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March 11, 2008
OT 08-12
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the modern ‘politician’ jogs his/her way through the seven circles of hell
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 23 2008 3:04 utc | 101
in the worst of my nightmares it is blairhowardbushuribesarkozy running over & over again in their stupide shorts surrrounded by a sea of stupidity that would call itself security but is nothing else than a sea of shit hitting endlessly against the shore of whatever conscience or memory we have left
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 23 2008 3:24 utc | 102
Hope you know (and assume) I’m reading all this with great interest. My personal decision to work in art was born in Vietnam, when I concluded with ample evidence that I was just as easily dead – so why not. Not that I ever studied it or considered it like any kind of career, truth being I hadn’t a clue about art history, modernity, or any preconceived notions about what an artist did. Square one in every respect, which in retrospect I now see as an advantage, as my first love in art was native (all aboriginal) art and later abstract expressionism – having had no indoctrination in established evaluations of status. The evolution of modernity appears to me (its phenomenological insights not withstanding) and always has, as mere footnotes to aboriginal art – the marketing of a nomenclature of details and parts dissected from the whole, and predicated on the notion of formal “progress”. No formal distinctions between painting and sculpture here, and or distinctions between visual art, music, stories, and theater for that matter. Not to mention, the actual universal human language found in that art. Although modernism must have come as a kind of relief and liberation from the stasis of academia bound by church and oligarchy towards liberalism and scienticism, its evolution and status of novelty and innovation has found itself appropriated into an arranged marriage with both capital and empire. That seems to get progressively more blatant and degenerate as empire becomes more demanding to infiltrate every recess of human consciousness and norms of human interaction with its filth of anxiety, dependency, and divisiveness.
On the whole though, I actually think this is a time for art and cultural reconfiguration – like no other.
Posted by: anna missed | Mar 23 2008 8:57 utc | 103
Although modernism must have come as a kind of relief and liberation from the stasis of academia bound by church and oligarchy towards liberalism and scienticism, its evolution and status of novelty and innovation has found itself appropriated into an arranged marriage with both capital and empire.
Indeed, and well said anna missed, that is why it’s so very important to understand that once distilled what is left after the props and decorations/distortions, are seen through, is a ‘war on imagination’, on creativity, solutions, the evolution of thought, further, on birth itself.
On the whole though, I actually think this is a time for art and cultural reconfiguration – like no other.
Robert Anton Wilson talks of how in Soviet Russia artists, writers, poets, painters, jazz musicians*, etc, made the KGB and, authority types increasingly nervous. Same here yet, much more subtle.
*The above Russian artist/musicians ‘DDT’ has a meaningful history beyond merely being celebrity musicians of misspent youth, their brand of Russian soul was and is what has become to be known as truly “underground” as they were products of glasnost and perestroika – restructuring during the eighties, after the ending of the Iron Curtain, i.e., the fall of Russia.
Namely, the prop-agenda of controlling everything from Hollywood, to publishing houses, media, the musical airwaves, even, and much more important to them, our universities.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 23 2008 13:21 utc | 104
anna missed
i started so young. a tubercular father wheezed me his form of hope but living where we lived i preferred boxing – i preferred hitting. i had a bit of tyson’s hatred running through my veins – i was not a gentleman – i wanted to hurt as i had been hurt
what my father gave me was tools. instinct taught me its contexts. more than any of the ‘learning’ i have done
i think we were lucky too to have as our stravinsky – jimi hendrix. because he taught us what formal control was of your work & how if you were brave enough – it could be deconstructed back again into its constituents & began again. & he taughtthat to go through your ideas with a tank was a very delicate business & that is what i remember mostly about hendrix is the delicacy
but when you work oppositionally you want all the tools in the toolbox because you will be attacked at every turn. & i was. for decades. only in france, scandinavia & in latin america were my words taken for what they were
but even in the most concentrated times of activity i understood clearly – that the trace of what you are doing is in fact the most elemental. & that trace was also the means with which you built. you went inside that trace & in a sense lost yourself – the human entity lost & you become a tool
& that why it seems completely appropriate for me to work alongside the oppressed being used as a tool & swapping tools
& it is true it is the most exciting time to create – at this juncture where an empire is collapsing but as you’ll acknowledge – anna missed – it is sometimes very difficult to live
& that is where the real talent has resided – is to live in such an epoch – without wiping yourself completely out
the old left artist had his/her certainties to keep them afloat. their absolutes were the fortress they mùade of their lives. whether they were louis aragon, diego riviera or hans werner henze
for those borne after them – our business was the delmolition business – as indeed malcolm lowry had subtly taught us through his kabbalic exercises. we knew our poems our our paintings could never become banners or slogans – that they had to take the higher risk of going under people’s skins & being transformed by them
i was always interested in the gnostics & their researches – not because i believed in any form of mysticism – i don’t – but i believed that exercises of demolition required a little of the deluded alchemists armoury
& when i came to france nearly twenty years ago – i wanted to relearn. to reread everything. & to read what i had not read. to read anew. working in another language forces you into the demolition business, naturally. you cannot reread hegle for 2 years without understanding that
i loved me my marx & engels – & still do – anti duhring is perhaps the greates poem in any language, dead or living but it is to hegel i go again & again – i rejected the work of kojeve & of hippolyte & went down – full fathom five – &used the tools of that tubercular teacher – my father.
& if you like i also used the tools of that group within china, lin piao, chiang ching & chen po ta – all their group who are demons to the new emporers of china – they tauught me every single thing – the least they taght me was the most – that is to not hang on – to not hang on to anything – but to continually reverse the choses – to undermine your own project – surely they would not have considered me a student but from them i understood deeply w. reichs dictum that before we gan through to erso we have to pass through the death instinct
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 23 2008 15:18 utc | 105
Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can’t help but cry. I mean, I’d love to be skinny like that but not with all those flies and death and stuff.
— Mariah Carey
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 23 2008 15:45 utc | 106
I wonder, have you ever seen this PBS film Mirror Dance? It is a very understated film following the careers of two (identical twin) aspiring dancers caught in the Cuban revolution. Both sisters become important in the Cuban Ballet, and both marry – one to a dance instructor from the states, the other to a Castro confidant. For the first sister (or her husband?) the demands of the revolution become to difficult and so they leave Cuba, to eventually open a successful dance studio in the U.S. The second sister stays in Cuba and over the years becomes the director of the Cuban Ballet.
The film is about their reunion, when the first sister returns to Cuba to finally visit her sister after several decades of separation. And the subtle comparisons of emotional, cultural, and material reflections that ensue from the choices the each of the had made.
There was something very important (to me) in the differential that emerges in the comparison. The sister that had left, found much greater autonomy, flexibility, and material gain but felt existentially unsettled and unsatisfied. The sister who stayed, in spite of her success, lived very modestly and despite the difficulties of actually living the revolution, comes across with great humility, a fully integrated and inspired human being.
I suppose what many artists fail to see, is that there is also a large price to be paid for following the empire.
Posted by: anna missed | Mar 23 2008 20:00 utc | 108
Such thoughtful reflections in the deep heart.
This world inside our prism.
rgiap, annam, thank you.
Posted by: small coke | Mar 23 2008 21:56 utc | 109
annamissed
they fail to see, because as other threads attest – the central act of living in our time is to forget
& a certain type of artist have excelled in that. ready to steal & violate anything from the last 500 years but to be reminded of the actuall history & especially of the history they are living through, forggedaboutit, because they have
that is one of the gifts of the moon – we are forced to remember & remember & remember – even in the framework of the time bernhard established this site – we have been able to go through – all the empire’s act of forgetting until it drives us to near madness
& that is the gift of creation – it is necessarily troubled but it is purifying & i don’t mean in any profane sense – i mean that working on mystery – essentially demysifies – that is it renders question simply – without absolutes & without simplification
& i think that is what reich intended when he sd to get through to eros you must go through the death instinct
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 23 2008 23:52 utc | 110
it is as if all the people living in this world today suffer from post traumatic stress disorder
it is as if people do not see or want to see what is happening before their eyes
what happened today in iraq is not exceptional – it is just that we do not see it -& clearly those who rule from the roll of dollars do not want us to see it
modern media is all about forgetting – to live in the ‘moment’ – this ‘moment’ which is historically determined. the cruelest play the tightrope of celebrity & crime until they are synonymous
a living art is about remembering so deeply you cannot forget the present & understand all the implications of the future
several implacable truths : the empire has lost its battles in iraq & in afghanistan, it has lost pakistan & it will soon lose egypt, indonesia which was once in its pocket like so much small change will be an implacable enemy within the next 10 or 15 years
the economies of the empire are collapsing & this is happening with an inevitability – that makes all the questions about are we or we not in a recession simply ludicrous when not actively cruel. & because the elites have nurtured fools & not courageous or even initiative led leadership – countries within the west are condemned to a certain type of collapse. an example here – once social democrats represented the less brave reformers but who were capable of a humanism – that was important for the ‘society’ margaret thatcher insisted did not exist. today the ranks of social democracy on every continent & in every continent – is the refuge of a moral bankruptcy – that make loydd george look positively socialist
& one of the tools of forgetting – is a debased language – we all know every wretched word or phrase because they have come out of bush’s mouth & then repeated with a sledgehammer in all our languages, the cooptted language of the social science stripped of all meaning
“surges” & “painful concessions” never capable of hiding completely the crime that goes into their construction,
& as i would say to my participants – there is no rhythm in their lies, there is no melody – it is hardly breathing – it is agitated compressed wind from the bowels ccoming out the minds of a mindless media who want us wrapped up in their ‘words’
a living art defies that & simply tries to breathe
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 24 2008 2:11 utc | 111
tonight they tell
of 4000 dead
americans in iraq
& what
am i
supposed to sing
supposing
singing still
possible
under circumstances
1 million citizens
of iraq
dead or getting
there or here
it doesn’t seem
to matter
most material
flesh blood bone
falling through fingers
between two rivers
& the words
wreaked in wind
words welded
from alphabet
they themselves
were the
discoverers
of that
& this deed
merely sighing
when
more than that
needed now
how
can we sing
when
we must
sing of sorrow
wherever
we are
we are
not there
but here
wherever
that is
it is
falling from fallujah
we are
all falling
from fallujah
& the sands
blinding us
from our skin
& our song
we must sing
for those
who are
being bled
of all
that belongs
to them
ô yes
that
belongs
to them
i stutter
this late
at night
morning
in france
day somewhere
dread being
defined
daily in horror
history is being
devoured
piece by piece
& we are
missing
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 24 2008 2:58 utc | 112
“a living art is about remembering so deeply you cannot forget the present & understand all the implications of the future”
r’giap, that is so beautiful. I hope you don’t mind if I quote you in a piece I’m trying to put together about Mamet. I am having a hard time dealing with Mamet’s essay and the articulation just sticks in my throat. It’s the complacency at the heart of his defection that bothers me the most. He does’nt even snarl like Hitchens. He’s smug.
I want to thank you for the illuminations you leave here.
what am I to sing
a partial answer?
refusez d’obéir
refusez de la faire
n’allez pas a la guerre
refusez de partir
I have been learning this Vian song lately and find it oddly comforting… that dissident spirit reaching across the decades to our own troubled moment, the lesson of Algeria not quite forgotten even though our masters wish it forgotten… and that challenge, that imperative, refusez d’obéir ringing out, confronting each one of us. in what way can I refuse, today, to obey? in what way can I find the courage, tomorrow, to obey even less?
Thanks again to all.
The thoughts and references that r’giap and anna missed have posted here would make for a university class of no better. Again, I am embarrassed to state my ignorance on the poets that r’giap mentions above. I have spent a few hours googling the names and reading today. Probably reading this post is a most fitting task for Easter Sunday – a time to think fresh.
My knowledge and appreciation of art is also painfully lacking. No doubt these attributes lacking in me, along with millions of other Americans, is part of the picture in this disturbing but true message of culture that r’giap presents: “i know rick will be angry – but the irrevocable truth – is that the complete & utter dominance of u s imperialist culture & the weaknesses of national culture – created this cesspool”
With maybe a million dead in Iraq, and millions more displaced from their homes, only a fool would be angry or even attempt to deny the many decadences of American culture. This morning my wife and I attended church service at a Catholic Church. After the sermon we were asked to pray for the 4000 dead Servicemen and the thousands of wounded and their families. I did not hear a prayer request for the dead or wounded Iraqi’s. And all last week, the five-year anniversary of the Iraq War, again I heard little or nothing in remembrance or concern of the Iraqi people from the major news media or cable television programs. I have used the word genocide here when talking about the U.S. actions in Iraq. It is really genocide of a culture. What follows is a quote from Adonis, one of r’giap’s aforementioned poets, ‘”There is no more culture in the Arab world. It’s finished. Culturally speaking, we are a part of Western culture, but only as consumers, not as creators.” And Adonis spoke this in 2002. In 2008, it seems even more so; but what lies ahead, may yet surprise us.
The realization of the U.S. decadent culture was obvious to me long before reading here at Moon of Alabama. Perhaps more, perhaps less than others here was this realization, but it came without experiencing the Vietnam or any war, and without experiencing the works of these poets and artists. Yet I do not discount their value and without doubt, I along with many here benefit from people like r’giap who have experienced and studied such expressions: ”a living art is about remembering so deeply you cannot forget the present & understand all the implications of the future.”…“that is one of the gifts of the moon – we are forced to remember & remember & remember” Again from r’giap, ” when you work oppositionally you want all the tools in the toolbox because you will be attacked at every turn.” Yes, we need all the tools in the toolbox.
I have so many thoughts to add but my time is short now. Just one more thought for tonight. I am not sure about this, but sometimes, in various posts, it seems that r’giap is troubled that the crimes of U.S. imperialism will be forgotten in history. I know they will not be forgotten. The Western world does not have a monopoly on history books. They never did.
Posted by: Rick | Mar 24 2008 5:14 utc | 115
Wasn’t it Obama that recently quoted Fulkner’s “some say the past is dead and buried, but in fact, it’s still present”.
It’s a start.
Posted by: anna missed | Mar 24 2008 8:31 utc | 116
Taking a step back and pondering the prose above, and if the past is present, then this is a must read from John Le Carre.
Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God’s work.
In 1993, while ex-President George Bush was visiting the ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to receive thanks for liberating them, somebody tried to kill him. The CIA believes that “somebody” was Saddam. Hence Bush Jr’s cry: “That man tried to kill my Daddy.” But it’s still not personal, this war. It’s still necessary. It’s still God’s work. It’s still about bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed Iraqi people.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Mar 24 2008 9:56 utc | 117
Thank you for all of the above but #112 – words falling like tears.
Thank you tovarich.
Posted by: beq | Mar 24 2008 11:17 utc | 118
so when a david mamet turns – he has only to turn his vest as the french would say. a real playwright worthy of that name – harold pinter, the scenarist dennis potter & the writer john le carre & the great edward bond have moved so far to the left that they make me seem like a liberal
hey understood that stupidity was also one of the crimes of our century. theirs was never an argument over style – it was always over substance
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 24 2008 14:45 utc | 119
mamet never had much talent to betray, ever
it made me think of two painters of australasia -(it’d be wonderful if debs or b could find examples to post) who show the very different paths – one leading to betrayal & ther other to transcendance
brett whitely was perhaps – outiside of the almost universally gifted aboriginal painters – destined to become one of australia’s greates painters. he showed outstanding talent when young & a bravery to match but like much produced at that level in the 70’s he was drawn to power as if that class possessed alchemical agents – yes they posssed & sold heroin – in fact some members of the elite were responsible for its importation into australia & it accounted for a great deal of the liquidity amongst those elites. a transforming or transmuting alchemy they did not possess however. on the contrary the possessed an emptiness that would prefigure the greed & venality of our time. whitely painted for them & his work became so caricatured so obviouslly a mimicry of a matisse or a bonnard – it was easy for the powerful to hang himfrom their walls as indeed they were doing to the person. whitely ended up an overdose in a sordid motel – with a heritage that had turned into a hole
on the other hand perhaps the greatest painter of the late 20th century came from a very provinicial new zealand colin mccahon (i always misspell his name so this is probably wrong) & his talent was never betrayed – like a steamroller he demolished dominant culture & he absorbed what was natural & organic. it helped that he remained drunk for the better part of his life given the painful nature of his work . but he never admired any other power than the natural & even tho his work is very, very very dark it is illuminated with a rare humanty
a humanity almost completely absent from european or american painting of the same period
his refusal to betray teaches us
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 24 2008 15:12 utc | 120
Iraq death toll reaches 4,000
Snip…
The U.S. military dismisses such tolls as arbitrary markers.
This word…”arbitrary”… I don’t think it means what you think it means.
“Turning corners” like capturing and executing Saddam Hussein after a kangaroo trial, butchering his sons or showing photos of him in his underwear as evidence that the war in Iraq is going your way; that’s arbitrary.
Painting people’s pointers purple or staging photos of soldiers smashing statues while occupiers move into pleasure palaces and dirty dungeons but not changing the basic business done in either of them; that’s pretty arbitrary.
Putting up banners declaring your mission as accomplished during an opening volley; arbitrary.
Trumping up accusations, any accusations, to justify beginning a war of aggression; couldn’t be more arbitrary.
4,000, on the other hand, is a pretty concrete number.
Posted by: Monolycus | Mar 24 2008 16:27 utc | 124
many thanks for McCahon database link, most relevant to where i’m going, not that i’m lost, but is reassuring to find –
a sign, as it were
Posted by: anna missed | Mar 24 2008 16:51 utc | 126
to have a real sense for a task you need necessarily to be lost
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 24 2008 22:40 utc | 127
Just say’n, the link to McCahons work has had an uncanny and timely effect on my current work – which is at fever pitch right now. especially the conjunction of – word – abstraction – representation – simultaneously. Something I’m beginning to realize, and have sought a parallel too for many a moon but formally in fits and starts. The singular (and spectacular) thing about his work is that the incongruity evaporates, or coalesces, into the driving message of the work. Which is above all, its humanity. In spades.
thanks for the sign.
Posted by: anna missed | Mar 25 2008 20:33 utc | 130
anna missed
you share the same with me. all of us do here in one way or another. when i see your work when you & b post it – it gives me energy – i am able to look across the trench & see the others who are fighting
at a different level – there is another artist – an australian -peter kennedy who i also think might be interesting for you & the work
& i think we give each other sines here when we most need it
& by lost – imean something wonderful. something full of wonderment. & wonderment has always been the real recompense
when i’m ill & i do one of my ateliers badly – then i am just like an old professor performing tricks but when i am courageous & full of heart – i don’t know what i am doing from the beginning of the seance to the end. it is then brute instinct – informed by all i have learnt & all i have been given
& it is one of the real pleasures – to be lost. i feel secure enough in my craft to let it go. the difficulty in our world is that sometimes letting go is confused with neglect. & yes it is a fine line. but then taoism & buddhism offer sufficient tools to deal with that
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 25 2008 20:57 utc | 131
am
the year 1996 is intersting in relation to the work i witness here
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 25 2008 21:03 utc | 133
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 25 2008 22:03 utc | 135
there is a little documentary on you tube from barcelona – which uncovers one of the assasins of victor jara. it is moving to see how much this atist still affects people today
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 26 2008 13:19 utc | 136