Nerves in Patterns Scattered on a Screen

All Things Digital

2010-09-22T12:51:00.000-07:00

My roommate and very good friend with whom I engage in myriad ongoing debates about, among other things, religion, the nature of scientific progress and which of the four seasons is the most devastating in its extreme, sent me this link, wanting to see my reaction and knowing me to be a notorious Neo-Luddite. This was my response:

Interesting, but i'll give you my Marxist critique instead,

Being as Apple are the leading empire on the virtual commodification of anything in human society that can be digitized, I look upon their obnoxiously unrelenting conquest to bring us new and improved everything as a blatant and pathetic attempt to disguise imperialistic capitalism under the ultra-urban chic and the 'cool.'

...and unfortunately its working.

To be sure, one should stress the fact that I said "Apple are leading the empire" because, as the Buddhist maxim goes; first there's the one, then the two, then the two thousand. Just like the Beatles spawned generations of bands who tried to perfect their own interpretations of Beatles pop song, structural model--so do the myriad practitioners of micro-technological enterprise take their cue from Steve Jobs and his nauseatingly-hip minions. From the standpoint of a potential consumer and being somewhat of an anarchist, I say that the itunes model for essays is redundant. Unless its the work of one of my friends or someone whom I greatly respect, I am not going to pay for anything that I can easily obtain for free and text is perhaps the easiest medium to access free of charge; what, with copiers, faxes, microsoft word, hypertext and the Internet at large. And whereas, from the standpoint of a writer and potential benefactor of this technology, this innovation seems quite alluring. Nevertheless, I'm unable to relish in its unveiling due to its being overshadowed by the larger, much more disturbing/annoying issue here, which is what I was getting at before:

It wont stop at digitized essays.

Soon you'll have a whole host of digitized alternatives to correlate to the aggravating and presently, non-profitable realities of directly-lived, day-today experience:

-Digital food that can simulate nutritional value
-Apps that let you choose your dreams...and in 3D!
-Automated Nikes that walk for you

...No idea is too ridiculous to try to sell to people at perpetually affordable prices. This is the spirit of free-market liberalism! Hooray!
Just like American politics; the more absurd and useless the idea, the more likely the public is to adopt it. (Hence the horrifying rise of Sara Palin, the Tea Party and the rest of the emerging League of American Fascists.

I remember i was at the mall in 1996 at the now-extinct Camelot record store going to buy a CD. The Spice Girls' popularity was finally dwindling and I couldn't be happier. I walked past a giant cardboard cut-out of this bitch named Brittney Spears. I thought to myself "who the hell is this? Its more of the same contrived and artless corporate tripe being masqueraded as music to anyone dumb enough to buy it. It will NEVER work."

Damn son, I've never been so wrong.

The Circle of Life

2010-08-26T11:35:00.000-07:00

Pragmatic Battles

2010-08-25T13:46:00.000-07:00

I stopped writing for a while. With the daily deluge of right-wing reactionary pretext saturating the news and the present cultural landscape, it became a bit too overwhelming, ineffective, insufficient and redundant to try and combat it all at once on such a micro, specific level; and more importantly, it just started getting a bit nauseating--spinning around in circles, hitting the same nail on the head in the same place everyday.

There are still other fronts to fight and other ways fight them.

That being said, here are two interesting pieces. The first is old news and familiar to many (although apparently, not to enough). It's Steve Albini's devastating critique of Major Labels as glorified loan sharks in The Problem with Music

The second Link is something much more recent and considerably more obscure by one of the great Ted Leo. In an inspiring rant of pragmatic accuracy, he sums up with eloquence why any musician or self-respecting artist who subscribes to the DYI ethos should bother carrying-on at all, in light of the ever-impending assaults of real-world capitalistic demands that increase in both vehemence and immanence as the artist increases in age. It is at the very least, inspiring.

...And They'll Tell You Everything's Fine

2010-03-22T19:28:00.000-07:00

Some words of enlightenment from the the emerging American Fascist Party, compliments of the National Review:

"As everyone sweats out the final Obamacare tallies, I’m struck by a couple of other stories. In one case, someone reported hearing an anti-black epithet used at a political rally. In another case, dogged police finally arrested the perpetrator of an intolerable crime. The perp is a 16-year-old kid who made a potentially offensive comment on a Wal-Mart overhead speaker. That these things are even remotely newsworthy leads me to one conclusion: Racism in America is dead. We had slavery, then we had Jim Crow — and now we have the occasional public utterance of a bad word. Real racism has been reduced to de minimis levels, while charges of racism seem to increase. I’ll vote for the first politician with the brass to say that “racism” should be dropped from our national dialogue. We’re a good nation, among the least racist on earth . . ."

Nowhere is this position more reinforced than through the most recent actions of those true blue, red blooded, revisionist sons and daughters of liberty, the Tea Party:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/22/us-healthcare-bill-passes-congress

Tried, Convicted by a Show of Paws

2010-03-01T20:02:00.000-08:00

The Peacelike Mongoose
by James Thurber

In cobra country a mongoose was born one day who didn't want to fight cobras or anything else. The word spread from mongoose to mongoose that there was a mongoose who didn't want to fight cobras. If he didn't want to fight anything else, it was his own business, but it was the duty of every mongoose to kill cobras or be killed by cobras.
"Why?" asked the peacelike mongoose, and the word went around that the strange new mongoose was not only pro-cobra and anti-mongoose but intellectually curious and against the ideals and traditions of mongooism.
"He is crazy," cried the young mongoose's father.
"He is sick," said his mother.
"He is a coward," shouted his brothers.
"He is a mongoosexual," whispered his sisters.
Strangers who had never laid eyes on the peacelike mongoose remembered that they had seen him crawling on his stomach, or trying on cobra hoods, or plotting the violent overthrow of Mongoosia.
"I am trying to use reason and intelligence," said the strange new mongoose.
"Reason is six-sevenths of treason," said one of his neighbors.
"Intelligence is what the enemy uses," said another.
Finally, the rumor spread that the mongoose had venom in his sting, like a cobra, and he was tried, convicted by a show of paws, and condemned to banishment.

Moral: Ashes to ashes, and clay to clay, if the enemy doesn't get you your own folks may.

Goodbye Howard Zinn

2010-01-28T11:49:00.000-08:00

Today, the world is a darker place: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/actnow/522580/goodbye_howard_zinn

Fancy some light reading to pass the time?

2010-01-15T09:54:00.001-08:00

Here's a little bit of humor from the gallows:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Last_words

Useless News

2010-01-12T14:28:00.000-08:00

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/01/12/reid.race.lessons/index.html

...In other news, Mark McGwire has admitted to using steroids: (http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4816607)

...Fox News debates 'lack enlightenment':
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jan/12/fox-news-tiger-woods-buddhism)

...and it has been revealed that apparently McDonald's makes you fat. They serve Big Macs. They serve Quarter Pouders. They will put pounds on you.

Rock over London.
Rock on Chicago.
Ensure One: Its the ensure superstore.

Exceptionalism and Denial

2009-12-31T07:04:00.000-08:00

From Terence McKenna's book Food of the Gods (compliments of Ed O'Brien):

“Looking down on Los Angeles from an airliner, I never fail to notice that it is like looking at a printed circuit: all those curved driveways and cul de sacs with the same little modules installed along each one. As long as the ‘Reader’s Digest’ stays subscribed to and the TV stays on, these modules are all interchangeable parts within a very large machine. This is the nightmarish reality….. the creation of the public as a herd. The public has no history and no future, the public lives in a golden moment created by a credit system which binds them ineluctably to a web of illusions that is never critiqued. This is the ultimate consequence of having broken off the symbiotic relationship with the Gaian matrix of the planet. This is the consequence of lack of partnership; this is the legacy of imbalance between sexes; this is the terminal phase of a long descent into meaninglessness and toxic existential confusion.”

I Have a Black Friend

2009-11-16T17:51:00.000-08:00

It’s been a little while since something has provoked me to write, which surprises me since vitriol is my bitchgoddess and indignation, my muse. But even as Americans are boarding the hate train in hordes, the soul-sucking ennui of their politics has descended upon me like an implacably black cumulonimbus and I don’t want to keep beating a dead horse. Unfortunately, the media is growing bolder, the masses; more susceptible, and the country, more insipid by the day.

The hits from the Right just keep on coming and like birth pains, the attacks are increasing both in frequency and ferocity. What’s so devastating about this is that it is hardly even news anymore. Therefore I’ve resolved to bring out my soap box only for special occasions (at least for the time being), and today, is one such occasion.

I respect and admire Michael Tomasky as an intelligent journalist who offers real and objective reportage concerning America’s societal unraveling and in his latest column in the Guardian, Hate Obama? You may not be a racist. But you will be white, about the dubious nature of far-right opposition to Obama, I agree with almost everything he says. I, myself, have been stating similar claims for quite a while now.

However, there emerges one truly unnerving point in his argument which invariably gets its bearings into the argument of even the most progressive American writer: that inevitable little white strand of exceptionalism.

Tomasky muses, “I do think it's fair to say that, at this point in US history, most individuals aren't racist, at least in any blatant way. Most white people, especially from middle age down, may have a black friend or two, or at least co-workers with whom they get along fine.”

I must have re-read this excerpt a good four or five times before I accepted the fact that there was not laced with even the slightest trace of irony.

What urks me is the way in which Tomasky seems to undermine his own argument. In one breath he observes with the acute perception of an incredulous and weary expatriate the way in which the media and the mainstream ephimize and smokescreen the true nature of race relations, only to give creedence to these same practices paragraphs later.

My problem is, and always will be that it serves as an alibi or a wild card which passively disavows responsibility or even dismisses the faculties through which the discursive practices of racism abide.

The real issue here, once again, is that racism exists on a variety of levels in a multitude of forms. You don’t have to be in the KKK to qualify as a racist. I know quite a few racists that had a few black friends.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/16/obama-racism-conservatives-opposition

You Lie (part III)

2009-09-30T10:16:00.000-07:00

The audacity of hatred continues to resurface as The Nation provides a slide show of the far-Right's current exploits. My only question is where does the line fall that purportedly separates the fringe from the mainstream in right-wing American politics--assuming that the line exists at all. Forgive me if I'm incredulous.

www.thenation.com/slideshow/20091005/slideshow_rightwing/

"Why Can't I Say It?"

2009-09-21T13:24:00.000-07:00

A funny thing happened to me at work today. A co-worker approached in a hackneyed and cliched, cinematic end-of-the-day swagger to initiate one of those offhand conversations that exist in the precarious gray area of semi-casual workplace banter. I already knew where this was going by the expectant gleam in his eye. "Franklin" He starts, leaning on my desk, "Why is it that black people can call each other n---- but anyone who is not black isn't allowed to say it. Why can't I say it?" It was one of those moments wherein I was so stricken by someone's audacity that I was rendered utterly speechless.

There is an unmistakable audacity among a certain group of people--people who have had very limited exposure to black people on an interpersonal basis. There are those whose worldview is based upon the stereotypical and caricaturistic images of blacks promulgated by the media; and others still, whose worldview is shaped by an inherited and therefore, rigidly ideological phobia of the Other which at best could be identified as prejudice and at worst--racist.

Any given individual among this group is unaccustomed and therefore uncomfortable about the very idea of daily interaction with and exposure to African-Americans. And being an African-American myself, I assure you that once they've made your acquaintance, a certain, predictable patten emerges in their behavior:

You disprove a given set of stereotypes or prejudices that they held of you.
He or she is shocked by how exceptional you are regarding their general idea of most blacks and subsequently come to feel inordinately comfortable around you. In fact, they find themselves exponentially more comfortable than they ever imagined they could be around a black person.
A false sense a familiarity arises in them.
He or she inevitably attempts to use this sense of familiarity as a smoke screen in order to rationalize, justify or validate his or her aforementioned prejudicial or racist attitudes. This usually manifests itself as a grotesquely inappropriate question or joke.

Arising from this process are a myriad of questions, statements that I have witnessed first-hand and which range from the naively orientalist to the grotesquely racist. Listed in no particular order, here are some of the most frequent or memorable:

"No, where are you really from... in Africa?"

"[laughing]...It's funny seeing you eat that banana, it reminds me of this image we used to have of the colonies here in France."

"Seriously, your people do have an extra muscle in your leg; that's why you can jump so high. You got it from running away from the slave masters."

"You know, its funny...you don't talk like a black guy."

[inaudibly under his breath as he walks away] "Wow, you're pretty cool for a n----."

"Hey man, you're my n----"

"You look...black."

[laughing] "Your hair is like pubes"

"Why do you brush your hair...you don't have any"

insert any rap song or comedy routine (eg Chappelle's Show) which uses the N word gratuitously--they will attempt to recite it in all its explicit glory around you at a given time: usually drunk.

I can only imagine that what goes through these people's heads when they say these things is some kind of absurd rationalization that suggests "well, I can't be racist if I'm sitting right here having a conversation with a black guy." Regardless of their rationalization, it should be quite obvious--even to the offender--that this is misguided and wrong.

Indeed, part of the problem of racism and the conditions (intermingled webs of economic, cultural and societal pathologies) that are conducive to and arise from it, is that it in this culture, it [racism] is oversimplified, if not completely overlooked as having been overcome or irrelevant to the makeup of the present American condition. In this society of binary reductionism, there is either the Klansman or the abolitionist; the slave or the freedman; the slave master or the benefactor. Unfortunately, it--like everything else--is not that simple. There currently exists no consideration for the idea of varying degrees of racism (and racists) in the national or even academic debate on the subject. Yet, it is something which I observe and experience everyday. Just because a white, middle-class hipster from Williamsburg may evidence his intercultural bankruptcy by telling a black man what he should sound like, it does not mean that he is waiting in line for a membership to the White Legion Knights but it doesn't mean he's willing to subscribe to or support the NACCP either. By the same token, one who begs permission to freely use a racial epithet--for whatever reason--inherently accepts the histories of torture, hatred, dehumanization and murder inextricably bound to meaning of the word; just as one can be guilty of a crime by complicity, association, omission, indifference or inaction. There are varying degrees of racism ranging from the reductionary Orientalist, to the nascent xenophobe, to the full-blown hate monger. This is something towards which I will dedicate a great deal of energy and attention in order to problematize the American racial debate which has become over-simplified and is in danger of vanishing forever within a blizzard of simulation that results from progressive generations of political denial, historical revisionism and cultural delusion-- perpetually burying the naked societal landscape beneath new and improved layers of seemingly innocuous and forgetful alabaster fluff.

It should be noted that my purpose here is not to explain why the word is used among the black population. That is another issue and another essay. Regardless of that reason, the issue is that when someone asks 'Why can't I say it?" he/she is quite literally begging permission to say it; and moreover, expressing a desire have a socially acceptable format wherein he/she can vent latent (or otherwise) racist urges. So If you are reading this and happen to be someone who is not black, rather than asking "why can't I say it," perhaps you should ask yourself why do you want to say it at all?

"nigger."

If you can read this word and focus on it in all of its grotesque glory without feeling the slightest sense of guilt, shame or repugnance, then be my guest. Say it til you heart's content but in doing so, just know what you are and acknowledge it without pretense or excuse...and do not ever come near me.

You Lie (part II)

2009-09-15T10:23:00.000-07:00

Add this to the list of the increasing right-wing facist practices cited on the post from Sept 10th. CNN actually had the nerve to ask in the headline: Is Obama Witch Doctor Image Racist? The fact that they have resorted to this level of blatant racism would be hilarious if it weren't so disgustingly sad and offensive.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2009/09/15/quijano.tea.party.racial.cnn

There's much more to come. I'm absolutely sure of it.

The World Is But a Stage

2009-09-15T08:26:00.000-07:00

I said it once and I'll say it again: In the Society of the Spectacle substance and meaning are completely irrelevant. Inherently showbusiness is nothing more than artifice and simulation but we must come to understand it in its full capacity of falsehood. From Usher Raymond's fake/forced tears at just the right moment of his melodic eulogy at Michael Jackson's simulated funeral to the simulated intermarriages of celebrities who have long-ceased to be individuals, swiftly discover they each have married fabricated, public personalities and just as quickly divorce, simulation is all that remains in the pop world--much like the real world--and is constantly and increasingly turning into a cheap caricature of itself.

The latest farce to unwarrantably captivate the public's ever-shrinking attention span is that latest Kanye West performance at the MTV music awards. I am speaking, of course, of his interruption of Taylor Swift's acceptance speech which by now needs no introduction. The tone of this debate, which has spread across the Internet like a virus, has shifted now from how could he? to was it staged? Ultimately (assuming that it would be justified to dignify this garbage with any response whatever) one ought to conclude that none of this matters.

To question the authenticity, validity or ethics of Kanye West's actions in this pseudo-saga is tantamount to musing over the real-life consequences of a villain's actions in a television miniseries. Regardless of any contingent, extenuating circumstances ('staged' or otherwise), it has all been done for your benefit/entertainment/distraction. It's all the same. He is filling the role that is the public creation of Kanye West; the image, the personality, the concept. He is not real. Beyonce Knowles is not real, neither are Taylor Swift, MTV, Jay Leno or his spurious interview with Mr. West.

What is troubling about this, the latest in a weekly deluge of reality, celebrity or showbiz drama--call it what you will--is that it points to a growing state of incurious, uncritical and entertainment-obsessed ignorance that is endemic in our society; symptoms which lend themselves to more serious consequences (namely social apathy, political disengagement and a very deep-seated and diluted sense of reality stemming from a mis-prioritization of information based upon what is and what is not easily sensationalized). What arises is an approximate societal hybrid somewhere between that which is described in Theodor Adorno's Culture Industry and Jean Badrillard's Simulacra and Simulations. Imagine the cheers and the clangor of 160 million chattering apes; mesmerized at big, loud and colorful sounds. This is where we are.

This, of course, should come as no surprise. In a culture wherein everything is commodity, everything must be made disposable so that an updated, upgraded version is always-already desired and eventually available. MTV will surely keep trying to outdo itself to promote major label artists and mega-celebrity agendas by finding more ways to market a commerical by blurring the once-ostensible divide between fact and fiction..and then labeling it controversy. The audience will be sure to lap it up as staple fodder for their already glutted, surrogate existence as they remain blissfully ignorant of the discursive, coercive practices that maintain their meaningless lives.

Don't Mention the War

2009-09-14T10:04:00.000-07:00

In a recent article, Naomi Klein writes:

There were those who saw this coming. The late Latino activist Juan Santos wrote a much-circulated essay during the presidential campaign in which he argued that Obama's unwillingness to talk about race (except when his campaign depended upon it) was a triumph not of post-racialism but of racism, period. Obama's silence, he argued, was the same silence every person of colour in America lives with, understanding that they can be accepted in white society only if they agree not to be angry about racism. "We stay silent, as a rule, on the job. We stay silent, as a rule, in the white world. Barack Obama is the living symbol of our silence. He is our silence writ large. He is our Silence running for president." Santos predicted that "with respect to Black interests, Obama would be a silenced Black ruler: A muzzled Black emperor."

Klein provides yet more evidence which suggests America’s first black president is nothing more than an empty symbol which diverts attention away from the politics of race and reinforces Exceptionalism. Would that president Obama were in fact, the incarnation of Malcolm X and Karl Marx; as the delusional wolf-cries of the far-right so feverishly claim. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama could hardly be further from either.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/sep/12/barack-obama-the-race-question-naomi-klein

Me? Racist??...You Lie!

2009-09-10T12:57:00.000-07:00

“You Lie!” This was Joe Wilson’s direct and audacious assault on President Obama last night as he detailed the plans of his health care reform bill before a joint session of congress. Like a rabble-rouser tryin’ to incite a good ol’ fashion riot, the South Carolinian congressman's enraged outburst was instantaneous upon the president’s pledge that no illegal immigrant would receive government-sponsored health care. It is hard to say just what it was exactly that provoked Mr. Wilson to such a violent and unprecedented breach of statesmanship and protocol. Perhaps, as a republican, he just harbors a deep-seated distrust of big government which he sees reified in Obama. Perhaps Mr. Obama is really a pathological liar and only Mr. Wilson is wise to his charade. Or maybe Mr. Wilson strongly disagrees that illegal immigrants should be denied care seeing as they are, in fact, such an indispensably large and integral part of the American work force. But if I had to make an educated guess, I would say that Joe Wilson just really, really doesn’t like brown people, especially if they’re in this country illegally and especially if he suspects one of them of being his commander-in-chief. Unfortunately Mr. Wilson is not alone and his attitude is symptomatic of an entire population of Americans.

When the time came around for the 2008 primaries, I was snug in the idyllic confines of European exile. To say the least, it was an interesting time. It was the last of my six-year, self-imposed exile from Bush and Cheney's America and the climate of the world was electric with hope and anticipation for regime change. In fact, I found myself surrounded by people of all nations outside of America: all of whom were immeasurably more optimistic than me; not just about the potential outcome of an Obama victory, but the long-term implications entailed therein. Being not only an American abroad but an African-American expatriate, a lot of people were interested in my thoughts on the matter. The most frequent question I got was what will happen to race relations in America with a black president? Invariably, my answer was, (and is) that, racists would start to re-emerge from the woodwork, so to speak; meaning we would witness a great revival of unabashedly open racism. The reason for this is that racism—being this country’s most deeply-rooted and unresolved issue—never went away. It never dissipated. It was never over. It only evolved, grew subtler; more effective; and if anything it is more ingrained in institutions, cultural practices, politics and ideology.

What’s so infuriating is the irony. The majority of those who proclaim the end of racism so boldly are the very ones guilty of perpetuating it: either consciously or otherwise. For, to issue racism its death certificate is to certify its obsolescence, thereby labeling it as a non-issue. Subsequently, people begin to perceive it as such and so whenever anything that could be construed as racist surfaces, it is looked upon as a shocking exception; as a hideous relic of a long-dead and distant past instead of what it really is: a symptom of an omnipresent, underlying malignancy. Meanwhile, the right-wing—whose foundations are no doubt, rooted in racism or at least a very intense fear and subsequent lashing out against the Other—relish in society’s widespread delusion that we have arrived at some post-racial paradigm. With the new, black head-of-state, they have seized the opportunity to feign victimization and to exploit this position to see just how much they can get away with. What ensues is a massive coming-out party of the most loathsome and insidious design, as they vent forms of hate that consume them so intensely they cannot manage to suppress it—even if it is to their own peril. This grows increasingly evident by the day. Off the top of my head, this includes but is certainly not exclusive to:

Fox news’ sudden flip-flop from an almost royalist, unswayed allegiance to the Bush administration to their antithetical, anti-federal, watchdog defiance that they assumed in less than 48 hours after the inauguration.
Cries from the extreme and the ironical that resound from Glenn beck’s 15 minutes of revisionist hate to Rush Limbaugh’s accusatory protests which label Obama “arrogant” in his non-subservient “intelligence.”
Paul Shanklin’s Kristmas minstrel jingle “Barack the Magic Negro.”
Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose’s email which depicts watermelon patches in the front lawn of the White House. http://news.spreadit.org/barack-the-magic-negro-paul-shanklin/
My hometown of Marietta GA—unable to suppress its festering racist resentment—even got into the act (not surprisingly) when local restaurant owner Mike Norman started selling t-shirts depicting a monkey eating a banana which read: “Obama in 08.’http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/15/politics/main4098542.shtml

Although it’s very easy to misconstrue this essay as solely in defensive of Obama, and it is to some extent, I am addressing something that is more essential and bigger than just Obama. Simply put, the illusion of an inverted power structure, via Obama, has opened the floodgates for all sorts of racial hatred to resurface and for the bigots to test the public waters to see what is and what is not now, acceptable. I will leave you with what is, so far, the clearest example of this phenomenon which needs no introduction or further explanation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIW27p4BI_g

Untitled

2009-09-06T13:57:00.000-07:00

She laughs like the dying
She’s glued her hands in patience
It’s too early to worry
It’s too early to wait
It’s erased from her memory
She’s erased all the feeling
No, she won’t be staying
But he won’t be leaving

It’s come to an end
(You only lost your faith)

“You shine from the window
You shine from the sill, my love”
As gray as the morning
Her love lingers there
Outside of her patience
Inside fornication
She has no remorse
And she just doesn’t care

So she’ll wait for him there
(You only lost your faith)
With a gun in her hand
(You only lost your faith)
With a cross around her neck
(You only lost your faith)
With a cross in her hand
(You only lost your faith)

And she says:

“It’s over.
Time to go down now slowly
Time to go now, where everything’s lost
You’ll find Hell where you found Love
You’ll find Hell when it falls apart.”

Your memory is teeth now
And you gnash with persistence
To the last of the sinful
And the bottomless smiles
The smiles of delusion
The smiles of division
All the smiles that she gave you and made you tremble inside

It’s come to an end
(You only lost your faith)

And you say "Its over"
You keep repeating its over
Two times you died and you'll die some more
because she said:

“It’s over.
Time to go down now slowly
Time to go now, where everything’s lost
You’ll find Hell where you found Love
You’ll find Hell when it falls apart."

Five Portraits

2009-09-04T12:25:00.000-07:00

She throws her eyes to the sky in exhausted contortions
They fall with the rain to the rest of Manhattan
Riding in sideways glances
And escaping the chance
Of the horror of having to cross where I'm standing
Anyway, there's no one here searching.

No, I couldn't be bothered to come if you called
And I wouldn't be moved if your heart could unthaw
And it made you undress
Then it made you confess
That the hate that you held in your eyes was a test
Let's just say that you'd carry on hurting.

In those cruel summer days
When anxiety preys on the anguish that layers the air and devours the skin,
When the vagabonds played with panhandlers and puppets
And you cast me away without answers or conscience
Their night stripped me naked, your eyes were so vacant
I returned with the sun fragmented and forsaken
And you sighed 'i can't see you again.'

I could blame the two years that rotated like gears
That were rotted and rusted by Time and his fears
Like a mem'ry repressed
Like an accent unstressed
Like a ghost disappears with no trace of his presence
But it was you, who decided instead to not let me in.

Once a ginger-red Sapphire emerged in my hands
And convinced me of beauty and all that's romantic
So I buried my talents with a false sense of self
And I fatally followed the call of the Sirens
Though the sea that I fell in was shallow
It won't drown me again

Neoliberalism: Svengali to the American "Left"

2009-09-03T14:09:00.000-07:00

Walter Benn Michaels in the London Review of Books

As the apolitical discourse of the American Simulacrum rambles on, that annoying little race question just won't go away, even as it is swept ever-further under the floor mat of the post-post. Nevertheless, as the implacable spirit of neoliberalism tightens its grasp on the hearts and minds of people on both ends of the American political spectrum, (that is to say, the extreme-right, the centre-right and the liberal-right), I somberly anticipate the inevitable disintegration of that special place in our society that, through obvious historical determination and necessity, has always designated African-Americans as the country’s closest representation to a truly, left-wing population. This is almost without exception save for a select few who have placed personal interests and gain before collective ideas of liberation or progress. Their ranks unfortunately are beginning to grow and are quite possibly on the threshold of burgeoning. Chalk this up to a particularly false sense of political enfranchisement on account of the newly-elected President, (which has so far succeeded in rousing the strongest national sentiment among the black community in recent history). This will almost certainly lead to a false sense of political accomplishment followed by the subsequent political malaise.

At the same time there is also the rise of the supposed black middle class, which is successfully polarizing common interests among wealthy and non-wealthy blacks. Meanwhile, you have an increasingly fragmented and ineffective “Left” which seems to be attacking all the peripheral issues while missing the main target. That target is neoliberalism and I put the quotations around “Left” to emphasize exactly to what extent the Left is absent in the American political arena. Democrats, or ‘liberals’ as they are so misleading called, cannot truly be a leftist-oppositional force for one very specific reason: they unquestionably accept, indulge and work from within the capitalist (neoliberal) ideological framework which is inextricably bound to the right-wing ethos. In fact, today if you criticize the capitalist system, it is very hard to find an American “liberal” who will not defend it every bit as adamantly as your most straight-lined conservative. Ironically, what results is an actual reinforcement of the right-wing discursive practices that the Left initially sought to rail against. All of this falls under the influence of the ingrained neoliberal system which Walter Benn Michales sums up brilliantly in his essay What Matters.

Michaels delivers a concise yet acutely Gramscian assessment of the American Left’s faltering agenda as understood through the coercive ways in which neo-liberalism has appropriated various causes of "multiculturalism" or "tolerance," and therefore effectively undermines the possibility of an effective progressive politics. Michaels observes:

"We can put the point more directly by observing that increasing tolerance of economic inequalityand increasing intolerance of racism, sexism and homophobia – of discrimination as such – are fundamental characteristics of neoliberalism. Hence the extraordinary advances in the battle against discrimination, and hence also its limits as a contribution to any left-wing politics. The increased inequalities of neoliberalism were not caused by racism and sexism and won’t be cured by –they aren’t even addressed by– anti-racism or anti-sexism. My point is not that anti-racism and anti-sexism are not good things. It is rather that they currently have nothing to do with left-wing politics, and that, insofar as they function as a substitute for it, can be a bad thing."

Michaels proposes instead, a re-examination of the capitalist, or neoliberal system itself—identifying it as the key proponent in a structurally flawed system from which all other forms of ‘inequality’ emerge; and with which left-wing politics should be primarily concerned. In short, most inequalities stem primarily from economic inequality and the fight to diversify your ruling classes isn’t much of a fight at all. With an amusing anecdote, Michaels illustrates how, if understood, one can delineate the absurdities of this counterintuitive process:

"In the US, one of the great uses of racism was (and is) to induce poor white people to feel a crucial and entirely specious fellowship with rich white people; one of the great uses of anti-racism is to make poor black people feel a crucial and equally specious fellowship with rich black people. Furthermore, in the form of the celebration of ‘identity’ and ‘ethnic diversity’, it seeks to create a bond between poor black people and rich white ones. So the African-American woman who cleans my office is supposed to feel not so bad about the fact that I make almost ten times as much money as she does because she can be confident that I’m not racist or sexist and that I respect her culture. And she’s also supposed to feel pride because the dean of our college, who makes much more than ten times what she does, is African-American, like her. And since the chancellor of our university, who makes more than 15 times what she does, is not only African-American but a woman too (the fruits of both anti-racism and anti-sexism!), she can feel doubly good about her. But, and I acknowledge that this is the thinnest of anecdotal evidence, I somehow doubt she does."

Hey Disconnector

2009-09-02T18:37:00.000-07:00

Its come to this?
When I come running you go hiding away
You go changing around your faces
It is what it is
But I've been waiting too long
I've been surrounded by the dead
Waiting for you to resurrect

Hey disconnector, you're not the only one
Hey disconnector, don't you know you're not alone?

But you disconnect
Why do you carry-on?
Why do you bother at all?
The soul you sold's not worth the cost
Keep on waiting
One day you'll turn around
And we'll all be gone with all the misery you brought

Hey...you're not the only one
Don't you know you're not alone
HEY DISCONNECTOR
HEY DISCONNECTOR
HEY DISCONNECTOR

My Last Mistake

2009-09-02T18:09:00.000-07:00

Go away from my door
I don't want you no more
All the names that I've known are in your face
Its a game and its played
Turn around
Bow out gracefully
I don't owe you and you won't see me again
Go away.
Roll away.

They say: "...love and not time alone..."
And honesty turns you on
But no.
I will never grow so old again
No resolution now.
No more forgiveness
No remission
No remorse

I know its not too late but I'm leaving anyway
I lied every time i said "i love you"
You were my last mistake...

I don't want your mysteries
I don't want the death you bring
I don't want the heaven or hell that raise up from your smile
I don't want your night or your dawn
I don't want you to turn me on
I don't want your touch or your pain, in the end they're the same

you're gonna turn me away
you're gonna turn me away

We're All Shape and Sound

2009-09-02T17:50:00.001-07:00

Its a broken protection
Endless reflections of lies
Sucked and seduced by a simulated process
But experts tell you that its alright
The soothing voice of the critics lulls you away in a trance
800,000 artificial resurrections
Everything's already dead and risen in advance

"I'm concerned with my money
I'm concerned with my fame
The acquisition of sex and for power
I'm concerned with my gain"
It'll crack like an eggshell in the event of The Event
But until then we can go on shopping for politics
And until then we'll just pretend that it's alright

We're all shape and sound
Here you're safe and sound now
...its alright

The trinity of celebrity, capitalism and greed
Lay you down on the alter of artifice
And cultivate your retroactive need
They put the world in your hand
They make you feel like a man
They steal your soul and sell it back on a screen til history's devoid of meaning
but "its alright"

We're all shape and sound
Here you're safe and sound now
...its alright

Arabella (you played yourself)

2009-09-02T16:52:00.000-07:00

Babe, it looks like our time's run out
We gotta salvage this shit somehow
So its you I'll resign from life with
And its you who I'll kill my mind with
Arabella, I'm afraid of myself
Destroy my happiness and make it Hell
Make it bad, but I know you'll make it worse
If you don't then I'll find somebody else

I know you're leaving and I know its just a matter of time
So I'll stick my head in the sand and I'll pretend that everything's alright

(hey hey hey)

You played yourself for the last time
Forever takes such a long time
Blame yourself if its over now
Don't you think you should settle down?

Stick me, Arabella, in your side
You'll steal my youth and then you'll kill my pride
Hear those bells? Yeah, they toll for everyone
Still I can tell that I'm not your only one
Arabella put me in your trap
Shut me up and tie me down at last
I need you 'cause I'm still not worn down
And I need you 'cause there's no one else around

And now that I gave you what I can't take back
I don't know why I feel so strung-out and so attached...

(hey hey hey)

You played yourself for the last time
Forever takes such a long, long time
So blame yourself that its over now
Don't you think you should settle down?
settle down
settle down

We're All Shape and Sound: The American Experience as Simulation

2009-09-02T14:09:00.000-07:00

This is truly the land of official artifice; where double speak and loaded words form the national vernacular; where the binary reductionism is homemade and so engrained that the extreme right-wing media proclaims itself as the center, so the medium right wing, by default, are generally regarded as Trotskyite revolutionaries; where the masters are the masters of victimizing the masters; and where the lessons and laws of history are perceived to have no consequence, relevance or effect on the present or future.

The question of serious political debate and engagement in this society is quelled before it can even arise. Despite its elaborate, involved and confounding exterior, the American spectacle of pseudo-politics is nothing more than entertainment under the guise of serious discourse. In light of the most current fashion trends being masqueraded as issues, my flaring indignation has been coupled only by an acute sense of bafflement as to just how spellbound with spectacle American society has become: regarding both the obscene frenzy of blatherskite perpetuated by the media and the equally delusional antics of the public, whose actions and reactions only give further credence to the endless reflections of lies that are, for all intents and purposes, steadily eroding the ever-so-fragile foundations of reality which used to sit firmly under our feet. Some of these issues include:

The Henry Louis Gates affair threatened to disrupt the simulated tranquility of a self-proclaimed, post-racial nation still basking in its own self-satisfaction in the wake of its newly-elected, first black president. When African-American Harvard professor Gates was confronted, questioned and subsequently arrested by at his Cambridge residence, that national silence was disturbed (yet again) by the restless stirring of the nation’s most neglected eight hundred pound gorilla. This was initially in response to Gates’ blackness having overshadowed his privileged class status, (which drove the country mad and into ingrained defenses of capitalism and faux pontifications, bewildered at how a wealthy elite could be racially-discriminated against in a post-racist America). The absurdity was however, exponentially conflicted upon the reactions to Barack Obama’s initial reaction to the situation. For a brief moment, we may have believed that the current black president would have used his position to make a statement—going beyond Gates’ pseudo-situation—to signify a greater sense of solidarity with the African-American community, and in doing so, signify commitment to a political urgency that is every bit as anxious today as any time in the nation’s history. But (in the American tradition) being forced by politics to avoid engaging too directly with the political, Obama revoked the suggestion of his statement and his stance. And instead, what we were given in place of political action was the euphemistic and apolitical fodder of simulation. Inviting Gates, his arresting officer and the press to the white house for a beer and a candid discussion on race, Obama succeeded only in proving his impotence to act as the messianic agent of the African-American struggle that so many of us, the black population, were championing him to be, on account of the inherent obligations and appeasements that his high-office position entails.
The stark opposition to Obama’s health care reform proposal. A staggering 54% of the population opposes the bill. (http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/august_2009/54_say_passing_no_healthcare_reform_better_than_passing_congressional_plan) Ironically, approximately the same number of Americans are currently uninsured and would in fact, benefit from the plan if it were to go through. Nevertheless, some of the most common grounds for rejection of the bill include concern for the welfare of insurance companies and ideologically-informed rejections of ‘un-American’ ideas such as socialism.
The pervasive fear of Socialism as the principle insidious design of the Obama administration. This is largely upheld by the widespread accusations that Obama plans to dissolve the Constitution, hijack the country and turn it into a socialist state. Subsequently, you have the accusatory public cries, denouncing him as an aspiring socialist totalitarian and comparing him to Hitler. Implicit in these accusations is the brilliant leap in disjointed association that fails to distinguish (among other things) between Socialism and National Socialism; thus illustrating the fact that these people would fail to produce even the most elementary definition of either system. Note the ultra-revisionist, nationwide “Anti-Tax Tea Parties,” easily the premiere champions of this, the latest incarnation of ignorance and hate masked awkwardly behind the veil of nationalistic schizophrenia. They claim to be at once, a silent majority on the margins of society who’s time (after eight long months of suppression) has finally come to be heard: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=7337117&page=1
Keeping in stride with theme of self-victimizing majorities, are the ‘conscientious objectors,’ who, in airs of obscene pretense, plead their innocence in protecting their second amendment rights by organizing en mass at Obama’s town hall meetings, with loaded automatic weapons. Immediately upon hearing about this, I had visions of Orval Faubus’ Arkansas, George Wallace’s Alabama or more to the point: lynch mobs and Klan rallies. This is nothing other than a societal turning-of-the-cheek (and therefore an acceptance) of racially-motivated intimidation. And although that in itself is absolutely nothing new in this country, the idea of permitting and therefore inviting a clear and present threat of assassination into the midst of the president is indeed an unprecedented low. Meanwhile, the media and the public alike, dance around this point as the heart of the issue or ignore it all together.

French philosopher and social critic Jean Baudrillard said it best when he stated, “Disneyland exists to mask the fact that the rest of America isn’t real.” That is to say, this culture exists in such a diluted and delusional state of super-hyper-informational-induced schizophrenia and is subsequently so far removed from reality that any such deliberate constructions of escapism or fantasy (with Disneyland here serving as the hyperbolic example) ultimately prove themselves as ironic, spectres that mock their surrounding environment just by their very existence.
In his essay Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard taps into what is possibly the most viral, ubiquitous and evidential phenomena afflicting American society. He discusses how an increasing interplay of signs and symbols (which are the culturally-understood connotations that arise from the symbolic exchange of goods and the arbitrary, symbolic value placed upon them within a consumer society) has eroded the very concept of ‘meaning,’ as it relates to the human experience and its relationship to reality.

What you have instead, through this interplay of empty images and signs (which are incubated in media, entertainment and technology) is a hyper-sensational facsimile of reality, wherein people are only concerned with spectacle; with sensational experiences that are sexier, more alluring and more mesmerizing than the mundane banality of everyday reality. He calls this Hyperreality: a reality more ‘real’ than reality itself; as evidenced by the masses’ engagement with it as they flock in droves toward avatar identities, reality TV, internet dating and pornography and celebrity cults of personality and away from the utterly unromantic ‘desert of the real.’

Furthermore, he asserts that there arise certain codes embedded within the web of transient and exploited meaning made malleable and eternally false through the advertisements, films, magazines and fashion trends of the hyperreal, which signify and therefore determine thought and behavior. The more enthralled one becomes with (the sensations of) the hyperreal, the further he is disassociated and disconnected from his external reality. Subsequently you have people acting, thinking, behaving and formulating ideas of the world based upon images, meanings, signs, symbols and signifiers which point to nothing other than or outside of themselves in a furiously frivolous enjeu des images. It is the relationship of these two things—the hyperreal cluster of useless and misinformation and the un-knowledge that people take from it to apply to life or reality—that we may come to understand as Simulation.

Baudrillard points out how, within the confines of this new hyperreal world, many categories and distinctions that were once important in categorizing phenomena in society, have imploded amongst themselves and lost meaning: culture, social interaction, economics and politics for example, have all been consumed by the artifice of simulation. It is with the political however, that this article is most immediately concerned. Just so I’m clear, I’ll provide a few examples.
Take the concept of celebrity and the ever-growing hysteria surrounding it. We can understand the cult of celebrity in the same way we understand cults of personality in so-called totalitarian regimes. Each creates larger-than-life images through an over-saturation of multimedia networks which ultimately take the place of the individual they were created to represent. The individual eventually grows to bear little, if any resemblance to his simulated representation. His former self all but vanishes to such an extent that he himself—as well as those who may have had access to him before and beyond the emergence of his simulated self—no longer recognize him. Take for example, Kim Jong Il or Michael Jackson: both; extremely isolated figures—separated from their public personas; both are engulfed in a state of simulation so advanced that he has become his own simulation; an characteristic imitation of himself which is nothing more than a connotation—a signifier that points to a perpetual interplay and exchange of images and symbols.

Through this example, we can also seek to grasp the concept of simulation at a more intricate level by examining public reaction to the personality cult. A fan of Michael Jackson, (or of any celebrity for that matter), has always already convinced/deceived himself into thinking that he knows this celebrity on some level, no matter how slight. If he is a temperate fan, then he is convinced that despite the television appearances, movies, videos, albums, merchandise and paraphernalia, despite all the media coverage and sensationalism, he is aware of that Michael Jackson is ‘an entertainer,’ and that ‘behind all the glitz and glamour,’ he is perhaps ‘a casualty of an over-zealous father, ‘the victim of a blood-thirsty paparazzi,’ ‘a tragic hero fallen from the excesses and pressures of fame,’ ‘a predator of children,’ etc. Regardless of his views or beliefs and however pragmatic they may seem, what the moderate fan does not realize is everything that has shaped any ideas, analysis or opinions regarding the star, has been equally informed by simulation. Because the media is his only source of information about this, so-called public figure, he cannot profess to know anything about him that hasn’t already been simulated and processed infinite times over. And in a cruel twist of irony, every time a sign, image, symbol or connotation of Michael Jackson is circulated or introduced into the simulacra, the individual who used to assume the identity of Michael Jackson becomes further removed from the identity that used to be designated him, as the concept that is his simulation consolidates its power of this increasingly fabricated identity, the exponentially-increasing associations in the simulacrum. For a more straight-forward view of simulation at work in American society, consider the following:

· Simulation is not merely reality television but the pretense that conceals the fact that any ‘reality’ show is scripted, and in fact, scripted off of simulations.
· Simulation is virtually anything that participates in the cult of celebrity for the aforementioned reasons; from celebrity look-alike contests to the very existence of Hollywood as an accepted, real, physical transmutation of the procession of image reproduction.
· Simulation is the unwritten, guiding principle of behavior, cognition and taxonomy in American High Schools; being one of the most exhaustively exploited and recycled themes in television, cinema and pop music, wherein the distinctive lines of fantasy and fiction are hopelessly blurred, informing all experiences entailed therein: past, present and future.
· Simulation is, as Baudrillard says in his observations on Watergate, reporting it as a scandal conceals the fact that it is a commonplace of American political life (Storey347).
· Simulation is the fan writing the TV doctor for medical advice.
· Simulation is the declarations of love and proposals of marriage to leading actors and actresses
· Simulation is the dating code as well as the rules of attraction.
· Simulation is the number one cause of failed marriages.
· Simulation is the lionizing of the recently-deceased celebrity.
· Simulation is America’s particular brand of nationalism, as well as its imagined antithesis, the concept of being un-American
· Simulation is TV shows like 24 (informed by already simulated images symbols and representations about behind the scenes activities of governments and their adversaries) have and will continue to shape the geo-political world views of unsaid millions of fans, whose subsequent miseducation will both feed back into the impetus for producing the show as well as effecting how their ‘real life’ politik—resulting in a vicious cycle.(myth, feeding into myth, feeding back into myth which may actually effect an external reality.)

It should be noted here, that there is a point where I diverge from Baudrillard regarding the extent to which simulation and hyperreality hold dominion over individuals. Whereas Baudriallard believes that hyperreality is an all-encapsulating phenomenon which is not only irreversible but inescapable and undefeatable, as it has succeeded in collapsing (among other things) the political, as evidenced by his ultimate renunciation of any quest for social and political change, (concepts he sees as mere illusionary refractions of simulated half light), I believe that there are varying degrees of both hyperreality and simulation. I also propose that individuals are not hopelessly condemned to the infinite delusions of simulation and that it is possible to access an external, a priori Real…and more importantly, that real political action is possible despite the seemingly omnipresent hypnotism of seemingly endless simulation. This is a central point of contention which I will necessarily have to revisit and address a length a later time, and hopefully develop into a more specified theory on the hyperreal and its relationship to the infamous postmodern condition.

We now live in a society wherein the real and the imaginary are increasingly indistinguishable and for those patrons of the simulacrum—the hyperreal universe—the distinction no longer holds any meaning or importance. This places the individual into a position of perpetual spectatorship wherein he only lives life vicariously through facsimiled series of images and representations of imagined, ideal worlds: life itself is reduced to a mere simulation and individuals are transformed into blank screens—filled purposelessly with the hollow shapes and sounds of simulation. This is the micro tragedy. On a larger scale however, you can imagine the import of more wide scale problems. Consider the relationship of the simulacrum to the actual external world where there is real cause and effect; real consequence. This is one of the primary issues with which I am concerned and I will address on different levels across varying topics in my work and music.