Posts

Extraordinary Discourse 160

Visceral Release Lots of violence, rambunctious profanity, mass psychosis, and fun! And in case you missed some events, an extended newscast to keep you informed of what you really need to know. If for some inexplicable reason the newscast gets tiresome, the news sequence ends at just after 21 minutes in - feel free to fly over the News like Dorothy flew over the Hammerheads to the land of the Quadlings. There's great stuff after that. Thanks to Norm MacDonald Thanks to Mark Maron, WTF podcast . The term profane is derived from the Latin pro (before) and fanum (temple). …the wild realm of the sacred as it was/is before being caged into the temple of Father Time. It is free time/space. This prehistoric sacred is prior to the patriarchal sequestered "sacred" not merely temporally, but more importantly, in range and depth. Since it is not confined within the walls of any spatial or temporal temple, it transcends the "accepted" dichotomies between th...

Extraordinary Discourse 159

Autodidact's Intelligence Gathering All great ideas and innovations began life as "disruptive" from the periphery, from "outsiders" -- those people just going it alone, often "outside the box." Morris Berman calls these people the New Monastic Individuals (NMI), and Berman thinks this is where the future lies. I'm inclined to agree with him. Berman puts forth a "new monastic" model of action whereby individuals/groups get on and create new ways of doing things, without fanfare or large billboard announcements. Such monastic work, so to speak, often operates below the radar, being authentic in activity rather than seeking visibility. The monastic worker, in seeking change, chooses a way of life that has meaning and that can be a heritage for the family. Often the monastic worker strives for assisting change within their own communities. They are like ink dots on the paper, slowly spreading their impact by diligent yet creative work....

Extraordinary Discourse 158

Juggle The Hand You're Dealt If you are a writer or reader of a certain temperament, you celebrate the “postmodern condition,” in which the flux and flow of events dethrone the narrator’s assured voice. If you are a scholar exploring “posthumanism,” you might believe that the human subject can no longer speak as the master of circumstances. Yet if you are an ordinary worker, you need to find your voice. You need, like our Renaissance forbearers, to find principles of continuity and unity in how you account for your material experience. “Voice” is both a personal and a social issue. To hold fragmentary experiences together in time requires the capacity to step back from the power of each event to hurt or to disorient. To find one’s voice requires establishing some distance from the immediate, from the noumenal; sheer surrender to the moment weakens one’s voice. Of course in the midst of the most traumatic events, like a civil war, stepping back can occur only after the event...

Extraordinary Discourse 157

Walks Outside The Box Art has made us myriad-minded. Oscar Wilde

Extraordinary Discourse 156

Dots Connected And Otherwise Quotations in my works are like robbers by the roadside who make an armed attack and relieve an idler of his convictions. Walter Benjamin  In response, he made himself a diffuse, uncertain thing, a mass of contradictory, irresolvable voices that speak truth plurally. Zadie Smith, Speaking In Tongues

Extraordinary Discourse 155

Pivoting The Discourse Commission By Ezra Pound From “Contemporania” Go, my songs, to the lonely and the unsatisfied, Go also to the nerve-wracked, go to the enslaved-by-convention, Bear to them my contempt for their oppressors. Go as a great wave of cool water, Bear my contempt of oppressors.       Speak against unconscious oppression, Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative, Speak against bonds. Go to the bourgeoise who is dying of her ennuis, Go to the women in suburbs.       Go to the hideously wedded, Go to them whose failure is concealed, Go to the unluckily mated, Go to the bought wife, Go to the woman entailed.       Go to those who have delicate lust, Go to those whose delicate desires are thwarted, Go like a blight upon the dullness of the world; Go with your edge against this, Strengthen the subtle cords,       Bring confidence upon the algae and the ...

Extraordinary Discourse 154

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All These Things And More 2014! Leaping in. The topsoil of this "arcades project" is around 30-some years deep, with, as all good soil, deeper bits and newer shit. I consider myself a longtime player in the underplayground in these 30-odd "neoliberal" bullshit years. Here is my collection of stuff I picked up in my underground tunneling, under the mall, beneath the school, beneath the bottom line. Jump in anywhere, from the first in the series to the most recent - they are equally relevant, their themes endlessly entwine and blend. Jack Anson Rabinbach, editor of New German Critique summarizes Benjamin’s thought […]: The world is… dispersed in fragments, and in these fragments, the fragments of the world that God has now turned his back on, reside certain presences, which attest to the former existence of their divine character. You cannot actively go about to discover these divine presences, but they can be revealed. According to Rabinbach, Be...