すべてが夢です

many times I have begun by asking this blog why it exists. blog, I ask, what the hell are you useful for. I don't have an answer yet. there is no use arguing that the internet enables us to do "better" things than we had been capable of before. I love the internet, but I don't know how many things I read on it every day that have actually affected my life. most of the things I read on the internet that affect me are documentation of an interaction that occurred in real life - e.g., an interview with extremely good quotes in it, etc. this blog is not a documentation of an interaction that occurred in real life, most of the time. most blogs are just links to documentation of real life, so it's life twice-removed.

blogs are weird. I frequently do not know what they are for. I can't even pin down an audience. there are some people who come to this blog looking for other things, things I can't possibly deliver, such as the people who came here after googling "blood reabsorb sperm nietzsche" and "herzog + erection + good currency". these searches compel me to type in all the words that have to do with anything interesting, so that they will come up in a google search. I like having people come here who searched on google for something to do with self-doubt. I like the blog title for that reason.

I do not know what this space is for. I guess it is the same with art. what is it for? I am finding it bizarre that I was once in a population that conceived of such a thing as "art that is useless", implying that there is art which is useful. am I now in a population that finds some kinds of blogging to be useless, implying that I find some forms of it useful? when there is no useful form of blogging?

every time I sit down with this box open I think "I am going to reinvent this blog" and I think of many different voices I could write in, various "gimmicks" I could use, like putting in pictures or writing posts that are broken into single lines; but I know that I would tire of these gimmicks quickly. in writing off-line, you stick with a voice or a gimmick long enough for one story and when you are done you are expected not to use it again or you are "repeating yourself." a blog, on the other hand, is a document which does not really begin or end. it can be redundant and derivative.

what blogging feels like mostly to me is a form of practice, one which admits the need for people to have an audience. I could practice off-line, and I do write a lot of journal entries that no one will ever read (I hope), but these journals become weird and odd and contain such strange elements as the google searches I quoted earlier. there is really no reason to even use the pronoun 'I' in those journals, since everything in them is one person. the blog prompts you toward communication rather than expression. you would never post your most valuable poetry on a blog. it is a place for throwaway things.

I am now thinking about if an artist decided only to publish on a blog; it seems impossible to me that, even if the art were as good as rimbaud or tolstoy, it would ever be properly acknowledged or legitimized. even if good opinion were spread about this person there would be flame wars on the person's blog and on other blogs and absolutely anyone would feel entitled to comment. whereas if it were in a printed book, the evaluating would be left for the critics.

these are some very banal circular thoughts brought to you by sitting here while the wind is actually knocking things over and making a racket outside and my head is tired and I have just used the word "blog" so many times I would like to never type it again. I am going to chicago tomorrow, goodnight.

LAMELY PAWING TOWARD CULTURAL ANALYSIS

I ought to be working, but I am going to blog about angelina jolie. if you live in a country like ours long enough you can easily tell that being a celebrity takes a healthy amount of ego and self-interest; it almost goes beyond that, into a kind of imperialism of personality. these people - oprah winfrey, george clooney, whatever, joe the plumber - clearly have a different sense of self than the rest of us. this is obvious, I am not "exposing" anything here.

angelina jolie seems to have this kind of perspective embedded in every cell of her body. I have never seen anyone so intensely self-interested; it is as though she is wholly composed of the hollywood myth. I don't mean this in the way that her life follows some kind of hollywood narrative arc; I mean she clearly believes her actions belong to some sphere of behavior that is super-human, or worthy of watching. people who believe they deserve to be watched interest me, because I am always thinking "why am I drawing attention to myself like that, I am so lame".

I never see or hear anything about angelina jolie that makes me think "hey, that's sort of similar to my life." I don't see any human vulnerability in her, even her phase when she was "acting out" by doing weird things like carrying billy bob's blood around and talking about sex with women seemed totally out of a movie universe. she is her own movie. I have never seen a human being like this before.

sometimes I try to figure out why I, like the rest of the world, can't help but pay attention to her, at least once in a while. I think for me it has to do with her version of femininity (I feel like I put too many letter 'i's in that word). she seems to have totally bypassed the cute, romantic-comedy girl and gone onto something far more aggressive and swaggering. I think that is a good word for what she does in movies like tomb raider (which I think I might have seen ten minutes of on a plane once) - she swaggers. I like this about her. I hate the version of women that you see on shows like gilmore girls - I mean I pretty much hate everything about that show, but especially that the women seemed stuck in this kind of trivial universe and only the men were allowed to be kind of mysterious and romantic.

the articles that are written about angelina jolie - I read one in esquire a while ago that was absolutely ridiculous - tend to be so overblown and full of pomp and ballast, analyzing her, in the way I am tempted to, as a mythical figure instead of a person. they know, they can sense that she is not like other people in that she is her movies. trying to decide whether she's being "fake" in the above video is totally beside the point; there is no "real" version of her. I think she has been totally overcome by the personality empire that she's built, which I partly admire and partly abhor. it seems to define american culture in some basic way, that our need to influence has more to do with personality than with money. we use money to throw our influence as wide and far as we can, because fame gives the illusion of happiness, and best of all, of something happening.



I've been reading this fantastic book by lydia davis lately and this might be my favorite opening ever in fiction:

We have all these favorite shows coming on every evening. They say it will be exciting and it always is.

we are angelina jolie's totally captive audience.