Days of '22

He sits at an ornate banquet table, but there are no guests. No one drinking wine. No one to tell an off-color joke. There's just the man wearing a drab suit. He once had the tragicomic face of a beautiful clown from a Jim Jarmusch film - the sunken eyes, the slightly pouted lips, the blank expression that says, "Fired from another job, I'm walking home. I should be sad, but I remember a song by Brecht and Weill and I notice a bird on the telephone wire taking in the sun." There are no guests at the table, but there are attendees. Two officials sit far at the other end. The man thinks: "We can't even hear each other. Should I yell or just mumble in my monotone? They don't really care what I say. They look white as sheets, in any case. I need more coffee. I could have been on stage -- falling down, getting up, slapping the dust off of my pants. Saying mysterious lines by Chekhov. I have the eyes for it. Or had. They were once so lively, like Lopakhin's, 'I know exactly the potential of the people around here. They have the potential to lie. They have the potential to deceive. They have the potential to charm. They’ll change nothing. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I lie awake thinking, My God! You've given us so much. Huge forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here, ought really to be giants.' "

"Ray Donovan" and the Patriarchy

Ray Donovan won't be one of my favorite shows. I'm going to try to stop watching it after one season. It is bleak and brutal. It is, however, an effective portrayal of how the patriarchy manages to induce grinding misery even in men, the beneficiaries of the sexist order. The patriarchy oppresses women by limiting - even seeking to eliminate entirely - their agency and power, imposing on women the most constrained and reduced identity possible - that of a unpaid domestic servant with no rights and the opportunity to be perceived as either a Madonna or a (sexist epithet). The gender caste system permits men power and agency, but demands of them that they limit their emotional spectrum to aggression, dominance, the absence of vulnerability and very limited intimacy with family and friends. In many cases, as in the Donovan family, not even sadness is permitted. No grief allowed. The men learn they must bury their pain with drugs and alcohol, with fighting and often with the oppression of women - per the design of the wretched system.

"Don't Tell Me How to Live" by Kid Rock - The Trump-o-fascist Anthem

The new song by Kid Rock is the the manifesto for Trump-o-fascist movement. It presents, better than any political tract ever could, the core beliefs in selfishness, vanity and the contemptuous rejection of all social conscience and responsibility. It is the cry in the wilderness of the American settler colonialist entering the Cumberland Gap in 1800 and screaming, as Kid Rock does in the chorus, "Ain't nobody gonna tell me how to live!" Manhood as an eternal teenage bender. Manhood as monad. Politics and citizenship means to jet into the heavens on a rocket in the shape of a giant hand flipping the bird. In the end, for Kid Rock and Trump-o-fascism, there is only the self - the self and a gigantic fuck you to every attempt to ask it to care.

O grande desafio do artista é viver

O grande desafio do artista é viver - viver e não sucumbir à loucura, à autodestruição e à morte precoce. Os dons da criatividade, da imaginação livre e do fluxo constante de ideias são muitas vezes associados com a instabilidade emocional e a vulnerabilidade, a mania e o desespero. Acredito que essa dualidade pode ser gerenciada e a autodestruição pode ser evitada. No entanto, esta tarefa hercúlea muitas vezes não é percebida nem falada com franqueza.

A maioria dos dons do artista é irrelevante para o mercado e o mercado serve como uma espécie de deus misterioso de admiração e reverência em nossa sociedade. Consequentemente, conselhos práticos sobre como viver como artista são escassos - simplesmente não somos importantes o suficiente. Somos também vistos como ameaça à brutal ordem estabelecida. E assim morremos jovens. Somos vencidos pelo outro lado do dom artístico.

Mas não precisa ser desse jeito. Quando reconhecemos que a criatividade, por sua natureza, contém as sementes da própria destruição, podemos aprender a estar preparados para as tempestades. Podemos desenvolver hábitos e habilidades para limitar a duração, a frequência e a intensidade delas. Podemos ser práticos. Podemos viver guiados pelo amor-próprio e não pelo senso de inferioridade e autodestruição tantas vezes romantizadas pela própria arte.

-- DH 1/22, traduzido do ingles com Martha Maria Costa

Nostagia

You were unhappy. Your body had problems. You would stop walking to massage your feet. This was worse when you were carrying socks full of coins to buy a sandwich and coffee. But you could always talk to the homeless. They were open and friendly. The sun would rocket down through the western sky like a stone of fire and leave the city cold. The café had a parquet floor and strange coffee - muddy, approaching sour. Men and women at tables writing, noise music, zines, outbursts of sound from the punk kids drinking cups of water and everyone lightheaded with so much longing. Your upstairs neighbor played "Shoot Out the Lights" loudly. You became friends. He was more beautiful than you and the women you met preferred him. Another neighbor was an old German immigrant, named Horst, who left his keys in the door. This was more convenient. The tree outside the lead paned windows flowered white and pale yellow in the spring. The couple who owned the turreted building watched business channels on cable TV, tracking their investments. You didn't have any skill or any persistent interest in money, so you vacillated between feeling superior and inferior to the landlords, Bob and Nancy.

No Mast High Enough, No Bridge Too Old: The Void of Bezos

At this point, it is predictable, "normal" when land-water-sky-plant species-animal species-community-peoples-cultures-the self-the soul are sacrificed on the altar of profit. That anti-rite been playing out in its current form for 500 years. It is shocking, and emotionally devastating, but almost tedious or monotonous at this point. Among the many extremes to get normalized under such circumstances, is the vast dead plain that inhabits the land of the soul in ultra-rich individuals (and even those of us aspiring to be them). That's what I thought of upon learning of this latest Bezos Excess™. Only when the simple calm and joy of walking down a snowy path in the morning or reading a poem with a cup of coffee or having a long conversation with a friend has been internally obliterated and rendered unavailable to a person, do humans engage in such idiocy and excess. There is no yacht with masts high enough and there are not enough historic bridges in the world for Jeff Bezos to deconstruct that could replace what has been abandoned inside of him. Likely, only a gesture that is the opposite - maybe sitting at a picnic table in a public park, looking at dandelions and feeling the breeze – could ever begin to repopulate the rubble within Jeff Bezos.

BULLSHIT AND HUSTLE (poem)

Bullshit and hustle Hustle and bullshit

In for a penny you're in for a pound

Open the gates of the city

And dig a hole to China

When the cold wind blows

Out on the plateau

Hang your lanterns

From the willow tree

And say a prayer to Saint Anthony

George Washington spied the striped bass

Leaping in the stream

Shimmying silver mirror flecks

In rainbow waterlight

Bullshit and hustle

Made it all briefly his

A man in a bowtie auction-barked

The acres and the possible futures

Lanterns swung in the wind

St. Peter stood waiting at the gates

Bullshit and hustle

Hustle and bullshit

From the Chesapeake Bay

To the shimmering West

For Morris Berman and Derrick Jensen