Thursday, October 23, 2003
And what's more, if you are scared of spiders then you will always, subconsciously, be on the look-out for spiders, and thus see more spiders than the people who are not afraid of spiders see.
10/23/2003 08:37:00 pm
The below is also, of course, part of the reason why I am an asshole.
10/23/2003 08:28:00 pm
There are three tragic things about the recent (apparent) suicides of singer-songwriters Matthew Jay and Elliott Smith, and the “music world’s loss” isn’t any of them. The first tragedy is the loss of two human beings; sons, brothers, lovers, friends and more, no doubt, to the various and individual people around them. I cannot begin to comprehend how the people who actually knew these two young men (24 and 34 respectively, almost the same as me and my eldest brother) feel, and I shan’t do them a disservice or disrespect by even trying.
The second tragedy is that they will no doubt be added to the pantheon of musicians, pop and rock stars, who led sad or crazed lives and who died early. The myth of the romantic soul shall remain undimmed; the artistic temperament too fragile and beautiful for this world, chewed up and spat out by the music industry. It stretches back to Keats. No; it stretches back to Jesus. Lennon, Cobain, Joplin, Hendrix, Drake, both Buckleys, Coltrane, Aaliyah even. You can count James Dean too. Canonised by death. Is it a basic human need, to try and understand death by mythologizing it, by making those who die young somehow seem more special and wondrous and delicate than the rest of us? Perhaps. Perhaps it’s a capitalist thing, the need to use somebody’s myth and image to market what little product they managed to create in a short lifetime to as large an audience as possible? No. I’m not that cynical. The fetishisation of the talented young deceased will continue, I’m afraid, and it makes me sick to my stomach.
The third tragedy isn’t a third at all, but a refraction of the second. Or, rather, the second is a refraction of the third, which is the simple fact that here we have the lives of two young men, two amongst thousands every year, who felt unable to continue living in this world. People who thought, for whatever reason, that they had no option, no chance, no reason, to make their life into whatever they felt they needed or wanted in order to make it worth prolonging being alive. Two young men who felt so bad, in fact, that they had to desperately stop being alive.
I can’t pretend to understand depression. I am, I think, to aware (read ‘solipsistic’) to find myself in a position where I felt I no longer had control enough over my own life to make it worthwhile. I have felt low. I have felt my feet slipping into the undertow. I have wanted to run away or leave or break things or change who I am and who sees who I am. But I know that’s nothing. I’ve seen too many people I care about be reduced to real and persistent mental and emotional anguish, anguish so severe that it requires medication, counselling, and training to ameliorate. Not cure; ameliorate. (As much as I can care about anyone after being raised to think in a language where the self-singular pronoun is privileged over and above any group or singular ‘other’ pronoun, capitalised, no less, I, made more important than you or them or us. And a language where I can make no linguistic distinction between a friend and a stranger, between someone who sells me a train ticket and someone I share a bed with; they are all you. You can claim the English language is the richest in the world but compared to the French, with tu and vous to distinguish between and demonstrate affection towards people other than yourself, our single, dismissive you is a barbaric and damaging term.) I don’t like the term clinical depression but the fact is that 50% of people in the western world (and we think we’re so civilised because we have phones that you can play games on) will experience a period of it at some time; clinical because it is diagnosed and treated. God only knows how many people who feel the same or worse, who should go to a doctor or counsellor, never do.
The fadeout of Blue by Bark Psychosis might just be the saddest, most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. At least today, anyway.
I had Matthew Jay’s first two EPs, but gave them away a year or more ago because, while I thought they were pretty enough in their way, I couldn’t care for them. I have only ever, to my knowledge, heard one Elliott Smith song (“Baby Britain”), which was on a compilation CD made by Embrace and given out to fans who attended one of their secret gigs a couple of years ago, and which I remember thinking was wonderful. Not, however, wonderful enough for me to go out and buy his records.
Olly, this is why I’m worried about you, and why I alternately want to walk away from you or kick your arse. Who you are really is only limited by your imagination and your ability to see through what you imagine into actuality.
10/23/2003 08:27:00 pm
Any ends necessary that don't fuck up anybody else. Balance and bravery.
10/23/2003 11:54:00 am
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
Decide who you want to be and take steps to make that who you are. Do something differently every day. Notice when a situation arises which necessitates you respond, and pledge not to respond in the manner which is typical of you. Do not be bound to system and definition because of who you think you are. Be aware at every second that you do not have to be acting the way you are acting. Reduce all angles to zero.
"If you are ten degrees and walk a mile from your origin then you may appear broad but it is an illusion. If you are no degrees, zero, then you have no origin and you are as broad as you are non-existent. With OK Computer Radiohead opened up to 180 degrees and walked a mile and appeared to be everything. Where do you go from there? Back upon yourself? No. You dissolve yourself, you become no degrees, and you become no degrees by going full circle, reaching 360 and closing."
Dissolve yourself. At this point you can go in any direction and the direction is decided by YOU.
A conversation between young Sam and I. Which just happens to be, in a roundabout way, about this kind of thing.
From last January...
Are we talking extreme existential desolation here? Nihilism as result of existential hopelessness, voidness of the soul, post-God lack of purpose? My favourite subject. Taxi Driver, Keep The Aspidistra Flying, Fight Club, Nausea, The Outsider, hooray! Urban masculine postmodern existential miserablist ennui! All the protagonists and all the writers are male! Because we, men, aeselfish wee bastards! Oh yes! Guilty at our lack of success, beauty, at repulsed by our repugnant laziness and selfishness and lack of drive and passiona nd commitment, crippled by our inferiority complexes, we invent existentialism! "I am not lazy, I am not selfish, I am deeply sensitive and profound and in great philosophical pain at all times..." I love it. And I also hate it. William and I regularly discuss at length techniques for living in a modern world and not succumbing, aggreeing that the best way is to get to the bottom of the existential trough and then bounce back up again (both of us having seemingly done this - my particular rock bottom was reached in a strange confluence of drugs, drink, Sartre, perfume, ecological disgust and complete absence of faith and hope = great fun!), realising on the return journey just what a twat you've been. The point at which nihilism occurs as a possible alternative/way out/solution is, I believe, just before you hit the bottom of the trough.
But isn't nihilism as idealism = purposelessness as purpose? The belief that no principles or beliefs can have meaning is in itself a belief and does in itself have a meaning! Isn't therefore the pursuit of nihilism an effort in itself and therefore un-nihilistic? Is it something that requires conscious thought or is it achieved by regressing to the idiot savant state, or Deleuze & Guitarri's condition of the schizophrenic? And at that point are you nihilistic or do you just act in a way which is nihilistic? And is there, at root, a difference?
But anyway. How to bounce back up? Become Zen! Yes yes yes. Abdicate from the Western duality of mind(spirit/soul) and body, of art and science, of romantic and classical! Yes yes yes. Seriously, I read The Tao Te Ching and The Tao Of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, plus some Debord and Heidegger and lots of stuff about Buddhism and so on and so forth, thought about things a lot until I came to the conclusion that it's not that bad. All these things that piss you off (the mundanity of most discourse, the insincerity of everyday communication, the insidiousness of business, the ulterior/interior motives of government, the dehumanising effects of city life, the unstoppable flow of capitalism, the creation within us of false and disproportionate desires [we're not all gonna be beautiful artists, rock stars, writers, monarchs footballers], pollution, any of it, all of it), you can avoid some of them (don't like living in the city? Don't live there! There is always a way out) and those you can't avoid you can live with, and even enjoy some of them (those petty, redundant conversations - just 'cos they're petty doesn't mean they're evil, doesn't mean they can't be enjoyed or productive). Culture itself does not make anyone into a pariah, it can't, it's a thingy, it doesn't exist, it's just a collection of stuff we do. You make yourself into a pariah and therefore you can unmake yourself into a pariah too. And you keep reading and you keep listening and looking, and you see the people who are getting on with their lives and are happy and you don't copy what they do so much as how they do it, because it's not about events or objects or articles but rather about approaches. Nihilism! Yay! It's escapable, and existential angst which causes it is escapable too!
are you nihilistic or do you just act in a way which is nihilistic? And is there, at root, a difference?
A mate of mine kept on cheating on his girlfriend, and everytime he'd do it, he'd ring me the next day and say "but I'm not a bad person am I? I don't mean to do it!" After a while I got bored of this little roleplay, and replied, very sensibly, "if cheating on one's girlfriend makes one a bad person, then you ARE a bad person, simply because you do cheat on your girlfriend. The intention matters not one jot." We try and seperate the 'being' from the 'acting' when really they are one and the same, the 'being' in our logic tied to the 'soul' and the acting tied to the 'body', when there is no duality between the two! Stop talking about your liver or your legs or your ears as if you bought them and realise that they are you and you are them and that that is not a big thing, it's just the way it is and they can change and you can change and nothing is immutable! Yes yes yes!
Nihilism = bad for you, and objectionable, and yet you still quite enjoy it, like wallowing in self-pity or picking a really bad scab. It gives you an excuse to be shit and to be a shit, takes off any of that oh so burdonsome weight of expectation, for a little while at least. Cos you either grow out of it or you die! A|nd the weight of expectation is never really gone anyway, never really divorced, it just gets hidden, and it'll come back. After all, that's why you're a nihilist, isn't it? Getting rid of the weight of expectation means embracing now and not the future or the past, and nihilism is about not even embracing now, not embracing anything, except futility, and that's wrong, because now isn't futile! Now is great!
So, to conclude, nihilism = dud. Getting out of nihilism = classic.
-- Nick Southall (n.j.southall@ex.ac.uk), January 22nd, 2003.
For more...
Next, read The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart.
You do not have to be the way you think you are.
10/22/2003 07:38:00 pm
Oliver, fucking stop it. Stop painting yourself into a fatalistic, paranoid corner. I shall elaborate tonight. But for now, just fucking stop it.
10/22/2003 03:35:00 pm
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Version 150.
10/21/2003 08:59:00 am
|
|
