HOW TO HAVE A GRAD SCHOOL CONVERSATION

broach the topic by connecting something - your lunch, Tuesday, the weather - to deconstructionism. bring up foucault and derrida in the same sentence. say "there is no center". compare the setting you are immersed in to a simulacrum, and say "baudrillard was more right than he knew" with a tragic note in your voice. repeat every two days or so.


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I had forgotten what psychic overload cities are. was anyone meant to live in them? I don't understand. in the train station I was so exhausted from just being around people that I rudely turned down someone's request to use my phone - I just thought about what a mental investment it was to make a connection to another human being, lend them the phone, wonder if they're going to rack up some kind of charge on it, get it back, think about whether this person's hands were clean when using the buttons, etc etc etc. this is sad.

art museums are also another kind of overload, but they get ideas moving, although many are useless. I am still of the opinion that though there is an infinity of art that could be made, some of it shouldn't. still on the fence about these two-color block prints by abstract painters from the fifties. is this a rejection of the complexity of modernity? I found myself fixating on the explanatory notes beside the paintings - giving you a key concept to latch onto, for example, when confronted with a big canvas full of splotches you look helplessly at the plate and read "religion" and go AH, and only then do you begin to interpret.

if it doesn't speak to you, it doesn't speak to you.


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listen to this interview with charlie kaufman from wired magazine - it's unedited, and in between charlie's halting sentences about the nature of art and commercialism in film and mortality you can hear him ask the waiter for more ketchup.

gobama part 5 zillion

went to the obama event in elkhart with no ticket, thinking I could just stand around and listen to him on the soundsystem; ended up getting into the gym. took a shitload of photos (most of em too crappy to put up) and some video.


gobama from vorgefuhl on Vimeo.

he was supposedly focusing on energy policy, which was perfect. I have to admit that obama's positions on various energy issues has me scratching my head. I did not like that he broached the topic by stating that the oil reserves should be opened ("use it or lose it"). before obama was totally against drilling, but it seems like he's waffling. he says it's a temporary fix, which it is! at one point in the speech he brought up kennedy's seemingly impossible goal of reaching the moon in ten years; exactly what gore had alluded to in his more extreme, but much more realistic, speech. in the Q&A I was thinking of asking about this but of course did not even get close to being able to ask a question. I was annoyed that he mentioned "doubling our use of alternative energy" because that seems pretty meaningless - I mean, I don't know how much we're using now, but it can't be that much. plus, "alternative" doesn't necessarily mean "renewable."

he did bring up some things I hadn't heard, though - high-speed rail, which I honestly hadn't given much thought to, and also reducing the energy usage of the government itself. everything he said was very reform-centered. he literally said he wanted to "rebuild america," and it felt like he wasn't just talking about putting up more strip malls or something.

afterward people passed their babies up to him and he shook hands, and I stood back and just admired the media spectacle that surrounds his every step. at moments I forgot he was standing there, a physical person, because I've seen his image so many times over the last few months. indeed, although it was a great opportunity for me to go see him, even I'm feeling a little bit of obama fatigue (looks like he is too, heading off for hawaii like tomorrow or something).

another thing: it felt, in the gym, like we were listening not to some dude who's trying to be president; it felt like we were hearing from the actual president. people who asked questions and wanted certain things done sounded like they were putting in work orders for someone who's already in power. probably wishful, but I do find myself thinking that mccain doesn't have a chance. also I was touched by how the people were touched, that obama had come, more than once, to a county that no democratic candidate has visited since harry truman.

phew! for a minute there...

would it be accurate to say that, whenever I am not actively writing or at least thinking about writing, I am lost and empty, not quite myself?

yes.

which means I've got a lot of time to make up for - these last few months I have made so few genuine attempts at writing that I am probably at this point 1/4 of my former self (cue McCartney with the guitar, "suddenly...").

I find it very strange, and interesting, how "self-development" (a luxury, I'm aware) is a series of both going backward and forward at the same time. engulfed in an environment that I have little control over (work), I cling to anything that might remind me of a time in the past when I was really enjoying myself or felt "alive" or however you want to see it. but, now that I have my life back, I am bored with those old things, for the most part; I have some nostalgia for old music and memories, but I have no real compulsion to immerse myself in those things. not visiting old friends like I was sure I would when I stopped working has made me see that I am really not interested in rehashing old things, because I am craving whatever is new. another luxury: self-reinvention.

oh and let's not get started on what a time-drain a full-time job is. I've complained about that enough times. but I will say, just as a "closure" thing now that I don't have to spend eight hours a day doing something I care nothing about, that no fucking wonder this country is so zombified. working forty hours a week leaves no one any time to pursue interests; I even stopped being vegetarian, because it was "too much work" and I didn't have time. how the hell is a society supposed to pursue alternate ways of living when a working person just wants to collapse on a couch after a regular day? how is that person going to find time to look into the current news, change their lifestyle perhaps? it's such a long shot.

and, added to this point, is the relative difficulty, when working, of "unplugging" yourself. if, given a regular workday which completely exhausts you, you have a choice between coming home and zoning out in front of grey's anatomy, or sitting in a room with a book, which would you choose? right. and after making that choice, between the easy entertainment over the slower and less instantly gratifying thought process that might come from sitting in a quiet room with a book, over and over, through time your mental state is nothing but a circuit center which switches thoughtlessly from one part of the day to another, with very little reflection.

so for the last few days I have been "unplugging" myself and meditating on meditating, sort of. it has really taken me about five days to get to the point where I didn't need something constantly entertaining me, or a chore to do. I do like how, after I emerge from these sessions of thinking about something with some degree of intensity, I basically write what has already been discovered by thousands of people already. yes, working for some cause you care nothing about is incredibly counter-productive on both a personal and societal level. but at least I have experienced this firsthand, now. I have to find some positive things to make me feel better about having wasted all that time.

mixed drivel

this about sums up my feeling today - how can she make the argument that she's "more electable" based on a DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY where the two choices are both democrats?? just because she got the majority of older white women in pennsylvania does not mean they won't vote for obama in the general. BAH, I wash my hands of this media nonsense.



I basically knew nothing of daniel day-lewis before seeing there will be blood; I bring this up only because I watched an interview with him and was completely baffled and surprised. I can barely make the connection between the guy in the interview and daniel plainview. they are hardly the same person. if I were on the set of twbb and daniel plainview started speaking in that day-lewis, british, choirboy tenor voice I would be so confused. I don't know where the hell he came up with his accent for this film (I don't think of 1900-era americans as pronouncing the word call like "cole"), but goddamn if he didn't completely transform himself for this role. highly impressive.



I turned in my key today. in exactly a week, I'll be without a job. I'm anticipating sitting in fields and thinking a lot, trying to detox myself of all the built-in sense of routine I've been living the last year or so. you'll find me anyplace that has no schedule.