say, today, that they can truly appreciate the potency with which the written word could stir the imaginations of the nineteenth century. Attempting to appreciate this, we are led to ask if there could be, in our day, some form of human communication that poses a threat analogous to the one that the novel seemed to present to the order of nineteenth...If there could be, in our days, as well as theirs, an essential fiction behind which reality was completely obscured. A fiction that is as false to now as the one that was the substance of then- that certain men were appointed to rule others by the mandate of God.

As far as my faltering attempts to learn Spanish go, I definitely owe bit of gratitude to VL. While I no longer have the slightest bit of patience for the craftsmanship of storytelling in my native language, I have to admit that being able to follow a coherent narrative is occasionally of some assistance when making guesses at unfamiliar words in another tongue. ';';';';';;As good as some of his fictions are (and several chapters of La Guerra Del Fin Del Mundo, in particular, creates some poetically fated characters evoke some scenes which really rise up before one's imagination);';';';';';';'; VL truely shines as an essayist. I tore through the three volumes of Contra Marea y Viento at a breakneck pace.

Esa es una de la seguridades que tengo...El escritor siente i'ntimamente que escribir es lo mejor que le ha pasado y puede pasarle, pues escribir significa para e'l la mejor manera posible de vivir, con prescindenca de las consecuencias sociales poli'ticas

"You know, I think that writers write what happens. Let's face it, things don't happen unless somebody writes it...I had been in Algiers eating in this milk bar. Two months after I had left there, about two years after Graham Green had written this scene, the explosion occurred."
(24)
What is a writer trying to do? He's trying to reproduce in the reader's mind a certain experience, and if he were completely successful in that, the reproduction of the experience would be complete. Perhaps fortunately, they're not that successful.
(53)

A division in the world between reality and fiction. between an objective world that is the cause of experiences and ideas in the mind that are representations of that world. A causal relation between the former and the latter.

The entire structure of this is a misunderstanding...consciousness itself is a misunderstanding. but then we are forced to confront that "understanding" is a word whose meaning is dependent on a consensus and certain patterns of usage, a word whose meaning depends on other people, something cannot be understood unless it understood by others

It is one of my principles that one must not write oneself. The artist must be in his work like
God in his creation: invisible and omnipotent (3/1857) I even think that a novelist hasn't
the right to express his opinion of anything whatsoever. When has God ever expressed his opinion?

Matthew Arnold set up three criteria for criticism:
1. What is the writer trying to do?
2. How well does he succeed in doing it?
3. Does the work exhibit "high seriousness"? That is, does it touch on basic issues of good and evil, life and death and the human condition.

Does anyone know what Arnold text Burroughs is paraphrasing here?

The third of these criteria is obviously a little more vague than its predecessors. It could be replaced, without any general loss of meaning, by merely asking: "3. Is it worth doing?" The word: "worth" contains within itself all the inquiry that is implicit within value, desire and their opposites.

the principle instrument of monopoly and control that prevents expansion of consciousness are the word lines controlling thought, feeling, and apparent sensory impressions of the human host

12 honest sidedoor marble door

The difference between actually writing and merely copying previously written words is founded in an author's ability to disassociate itself from the narrative persona. What is the real relationship between author and narrator? The author anticipates the judgment of a reader...because of this...that which is judged is not the author, but the narrator, a character evoked in words exactly the same as all other fictional characters.

I threw coins for a bar and it said that I could expect great good fortune...I can't imagine the pendulum swinging quite that far for me, but I turned off the monitor and went for a drive.

A room around a bar with television screens playing the same three or four sports channels...speakers playing the same 10000 pop songs...posters with no discernible content...signs and mirrors advertising brands of alcohol...poker machines...people sitting in front of these en annoyed, distracted, and absent...

What are you going to do tomorrow? Tomorrow is work: dead time. Tomorrow, I'm going to go through the motions. Everything will happen as if I was watching it from far away. It will be as if it had already happened before it ever started.

A woman in a black dress with long hair, smoking nervously. A pair of waiters with their white shirts unbuttoned, white t-shirts underneath...a chubby girl with dirty hair and her bald boyfriend, playing plastic darts...two post-college aged men talking about wireless routers and mediocre bands they pretend to be enthusiastic about. The voice of someone to his date about his work...A voice which is easy to ignore, thankfully...

The author and the narrator...which of these do you know the most about? Which of them is dictating the words that follow you as you move from place to place? Which of them is controlling the events that surround you- arranging the world into forms, settings, characters that are compromises between what is real and what is desired. The difference between actually writing and merely copying words is something that evokes importance, even though how it might actually be reached and how it might actually be depicted.............................This important thing, this object of desire itself... this is something that, despite all of its self-contradictions, must actually be real- more real than what cannot be effected, which is all around us and means nothing. The difference between copying the old forms and gaining novel ones must be something that is opposed to the author and its efforts...there is a balance that exists- certain experiences belong to depiction and others remain outside...If we are to win any new ground, we have to confront something that provokes fear and desire. There are words and there are things. But there is only one reality and all divisions have exceptions. It's commonly thought that things happen- and then they are described. The notion of a cause...of a reason. But can it be thought that things are described and then they can therefore happen?

13 a wind like glass

Why write? A century of hands...hands typing out words like a plowman digging rows in the dirt. There are worse fates, to be sure. What overwhelms us at this point is the meaning of the real: there are no vocations, only careers. Is that truly the limits of conception? I feel with cold total certainty that everyone I have ever met face to face believes as much. "I am pleased, in turn, to have something to do with the fact that several young writers today have lost all literary ambition. We publish to seek out men, nothing more..."(The Disdainful Confession; Breton) Yet we will disagree with this as well. There is no one reading this. You and I, I say to myself...we can deny everything that has been previously understood and thereby imagine the possibility of the present...Others, illusory others, might condemn this self-evident affirmation to be false, but if it is so, so is everything else. How might an actual someone ever dare reply? This entire essay, with its deliberate, intelligible progression, is itself a demonstration of the kind of method that it proposes to be a failure. The dimensions following this will only be analogous to language...they will appear to all others, falsely, to be determined totally by chance.