From yesterday's NYTimes and spreading fast through every poetry site:
in “Nox,” Ms. Carson takes the premise of translating a single classical poem as the basis for highly personal and multifaceted reflections. And Mr. Mitchell here works in a genre that Cunningham generally avoided, the male-male duet, and uses movements (falls, acrobatic floorwork, dramatically charged interlockings) that depart from Cunningham’s wide lexicon.
Speechless. Be still my bones my heart my breathless breaking desire for everything coming together.
Love is either of two kinds: for something or for everything.
The first kind, what we might call 'romantic' love, is the bringing-forth of a world assuming the mark of the non-being of the supplement of the disjunction between the two.
The second kind, what we might call 'perfect' love, is the bringing-forth of a world assuming the mark of the indifference, even to fundamental ontological difference, of that which anonymously 'calls non-beings as beings.'
Because the first kind is founded on the non-being of the supplement of the disjunction between the two, and the second kind is founded on indifference, even to fundamental ontological difference, we are right to think that both kinds are not, though real.
Where and when these two kinds inevitably become incommensurate, only subjection to the latter offers gladness, while only subjection to the former 'abolira le hazard.'
On Sex
If two bodies each assume the mark of the non-being of the supplement of the disjunction between the two, then this supplement can infinitely converge through them. This is what we might call 'the truth of sex.'
Though sex is something else than its truth, we must hold onto its truth, that we might encounter our beloved honestly, in our vulnerability, our finitude, and contingency, or however, to infinitely converge upon infinity and freedom together.
On Money
Representations of 'sex' often make a mockery of sex, and representations of representations, and so on, would have it that there is nothing but representation. We might call these representations 'money.'
Money reifies itself as it encourages the minimal resistance necessary for its reification. We must not identify ourselves by it, and this may even mean democratically, as rights against this or that, and soon.
On Death
Because it does not represent absence as absence, money makes a mockery of death. Money replaces the endurance of death as a possibility in the being that is itself for itself only by this endurance: Human Being.
Death, as a possibility, must be endured as our supreme challenge. Being toward the end of our being is a possibility that must be cultivated to the extent that we refuse it for eternity, where we always will have been.
On Friends
Because a relation to our own death is impossible, and the endurance of our own death as a possibility is not only our supreme challenge but also how we are ourselves for ourselves, we must enter into a relation with our own death by the death of the friend. The death of the friend also opens us to the alterity that calls us into question and open us to community.
The disjunction between friends is not supplemented, and we befriend in the friend the enemy they could become, so that by friendship we meet our own isolation, which, precisely, we cannot be isolated to meet.
On Family
If 'romantic' love is supplemented disjunction, and friendship is unsupplemented disjunction, then family is where disjunction is altogether unclear. Even where we might be disjunct from family we remain conjunct as they become the object of desire within us.
On Home
Home is where we are always going anyways so that the question of being-at-home is the question of that which keeps us homeless.
If being-at-home means the fourfold preservation of the fourfold: earth, sky, mortals, and the divinity, then that which keeps us homeless would be something like a modern city: in its destruction of the earth, in its concealing of the sky, in its unhope in the divinity, and in its forgetting of mortality.
In something like a small town, bringing the presencing of the fourfold into things, that is, being-at-home, is much more possible. In small town Midwest for instance, it is more possible to set the earth free into its own presencing because there is earth, not garbage. It is more possible to receive the sky as sky because there is sky, not skyscrapers.
It is more possible to wait for intimations of the divinity's coming and not mistake its absence because one can hear its silent call, not the stupid clamor of traffic. It is more possible to initiate our mortality because the earth, sky, and the divinity may presence, and because while in the packed metro one may know about the certainty of one's mortality, when at home in this way, one is certain about it.
(From Plan B magazine a long time ago?)
Saturday, July 17, 2010
After a week of feeling like a terrible excuse for a human being, the aches and pains are starting to break away, brain fog clearing. The sky is grey and cool with windows wide open for the breeze. Hot coffee and blog reading breakfast, listening to Haruka Nakamura, making plans for the day such as dishwashing (after a week of weakness good god does the sink stink) and giving up hope on lunchtime avocado (which overnight became a cat toy).
Yesterday: productivity, Gala Art Auction planning & envy (as in I will never be able to bid on that, glee over the artist donating the piece, etc) reading the new issue of Poetry at the bus stop (esp Pinsky's Robot libretto, Anthony Madrid's "In Hell the Units are the Gallon and the Fuck" (with the eyes of Athena, and the hands of a destroying eagle) and a poem about Hart Crane & Frank O'Hara, Kenneth & Barbara, etc etc.)
Sometimes I listen to contemporary music and thunderstorms. Slept the weekend through, sore and muddled attempt at work in the morning, a summer flu, returned home fever napping, waking up gasping for air and water mid afternoon. Now waltzes from the speakers and rolls in the distance, blinds rattling in the wind and my bones creaking.
Until further notice, a lack of poetry reflects a total immersion in Frank O'Hara still "the air the stumbling quiet of breathing/newly heavens' stars all out we are all for the captured time of our being" Despite three days sleep I can barely hold up my head my hands, maybe I will sleep on the couch out of these sickbed heat sheets?
Meanwhile, after work at one gallery I stopped by another to finally take in the Cynthia Girard installation/exhibition. Slightly surreal paintings and poetry (and a performance I missed) inspired by folk art from the permanent collection. But because sometimes I am a lazy agoraphobe, instead of going to Nouveau for the summer show reception, I go home and watch this on the internet over and over
Reinita amarilla, termina en el charco (2006) is a composition originally composed for harpsichord, bass viol and recorders (on this occasion the harpsichord is replaced by a keyboard and the viol by a cello). Reinita is inspired on Couperin's "Le Parnasse", Murakami's "The Wind Up Bird Chronicle", biwa music and a selection of japanese avant-pop/rock. The title means: "Little yellow queen, winds up in the puddle".
“To me, this is one of the primary duties of a curator, i.e. care of a collection, and it is this definition that is reflected in most of the AAMC’s programs and initiatives. As a curator who has made a long-term commitment to one institution (25 years), I find inspiration and renewal in returning to the collection over time. Conservation is only part of this story, and I find I am always learning more about artworks (and their meanings) from physical evidence as well as from research. This is very different, I think, from the definition of ‘to curate’ as a form of enlightened sampling.”
"these new uses of ‘curator’ take the term out of the rarified and push it into the wider populace, encouraging visitors to create experiences—virtually or otherwise—in which they might gather stories, share expertise and create meaning within a defined community that we may not have envisioned. As we encourage others to take on some of our traditional responsibilities, we are infusing these skills outside of our field. If we don’t embrace this sharing of expertise or encourage more user-curated experiences, how long will we last?”
Jenny Holzer sneakers and Joy Division tights. What is the world coming to? Why do I want them so? What you have is more than enough.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Swealtering paresseuse in place of patriotism. Thoughts of mother, brother & motherland (& father's iPad, dinner last night in the childhood home, valley summer). Back in the city, long weekend of our native land, the cat naps in front of the oscilating fan while I watch 9 hours/episodes of Mad Men Season 3. Blinds drawn, underwear & ginger ale. The summer issue of Art Forum, pages sticking to my fingers. Back to Sterling Cooper before the fireworks begin.
