Saturday, November 7, 2009

worthwhile seminar corner

An event that could only be made better if Oscar Wilde were giving the talk:

Lionel Trilling Professor of the Humanities Edward Mendelson will give a seminar on the craft of literary criticism. His recent article
on poet Frank O’Hara from the *New York Review of Books*
will serve as a springboard for a more general discussion on the writing process. At Hamilton 304, Tuesday, November 10th at 8 pm - rsvp here.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

curious tense corner



From class this evening:

In Chaucer, the past tense of shape is spelled 'shop'.
This usage raises a few q's:

Perhaps it (the usage) is related to 'shop' in English in the present?
That is, when one shops at a shop, or has shopped, has one been shaped?

I curiously wonder.

Monday, November 2, 2009

what we make in america corner



A conversational response from Bruce on what we make in America now: Jet Engines.

(what we don't make in America now? that would be a longer list)

Sunday, November 1, 2009

stories + ongoing project corner

I've been thinking a lot about art and commerce today, and had a conversation about youthful moments with art at a Halloween party last night, so I'm going to try to roll up the two experiences into a post before giving an update on my long-running background project.

The first moment is from when I was in elementary school in the rural south of Big Stone Gap and Northeast Tennessee: seeing kids doodle while tuning out the teachers and their lessons. I was never much of a doodler as a kid, but I did always really like watching the process. It was a subtle form of protest, this doodling, and a way to connect with other kids in class between lessons, and I was a fan.

The doodles were pretty simple, of course, but the beauty in these was more in the act and post-act criticism.

The next is also from school, much later when I went to a jesuit high school just outside of Washington, DC. There I made friends with the punk (well, more like post-punk, given the decade) rock clique, which also encompassed the artsy kids. One time, probably before going to a show at the 9:30, we stopped in at someone's house and I saw the room of an artist for the first time. There were all kinds of things on her walls, drawings, clippings from magazines, just a lovely and beautiful mess, this room. It was really overwhelming.

The drawings were much more advanced than elementary doodles: the kind of expression you have to practice a lot to be able to make real.

In both cases there was a form of bootstrapping going on, a kind of visual hypophora to push the doodler/artist ahead in some given direction. In elementary school most of the doodles I remember were of gi joe or monsters, while the work on the walls I saw above felt more like something you would see at Anthropologie today, which perhaps says something about the direction kids are trained for in the schools they attend, socioeconomic circles they live within, etc. etc.

Anyhow. The last moment is from Kinkos.

In my last year of high school I had free access to a Kinkos in Rockville, by way of trading pirated software* with the manager who worked the midnight shift. While I was never much of a doodler or drawer, it turns out I was an awesome copier. I went there several times with my best friend who had a copy of Banned in DC, and we made prints of all the classic posters**, t-shirts with stylish images, dress shirts for school with the 'V' from the inside cd booklet from the Pixies' album Bossanova on the left-side pocket, and it was just wonderful.

We gave the posters to friends, started wearing our own subtly custom dress shirts, and it spawned a whole artistic discourse in our corner of the world. That is to say it got people talking. It stirred up a larger experience rather than the self-bootstrapping as seen in the first two moments.

There is value in the art in each of these examples, but finding a way to wedge the last example into an exchange of value in the real world is the driving notion behind my long-running background project. And while it may be a bit longer until walltype is real, and for it to be real, it might not be possible to make money from it, that's okay.

In the interim, here is a work of doodle art to stir up some artistic discourse:



^^^ this was made by my Dad, during the last round of testing, riffing on the project logo by way of a reference to the Eschaton chapter of the Jest.

* that is to say: warez for art
** said posters made during these Kinkos sessions can be viewed today on the walls of Smash Records, 2314 18th ST NW 2nd Floor, Washington DC

worthwhile reading on the stages of capitalism: via harpers

There is a piece worth reading in this month's Harpers: Ways of Not Seeing - On the limits of design fetishism. It has a great writeup on the stages of capitalism and the exemplary works of fiction that go w/ 'em.

Infinite Jest is, of course, included in our present stage. An excerpt:
Suppose for a moment that there are three clear stages of capitalism, defined minimally as the dominance of markets by money. The first, classical capitalism, defines the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, more or less the moment that Veblen analyzed. The engine at this stage of development is the straightforward production of goods and services. In order to clear the markets of these goods and services, the system works to cultivate desire. Accumulated capital—in its most basic form, primitive hoarding—is spent on conspicuous demonstrations of waste in the form of leisure. From the individual point of view, the central goal is a self defined by the demonstration of good taste. Exemplary fiction of the age: Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country.

The second stage, late capitalism, is what caught the Frankfurt School’s gimlet eye in the middle of the last century. Now the engine of the system is the production not of goods and services but of consumption itself. That is, rather than merely cultivating longstanding desires in new aspirants, the mechanisms of economic growth must manufacture ever-novel desires using the feedback loops of the emergent advertising industry. Capital is reproduced, not merely accumulated: the shadowy shills of the culture industry want us to spend our way to wealth and happiness. Down on the ground, the individual experiences fractured selves, or multiple consumption identities, even while yearning for wholeness. Exemplary fiction: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night.

The third stage, postmodern capitalism (for lack of a better label), is with us still. We witness both the cultivation and the manufacture of desire—and the wild proliferation of it. The market engine is still producing consumption, but now it is consumption of the self in the form of the consumer. We’re no longer interested in stuff, or even in the satisfaction that stuff promises; now we chase a certain idea of ourselves, as cool or fashionable or self-actualized. Thus the arrival of what we ought to call erotic capital, the most spectral form. I, with all my carefully constructed preferences for Pink shirts or Lululemon sweats, become the most desirable consumer product in the economy of taste. To paraphrase Slavoj Zižek, the superego is no longer a form of restraining conscience—Don’t do that!—but instead expresses the imperative of smarmy waiters everywhere: Enjoy! Consumption is both intimate and relentless: brand-conscious consumers cannibalize themselves, feeding on their jumble of layered identities. Exemplary fiction: David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.
(Surprisingly absent: Dreiser's Sister Carrie)

Sunday, October 25, 2009

notebook idea corner




^^^ idea for a new notebook, unlined unruled but with little boxes and outlines for writing notes into

post race brunch

Friday, October 23, 2009

running mix cont'd even more



(and even more of the prior post)

mighty mighty bosstones
same reasoning as stone temple pilots: a familiar running song.  a pace setter. a solid 9.5 minute miler.

r.e.m
we walk is a good song for jog-walking.  
(a 10k is just 5k twice with a little walking in the middle)

a nin cover of a joy division classic
sometimes you need to be reminded that dead souls can only be sung by ian curtis.  this version has sass, but lacks a certain substance.

fugazi
my coming-to-know-good-music roots.

radiohead
it's in the blood - or maybe even is the blood? - of my generation. a song for trying.

nirvana / aneurysm
a good song and also the thing that runs in one branch of my family. but not a great running song. it's okay i guess.

running cadences from papa baer
on navy seals, etc. it's decent stuff, solid 10 minute milers.

sneaker pimps, ian curtis at his best, tom waits
for the home stretch/crawl/weep at the finish line.

*/*

i'm also including a robert frost poem in the mix.


running mix cont'd



Okay, I feel like I have a good set for tomorrow now.  Let's review it in the quick lowercase-style of work e-mail: it's a style that reads as just do it, as the good folks at Nike might say.

party and bullshit
start on a quick, forceful number

some abstract frank black
oh my god it hurts to run this early in the morning

if i were a boy
i would be running already

tiny dancer
oh i must have made a mistake

#9 dream
am i really running now?

girl talk
oh yeah

metallica
OH yeah

red hot chili peppers
the righteous & the wicked is practically Miltonic.

???
this is a song an old friend gave me on a mixtape in high school. techno samples from the movie the running man

portishead
good for that, and also good for running

plush
familiar. i've run to this a lot, it's a good 9 minute mile long-stride song.

fiona
mad women make me run faster

pixies
i might be bleeding at this point

jay-z
cf. reasoning for track #1.  a solid late mile #2 number.

rihanna and her umbrella
well, it might be rainy ...

HAYEK
an analysis of the interdependence of economic institutional and social phenomena.
(a little learning)

midnight oil
is blissful.  australia's version of fugazi.

(part 2 coming next)


running mix

i'm in the midst of making an ipod mix for tomorrow's 10k, and i nearly left out radiohead.  is it possible to run without the bends?

i might leave them at home for this one; instead, it might be wise to include a version of stormy weather, based on how the weather looks tonight. urg.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

panel review corner

There was a panel for prospective English grad students at school this evening: an event for potential militant grammarians and fans of the academy in general.  

A revealing quote from one of the panelists: we all grew up as precocious children, yes?

Ahem.

The panelists were all pursuing positions as professor (say that 3x fast) and I didn't ask the question I felt like asking, regarding values-based teaching, which was somewhat disappointing. There is a similar panel on Thursday which might reveal another opportunity for the expression of a question.

Friday, October 16, 2009

on bitter october chills

The onset of real cold in New York doesn't happen gradually: it usually happens all at once within the course of a night or two, or at least that's how it feels right now. Tonight is not a good night to be at the mercy of the landlord and the reluctant boiler.  

I feel like I've always been at the mercy of others for warmth in the city, although when the heat is on, it's so on, unlike the modern and efficient central a/c style heating systems in the suburbs which tend to leave one clutching at the blankets.

life + gerber daisy corner


one of my favorite photos from 6d, two years ago or so.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

placement of advertising




Monday, October 12, 2009

an observation at 4:17pm.

The ability to make a note when something comes to mind is the difference between being able to write and not being able to write.
-- Joan Didion, paraphrased from p23 of The Year of Magical Thinking.

Sometimes when I'm headed back to work from campus, it feels like everything I've experienced can be expressed fully; I reckon this is a pleasant side effect of a few hours of academic discourse.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

new words corner: deaccession

I heard a new word on npr this morning. 

Amber told me how museums often literally send their shows on the road by selling them to other museums; I wonder if items in these tours are temporarily deaccessioned ...

deaccession (dēakˈse sh ən)

[To] officially remove an item from the listed holdings of a library, museum, or art gallery [...]


Saturday, October 10, 2009

oscar wilde reference corner: salome and si newhouse

From conversation a few days ago w/ a friend who survived another round of layoffs at Conde Nast:
You could write a book on the 8 layoffs of Conde Nast / Advance. It's like the dance of 9 veils, but without Salome.
-- (...)
Oh come on, that's funny.
        -- Especially if you picture Si Newhouse in traditional Salome garb.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

stowaway castle corner




Sunday, October 4, 2009

words and their sounds corner: favela



After Brazil's winning bid for the 2016 olympics was announced on Friday, at work we talked about the different level of crime there (the aristocrats must fly from place to place in helicopters to avoid carjacking, for instance) and I heard the proper pronunciation of the word 'favela' from someone whose wife is from that part of the world:

It is pronounced fah-vell-uh.

new web thing corner: visualize



vi.sualize.us -> it's like delicious for images.  i'm playing with it now.