Displaying news from 1 December 2004 to 1 January 2005.

s p a c i a l i t y - Posted on 2004-12-31 14:43:30

points on a curve connected, cover, in the drawn lines’ opacity, those points whose differences force their strength downward – the window, as seen from below this seeming cloud cover, appears, from above, a mirror. those below, see through the web of connectors that have risen, while those above, merely bounce happily off their self-woven webs, allowing them to forget the conglomerate ground of points that supports their [trampo]lines. like the myth of rigidity, consistency and power of the earth that lies above the frost line, so too is the net of connections that create a intellectual super-terra, eventually destroyed by the constant change of the points beneath.

keepin it real in central new york - Posted on 2004-12-26 19:50:41

leaving the plush scenery of staten island for a bit, jen and i have headed off to deruyter new york, a very tiny town where she's from. tomorrow i'll be playing a bossa nova gig in rochester with my good friend red wierenga at the memorial art gallery! hilar!

and don't forget that very soon, the respect sextet will be putting out there new record: Respect In You [roister records]. keep your ears to the ground for that one!

respect!

funny way to ruin a conversation! - Posted on 2004-12-22 23:45:00

"yeah, hahaha, yeah! man, you should totally read that book! it's an international cult classic!

'tis the season - Posted on 2004-12-20 20:56:00

philip heseltine [peter warlock] took his life by gas on december 17th 1930, at age thrity-six. the coroner read out part of a letter:

I would much rather visit you at some other time than Christmas. It is a season of the year which I dislike more and more as time goes on.

we’ve reached the dreaded week before christmas; a week in which ‘we’ll’ to the mall and to the neighborhood barnes & noble, and we’ll continue until all of the names are crossed off our doubly-checked lists, and when that final name is crossed off we can rest easy knowing that we will have made everyone happy, by giving them a gift.

being a jew, the experience of christmas has always been slightly foreign to me, but living in america [and more recently, working at one of the aforementioned beans & noodles,] has afforded me the opportunity to experience first hand the joys [and peculiarities] of holiday gift giving. [i should mention as an aside, that i’m well aware of the fact that jews have, over the years, incorporated gift-giving into their chanukkatic tradition, however, i see this style of giving as stemming from the same root as the christ-mass-give-[t], and so for convenience sake, will take to talking about gift giving in the general american [i.e., “christmasy”] fashion.]

the very fact that the institution of gift-giving can be referred to as an ‘institution’ is testament to its degradation. what does it mean, to give someone a gift?

perhaps a look at sacrifice would help. slavoj zizek describes sacrifice in his 2001 book [one of six, actually, written in that year,] On Belief as something relying on the notion of exhange:

I offer to the Other something precious to me in order to get back from the Other something even more vital to me (the “primitive” tribes sacrifice animals or even humans so that Gods will repay them by enough rainfall, military victory, etc.). The next, already more intricate, level is to conceive of sacrifice as a gesture which does not directly aim at some profitable exchange with the Other to whom we sacrifice: its more basic aim is rather to ascertain that there IS some Other out there who is able to reply (or not) to our sacrificial entreaties.

generally speaking, we are well aware that when we give a gift, the other person is there, and they are able to reply to our en[treat]ie[s]. assuming that axiom, let us observe the interesting observations of the first part of zizek’s take: giving of one’s belongings or herd [or community,]- literally, “giving up,” as in, up to the gods- has, at its base, a utilitarian spin. though established well before john stuart mill’s time, religions and ancient communities had and continue to have a silent bedrock of ‘usefullness.’ [sometimes, this bedrock is not so silent.] indeed, even social lives fall under the spell. check out how phyllid mcginley views and reconciles the push of utilitarianism in her poem “A Word To Hostesses”:

Celebrities are lonely when
They congregate with lesser men.
Among less lambent men they sit,
Bereft of style, deprived of wit,
A little chilly to the touch,
And do not sparkle very much.

Hostesses, then, when you are able
To lure Celebrity to table,
It is discreet to bear in mind
He needs the comfort of his kind.
Fetch other names. Fetch three or four….

though the idea of usefullness is significantly ingrained in our brains, we have actually taken it to the next level, and [concievably without knowing it, through an ever-growing state of exception,] created a simulacrum of utilitarianism. perhaps, as tw adorno notes in his minima moralia[1951], this discomfort with true gift giving- a discomfort which, instead of eradicating GG entirely, has produced its simulacrum- is due to the seeming nonsensical implausibility of violating the exchange priciple:

…here and there even children eye the giver suspiciously, as if the gift were merely a trick to sell them brushes or soap.

milan kundera illustrates the same discomfort due to social over-analysis in immortality [this time from the point of view of the giver]:

Imagine that you have a friend who loves Schumann and hates Schubert, while you madly love Schubert and Schumann bores you to tears. What kind of record would you give your friend as a birthday gift? The Schumann he loves, or the Schubert you adore? Schubert, of course. If you gave him a record of Schumann you’d have the unpleasant feeling that such a gift would not be sincere and would be more like a bribe calculated to flatter your friend. After all, when you give someone a present, you want to do so out of love, you want to give your friend a piece of heart! And so you give him Schubert’s Unfinished, and the moment you leave he’ll spit on it, put on a rubber glove, gingerly pick up the record with two fingers, and throw it in the wastebasket.

is this not the basic question we ask ourselves every time we pick out a gift for someone? should i get them something they like, or something that i like? should i make my friend happy by providing them with something they like [or, worse yet, need]? will my purchasing for them the merzbox sufficiently please their love of being aurally challenged? how many years can i successfully pass of a respect sextet cd as a gift? etc.

all these questions distill to this: what is the function of this gift?

and it is function, that has toyed with our sense of modern GG.
function as purpose, function as gathering, function as a mathematical correspondence that assigns exactly one element of one set to each element of the same or another set, as routine- as duty. [once]holidays, birthdays, and other such occasions call for the giving of gifts and, in effect, paralyze the part of us that can give gifts with sincerity. adorno continues:

Even private giving of presents has degenerated to a social function exercised with rational bad grace, careful adherence to the prescribed budget, sceptical appraisal of the other and the least possible effort. Real giving has its joy in imagining the joy of the receiver. It means choosing, expending time, going out of one’s way, thinking of the other as a subject: the opposite of distraction. Just this hardly anyone is now able to do. At the best they give what they would have liked themselves, only a few degrees worse.

in the same essay, adorno illuminates those things that we who work at barnes and noble refer to, as “crap.” the invention of what he calls “gift-articles”: those things that are made [invention is perhaps a necessary inclusion here] solely to help those who “[do] not know what to give because one really does not want to.” a “drug in the market.”

why would one not want to give? because they are told to give. again, it is the pressures of the holiday, and, at its core, capitalism. surely, if holidays did not exist, the capitalistic powers-that-be would have invented them for the purpose of infusing the buyer with a responsibility to buy [or, as the market would translate it: ‘give’] [and in fact, we know several that we refer to as hallmark holidays, created for just such a purpose].

one of my favorite cracks in the façade that shows the plumbing behind this 'whole-iday' givefest is the gift receipt.

we are required, as employees of b&n, to inquire of everyone perchasing something this season whether or not they would like a gift receipt. as i work in the union square b&n, which is frequented by visitors of the united states, i’m often asked [usually in some funny, ‘visitor of the united states’ accent] “what is a gift receipt?” to which we reply, “it is a receipt, that doesn’t show the price of your gift, so that its recipient, if they so choose, can return it without hassle.” the basic oversight of such a receipt is that, if one were to return it, the price would be revealed immediately. so, why [really] a gift receipt? take it adorno!

…the right to exchange an article…signifies to the recipient: take this, it’s all yours, do what you will with it; if you don’t want it, that’s all the same to me, get something else instead. Moreover, by comparison with the embarrassment caused by ordinary presents this pure fungibility represents the more human alternative, because it at least allows the reciever to give himself a present, which is admittadly in absolute contradiction to the gift.

yet another spoke in the wheel of gift giving is the [primarily christmas-bound] tradition of making wish lists. this concept has taken the brutality of the corporate push to purchase, and diguised it the clothes of our loved ones.


friends!

break out of this dark cell of gift giving! the true power of the gift lies in its unexpectedness [and lies in its expectedness]: do not give, then give. lay low for a while, then give again. use creativeness and surprise! we must be guerrilla warriors of gg!

with a twist of che guevara’s tongue,

gift and run, wait, lie in ambush, again gift and run, and thus repeatedly!

more on moron war - Posted on 2004-12-17 19:28:00

A modern Rune: 'Pooey on the war!' No one can pronounce these four words and not feel a tremor of earth-shaking dimension. And not until the two thousand and fifty million belligerents can thunder them in unison, will the war be over.

-cyril connolly, the unquiet grave, a word cycle by palinurus

hey paul, what's with all these...jackets? - Posted on 2004-12-17 14:49:00

an interesting trend: sports jackets and hats that don't just advertise an alliance with one team, but are rather a way for people see that you are a fan of... well, just about every team.

and, what an interesting thing wearing some sports star's jersey! this is a trend that's been around forever, but it occured to me the other day that what one is essentially doing is invoking the spirit of the athlete, both to inspire respect and [at times] fear. but this respect is local: one who idolizes, bows before the god; makes themselves a slave by assuming a master. it is only out of the presence of the god [or, sports superstar] that one can use one's allegiance as a form of power [or indeed, currency of any kind]. perhaps this is similar to the trend of religious 'fervency' in the modern liberal, and the nationalism of many americans today. one claims an allegiance with something, reduces one's self and bows, then walks away with an enlarged ego, and power welded [for power wielding: a 'welt', a doubled edge, strip, insert, or seam (as on a garment) for ornament or reinforcement.] it is not the literal support of god, country or sports star one requires, but the residue: the image of alliance. carefully viewed, however, one sees such false alliance as it's opposite; as what it is: an imitation.

take it mc paul b: "...gangsters aren't rebels, they're just imitating daddy"

finally. - Posted on 2004-12-13 15:00:14

hey! look! here he is!
so, it has now been deemed officially "too long; much too long" since i've updated this site. now it begins. i thought rather than spend even more time discuss why i haven't written, it would be better if i just began.

since i've been in new york, i've had the opportunity to hear so many amazing musicians in a variety of venues. eric biondo, christine hagan, kneebody, the icp orchestra with misha mengelberg and han bennink, mc paul barman, phil collins and others...

so new york is indeed a hotbed of talent. but so would your town if it had as many people...

i've been working at a barnes and noble in union square for about 3 months now and it's been totally great! because of the location and size of the store, they get all these great writers and musicians to come and give readings and performances. since i've been there, there have been appearances by [among others] toni morrison, art spiegelman, jon stewart, george carlin, rufus wainwright... it's pretty cool.

oh yeah, there was an election. it was quite an interesting thing, being in this pool of blue when the republican national convention happened at madison square garden. luckily, i don't go to that neighborhood very often [i'm quite convinced that my mood is inversely proportional to the number of neon lights in the area], but there were demonstrations [often a little vague against what they were demonstrating] and the papers, on a daily basis, had some graphic of a donkey and an elephant on its cover. this election, for me, is another nail in the coffin that we call democracy. not because bush won, [necessarily,] but because of the huge, glaring misconceptions people show when they made the 'other guy' out to be evil. it was ridiculous to watch television before the election and see this high-school-pep-rally-type rhetoric [which, by the way, is IDENTICAL, no matter which party or non-party people belong to]. i have some serious doubts in the voting system as well. electoral votes are not the way to do it, and a single, uniform, equal system would certainly not hurt. more on this in later updates.

i haven't been playing saxophone very much since i've been here, but i have been very comfortable with that. after something like the respect sextet, whose aesthetic attempts to be all-encompassing, one needs to lay low a little and regroup before thinking about a new direction... i have, however, been keeping myself busy by doing a lot of reading, listening and having quite regular and fantastic mental jousting sessions with my great friends seth brodsky, robert wood and steve smith. if all goes well, and according to plan, the four of us will be starting an online magazine soon.

oh yeah!! just recently, i sent the new respect record in to be duplicated! RESPECT IN YOU [roister records] will be out in early january! keep your ears to the ground folks!

i will be doing my best to keep updating on a regular basis, so do stay tuned!

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