Hold Fast

Acute pressures from multiple spheres (personal, professional, intellectual, activist) are converge into one rapidly approaching zero point. I have only myself to rely on at this point: the time spent studying Badiou's distinction between heroism and courage in between endless listenings of metal anthems lionizing steadfast resolutness in the face of crisis has just been preparation for putting the analysis and critique on hold while I get down to business. Alright, then, here we go.

Oh, hi down there!

And since my iPod is brokified, which for me is akin to having my fellow athiest-in-a-foxhole abandon post at the first sign of a firefight, I've been subsisting on the same cultural effluvia as before, with the exception of Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï, Hithcock's Strangers on a Train, and Sophie Fienne/Slavoj Zizek's The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, none of which are portable, which is for the best when you really think about it.

So Busy, So Bored

So many deadlines approaching, and yet, with all the work I have to do I somehow find myself doing this. I should be reading critical theory and writing about urban social movements, but instead I find myself raiding friends of friends via Facebook and lurking on various electronic nonplaces. Sure, it sounds glib, but I grew up in a suburb, and spent a lot of time playing video games, isolating myself, hanging out on message boards, reading alone. I'm used to the idea of
boredom, but somehow still haven't found a way to be bored without being self-destructive. Maybe a little bit more time in this room with no windows will help? Maybe not.

Yeah, whatever.

Marching to the beat of: Gang Starr - Daily Operation, A Grave With No Name - Mountain Debris, Jodi Dean - Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies, Failures - 1st LP, Atlas Sound - Logos, Lustmord - [O T H E R D U B], some black metal bullshit, disappointment

Shards

Two and a half weeks until school is done. I can start playing music again. Three BMO songs finished, two of which involve scatological humour (my inner child needs a break sometimes too).The one is called "I'm Going to Need Another Autopsy, Scully", which is pretty self-explanatory, I think. Interview for two jobs today. Finish making brown stock this morning. Go see Until the Light Takes Us with pals tonight. Go to activist meeting beforehand to talk about risk assessment. Finish paper that was due yesterday. Look at potential new apartment tomorrow. Possible book review with program director/mentor next week. No time for complete thoughts or sentences, just straight ahead forward, one goddamn maniac fueled on caffeine and grindcore, skirting disaster and collapse, because I'll deal with those later thank you very much.

Hello Edward Burtynksy, could you stay away from the next 30 days of my life, please?

Essentials for spring living: Defeatist - The Sixth Extinction and Sharp Blade Sinks Deep Into Dull Minds, Human Remains - Where Were You When..., various Edward Burtynsky photos, Max Ernst's Europe After the Rain, Jeru the Damaja - The Sun Rises in the East, Dr. Octagon - Dr. Octagynocologist, Disfear - Misanthropic Generation, the way that the 2006 Sokol Blosser Dundee Hills Pinot I opened last night slowly evolved, The X-Files: Season 2

In which the author reaches for a higher plane of existence and grabs on to ... something.

The sun is out. It's gorgeous, it feels like summer. I'm done classes in less than four weeks and I'm thinking about my future. I'm applying for jobs (or I would be if I wasn't writing this blog). I'm sitting down and focusing, and for me focusing isn't the blank screen or the nothingness of the Buddhists, but it's having all channels on at once and letting myself become overwhelmed in the glorious overload of information and sensory inputs. Let the images and messages make themselves clear, because thinking of everything is the same as thinking about nothing but nothing.

You can write about it in a formula if it helps. Isaac Asimov worked it out: that we exist, because we have to exist, because we cannot possibly exist, and it can be proved with math if you believe in that sort of thing. 0 ± 0 = 0, nothing equals nothing, which really means that everything equates to nothing, everything that is nothing. Ex nihilo nihil fit - out of nothing comes nothing - or creatio ex nihilo - out of nothing comes everything, all the same, because 0 ± 0 = -1 + 1 = ∞ ± ∞. Nothing can exist without everything, because nonexistence constitutes existence, and everything cannot "be" without nothing, therefore nothingness is not possible without something(ness), thus all there is is everything, converging at a point in the middle of the existential contrast, the droning God-loop equilibrium, the circle of life, Ouroborous circling hungrily in pursuit of his own tail, and so on.

Doesn't this make so much more sense than that horrible run-on sentence?

Back to the point at hand and the matter in question. What I'm doing, where I'm going, all of that. Point is, there's nothing in store for me, but there is everything for me. I've never had a chance, not even a small one, and the moment is lost like tears in rain (score one for Rutger Hauer's on the spot revelation, where he too probably saw into the void) before it even happened, but that's because even where it doesn't exist it will always exist, and energy is never lost or destroyed, but just transferred (thanks, laws of physics!), and so we're always stuck in that uncomfortable stage of becoming, becoming, becoming. Listen closely enough and you can hear Sisyphus cracking his head against the boulder as he lurches it up hill, as is his eternal task, and laughing - laughing! You would too. You should!

I never had a chance, you never had a chance, none of us ever did, but that's what makes us so fucking free, so stop what you're doing, right now, right in the middle of this sentence, and grab on to that heaving temporal wave before you drown in it.


Lifeboats in an ocean of time: Throbbing Gristle - DOA: The Third and Final Report, Groovie Ghoulies - Travels with my Amp, The Dictators - The Dictators Go Girl Crazy!, White Static Demon - Decayed, The Slits - Cut, Public Image Ltd. - Metal Box

I Just Want to Forget

I can't do it. Spiked hair, spiked drinks, the most banal music conceivable, the most desperate-yet-spoiled people imaginable, matching smiles, gladhanding, pretedetermined futures, pervasive marketing, just do what your parents did and take the life that was advertised to them, and don't ask too many questions, and no, I can't fit in here. I don't even try anymore. I won't go through the motions. Are you uncomfortable? So am I. Your discomfort will probably not last as long as mine. Maybe that's my problem. Maybe. Maybe. Then again...

Substance: Wolf Eyes - Human Animal, Final - Reading All the Right Signals Wrong, Rotten Sound - Cycles, Fushitsusha - The Caution Appears, Parlamentarisk Sodomi - De Anarkitiske An(n)aler, Santogold - Santogold, Official Secrets Act - Understanding Electricity

I Can See Through Time

All of you. I can see all of you. All of you with a future in the academy, I can see you. I can see you teaching first year political science courses and graduate seminars in anthropology, spending late nights in offices cluttered with unread papers and empty coffee cups, drunk and misty eyed at dinner parties, where you silently fume at how difficult it is to communicate with the majority of other people.

All of you with a future in business, I can see you. I can see you backslapping and clinking expensive scotches in exclusive clubs, spending early mornings in offices cluttered with valueless financial instruments and steaming cups of coffee, drunk and libidinous at office holiday parties, where you prey on young blood to recapture an elusive and lost sense of youth.

All of you with a future in the arts, I can see you. I can see you balancing the asceticism your means impose and the indulgence your will necessitates, spending long afternoons in quiet bedrooms with sleeping lovers and blank tablets, drunk and reckless at parties you've snuck into, where the vulgar tendencies of moneyed tastemakers frustrate and sardonically amuse you.

Just a sampling to be sure, but so many of you are tipping your hands to me. I can see straight through it, straight through time. I crave mystery.



Bedrock: Curse of the Golden Vampire - Mass Destruction, Techno Animal - Brotherhood of the Bomb, HEALTH - S/T, Wormrot - Abuse, Graf Orlock - Destination Time: Today, Weekend Nachos - Unforgivable, Dälek - Gutter Tactics, Discordance Axis - The Inalienable Dreamless, David Cross - I Drink For a Reason, Frederico Fellini - Satyricon

Deep breath before the plunge...

Deadlines are rushing at me like fear-affected suburbanites rushing towards a truck full of H1N1 vaccines. My stomach is in knots almost all waking hours of the day and I am not sleeping. I am so fucking caffeinated that my hands shake, even though I don't really need caffeine to keep me running - adrenaline and a fear of letting other people down usually takes care of the rest.

Happiness?

Yes, happiness.

I just spent five days (five glorious, glorious days) in Vancouver visiting friends and setting up an academic research conference. Man, that place is epic, although 5 straight days of non-stop rain and greyness was a little wearing. I'm pretty grateful for any occasion I have to take five days off to ride bikes, party like a student (because, you know, I'm much more responsible in Calgary), get excited about academia with other young academics, record music, get intimated some of the most opulent real estate in Canada, get intimidated by the worst urban squalor Canada has to offer, have heart-to-hearts, make new friends, and ride bikes. But...

Five days off has crippled my academic process. Or at the very least hobbled it, in a similar way to how Russian peasant used to pay people to break their ankles so they couldn't get conscripted to fight on the front lines in World War I. Or maybe in the way Duane Allman (and probably quite a few others) shot himself in the foot so he could keep playing music and not get drafted for Vietnam. People with foot fetishes might not make good draft dodgers based on these experiences. I don't know. Maybe?

The gerbil racing around powering the wheel in my noggin is going at Mach speed. I like all of this, actually. I like being wired on grindcore and coffee and new knowledge, and I think that a little forlornity and confusion and heartache makes those end-points so much more satisfying. I like sitting down and writing something like this, a letter to the void, with no preparation, just sincerity that stream of consciousness writing provides. This might not make sense now, but in a few months, it will.

Currently enjoying: Lock Up - Hate Breeds Suffering, Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock and Roll, Patton Oswalt - My Weakness is Strong, Various Artists - This Comp Kills Fascists, Vol. 1, Femme Fatale - Fire Baptism, Venetian Snares - Filth, Thomas Pynchon - Inherent Vice, and my ongoing successes with French cuisine.