First of all there is pleasure. What gives me pleasure? I do not think of myself as the type that gets joy out of simple things - I like those intense and great pleasures which come and pass. I prefer the extremes, even when they are painful and terrible. This gives me more difficulty, more depression, more love. This I must come to terms with - and perhaps this is the first time I've written this down...
And why I love drugs even when they make me feel like crap. Intensity. And playing songs because I can really sing into them, they're temporary, they leave me but I play them again, differently, with different emotion, passion, pain, whatever. Why I love to scream.
Then there is the curious life - the life which searches for new things, gets bored with comfort and monotony (but perhaps fails to find a way out...); which thus seeks extremes and finds good and bad, ugly and beautiful, without much satisfaction for in-betweens. There is also the aspect of the curious life being one of dreams and imagination. A taste of some sweetness leads one into a spiral of delicious exploration and creation - of that woman, and what she might feel like, taste like, say, do, love...
But then this quickly becomes boring. More of the same. And so I move to something else.
There is certainly an element of loneliness. I think that will never leave. That Devendra Banhart lyric - "i'm gonna die of loneliness...for sure.."
Where I'm never going to connect completely, even with myself. It's all very strange though. When I walk around and realize that all these things that have been built up in my head, all these structures and desires, likes and dislikes...Mostly just conditioned things, many things I haven't questioned. But if I think of Nietzsche, and think of my life and my body as art, then I know that the real task is to construct a self that I think is beautiful, unique, mysterious...whatever I want. There are certain base desires I have (probably) that cant be escaped, but for the most part it is my decision...To find new things, to follow this curiousness. And to keep adding, subtracting, etc.
I can go down to the way that I stand, sit and walk. The way I smoke a cigarette. The way I speak and smile. What I wear or don't wear. Say or don't say. The type of person that I'm attracted to. To find turn myself on to new and strange things. To be strange. To develop my legitimate strangeness.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
URGENCY
Absolutely crucial to keep this in mind. What temporal mode I'm operating under in relation to others.
reformatting
I heard myself laugh loud and hard this evening so that the woman/women downstairs might hear me. Or so somebody might hear me. And immediately a line from the film American Gangster hit me - "the loudest man in the room is the weakest man in the room." This is odd because the movie was not so powerful or good or important for me, but obviously the line went into me, waiting...It had an effect on me.
I'm happy about this and the way film/art/whatever can pop into your brain to reformat your drive.
I miss having sex and I want it. Soon. I will start grabbing women off the street and taking them to my place. Not really, but maybe in a dream or something, this would be good.
Evan moves to Costa Rica tomorrow. He's going somewhere. I finish school soon and I must delve crazily into my paper writing. I have many books and too many articles to go through. Mostly on Foucault, but also this Frenchman Pierre Bourdieu who I am excited to get into. He was unhappy in school, as a child, and he tore shit up intellectually in France. I will write about the function of criticism, the role of the intellectual, and the relationship between theory and practice. This will have implications for scientific policy, but it will not be explicit in my paper. I will also write a paper on black masculinity (and perhaps homoeroticism) in African American Art. This will allow me to research hip-hop (in all its forms and aspects) more deeply. I'm getting a book called Total Chaos by Jeff Chang (I think). There are great political implications here. And I also wonder if I might insert the BLack Panthers and Malcolm X into this research. Mostly I'm interested in identity, gender, and image. Lastly, I will write a paper on the way discourse effects political organization. I might write it about language strategies or about Latin America. This is a paper I am not excited about, but I know it will be powerful and important for me in the end. So, I must enter into a form of madness, as Ben described in the email i just read...It will be a new sort. Perhaps I will also start using ritalin and caffeine more liberally, but more intensely, to spice things up. But it is important that I dig in and actually Think. To reach the borders.
I want to know many things. make sure the questions are specific. And get some kind of answers. Or understanding. Or something godamnit. this is the end of this fuckin university career...
for now.
I'm happy about this and the way film/art/whatever can pop into your brain to reformat your drive.
I miss having sex and I want it. Soon. I will start grabbing women off the street and taking them to my place. Not really, but maybe in a dream or something, this would be good.
Evan moves to Costa Rica tomorrow. He's going somewhere. I finish school soon and I must delve crazily into my paper writing. I have many books and too many articles to go through. Mostly on Foucault, but also this Frenchman Pierre Bourdieu who I am excited to get into. He was unhappy in school, as a child, and he tore shit up intellectually in France. I will write about the function of criticism, the role of the intellectual, and the relationship between theory and practice. This will have implications for scientific policy, but it will not be explicit in my paper. I will also write a paper on black masculinity (and perhaps homoeroticism) in African American Art. This will allow me to research hip-hop (in all its forms and aspects) more deeply. I'm getting a book called Total Chaos by Jeff Chang (I think). There are great political implications here. And I also wonder if I might insert the BLack Panthers and Malcolm X into this research. Mostly I'm interested in identity, gender, and image. Lastly, I will write a paper on the way discourse effects political organization. I might write it about language strategies or about Latin America. This is a paper I am not excited about, but I know it will be powerful and important for me in the end. So, I must enter into a form of madness, as Ben described in the email i just read...It will be a new sort. Perhaps I will also start using ritalin and caffeine more liberally, but more intensely, to spice things up. But it is important that I dig in and actually Think. To reach the borders.
I want to know many things. make sure the questions are specific. And get some kind of answers. Or understanding. Or something godamnit. this is the end of this fuckin university career...
for now.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
From Sweden - Travel
not sure of the exact date, but it doesn't really matter:
"We must travel extensively in order to appreciate the experience of new social situations and expand the self beyond the inevitable constrictions of being part of one or a few culture(s).
We must move and get away. Everybody that is here for you now will be there forever. But they will become boring if you do not move.
We must uproot our 'self' from our 'self-image' to grow higher and deeper then our shallowly buried and suffocating 'selves.'
Watch your daily ritual. Notice your attachment to ritual, the comfort it brings you is more important to you than your actual happiness. And that despite the happiness you derive from routine, greater freedom and exploding joy will come forth as you break into fresh and cool territory. Do not allow personal ritual to constrict your days.
We do not understand the most important things that happen. There is a moment when you walk that both feet are off the ground. Sometimes, not always. In that moment you are suspended forever and you fly. Life has that in its grasp forever.
Capitalism creates the most disgusting, vicious, savage, selfish and dishonest society possible to this point. Because we think we are free from it or better than it, because we want within it and feel within it, we are under its power. In order to move beyond this problem, which decays and spreads like a virus every time you take a breath, we absolutely must tear down this system and begin to construct a new political thought, a new political imagination. We all have visions of the future. Let us not build them upon the monstrous cesspool burning below us. Let us clean this mess. There is absolutely nothing a government or system can do against an army which demands, without compromise, its complete destruction. It is not a question of whether we can be victorious. It is a question of whether we can organize and mobilize and construct a new vision of the future. And take action in the immediate so that this vision does not drag us along or keep us chasing something we will never get. It must be action that produces that vision, gives birth to it, changes it according to what must be done. Rigid conceptions of the future, of goals that we must achieve are limiting and will be wrong. You don't know shit."
"We must travel extensively in order to appreciate the experience of new social situations and expand the self beyond the inevitable constrictions of being part of one or a few culture(s).
We must move and get away. Everybody that is here for you now will be there forever. But they will become boring if you do not move.
We must uproot our 'self' from our 'self-image' to grow higher and deeper then our shallowly buried and suffocating 'selves.'
Watch your daily ritual. Notice your attachment to ritual, the comfort it brings you is more important to you than your actual happiness. And that despite the happiness you derive from routine, greater freedom and exploding joy will come forth as you break into fresh and cool territory. Do not allow personal ritual to constrict your days.
We do not understand the most important things that happen. There is a moment when you walk that both feet are off the ground. Sometimes, not always. In that moment you are suspended forever and you fly. Life has that in its grasp forever.
Capitalism creates the most disgusting, vicious, savage, selfish and dishonest society possible to this point. Because we think we are free from it or better than it, because we want within it and feel within it, we are under its power. In order to move beyond this problem, which decays and spreads like a virus every time you take a breath, we absolutely must tear down this system and begin to construct a new political thought, a new political imagination. We all have visions of the future. Let us not build them upon the monstrous cesspool burning below us. Let us clean this mess. There is absolutely nothing a government or system can do against an army which demands, without compromise, its complete destruction. It is not a question of whether we can be victorious. It is a question of whether we can organize and mobilize and construct a new vision of the future. And take action in the immediate so that this vision does not drag us along or keep us chasing something we will never get. It must be action that produces that vision, gives birth to it, changes it according to what must be done. Rigid conceptions of the future, of goals that we must achieve are limiting and will be wrong. You don't know shit."
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