Up Next Yoko Ono

Two Days!...after 8 dreary sepia months, we crack the screen door open on Oz...if Oz had bourbon and smoked pigs....a four month Technicolor Southern block party. Actually, considering the emotional scars, the intractable grudges, the fact that we will get drunk and yell at one another ...maybe it's more appropriate to call it a family reunion.



I love the song on this one...but, the true beauty comes at the 1:09 mark.

 

I can't wait. There's a delicious irony to this time of year. Universities all over the US are gathered into athletic conferences...the Southeastern Conference (SEC) is really the only one that's still regionally and culturally cohesive.* So, when SEC teams play outside of conference we are more Southern than ever...we are one fanbase. It drives a lot of people crazy but, SEC football is a Southern institution and we are loyal people and we are not them. It's also one of the only times a goodun can celebrate being Southern without somebody screaming racism in your face...just before they go into the RocknRoll hall of fame in Cleveland, Ohio...to eat bbq and drink Cokecola in the café while finishing off the last chapter of Absalom Absalom. Uh-Hmmm Anyway.....

On the other hand, during Conference play, we can forget about all that and get down to what we truly and dearly love...beating hell out of the only worthy foe...one another.

That's Thursday...this is still Tuesday and we need to go ahead and get some things out of the way...maybe deal with a few recurring topics before things go pear shaped.

PAVEMENT



Other than the sweet sweet degeneration**....the best thing about this about this clip is the flippant political statement. Earlier during the set he said "We're here for turrets...I mean Tibet." Ha. I know a lot of y'all are true believers in the political power of music...y'all and hippies :)...but, many of us were horrified and scared, as young'uns, watching you punk rockers become hippies with mohawks...pestering us about workers and the sandinistas or whatever. We were dismissed for being willfully uninvolved with reality...as Slackers. Yeah. I guess. 



Speaking of politics spoiling everything....this bastard.

MIRO

Today, during my trials and tribulations on the road (I left home without a wallet...and had to wait for an hour at a gas station to be rescued by Martha with credit cards), I tried to listen to a series of podcast on Miro. These were put on by the Tate...good...they turned out to be on MIro and politics...bad, very bad. The stream of profanity that I unleashed on the windshield was so intense that it blocked sunlight for a nanosecond. Look up there...look at it. Who looks at that and thinks about politics? It turns out, people whose definition of politics includes every possible human activity...that's who. Then they set about explaining his paintings through politics...even when political statements, in the paintings, were vague at best.

It's one thing to say a storefront mannequin unavoidably evokes Plato...it's quite another to say the worker who put the mannequin together had Plato in mind. I'd rather be bit on the forehead by a mosquito than listen to this nonsense.

Rude Talk

Did y'all hear Richard Dawkins the other day? He said it was "immoral" not to abort a fetus with downs syndrome. That's nasty man. Then, under the guise of an apology, he doubled down. At least he didn't actually apologize. I'm sick of people saying something...something they've obviously meant to say...something they'd given some thought to...then coming out the next day and apologizing like they'd merely burped at the table. You said it...stand by it. Shit.

What I want to know is this...what did he mean by immoral? He didn't say it was undesirable. He didn't say it shouldn't be allowed. He said it was immoral...as if he had some absolute authority in mind. I'd like to know exactly why he thinks it's immoral to have a baby with Downs. Why it's wrong...and what authority he's drawing on? I could infer...but, that would just be rude. Where does a machine go for moral authority?

Adamparsons Hates on the Fall

An oldie but a goodie (as a topic on the blogs...the song is timeless)



Me

Who am I kidding...we gon' keep talking about me....but, this gives me an excuse to point you all in the direction of Hugh Marwood's blog. He is an artist...a good one. He has been kind enough to recount some of our recent conversations on his blog. He's also put some of my really fantastic photos on there. So go look at it. He talks about Tom Wolfe too...so it's actually worth a click. :). Hugh's work is really good.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some things but, that should hold us over for now.

*If the money grubbers keep expanding the Conference we'll have Yankees in it...at that point we will seriously be looking to immigrate...it'll all be over at that point.

**If only Pavement had given this much "effort" in covering The Classical.

Tersanctus

"When I'm rushin' on my run...I feel just like Jesus son." Heroin - Velvet Underground.



Yesterday, I spent the afternoon listening to Perfect Prescription over and over again. I think. It's hard to tell in a loop...of glorious loops.

They are glorious.

Hard drugs and Jesus. They come up a lot together and the connection is probably not unwarranted...not entirely.

"If heaven's like this, then that's the place for me." Spacemen 3 Confusion/Walkin With Jesus.

 

Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Teresa. The sculpture is a depiction of the nun's experience with an Angel who was delivering God's love with repeated thrusts from a spear...

 

"When he pulled it out I felt that he took [my organs] with it, and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God. The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans. The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one cannot possibly wish it to cease..."

 

I think most readers today would see a sexual allusion in this. That's what the 18th century smart ass, de Brosses, saw when he sassed..."If that is divine love then I have a lot of experience with it." Bernini was no stranger to that kind of experience either. In fact, as a young man, he seems to have been consumed with carnal passions. He is, you'll remember, the one who, upon discovering that his mistress was making time with his brother, had a servant slash her face to bits and pieces. He couldn't do it himself, of course, because he was busy trying to murder his brother.

 

There is no better illustrator for the need of Christ than a Christian.



A heroin addict might see Teresa in a different light though. Like those that see sexual gratification, he would not be that far off either. For Christians, the great hope is not an eternal spiritual existence in the clouds...not, as Orwell hilariously described, "choir practice in a jeweler's shop."  It is for a renewed material creation...a place for the senses in full.

Surely being in the presence of God, physically, is a greater sensual experience than even heroin...which is merely a hint of a taste.



You don't have to be a Christian or even believe in God...you don't have to believe that Jesus actually existed at all, as I suspect some of you don't...adamparsons and Muj once had a running dialogue here about the historical evidence for his existence. Even if he is just an amalgamation of various cargo cult figures...rumors of an eastern mystic...whatever...Christianity's narrative exists. It exists and has it's own logic. We can imagine, even if we can't fully comprehend, the existence of an omniscient being that is pure Love...and we can imagine that being in the presence of such a creature would have a physical element to it...a euphoric element.

 

I'm not saying go find Jesus in the curve of a spoon. I'm just saying that the desire to push the potential of sensual experience...probably comes from a genuine urge...a pure prescribed desire.

Conversations with BLB

 

The Boy has become a conversationalist. He still talks a lot of nonsense (really...a lot) but it has become increasingly clear that he prefers conversation to communication and chit chatter.

  Chagall

 

We have a lot of theological discussions. He thinks about these things.

 

Our first was last year during a thunder storm. I half jokingly tried the God rearranging his furniture line...as a segue to explaining that God is an immaterial being. He laughed and then, in a very matter of fact, ohhh Daaaady, tone he explained to me that God doesn't need furniture because he doesn't have a body. Well then... 

 

There's been quite a few conversations about the fully Human nature of Christ...conversations and observations.

 

"Jesus had a..."

"Yeah son I reckon he did"

 

I think that was established at the little known, actually entirely unknown, Council of Ephesus in 327. Jesus did have a penis (or wiener if you prefer) and yes he did go potty. Fully God....Fully man.

 

If fully man....then there is a possibility that The Boy could have beaten Jesus in a foot race. Maybe he wasn't that fast...that was an exciting possibility.

 

This week's talk was different tough. A much beloved security guard at his school finally succumbed to cancer. It's been a few weeks since Mr. Joseph passed but it perturbed his thought a couple of days ago while he was putting on his shoes.

"Why does God give people get cancer." You could hear the irritation in his voice.

I was taken aback and honestly a little excited...he's pondering these things. If he doesn't think about them he'll never hold them True or dear. He'll drop it like a bad habit or even worse just spend his life going through the motions...or horror of horror's end up at some Six Flags Over Jesus, listening to contemporary Christian music...wondering in a panic why the Holy Spirit hasn't moved over him like an epileptic fit...or why God hasn't blessed him with a Rolex because God wants his followers to be rich...or God only knows what.*

First, I gave him a Christian answer...God doesn't give people cancer. The world is fallen because of Sin but God by his grace has provided a way out. That is what I believe and I hope that is what the Boy believes but, that is not a very satisfactory answer to the question...it's a conclusion to be drawn after considering and thinking through a series of questions about Evil and suffering, etc.

The first thing we have to do is establish the fact of Evil...or Good for that matter. I started to ask him why it was bad for someone to get cancer...but, he was satisfied for the moment (we will return to it I'm certain) and went on a rant about Adam, Eve and Judas....he really dislikes Judas right now. Now I'm trying to explain that Judas is not responsible for Sin in the world but....

"Ok Daddy first thing we have to do when we get outside is go down the water and make sure the Japanese aren't attacking by boat." Our backyard has been battled over more times than the last Twinkie and The Boy has fought gallantly against Yankees, the Imperial Japanese, Pathans, the British, Zulus and the French Foreign Legion.

When we got to the water he determined that the Japanese had already come ashore and were to our rear...between us and our base (the deck). He assessed the situation like a salty veteran would...

"Dammit."

Salty indeed.

"You're not gonna tell Moma are you?"

 

 

 





*There is of course the rainbow, social justice, liberation theology option...where he agitates for some new legislation because Jesus came to establish the modern coercive welfare state....where he admonished his followers to feed the poor with threats of violence and incarceration...but, that's highly unlikely around here.

I think of all these options being forced to listen to contemporary Christian music would be the most punishing.

Slip It To The Andriod

Yet another week where I've worked more than 20 hours. Y'all I didn't make it back to the house until 9:30 on Thursday...then turned right around and worked for five hours on Friday. It's like I'm making Nike tennis shoes in China. There's nothing for a week like that but liquor, smoke and Chrome.

Our friend from Satellite of Love is back...only now, he loves her even more. So Sweet.

Beat yer head on that for a while.*


Mainly I've just been beating my head against this laptop and blogger...and idiots. Below is not a sketch as such...but, a material artifact of a conversation between me and Martha. Through a convoluted series of links I ended up on an article from, where else, Salon, that blamed all of America's wars on Southerners. Why? Because we are the dregs of Scotland, Ireland, Wales and North and West England. We like to scrap. The author had just read Albion's Seed. The last decade or so has been a real revelation for the Yankee. Through the publication of a few books and essays (see: See Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell or Better Off Without 'Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secesion, Albion's Seed, etc.) the Yankee has finally come to understand that flawed as we are...we aren't flawed versions of them. We are different from them. We are still, to a large extent, the same people that were too poor and rowdy to live in the poorest and rowdiest parts of Britain (or kidnapped from West Africa). New England, and the United States of God Almighty America and the whole of the Western Hemisphere was invented by the Puritans...the better sorts of England...the sober and industrious and, above all, the Pious. The example to all...they founded a shinning city on a hill. A beacon for the rest of us struggling in the dark. They will save the world...even if they have to burn it down to do so. From Calvinism through Transcendentalism to Statism...they haven't changed a lick. Some of these people were sent out to save the Great Lakes region (the Midwest)while others stayed back to get the minds of wave after wave after wave of immigrants right. They pulled that shit on the Italians and Poles...found ready allies in the Germans of 1848 but, we instinctively knew why they'd been kicked out of England in the first place. F***ing witch burners. We've never wanted any part of it...and that is our great and unpardonable Sin. We aren't just different than them...we don't want to be them. That's Cardinal. That is what they are finally coming to realize. One of the reasons we don't want to be them is that their Piety is literal minded and dull. They're not Righteous. They're busybodies.* Their industriousness, their solid work ethic, looks an awful lot like grasping, rapacious, greed. In short, they're the kind of people who would invade, conquer and occupy Sovereign States, slaughter indigenous peoples, go on rabbit hunts in the Philippine, send gunboats to South America, Vietnam, and on...all in the name of Abolition or Manifest Destiny or making the world safe for Democracy or etc. etc. etc. and BAAAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhhh. Now matter how dastardly...they can always come up with some cockeyed Moral Justification paper over their Imperial compulsions. We're the warmongers??? Pound sand dickh**ds. Anyway...the above is what you obviously see in those scribbles. We will revisit all this later. We gotta clear the air in here... Stay tuned...I didn't want to sully F-Word's efforts with all this nonsense but, next up...we will be examining a piece of his excellent work that purchased recently. *You may be asking yourself...Isn't the Bible Belt in the South...isn't the South hyper-religious. One, there's more than one religion (see the State). Two, much of what passes for religion in The South is not naturally Southern...fundamentalism, for instance, is a product of modernity and a Midwestern import. Three, we go to church because we, as individuals are Sinners, not to plot the salvation of the world. Jesus handled that...without any help from Cotton Mathers even. Again, we will be discussing all this in the future.

8 Hours!?!

Yesterday I worked for almost eight hours...EIGHT freaking hours. Can you imagine working like that five days a week?  &%$# on that!

This has been an exhausting week. Not only have I put in over 20 hours...but, I've done manual labor. Just let that sink in.

I painted my room. Well, I put colors on the wall. I spackled some of the holes and even sanded some of the spackling but mainly I just covered the walls with paint.

I spent about 8 years, off and on, as a house painter. Started right after I got out of the Army and while I was an undergraduate...between jobs after graduate school, and whenever I needed some folding money.

If my old boss was to come by and see the work...he'd probably try to retroactively fire me. We got color though and that's the main thing. Color and pictures.

Keep in mind I couldn't completely ignore my day job for this task. I spent time on the road this week...from up to French Camp and down to McComb.

This was taken just off the Natchez Trace between French Camp and Kosciusko.  The phone decided we were in McCool, Mississippi but, of course, any place I go in Mississippi is made McCool by my presence.

McComb was an especially taxing trip. I was so worn out by dinner that it took four bowls of banana pudding at The Dinner Bell just to get my energy back up for a few more hours of work.

Six or seven hours in the car isn't a lot in my line of work but, it is long enough to have your patience and sanity tested by idiot philosophers (as opposed to non-idiot philosophers who have the grace to spend most of their time driving a tractor rather than being a smart-ass). I found a series of podcast called Philosophy Bites put on by David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton. Each podcast features a philosopher being questioned by Edmonds or Warburton on a specific topic. 

One particularly irritating example...Ronald Dworkin on the Unity of Value. He takes two values that are commonly, and to my view rightly, believed to be contradictory...Liberty and equality. Then he shows how they are actually compatible. How? By altering the definitions until they are reasonable. How do you know they are reasonable? They no longer contradict each other. Ronald Dworkin has discovered the color green and mistaken it for the elimination of the colors Yellow and Blue.

As an aside, Spliff and I have argued about this on various occasions...all I can say about Dworkin is that he is no Spliff.

Then there are those who have interesting insights about the findings of neuroscience but don't really seem to be doing philosophy...hallucinations, personality disorders, etc. There are some delights like Emma Borg on Context Sensitivity and Language or Nick Bostrom on the insanity of Simulation Theory (you, me and Tom's house-cat are almost certainly computer generated simulations...it's not that easy to dispute). 

It was Galen Strawson on Pansychism that took the prize. Strawson is a self proclaimed Physicalist. In this view everything is physical through and through...merely physical. Everything has a material explanation. He then addresses the big screaming, purple experiencing, problem with this view...Consciousness. You can't deny the existence of experience but to accept experience as real is to accept the existence of non-physical things...nevermind that, how do you explain the emergence of Consciousness from non conscious material. Science can't do it. It can explain the complex process that seems to accompany consciousness but we don't have access to the data of consciousness...it dosen't exist in any accessible way.

My favorite exchange was when the interviewer, I can't remember which one it was says..."it could be the result of some magic interjection but that's implausible." As if there were anything plausible about consciousness in the first place. 

Sam Harris provides an answer in The Mystery of Consciousness ...it's "incomprehensible - a miracle, in other words." Something, non-physical has arisen from the purely physical, something has emerged from the absence of some thing. No problem for me the Theist...and, obviously Sam, the non-theist, has learned to live with it...not so Strawson. Strawson's answer is that because everything is physical and experience exists...everything must be experiential. Consciousness must be integral to all material...it didn't emerge it was always there. A cardboard box, a wad of gum stuck under a desk are conscious on some level...dear God, that means there must be something it's like to be a urinal at a bus station or Adamparsons' toothbrush. 

I actually enjoyed his interview...it's a clever way of trying to deal with his problem.  After all, it can't be tested. 

The biggest bore of the week came, not from Philosophy Bites, but from an interview at The Whitney with Lawrence Wiener. What a silly ass. At one point, he states "good people can make bad art and bad people make good art...that's why I don't want to know anything about the people I'm showing with."

Yeah man, he doesn't place any importance on personal morality...that's so f****ing bougie. Unless..."they're racist, or sexist...or you know fascists."

That is the kind of shit that causes me to have acute visions, hallucinations almost, of beating a blazing, 50 gallon drum with a baseball bat over and over until I collapse from exhaustion.