London for Dummies

An expanded definition of Love

2011-08-08T21:08:00.001+01:00

Heya,

I realize that these messages can be rather long and much to get through, so I've tried to shorten them up. I suppose i've also gotten so busy with writing to finish this PhD, I feel a lot less like writing when I get home--that and there hasn't been something really emotionally profound to share until about three days ago.

What sparked this is reading the NY Times tonight and seeing pictures of Jeff Bridges (whom I really like) doing his star turn for the movie crazy horse. It's not the hollywood attention, or his ability; it's what he said in a little "60 second Interview" One of the papers I find on the tube, on my way in to the library is called the Metro. It's free so it's always lurking about. They have a 60 second interview bit that's usually with someone quite famous (Did you know by the by, that using the word "quite" here signifies "not so much"? LIke saying he's quite
smart, means he's actually a little thick. Well maybe not thick--thickish.)

Anyway in this little snapshot of his life Bridges lets on that he's been married only once, now about thirty-six years. I'm already floored by that. I mean he's a hollywood star and that ain't the model for a star. But, moreover it's what he said about being in a relationship: He said you have tough time and then draw a line and if your partner crosses it, "You say, 'well, is that it? or , 'Am I going to enlarge my concept of what love is"

I tore that out of the newspaper and have had it in my pocket since. I wonder about that. I think my idea of love has often been too rigid. You let someone in (hopefully the right one) and then maybe you have to make some adjustments to what you think love is supposed to be. Or maybe the whole thing gets exploded. Maybe I start
from scratch.

I'd like to welcome everyone to the new year, with this thing, which for me at least is a new thing to ponder in between wondering about the legacy of modernity. I'm in the grind now. Every day at the library banging out more scholarly prose on museums and what they are for. I like taking a moment out to think about this, combining it with another thing I read last year: You choose to love someone. It's a conscious thing. You don't just fall. Actually, you rise to the occasion.

Lots of love,

Seph

Warehousing Jazz

2011-08-08T21:04:00.001+01:00

Heya,

I finally found out what Robert (the child I was tutoring in his
council estate home in Hackney) was saying when he wanted to convey that
whatever we had on the menu for his education that day didn't suit him: Jazz.
He would say that something was Jazz. I found this particularly troubling
since the album I gave him for his birthday some months back was a copy of
Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain, and I think Coltrane's A Love Supreme as well.
wtf?

What can I do? He's gone now. After the third or fourth week in a row where
I showed up to tutor him and he refused to do any work, the organization I worked
for called time on the whole plan for me mentoring and tutoring Rob.

Every day I went to his house towards the end he would just glare at me and make up
some excuse to not do the work, or simply say: "I'm not doing it". I honestly did not know what to do, and in every session report I filled out after the attempt I said this. When admin at the company finally pulled the plug, I asked (via email) why they didn't try to do something before it got to that. The answer I got was excuses: they tried to give me interesting exercises to do with him, asked me to pull back from the academic stuff of learning how sentences work, parts of speech, and algebra, how to use variables. They wanted me to try to get him into football, cooking, acting or journalism. I genuinely made the attempt and asked him about his interest in these areas and I got back no. It seems that Rob was saying no to me like it was his
only moment of personal power in his life and he said no to finally be in control of something.

I think this is true, but had no idea how to get around it. I thought I would be patient and wait for it to break. I thought that I got £40 for every session so it was worth the aggravation. I felt like I had been passive and did not do enough.

I replied to the company's wackness, by pointing out that I had initiated meetings with them about Rob, to try to get him back on track (at one point he was really on it, asking questions, excited). I told them that what they needed was to have a qualified social worker on hand to guide tutors through these difficult patches--especially since most of the kids were like this, troubled and hurt and angry. My friend Lawrence also pointed out, it would probably help to do mentor mentoring as well. The short of the rest is that I'm not working for them anymore. But the curious thing I picked up is that they were fine with having some actor hang out with Rob three times a week, and given what Rob said towards the end, I'm not sure what for.

They say they want to build Rob's confidence. I think they are killing time until he becomes someone else's responsibility--breathe--just giving up on his intellectual capability which continues to go unchallenged. He's 15, already done some violent crime; you don't have to be Nostradamus to see where this is going. His mum says it's the drug use: huffing, she says. I don't know if she's a credible witness.

As I write this PhD I am getting to the point where this argument takes on real significance for me in terms of what I want to say, and also in terms of social policy in industrialized nations like the UK, and the U.S. There is an interesting lie/disconnect between the social and the cultural. You have the social providing the structure for particular lives bred in desperate, vicious inequality, and then the responsibility for those who go bad gets foisted off on the cultural: youth groups, community activism, art projects for habitual drug users. There's this idea that the cultural, i.e. art, can save people, rescue them, give them back to themselves
with a raised awareness. And (it gets better) you have an entire armada of people in cities like London, lining up to fight the good fight and work for bullshit pay for charities and community orgs. that want to "empower people" and promote diversity.

This is a sham. It's just silly. And if you tell these bright-eyed conscientious folks that this is rigged game, they will inevitably say, well, what else can we do? Or they get really depressed. I know, because this past weekend for thanksgiving at a friend's house I made this argument to three young doe-eyed people who were working with at risk youth or had, or would in the future. I felt bad afterward. I really unloaded on them. I was arguing it out in my own head. But I'm convinced this is true: The Cultural did not make the problems and it cannot cure them. We are lying to ourselves when we don't address root causes of angry and disfranchisement and poverty and lack and warehousing kids until they get a job driving a lorry. I for one don't want to play.

Love,

Seph

Updates from Seph: No Access to Children

2009-07-04T00:12:00.000+01:00

You know, I saw a sign the other day, on my way from work. It was tacked up on the gate to a construction site. It reads 'No access to Children!' I keep thinking that when the project is complete they are going to have children just docilely lined up, with signs pointing to them. Shouldn't we have a policy of somewhat limited access anyway, you know, to relatives or playmates?

It's been a terribly long time since the last time I wrote. I have been just exhausted by the last few weeks, and what my countrymen would call rubbish at keeping in touch. I got a new job tutoring/mentoring kids in Hackney. Now to give a picture of Hackney, let me say it's like the lower east side of New York city, before it was gentrified, maybe 15 years ago. Or it's a bit like the poorer parts of LA, where there is tract housing, except that in Hackney, it's all what they call council estates.

Estates. That's ambitious. I think I had misgivings about this job from the start, when I showed up for the interview and the guy who runs the company [Name Removed] talked with me as if he's already given me the job and was just setting down the details. The idea is to tutor and mentor (though i think the mentoring part is the most nebulous idea, sort of like just showing up regularly is leading by example) kids who have fallen out of the school system and need tutoring to catch up and get back on track. They offered me an assignment early on which was a learning-disabled student who needed someone 5 days a week. I couldn't do it cause of my schedule, but I kept thinking: I'm not trained for this. You've got to be kidding me.

One student I'm working with now, they called me before they offered me the assignment, because he was supposed to have exposed himself to his last tutor (a woman) and they wanted to make sure I was okay with taking this on. I'm still working with him, and the one thing he will not do is leave his blasted mobile phone in his room. One other student with whom I had One meeting I met at his father's house. I walked in and it is easily the worst house in which people were 'living' I have ever been inside. There was stuff everywhere, and in the 'living room' a huge fishtank, bigscreen TV and an old turn of the century mattress the boy was sleeping on wedged between two couches. The place smelled of chemicals. The main table, aside from the paraphernalia on it, had burn marks everywhere from cigarettes, and a fine grit of I don't know what. THe child refused to deal with me. He went into a room and shut the door and wouldn't come out. I left. I came back not thirty seconds later to get a signature on my timesheet form. Thirty seconds. The guy had his son answer my knock on the door. He opened his door holding the pit bull in one hand. I got him to sign the form, and I will not be going to that housing project again. I swear he had a crystal meth lab in that flat.

The other student I'm working with yesterday told me that he thought the English exercises we were doing with parts of speech was bullshit. It was boring and he was going to go back upstairs to sleep if he had to continue doing this boring bullshit, bruv. I don't know what to do with him. I don't know that my attitude of okay, do what you need to, i'm not going to force you, is what he needs. I let go. I understand that he can't recognize how to act in his best interests yet. I don't think he is well served either by bringing someone like me in for a month and a half to tutor and then disappear never to see him again. No continuity, and I don't even want to talk about what his home looks like, and how this all probably adds to a sense of precariousness and confusion.

It made me think that this is part of the problem of cities and of modernity. If it takes a village to raise a child and we don't have the villages anymore, and instead we have a bunch of people crammed next to each other, some of whom don't know how to raise their children, with flailing bureaucracies trying to figure out whose in immediate danger, who can wait, who needs education and in what form and to what extent. Most of the governmental/municipal responses seem inadequate to me. We just don't know what to do with kids who fall out of the main thoroughfares towards success. And then like my student, who had to miss several sessions with me cause he was in court (for what I didn't ask, didn't want to know), clearly it gets worse when they are bored with this bullshit.

I wish I could say I am doing it cause I feel rewarded and recognize this as worthwhile. Really--I just need the money.

I've got to submit 60,000 words next week to get on to my writing-up year. One more hurdle along the way. It would be great to hear back from you when you have a moment.

Updates from Seph: Governmental Power

2009-05-06T13:34:00.000+01:00

Dear Friends,

It's been so long since I have written one of these and I think that's because I am just a little bit afraid of boring the bejesus out of you, or maybe I just haven't thought of anything that seems to rise to the occasion of writing. It feels that since we (Ben Dawson, Alex Douglas and Sean Legassick) spent an hour on the Thread, our little radio show last night taking about governmental power and states of emergency that it's worth passing on some discoveries we made.

I don't know whether you heard the story of some of the fallout of the G20 protests here in London, in terms of the violence used by police. The big one (which started some dominoes) concerns one Ian Tomlinson, a guy (a regular punter they would say here) who was on his way home from work on the day of the protests. He happened to walk by the area in which the protests were happening. The initial accounts from the police were that he collapsed and paramedics rushed to resuscitate him, but he died despite their efforts. Then people started discounting that apocryphal history. People said they saw police officers hit him and send him sprawling to the pavement. The police said they had no contact with him. Then the CCTV footage came out, the Guardian newspaper got a hold of it and it showed one officer walking behind Tomilinson, who had his hands in his pockets the whole time, just walking slowly, a cop comes up and shoves him to the ground so hard, the man bounces. The fact that the very cameras the city authorities insisted on installing has allowed others to police the police I find poetic: they've been hoist on their own petard (I aline I got from Wolverine in X-men comic books decades ago).

Other footage emerged, along with eyewitness accounts that show the same officer hitting him with the baton before shoving him. Tomlinson got up said something to them and wandered off to die. The shit made me so sad. It gets better: The police finally admitted they had contact with the guy, then got their own coroner to perform the autopsy. One doctor Patel found Tomlinson had died of natural causes. Turns out this doctor is used by the police often when they need some medical science cover for brutality. The family of the man, he owned a newstand, was a recovering alcoholic (who isn't?) got another doctor to do an examination and he found that Tomlinson had an abdominal hemmorhage and died of internal bleeding. They police finally owned up to suspending the officer who assaulted him and days later, after much press coverage, put him up on manslaughter charges. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/08/ian-tomlinson-video-inquiry-ipcc

That was the backdrop to the conversation we had. THe main guest, Ben, studies a lot of philosophy and the other guys did as well, along with some political economy. None of which is a strength of mine. We had a good discussion and the most important things that came through were that one: Sometimes governments take emergency powers in order to regulate institutions that had not been regulated before, it taking a moment of crisis for them to realize that this mess, in FDR's case the banks, etc. were unregulated, and that they could. Sometimes this dictatorial move is kinda about rethinking the world, not trying to close it off and shut it down.

Two: Ben said something I had suspected for a long time, but people on the extreme left like Ben (he's a Marxist) have never said out loud, at least in my hearing: There are not really any new ideas for how to confront and deal with capitalism; we simply are not sure where to go and how to get there. I bet the other officers around the guy who is now facing prison, that night saw nothing wrong with what he did hitting and tossing Tomlinson to the ground. They don't know either where they are going, but the difference might be they actually like being in a position to say no; go this way; get on the floor; i'm in charge. Ben would say they only protect capital and we misrecognize that protecting us. The DVD of the movie City of God has an interview with the Chief of police there, who says essentially the same. More questions than answers right now.

I'll send a link to the show once I get it for those who want to listen in.

Hope you are well,

Seph

Replies to "Updates from Seph: Timetables, White bikes, Skepticism"

2009-03-05T13:31:00.000Z

Seph,

I think, perhaps, not having the doubt reflex is a gift, as long as it's not tethered to stupidity, which, in your case, it clearly isn't. I like to imagine that Shakespeare lacked that same reflex, and Joyce, and Plath too--probably. I'm not saying we should believe every snake oil salesman that comes to town, but I am saying that to make something beautiful is to fly headlong in the face of reason. It's doubtful it made sense to raise trees from rocks, or convexities out of molten mass, but here we all are. Protoplasm and goo are reasonable, doubt's most appropriate sludge, but mountains, wars, greek gods, that's the stuff.

Chin up, my friend.

As for your big reward, perhaps we can find a way for me to be there, or for us to be somewhere together on that date. Maybe see if you can round up a few others. Just a thought.

Travis

Replies to "Updates from Seph: Timetables, White bikes, Skepticism"

2009-03-04T16:49:00.000Z

Hey, Sepher.

The death of a loved one gives you a chance to unbalance the relationship. Communication or lack of it is no longer an issue. Neither is over-the-top demonstrations of affection.
You can stalk dead people, or the memories of them, the way you can't in life without getting arrested or at least having a restraining order drawn up against you.
Living each day as if its your last has always sounded like bullshit to me. Who has that much energy? That much cash? That much tolerance of other peoples eccentricities?

I admire you're quest for a dissertation subject. I honestly can't think of anything I care enough about to put the years long work into.

I have a yearly evaluation coming up at work. I've been at my job for about 6 years now, at the company for 10, and I'm tempted to make this year's summation and declaration of goals into a sort of tepid valentine to a disappointing partner. But I'll lose the nerve at the last minute.

But I will talk about how any talk of a relationship between me and my job went sparkless a long time ago.

I like the idea of a white bike.

There's something about all white that conveys unearthliness.
Clouds, a snow covered meadow, a meal of boiled tofu and rice served up on a white plate.
Milk filling a clear glass tumbler.

A white bicycle tire sounds like a good think to contemplate during meditation.

Take care. We both like you a lot. Alain considers you close because of your times in the store.
I consider you close because your e-mails make me want to respond with a thoughtful sentence or two.

Glen and Alain

Updates from Seph: Timetables, White bikes, Skepticism

2009-03-04T13:47:00.000Z

Hiya,

I don't know why but I've gone through a period where I really hesitate to write these now. I am going through a tough time: the usual, money, family, being roundly rejected by every single conference I applied for this year, and every single job, although at least I get an email from the conferences that reject me. It's odd especially because it seems now that I am most certain about the kind of PhD I want to write—an ethnography of museum rooms, essentially the story of walking through them and experiencing them in all their informational valences. Now it seems a powerful idea to do this, and a relatively unique one.

I had a meeting with my PhD supervisor, Marko. We met as usual at the Tate Modern and we sat down and mapped out doing the upgrade. He told me again that
I should leave off working on the literature review and methods chapters I have been working on since, well most of last year. He looked at me and said that it pained him to see me unhappy. I told him I regularly bit off too much to chew. I realized after the meeting that I had been punishing myself these last couple months, trying to perfect something that could not be, would not be perfect. I handed in all the materials for the upgrade process last week, the chapter plan, timetable (more on this in a moment), the lit review and methods chapters and the bibliography, which itself is up to about 19 pages already. On March 10 I have a meeting with Marko, my second supervisor Gordon and the director of my program, Steve, who happens to be the independent third reader. I find out whether my work is considered worthy of pursuing as a PhD. If not then, I don't know what the fuck.

I want to mention the timetable. I took a one-day course on completing the PhD and at the behest of the instructor worked out a few things. One, this is costing me so much money I had to blink. Second, I have to set a date for completion and make this public so that I can enlist help in sticking to it. That date is the 15th of September 2010. Then I should submit everything. Third, I should plan a big award for myself for the day after I complete this. I'm no damn good at thinking of these things so if you have suggestions, that would be lovely.

I took another course the other weekend, on critical thinking. I found out that I'm not very skeptical, at least, I don't do that as reflex. I want to believe and figure if you look alright and seem logical and devoid of misanthropic tendencies then, okay, I can be on board for whatever.

I listen to a lot of the same DMX songs over and over. He's so angry and stupid and yet I love that stuff. I don't know what this means either.

There is a white bike chained up by the rail right down the street from the tube station where I go almost every day. I mean it's painted white–completely. I saw it appear a couple weeks ago. Thought it was an art project. Just read in the NY times yesterday that a family who lost their daughter to a bike accident in Manhattan (a truck ran her over), keeps a white-painted bike on some street corner near the accident, as a kind of shrine, with flowers and pictures and things that are permeable and don't last. I imagine it's the same thing happening here.

I read yesterday; there is an inscription on it something about life not being measured by the number of breaths, but the quality of breathing—my bad paraphrase. It always occurs to me it's so easy to say that in death, but in life too often it's just overzealous metaphors, awful, broken crockery that means to hold more than it can.

I finally decided after figuring out in that course how many actual working days I have left to finish and after talking with Marko and realizing I was making myself really unhappy, that I could take days off. So now Sunday is mine, and I kinda like it, and gonna try to keep it this way.

Seph Rodney
PhD candidate, London Consortium
24 Litchfield Street
London, WC2H 9NJ
www.londonconsortium.com

P.S. sorry about the email long ago about loose change, the internet movie. It was just a awful conspiracy stuff and I can only say I was being my typical non-skeptical self and will stop that bullshit right now.

Replies to "Three photos: Treehouses and Christmas on Store Street"

2009-01-14T12:03:00.001Z

The picture of the building is very festive. Nice. I had seen the tree houses in Madison Square Park and my thought was that the display speaks well of New York's housing situation since it's either a representation of what crazy New Yorkers would do to get an exclusive apartment or conversely an illustration of the chronic shortage of living space in this city. I really didn't think of the access issues having been to so many apartments with difficult means of entrance. Having to climb a rope would be novel, but hey, this is New York. Everything is possible.
Love Ya

Replies to "For Many Reasons"

2008-11-02T14:35:00.000Z

Hiya, Seph.

Your friend is right to a degree. You put too many constraints on folks and you start to deprive them of their rights as human beings. So at that point freedom becomes the issue.

But there is a natural inclination to be outraged when you notice that someone has something you feel you ought to have, especially when those who hold their lots in life against average standards and see themselves coming up wanting. At that point equality becomes the issue.

I was listening to George Will on the Colbert Report (funny how when the economics of a situation require a laugh from your audience instead of mere insight from the presenter, you get an entirely different whittling down to the truth) and he said, "Conservatives will value freedom at the expense of equality. Liberals tend to value equality at the expense of freedom."

I think that's probably true. And it made me see just how important the balance between conservatism and liberalism is.

The conservative movement in this country is for the most part, considered to have come to full flourish under Ronald Reagan. His administration began a series of policies such a trickle down economics and deregulation, that moved this country in a positive direction following the deadlocked miasma of the Carter administration. One of the reasons the Carter years were considered such a dark spot on the political scene, aside from the Iran fiasco, was the fact that the economy was going through the pains of recovery from the Nixon and Ford administrations, which inherited massive debt acquired from Vietnam and the massive social programs under the Johnson administration.
When Reagan took office, the economy was finally on the verge of recovery after years of massive debt and then high interest rates to alleviate that debt.
But Reagan's policies, while good for America (white America at any rate), started a series of events that, if followed to their logical conclusions, would bring economic, environmental and even military ruin; Deficit spending, military buildup and foreign policy unilateralism.
The Bush administration has brought us disastrously close to the logical conclusion of Ronald Reagan's influence on the United States and it's position in the world.

The one factor that determines the United States' economic power, and we ARE still the world's strongest economy, is it's huge middle class. Make the middle class as strong as you can and everything else falls in line. Money moves freely, GDP soars, business owners benefit, governments benefit from higher tax bases.

Socialism is alive and well and tolerated completely in the USA. But it's confined to subsidies for the big corporations, bailouts for banks and institutions too big to fail, and tax loopholes that alow the rich to pay a percentage of their income so low that if all tax payers were granted such a rate, the government would have to close up shop and sell us off to Asia, Europe and OPEC nations in an estate sale.

But nothing puts a fire under the ass of innovation like market demand. So businesses have to thrive.
Let's just remember that the main reason a business CAN thrive on an exponential scale is to have as big a consumer class as possible.

So lets hear it for balance. Lets hear it for reaching across the aisle. Lets hear it for intelligent solutions to challenging problems. Let's hear it for the American electorate choosing a smart guy to lead us instead of a guy you can sit down and have a beer with.

Go Obama '08

Glen and Alain

Replies to "For Many Reasons"

2008-11-02T13:21:00.000Z

Your friend needs to test her love of freedom against some of the free-market realities of the last five or so years. The same disparity between earnings of the rich and middle-class and poor which you talk about effectively limited the number of people who could afford to buy homes. The mortgage market literally ran out of buyers who could qualify for mortgages that would match inflated home prices. The free market and its core principle - freedom - should have responded by dropping the prices of homes. This free-market solution was unacceptable, however, to whole other market lurking in the background - the securities market. Those people were making too much trading mortgage-backed securities to allow for such a natural and free adjustment of the mortgage market. So, instead, they made sure that the population of buyers continued to expand buy dropping the standards for mortgage qualification - a solution everyone knew would only last a handful of years, long enough, however, for securities traders to continue to get rich. So, my question to your friend is, How can you not see the extreme degree of social/fiscal engineering that occurred in this story? Or is it that such manipulation of people and markets in the benefit of the rich has become so naturalized to your friend that she mistakes it for freedom?

-- F.

Updates from London: For Many Reasons

2008-11-02T03:14:00.001Z

Hello,

It's about 2:30 in the morning on Sunday and it will soon be election day, Tuesday apparently. It snowed on Thursday. I thought that might be a portent of some sort. Otherwise it was really cold and the sky gave us what it had pent up for a while. It's been tough—arguing with myself. You see, I have a friend here who is voting for McCain, someone I met when I first came to London. I not only don't understand her thinking, I seriously disagree with it. But I argue with myself trying to find the ground to being a good human being and not dismissive of difference and yet not coddling mistaken thinking. She says she opposes any limits being put on people.

I guess she means financial ones. I want to ask her whether she is okay with the limits put on fireworks, or having a certain number of people assemble, or yelling fire in a theater, or limits on the load that vehicles of a particular make can carry interstate. I imagine she would not, though I could be wrong about this too. I am thinking about Obama going further than McCain and his brood are rightly accusing him of going. There is so little political consciousness that the idea of taxing the rich more seems like unfair limits. I want to ask my friend: if it was proved conclusively that the disparity between the rich and the poor created more crime and more dishonesty and more of a sense of hopelessness, couldn't you argue the same argument that is made for curtailing the sale of fireworks–that ultimately it hurts the public good? It may put people at harm.

What if we did live in a state where those at the top were only allowed to make 25 times (Its more than fifty times within some corporations) what the lowest person on the totem pole makes? Would we be safer? Would we have less inclination to hate the person who has so much more than we have and so skews our sense of success and content, or the person who is so poor they sleep on the street and so skews our sense of entitlement and augments our fear of failure, which we slough off as the weak argument that they are a drag on the system? I don't know but a place that ignores these questions, I think that's a country I do not want to live in. Obama is not even promising that. He is promising much more and less at the same time. America is such a great country and an ugly and near-sighted one at the same time. I won't be the first or last to say that some will vote against their economic interests in favor of religion or candidate's personality or other emotional factors.

Dj Spooky aka Paul Miller said in this week's Guardian paper that part of the cultural legacy of the Bush presidency is a feeling of indifference, a lack of some coherent politics or even emotional response. There are other people in the piece who say different, who say that the administration brought back irony, or that it generated much anger and blowback. I agree with Miller. For long now I've wondered how we could go on merrily while the government held people indefinitely on sometimes sheer speculation or hearsay that they were/are terrorists. That this could happen and everyday someone not yelling until their throats were raw everyday is evidence of my and our complicity in Guantanamo prison and evidence of our political collapse.

And now we are on the threshold of a change, still not enough yet for me, but it's something. I can't help but think there is a generation that is slowly but surely dying out, one that had made its money and politics and religious thought based on the idea that equality does not matter; power does. Difference is weird and dangerous and homogeneity is a guarantee of peace or at least of the staus quo. They are dying out and their multicultural children may thing differently and the older generation wants a country that reflects them back to themselves. I argue with myself late into the morning, really wanting to argue with my friend and feel like it's not up to me anyway. We'll see. I can't wait.

Seph

Responses to "Bygone Summer" by Anonymous

2008-09-13T23:50:00.000+01:00

You're crazy for this one...writing check's in Raleigh, thats classic! Yes, America is a crazy place...I was in South America for a month and just returned back to LA, I immediately came down with a sinus infection on the plane ride back and it got progressively worse as I entered LA; I knew this was a product of stress of returning to a land I did not truly belong in - North America.

I thought back to W.E.B. Dubois and Fredrick Douglas and their issues in America and realized that so many countless men that precede me have provided a model for those of us who have broader minds than what North America has taught us we should have.

Having said that, it made me question even my own excitement about Barack; I wondered, if he weren't black, would I be excited to have him all other things being equal?

Actually, would any of us?

The answer - well at least for me was no...he would just be another politician promising change. This upset me as I realized yet again that so much rides on our color in North America; yes, the world does share in it, but the lunacy of our thought on color in America is still so pervasive, it guides an entire country when dealing with its slave off-spring.

Well, I don't want to harp on color, but, this was just to say that hopefully you're getting to experience something more fulfilling in the UK than the temporary elation that CNN and MSNBC are stirring up everyday for American citizens who don't get to see the world.

Responses to "Bygone Summer" by Mingus aka Damione

2008-09-11T16:43:00.000+01:00

tWo things. I'm currently reading Me talk Pretty one day. That and an orson scott card booK: Shadow puppets. David is great. Inspiring. Also, that "phenomenological" word....do me a fav luv, i dig using words with seven syllables when umm, say-i'm trying to get some pompous dick, however, when my friends are using them to describe their studies, i kind of feel like the chick looking at the I.D. and i swallow my double mint gum ackwardly and get that retarded drooling-eyes-rolling in the head-baby stare thing goin'. But that's just me.

Also, i think you get your literary gene from the the spirit of you that wanted to find new ways to cuss your father out (with the hope he wouldn't understand a word you were saying). It's like a cup of coy stirred with vengence: sweet, bitter and hot, frothing with illusion; only a few can truly taste it.

Anyway,
I love you slopey head and miss you, and it was great joy to hear from you the other day, and even better to be trusted with what is important to you. You make for fantastic journey and give hope to this dUrty bird.

I love you dearly,
Ming-a-licious
(thats my stripper name; yea i do it on the side at this home for elderly retarded men-I'M A HIT!!!...i mean, when they can manage to take their hands out that crinkly bent position at their chest or down cast head, and rush-more fall on-the stage).

"the 80's R over and the time has come
4 a new proclimation of love and fun-
monogamy and trust
is what i'm talkin' bout
i'll give up all my lovers if u can make me shout-SEX:
S is 4 Scandolouse
E is 4 exciting
X 4 adults-only
Lets do something frightening-SEX!"
-Prince

Update from Seph: The Bygone Summer

2008-09-11T12:57:00.002+01:00

Heya,

It's been quite a while since one of these missives from me (my mom actually used that word in an email to me, not too long ago—I can see where I get my literary genes from). It's been a long, only intermittently warm summer, the majority of which I missed spending it in the library. Aside from the days when I was off with a bad back, or the one day I took off to prepare for my dinner party, every day of the week I have been either at work at the store, or in the library, trying to get this damn literature review done. I admit I am feeling just a tad bit sorry for myself, and yes I realize that sacrifice is key and to be expected and that it will be worth it in the end (but really, could I countenance a scenario in which it did not work out?), right now I am lamenting a bit that the summer's gone and it has been a week solid of gray skies. Boo Hoo.

The literature review is that piece of writing that is supposed to make a case for what has been left out of the academic disicipline of visitor studies, my topic, which I newly emboldened with my knowledge of it, will supply. My supervisor described it about a year ago as making a "Seph-shaped hole in the literature" This shit is hard. I have to read across the discipline, books, articles, theses, to argue that what is missing is a real, phenomenological account of a visitor's actual experience. Okay, but then I need to argue for why this is important to include. I felt overwhelmed at first. Now I am starting to feel capable again.

I had a dinner party, my first in London a few weeks back. I think it was a success. I like cooking and entertaining and allowing people to meet new people and seeing what develops. And I think the food was good too. Lemon sole and brussels sprouts and new potatoes—I'm telling you brussel sprouts can be a revelation.

Went to the big parade in Notting Hill two weeks back. It is as big as the caribbean day parade in Brooklyn. Huge. Floats and food and people. And the poh-poh. They police were out in force. I took the train to one of the festival entry points with a group of friends. They had sniffer dogs out, just pulling people aside and searching them as they came out of the train. They searched me and everyone else in my group they let through. I asked if they had stopped me because of my color. Officer told me it was a random search. Everyone else in the group was white (one asian woman). The funny thing is that I was probably the only one Not carrying drugs. I decided not to be angry about this. But I will make a more concerted effort next time to quiz the police on how this choice could by any rational scheme be called "random"

Also it seems that Whitehot magazine is going to do a print version and the editor wants to include the piece I wrote on Daniel Martinez. This is great. Even greater is that I was able to get the piece professionally edited through a friend of Daniel's and now it looks like something serious. I can't wait to see it in print.

Lastly, the highlight of the last few months, I saw David Sedaris last night at the Bloomsbury theatre. If you have never read him, go on and get Me Talk Pretty One Day. I remember sitting around with my friend Farid and his friends and trying to read a passage from it and not being able to quite get through without laughing like a child. He's stupendously funny. He had a lot of great anecdotes, but this is getting long so I'll limit this to the one he gave in answer to a question I asked him at the end of the reading. I asked him about the upcoming election. He described the difference between the candidates by using the analogy of being on a plane and being offered two different meals; "one of chicken and the other of human shit with glass in it." He said people respond by asking "Yes, well, how is the chicken cooked?"

Okay one more: When asked about what he missed most about Raleigh, N.C. and was most glad to be away from (He lives in Paris now, or perhaps the UK?) he gave the story that explained both at the same time: being at a Pic N' Save and being on line forever cause everybody writes checks in Raleigh. "You can write a check for a quart of milk" So he and his dad finally get to within one person of the register and the woman in front is writing a check and the store employee is looking at her driver's license picture and says "You know, I like your hair better this way"

America is a crazy place.

Cheerio,

Seph

Update from Seph: All Kinds of Newness

2008-07-15T23:18:00.000+01:00

Hiya,

Thanks for the reply messages from last time. Really appreciate that. Makes me feel connected to you. One of the new things I want to talk about is that I've moved again. Just two months and two weeks at the last place was more than enough. The same landlord (who I informed 2 weeks in that other place that it wasn't working out) found a much better place for me, further north, with almost a suburb feel. I moved in on Saturday. No litter on the streets. It's quiet. At night I can hear the sound of the clock in my room. But there's a grocer two blocks away and a main drag I can walk to in about 15 minutes with shops and a big movie theatre that's showing the Hulk, etc.

The neighborhood is called Wood Green, and my little front yard even has a flower arrangement. My room has an old fireplace that's been re tiled, the floors are wood and three large windows out front let in as much light as I can handle. It is one of the nicest places I have seen in London, and I can finally feel good about inviting people to come over. So come over. Please visit. My room smells of wood. It's great.

Just recorded the first episode of our radio show last night. There was some trouble about the name we went from "Connective Tissue" to "Substance" (which too many people seem to think is pretentious) to "the Thread" What do you think?

I was a bit nervous last night at first blush. Never been in a recording studio before, but once the conversation got going, it was pretty good. An hour on radio goes by real fast. Our main guest Seamus, really carried the conversation despite my hamfisted direction. His project is really interesting: using the music of techno as a way to examine the history of Detroit, it's utopian fantasies, its economic collapse, its political incompetence. For this inaugural show we had a former Consortium graduate on the phone from Detroit even. We have a really rough cut that will be edited down, and I've got some stuff to learn about how to be a host, and we have the beginning of a good thing, I think. I will send everyone a link to the podcast when that is set up.

By the by, thinking about the power of the voice. I read the Guardian now and again, and they have these interesting series of pamphlets. One from a couple weeks back was great lyricists of the 20th century. Yes, you guessed it: Chuck D of Public Enemy was one of the featured artists. There is a foreword by a writer/theorist and a reprint of the lyrics for seven songs. I loved re-reading and reliving "Don't believe the Hype" Caught in the middle and/Not surrenderin'/I don't rhyme for the sake of riddlin'. This in a daily newspaper. Sometimes living in this city seems to make sense.

luv,

Seph

Update from Seph: Some News

2008-06-27T00:04:00.005+01:00

Hiya,

I really feel the need to share some good news: It looks like the radio show that I was working on with a few people in the Consortium is going to happen—at least we will have a pilot show and see how it goes after that. The station here in London is Resonance FM, a place that does a lot of wacky and fascinating stuff, like sound art, like some guy recording the sounds of an ice forest. It broadcasts in Central London and reaches about a 100,000 folks, plus 85 thousand on the web—so I am told. The idea was first to do a regular print piece in a good newspaper, a monthly column that would connect some one's research topic (the nature of glass walls in the city allowing a running movie of the self wandering through it, or the architecture of Detroit's house music and how it mirrors the city, or the nature of speed in the urban environment, or the deal with insomnia, its history and cultural significance) Someone suggested I try for the radio and me and another cohort met with the guy from Resonance on tuesday and he really likes the idea and wants to give us an hour long show to just have an interesting conversation. TH idea is to have a host, one special guest with a project and some other people to add to the mix of ideas. I plan to serve as host and facilitator and can't wait to start.

Also finally got a very small grant from the Central Research Fund. I have to account for every penny, and I have to acknowledge the grant in writing on whatever paper I publish or dissertation I hand in, but at least it's something. I'm grateful.

I had moved again back in May, to get away from the higher rent and crazy Chris and his listening at doors, and come to find out that he was able, because he controlled the internet gateway, to look at all the websites anyone in the house was visiting. He's done some odd stuff with that to mess with Joanna and I know cause I'm still in contact with her, and am only a few blocks away. I think she has finally convinced the landlord to get rid of him. But I really don't like where I'm living right now. Dirty dishes left on the counter for days, trash outside that did not get picked up for weeks until I made a phone call, laundry left to rot. . . I'm just telling myself that since I don't talk with anyone here much (that genteel politeness went south very quickly) I will get work done and move towards my upgrade—due in September.

And I finally wrote the piece on my old professor, the artist Daniel Martinez who was at the Whitney Biennial in New York this year. It's here in Whitehot Magazine, online: http://whitehotmagazine.com/whitehot_articles.cfm?id=1434. It took me a long time to get it done and I still feel like making revisions right now , but I think it is a decent piece and hopefully insightful about who he is and what he does. I am still trying to figure out how to be an art writer, mostly because I love it.

I hope you all are doing well and write back when you get a moment, let me know you are still out there.

Best,

Seph

Update from Seph: The beautiful game

2008-05-24T14:31:00.000+01:00

Hello,

It's been a little while. I suppose that I've thought that I would like to treat these group emails as a place to ruminate about odd, or difficult things as opposed to giving a sense of what I'm up to and how I'm feeling about what I'm up to. I like it when I have knots to untie and people help me do that—then it feels like a collaboration.

I had occasion to think about something new and oddly different this week. I had wanted to do something else on Wednesday evening, but I forgot a critical thing at home and decided that I would go out and watch the big Champion's League game between Chelsea and Manchester United. The Champion's League is said to be the greatest prize won by a football (you know-soccer) team in Europe for the year. My guy at work, Micky, who during the season coaches some youngsters to keep them out of trouble, showed me a small article in the newspaper that shows that considering all the money spent on advertising and prizes and preparation for the game, the Champion's League dwarf's the Superbowl–by something on the order of 50 million more dollars.

What also helps, is that England is fairly awash in beer and booze. People—hand to god—live for their pints and the game. It's called the beautiful game, even, though when you witness the level of violence that is everywhere in Football, verbal, psychological, physical, fans, coaches, players, spouses, you might want to call it something else.

The rivalry between Chelsea and Man U. is helped by the fact that Chelsea is London and Manchester is about 160 miles northwest of it and is considered the UK's 'second city'. Chelsea, so another guy at work Jason tells me, is hated by the fans of other teams, for the reason (according to Jason) that while a match is being played you can find Chelsea fans walking around wearing the shirts proudly, but clearly absorbed by other tasks. This is reprehensible fan behaviour then. Also Chelsea has the deep blue color scheme and Man U. The red with white trim. A rich Russian oligarch, Abramovich, owns Chelsea and has a coach who is his yes man, while a U.S. business person, Malcolm Glazer owns United and let's his coach have free reign. In addition, I'm told that the history of football is that is came about as game between rival villages and was used to work out tensions that might otherwise escalate into greater conflicts. It involved a mob of people trying to get a pig's bladder to some special place, but was also about mediated violence. So one farmer might use the game as an excuse to put his foot in some other farmer's John Brown hindparts because he borrowed his donkey and didn't return it.

I watched the game, but getting to it was a crucible. I was on a bus looking out at all the long lines outside of bars and pubs, and it was still and hour and 15 till the match. We got to a place that had about 50 different screens. I drank too much beer. But it took so long to get one from the bar, we tended to buy two at a time. First Man U. scored and then Chelsea equalized. One chelsea guy, Didier Drogba, was sent off for smacking some Man U. Player in the face—not hard, just in a 'What are you going to about it?' kinda way.

The drama was in the shootout at the end, where each team takes turns shooting a penalty kick for a round of five each at the end of which, if not tied, someone goes home in tears.

The first kick was from Man U's Tevez, who is hailed by many as a great player (including by Maradona), from Argentina. He has a big burn scar from his right ear, on his neck, all the way down his chest. I happened to read in Sport magazine months ago his account that he got burned by a rival gang or set of thugs, but Wikipedia says it happened when he was only 2 years old. Who knows? Anyway he made his penalty shot. Then the Chelsea guy made his and the next and the again the Chelsea player.

Then it was Cristiano Ronaldo's turn. A guy from Portugal. It's impossible to live in this country and not hear about him. His commercial where he is shown racing a car; the stories of his exploits with many, many prostitutes, often at once; his being voted one of the most hated sports figures in England by some documentary program; his sometimes amazing play. He was the one who scored the lone goal for Man U. in the game. The goalkeeper guessed right of course, and deflected his shot. He fell to his knees. By this time it was seriously raining, though it had been dry most of the game.

Now Chelsea could win it just by making the next three no matter what Man U. did. At many points there were songs being sung. They make up stuff about other teams and their fans and sing and laugh and drink more beer. Now it was quieter. Frank Lampard for Chelsea stepped up to shoot. He had just lost his mother a few weeks back. The papers said all kinds of things about this and how he would play. He made the shot and pointed to the sky. The Man U. guy made it. Asheley Cole was up. He had been going through a messy break up, which was all over the tabloids (I know it sounds like I read them, but honestly it's unavoidable.). A teamate seriously harmed his ankle in the practice a day or 2 before and people weren't sure he would play. He made it in. Then Man U. also scored. The next guy, the one for the win was the Chelsea captain, John Terry. I suppose you can guess: he missed it. Hit the pole and Man U. came back to win.

What amazes me is how much information and knowledge is produced around the game, how much energy and time and newspaper ink, how much agony and ecstasy and anger is invested. Walking home with my friends from work, down Chelsea fans, I thought I was glad to not care one way or the other. Then I thought about the NBA and how much I want Boston to get to the finals and the Lakers too.

I wonder about games: what it's like to invest in them and knowing that we are all like chimpanzees who get hopping mad about something and perform and act out and cry. John Terry cried after missing the kick and losing the game and of course the papers made fun of him. We invented a game, any game really, and it takes on significance because we give it that. I think our constant invention is the drama of success and failure, and we create such compelling versions of this for ourselves. I wonder what the world would look like if people decided neither to win or lose, which is not exactly the same thing as Not playing. Or maybe it is. I suppose I would like the terms to be less stark and more nuanced. Maybe they are.

But when watching English football the world seems to telescope in to a single field and pitch, the rain falling wet and constant on these men who brush off adversity and difficulties and pain to find a way to be better than the other, and for a time they find it and I wonder if one of the winners right before drifting off to sleep, having touched the trophy and received the prize money, think, 'this is really good, but next time . . .'

Seph

Updates from Seph: Sometimes in April

2008-04-10T14:20:00.000+01:00

Yes. It's like the Prince song was written, you know, with London in mind. Sometimes it snows in April. It did. And in the morning this Monday the city looked about as lovely as it can. A few weeks ago I had finally taken the cheesy and unselfconscious step onto the London Eye, a big slow ferris wheel, which from the top has a view of London that extends not nearly as far as the whole city does. It seems oceanic from up there, but I probably only saw through zones one and two. (They go up to six, ending up in places like Cockfosters, Morden, Uxbridge and Heathrow airport.) It's like a vast bowl of row houses punctuated by cathedrals and massive parks, and oh yeah pubs. Don't forget the pubs.

I delivered my paper at the Association of Art Historians conference and people really responded. The room was pretty full. I had to battle the air conditioning system though; it had some major noisy component in the room we were assigned. People said that my writing was very poetic. One person even said the whole paper was like one long poem. I got tentative (or rather gushing) invitations to read my paper at other venues, like, say, Dublin (but these may get scaled back upon sober reflection). I have to make some corrections and send it out to some folks, hopefully by this weekend. I heard some very capable papers there, at the conference, perhaps the smartest being a kind of consideration of Blanchot and the impossibility of writing about one's own work–oddly enough something I am trying to do. Then I got a letter today saying the next-to-last scholarship I had applied for I did not get short listed for. Sometimes it snows. I think I said some worthwhile things in that presentation; just not sure how much of it is really news. Good to know that I found something that resonates with me so much I like writing about it. It scares me a bit, how much I still need to read and figure out, but I feel good about doing the work.

Oh, and my father called me for the first time in almost a year. Sometimes it snows in April.

Seph

Reponse to "Biblical" from Glen and Alain

2008-03-28T18:22:00.000Z

http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/extra/laughing_malady.txt

Alain and I were driving back from Yosemite Nat'l Park and a story about this came on NPR.

All sorts of explanations were offered up to account for this weird malady but no one thing, bacteria, virus, parasite, was found to be the cause.

But it turned out that all the cases occured about a year after "the revolution". I believe it was Tanzania. The sultan warlord was overthrown and a socialist government was formed. All the old beliefs and village political infrastructure was replaced by Christianity and more or less centralized government. Families were separated as workers were transplanted to fill the industrial/agricultural needs of the new government.

This radio show made a connection between the laughing sickness and this sudden cultural shift.
The mass uncontrollable laughter was a reaction to the stress placed upon the population, a population suddenly without familiar beliefs, familiar family structure, familiar cultural grounding.

I wish I could remember the name of the program. It was a good one.

Glen

Response to "Biblical" from Glen and Alain

2008-03-25T17:04:00.000Z

Hiya, Seph.

Weather's a great primary leveler. It can bring down the mightiest of us.
If we don't evolve fast enough to pace its change we become extinct, don't we?

Like the little creatures on the island in "Life of Pi", scampering up into the trees at night to sleep or else they get digested by the ground.

There's that one scene in Forest Gump where Lt. Dan warns all the newbie soldiers in Viet Nam to keep their socks dry lest gangrene claim some of their toes.
I was raised in the desert and gangrene was never much of an issue.
Our issue was running out of water and talking in spite of swollen tongues.

I remember seeing a picture of a polar bear in a snow storm, laying face down spread eagle on an ice flow trying to cool its belly and the rest of its innards, because it had gotten overheated.

Have you read a book called "Ishmael"? Its about a guy who answers an ad in the paper that goes like this,

TEACHER seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.

The teacher turns out to be this sage-ish gorilla who has definite ideas about where man and his beliefs are leading him.
I won't spoil it for you.

But one thing I learned from it....did it ever occur to you that the story of Cain and Able was really the story of early farmers, just at the dawn of the agricultural revolution, realizing they needed more land to grow food, battling the hunter/gatherers for their territory. And that since Cain was the second favorite of God's, the story must have been written from the point of view of the hunter gatherers? The good, peaceful shepherds and nomads confronted by the evil toilers of the soil?

That's why that story always seemed so weird to me. I thought it was GOOD to work the land and build your community.

The guys in Waiting for Godot are just desperate junkies waiting to buy their crack from Godot with nothing more to offer him than the secret of the hat trick.

Our American economy is falling apart because of the evil employees of Countrywide Homeloan and various investment banks...and because of an expensive deployment of men and women to wipe out a phantom menace known as Al Queda.
If you were only allowed to spend the money you make in America, you would have basically gotten a hefty raise this last year.
I hope you took full advantage of the exchange rate during your New York visit.

I've recently developed an identity death wish. I've started plastering my social security number on men's room walls, my various VISA numbers on loading dock doors of big box stores around town. But no one has bothered to write them down and charge my account for things like massages with happy endings or Monster Truck Event tickets or Bentleys rented from Hertz Executive Premium on Wilshire and Santa Monica to go joy riding in.
No curious charges on my cards at all.
Maybe nobody's made the connection. But how many 16 digit numbers do you see written on walls in less than affluent sections of town? Not many I bet. Doesn't it occur to people that the only real 16 digit reference of any import MUST be a credit card number.

I'm also mad a Lexus because they have SUCH attitudes at the dealership.

It was a really nice day today in Los Angeles. Some sleaze ball up in the hills must have produced a movie that God approved of.
Saved from the end times for another day because of someone's connections to the film industry.
The apocalypse avoided because of a modern day Hollywood rendition of 1001 Arabian Nights where the Maharaja part is played by God and Shaherizhad is played by some Jew up on Mulholland.

Okay...I started this note out with the intention of saying something important. As you can see...I must have changed my mind and shifted the subject matter from the "things that matter", the "things that are of sufficient gravity to merit serious discussion" side of communication's bell shaped curve and onto the more "tra la la-ish", the more "dance in the garden in torn sheets in the rain" side.

Have lots of industrious fun with your paper.

Alain and Glen

Updates from Seph: Biblical

2008-03-25T13:57:00.002Z

It happened on friday. Standing in the store on New Bond Street and getting older, watching the people walking by, both hoping that they continue with their lives and hoping that they turn and walk in and at least distract me from the bullshit. There seemed to be this noise and whiteness that thrust itself slantwise across the front of the store. Hail. Fucking hail. It rained down for about fifteen minutes and then just as suddenly stopped. I swear. It felt biblically apocalyptic. It also felt like the film Magnolia and I looked around at my colleagues in the store and wondered if we could all find the same key at the same moment.

I was out looking for a new place to live, on saturday and suddenly again sleet. Not quite frozen balls of ice, but more jagged agents of slush thrown at me by the handfuls. And twenty minutes later, you know the sun had the nerve to come out. I'm utterly flummoxed by this weather. It's Easter and Spring should be on the wing and I never saw anything like this in January and anyway there I was: sleeted to bits and running for cover towards Finsbury Park station.

I just got back from New York last week and had quite the time. Went to the press opening of the Whitney Biennial and chatted with an old school mate who was in the show, and with my old MFA professor who was also in the show. If you want to look up their work its Mario Ybarra and Daniel Martinez. Check it at Daniel's work is (as usual) inflammatory. (I mean this is the man who made an art piece years ago that had text reading out "In the house of a rich man the only place to spit is in his face"—I thought I was angry) This piece is called "Divine Violence" an ongoing work of text paintings of names of groups, all kinds of names, all kinds of groups: Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade (sounds daunting doesn't it?) KGB, Jewish Defense League, Uncontrolled Rage, Mano Blanco, Venceremos (we will win), Seikijuku (Sane Thinkers school), Revenge of the Hebrew Babies, etc. What links them all is the use of violence to forward their political agendas. (Gee—what word comes to mind to describe this phenomenon?) I want to write about the work for this Whitehot magazine. But I have a paper to give at a conference (the Association of Art Historians) at the end of next week and I have barely started writing it. Not much sleep in the next week or so.

New York made me feel a little sad. It's not really my city anymore, and it's not quite not. It's in between, which is where I am and I feel like what I call home is fairy tale. I had some good meetings though with MoMA people and I'm grateful that a couple people would speak with me. Did choose the room I want to talk about and it's great: has a huge heroic painting on the fourth floor North wall like a monument.

Swam through the Life of Pi on my there and back. It's a good book, and very moving at the end (guess I mention it cause it's also kinda about an apocalyptic event). Graham Greene's Brighton Rock was soooo overdone. Don't know that I will finish it. Does anyone know any good books by him?

Was hanging out at a party the other night and a girl I work with at the store was wearing "Anorexy" jeans. I didn't know there was such a brand, but it's not surprising. After all we (my generation) have learned to flaunt our insecurities and neuroses and even use them as badges of authenticity (or jokes about the same?). We are who we are because we are fucked up in certain ways, or something like this, but by this logic seems to reach its extreme and necessary horizon when you have really good PR. I need a PR machine. I'm more interesting than I am letting on.

I wonder if it's just me, but I was saying to people tonight who were interviewing me for a spot in their house share, that New York seems like a harder city, just rougher and more concrete and overwhelming and indifferent to me. Whereas London feels slightly softer around the edges. Maybe it's that darn British politeness. It's kinda nice, though Innit?

Still I want to break through some of the academic politeness and I'm hoping to find something outrageous to say at the conference—outrageous and true, cause it helps if it's true.

luv,

Seph

Reponses to "Thinking about Anger" from Avi

2008-03-03T23:24:00.000Z

The conversational territory about these shootings has ceeded completely to the NRA. There is no mention of gun laws in the presidential debates, or mainstream media. I would like to say that there is no language for talking about controlling/removing guns but it isn't a question of language but one of taboo. Talking about gun laws is like talking about fucking your mother. As De La Soul says, "Gun control is about using both hands in my land"

Avi

Thinking about Anger

2008-03-02T13:56:00.000Z

I have been thinking about how angry people have been of late—at least in a public way. I kept meaning in the last emails to you, my friends back in the U.S., to say something about the public expression of rage and isolation in the shootings of the last few months. Seems that every couple of weeks I am reading another story about someone getting a gun and going to a school, a shopping mall, a rest stop to kill a bunch of people and then take himself out. I can't tell if the final suicide is the ultimate "fuck you" as if to say "I am beyond your reach; you can't touch me with your laws and prohibitions. Lots of scholars like to point to the final lines by Hamlet in the play to say that although he says that all the rest is silence, it isn't. Of course we go on living despite all the bloody mess of it. But nevertheless he wants there to be silence, to have the final say. It seems these men who killed and died in one sweeping gesture want very much to silence the critics, make everyone be quiet.

I asked my second supervisor when I saw him this past monday at his home in Leamington Spa, what he thought of the increasing frequency of these bursts. He began to say that he thought there were too many guns in America and that England, by contrast has severe restrictions on private ownership of guns and only just started to let some, only certain cadres, police carry firearms. Of course the argument Micahel Moore made in Bowling for Columbine is that although Canada has almost as many weapons per household, they have nowhere near the level of homicides. I think we moved on to other topics, but Gordon would have admitted there have to be other causes.

I think take away all the blasted guns—all of them. Force police to learn to negotiate better. Force them to get the training in martial arts that will allow them to still seriously hurt assailants but not perforate their vital organs. Tell the goddamn NRA there is no problem with hunting, just learn to use a bow and arrow—even a crossbow if you need the trigger action. It was good enough for us a few hundred years ago, and you will never hear of people at a shopping mall dying in the dozens because of a guy with a bow and quiver, and you won't hear about black men getting forty nine arrows stuck in them, by zealous but mistaken peace officers. I know I am preaching; it just seems so unforgivably asinine to me to respond to these incidents by recommending more patrols and more armed people—which is what I've heard.

I've been thinking about how much less angry I am here (though I may not sound it right now) and how in talking with natives about the public discourse around touchy issues such as race, gender, etc., anger just doesn't have the same cache, importance, validity. When I told Jo about how some people via the web respond to the stories of interracial couples by calling the white person a "mudshark" she is appalled and tells me that kind of thing just does not have a place in public discourse in England. That kind of commentary does not get a public forum. The argument from here usually goes something like " but America, constitution, freedom of speech and you can't stop people. . . but that's not the point. I have to admit that the response in some quarters to the Hillary Clinton campaign is only about hating women. When that (MSNBC?) broadcaster, said *publicly* that Chelsea was being pimped out by her mother, that's not even journalism. No one would think to say that about Mitt Romney and he had his whole fifteen sons chatting voters up for him. I have read in papers over here that people have gone to Clinton's rallys with signs that say "Life's a bitch; don't vote for one"

The issue is not freedom. It's anger and where is comes from and why it's perceived as valid in public, especially political discussion and debate, why it's given space to be. Even in he celebrated case over here of Princess Diane's inquest. The uber-rich father of Dodi El Fayed, Mohammed el Fayed, can't let go of the idea that the British secret service and Prince Phillip (husband of the queen) Tony Blair, the CIA, etc., took his son away from him. He is so angry that when he gave testimony in the inquest a week or two ago, he said that Prince Phillip plotted to have Diane killed cause she was pregnant with a Muslim child. He said that the Prince comes from German aristocracy (true by the way) and that his real name is Frankenstein. Al Fayed is pretty much mocked by the press. He may own Harrod's but he doesn't get a pass because of this.

Then last week a woman came into the store where I work and I missed this, but was told later about it. She was wearing a fur coat and carrying a rabbit in the crook of her arm. She stood in the doorway for a while and Micky, one of the guys who has been there the longest approached her. Asked if he could help. She was Italian and told Micky that she didn't want to speak to him, but would rather speak to Luis (a new guy who is Spanish–from Spain) because "they were from the same culture and they would be able to understand each other" While according to her Micky "looked like the porter" since he is black and "from Africa" "he wouldn't be able to understand her" The truly marvelous thing about this was that Micky told this story to everyone on the floor and he was not angry at all. I suppose it helps that she was clearly a few bricks shy of complete; plus Micky is in his forties and not bothered by a great deal. Still, no anger. No resentment I could see. Even though she dismissed him publicly. I wonder if I would be that at ease about it.

I wish you luck. I do. I don't pray, but I'll petition the powers that be to look kindly on you all and protect you from storm and pestilence, floods and raging fires, men with guns and drunk celebrities in cars, people who hate women and express this without shame; to please protect you and keep you from terrible anger.

Stay well,

Seph

P.S. I'll be in New York from Monday on, for a week—to do my research. I hope I get to spend time with some of you.

Reponse to Glen and Alain responses to "Integrity"

2008-02-28T14:11:00.001Z

Glen and Alan,

I can think of some things coming to a stop that may have been precipitated by committee: like the fall of the Roman empire, or the end of British hegemony, but I think, the same thinking may be applied to the positive movements themselves. Some like to think that the revolution sparked Marx into being, and not necessarily the other way around. I can handle, that is agree with either argument, but I think the doubts about Obama are about a few different things: one is just straight-up political experience, knowing that a lot of fool's gold has looked like the real thing at first. The second may be a kind of cynicism that goes something like: well we are all rotten, disheveled, ungainly, disreputable, and so forth, and that no good is is going to come of us anyway. My friend Ben genuinely doesn't see any difference between the candidates on the level of real, meaningful change. But he's a stone cold Marxist. His version of change would be fundamental and perhaps be better described as metamorphosis. We could not go back I think.

Me, I'm almost always a fan of believing. I would rather do that than not. And as far as I'm concerned, even little change is change. It's difference that may crack open into some other difference, that may blossom full lightning bore into the unknown. That's what it must have felt like at the time of the civil rights movement in the U.S.

This reminds me of a poem by Robert Creeley, I seem to have read somewhere long ago, but can't find again: I think it's called "the Mechanic"

Were we to fall from
our stubborn knees and
sink to rest,
myself sunk
in yours, then what
would hold
us together
but uninteresting weight?
Do you believe love,
and how much.

So much of our history is uninteresting weight. But maybe something else, yes, might believe? And I wonder what that will produce. Go Obama.

Seph

Part II

Yes,

I agree. I think that the logic is slightly suspect though, because what it seems to suggest is that candidates have to engage in what Charles Barkeley would call "Trickeration" to get to the place where they can wield some actual power. So they, almost defined by the role played, have to be tricksters, and if they are, then do they maintain any integrity? And if they hide their true natures then aren't they like the member of the sleeper cell that "awakes" when the moment is right, (but most seem to fall asleep and stay there). So the true agent has to be both true and false at the same time.

I have thought for a long time that the way to bring about some decent level of change would be to do exactly that: play along until it was time to emerge. Funny that's the logic you almost can't say out loud, cause that's now tied to the character of the "terrorists". It may be that's what the good guys have to do as well.

Seph

Updates from London: Integrity

2008-02-13T06:30:00.001Z

What it would be like to wake up in that country with a black man with the name Barack Hussein Obama at the helm? What it would look like to inner city kids, rural folk and corporate executives to look at him and know he spoke to them and sometimes for them, to other nations? What it would be like to have him enter a room and have everyone stand when he stood. What it might be like to put to lofty, shop-worn rhetoric the political reality of colored person leading. I swear it makes me feel my own breathing. Perhaps it would be no less of a revolution in our collective imagination to have a woman take up the mantle. I just don't know that Clinton is one I can believe as readily.

It is amazing isn't it? One of those truly rare "I never thought I'd see this in my own lifetime" moments. I have to say that I essentially agree with your assessment. I've waited all my life to vote for a strong, intelligent, competent woman for president, and Hillary Clinton is more than ok by me. And I will happily vote for either Clinton or Barack Obama come November. But in the primaries, I ultimately decided I had to vote for Obama, because in so many different ways he represents both the present of America, and its future. There simply has to come a time when minorities and working class Americans are not always spoken for by a largely white middle class-- whether by the self-interested sludge that runs Congress, or the always too few who, like Clinton and Edwards and Kucinich, actually mean well. And in my opinion that day can't come too soon.

//A

Response to "Integrity" from Glen and Alain

2008-02-11T18:46:00.001Z

Hiya, Seph.

Can you think of a major event in human history, a change in the way people saw the world, that wasn't attributed to a single person?
I can't think of any historical watershed that's been the result of a committee.
There IS such a thing as a great man. There've been tons of them throughout history.
Great generals, great statesman, great civil leaders.
Why can't Obama be the great man for this generation?
Why can't he be the man who changes America the way Kennedy or Roosevelt (both of them) or Lincoln changed America?
Or the way Churchill changed Great Britain?
Or Ghandi changed India?
Or Gorbachov changed the Soviet Union?

Weren't these men idealistic and able to fight their own brand of the good fight and prevail and leave humanity better off because their ideals were realized?

The moment Obama gets sworn in as President of the United States is a moment that will resonate and etch itself into peoples memories. The hopefulness and the pride of seeing our country's once disperate elements come together, the promise manifest the second he says "...to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." is going to cover the country and probably the world with a beneficent electricity not felt for a U.S. President by anyone in recent times. Everyone you know and everyone you don't, even Ann Colter, will be able to tell you where they were when it happened.

By the way. I'm planning on voting for Obama. :)

Who are you voting for?

That's it.

Glen and Alain

Part II

Hiya, Seph.

One more thing....

I remember reading something...I believe it was a quote of pre-imperial Napoleon's but I can't remember.

He was asked why there were so few great statesmen.

His reply was that the pettiness and short sightedness required to claw your way to the top of the political pile seldom gives way to the profound and munificent state of mind needed for enlightened leadership once you've reached the apex.

Do you think whatever underhanded tactics Obama may have used are central to his character? I don't.
I have a feeling he sees them as necessarily taken low roads to get the apathy and small minded bullies out of the way; the one-two punches needed to handle formidable political adversaries such as Carl Rove or the half truth rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh.
Don't you get the feeling that once he's at the top, that's when we'll see his true nature? That's when he'll shine.That's when we'll see the good work he's got in him to accomplish?

Glen

Updates from London: Integrity

2008-02-11T14:40:00.000Z

Hello,

I've been thinking lately about these nomination campaigns and sending out various articles to some about Clinton and Obama and getting in a kind of giddy mood about what seems to be happening. I have had some sobering responses from my friends, tempering my enthusiasm with the caveats that both candidates have done some not nice things to each other. Gee whiz: I was hoping that one or the other would just take the moral high ground and allow others not to dither too much. There are still questions I suppose and the realization—naked as the emperor still pretending to be in control—that one woman or man is probably not going to single-handedly change the direction of U.S. foreign policy, balance the deficit, simplify the tax code, provide economic shelter for an aging population, address ecological conundrums, shore up depleted government agencies in need of staff and money (the FDA for example), provide reprieve for the coming recession and restore balance between the three branches (that is the executive not behaving as if the rule of law applied to it only sometimes)—oh, and sort out the war too.

What's also interesting is how I find myself being more careful now about people's political sensibilities since some I've spoken with have ping-ponged between anger and despair and some have given up on the political process. Lots of Brits, on this side of the pond are quite interested in what happens even now, in just the nominating phase. I think they sense that it's meaningful in a serious way what happens.

Seems a lot of us have gotten fired up for the first time in a long time. Why doesn't that mean we can be hopeful? I think we have a right to be. I think we dodged a bullet with Giuliani bowing out. From what I have read he has been a petty and vindictive administrator. And Romney with his endorsement by Ann Coulter, and his personal millions poured into a campaign that would have outright proved the the presidency is really a commodity for purchase, plus what he said about surrendering to terror when he left the race. (sorry I am trying to delicate with sensibilities) I find that although I deeply disagree with Macain on most issues, he struck me as the one on the right with some integrity, who doesn't think that god just up and chose him to run. You might think that integrity would be a trait to capitalize on but in this political landscape it is getting him raked over the coals by serious conservatives, who might think that a conscience should be folded up and put away when the party wants loyalty. Reminds me of a conversation I had with some hard-core Marxists who are friends of friends: Miguel says to me that someone said to him that he "would not know what he thought about a certain proposal until he discussed it with his party" I said I don't understand that. I don't.

That said, I was thinking about what the world would look like if Obama won the nomination and then the presidency. What it would be like to wake up in that country with a black man with the name Barack Hussein Obama at the helm? What it would look like to inner city kids, rural folk and corporate executives to look at him and know he spoke to them and sometimes for them, to other nations? What it would be like to have him enter a room and have everyone stand when he stood. What it might be like to put to lofty, shop-worn rhetoric the political reality of colored person leading. I swear it makes me feel my own breathing. Perhaps it would be no less of a revolution in our collective imagination to have a woman take up the mantle. I just don't know that Clinton is one I can believe as readily. It seems to me that if you are willing to take the hit politically for maintaining a deeply unpopular position despite the coming storm then that is also integrity. The thing I want more of in everyone and in myself.

Good luck and Good night,

Seph

Response to "Hey, It's my Birthday" from Dame

2007-12-10T20:12:00.000Z

CONGRATES BABY!!! CONGRATES. The beauty of age is
understanding what you really own and what no one but
yourself can give or take.
I'd like to be deep right now, ha..."deep" i should
say, but it's rainy and i want to go lay in bed.

*sigh*

Love u man, sorry so long on the uptake. Will write
and respond later in the week.

God gave you life, think about life in it's mystery,
power and trip and just go woa. U'r not here by
mistake, u'r not here without reason. Glad u've lived
this far to be a part of it.

Praise God.

Love,
Dame

Response to "Hey, It's my Birthday" from Farid

2007-12-07T23:30:00.000Z

my man, happy birthday to you. 37 is the new 27, or something. seriously, you're hot and smart and aging better than any of us. i don't remember you talking about thoughts of an early death so it's a surprise to hear you say you never thought you'd live this long. glad you're still here. much

love, f.

From Darcy, Response to: Hey it's my Birthday

2007-12-06T03:58:00.000Z

Seph,

Happy Birthday! I just had mine as well. 29. Although it is different than nearing 40, it is still nearing, and nearing a major marker.

I had to write because I really reacted to your email. The part of what it means to age but specifically the part about not giving up and pushing for breakthroughs. Yesterday I was in such peril. My day at work sucked. I was belittled (called a pussy by my manager in front of everyone) after having to do mind numbing power sanding literally for 8 hours straight. It is a strong attack to the arms and mind, this operation that is. I was lightly complaining about how insane and exhausted I was when the manager came in and ... I wanted to say fuck you and just leave forever. And the fact I didn't made me feel worse, reminding me how much I need the job and therefore must put up with such abuse. Last night at home I felt so hopeless, so miserable and it all seamed like it was going nowhere, that nowhere was unavoidable, and that I had wasted a year of life and had more waste ahead.

And that was my breaking point. I was aware of it last night. But I sucked it up for deep feeling that still this was necessary, I suppose. But it cut deep. So I was torn.

This morning the manager was in the office when I arrived, the first person to greet me while I angrily pulled my espresso shot. He started going in on my sanding job which I still had more to do, first thing for the morning. But he was calm and nice and suggested different materials to make the job easier. As if he had a realization that he was a real asshole the day before and that really, I have been the only guy hired in a year who was honest about his skills, did any fucked job, and stayed. Everyone Seph, I kid you not either officially quit or just stopped showing up, usually after one week. And the jobs that the other full-time employees refused I always completed and didn't complain. Well at the end of the day he informed me that they are making me the new carpenter now! So, I understand that advice. But man it is hard to push through.

love,,

Darcy

Response to "Hey, It's my Birthday" from Jeff

2007-12-06T00:01:00.000Z

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SEPH!!!

ONLY 37? PFFFFFFFFPH!!! Try being 57. LOL. I think any time on this
earth past the age of 25 is simply a blessing, and as long as you are in
the game you can still play, and if you can play you can still win.

As those from my generation would say:

"KEEP ON TRUCKING"

Best wishes always to you my friend. Be happy on your special day.

Cheers! Happy Holidays!

Jeff

Response to "Hey, It's my Birthday" from Glen

2007-12-05T22:17:00.001Z

Hey! Happy birthday! I'm quite envious of what you've done over the last two years: making a place for yourself in a foreign place the way you have. That and all the friends you've made. What you've learned. I'm green, totally green.
I turned 38 in 2000 and, probably because of the zeros, the exact number of zeros, by the way, I'd like added to my paycheck, 2000 seemed like a pretty good place to stop thinking about what lie ahead. But time kept moving along and 38 became a nonevent for me. 39 was actually the watershed for me. Weird, huh?
Shine your attention spotlight somewhere totally against your expectations today. See what turns up.

Cheers!

Glen

Updates from London: Hey, it's my Birthday

2007-12-05T15:23:00.000Z

My friends,

Just a not to say it's my birthday today, and it has been a generally
sucky day. Had to work and it was slow, and of course I sold almost
nothing. And I certainly did not want to be at work today, and am
fairly done with retail. But I had a couple good conversations, and —
this is where it gets better—I came home to find an email from my
college saying that they were finally going to help me financially.
This is after several applications and this one submitted with a
complete budget along with bank statements and rights of first
refusal offered.

It's not much, but as Denis, when he was my manager at Boss used to
say "It's better than a kick in the teeth" Truth is I woke up today
thinking that my landlord may very well be taking advantage of me,
but with the £500 the college is giving me towards living expenses, I
may be able to move out when my lease is up at the end of January. I
hope to work extra days during the holidays and save some more.

I'm 37 today. I keep saying it out loud because I'm not sure how to
deal with it and not entirely sure I know what it means. Nevertheless
I am older than I ever thought I would be. I have made it this far
and it seems that there are still interesting things to do and think
about. I still want to think about them and do them—some of them.
People who are successful always are quoted for saying don't give up,
keep at it until you break through, and I wonder if this is one of
those homespun pieces of wisdom that are kinda like good apple pie:
sticky and terribly sweet, a little tart, cloying perhaps, but warm
and filling and wholesome, and remindful of something that cannot be
refuted, can't be not true.

Maybe.

Love,

Seph

Happy, Happy

2007-11-22T23:50:00.000Z

Everyone,

I just want to say Happy Thanksgiving. I might have missed it, perhaps, but a friend here sent greetings to me, and I would like to send them on, like handing off the good tidings torch. Enjoy the food and family. I do miss you all.

Seph

Update from London: Some political things

2007-11-19T11:19:00.000Z

Hi, Hiya and Hey

I wanted to say the last time (but ran out of room and didn't want to drop yet another utterly long and drawn out letter like one of those christian pamphlets you get handed to you, by, well, you know, the crazy people) that I had a moment of understanding politics the other day when working for the NBA.

When I was picking people out of the audience for the contests and generally running around to help people set this up, take that down, I was wearing a headset that allowed me to listen to everyone in the group who was connected and to talk to everyone in the group or just the people (two or three guys) in my little enclave. There was this exchange that happened between the woman whose name I can't remember for the life of me and one of the camera men she was directing. I think she may have been Rebecca, actually, and she was running the entire show as chief, I don't know, coordinator or director. She is the one who cued all the pieces in the game, from the introductions to the separate elements of the half-time show, to the graphics and sounds on the jumbotron and the lights and camera work. This exchange happened just at the end of a dance routine by the Celtic dancers during a break or time-out. This is as I remember it:

Rebecca: Okay, camera 2 let's not zoom in on her butt as she's coming off the floor; that's not nice.
Camera guy: I didn't have another shot, there was nothing else to shoot.
Rebecca: We can go to the audience or celebrities again. no more butt shots on the dancers coming off the floor.
Camera guy: I was following her cause I thought she was going to do a flip or something . . .

Rebecca: Yeah, well there are no flips in the choreography. I don't think that the dancers do that.
Camera guy: Oh, well I thought she might tumble or . . .
Rebecca: I don't think any of the dancers tumble.

I went up to her later and said that what she did was right on. I told her I liked the way she handled the situation: professionally and directly, in the moment, as it happened. I said that I thought that we often give rhetorical nods towards feminism and equality, but a situation like that is one where the rubber meets the road. I do think so. This is politics at work. That kinda bullshit of broadcasting her butt for the audience demeans not just the dancer, but demeans me in creating this world where I am expected to like that and be the kind of man who looks for this and expects it. I admit I check out women all the time, all aspects of their bodies and attachments, but that is for me, and is not meant to enter the economy as way for men to get together, or for women to understand what they "should" look like, or for some corporation to sell me something. It's not that I completely resist making women sexual objects (and you have to wonder about the game of basketball itself to as a kind of commerce in bodies); it's that I don't trade on that. I try not to make that my way of understanding being a man.

Well, another thing to share, which may certainly be read as self-aggrandizing is that the Arts Council, a governmental body that dispenses the money for the arts did a big campaign on public opinions which ended up in a thing called the Public consultation report, which was supposed to get at exactly how the arts impact our lives and what we expect from the arts and from the government's support of the arts. Well I wrote in a little thing. I filled out a questionnaire in response and one thing I said ended up in the report of 150 pages. What I said was: ‘Give more, not less. Fund it more than you fund any war.’
I like that bit.

Oh, and I just ate a papaya for the first time. It kinda has the consistency of a over-ripe cantaloupe, but not quite as good, though it has a deep yellow inflected orange color I don't think I've ever seen anywhere else. That was a decent bit too,

I hope you are all well and doing flips here and there,

Seph

P.S. at the game they had this group of guys from France who are called the Crazy Dunkers. They did some really fantastic stuff at halftime, flips and spins off trampolines with no-look passes and 360 dunks. It was, well, . . . you know the rest.

Updates from London: How to be in the World

2007-10-29T01:16:00.000Z

Well,

It's been odd, the past few weeks. I presented the first "chapter" of my dissertation to the weekly seminar comprised of other students and a faculty member in my program; I hurt my back and have been walking like an old man for a while; (and though that happened) I acted as a production assistant for the NBA when they were here 2 weeks ago for the exhibition game between the Boston Celtics and the Minnesota Timberwolves; I started a relationship which seems to have some promise; and I more fully realized that the people I share a house with are a little bit . . . unique.

The seminar session went quite well. People said the usual things about my writing: that it's poetic and elegant. I don't mind that, but I think I would also like it to be insightful and little haunting, perhaps even persistent. There were some contradictions that came up in the text (since I seem to prefer one type of art institution over the other yet the latter is the one that seemed to generate my initial appreciation of a quiet space in which to contemplate ideas), but that's fine. There will be some. The strategy, and it seems to be a successful one, is to compare two rooms, two homes for meaning across the Atlantic ocean. One room in the Tate Modern against one room in the MoMA in New York. Compared in terms of how they structure meaning, how they arrange the sense of history, how they encourage an imaginative space for being. I really like this project and want to write a book that starts a blaze somewhere (a metaphorical one I mean. I'm sensitive to the problems my Cali people are having right now with real conflagrations). The text that is the gleaming example of what I want to accomplish is Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek by Annie Dilliard. It's brilliant, but deeply personal and endlessly curious.

The NBA days were kinda fun, mostly it was hanging about the offices waiting to get instructions and then doing things like folding shirts and rehearsing with the Celtic team dancers and the project staff the order of events for the day of the game. Rick Barry, Bill Russell and B.J Armstrong were there for a "Legends" presentation. Barry was kind of a bitter and mean guy, and Russell got the most applause and cheers from the audience and I was surprised that so many British people knew of him. I was one of the people with the headsets who run around picking people for the halftime contests and giveaways. It would have been more fun I suppose if I hadn't hurt my back two days before, the pain was so bad I couldn't sleep properly.

Now about the people I live with: The first one I met, and the one who vetted me for the landlord and the rest of the house was Chris, who looks asian, born in Hong Kong, but educated in the States. Quite happy-go-lucky it seemed but I had a slight sense in the first few conversations that he had some issues with women. Then there's Gary who I almost never see. He was described to me as the alcoholic, coke-head, psychotherapist. He is that, at least by reports from everyone else in the house. He only wanders back to sleep and shower, (and now that I have stopped having milk in my coffee and don't need to worry about him drinking it) in some ways a perfect flatmate. I'm just not sure how his escapism works within his therapy practice, but I have a friend who is also a psychologist and he says addiction happens a fair bit.

The last one to move in is a recent French guy named Stephan who works part-time as a gardener, though he wants to photograph music bands during their gigs. And Joanna, the one woman, who happens to be quite lovely, and smart though she has some health issues. When I first moved in I hardly saw much of her cause she was sick for a while but as she recovered, we would talk more and more and eventually she told me that Chris had really become an in-house stalker, texting, e-mailing (though she never gave him her address) asking her out every day (nine days I think) until she said yes—to seeing a movie. At one point when she was in bed and needed help being fed she got help from him, and then got her phone and looked through it to see who she was calling. After all that, when Jo got better, she confronted him about the invasive things he had done and he cried while talking with her. He approached me as well and asked me what (after he realized that he needed to turn his affection spigot onto someone else) he should be careful to not do in new relationships. I told him that he has to be able to hear "no" and accept it. I told him other things—gently I believe. He cried during this conversation too. But the really odd thing is that he continued to act strangely, lurk at doors, listen in on conversations, convinced that Jo and I would be interested in each other, constantly asking us about the other. Chris makes me realize that there are some people who are just not sure what to do with themselves, not sure where or how to be in the world, and whether it's selling Amway, or listening to quasi-religious self help seminars, he is looking for some awareness which seems to always exist outside of himself. But where Jo and I are concerned, turns out he was on to something.

I started seeing Jo and I do feel good about the relationship, though we live together and though she does have some limitations. She has pointed out that I have a few myself, and I have to say I really respect her willingness to see me and say what she sees and ask me for what she needs. I am taking it (somewhat) slowly, trying to build a friendship around which some trust can coalesce. She studied Latin and Greek before falling ill, so I can impress her by knowing the singular of "criteria" or the etymology of "perspicacious". She impresses me by being indomitable about life. I don't know what will happen, but I'm going try to listen carefully, so I can actually hear what's going on.

Travis came up with a wonderful idea for a book we could do together (more on this later) and I think about it and smile and imagine that the homes for meaning are wherever you make them.

Hope you all are well,

Seph

Response to "Kinda in the Middle" by Antoinette

2007-10-02T15:55:00.000+01:00

Seph:

I know this is an incredibly trivial response to your long, thoughtful missives but so be it. Here are three things that have stayed part of my ordinary daily life decades after leaving England:

1. English cheese (Double Gloucester melted on toast for preference)
2. Homemade whole-wheat bread
3. Ales of all kinds (ah, Jubilee, how good you were)

Notice that it's all food?
I'd use the slang but no one here understands it.
I'd tell the stories but they are mostly irrelevant at this point.
Nearly everything else... gone.
The petty humiliations aimed at women (Oxford has to be one of the world hotspots of sexism) and Americans have long since faded, leaving only a residue of permanent challenge to established orders. Not a bad legacy for an artist.

Am I trying to say 'this too shall pass'? Perhaps.

Beckett said it best: "I can't go on. I'll go on."

cheers,

//Antoinette

Reply to Stinking Bishop from: Potty mouth in Dallas

2007-10-01T13:45:00.000+01:00

0my man, missed your call yet again today. i was on my
way out the door to mentor this cat (volunteer
bullshit i got roped into via my old job here) on his
poetry was rushing to get other things done so i
didn't look at the phone. our time will come.

as for your anger and its many provocations - yes,
well, you know.

i'm serious though, mutherfucker! you know yourself.
you know you're looking for provocation around most
corners. i can't lie though. this black woman bum
came up to my car at the whole foods parking lot and i
had a mark on her a mile away. it wasn't the third
word out her mouth before i said "NO" and walked the
fuck on. then i turned myself around and watched her
ass cuz i thought she might fuck with my car. then i
came in the store and imagined taking the exotic whole
foods fruit and pushing it into that woman's mouth
until she started choking.

so all this to say i understand you and also to say i
do not share your need to be articulate in my anger.
sheeet, as the saying goes.

i don't know my man. but we both got it, those honey
pots of rage. may we love ourselves through whatever
we need to do.

have a wonderful week and please don't give up trying
to call. we'll work it out.

much love, f.

Reply to Stinking Bishop from Denis

2007-09-30T21:37:00.000+01:00

Seph,

Sometimes in life it just takes a small delicacy like a fine cheese, a good
pint or a simple kind word from a friend to make someone forget the bad
influences that are thrown our way. Please remember that life is absolutely
full of conflict and ones ability to deal with this adversity will vary from
chapter to chapter. It would probably be wise and big of you to open a
dialogue with one of the people that got under your skin this week and make
a mends, (maybe a little cheese or possibly a pint). This will help you out
much in terms of how you feel inside, about yourself. And how you feel that
you are seen by others. Loosing some of the tension will help your work to
flow. IT seems that most great writing must possess a healthy bit of angst
in order to challenge a good reader. Don't forget balance though as anger
at the keyboard will cloud creativity and output.

You are doing something that is for you and the betterment of your life.
Many of us wish that we were off pursuing the life that you now have, higher
learning, art appreciation and criticism. This is a gift to be able to
follow this desire that you have. Keep up the good fight, keep producing
the best work that you can and keep being SEPH.

Cheers Mate,

Denis

Updates from London: Stinking Bishop

2007-09-30T15:55:00.000+01:00

Someone please help me. I am really tired this week. Since I have been studying french all summer long I happen to think of a phrase right now that seems appropriate. It's funny. J'ai le cafard, which translates literally as "I have the cockroach", but means more like I am tired and fed up. I am. I found out that yet another piece of financial aid I applied for months ago I did not get, and I have been waiting for many weeks to hear back from the main financial aid person at my school about something else, but most likely related and now get the feeling she is dodging me.

I did through asking and asking finally get a small writing job for a magazine out of Dubai (the circuitous route to get the assignment would take too long to explain) called Boutique but the editor wants me to do the damn thing for free, for the "experience" and I really can't just say no, cause it is a genuine magazine and I need the writing credit, and it's real. I have to go interview some up-and-coming designer and make the piece sing. But I was really hoping to make some money from that gig since this is still the most expensive city in the world and I'm working a shop job.

I have 10,000 words due tomorrow and am about 3,000 words shy right now and had planned it out well in advance of going to Venice last week, but have been so tired and run down by my days that I haven't had the energy–hopefully do 1500 tonight and another 1500 tomorrow. Not huge penalties for not getting it done, but damn it, this is my main focus and if I can't buckle down and get this done then what the hell is what?

Then this week I have been utterly frustrated with the job at Collezioni, cause I keep barely making decent days in terms of how much I sell. I just always miss the big sales, though I don't want to care about that; I sorta have to. I forget things, always alteration-type things and forget to bring things back to the floor, and I know I just am tired of doing the job, but I don't want my manager breathing down my neck and taking liberties with how he talks to me. I kinda lost my temper two sundays ago with another manager when he said something really rude to a bunch of us on the floor and told him he has no right to talk to me like that and he was doing it to demonstrate his power and that I wasn't going to stand for it. I am reminded that I have a little pot of anger in me that needs the right kind of stoking to develop to a full boil. It's in me to tell a motherfucker where to go, and I will accept the consequences, but I'm going to fight when it calls for it. The previous day I went to a bar with friends from work and the cat behind the bar ignored me and then had the nerve to dismiss my carefully worded concerns. I . . . suffice to say it was a weekend of losing my cool.

Then I went to Venice. (the flight was so cheap it was like I couldn't pass it up, plus it will be my one vacation this year, since I can't go home for christmas) The trip was really conflicted. I stayed with a friend and issues developed. I just wanted to relax so badly and could not. Sometimes I am truly not smart (i.e. stupid). But I did see some beautiful work at the Biennale. I have to big up the Swiss pavilion and the Russian one as well. They both used very obviously artificial characters to talk about race and war and (more the russian one) nationalism. They were long films and the Swiss artist used the kinds of animated characters that you might see in DMV illustrations, but in CGI three dimensions; they were oddly moving and touching. And the Russian work was a very obviously manipulated version of a Benetton ad, with pretty children committing stylized acts of violence on each other, with both old and new and ethnic weaponry. It was fascinating. I have to mention this Italian "painter" named Angelo Filomeno, not sure what to call him really, but he makes these canvases of utterly breathtaking stitched silk shot through with glistening fibers and bits of reflective material. And they are all skeletons as characters, for instance, one called "Cold" is just a skeleton underneath the night sky with the earth crystalizing and glistening around it.

The Best though, was the French house and the big piece by Sophie Calle. She took a break up letter that her ex boyfriend had written her (rather than meeting) and shared it with 107 women around the world and documented the women responding to the text with either photographs, video, performance, text, etc. The letter itself was dissected nine ways from sunday. It was examined in terms of the tense of verbs, the ratio of active to passive verbs, the use of adjectives, nouns and pronouns, allusions it made to other pieces of literature. It was profound. And I liked that on the face of it it could sound self-indulgent (but then what isn't?), but it is a viciously important work and I love how the women come together to help Calle make sense of language and loss. Some women in videos read it and dance and one wears a clown outfit, and one Italian woman reads it while making dinner and lambastes it, and some read it and cry. Some read it and explain why it's shit.

Then I came home and my flatmate had bought me some cheese to try out. One was Lincolnshire poacher, the other was Stinking Bishop. The Bishop really did stink. Roundly. It was like being stuck in a bus with kids in high school. Soft cheese, cows milk. Though brave soldier that I am I tried it. Not for me. But the Lincolnshire poache was the bomb diggety. That's tasty cheese.

I hope the coming week opens its arms and embraces us all. I certainly do need that.

love,

Seph

Updates from London: Anniversary Issue

2007-09-16T15:40:00.001+01:00

My friends,

Today makes a year I am in London. I do feel it's been completely worth it. I've accomplished a few things I wanted to, but more importantly gained some clarity on exactly what I want to do, or perhaps more to the point, what I want my life to look like.

I went to a literary reading tonight and listened as some established and 'emerging' writers tried out their stuff, did their literary thing and some were decent, enticing, even lovely. And then I thought about how years ago when I went to all those readings in New York, often by myself, to the 92nd Street Y, or Poets' House, or the New School, or wherever, and I heard Robert Creeley or Grace Paley, Joseph Brodsky or Jimmy Breslin, Phillip Levine or Michael Ondaatje, Jorie Graham or Peter Matthiessen. And I remember very clearly thinking that what they did was the highest calling: to write something, create something that might a little bit set a people on fire—and my feet hardly on the ground on the way home.

Now I have various books (of which the Ph.D. is one) I am working on and it feels right to be here, in my skin, doing the work that is the work I want to do. Feels like the flinty rocks sometimes. Feels like they spark me into my real life sometimes too.

I do miss you all some of those times as well.

Seph

Updates from London: A bit on language

2007-08-14T20:07:00.000+01:00

Hello,

We've had a spate of great weather here, and though I think it's usually
boring to talk about the weather, or indicates a kind of polite distance and/or
an attempt to break the ice gingerly, you have to understand: London weather is
usually reprehensible. Just right now it has been truly inspiring and takes the edge off the state of quiet
desperation Wilde said most of us exist in. It has been deeply satisfying and makes
me want to sanctify the moment in some religious way.

I feel like doing two things at once with this email: One I want to do a kind of
William Safire, On Language type letter, because some of the british-isms have really
struck me this past week: for instance: the sign in the men's toilet at work
at the Armani store talks about what we should do should there be a 'blockage',
or a 'spillage'. What the hell happens if pills should fall on the floor?
(pillage, anyone?) (Yeah,. . . I'm here all week)

Then there is the habit of British people saying they like this 'bit' or
that 'bit' to talk about aspects of a show, or elements of a meal or body
parts, as in 'they covered up all the naughty bits' Naughty is such a good
word, but I can hardly imagine an American saying it, unless he or she is much older
and slightly 'cheeky' They also love to say things like 'cheeky monkey'
which might get a person in trouble in the States depending on the context and who
is being referred to. The precise connotation of 'cheeky' is ultimately
not a U.S. thing at all. People aren't cheeky, but sarcastic, or arrogant or
challenging or in rare cases mischeivous. As if the U.S. wants to turn up the volume
on the thing or make it seem more dominant and less coquettish.

Perhaps that's what I mean when I say that being a man in this context is a
little less weighty. Not so much to carry around, maybe? And then when you are
in shape, but not just in shape, but good looking as well, they like to call you
'fit'. As in she's really fit (the dog's bollocks). He's really
fit, though he's a bit of a wanker. That is supposed refer to the whole package
being 'good' I have to say this does not work for me at all and I don't
find it convincing to say someone is 'fit' That just says to me their cardiovascular
system works well. I still prefer 'fine' to refer to an attractive woman,
or in this country 'bird' a word which appeals to one's inner bloke.

Then there is the sign(age). There is a store in my new neighborhood that has the
name 'Hot Nuts' I'm still laughing about this and it's been about
two weeks since I've moved in. They really do offer them. Then there is the
advert for a new musical. It's 'Bad Girls' the musical and the tag
line reads: All Banged Up. I swear. Nothing I can say will make this any better.

Finally went today to see the Blind Light show at the Hayward Gallery and a mother
in the queue (line) right behind me with three young children whe was trying to
control, kept admonishing them as they would mess around. She would say stop it,
stop it, you're being booring and childish. That's a lot of pressrue to
handle at four or five: to be an interesting grownup. Maybe I should have just
cut to the chase and given all three the number to a good therapist right then.

The second thing I wanted to do was tell about the new house and my Ph.D. project
and my smaller research project with the tate modern. Like the house and really
like the people and finally have dining room in which I love to sit and read or
chat with Joanna and Chris. One bloke is a rarely seen alcoholic who has already
stolen my milk. The last person arrives in September, a woman so the energy in
the house should be nicely balanced.

Had a great meeting with my supervisor and we recognized/figured out that my project
wants to be partly, what I had first thought, which is a comparison between the
Tate and the MoMa in New York. I want to compare two rooms.(say a little prayer
for funding for me.) I want to talk about the work in these two rooms (I haven't
decided which ones yet), talk about how the work got there, what the curatorial
strategy is, what the room says to a viewer, what the narrative is, what the narrative
of the museum itself is, what the rooms assume the visitors know, what we need to
know, competencies we need to have, whether the rooms take an audience for granted
or want to develop one, what becomes possible for a viewer within each room. I
suspect that the MoMa has a very different m.o. and narrative than does the Tate.
I suspect that MoMa is all about the herocism of the 20th century and wants people
to pay for the privilege of feeling privileged to have inherited the great innovators
and masters and we are the logical conclusion of all their hard work. While I think
Tate is bit more forward looking.
We'll see.

Lastly did a small project with the tate because the interpretation dept. wanted
to experiment with captions for the pieces. I volunteered to do the research on
the idea of using poetry. So I had to speed read through several books, once I
got the assignement of the room and went to look at the work. Luckily, I remember
the particular voices of some of the famous writers I really loved, so I could go
to big collections of e.e. cummings, or Rilke, or Lorca, and finally big anthologies
to find appropriate (small) poems for each piece: paintings by Picasso, Matisse,
Braque and Miro, and a sculpture by Hepworth. Then the last two weren't quite
there, so I asked Travis to write one and I wrote one. I should be there at the
museum to help them actually gauge audience response to the work so I can't
wait to see how it shakes out.

It did however rain today after the long reprieve. I'd like to take that bit
out of today since it's just boooring and childish.

Seph

Responses to "Kinda in the Middle II" from Travis

2007-07-20T02:49:00.000+01:00

1) There is *nothing* wrong with wanting to live near or within a 
culture that you feel comfortable; assuming, of course, we're not 
talking nazi's, confederates, or the french.
2) Thoreau lived in the woods--some of the time.
3) Gandhi lived with the poor--mostly.
4) MLK lived in the burbs--basically.
5) There is no necessary and sufficient connection between where one 
chooses to live and one's political tendency or cultural efficacy.
6) I like 24-hour supermarkets and I hate poverty, whether it is 
economic, cultural or intellectual.
7) People are complicated like that.
8) Godfrey should ask his platitudes to blow him, since he clearly 
gets off on them already.

Lastly, "time's winged chariot" is from Marvell's "To His
Coy 
Mistress," I think. Shakespeare might use it somewhere else, but this 
is the one I know, which I have included. I think you'll like it, if 
you don't already know it.

To his Coy Mistress
by Andrew Marvell


Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

        But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

        Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Responses to "Kinda in the Middle II" from Glen and Alain

2007-07-17T21:31:00.000+01:00

In the movie "Bullworth", Warren Beatty says the answer to race relations is for everybody to keep fucking each other until we're all the same color.
There's a lot of truth to that. So the ball's in the court of you straight folks. Go to it!!!!
Us gay folk will take up the slack by adopting the accidental butterscotchers.
I like a lot of diversity in my neighborhoods. The more varied the gene pool the more everything seems to thrive.
Lets start an artist's comunity somewhere. Only ours will have hot water and proper electric outlets and every one will have golden skin like the folks that populate Pepsi commercials.
There was a fairly ridiculous reality show about Mrs. David Beckham on television last night. She had lunch at the home of a Beverly Hills socialite and was surrounded by all these rich women with bad plastic surgery, enormous lips (I think they were WAX!) and bad blonde hair. Pathetic creatures, well off to be sure, taking comfort in the company of each other. Because if they should venture outside the security walls, they would be seen for the freaks they are, ex-trophy wives desperately trying to re-gain their youth and sacrificing all dignity for the chance. The really scary part was that they ALL LOOKED EXACTLY ALIKE!!!! It was like a Twilight Zone episode. Just creepy.
It conjured an image in my mind of a wealthy banana left out too long, using its substantial reserves of cash to keep as much firmness and yellow as it can for as long as it can. The end result is a mushy black tube, painted with two coats of some color called Banana No. 12 or Lemon No. 3, injected with saline and plant food to keep it from sagging in the middle, and wrapped in celophane to avoid any banana-y leakage or embarrassingly ploppy explosions.
Or Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn in Death Becomes Her.
Just disgusting.
Nothing philosophical from me today. I'm going to have a drink after work.

Glen and Alain

-----Original Message----

Sent: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 12:46 pm
Subject: Re: Updates from London: Kinda in the Middle II

Heya,

I appreciate this reply a whole lot. I do the same damn thing of wasting my time with hypothetical, theoretical 'solutions' which always already assume that my life is a problem. I love this answer about the alternate universe. It's so brilliant it has to be true. I'm going to keep this one close to me and remember when some other friend tells me that she has just been nominated for the nobel prize in literature. This will be helpful. Thank you.
I don't think there is an upper middle class neighborhood in London that is primarily black, but, you know, I'm not sure they need one. I have never seen so many mixed couples and butterscotch children in my life. They are all quite so beautiful. Less so in the affluent neighborhoods, but there is so much less exoticism attached to mixing here. And what I want is a mix, not homogeneity. Of course then the class thing goes and makes it all squirrely again. C'est la vie.
A teut a l'heure,
le Seph

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Jul 13, 2007 9:36 PM
Subject: Re: Updates from London: Kinda in the Middle II

Hiya, Seph.

There was this radio psychiatrist who used to be on KABC in the afternoons. This was about a dozen years ago when I was working in an little art gallery/frame shop. I'd listen to the guy while I was dainty-fying mattes, chopping frames and cutting glass to strange sizes. Most of what he was doing was catching people in lies or inconsiderate behavior and setting them straight.
Once in a while he'd get someone who was being way to hard on themselves because they weren't achieving what they thought they ought to be achieving. His comment to these folks was something like "You are exactly where you are supposed to be. You haven't lost ground, you haven't gotten ahead of yourself. There is no alternate timeline featuring some fantastic version of yourself that's lived a perfect existance, an existance that you'd better start marching doubletime to catch up to. There's only the one you and that's it, a unique thing. Not a very unique thing or a kind of unique thing because there's no such thing as being very or kind of unique. You're either unique, one of a kind, or you're not. And there is no person in the world, even the most identical twin, who isn't unique. The place you are at this moment in your life is the place you are supposed to be.

That sort of thinking takes the pressure to attain off of one so that you have the energy and clarity of thought to actually go out and attain. I liked that.

I agree with thought that once you start feeling bad about not having gotten to a certain place yet, you get into a whole world of hypotheticals. Hypothetical problems are the worst because they haven't happened therefore there's nothing you can do about them....except come up with a range of hypothetical solutions. How much time have I wasted on solutions to hypothetical problems? How many times have I wondered how I would deal with the burden of 160 million dollars that I'll have in the bank when I win the lottery?

Is there an upper-middle to upper class black neighborhood in London that you could move into?
Along the lines of Baldwin Hills here in L.A.?

Anyway....I'll write more when I have more to say.

Hope all is well.

Glen and Alain

Response to Mingus' response to Kinda in the Middle

2007-07-14T16:50:00.000+01:00

I loved reading this email. I am inspired by you in your use of language. I love
the fact that you will talk to the Author about me. Even though I don't believe
quite the way you do, I am always taken aback by how much your faith is convincing
to me—if nothing else is. Some times I talk too, I talk to the universe and petition it
on behalf of people I love. I love your phrase 'tender and supple needs' I would
not share that with everyone I know, but it's right on time, really. Plus
what you say about the making of a sutra and the imperialistic thought control.
I hope you realize that I will be stealing these very things when I talk to others.

Yes, you should be with me when the day comes and there are some long deserved
funerals. Some shit very much needs to be laid to rest, let go of, long deserved
indeed.

And I have to say as well, I am impressed by your conviction concerning getting
your life together. Only you can do. I just stopped smoking and though I struggle
I think I want to stay stopped. You and I always make the beds we sleep in, and I
really want for you that it is wide and soft and clean and welcoming. Do what you
can to make it so.

love,

Seph

Reponses to 'Kinda in the Middle II' from John

2007-07-14T15:44:00.000+01:00

Listen you endearing thoughtful soul- live where you want cause its what you want and FUCK the what I personally think is some form of gratuitous guilt andenjoy your life cause life should have its fair share of style and kozy and nice lines and I aint talking (only) about the skirts going bing boing bing boing ohhhhhh lovely RIGHT where was I RIGHT so yes move there because its what you want and knowing you it is what you want (you poofter) full time and the other stuff... part time.... Grammer anyone? Naw! Anyway- good to here you have some thoughts(understatement) about life there. And it sounds as though life is engaging more than youve been engaged in a long time. Quiet on the girl front though . . . Anything happening with that?. . . Fencing? Fucking? How about flagellation?

Miss you me friend

John

Response to Kinda in the Middle from Antoinette

2007-07-14T13:29:00.000+01:00

>>I also have this kinda crazy idea that we could really, honestly cart off to the landfill most of the stuff before the 20th century that qualifies as art, which is really hardly art anymore and more like an excuse to have some money change hands--or jettison it into the upper atmosphere to fill in the hole in the ozone layer, either way I don't give a shit as long as it goes. I mean what does it teach us anymore?<<

what crazy? The Impressionists made the same proposal... and the >Futurists... and the Dadaists...

and now you can add a purely 21st "green" spin to the idea: artists make too much stuff and need to cut back... stop making those 15x20 foot paintings for the museums that are the art equivalent of Hummers... divorce art from the culture of conspicuous consumption... update arte povera to include eco friendly approaches... trimming the art of the past as a form of recyling... blah blah blah...

though I call this a 21st/c idea, I proposed something along these lines in a talk I gave in 1995...

//Antoinette

Response to Kinda in the Middle II from Antoinette

2007-07-13T22:39:00.000+01:00

>>It occurred to me looking at what I wrote after getting a reply that I left out a few key things. I think that part of the limitation of the way I think about politics and culture is that I am obligated to feel a certain way because I am black. I love being black, but I have to say sometimes the luggage is heavy. (Though I wonder whether I would still feel this way if I weren't) I almost feel apologetic for wanting to live near a community that is cleaner and better cared for by the municipality (though up by Finsbury Park is only a little different), even and unbroken sidewalks, storefronts that are whole and have a little design flair, fewer betting joints
and more coffe shops, a community that feels like it's thriving, not just staying alive or at risk. I like the idea of being in a real house and not a flat. I like the idea of being near a 24-hour
supermarket, cause I like to shop for snacks at 2 in the morning. I like being near a big public park (that's not really changing). And I think growing up in the Bronx when I did has much to say about what I want and feel safe in. These sensibilities are not rightly designated as middle class. That's incorrect. But they have been called that for so long I go along with it to fit in. I thinks it's more rare to find a community that is active and mixed and not smug or elitist, yet also highly motivated to have a certain kind of presentation, that maybe mirrors in some way what one feels about oneself.>>

>>So it occurs to me, following up on that conversation about confronting evil (not that this is evil, only perhaps unfair), that I should have said something to the guy (Godfrey) about his
>assessment of the meaning of where I live. I'm sure it's flawed and I'm sure that once we begin thinking in terms of a 'should' as in where I should live, there is a big, fat sinkhole in the bottom of that.>>

all true; not to mention which it is a profoundly bourgeois
preoccupation to judge everyone by where they live and most
especially by whether they have a house, and what kind of house. It's
a shorthand for not knowing anything actually vital about who a
person is and what they are doing with their life. Maybe it's ok to
just figure out a place to live that is enough for you-- safe enough
or affordable enough or unracist enough-- and put your mental and
physical sweat equity into an entirely different subject.

Claim your eccentricity :)

//Antoinette

Reponses to 'Kinda in the Middle II' from Darcy

2007-07-13T17:56:00.000+01:00

hmmm....THere is also the opposite side where I was attacked by a couple of 24-ish hipsters at a party for my stating that I don't think I would move to South Central because I was sick of poor, dangerous, and fucked up neighborhoods. They refused to allow such an assessment of SCLA. Now I am sure that certain parts are not that bad. Im just weary after my 2 years in the Tenderloin in SF. But I was fascinated by there emotional defense of the area. BEcause they were very much not from there (I did ask). So I thought, then why, after living there several months, would one have such strong defenses for such dismal conditions. And part of me wondered was it an attempt to fashion there seemingly non-racist opinions or perspectives. Maybe similar to "I have good black friends." "Unlike other white people, I love this fucked up place." Therefore, I am not racist? I don't know. I mean. I am living in east LA and lately I have come to find these poor neighborhoods wonderful. They are scary sometimes. Nothing compared to the Tenderloin. But much of these neighborhoods are Latino families while the Tenderloin was single, low-income housing for insane drug addicts, who were mostly Black. I don't know anything about South Central. But these are two vastly different worlds, family and singles, Black and Latino, healthy and sick. Perhaps this paragraph didn't really state anything. Enjoy!

love

Darcy

ps- I keep getting messeages and emails, it Alexis and Johannes, we are wasted in Berlin, wish you were here,,,etc. Whilst sweat is pouring from my brow as I sand aluminum. Woe is me. So it goes.

Reponses to 'Kinda in the Middle' from Carrie

2007-07-13T01:06:00.000+01:00

hey seph

i'm kind of in shock about your proposal to burn/trash all art before the 20th century. ??? wow - if you can write a compelling argument for that kind of short term memory i'm sure you'll get the attention of the art world. good luck. i'm amused and offended which is probably a good reaction. go chapman brothers.

carrie

Responses to "Kinda in the Middle II" from Damione a.k.a Mingus

2007-07-12T20:49:00.000+01:00

Hmmmmm-oh, i can't help laughing because i'll prolly
(ghetto for probably) sound my usual candid tackiness,
but....ahhhh, i guess you just don't wanna live wit no
niggas-BLACK OR WHITE, or those under "nigga"
watchlights.
Ok, i just really had fun saying that, like at a
dinner table asking for the mustard instead of
grape-tampone (or pupon-whatever)!

Seriously, i do understand you, and it is a tug from
"reality" and the "realities" you choose. Desire.
However, i do believe the same darkness lurks in both,
however one does have the sense to have boundaries.
That's a weird struggle. I mean, give a person with
poor ideas lots of money, and well.....you get a young
Master P (What the fuck u need a GOLD BATHTUB for i do
not know...AND DON'T WANNA KNOW). AT the same time,
there is the fact that people find validation in
something that they had nothing to do with in the
first place, they simply move and keep the rules of it
and add it to their accolade cache. But i guess u
mentioned that. But in the end, u'd rather there be a
place where people accept a certain lifestyle as a way
of being, and make that their standard as far as they
can. it' a good thing as long as you don't become
lofty. As long as it does not make you paranoid of
those "other" places that don't live, or exist, by or
with those standards, because at the end of the day of
our BETTER selves, we, as educators (having something
that benefits the whole, or at least acknowledging the
age-old truths that cannot be denied)have to go into
the darker places of self and others if we are to
facilitate the "worth-whilness" of those "standards".

the more light we have, the deeper the darkness we are
called to go into, we of the world and the world only
suffer when we refuse this. Our art is stagnated,
imperialized.....god forbid-standardized. At that
point, not just the art, but all of us end up being
buried. But i understand your cultural plight along
with the religious dogma that hangs over your head.
Shucks, even i say to myself that hey, just cause
Jesus decided to live all humble and poor, why i
gotta. But i understand the message, even if i don't
agree with the politics that unfortunately came later
when certain disciples started power trippin, and the
masses eagerly accepted the pretty mental pictures
that told them they'd have nice shiney mansions in
heaven (rent free).
don't ask me where that came from, but believe me i
was sneering and staring into the sky.

I'm back now.

enjoy the song, again when all else, my tongue, my
thoughts and my places to go have reached their
peak...this i know. ABove culture, above race,
religion gender AND geography, at my bottom line i
know, even when i don't feel to sing it-this song.
Love you beautiful.

-Dame

Reponses to 'Kinda in the Middle' from Damione

2007-07-12T19:22:00.000+01:00

Please 4give me for not writing back Sepher, i've beentrying to get it together (lose weight by eatingright, drinking less and going to bed very early) andunderstand that it is better to be "alone" than tosettle for something that in essence is only aillusion of my desire when it comes to being withsomeone for affection-when that person is activly notconcerned with meeting my more supple and tender needs. The best way to suffucate contempt is to loveaffection for affections sake and watch what world it opens up in it's real and dreamy.

I thought about you the other day, seriously, i wokeup feeling good, or better than i have in a while, andfelt a real pang longing for you. I prayed for you, orshould i say i talked to our Author about you and that thing inside me that feels loving, loved and awakenedwhen i expierience something for and from someone whois not around. Amazing how friendship, long friendshipis so much of the past and the present at the sametime, however it is not the past, but the now. I am reading Octavia Butler (Parable of the Talents) forthe second time, and read again:

To survive, let the past teach you-
past customs, struggles, leaders and thinkers.
Let these help you. Let them inspire you, warn you,
Give you strength.
But beware: God is Change.
Past is past.
What was
cannot
come again.

To survive, know the past
let it touch you.
then let the past
Go.

i was moved differently this time when i read it. The letting go part was handled differently. Now reading it i ACCEPT that i am a new thing in old skin and oldways. I am a new thing with habits that have to be letgo of and walls that need to come down. My skin is different, my mind not so topsy turvy. Move on,because most of what i want to do i will be learninguntil the day i die. I don't have to make a sutra of it, but i have to remember that there is an imperialistic form of thinking and control that i exercise unneccesarily that keeps me from walking forward, and at the same time keeps calling what i seecleary in front of me darkness, simply because of fearand doubt. What the hell does this all have to dowith what you wrote?

Well bucko, i like how you went in that office andsaid what you said about not being an academic. I appreciate taking the whole shirt with the cuff andthrowing it on the desk and then saying-THIS IS WHY ISAY WHAT I SAY!!! When someone i know, but moreimportantly LOVE,does this, i still am inspired (letthese help you, let them inspre you, warn you, giveyou strength).

Also, in becoming better with my "self", i am amazedat the "worm-holes" of love that surround me. Myfriends, those people who live in a way thatstill...and i mean-STILL inspire me. Not movie stars,not the rich, not the accolade riddled, but people whoare everything BUT ordinary to me. It helps me tounderstand that for a Phoenix to be reborn-IT FIRSTHAS TO BURRNNNNNN!!!

WOA.sO in light of that, i just gotta say....love u man,and love watching you in the cacoon. Here, have some music.

Love,Dame

p.s. When that "stuff" goes into the landfill, i'll bring a gun to clip the tight collars of drama that try'n' stop it from happenin. We can have some very well deserved funerals that day too. lookit that huh.

Updates from London: Kinda in the Middle II

2007-07-12T19:17:00.000+01:00

It occurred to me looking at what I wrote after getting a reply that I left out a few key things: I think that part of the limitation of the way I think about politics and culture is that I am obligated to feel a certain way because I am black. I love being black, but I have to say sometimes the luggage is heavy. (Though Iwonder whether I would still feel this way if I weren't) I almost feel apologetic for wanting to live near a community that is cleaner and better cared for by the municipality (though up by Finsbury Park is only a little different), even and unbroken sidewalks, storefronts that are whole and have a little design flair, fewer betting joints and more coffee shops, a community that feels like it's thriving, not just staying alive or at risk. I like the idea of being in a real house and not a flat. I like the idea of being near a 24-hour supermarket, cause I like to shopfor snacks at 2 in the morning. I like being near a big public park (that's not really changing). And I think growing up in the Bronx when I did has much to say about what I want and feel safe in. These sensibilities are not rightly designated as middle class. That's incorrect. But they have been called that for so long I go along with it to fit in. I thinks it's more rare to find a community that is active and mixed and not smug or elitist, yet also highly motivated to have a certain kind of presentation, that maybe mirrors in some way what one feels about oneself.

So it occurs to me, following up on that conversation about confronting evil (not that this is evil, only perhaps unfair), that I should have said something to the guy (Godfrey) about his assessment of the meaning of where I live. I'm sure it's flawed and I'm sure that once we begin thinking in terms of a 'should' as in where I should live, there is a big, fat sinkhole in the bottom of that. I wonder if Kant might have thought that the right and good thing to do in that moment, in line with the categorical imperative, would have been to challenge that. I would like to imagine that part of the task of being a real academic would be to confront bankrupt ideas like this and encourage people to think in different ways. I think Steve may be wrong about me, because most academics I know and know of don't do this. They have other, more insular concerns than the people they see every day to and from work.

Also it occurred to me to mention that with the job being okay so far my money problems have evened out somewhat, since getting a small, private grant, though I still did not get any of the grants or awards from my school that I applied for this year. That is a little hard to deal with, but I don't know a better way to deal than to keep trying to find a seam, a place for me.

I had a friend from Cali (now New York) visit this past weekend. Alexis and hung out and sort of drank our way around the city: The strand and Trafalgar square, the bar at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, Chinatown and Soho, with a great fish and chips meal in Borough Market--a fish and chips which unlike the first oneI had in London, did not take two days to digest. I know a really good joint when anyone decides to come out and join me. The invitation in hereby open.

Seph

Response to 'Kinda in the Middle' from Darcy

2007-07-12T17:43:00.000+01:00

Seph,

Just up a ilttle early this morning to make some crap gauche paintings before crying myself back to Mike Kelley's salt mines. Its fine really. This is actually my first full-time job. So I have a lot of issues adjusting to the amount of hours (45 a week). I think it is getting better. But it feels like it allows me just an hour for my work here, 45 minutes there, eat, sleep, start over. Im living in LA these days which I really enjoy. The East side however is much more tolerable than the West. I went to an opening the other night in Culver City and it was filled with those commercial, actor, professional, immature types that have way too much faith in themselves, their future and there sensibilities. Well. As I said, I have to tie up my boots now and run to the shop for another 9 hours. Im getting really familiar with aluminum.

Take care old friend,

Darcy

Updates from London: Kinda in the Middle

2007-07-12T16:47:00.000+01:00

At the end-of-the-year reception for the Consortium and a friend of someone in theprogram came up to me and asked what was going on, so I talked about moving (again),how I have been looking for someplace north of the river and he said to me that my wanting to abandon the Southern community by Camberwell Green in favor of theone up by Finsbury Park was like moving from the left to the right politically. Then he said it was like the dividing line in Jamaica, which is the town of HalfwayTree, demarcating the rich digs of the hills in Kingston from Spanish Town down below. I think I mentioned I was from Jamaica, which is I suppose why he used thatanalogy. But he didn't know that I was born in Halfway Tree, and my mom livesin Spanish Town and I have a very rich cousin in the Kingston Hills (in fact wasas his house last Christmas). When talking to people about moving or wanting tomove after being where I am for only two months. I made the same joke several times:that Camberwell offends my bourgeois sensibilities. It does. That's not the joke.

I think the joke is in admitting it, and that admitting it seems to amount to takinga political position, and I'm not comfortable with this, so I joke about it.I claim what I feel, but I think, in the back of my head is the suspicion that I'lllook around and galloping in from the far horizon will be a posse of black peoplewho will want to arrest me and throw me under the jail for crimes of cultural disloyalty.(I swear this self-persecutorial stuff is got to be from a strictly religious upbringing;I just have not read that much Kafka) Odd, being born in the middle. Still, I likea certain level of order, of cleanliness of stability and I'm hoping I get thatwhere I plan to go by August 1. It's a big house, a real house and has a realgarden out back and big kitchen and dining area and tv room and I already get onwell with one of the housemates. Plus there are other problems (I think 'issues'here would be too value neutral) with living with the people I live with now . .. can't wait to fly.

I also had an end-of-the-year meeting with my program's director and I went in with the big guns. I said that I didn't think I am an academic and that I'm thinking that the way my PhD. project is now, that it might just end up on a shelf somewhere filed away and if that's the case I don't need to doit. It needs to have real relevance in the world. And then I started talking abouthow I really want to get at what museums should be doing and how the schemes of invitation and interpretation all seem to be about fixing meaning and holding ithostage while they hand out the turner prizes and curator accolades and big moneygrants. I believe you can have a place where meaning is not so determinate and stayingthere, right there is okay for a while, if it gets us to think in interesting waysabout our lives. (I also have this kinda crazy idea that we could really, honestlycart off to the landfill most of the stuff before the 20th century that qualifiesas art, which is really hardly art anymore and more like an excuse to have some money change hands--or jettison it into the upper atmosphere to fill in the holein the ozone layer, either way I don't give a shit as long as it goes. I meanwhat does it teach us anymore?)

Steve cited some things about me and said that I am an academic and that this programis interested in exactly these kinds of projects and that so far so good. He actuallynever said, don't give up or anything sentimental (the British--you can'tbeat them into being touchy-feely) but he seemed to want me to understand that sofar I have been doing what he hopes PhD. students do in their first years. He saidhe wished more students were like me. But at the same time I never wrote a paperthat rose to the level of distinction, and I don't have a book I wrote or editedcoming out next year, or curated a major show at the Tate Modern. There are colleaguesof mine who do or did and right now, this past week I have really been feeling thepressure to be greater, faster, more well known, and full of rising action. LikeTina Brown said the other day 'I don't make people; I make contacts'So this week I am feeling 'Time's winged chariot at my back' (Shakespeare?)and I want to go somewhere from the middle.

Seph

P.S. I really like when you all do write back. And I do miss you very much.

Reponses to Nothing Broken/Nothing Made Up from Glen and Alain

2007-07-11T13:29:00.000+01:00

Hiya Seph.

Sorry to hear about your back and your hand. I hate it when a muscle gets pulled. The second you feel the twinge you know you're going to be suffering a dull ache for the next couple of days. Just load up on aspirin or Tylenol or whatever works for you. Don't be a martyr. Nothing brave or clever about going through the day with pain you know is temporary if you don't have to.
Take care of yourself. Take it easy. You're already beautiful. How much more so do you hope to get? Causing traffic accidents due to the attractiveness you display as you walk down the street may be a boost to the ego. But please....think about people's insurance premiums. In that sense, you have a moral duty not to become absurdly handsome.
I saw that movie about Mr. Death a long time ago.
I have this theory about evil.
Evil isn't a demon; no personification of hurtful things. Its not even a particularly intentionally hurtful thing.
Evil is distraction. Its allowing one's attention to become scattered in the middle of a task or thought. In the middle of anything really.
I'm not talking about just taking a break. Taking a break doesn't cause you to lose focus. There are lots of writers who will intentionally stop a days writing in mid-sentence just so they know where to pick up when they sit down the next day.
I'm talking about distraction from purpose. A distraction from strength and truth and towards apathy and self-denial. This is the first step towards chaos. Chaos being the conclusion of an evil process.
Take that movie about Mr. Death for instance. He started out doing some fix-it work on an electric chair at a local prison, right? He then progressed to the lethal injection machines and gallow thus making a name for himself in that small circle of executioners and their allied services.
The thing that freaked me out about him was all the coffee he drank. Was it in the neighborhood of 40 cups a day? Something ridiculous like that. Six packs of cigarettes a day too. Wonder what habits like that do to a body in the long run?
The thing was, his task started out as a fairly noble one; to make executions more humane by doing some modifications and refurbishments on equipment that had fallen into disrepair.
But he began to get some notoriety. He was getting phone calls and working enough to make a fair living from repairing and ultimately designing instruments of capital punishment.
It seems that's when he began to get distracted. He was a geeky little guy who was suddenly getting all this praise. So when the organization of holocaust deniers or whatever it was called, approached him as a scientific expert, he was distracted from the original noble path and down one that was more self-serving and self-deceiving.
I wonder if, before his original experience with the gallows repair, he would have agreed with the data collecting methods he ended up using in the concentration camp remains? The thought process of someone who, on a daily basis, drinks 40 cups of coffee and smokes six packs of cigarettes seems to me to be from another planet and I don't understand it. But unless you walk a mile in somebody else's body chemistry, how could you ever expect to fully understand them?
( One hour later)
I just googled the transcript of Mr. Death. It was really a twisted rags-to-riches-to-rags story wasn't it?
The sense of empowerment can work wonders. Look at any infomercial that touts "The Power Of Positive Thinking".
But its nice to see the opposite side of that coin, the Dark Side, the Lesson Against Ego. Empowerment brings with it a vim and "damn the torpedos-full speed ahead" attitude that can bring about your fall just as easily as it can your success.
Its the Adam and Eve story over and over, isn't it? Getting ahead of yourself, testing the waters and suffering for it.
But at least you get to see your nakedness. That's kinda hot. And evil? Okay....but in a good way depending on your health regimen, what God decided to give you, and , of course, your definition of beauty.
It reminds me of the joke.
There are these two 15th century ladies watching a royal parade. One of them is holding a little boy closely to her and has her hand over his mouth. The caption reads, "He was going to say "The Emperor is naked". I say, who cares? The Emperor is buff!"
Totally off the subject....what did you think of the music I (Glen) sent you?
Hope you're feeling better.

Take care,

Glen and Alain

Updates from London: Thinking about Immanuel Kant

2007-06-14T20:12:00.000+01:00

It occurred to me that in the last email I forgot to thank people for all the wishes
and encouragement I got for the previous emails that were about my difficult financial
situation. I really appreciate the offers of help and the sense that although I
am a ways away, I am not forgotten.

Then I was also thinking about how this course on evil, or I suppose Evil, in light
of Kant's ethics has made me think about some things I haven't thought about
before. One of these ideas I already shared: about how Eichmann used Kant to defend
himself, arguing that it was his devotion to duty and the law that forbade him from
making a radical departure from the demands of the nazi regime. I have been wondering
about that and how he made the trains run on time and it has haunted me.

I started out in the course really not liking Kant at all. He seemed to me a transcendentalist:
that in arguing that we have Reason which is a universal standard and allows us
to access a moral law that exists before experience, a priori, and gives us the
freedom to act irrespective of and indifferent to the exigencies of what occurs
in the world. In a really complicated way he divides the world into forms of objects
which can be known by resort to the senses, or to rationality,noumena and phenomena
or form and matter; then further divides the world into practical knowledge and
universal cognitions; being subject to nature versus autonomy and making nature
subject to one's will, etc. He seemed more like a mathematician to me than a
philosopher.

Reason for Kant since it is a universal standard, defining what is true for Every
Single Rational being you will ever meet, is the way to create a bulletproof set
of ethics in obedience to the moral law. THis law avoids the problem of getting
involved in ethics in a personal way, because then it is about personal happiness,
which often fails to do the right thing though it may do the good thing. We end
up acting to make ourselves feel good, or to be good to only those we recognize
as worthy of goodness, or just end up being plain selfish and calling it good. I
hated his system right off the bat because it seemed so apolitical, seemed to have
nothing to say about how to actually make these choices in real time, in the real
world, and I think that is where ethics needs to come in, when the rubber hits the
road, and you confront someone or they confront you and they are ugly and smelly
and revolting and in need and it takes exercise of a different set of muscles or
calling on some other resources you don't usually call on to meet the need in
front of you. Kant seems to want to do this work outside or before the moment of
encounter.

But in reading him, in the Critique of Practical Reason I get why his ethics seem
so cold and sterile. It's to get me out of the way and all my excuses and physical
responses and ways of seeing and prejudices and faults, so the right can be done
(not only the good). It's an awesome project and I am learning respect for
it.

Then I think of this story that a former priest told me about evil back when I was
doing my undergrad, and it has stuck to me. He said that he and a friend were on
line at the movie theater and a woman came up and just cut in front of everyone.
All the people standing were uncomfortable and murmuring and this woman had no right
to step in front; she stole their time and treated then all as if they were less
important than she. The priest called this evil. He said that it was not a huge
thing, but they all stood around and did not confront her. They let it happen.
I can't help but think he's right. That somewhere, in each and every one
of these vast political, state-run murdering sprees that at the outset, people stood
around murmuring under their breath and let it happen: Cambodia, Haiti, Russia,
Rawanda, Yugoslavia, ad nauseum, ad infinitum. People stood around and made excuses
for themselves, for the killings, for what the hell? I thought about this especially
because I was just at the British Library on tuesday and jumped the line (really
not realizing I had) to ask a question. I turned around and saw people standing
there and walked away. No one confronted me. No one said a thing.

Confrontation is not the answer by itself, but dammit, who else will create the
means for any sort of justice if we don't do it, and can't we start right
here?

More to come,

Seph

Updates from London: Nothing Broken/Nothing Made Up

2007-06-10T20:22:00.000+01:00

I don't know whether someone is trying to tell me something. If I had a kind
of religious I might be so persuaded, but this son of a bitch is kinda ridiculous.
Last saturday I went to the gym, for my once-a-week workout with the weights. That
went swimmingly and then I saw some guys playing basketball, just stood around the
sidelines watching. (Okay, I suppose I was inspired by the story of the Cleveland
Cavaliers behind Lebron James, King James, and am sucking up all the highlights
available on the NBA website and even watched one of the games a few weeks back
at two in the morning). One of them asked me to play and as they say things went
south from there. I played for no more than fifteen minutes and seriously hurt
my back. I felt it about midway through, went home and took some tylenol and then
went out to meet a friend for drinks. (Okay that was proabably just shy of stupid).
But I did ice it down the second day, though I went out that night too. Then I aggressively
stretched and iced the whole week. That first night it hurt so bad, just shifting
in bed made me catch my breath.

Then one week later. Back is much better (though not utterly healed) I am working
out again, and yes, you guessed it: I bring my hand down with a dumbell in it whambam
onto another dumbell and immediately knew I was in trouble. I got ice. Immediately.
Today I can barely close it, but at least nothing seems to be broken.
My new neighborhood, is interesting. It's not on the tube, or subway lines,
but is on the rail. The stop is Denmark Hill and is very close to a park and my
little cottage is actually on the campus of King's College Hospital, somewhat
placid. (I was told however, that the south is where all the brothels were in relation
to London proper.) Thing is, just five minutes walk to the east is Camberwell Green,
which is teeming with immigrant life, lots of bars and restaurants, a big Woolworth's
and little mom-and-pop businesses, and entirely unkempt in that busy urban way.
I get to warm up my Jamaican accent again. Other points of interest: There is
a place called the Jungle Grill (I mean, you can't make this shit up). It seems
to be owned by a middle-eastern family. A huge, Baptist church with fronted Doric
pillars, but with the font steps chained off and a sign asking for donations to
"save" them.

Anyway, I need to move. They don't have broadband access and probably will
not for months, because there is something wrong with the landline, so I can't
make calls from home. There are other issues besides this, but that's for another
time. I don't mind so much having to move again. Now at least I know I can
do the moving process in a week by myself, and I have a better sense of what I am
looking for from flatmates. And since this place is cheap I won't be hemorraghing
money while I look.

Been wrestling with Kant and this final course on evil, last class was yesterday.
Man, we saw some nasty stuff in the movie assignements for this class: Shake Hands
with the Devil, documentary about the retired General who led the UN peacekeeping
mission to Rawanda; Mr. Death about a guy who made electric chairs and turned into
a holocaust denier; Pasolini's Salo (don't ever see this film, just don't)
about the Marquis de Sade, but not the really salacious stuff; Doggville, by Lars
Von Trier, which if you have the patience, is a completely rewarding experience,
etc.

Nice thing about Kant is he thought that rationality by itself could determine our
will and give us the means to be completely moral creatures. He died in 1804 and
I wonder what he would have made of the 20th century. Did you know that Eichmann
who was tried in Jerusalem for war crimes committed during the Nazi regime actually
quoted Kant at a moment in his defense? He just made the trains run on time, all
the trains going to the concentration camps. He said it was his duty. You can't
make this up.

Seph

Updates from London: Facing West

2007-05-31T16:06:00.000+01:00

Well,

Today is the first day of evening sunshine in about a week. It's almost five now and I'm done with my seminar on Violence, for today. Have done most of the housekeeping things that I needed to do to finally move out and I have a car coming for me in about 3 hours. Having been in the cold, despotic dark for the last few days, holding up under the onslaught of rain I'm just grateful today and will go out in a few moments to walk and be in it as well as of it.

I think my new room in Denmark Hill faces the west. At least it would seem so because the sky in that direction is a blue that's collaborating with other colors to invent yesterday's sunset, the last time I looked. It seemed that the ochre reds and ripe oranges and vehement greens had something to say, to add to the conversation. I appreciated that too. Denmark Hill is south of the center and requires me taking the rail, which I don't mind since it's overland and I see some of the sometimes forgotten world. It's also not too far from Brixton, so I can walk not too far to get Jamaican food.

I got a call yesterday from the people I had interviewed with weeks ago, and was offered a part-time gig at the Armani Collezioni store on Bond Street. This after coming home and seriously panicking about making the rent next month, sending out emails like press releases after an environmental mishap, worrying and wondering about the next few months. I think and hope it will be good. Since it's not Emporio, I probably won't have to wear a silly
uniform and I can work one weekend day and sundays offer time and a half.

I'm still waiting to hear about other applications I've made for financial aid, and am slightly concerned about the new upstairs neighbors who like to get their rave on after ten on a week night, but today I'm glad to be.

Hope you are too,

Seph

Response to Something (from Glen and Alain)

2007-05-23T16:50:00.000+01:00

Howdy, Seph.

Your life seems to be presenting you with a plethora of challenges right about now.
I guess that's to be expected when constantly striving towards goals.
Struggles, pains, irritations, set-backs....all those nasty things that other people don't seem to have to deal with on their ways to the top.
But that ain't true, is it? Everyone has little nagging demons telling them how completely they've failed or how incompletely they've succeeded.
One saying that I've come to absolutely hate is "Its all good". Its NOT all good. Its NOT! I know its supposed to be the stoic response to adversity. But its about as bullshit a phrase, chock full of denial, as I can think of.
Read any inspirational book, any self-help book and there will be stories about how folks picked themselves up after some horrendous tragedy.
The books don't usually dwell on the tragedy, they just touch on it enough to make us like whoever's doing the suffering. That way, when we get to the part about the amazing success, the one that couldn't have happened without the tragedy, we care enough about the person to be happy for them.
Good lessons and lasting discipline are never pleasant at the time.
I think there has to be this major chemical imbalance in your system to make you really remember something.
I worked for this one doctor who was about as cold as they come. I'd try to make friends but he was behind to much of a shell. I really grew to hate him just because I couldn't establish some kind of contact. I'd let him belittle me because he had my job in his hands. He could fire me the second he felt like it and I needed the job.
I'm shaking right now just thinking about that place.
I wouldn't take a lunch most days, I'd work through the day without any break. It was awful.
The day came when he sold the place to the big hospital across the street. Managers and Assistant Managers and Supervising Managers started to fill up the place. Techs from the hospital started to come over to cross train on the machine I'd been using for the last year and a half.
The first thing I liked about the changeover was the hospital techs' opinion of the schedule I'd been working under. They said it was total bullshit and that they wouldn't tolerate it.
That made me feel good.

The second thing I liked was that the doctor who owned the place (he continued working there part time) tried to pull some of the fraudulent billing stunts he'd gotten away with in private practice. Management said "No fucking way."
The doctor came to ME and started to present a case about how this type of billing hadn't been questioned in the past and that we should keep doing it the way we'd been doing it.
I guessed he was trying to make an ally of me. But I just said, "I'll talk to my manager about it." I tried really hard not to smile as I said it.

That made me feel good as well.

The third thing I liked was the fact that all of a sudden, I was working for this major institution with a great reputation. I had some very high expectations of UCLA when I started to work there.
And, like everyone who has high expectations of something they know little about, there were a lot of disappointments in store.
I'd list a couple of them for you but I don't really feel like drudging that crap up.

Instead.... I thought I'd share a couple of quotes from this book I just read, Madeline Albright's "The Mighty & The Almighty". Its a great read exploring the current situation in Iraq. Its also a meditation on religion as a catalyst for understanding as well as for extreme actions such as terrorism and war.
Ready? Okay, here goes....

"The most common form of human stupidity is forgetting what one is trying to do" Nietsche

"Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith." Paul Tillich, Protestant Theologian

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." Mahatma Gandhi

"if Allah did not check one set of people by means of another, the earth would indeed be full of mischief" The Quran in reference to David's killing of Goliath

"Maybe some will say, "Vote for me; I look forward to blowing up America,' but...I think people who generally run for office say, 'Vote for me; I'm looking forward to fixing your potholes or making sure you've got bread on the table." George W. Bush

"All politics is local" Tip O'Neal

Okay...guess that's about it. Hope you're feeling better about things occurs some time in the near to very near future.

I remember you, Alain and I sitting in Vert at Hollywood and Highland, having cocktails and just bullshitting about things. And then that one time we met in this divey place on either 3rd or Beverly...I forget...and we talked about everything and nothing, light gossip and subjects of more gravity. Seems like everything was talked about from the grotesque to the dainty, from paper thin soles of Italian shoes to super string theory. I really enjoyed those discussions.

Okay, talk to you later

Alain and Glen

Updates from London: Whingy

2007-05-13T01:00:00.000+01:00

There's a term these folks use to refer to whinny, complainy sorts of behavior: Whingy. Soft g as in jelly and short i sound as in injury. That notwithstanding, this is going to be a somewhat whingy email.

It's just been rough lately. I didn't get the Tate thing, which would have been a paid "training-ship" for three months–a part-time thing helping to physically set up conferences, put out information, run between here and there. Nor did I get the thing I applied for which was some summer program in Washington (I was over-qualified they say), nor the European something college trip offered by my program to deliver a paper in Heidelberg Germany in August (don't know why). Nada. Zip. Zilch.

I got told something very interesting though about the Tate thing. Marko Daniel who is a Ph.D. supervisor for some of the other people in the program, and with whom I have that reading group on the magnum opus text The New Spirit of Capitalism, was one of the interviewers. He told me the next day that I didn't get it, cause I seemed too cool. Like I just didn't care either way. Now in all fairness, one of the last questions I was asked was whether this training-ship would help me out with my research, since it concerns the Tate anyway. I replied that I would do the research anyway regardless of whether I got the job. Not the right response. Marko said he told me, because he thought it would be helpful for me to know how I am being read by other people, so I could make adjustments. I have to admit, I was a bit ambivalent, cause though I think I wanted it, I was also concerned about it starting before my last class is finished (not until June 20) which is a class on Kant, ridiculously difficult to follow philosopher, plus the reading group, plus another seminar, and concerned about the little it would pay. Marko said all three interviewers thought I could do the job in my sleep (and I can) but that I didn't seem to really want it. I'm not sure how to register really wanting anything these days. There is so much I have gone for and not gotten that I don't feel like becoming emotionally involved in any of it. Also I have to be utterly honest about this: I mildly resent having to invent and perform enthusiasm about things in order for other people to feel comfortable and believe in me. It's like being back to selling. When I'm not selling I really don't want to be selling, anything.

Speaking of which, I actually had a good interview with a manger in the group that runs the armani shops, so oddly enough, I may be able to get a job from them. We'll see. Won't hold my breath.

And I was hoping to move by the 23rd. I already gave my notice for this place because it's far too expensive and I saw a place last week I really loved, talked to the landlord, and called back to move forward with it, and he had just taken ill, went to the hospital and everything and though he's out now, can't deal with anything for a while. THis was the one place of all the like fifteen I've seen I really liked, and affordable, not to far from school, near Finsbury Park, and now I have to find something else in the next ten days.

I'd like to say that finally seeing Diamanda Galas in concert was thrilling enough to take my mind of things. It wasn't. She does have a voice like a hurricane. Hits you like a physical force. But other than that, it's just a lot of wailing. I hope things change. They need to.

I hope too you are well,

Seph

Response to Glen and Alain

2007-05-08T00:56:00.000+01:00

I think the idea perfection does not make sense. To assume perfection is to assume a kind of frozen moment, a static reality. For something to be perfect, it has to hold the entire cosmos still while it "perfectly" realizes some thing. I think it is an extremely idealized version of our world most get away with saying because we tend to be awfully sloppy with our terms. Perfect for whom? in what way? If we are talking about human beings it also implies that there is some purpose which we have and then a thing comes along and fits with us and that purpose seamlessly.

I think you are right and more on the ball when you realize it's more as good as it gets. Perfection, if it means a state in which no greater clarity or beauty or insight can be, then it's not talking about our reality.

I also agree, those words should be in rap songs. As should supercilious and repudiate. I am
still listening to your music and have not made up my mind about it yet. I will let you know
what I think when I do.

Sepher

Response to "The Dog's Bollocks"

2007-05-04T19:06:00.000+01:00

Hiya, Seph.

I loved the idea of death as a perfect state, or the state of non-being as a perfect state.
But I think of non-being as more a pure thing than perfection.
Laurie Anderson says "Paradise is exactly like where you are right now. Only much, much better."
Perfect is more of a "As good as it gets" thing to me.
Non-being is no where near as good as it gets. But its sure 100%. Or 0%, I guess. So anytime you have all or nothing, you have purity.
I read another book about how zero and infinite are basically identical twins. They look exactly the same, sharing the only two traits which comprises them both; completeness and incomprehensibility.

Alain and I are sitting here in front of the television, waiting for a special 2 hour Grey's Anatomy "event". He's got the day off tomorrow but I have to work. So I'm not going to watch it.

I hate show about doctors. They make us techs look so idiotic. We have to tell patients, "Don't pay any attention to the MRIs you see on TV. The shows make Mires seem like horrific experiences."

I'm glad to hear your work is getting appreciated. I think the English say "brilliant" way too much as well. It's the same way with Americans and "fuck".

Why don't people say "cogent" more? Or "ebullient"? Those are great words. They should be in rap songs.

See ya,

Glen and Alain

Updates from London: The Dog's Bollocks

2007-05-02T00:22:00.000+01:00

Friends,

There is some good news: I got very complimentary and genuinely interested feedback from my paper presentation on Monday. From Friday last week, and monday through tuesday this week we had the Consortium academic juries. We present our research work so far, mostly in the form of papers, read to the group, or other more gussied-up presentations, and the senior students and faculty get to ask questions and engage the 1st years in other approaches to the research. They first went very well. Lots of my peers gave me more to think about, and even added to my own project. I think what made mine strong was that I finally started looking at actual things I want to investigate at the Tate Modern, instead of swimming around in some theoretical blur, trying to make sense of Althusser via culture and forms of subjectivity one may get invited to in art. I decided to let Althusser go and just concentrate on the modes of invitation, so I looked at the Tate Etc. magazine and at the guides sent out to members. Someone even said my analysis was brilliant, though the British use that word so damn much, I think it's a stand in for 'good' I am going to present the same paper at Kingston University (about an hour south of London) on Friday.

One strange moment in the Juries: One of us, who is a dancer/performer, who has apparently been doing butoh dance sine she could walk, presented her research as a project on death being the absolute idealized state, and showed images of people 'performing' death and images of corpses. Steve Conner (one of the most monumental intellects I've met) suggested that what she was getting at was not the actual state of death, but the act of dying, or looked at another way, the situation of desiring death is really an attempt to get at the state of never having experienced life, not having had the idealized state of non-being disturbed in the first place. Steve asked her if that made sense as a recognizable alternative, to which she said 'no'; then he asked if the argument might move her to reconsider her assumptions. She said 'no' Then I asked her why death was an 'idealized state' She said because she wants to die, not in a sad way, just in a way of she really thinks death is perfection. The room got a little quiet. Then people tried to again get at her research topic and have her consider other avenues of philosophy or cultural critique or what have you. She basically kept saying no, she's not interested. I thought, damn, why are we going on like this; after the second no it's obvious she's not going to budge from her defensive posture. Oddly enough the conversation around the topic was interesting anyway. She has always been strange and no one, including me, thinks she is suicidal; she is a little like a satan worshiper who, despite the spells not working needs to go through the rituals. There are a couple people in the program who just don't really seem to be benefitting from it and go off and do their own thing anyway. I think this month she will be in the U.S. If anyone of you get a flier of a woman dancing butoh topless with a Japanese man—well, you may go to the have an interesting conversation about death with her.

More good: Had an interview at the Tate today for a summer postition. Doesn't pay much, but is exactly what I want to do with that institution. I think they liked me a lot. I know I brought my 'A game' I certainly tried to answer all the questions with aplomb and imagination. We'll see. (One of the things about being this age is that I finally feel comfortable using words like 'aplomb' in my regular conversation and not feel pretentious or weird, and now that I have just discovered a gray hair I feel more justified)

By the by, I hope some people checked out the link to the Wordsworth remix rap I sent last time. I forgot to mention there is a giant squirrel who raps the poem "I wandered lonely as a Cloud" It's surreal.

Speaking of surreal. Here are more dialogues:

On the phone with a rep for Natwest Bank and their supplemental insurance offer:

Me: Wait a moment. Can we go back to what you said before . . . something about £300 being a limit. What is that?
Rep: There is cover up to £300 for theft or loss or . . .
Me: Well, my phone costs more than that
Rep: That's not our fault
Me:

At a hang-out spot in Stoke Newington:

Stelios: You've never heard that before? If a guy wants to really give a girl a very high compliment he says she is the dogs.
Me: The dogs?
Stelios: Yes. It's short for the dogs bollocks
Me: The dogs balls ?
Stelios and chorus: Yes.

Thanks for listening,

Seph

A Remembrance of the Favorite Poem Project

2007-04-25T00:02:00.000+01:00

A friend of a friend sent this to me:

Yesterday as I was checking out slate.com for their commentary on the
Soprano's I noticed an article by Robert Pinsky titled, "In Praise of
Difficult Poetry" I didn't take any notice. Today in my poetry class
my teacher mentions the article then goes on to quote on Seph Rodney
and his reading of Sylvia Plath. In fact Pinsky urges readers to check out
Sephs comments in the Favorite Poem Project.

Props Seph. I hope this email finds you well.

Avi

Earth Day Poetry, From Travis

2007-04-22T00:28:00.000+01:00

A poem to you all on Earth Day. It's by Robinson Jeffers and cannot be called a hopeful verse. It is, however, true, and beautiful because of it. Jeffers was raised in fire and brimstone fashion, learning Latin and Greek and Hebrew from his father. That Jesus was a fisher of men is not lost on Jeffers. But now lost to me is my virulent distrust of civilization.

I once would have thought to shout this Jeremiad at the somnolent, berate the bourgeois, convince the cavalcade of capitalists that Moby Dick triumphs in the end: Ahab is lost; only Ishmael remains to remind the reader that human reason and human will finally chokes only itself. It is true that we may hunt and scar the wild white whale, we may chase the green towards extinction, punish the blue, but in the end the rocks and weeds will preside the last funeral, not the Testaments New or Old, nor the Quaran. There will be no Gita or Sutra, just a few lone sand crabs and worms--maybe a bird or two.

But now, well, now I don't want to shout it to anyone. I have a son; I own a business; I drive a "hybrid" car that costs more than it would cost to bring potable water to an entire village in the Sudan. Now that Liam is 10 and those closest to me are having children, or choosing not to have children, I want Jeffers to be wrong. I want my time playing video games and traveling to mean nothing. I don't want it to mean that I'm contributing to the exploitation of the indigenous, environmental ruin and a generalized cognitive dissonance. I want Pandora's Box to contain nano-miracles, fusion angels and hydrogen gods. I want solar sails to carry our children's children to Io and Mars. I want Rangers one day standing within the dry gulches of the Valles Marineris to explain to 5th graders that Mars isn't just another human outpost, a vacation spot on the way to Jupiter, but is named after a violent Roman god that seduced the sons of Abraham for a time. And then at lunch I want those same children to make paper monuments to their stupid 20th century cousins, who thought they could consume cultures and cows without consequence.

So, for this Earth Day I am going to pray that one day we can sit on the moon and wonder at the crescent earth. Because if technology doesn't save us, we have a real problem.

—Travis Webb

The Purse-Seine

Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark of the moon;
daylight or moonlight
They could not tell where to spread the net, unable to see the
phosphorescence of the shoals of fish.
They work northward from Monterey, coasting Santa Cruz; off
New Year's Point or off Pigeon Point
The look-out man will see some lakes of milk-color light on the
sea's night-purple; he points and the helmsman
Turns the dark prow, the motorboat circles the gleaming shoal
and drifts out her seine-net. They close the circle
And purse the bottom of the net, then with great labor haul it in.

I cannot tell you
How beautiful the scene is, and a little terrible, then, when the
crowded fish
Know they are caught, and wildly beat from one wall to the
other of their closing destiny the phosphorescent
Water to a pool of flame, each beautiful slender body sheeted
with flame, like a live rocket
A comet's tail wake of clear yellow flame; while outside the
narrowing
Floats and cordage of the net great sea-lions come up to watch,
sighing in the dark; the vast walls of night
Stand erect to the stars.

Lately I was looking from a night mountain-top
On a wide city, the colored splendor, galaxies of light: how could
I help but recall the seine-net
Gathering the luminous fish? I cannot tell you how beautiful
the city appeared, and a little terrible.
I thought, We have geared the machines and locked all together
into interdependence; we have built the great cities; now
There is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable
of free survival, insulated

From the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on all
dependent. The circle is closed, and the net
Is being hauled in. They hardly feel the cords drawing, yet they
shine already. The inevitable mass-disasters
Will not come in our time nor in our children's, but we and our
children
Must watch the net draw narrower, government take all powers
-or revolution, and the new government
Take more than all, add to kept bodies kept souls- or anarchy,
the mass-disasters.

These things are Progress;
Do you marvel our verse is troubled or frowning, while it keeps
its reason? Or it lets go, lets the mood flow
In the manner of the recent young men into mere hysteria, splin-
tered gleams, crackled laughter. But they are quite wrong.
There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew that
cultures decay, and life's end is death.

Response to "Slightly Sad" from Glen and Alain

2007-04-14T22:22:00.000+01:00

Hiya, Seph.

Ah....Battlestar Galactica. Don't get me started on Battlestar Galactica.
Oops...too late. You just did.

I remember in high school went all America was as hot for high flyin' special effects immediately after the release of Star Wars as it was for kicking every Arab terrorist's ass immediately after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on 911.

I'll take the analogy further....

Battlestar Galactica of the 80's was to Star Wars what the Iraq War was to 911.
The original show with Lorne Greene, Dirk Benedict, Richard Hatch et all was sort of a mish-mash of what everybody had just whetted their appetites for from Obi-Wan, Luke and Darth Vader.
Expectations were so high. How could it help but fail.
The effects were great for the time. But the plots were bad, the characters were depthless, the writing was silly. Humanity had been obliterated save for about 50,000 people. But all we, the audience, got to see were excuses for using the same cool effects, the same tiny spaceships flying laser powered strafing runs over mammoth spaceships, episode after episode.
Star Wars was the thing that George Lucas and 20th Century Fox gave to America, no...the WORLD, and got it excited about something. Battlestar Galactica was a rival studio's attempt to cash in on a proven idea.
Given Star Wars success, giving Battlestar Galactica the green light was an idea that seemed good at the time, indeed GREAT at the time.

I won't go into great detail about how the Iraq War is an idea that seemed good at the time. But due to bad plots, depthless characters making the decisions and bad writing, we, the American public, sit waiting for some cool special effect to bring the whole thing to an end. But we don't get Star Wars. The Death Star never explodes. The face of the moonsized battlestation is gone, only to reveal a million pernicious inner workings now set free. The Iraq War has gone passed any serious consideration of motive. Its now moved so far into the realm of fiasco that we should start thinking of it as camp. Good intentions gone bad gone Bad gone so horribly Bad that, were it not for our neighbor's sons and daughters being killed every hour or so, it would be hilarious.

Now.....about the NEW Battlestar Galactica....

I think its just about as brilliant as television has a right to be.
Every character on the show has a great flaw and that flaw gets exposed in exquisitely painful ways during one episode or another.
I'll only go on another paragraph or so...but a word about the Cylons in the new Galactica.

They're really terrifying because they are seeking a truth (God's plan) and they're terrified by what they've done (kill their original makers, their summa mechanus genesi or some such shit). They destroy the human race so completely because they are disappointed by their creator's flaws, they see their gods as imperfect and unworthy of respect due a Deity or, since the Cylons are rebelliously mono-theistic compared to their human creator's poly-theism, the Deity. This is probably because Cylons look for the thing that is above even those that created them, the prime mover. Or maybe the Prime Mover. That's the nice thing about talking God-isms; you can capitalize a lot of words that aren't proper nouns even though they're mid-sentence.
But the other cool thing about it is that the Cylons know full well there will be human retribution and that it will be carried out in very innovative ways. As long as one human remains, the Cylon machine race cannot mechanically sleep for fear that their days are numbered.
I never got that from the original series back in the 80's.

I'm going to send you one of my musical-type compositions in an MP3 format. I think you said you had DSL or some high speed internet connection. Tell me what you think of the ditty. I've talked to Alain about how to classify my composing style and we agreed that it falls into the "Aggitated Elevator Music" catagory. Sort of classical but not as many brilliantly correct notes as Mozart or Bach.
But not as many brilliantly incorrect notes as Stravinsky.
That and the fact that there's this general laziness that envelopes the whole character of the piece.

Talk to you later,

Glen and Alain

Response to "Slightly Sad" from John

2007-04-14T13:40:00.000+01:00

Dont be sad!!!!! Let me be instead. You go off and
have fun in the london sun. I will stay here and moan
in the...groan of this cities' anger and stench. It
truely has me down and two of us should not be. So
you, yes you- be free of sadness and enjoy the
romantic struggle of your new city. Amid the struggle,
let light follow your footsteps, let the love of
inspirations arms crowd you with possibilites of
fortune, women, good work and a belly full of wine and
some lovers food. You deserve it!
Your friend,
John

Updates from London: Slightly Sad

2007-04-14T11:39:00.000+01:00

Everyone,

I've had some financial difficulties, so I sold my Hasselblad last week. I had it since I graduated UCI and it took five years to actually take it out of the box. I did. Then I put it in a camera bag and took it with me to London. I had to sell it, but I don't think I ever took a picture with it. I just feel like I am more and more leaving another life behind and I just don't know how much better this one will work.

During the last two weeks of Easter break I was embroiled in writing various applications (summer programs) and a review of a show at the British Museum of an African artist's work (a slave ship done with found objects, please take a look at my review: under "reviews" and the actual piece on the museum website: though they use precisely the wrong image for the show—the one mask that refers to the europeans, just a tiny bit self referential of the British Museum. The work itself in moving. But also working my way through Battlestar Galactica seasons one and two, which turns out to be pretty good. I have a couple papers due at the end of the month, so it's time to start the push.

The technology isn't there yet. I really want to take photos with my eyes. The actual process has been shortened and reduced by the resort to digital, but it's not there yet. I mean, it's not where I want to be.

One very funny thing: They redid Wordsworth and made a rap out of it. "I wondered Lonely as a cloud" I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's charming in a way. Take a look

and with that I take my leave,

Seph

Response to Glen's Response to "Don't Hurt the Soul"

2007-04-04T01:16:00.000+01:00

Glen,

That was bountiful. I do like the rabbit jokes.

I think I want to respond to the questions.

Yes, I think I would be interested in the race continuing beyond me and everyone I know, but I am not sure why. I imagine that there are people who will have children and their survival will be important to them. Wow, this is the one question I feel the least connected to.

No on the memory. Sometimes I remember too much I don't want to already. I want to have more selective memory.

In some cases, yes. Not all. But I am not sure that the idea of transparent gov't was a populist idea, nor abortion via a pill, nor the trials of former dictators. Sometimes important forms of politics are imposed.

Yes. All the time.

Given how self critical I am, I would not hate myself, but I would be more affected; I would imagine this as my fault and something to rectify.

How do I account for doing it? Protection. Imminent danger. Absolute evil: like serial killers. Some things cannot be tolerated, or the self and/or the community may die.

Live on. Live on. As a cheetah. Fast sky runner, flow like quicksilver.

Seph

Response to "Don't Hurt the Soul" from Jeff

2007-03-22T19:51:00.000Z

The tutoring thing sounds a better gig than the grind all day at a
cluttered retail outlet.

Clarity of mind and peace of one's soul is everything. That's why I fence.
Sounds contradictory, but if you think about it, it is being in the eye of
the storm--calm surrounded by tempest. Hahaha! That's about all you'll
get out of me today Seph!

One more thing:

"The first rule is to keep and untroubled spirit. The second is to look
things in the face and know them for what they are."

---Marcus Aurelius

Oh yeah! Good luck Seph.

Jeff Gin

Response to "Don't Hurt the Soul" —Glenn & Alain

2007-03-18T18:27:00.000Z

Hiya, Seph.

Just finished reading your last update and just finished talking to you on the phone and not in that order.
I've taken a couple of classes where the instructor didn't seem to fit the material.
In both cases, the instructors had a firm grasp of the subject matter. They knew their stuff. But the basics seemed to bore them.
One of these classes was a physics class, the other was Anatomy and Physiology.
The physics professor was an old codger-ish type of fellow. He wore an ill-fitting tweed jacket with elbow patches, baggy Sears dress pants and Hush Puppies. The first day in class he sent the soundtrack to Cabaret-over the lecture hall sound system and did a little lip-sync and dance act.
I thought, "How cool!"
He would talk about how the solar system came to be.
The currently accepted theory, accepted at the time anyway, was that the solar system was a big gas cloud, denser parts gravitating to more denser parts and becoming pockets, then really dense pockets and finally the sun and the planets.
His theory was that there was an even BIGGER gas cloud that congealed into an enormous, unstable star that threw out chunks of plasma like a sprinkler watering the lawn.
One of those drops of plasma became our sun, spinning like crazy, throwing out chunks of its own, which cooled and eventually became our local solar system, asteroid belts and other nearby celestial bodies.
He had other theories too....which he talked about but I've forgotten them now.
And at the end of class, when everyone was pondering the neat stories he'd told, he'd throw out two or three formulas, seemingly as an aside.
Like this
Instructor: Oh.....by the way, class, the formula for the gravitational pull of two bodies on each other is m1*m2/d squared.....oh...and force equals mass times acceleration, okay....class dismissed.
Music over PA system
Crash......Duh-duhduh duh-duhduh duhduhduhduhDUH-duhduh
Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome
Fremde, etranger, stranger
Gluklich zu sehen, je suis enchante,
Happy to see you, bleibe, reste, stay.

Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome
Im Cabaret, au Cabaret, to Cabaret........

When the first test came up, I don't think I was alone in the class when I was surprised to see 98% of the exam were on those sort of mentioned formulas. He'd spent more time on the song and dance piece. He had some decent choreography...not Bob Fosse, more like Bill Frawley, but decent. And the lip syncing was good. Really good. The only time I'd seen a better job of lip-syncing was by some emaciated blatino drag queen in a white sailor suit and frizzy hair doing a performance of "I Believe the Children Are Our Future" in an after-hours gay club up in the valley

At any rate, we, the class, couldn't believe the content of the exam compared to what was covered in class. We were SHOCKED! :)

The A & P class was similar. The instructor in this case was a very lets-get-down-to-business latina gorda dressed in a nicely tailored suit and coifed to the 9's. In the course of a 3 1/2 hour lecture, 2 1/2 hours were spent on the inhumane practice of female circumcision in the Middle East and Africa. She would then try to cram all of the components and functions of the genitourinary system into the remaining 59 minutes, her voice now hoarse and mostly inaudible because of the passion with which she had presented her case during the first two thirds of the class.
The tests were based on the last 59 minutes worth of information. My notes looked like the a diagram of an electrons path around the nucleus of an atom: just a cloud, a cloud of ink and graphite and eraser marks.
This basically became a home study course with a once a week performance/lecture on the sanctity of the female body.
The people who did the best in class were the folks who realized early on to just read the text book or even sleep during the lecture. The productive learning time exam-wise would come later at the library or at home.

There have been two jobs I've had where I wished I'd had the sense to quit after two days. But my personality seems to go by this one peculiar rule:

"If its not working for you, Glen. Then you must be doing something wrong. Keep at it until you get it right."

I'm like Boxer, the horse in Orwell's Animal Farm: always saying, "I will work harder" and "Napoleon is always right."

Good for you for not falling into that trap.

My sunworshipping past caught up with me again last week when the dermatologist removed a dime sized plug of squamous cell carcinoma from my left temple. I suppose that once it heals I'll be asked about it. The responses I've come up with so far are,

1) It's just another failed suicide attempt.
2) I wanted to see how deep the pencil would go until I started to see colors.
3) Everybody's getting their temporal bones pierced in Europe. I wanted to do it before the wannabe's over here find out about it. Its cheaper that way.
4) I have cancer. (I find this to be the funniest response)

I read an interesting questionnaire in the New Yorker Magazine this week. Its part of a story by Jonathan Lethem.

Are you sure you are really interested in the preservation of the human race once you and all the people you know are no longer alive?

Would you like to have perfect memory?

If you had the power to put into effect things you consider right, would you do so against the wishes of the majority?

Are you convinced by your own self-criticism?

Are you conscious of being in the wrong in relation to some other person-who need not necessarily be aware of it? If so, does this make you hate yourself- or the other person?

Let us assume that you have never killed another human being. How do you account for it?

Which would you rather do: die or live on as a healthy animal? Which animal?

One thing about being home sick the last couple of days...my schedule's been thrown completely off. I was just wondering how long it's been since I last brushed my teeth. I'm sure it was last night...but there was no pattern to fit the activity into. One toothbrushing seems too much like the last for me to distinguish between Friday's brush and Saturday's brush.

You're intellectual pursuits sound terrific. Maybe I'll fly to London one of these days and have you tutor me in art for a few hours. Make it fun for me. Tell me gossip about all the artists, what lover's quarrel or upset stomach or overdue bill conjured the passion in what master to create which masterpiece. That's the kind of thing I like to imagine behind the brush strokes or the weld seams or the chisel marks.
Has any enduring piece come about as a result of an artist sitting down and saying, "Hmm...I think that I shall now combine influences of the impressionist and postmodern, thus creating a synthesis of contemporary color and form and of classic line"? That sounds like a boring endeavor indeed. As if here were a banker opening a vault, confident that by applying the combination he will soon reveal the treasures inside. The tumblers click, the huge armoured door swings open and there sits the loot. But does anybody care? Does Friday's vault opening differ so much from Saturday's vault opening?
Not unless somebody robbed the bank Friday night.

Two weeks ago both MRI scanners wouldn't scan because a power surge broke through the university safeguards and fried a couple of RF amplifiers, a vital piece of equipment for MRI.

Replacing the parts would be easy enough. A small team of service engineers could have both scanners up and running inside of an hour.
But we had to wait for an additional two hours to see if there were two RF amplifiers available locally.
If not, the scanners would be down for the rest of the day (this happened at about 7:30 am), the patients would all be canceled and we would go home.

You're talking about beginning the day with the prospect of a full schedule and then suddenly being given a reprieve. That was my day.
The RF amplifiers were, however, available locally. And no patients had to be inconvenienced.
But there was that glimmer of promise...if only for a couple of hours.

How do you catch a unique rabbit?
Unique up on it.

How do you catch a tame rabbit?
Tame way. Unique up on it.

How do you catch a rabbit with a crazy person?
You wait for the rabbit to hop down the psycho path and then unique up on it.

Gertrude Stein and Dick Clark were sitting in a gay bar in the south of France one day doing a crossword puzzle about the golden age of television over cocktails.
12 down was a three letter word "Kid's host Christian name".
Clark wrote down "Bob" with his Bic ball-point, confident in his answer.
"Bob?" asked Stein.
"Bob Barker did kid's shows in the 50's"
"Not Barker dear. You're thinking of Linkletter."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course, I'm sure."
"Let's look it up."
Gertrude Stein shifted her considerable weight on the barstool, gave Dick Clark a maternal smile, the kind she'd given to Earnest Hemingway when he would walk into a room and shout, "I'M EARNEST HEMINGWAY." and said "There's no need to do that, darling. Its Art because I say its Art."

Talk to you soon,

Glen and Alain

Updates: Don't hurt the Soul

2007-03-18T13:42:00.000Z

It is a very windy day in central London today. I woke up early to go to work for what was my new part-time job at Hugo Boss in Sloane Square. I quit today. Actually I quit on friday, doing the professional bit of calling and letting the manager know that my last day would be Sunday. I came in to work and Simon suggested that I did not need to stay to work out the day since I wouldn't be happy there and I agreed, handed back my key card, collected my deposit and headed for the door.

You ever have a day like that where you are expected to, and fully expect to be encased in your office, or studio, or class, and you get a reprieve, and you go out into the world outside and the sun seems brighter and sharper, the air crisper, and your body better able to hold you above the ground? I felt like that leaving the store and thought how much happier I am right now, doing something that feels meaningful.

I think that makes for the shortest job I've had in my life. Two days. I just couldn't continue. The schedule would have forced me to miss the seminar/reading group I have on thursdays where we are reading The New Spirit of Capitalism, which is so exhaustive a project I can't reduce it to a quick definition (though the palpable irony for me would have been giving that up—a serious dissection of the way capital works and demands me to work—for a job that pays £6 per hour plus 1% commission). It was silly: there are like eight sales people on the floor and no system in place for determining who helps whoever comes through the door (how could I possibly make any money?). The main manager in Orange (the sportswear section of the men's department) doesn't know how to sell, (waits for people to talk to him) and in those two days at least a third of my time was spent tagging merchandise in the back—while they have a roster of 14-16 sales people. And then the assistant store manager had the nerve to resent me, upon making the initial offer of the position, for asking for more than £6 per hour. They also were demanding I come in on odd weekends for training (which they could not legally pay me for given the limitations of my visa).

The entire attitude of management is little like the American Civil war's recruitment strategy: they just want bodies, figuring they throw bodies at the situation and something will stick. That's the awful thing about London: they have an enormous pool of unskilled labor desperate for jobs, so big business can take people utterly for granted and make it seem like a part-time gig at store is a kind of gift. Within retail, they don't value highly skilled people (I've heard this across the board). It's not even smart business practice, not to mention making me a little sick to my stomach. Luckily, I had two tutoring gigs come in this week, which pay on the order of £25 per hour, and cost me more in terms of preparation, and don't hurt my soul.

The performance at the Tate Liverpool: Well. What can I say? I did it. They were maybe thirty people in the audience including the other presenters. Only one person told me what he thought about it. One. (told me about an interesting condition afflicting Japanese kids who end up not being able to leave their rooms) He was a fellow presenter, and from Portugal, a really interesting guy, with a presentation on the body in Medieval and Renaissance painting. We walked back to the train station together talking and laughing. I was a bit bothered by the lack of response, but talked with Farid about it and that helped. It's frustrating because I want feedback in order to know what what I do looks like outside of myself and this is part of the process of making and understanding my work. But I was fully present and said what I wanted to say with the piece.

Unfortunately, the conference itself was rag-tag, and badly organized. The title was "Corporealities" work informed by a concern with the body—right? They had a guy who presented on Science Fiction novel book covers, another PhD. student who showed a video installation piece from the 70s that included 13 monitors and did a kind of feedback with the viewer. He spent the entire presentation with his head down reading the paper, in a monotone. When the question and answer period came around after my piece I expected some hard questions. No. Just no. I should have expected that at that point, because earlier in the day we presenters all had lunch with the curator and ended up talking about the Chapman Bothers exhibit that was up and apparently was what the conference was organized around (though I was never told that until then). It came up that some viewers have been morally offended by their work. I made an argument that their work doesn't even enter a moral sphere and it's a mistake to look at it in that way. Silence. I expected at least for the woman chairing the conference and the curator who organized it to have something to say. Nope. I loved the question section anyway cause I got to say some things I really wanted to say, and there were a couple real questions from the audience, but I think I pissed some people off, by slightly dissing the Chapman brother's work (I really don't see the critique in it). But I suppose that's what having a strong opinion looks like sometimes: kinda lonely.

It has been sunny intermittently today. Rain at one point made me wistful. But I saw cherry blossoms on a tree by borough market on friday. That seems . . . precocious. Though, they are more coming, I bet. I've got reading to do and an intellect to try to hone. Wish me luck.

Seph

Updates from London: Communication

2007-03-01T23:39:00.000Z

Updates from London: Communication

All,

I am sitting in my little hovel with a much deserved beer desperately trying to finish out the day's agenda given the little less than three hours I have left. I've re-discovered that I am drawn to take naps in the middle of the day, especially after lunch, and discovered that if I do that I am likely to stay up till three in the morning, sometimes four. Even if one a given day I only got five hours of sleep the night before, once I get past the hump of drowsiness around ten eleven. I can't fall asleep until three. Too much to do; too many things to think about.

I just finished the RADA course on presentations (The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts happens to right across the street from my college). It was an entire two-day all-day seminar on getting us (there were 3 other Ph.D. students) to be more aware, perhaps hyper-aware of our audience and how we are Communicating. (I think of that scene in Cool Hand Luke, where the Boss says What we have heeeere, is a failuuuuure to communicate). It started out with exercises with just saying good morning, . . . and waiting for a response. my name is . . . and I am here to talk about . . . Amazing how right from hello, we give so much away. THe course was taught by an older British Man, who used to act, but now teaches these courses. Then we had breathing exercises, just to get a feeling of where the breath originates in the diaphragm. Mouth limbering exercises, tongue exercises (Seriously, try reading a short passage with a pen in your mouth lengthwise clenched between the teeth, then take it out and say the same thing again—it's magic I tell you) Exercises with volume and pitch and cadence. We even the I have a Dream speech, by King. Second day was presentations, 10-minute, power point (which I had never used before) constant interruptions: don't look away, hold our attention, look at the slide with us, don't rush.

The most interesting aspect of the training was how it fit in with what I already knew from selling and from yoga. In early training for retail they always tell you you have to control the sale. Sometimes you make the customer wait. You don't rush to do a thing; you let them see that you know what you're doing. In the same way I need to control the room. And then I love that I got to take a singing class in undergrad, so I am aware that I have a thing called a diaphragm and it's important. But the whole idea of a thought being utterly connected to breath is fascinating. Like in my yoga classes where the breath is everything, the structure for movement, the thing that gives me energy. Greg was saying the same things: You have a thought, use he breath to move it into the world; connect to the people in front of you, leads to the next thought. They are here to hear what you have to say. I love that there were no Jedi mind tricks to get over the fear (apparently number one even above dying?) just focus and breath and connect. I didn't use a script I just talked about art and since I love that, I'm already believing in people.

My fantasy is to become very good at that (especially working without a text), partly because when I was young I was so afraid of talking ,and also because I think we do real learning in the moment, taking a risk, saying something you did not know you had in you to say. Each moment has a lot to offer.

So I've had some financial panic, but have an interview tomorrow at Hugo Boss, and I'll swing by Armani, see if they have an opening and go by wherever else . This friday is my performance at the Tate Liverpool. I can't wait.

I thought I would include some dialogues I heard (some spoken to me) since being here:

Me: I can't hardly make out what you all are saying sometimes.
Hannah: You taking the Piss?
Me: No I really don't always understand . . .

Alexsandra: (Talking about someone who annoys her) Well, he's French. What does that tell you?

Some Guy: (mimicking kids he teaches who want to wear Nikes like the guys they see in rap videos) It's real gangsta innit?

Imogen (talking about one of our professors): I really, you know like like him and respect him, like academic like

Vasilis: Okay she has a really pretty friend from Brazil who does massage. . . I mean the shit writes itself . . .

love,

Seph

I forgot

2007-02-28T00:50:00.001Z

Happy Valentine's Day.

Updates from London: The Silver Lining

2007-02-28T00:48:00.000Z

It's been a couple of tough weeks, for me, somewhat. I got my grade back on the rsearch and methods class project and it was far less than distinction. I felt disappointed, but really couldn't argue their point that it was not as methodologically developed as it could have been. It was more than a little anecdotal. I was under the impression the assignment could be that, but instead it needed to demonstrate a grasp of the issues of methodology and conduct of research encroached within the class, forming a cogent framework for the understanding in these issues (whew). The bar is set high. I don't mind that. I suppose its what I signed up for. But I haven't made a grade yet that I'm satisfied with.

I just handed in a paper for the Stoicism class, which was written on the idea of empathy that Epictetus sets out in his handbook. He says that instead of looking at someone in distress and imagining yourself in their shoes, the thing to do (I suppose as a proper stoic) is tho rather imagine them in your own shoes, having the detachment and clarity of the stoic position. I love talking about things like empathy, things that are metaphysical, but make us human. The only thing I worry about with the paper is that I quote Marianne Williamson at the very end in her book "Return to Love . . ." Not sure how that reference will go down, but the passage itself is great: Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that wee are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us. . . . [this is the section I used] And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

I somewhat disagree with the "automatically" part, but the passage I think has truth in it.

It also seems that I did not get the Tate job, though I am still waiting for confirmation of that. It would have paid enough to live on (thereby reducing my dependence on foreign oil) and been part time and right in line with my research. I wonder where the silver lining is on this one.

Well, the presentation on my research went fine, and now I have writing to do. I am also looking to move to a real apartment, uh, I mean flat.

There is a scene in Babel (that kinda new film with Pitt and Blanchett, Bernal, etc.) where we see a helicopter rise up into the air. It's a US vehicle and the way it's framed in the shot, it looks powerful and intent and unstoppable. It looks like our new (and for some only) real manifestation of the divine. It just looks like it will save us, and few things look like that.

Seph

Response to "Communication"

2007-02-02T23:47:00.000Z

I just finished the RADA course on presentations (The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts happens to right across the street from my college). It was an entire two-day all-day seminar on getting us (there were 3 other Ph.D. students) to be more aware, perhaps hyper-aware of our audience and how we are Communicating.
sr

this is a really good idea-- i wish they would run all grad students through something like this to give them insight into the performance side of teaching and talking-- even if all it does is eliminate the dreaded "um". i had to learn it all the hard way. you are lucky indeed to have a head start in understanding breath.

I love that there were no Jedi mind tricks to get over the fear (apparently number one even above dying?)
sr

i've heard this so many times, but i'm not sure i actually believe it...

because I think we do real learning in the moment, taking a risk, saying something you did not know you had in you to say.
sr

this is so true. in fact, here is my own "hierarchy of lectures":
a good lecture: the students got what they needed
an exceptional lecture: the students got what they needed, plus something extra they couldn't have gotten from anyone else
a brilliant lecture: the students got what they needed, plus something extra they couldn't have gotten from anyone else, plus i surprised myself at least once.

//a

2007-01-24T21:21:00.000Z

And then as it dawned . . .

2007-01-24T21:16:00.000Z

Photo Diary 4

It snowed in London last night. I woke to this. (The view from my window)

Updates: Photo Diary 4

2007-01-24T21:14:00.000Z

Updates: Photo Diary 3

One image of the christmas tree beneath the arch at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. We passed it in our cab on the way to Brighton Beach on New Year's eve.

2007-01-24T21:07:00.000Z

Updates: Photo Diary 2

A few more of my mom's house. The tree in the background that's a few stories high is the mango tree in her back yard.

2007-01-24T20:44:00.000Z

Updates from London: Photo diary 1

Here's some photos of my mom's home in Spanish Town. She did all the landscaping work herself. I had forgotten how vivid the colors are. This is the front yard and side. It was about 80 degrees when I was there. (More to follow)

2007-01-17T21:30:00.000Z

Response to Escape the House

SHORT:

Amazing how you'r life was balanced. Amazing how you
had two forces (mom & dad) come together and be two
different things. Both supportive, yet seemingly for
vastly "different" reasons. Only as an adult can i
appreciate that. Only can i really appreciate what it
took/takes for you to exist, but most importantly how
you had to (have to) continually make the choices
which truly makes you an individual amongst these two
(what can sometime seem) oppossing forces.

As adults, we can more easily see the trajedy that has
always existed in the peoples lives we have grown
up/around with. We get to say thank God that i didn't
turn out to be, or thank God that i do not do that. We
also get to say, God don't just help me with that, but
help her/him with that. We get to how silent love is
sometime just as important as loud love; the thing
about love being that in whatever form it manifests
itself, it will always let you know you are loved,
some-how, some-way.

I'm glad that you became you Seph. There are so many
children that become their parents, or become their
ideal or hatred of their parents. Though they are
unique in creation, they don't become so. This is a
problem with even those who throw out the baby and the
bathwater when it comes to the choice of being "like"
their parents. Our history has reason even when the
unreasonable ways of it are evident and prevail in
causing sorrow and misery in our lives. But to the
adult who knows what is his and what is not his to
control there is a lessening of fear, anger,
dissapointment and sadness that is aligned with
wonder. Wonder at your past, wonder at your now, and
wonder at your living hope towards a future that you
may never see to complete fruition.

Now, what the heck am i babbeling about Sepher? Not
sure, but it's what i felt.

Tell your mom go to the Doctor. Tell her you love her
and though life is God's to give and take, life is
still looking death in the face unapologetically and
courageously (and whoever thinks that courage is the
abscense or tranquelizing of fear-OH HELL TO THE NO).
Courage is doing even when the fear is the greatest.
At it's worst, but it does not dibilitate.

Why did i say that? I had to. I'm sure you know these
things, but i think it has to be said in someone elses
voice sometime for us to remember...remind.

I've found that love can be quiet. Sometimes in the
fear of living it can be the truest thing. It calls
for more attention, a kinder, gentler and patient eye.
It doesn't speak loudly because love does not depend
on words, in fact love will show how feeble words are
and can be. How even clumsy and blashemouse they can
be in the face of such a "being".

Your father struggles with his love, your mother lives
in it. You, who are of both these humans, celebrate
interaction and thought, the ethereal and muddy
beautiful (hard earth). You celebrate life, love and
change with "variables" you can gleen in both of them.
When you put them in the gold mining pan of your
memory and heart, and shake them around in the liquids
of your living, then drain-i see that even though you
find more rock than diamond-you come up with a
compassion and understanding that i must say i truly
appreciate. Yet it has it's sorrow. And that is ok
Seph. In fact, that is the point.

Sorrow encourages love. It speaks the "meaning" of
"love" above, beyond our ideologies. Sorrow is the
greatest equalizer. Sorrow is the Star in Bethleham.
Sorrow has been our greatest speeches; it has brought
us together and told us that death is not the end of
our lives. Sorrow teaches us to forgive.
Sorrow will make a cheetah sleep in flowers it usually
runs past all day. Sorrow is quiet, like love, and
sometimes it's louder than our thoughts.

What do i mean by all this? i'm not sure, but it feels
right to say it. There is something that "seems" to
me, and well, it was for and toward you. I'll let you
see if it was for you.

This is more than i love you Seph, this is a reminder
to you that as hockey as it may sound....You are not a
mistake. Judith, your mom and dad-are not mistakes.
Our creator knows what it makes, and makes all things
with purpose that only choice can partake of. I love
to see how your choices bloom into "things" that speak
compassion.

I think that something is in this for you. I tried to
make sense of it in my head, but my heart told me to
shut up, mind my business and say it. So i did.

-EH-EH....OH-OH,
Love Dame.

2007-01-17T20:40:00.000Z

Response to "Escape the House" from Antoinette

It made me wonder (along with subsequent events later) how I came from these people. I am so little like my mother and father. And saying this I realize I feel guilty. I feel guilty because it sounds to me like I am complaining and I should not. I imagine other people telling me I should be grateful for what I have. And I do love my mom desperately-she is extremely supportive whether she understands what I'm doing or not; and she cares about my happiness ; we just have so little to say to each other. My love for her finds its best expression from far away.

A: I have always thought it was a particularly Western idea that we come primarily from our parents, and America has perhaps the most intense form of this pyschosis, since Americans are always trying to break off from the last generation (hence our youth- and novelty-tilted culture). We all hail from an enormous tree of ancestry, of whom our parents are only the most immediately potent members. Many people end up having far more in common with other relatives-- grandparents, aunts, sisters, cousins.

Anyway, I got my performance piece accepted into the Tate LIverpool conference in March

A: way to go :)

//A

Response to "Escape the House"

2007-01-15T23:43:00.000Z

Hiya, Seph.

I think most of what we know about other people must be distorted by our expectations of them. Our motivations, fears and passions are so imperfectly communicated to each other because we try to translate their experiences using the limited language of our own.
I suppose poetry, art or music are the mediums of choice for great understanding since they use words the most sparingly if they use words at all.
I got this book of poems. I'd like to give you a smidgen of one of my favorites from the collection.

The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds,
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving
each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.
The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always-
greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.

Here's something from the New Yorker a few months back that I enjoyed.

Dearest Pears,

I experienced rejection this week that cut my heart open. Figuratively, of course...no need to call 911, dumpling. As a result, I was more drained and more alive than I'd been in a couple years.
I decided to reveal my love to him finally. Oh, I know you were against it from the start. Clever girl. But I took the plunge.
A half dozen or so heart-felt sentences with an average of between 6 and 7 words apiece.
Two of the sentences were questions actually. You know, THOSE questions.
Two questions made up of the real stuff, the core of the thing, the flavor's source, the just-dressed thigh bone in the soup. The kind of questions you pull from deep down just to see how real the connection with another human can get.
So the questions were asked.
The answers were, in the following order, no and no.
Had the answers been "yes" I would walked away feeling like I was made of light, feeling like I could claw the white off the moon.
But they weren't. They were kamikaze blocks of ice into the face. And so much gravity in my stomach. It may have dropped through the holes in my socks, I was too distracted to notice if it did or not. I'm sure my blood pressure went into free fall because I nearly passed out.
But I made my retreat with some dignity. You would have laughed because I'm sure I looked drunk. I walked into a streetlight.
So I'm distrustful of words that aren't part of some cold, left brained equation of Professor Mabee's or other such instruction...recipes et al. No passionate words for me right now, no descriptions. Just get through life with a howdy and a thank you and thats it.
Here's to words and all their uselessness and all that they gloriously conjure.

I drink to you now as always,

J

That's it. I wasn't able to access you're blog. Was that the right web address?

Glen and Alain

2007-01-14T15:48:00.000Z

Updates from London: Escape the house

Everyone,

I will try to make this somewhat shorter than usual since I am supposed to meet a friend in a little bit. But, I wanted to talk about the vacation/holiday when I went home to Jamaica and spent time with my mom and sister. The first few days were great. I mostly spent time on the couch in the living room reading Zadie Smith's White Teeth (and I got a ticket to go see a talk with her, here at the ICA in about a week ). My mom took care of me and fed me and that is such a gift, I feel grateful to her for it. At the same time, I had this moment with her when I tried to explain the other book I was reading, Marcus Aurelius' Meditations for my stoicism class (tried to be studious even in 80 degree weather). I explained what stoicism was about and who Aurelius was and I handed her the book and she turned it over a few times and handed it back to me, not saying anything. I just wanted her to be a little curious about him, the philosophy, what it meant to me, my reasons for studying—whatever. And I get that I can't expect my mom to necessarily be as interested in certain aspects of my life that my friends would be interested in, but still. It made me wonder (along with subsequent events later) how I came from these people. I am so little like my mother and father. And saying this I realize I feel guilty. I feel guilty because it sounds to me like I am complaining and I should not. I imagine other people telling me I should be grateful for what I have. And I do love my mom desperately—she is extremely supportive whether she understands what I'm doing or not; and she cares about my happiness ; we just have so little to say to each other. My love for her finds its best expression from far away.

The way my mom and sister both refuse to throw away anything (and in this I finally see one point of connection for my mom and dad) and the ways they are afraid of other people and sequester themselves within the house; all these things make me wonder (or maybe not) how I got to be the person that I am. I got to escape the house (and boy, did I need this) when I went to a cousin's home in the hills for Christmas eve dinner. He lives among all the ambassadors and high muckety-mucks in the hills of Kingston and has a ridiculously beautiful house and drove me around kingston proper afterwards to show me what was new with the city. I planned only five days there and that was a blessed piece of foresight. Next time I go I will make sure I have avenues of escape so I am not driven crazy and driven to drive them crazy.

Then there was New York and I had a great time with friends: John, Alexis and Kaylynn, Leslie, Damione and Lawrence, all people who I am thrilled to talk to and share some of their lives. I swear: all I learned about love I learned from my friends. (and I wish I could have gone to the west coast to see everyone there) The interactions with my father were decent at first. I spent the first night in New York at his house and then we went shopping the next day (that always seems to be the activity around which my family coalesces, buying stuff). Then it started to go south. He seemed to get pissed off when his girlfriend mentioned inviting me for something at the house on new year's day. I asked what this was about and he said there was no point in telling me because I wouldn't come anyway. Later, when I got back I called him and the conversation was cordial at first and then he mentioned that he was angry because I didn't have time to go back to the Bronx, (which was a sublimated way of asking why I prefer spending time with friends,) but said in a very dismissive and vicious way. I started to really lose it on the phone, and tell him basically that he found reasons to be angry because he just doesn't like who I am, that he wanted someone else as a son, that he doesn't know how to be decent with me (reminded me of those dreams when I get so angry with him I start to explode, literally). Truth be told I can't tell if he hates fatherhood, or his father, or himself, or me, but It's time I started seriously drawing some boundaries with him, though he will probably reject this, or see it as an act of hostility. I know it has little to do with me, but it is still difficult to deal with.

Anyway, I got my performance piece accepted into the Tate LIverpool conference in March and its all about paranoia. It has everything to do with this Radiohead song from Kid A, track 8, Idioteque. It takes place in a chair, and I never leave the chair. Soon as I got back I had to work on/finish the map project for the research and methods class, and I think I did a pretty good job. Rather than inflict the images on everyone I put them up on the blog that I have going of most of the updates I've sent out to you all. It's at http://wwwlondonfordummies.blogspot.com. (no dot between the "www" and the rest) Take a look and tell me what you think if you like. I hope you all had shiny, happy holidays and take care.

Seph

2007-01-12T19:26:00.000Z

Map Images (from Research and Methods class final project):

Kinda response to "Clarity and truth" from Glen and Alain

2006-12-19T02:06:00.000Z

Okay...okay....I guess I've been drinking or something. Here's the address.....

Alain DeRosen and Glen Nyborg
1745 Camino Palmero #437
Los Angeles CA 90046

Speaking of the "n" word. And I'll only say two things about it...

I was listening to Tavis Smiley interview Maya Angelou and the subject of the word "nigger" came up.
Angelou said that when she heard the word in a gathering it was like someone had introduced poison into the room. At that point she said she would look at her watch and say something like, "Oh, look at the time. I've got a flight to Timbuktu or Antarctica first thing in the morning", and leave.

Also...."nigger" is to the early 21st century what "motherfucker" was to the mid 20th century. It's meant to shock and it shocks. Youth and the oppressed can use it as a fraternal code word and at the same time a weapon to offend and intimidate the establishment.

We Remain Sincerely Yours,

Alain and Glen

2006-12-17T19:30:00.000Z

Updates from London: Clarity and Truth

All,

The last time I had sent a message I had wanted to talk about taking the night bus home, but didn't want to go on much longer. (It usually feels like I don't have that much to say, but then I get going and it's like Leviticus.) I have taken the bus home a few times and, to save money, have not indulged in taxis each time I could have, though one night coming home from shoreditch, there was no chance to get anything, not a bus, or a cab, or a rickshaw; it's like the area emptied out onto the streets at three in the morning (therefore a lot of walking, which, that night was okay)). So twice now I have had people just throw up in my general vicinity while minding my own sweet business on my way home. One time it was a girl who thankfully was kinda far away, and the last time, on my way home from my friend Shane's house, it was the guy sitting next to me. When he got on he looked like one of those old school drunks who wants to have an entire meaningful conversation about the way the adverts are rubbish and made by tossers, so I steadfastly looked out the window, and kept my headphones on (and I thought initially that he had a friend with him, but did not see any indication of him later, do they just get on the bus together and see what happens, maybe they end up home, maybe not?). Thankfully I only had one more stop to go and thankfully he threw up to his right. No, no, no I prefer to stand, thank you. And he just went right on sitting there like, well, me stop is Chatham Wells, so I'll just sit here until then. Jesus. Shouldn't someone cordon this area off?

I found out last week that I had not gotten the Tate internship I had applied for. I did rationalize it at first and say to myself that i really wanted to do this the following year when I wouldn't be taking classes, and this is true. But I also wanted to find out why I didn't get it. So I called up the department and they did get back to me a few days later and I had a surprising conversation with the woman who heads adult programmes. She said my application had already been flagged by her, and that my essay really stood out (thanks for the help, claudia, travis) and that I was overqualified for the internship. Wow. Then she said that they thought I would be bored and chafe under the menial stuff they would give me to do. (Although, can I say that the way the internship was described, it didn't sound like this at all). So they have a big research grant they just received which has something to do with immigrant Caribbean populations and their relationship to art within the museum setting and they want to sit down with me early next year and talk about what i might be able to do with and for them. Wower. That is just a huge piece of affirmation and I feel grateful.

And on the affirmation side: I had an ongoing email conversation with my friends Lawrence and Damione who are in New York, about this piece that appeared in Esquire recently. It was a piece written by John Ridley, and apparently seeks to separate out "niggers" from the rest of black population by defining them according to behavior, temperament, other classification features, etc. It's a ridiculous piece and if nothing else made us talk to each other about the state of thinking about race and other issues. By the time I got the thread (started by an outraged Damione) , a few people had commented and the last person had said that thing which I utterly cannot stand: "Opinions are like assholes; everyone's got one." It's a lazy and somewhat stupid way of talking about ideas that enter the public stream and ignores that once they do, they become arguments and need to be dealt with as such. So said as much and also suggested that mainstream black magazines are incapable of having real, meaningful conversations, since it was suggested that the article should have appeared in one of them. The reply we got from the one writer ignored pretty much the part about awareness of public rhetoric, but said that he didn't want "another journal" with "pseudo intellectuals" writing about these issues. So I asked him alone what journals these were (cause I don't know of any) and what the difference is between a pseudo intellectual and a real one, and how he recognizes a "real" one. I asked really because I wanted to know. His reply was to say sorry. The point is that when I sent him that email I realized that I am not a pseudo anything. I have been thinking and writing and talking about these issues for a long time and doing so with some awareness and rigor. I love that. That I no longer have to shy away from that term, or worry that someone will try to treat my arguments as unimportant because I'm not on Crossfire. I am doing precisely intellectual work and it's precisely who I am. I will not always get it right, and sometimes, need to shut up and listen, but I would like to think I am self aware enough to recognize when those times are. And if not, other of my intellectual friends will help. But, I am what I am.

Lastly, had a conversation with the woman in the program I had had a beef with before about the way she spoke to me. We had been getting along so well, and then she just kept sliding (I have to say it was somewhat subtle, but constant) these snide, biting comments into her conversations with me. So after we were all having beers (see that's trouble right there) after handing in our essays, she did that. And I walked out and had a conversation in which I told her I really wanted to like her, but then she kept doing this underhanded bullshit. Of course, she denied it, evaded and finally ended up in the town dump, saying I was being inappropriately heavy with her. (and this is also a thing I have noticed, that people who are insensitive: They like to define their level of sensitivity as normal and sensitive people like me as not. When did we just give up the keys to the kingdom and accept this? I don't get why insensitivity is allowed to be the baseline for assessment. It's not that I am over-sensitive, it's that you aren't sensitive enough) She even said this was the type of conversation she would have with her ex-husband and suggested I wait to get to know someone more before I confront them. I said no. I said that I aim to live in clarity and in truth, and we don't have to talk, but if we do, I need to know if I have offended in some way and what I can do to resolve that. And I won't accept people being mean because they don't know how else to be. Clarity and truth. Shit. I wish I had known this ten years ago.

Bless you all this holiday season. I wish I could just show up for a hug and kiss and get some personal affirmation. I will be in Jamaica after this thursday through the 27th and then in New York until the 3rd of January. I am thinking of you and hope you enjoy the holidays.

yours,

Seph

2006-12-09T03:30:00.000Z

Response to "Hours in the Darkroom"

Hiya, Seph.

Its 3:30 in the morning, Alain's asleep and I felt the urge to type in the quiet darkness.
I suppose the coyotes are coming down from the hills, looking for a stray cat to snack on.
Happy Birthday. However old you are, you certainly don't look it.
What sort of Christian guilt are you keeping inside? My thinking gets so egocentric sometimes I have to remind myself that straight folks have things to feel guilty about.
What would the Judeo-Christian tradition be without guilt?
I suppose guilt has to be a major part of any successful religion. Ask any Baptist minister how to fill the chairs in a tent meeting and he'll basically say, "Scare people as best you can and then serve 'em up a nice chicken dinner afterwards."
So a hot meal is key. You seem to have found that out in your last letter.
In about 4 hours, I'll head into work to do some overtime. I'm going to scan the hearts of six men or women, Chinese, Hispanic or black. That's what the make-up will be. Only fate, the clinic and an unopened e-mail addressed to yours truly know the final mix of those ingredients.
I'll be on one side of the room where the 1.5 tesla magnet is. That's the best scanner for cardiac work. The 3 tesla magnet will be used by researchers doing functional MRI, seeing how the brain and its myriad of electrical freeways react to certain stimuli. They're loud and pretentious, talking about all the papers they've published and are going to publish, about how important their work is. It bugs me when people pat themselves on the back so much.
But they bring food. They pull together every available table sort of thing they can find and make an elaborate buffet for anyone who wants to partake.
The downside is that the research center smells like old sour cream and onion dip and pizza for the rest of the week. Bleah!
Afterwards, I'm going to walk down Westwood Blvd to the Borders, buy a documentary on the life of Phyllis Diller and have her sign it. I'll be nervous when she signs it and say something stupid like I always do when I'm nervous. Or maybe I'll just smile when she signs it and say "Thank you. You're just great".
What is my attraction to Phyllis Diller?
I like the fact that she was playing Vegas back when the mob ran things. I like the idea of her walking onstage in front of a stylish, plump, 1960's crowd, the kind of crowd where the men all had skinny ties and the women had tight, knee length dresses and big hair. I like the idea of her wearing outlandish costumes, brandishing a cigarette at the end of a long holder and making people laugh in a big showroom. I like the idea of her name on the marquee at the Sahara or the Caesar's Palace back when the Sahara and Caesar's were two stories and were indistinguishable from your basic Holiday Inn. I like the idea that the check she got at the end of the week was signed by a guy who'd probably killed a couple of people.
After that I'll have the day to myself. Alain's started working again, a couple of hours a day until he gets his strength back. Not enough to pay many bills yet, but that'll come.
I think you should start a "Polonium 210 Tour of London". That's the big story in the news here, how when Londoner's refer to Russian frequented bars and restaurants as "hot spots", they're not talking about the popularity of the place but rather its radioactivity.
Okay. I'm finally fading. Back to bed.

Glen and Alain

2006-12-04T20:56:00.000Z

Response to "Hours in the Darkroom"

Great read. Nastalga of who you where. Funny, i was
going through that last night when i was in a
situation to conversate (mainly listen) with someone.
I'm rushin' baby, but i'll get back to you in length,
Allah willing, tomorrow. I love you, and joyful
living my bliss bringer.

-Dame

2006-12-04T15:11:00.000Z

Subject: Updates from London: Hours in the Darkroom
Date: 4 December 2006 15:11:57 GMT

I went back to the clinic where I had gone the other week when my tummy was giving me an extremely hard time. I have to say I experienced a little veiled hostility on the part of the doctor the first time when I suggested that I may have some allergies to food. I could just be she is awfully tired of hearing those questions, and having to repeat the same sermon since her position is that there is no such thing (Accor. to her, there is an allergic reaction of wheat by some bodies, but that condition is a disease). (Also apparently the British, or at least Londoners also have the habit of saying "whutevah" and sometimes that's just really the appropriate thing to say) Nevertheless, when I went back last friday, she was much nicer. She went through the results of the blood work with me and all the tests have indications of normalcy (!) She suggested, given my history that I have Irritable bowel syndrome, which makes a lot of sense. God knows since I was a child, I have held stress in my stomach—there was always a big, fat pot of christian guilt being served at dinner at my house, and I always seemed to get two or three helpings—though as I get older (more on that later) I am finding ways to mediate stress and surround myself with people who have some idea of how to love themselves and others. So, although I internalized the oppressor a long time ago, I don't have to hold onto him. I am keeping a food diary now and being a lot more careful and watchful and can I say? I have finally figured out what people mean when they say they just want a good, hot meal. For the first few weeks of being here, there were lots of cold sandwiches and salads and it didn't dawn on me until I moved into the hall and had access to the evening meals, that it really makes a difference when you have something warm and filling. It makes me feel whole for a while. So even though the menu is not three star I really appreciate being able to go there for a meal every other day or so. And I have felt good for the last two weeks or so, even with having the essay due and working up till the last day on it.

I ended up talking about Ad Reinhardt (I may include an image at the back of this thing) and his enigmatic practice of painting black paintings for the last seven years of his life. I did a lot of reading including his collected writings and interviews in Art-as-Art, an cantankerous book. I compared his practice to the buddhist practice of outlining a territory for inquiry and emptying the self in order to let go of ego and allow the self to be enlightened. I read part of a really good book on Buddhist, christian and Jungian philosophy on the practice of emptying the self, wanted to look at Jung but knew so little about it and didn't have the time, and already had a tiny bit of knowledge about Buddhism. (There was one famous practitioner, Bodhidharma, who was supposed to have spent nine years looking at a wall) The paper I think is good, but it's also sad. I don't think Ad ever made it there. He was in process, but was still trying to negate things to find a space to in which to live. It's funny (i.e sounds like I wear a lot of hemp), yet true; to be on that path is to be on the path of seeing god in everyone.

I had met someone in Yoga class, another greek woman and we talked about seeing a photography show at the Barbican. Well, we went this past saturday and it was really sweet to spend time with her. Very similar emotional makeup and history, and experiences and it turns out she was just in the hospital last week for the same condition I am probably suffering from (IBS, it may be that she is at the point where she is struggling to understand how to control her stress). We talked a lot and then went to a Brazilian joint to have caipirinhas—that has to be one of my favorite things. I think we'll be friends. The thing is: in looking over the photographs, which are largely eastern-european work from the last thirty years or so, and mostly portraiture with a journalistic bent. I was taken back to when I had just started studying photography. The work at the Barbican is very much in that stream of work by people like, weston, strand, Dorothea Lange, very humanistic and also photo-journalistic and concerned with serious, classic photography concerns such as: composition, separation of tones, contrast, the way a print is matted, warm or cold, (as if they were still interested in those questions of form when lots of others have moved on to . . .I don't know . . . empty interiors and Ninety-nine cent stores—whutevah). I remember those long hours in the studio just shooting and getting it wrong and shooting again, and tripping it up and getting it kinda right. Then more hours in the darkroom, playing with printing techniques, not being able to do less than a four- or five hour session at a time; not being able to see the print until the next day and waiting, waiting for it to dry. I always loved the moment in the dark where I put the paper into the developer and watched the image swim up to meet me. I always thought of that as a really beautiful moment. I saw these prints and they took me back to that time when I valued and cared about that stuff—making a perfect print, making beauty. You really can just spend hours looking. I just don't think that it's a very interesting, or challenging conversation anymore. Still, I get nostalgic for who I used to be.

So tomorrow is my birthday and I'm nursing a sore throat today and drinking lots of juice and looking outside at the weather today: ghastly with a little sense of apocalypse on the horizon. (mommy, tell us again why we live under the dome). But, I have a good feeling it will be sunny tomorrow.

Seph

P.S. I have to remember to tell the story of the conversation I had with the woman I had to confront about being snide, and my adventures coming home on the late-night bus, the only public transportation available in London after 12:30 or so in the morning.

2006-11-24T23:42:00.000Z

Response to "Paris"

From: Amaryllis Tsegou
Subject: Paris
Date: 22 November 2006 11:15:28 GMT

Thank you soooo much for these. I love masks too- I usually feel
overwelmed by them; it's like there's something very dark about them,
but also very real- like they're covering something to reveal another
thing. The first one was indeed amazing.

Obviously I can't judge just by the shots, but from your description,
the whole thing brought to mind that text by Stuart Hall I was telling
you about- that notion of pretensious 'openess', that people have
towards the 'other', when they don't actually know it and are not
really interested in it. Like, by actually exposing all these
'exoticism' you kinda become more connected with the other, when in
fact the separating line is so obvious- I mean, to begin with, all
these are behind glass and you 're the voyeur, you 're safe. Do I make
sense? Just woke up a while ago. And the whole museum is very
interesting if you think of it in relation to the situation in France
and all the turbulence in Paris last year. It's like an attempt to
sleep better at night- you know?

Anyway, I always feel like walking on thin ice when talking about art...

Thank you, thank you. Good way to start the day. I 'm off to my dance
class. Talk to you later.

Amaryllis

2006-11-23T22:01:00.000Z

All,

I promised you some images of the trip to Paris this past weekend. Really the group had taken the trip to see the exhibit of the "The Moving Image" at the Pompidou center. It was about film and cinema and was mostly film work. There were lots of pieces I had not seen before and the thematic arrangement of the show meant that there were sculpture works next to films, next to painting and sometimes the link was not obvious. Then we had a great personal talk with the curator, Phillip-Alain, who is a friend of a friend of the film studies professor Laura Malvey.

These are mostly the images of the Musée du quai Branly—a rather ignorant collection of highly exoticized images and pieces taken from, or about Africa. The permanent exhibition contains this first set of images. This is downstairs and is presented in a very mixed fashion: a Gaudi-like meandering set of passageways, very organic looking and natural wood tones, but all the vitrines were very modern looking and black and all have recessed lighting, sometimes lit from the bottom to give that extra hollywood dramatic effect with shadows. The whole presentation downstairs just reeked of entering the "Dark Continent." I can bet that the whole enterprise makes a lot of money( and judging from the long lines outside it does). (Yay, we're French—We win again!)

Apparently this is the pet project of Jacques Chirac, the president (an attempt at leaving a certain kind of legacy?) and it certainly looks like a lot of money was spent on it. No mention by the by, of how this work was procured, from what I can tell of the permanent exhibit, it just magically cohered, from the collections of several private owners. A lot of the work still, and always is, arresting. It's just presented in a way that produced an audible moan from me.

I always amazed at the masks; they always seem to me to come from another civilization so far removed from us, I can't imagine we were once there. Some re-conceptions of the human face are so completely radical, they're astonishing. I have felt this way since I first saw versions of them when I was a kid in New York.

This batch is just masks and musical instruments. I will break this up in a few emails.

Seph

Subject: Paris Photos II
Date: 23 November 2006 02:08:15 GMT

The had a new show up called "D'un Regard l'autre", or a look at the other, which is essentially the same kind of view as the permanent collection, but the presentation has a few more bells and whistles.

This is the second iteration: The show is the "Look at the Other" and is more widely and brightly lit and contains images of European art (as if to articulate connections) and shows the idealized, ridiculous (see the men they dressed in togas) and racist, and (in some cases) awed views of the Europeans looking at the people from places they could hardly imagine. These are: Images of the projections along the floor and the wall (the green one was on the floor), all which tended to be more colorful, tourist-trade images of people from the continent.

Then a rendering of "savages" in wood. Then some busts in vitrines; then the portrait rotunda with very large paintings.

The had a new show up called "D'un Regard l'autre", or a look at the other, which is essentially the same kind of view as the permanent collection, but the presentation has a few more bells and whistles.

This is the second iteration: The show is the "Look at the Other" and is more widely and brightly lit and contains images of European art (as if to articulate connections) and shows the idealized, ridiculous (see the men they dressed in togas) and racist, and (in some cases) awed views of the Europeans looking at the people from places they could hardly imagine. These are: Images of the projections along the floor and the wall (the green one was on the floor), all which tended to be more colorful, tourist-trade images of people from the continent.

Then a rendering of "savages" in wood. Then some busts in vitrines; then the portrait rotunda with very large paintings.

Subject: Paris Photos III
Date: 23 November 2006 02:12:43 GMT

All,

These are the last ones: Parting shot of museum from outsidet. And then the evening shots of the pool near the Pompidou center. Plus a view of the Eiffel Tower.

2006-11-18T06:32:00.000Z

Response to "I am Speaking" Damn that was a lot

Subject: Re: Updates from London: I am speaking
Date: 17 November 2006 06:32:36 GMT

Damn...that was a lot to chew on.
I think your classmate likes to hear herself talk a lot. And I would like to meet the person who told her she was so compelling.
I read somewhere that talking provides the female of our species with a certain sexual fulfillment. Some balance of the tongue and glottis moving about combined with soundwaves and a lot of chemical reactions must trigger a response that sets your gals juices going.
After one of your classes where she's held court, you should check her seat to see if it smells like mid-week at the Seattle Shrimp-fest.
As for transformations....there's that metamorphosis thing again....
When I get creative and produce something worthwhile, to my eyes/ears/nose anyway, the process always becomes such a blur. There's this sense of focus that I really get off on. But I'm unaware of the getting off because all my attention is on the painting, music, drawing, etc...
But I know I have to get to that state of being unaware of what I'm doing otherwise I'm going to produce nothing but a great smelly steaming pile.
I think the enlightenment that Buddha talks about is what anybody feels when they are having a helluva good time, when they're having fun. Time is annihilated.
So the trick is not to be aware that you're getting off on what you're doing. To just be in this state where you're entire self is in that one little universe which is you and you are its cause and you are its effect. You are at once the sun, the magnifying glass and the ant...or if you're into less painful analogies, the sun, the water, and the plant. And you realize none of it until the moment focus is lost and you're back to life's million billion distractions.
Its only then that you realize time's passed and that you're really hungry or really exhausted, or that you've shit in your pants and have only now noticed.
Buddha was just one of those lucky people who could have a helluva good time sitting quietly by himself. In my opinion, Buddhist philosophy is just the attempt to explain WHY he was able to have such a helluva good time sitting quietly by himself.
Lawrence Olivier was performing Hamlet at the Old Vic, as the story goes. He's a great actor and surely every performance was a gem. However, there was one performance he gave that everyone in the audience, the cast, the stage crew, the ushers, agreed was brilliant. When the curtain came down that night, there was silence in the theatre for a full 20 or 30 seconds because everyone was so taken aback by Sir Lawrence's portrayal. Then came the deafening applause.
After his bows, he went to his dressing room and wept almost uncontrollably. His dresser was surprised by this and said, "You just gave a perfect performance. Absolutely PERFECT! You should be ecstatic! Why are you crying?"
To which Sir Lawrence replied, "Because I'll never be able to do it that way again."
That sounded like transformation to me, his realizing the sponge had been completely wrung out.
Nothing left.
I don't think transformation can occur without some sort of trauma. Bones grow in the direction of stress put on the body.
A Nirvana-like emptiness without a humbling vehicle to get you there doesn't seem like it would be very sweet. Art without some fucked (bad sense) degree of pain or fucking (good sense) ecstasy driving the Artist's passion is mere craftsmanship.

This probably helps your essay not one iota. But it was fun to type.

Alain was in the hospital this week. He was really sick there for a couple days, unable to move, unable to eat. Infection upon infection upon allergic reaction to a couple of antibiotics to fight the infections....it was scary.
He's okay now for the most part and will be coming home this weekend.
I think he and I have been transformed by the experience.
The most relevant part of the ordeal, most relevant to your e-mail anyway is....
I knew he was getting better once he started to get bored with the hospital. He'd turned the corner. Got over the hump. Saw the light at the end of the tunnel.

Tonight it occured to him what might have happened had we not been so close to Cedars-Sinai. It unnerved him big-time and he displayed all the physical and mental perturbations that accompany a good unnerving.
He shook it off.
Then it unnerved him again.

Talk to you later. Good luck with your essay.

Glen and Alain

2006-11-17T20:10:00.000Z

Updates from London: I am speaking

Date: 17 November 2006 05:13:35 GMT

It's been rough for a brother this past week. I have had some persistent tummy trouble, I suppose getting used to the diet here in London has to . . . take some getting used to. Went to the doctor today and he poked me to make sure that I hadn't ruptured a spleen or had appendicitis. Sure that my situation wasn't "acute" I made a "regular" appointment for monday. I suppose I'll survive until then.

I applied earlier this week for an internship next April at the Tate Britain (or is it the Modern, not sure?) Thanks to those who helped me out with the essay. I keep trying to write in a voice that is scholarly, but surprising; I don't want to sound like I'm destined for the MLA conference next year, but I also don't want to appear academically naïve. I was talking with Travis the other day about how I want to inject poetry into the conversation around visual art; I also want to inject storytelling into academic writing. I have felt this way since undregrad. Going to those academic conferences and hearing everyone talk in that Derridean way about Derrida and realizing that part of that exercise was such mutual masturbation. Though honestly, part of it was celebrating getting to the summit of such difficult terrain.

Still, I really hate most of the academic writing I read. It just sounds like posturing. How do we get at difficult concepts, but write with the attitude that we want to welcome more people to a world of ideas, not fewer? I'm just not interested in keeping the gate, guarding the border, talking the talk (Deleuzian minutemen). I think of Tom Wolf in the Purple decades. That was it. He writes in this "gonzo journalism" style that was fresh and innovative back then (okay, it was the 70s). It was wild and ridiculous and poetic, but it didn't shy away from closely examining a situation in a critical way (Look at "Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers"). I keep coming back to this word: generosity. I keep looking for it to show up. It's like one of the professors I have now: He speaks as if he fully suspects that none of us will have anything interesting to add to the conversation; we might, and then he would deal with it—but probably not. At the same time, while I am learning to be generous, I don't want to be afraid to make people uncomfortable. Some situations are. Some ideas are supposed to haunt you. I want to be the person who will call you on it. The emperor is buck naked, Sir!

Which reminds me: I was hanging out on tuesday with two classmates I really like and we were talking about how another classmate tends to ask the professors questions with this smug, disdainful air, questions that basically amount to (at least this was my reading of it) "I heard what you said and I think you're wrong." Full stop. My friend said that he couldn't help rolling his eyes whenever she speaks, and that he had thought a lot about it and his reading is that all she is saying when she talks is "I am speaking now" Full stop.

I have been trying to write this essay on the idea of transformation in art. I am specifically interested in the mechanisms for such a transformation to occur, and I want to talk about this in terms of the transformation in the artist herself, as opposed to just the viewer. There isn't a hell of a lot of scholarship out there about this. The research I've been doing has only turned up one interesting source, but it's tangential: Buddhist thought on emptiness, as an experience of being without, not having answers, property, love, or power or hope. This emptiness is, according to this scheme, a precondition for spiritual transformation; it is not painful, but a doorway to a larger experience of connection to all life. The only thing is that I don't know much about this spiritual tradition and am having some trouble discussing this in terms of art. Can anybody suggest anything? This essay is due in a little over a week.

Anywho. I hope I get the Tate internship. It would make my life extremely busy, but it would be a serious stepping stone to doing what I want to do. Oh yeah, and I'm going to Paris this weekend. Just saturday and sunday to see the exhibit at the Pompidou center and talk with the curator and all that jive. The exhibit is called the Moving Image. Then Sunday I think we check out another museum that's supposed to be really controversial, holds a lot of material on France's colonial past. The Musée du Quai Branly. "Highly political" Oh boy.

No real romance yet. Still waiting for something compelling. Met a Greek woman whose middle name is Aphrodite. Despite all the legends, not compelling to me. Oh well.

Hope you all are well and thriving,

Seph

2006-11-05T23:29:00.000Z

Responses to "Just be French . . . "

Hiya, Seph.

Have you read "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris.
If you haven't, please read it.
If you have, let me know and let's talk about it. I'll just say one thing....Jesus shaves?

Ah...Kafka....

I read somewhere that he read a few things of his to some friends and they all had a good laugh.
Which made me think, "You know, the ridiculousness of your average Kafka situation does border on the sublime...if it doesn't just go ahead and cross that border illegally, get a job, make some money to send back to the family and go out drinking on Saturday night."

So I started reading some of Kafka's stuff with the idea that this whole thing is a very silly can of worms.

But metamophosis....I think metamorphosis is an allegory for the attainment of grace, the permanent state of happiness that we, as humans evolved from scampering , are genetically hardwired to shun for fear that we will become complacent and get eaten by the next preditor

On 4 Nov 2006, at 18:52, Glen wrote:

Hiya, again.

I didn't quite finish the last message. I accidentally hit send...so here's the second part of it.

So...the constant persuit of grace, redemption....

I think that's what metamorphosis is. There's coming of age stuff to be sure. The juvenile girl starts her period and looks for the breasts that have yet to develop. The boy's dick gets bigger and his balls drop and everyone starts to stink. But metamorphosis is more than just maturing.
Metamorphosis implies something more of a sea change. Full fathom five thy father lies, of his bones are coral made sort of stuff. A change of awareness, usually for the better. I don't know of any metamorphosis stories where the change is for the worse. Redemption seems to be the point of metamorphosis stories.
There are stories like The Days of Wine and Roses where alcohol is the vector for metamorphosis. But then AA comes along and provides the real redemption.
Then there's the metamorphosis that's always been there, just waiting to be discovered. Like the candlestick in which you one day suddenly see the two profiles.
The Walt Disney/Salvadore Dali collaboration "Destino" is chock full of metamorphosing, transfiguring images, the meaning of which escape me, but its art so I suppose its saying something important.

I don't know what to say about a bank that declines your application to set up an account for no reason. On second thought, I do know what to say. That's just fucked up.

Glen and Alain

Subject: Re: Updates from London: Just be French
Date: 13 November 2006 12:36:40 GMT

Always great to hear from you guys. I have been busy-er the last week because I have an essay due for the metamorphosis class and still don't know exactly what I'm doing.

Luckily I have read me talk Pretty One Day. It's so funny, I was trying to read out loud the passage where he describes his brother as the rooster and quotes him saying You can't kill the rooster; you might can fuck him up sometimes, but you can't kill the rooster. Oh. I'm still laughing now. I pretty much love everything that David Sedaris does.

And as far as the metamorphosis topic goes, it would have been welcome to have you in class. There are lots of people who are gifted at things other than verbally dealing with difficult ideas. So it often ends up being just a handful of us that respond to the questions posed. I like your idea about avoiding happiness. It has often seemed to me that some people are preemptively unhappy, as if by getting there first they will have some control over the rest of what happens in their lives. And maybe too, it's also about that fear that happiness will make us weak, less able to defend ourselves. Speaking of which: I keep hearing these stories about violence occurring in the city, muggings, stabbings, etc. But I have yet to see that happen. I don't really want to, but I am still caught in this penumbra space, in between the stories I hear about London and the reality I walk through everyday.

Redemption. That's one of the conclusions we came to in class: that stories about metamorphosis are representative of the ultimate fear of death and are forms of fantasizing beyond death. Ultimately, the thing we give up in death is consciousness, and we would like to have that consciousness continue, to pass into another form, yet retain the sense of who we are. At the same time is the fear that we are already deeply flawed and want to get to a higher state of being, instead of being, to quote Angela Carter "hairy on the inside"

Must to get to the library today and do all kinds of marvelous shit.

love,

Seph

2006-11-04T15:46:00.000Z

Updates from London: Just be French

It' been a more settled-in kind of week. I realized on Monday after I had sent the last email, that the computer had actually said yes—a different computer. I got an account with Natwest in less than half the time it took dealing with the other bank. . . . So I am on the phone calling the Cooperative Bank (sic) and the manager tells me that I have been declined for a bank account, no reason, just declined. So I take a few deep breaths and call Natwest which I had gone to just to hedge my bets and found that the account was on and had been active since the friday before. I wrote a letter to the Co-op bank. It wasn't very nice.

I am starting to sink into this disciplinary stuff. I went to yet another research center—this one at the Tate Britain—the Hyman Kreitman research center, for which one has to make an appointment. At least they say you have to, but I showed up and told them that I had, and they didn't see my name on the sheet and said "ah, go in anyway" I didn't find more than two things to help me. I have a feeling I'm going to be doing a lot of trudging back and forth, a lot of on-line searches, a lot of asking questions and waiting for the computer (the new Oracle at Delphi?) to say yes or no; slapping the computer down when it says what I don't want it to. (it's about de-incentivizing certain types of behaviour)

This past week, had a few film screenings, including Neil Jordan's The Company of wolves, which looks somewhat dated, but is childlike and fanciful, almost to the point of silliness, then Cronenberg's The Fly, which is a lot more gruesome and sad. All of them had to do with the seminar built around the idea of Metamorphosis. I completely missed the big film festival that was in town, blinded by the lights. Had my first French class meeting which is led by a woman named Martine. She has that ex-ballerina vibe, very excited to be leading the class and somewhat tightly wrapped. I like her already because she's insistent, keeps making us try harder. It's as if the subtext to most of what she says is: okay, maintenant, just beee French. Hmmm. D'accord.

I also finally got to read Kafka's Metamrphosis (or Transformation, is another reading of the title). I never realized that the story starts out with him being a beetle, first of all, and then a dung beetle at that. Damn.
You basically are a dung beetle and don't even realize it until certain events catapult you into that level of self knowledge. And you are the economic support of your family, who then turns on you and throws apples at your retreating back. It's really too much. I can see why the story was so pivotal—such a blow to the post-industrial collective self-esteem. We, the students, also as a group saw the play (adapted from the story) at a place called the Hammersmith Lyric. Great theater. great performance. But, I am really tired of the theater. Too much emoting and yelling and Acting for my taste. I always end up feeling embarrassed by the overwrought action on stage (overwrought, overdetermined, ohhgee) Can we just have a cappucino and talk about it?

I finally got a version of an outline for my project done and have sent that off to my supervisor. We'll see. Booked my flight home for christmas, be in Jamaica with my family, then in New York for New Year's. Paid so much for the flight, I had to have the defibrillator next to me. Oh. And I now have Vonage here, so I have a new number. (Hopefully the cell phone will also be active by Monday; I'm waiting on that too).

Please update your files:

Now back to work.

love,

Seph

2006-10-16T23:34:00.000+01:00

Reply to "The Computer Says No"

YES, FIGHT ON!!! Very well put on how people have no
concern about others "humanity" or their own, very
well put, and hopefully better observed. Those "kind"
of folk are usually the ones i have a sick sense of
"satisfaction" for when they fall and are left looking
for help from those they have dismissed. A wonderful
lesson that is, one that money CANNOT BUY. But in the
meantime, it is a rather sensless thing to wait and
watch for. I'm told that serial killers sometime cry
with joy when they've done what they do, so i guess
tears for some is merely a release, not some key into
something more compassionate (don't ask). I think i
said that because i believe there is a fall waiting
for all of us who dismiss the credibility and worth of
another as something wonderful waiting to happen if it
already "has not". again, don't ask.

ok.

I'm really excited for you Sephee, the couragesness it
takes to get up and move somewhere so foreign, to
engage yourself so and expierience life outside of the
safety mechanisms that we can hold onto for dear
life...i truly admire you, and when admiration is
heaped on familiarity and love it only produces a map
who's lines i eventually learn to follow-or not. But
either way, it's wonderful to have that map. It's
encouraging to love and appreciate you.

So, in the words of St. Paul: Teach those sons of
sinners though you dimly see now, you still see enough
to punch them in their fuckin mouths with the fist of
your tongue.

uhm, maybe Paul didn't say that...but maybe he did
when he simply went by Saul. Yea, thats it, i know i
read that somewhere.

ok.

I love you.
Hope you liked the music.

Love,
Damee

2006-10-14T23:23:00.000+01:00

The Computer Says No

So this past week has been tough. I am still struggling with the bank to get the damn account up and running and it's surprising to myself how calm I am about this. I suppose I just realize that there really is nothing else I can do. I have been on the phone constantly with the branch manager and have asked him point blank whether this severe lack of competence on their part is something I should take personally, or whether they just treat everyone like this. Apparently it's everyone. That show I mentioned before: Little Britain, has a recurring sketch, with one of the actors in drag, acting as a bank teller (or some other office functionary) and she gathers information form the customer, listens to the questions and does some typing and then says "Hmmm, the computer says no." That's it right there. The computer always says no.

Then this week I went through the, I suppose, typical jockeying for position with some in my class. There were a couple of arguments this week (which took place oddly enough at the bars after the blasted lectures, one which was on the history of universities, and the other which was on the "ugly") which amounted to people trying to tell me they didn't approve of my methodology of research or my off hand way of dismissing Russian immigrant culture. Really, they were attempts at establishing some social dominance. You know, I forgot that grad school was full of other people, some of whom are not at all interested in recognizing my humanity—or their own. So I had to git down and do some fighting. No one got hurt, but I hope the word spreads that I am not the motherfucker to be fucked with. I just don't get mistaking kindness for weakness. (unfortunately too, one of these people is the woman who was assigned to be my senior "buddy")

Then there was the slightly less troubling situation with one of our professors who, last week, on our second meeting for the "Metamorphosis" class got a true case of manifest destiny on and went a little bezerk. One of us is a Korean woman who is doing her second Ph.D. and English is not her first language; we were discussing Ovid and she asked, in a halting and not completely clear way why the greeks followed their gods so faithfully, when the gods were clearly amoral. He actually took this to mean she was asking why we should bother reading the classics at all. I suggested that he was making an oversimplification of what she was saying (he is one of the founding members of the program). He backed off then launched into in again, and did this fifteen minute screed on why studying the Greeks through to Ovid was worthwhile and important and offered more than other literary or philosophical traditions. Part of the problem is that he is amazingly well read and smart and can do that easily. But clearly, he has issues and was ready with his defense (really apology for) of western civilization before we ever showed up for this course.

Most of us in that class met at the bar later and dissected it (and I've noticed we almost always meet at the bar, either over beer or coffee and I get the hint that some of the faculty have been in bars a little too often): we figured we need to direct the conversation more and not let him get off on tangents where he can just wail for as long as he wants. He was better this past week when we read Deleuze and Guattari (Becoming blah blah), because the shit is so hard, most of the class was spent in trying to understand the language. I really liked the bit on the war machines, made me think of Commandante Marcos. The same professor also invited ten of us to a film screening of some movie, which—and he said this twice—"is the best movie I have ever produced" I didn't go.

Now I got some Althusser from the library and doing some serious reading. I have to hand in an abstract this week and a topic and firrst paragraph of the 4000 word essay I have to write by the end of november. Well. Okay.

I had a dream too. The other night I dreamt that some one was trying to mug me, some guy who had another guy with him. He had a rusty hand saw on him and wanted my wallet. I thought about it and thought: there's no way I am giving this bastard my Oyster card (its the card that you buy weeks or months of travel for use on the buses and tube, and I just bought a month on mine) so I fought, and he had different weapons and I fought, and my weapons seemed to be just my body, and I fought, and eventually he gave up. I'm going to take that to heart.

Seph