Guess who?

“In addition to the term ‘complex’, **** also coined those of the ‘collective unconscious’ and the ‘archetype’.”

Before I go any further, I have to mention that these are key terms in modern usage. “Collective unconscious” and “archetype” might be a little… precious, but think of how often you hear that someone has a “Napoleon Complex,” or an “Oedipus Complex.” Maybe I keep odd company, but I would suggest that it is also common to create descriptions of new “complexes” in conversation.

It makes me want to investigate exactly what it is I am talking about when I say “complex.”

“Specific contents of the collective subconscious were, he considered, archetypal images, such as the ‘Great mother’, the ‘Serpent’ or the ‘Shadow’. On his ethnological expeditions, **** had observed that these images occur in all cultures and must therefore be anchored in the human brain.”

Then he has to go and claim something like this, which is a little troublesome and disconnected.

Comments on the Second Presidential Debates: 8/7/08

The debate tonight was an inspiring experience for me, and I have found it, maybe out of a sense of perversity, to be a largely uninspiring period of time. It’s been so long that I’ve heard any public issue addressed in a reasonable, honest way, that when it happens I want to slap my hands and thank whoever is responsible for having the simple courage to say what is true.

This is the most important lesson to be learned. That it is possible to say things that are true, and that anybody can say them. Truth has its contexts, and it has its nuances, and neither the world of politics and business-the macro world-nor the even larger and more finely nuanced world of personal life-the micro world-can be helped by anything but a fire to accomplish something good.

The problem with saying something like that is that you, the reader, and myself, the writer, both immediately question ourselves, saying “Is that naïve? Do I have any fire to accomplish something good?”

You create effects of quality in all moments of your life. You experience the world-its breakups, its defeats, its sunrises and snowfalls-as good and bad. This simple acknowledgment, of the universality of complicated experience, signifies in any of us willing to step forward a fire to accomplish good.

Maayan told me about seeking “balance” in the visual design of her magazine.

Experimental Lectures: Still Representin’

I gave a lecture two weeks ago. Originally, I’d wanted to talk about what I call “automatic art.” The term refers to the process of using operations of chance (or mathematics) to create works of art. John Cage did this when he composed “12 Radios, 24 People,” which required the performers to adjust radios to predetermined frequencies on a predetermined schedule. While all the performers operations are controlled for, the location of the radios is not. Since different locations receive different combinations and strengths of radio stations, the piece cannot be the same in any two locations. Location, then, rather than any action by the performer, is the creative element in the piece. Cage’s algorithm simply permits location to enact its effect.

As I was preparing the lecture, I realized that to deliver a controlled, linear, sequentially-organized lecture on automatic processes and chance operations was sort of hypocritical. Or at odds with itself. The lecture had to be the product of a sequence of chance operations. Yet I still wanted it to function as a traditional lecture–providing facts and interpretation to the audience. So I rounded up all the concepts I’d considered for the lecture (including “Light Speed Travel,” “Finnegans Wake,” “Early Polar Expeditions“–I go for the gusto with these lectures), wrote them on little scraps of paper, and put them in a hat.

Don’t Run — It’s Just Deconstruction

A few weeks ago, pawing through the online edition of The New York Times, I came across a piece written by Stanley Fish about the effects of deconstruction on thought on this side of the pond. The Times is not the most unlikely place for a longish, pop-explanation of deconstruction and its impact on disparate modes of academic theory and politics. But neither is it so high-brow of a publication; some peg it as written for a 12th-grade reading level. But I suppose that’s the joy of the internet version of The New York Times.

What is begun is combined

What is begun is combined

I.

Initially it is a mezcla
of cosas like corn and wheatflour
speckled like cinammon in white tabemono.
At the stage of five, we cook
and the ingredients vanish
into a fiery inferiority.

The majoridad of veces we are unaware
of eating but when the food is gone
we are aware of that.

So our personalities are smears on
una plata para la camarera to clear.
We start on the page but grow like vines

Off it into this taciturn dimension.
Addicted to these sorts of hallucinations
which even a squirrel wouldn’t be.

And this is the state we find ourselves in:
seeking forms to deny
that a squirrel could teach
me how to be a man.

II.

On the night of the inkwell
not a boy but a moth
jealously masked, hovering
outside the closed post office.

I hope I am never forced
to replace those waking moments
when you rolled over to ask
what year is it? what country are we in?

And later I confessed I wouldn’t
have even been able to decide with certainty
if I was a person or an object
or even how to set about making
that decision.

It is the measurement itself
that we are unfit for,
so the suit can never be made.

III.

The string is pulled on la combinattoire.
It falls, and I am doubled again.

This problem precedes me,
though I run at day and walk at night.
My most successful trick has been
to hide in late hours.

My kimono is crossed over my body
in a Matadorian proverb of insolence.
If it were polite, we wouldn’t fear it
so therefore I infer that it is a leering fool.

But of course we have instructed it to behave this way.
Our final chastistement, meaningless,
with no opportunity for reform.

The Bird Life of Cold Springs

There are certain paradoxical elements to reality that creep into the mind in progressively more visceral ways. The absurdity of street signs, tiny proclamations of nonsense: “No Alcohol Beverage Allowed,” “Yield,” and “BUMP.” Those from a small army of them. From just today.

 

And the perverse ways we allow our minds to work. Concentrated on death and patterns of behavior, in a constant struggle with ourselves. And as much as some might like to say we don’t think enough—we don’t think about what’s happening to ourselves, our countries, the perspective of humans in the world—it usually seems to be more true that we think ourselves to distraction.

 

For example, the recent illness of my girlfriend’s cat. Sunny was diagnosed with an inoperable liver problem, and had not eaten in a week. She was brought to the city, to an expensive clinic, and operated on. Sunny is fourteen years old, comfortable, and well cared for. As I look at the list of categories this verbal record has amassed, my eye happens on “the scientific impulse,” and “the violence of the camera.” Together, they reflect something important about what’s happening to Sunny: “The scientific impulse/ the violence of the camera.”

 

Harder to say is exactly how. The scientific impulse operating on a cat is just as intrigued by the possibilities of affecting future reality as with doing good work on the meaningful job at hand. Which is creating a good end to this story—acting in a such a way that you feel right about what happened.

 

This is where the violence of the camera comes in. How does one develop a sense of rightness, or learn to recognize it when it comes? The same as with everything else. By observing behavior around us. Other people serve as models of all sorts: complicated, persuasive, repulsive, redemptive, subtle. We receive these images. It’s the ultimate function of our bodies; to observe carefully, record, sort, record again, generalize sets of principles, and then blast through them in concentric circles of daily living.

 

The camera creates a moment about which we know nothing, about which we can hear nothing. In which we are not present. Often from before we existed. Things which are just as haphazard and unknowable as the present moment. But the object of the photograph and the physically constrainable stream of television create a source of images so lucid that we are tricked into forgoing observation of many other things. The most obvious loss is the present moment. Sunny, fourteen years old, on the operating table. An expensive clinic in the city. Concentric circles of daily living.