It is deeply unAustralian to dislike hot weather, be largely disinterested in sport and be underwhelmed by the idea of mowing in middle of the day, but nonetheless, here I am. Your personal representative of that irritating single digit demographic of population that insists on watching SBS, reading books without pictures and not eating meat. Frankly, under Howard the sedition laws were getting very close to netting us pale non-sporties and veggos. I don't think any of those "patriot act" style laws have been revoked, but I'm pretty confident they haven't continued to expand. (Of course, they may have. My deliberate ignorance of news means that I remain unaware of what new evils the blandly congenial face of our Current PM hides).
I used to find the idea of sedition very interesting. As I understand it (ie, vague guessing rather than any looking up of definitions, or actual research. I like to start off with a kind-of gestalt feel and spiral my way towards accuracy. Lends slightly more to poetry if there's any in the offing than just diving in to the dictionary. But I digress.) sedition is kinda like mutiny, but on land. Or the idea of mutiny. Of course learning about Pirates has shown me a few more things about mutiny too. Sometimes 'mutiny' was a fairly straightforward commercial decision where a strongly held difference in acquisitional strategies and philosophies of plunder led to simple (ie bloodless) partings where the pirates' fleet (yes, they often had small convoys and even fleets) would experience a re-distribution of crew and a ship or two would peel away and head to fresh horizons. Seems reasonable. In other times, most notably in the above-board commercial world and the navy, mutiny was the last line of defence against a Captain gone buttfuck crazy - wigging out all over the place and homicidal on an unsustainable trajectory. Of course, Captains get to write the Ship's Log, so later on it could be hard to get the dead to speak in one's defence if the Captain had a lucid moment with quill before the parting of ways.
So anyway, why might this be interesting? It seemed to me that crumbly empires get more concerned with what you might be thinking than what you're actually doing. Critical thought can become a crime. Frank conversation about how things could practically be different can become a crime. Not a misdemeanour, not a concern, not a 'no scones for you naughty thing!' but a crime.
A much greater thinker than I, George Orwell, has of course covered this ground superbly, in his seminal work of paranoia "1984". I recommend it to myself for a re-read and to you dear reader for your own edification (read it here for free).
I'm not up to Orwell. I'm just saying that for some reason a few years back, we started making it explicit that thinking was problematic to the Australian way of life. That was interesting because it seemed so quaintly old-school and utterly, utterly pointless. Then it wasn't interesting at all for a long time, just another example of how shitty life can be, and keeping that list is a really dull hobby. I let it go.
Then last weekend I watched "Death Race" and it set me to thinking (as incredibly brutal, masochistic, post-collapse action films often do) about what we like to think of as "fiction" and therefore entertaining, and who we think are suitable people to fill the roles of villains. Not many people saw Death Race, despite Jason Statham in the lead and Ian "Swearengen" McShane in support so let me break it down for you... and bear with me as the plot does not hang together in the film so this will not sound very cogent*.
An ex-con who happens to also be an ex-car racing guy's wife is brutally murdered and he is framed for it so that he can go to the commercially run jail where they RACE (a la Running Man) in a competition to THE DEATH to win their freedom. BTW the race of fortified and armed cars is telecast live and viewing is by subscription, thereby earning the prison mega-bucks.
Ok. Nothing new there. Literally (it is a remake of a '76 film). I won't distract our conversation by going into the gender stuff (other than to say it is tediously predictable - the wife is a corpse before she gets 2 full lines out, the uber-evil Warden is a post-menopausal corporate witch drone, and then there's 3 or 4 bootylicious and interchangable sets of tits and arses to dress the cars up. Sorry "navigators" from the women's prison.) That was a long set-up for a short pay-off. The fiction here (can you spot it?) that makes all of this allowable - is that "in the future, prisons will be run for (dramatic pause) profit!" (GASP OF SHOCK) Only in that kind of hideously peverted world would something so craven come about.
But of course this fiction is a fiction.
Prisons the world over, and here in Australia, are run by contractors to lesser or greater degrees already. Some in the States are already "purpose built facilities" completely funded by commercial interests. Running a prison is like removing garbage - one of those services that the community expects gets handled, but actually as long as the name and the signage is ok, really don't care who exactly is taking care of that business, and it's a growth industry. It's the Indian call-centre approach to staffing and funding. A hollow-core world, and, most importantly to this discussion, it is old hat. Maybe in 76 it seemed a wild idea, great for some future world (Mad Max-esque - if you will. Actually Mad Max came out in 79 - but you get my drift.) and certainly when Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead came out in 88 it was a chilling commentary on a system running loose and note - even the title tied it in to the concepts that prisoners were people, with rights (BTW Nick Cave co-wrote this, and had an acting role in it. Keyword: BLEAK. It is not a popcorn and beer type film - unlike Death Race which is clearly made to be consumed as Entertainment "Ghosts..." feels like a nightmare documentary ). But I digress.
To bring this back to sedition, it seems we have eaten our own tail. If sedition is a crime of thought in which criticism of the ruling system is entertained, what is it called when telling the truth about the ruling system is seen as distasteful or undesirable enough that we maintain a consensus reality that these unpalatable truths remain fictions?
How close are we to a situation where, on the books at least, speaking aloud a truth becomes a crime?
Close enough, I'd say, that someone will be able to furnish an example in Australia of where this is already the case. Or proposed to be the case. Probably in that that bundle of ridiculous on-line measures. Anyway. There it is. I don't really know what to do with that line of thought. It begs for action of some kind. But what?
In a hollow-core world where do you toss the molotov?
* WARNING - PLOT SPOILER. You and I know that it is unlikly that you're going to:
a. Watch this film, eva.
b. Not see this twist coming, and
c. Have the pleasure of watching massively overclocked cars race around almost endlessly brutally killing 'people' ruined by this brief synopsis. Basically this is a film that delivers on the core promise of the title. "Death Race" That's what they were selling and that's what they made. No nancy-pantsing around.
Showing posts with label Truths. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Truths. Show all posts
Monday, February 15, 2010
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Australians all let us rejoice, for we are protected by our paternalistic government from seeing complicated things on the interwebs
This week it was easy to shake one's head sadly at those poor Chinese people who have suffered the indignity of the whole world knowing that their internet feeds censored Barack Obama's inauguration speech. In a double-whammy they got fucked by their own government and they missed a few good lines. Poor bastards. But then that's what you get for living in a politically shit country, like Australia China.
Of course Australia is a pretty cool and democratic place where if someone proposed that kind of thing it would be laughed at byme the rude people and heavily debated and considered and then rejected by all the polite &/ thinking people. Not just implemented. Not our style.
Aussies like to think of ourselves as easy going and fairdinkum enough to not really need the pain-in-the-arse paperwork. We as a nation are happy to sign up for things that sound like good ideas (with all the best intentions,) but we don't necessarily turn them into anything specific here at home. Our constitution reads like a random chunk of tax law. I guess that's what happens when you're set up by bureaucrats rather than Enlightenment idealists, but I digress.
Australia isn't the kind of place to freak out over, say, art or worry too much about people taking responsibility for their own lives, no way mate! So when our government says that blocking nasty things is for our own good, they probably really know what they're doing. We should just stay relaxed and comfortable, and let them take care of it.
After all, it'll be completely painless. You won't even know there's anything missing!
404 NOT FOUND
Of course Australia is a pretty cool and democratic place where if someone proposed that kind of thing it would be laughed at by
Aussies like to think of ourselves as easy going and fairdinkum enough to not really need the pain-in-the-arse paperwork. We as a nation are happy to sign up for things that sound like good ideas (with all the best intentions,) but we don't necessarily turn them into anything specific here at home. Our constitution reads like a random chunk of tax law. I guess that's what happens when you're set up by bureaucrats rather than Enlightenment idealists, but I digress.
Australia isn't the kind of place to freak out over, say, art or worry too much about people taking responsibility for their own lives, no way mate! So when our government says that blocking nasty things is for our own good, they probably really know what they're doing. We should just stay relaxed and comfortable, and let them take care of it.
After all, it'll be completely painless. You won't even know there's anything missing!
404 NOT FOUND
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Enlightenment from Band T-Shirts
I was just thinking that I would tell you about my time ITRW1 over the last few days, given that I've had a 4 day long weekend. Some of that time was spent implementing project "Cheerful" by going to the QLD GOMA to see the exhibition "Optimism" and to a concert (concert doesn't seem the right word for 6 bands over 8 hours, but neither does "festival" fit anything where Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are headlining) and then a large amount of time doing very normal things (took out the rubbish, started trying to make a picture of a giant octopus -as you do when you have a bit of time, went to dinner in Ipswich, and yes, we were the only people in the place on a saturday night at 8pm!, set up my new second-hand computer which won't boot up *sigh*, tidied, messed, washed, dried. Dull as dishwater. Literally).
I'm still processing some of the art/music experience. It was a very big day. I was going to root through it all and find some nugget of insight about public entertainment, give a little review of the event, share something pithy about the ecology of band t-shirts that were on display, maybe mention that I deliberately rationed myself to a max of 2 text messages to any person I felt compelled to say something to while there .... but either I'm not going to make enough sense of it and how I felt about it or in some important way I wasn't really there.
Isn't that weird?! If I'm not the one living my life - than who is?! Is the real me off in a different probabilistic 'verse having a much better ITRW experience and I'm just keeping this seat warm? Of course, scientifically that's hard to substantiate2 so Occam's Razor4 would suggest something else is the true cause. Buddha tells me that this is the experience I'm having and I better come to grips with it. Strangely enough, it was a T-shirt on a tall lanky man who walked past me many times to fetch beers that has, in hindsight, untangled this knotted skein of transcendental angst. His shirt said, "Don't just listen to the music, feel it". Feel it. Hmmmm. Feelings .....
Feelings happen in the body, and I spent that time here. In my mind.
I was watching everything, noting, cataloguing and analysing it, thinking about ways to capture it ... not experiencing it. OHH!! (sound of light coming on) Gee whiz. Of course. What a drongo. Feelings might be important to project "Cheerful". I get it. Figured that one out all by myself. Ok, well there's a good heads-up for next time. Good thing I didn't get too committed to that idea of actually being busy in another probabilistically linked universe hey!!
1." In The Real World "
2. i.e. I borrowed that concept from a SF book and it has no Scientific basis AT ALL3, but it's a great story, you should maybe have a look at it - Anathem by Neal Stephenson. If you're going to steal - steal from the best.
3. Maybe a little in some little backwater of time/physics that I haven't got to or understood (that's not narrowing it down) so I can't say definitively that there's none at all, but, you know, it was fiction, and he normally footnotes really cool real things. So if it is real, don't hold it against me, but it's like, massively unlikely. That's all I'm saying.
4. I meant this is the newer and slightly less accurate sense, but in reading this reference, realised that both are applicable in this instance. How fortuitious! Also, here's a good example of where a mass usage, although incorrect, has already modified the primary meaning of the phrase. Inexorable! Another good reason to keep hold of those precious, printed copies of the OED with word histories in them!
I'm still processing some of the art/music experience. It was a very big day. I was going to root through it all and find some nugget of insight about public entertainment, give a little review of the event, share something pithy about the ecology of band t-shirts that were on display, maybe mention that I deliberately rationed myself to a max of 2 text messages to any person I felt compelled to say something to while there .... but either I'm not going to make enough sense of it and how I felt about it or in some important way I wasn't really there.
Isn't that weird?! If I'm not the one living my life - than who is?! Is the real me off in a different probabilistic 'verse having a much better ITRW experience and I'm just keeping this seat warm? Of course, scientifically that's hard to substantiate2 so Occam's Razor4 would suggest something else is the true cause. Buddha tells me that this is the experience I'm having and I better come to grips with it. Strangely enough, it was a T-shirt on a tall lanky man who walked past me many times to fetch beers that has, in hindsight, untangled this knotted skein of transcendental angst. His shirt said, "Don't just listen to the music, feel it". Feel it. Hmmmm. Feelings .....
Feelings happen in the body, and I spent that time here. In my mind.
I was watching everything, noting, cataloguing and analysing it, thinking about ways to capture it ... not experiencing it. OHH!! (sound of light coming on) Gee whiz. Of course. What a drongo. Feelings might be important to project "Cheerful". I get it. Figured that one out all by myself. Ok, well there's a good heads-up for next time. Good thing I didn't get too committed to that idea of actually being busy in another probabilistically linked universe hey!!
1." In The Real World "
2. i.e. I borrowed that concept from a SF book and it has no Scientific basis AT ALL3, but it's a great story, you should maybe have a look at it - Anathem by Neal Stephenson. If you're going to steal - steal from the best.
3. Maybe a little in some little backwater of time/physics that I haven't got to or understood (that's not narrowing it down) so I can't say definitively that there's none at all, but, you know, it was fiction, and he normally footnotes really cool real things. So if it is real, don't hold it against me, but it's like, massively unlikely. That's all I'm saying.
4. I meant this is the newer and slightly less accurate sense, but in reading this reference, realised that both are applicable in this instance. How fortuitious! Also, here's a good example of where a mass usage, although incorrect, has already modified the primary meaning of the phrase. Inexorable! Another good reason to keep hold of those precious, printed copies of the OED with word histories in them!
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Too many Days
The 28TH of December poses a real and present danger to the capitalist way of life and should be dispensed with under the Keynesian Laws of Market Stimulus (1927).
This problematic day creates a hiccup in the smooth flow of capital from the proletariat to the businesses of escape and should either be commercialised or excised. The major investment poured over the decades into creating a day of massive consumption (code name "Christmas") and the corresponding after party (Code name "Boxing Day" - both 'sales' and movie premiers) has been inordinately successful. The use of all subsequent days as lead-ups to New Year's Eve and the increasing commercialisation of this event is being undermined by the subversive elements within Dec28TH and this cannot be allowed to escalate and put at risk all that we have achieved.
Situation Report
Undercover agents have again reported unacceptable behaviours on this day such as the vague and somnambulistic questioning the value of ongoing consumption of disposable consumer items, public expressions of symptoms and sensations of boredom, even a desire to connect with other non-familial humans without the purchase of special clothes or equipment in order to do so, and most problematically, some were seen to take a long walk on this day and to read a non-fiction book when they returned. Obviously this is not yet a crisis, indeed may of these behaviours are part of the cultural legacy inherited by the system from the previous historical construct. They are weakening overall but the cabal feel that at this juncture of the dominance of global capital such outbursts constitute a warning sign. This undercurrent of unease could be used by the rebel forces to politicise and activate currently placid consumers. That risk is unacceptable.
The Decimal Option
A further investment of funds into a fresh event is always possible. However analysis suggests that both December and January are sufficiently subscribed to meet requirement. Many other months are desperately under-subscribed, entire quarters in some instances (August, September, October for example remain barren of all but the weakest events. Despite ongoing investment and marketing application, Father's Day remains sluggish against expectations). This presents an opportunity to instigate a radical re-visioning of the year as we know it in line with some other goals of the cabal. Let's be honest - 365 has always been an unwieldy number. Non-decimal, pagan, geo-centric it represents a psychologically uncontrollable random element to life and commerce. Frankly, it's just annoying. Twelve months is two too many. Seven days a week - WTF? - let's make it 5 or 10 and neaten up the whole calendar business. The year would be much more manageable at, say 200 or 250 days length. Each month would then have a perfect four or five weeks (at a 5 day length) and in the course of two comparative centuries, we would accrue an extra 92 Christmases (using the larger 250 day a year model, results are even more dramatic at the 200 day a year rate). Thus creating an increase in the rate of return on investment for cabal members that I'm sure will be persuasive in and of itself.
On the Front Foot
There's simply no downside to this option, and at this point in history we have the power, the reach, the will and the advertising budget to pull it off. So many of our niggling and accruing problems would be dealt with through this one rational measure. There are simply too many days in the year, and it is time we handled it. Time we created a tighter, pacier year that zips and flows from one major celebration to the next. It is time for this cabal to shine the digital decimal light of market forces onto the slapshod rambling world and really rip some returns for our shareholders. Analysis suggests that implementation costs would actually function as a market stimulus (much as we've recognised that the targeted and deliberate reduction in carbon emissions would). I urge the cabal to get on the front foot and do it now while they're on their knees from the 'credit crunch' (you've got to hand it to our marketing department and their snappy names) and then as a reward we can ease the reins a little. What we lose in control of the crunch will be nothing to what we gain in the big matrix.
This problematic day creates a hiccup in the smooth flow of capital from the proletariat to the businesses of escape and should either be commercialised or excised. The major investment poured over the decades into creating a day of massive consumption (code name "Christmas") and the corresponding after party (Code name "Boxing Day" - both 'sales' and movie premiers) has been inordinately successful. The use of all subsequent days as lead-ups to New Year's Eve and the increasing commercialisation of this event is being undermined by the subversive elements within Dec28TH and this cannot be allowed to escalate and put at risk all that we have achieved.
Situation Report
Undercover agents have again reported unacceptable behaviours on this day such as the vague and somnambulistic questioning the value of ongoing consumption of disposable consumer items, public expressions of symptoms and sensations of boredom, even a desire to connect with other non-familial humans without the purchase of special clothes or equipment in order to do so, and most problematically, some were seen to take a long walk on this day and to read a non-fiction book when they returned. Obviously this is not yet a crisis, indeed may of these behaviours are part of the cultural legacy inherited by the system from the previous historical construct. They are weakening overall but the cabal feel that at this juncture of the dominance of global capital such outbursts constitute a warning sign. This undercurrent of unease could be used by the rebel forces to politicise and activate currently placid consumers. That risk is unacceptable.
The Decimal Option
A further investment of funds into a fresh event is always possible. However analysis suggests that both December and January are sufficiently subscribed to meet requirement. Many other months are desperately under-subscribed, entire quarters in some instances (August, September, October for example remain barren of all but the weakest events. Despite ongoing investment and marketing application, Father's Day remains sluggish against expectations). This presents an opportunity to instigate a radical re-visioning of the year as we know it in line with some other goals of the cabal. Let's be honest - 365 has always been an unwieldy number. Non-decimal, pagan, geo-centric it represents a psychologically uncontrollable random element to life and commerce. Frankly, it's just annoying. Twelve months is two too many. Seven days a week - WTF? - let's make it 5 or 10 and neaten up the whole calendar business. The year would be much more manageable at, say 200 or 250 days length. Each month would then have a perfect four or five weeks (at a 5 day length) and in the course of two comparative centuries, we would accrue an extra 92 Christmases (using the larger 250 day a year model, results are even more dramatic at the 200 day a year rate). Thus creating an increase in the rate of return on investment for cabal members that I'm sure will be persuasive in and of itself.
On the Front Foot
There's simply no downside to this option, and at this point in history we have the power, the reach, the will and the advertising budget to pull it off. So many of our niggling and accruing problems would be dealt with through this one rational measure. There are simply too many days in the year, and it is time we handled it. Time we created a tighter, pacier year that zips and flows from one major celebration to the next. It is time for this cabal to shine the digital decimal light of market forces onto the slapshod rambling world and really rip some returns for our shareholders. Analysis suggests that implementation costs would actually function as a market stimulus (much as we've recognised that the targeted and deliberate reduction in carbon emissions would). I urge the cabal to get on the front foot and do it now while they're on their knees from the 'credit crunch' (you've got to hand it to our marketing department and their snappy names) and then as a reward we can ease the reins a little. What we lose in control of the crunch will be nothing to what we gain in the big matrix.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Politics anyone? (Rated: MA)
Are you interested in politics? Well now, let me see if we agree what we're talking about here (English - such a sloppy language).
If we're talking about the bastard child of vigilante justice and corrupt management masquerading as leadership and patriotic paternalism, then yeah, we're probably on the same page, and my quick, accurate and honest answer is "no way". Am I addicted to it in the way of cheezy soaps and sleazy lying two-timing boyfriends - "way!".
It's my dirty secret, I don't think I'm worth a good life any more than the next sad, overweight, brain dead tv-addled moron. And I'm right. I get what I deserve, and I'm getting a lot of politics. And a new season of Biggest Looser - 6 nights a week. Alternated with "Big Brother". Right there in the juxtaposition of those two titles tells you all you need to know about the state of our country and it's info-tainment mindset. It's ok, you don't need to ask - yes I do feel dirty and hate myself for it. But that's the beauty of self-hatred, it's a perfect cycle, leading directly to self harm, self sabotage and indulgence in reckless behaviour - like reading the newspaper, watching the TV or just believing any guy when he says he'll call you.
I'm not even feeling especially bitter today, just bored with being bland, and sick up to the back pass with living in the suburbs. What fucking shit-holes we make for ourselves, and then squabble over the price of buying into them like sarky ill-mannered little rats. Ignorant, angry rats, gagging to hole-up somewhere and gnaw away at the wiring and stray dog kibble. Breeding as fast as we can so it's our bigoted, bored offspring tunneling away into the next natural area of our dwindling stockpile and roaming the streets bored and jacked up on cheap drugs and subsidised petrol looking for a new abuse to amuse for a few minutes. As long as it's not those icky fuckin rats from over the water. In the immortal words of Ms J: Fuck that shit.
Ex-xactly.
So, here I am. Sending out to you from the impacted colon of the arse of Australia. Since the Roman senate, politics has been about paying off the noisiest interests and distracting the dimmest or least powerful interests. The only fracture in this process at the moment - sport disappearing off the free-to-air. Bring back our circus! Riiiiiight. Not the creeping corporatisation of our public services, not the preventable diseases and deaths from reckless driving or the huge amount of money we as a country piss away in corrupt defence contracts or "lost" armaments, or the fact that our literacy levels are heading towards the same levels as Nelson's approval rating. No, we're pleasantly distracted by Guillard's haircut (or lack thereof) and the liberal party failing to grow a new head.
Well I don't have any answers. I'm part of the problem and I know it. I am disillusioned, cynical and fed-up. I've got more than half of my life in front of me - almost enough time to make sure that if I work 'hard enough' I can "self-fund" my decrepitude. Gee, thanks. It's not like I can even plan to do the reasonable thing and top myself when the time comes. That's been outlawed. Good thinking guys. And can anyone give a real reason for the criminalisation of self-responsibility in one's end days that isn't soft wet hand-wringing? No? I didn't think so.
I'm no more interested in politics than I am interested in the practise trepanning to relieve back-ache.
If we're talking about the bastard child of vigilante justice and corrupt management masquerading as leadership and patriotic paternalism, then yeah, we're probably on the same page, and my quick, accurate and honest answer is "no way". Am I addicted to it in the way of cheezy soaps and sleazy lying two-timing boyfriends - "way!".
It's my dirty secret, I don't think I'm worth a good life any more than the next sad, overweight, brain dead tv-addled moron. And I'm right. I get what I deserve, and I'm getting a lot of politics. And a new season of Biggest Looser - 6 nights a week. Alternated with "Big Brother". Right there in the juxtaposition of those two titles tells you all you need to know about the state of our country and it's info-tainment mindset. It's ok, you don't need to ask - yes I do feel dirty and hate myself for it. But that's the beauty of self-hatred, it's a perfect cycle, leading directly to self harm, self sabotage and indulgence in reckless behaviour - like reading the newspaper, watching the TV or just believing any guy when he says he'll call you.
I'm not even feeling especially bitter today, just bored with being bland, and sick up to the back pass with living in the suburbs. What fucking shit-holes we make for ourselves, and then squabble over the price of buying into them like sarky ill-mannered little rats. Ignorant, angry rats, gagging to hole-up somewhere and gnaw away at the wiring and stray dog kibble. Breeding as fast as we can so it's our bigoted, bored offspring tunneling away into the next natural area of our dwindling stockpile and roaming the streets bored and jacked up on cheap drugs and subsidised petrol looking for a new abuse to amuse for a few minutes. As long as it's not those icky fuckin rats from over the water. In the immortal words of Ms J: Fuck that shit.
Ex-xactly.
So, here I am. Sending out to you from the impacted colon of the arse of Australia. Since the Roman senate, politics has been about paying off the noisiest interests and distracting the dimmest or least powerful interests. The only fracture in this process at the moment - sport disappearing off the free-to-air. Bring back our circus! Riiiiiight. Not the creeping corporatisation of our public services, not the preventable diseases and deaths from reckless driving or the huge amount of money we as a country piss away in corrupt defence contracts or "lost" armaments, or the fact that our literacy levels are heading towards the same levels as Nelson's approval rating. No, we're pleasantly distracted by Guillard's haircut (or lack thereof) and the liberal party failing to grow a new head.
Well I don't have any answers. I'm part of the problem and I know it. I am disillusioned, cynical and fed-up. I've got more than half of my life in front of me - almost enough time to make sure that if I work 'hard enough' I can "self-fund" my decrepitude. Gee, thanks. It's not like I can even plan to do the reasonable thing and top myself when the time comes. That's been outlawed. Good thinking guys. And can anyone give a real reason for the criminalisation of self-responsibility in one's end days that isn't soft wet hand-wringing? No? I didn't think so.
I'm no more interested in politics than I am interested in the practise trepanning to relieve back-ache.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Silences & Secrets [dull, self-indulgent post. No need to read, really]
I've been having trouble writing lately, and after a bit of reflection, I realise it's because I don't tell enough emotional truth.
When I don't acknowledge the depth of my feelings and hopes, I am clamping down on who I am in a way that doesn't actually benefit me, or anyone around me. I keep quiet about stuff, I tell myself a sanitised version of things. I'm not saying I should be in some kind of uncontrolled verbal-diarrhoea-type-state, but that effectively I'm spending a lot of my time in that wide and expansive place that has so much room for so many of us - De Nial. I keep my own secrets from myself so well that over time I forget them. I hold my opinion so quietly that after a while it fades away. While non-attachment is generally a good thing, I haven't been doing it right - my non-attachment has been a barely disguised form of giving up. That's not good.
I thought about this when I was watching New Amsterdam. One of the things I like about John is that he stays authentic to himself - he tells the truth. He lives his life, and accumulates and looses, relationships, knowledge, stuff, love, family. If the people around him paid attention to what he says, they'd soon figure out his secret, but most of them don't. This is the privacy we have in the modern world - disinterest. Is there a cost? Sure there is! He's treated like a nutter by most of his colleagues, but he holds this in balance with the freedom of living his own truth.
The cost in my life from trying to control everyting from changing, or being lost, or forgotten or hurting has been to slowly ossify in a set of behavious that I never really wanted, but seemed like a good compromise at the time. This is what makes my writing stilted and slightly forced, and quick to dry up - because the price of control is a closed, entropic system, slowly leaking energy towards stasis.
I guess that it effects other parts of my life, but I can't really see them. I can only see it through the prism of this one frustration. Everything else in my life I seem to fatalistically accept as my lot. This systemic link to my own (previously useful survivial) behaviours and the current broader state of impasse has slowly emerged in front of my mind like lemon juice on paper under heat - I swear it wasn't there a minute ago! But now that it is, I better make a copy of it before it fades (trap for the new players with the lemon juice thing!) and make a move.
When I don't acknowledge the depth of my feelings and hopes, I am clamping down on who I am in a way that doesn't actually benefit me, or anyone around me. I keep quiet about stuff, I tell myself a sanitised version of things. I'm not saying I should be in some kind of uncontrolled verbal-diarrhoea-type-state, but that effectively I'm spending a lot of my time in that wide and expansive place that has so much room for so many of us - De Nial. I keep my own secrets from myself so well that over time I forget them. I hold my opinion so quietly that after a while it fades away. While non-attachment is generally a good thing, I haven't been doing it right - my non-attachment has been a barely disguised form of giving up. That's not good.
I thought about this when I was watching New Amsterdam. One of the things I like about John is that he stays authentic to himself - he tells the truth. He lives his life, and accumulates and looses, relationships, knowledge, stuff, love, family. If the people around him paid attention to what he says, they'd soon figure out his secret, but most of them don't. This is the privacy we have in the modern world - disinterest. Is there a cost? Sure there is! He's treated like a nutter by most of his colleagues, but he holds this in balance with the freedom of living his own truth.
The cost in my life from trying to control everyting from changing, or being lost, or forgotten or hurting has been to slowly ossify in a set of behavious that I never really wanted, but seemed like a good compromise at the time. This is what makes my writing stilted and slightly forced, and quick to dry up - because the price of control is a closed, entropic system, slowly leaking energy towards stasis.
I guess that it effects other parts of my life, but I can't really see them. I can only see it through the prism of this one frustration. Everything else in my life I seem to fatalistically accept as my lot. This systemic link to my own (previously useful survivial) behaviours and the current broader state of impasse has slowly emerged in front of my mind like lemon juice on paper under heat - I swear it wasn't there a minute ago! But now that it is, I better make a copy of it before it fades (trap for the new players with the lemon juice thing!) and make a move.
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