let's see if i can make this short and sweet (by which i mean not short, as convoluted as i can muster cuz that's my style, and brutal). recently i wrote:
I'm gutless. I want to be a badass but, I dislike intentional cruelty. What am I withholding anyway: my inestimable friendship, a chance for her to do that closure thing, or the favorite cobbler emergency: a booty call? I toy with absolute crudeness and cruelty because it's fun, and because it's useful to explore, but I only wish I could dispense so, but never do.
and
In a poem, Auden offers, "... indifference is the least / We have to dread from man or beast." I don't quite get it, because indifference is pretty sucky. A takeaway nonetheless is that it is still dread-worthy. Not replying is like indifference, I think. Indifference or indifference plus? The poem is The More Loving One.
so these will be some themes i may waddle in, posing as a sort of sequel to my last largely/fully ignored entry.
convolution, let's go. roberto bolaño's novella, titled
By Night in Chile, starts:
I am dying now, but I still have many things to say. I used to be at peace with myself. Quiet and at peace. But it all blew up unexpectedly. That wizened youth is to blame. I was at peace. I am no longer at peace. There are a couple of points that have to be cleared up. So, propped up on one elbow, I will lift my noble, trembling head, and rummage through my memories to turn up the deeds that shall vindicate me and belie the slanderous rumours the wizened youth spread in a single storm-lit night to sully my name. Or so he intended. One has to be responsible, as I have always said. One has a moral obligation to take responsibility for one's actions, and that includes one's words and silences, yes, one's silences, because silences rise to heaven too, and God hears them, and only God understands and judges them, so one must be very careful with one's silences. I am responsible in every way. My silences are immaculate. Let me make that clear. Clear to God above all. The rest I can forego. But not God. I don't know how I got on to this. Sometimes I find myself propped up on one elbow, rambling on and dreaming and trying to make peace with myself.
bolaño is suppose to be this moment's it lat-am writer, nevermind that, at the tender age of 50, he's been truly dead for 'bout 5 years. don't worry if you ain't hip to his prose stylings yet, while i think the cool factor deadlines with my partaking in the groupie party, i think as the books (of which i read only one, and a wee one at that) that will stake his reputation are his lengthier pieces, like
The Savage Detective and
2666, where thick book spines, latino root, and, i assume as not having read, ample experimental bent - jorgie borges, tommie bernhard, and davey lynch are typical comparison points - i wager, if you read any bobbie bolaño's novels/novellas, you will be the only person of your clique who will have done so. i have
Savage Detective on my to-read (eventually) stack; if you do read it, feel free to share.
his writing is said to be a markedly new voice or next voice, away from that boom (those yarns of dictators, whores and magic realism, ringlead by vargas llosa, fuentes, and macondoite garcía márquez) or those anti-boom-ers (whoever they are, but from what i hear: european/pop/postmodern looking, which tend to be imitative, and therefore usually second-rate). uh, i actually do not read a lot, hardly any, lat-am books, so add a salt pinch. bolano does set himself far apart because, from
By Night, there is something wild going on, which can be interpreted as "unique," "new," or "fresh," and there is this precise control over things that have to do with words and sentences, like imagery, pacing, tone, word choices (as much as a translation tells), etc.
By Night has a dizzying quality, because there are things like (per the borges and lynch nods) surrealism and (bernhard-land) a mad man's rant, which somehow always have long, shifting and dramatic sentences; dizzying, or boring. the way i read, however, ain't too much of an roadblock for leisure's pleasure, i pass over stuff until hitting on scraps of narrative or lyricism that turns me on, which
By Night gots lots.
anyway, i proposed (recently) silence. does my silence rises to god and heaven? very carefully? and immaculately? thank you bolaño. more
con-
volution because silence, an old slogan formulated, = death. though, when i think silence,
it is david lynch's movies. he is best known, probably, for putting together dense surreal dream/fantasy/nightmare puzzles, plots and images. but i'm most stuck on the soundscapes (and music) he creates, where silence roars, hums and drones, and otherwise is purposefully present, lush, haunted and/or often violent. also
Mulholland Dr. contains a club silencio and the movie ends with an evocation, "silencio." you know what else? i previously considered
Lost Highway as the better
Mulholland, because with similar fantasy/reality bifurcation, i thought its exploration on male in/adequacy more compelling. but. googling around for silencio i found a bit more to
Mulholland, like,
diane/betty was likely abused as a child.
1 it fits well plot-wise (and lynch preoccupation-wise), and gives a, i want to say richness but it feels like an awful, awful way to describe child abuse. i'll say texture instead, a texture that augments the watts character and different types of motivation, and wraps the movie more tightly together. it is awful for it to take child abuse to read betty/diane more sympathetic too. but. i want to get my hand on the dvd to check the accuracy of my memory, from which recalls enough signs to credit the abuse idea; still, i like to make sure, i do not like, normally, extra textual readings. the same source that outlined the abuse backstory offered a connection of
Mulholland to godard's technicolor knockout movie
Le mépris. i dig that. among many odds'n ends, bardot's character is camille, the "real" but no less fantasized rita is camilla. and
Le mépris ends with an evocation, "silence," subtitled in italian as "silencio." interesting.
2 kind of?
how or why silence = death was appropriated by the pink triangle movement?
the same
Mulholland and silencio e-source brought up the proposition that the greatest sin there is, is silence. further googling: an assumed quote but absent where and when which kinda diffuses the potential steel cage match with auden, is from holocaust leftover elie wiesel via, "to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all." you know what, i'm going to limb out and say wiesel never ever said that, but that someone, by paraphrasing some of his statements, said he said it; that's the closest i got from google,
3 and until something contrary comes up with a where/when citation, that is what i will keep saying. wiesel is properly credited with:
Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil. 1986.4
Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment. And this is one of the most important lessons of this outgoing century's wide-ranging experiments in good and evil. 1999.5
which does not help as auden's poem weighed in in 1957. i guess there is little purpose in trying to reconcile auden's indifference against wiesel's indifference.
Refugee Blues - "Stood on a great plain in the falling snow; / Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro: / Looking for me and you, my dear, looking for me and you" - with mentions of hitler and german jews, was out by 1939, so auden would not be one to make the, at the time, common but specious excuse, "we never knew."
indifference is the least to be dread from man and beast even with the genocide legacy? auden's line, i suppose, is for indifference he is being (poetically, hypothetically) subjected to; in a way, the narrator professing that stick and stone fractures, but the stars paying no mind don't,
6 which is a distinction. i still feel it is a puzzling assertion, but, as well, how does ten thousand stand and march at the same time? and, if elie pushes the requirement for speaking out against injustice, why new found appreciation in shutting the fuck up on israel's mis/handling of palestine and palestinians?
assassinated 19th century president lincoln did not say: "To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."
7as well, dead irish bernie shaw gave: "The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity."
8oh, there is a world of difference in the silence or indifference i espoused and what the notables describe; theirs is much more for the political realm. but with my protestation for being a mere dilettante in absolute crudeness/cruelty and disliking intentional cruelty, i cannot help being suspicious. have i been carrying out my evil daydream wishes, then, to boot, bragging about indifference plus? so strange, i say there is a world of difference, and. difference spreading.
so there is this thing where i read and watch (relatively) complicated books and movies.
Le mépris, a kind of shocking thing is that when it was released, and contrary to its late 1990s re-release as a art house picture, was distributed as a mainstream movie: godard skyrocketing hype, blonde bardot was the it sex kitten, big money budget and so forth; i read, as i was not yet born circa 60s. it's hard to imagine anything as nobly/frustratingly daring getting wide release these days. not that it should necessarily not have a wide appeal, but not being easily digested is another matter.
Mulholland is tough, but to me, and without disparaging how good and fun it is, it is still bound to a traditional, close system narrative; once you get it, you get what it is more or less about.
Le mépris' tableau of, among other things, relationship wreckage is open, at turns messy, sporadic and abstract. convoluted also is gertrude stein's writings, like:
A CARAFE, THAT IS A BLIND GLASS.
A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.9
this link
here is one practical takedown, hopefully too a good starter for more reading/appreciating gertrude stein and other experimental works/art.
cubist gertrude stein, i have not read too much from her. i left off: and. and let's say it's not, as i purport, a world of difference with my silence.
let's say my silence is the epitome of evil. it would be awful. hurting someone usually is. intentionally, now. then. it would be unbearable.
or difficult to stomach. when i think about it. if. i wonder if that's what i really mean. could be.
let's say my silence is not the epitome of evil.
i do feel slightly tricked, or perhaps deceived by pretty word play; tricks are something a whore does for money. or candy. folks, casually it seems, insist on extremes and extreme duality: greatest, most, worst, epitomes, etc. referring to things in those terms is dramatic, but as to real life and real life situations, eh. indifference may be the epitome of evil. that much worse? it would be nice not to be talked down to, as if i or other readers were nincompoop gods, with fatal allergies to nuance. to be honest, i was set to quit my well worn silence, as it were, to err on safety's side, to avoid epitome of evil. then instead, i was dead set to safeguard that tired silence to not fall, like a klutz, into some kind of pascal's wager's trap. easy on the eyes extremes abdicate responsibility too.
let's say, as bolaño writes, silence carries with it a moral obligation. i am responsible for my silence. huh. writing that, well, that didn't magically answer jack shit. i don't know. nuance may, after all, fucking suck.
is it worth raising - rick warren's invitation is indifference?
there is a famous feud between garcía márquez and vargas llosa that reaped a 30 year long silence between the two former buddies. it is unnerving that, and i have only read garcía márquez, but assume it applies to vargas llosa too, where one reads, or writes, to open or shoulder the enormous field of possibilities in supernatural sympathy that such a feud exists/persists. in my black and white perspective, the feud (all feuds?), if not phonies and liars outright, makes these two writers gravely suspect.
10 "Grave the vision Venus sends / of supernatural sympathy," auden warned in a different poem.
11 the b-side is my own education on the single hurt color. what exactly am i coming away with? - ammunition for being more recalcitrant seems pitifully awful. at the same time, what am i withholding? her coming back with power, power?
... we're hungry like the wolves hunting dinner dinner
And we're moving with the packs like hyena ena.12let's say i dislike intentional cruelty. that is what i am, actually, doing. silence is that. it's also not absolutely, or the uttermost expression of that. i spoke of complicated art, books, movies, music, etc., and their purpose and i'll not fib or pose, i am drawn to them mainly for the silly and lewd jokes (gertrude stein is alas quite a dirty bird) and awkward, solo rump shaking in my living room (cuz m.i.a.'s beats were too evil). the residue, however, is discontent. perhaps. heavy discontent for what and how and why of status quo. that is silence now, which is preferably over most of the other alternatives, many times over, especially given my perchance for a thud-life, downer attitude, but even so as the best option, silence has its demerits. one, namely that it forecloses, - let's say this jilted sweetheart is, even if it is for emotional finality but more if it is for some kind of personal transformation (as friend, person, world citizen, whatever),
13 is sincere - silence forecloses whatever small way i can possibly facilitate that; affirmatively so. in that small, small because, come fucking on, it's not hard to figure out, i'm monstrously flawed but can muster grade-a amends rote, small but not minimal then, way i may be backstopping an evil and or cruelty that outweighs whatever it is that makes silencio beneficial. may. be. or may be not.
not an improvement on silence, i e-reply:
dear a (for a person),
first, if you ever write to me again, please learn to use the spell check function.
the rest, just apologize. don't tie your apology to a demand for forgiveness, or other accusations. it makes your apology phony. and, if you explain why so, the better. apologize, say why, and say it won't happen again, at least to your ability's best and accept responsibility otherwise.
i'll likely not give a damn regardless. because i ...
and so forth.
Wiesel's interlocutor pointed out that, "as a survivor of the Nazi terror, you have taught that silence is the greatest sin, that it should always be avoided."
taught, as opposed to stated. also, this source addresses certain questions as to wiesel and the ethical dimensions of the palestinian issue.
10. a reason why i don't like extra textual reading, because it pollutes, to a degree, the work itself. a work of art (or craft), i feel, is an independent entity.
11. probably taken completely out of context, but. Lullaby, a lovely bombshell indictment on love. first stanza:
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtless children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me,
The entirely beautiful.
12. Bamboo Banga off m.i.a.'s newest cd Kala.
13. i hate closure, by the way. or i think closure is code for free run emotional violence. what is it about closure that makes it perfectly acceptable to tell someone "i'm over you," especially when time and reality makes that assumption a given. i understand emotional finality can be done without resumed emotive shelling, but i am speaking of how it is generally and widely applied (and make neither accusations from those old sad songs of experience nor predictions what anyone may do). even though as it is part of the relationship open quote process close quote and a skimpy final price to pay for another's relief - jesus via irs agent forerunner matt also adds, i paraphrase, that those who want to save their lives/comforts will lose it - i put up too much protest and need to just take it? great, now i make myself out to be like jesus lugging that crossbar while the discourteous security cohort struck, spat & mocked - though these modern days, we call it doing the three-seventy-second, and have gotten around to incorporating without limitation:
a. Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;
b. Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;
c. Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;
d. Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;
e. Forcing naked male detainees to wear women's underwear;
f. Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;
g. Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;
h. Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;
i. Writing "I am a Rapest" (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;
j. Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee's neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture;
k. A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee;
l. Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;
m. Taking photographs of dead ... detainees.
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