| Halloween walk |
[Nov. 4th, 2009|09:23 pm] |
We went out walking last Saturday and met these friendly witches near the town of Srni in the Šumava forest. Seems that the local hotel? was putting on a halloween walk for kids. Dominik was already spooked by the atmosphere of the dark woods and when we saw the witches he held on pretty bravely. But the skeleton and ghost around the corner was too much and he was crying for quite a while. He finally settled down once back inside the car. Lightweight city kid I guess.
( more photos below the cut )
Life is so strange
Meanwhile forever away on the plane of memory and cyberspace, a comment over on facebook triggered memories of Missing Persons. I always liked this band, the shattered mirror in the video, putting together the pieces of a puzzle. And their other hit, Words: Do you hear me, do you care? ...
Watching Missing Persons led to investigating Lady Gaga... the music is forgettable, but the style is very visual, reminded me somehow of Matthew Barney. Funny how she projects this sense of celebrity and cult-like star status to the point that it comes true. Make the dream real. It takes power and a lot of luck to do that. Admittedly she's just a pastiche of a lot of older tropes, but kids today have no idea and she is selling the same old dream of sex once again, yet now it's almost post sexual .. kill your boyfriend and get another, its all just a "love game", materialist to the core .. sad isn't it, the way we became objects
Missing Persons was more original, that early 80s energy of punk still lingering, like in Liquid Sky, for example |
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| The Christ of Abu Ghraib |
[Oct. 24th, 2009|11:07 pm] |
http://www.counterpunch.org/davis06192004.html
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2009/07/christianity-will-be-victorious-but-only-in-defeat
I'm finishing my book on Girard. As I've read somewhere online Girard is a theologian disguised as a post-modern cultural critic. But as the writer, Chris Fleming, points out, modernism is itself an extension of Christian values, hidden in a secular cloak. Girard seems to agree with Kierkegaard that "the official prevailing proclamation of Christianity is a conspiracy against the Bible." The argument akin to PKD's is touched on: that from 380AD when Christianity is united with the vision of the Roman Empire, the whole pacifist message of Christ becomes perverted. To look at the images from Abu Ghraib is to know that a terrible sickness has come to occupy our minds .. its like a fog that covers over the truth, this media sphere of charged images, a sexuality turned against itself, a thirst for violence that implicates the audience. The Davis article I linked to above is quite insightful on this point.
Yet I read Girard is a friend of the neocons behind Facebook, and it does seem that there is a conservative bent to his message. (One wonders how the people behind faceboook see the world .. what is there goal? Data-mining? And to what end?) Fleming assures the reader that Girard is not longing for a Hobbesian absolutist state. He quotes Girard, "From the moment cultural forms start to dissolve, any attempt to reconstitute them artificially can only result in the most appalling tyranny." Nevertheless I have to wonder at the reasons he emphasizes in the interview linked to above the conflict between Christianity and Islam. Why does he draw a line in the sand? I would think he could see clearly the way Muslims are being scapegoated today. The military industrial complex needs an enemy. Our program is not one of peace.
As to the horrors of the apocalypse, Girard states that no one could do it better than the daily newspaper. For if there is a judgement of God, a punishment for mankind, it is simply that He has abandoned us, He has left us to our own devices. And look how well we are doing on our own. |
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| Zizek on Democracy Now .. again |
[Oct. 20th, 2009|11:17 pm] |
"But I see more hope at this moment with you in United States than with Europe. Europe is now, I think, in great decline."
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/15/slovenian_philosopher_slavoj_zizek_on_the
"... when things started to move, capitalism always engendered a push toward some kind of democracy. No longer. I claim that what is now emerging in the Far East started—it started in Singapore, this kind of so-called, again, authoritarian capitalism. I think something new is emerging: a capitalism even more dynamic —than our own, but which, even in long term, doesn’t need democracy." |
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| plutocracy |
[Oct. 20th, 2009|01:20 pm] |
Good interview with Bill Moyers
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10092009/watch.html
on the lack of interest in Washington to overhaul the financial system and help rein in the massive banking juggernauts. One could say its too late. Goldman Sachs is acting like a country unto itself .. I wonder how long it will be before these huge corporations hire Xe/Blackwater mercenaries to fight little wars for them? Yes I know the banana wars in the 50s could be seen in this way .. so corporate wars have been with us a while already.
The realpolitik is so strong that it makes politics into a mockery. People are apathetic and have little belief in the political process. And Obama, in a sense, is expendable. As crazy Qaddafi reminded us recently, who assassinated JFK?? In the book on Rene Girard I've been reading there's a discussion on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. After Caesar was killed and Brutus turns to the crowd, there is a cheer, "Let him be Caesar!" ... an endless recycling of sacrificial kings. If Obama falls, we will see this social violence once again, an old story played out for the sleeping masses. The real leaders I suppose are rarely at the podiums, the CEOs of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan ... Life in a plutocracy feels strangely medieval, like the Florence of Dante replacing the world. It's a funny place, the world that needs perpetual revolution to be free. But only when the sleepers awaken will we have a chance to reclaim democracy ... and only then if our best instincts prevail. What is the endgame of civilisation? Power or Freedom? I would opt for the greatest good for the greatest number, universal human rights, a working wage, and saving the ecosystem of the planet. Is it too much to ask? |
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| Heads and Torsos |
[Oct. 12th, 2009|02:01 pm] |
Archaic Torso of Apollo
Rilke
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96apr/rilke/rilke.htm
Rilke died after pricking his finger on a thorn
for me it symbolizes the frailty of the poetic impulse
( two more ) |
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| today |
[Oct. 9th, 2009|10:54 pm] |
We decided not to move to a castle today
that it would be a dead end and make us poor
maybe we are stupid
So we stay in this lovely town
maybe have another kid
I keep teaching English forever
I told Domik that he will be all alone one day
"Okay", he said |
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| Sturm und Drang |
[Oct. 4th, 2009|10:06 pm] |
There is a retrospective of the work of Georg Baselitz in Prague just now.
It is said that the Germans are the best painters. The massive art scene in Berlin can attest to the need to make art in German culture. Perhaps it is the strong romantic yearning, melded with angst, like the figures in Baselitz'z early work, romantic heroes in disarray, their organs spilling out, walking through a land of bleeding trees. Wounded dreamers. Baselitz is emblematic of the way art is tied to nationality.
The Czech Republic lies in the shadow of Germany. Baselitz in Prague is like a heavyweight slumming in the provinces. This is the land between Bavaria and Saxony. Its very difficult not to be influenced by the Germans here, though they are resented, of course. I've been told that Czechs have turned to conceptual art as an escape from German dominance in painting. But there are many painters here as well, a few good ones.
Early on he started turning everything upside down. One of those simple strategic moves that only one artist can do, upside down=Baselitz. Baselitz quickly vaulted to the upper ranks, a place where he could paint anything and be exhibited. The artist must be a Brut, to transgress, yet in a leisurely controlled way on the canvas, and Baselitz provided plenty of madness. The artist as mirror, but of a kind of cliche, the stereotype of the suffering German psyche. In the documentary by Schwerfel, Baselitz speaks of how we must kill the fathers, that the Germans kill their fathers faster than the French, and so on. This is the smoke and mirrors genius dance that Baselitz has perfected. And yet all art is still mimesis. Baselitz is like Nolde on steroids.
Watching Baselitz speak in the documentary, one can feel his energy, as if he made some Faustian bargain. He is an art celebrity, maybe one of the last. I saw a few images from Jonathan Meese, for example, in a catalogue, he is often linked to Baselitz, but it is entirely imitative, and absurd. Are we destined to live in an age of copies of copies, ideas recycled until they fade into nothing? The Neue Wilde are the Alte Wilde now. Baselitz blithely exhibits alongside Meese, he has retrospectives around the globe these days it seems. It's (almost) all about the money at this point. But of course its the smell of money and prestige which allows him to be Baselitz. Whats the point of being an artist without being famous? Yet Meese and his generation must scream ever louder, and that quickly becomes tiresome, while Baselitz, like an old wizard, effortlessly produces these compelling images, combining hints of naive figuration with complex abstract compositional elements. It is all about ambiguity with an air of provocation. And that's all that it is ... all that painting can be today.
short interview with Baselitz
images from his latest retrospective
image gallery |
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| big guv'ment problem |
[Sep. 30th, 2009|01:39 pm] |
Reading over comments on an article on Huffington about the failing middle class I realized the push-pull of the big government/little government debate. Conservatives have long railed against government and many Republican politicians promise to reduce the size and responsibility of government. I always felt that made little sense .. why should I vote for someone who promises to make his own job irrelevant? Pay me for doing less work, hooray!!
In the other direction, big government can quickly become unwieldy and bureaucratic. I cant recall the percentage of the economy that the government occupies, but I believe its pretty significant. Despite all the republican promises of smaller government, they all kept inflating it. If government would do its job and protect the rights of citizens (not counting corporations), provide for the health of society and put tight controls on the expansion of power in the private sector, then I'm for a big government. But when all we have is a bloated pig of a government fat on the teat of corporate power, sold off to the highest bidder which operates as a servant to big business, then I find I side with those conservative anti-guv'ment types.
So the problem is not so simple and the arguments for and against big government play out across the political spectrum. Corporate thinking is so widespread that it has infiltrated the mindset in Washington. It did so long ago .. Nixon era stuff. The irony of the 60s and California Dreaming (yikes John Phillips) is that Reagan rode the wave of fear of civil unrest all the way to the White House and turned our country into a corporate state. The hippies gave us Reagan, strange but true, and now twenty years later, we continue to wallow around in his nightmare, all our presidents since have been similar. Reagan has become the center, and this is why we are doomed. Like many leftists, I liked Ron Paul's message on the economy during the last election, I agree that the Fed should be under much tighter scrutiny, perhaps even dismantled, but his other ideas frightened me. You start burning down one section of the state, and the fire can easily spread. |
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