every time i enter a bookstore, i add a truly distressing number of books to my Big Damn List which i will probably never be able to finish. and then i pause and consider all the literature, non-fiction, and bestselling entertainment that have so far been published. and all the interest-perking works that have yet to be contracted. and how no one since John Milton and other 17th century scholars with eidetic memory and absurd amounts of money has the time or the resources to track down and absorb all of the music, movies, television, essays, fiction, poetry, plays, visual or performance art, etc that has ever been and/or is currently being produced.
technology has caught up with the creatively-inclined inhabitants of wealthy countries, and so this last century has been spent self-publishing all sorts of projects that would never have seen the light of day even as recently as the 1920s, when the mostly white, mostly male, always affluent, and eternally erudite people of the world were the only successful artistic types. nowadays, anyone gets acclaim from numerous supposedly-prestigious societies that no one has ever heard of, and therefore becomes 'known' in ever diminishing bubbles of popularity that have no impact or resonance with the idea of mainstream society.
for example, how many names out of these current world poets laureate are recognizable by any majority? and how many people in those majorities can name poetry by those writers? what prestige is there in a manifold mediocrity?
i'm all for breaking down unfair boy's club boundaries, but whatever happened to the positive kind of standardization? the one that meant if so-and-so said you were worthwhile, that yes, objectively, you were? because i want to embody that, but i can't think of a single name newer than Sylvia Plath (of the 1950s, so 60 years ago) that provides instantaneous artistic acknowledgment; even if someone thinks she was shit, or only recalls her suicide story, she's still remembered by America's semi-educated masses. the only people with that kind of fame in the modern world are tween celebutantes and cultural douchenozzles.
Showing posts with label snobbery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label snobbery. Show all posts
Saturday, July 10
Wednesday, June 23
without you, i'm nothing: six people who make me, every day
not to my best friends, because they are obvious and anything i would say to them i hope they already know. anything i haven't expressed i could never admit.this may sound sarcastic at times, but every word is sans cere.
****
1. you inspire me. conversing with you, i sit up straighter, shoot the shit sharper, and snark snider. i hope one day you'll realize how far you outstrip me, gather up your stardust and expand. i hope you never do.
i like to sift through your photographs and note how cohesive your composition never fails to be. i like to then look at my own photos and struggle with whether or not to throw them all out and pretend i never tried to overstep my point-and-shoot kodak limits in the first place.
nothing is healthier for a self-absorbed pseudo-artiste than to realize she's actually quite shit, and should go sacrifice her soul to a cubicle.
2. you bring out everything i fear about myself and make me love it. i am always at my most self-destructive around you, and i never am happier. you keep me honest; keep me aware that i am not a 'good' person and that Antihero is the archetype i am because Antiheroes don't want redemption.
i suspect one day you'll thinspirate yourself out of existence but the ride there will be exquisite [as will that trip from the Eiffel Tower].
3. you vindicate me. if i had been alone and overpowered by that incessant pressure, i may have cracked. i may have given up. i may have relinquished everything i stand for, and been led docile as they could have ever hoped.
but you finally, finally, came into my life, and regardless of my jokes, i would never have sought a replacement. you are my calvary, my confirmation, my compatriot.
i pray for you under onslaught of every word i cannot twist, every opinion i cannot reconstrue, every mark i cannot shape. but you are vibrant, and you are powerful; you have my dusty footprints to guide you if so you need them.
4. you are all the parts of me i left behind. you are that which curves my feet and directs my path. in no kind way, but all the necessary ones, you are what jolted awake my ambition, and the snark that fueled my flight away from you.
i wonder if you have found your own reasons to grow, or if you are still content in the squalor of your personality. many days, i do not care, but every day i inhale deeply the air that does not reek of our rotting.
5. you polarize me. with each callous phrase you utter, blundering your way to success with a carefully intuitive grasp of networking policies and a vast reserve of dumb luck, i burn colder and bluer. you are my moral south. in any situation, i recall you, the shadow in the mirror. always your black memory affirms the shades in which i must logically myself be cloaked, and i navigate accordingly.
i blush for the cruel mantle i fasten on your shoulders, but you forever bear it with little affect. one day, i would like to strip you of your many superciliious folds, and examine the creature that conceived of them. i expect, however, that it would resemble too greatly myself.
6. you dented my first fingerprints. an ever-warping kiln, you melted the very muscle from my bones, hoping to leave even them brittle and malleable. but clay hardens with pressure, and though your smudges disfigured me, i retained the shape with which i was born. in some ways, you gave me focus; by setting me up to swerve, you ensured i would never sway, and i thank you with all vindication for creating the very same black sheep that you shun.
i would say more, like that my gratitude extends to debt, but my continued willingness to pretend that i yearn to appease you makes us even. my capacity to respect a creature that refuses to acknowledge upon me any such similar courtesy is too limited for anything else.
Tuesday, October 13
when they intend to unname
i am enraptured by the near-universal abhorrence of hipsters.
simply put, hipsters are the grandchildren conceived by postmodernist bitchfest orgies.
as with all grandchildren who've been immersed in a culture vastly opposed to the oft-touted world from their ancestors hail, the hipster movement possibly began as a way for those attracted to the lifestyle to immerse themselves in the glories of the past they've only known vicariously. somewhere down the line though, the presumably honest attempt to embrace the riches of experiences past turned into a race to collect the most pop culture references. hence the constant condescending sneer of hipsters: they can rattle off the names of more 1970s musicians than any classic rock aficionado, even if they know nothing about band members, lyrics, or guitar tabs, and that dearth of pointless, contextually nullified information is what gives them power. or something.
it certainly gives them something to say anytime someone asks a member of the tribe a question. if the answer neither makes sense nor has any tangential relation to the topic at hand, the technicalities don't phase a hipster; true Art is not dreamt of in philosophy, but an awkwardly-cropped rendering of Sofia Coppola dressed as a pack of Parliaments in converses, printed out from the internet and pinned or pasted onto a dingy pair of cutoff jeans stolen from a hobo in NYC.
but let it never be said that hipsters aren't aware of their own tragedy.
whatever, hipsters; i maintain that there is always something unique and interesting waiting to be discovered and appreciated. there may only be five original stories ever, but the eyes that observe and are moved by them have yet to find a doppelganger. i've sifted through your last, lost generation and remain bored; i demand my beatniks back.
otherwise, i'll see you at the bottom.
The problem with hipsters seems to me{sic} the way in which they reduce the particularity of anything you might be curious about or invested in into the same dreary common denominator of how “cool” it is perceived to be....One must start with the premise that the hipster is defined by a lack of authenticity, by a sense of lateness to the scene, or by the fact that his arrival fashions the scene—transforms people who are doing their thing into a self-conscious scene, something others can scrutinize and exploit. The hipster is that person who shows up and seems to ruin things—then you can begin to ask why this person exists, whether he is inevitable, whether he can be stopped, and what it will take.["The Death of the Hipster"; Rob Horning]
simply put, hipsters are the grandchildren conceived by postmodernist bitchfest orgies.
Hipsterdom is the first "counterculture" to be born under the advertising industry's microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion. But the moment a trend, band, sound, style or feeling gains too much exposure, it is suddenly looked upon with disdain. Hipsters cannot afford to maintain any cultural loyalties or affiliations for fear they will lose relevance.
An amalgamation of its own history, the youth of the West are left with consuming cool rather that creating it.["Hipster: The Dead End Of Western Civilization"; Douglas Haddow]
as with all grandchildren who've been immersed in a culture vastly opposed to the oft-touted world from their ancestors hail, the hipster movement possibly began as a way for those attracted to the lifestyle to immerse themselves in the glories of the past they've only known vicariously. somewhere down the line though, the presumably honest attempt to embrace the riches of experiences past turned into a race to collect the most pop culture references. hence the constant condescending sneer of hipsters: they can rattle off the names of more 1970s musicians than any classic rock aficionado, even if they know nothing about band members, lyrics, or guitar tabs, and that dearth of pointless, contextually nullified information is what gives them power. or something.
He’s the one / Who likes all our pretty songs / And he likes to sing along / And he likes to shoot his gun / But he knows not what it means["In Bloom"; Nirvana]
it certainly gives them something to say anytime someone asks a member of the tribe a question. if the answer neither makes sense nor has any tangential relation to the topic at hand, the technicalities don't phase a hipster; true Art is not dreamt of in philosophy, but an awkwardly-cropped rendering of Sofia Coppola dressed as a pack of Parliaments in converses, printed out from the internet and pinned or pasted onto a dingy pair of cutoff jeans stolen from a hobo in NYC.
That there exists somewhere in the past an item, ostensibly useless to humanity now, that could become a necessary accessory, is only a matter of creativity and originality...looking even farther into the past to find something that could be a mark of hipness in the present.
but let it never be said that hipsters aren't aware of their own tragedy.
An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the "hipster" – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society....We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.["Hipster: The Dead End Of Western Civilization"; Douglas Haddow]
whatever, hipsters; i maintain that there is always something unique and interesting waiting to be discovered and appreciated. there may only be five original stories ever, but the eyes that observe and are moved by them have yet to find a doppelganger. i've sifted through your last, lost generation and remain bored; i demand my beatniks back.
otherwise, i'll see you at the bottom.
Wednesday, December 10
why the list of literature in The Canon is interpretive
recently, i heard mention of the grapes of wrath as a fantastic work of cultured something or other.
no. not so, kool-aid.
at 18, i was instructed to read it, for my AP English class, something that pleased me mostly because i love literature like fanatic groupies love rockstars. literature is my Aragorn. this particular bit of paper, however, was nothing like Of Mice And Men, that soundbox which encased my heartstrings for Steinbeck to pluck as he chose. i don't know what happened between writing the two works, but a book that acts as victrola for too-finely tuned violin music did not inspire from this Shieldmaiden any sort of fondness. what it did inspire, in the november 2006 that first saw me hurl a book across a room, was the following:
1. on the back of the Penguin book, The Grapes of Wrath is described as “The Pulizer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized – and sometimes outraged – millions of readers.”
no. not so, kool-aid.
at 18, i was instructed to read it, for my AP English class, something that pleased me mostly because i love literature like fanatic groupies love rockstars. literature is my Aragorn. this particular bit of paper, however, was nothing like Of Mice And Men, that soundbox which encased my heartstrings for Steinbeck to pluck as he chose. i don't know what happened between writing the two works, but a book that acts as victrola for too-finely tuned violin music did not inspire from this Shieldmaiden any sort of fondness. what it did inspire, in the november 2006 that first saw me hurl a book across a room, was the following:
A Waste of 619 Pages
John Steinbeck disappoints me. His work, The Grapes of Wrath, was supposed to be some amazing piece of literature that “galvanized” [1] the millions who read it. At the time, I didn’t even know what ‘galvanized’ meant (“to stimulate somebody or something into great activity”), but I expected to glance up from the novel in thought and suddenly be overcome with the feeling. An emotion did slap my face while I read, but it was far less pleasant and more idenifiable that whatever ‘galvanized’ was. That emotion was annoyance.
Here, in this novel, dozens of little plot turtles plodded along, waiting to be snatched up and turned into eloquence. Unfortunately, the only thing snatched away during my experience was my eager desire to read this book. Then I found out that either all the critics in the literary world are liars, or Steinbeck needs a new theme. After reading my 3,458th thinly veiled ‘I hate Capitalism,’ I became convinced that it was that latter one.
Granted, Steinbeck touches on several interesting topics. Key word there, by the way, is ‘touches.’ As in ‘barely glances at it,’ or ‘briefly considers veering off the dead-ended Anti-Capitalism trail to pace other pastures.’ Former preacher Casy spends a lot of time organizing strikes that worsen the economy or praying over the dead and performing other priestly rites. Whenever he can escape the obligations he takes on, Casy takes a second to ponder the Over-Soul[2] and how we’re supposed to act when little pieces of our friends and countrymen are in our minds, influencing our subconscious descions.
For the most part though, Steinbeck just forces socialism-love down the throats of the thoroughly Capitalistic consumers who supplied his salary by using said despised economic system to buy the book in which he bashes the whole process. I’m relatively[3] certain that The Grapes of Wrath was simply a cathartic (though decades-late) retribution for failing Civics.
I understand that Steinbeck endured some of the worst aspects of Capitalism, but all at the fault of Steinbeck’s own generation[4]; the overspeculation by all parties, the uncontrolled inflation, the use of credit lines as toys, and the overall irresponsible excess of the 1920s caused the Great Depression more than anything. Pure Capitalism is not to blame, for the industrial capitalism eapoused by Adam Smith calls for an “Invisible Hand” that would force everyone to, by acting in their best interests, actually perpetuate the common good[5].
Here, in this novel, dozens of little plot turtles plodded along, waiting to be snatched up and turned into eloquence. Unfortunately, the only thing snatched away during my experience was my eager desire to read this book. Then I found out that either all the critics in the literary world are liars, or Steinbeck needs a new theme. After reading my 3,458th thinly veiled ‘I hate Capitalism,’ I became convinced that it was that latter one.
Granted, Steinbeck touches on several interesting topics. Key word there, by the way, is ‘touches.’ As in ‘barely glances at it,’ or ‘briefly considers veering off the dead-ended Anti-Capitalism trail to pace other pastures.’ Former preacher Casy spends a lot of time organizing strikes that worsen the economy or praying over the dead and performing other priestly rites. Whenever he can escape the obligations he takes on, Casy takes a second to ponder the Over-Soul[2] and how we’re supposed to act when little pieces of our friends and countrymen are in our minds, influencing our subconscious descions.
For the most part though, Steinbeck just forces socialism-love down the throats of the thoroughly Capitalistic consumers who supplied his salary by using said despised economic system to buy the book in which he bashes the whole process. I’m relatively[3] certain that The Grapes of Wrath was simply a cathartic (though decades-late) retribution for failing Civics.
I understand that Steinbeck endured some of the worst aspects of Capitalism, but all at the fault of Steinbeck’s own generation[4]; the overspeculation by all parties, the uncontrolled inflation, the use of credit lines as toys, and the overall irresponsible excess of the 1920s caused the Great Depression more than anything. Pure Capitalism is not to blame, for the industrial capitalism eapoused by Adam Smith calls for an “Invisible Hand” that would force everyone to, by acting in their best interests, actually perpetuate the common good[5].
I think if Steinbeck actually understood the theories behind Captialism, Socialism, Communism, and especially the latter’s contrast to its root, Marxism, then he would have written a truly fantastic novel. As it is, I’m surprised Ayn Rand didn’t send her Objectivist friends to his house to beat him up. Later, recouperating in the hospital, he could appreciate the irony of their collective action.
1. on the back of the Penguin book, The Grapes of Wrath is described as “The Pulizer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized – and sometimes outraged – millions of readers.”
4. Steinbeck was born in 1909; he would have been a teenager during the Roaring Twenties, and it was those younger generations that were most fashionable and radical, as the old ones were still recovering from the Great War.
5. by ‘best interests’ Smith meant in the long run, not just whatever’s interesting or wanted, but what’s needed. His capitalism works (splendidly) off of the definition of ‘best’ as what is of the highest quality or most suited to need.
5. by ‘best interests’ Smith meant in the long run, not just whatever’s interesting or wanted, but what’s needed. His capitalism works (splendidly) off of the definition of ‘best’ as what is of the highest quality or most suited to need.
Thursday, December 4
one does not compartmentalize oneself unless one believes the self has no potential
there is, it is said - by two people, no more, that i know of - something called the Quantum Theory Of Relationships. the addage goes: " [i] can't observe a relationship without changing it. If i stop to think about the whys and wherefores, it's destined to fail. i'm happy to let what happens happen for the moment." {http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html#2231860428554564075}
as i have my own ideas about the cosmic jokes that interfere with personal interplay (refer to the post where i posit that interpersonal relationships are simply facets of economics in a social market), i find anything intriguing that differs from what i conceive as fact. particularly when, as is the case here, that differentiated opinion is so blatantly Stoic.
a Stoic, you see, was invented in classical rome, by a manchild who blinked balefully at the world, and attributed to himself such importance that he imagined all misfortunes flocked to him. it was a curse of fate, he assumed; a displeasurable happenstance mapped out in the cosmos. but, he decided, one whose ill effects could be sidestepped. simply pack away all emotions, advised the Stoic, and treat each event as though the world weighing upon your shoulders will be joined by moons and stars.
essentially, the basic solution for someone who struggles, insisted those who peddled Stoicism, is to assume a grand design where all success is sabataged. and then to soldier onward, a shining star braced for expansion, for explosion. for death.
you see, Stoicism is secretly simply a crass bastardization of Zen Buddhism, an aspect of the philosophy i for which i find myself especially fond. guising itself as defeatism, it claims honor and fortitude in the face of pain. i doubt an epistemology which encourages overpersonalizing entropy and hiding from life experiences can be considered inspiring or hero-making, but Stoicism has garnered quite a following for itself, as observable by the quote that inspired this post.
i suppose the only good thing to come of that epidemic known as Stoicism is that now it has infested the emotastic blogosphere. perhaps there will be an end to those who formerly released tedious tantrums to cope with the lack of higher brain functioning that would have enabled them to blossom in the wake of frigid failures? may they cling to Stoicism like parasites, and the comfort of the ensuing silence will spare the rest of us from remembering them.
hmm. i had intended, i confess, to conduct this entry in a far different direction, but i suppose i got on the wrong train. i imagine no irretrievable loss, however.
as i have my own ideas about the cosmic jokes that interfere with personal interplay (refer to the post where i posit that interpersonal relationships are simply facets of economics in a social market), i find anything intriguing that differs from what i conceive as fact. particularly when, as is the case here, that differentiated opinion is so blatantly Stoic.
a Stoic, you see, was invented in classical rome, by a manchild who blinked balefully at the world, and attributed to himself such importance that he imagined all misfortunes flocked to him. it was a curse of fate, he assumed; a displeasurable happenstance mapped out in the cosmos. but, he decided, one whose ill effects could be sidestepped. simply pack away all emotions, advised the Stoic, and treat each event as though the world weighing upon your shoulders will be joined by moons and stars.
essentially, the basic solution for someone who struggles, insisted those who peddled Stoicism, is to assume a grand design where all success is sabataged. and then to soldier onward, a shining star braced for expansion, for explosion. for death.
you see, Stoicism is secretly simply a crass bastardization of Zen Buddhism, an aspect of the philosophy i for which i find myself especially fond. guising itself as defeatism, it claims honor and fortitude in the face of pain. i doubt an epistemology which encourages overpersonalizing entropy and hiding from life experiences can be considered inspiring or hero-making, but Stoicism has garnered quite a following for itself, as observable by the quote that inspired this post.
i suppose the only good thing to come of that epidemic known as Stoicism is that now it has infested the emotastic blogosphere. perhaps there will be an end to those who formerly released tedious tantrums to cope with the lack of higher brain functioning that would have enabled them to blossom in the wake of frigid failures? may they cling to Stoicism like parasites, and the comfort of the ensuing silence will spare the rest of us from remembering them.
hmm. i had intended, i confess, to conduct this entry in a far different direction, but i suppose i got on the wrong train. i imagine no irretrievable loss, however.
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