Don't Diss Yoko!

If you were looking for a cool poster to hang in yr cubicle at work to fight the grey monotony of things like I eternally am, I think I found the coolest poster available for sale on teh internets.

The text at the bottom reads: "Girl was famous before she met the man whose fame so completely obscured hers. She was part of the first wave of female Japanese artists who struck out for New York to revel in the new Post-War, multicultural, cross-national wave of performance and video art that was taking the world by storm. She ran a gallery out of her apartment that showed the height of avant-garde art, and was an early member of the legendary group Fluxus. She played a key role in the movement towards what we now consider a work of art to be: not just a precious object on a wall, but a total experience that goes beyond painting, sculpture and photography into performance, video, and installation. Her works often present the audience with a moral dilemma; they are beautiful, brilliant, illuminating, weird, and (fair enough) occasionally terrible. Her music is the same. She is epic. Don't dismiss all this because you heard she broke up the Beatles. Face up to the facts! Post-War American culture was uncomfortable with a sexually confident, strange and intriguing Asian woman commanding the cultural spotlight, especially at the height of the Vietnam War. We've got a cultural hangover that won't let us shake off the idea of strong women as sirens who drain mens virility. Say: Don't Diss Yoko! Say thanks for making the world a more interesting place. Long Live Yoko!"

I will tell you where you can find this amazing poster if you buy me one, as well. :D Or you can just "use the Google," G.W. style and hook yrself up.

Props to Bea Arthur

She was always my favorite Golden Girl...

Analysis of a Writing Sample: J.R. Carpenter's "The Cape"

In composing this work, I believe Carpenter intended to get people thinking about the boundary between fact and fiction. I think s/he wanted us to question why we trust our memories more than our doubts. I think this because s/he told me so in the "Author Description." I was, however, grateful for these directions because I like to have an author's note on their work to give me a framework in which to think about the piece and assess how successful it is based on what their intentions were. However, I experienced the piece before I read the author's note, which I think is important--to experience it without assistance first so you can truly gauge how successful it was based on what you took from it without their instruction. Many components of the piece point to the dichotomy between fact and fiction, however, specifically the frame with text that says "these events happened so long ago that this whole story is in black and white" combined with the slide in which s/he admits there is no picture of their grandmother but that if they had one it would be there, which suggests that we construct our own memory of things based on what we have, which is sometimes very little. Perhaps the threads we create to connect what is left to us via our own memories or stories passed on are little lies or assumptions that help us weave a tapestry to explain to us who we are.

For example: I used to think I had memories from when my parents were still married. They divorced when I was two and a half. What I think happened was that I spent so much time looking through my baby book and updating it with new photos of me as a child, that I started to recall the photos and believe that I remembered being in the backyard with my dad and our dog Freckles and my mom pushing me in a stroller down a street made of bricks and sitting in a baby seat wearing sunglasses. But I didn't remember them. I saw them, and I recalled images of myself, where I was outside myself, so I remembered things like the silly sunglasses I had on and how happy my father looked because I looked at them from a historical perspective outside of the moment I was once in and noticed things about them. (I've always been fascinated with myself.) Also: I wanted to remember those things. My real memories begin when I am four, just after my mother re-married. I have always used photographs and letters, any kind of evidence I could locate to reconstruct my parents' love. I have this picture of them in California in 1984 or something, and my dad is wearing the shortest shorts I have ever seen and that is all he is wearing, and my mom is wearing a bikini top and some high-waisted shorts and they are posed in an open parking lot in front of Mary Lou Subaru, a piece of shit car my dad bought for $100 that he had to turn off when they went down hills, and Mary Lou has a beer sitting on her hood, and in the background is a gorgeous bluff, covered in trees, with a road alongside it on which a VW van is chugging around the bend. I also have a poem my dad wrote when my mom told him she was going to divorce him that was tucked into an original envelope of photos my dad had developed (like it had our old address on it and everything) and it's horribly sad. It's like a Bruce Springsteen song. It's like "The River." It's "Downbound Train." It's deliciously sad and heartbreakingIt's my treasure. I have no memories of my parents being married, but through these artifacts I attempt to reconstruct their rise and fall, the arch of their love, some semblance of romance that I can cling to and attach myself to, to know that I am a product of this EPIC THING.

I think Carpenter actually wants to know more about their family and is constructing their history in a way to illuminate the emptiness of the threads s/he has. I know that s/he says it's about the fact/fiction binary because the pictures aren't family-related and the maps aren't to scale and are out of date, but now that I'm writing about this, I think it is about the potential empty-feeling of the threads of family history if you don't try to attach them to something with these little threads that fill in the holes and make your family history a tight knit blanket; better to have a tight knit than a loose one when the cold wind blows. We are from a linear-society, we must know ourselves from beginning to end. This idea is furthered to me by the frame that states "sound carries, especially in winter." There is a specific emptiness to winter that enables sound to carry. This suggests to me a kind of haunting, or the way in all of Bruce Springsteen's saddest songs there is that keyboard part that always, unmistakably sounds like a forlorn train bounding through the plains at night. It's that kind of sound carrying: grief, emptiness, the being without.

I think Carpenter chose not to use a traditional approach with this piece because we are talking about memory. Memory is non-linear; memory is especially nonlinear when you have very few memories with which to actually construct something. This is why I think the non-linear form has been utilized frequently in recent history for the writing of memoirs.

L I N E S

For my short animation project I will be examining lines:

rounding them,

subverting them.

I will use visual lines as well as lines of text

in this experiment.

I would tell you more

but I am trying to let my content drive my process

while also letting the medium drive my creative impulses.

R.I.P. Reginald "Omari Huduma" Blanton
6/3/1981 - 10/27/2009



"Nothing is more difficult to understand than the dead, I've found; but nothing is more dangerous than to forget them."

--Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

DID YOU KNOW
THAT THE RATE OF
SUICIDE
AND THE RATE OF
SEXUAL ASSAULT
WITHIN THE U.S. MILITARY
NOW EXCEEDS
THAT OF THE CIVILIAN POPULATION?

There is a film about it premiering only in NYC because it's been effectively banned in this country.



(how

does

that

make

you

feel?)

Technological Impact on My Writings

Okay, so I don't actually type correctly. See, I started instant messaging when I was in third grade and became able to hunt and peck reaaaally fast to keep up with three or four different instant message conversations, so that is the kind of culture I grew up in. I am 22, so unfortunately a lot of my childhood was spent waiting until 5pm when I was allowed to sign on to AOL (insert weird login noise here). However, I have always been an avid reader, so I have to say that for me, personally, I feel that I have a command of standardized language as well as a fluency in the continuously emerging technologically-motivated language. I think communication has become less formal. I also think websites like "I Can Haz Cheezburger" have made it popular to speak pidgin English, which is odd to say the least. Most of my communication with friends and family is through Facebook and text messages at this point in time. This is part cultural shift and part convenience on my part.

(I had to rewrite this next part. Technology FAIL.)

Responsibilities I am taking on as a producer/reader/future teacher of texts:

SUBVERSION. I take on the responsibility of challenging language, and treating it not as an apolitical tool but as a system which works in the favor of the dominant cultural paradigm.
CULTURE. I take on the responsibility to make it clear that culture is an ongoing conflict and not a warm blanket we are all sleeping under. There are some school districts where Huckleberry Finn is supposed to be taught without any discussion of race. This demonstrates a strict separation of literature and history that I will not tolerate. There is a need in this society to separate literature and history because literature liberates history. Asking students to read a text and be able to answer multiple choice questions or fill in blanks from a word bank about what Susie had in her hand when she came into the house, or what Papa was wearing when the fire started, is not engaging our students in critical thought. It is limiting the level of cognition we ask them to think at to the lowest levels of word perception and literal comprehension. Beyond any of this, Mark Twain would roll in his grave. If America is a circle, then race is at the center of it. By agreeing to even acknowledge culture as an ongoing battle, I believe I place myself within that war. I am willing to fight.
CREATIVITY. I take on the responsibility of making art (and life) fun and engaging, with an emphasis on discovery, appreciation and play alongside commitment and compassion.
SUPPORT. I take on the responsibility of at least trying to think of everyone in the process of making something, whether it is an animated writing or a lesson plan. I think it would have benefited me a lot more to read Dorothy Allison in high school than it did to read Charles Dickens. It makes sense for multicultural classrooms to be less successful in America when we are teaching a bunch of brown children a perspective of history that further victimizes and marginalizes their people. I take on the responsibility of each individual's story in constructing my own.

Networking & Collaboration = The Future/History of Art

I want to approach this reading from the networking standpoint. The existence of the Internet has made possible many new ways to create. The existence of collaborative projects such as Wikipedia are challenging “the concept of the 'author' as it was defined by the book culture.” Someone who is reading Wikipedia can also become a writer. For example, I once was perusing the wiki page on American ex-patriots and noticed that Nina Simone was missing from a section devoted to musicians who expatriated to France in the sixties, so I added her. In a way, this type of format liberates the reader and the writer, but the writer who does not want their text to be altered or deleted might have a hard time embracing this type of online collaboration. It is interesting to browse wiki pages of current issues, for example if you go to the wiki page of Roman Polanski the top of the page will tell you something like this: “This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (April 2009)” It is always interesting to me how Wikipedia is maligned as a resource because of the collaborative format and the fact that people do not have to have any kind of academic credentials to participate. Not that I think Wikipedia is the best source to use, but plenty of people have no problem citing the Bible as evidence for a specific argument, when there are theories that argue certain sections of the Bible may have been written collaboratively by a group of scholars.

Posting work on my own blog and reading the works of others online does shift my sense of texts and the way we judge them. The Internet has updated worldwide collaborative art projects from the mail art that emerged in the fifties as part of the Dada and Fluxus movements to participatory online websites where people can take directions from a website, create, and then post their completed work. This has given birth to many beautiful and human projects such as Learning to Love You More and The Six Word Memoir Project, among many others. The former, resulting in a number of exhibitions around the world and a book of some of the most beloved pieces, and the latter resulting in a number of books with different themes that became best-sellers. So, some of these networking projects actually cross-over into the “book culture,” which is maybe a sign that we are finding ways to navigate the old media and the new media without creating a false dichotomy or limiting the potential of each, but combining them. For example, the Six Word Memoir project functions great as an online site in that people can register, and submit six-word memoirs as frequently or infrequently as they want and be able to see the submissions of the others participating in the project. The individual memoirs work phenomenally in a book form, however, because the various typographical choices the memoirs are presented with can have a very substantial effect on the meaning a reader takes away from such a short description of a life. Additionally, there are networking organizations such as The Yes Men who execute missions and that challenge the people who discover them to copy/edit/recreate in some way the missions the Yes Men have successfully pulled off, in a kind of performance art that creates countless collaborative, nameless, genderless, faceless political acts, with their projects moving "off the screen and into the streets."

That having been said, I want to add that the possibilities networking creates for collaborative art and global action is really one of few positives in my overall evaluation of technology and digital culture. I miss pay phones and cursive handwriting and mix tapes. I wish people still listened to whole albums instead of snippets of songs, I wish people bought books from their local book stores and bought music from their local record stores, and I wish a new stylus didn't cost as much as a whole new turntable. Though networking can result in neat, collaborative art projects, the internet and networking specifically have also had a devastating impact on the music industry via file sharing, and technologies like the Kindle are seemingly the new way to read...texts. I won't call it reading a book because it isn't. There is something very important about books, they are sensual, intimate things, so intimate that we take them to bed with us. Or, at least, I still do. Reading is different on a screen versus in a book. I have started printing out the readings for this class because I stare at a computer all day at work and reading on one all night really makes it hard for my eyes to focus and that tab to the right of the one I am reading in is always whispering "faaaaaaceboookkkk, faaaaceeeeboookkkk" and I really just don't think the computer screen is an ideal reading environment for these reasons. The internet breeds hyperactivity for me, and in many cases useless forms of it. I need to have the pages in my hands; I need to touch them, write on them, interact with them.

30 Senators Vote to Protect Corporations Over Rape Victims

If you identify as a Republican, I hereby recommend that you talk some sense in your congressional representatives. This is completely callous. For those of us who do not, I think a writing campaign might still be in order, though the measure was passed. Notice Senator McCain voted against this amendment. Glad he's not our President? Oh, hell yes.

Dear Republican Opposition to Senator Franken's Amendment,

Shame on you.

-Your conscience

Six Word Memoirs

Last night while I was waiting in line to get an autograph for the first time since I was ten at the Sherman Alexie reading, I came upon a collection of these six word memoirs and wanted to share the phenomenon with you in case you hadn't yet discovered it. They are especially interesting in the book format because the typographical choices are very important to the meaning to be derived from the short sentences.

I just wrote mine:


SHE
DIDN'T

TOW

THE
PARTY

LINE

The Main Reason the St. Brigid's Cross That Hangs Around My Neck is Moreso a Question Than an Answer

My grandmother is very Catholic. Grew up in predominantly Irish Catholic neighborhoods, west side of Chicago, went to Catholic schools, had nine children before asking the pope if she could please use birth control since the doctor said another child would kill her, and still at 82 reads at mass every Sunday and prepares meals for the Father of her parish.

When my grandmother talks seriously about religion and faith and the power of god, she frequently cries. I have long thought of this as being demonstrative of the importance of faith in her own life. Only today did I first come to the idea that maybe, just maybe, she cries out of her own doubt, and her participation in the Catholic faith is a long and winding project of denial because it would be too heart-breaking, too paralyzing, to have worked so hard and suffered so uselessly for "God" to not exist as the church purports "him" to. But it's just a thought.

Today's severe skepticism of, repulsion from and rejection of religious doctrine courtesy of the Catholic Church making a "pedophile paradise" out of the remote villages of Alaska Natives.

Some Things I Have Been Contemplating

“The simpler we make social reality appear to be by reference to language defined as an instrument for speaking about things other to it, the better able we are to supplant dialectics with paradox, a mere contradiction in terms, a literary technique. And language proves it's mettle by it's ability to smooth over the contradictions which it discovers through observing its grammar.”

-H.T. Wilson, American Ideology: Science, Technology and Organization as Modes of Rationality

“The spectacle inherits all the weaknesses of the Western philosophical project which undertook to comprehend activity in terms of categories of seeing; furthermore, it is based on the incessant spread of the precise technical rationality which grew out of this thought. The spectacle does not realize philosophy, it philosophizes reality. The concrete life of everyone has been degraded into a speculative universe.”

-Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

“The most efficient oppressor is the one who persuades his underlings to love, desire and identify with his power, and any practice of political emancipation thus involves that most difficult of all forms of liberations, freeing ourselves from ourselves."

-Terry Eagleton

Rsrch Prjct: FLXS

For my independent researching project I will be reading and writing about FLUXUS, primarily because I am incredibly intrigued based on the texts we have read in class, especially the "Manifesto for FLUXUS" by Maciunas. I hope to learn about FLUXUS from an art history perspective but also connect it with the movement's evolution and present-day context. More importantly, I want to examine FLUXUS as a truly shape-shifting creative force that is innately transformative and without limitations to art as a cultural production of past time.

For my research, I have gathered every text the UWM library has available on this movement. Also, the automated lady from the central library called to let me know some additional research materials are now available to me and being held at the East library. I have a lot of very thick books on my desk that I will not be able to read before the end of the year, no less in time to turn the first draft for this paper. Thus, my first assignment is to go through these books to determine which ones I should focus my attention toward. I have books that take more of an art history perspective, a few biographies on George Maciunas, and some books of concrete poetry and collections of FLUXUS work that are half ((non?)art)works and the other half descriptions of artists, FLUXUS scenes throughout the world, and details about various projects. Additionally, I am reading The Society of the Spectacle to get more of an idea of the theoretical underpinnings of the experimental arts movements that emerged around the same time as FLUXUS, specifically the Surrealist and Situationist movements. I have a feeling I will experience quite a struggle to keep my paper under seven pages...

Anne, I might need your help narrowing down my topic for this paper! Granted, I haven't really had a chance to fully immerse myself in these texts, so I am assuming that once I do I will be more able to formulate a more specific topic. As the paper is relatively short and I do have so many books sitting on my desk, it is my first goal to narrow this down. I think you might already have knowledge of some themes or sub-movements within FLUXUS that could point me in a more clear direction.

Schedule for getting this done: Honestly, whenever I have time. This will probably consume the majority of the time that I am not working, in class or getting things done for my other classes. There is no set schedule I could make that I could actually adhere to consistently. I will probably spend my free time this month doing research, first figuring out which books are going to be of most assistance and then documenting the information and sources I want to use within my paper as I develop my understanding of the movement. I will then allow myself the first two weeks of November to get a paper started and develop it enough to meet the requirements of the first draft due. Throughout the construction of the draft I suspect I will still be researching, but will have narrowed down my pile of resources substantially.

Raising Our Obsessions to the Level of Creation!

Of what I was able to discern from this dense reading, the general idea seems to be the departure of various art movements from adherence to traditional forms and their reasons for doing so. Specifically, Drucker addressed the need for an avant-garde to “[rescue ] poetic imagination […] from the dwelling effects of ordinary graphic and linguistic practices.” This process entails the creation of a figural or visual mode that is “radically anti-grammatical” and derives meaning not from traditional syntactic structures or cliché phrases , but rather by the arrangement of language to create a form “independent of the grammatical order of the words.” She mentions exhaustively the various figures in these different art movements that agreed on the importance of making art that was presentational rather than representational. I just took Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle out of the library last night (along with pretty much every book they have on FLUXUS, minus two that I had to order online because they are renewed until the end of the year*) and the idea that art should be a presentation rather than a representation is similar to how Debord describes a modern society in which genuine social life has been substituted with representation. This leads me to believe these avant-garde movements were seeking to create art (or non-art) that conveyed this realization about modern society, though this theory was published much later than a lot of the work Drucker discusses, most of it being much nearer to the early part of the twentieth century.

What I want to hold onto as I embark on my own projects is the idea of the image and the word as different orders of symbolic activity. Additionally, I want to apply that idea to the notion that each given medium “has its own particular effect on our impulses,” in order to create animated writing that make the most out of the possibilities of image and word in the framework of animation. Furthermore, I want to follow an idea about modern poetry Drucker sums up succinctly in the text: as not lacking government, but being governed from within. I want to create pieces that work, but work in their own way and according to their own internal logic…hopefully, a logic that is new and refreshing and engages the reader/viewer.

*I'm planning on researching FLUXUS for my independent research project.

Conversation Project: The Plan (Erin & Nikki)

For our project, our objective is to raise awareness about the current controversy surrounding the arrest of two activists, Mike Wallschlaeger and Elliot Madison, for tweeting to protesters during the G20 summit to help them evade the police. They are the first Americans to be criminally charged for using social networking devices in connection with political protesting.
We want to use two corresponding animations to visually present the conversation. We will use our own voices to express how we feel about the situation, along with facts about the Patriot Act, the Civil Rights amendment, and social injustices, in conjunction with explaining the case concerning the two activists. We will also use another voice in defense of the Patriot Act and illegal searches and seizures to illustrate an opposing stance to our views.

For our research, we are planning to research Russ Feingold, since he is the only senator who actually read and voted against the Patriot Act. There are also numerous articles on the web about the G20 incidents in Pittsburgh, and the Patriot Act itself.

Each voice will be visually represented at a certain position on the slide and will vary in color and size. Color will be communicated as mood, size as emphasis, and font as the perspective of the speaker. The viewer will be able to read our texts because as the conversation builds on the slide, the comments will be displayed until the next section of slide is introduced.

On May 23, 2009 around 4:45 in the morning my cat woke me up. I immediately became aware that my partner, Ralph, had never come home that night.

When I called him he sounded disoriented, said he was with the police and that they were bringing him home soon. About twenty minutes later I heard a man say "okay, take care, Ralph!" and I ran out onto the porch to see him hobbling, wincing, toward the house, pushing his bike along side, with his face beaten. My first reaction was anger. I didn't know what had happened. As he struggled to stand on his legs he couldn't help but cry...we didn't know at the time but he was putting weight on a tibia that was fractured in three places, with much of the soft tissue behind the tibia and in the knee torn from the bone or ripped.

He had been out late making sure some acquaintances got in this bus safely. They had gone to a casino and some bars. He described his level of intoxication to the police in the emergency room twelve hours later as having been "two sheets to the wind." As he was on his way home he came upon a residence in which a group of men just south of Brady Street were saying some demeaning things to some women on that same property. Ralph sought a way to interfere in the conflict and derail attention from these women by asking them for a cigarette. A conversation ensued which escalated into an argument because Ralph challenged how they had been speaking to the women, and then how they were speaking to him. As it got more heated, they told Ralph to leave and he obliged willingly. However, as Ralph was walking away from these men, he was attacked from behind and held down by one man (Radakovich), and then punched in the face repeatedly by another (Busalacchi). They did this directly in front of their house, so when they were done they just went inside. Two girls across the street shouted to Ralph that they were calling 911, and the police came in record time (because it was on the east side, of course.) Ralph refused an ambulance because he did not have health insurance, so they had a paramedic check to see if his leg was broken and it was not. They put him and his bike in the paddywagon, and dropped him off in front of our house.

Only after I convinced him he needed medical help and solicited my mother for a car ride to hospital did we find out the extent of the damage. We called a police officer to the hospital to report what had happened, since we figured the cops that came to the scene hadn't reported anything. They treated the event like it had been a bar fight. Angry. Drunk. Mutual.

The officer who came to the hospital was in the room when the physician came back to report the extent of the damages to Ralph's body. He said it amounted to substantial battery - a felony. He also told us that the officers who had come to the scene of the crime (which included a sheriff) had completely mishandled the situation, that Ralph should never have been taken home, that he should have been taken right to the hospital regardless of insurance status because an officer is not qualified to determine the extent of the damages and his condition could have worsened in going home and sleeping, especially if he had experienced a concussion (which he fortunately did not.)

Interestingly, as this case progressed, his assigned officer who took the initial report was taken off the case, and switched to another district. We were not able to get an attorney to take the case because they all wanted a copy of the police report, and we were repeatedly told that we would not be allowed access to the police report until the district attorney had settled the case.
Well, interestingly enough, we recently discovered that the man who attacked Ralph from behind and held him down and is thus responsible for most of the damage done to his body, THAT GUY, that guy's father is a sheriff in New Berlin. Yep. Sure thing. And he works at an attorney's office, put that on yr brainy-brain.

So, I pose the age-old question. Police: To serve whom? To protect what?

Additionally, Ralph could not work for two months and didn't have insurance and we were denied any kind of government assistance besides food stamps (which we weren't granted until September when he applied in mid-July). Here are some of rationales offered by various social services as well as the district attorney's office for why they aren't going to do anything:

You were drunk.

You were walking around at four in the morning.

You initiated a conversation.

You accused these men of being "nazis," how do you expect white men to react when you, a brown man, calls them that?

The Criminal Victim's Compensation people pretty much described it like "You were rambling the streets drunk at 4am, initiated an argument with some other drunk guys, and you got punched," totally ignoring his motivation for talking to them at all and the fact that he was attacked by more than one person and that he got punched numerous times after he had already sustained major injuries to his leg that would prevent him from getting up without help FROM BEHIND.



Could this be a hate crime if he hadn't said anything to them? If he had just been attacked from behind, two guys against one, the assailants white and privileged, and the victim brown and passive, would they care about this then? DOES THE FACT THAT HE WAS ATTACKED AFTER SPECIFICALLY TELLING THESE MEN THAT THE TIME FOR WHITE MALES TO FREELY DEHUMANIZE WOMEN AND MINORITIES WAS OVER, does that strike any of these bureaucratic assholes as a clear indication of hatred?

There is a restorative justice intervention scheduled for November 4th. This means there will be no prison for his assailants, but it does mean that they had to admit guilt to avoid prison.

Though I am looking forward to making them pay off the medical bills and the fees incrued on Ralph's bank account and his lost wages while he was put out all summer, I honestly, honestly, honestly can't wait to force these men to have to look into our eyes.

America, the Beautiful?

I'm at my desk at work listening to Talk of the Nation on NPR. The radio announcer says:

"Hate crime legislation has been introduced that would finally cover crimes committed against persons because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Christian conservative advocates have opposed the legislation, arguing that it 'is an infringement on their freedoms of speech as well as religion.'"

I just want to make sure that I heard this correctly. There are people who are opposing HATE CRIME legislation because it would be an INFRINGEMENT on their FREEDOM? Their freedom to what? To rape and assault people for not having the sexuality you want them to? To abuse people for not conforming to gender as it is socially constructed and mandated? Did these same people think hate crime legislation that covered racially motivated crimes was a threat to their freedom? And if they think their freedom is impeded by protections for marginalized groups of people, wouldn't that imply that their freedom supersedes the freedom and protection of marginalized groups of people? That their freedom is dependent on the suppression of others?

[and outside the specific context of this legislation...]

AT WHAT POINT DO WE ADMIT THAT FREEDOM IN THIS WORLD, AS WE HAVE CONSTRUED IT FOR THE MOST PART, IS DEPENDENT ON OPPRESSION SOMEWHERE ELSE? That to live comfortably in America, others must live uncomfortably elsewhere? That there are not enough resources in the world to provide adequate nutrition to everyone, even if we wanted to make feeding the world a priority?

[and I'm getting way off of my original topic, but I have been wanting to ask you this question as well,]

AND KNOWING THAT THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH RESOURCES TO SUSTAIN THE LIFE CURRENTLY ON THIS PLANET,

knowing that each additional child born into the developed world sucks money, and resources, and LIFE away from the less developed world...

HOW CAN YOU JUSTIFY HAVING CHILDREN? IS THIS THE WORLD YOU WOULD WANT YOUR CHILDREN TO INHERIT, and if not, WHY NOT DEVOTE YOUR LIFE TO CREATING THE WORLD YOU WOULD WANT YOUR CHILDREN TO INHERIT, SO THAT THE NEXT GENERATION MIGHT HAVE SOME KIND OF LIFE?

Note: Wanting to establish a relationship with a baby/infant/child is not a logical response. If we are to change anything about this world, we must change the way we think about human relationships, must realize we are all a family, and that you do not need to see your own physical features reflected in the form of another being to have a powerful impact on their life and to benefit from their participation and influence in yours. I refuse to accept any answer that doesn't acknowledge these facts.

In Case You Weren't Already Convinced...

that the health "care" system in this country is not meeting the needs of the people physically or financially;

that the current system puts profits before people;

that Americans die every day because they can't afford the PRICE of continuing to live;

that our society has become a plutocracy in which those who can't AFFORD TO LIVE die, those struggling in the middle live in fear, and the rich live off of the frequently invisible slaughter parasitically;

YOU NEED TO WATCH THIS. Even if you are convinced. No argument has been made against the current health "care" system that is this public, this evocative and this direct. You should watch this because you are not outside of this. I know we live in a culture of alienation and disillusionment, especially among young people, being a young adult during the Bush II era was really rough, BUT HONESTLY: We are mortal. We will get sick, we will be injured, we will experience great hardship that we do not deserve. That is definite. Whether or not we have a system that is responsive to our challenges is what determines whether we survive. Currently, even those of us who have private health care, have no reason to feel secure. If you care at all about the life of yourself and anyone you know in this country, this is important to you.

Linear vs Relational Narratives and Revisionist History in Susan Howe and Alistair Reid

In the Susan Howe poem there seems to be a specific division of labor between the two paragraphs. The first paragraph actually resembles an airplane changing direction with its nose slightly up, suggesting that it is leaving or moving away from the ground, which here we can think of as the second paragraph which looks similar to a pile of rubble or a structure collapsed in on itself. The first paragraph consists of a sequence of words that suggest a rigid procession: “in mum/in arm/in at/ in ale as in tone.” The words overlap occasionally, such as “in arm” crossing over “in mum” and “in at” in the opposite direction, which to me suggested a system of silence and domination that both kept people collectively powerless (arms locked together) and was enforced through the barrel of guns, or arms. Below that, the word “open” literally opens the form of the poem for a moment, and then the words “peon vies company” flows upward, with the word “fluent” transposed over it, suggesting a conflict between an indigenous and an imperialist culture in which the indigenous people are fighting. Furthermore, the word “wedged” suggests something in a difficult position between two things, followed by “destiny shed,” which reflects possibly a dream broken. “[Cancel whole]” seems to confirm this idea of an indigenous culture’s destiny not being fulfilled because of cultural interference, especially if we look at it as the cancellation of a holistic way of living, such as what western culture has largely done to indigenous people around the world. The paragraph ends with squall extending out into the abyss between the two, like an actual wild cry.


In the next paragraph, Howe discusses history as a record of survivors, introducing the idea of revision. In this stanza the phrase “They cumbered the ground,” shoots out of the word “[authoritative];” this, (along with “Human [authoritative] human!”) is a rare instance of adherence to typical grammatical structures in the piece, suggesting the authoritativeness of the “human” in question.

It makes sense to use a non-traditional structure for this poem because the emphasis of the poem seems to be on the revisionist properties of history. The idea of re-doing or un-doing works well for her purpose of capturing the complex smattering of ideas and feelings the dominant cultural narrative leaves out or glosses over; the outburst(s) she is trying to give voice to require an experimental form. Reading the author commentary was very intrinsic to my eventually forging a meaningful relationship with this text. Without some background on the author, I think it would be hard to interpret this poem without feeling that you were totally going out on a limb, but I do think that the second paragraph functions as a directional signal back to the first in some way and that applying clues in the second half to the first would be of assistance in breaking it down. Additionally, it works in two main contexts; the form represents a product (war) of the topic (conquest), and the words imply a historical counter-narrative through the use of words such as “revision,” “record,” and “cumber” to describe the “authoritative” humans taking up space (potentially in regard to clearing green space to pursue agriculture/industry beyond initial settlements). What I want to retain from this piece is the application of form and use it in the process of thinking about making a visual out of words that communicates something about the subject that contributes to the overall meaning a reader takes from it, or that assists in the reading process.

Comparatively, Alastair Reid’s “Mandala: Dilemma” has a similar application of form to create meaning. In this piece there are only four words: “mightier than the penis.” This would be hard to contribute if it were written in a line like a typical poem, however Reid places his words in a circle with equivalent space between each character and no definition between the individual words. Thus, the words in this piece are completely dependent on the shape that they make. Reid is at a literal level making a comparison between the genitals specific to each sex. We see that comparison through the words which describe the relative power of the male sex organs, versus the shape, which represents in a figurative kind of way the female opening, or “hole from where it all arrives.” I offer the “hole from where it all arrives” idea because Reid seems to be pitting male sex organs against female sex organs as a metaphor for the conflict between linear and relational – the penis representing more of a line, with a beginning and an end, and vaginas representing a circle, life, and all of the deep, dark mysteries patriarchal culture has affiliated with the female sex organs throughout much of history. Reid seems to be saying “[this circle is] mightier than the penis,” and to me what this means is that Reid is saying a relational way of thinking and living is mightier (and perhaps less destructive) than the linear fashion so prominent in the progress narrative.

In conclusion, I see these poems relating in two very important ways. Both of them contain meanings that rely heavily (in the case of Howe) or solely (in the case of Reid) on the formatting of the words themselves. Furthermore, both seem to be discussing a conflict between the linear and the relational, in Howe’s poem this is just demonstrated specifically through the lens of history. We can view the conflict between the “peon” and the “authoritative human” as a conflict between linear and relational ways of life, and linear versus relational means of conveying a people’s history, specifically.

Justice?

So, admittedly, I've been getting consumed a bit by the global debate about Roman Polanski's recent arrest in Switzerland. As someone who is against prisons, and someone who is a sex abuse survivor/feminist/person with a conscience/human/activist, this is really a quagmire. I hate the idea that he committed this horrible crime, and that he has evaded punishment for so long. I hate the idea that almost every article on this subject refers to his crime as "sex with an underage person" (the reader perceives: consensual) when non-consensual sexual assault against someone of any age is rape, and always rape if their consent is not legally recognized if it is there. I hate that almost none of the articles mention that he was a full-grown man of 44 when he did this. I hate the idea that his actions are perceived as "not rape-rape" because he is a Holocaust survivor and his wife was killed by the Manson cult and he has made some important films. I hate the idea that he should be freed because his victim no longer wishes to pursue the charges against them; as a survivor I hate that our wish to not suffer further is interpreted culturally as retroactive consent and as a citizen of a purportedly democratic nation I hate that we accept the idea that just because a victim forgives hir abuser that an instance does not need to go to court. This is not the United Arab Emirates, blood money (though it always seemingly finds ways to exist), is not supposed to in this country. Simultaneously, I hate, very intensely, HATE, the idea that so many of the people who support this man's imprisonment support it because they are dreaming of the horrible things that would most likely happen to him if he was indeed imprisoned. Yet I am totally disgusted with the Hollywood supporters petitioning for his return to being a free citizen.

Dorothy Allison, also a survivor, has written that "there is no justice." I have been coming to that conclusion with regard to this current news topic. Is a wrong righted if an old man spends a few years in prison? I mean, this is America, so you have to be aware at this point that most rapists get less time than drug dealers and even some people who have been detained without any trial? And he's rich, so is it really feasible that he would much, if any, time in prison? My partner asked me what I think would be a good solution to this problem, because I keep bringing it up and he can see how intensely conflicted my feelings are about this, and the only thing I could come up with was that he should have to visit sex offenders in prison. Frequently. Be an ally for them, help them work through their shit by discussing his crime and how it has affected him, and also never be allowed to shake off his wrong doing. That doesn't seem equitable, though. Like, I'm sure Roman Polanski would definitely choose my punishment over the equivalent of what he did to his victim happening to him. There is nothing that would cancel out rape. There is nothing that would balance the scales here. Any attempt, as much of the media has done, to put the suffering of the victim and the abuser in some kind of hierarchy is futile, callous, and insulting.

So, as per usual, when I don't know what to make of the world, I turn to Adrienne Rich, who always seems to have commanding responses, if not answers, to the truly difficult questions.
Below is one of my favorite poems in the world, which I thought of while reading an article today on Switzerland not offering Polanski any bail, the parts I find most related to this are bolded.

HUNGER

--for Audre Lorde

1.

A fogged hill-scene on an enormous continent,
intimacy rigged with terrors,
a sequence of blurs the Chinese painter's ink-stick planned,
a scene of desolation comforted
by two human figures recklessly exposed,
leaning together in a stick like boat
in the foreground. Maybe we look like this,
I don't know. I'm wondering
whether we even have what we think we have--
lighted windows signifying shelter,
a film of domesticity
over fragile roofs. I know I'm partly somewhere else--
huts strung across a drought-stretched land
not mine, dried breasts, mine and not mine, a mother
watching my children shrink with hunger.
I live in my Western skin,
my Western vision, torn
and flung to what I can't control or even fathom.
Quantify suffering, you could rule the world.

2.

They can rule the world while they can persuade us
our pain belongs in some order.
Is death by famine worse than death by suicide,
than a life of famine and suicide, if a black lesbian dies,
if a white prostitute dies, if a woman genius
starves herself to feed others,
self-hatred battening on her body?
Something that kills us or leaves us half-alive
is raging under the name of an "act of god"
in Chad, in Niger, in teh Upper Volta--
yes, that male god that acts on us and on our children,
that male State that acts on us and on our children
till our brains are blunted by malnutritiou,
yet sharpened by the passion for survival,
our powers expended daily on the struggle
to hand a kind of life on to our children,
to change reality for our lovers
even in a single trembling drop of water.

3.

We can look at each other through both our lifetimes
like those two figures in the sticklike boat
flung together in the Chinese ink-scene;
even our intimacies are rigged with terror.
Quantify suffering? My guilt at least is open,
I stand convicted by all my convictions--
you, too. We shrink from touching
our power, we shrink away, we starve ourselves
and each other, we're scared shitless
of what it could be to take and use our love,
hose it on a city, on a world,
to wield and guide its spray, destroying
poisons, parasites, rats, viruses--
like the terrible mothers we long and dread to be.

4.

The decision to feed the world
is the real decision. No revolution
has chosen it. For that choice requires
that women shall be free.
I choke on the taste of bread in North America
but the taste of hunger in North America
is poisoning me. Yes, I'm alive to write these words,
to leaf through Kollwitz's women
huddling the stricken children into their stricken arms
the "mothers" drained of milk, the "survivors" driven
to self-abortion, self-starvation, to a vision
bitter, concrete, and wordless.
I'm alive to want more than life,
want it for others starving and unborn,
to name the deprivations boring
into my will, my affections, into the brains
of daughters, sisters, lovers caught in the crossfire
of terrorists of the mind.
In the black mirror of the subway window
hangs my own face, hollow with anger and desire.
Swathed in exhaustion, on the trampled newsprint,
a woman shields a dead child from the camera.
The passion to be inscribes her body.
Until we find each other, we are alone.

WOR(L)D/fnl drft

I lrnd hw to mk a wbpg fr my anmtnz.

My id(ea) ws too cncptl.

Thngs gt cnfsng wtht vwls...

https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/erinmday/worldfnldrft.html

Writing, Change & Consciousness

"Writing not only records language, it also changes language - and consciousness." -Bernstein

Think about it: did we describe good memories as playing like a movie in our mind before the invention of film? Did we describe a less developed memory as being like a snapshot, only capturing one fraction of a second? Mediums determine how meaning is constructed in a lot of ways. Writing does not only record language; the manner in which language is recorded, shaped, laid out, determines how the text will be interpreted by its audience. Th structure of writing also alters the consciousness of the writer; the expected/intended structure of a text shapes a writer's ideas.

I think the effect that Bernstein suggests this has on consciousness involves the use of writing as technology. The birth of the book created an external brain that you can keep on yr shelf at all times. Writing affected memory, which was the main medium of cultural transmission in cultures that used primarily oral traditions.Writing became less an abstract form of notes to use for an oral performance but a more cohesive and concrete recording of ideas/sounds/etc that could be mass-produced and interpreted by other people than the author. Additionally, the fairly recent advent of comprehensive public education has made it so that information that is recorded and printed and distributed can be experienced by a much wider audience who can have a one-on-one engagement with the text (not relying on someone else to read it to them) so the possibilities for consciousness both personally and collectively, as we absorb literature as a culture and develop opinions around it, expand to some degree and usually, we hope, that the engagement of an individual with the larger world expands and their consciousness is opened up through the process.

Unless they are reading Nietzsche, maybe...